The Fall of Sky: Part One by Alexia Purdy Page B

ruffled them up filled up my head. She had never looked frazzled; always calm, always happy. That’s how I remembered her. Facing out toward the water, clutching her arms around her like she was cold, even though the day was warm and brilliant. Her face never came to me when I thought of her. It only came when I stared at the faded photographs she left behind, which were all I had left of her now. In my mind, it was always a profile of her that came to me, nothing of her full on face. It made me wish I could remember her features more clearly, but time had a way of blurring such things out.
    “After he left, she struggled to keep food on the table and the rent paid. Moved us to a tiny studio room for a while, that was a converted garage of one of her friends, until we got back on our feet.”
    “Must have been rough.”
    I nodded, but the memory of us three rolling into each other in the one queen size bed in that shack made smile. “It was, but it was fine with us. She kept things so normal, calm, we really didn’t mind. We three were so close, thick as thieves, nothing brought us down. She found ways to make it fun, even when there was no money.”
    “She sounds like wonderful woman.”
    “Yes, she really was. Unfortunately, she always fell in love with the wrong man. When we were twelve and thirteen, she shacked up with a guy who eventually became our stepfather. With her, he was okay, but he’d lose his temper over silly things, like leaving a dish in the sink, or food not being ready right when he got home from a long day at the construction site. He was moody, volatile, but my mother had a way of calming his rage. I know she loved him, but as time went on, he wore her out.”
    “What happened?”
    “Well, after one particular nasty fight, me and Liz had walked in from school and caught the jist of the fight. It was really bad. He hit her, and she stormed out, crying and hysterical. Liv was spooked, so I rushed her to our neighbors’ two houses down, where we played with a girl there, and hid in her house until nightfall. When we came back, Mom was still gone and our Stepdad was drunk and passed out on the couch.”
    “Where’d she go?”
    My hands were shaking. I hadn’t told anyone this story in a long time. I don’t even think my ex heard the whole story. Some things were meant to be shoved into the deep crevices of one’s mind, like an odd, hidden closet, where everything you had to keep buried and didn’t want to display ended up in boxes of memories, stuffed away with the door glued shut, never to be opened again. This was that….repressed. The resurfacing of emotions made me tremble.
    “The police came by later that night, when Liv and I snuck back in and took our baths and slipped into bed. I got up to the sound of the doorbell, Liv was still asleep, and I tiptoed down the hall to hear what was going on. My stepdad, his name was Brian, he was still drunk but coherent enough to answer the door. That’s when…” I gulped, my mouth turning dry as I saw the scene flash across my vision, as if it had just happened. “The policeman told him that our mother was dead. Her car had busted a tire on the highway, and it had sent her car slamming into the opposite lanes of traffic, head on into a large truck. She’d died on impact.”
    “That must have been devastating for you both.”
    I sipped on my coffee. The steamy heat from it made the tremors fade. Right on time, our food arrived, the story interrupted as we shoveled the food into our mouths.
    “What made you run away?”
    Washing down the hash browns with some water, I sat back and wiped my mouth with a napkin. These tiny mundane things are what kept me going when the past wanted to swallow me up in its constantly awaiting despair.
    “Well, the next three years were hard. We avoided our stepfather as much as we could. He ignored us to the point of pure neglect. As long as dinner was ready when he arrived home, he’d drink himself to sleep