I reach into the cupboard and pull out a bowl. A harmless action, one that could hardly be described as criminal, but yet, the bowl causes me to gag, almost losing my appetite for the Lucky Charms I had planned on putting in the bowl. The reason:
The bowl, though seemingly harmless, is the reason for everything. The reason for my getting expelled from high-school, the reason for my getting pregnant at fifteen, the reason for my hatred of my mother, the reason for my being drunk last night, crashing into a stop sign, seriously injuring myself and a passenger, and killing little baby Grant. How could a bowl cause so much you ask? Well, it’s not the bowl, it’s the things behind the bowl.

In the bowl, is a picture of my mom, and my new dad. She cheated on my birth-father when I was nine, he found out, and when she filed for divorce, bang. The 44 shotgun he kept to deter marauders wishing to pillage and plunder, went off in his mouth. I guess it wouldn’t be so bad, if the guy she remarried was at least half as good as the one who killed himself for her. But no, she left my dad for a reject, a high-school drop-out she had known for a week before sleeping with. A shmooze who couldn’t afford the cheap liquor he drank night and day, the liquor that seduced her into marrying him.

So I shunned my mom, I hated her, we never spoke, we barely exchanged glances, and now, Mr. Perfect, was trying to get her to kick me out of the house. She says not before I’m seventeen. That’s when she’ll kick me out. I’ll be seventeen next week. Anyway, having grown up, since the age of nine, with a boozer for a dad, and an up and coming stripper for a mom, I became a drop out too. Well, actually, I gave a kid a concussion with a lunch tray, he ended up going to the ER and having severe head trauma.


How could a bowl cause me to throw up? The bowl is the wedding bowl. It has a picture of my mom and step-dad on it. Every time I see it, I can hear the scream, I can feel my nine-year old feet padding down the stairs for a glass of water, I can hear the bang, and I can see the brains of the best person in the world to me splatting all over the baby-blue wall. That’s why I throw up every time I see the bowl.

Something in me wants to smash the bowl, but something else in me, bigger than the smashing something, wants to hold the bowl close to me. Why?

My mom walks in, staggering back and forth, she sees me with the bowl, just kind of staring at it, not moving, barely blinking. She looks at it too, and then she looks at me, and then, she seems to read my thoughts, the ones that want to smash the bowl. I look at her, I mean really look at her. Her nose is bleeding. Little spider trails of blood trickling down her perfect face, and onto her perfect lips. At first glance, I think she is drunk, but I don’t operate on first glances, not even with my mom. I look harder, and see a purple bruise forming around her eye. I gasp, and she gasps too.

A tear forms in my eye, and then another, and another, and soon, my eyelids can’t hold them back anymore, I blink, and down comes the waterfall of emotion I have been hiding ever since my mother hooked up with the boozer millionaire dude. He was next in line for some car business or something, that was like the top one in America and he was going to make mega bucks.

None of that mattered anymore, the trip my mom was taking us on to Bermuda in the fall, the money we stood to inherit the moment boozer losers relatives dropped dead. Nothing mattered except my mom, and me, and the bowl separating us.

She is the first to speak. “Honey,” she begins, her voice cracking, “I need help.” and then the tears fall from her eyes too. I open my arms to her, and she comes running into them. A stellar collision, that stirs mega tears on both sides, especially mine. Someone once said, to lose one parent, can be considered misfortune, but to lose the other, is downright carelessness. I think he was right, and right now, I am really happy that my carelessness has not ruined everything.

“I need help.” she says again, muffled in her tears.

“So do I.” I say, my face buried in her neck.

And there we stay for ten, fifteen, twenty minutes, embracing. When all the tears have shed, we retreat to my room, where I show her everything going on in my life. And then, we pull out my scrapbook, looking first at pictures of me when I was a baby, and pictures of me in kindergarten, and then my first day of sixth grade, and then, the picture of him. My dad. I tear up again, even though it seems impossible that I have any liquid left in my body. She notices.

“I’m sorry I drove him away from me sweetie. I didn’t realize what I was doing until...” her words trail off, but I know what she was about to say. She’s never apologized to me before. I merely nod, and then, turn the page. I shouldn’t have. The next page are pictures of me in the hospital with my boyfriend, having just given birth to Grant. Grant, the adorable little redheaded green eyed baby, the saving grace of my life.

Yeah, Grant was dead, I killed him. It was accidental, and I should be in jail for it, but my mom stood up for me in court and said I had caffeine induced seizures. They believed her, and they let me off with a fine, and a suspended license, even though my boyfriend has head trauma, not severe this time, and Grant is dead. I could kill my self for that. I don’t mind so much losing my boyfriend, even though he hasn’t come too, to tell me we’re finished with eachother yet, it’s Grant I miss the most. My mom hugs me, my labor of love is gone. Now with all the men in my life in the ground or the hospital, I have no one to cuddle at night. All because I was stupid, I drank, and then I drove.

That night, my mom and I curled up together in front of the TV, watching home-videos of my daddy and me and her on the beach in Fiji, on the playground in Battery Park, on the merry-go-round in Central Park, racing up the stairs to our top-floor hotel room in the Waldorf Astoria. My ninth birthday when I opened a package to reveal a barbie car from gramms and gramps.

It just took that one smack he took at her to wake her up from her long night-mare. It just took that one blow to the eye from boozer loser to make her face reality, and realize she has a sixteen year old daughter with a dead dad, dead son, list of ways to die, amazing boyfriend, and no relationship with her mother. It took one hard blow to the eye to show her I was anorexic, and bulimic, had anxiety attacks, and had a criminal record as long as my right arm. It took him making her nose bleed for her to realize she was messed up, because of him. She woke up and saw how much I had changed, how much she had missed, and how much help she needed, we both needed.

The next morning, we climbed up to the roof together, with daddy’s 44, and the wedding bowl. We held hands, and bang. We threw the bowl up in the air, and shot it. We laughed as it smashed into a gazillion pieces on the pavement below. Each fragment a piece of our old lives, destroyed forever, never to be looked at again.

To lose on parent is misfortune, but to lose both, is carelessness.

That guy was right.