The moving van pulled up to the new house, resonating with the ancient creaks of one of the old Viking ships making port after a long battle. The moving men who loosely resembled Vikings weren't the most reliable sort; two hours into packing up our apartment into their ancient artifact of a vehicle they had dropped several boxes marked "FRAGILE" and put a chink in the headboard to my bed. "Good thing it was your ratty old headboard and not my new one. The way you decorate your room you don't need anything nice." Aurora smiled, flipping her blonde curls and bouncing away as she relished the destruction of my property. For the fifteen thousandth time I had to fight the urge to slap the back of my little sister's head as she retreated. Of course pointing out the damage to Mom didn't help at all.
"Medora, just deal with it and we'll glue it or something" she sighed, rolling her eyes as she nudged past me, sneaking a box marked "DISHES" past the movers. "Does it look like I have time to deal with your problems?" Glue it, she says. That headboard was practically an antique, not to mention precious to me. There was an engraving of a knight riding forth on his trusty steed to the dragon's keep, only the dragon's keep had never actually been finished and the only thing that existed of the dragon was his long tail and his hind quarters; after that it was just a solid piece of wood. I think it was someone's pet project, they were attempting to rehab an old headboard and got bored and abandoned the project at some point. But when I found it for twenty bucks at a flea market I bought it anyway. I was with Granddad and he had no problems hauling it in his truck for me. My mom blew a gasket when I brought it into the house, but I could have cared less. I didn't have rails to attach it to, so I just placed it behind my old mattress and support and there it remained. Granddad and I decided to finish carving out the castle and the dragon whenever we had a free moment. That free moment never came.
Granddad smoothed things over with my mom regarding the new addition to my room; he was always good at taking my side with all things big and small when it came to her. Yes indeed, John Parker was a peacemaker. Everyone loved him, and I was his biggest fan. I loved how he always wore the same old scuffed shoes and tan slacks, and how Grandma always rained storms above his head, begging him to wear something OTHER than a plaid shirt to church on Sunday. She always relented though; nobody could ever be angry at Granddad for long. That included my mom. I think with her it was just the knowledge that she couldn't win an argument with him that made her stop trying. So, when Grandpa championed my cause, she did little to challenge him, and I kept my "hideous" headboard.
It was the last great argument he fought for me before he....before he died. A heart attack took my real white knight away from me. When Grandpa died, I was really lost. Grandma was always wonderful, but there was just something about him that made me feel whole and safe. He was my only friend, the best of me and the only good link my mom and I shared. And all that was left after the devastation was the failed relationship between Mom and me. The princess and the dragon's butt. Mom was the butt.
"Whatever." I scoffed. Arguing with my mother did very little good and usually made her unbearable to live with and me a nervous wreck. So these days I sidestepped as many arguments as possible. It wasn't worth the effort.
"Curb the attitude, Mer." was my mom's sharp reply. I just kept moving. Don't call me Mer, I thought. I headed to my room to grab my own box of breakables. I didn't trust the two goons throwing our furniture about to handle my most important stuff. I took the box and put it in the back of the car, where I was always consigned to sit; Aurora always sat in the front passenger seat, so I knew it would be safe there. I put the box on the back seat under some coats and hurried back to packing before my mother could find me out.
Inside sat the only items I had ever gotten from my father's family; several music boxes I received on each birthday, before my mother started sending my birthday gifts back "RETURN TO SENDER". It was one argument my grandparents could not win against my mother. She even threatened to smash each and every music box I had received up until that point. To keep that from happening, they simply took them away, put them in a box so they could return them to me when I was old enough to keep them safe. I guarded those treasures with my life, though I didn't really know why. I never knew my father, so why protect these small insignificant gestures of affection for the child he seemed to care nothing about?
