Khera's+Memoir

This is my memoir, BUT it's just a place-holder until the real one is done. This is three little stories together.

__Mommy Issues__

A five year old, a nine year old and an eleven year old were sitting in a rusty-looking, green Ford Windstar listening to a Sarah McLaughlin cassette that wouldn't die. I was the five year old, my brother at nine and my sister at eleven. My mom had locked us all in the car with the back windows cracked and the sticky summer air doing absolutely nothing but depressing us. Every time a person would walk by, we would bang on the windows and yell. Most of these idiots just smiled and waved, crushing our hopes of freedom. After about an hour of sitting around, fanning one another and playing car games in an unmoving car, things got hostile. "Ezra, you're hogging all of the air!" My sister would screech. "What air?!" He would screech back. "SHUT UP, MAYA." I would chime in. "KHERA, DON'T SAY THOSE WORDS!" Ezra would scream back to me. Things haven't changed. Eventually, we had a few stop-and-starrers pausing at the sight of Sarah McLaughlin's Screaming Children Mobile. Another hour came and passed and we took up the window-banging again. Suddenly, we saw our mother bustling towards the car. The troops cheered, then saw the look on her face. "WHAT are you doing?" She hissed through the front seat. I jumped out of the car and hugged her leg, hoping that her return meant freedom, stupid child. She ripped me from her side and shook me violently on the front seat. "Someone just came into the bank and said that there were three children BANGING and YELLING from a green minivan. Are you //trying// to humiliate me?" No one said a word. "I am going back into the bank. You kids behave, and here, listen to this." She turned the devil cassette over to side "B". Sarah McLaughlin's warbling filled the car, and we slumped down and accepted defeat. "Life has no meaning," I sighed.

My eight-year-old frame sits rigid on my ratty old couch. It’s three in the morning, and I’ve been alone for about a week. I’ve got a meat cleaver in one hand, and the phone in the other. Most children aren’t afraid of serial killers. I, however, am convinced that if I fall asleep tonight, some sort of Jason-Chucky-Michael Meyers Cerberus will be coming. If I’m awake, I reason, I can hit the monstrosity with my cleaver, grab another weapon while I’m at it, and hide in the bathroom with the phone until the police get there. I figure that the police in the movies are just too stupid to kill these slashers, but in real life, the police in my town can protect me, an innocent child. I have the TV on for company. Mick and Mimi are selling the Magic Bullet, which can do anything including your taxes. I watch, as their alcoholic smoker friend is awestruck at the lunch they’ve constructed in, “TEN seconds!” This has become my favorite infomercial. I have yet to discover the magic that is the ShamWOW! I take a drink from my coffee mug, where instant coffee reminiscent of moose urine sits. Most children don’t drink coffee, but most children aren’t left alone for extended periods of time. I doze off, anyway, and wake up with a large cut in my hand; I’ve been gripping the blade in my sleep. The cut runs curiously down the life line of my palm. It seems to have shortened. So, where’s my mom? She’s been at her boyfriend’s house for the last three weeks. This is not a summer vacation, either. This is the beginning of March, my brother’s birthday. Where are my siblings? They’ve been staying with their friend for the last week, telling his mom that I’m with my mom and their eleven and thirteen-year-old selves were left to defend themselves, at the mercy of the Orcs. My sister, of course, pioneered this idea, and she convinced my brother to go with her and leave me behind. I would call them, sobbing into the phone, scared and wanting them to come home. This was met with an abrupt, “Suck it up!” from my sister. I would hear my brother in the background asking, “Who is it?” He would’ve come home if he’d known it were me. She would say it was her accountant, or something, and slam the phone down. In the early hours of every morning, I would call my mother, terrified, telling her voicemail how much I loved it and hoped to be alive to see the day. Finally, my mom came home. She dropped her bags on the floor and yelled, "Mommy's home!" expecting her children to come to her and give her hugs and kisses and beg for vacation presents. I was the only one home, and honestly was not about to get up from my post on the couch, waiting for the slasher posing as my mother to come in the room. My brother had checked on me the night before behind my sister's back and basically shat himself upon seeing my weaponry, telling me that if I had to have a weapon, then it would have to be something that I couldn't hurt myself with. He replaced my cleaver with a foam bat. My mom walked into the family room, and before flicking on the light, I bolted up and began hitting her everywhere with the foam bat, thinking that would at least stun the murderous soul into submission, giving me time to run under his legs and hide in the garage where all of my dad's saws were. I did this. Confused, my mother walked heavily, still weighed down by her bags, to the garage. Just like Jason Voorhees. I let out a war cry, just like Xena's, and run at her, she catches me just in time for me to only cut my own arm, a little. It was nothing; the last couple of weeks were full to the brim with cuts and bruises. "What's gotten into you?" She says, trying to control the squirming child in her arms. I look up at her. "Mom?" "Yes, 'Mom'! Who else would it be?" Freddy Krueger, I think as she puts me down. After setting me free, my mom expects me to bring her bags to her room, and give her a hug, "hello," but mostly the bags. I tell her to kiss my ass. "Language!" She says, shocked, arms poised to pick me up and bend me over her knee. "Mom," I reply coolly, but paranoid, "If you're going to leave me here alone for so long, you should be glad all I said was, 'kiss my ass'." I still got spanked, instead of kissed.

