Scarlet Waters: The Iconoclastic Memoirs of Holiday Shapero Book One

By Holiday Shapero

All of the people that I have ever shared my stories with, had a response similar to J Kirks. Many people felt that it would make a great movie and that people would be inspired by it. From those perspectives, I have come to see that my writing is in some ways, not my own. For in the final analysis, I want to contribute. My intention is for my writing to reach many people. From that place of unity in my heart, I give you Scarlet Waters. Rather than writing an author bio, I invite you to share in my memoirs.
Holiday Shapero

• Language: English
• Publisher: Xlibris US
• Release date: May 22, 2015
• ISBN: 9781503547384

Holiday Shapero

Holiday Shapero is continuing to study ancient Greek astrology with Robert Schmidt, creator of Project Hindsight, designed to bring back to the world, the entire corpus of surviving works of the Hellenistic astrologers, beginning around 200 BCE. She is also working to raise the awareness of the people on Earth in order to protect the wild and return Earth to health. She is the author of three previous booksScarlet Waters, Tears of Amber, and Lluvia Suavewhich are a series containing her memoirs of this life.

Book preview

FIRE AND CHOCOLATE

W hen I was with them, it was like being a gypsy under the full moon. We were shiny like a thousand jars of glitter. In that light, they imparted their secrets to me. They never told me that most people live in a prison, but they showed me how to escape.

My mommy and my auntie, they were the mirrors of womanhood for me. They were ladies of the evening, hatcheck girls who worked upstairs after hours. They were complements of each other. Mommy, Rosa Bella, supple and voluptuous. Aunt Roarie, Aurora, luring, firm, seductive. Their souls were knit together; one was not whole without the other. They were each filled with secrets that bonded them together.

It is their colors that make up the texture, the grain of my story. They are the coarseness and the fineness with which my life began. My first memory of them is made of fire and chocolate. It was in New York City in the 1950s.

We were at a place where there was a fireplace with a fluffy white rug in front of it. We were sitting there watching the flames dance. I remember being between them and dipping my hands into the large pink glass bowl, which was filled with M&M’s. I was tasting the little nuggets and smelling the chocolate as it melted onto my fingers.

They were smiling and encouraging me, telling me to take all that I wanted. I glanced at them, their eyes were misty. I liked it when their eyes were like that because they were happy. They were at ease, and everything flowed when they were like that. The pain went away.

Soon we were all reaching our hands into the dish, grabbing the little hard candies and throwing them into the fire. They were laughing and laughing as they fell into each other and rolled on the floor. I was in their midst, engulfed by their perfume and shiny ribbons. I heard them whispering to each other, stroking each other’s hair.

Then they were singing to me. I loved to hear them sing. Mama Bella was the best singer. Her voice was clear even when her mind was not. She sang like a beautiful bird of magic. Her singing was sacred; it took all of the scars away.

My mother was beautiful. She could lull you with her beauty. Her hair was black, like evenings baked in velvet, and her eyes were pools of shimmering blue light. She was open when I was young, like a magnolia in full bloom. She never hid herself. I did not like this about her because it rendered her fragile. She was the opposite of her sister who was very polished and protected.

You could not read Aunt Roarie like you could read my mother. She had chiseled features, like a goddess carved from ivory stone. Her eyes were a deeper blue, almost violet, and they sparkled with the darkness. Even her hair held her in place. She often wore it pulled back tightly so that it was smooth and sleek. It seemed shinier than Mama Bella’s because hers was loose and curly, falling in ringlets around her heart-shaped face.

My auntie was one year older, and she was the more responsible one. She held determination and pride for both of them. She had a will of iron, and she used her strength to protect them. I used to wonder if Aunt Roarie ever wanted to break down like my mother did. But if she felt that, I could never tell.

Mama Bella was sensitive, and she spilled out all of her distress, but Aunt Roarie never cried and messed up her mascara like my mother. They both painted ebony lines around their eyes, and they shared lipstick. It was dark red like rubies.

