Where Do I Find My Fa-La-La?

THE FACE OF UNEMPLOYMENT….THEN…NOW

Don’t Feel Much Like Celebrating…

5 months have passed…. …still no luck. She hates the boss for letting her go.

The news is on. She listens: “The stimulus is working…recovery…Obama’s doing great..More jobs…”

She grabs the remote… CLICK!

“Right…not from where I’m sitting.”

 Unemployment, alive and well, becomes her nightmare for the holidays…

Unemployment… nights of worry,…no sleep….bills mounting…

“Will it ever get better?” “Why me, God? Why won’t you listen? Don’t you care?” She’s angry…. Then, the phone rings.

“Don’t answer that, Johnny…it’s just another collection call….”

Next day….

7 am….Scraping quarters out of the change jar…Johnny needs his lunch money.

 ”It was better with Dad here…You never should have kicked him out…at least we had food…it’s your fault, Mom…you did this to us…”

He slams the door on his way out. He walks to the bus stop angry.

 She stares blankly, silently at the space where her son had stood.

She soaks in his words. She feels them penetrate, sting, pull at her heart.

He doesn’t remember the night mommy locked herself in the bathroom, trying to get away from Daddy.

 He doesn’t remember the scary place, the place that was hidden, the place he begged his mother to leave…the locked up place…the dirty place…the place filled with sad women…the place mommy cried herself to sleep…the women’s shelter… No, it’s better that he doesn’t remember…`

 Back then, he adored her. He was a two year old with questions…”Mommy, why are you so sad all the time? …Why does Daddy yell at you ?…Was Daddy choking you again, Mommy?….Oh Mommy, that’s a big bruise…I’m gonna hit Daddy for hitting you Mommy…Why are you crying Mommy?…It’s okay Mommy, I love you… it’s okay if Daddy doesn’t…I love you Mommy”

 He was a two year old…climbing up onto her bed, spilling juice from his sippy cup, …rubbing her back…comforting his mommy… as she sobbed into her pillow….feeling scared and all alone….living a lie…a secret she kept…ashamed of being the victim…That evil man’s control suffocated her…

 She dreamed of the day she would escape…but how?…

How did she end up like this?

 Now, that boy hates her . He doesn’t ask questions…he thinks he knows all the answers…

He’s angry, resentful…and no longer two, but a teenager, slamming a door…

 blaming his mommy… hating his mommy…she did this to him…she lost her job…she’s making them poor…

Now, she listens to him at night. She listens to him cry into his pillow…

He’s scared…what if mom can’t find a job?…Why isn’t there food? …what did Dad mean, “Will you lose the house?” …

Adult worries that plague her young son…He’s old enough to recognize life’s cruelty…too young to understand it’s not his mother’s fault….He’s scared…

 just like his mother….

A part of her wants him to know the truth..She’s tired of hiding the secret…fed up..sick of being the parent blamed…

If he saw that photo, the one that hides in her top dresser drawer, folded in half, between old pages in her grandmother’s bible…

If he saw that photo, he’d understand…

Grandma took the picture, the night of the snowstorm…after another beating…when she left with him, bare foot, slipping in snow, …trembling hands unable to fit the key into the ignition…

“Oh God…there he is…he’s coming !”…. “Get the key in…hurry….Yes!..shift in reverse…”Hurry!, Why won’t you start car? Start!”

Pulling out of a snow covered driveway…shivering behind the wheel…wearing nothing but thin pajamas…listening to her son cry behind her…no jacket or teddy bear…alone in his car seat… Both of them….cold…confused….driving away….not knowing where to go….

Driving on slippery roads reported to be unsafe…”Stay inside tonight, treacherous driving…” the weather man had said, an hour before…

 Before his father started raging about the grocery bill…she spent too much…$10 over budget….She was told she was “stupid”….then his attack…first with words, then…

Mommy was black and blue that night. Her eye was swollen after his cowardly punch…her knee badly scraped, swollen and bruised… where he had kicked her…after she fell…

 Curled in a fetal position on the floor, next to the refrigerator… blocked..like a trapped animal…prevented from leaving…

This was the night, she held one hand up, blocking his punches, the other hand covering her face like a shield…whimpering from the pain… like a lost pup in a snow storm….

One last strike and “You deserve it!” he yelled.

Then it was over….for tonight…

…just an ordinary night for her….but different…

this time…

She left…

…This was the night ..emotional bruises took their toll…enough was enough…she was slowly dieing… Wishing she never had met his Daddy…wondering how her life became so sad…so trapped…so pathetic… Mommy should have gone to the police that night…but she went to Grandma’s instead.

