In the Blink of an Eye

By Christine Hart

A fourteen-year-old teen’s life takes an unexpected turn. Will she be able to overcome the obstacles that life throws at her time and time again? Will she be able to battle her demons and not lose herself, or her life, due to the life-altering diagnosis and the darkness that seems to be lurking around every corner that she turns and overcome? Will she be able to live a life of brighter days ahead of her?

• Language: English
• Publisher: Page Publishing, Inc.
• Release date: Dec 29, 2020
• ISBN: 9781662406126

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In the Blink of an Eye

Christine Hart

Copyright © 2020 Christine Hart

All rights reserved

First Edition

PAGE PUBLISHING, INC.

Conneaut Lake, PA

First originally published by Page Publishing 2020

ISBN 978-1-6624-0611-9 (pbk)

ISBN 978-1-6624-0612-6 (digital)

Printed in the United States of America

Table of Contents

Chapter One: Blinked

Chapter Two: Fighting for My Life and Sanity

Chapter Three: Realization

Chapter Four: Battling Darkness

Chapter Five: Graduation Vacation

Chapter Six: Campus Life

Chapter Seven: Regrouping

Chapter Eight: Reconnecting

Chapter Nine: Love

Chapter One: Blinked

Blinked

Iwas not sure if I blinked. I intellectually knew that I did, but that was how quickly a fourteen-year-old girl’s life changed. That vibrant, ready-to-take-on-the-world girl was me. In the year 1989, in the blink of an eye, my life as I knew it would be changed forever.

A fourteen-year-old child should never have to worry whether or not if they’re going to be able to take in a breath of fresh air or run down the sidewalk to catch the school bus ever again. From May 18, 1989, and thereafter, I did.

The year and day would never be erased from my memory. It’s funny how the brain works when your body suffers from trauma or traumatic injuries. I remember getting off the school bus and my friend Carmen riding my bus route that day. We didn’t have band practice, and her mom allowed her to come over or maybe even spend the night. I was not sure. That was what baffled me the most. Normally, I had such a great memory, but on this particular day, there were gaps in what I could remember. I intellectually knew it was my brain protecting me from the traumatic memories of that day, but the curious human side of me wanted to know. What was I doing? What was I thinking? Did I see it coming? Did I scream or brace myself? These were questions that I would never have answers to. I knew this because it had been thirty years, and I still couldn’t remember those moments before impact.

I was okay not knowing my whole story. I had bits and pieces of memory before and after what occurred that evening. The blanks that friends and family filled in was never the same. I was told that we were going to three different places. None of those rang true to me, not that I could say that anyone’s story was true or untrue. I don’t know. I’d been trying to get my mind to recall on my memory, but it was like my brain had selective amnesia. Friends told me about the rumors that were going around—that we were drinking. I am not saying that I never drank before, but I knew for sure that I didn’t drink that day. I got off the bus, went home, and then went to my cousin’s apartment and used the neighbor’s phone. That was when my memory faded. The story about drinking was a lie or just what it was—a rumor. I came to realize, depending on who was telling the story, that what they all insinuate themselves was their story, not mine.

What I do recall about that day, May 18, 1989, was my story or lack of it, but nevertheless, this was what I remember. Carmen and I got off the school bus and went up to my house, which was on the third floor of a low-income apartment complex. The one thing about the Apple Tree complex was, it was safe, and the residents kept the property clean. People who didn’t live there and lived in affluent neighborhoods would come hang out and play basketball. The court drew people from all around town.

Before we moved to Apple Tree, we lived in this red house with no indoor plumbing, no central heating, and no air-conditioning. The only heating/cooling system was a wood stove to heat the house during the winter and fans to cool the house during the sweltering summers.

During the late seventies and early eighties, we would go to the bathroom on a pot that we had to dump outside when it was filled up with feces and urine. We, meaning my parents, Linda and Nate; my big sister, Little Baby; my eldest brother, Kenny; and I. We had to take turns emptying the pot that most of the time would spill out on our feet and splash on our ankles because we waited until the pot was completely filled to the brim. My other two siblings, Nay and Willie, were too young to lift and carry the pee and poop-filled pot outside. Hell, I was barely big or old enough to dump the crap in the woods myself.

We didn’t have money and material things, but we had some of the best times of my childhood in the old neighborhood that everyone referred to as Big End. We lived near the memorial park, and it had a public pool where we would spend most of our time during the summer. We would sneak into the pool area after getting our bodies wet at the water fountain so that it looked like we already swam in the pool before the lifeguards would blow the whistle that swim break was over and everyone could resume swimming. During the fall, my sister Little Baby; my cousin’s Tracy, Tinsi, and Sharene; and I, along with some other neighborhood kids, raked the yards of the affluent families who lived around the corner from us to make candy money. They sometimes wouldn’t pay us, and all we would get were crab apples thrown at us.

At that time, the only kids I was friends with were the children of our parents’ circle of friend’s children. In that circle was my aunt Moat. She had my cousin Sharene (she was the oldest), then Tinsi was (my aunt’s second child), the third-born Tracy (the only boy, he’s more like a brother to me) and then the baby of the family, Tobaby. They lived around the corner from us. There was also another family we were close to and interacted with when living out in Big End—the Carr family. They lived a few houses down from us.

Sometimes we would walk to downtown Charles Town to the family’s side of town of my aunt Moat’s best friend. They resided on what we called the Strip. The Strip had more livelihood than Big End. That part of Charles Town had the Cellar Door, one of the nightclubs, Dock’s pool hall, and around the corner was the A&P grocery store, where our parents did their grocery shopping at the first of the month and where we got to order a sub or a slice of Frank’s Pizza. Frank’s had the best-tasting subs and pizza in Jefferson County. Then there was my aunt Moat’s best friend Buck and her sister Big; they were the ones who lived in town on the Strip. Buck had four children, and out of the four children, I hung out with her son Little Jim and her daughter Pooches. Buck’s sister Big had two kids at that time, and her oldest daughter Binky and I were good friends. These were the people I’ve known and went to school and grew up with my whole life. Little Jim, Pooches, Tracy, and I—we all went to Page Jackson; my two siblings Little Baby and Kenny, my two cousins Sharene and Tinsi, and my friend Binky all went to Wright Denny. After making sure Tracy and I was at our bus stop, my siblings and cousins would continue their walk to Wright Denny. When we got off the bus, we were supposed to wait for Little Baby, Kenny, Sharene, and Tinsi to come meet us before crossing the street. Once, I took off running across the street, not wanting to wait for the older kids to cross the street with us, and I got hit by a car. I was hospitalized for a week and released with medication that was for seizures. They said I had some brain damage. The medication was only to be used if I started having seizures, but I never had one seizure. This happened around the time we were going to be moving to Apple Tree. When we all moved in Apple Tree, the Carrs lived under us on the second floor. The Harts, Carrs, and Thorntons all moved to Apple Tree eventually, around the same time frame. Though it was a low-income apartment complex, to us it felt like we were living in penthouses.

Although Apple Tree was low-income apartments, we had central air and heat. We had an actual bathroom with a sink, a toilet, a tub, and a shower. Coming from living in Big End to Apple Tree was a significant improvement for many African American lower-class families during the early eighties.

After dropping off our backpacks and instruments, Carmen and I headed up the sidewalk to my cousin Sharene’s apartment, where everyone was hanging out on the stoop. We walked up the landing and spoke to everyone—a mixture of adults,