Like a record playing on repeat, it’s the same shit on a different day. No matter what I do to escape the normalcy that floods my life, I can’t, as much as I try so hard to. It’s just past six in the morning, and I wake up to the sounds of my baby sister’s cry flooding through our house. There’s no reason for her to cry, and yet, she still screams her bloody head off every morning. Only today, well, today I thought I’d be able to sleep in for just a little bit.

I toss my comforter to the left, sling my legs over the bed, and stand up quickly, hoping that I can get to her before she wakes up the whole house. In the back of my mind, I know that it’s no use. There’s this running joke that Ellie wakes up the neighbors, and to be honest – she might.

I open the door to my bedroom and walk directly across the hall to hers. She’s sitting up in her toddler bed, tears flowing over her soft, rosy cheeks. She just turned three, and for the life of me, I still don’t understand why she cries. When she was a baby, I understood it, she needed to be fed, or a diaper change, or maybe she was tired. Now, it’s different. She wakes up every day crying like something horrific has happened to her.

I turn my expression into a happy, doting smile as I walk over to her, sit on her bed and pull her into my arms. “Baby, what’s the matter?” I ask her as I brush my thumb under her tear ridden cheeks.

“I….I f-fought y-you l-left me…” Ellie is still struggling with her speech, some of her t’s sound like f’s and s’s sound like z’s. We’ve gone to the doctor about it, and he told me that it’s nothing for us to worry about, we just need to practice, and eventually, she’ll grow out of it.

“Why baby? Why did you ever think I would leave you?” I pull her closer to my chest, holding her in the tightest bear hug I could muster up.

Ellie turns her body around to mine, her bouncing black curls shape her face, and those dark brown eyes stare up at me with such intensity. “Daddy left.”

Her words cripple me beyond belief, granted she is three and doesn’t understand. Sometimes, I’m still shocked that she even remembers much of our Dad. “No baby, Daddy went to Heaven, he didn’t just leave us.” Like our mother did, I want to add, but I won’t. I bite my tongue.

“He-aa-ven,” Ellie repeats back slowly, and I nod with the biggest smile on my face to conceal the hurt and pain hidden inside me.

“Yes, baby, it’s where all the angels go. Daddy became an angel, and he’s with God now.” I pick Ellie up and take her towards the window. As I move the curtains out of the way to let the sunshine in, I point up to the sky. “See that, baby? That’s Heaven, and Daddy is up there watching over you, me, Luke, and Sabs.”

“We c-can f-fly to He-aa-ven?” She looks at me curiously, and I shake my head, giggling at the thought.

“Not quite. But whenever you miss Daddy, know he’s always watching over us. And, my sweet, remember he’s always right here.” I tap on her chest, right where her heart is. Ellie giggles, and grabbing my hand, she brings out that sass that every woman in our family has.

“No! He’s too b-iiiiig!”

I can’t help but laugh at my little sister, she is right about that, but I know he is always with us. I choose to believe that, believing that is what gets me through most days.

***

“Luke! Sabrina!” I yell from the stove up to my younger brother and sister. Luke is fifteen, and Sabrina is a few years younger, just having had her ninth birthday last week. As I said before, it’s the same shit, different day. I’m cooking everyone bacon, eggs, and toast this morning, though, opposed to the usual cereal or quick thing I could throw at them if we were running late.

“Be there in a second!” I hear Luke yell down the stairwell as Sabrina comes running down. She looks at me, and we both exchange a glance, knowing very well that Luke isn’t going to be down in just a second. I swear, this kid takes more time in front of the mirror than I ever did, but I suppose that’s what happens when you’re the star pitcher of the Lawrenceville Blazers, his high school baseball team. I’m hoping and praying to God that Luke continues to do well in baseball; at this rate, it’s the only way I’m going to be able to get him into college. I will motivate the living hell out of him and do whatever I have to do to help him maintain his averages. That’s going to get him a scholarship and send my little bro after his dreams to play in the major leagues.

I gave up on my dreams when I found out my dad was sick. I had this long, detailed plan to open up a bar. The thing is life is messy and cruel. We are almost never able to go after our dreams, and that’s fucked up if you ask me. My dream may not have been as glamourous as Luke’s, but it was still my dream to own something that was completely mine, to be able to tell people this is MY place. I’d worked in the bar scene since I was sixteen, and now, at twenty-two, I still haven’t left. 