 Five years of pretending over…

…the weight was lifted…after sharing her secret with both her parents…watching their expression change… disbelief… shock….

 She saw the anger and hatred grow in her father’s eyes….the gentle giant who was determined to be her protector…Never again would that man touch her….except with words… Her father, her hero, couldn’t stop the emotional battery. That she would learn to live with…by becoming numb…

No, he’ll never see that photo…her son will never know…That would hurt him too much….

She’s used to being hurt..once at the hands of the man she hated, now by her son’s sharp tongue. She always had been the scapegoat… the bulls eye… the receiver of cold stares.

 Her son blames her now, just like his Daddy always did…after a bad day at work …it was always her fault…always…

She felt defensive, wounded, angry at her boy…

She reminds him of how it was…what it was like… living with Daddy…living with his words….

 ”Words…so what….They’re only words…you could have let Dad stay…It was better…better than being poor…”

She knows better.

 Those words cut her, sliced her up for 15 years, made her bleed, feel small….never good enough… She was not living, but controlled….frightened….sad…numb… Only words? No….she knew better…

As she stared at the empty space, the space where her son had wounded her with words… She feels tired…tired of feeling sad….hurt…hurt now by the boy she loved more than her own life.

Taking it all in… hurtful words…harsh, unfair words spoken by her baby… not from the man she hated….

That night…

She thinks about the night …the night she took her life back… and the last night she spent with her Dad, the only man who had ever truly loved her… One week after she sat with her dieing father, remembering a sad conversation …their last… Her eyes water as she remembers…

She remembers….

gently touching , stroking, kissing swollen cheeks of a man, now only a shell….saying goodbye to the man who brought home dolls after business trips…the man who was ticklish under his chin…how they both giggled as she ticked him, a little girl adoring her father on his lap….his arms that rocked her after a boo boo… The man who carried her giggling up to bed, on his back…and sang to her, off key, bedtime lullabies…the arms that wrapped around her, protecting her…keeping her safe…

 Her dad….her protector …since the secret had been uncovered… her hero…and a final goodbye…

 Sitting alone with the only man she had ever loved…a true love… a beautiful love between a father and his daughter…

Sitting with her protector, now clinging to life, attached to tubes, machines…and her last question…the one he couldn’t respond to, but she knew he had heard…

 Their last conversation…

 ”Daddy…it’s okay…you can go now Daddy…we’ll take care of Mom…But Daddy…When you get to heaven….will you ask God to let you be my guardian angel?…Watch over me and Johnny, Daddy….will you do that for me?…”

His last breath….

her tears…

sitting alone …without a protector…only the shell…engulfed by emptiness…

But That Night…

His spirit gave her strength… courage … Her Daddy was watching….the night she picked up the phone…for the first time in 15 years….she made that call….finally…she no longer worried about what the neighbors would think seeing a police cruiser parked in their driveway… The night she set herself free… The night her son began hating her…the night the policemen came to the house and made the bad man leave.

Her Dad would be proud….but not her son…

Her son’s words…”It’s all your fault…I hate you..” his words, loudly play over and over in her mind…

Only words?…the echoes won’t stop…

 ”Make it stop, God…”

 Once again, her prayers go unanswered…

Is there a God?…Maybe for others..” She is convinced she’s all alone….

Then…

The phone rings….She tells herself …”Don’t answer it…another collector…When will it stop?…”

Another day….like all the others…

“This will be a lousy Christmas…” her daughter tells her before she stomps away… Her daughter, now the shooter… throwing daggers… “Life was better when Dad was here…”

 Better?… Better?…. Why are her kids doing this to her? Why do they punish her with words?…

It wasn’t better…walking in a coma, living numb…

“Don’t feel the pain…deny it…lie to your friends…make excuses…pretend…”

Living in a world of numb….her only way to survive… Better?…

 Another day…

Another Macy’s commercial plays on the HD screen…showing a happy family, presents under the tree…laughter…

 ”Where’s the remote? “

She can’t look…she doesn’t want to … She hates seeing Christmas commercials…she hates her old boss for letting her go…joining the world of unemployment….

“Why me, God? What did I ever do to you? Don’t you love me? Why?”

It’s Christmas for those with a paycheck…It will be a great celebration…happy families opening presents…

Christmas for the unemployed… a day of dread…worry…no pay check….presents? …How will she pull that off? …

She can’t feel the Fa-la-la….

 It will be a numb Christmas…. …no Fa- La- La for the unemployed…

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