Shit That We Should Never Pass Along, and All That We Can Not Leave Behind

By M.J. Boin De

In late 1980s rural Kansas, Mara finds herself taking on more than she can chew. Mara’s mother is a woman arguably ahead of her own time when it comes to the investigative day job she holds, and her own progressive take and unwanted oversharing of her thoughts on the day’s larger social justice issues.

Mara’s story allows the reader to start their journey following her mother’s divorce from Mara’s abusive stepfather, and make the move with Mara, her two youngest sisters, and her mother from city life to the rural awakenings that seem to only exacerbate her mother’s own baby boomer inclination towards double standards. Sprinkle in three know-it-all rural town biddies to ensure that The Greatest Generation has their say, and it’s no wonder Xer children are now all referred to as “survivors.” Mara is determined to show her mother, and an entire town of rural Kansans, that the only parties in need of a clue are they themselves. As long as Mara remains convinced that she will win in the battle of wills against her seasoned mother, absolutely nothing at all will go sidewise in this book for any of the characters.

An authentic throwdown between the baby boomer and Xer generations, delving into everything from childhood abuse, racism, abortion, religion, higher education, and ensuring those familial elitists who we all believe we know (and either love or hate) are well set for the next generation of epic failure and loss. Sure to infuriate all comers, keep everyone laughing and crying in equal measures. Mara and her mother prove that simply being human, and a product of one’s own generational time, cultural norms, and familial expectations is more than sufficient to ensure offensiveness for generations to come. The challenge lies in learning to love and find the best in each other during times when the last thing in the world any of us wants to do is love or find the best in each other.

This book comes with every trigger warning known to mankind. If you are a survivor of childhood sexual or physical abuse and trauma, post-abortion trauma, or racial-related childhood or adult traumas, the author of this book cautions the reader. This book is intended for mature audiences over the age of twenty-five. Parents are not advised to purchase this book for young teenage readers.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Gatekeeper Press
• Release date: Aug 15, 2023
• ISBN: 9781662939884

Book preview

Preface

As Gina sat on her front porch drinking an Old Milwaukee to help calm herself down, she found herself once again greeted by Limon County Sheriff, Conrad Higgins. This was no surprise to Gina, as she had just completed a twenty-minute screaming marathon with her three daughters, Mara, Nina, and Christine. A newly single parent, Gina found herself with three jobs and no help whatsoever at home from a teenager and two preteenager girls. At least that’s the base allegation that Gina had managed to establish as her own starting point to justify overriding the shouting match that generally started between Mara and Teeny around this same time frame every month. Poor Nina would end up in the middle of the fray simply because she had two dominating asshole sisters on either side of her, demanding that their middle sister take either the older or younger’s side of a nonsense argument. Nina, for her part, loved them both and wanted to take both of their sides, so she was always screaming both sides of each of their arguments. Every month within the course of the past six or seven months, Gina found herself recalling her three bitch-ass daughters back to the fact that she was a single parent with no fucking help at home.

Gina rolled her eyes as she took another sip of her beer and said to Conrad, Let me guess. Old Lady Slater called us in again?

Conrad just smiled and replied, The girls acting up again?

Gina sneered. It’s all good now. Having an Old Milwaukee after laying down the law with those three girls always makes for a quiet rest of the night.

"Have you ever thought about giving the Old Milwaukee a chance before laying down the law with the girls? Conrad chuckled. It might keep Old Lady Slater off my phone."

The last time I went with the Old Milwaukee before putting the fear of God into the girls, Old Lady Ballask was on your phone accusing me of neglecting them altogether! But hey, if you’ve got any other ideas on how to rein in three hormonal little bitches, I’m all ears, Conrad, Gina retorted.

Conrad sighed. Same time next month then, Gina?

We’ll call it a hot date as always, Gina confirmed with an agreeable smile that didn’t reach her eyes.

Conrad walked back toward his tan-colored 1980 Ford LTD Police Cruiser, shaking his head and mumbling something about the girls need some discipline and guidance.

As always, Gina remained unmoved by yet another small-town hick judging her parental abilities, or lack thereof.

The monthly routine of Gina getting mad at her girls’ shenanigans and blowing up at all three of their blowups, followed by her calming routine of sitting on her front porch with a beer and a cigarette, watching her three matronly neighbors gossiping together, and awaiting Conrad’s arrival becoming her new small-town normal still somewhat surprised her. Not that Gina didn’t understand the three old biddies’ desire for peace and quiet in the neighborhood, but Jesus! Gina thought. One would think that the three old birds have completely forgotten what it was like when they were raising their own children.

As the old ladies continued to stare and whisper to each other, Gina reminded herself that the three women constantly standing in judgment of her as a single mother had all been married during a time when divorce was unheard of. The old ladies were of her own mother’s generation. And Gina knew that they were not to be fucked with, even if their own children had been a thousand times worse than her three daughters. As the three women continued glaring at her, something about their gazes caused to Gina cringe at the thought of having left Mara’s alcoholic father, the first of her two marriages, only to have ended up in a second marriage to Nina and Christine’s father, Bernie—an abusive asshole if her oldest daughter, Mara, was to be believed—whom she had most recently divorced.

Gina didn’t have to hear any of their condemning words to know what they thought of her as a two-time divorcee working full time in what, by now, most folks likely realized was a traditionally male-dominated profession. Conrad knew Gina not only from his monthly noise complaint visits to her home, but also from the occasional voluntary walk-in welfare fraud arrests of several of the town and surrounding county folk in which Gina happened to be the acting state investigator bringing the individuals up on charges. Gina knew that it would only take one in-town arrest for word to get out amongst the traditional townsfolk about exactly what it was she did for a living. And so, before she even moved down into the town, Gina secured the second job she knew she would need to pay the bills at the local Thriftway. Gina was well aware that she and her daughters were outsiders. She had received her promotion to covering several rural counties in Kansas where catching acts of fraud was a challenge because she had one of the highest rates of clearing cases in the city. Now Gina found herself in a setting with lots of very nice people. Lots of very nice people who sometimes very much reminded Gina of her mother. And her mother reminded Gina that she was now divorced for a second time. And Mara had alleged that Bernie had hurt her. This is what at least one day every month had been turning into for Gina.