As for the reason Mom turned so violently against my dad, refusing his family's gifts, I never knew until Aunt Charlotte told me much later. Those gifts were the only links I had to my father, the first man to actually break her heart. I didn't get to see him; he lived across the country. She wouldn't allow me to speak with him, but he never called or wrote anyway, just sent the music boxes along with a non-descript card. I used to wish he'd save me from the miserable childhood I lived through. But as I got older I learned to accept the things I could not change, just like the drunks at AA, and my mother and I managed to keep our long-standing tradition of living in the same space without killing each other, and it seemed to be a good system for us.
Aurora, on the other hand, I wanted to mutilate on a daily basis. At the age of thirteen, she was a veritable pain in my ass. She was at the top of her class, well, socially at least. Grade-wise there was always a reason to make the occasional C or D, usually due to a teacher's insane jealousy of her, but every now and then she would lie and say "I'm just so busy setting a good example for the other people in my class I don't always have time to complete my assignments." Mom accepted the excuses, even tried to bribe me into cheating for my little sister from time to time by giving her the answers to my old tests up front. I always managed to lose the tests and forget the answers entirely. Made Mom and Aurora beyond livid but it kept me from wasting hours scribbling answers on tiny bits of paper. Besides, if Aurora got caught I'm pretty sure I would have been the first flung under the bus.
It's not as if I've spent every single day of my existence trying to find ways to disobey my mother or get revenge on my sister; quite the contrary. For the longest time I tried every which way I could think of to break into their inner circle, to be a part of our small, dysfunctional but two-thirds happy family. Eventually I had to give it up. Too much effort, not enough return. No return at all if you come right down to it. You see, I think the only way I can describe myself is "born cursed." No, I gotta go back for this. Back to a time I can't even remember, but I know all too well; before I was born.
My mother was a very willful teenager. From Aunt Charlotte's descriptions "willful" was a bit of an understatement. Aunt Charlotte wasn't fond of her big sister, often recalling how people at school knew her as the girl who got boyfriends on her knees. To be honest she had sex every weekend, with any guy who would climb through her bedroom window. But when she met my dad Jack in Chemistry class at the beginning of her senior year she thought she had hit the jackpot, and her wandering ceased. For the first time in her life, Olivia Parker was deeply in love.
He was a handsome young man; his dark brown hair often drooped down over sparkling brown eyes. He was tall but not gangly, three years in football providing him with a strong build and a physique all the girls lusted after. Jack Lange was the most popular boy in school, and for some strange, bizarre reason he was attracted to my mother, bad reputation and all. And Mom worshipped the ground he walked on. The only thing that marred his perfection was his desire to join the Army the moment he graduated. He had seen the brave soldiers fighting in The Gulf War and it made him determined to join up, no matter what his family or friends thought. He held no grand illusions of being an athletic star. He was the only good player on a losing football team, and no matter how good a player you are if you're on a losing team the scouts don't waste their time. But my future dad took his losses like a pro, deciding to get his college money and a little adventure all from serving his country.
Mom thought she could change him. As much as she loved him, her motives were selfish. She had escape on her mind; escape from her strict parents and her dull life, and Jack Lange was that ticket. By April of that year they were dating, and by the end April they were doing a lot more than that. Before senior year began it became obvious his mind wouldn't be swayed from his future plans and the army still beckoned. So July fourth, in the back of Jack's car and underneath the magnificent majesty of the local fireworks display, Olivia forgot to take the pill and intentionally got pregnant...with me. The truth of the matter was she figured if she provided my dad with a strapping baby boy he'd drop all of his plans of joining up and stay home with her, get a go-nowhere job and attend community college part-time while she stayed at home and played house with her little boy.
It seemed to work. Jack was thrilled about the prospect of becoming a daddy, once he got past the shock. Unfortunately my mother, overrun by pregnancy hormones and the loss of her once-trim waistline, was a misery to all she encountered, and Jack was her favorite emotional punching bag. But despite all the fighting and tears she knew it would be worth it. In November they would see the first pictures of their baby boy and Jack would melt and everything would be perfect. Only when they performed the ultrasound, instead of finding a tiny penis they homed in on my wee private parts. My dad was ecstatic in that moment. My mother, however, was not.
