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“I’m making a dinosaur,” Jared stated with every bit of authority a four-year-old boy can muster. “A Ty-man-asaurus Rex. They are the most meanest dinosaurs in the world and they eat all the monsters.”
“It’s Ty-ran-asaurus Rex, Jared,” Chloe corrected. And they don’t eat monsters, they eat other dinosaurs.”
Jared came into the world when Chloe was five years old. She didn’t understand how two kids could have the same mommy, and since her mom was bigger than her and she was bigger than Jared, her childish logic made her believe that she was Jared’s mom. Not only did she pick out what t-shirt he would wear everyday (usually ones with animals on them), but she also felt that it was her duty to educate him in the ways of the world.
“Don’t use all the red!” Chloe exclaimed. “I’m making a heart and I need that!”
August had begun, the weather had been absolutely lovely for the past week, and the two children had taken to converting all their inside games to outside ones. Their father had given them an old plastic tarp that he once used to cover his motorcycle, and they spread it out on the grass in their backyard to play with clay and draw pictures on the other sides of used typewriter paper.
“I need help making shapes, Chloe,” Jared whined. The sunny, warm afternoon was fading abruptly, and grey clouds had begun to roll in.
“I’ll go get our cookie cutters,” Chloe said, a hint of impatience in the back of her voice. “Don’t touch my heart and don’t use all the clay while I’m gone, okay?”
Chloe got frustrated with Jared sometimes, and at times she used her age and wisdom to trick him. She once convinced him that her five, shiny pennies were worth much more than his two, stupid quarters and cut him what he thought was a great deal by trading. Because she spent every moment they were together teaching him new things, Jared regarded Chloe as a grownup that knew everything in the world. And despite her tricks and bits of frustration that came through once in a while, Chloe loved Jared with every bit of sisterly love her nine-year-old heart could hold.
Chloe went in through the side door of the little yellow house her family lived in. It was a Saturday, so both her mother and father were home. Usually her father spent his weekends in the garage, grilling steaks and using loud power tools and always drinking cardboard cubes filled with cans of Budweiser beer. But today he was in the kitchen, with her mother, and when she came inside, her parents became abruptly silent. Her father looked down at the orange tiles in the kitchen, but her mother walked over to her and bent down.
“Chloe, go back outside and play with Jared. I’ll tell you when you can come in.”
“But Mom,” Chloe whined, sounding similar to Jared had earlier. “We need cookie cutters and butter knives to make shapes with our clay. Will you come help us?”
“Listen to your mother,” Chloe’s father said suddenly. The sternness of his voice and the smell of beer on his breath demanded obedience, but it could not bend Chloe’s will when she was in the middle of creating something.
“Daddy we NEED the cookie cutters, puh-leeease,” Chloe pleaded, looking from her father to her mother.
“Hurry up, Chloe,” her mother said, exhausted. They’re in the blue basket by your toybox.”
Chloe scuttled along to her room and shut the door. As she gathered the small pile of cookie cutters in her arms, the sound of breaking glass startled her so much that she dropped the bundle at her feet.
“I’m sick and TIRED of this shit!” her mother’s voice pierced through the walls. Chloe felt scared, her mother’s voice was the most comforting thing in the world, and the yelling was a very foreign element to her ears. “We don’t have the MONEY for your little problem anymore, and I’m so TIRED of taking care of OUR children alone every night!”
“I work all day!” her father’s voice boomed, shaking the walls and sending tremors up Chloe’s spine. “I come home exhausted and I just want to relax, but no! As soon I open the door your damn nagging begins and doesn’t end until the lights go out!”
Paralyzed with fear, tears began to work their way through Chloe’s body, pushing themselves stubbornly through her eyes. She had almost forgotten about Jared, who sat patiently on the tarp outside, letting a ladybug crawl up his arm. As young as she was, Chloe knew that telling Jared about what she just witnessed would be a terrible idea, so she pulled her shirt over her face and wiped her eyes and nose and ran quickly out
the backdoor, back into the safety of the grass and sky and childhood.
“I got ‘em, Jared!” Chloe said cheerfully. She was surprised at how well she faked her enthusiasm. As she set the cookie cutters down on the tarp, she noticed how her clay heart had been untouched and the red clay was still intact. “Good job, bubby! You didn’t let anything happen to my heart!”
“There were bugs that crawled on it but I didn’t let them poop on it and moved them away,” Jared said, very matter-of-factly. “My Ty-manasaurus Rex needs feet but I can’t make them. Will you help me?”
As Chloe bent over Jared’s clay creation, a crack of thunder bellowed across the sky, startling the children. Within seconds, rain began to fall to the earth in huge, fat drops, as if the clouds were watering cans and they were little seedlings. The children squealed, pulling the tarp over their heads, running with their bare feet through the newly formed mud and into the house. Before the door could close, however, Chloe ran back outside and scooped up her heart and Jared’s dinosaur into her arms.
Wednesday nights were taco nights. The children’s mother always left the house early in the evening, smelling like perfume and dressed in nice clothing. Their father had taken it upon himself to create the tradition of making tacos midweek, partially for fun and partially because the children didn’t like many other of his culinary creations. Their mother, upon discovering the new tradition taking place, started buying miniature sized taco shells and little taco trays to make the food easier for small hands to eat. But then she would leave, to teach an evening class downtown.
“Daddy I don’t like white cheese,” Jared said for the second time in three seconds.
“It tastes just the same as the yellow cheese, Jar, just eat it.” Lately their father had seemed distracted, even more so than usual. The children generally didn’t like to be left alone with him, especially when he had a silver can in his hand, not because he got violent but because he got loud. Chloe silently picked the cheese off Jared’s tacos and folded the clumps into her napkin. It had only been a few days since she witnessed her parents fighting, and she believed that it was her fault somehow.
