Toni had never doubted her parents’ love for her, which was the whole problem! Her life would have been so much less complicated if she believed her parents hated her. Did they wish they hadn’t been fifteen when they had her? Absolutely, but that was so they could offer her a better life.
Wayne started working as a newspaper delivery boy before school and a dishwasher after school, and when the opportunity for a higher paying position came up, he dropped out of school to accept that, too. Debra had already dropped out to stay home and take care of Toni.
She wasn’t sure of the exact date, but Grandma Connie claimed it was when Toni was around two years old that Wayne was accused of stealing money from the till. She did not know if her son had done the crime, though to this day he still claimed he was innocent, but even the accusation in a small town had dire consequences, and he was soon fired from his other positions as well. Seventeen, jobless, with a baby and girlfriend at home to take care of.
No one would hire him, not with the rumors of him being a thief following him around. Which was when he started looking for less reputable work. The details of how or who, Toni didn’t know, but she knew her father started dealing drugs. In a small town, though, the market is scarce with limited customers. So, Wayne packed Debra and Toni up, and moved them to the big city.
Toni’s memories of this time were…mixed. She remembered their one bedroom apartment in Philadelphia. Remembered the smell of her mom cooking—both her successes and her failures. She remembered the sounds of her parents’ laughter as they play-chased Toni around and around in circles. She remembered the small playground in the courtyard of their apartment building, and standing with her nose pressed to the window in anticipation of being able to go down there to play that day.
She also remembered hiding around the corner when strangers came to the apartment. She remembered waking up in the middle of the night and being unable to find her parents. She remembered when the smell of her mom’s cooking turned rotten, reminding her of the doctor’s office but worse. To this day, Toni couldn’t stand the smell of acetone. And despite her father going to work every day, they were constantly out of money, which caused several arguments between her parents. Her mom would start sleeping at all hours of the day, nodding off during activities she used to enjoy. Once when they were at the playground, Toni couldn’t wake her when she wanted to ask for money for the passing ice cream truck.
She remembered the first time the police came to their apartment, thinking of them as big blue monsters because they wanted to take her away from her parents. Her father’s temper was worse during that time. Everything was worse back then. Toni started having to go across to a neighbor’s apartment whenshe needed something because her parents were always too busy or too scary to go near.
But it was when their apartment building caught fire when Toni was six that things actually changed. The only reason her parents were not arrested or charged was because it wasn’t them who had started the fire. While the police suspected they were dealing and cooking, there was no proof. Surveillance and technology wasn’t what it was today in the nineties, and the Philadelphia police had more important matters than two small-time drug dealers who barely remembered to stop using long enough to actually sell their product. Walter White, they were not.
However, the fire was the last straw. Neither Connie nor Craig had known how bad things had gotten, believing the lies told to them over the phone by Toni’s parents. Now homeless again and with no money or resources, Connie and Craig gave Wayne and Debra a choice: lose Toni or get clean.
It was the wakeup call her parents needed. They moved back to Mount Grove, back into Connie and Craig’s house with Toni. Toni, though, was completely in her grandparents’ care. While legally, nothing had changed, Wayne and Debra had essentially lost their rights to Toni. They got clean. They attended church, worked hard to get their GEDs, and did everything they could to turn their lives around.
Toni was around ten at this point. She remembered being happy. So happy. She was getting good grades in school, was on the soccer team, had a full belly, and had her parents and her grandparents in her life.
Then Grandpa Craig had his heart attack on Christmas Eve 2006. One minute he was singing Christmas Carols, and the next… The holiday seasons were never the same after that.
Nothingwas the same after that.
Craig’s life insurance policy was denied due to a claim of failing to disclose his recently diagnosed high blood pressure and the medication he was now on.
Toni’s teen years changed dramatically. From having a happy, stable home to fight for, and eventually lose, their house, and having to move into a two-bedroom apartment in town. And then that smell… That sweet ammonia with just a hint of sulfur… It was back.
What followed wasyearsof her parents trying and failing to get sober. By the time she was sixteen, Toni knew she needed to do better, tobe better. She loved her parents, acknowledged the struggle of their disease, but also knew that it was their choices that landed them where they were. They chose to deal drugs. They chose to start using drugs. She did not, and she would not allow their choices to ruin her life or her future.
Connie and Toni came up with a plan. Her grades were good, but Toni needed them to be better. She dropped out of sports to concentrate everything she had on studying so she could get every scholarship possible. Graduating high school with a four-point-two GPA, she got into pre-law at Bucknell University on a partial scholarship. Connie moved to Lewisburg with Toni, getting them a small apartment off campus and a full-time job as a secretary to support Toni. Hell, by the time Toni graduated, Connie knew just as much about law school as Toni did.
While Toni would have loved to get into an Ivy League school like Harvard or Yale, she set her sights on more reasonable law school options, getting into Penn State Dickinson Law while also working part-time as a paralegal. On her first day at the law firm, she requested a meeting with the senior attorney and presented her case against her grandfather’s life insurance company. Including stacks of public record evidence, interviews she’d done with other denied claimants, and statistical analysisshowing that his was not the only one they denied for recent diagnoses.
In her second year of law school, the company settled, made a public apology, fired their CEO and CFO,andagreed to make practice changes moving forward. The senior attorney, Mr. Bernard, even allowed Toni to sit at the plaintiff’s table as part of the legal team.
Her parents, newly sober, sat in the back of the gallery as the judge accepted the insurance company’s settlement to avoid going to trial.
It was one of the happiest days of Toni’s life, followed closely by Toni’s graduation from law school at the top of her class where her grandma gifted her a Revere ladle handed down to her byhermother that she’d been keeping secure and locked away, despite their money troubles. It seemed like everything was falling into place. She had her parents back, her grandma’s unwavering love and support, and she was now a law school graduate.
Unfortunately, her joy was not long lived. Just after Toni took the Bar exam, Grandma Connie was diagnosed with stage four pancreatic cancer. She’d been feeling tired for a while, but the woman was a nonstop Go-Go-Go machine. Toni used to joke that the Energizer Bunny wished he had the energy her grandma had. Then her skin and eyes got a yellowish tint to them, and Toni knew it was more serious. But she never expected cancer.
Not knowing how much time Connie had left, Toni used the settlement money to purchase a house back home in Mount Grove. Her parents, now each holding a two year coin, moved back with them. They took care of Connie while Toni set up her future practice, so she would be ready to open doors as soon as her Bar results came in.
As if waiting for the proof of all their late night study sessions, the endless sacrifices and long work hours, and hersteadfast faith in her granddaughter, Connie passed peacefully in her sleep the night after Toni got the notification that she passed the Pennsylvania Bar Exam.
Toni could still feel the wind on her tear-drenched face as she stood over her grandmother’s newly dug grave next to Grandpa Craig’s headstone. She knew her parents were behind her, but she didn’t turn to look at them. Knowing what had happened the last time she’d lost a grandparent, she begged her parents,“You’re all I have left. Don’t let me down again.”
And they hadn’t. For six years, they supported her, loving, helping, and guiding her. Debra and Toni went on mother-daughter vacations. Her dad insisted on being in charge of all the house maintenance work, for both her home and the modified garage they made into an apartment for her parents. More times than she could count, Toni came home to a note on the microwave with reheating instructions for the dinner her mom had left her in the fridge.
They were afamily.
But the wrinkled baggie in her hand and the silver ladle in his proved that something had changed.
When?
How?
