The Lights In the Sky

Chapter 24

Susan came back a few days later. It started snowing early that day, sometime around sunrise. The first snow of the year is so pure white and beautiful. Flakes fell through the sky like moths and then disappeared in the frosted grass. I was still up watching a program I had already seen a couple times. I don't think it was actually supposed to snow that much that day. That's what my dad said anyway. He would come and talk to me in the morning before he went out. He was at the part of the year where he mostly was doing odd jobs around town making a few hundred bucks here or there. Harvest was over. It wasn't a good year. If I was a better son, I probably would have asked him what jobs he was doing at that time. But I'm not. He came into the living room and told me that he didn't think it would snow much, not even enough to stick on the ground. Then Mom got up and made breakfast and it was still snowing. Then Dad left and it was still snowing. Then Mom took Tabitha to school and it was still snowing. And I wondered if Frank was at school yet and whether it made him sad to see my closed locker every day. And it was still snowing.

The dead tree branches outside were covered by the time Mom and I finished lunch. I don't know if I mentioned that we sat together every day to eat. Neither of us spoke much. Sometimes she would ask me a question about the animals on TV and I would answer her and she would say something like interesting or bizarre.

After Mom did the dishes, I heard a knock at the new sliding glass door Dad put in. Mom doesn't typically have time for niceties, so she'll just tell whoever's knocking to come in. I listened closer when all I heard was silence. She went to the door slowly, her footsteps spaced out. I actually turned down the volume on the TV to listen. There was a swish as the door opened. There was a muffled voice, Mom telling whoever it was to come in.

Mom stepped into the living room, her face taut. Susan walked in behind her. There was something different about her. She wasn't pale exactly, but more of a gray color. She stood up tall and stiff, like slouching would cause her to topple over. Her eyes darted around the room. There was a long silence. Nobody moved. Then, her eyes watering, Susan spoke.

"The school has elected to contact Child Protective Services," she said. "They want to take Tabitha out of the house."

I looked at Mom, not understanding. Her face showed me that I would get none from her.

She yelled at Susan, "You promised! You said you would help us!"

"I have to help Tabitha, do you understand that?" Susan asked in a whisper.

I got to my feet, my legs half-asleep. I had to steady myself on the arm of the couch.

"I told you it was all in my head!" I screamed. "I told you that I made it up!"

"I needed you to say that," she said, never raising her voice. "It was easier for me to take her if they thought you were a threat to her safety."

Before I knew what was happening, Mom grabbed Susan by the shirt and slammed her against the wall, holding tightly onto her collar.

"I told you not to hurt to my family," Mom said through clenched teeth.

"I can't hurt them anymore than you already have," Susan snarled.

Mom shoved Susan against the wall one more time and then took a couple steps back. She looked down at the floor for a while. Then back at me with tears in her eyes.

"It's real," she said. "It's all real."

They've been taking my mom since she was a little girl. Sometimes they would take her every night for weeks at a time. Sometimes she would go a few months without seeing them. She stood there in the living room, Susan and I watching her, and said everything out loud. It went on for years. She was afraid and alone. Her mom was too drunk to listen and only wanted to be left in peace. Mom knew her friends wouldn't believe her. She couldn't even tell my dad. She especially couldn't tell him. Because that would risk everything. It's why I couldn't tell Deborah.

"They did things to me," she said, "things I won't talk about around my son."

When my dad got her pregnant, they stopped showing up. Mom got depressed after that, but she didn't know why. Maybe she felt abandoned, no longer important to the only thing consistent in her life. Nothing happened for nine months. Then I was born. The doctors at the hospital pulled me from her kicking and screaming. I was underweight. Unhealthy. I wasn't getting all the nutrients I needed from her. She and Dad were afraid.

I never knew any of this before she told us that day. Dad never spoke of it, either. But it didn't really matter, did it? Because I did survive. I did fight.

Except it did matter. Because they took her again that night. And they took another baby from her. And it was hideous and half-formed, but it was hers and they stole it. They pulled her from him kicking and screaming and sent her back here. She told herself it was a dream, but she knew. She knew she lost the other boy. For the first time in nine months, she drank. She drank a whole bottle of whiskey by herself and passed out on the couch while Dad held me in his arms next to her.

And we lived that way until they came back seventeen years later.

I was sitting on the arm of the couch when she finished talking. Susan was still against the wall, afraid to move. Mom was silently crying. Her hands were shaking. She wanted to drink.

"I'll fight you on this," Mom said to Susan. "I'll kill you if I have to. My daughter is the only thing that's mine."

It killed me when she said it. She looked over at me sadly. We both knew it was true. I wasn't hers at all. I was theirs. Always had been. Both me and my brother.

"In a week's time, you'll have an evaluator coming out to see the house and talk to your family," Susan said quickly. "But they already know the situation and believe they've made a decision. They don't believe this is real anymore than I do."

She walked into the kitchen and turned back. I couldn't see her, but her voice was clear.

"Sammy deserved better than you," she said to my mom. Mom wiped a tear away from her eye and nodded.

"I know," she said.

I haven't seen Susan again, but I wish she was there last night. I wish she had to stand there and see what she did to us.