Chapter 2 – Hope
“Wake up!” My mother’s shrill voice broke into my sleep. I had never been a morning person and I didn’t foresee that changing any time in the near future. No matter what my mother had to say about it.
“Wake up! Wake up! Wake up!” she shouted louder, shaking my bed.
Rolling over to face her, I groaned, “I’m up, Mom. I’m up.”
Sighing with relief, my mother leaned over my bed, physically exhausted from her mini fit. I perked up a little more and noticed how sickly she was looking this morning.
“Mom, are you okay?”
“No, honey, I’m not so good today.”
Not so good today.
My mother was as tough as nails. This was the woman who had checked out of the hospital with walking pneumonia and went straight to working a double shift, so for her to say that she wasn’t feeling well was a big deal.
“I need you to go do Mr. King for me today.”
Her choice of words made me want to giggle at the thought of me “doing” him, but of course I didn’t say anything to my mom. She would scold me for such silliness. At my age— nineteen— Mom was already married and pregnant, yet working hard every day. Therefore, she thought I should act more mature than I did.
My mom took her work very seriously. My father had died in a car crash when I was very young and he didn’t have insurance. My mother had little support, and only unskilled labor as work experience, but she had three young children to take care of.
At first, she struggled to take care of us. It wasn’t until she had picked up a few regular cleaning jobs that we started seeing a light at the end of the tunnel.
Then, mom got sick. It was a mysterious autoimmune disease, causing symptoms ranging from arthritis to stomach pain. The doctors had no answer for her, other than to tell her that she should retire and live out the rest of her days on a beach. Of course, that just wasn’t possible so it couldn’t be her reality. It almost seemed cruel for the doctors to suggest to a woman who was used to working multiple jobs just to be able to make ends meet.
In the months that followed, I saw her, worn out and tired, becoming a shell of her former self, slowly dying in front of my eyes. And my heart began to break. Losing my dad had been hard enough, something that I will never get over.
My dad had been my best friend and my hero. He was so fun, always joking and laughing, doing silly things that would make my mother scold him, but a smile always played at the corner of her mouth while she was doing it.
That was back then. Now, I couldn’t remember the last time that I’d seen her laugh.
I started helping her out with her jobs. I figured that because I was younger than she was, yet still old enough compared to my younger siblings, I could help lighten her load.
When I first offered to help her, my mom flat out refused, saying that it was her responsibility to care for the family and that she wanted me to focus on my own life. She wouldn’t even listen as I explained that my family was my life and that I would do everything in my power to make sure that everyone was okay.
Eventually, though, she acquiesced. She had to, because it was too much work for her to be able to do on her own. And once she started to see me as a worker bee, she started giving me lessons in how to grow up and earn my own keep like she had always had to do.
Despite her stern, serious lessons, I didn’t mind the work. I would throw on my iPod and rock out while cleaning. Time would always fly by. Even my mom was surprised at how well things were going at her jobs when I worked them. I told her that I’d learned from the best.
I had helped with all of her jobs, except for Mr. King. She told me that he was very particular and he made certain parts of the house off limits. She didn’t want to risk anything going wrong. We had been struggling just to pay bills for so long that once she started working for Mr. King, she saw that she finally had a chance to change things for us. That was because he paid more than anyone that she’d ever worked for. She cleaned his house once a week and then cooked his meals for the entire upcoming week.
“Sure, Mom, I can do Mr. King. I’ll get dressed and head over now.”
“Wait, wait, wait,” she said, putting her hands up to stop me in my tracks. “We need to go over the rules of being at his house.”
We had been over it so many times, just in case I ever had to step in and help out at his house when she couldn’t, but I didn’t say anything to remind her of that just now. I knew that going over every detail again would help her feel reassured. I just nodded my head and listened as she recited her same speech.
“Now, Mr. King is very different. You can tell that just by looking at him. That is, if ever you get the chance to lay eyes on him. If you do see him, look at the floor, look at the ceiling, look at the wall. Look anywhere but directly into his face. If you need to tell him anything, write everything down on a note and leave it on the refrigerator. You never walk up to him directly. And there’s absolutely no walking into a room where he is if he hasn’t invited you. He spends most of his time in the west wing of the house, so most of those rooms are off limits. You get in, you get out. You clean and you leave. Got it?”
“Of course, Mom,” I smiled at her sweetly, hoping that that would reassure her. “I got it. I can handle it. Don’t worry.”
She looked me over skeptically, then sighed, her shoulders lowering like all the energy had been drained from her. She kissed my cheek and shuffled out of my room and back to bed.
She wasn’t going to listen to me. She was going to worry. But, there wasn’t much I could do about that.
I got up, showered, and ran out the door. I was eager to finally see the mysterious Mr. King’s house. Mom had told me that it was a cabin, but also a mansion. The biggest, most modern cabin she could even imagine.
Pulling up to the front gate, I was blown away by the sheer size of the building and I realized that Mom had not been exaggerating. I’d never seen anything like it, either.
I couldn’t rightfully call that enormous building a house or even a cabin, even though it did look like a log cabin. In my mind, it couldn’t be called anything but a building, because it looked like there was room enough for an entire company of people to live or work in.
I entered the code that my mother had given me and the gates swung open so majestically that I thought that I was about to walk into a castle. Walking through the giant oak doors, I had to catch my breath as I looked around at all the luxurious beauty that laid before me. I had never seen more gold and crystal in all my life.
I had to drive for a long time before I arrived, and looking out the expansive windows, all I could see were beautiful mountain views. The backyard was so wooded it looked like a forest. There were no other houses in sight.
The outside of the house had the wooden logs and cozy look of a cabin, and inside was no different. It featured a wood burning fireplace and comfortable nooks and crannies where one could curl up with a good book.
It was a gorgeous house. And it was amazing to think that only one person lived here. There weren’t very many other people to enjoy all the beauty this home had to offer, and from what Mom said, Mr. King didn’t have visitors over.
What did he do with all this space? And what did he do with all the other rooms? He could only really sleep in one. I couldn’t help but think of how my younger siblings had to share a room in our own small house.
I willed myself to stay focused on the task at hand. My mother had entrusted me with a huge amount of responsibility and I had to stay focused on that.
I could see why my mother had been so careful about how she dealt with Mr. King. But, the more I walked through the house, the less concerned I had become about following the rules that she’d drummed in my head.
I was curious and I wanted to explore the house. I was glad to be helping Mom out with this job, because it was a lot more exciting than anything else I would be doing today.
I’ll just walk around and get an idea of what my work day is going to look like, I justified to myself.
I set off to look around, not quite sure what I would find. But I had a feeling that today had a lot in store for me. And that meeting Mr. King was going to be very interesting indeed.