My auntie wanted my mother to hide her weakness, but she did not know how. I felt and witnessed my mother’s sorrow daily. There was a part of Mama Bella that had already broken off by the time that I was a little girl. I was highly aware of my mother’s pain from as far back as I can remember, and I was certain that my father, Wesley, was the one who had caused her to chip apart.

My daddy was slow and smooth and easy. He could bewitch you with his charm. All heads turned when he walked into a room. People were drawn to him like a magnet. He was handsome in an old-world way; they called it classic beauty. Everything fit him. From the soft charcoal curls that crowned his head like a cap to his dancing gray eyes that changed color as he willed them. His will was one of his invisible powers, but he had many of them.

My daddy was a boxer. He held the Golden Gloves because he was the best. The plaque over the bed said so. It said, Wesley Shapero, first place. There was never an in-between for him. He was an all-or-nothing person. So when he did something, it turned to gold because he brought all of his power to it. He had a focus like a sword of light, and it made him a lot more impressive than most people.

My daddy was made of courage, and people felt at ease around him. Everybody knew that he was always going to win, and when he got what he wanted, he would share it with you. His gifts were never tiny like other people’s. Or if they were, you would not know it because he hid the small things and showed you the glamour.

He was polished to perfection like his shoes. You could almost see your face on his shoes because he went to the best shoeshine boy in the Bronx. Daddy said that our feet were an important thing because the way that someone walked told you their story. In my eyes, my father walked with more style than any other man in New York City.

When he slipped his feet into the soft black leather with alligator trim, he said, I am the godfather now, baby, and Mama Bella giggled. He was the king of making her laugh because he knew how to play with her. He wrestled with her, and he usually let her win. Then he carried her in his arms like she was a star on the stage at Radio City.

He did that with other women too, but he hid it from my mother. He told her that she was the only one for him. He was very convincing, so it was hard to trust your instinct if it varied from what he said.

It was that magnetism that made him so popular. He even ran the cell block when he lived in prison. He said that prison was a place where you got to know yourself because all the pretenses were gone and you came face-to-face with your stripped-down self.

Daddy said that he made good use of his time there at Sing Sing. That is where he got his muscles from. Once at lunch, a lady asked my mother if he worked out at a gym to get so strong. She laughed and told the lady, No, he got them at prison.

He also studied law and psychology while he was there. He learned about the laws because he did not trust the government or the cops. But understanding psychology was the most important for him. He said that if you did not understand what made people tick, you would never get what you wanted.

He studied every kind of psychology that there was all the way from ants to humans. He really took it in too. I know that he understood it in a way that most people did not. That is because my daddy was smart. He was slick, like a whip.

Nana said that he was a genius. When he was in fifth grade, they wanted to put him in a school for gifted children. By the time that he was twelve years old, he could do college-level mathematics. But my father hated school. It made him bored.

Grandpa used to say that he wished he would have sent my father to that school for brainy children because maybe it would have helped my father to stay on track. But then again, he did not want a nerdy son. He wanted a shining stead. A man’s man, if you know what I mean. And in a way, Grandpa could not complain because Wesley did hold the Golden Gloves.

But the gloves that he wore when he punched were only made of leather. I never could understand why the leather gloves were not gold like they said. People are like that though. They say one thing, but when you look, you see another.

My daddy was especially like that. Sometimes he had different stories for everyone who came to see him. He was like a chameleon. If you were a sunny person, he showed you his yellow. But if you were given to rain, he wrapped gray clouds all around you.

My father, Wesley, was a master of colors and of people. So it was not difficult for him to hide what he did with me when I was a little girl. Even Mama Bella did not know. Those memories were not accessible to me for a long time though. I dug them up slowly across the span of my life. It was like digging up corpses from a graveyard. I did not want to look. But if there is one thing that I have learned in my life, it is that everything that we face empowers us in the end.

