Alexandra Meyer
Alexandra Meyer
Alexandra Meyer is a poet and writer from Wichita, Kansas. She holds a bachelor's degree in English from the University of Kansas. She loves to write with the cadence of whispers about topics often discussed around kitchen sinks and coffee tables. Her poetry also appears in the Philly Chapbook Review.
Leaving
I was eight years old the first time Mom said she was going to leave Dad. I was watching The Jungle Book with my sisters on an old, faded TV that would overheat if we left it on too long. We had been told to go upstairs after Dad got home from work and the two started to argue. They didn’t want us to listen. All three of us meandered upstairs, my oldest sister, Natasha, turning on the satellite channel that we knew played old cartoons. She slowly turned up the volume to match and muffle the increasing volume downstairs. The old farmhouse did not retain heat well, so we all curled up closely, a well-established routine.
We had learned not to listen. We focused on the screen before us, pretending not to hear the curse words we did not understand and the thuds of their movements. It took two calls from Mom to get my oldest sister’s attention.
“Natasha, please come downstairs,” Mom said. We could barely distinguish her voice as it broke into the safe atmosphere we had created. My sister looked at me before she lowered the TV volume. I shrugged my shoulders. A third call from Mom. She got up and descended the stairs. The yelling had stopped.
I sat closer to my younger sister, Eve, on the old gray and blue couch. I told her to focus on the movie and that Natasha would be back right away.
The Swan Princess had started playing when I noticed the cop cars. The lights shown through the window; bright red and blue. I told my sister to stay on the couch as I got up to look out the window. The cars were parked on the dirt road by our house; two officers walked up to the door, Dad was sitting on the curb, and all three of them were talking.
When I heard the stairs creak under the pressure of adult footsteps, I assumed I would see Mom; that she would be there to explain what was going on. An officer stood in the doorway, asking us for our names. I muted the TV.
He asked us questions; if we heard any yelling, if our father ever laid hands on us, if we liked seeing him, if we were safe. We looked at him, answering yes, no, yes, yes.
I focused on his badge, not knowing what else to look at. He told us that our dad needed to cool off and that we would see him again. The badge had swooshes and stars in its center, the metal swirling around it, making it seem like the whole thing was moving.
The man left soon after writing down our names. I looked at my sister and told her to stay there while I went downstairs to see. My hands felt the popcorn texture of the wall in the stairwell. The steep steps guided me down. I moved slowly, scared to stir the scene. First, I saw the mess made out of my parents' room. There was a sharp hole in the wall, the iron lying on the floor. The pictures on the other side of the wall had fallen off, shattered glass littering my path. My small feet worked around the shards as I made my way into the kitchen where Mom and Natasha were sitting. She was holding Mom’s hand as she cried. She looked at me.
“We are going to leave, Ellie. I promise,” Mom said. And I believed her.
***
As I sat in the outfield, picking flowers, I saw my parents begin to fight. They had been happy for three months after Dad got sober. He pulled out her chair every night at family dinner and always led prayer.
I could not hear anything that they were saying, but I saw my mother's hands starting to wave around in the stands. I knew she was not excited for me, I had not touched a ball – with my mitt or the bat – all season. I dug my glove into the bright red dirt, ignoring them. I spit into it, making a paste that I could play with, as I had already cleared the area of the white clover flowers. I pushed my fingers into the muck, trying to focus.
Out of the corner of my eye, I saw the ball coming towards me. I felt it fly past my face. It landed a foot from my station in the outfield, a novelty for the season, and I immediately ran to grab it. Adrenaline coursed through my veins. This was the closest I had been to a ball outside of practice. I scooped it up with my muddy mitt and made an attempt to throw it to the girl watching third base. By the time I had managed to get the ball, line my body up, take a deep breath, and throw it, the batter had already made it home. I threw the sticky ball at her anyway.
I looked back at the stands to see if my parents had seen the throw; mom was clapping alone in the metal bleachers.
In the car, she told me that Dad had gone home to pack a bag and stay with his brother and that he would be finding somewhere else to live. She told me not to tell my sisters, and that we would have a family meeting about it after Church the next day. I cried hard thinking that Dad would never come to another game; he always cheered the hardest.
