sammi

This was one of those crazy college weekends that you look back at and say, “Man, we were a complete waste of space. But it was awesome!” My roommates and I had spent two years living above Town and Campus in apartments that, shall we say, had… character. Our current apartment was previously an office of some kind, so our living room came complete with coat hooks in the wall, a random left over door which we decorated and left leaning in the corner, and a fully operational old fashioned sink which we filled with water and housed our faithful pet rubber ducky. The walls were painted midnight blue by the last tenants, so we strung Christmas lights around the perimeter, surrounded the room with our Salvation Army sofa, futon, satellite chair, scattered pillows, and we called it a day. Our kitchen table was the graffitied beer pong table, which had once been a bedroom door from our last apartment, and the window in my room had roof access. For all immediate purposes, this apartment was prime for a few twenty one year olds and their friends.

So this weekend, my brother and some of his wacked out buddies were coming to visit. Our track record was pretty good. When people come to visit us, we usually deliver unforgettable times. UNH kids know how to party; and we partied artfully. We generally stayed away from frats and the people we associated with being involved in that scene – unless, of course, we dressed up in crazy costumes just to crash. Instead, we counted on each other for amusement.

Weekends of this sort usually included things such as 4am outings to the launder mat to play in the dryers and climb onto rooftops, or rollerblading excursions across campus when most of the die-hards had returned to bed. We’d been known to break into locked up residence halls before school was in session just to play the grand piano, or spray paint phrases such as, ‘You are being lied to,’ or, ‘Everything you know is wrong,’ on the back walls of the student union – and we nearly shit our pants when it showed up the following Tuesday in The New Hampshire. We savored deep philosophical conversations on our roof while staring at the stars, beach drives and trips to the ocean (where some would venture a swim in the nearly freezing water), lighting fireworks on an open field (somehow succeeding in lighting grass on fire and attracting the attention of the local five-oh), and any other spontaneous notion that might flit it’s way into our thoughts. This weekend was no disappointment.

To cap off this fun-filled few days in Durham, the lot of us took a field trip down to Hampton Beach – music blaring, enjoying being in the now – and to the nearest Taco Bell we could find. As we sat there in our Burrito, Chalupa, Cheesy Gordita glory, my brother says to me, “So. Have you talked to Mom?”

“Not since last week,” I replied, thinking this was no more than a silly story about her classroom. She always talks to us about the kids as if we know them all intimately. It’s endearing, actually; she adores her job and she’s damn good.

“Yea, so…” he sucks down some air before the plunge: “Kevin was driving drunk the other night and flipped his car.” His eyes break from mine as he takes an unnaturally large bite of his beloved Cheesy Gordita Crunch. The Band-Aid was torn; smarting, I had to respond.

“… uh…” slowly shaking the disbelief from my skull, “Is he ok?” Then it hit me, Mack truck Reality, “Where was Sam?!” trying hard to keep hysteria out of my voice.

“She was in the car.” He’s stopped eating and is looking at me again. My eyeballs are wide, wildly searching his for the punch line. The dread washes in.

“WHAT!?!?!” Usually at this point, he tells me to quiet down. I have a tendency to explode, irrespective of my surroundings. This was no exception, but this time he let it go.

“Yea. In the car. He lost custody of her.”

“…..” I can only imagine what my gaping face must look like.

“They’re both ok. I guess she had to spend the night at the hospital for observation. And now she’s staying at our house. No one really knows what’s going on or what’s gonna happen,” my eyebrows furrowed so deeply that my head started to hurt, “And Dad’s not talking to Mom.”

My heart pounded through my chest. I wondered why the others couldn’t see it, in 3-dimensional Pepe Lepew style. I continued eating and carrying on pieces of the other conversations swirling around me. I drifted in and out, sometimes staring out the gaudy advertisement-ridden windows, not looking at any one thing in particular. I would sometimes snap out of the daze, fighting nausea, and sigh, “I can’t believe this.”
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I walked in the door, sat down on my bed, dialed home, and waited. I waited three rings and wanted to scream.

“Hello?” The voice on the other end sounded tired, weak.
“Mom. Why didn’t you call me!”

“Sorry T. It’s been crazy around here and I’m not getting a whole lot of help.” Well, obviously. Dad’s ignoring her and Ian came to New Hampshire. Now, you’re probably wondering why my father would be so insensitive – be patient, I’ll get there.

“I know Mama. I’m just a little shocked. Tell me what’s happening.” My insides melted. It was rare that my mother weakened. She is one of the strongest, smartest people I know, and if she is having trouble with something it is clearly a challenge. I found myself transported back to another dark night. It was September of my first high school year, the night she learned of her mother’s death. She shook and she cried and all I could do was hug her, be strong for the woman who, until then, had always been strong enough for the rest of us. By the sounds of it, she was again trying desperately to hold it all together – for the sake of the family.

“Well. It’s been a zoo around here this week. Between DCF and Deb’s family coming by constantly to see Sam, I can barely keep things organized let alone get things settled for her. Luckily, we’re on April vacation, so I was able to get over to Birch Grove and sign her up for school.”

“So this is going to be for a while, then.”

“As long as it takes.”

“As long as what takes?”

“For the state and the court to figure out what to do. They’ve already taken away Kevin’s license.”

“Well, GOOD.”

“And he’s going to appear before a judge soon. He’s going to have to go to AA and parent retraining and, most likely, therapy. He’ll probably do jail time, too…” Jail. Wow. Switching gears, she murmurs, “You do realize that this was within days of the one year anniversary of…”

“Deb’s death. Yea, I remembered.” It stung. It’d been a year, and I still hadn’t gone to see the grave; I still hadn’t given her my rose, now dry and fragile.

“He’s been going downhill. He’s not been eating. He’s bankrupt. He’s got all of the medical bills still looming over his head. And he feels like none of us are helping him. I drove him to the police station from the hospital, he was still drunk and belligerent, and he was telling me that he had been drowning and nobody noticed, nobody cared.”

“Mom, this is not your fault.” She’s the only girl of five, and Kevin is the baby. After he was born, my grandmother was drinking whiskey daily and not being a very active mother, which had much to do with my grandfathers’ unwillingness to accept some of the boys as his own – but that, too, is another story. So my mother became the surrogate; and she’s felt responsible in that role her whole life. “Listen. I graduate in three weeks and then I’ll be home. We’ll make this work, ok? I’ll take her after school so you can focus on the end of the year.” Somehow I always knew something like this was going to happen, a moment of truth. This was a time when my spirit could shine, and I wasn’t about to lose my chance. I was going to make up for missing the funeral, for not being as active in Sammi’s life as I had wanted. I would be strong enough for all of us; we would not fall apart.

This was my role, right now, there was no turning back – forget all the other plans of traveling abroad, teaching English in Japan, or moving to San Francisco. My family needed me, so that’s where I needed to be. But, man, I had no idea what I was getting myself into.
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She came tearing into my life
A ball of fire
Scalding me with what’s real
And true, when

Truthfulness
Hanged at the gallows
Suffocated
And broken
A value forgotten
It fades
As mist at dawn

She came into my home
Took my bed
My room
My space

She took my mother
And made me a mother too

She screamed
She sassed
She cried
She laughed

She pushed

Every last button
Every last nerve