It was my brother’s sixteenth birthday, and I was twelve. His party consisted of about six or seven people because, “A party does not involve more than ten people and does not exceed two hours”, according to my mother. I was at the party as a source of entertainment because the assorted guys and girls were not allowed to play “teenage” party games, or watch movies because of, “manners,” blah, blah, blah. Sitting in the middle of the room, everyone was asking me questions just to hear my, “Kids Say the Darndest Things”-esque answers. I, on the other hand, was swelling with pride that a bunch of teenagers were giving me attention. “Yes,” I would reply, trying to sound grown up, “I //do// have a crush on (NAME WITHHELD TO PROTECT MY GOOD NAME). How did you know?” It would come up a few months later that my sister had been reading the creepy contents of my diary. “Dude,” one of my brother’s friends said, coming back into the room after getting a drink from the kitchen, “Your mom is definitely changing with her door open.” This happened entirely too often. My brother was devastated. “Khera, you //have// to go talk to her.” “I’m not talking to her! It’s your party, //you// talk to her!” “Khera, it’s my birthday and I ORDER you to talk to her! Tell her she can’t change with the door open anymore! ” I lost. My brother pushed me out the door, and my mother was already standing there. “What’s wrong? I heard yelling! Did you and your brother get in a fight? What did you do?” “Uh, Mom, I’m really sorry, but…” “But, what? Spit it out! What did you do? On his birthday, Khera!” “I didn’t do anything! It’s… you!” “Me? What did I do?” “You were changing with the door open and one of Ezra’s friends saw.” “Well, what does that have to do with anything?” “He saw you kind of naked, mom!” “Well, so what?” It was at this point that my mother, hair wet and shirt unbuttoned barged into my brother’s room in a fit of maternal fury. “EZRA MANUEL RUFINO,” She yelled, “ARE YOU OF THE UNDERSTANDING THAT I AM A SINGLE MOTHER?” “Yes…” “AND ARE YOU OF THE UNDERSTANDING THAT I HAVE RAISED THREE CHILDREN, ON. MY. OWN?” “Well, you kind of only raised Khera, since she was really young when you-,” “NO! I AM STILL IN THE PROCESS OF RAISING THREE CHILDREN AND ONE IS IN COLLEGE, SUCKING AWAY ALL OF MY MONEY, BIT. BY. BIT. WHO ARE YOU TO COMPLAIN IF I FORGET TO CLOSE THE DOOR AND ONE OF YOUR FRIENDS SEES ME? WHAT DO I CARE?” “Well, I’m just saying, it’s kind of embarrass-,” “NO WORDS FROM YOU, YOUNG MAN. IF IT WEREN’T YOUR BIRTHDAY, I’D… I’D…” She calms down. “I hope everyone is having fun at the party. I will be in my room, Inside the Actor’s Studio is on.” “No it isn’t, that’s not on ‘til tomorr-,” “I will be watching something else,” her rage is still palpable through her seemingly-calm words. Her door closes.