Rise: How a House Built a Family(77)

I exhaled quickly and pulled it out, like ripping off a Band-Aid; there was no reason to wait and think it through. More than anything, I was pissed off that I had yet another thing to deal with on a day that had already had enough of me. Rich blood pumped out, matching the rhythm of my heart rather than just dripping in a steady stream. My vision tunneled. I had passed out when the older kids’ dad had his wisdom teeth pulled and again when Jada’s bottom teeth poked through her lip after a fall. Passing out there in the field would have been a welcome reprieve from the day.

“Mommy?” Hope’s voice went wobbly, sounding a lot like Jada’s.

“I need,” I said, looking around for something to put over the pulsing wound and not seeing anything. “Tape. I need the roll of duct tape.” I pulled off my left shoe and sock, wadded the already bloody sock over the hole in my leg, and fell backward onto my butt.

“You okay?” Hope asked, her face ashen and her hands shaking.

“It’s just a little hole. Where’s the—”

Drew handed me a roll of gray tape. I wrapped tape around my leg to hold the sock in place. Definitely not the most sanitary wrap, but it couldn’t be helped. Jada was holding Roman and leaning against the car. All four of them looked terrified.

I took a deep breath, preparing myself to shrug it all off and reassure them. Maybe I could have pulled that off if I hadn’t looked down at my leg. The sock was drenched in blood. On my exhale, I leaned over and puked in the grass, narrowly missing Drew’s foot. It wasn’t that the injury was all that terrible, but combined with our hellacious day, the heat, and my squeamishness, it was more than I was prepared to handle. I put a hand up, palm out, to the kids and waved like it was no big deal, but in reality it was in surrender as much as reassurance.

“Just need to keep pressure on it and get a tetanus in the morning. Good as new.”

Hope drove us home and no one spoke.

Some of our words had been stolen away by exhaustion, that was true, but my mom had taught me to live by the old “if you can’t say something nice” rule, and I had nothing nice to say.

We were so far beyond tired of the project that there wasn’t a word to describe what we felt. And with so many things left to do, the deadline looked more impossible every day. I wanted my kids to go on dates and eat spaghetti and meatballs instead of jerky and crackers for supper. I wanted the house we were living in to sell and I wanted the new house to be a home instead of the hardest damn thing I’d ever done in my life. I wanted to go on vacation with my mom again and invite my dad down to relax.

I wanted to take my own turn at feeling broken and let someone else take a turn at cheering everyone up. But that isn’t how being a mom works. So I swallowed all those thoughts, got everyone showered and fed, and carried on with the pushing-forward, the cheering-up, and the determination to work hard enough to make everything better.

Have I mentioned I’m an optimist?





–20–

Fall

Down by the River

Even though Adam and I had been divorced for well over a year, my erratic sleep reflected how often I still worried about him coming back. I stayed up late, woke frequently, and found deep, solid sleep only in the early-morning hours before my alarm rang. It wasn’t a sustainable pattern, and I told myself that every evening before I climbed into bed and did it again.

My phone was ringing, and I had the sense that it had been for a while. But it was so far away that I wasn’t sure how I was supposed to get to it. I tried to climb up out of the foggy sleep determined to hold me down, and I slowly became aware that I was in my bed.

A woman had been yelling at me in my dream. She was red-faced and angry. When she opened her mouth, the ring tone of my phone sounded from deep inside her.

Yes, I’ll get it. Leave me alone.

I often felt like it had been years since I’d slept a whole night without worry or fear. But that never seemed like a terrible thing, as long as there was hope that it would end sometime soon. A person can get through just about anything if they believe it isn’t forever. I reached over to my nightstand and fumbled for the phone, knocking it to the ground. It stopped ringing. Fine with me. I rolled over so my back was to it, but I had only pulled in two slow breaths when it started again. The ringer was turned too low to wake the kids, but I couldn’t ignore it no matter how much I wanted to.

I leaned over, grabbed it, and tucked back under the blanket like there were monsters under the bed.

It was a Little Rock number. “Hello?” I cleared my throat.

“Is this Cara? Cara Brookins?”

“Yes. Who—”

“Shit. It’s her. I have her,” the man said aside to someone else. “Cara, this is Officer Stracener with the Little Rock Police Department. I need you to confirm that your children are with you.”

Cold rushed from the sides of my neck down my torso. “They’re here. In bed. Asleep.” My voice was tiny. Insignificant. The voice of a liar.

“No. I need you to confirm that each one of them is there. I need you to go check your kids. Now.” He was firm. Commanding. Nerves—or fear—stretched his tone a notch too high, made it flutter at the edges.

I couldn’t move. Couldn’t speak. My heart galloped so fast that I half expected Officer Stracener to witness my heart attack over the phone. The last of me. I had nothing left.