Regardless of what Bernie might, or might not, have done to Mara, Gina comforted herself with the thought that at least all three of her girls were now safe with her and currently nowhere near her second ex-husband. And to quote the good Ms. O’Connor, Gina said aloud to absolutely no one else, A good man is hard to find. By now Gina suspected that she could’ve easily enlightened O’Connor with her knowledge that an even better man the second time around was impossible to find, especially if one was toting a young toddler around when they ran across their second husband. God only knew how much damage and shame, how many life-altering consequences, might come from the things that Mara claimed she had survived at the hands of Gina’s now second ex-husband. But Gina was an optimist, so she went right on believing that her girls would be fine. They were, after all, her three girls. And Mara, perhaps, was the strongest of all three girls, Gina believed.

As the three neighborhood matrons continued to stare and gossip, Gina took one last drag of her Kent Light 100 cigarette, put it out on the porch step next to her, and then drank the last swig of her beer. She was calm again, and now she could ground each of the three girls using what she believed to be her rational tone. Gina knew that she would be the only one of the four females in the house making any sense at all tonight, but now that she’d had her beer and a smoke, she was ready to once again take on the three other hormonal beasts that she lived with.

Gina took a final look across the street at the three biddies. Something about the three together made her think about the very last conversation she had with her own hardened mother. Years before the second divorce, her mother reassured Gina that she wouldn’t be sticking around in Kansas to do anything as mundane as playing the doting grandmother who helped out with babysitting or moneylending when there was no food to be found in the cupboards. Gina’s mother, in fact, had announced to both Gina and her sister, Dee, that she would be immigrating to Canada in support of one of her brothers, who had decided that the draft in the 1970s wasn’t exactly for him. Gina was more than aware that her mother had never forgiven her for having personally pushed through the documents that had enlisted her own brother, Albert. Albert was the twin brother to her closest sister and best friend in life, Deeann.

No matter how often she had reminded her mother that she had just been doing her assigned governmental secretarial duties and that Albert just happened to be on her list of draftees that day, Gina knew that nothing she had to say would convince her mother that she wasn’t personally at fault for Albert having been subjected to the horrors of the Vietnam War. To make matters worse, the Star had thought to capture the moment that the older sister was completing the draft documentation of her younger brother and had run the story as one of its top headlines in that day’s newspaper. Her mother was beyond appalled. It took her father weeks to convince her mother that someday the entire family, and children for generations, would look upon the memory with both fondness and reverence. Given how unpopular the Vietnam War was, and how scary it was for the mothers that had just finished replenishing the US population only to be forced to send their sons back into what everyone knew was a losing war, Gina knew that her mother would never let her forget that she had personally drafted one of her own brothers right into the gates of hell.

Gina damn well knew that her mother wasn’t a fan of airing her own family’s dirty laundry, and her mother was always quick to note that taking pictures of the family during times that her mother deemed morbid and inappropriate was simply unforgivable. Father’s ability to get her mother to acquiesce that something was out of Gina’s control and allow her to remain a member of the family was always only surface level at best when it came to her mother. She was lucky that way. Not all of her siblings had fared as well as she had. Gina’s oldest brother, Eugene, and his entire family, for example, hadn’t been spoken to by their mother since the day that Eugene’s wife had thought it a good idea to take a picture of their father as he lay dead in his casket during the family’s visitation. Despite her sister-in-law’s clearly kind intentions of ensuring that the family had one last picture of their beloved father, her actions had been deemed absolutely unforgivable by Gina’s mother, and as long as Gene continued to remain married to a wife their mother hated, it was understood by all seven of the other siblings that their eldest brother was no longer entitled to a path of decent, respectful, or easy communication with their mother.

All eight of the Beresford children were more than aware of the unwritten but frequently called-upon rule that required any of the eight children not currently experiencing their mother’s castigation for one reason or other were expected to turn an absolute blind eye unless and until given an all-clear indication from their mother that would make it once again acceptable to resume a relationship with the outcast sibling. Gina and her sister, Dee, used to laugh and make fun of this maternal dictate without an end date to it. Gina had gone so far as to point out to Dee once that their mother had clearly missed her calling, having been raised as a Methodist instead of a Mennonite, or even a Jehovah. As long as their father had been alive, he was usually pretty good at bringing their mother back around to some form of forgiveness, or at least the pretense of forgiveness.

It had been over twelve years since the death of their father. Still, Gina’s mother had not hinted even once to her remaining seven children that Gene and his family should be invited to come and visit the larger family when their mother and her twin siblings came back to Kansas from Canada to visit with the siblings that continued to live in Kansas. Her oldest brother couldn’t reenter the states because he was now labeled a criminal draft dodger and would be subject to arrest. Eleven years ago, Gina had managed to convince herself that it was a real shame that Gene, the kindest and most like their father of all the male siblings, had managed to make it onto their mother’s shit list simply for a morbid blunder his equally as kind wife had made. Their father, while alive, of course, would follow his wife through hell and back if that’s what she wanted. What his wife, had wanted was to go and live with her favorite son in Canada. Now Gina’s favorite brother was permanently stuck in persona non grata mode.

