i’ll remember you || flashback 2
Mommy will be with you soon, baby- I promise. Just get out---- now.
I can barely hear the words anymore. They still ring in my head, but I can’t tell whose voice they are anymore. It’s heard in this sweet woman’s voice; the dripping honey suckle—the way a mother’s voice should sound.
I can barely remember my mom, let alone my dad. There’s no voice to accompany what little of a vision I have of him. He’s vague, like a shadow. The shape is there, but there are no traces of a human life. He was just a blacked out figure, beckoning me forth—teasing me in my struggles to unlock the memories that lie underneath.
They were never even there; the social worker called it severe negligence. Can’t say much changed, after I started hopping around the homes. No one started watching after me. Only difference now, was that people got paid to not give a shit. Would have been a nice job, if you ask me. Collecting checks; telling me to go to school, while never actually enforcing it.
One pair of fosters I had for a few months acted shocked when the principal called—Siobhan hasn’t showed up in more than a week. Is there a problem at home?
Who us? We had no idea our sweet angel was so troubled; we’ll put a stop to this problem immediately.
My social worker noticed the marks on me twenty six days later—she pulled me out within the hour. She tried so hard to keep me out of the hands of the abusers, the greedy; never seemed to work. The woman did her job; filed all the right paperwork, even asked the right questions. Too bad she never heard the honest answers.
I went through eight homes in two years. I thought it was a record, until I met this girl Rebecca. Fifteen homes in a little under three years. I wonder what her damage was. We didn’t stay in the same house long enough for me to find out.
She then brought me to a place with this perfect front yard. It was so clean. No trash, no diapers; I didn’t even see any muddy kiddy shoes on the porch. They weren’t my last hope, but I acted like they were.
Lyra was quiet at first; I was their first addition. I don’t think she knew how to deal with a newbie. Then again, I didn’t know what a functioning family looked like. We were both always observing each other; seeing how the other acted with the adults in the room.
The moment that I truly felt like I wasn’t looking in from the outside, that I was a part of their family; was when I got sick. Food poisoning, I think. Throwing up everywhere, sweating gallons all over the place- I was the poster child for human disaster. The three of them came in and took care of me. Ly and I watched TV, and flipped through all of her mom’s old magazines. Cee kept a constant flow of different soups in me; variety so you don’t get sick of consistency, sweetheart.
Even Lucas came in a few times to make some jokes about how horrible I looked. He was always trying to make us laugh. He’d even succeed at times, when we weren’t rolling our eyes.
I still see so much of them in her. I never noticed it until after they were gone. It was more than the star obsession; that longing for a foreign galaxy they all had. Lyra and her dad have the exact same sense of humor. She tries to add in a lot more sarcasm than she really has, but you can always see her lips turn up at the cheesiest of jokes.
Yet, she had Cecelia’s laugh.
Looking at her every day is like staring directly into a faded photograph. She’s the only picture I have left of them; I need to make sure she doesn’t throw herself into the fire.