“MOMMY!!” Jared yelled, tumbling out of his chair and dropping shell crumbs on the carpet.
“Hello my little sugar lump, how was dinner?” she replied.
“I don’t like white cheese,” Jared said.
Later that night, as Jared was being tucked into his bed with jungle themed sheets and a dinosaur nightlight, Chloe took the clay heart she had created out from her nightstand drawer. The rain had damaged it, as briefly as it had been exposed. The vibrancy of red had faded, and stained the inside of the drawer. She ran her tiny hands across the curved shape she had created; proud of how nicely it had turned out.
Suddenly, the door next to her room slammed violently shut, and the yelling had begun. Their voices were different this time, explosive, high pitched, and Chloe’s chest felt like it did when she woke up from an awful nightmare. Jared came running into Chloe’s room, crying.
“What is happening, Sissy?” Jared’s eyes were wide and terrified, his hands clamping around the bunched cloth of Chloe’s Barbie nightgown.
“Mommy and Daddy are yelling, Bubby.” She knew her brother was young, but he wasn’t deaf or blind. “Do you want to sleep in my room?”
Jared nodded several times, and crawled under her covers. Chloe sat beside him, cradling his head in her arms, shielding his ears from the sounds of her nightmare.
“Why him? What does he have that I don’t? How could you DO this to me, woman?! HOW?!”
“I haven’t been YOUR woman for a damn long time, you bastard! Our bank account shrinks DAILY, and you do nothing but throw money out the window on your booze! It’s taken the place of everything in your life, there is no room for me! No room for your children! No room for a single damn thing!”
There comes a time in every child’s life when they are no longer a child. For some, it is a very gradual process, a healthy one, and the transition is flawlessly blended into drivers licenses and first kisses. But for others, the moment is so abrupt, so unforgivingly sudden, that they forget what it was ever like to feel light inside. For Chloe, childhood ended the moment she heard her father sobbing, her mother cursing, her world crashing. This was not what happened on Brady Bunch. This was not what happened on Full House.
A month passed by slowly. The children’s mother did the best she could to remain cheerful, cutting shapes into their peanut butter and jelly sandwiches and putting braids in Chloe’s long hair. School had begun, so the children had a different environment to focus on. Their father spent almost every night in the garage. He only came in for dinner, and never without the aluminum tumor molded into his skin.
It was a Tuesday morning. Chloe was eating peaches and cream oatmeal and Jared was sitting on the couch, hair fuzzy and eyes puffy from sleep, attempting to tie the shoelaces on his Power Ranger tennis shoes. Their mother was nowhere to be found, and the hands on the clock inched dangerously close to School Time. Suddenly, a blue and red flashed through the curtains of the living room. Chloe jumped up and peeked her face through the glass. A policeman was standing next to her sobbing mother on the phone. Panic struck Chloe’s chest, as the body reacts to swimming pools that are much colder than expected. She ran outside to her mother.
“Mom, what’s going on?!” Chloe yelled, stricken with fear.
“Go inside, Chloe. Now.”
Minutes passed and the knots in Chloe’s stomach tangled and grew like vines up her throat. Suddenly, the children’s Mom’s new “friend” Jim came stomping into the house, yelling at them to “get their coats on and get into the car.” They obeyed, quickly, and arrived at school ten minutes late.
“Grandma!” Jared yelled, running across the crosswalk and into his grandmother’s arms.
“Hello, munchkin!” she replied, putting her arms around both children. “Today we are going to your uncle’s house!”
When the children arrived at their uncle’s house, their mother was waiting upstairs.
“Sit down, children, Mommy needs to talk to you.”
“Mommy I got a gold star on my coloring page today,” Jared said proudly, pulling his artwork out of his bookbag.
“That’s beautiful, darling. Chloe, come sit down here by us.” Their mother had very obviously been crying, and her voice was weak, defeated.
“Sweeties, there is something Mommy needs to tell you.”
“What’s going on?” Chloe asked. She felt like she was going to throw up.
“Daddy is not going to be able to live with us anymore. We are going to move to a different house and go to a different school.”
And the sobbing began. Through snot and tears, Chloe managed to stutter a few words.
“Why do we have to move? Why do you and Dad fight so much?”
“Your Dad drank too much beer, so now he is in a hospital that will take care of him. He got lost this morning and had to call me to find his way home.”
Jared didn’t understand much of what was going on, but because his sister and mother were crying, he cried too. Chloe wanted to know more, she wanted to know why she had to suffer from her father’s problem, she wanted to understand why things were happening so fast. Just yesterday she was worrying about her Goosebumps book being overdue, today she was losing all her friends and her house. It would be years before she realized what really happened between her parents, how alcohol and adultery poisoned something sacred and beautiful and ripped her innocence from beneath her feet. Life was different now, dark and unforgiving, and she felt the weight of adult responsibility on her so very young shoulders.
Later that night the little yellow house was emptied out. Rain pounded furiously against the rooftops and heads of the movers. Furniture was packed into big trucks like puzzle pieces, toys and clothes thrown carelessly into cardboard boxes by adult hands. Chloe walked through the chaos slowly, touching the countertops, running her hands along her father’s shirts that hung, untouched, in the closet. Adults carried a box labeled “Chloe” past her, and just as they stepped out of the room, her clay heart fell out of the box and to the ground, breaking into two pieces. She picked up the pieces, put them tenderly in her pockets, and walked outside into the chilly air.
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