Ava
Let me know if you like the prologue to this, plz. I love your opinions. If you're reading this please comment and give me feedback. I appreciate it more than you could even imagine.
Prologue
"Don't ever get too attached to anybody," my mother told me one cold November night. "'Cause it'll just hurt you more when they leave; and I've lived long enough to tell you that nobody ever stays when they don't have to." My mother Clairah has been stepped on, let down and continually used her entire life, but no matter where she goes in life, she never looks back. "What's the past is the past. You'd get more use out of starting over at the first grade again that in trying to live for the past."
After years of having friend after friend, family member after family member leave her, my mother did not trust a single soul. She knew enough then to know when she was being lied to, and when she didn't know she never wanted to take any chances. Despite her unwillingness to let others in, my mother was still the most charitable person I knew. When you finally did earn her trust, you knew she was going to dedicate every ounce of her being into making sure you were one hundred percent happy. But like so many others have seen, if you broke Clairah Bentham's trust, you just broke a connection to the world's greatest care giver.
When my Aunt Ava left for a vacation and didn't tell anybody except for my mother where she was going and what she was doing, my mother broke all ties with her sister and took my cousin Richie in. Even though we only lived a few blocks down from each other, I never really got the chance to see Richie that often. My Aunt Ava divorced Richie's father after he accused her of cheating on the pretense that she was always taking mini vacations and never telling anyone where she was going, and Richie spent every free second she could with her father. It wasn't that she didn't get along with her mom, but Richie always felt the need to try to win approval from her father - the one person who she would never earn it from. Aunt Ava told me one day, on the rare occasion that she and I were left alone in a room for longer than five minutes, that sometimes she just wanted to leave the life she was living for a while and "live someone else's life," even if it was only for a day.
"What's wrong with your life now?" I'd asked, unable to fathom why a grown woman and the mother of a child would ever try to escape her life. A perfect life to me then still meant graduating college, getting married and having kids. To me, there was nothing more to it.
"You won't understand right now, Liah," she told me. "Maybe when you're older and you have kids yourself..." Aunt Ava didn't look up at me as she said this; she just let her eyes stay glued to a spot on the ground. I could see the sadness she let touch her eyes but when I asked her what was wrong she just told me to listen to my mom. "You mother knows what she's doing, even if it doesn't seem right to you at the time. Got it?" I nodded. "I don't ever want you to talk back to her, or to tell her no or get sassy or anything like that. Y'hear?" I nodded. "Alright," she said, letting a gust of sad air steam out of her mouth.
"Let's get you to bed." Although I was in fourth grade, and well past the bed-tucking stage, I let Aunt Ava tuck me in for the first and last time. About two months later, Aunt Ava filed a diverse against my Uncle Terry and was on her merry way to four weeks of solitary aloneness with the road, the car and her very self...
Richie was a lot like my Aunt Ava. Both had their thoughtful moments, but when it came down to it, the only ones that matter were themselves. The only reason Aunt Ava kept going out on mini vacations by herself was to get away from her problems, while unknowingly starting new ones with her own daughter. A working father and a perpetually missing mother meant a child with no direction in life. I always did feel sorry for her, though. Nobody was there to teach her that you do not say no to your guardians, and nobody was there for her to vent about her daily problems that any normal teenager has. The damage was done, though. Richie's pieces would never quite fit back with each other ever again and they would surely never work with my mother's.
"Mom went on another trip," Richie chimed in as I asked my mother about Aunt Ava's whereabouts. My mother shushed her.
"I don't know where your Aunt Ava's off to this time, Lee. Couldn't tell you even if I knew."
"But - "I argued to try to explain to my mother that she told me Aunt Ava had called, leaving her plans for the future.
"Stay out of it, Liah," she warned.
"I can tell you where she went," a sixteen-year-old Richie said as soon as my mother was out of ear shot.
"Where?" I asked, fully expecting an honest answer.
"Dad kicked her out, so Mom left to go to Africa so she could go to Uganda and get herself shot by one of the leaders there," Richie fabricated. "She told me herself that she was unhappy with her life, and the only solution to that is death." She enunciated the word death, giving me the most serious face she could muster.
"That's not true!" I almost cried. Suicide was sin, and Aunt Ava would never have let that cross her mind. "What's wrong with you?"
"Only you would have believed that story," she scoffed.
"I didn't believe you," I said defensively.
"Yes you did," she said surely. I just shook my head and began to walk away from her. "Oh Liah, Liah, Liah. You really should start believing everything I tell you. Your own mother doesn't even tell you anything; you pretty much have to believe me. One of these days, you're going to ask me something, and unless you're nice to me I won't tell you the truth. Face it, kid. I'm all you've got." I hardly even looked Richie in the eyes before retreating up to my bedroom. I shook my head. If there's anything I had to say for myself, it's that Richie is not all I had. I may have believed it then, but she doesn't have anything. She's nothing to me.
