AllFreeNovel
Share Us
“Oh, come on.” She dismissed my words and headed to the couch, where she sat and peered at Izzy and Hannah. “Y’all don’t mind if Nana smokes, right?”
The girls shook their heads dutifully, glancing back at me.
“See? They’re fine.” Mom collapsed onto the couch with a sigh. “It’d do you good to loosen up a little, Jessa. Like I been telling you.”
Everything inside me felt disjointed and unpleasant. I felt ill in a way that I couldn’t expel from my body via the usual methods. This was a deep illness. A sickness I couldn’t touch.
“So you doing good?” I asked, packing up my things as quickly as I could from the coffee table. A couple of my colored pencils rolled off, and Izzy hurried to pick them up.
“Ooh, this one sparkles,” she cooed.
“Yeah, I’m good. Same old bullshit, but good. Hey, whatcha coloring?” Mom jerked her chin toward Izzy. “You gonna draw Nana a pretty picture?”
“These are Jessa’s,” Izzy said softly, looking between mom and me.
Mom cackled. “Ain’t you a little old to be coloring?”
I took the pencils from Izzy’s outstretched hand. “It’s for a project I’m working on. And there’s no age limit to coloring, anyway. It can be therapeutic.”
Mom crossed her legs, her foot bouncing as she tapped the cigarette into the ashtray. “Yeah, yeah. I know. They tell me that plenty. Hey, what are we having for dinner? I can go get a case of beer if we want.”
“Makin’ ribs,” Jeremy called out from the kitchen. “Been marinating these suckers since yesterday. Y’all are gonna flip.”
“Ooh, that sounds good. You need anything, Jer? I’ll head to the store now.”
“Naw, I’m good, Mom. Take my car, okay?”
“Sure thing.” Mom hopped up, extinguishing the cigarette in an ashtray on the end table before heading out the front door. Once the car had revved and she was gone, I wandered into the kitchen to find Jeremy. The girls scampered down the hall to their room.
“You let her just take your car?” I asked softly. “Don’t you think she’s gonna just try to score?”
He sighed, wrist deep in a mixing bowl of marinade and ribs. “Jessa, she’s gonna score if she wants to, no matter what. Whether or not she’s got my car.”
I leaned against the countertop, crossing my arms. “She doesn’t look good.”
“She’s looking better than she did before.”
“Do you really want her here with the girls?”
He set his jaw but didn’t answer.
“I wouldn’t,” I said.
“It’s what family does,” he said softly.
And that was the whole problem. What the Waltons expected family to do was depressing. It involved bending over backwards to accommodate people who may or may not have been using heroin. Family meant accepting cigarette smoke in children’s lungs. Family meant thinly veiled distaste and outright disrespect when someone didn’t behave how you thought they should.
Family meant forsaking anything you wanted for yourself in order to bow to the needs of someone in relapse.
If they could stand by Mom like this, and enable her decisions, why couldn’t they do the same for me? Frustration scorched through me, curling my fingers, making me itchy. I heaved a sigh and pushed away from the countertop.
“Where you goin’, Jessa?”
“To check on the girls.”
“They’re playing in their bedroom.”
“Then I think I’ll start packing.” I turned for the spare room.