Gina allowed herself the convincing, despite knowing her entire life that her mother had never, not once, ever, been someone who allowed others to rest on the notion that it was their own thoughts that counted. And Gene’s wife had allowed her own thoughts to go meandering around in kindness and consideration for the eight Beresford children on the day of their father’s funeral. Of all the days to pick to go around being thoughtful and kind, Gene’s wife had gone and landed on the one and only day that their mother’s love for her husband had exposed the truth that Gina’s mother was, in fact, a human being with at least one vulnerability fully capable of bringing the woman to shedding tears in public.

The only other clue any of the eight siblings ever had that something resembling a soul with any form of vulnerability actually resided within their mother’s body happened when Gina was just seven years old, when she watched as her mother stepped forward from her place at the back of the Methodist choir and sang Amazing Grace solo, with neither the organ nor the rest of the church choir accompanying her. The woman had the voice of a fucking angel and simply wasn’t capable of hiding her facial expressions of pure joy when she sang that day.

The entire time Gina’s mother sang her solo, her eyes, her smile, and her soulfulness was on display for all to see, but her eyes were fixed firmly and only on her husband and never once wavered away from him. Gina could also still recall the dumbstruck look of awe and pure love written all over her father’s face that day as she sat right next to him in the front pew with five of her other siblings. Her two youngest identical twin sisters hadn’t been conceived or born yet. That specific day in church when her mother sang solo was the only reason Gina wasn’t surprised at all to see her mother vulnerable and in tears on the day of her father’s funeral.

Really! What the fuck had Gene been thinking, bringing his good-natured, kindly wife to their father’s funeral? Gene should’ve known that when it came to their father’s funeral, his wife, in particular, was subject to the same rules that their entire family had been following when it came to children. You didn’t bring them with you. It had always been just that simple. He was already the other sibling who had erred when he, too, had married himself off to an Irish Catholic.

Unlike Gina, however, Gene’s marriage remained intact, even all these years later. Gene, it seemed, had been absolutely fine with the loss of their mother’s approval to have open access to his seven other siblings. Not having open access to his seven younger siblings meant that the siblings had to call and visit Gene and his family behind their mother’s back—not a difficult thing at all to do for the three siblings who still lived in Kansas. Albert, Dee, and Gina all stayed in contact with Gene, his wife, and their children. But not one of the three of them would dare bring up Gene, or any member of his family, or how they each fared, in front of their own mother.

The real truth, in Gina’s mind, was that most people made the mistake of thinking that there was only one big day that counted as the most deserving of the title most important in the lives of so many men and women. And that day had always been the day that a man became a groom, and a woman became a bride. Gina knew that this wasn’t true at all, and it spoke only to humankind’s inability to understand and grasp that the day that one buried his or her spouse was the other most important day that existed for married adults. That was the day that we became me for whichever spouse was still living.

By default, the day of their father’s funeral was their mother’s big day. It belonged to her. And, therefore, should’ve been conducted according to their mother’s express wishes. How easy it seemed for children to forget that they existed in this world because someone before them loved someone else before them. Gina always saw it as the mistake of the generations. It was made over and over again, never to be shut down, always, without fail, to be repeated. Because the next generation is always convinced they are smarter than the last, they are unwilling to adhere to guiding principles that have worked for centuries or to shy away from things that don’t work. The day of their father’s funeral, there had been eight grieving siblings in attendance, without a doubt; but there had been only one grieving widow. And in the case of their mother, Gene should’ve realized that their mother was burying the one and only source of warmth she had ever allowed herself in life. Of course, their mother wouldn’t want any reminders of their father, William, which would stand in stark contrast to who her husband had been while alive. A cold, dead body had not warmed the woman’s bed for all the many years she had been married to him.

Growing up with William as their father, Gina had never noticed that her family of ten had actually been quite poor. William had always been so happy, funny, and loving toward all eight of his children. Gina couldn’t recall wanting or needing anything throughout her entire childhood. It took her sitting through a sociology class in high school before she realized that her family had, in fact, been poor. What Gina was painfully aware of her entire life, however, was that her mother and father were absolute opposites. Where her father had been funny, charming, witty, warm, and a nonstop jokester, her mother was cold, to the point, unforgiving, and forever pushing her children toward being perfect and successful in every facet of their lives. At the ongoing risk of inciting her mother’s never-ending ire, Gina decided in her senior year of high school that, come hell or high water, she was going to strive to live her life seeking happiness, fun, and the joy that her father had shared with his children.

This was Gina’s one life constant that hadn’t changed as she and her seven other siblings moved into adulthood and began having children of their own. Gina was certain that her mother’s harsh, judgmental demands of her own children occasionally led to friction among the eight siblings, or to one of those shunning episodes faked for their mother’s sake, well into their adulthood. For her own part, Gina was hell-bent on ensuring that each of her daughters was reminded that they were all her favorites. She hoped that if her daughters recalled anything fondly about her in their own lives, it would be that she would tell each of them the little things that she admired and appreciated about them as soon as she became aware of them.

And despite what currently felt like a never-ending monthly cycle of Gina needing to adapt her parental approach to look and feel a bit more like her own mother’s no-nonsense approach to handling the drama, she figured that was to be expected with three teenage girls all living under the same roof. Still, Gina found that as quickly as she handled the monthly messiness that required her to be serious with her three daughters, she could reset her household by bringing back her own humor and good-natured chattiness with her girls after she finished her one beer and one cigarette each month. At least the adaptation was making Gina feel better in the moment.

Gina smiled as she thought of each of her three very individual daughters. As her oldest daughter, Gina knew that she could tell Mara all her own favorite family memories and use those memories to guide Mara into the seriousness of being an educated and responsible human being. Gina wanted Mara to go to college and be among the first of her generation to graduate from that institution. She hoped that Mara would become an English teacher. That had been Gina’s own dream for herself before life, bills, children, and two failed marriages had taken her in another direction entirely. Gina also hoped that Mara would be the first of her mother’s grandchildren to snag a college degree. Preferably before any of her sister, Dee’s, children could do so. That race was already on, and Mara already had three cousins that were older than her.