***
When I was in middle school, Mom used to go on trips with her girlfriends to get a vacation from being a mother. During these trips, we would eat junk food and watch pirated movies off a hard drive Dad brought home from work.
“They jailbreak it,” he said. “That way we can watch what we want.”
“Is it like renting it?” I asked.
“Not quite.”
He plugged in the firestick to the TV and pulled up the Kodi app. I sat on the couch and watched him flip through all the most recent movie releases. Natasha pulled the garlic bread from the oven and Eve stirred the powdered broccoli and cheddar soup into the boiling water. They called us to come make our bowls before we could pick out a movie.
That night, we watched A Series of Unfortunate Events, soup dripping down our chins. I remember Dad’s face, laughing at the punchlines I’ve since forgotten. His forehead had three distinct grooves that warped when he laughed. They seemed to dig deep into his skull each time he lifted his eyebrow. It seemed at odds with the easy smile he always wore. I saw the lines more frequently when Mom was on her girl’s trips. Dad seemed to laugh easier, but the lines always seemed more stressed, stretched thin over his head.
He had brought us home Cool Whip for dessert. My sisters and I sat crisscross applesauce on the floor, scooping the whipped topping into our mouths. He rested on the couch, drinking from the thermos he took everywhere. We called it his sippy cup. Usually, it held coffee. We threw the trash from our guilty meal into the outside trash. As I tossed the sack into the family bin, I recognized the bottles my mom had shown us months prior, asking us to tell her if I ever saw them again. Clear, tall, and empty.
When my mom came home from her trip, I showed her the trash – I had thrown our junk food trash in the neighbor’s bin, of course. She looked for a fraction of a second before dragging the container to the curb without a word. Dad slept on the couch that night, and the next morning, Mom told us to pack a bag to stay at Grandma’s house. I tried to take the firestick, but she told me that stealing movies was a sin and threw it away. I knew Dad would get another one.
“I’m done putting up with this. The kids and I are not doing this anymore,” Mom said. Grandma rubbed her back, praying with her and reassuring her that he would get better – be better. He stopped drinking and came back the next week.
***
Mom sat us all down after a fight that resulted in the loss of their wedding china to the hard floor of our kitchen. At parent-teacher conferences, Mom had said “my kids” when telling a story, to which Dad corrected, “our kids,” and then they fought about it until the sun set and we could hear dishes breaking from our rooms upstairs.
“Girls, never let a man treat you like this,” she said. “You need to know when to leave.”
We watched as Dad packed his bags, walking out the door to stay with his mother. I tried to remember where his shoes went in the closet so we could save space for him when he came back.
***
The house had one filtered waterspout that dispensed clean water at an achingly slow pace. Often, Dad would sit his cup underneath the spout and walk away, trying to do too many things at once. The water would overflow and pour onto the vinyl flooring of the kitchen. Left long enough, it would creep to the island, where it would soak into the wood base. Eventually, mold would grow in this spot, as we all had a bad habit of trying to walk away.
Fights over this started with Dad not being patient, grew into Mom always nitpicking him, then burst with ideas of disrespect and judgment on both ends. Sometimes, the water caused him to leave on his own.
We often cleaned up the overflow, my sisters and I soaking up the water with rags made out of old bath towels. From the kitchen, we could hear them screaming at one another through the walls that separated us from them. They never fought long in the kitchen, a fact we were all thankful for. It meant that we had easy access to the Hot Pockets we were not allowed to snack on. Our breath would reek of garlic and pepperoni as our parents would tell us about their impending separation. He was leaving. We were leaving. Staying with his sister, her mom, Aunt Jolene, his brother. As we told Mom we loved her, that we understood that it was okay, we prayed that she would not smell our lies.
***
I dreaded Dad coming back because that meant that I had to fold his laundry again. It was always my least favorite chore, yet the one always assigned to me. The oldest, Natasha, got to sweep and mop, I had to fold laundry, and Eve had to clean the bathroom. Everyone else’s chore was bigger but only had to be done once a week. I had to fold laundry every day. Mom didn’t care that it was unfair. When Dad was gone, I only had to fold laundry every other day. The only man in the house made more dirty laundry than any of the women.
About every three months, his clothes would come back into the wash, and I would fold them on Mom’s bed.
“It’s Mom and Dad’s bed,” Dad would say.