So as I grew up, I forgot all of the times that I was raped by my father. That was not so very hard for me to do, because I had a miraculous power that allowed me to forget. Somehow, it did not seem strange to me that I was like that. It was a tool that I used over and over again.

Even when I finally became aware that I was doing it, it still worked. Whatever trauma had happened would become eclipsed from my mind, and before long, the memory would disappear into a cave inside of me, and I was no longer plagued by it.

THE RED MOTHER OCEAN

I was always very mature for my age, but the responsible side of my nature developed a lot in the year that my brother was born. That was an important time for me. I have memories of it within the childlike space inside of myself. Yet those memories would probably have dissolved like tiny broken bubbles if it were not for my mother. You see, Mama Bella was a storyteller, and that is what kept all of my remembrances alive. As I grew up, she told the stories of what happened to us in New York City over and over again.

One of my favorites was the story of my brother’s birth. It was a red water story. Primal like the desert sands or lizards that crawl on their bellies in caves. It was a hot sticky day in late summer, and Mama Bella decided that she and I would take a cool bath. I remember splashing and plopping my feet up and down in the water. We were both having fun until all of a sudden, my mother cried out in pain. For a second, I thought that maybe I had kicked her by accident. But then she gasped and held her hands against her big round belly, and I knew that the hurt was coming from inside of her. I reached for Mama Bella, and as she leaned toward me, her face winced in anguish. At the same time, the bathtub filled up with a deep, rich color. I could not tell if it was red or if it was black, but I knew that it had to do with the baby inside of her.

I moved my feet to see if I could stop the water from changing color, but I could not. When my mommy’s face turned white like the porcelain tub, I felt terror clutch at my heart. It seemed like giant bird’s talons had torn into my chest. Then my mother blurted out that she had to get out of the tub to get to the telephone.

I stared at the warm red ocean as she climbed out. I felt mesmerized by it, but it made me dizzy and queasy too. Just as I was beginning to panic, I heard her voice call out to me from the bedroom. Come to Mama Bella. Come lie with me.

Her voice was shaking and her teeth were chattering. The bedroom was freezing when I got in there. So I quickly wrapped some blankets around her. I wanted the blankets to cover everything up and make it all better. But the red color started coming through the blankets.

I wanted to slow down the red mother ocean, so I took my own special blanket and stuffed it between her legs. Then I wrapped the afghan that Gram Ivory had made for her over her shoulders, because Gram Ivory was her mother. It seemed to me that the afghan would help her. But my mother did not get better right away. She faded in and out of consciousness.

I sat very close to her face so that I could watch her eyes. Occasionally, I would touch her cheek or brush her bangs back. She did not talk, but her groans let me know that she was still there. Sometimes I would peek downward toward her legs, hoping that the color would be gone. But it only grew worse, and when I looked, my own special blanket was full of the color, and so were the sheets. I felt afraid because my efforts to help her were failing. So I put on Aunt Roarie’s sweater that was lying over the chair. Right away, I felt better.

I kissed Mama Bella’s hand and asked her to wake up. She stirred and tried to lift her head, but she could not. I was satisfied with that though. I did not want her to hurt herself by trying to talk when she was sick. I sat and stroked her fingers until all the noise arrived.

Suddenly, our bedroom was filled with people and lights and shiny objects. There were whirring sounds and instruments banging against cold metal. Then there amidst yards and yards of white bandages, Daddy’s mother, my nana, came rushing in.

Tears were streaming down her round cheeks as she reached for me and scooped me into her arms. I remember being pressed against her big soft bosom as she cooed to me. Bubala, my little Ishka, Ishka Bibble, are you all right? I nodded and snuggled in as she wrapped me in her shawl. We rushed down the stairs behind the stretcher that was carrying my mother.

Mama Bella did not get to go home with us that night though. They kept her in the big hospital on the Grand Concourse for a little over a week. I went to stay with Daddy’s parents, Nana and Grandpa. One day while I was playing, I heard Nana tell her sister Aunt Lettie, Rosa Bella bled all the way through the mattress and the box spring right on to the floor, and the little one was sitting there with her.