Gina let out a large sigh as she thought of her middle daughter, Nina. Nina was so unique. Gina was convinced that she lived, if not on another planet entirely, then definitely in her own world. Nina was loving, painfully shy, and didn’t often have much to say. Having worked two or three jobs throughout Nina’s life, it was often challenging for Gina to really understand what in the world was going on in Nina’s mind. Conversations about Nina’s interests were usually monosyllabic. Therefore, Gina typically depended upon Mara to help her with caring for and interpreting the thoughts of both of her youngest daughters, so knowledge of Nina’s wants and needs would typically come from Mara’s passing down of information. Gina noticed that while Nina looked the most like her, she had the personality of a quiet, thoughtful angel. Which was nothing at all like Gina.

Christine, or Teeny as the two older girls liked to call her, was the funniest of all three of Gina’s girls. She was perhaps the least serious of Gina’s daughters, and the most spoiled. Teeny had been born bald, but eventually wound up with a head full of the tightest blonde curls, the biggest red cheeks, and the roundest blue eyes, which reminded Gina of Shirley Temple. Because Teeny was beautiful as an infant and young toddler, Gina had noticed that both Mara and Nina loved carrying Teeny around, spoiling her, and standing up for her whenever trouble came her way. Teeny was usually the one that brought the trouble her way, of course. There was never a doubt that Teeny was the baby of the family. Her boisterous, outgoing, jovial personality was perhaps Gina’s favorite thing about her. Mara would accuse Gina of allowing Teeny to get away with murder. Gina would often have to intervene between her oldest and youngest daughters, and hope that Mara wouldn’t be the one to up and murder Teeny.

Putting her girls’ needs into perspective, and knowing that they were all safe and well away from her ex-husband, allowed Gina the comfort of knowing that her move to Limon was still the best move she had made to date. Indeed, the old ladies standing in judgment of her now weren’t much different from her own mother. Gina’s instincts told her, however, that the real war was just beginning and lay outside of her small, run-down, little limestone house. What in the holy hell had she been thinking by purchasing a historic home in the middle of Nowheresville—Limon, Kansas?!

Despite getting the run-down property on the cheap, Gina hadn’t been prepared to pay the actual cost of trying to tidy up or renovate her property. At the time of the purchase, she was just happy to be able to afford to put a roof over her girls’ heads. Gina regretted ever opening her front door to this neighborhood welcome-wagon trio. Before retreating inside, she gave a wry smile at the thought of her first meeting with all three ladies. That overly dry, shit-tasting meatloaf they had presented Gina and the three girls with most certainly wasn’t worth the hassle that now awaited her at home almost every evening.

Well, Gina thought, if it’s a war that these three old bitches want …

What Gina had yet to realize was that neighborhood warfare already lay in the hands of her three daughters. All three of them had been learning quickly from her own brand of shenanigans. As different as each of her daughters was, and despite any of their own in-fighting, all three shared a deep-seated instinct to protect their family at all costs.

As much as the town biddies had no idea what trouble might come for them, Gina was equally clueless as to what was to occur within her own household.

Part I

If There Was Light in the Beginning, I Must Have Been the Only Dumb Fuck Stumbling Around in Dark Places!

Chapter 1

Who Gives an Actual Fuck, Bernie?

If Mara could only be the parent in the equation, she probably would have beaten the crap out of her two youngest sisters. Well, if she was being honest, Mara would’ve just liked to beat the crap out of Teeny. Nina was sometimes a parrot for everything that Teeny said and did. And so, for today, both of Mara’s sisters were annoying the ever-living shit out of her.

A brief hesitation before unleashing absolute holy hell on both of her younger sisters allowed Mara to recall that perhaps their refusal to keep any of their messes cleaned up wasn’t really either girl’s fault. All three girls came from a household of utter chaos, which often included way too many cats, never-ending filthy laundry lying about for said cats to piss all over, and piles and piles of dirty dishes just waiting for any one of the family members to decide the dishes were worth doing should anyone decide they needed to eat that day. Frankly, Mara had realized a very long time ago that it was a waste of time and effort to demonstrate to her younger sisters how to keep the house cleaned to the rather specific standards she had set—after being knocked out by a cast-iron skillet by her stepfather, Bernie, who had judged that her efforts to clean said skillet were lacking. While Mara had picked up on the habit of deeply cleaning every nook and cranny of their home at least three times each week, neither Nina and nor Teeny had been on the receiving end of a cast-iron skillet strike to the face from their father as far as she was aware.

Mara was very quickly discovering that if she was willing to keep a clean house, even after her mother’s divorce from her stepfather, Nina and Teeny were more than willing to allow her to do so without offering any help. They were helpful at making messes only. Nina and Teeny were now both young tweens and were in the process of discovering the importance of friendships and cute boys while experimenting with makeup and learning how to fully take advantage of their mother’s frequent absence while working two or more jobs just to make ends meet. Of course, Mara also realized that she, too, was learning how to take full advantage of their mother’s absence from their home. Previously, when their mother had been married to Bernie, there had been absolutely no advantages to their mother being gone so much at work. Having a newfound freedom from both Bernie and their mother should’ve been amazing. Honestly, Mara now found herself absolutely in need of a clean house at all times. She knew she would never be able to explain this to either of her younger sisters or her mother. If she were being perfectly honest with herself, Mara saw the ritual of cleaning while listening to her heavy metal music as a form of relaxation. She wasn’t about to tell her two messy-ass sisters that though. That would only invite more mess.

Sometimes, Mara thought, it feels like nothing has changed despite Mom getting rid of the piece of garbage she was married to.