When my dad died a year ago, everything changed. I could no longer afford to go to college, to finish my bachelor’s in Business Management, or go after my dream. I had to be a realist, I had to assume the role of caregiver. It wasn’t anything I would have ever asked for, but I would never abandon my family. We’d been through enough already, so I was doing, and still, am doing, everything to make sure that we don’t have to go through anything else.

When Ellie was born in my junior year of high school, everything was fucked. My mother had some sort of awful mid-life crisis and abandoned us all. Her husband and her four kids. Maybe it was because, at forty-two, she wasn’t supposed to have any more kids, I don’t know. My dad never hid it from any of us that Ellie was a surprise, but a very welcomed one.

I can think about it, and at the end of the day, I still won’t have an answer for why my mother chose to leave. It wouldn’t matter, though, even if I did find that answer. I’d still hate her as much as I do today.

I hate her for leaving Dad.

I hate her because Ellie will never know a mother. Luke, Sabrina, and I at least have memories of her. Good ones, and the bad, we still have memories. To Ellie, our mom is a ghost, a figment of her imagination, a memory that I choose to keep alive because I want her to know that our mother loves her, even if she has a fucked-up way of showing it.

I hate her more because of how she left, how she just picked up, packed all her things one day while we were at school, and left. I found Ellie in her car seat on the living room coffee table with a note addressed to my father. He was working late that night, and I knew that she knew that. This wasn’t something that was sporadic or spur of the moment. She knew exactly what she was doing, and boy did that light the fire inside me.

I suppose I could stand here, frying these eggs and think of so many reasons that I now have hatred towards the woman who brought me into this world. It would be a very long list, and yet, every single one of my reasons would be valid.

I know exactly why I hate her the most, and this is going to sound awful.

I hate her for doing this to me. For being the reason, I had to grow up so quickly. I hate her for making me become the mother in our family at seventeen. I hate her for not having that senior year of high school that I wanted, the one where you stay out too late, you fuck the boy you shouldn’t, where I shouldn’t have listened to my father and rebelled. Because of her, though, that never happened. Instead, I was changing diapers and feeding Ellie at three in the morning. I was taking Luke and Sabrina to whatever extra-curricular was on the schedule. I held resentment towards her for it, and I still do, only now, it’s so much more than that.

When Dad was diagnosed with cancer, I cried. I cried like my heart had been ripped from my chest. I found out the day that I graduated high school. I remember that day, how I found him passed out that morning in the living room, the color faded from his skin. I thought he was dead, and to be honest, he looked like he was. Five hours passed of me waiting in the Emergency Room, ultimately missing my own graduation, and then he told me, with tears in his eyes. He’d known for months, secretly getting treatments behind our backs. There was an obvious change in his behavior, I can recall him going to bed earlier, not going out with his friends as much, but I attributed that to Ellie screaming at all hours. The exhaustion made sense to me.

It made “sense” until it didn’t; until my entire world had yet again come crashing down around me. My dad fought, and boy did he fight pretty fucking hard. He was trying to kick cancer’s ass. I can’t help but tear up remembering how stubborn and bullheaded he was, insisting on working as he was getting his treatments. He knew that we couldn’t afford for him to stop, so he didn’t. He worked until two days before he died, much to everyone’s dismay. My father is my hero, and I know a lot of daughters say that, but it’s true. He did everything that he could have to prepare us for his death, he never admitted it to me – the fact that he knew he was going to die, but deep down, we both knew.

I glance over to my purse where I very well see the few bills that I haven’t had the courage to open. My day job as a school secretary helps a little bit to pay the bills; it’s enough for groceries, gas, phone, and internet, and for whatever the kids need. It’s not cheap living in this suburb of Atlanta, and I swore I’d do whatever it took to keep the kids in our childhood home. I stand by that promise.

I can’t help but see the stamped red letters of Past Due to what is no doubt my mortgage bill. I sigh, knowing that no one could prepare me for my reality. As much as he tried, he just couldn’t prepare me for any of this.