Even though Nana called me the little one, I knew that I was not as childlike as she saw me. I had been told about the birth of my brother, and this made me feel much older. I was terribly lonely without my mother though, and I cried for her at night.

Finally, they let Mama Bella come home with the new baby, and I was so grateful to see them. Some part of me had been nervous that my mother might never come back. And I was worried about my new baby brother as well. Everyone said that a cord had gotten caught around his neck and that he had a difficult journey, so I was not sure what to expect.

Grandpa picked up my mother and the baby from the hospital and took them home in his car. They were already there when Nana and I arrived by taxi. It was an exciting time for me when I first saw them. I yelled and flung myself in my mother’s arms. I made her promise that she would never go away again.

She laughed, and I treasured the sound of her laughter. It had a gaiety to it that I loved. My mother had different kinds of laughs, and that one was kind of rare. It made me feel like we were OK. It had a lightness to it. In those moments, my mommy was at peace, and the world had a rightness to it. One that we could trust.

I was all propped up on the couch with blankets around me when Mama Bella put Jake in my arms to hold. I could hardly believe that he was real. He was so tiny. Smaller than any person that I had ever seen, but totally complete. He had every finger that I had and the same amount of toes too.

I loved my brother immensely the moment that I saw him. I was in awe of his beauty. He had soft wispy black hair, and his eyes were just like Mama Bella’s. They were blueberry blue. Not like the dark berries, but the ones that are so light that they seem almost silvery. His eyes were wide like my mother’s, and they shined like they had tears in them.

Later when we were alone, my mother confided in me. She said, "Because of the Jewish tradition, your brother’s name had to begin with a J, so I named him Jake. Let’s call him Jakey while he is little. What do you think?"

I was thrilled that my mother had consulted me. I told her that I loved the name and that Jakey was the biggest prize in the world. I wanted everything to be as nice and pure as he was. I did not tell my mother all my concerns because I did not want to worry her.

Underneath, I felt nervous though. The effects of my mother’s laughter had worn off, and I was afraid of what my father might do. It was not that I thought that he was bad, but he was unpredictable.

Everyone said that things were not his fault though. They said that it was because of the heroin addiction that he went out of control. The heroin addiction was a monster. It caused a constant chaos in our lives. It made the cops come looking for Daddy. Once when I was really little, my mother said that one of the cops looked in my diapers for Daddy’s drugs, and she yelled at him and said, My baby does not do drugs! Leave her alone!

The heroin addiction made a lot of people mad too. Sometimes men came to our house with guns looking for money. Once when my daddy was not there, they took all the silver and gold that was in our house. Even our silverware.

But when all the gold and silver were gone, there was still blood in our bathroom sink. That scarlet color that came when the water mixed with Wesley’s blood after he shot up was the sign that the monster was not sleeping.

My father had a love-hate relationship with that monster. It was the one and only thing that was beyond his control. He went through cycles of engaging with it and then he would try to escape. But it was nearly impossible because the monster knew a secret language that constantly lured him in.

Daddy wanted to get away, but the hypnosis of the monster overpowered him. When things got really bad, he would make my mother chain him up with a ball and chain. He told her not to give him the key, no matter how much he screamed and begged. That was terribly hard on my mother because Wesley howled like a wild animal. That caused her to drink a lot of scotch.

I wanted to help her, so I learned how to change Jakey’s diapers and feed him the bottle. This made me feel secure because even if my mother got too groggy, I could take care of Jakey. And I did not get mad at her either.

How could you ever get mad at Mama Bella? She was never mean. She was sweet, like berries with honey and cream. I did hate it though when she was really sad and she went into that cavern of despair. It was hard for me to bear because it felt like our whole apartment was crying, and a greenish-gray gloom latched on to us.

Once that happened, there were very few things in the world that could snap her out of it. But fortunately for us, there were a couple of antidotes. Well, really there was only one, which was my Aunt Aurora. But Aunt Roarie always came with more than just herself.