Even at her young age of fifteen, Mara knew full well that her mother had chosen to divorce her stepfather after years of him failing to hold a full-time job and spending all of her mother’s hard-earned money on entertaining his neighborhood friends with monthly breakfasts and who-the-hell-knew whatever else the lazy man might have been up to, rather than leaving the man for anything related to all the abuse Mara had received at his hands over the years. At one point, her mother had also commented to Mara that she had continued to receive notification that all three girls were missing too many school days, despite Mara’s stepfather having a perfectly working car that he was no longer paying for despite the three jobs she now held, according to her mother. His only fucking responsibility was to pay the bills and ensure that Nina and Teeny made it to and from school. He didn’t even have to take you. You took the bus. Mara had heard that complaint several times from her mother, both before and after their divorce had come and gone.

For her part, Mara was just happy that, there towards the end of their marriage, the man would often disappear during the daytime, do whatever it was that he did, and then be home in time for when her mother would make it home from one of those three jobs. As long as Mara’s mother was at home, the man didn’t dare touch her or her sisters. Her mother had confided to Mara that she was working with Mara’s aunts and uncle on an escape plan because she needed Mara’s help to ensure that all three of the girls’ clothing was hurriedly stuffed into plastic trash bags as quickly as possible on what her mother referred to as D-Day. The D-Day plan was shared, as far as Mara was aware, only with herself and her aunts and uncle on her mother’s side of the family. As Mara’s mother had explained, The girls love their father and are likely to tell him of any plans for being taken away from him.

According to her mother, a fairly long letter detailing Bernie’s many misdeeds and warning him not to bother asking for custody of Nina and Teeny was being left behind. Her mother had also emphasized to Mara that it was a high priority for the washer and dryer to come along with them during the D-Day escape. Mara had decided that this secret scheming session with her mother was likely the right time to share some of the absolute hell that she had experienced at the hands of her stepfather over the years.

Mara didn’t go into great detail with her mom. She felt shame; but more than that, she was afraid that the threat to kill her mother, that Bernie had made when Mara was very young, should she ever tell was still a possibility while they still resided in the same house with her stepfather. Mara had settled on telling her mother just this much: Beyond the many beatings I endured, I experienced a lot of touching and being forced to touch places on Bernie with my hands and my mouth that I knew were places that shouldn’t be touched, which happened from the age of five up until about the time that I started having my period and developing my breasts.

Mara had been afraid of the possibility of her stepfather eventually moving on to either or both of her younger sisters. She was more fearful of even suggesting such a thing to her mother. Surely her stepfather wouldn’t touch his own biological daughters? Mara wasn’t his biological child, so maybe that’s why he felt free to touch her and demand that she touch him so inappropriately? Every time she wondered about that as a possibility for her two baby sisters, Mara would become physically ill. She didn’t know what she would do if that were ever to become true for either of her baby sisters. So, Mara had learned to ensure that neither of her sisters was ever alone with Bernie if she could help it.

Her baby sisters were the first two babies who Mara had ever loved in her life. She was old enough to recall caring for both of her sisters when each was a newborn and first brought home from the hospital. And, with all the alone time spent with them at home, Mara rather imagined herself as more of a mother figure to them, than an older sister. Even at age fifteen, she was painfully aware that she was doing a fairly shit job of raising the girls. Neither sister seemed overly fond of school, homework, or keeping the house clean—traits that Mara embraced with enthusiasm—whether out of an initial forced habit or a now-unspoken emotional need for things to be tidy, orderly, and organized, she was no longer certain. What Mara did convince herself of, however, was that her sisters freely going in the complete opposite direction of her own habits (even if those habits sometimes led her to the conclusion that her sisters could sometimes be selfish, lazy, and uninspired) was hopefully evidence that neither girl had been exposed to what she had experienced from her stepfather. Mara often prayed that her logic in this regard was sound because she knew that she would never be brave enough to ask either of her sisters if she was right or not.

Every time she would allow herself to recall some of the most painful memories of living with her stepfather, Mara would always allow them to end at the very last time she received a bloody nose from him. This particular interaction had occurred the day before D-Day during a car ride on the way home from school. Mara typically took the bus to and from school but, that day, Mara’s stepfather had received a call from her school because she had just been suspended for fighting with a classmate.

Mara had, in fact, started the fight with another other female classmate in eighth-hour math, the last class of her day, by refusing to allow the girl to copy off her math test. When Mara had turned around to respond to the girl’s request that Mara allow her to look at her own test answers while the teacher’s back was turned, Mara gave the other girl a scowl and said, Hell, no. If you want to pass math, try studying, you dumb fuck!

The girl had promptly replied to Mara with, You know I’m going to kick your ass, right?!

To which Mara simply shrugged her shoulders and replied, You’re welcome to try!

The girl followed Mara to her locker and eventually stepped in front of her, after saying a few disparaging words of her own, right as Mara managed to open her locker. The girl pushed her backwards away from her own locker. Mara immediately responded in kind by pushing the girl back into the now-open locker. As the girl fell backward into Mara’s locker, the locking mechanism caught the girl’s right arm, completely ripping the girl’s shirtsleeve from the top to the bottom and causing a severe cut on the girl’s upper right arm. Some good Samaritan who was worried for Mara had already made a run for the attention of a teacher or administrator just as quickly as they saw the other girl place herself in front of Mara at her locker. And the responding educator, who must have been standing right outside the locker area, was there in plenty of time to see most, if not all, of the exchange between Mara and her classmate.

