After she walked into the house rain started to trickle on the window of the door she shut softly. The announcement of her presence was unknown to her son before she sat softly beside him. She reached over to brush his hair, but he winced away, fully focused on the game he was playing on the small handheld device before him. It would not be the fact the home they were now in would be a distant memory, no; it was not that, it was the fact that she had to tell him he had nowhere else to go. The lesson that needed to be learned here was hers, and beyond his years. She once heard someone say that they had been between null and void, but they did not have a child, a child that needed to be taken care of. They did not see the light of the child’s eyes dim to a dull shade when they would have to sleep in places they would never even touch in the past.
Things had been lost a long time ago. She could picture it all now so clearly, and had she known the fate that her decisions would bring she would have worn a pink dress with little pale flowers so that the said, “Fuck you” wouldn’t have been so harsh.
That fateful day started out just like any other. She put her pants on one leg at a time like always, so it was not that. She hadn’t put deodorant on, but she failed to perspirate as it happened leading to a lack of real need for it anyway. She thought it had to be the smell of the perfume she wore that made her husband so angry. He raised his hand as if to smack her but then release his anger and lowered his hand as if he gave up. That fact hurt her more than a thousand hands coming upon her face and pounding every inch of her body.
“Fuck you.” She spat out at him before he looked lost, but found at the same time. He turned and left. He never contacted his son, he never sent any money for the rent, and he never had the groceries delivered again. No flowers, no cards, no words after he left that day.
She was a strong woman. She held it together for so long after he left, but failed to extend even a brief notice to her son’s lack of understanding. She looked at him now learning the lesson of his pain and hate of her.
“You need to pack a small bag of things you will need for our trip son.” She calmly said to him.
He, without a word rises and leaves her sitting alone on the dreary couch that had become threadbare long before it sat in that little room. The walls started to close in on her before she could catch her breath to hold back the tears that stained her cheeks black from her cheap mascara. Crying silent tears she rose to go to her room to pack what she could take in her small case. She knew where they were going did not require the necessities of everyday living. She had a one way ticket she would exchange for her dear son. She knew he would have a hard life, but she needed to think of herself. As she reached for the door of her room she felt a sharp pain in her back right below her ribcage that rippled through her body. She could not think anymore, but just relax as she hit the floor with a settle thud.