"What do you mean, 'It's a girl.'?" she cried. "It's a BOY! I'm supposed to have a BOY! I was always supposed to have a BOY! You did the stupid thing wrong! Look again, it's a BOY!" She was coming off the table as if she would attack the poor distressed ultrasound tech given a chance, my dad was trying desperately to hold her down and Charlotte was enjoying yet another moment of her sister's hysterics. They got my mother dressed rather quickly and out of the doctor's office before the cops could be called. And she ranted and raved all the way home about how the ultrasound tech ruined her life, how her parents had ruined her life, how my father had ruined her life. After all, she went off birth control for him. This caused my dad to become livid, as he hadn't even known she quit taking the birth control pills. By the time they got into my grandparents' driveway Mom was jumping out of the car before it came to a stop and the relationship was going down in flames. My dad had had enough of the fighting and the lies. The next day he walked into the nearest recruitment center and filled out the paperwork. And the day after graduation he was gone to Basic.
Mom filled his answering machine full of pleading messages, of hostile messages, threats that she would put the baby up for adoption and the image he saw that fateful day would be the last he saw of it. But for my dad's sanity he had to move on with his life, with every intention of being there for me but no intention of ever returning to her. The last she heard from him was a letter, telling her he would always be there for the baby and would send money every chance he got, and when he settled back home he would always be there for me, but they were finished. In response Mom sent him a scathing letter telling him he wasn't the father, and I was another man's child. It was a horrible lie, but it was all about revenge for her.
But the truth was I was his child, and when I came into the world my dark brown hair and brown eyes it was a truth she couldn't escape. My attributes helped cement my place in Olivia's world. Before I had even drawn my first breath I had become the target of her hatred. I ruined her life. The reason he left was because I was a lousy girl, and if he couldn't have a boy he didn't want her either. The day I was born she tried to get a social worker to put "it" up for adoption, but when Jack's family offered to take me, test or no test, she had a change of heart. So much like a child who doesn't want a toy until someone else wants it, she kept me out of spite. So the tragedy of the two star-crossed teenagers passed on to a baby named Medora Beth Parker. She even denied me their name.
Over a year later we were living with my grandparents while Mom got her act together. My dad's family originally tried to get in touch with her, to establish some sort of connection to Jack's child. They wanted to help support me, but it came with a price tag. They also wanted to be a part of my life. So, in retaliation for the wrong she thought my dad had done her two years before, she bluntly informed them she had done the test and I was another man's child. I'm not sure they entirely believed her, but they did stop trying. When Jack came home he chose not to pursue the truth. He accepted her story, no questions asked.
Eventually my mother got tired of motherhood and ran off with some great guy named Ronald, who wasn't so great, but at least she could escape her responsibilities for a while. I never noticed she was gone. I was so little and Aunt Charlotte at the age of fifteen had been a better mom than she was. She disappeared for eight months, then one night showed up on the front doorstep, bruised and beaten, suitcases again in hand and a bulging belly standing out like a thumb that's been whacked repeatedly by a hammer. Two months later, along came Aurora, a perfect little clone of my mom, and my grandparents took them both in. What else could they do, send her back to the guy who kicked the crap out of her? Ronald spent two months in jail for threatening a cop during a traffic stop, because Mom refused to press charges against him. He was still her one, and she desperately hoped he would come back for her. Which is why three months after he went to jail and just as Aurora was able to support her own head it was a devastating blow for her to find out that Ronald had finally picked on the wrong person. He tried to beat up a man who had a gun. Two shots to the head later and Mom's happy future died along with him. She thought she could be the one who changed him, made him responsible, made him put down the bottle and love his daughter more than he loved the three other children he had created and abandoned. She never had the chance to prove she was right, and he never got the chance to prove how wrong she really was.
Either way, little Aurora became her whole reason for being, a small representation of the perfect ending she never got with Ronald. I was still too small to understand the favoritism, and at least it eventually got her on the right track. As the years passed she worked odd jobs, eventually got a two-year degree as a secretary, got a decent job and set up housekeeping for the three of us. Of course there was a long period in between where things didn't go so well, but that's a story for another time.