Although the entire fight was started and finished within less than thirty seconds, both Mara and her schoolmate were promptly suspened for fighting. Her school’s administrative justice neither asked nor cared to know what the fight was about or who had started the fight at all. The facts were the facts. Both girls had been seen with their hands on the other. Mara knew she had thrown out the first derisive words to her classmate in an effort to deliberately start the fight. Mara also knew the girl was known to frequently bully others and that this wasn’t her classmate’s first time being suspended from school. Despite Mara’s repeated efforts to let the school’s administration know that she had, in fact, deliberately provoked the girl into the fight by calling the girl a nasty name first and thus guaranteeing that the girl would want to fight, the adults just repeatedly apologized to Bernie when he picked Mara up for having to suspend her from school alongside that other girl.

Having the stepfather that Mara did, she already knew that that other girl was code among the school administrators for that Black girl who was being bused in from the same impoverished Quindaro neighborhood area that Mara herself was being bused in from.

Evidently, it was okay for Mara to be poor and bused in from the same neighborhood because Mara was White. Mara was more than aware that many at her school, and even others who were White in her neighborhood, thought this way. Many of her very own neighborhood’s parents would express their objections to their White children sharing the same bus with the surrounding Black community’s children just to get into a decent school inside of the district. There had been more than one or two discussions during neighborhood potluck dinners that Mara had overheard in which several of her White neighbors were discussing the fact that allotting for a certain percentage of Black children to also be bused out of the larger Quindaro neighborhood was simply unavoidable in this day and age, though not ideal in their own opinions. Mara lived inside of Roswell Park, which was surrounded by the larger Quindaro neighborhood.

During the previous year’s neighborhood Independence Day celebration, Mara had overheard one of her neighbors linking the current busing situation that their poor White neighborhood was experiencing to what he referred to as that bullshit precedent that the southerners failed to appropriately address back in the sixties when they had the chance to do so. Mara recalled being stunned when the neighbor went on to tell the other males circled around each other in conversation that the school district’s transportation department must have understood just how uncomfortable White parents would be with forcing their children onto buses with the outlying Black community’s children because he had noticed that all the Black kids were picked up before their own children so they were always sitting at the back of the bus, leaving their White children to be assigned seating at the front of the bus.

What shocked Mara about this conversation was that, as she thought about it, she realized that it was true that all of the Black children were always on the bus first each morning and did indeed sit at the back of the bus. Her stop was often one of the last few stops and the bus driver had told her to sit towards the front of the bus from the first day of school. Mara had thought absolutely nothing of it. The bus driver had a little radio that she played Whitney Houston tunes on. Mara quickly became a fan of Whitney Houston and she always felt a little bit spoiled because she thought perhaps the kids in the back might like to hear how beautiful Whitney Houston’s voice was. There was never a problem during any of the rides to or from the school Mara attended, which was a good twenty-minute drive each day from where she lived. As Mara thought more about it, she realized that the Black kids never spoke to the White kids, and White kids never spoke to the Black kids during the bus rides.

And every last student who took the bus claimed the same seat that they had taken in the morning for the afternoon return home each day as well. Mara had always thought the practice odd because the afternoon drop-offs went in the same order as the morning pick-ups, which would force the Black children in back to walk all the way to the front of the bus to get off at their stop. A more logical approach should have had Mara and the children that lived in Roswell Park sitting at the back of the bus because they were always the last to be dropped back off each day. Mara was then forced to acknowledge another fact about the school she had been attending: all the Black children in each of her classes also sat together in the very back of every classroom.

Mara often sat in middle seating because she didn’t like being the center of attention and she had found that sitting in the middle or close to the back of the classroom kept her from being called upon by her teachers.

Mara had only concerned herself with what allowed her to remain anonymous as much as possible, for as long as possible. Her teacher-avoidance strategy was how Mara came to be seated in front of the peer with whom she had fought that afternoon. It made Mara now wonder if the Black children attending school with her had perhaps adopted a similar strategy to avoid their teacher’s notice or if those students had simply assumed that it was expected of them. Regardless of their intentions, the Black students were often still the first students called upon by the teachers. And it hadn’t escaped Mara’s notice that there was no shortage of teachers willing to call on the students who failed to keep up in their classrooms. Mara had always been a middle-of-the-pack kind of student, so she wasn’t one to garner too much teacher attention, positively or negatively.

The math teacher who both Mara and her peer had together was fond of calling anyone who couldn’t give him a correct answer on a math problem a tard in front of the entire classroom. Still, Mara knew that on this, her last day in that specific teacher’s math class, her quiz would result in an A. That didn’t matter because Mara had still been the only real tard in attendance in eighth-hour math that day. The transcripts that her mother provided to the Limon, Kansas, school district no doubt showed a student who wouldn’t be needing additional support in basic math, English, science, or any other high school freshman courses. It was good thing Limon, Kansas, didn’t require Mara to produce a grade in morals or ethics following her tenure in the city. Mara suspected she would’ve been knocked back a few grades.

Although Mara never hung out in Bernie’s location during those neighborhood potlucks, she wouldn’t have been shocked had she found out that her stepfather was leading the charge in these kinds of racially charged grumblings. And if he hadn’t been leading such a conversation, he most certainly wouldn’t have been hesitant to put in his own disgusting two-cents’ worth in any of those types of conversations. He never missed an opportunity to diminish or degrade a Black person from the Quindaro neighborhood. Mara couldn’t understand how it was that her own family and her immediate Roswell Park neighbors didn’t see themselves as the interlopers who had all encroached upon their Black neighbors.

Mara had once been assigned the task of researching her neighborhood history in her eighth-grade sociology class. To her delight, Mara’s mother was only going to be working for a half day on the Saturday that Mara needed to go to the Kansas City Public Library and get her research done to complete her neighborhood history project. Her mother was able to drop Mara off when the library opened at 8:00 a.m. before she went into her weekend job, and planned on picking Mara up again after she was done working around noon.

