“She placed the button on my dress and I just beamed. Most kids’ moms made cupcakes for the class but I guess my teacher knew that wasn’t going to happen for me so she brought some herself.” A little tear escaped and ran down her cheek. “They were strawberry,” she choked, “with cream cheese frosting.” She looked at me earnestly and smiled through soft tears. “She even put a tiny candied number five on the tops of each one.
“It was the happiest day of my life. After school, I came bounding up the rickety stairs of my mom’s aluminum trailer, eager to tell my mom all about it, but she was gone as she so often was.
“Instead, I hung up my little dress, did my homework, cleaned the trailer because it was expected of me and made a dinner of peanut butter and crackers I’d stolen from the school when I thought no one was looking. The water had been turned off so I went out back and used my neighbor’s hose. I washed myself as best I could and went back to the trailer only to discover that my mother had returned home and she was not sober nor alone.”
My breath caught in my throat.
“I contemplated,” she spoke softly, “just leaving and staying the night at that same neighbor’s house but being little as I was, I wanted to tell her about my day.”
“Finley,” I said, turning toward her and grabbing her forearm.
“It’s okay, Ethan. I promise,” she reassured me, but I still didn’t let go of my friend’s arm. “She sat at the plastic veneer table we had with all but one broken chair and as soon as she saw me, I knew I’d made a terrible mistake.”
I squeezed her arm gently.
“She stood up quickly, tipping her chair back onto the torn linoleum and almost fell over she was so intoxicated.” My skin heated uncomfortably at the thought of the times Finley had seen me shit-faced and I cringed knowing what her memories probably did to her. “She lunged for me but landed on her face, which just incensed her further. She stood and grabbed me and asked me where I’d been. I told her about my pseudo-bath and she slapped me across the face, yelling something about how she thought I was trying to embarrass her in front of her new friend. I frantically tried to soothe her but, of course, it did no good.
“She dragged me to my room and threw me to the floor before walking over to my closet and yanking my little dress off the hanger. She held it in front of me, ripped the pockets and tore it to shreds all the while laughing while I pleaded for her to stop, but she didn’t. When she was done, she tossed the dress to the side of the room and staggered a bit on her feet.
“I cowered there on the floor, afraid she would wail into me like she normally did, which made her laugh uncontrollably. She yelled at me to get up so I obeyed. She grabbed me by the shoulders and shook me, tears streaming down my face and said that I meant nothing at all to her and I better be careful or she’d sell me and I’d have to go live with the bad men.
“I was five. Barely five, really, and wanted so badly to stay with her despite how awful she was to me because, well, because she was my mother. I had no idea the other children in my class didn’t live exactly as I did. Besides, even people who hate their mothers love their mothers.”
She shook her head once more. “The first time I’d ever spent the night at someone’s house was when I was in second grade. I spent the night at Holly Raye’s.” Holly Raye. That was the girl at the bar. Our classmate. “She was the nicest girl I’d ever met and her mother was no different. I remember sitting at her dinner table practically shaking in my boots when I spilled milk all over their table. When her mother stood to clean it up, I cowered in my chair.
“The woman looked at me with such pity. She cupped my cheeks and kissed the top of my head and said, ‘No use crying over spilled milk, my darling.’ That’s when I figured it out. That not all mothers were like mine.
“When dinner was over, Holly Raye’s mama fed us two huge pieces of chocolate cake and I thought I’d died and gone to heaven. She let us stay up late and watch movies and talk. And soon enough, within a few hours I’d forgotten about my mother and my situation. I’d considered Holly Raye my sister that night. I still do, in fact. Needless to say, I practically lived there after that.
“That’s what I did.”
“Did what?” I asked softly.
“Stayed at people’s houses as often as they’d allow just so I could feel like I was part of a family. So I could learn, teach myself how to be normal, really.”
“Jesus, Finley,” I breathed, turning her toward me.
I brought her to my chest and hugged her, wrapping one hand around her neck and the other around her lower back. I held her tightly against me, but she didn’t cry or sink into me with any sort of vulnerability as I thought she would. Instead, she hugged me back fiercely and I realized she wanted to support me just as much as I wanted to support her and I loved her for it. As much as I hated to admit it, I pitied her for it.
Finley Dyer was as selfless and brave an individual as I could imagine, and even though I could tell she’d only tapped the surface of her past, of her tortured soul, she wasn’t going to let that past define her. I don’t think I’d ever respected someone as much I had grown to respect Finley.
We broke the hug and faced the water once more.
“Thank you,” I said as loudly as my rough voice would allow.
“For what?” she asked.
“For saving me from making a horrible decision. From being the horrible person I’ve become.”