“Right,” I would say. “I know.”
From middle school to sophomore year, each time Mom brought us in to sit on Mom and Dad’s bed to tell us they were going to be separated, I would hope that it would stick so I could fold laundry every other day.
***
Mom ran notoriously cold. She would not run the AC until it was well over 80 degrees in the house. Dad ran hot. They would usually separate in the swell of it when Dad would overheat and call Mom crazy. I started working full-time in the summers after I turned sixteen and Natasha left for college. I was trying to avoid the heat. Eve would fill me in on their fights after I got home.
“I just can’t, Ellie,” Mom would say. “I tried to stick it out for you guys, but I cannot be with someone who does not respect me.”
“It’s okay, Mom. We understand,” our overlapping voices would say, sweat dripping from our foreheads to our chins.
***
Dad couldn’t find one of the old comforter bags full of Christmas decorations. They argued about family history, making memories for her kids – their kids – and forgetfulness. Natasha had found the missing items behind our old memory boxes and wedding albums. We brought them into the living room together, thinking it would quell their argument. Dad left for a week.
***
At Mom’s birthday party, Dad didn’t open her door. The fight had started in the car and ended in the kitchen. We left that time. I was reading when Mom came into my room, fuming about the fight and telling us we would spend the night with Aunt Jolene. She wanted to explain why the fight really wasn’t about the door. I sat and listened to her, then packed quickly, forgetting my English textbook on my bed. I got a C on my Crucible quiz the next day.
***
I thought the split would stick after the truck. He had moved back in for a year, a good year, and my siblings and I had given up on the idea of a divorce. He came home late from work one afternoon during my junior year of high school. It was Labor Day weekend, and the air remained warm from the late bloom of summer. The heat made it sticky in the old house.
Dad’s lateness sparked an argument between them and Eve and I went upstairs instinctively. We sat on my blue carpet, trying to pass the time in the sweltering heat. The sound of Dad slamming the front door made us look up. Usually, they had a sit-down with us before someone left. I got up to look out of the window.
I saw Dad stomping to his car. Mom ran out of the house and grabbed the keys out of his hands. They argued, the words lost to the space between us. I saw their hands fly at one another, never touching the other's body, only skimming the air around them.
“Maybe they just got hot in the kitchen,” I said.
Mom got in Dad’s face. I could tell they were screaming. He threw his head back, laughing. Her face finally shifted toward the window, and I could see the tears running down her cheeks. She made a praying motion with her hands, forcing the clasped palms together and pushing them into his face. He laughed again. The grooves on his forehead were chasms. Then his face contorted, the lines around his mouth deepening as I watched words drip from his lips. She paused. They looked at one another for what felt like a day, sizing the other one up, seeing who was lying, who would try to leave.
Dad broke the trance first. He said something else to Mom, and I saw her shoulders drop. He walked back into the house; I heard the door whine open and then slam shut. Then the back door was pulled open, flung shut. I could not move; like Mom, I was glued to my position. I kept my phone in my hand, just in case I needed to do what Natasha had done the first time. I watched Mom start to sob and dialed 911, waiting for a sign to press call.
I told Eve to pack a bag as I heard the growl of an engine. The wheat truck, usually lifeless behind the house, came alive. I saw Dad behind the wheel as Mom motioned for him to stop from the front of the driveway. She stayed put, daring him to come any closer. He accelerated the truck toward her.
I forgot about the phone in my hand, dropping it on the floor. I told Eve to stay in my room. I ran down the stairs, slipping on the steep decline. Pushing myself off the ground, I ran through the house and out the door. I saw my mom lying on the ground, the rocks of the gravel driveway stuck to her knee, and grass stains on her shirt. The wheat truck barreled down the dirt road, making the air around us heavy with dust. Slowly, I walked over to her. I was scared to touch her; scared that she would shatter and fall apart in my hands.
“Mom?”
“He was drinking, Ellie,” she said. “I smelled it.”
I knelt beside her, trying to look at her face. Her eyes were glued to the earth in front of her. She didn’t try to get up.
“We need to get all of the house keys,” she said. “I don’t know if he is coming back, but I want to be sure.”
“Let’s get you in a shower,” I said. I brushed the dirt off her face. She finally looked at me.