She had a medicine bag, which was filled with pretty little pills that woke my mother up. My mother liked the robin’s egg blue ones, because blue was her absolute favorite color. But even so, my auntie was the real balm. Just her presence alone was often enough to pull my mother out of the mire.

A HONKY TONK NIGHTCLUB

M y mother’s mother was named Ivory, but I called her Gram Ivory. Gram Ivory had divorced my mother’s father and was remarried to Grampy Buck, which was a much more joyful marriage. They lived on a tiny Island along the Maine coast.

There was a high time at our house when Gram Ivory and Grampy Buck came to visit us. It was a long journey from Grangely, Maine, to New York City, so they stayed for a couple of weeks once they got there.

For me it was a magical time. Wesley’s monster was hidden away, and he was mostly on his best behavior. Mama Bella and Aunt Roarie had lots of fun playing records and dancing with Gram Ivory. I loved to watch them dance in their sequin dresses and beaded rhinestone headbands. Every move they made was full of sparkles.

I have not told you much about Aunt Roarie’s life situation, so it is probably time. She was married to my Uncle Burl, who was incredibly tight with my daddy. They were like brothers. Uncle Burl was the father of my two cousins. Rene was their oldest girl, she was two years older than me, and Rainey. My mother and Aunt Roarie timed their pregnancies perfectly with me and Rainey because they wanted to be pregnant and give birth together. Or should I say almost perfect because I was born thirty six days before Rainey.

Everyone came and stayed at our house for the family reunion. Even my Uncle Ross came from Boston. He was my gay uncle, and he was able to fit in perfectly with my mother and my aunt. The three of them together were like a dessert. They were vanilla and chocolate, and Uncle Ross was the caramel on top.

Gram Ivory explained to me that Uncle Ross was going to bring his new lover, Dickie. She said, Uncle Ross likes men instead of women, like your mother and Aunt Roarie do. I want you to call his boyfriend Uncle Dickie. That way, we will be including him in our family right away.

Everyone loved Uncle Ross. He was a high-spirited, fun-loving guy. Uncle Ross was not Gram Ivory’s only son. She did have four kids, but you will hardly ever hear about my other uncle. He married a Catholic woman who felt disgraced by our family, so he had very little contact with us. In some ways, I think that this made all of them sad, but they seldom spoke about him. His absence did not affect our family reunion as far as I could tell.

The first half of Gram Ivory and Grampy Buck’s stay was mostly a celebration. My mother sang along with the songs that Gram Ivory put on the record player. Uncle Burl and Daddy stocked the bar and poured drinks for everyone.

Uncle Ross was famous for how he prepared food. He made lots of exotic things, like oysters on shells and tomatoes that marinated all day long in olive oil with basil and tiny grains of pink salt. His boyfriend, Uncle Dickie, was also a great chef who made foods that I liked. There were long strands of green spaghetti and it had cream cheese on it like what Nana put on bagels.

Every room in our house had something exciting going on. While the men cooked in the kitchen, we played beauty parlor in the bedroom. Aunt Roarie taught me and Rainey how to do pin curls when she did my mother’s and Gram Ivory’s hair.

We got to sit on the bathroom shelf and watch Mama Bella and Aunt Roarie paint their eyes on. They even let me and Rainey wear crimson lipstick. I reveled in all the womanly arts. They delighted me. I wanted to be sexy like Mama Bella and Aunt Roarie.

Neither Rene nor Rainey was anywhere near as interested in that as I was. Once they got their lipstick on, they ran off to play in the other room. But I always wanted more. And I usually got whatever I wanted, especially with Aunt Roarie. I was in some ways, a tiny image of Aunt Roarie. I liked to imitate her. I stood with my hip cocked out like she did, and I practiced walking like her until I moved with the same sway that she had.