So, let's get back to the music boxes. I'm not sure why Jack or his family sent me the music boxes every year. I think perhaps deep down they realized I was more than likely his. After all, I look nothing like my mom. She's blonde and her hair flows in natural waves and her eyes are sparkling blue. I have the darkest brunette hair that lies flat on my head and unexceptional brown eyes. I'm a little overweight, they are rail thin. She and Aurora could be twins separated by a twenty-year difference. I seem so out of place between the two of them. So I'm guessing the baby pictures my grandparents sent him must have put that little bit of doubt in his mind. As a child the music boxes were a welcome surprise to an otherwise hum-drum life. But as a teenager the music boxes made me resent him. If he thought for just one moment I might be his daughter, why didn't he come and save me? The last I heard of him he actually lived all the way across the country in Oregon. It was one of the last places he had been stationed before he left the military, and I guess it just suited him. Anyway, he married and had two sons and a daughter; my replacement, I used to ruefully tell myself. I didn't understand he was running from her, not me. Besides, I had my mother there to always reassure me that he didn't want any more to do with me than she did.
But I never let my treasured collection of birthday gifts out of my sight. It seemed to give me a link to a man who maybe, after all the lies and deceit, might still hold a hope that, somewhere back in North Carolina, he left behind a little part of himself that he would one day come back to claim. It was a thought that gave me so much hope when things seemed pretty bleak. And as I got out of the car I was careful to keep that box covered by the coats as I walked it through the door. If Mom or Aurora noticed it they didn't say anything.
I went to the bedroom at the back of the house. It was down a long hallway, away from the two bedrooms at the beginning of the hall. It was just what I wanted. The room was the smallest, but it had a large closet, as if the closet compensated for the size of the room itself. My music boxes went into a nook in the corner of the closet by the door. I would put them away later. My clothes were shoved into two Hefty bags, and when I dumped them on the bed, two huge lumps of conglomerated fabric fell in a pile, making up my entire wardrobe. I left them bundled on the bed, waiting for the dresser to be unloaded.
No sooner had I walked out of my room, Aurora pushed a box into my arms. "Here," she said, "Mom wants you to go through this. It's pots or dishes or something." And off she bounced to work on her room. On top of the box there was a phone book wrapped in plastic, with the words "Welcome to Marshdale!" written I bold across a scenic picture of the local lake at sunset. Geesh, did they still make phone books these days? I took the heavy box and the phone book and headed toward the kitchen. It was best that I organized the items where they belonged. Mom wasn't a huge cook, and my sister...well, the only times she entered the kitchen was to get a snack that didn't require washing a dish or cleaning a cup. It was why we kept an overabundance of canned sodas and single-serving packets of chips in the cupboards.
Thankfully the new house had a dishwasher. In our old house I used to wash the dishes by hand, until one day I stopped washing theirs and only washed mine. As a result of that little act of defiance we got a brand new dishwasher. The proceeds from the sale of that dishwasher paid for the idiots who were now banging our personal belongings about. At least we wouldn't get back into the rut of leaving plates lying about until they started growing medicinal mold. I tossed the new phone book on the bar in the kitchen and began to sort.
Dishes put away and all the furniture finally in its place, we stood on the lawn and looked at the beginning of the rest of our new lives. The sun was going down, and the new home actually looked quite charming in the fading light. "Well girls," Mom smiled, "looks like there's no turning back now."
Aurora frowned. She had been against the move, because she was so popular at her middle school, and now she was entering ninth grade not knowing anybody. "Sure Mom. This is great." She replied, not bothering to hide her sarcasm. Mom ignored it, as she believed her younger daughter could adjust to anything and would soon be happy in our new location. I was entering my senior year at a high school that was double the size of the high school where I had just finished my junior year. And the only thing I could hope for was to disappear entirely in the crowd.