Mara recalled that assignment to this day because she was able to start the assignment without needing a tension-filled ride from Bernie and she was dropped off at her favorite library branch (the one that had a small Indian gravesite right in front of the entrance) to do her research. Mara confirmed her suspicions that her family, and the entire white enclave of Roswell Park, was the race of folks who were actually out of place when it came to the establishment of the Quindaro neighborhood area.

Quindaro, as it turned out, was steeped in both tribal and Civil War-related history. Neither of those histories, Mara thought, suggested that an eventual enclave of shit-talking racist White men was given a thought by those initial settlers of Quindaro. By the time Mara had been picked up from the library that day, she found herself wishing that she had been able to find more information about how Roswell Park had accomplished the task of having only all-White residents in the middle of an area that was otherwise inhabited exclusively by Black residents. Mara suspected that the factories located just across the bridge from the townhouses held the answer, but her research never revealed the answer for her that day. So, Mara asked her mother on their way back home why none of their other Roswell Park neighbors were Black. Her mother gave her a two-word answer without any further clarification: Homeowners’ association.

Mara didn’t figure that her social sciences teacher, a White man, would likely give her paper a passing grade if she pointed out that her specific neighborhood had a homeowners’ association that evidently only allowed White people to purchase homes and live there in complete disregard of the people and cultures that surrounded her neighborhood. She might have been wrong, but Mara took the A grade she received on that paper as confirmation that speaking in generalities about Quindaro’s place on the winning side of history in the Civil War was the expectation. It wasn’t brave, but then again, Mara hadn’t bothered to point out to her own mother that although she knew the homeowners’ association had worked against access for Black folks, she still fancied herself a proud teenaged participant of the Civil Rights Movement, and that perhaps living somewhere that denied access to anyone for any reason suggested that big-picture social movements might still require individual action in order to ensure follow-through with said movements.

Moreover, Mara had been struggling for at least the past two or three years with taking her mother’s self-assessment as a supporter of civil rights seriously at all. Her mother was married to Bernie. As far as Mara was concerned, Bernie automatically nullified her mother’s efforts to impart any values related to equality to Mara and her two younger sisters.

Most folks would probably tell Mara that her thoughts were just a bit extreme, but she, for her part, remained convinced that no one should ever be allowed to get away with saying that they had loved both Bernie and justice in the same breath. Mara figured that her own complacency and desire to get a good grade on her paper meant that she was also a coward. In her home, being non-compliant always resulted in physical violence and pain. Mara, therefore, took the easy route and mostly chose to be a compliant coward. Besides, Mara had recognized at a very young age that her mother truly believed in what she was saying to her three daughters. And her mother was sincere when she indicated that she didn’t want her three daughters growing up to be racist or think themselves better than others. The problem, as Mara saw it, was that her mother didn’t seem to grasp that her words and deeds often conflicted and created confusing messages.

To Mara’s great frustration, as she got older, she, too, found herself burdened with the unwanted gift of talking through paths that made perfect sense not only to her mother, but to herself as well. For the life of her, Mara had absolutely no idea how in the hell she had managed to get to that space, but once she was there, she recognized it for herself. These days the only way to blow Mara off a talk-through was to put her into absolute emotional upset. In order to get herself landed appropriately on any given logical point, Mara was required to keep her wits about her at all times. This became of absolute importance when it came to Mara’s mother.

Her mother was exceptionally skilled at many things, but the woman was formidable when it came to coming out the other side of just about everything she said. She was always somehow in the right. Mara had been stuck in a household for over thirteen years in which taking on one adult required her to have brawn enough to handle any manner of physical and emotional harm, while taking on the other adult required her to have mental acuity in order to keep track of where in the hell one was at within a conversation and come out the other side with one’s sanity intact.

The last day she was required to concern herself with consequences from Bernie was a gift Mara had been desperately in need of for years. She was getting to the point where she didn’t know how much longer she would be able to withstand staying alive, stuck within all the extremes she was subjected to. There had been days when Mara wanted to just call it quits on life, but she was always afraid that leaving meant she would be leaving her sisters alone at the mercy of Bernie. Not knowing what he may or may not do to Nina and Teeny tortured Mara’s heart and mind on an almost-daily basis.

The day Bernie had been called to pick Mara up from school after she had been suspended and had missed her bus was their final confrontation. On the ride home, he wasted no time expressing to Mara how little he appreciated being called to the school to pick her up. He made it clear that she should’ve done a better job with the timing and location of her fight. It was awfully inconvenient for Bernie that Mara had been caught. And he was infuriated that now he would have to pay to replace a nigger girl’s shirt. Bernie’s look of disgust let Mara know that one misstep between now and their arrival at home would not end well for her. Still, for some reason, she found Bernie’s description of his having to pay for anyone’s shirt, regardless of the person’s skin color, absolutely hilarious, and so she began laughing.

Mara, of course, knew that Bernie paid for absolutely nothing at all, ever. And as Mara’s guilt over the fact that her own actions were landing on top of a Black girl, someone who she knew Bernie had zero regard for, settled into the most uncomfortable of places, her laughter became more hysterical by the moment.

Mara’s plan of getting herself suspended for a few days from school, as opposed to pretending to be sick and staying home from school as her mother had suggested, to ensure her own availability and participation in D-Day now had costs to it that Bernie was boldly declaring he would be the bearer of. Mara had decided to take the suspension route because she was more than painfully aware that pretending about anything, including the sudden onset of an illness, was nearly impossible for her.

Mara’s favorite aunt, Dee, had fairly recently proclaimed that Mara had no idea of how to be discreet with her thoughts and feelings after she had shared with her mother that the Bon Jovi concert her aunt had paid for her to attend alongside two of her cousins had the worst weed smell she had ever encountered. Evidently, her aunt didn’t appreciate having to explain to Mara’s mother why it was that she couldn’t keep an entire amphitheater of Bon Jovi fans from smoking weed so indiscriminately in public.