On this reunion, I came into myself. I asked to dress up and be on show like Mama Bella and Aunt Roarie. My wish was granted by my auntie. She put peach-colored blush on my cheeks and pearls around my neck. I was dressed to the hilt in Aunt Roarie’s mink cape and cat’s-eye sunglasses. I even wore Mama Bella’s high heels, but I had a hard time walking in them. When I came into the living room, all the men whistled and yelled, and Gram Ivory clapped her hands. It was my debut, and Aunt Aurora gave me a nickname. Instead of calling me by my given name, Holiday, she called me Hollywood.

She was very in tune when she did that. The name Hollywood really captured my style. I was flashy, and I loved to dazzle people and be on show. It was not something that I thought about. It was innate. I thrived on sexual attention, and as I grew up, I became seen that way. But being provocative was so much a fabric of my being that I did not notice it. I became it.

Our family gathering was a ferocious mixture of passion and liberty. When everyone got together like that, it was a time of free rein. The outside world was forgotten, and we abandoned ourselves to whatever caught our fancy. Our house was a honky-tonk nightclub.

Uncle Ross was a drag queen, and he had more makeup than my mother and Aunt Roarie. In the evening, he put on a cabaret show, and Uncle Dickey blew bubbles and sprinkled glitter all around him. That inspired Grampy Buck.

Not wanting to be outdone, he put apples under his shirt for boobies and wore Uncle Ross’s pink wig. We all loved his act so much that this ended up being a family tradition. On every reunion after that, Grampy Buck became a cross dresser.

Nobody wanted the parties to end, but Uncle Ross and Uncle Dickey had to get back to Boston to go to work. Grampy Buck started getting antsy after they left. He began to get homesick for Grangely Island. Grampy was wedded to the island as much as he was to Gram Ivory. He was born there, and the only time in his life that he lived anywhere else was when he was in the service.

By the second week at our house, he was having anxiety. I had compassion for his distress, which he talked about a lot of the time. He said that the city made him stutter and that he felt lost. Grampy Buck was public about his thoughts and feelings, like my mother. He just plopped them out there for everyone to see. But he did not handle his unhappiness the way that my mother did. He kept himself busy. He said that it helped to calm him down.

He scrubbed and polished our teakettle until it turned a whole other color. He whistled a lot and told me stories about Grangely Island. Grampy Buck carved out a place in my heart on that visit, but I did not have the same closeness with him that I had with Gram Ivory.

With Gram Ivory, it was an instant bond. She was accountable, in a way, for putting me at ease. She felt familiar to me. It was as if I already knew her. I watched how she conducted herself, and I saw that she was very forthright.

Gram Ivory was an upfront person. She did not have a hidden agenda. She never sugarcoated things for people. You could expect that she would call a spade a spade. And if you were an asshole, she would surely let you know. But she was not mean or hateful. She was quite understanding, and she was quick to forgive. Gram Ivory made people want to try harder to get over their flaws. Everyone respected her.

Uncle Burl did not have as many vices as Daddy did, but when he drank a lot of whisky, he sometimes got violent with Aunt Roarie. Even though he was six feet and three inches tall and weighed two hundred and fifty pounds, when he swung his fist, Gram Ivory was able to stop him. She never raised her hand. It is hard to believe, but when she yelled, Uncle Burl cowered.

Her voice was able to break through his alcoholic haze. That was because Uncle Burl loved Gram Ivory like the mother that he never had. He had not known his real mother, and his adopted mother was cold and distant.

Even when he was in a blind rage, Gram Ivory could put Uncle Burl in his place. Then later, she would open her love to him. There was nothing better than Gram Ivory’s love. It made you feel warm all over. We all loved her. She was the hearth of our family, and we were all sad when she and Grampy Buck went back to Maine.

Especially me. But she and Grampy bought me a present before they left. It was a stuffed collie dog with a plaid coat on. The pockets of the coat had tiny gold chains with bells so they tinkled when you picked him up. I named him Moushka, and he became my closest friend, next to Jakey.