“He wanted to hit me.”
“No. No, he didn’t,” I said. “It was just a fight.”
“I saw it in his eyes.”
All I could do was look at Mom and pick the rocks off her knees, ignoring the blood on them. She managed to sit up and sat crisscrossed on the lawn, letting me dig all the pebbles out of her skin. After a couple of minutes, I hoisted her back up on her feet, put her arm around me, and took her inside. Eve had come into the kitchen, trying to put together what was going on.
“Hey, why don’t you go and get an overnight bag ready? We are gonna go stay with Aunt Jolene,” I said.
She took off upstairs to grab the bags she had already packed. I took my mom into the bathroom, whispering for her to take her clothes off so she could shower before we left. While she undressed, I went to the barn and took the spare key from its hook behind the door. Then I took the second spare from under the plant container we used to shoot BB guns at.
Back inside, I pulled open the shower curtain, the rusted rings grating against the metal rod. Turning the nob to hot, I put my hand under the water to make sure it was warm enough for her. The steam filled the room. Mom sat naked on the toilet, waiting for me to help her to the shower. I let myself stand looking into the bathtub longer than needed to, so I could cry without Mom hearing.
***
Dad fought to go to rehab. Mom said if he went, we wouldn’t leave. He said he would get better. He said he was sorry. He stood in the kitchen and asked for his key back. He cried and told us he was an addict, that it was a mistake, that he loved Mom, that he loved us. I couldn’t look him in the eyes. Instead, I looked at his forehead, at the skin hanging weak and tired off his skull. We cried and told him we forgave him, that we understood, that we loved him.
He was in intensive rehab for two weeks before our insurance agent said he was cleared to go home and they would not be covering it anymore. He was diagnosed with severe depression and addictive tendencies. They said he slept for two days when he got there and did not eat for three. I thought he was trying to kill himself. Insurance thought he was ready to leave.
I cried in my car when Mom called me to tell me there was nothing else she could do and that Dad would be coming home. I begged her to leave. To really change the locks this time.
“Mom, if any of us were in this situation, what would you want us to do?”
“I would pray that you left,” she said.
He came home the next week. I made him a new key with an eagle and the American flag on it.
***
The summer before I left for college, Mom stopped me and asked me to withdraw four hundred dollars from my checking account.
“I am going to leave him,” she said. “I just have to think ahead, and consultations can be expensive and I don’t want him to know about it.”
I didn’t believe her. I didn’t argue. I cashed my paychecks at the small grocery store in town so our bank teller/neighbor wouldn’t get suspicious. I wanted to believe her.
The night before I left, she gave it all back.
“I’ve been with him longer than I haven’t,” she said.
We didn’t look each other in the eye, and I held her as she cried. I patted her back, leaning into the crook of her neck. I smelled her perfume and her hair wash, and I tried never to forget. Her shirt was wet from my own tears. I cried as she did; for my sisters, and for her.
***
I called Mom once a week during the first semester, often while I walked to my car before or after work. When I called that day, Eve picked up.
“Can I tell her?” her voice said. I heard murmuring in the background.
“Eve, put Mom on. I wanted to talk to her,” I said. “I didn’t call you.”
“Mom and Dad are getting a divorce.”
“Don’t get my hopes up.”
“It’s for real this time.”
“Oh, I’m sure.”
“Ellie, she isn’t joking,” Mom said. “Your dad left, and he isn’t coming back. I am going to call a lawyer tomorrow.”
My sister explained that Mom had forgotten to buy butter for Dad’s recipe for his AA potluck. They got into a fight. It blew up. Mom went to the store fuming mad and bought a tub of butter, which she promptly came home and threw at Dad. He said he was done being treated like a child, and if she couldn’t trust him, she should leave. She didn’t trust him. He left. She didn’t try to follow him.
That night, after I got off work, I stared at my phone, ready to dial Dad’s number. He had called me three times while I was on my shift. I had no idea what to say, if there was anything to say. I thought about calling Mom; I wasn’t sure if there was anything I could say to her either.
***
I didn’t believe it until March when the papers were signed, and Mom had a “Free at Last” party in her house, leaving ours behind. I sat in the foreign home, sipping champagne, eating cake, and wondering when Dad would walk into the room.