*****************
~ a work in progress. the beginning stages
let me know what you think plz
"Don't ever get too attached to anybody," my mother told me one cold November night. "'Cause it'll just hurt you more when they leave; and I've lived long enough to tell you that nobody ever stays when they don't have to." My mother Clairah has been stepped on, let down and continually used her entire life, but no matter where she goes in life, she never looks back. "What's the past is the past. You'd get more use out of starting over at the first grade again that in trying to live for the past."
After years of having friend after friend, family member after family member leave her, my mother did not trust a single soul. She knew enough then to know when she was being lied to, and when she didn't know she never wanted to take any chances. Despite her unwillingness to let others in, my mother was still the most charitable person I knew. When you finally did earn her trust, you knew she was going to dedicate every ounce of her being into making sure you were one hundred percent happy. But like so many others have seen, if you broke Clairah Bentham's trust, you just broke a connection to the world's greatest care giver.
When my Aunt Ava left for a vacation and didn't tell anybody except for my mother where she was going and what she was doing, my mother broke all ties with her sister and took my cousin Richie in. Even though we only lived a few blocks down from each other, I never really got the chance to see Richie that often. My Aunt Ava divorced Richie's father after he accused her of cheating on the pretense that she was always taking mini vacations and never telling anyone where she was going, and Richie spent every free second she could with her father. It wasn't that she didn't get along with her mom, but Richie always felt the need to try to win approval from her father - the one person who she would never earn it from. Aunt Ava told me one day, on the rare occasion that she and I were left alone in a room for longer than five minutes, that sometimes she just wanted to leave the life she was living for a while and "live someone else's life," even if it was only for a day.
"What's wrong with your life now?" I'd asked, unable to fathom why a grown woman and the mother of a child would ever try to escape her life. A perfect life to me then still meant graduating college, getting married and having kids. To me, there was nothing more to it.
"You won't understand right now, Liah," she told me. "Maybe when you're older and you have kids yourself..." Aunt Ava didn't look up at me as she said this; she just let her eyes stay glued to a spot on the ground. I could see the sadness she let touch her eyes but when I asked her what was wrong she just told me to listen to my mom. "You mother knows what she's doing, even if it doesn't seem right to you at the time. Got it?" I nodded. "I don't ever want you to talk back to her, or to tell her no or get sassy or anything like that. Y'hear?" I nodded. "Alright," she said, letting a gust of sad air steam out of her mouth.
"Let's get you to bed." Although I was in fourth grade, and well past the bed-tucking stage, I let Aunt Ava tuck me in for the first and last time. About two months later, Aunt Ava filed a diverse against my Uncle Terry and was on her merry way to four weeks of solitary aloneness with the road, the car and her very self...
Richie was a lot like my Aunt Ava. Both had their thoughtful moments, but when it came down to it, the only ones that matter were themselves. The only reason Aunt Ava kept going out on mini vacations by herself was to get away from her problems, while unknowingly starting new ones with her own daughter. A working father and a perpetually missing mother meant a child with no direction in life. I always did feel sorry for her, though. Nobody was there to teach her that you do not say no to your guardians, and nobody was there for her to vent about her daily problems that any normal teenager has. The damage was done, though. Richie's pieces would never quite fit back with each other ever again and they would surely never work with my mother's.
"Mom went on another trip," Richie chimed in as I asked my mother about Aunt Ava's whereabouts. My mother shushed her.
"I don't know where your Aunt Ava's off to this time, Lee. Couldn't tell you even if I knew."
"But - "I argued to try to explain to my mother that she told me Aunt Ava had called, leaving her plans for the future.
"Stay out of it, Liah," she warned.
"I can tell you where she went," a sixteen-year-old Richie said as soon as my mother was out of ear shot.
"Where?" I asked, fully expecting an honest answer.
"Dad kicked her out, so Mom left to go to Africa so she could go to Uganda and get herself shot by one of the leaders there," Richie fabricated. "She told me herself that she was unhappy with her life, and the only solution to that is death." She enunciated the word death, giving me the most serious face she could muster.
"That's not true!" I almost cried. Suicide was sin, and Aunt Ava would never have let that cross her mind. "What's wrong with you?"
"Only you would have believed that story," she scoffed.
"I didn't believe you," I said defensively.
"Yes you did," she said surely. I just shook my head and began to walk away from her. "Oh Liah, Liah, Liah. You really should start believing everything I tell you. Your own mother doesn't even tell you anything; you pretty much have to believe me. One of these days, you're going to ask me something, and unless you're nice to me I won't tell you the truth. Face it, kid. I'm all you've got." I hardly even looked Richie in the eyes before retreating up to my bedroom. I shook my head. If there's anything I had to say for myself, it's that Richie is not all I had. I may have believed it then, but she doesn't have anything. She's nothing to me.
*****************
~ a work in progress. the beginning stages
let me know what you think plz
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