The visit with Gram Ivory and Grampy Buck marked my soul, and I remembered them long after they left. I wished for them to come back and help me, but it was not to be. Instead, my life loomed over me, casting a shadow so dark that it froze my throat and made me hurt between my legs.

Wesley’s face was in that shadow, and there were things that crawled all over him and me. It always happened at night when my mother was gone or passed out. I wanted to scream, but the shadow chilled my blood so that my voice would not come out. You might think that the crawly things were just bad dreams. But they were not.

Wesley came to my bed and pressured me and possessed me over and over. When he left, I clung to Moushka, and I cried quietly into Moushka’s fur. Moushka was my savior, and Daddy crucified him because of this.

THE GIRL NEXT DOOR

I t was a hot August morning, the summer after Gram Ivory’s visit. Because we were melting from the heat, Mama Bella and I took Jakey to the park so that we could watch the squirrels and play in the fountain. It was one of those days when every little thing seemed touchy and Jakey was cranky. Even the squirrels were picking at the nuts like they were not really pleased with them. So we did not stay too long. We packed up all our stuff and went home.

But the negative mood followed us home. The apartment felt oppressive from the temperature. It seemed strangely still and ominous, like something had died and was hiding under the floorboards. As soon as I went into my bedroom, I got the sick feeling in my stomach, which was a signal that meant that there was trouble.

My head turned quickly and my breath caught in my throat when I saw that Moushka was missing. In panic, I screamed to my mother to help me find him. She put Jakey in the crib and began to search with me. But Moushka was nowhere to be found, which caused me to burst into tears.

My tears were something that my mother could not bear, so she asked me not to cry. She said that she could not stand it when I cried. So I stopped. This calmed her, and she kissed me. Then she must have had a feeling that Wesley was involved because she said, Don’t worry, we will find Moushka. Maybe Daddy put him some place. You keep an eye on Jakey, and I will run next door and ask Jeannie if she saw Wesley this morning.

When my mother left, I stood staring at the door as it closed behind her. I saw it in a way that I had never seen it. Every little speck stood out to me. I noticed how the aqua paint was chipped around the keyhole and the doorknob.

I wanted to make friends with the door. I thought that if I kept my eyes on it long enough, it would swing open and my mother would be there with Moushka. But then I started to lose my focus, and this caused me to spin in circles in a sea of doubt.

I wanted to believe that she would bring Moushka back, but I felt lost and uncertain inside. In my mind’s eye, I could see Moushka smiling at me. But I felt heavy, too heavy to reach him. I longed to put my arms around his soft fur and hold him close to slow my heart down. But the door did not move for a long time.

When the door finally opened, Mama Bella was empty-handed, and she was hysterical. She was coughing on her tears, and her eyes were puffy and red. She clutched at her chest as she spurted out that Wesley had given Moushka away to Cammy, the little girl who lived next door.

I followed her into the bedroom and begged her to go back and get Moushka. But this made her sob even harder, and she threw herself across the bed. Although I hated seeing her so collapsed, I was in shock about losing Moushka, so I pushed her. I made her tell me what happened even though I knew that she did not want to.

My mother’s hands were shaking as she took the etched glass bottle that held the scotch and poured herself a drink. Her face was all streaked black with her mascara, but she still looked pretty in her red halter dress. As soon as she took a gulp from the short blue glass, she started to relax.

She was not all the way better by any means, but the Johnny Walker Black gave my mother some dignity. Her breathing slowed down as she sipped, and the torrent of tears ebbed its way from a river to a meandering stream.

Of course she did not want to tell me because it made her face it more herself, but my mother was not a liar or a sneak like Wesley. After finishing the scotch, she blew her nose and blurted out the truth. She said that Jeannie, Cammy’s mother, would not give Moushka back because her daughter was in shock because Wesley had done something sexual to her.

I protested and told my mother that it was not our fault what Daddy did. I told my mother to go back and challenge Jeannie. But my mother started to cry again, and she admitted that she had already done that and had been unsuccessful.