Mara had known that her classmate was going to ask to cheat off of her math quiz that day. That same girl had been nicely asking Mara all year long to let her cheat off every other math quiz prior to that day’s quiz. And Mara had been letting that girl cheat because she thought the math teacher was an asshole and if he’d done a better job of teaching math, he wouldn’t need to be calling any of his student’s tards.

Mara truly wanted to help herself, her mother, and her sisters get the hell out of the home they had been living in for the past thirteen years with Bernie, but she knew it wouldn’t happen by pretending to be ill. As her stepfather continued to escalate and scream profanities at Mara, she continued only to feel the regret of walking her classmate into a suspension alongside herself, and thus her inappropriate and nervous laughter continued to increase, perhaps in proportion to Bernie’s cursing. Mara had every indication that her classmate was likely always fighting for survival in that predominantly White school filled with White, middle-class schoolmates. It was also likely that the children who had been lucky enough to actually live in that neighborhood’s school already had far superior educational opportunities that neither Mara nor her classmate had previously been able to access.

While the two girls clearly shared the same impoverished zip code, and both were among the lucky few from their neighborhood to be bused to a better school, the commonalities ended there simply because the two didn’t share the same skin color. Had the circumstances been reversed, Mara was certain that she would’ve been acting out against her classmates too. Mara hated having picked a fight that she knew would lead either of the two girls to suspension. Mara liked school. School was a place of refuge for her each Monday through Friday. Oh God! What if it’s the same for her? And I just got her kicked out and sent home again! Fuck!

Making matters worse for Mara was the fact that she also knew that part of her mother’s D-Day plans included a move out of the city to a farm town and a completely new school district for all three girls. This made Mara’s deliberate act that much more despicable, in her own opinion. Mara wished that she would’ve had a chance to go back for at least one day to offer a sincere apology to the other girl and explain to her now former classmate that, had Mara’s own circumstances not been dire and necessary to escape her own version of an absolute living hell with Bernie, she absolutely would have helped her classmate, would never have wanted the girl to get injured when Mara pushed her back, or caused her to lose the pretty shirt she was wearing that day, and certainly wouldn’t have called her struggling classmate a disgusting, vile name.

Before Mara knew what had happened, her smiling and laughter at her stepfather’s proclamation about his paying for things had earned her a backhanded slap, which instantly resulted in both a bloodied nose and lip when the right side of her face met with the passenger side window. Even as her head slammed violently into the passenger-side window, she didn’t shed a tear despite the pain and burning. Mara kept right on laughing as she realized that Bernie wouldn’t ever know how to pay for anything of real value or consequence, even if the Good Lord had shoved a calculator or an abacus right up his asshole before he was born.

Mara defiantly looked her stepfather right in his face as he continued to drive and curse at her impudence. As loudly as she could, Mara yelled back, "WHO GIVES AN ACTUAL FUCK WHAT YOU THINK YOU HAVE TO PAY FOR, BERNIE?! I KNOW I SURE AS HELL DON’T!!" Mara continued staring the bastard down, as she braced herself for the next blow from her stepfather. That blow never came.

To her surprise, Bernie simply narrowed his eyes and glared at her. He didn’t have anything else to say to her for the remainder of the ride home, or the rest of that entire evening. Instead, about ten minutes before her mother was due home from her late evening job, Bernie randomly decided that he was sick of seeing all the heavy metal rock band pictures that Mara was fond of tearing out of her Metal Edge magazine and taping to her walls and door. Bernie busted into Mara’s room unannounced and began to rip every single picture off her walls and door. As he did this, he didn’t say one word to her. Mara’s mother, however, finally walked into the house to find Mara crying as she sat on her bed just as her stepfather was ripping down the very last of her posters.

Her mother catching Bernie in the act of ripping down the pictures was the first and only time that Mara was aware of her mother defending her to Bernie. After hearing her mother thoroughly cuss Bernie out for having destroyed her pictures, Mara began frantically laughing for the second time that day as she thought to herself, What the hell? I was going to have to tear those posters off the walls or leave them there tomorrow during the D-Day escape anyway.

Mara knew that her mother knew this all too well. Still, had her mother asked her for an explanation about why she was crying, Mara would’ve informed her that she had spent the entire evening feeling awful about her actions and behavior toward her classmate earlier that day. And as the evening had worn on, Mara was genuinely concerned about how much trouble her classmate might be in at her own home. But her mother never asked. And by the time her mother had stopped yelling at Bernie, it was well past midnight and Mara needed sleep before the D-Day move that was scheduled to happen the next morning.

Despite Mara’s enthusiastic readiness to escape her stepfather, knowing that her mother had chosen the ripped-heavy-metal-poster incident to speak up on her behalf to Bernie left her feeling void. Still, Mara reminded herself, I said I don’t give an actual fuck anyway.

The happiness and freedom Mara felt in the first few days immediately following D-Day was tempered by the fact that Mara’s mother still grounded her for a month for having been in a fight, causing injury to another girl, and getting suspended from school. Mara hated being grounded worse than she hated her former stepfather’s beatings. Both her mother and Bernie’s groundings always included immediate bed for the entire night and staying in bed other than going to school, eating your meals, and your restroom time. Her mother hadn’t initially changed this approach to punishment following the D-Day move. However, Mara very quickly realized that her mother’s inability to leave any of her two or sometimes three jobs made enforcing said groundings now nearly impossible, so she was able to continue doing whatever she wanted to after school anyway. Additionally, Mara was now the oldest person remaining in the newly purchased home when her mother needed to be at work. So her inability to stay away from chores just because she was grounded and needed to