Spilled Milk: Based on a true story (5 page)

We had cereal for dinner that night since it was in
the middle of the week. “Friday’s are paydays and Saturdays are food shopping
days, if there’s enough money after Dad pays the bills,” Mom would say.

Kat and I were quiet as we exchanged knowing glances
across the table. This time tomorrow, we’ll be at Grandma’s, eating chicken or
mashed potatoes. Maybe both. Dad was working the overnight shifts this week. I
lived for overnight weeks. Soon Kat and I turned out the lights in our bedroom,
we kissed Mom goodnight. We waited.

At ten o’clock I slid my body off the bed like a snake
and sat on the floor to put on my sneakers. I listened. The house was quiet. I
moved to the edge of Kat’s side of the bed and put my hand on her shoulder.
“Hey, we gotta go. Put your shoes on,” I whispered.

I sat on the floor and pulled the suitcases out from
under the bed. They were heavy but it wasn’t too long of a walk. Maybe twenty
miles, or thirty. It only took Mom ten minutes to drive there, so I figured it
would take us about twenty minutes to walk there.

“Are we gonna tell Mommy?” Kat stood with her suitcase
in her hand. The moon illuminated her fluffy blonde hair. Her eyes were like
our cats when he sat to watch the birds and I could tell she was scared.

“I don’t think we can.” I leaned in closer to whisper.
“Mom can’t know where we’re going cause Dad might ask her and then he’ll know
where we are.”

“Why can’t Daddy know we’re going to Grandma’s?”

The shadows from our night light hid my face. “He just
can’t.” I thought for a minute. “Okay, let’s tell Mom. Just so she’s not
worried. So she can come visit us if she wants.”

Kat nodded.

The door to her bedroom creaked as we tiptoed inside
and stood by the side of her bed. Her pill bottles were lined up on the
nightstand next to her, some of them she didn’t bother to put the tops back on.
The glowing TV let me watch her breathe in and out, her mouth open enough to
fit a piece of paper, lips cracked and dry. She chewed on ice chips perpetually
because of her dry mouth.

“Mommy,” I whispered and nudged her shoulder. She lay
motionless and I looked at Kat. She shrugged. “Mommy, wake up.”

The clock read eleven something. Her night stand was so
littered with pill bottles I couldn’t see the rest of the display.

I picked up her hand and watched it drop like a brick
onto her bed. We didn’t have time. Sitting on the edge of the bed, I crouched
down next to her ear.“MOMMY!” I yelled.

She startled awake, grabbing at the air in front of
her. I pushed Kat back against the wall to avoid her flailing arms. “Ohh, what?
What happened?” She sat up in bed and I wasn’t sure what to say. Her hand was
on her chest. “What are you two doing out of bed?” She checked the clock. “Go
back to bed.”

Kat scrunched up her face and her bottom lip started
to quiver. “Mommy, we have to show you something.”

“Yea Mommy, we have to show you something.” I pointed.
“It’s in our room. Come look.”

I grabbed Kat’s hand and started towards the door as I
heard Mom throw the blankets off of her. She answered back rubbing her eyes, “What
is it? A mouse?”

Mom pushed the door open and flicked on our bedroom
light. Kat and I stood next to our suitcases holding hands. Mom looked from the
floor to the open window. “What are you two doing? It’s freezing out, close
that window.”

“Mom,” I said, “We are going to Grandma’s. We’re gonna
run away now, and we just wanted you to know. So you didn’t worry.”

“Yea,” Kat finished, “You can come with us if you want
Mommy, you just have to get a suitcase. We only have two.”

Mom folded her arms across her chest and stared at us.
She lowered herself onto the bed. “Wait, I don’t understand. You’re running
away? From me?”

 “Mom, we have to.”

I don’t know who started crying first, but all at once
we were in a group hug. “My babies, oh Brooke I am so sorry. Is this what you
want, this is what you really want?”

I nodded through my cloudy eyes. “Yea, Mommy. We need
to go.”

She stared at the open window. “Oh, Brooke. I am so
sorry. Please stay home, please stay. We can make things better here. If you
ever want to run away to Grandma’s house just tell me, we’ll all go together.
Your brothers too, we’ll all go.”

I didn’t need to explain? Maybe she knew. Maybe she
realized when Dad wasn’t in bed and when he savagely tore after my brothers
when they did something wrong. Maybe the pills didn’t make her as numb as I
thought they did.

“Okay, Mommy,” Kat said on our behalf, wiping her nose
on her sleeve. “We’ll stay. We can run away to Grandma’s later.”

Mom looked at me. “Okay Brooke? We’ll all run away
together someday, we’ll all go together.”

I looked at my feet, at her face. I believed her.
“Okay, Mom.” I forced a smile.

She helped us unpack. When Mom got to the bottom of my
suitcase she pulled out a black and white marble notebook. “What’s this
Brooke?” Mom turned it over. The front read:

Brooke Nolan’s Journal

PRIVATE ** KEEP OUT

“Can I read it?” Mom bit her lower lip. “I won’t tell
anyone, promise” She smiled.

I hesitated. “Sure. I need it back tomorrow.”

I used composition notebooks as journals now since Mom
and Dad wouldn’t buy them for me. They were the first things I packed, I
couldn’t live without them.

The sound of a glass breaking in the kitchen woke me
the next morning.
Adam must be unloading the dishwasher
. I wiggled under
the covers stretching my arms and legs before I sat up and saw my journal
sitting at the foot of my bed. I opened it up to the last entry.

Watermarks stained the page as I touched the spots and
listened to it crinkle. Mom’s unique uppercase writing and run on sentences sprawled
across the pages at the end of the last journal entry I wrote.

Dear Brooke- I love you with all my heart. I love all
of you. But you have an extra special place in my heart you are so smart and
aware of everything and I don’t know what I would have done without you (and
your brothers and sister). They don’t understand yet, but I know they will
someday and then they will say my God how did she do it and I am going to have
to say with a huge help from your sister Brooke. I am so sorry for all the
times I yelled at you. I had no idea the burden, stress and strain I am putting
on you. You’re only a child and this should not be. My God, help me to make
Brooke’s life a whole lot better. I promise I will try to help you Lord, please
help her, she’s only 11 years old. With all my love. I’m sorry for getting your
book wet but I was crying.

That week my brothers, Kat and I were sitting in the
living room when Mom and Dad came in to tell us some big news.

“We’re moving!” Mom exclaimed. She clasped her hands
together. “We’re going to Pennsylvania, it’s about three hours from here and
there is so much room to play and run around. There are farms and woods to
explore, you guys can build your own tree houses. Best of all, I found the most
beautiful house, it’s perfect.” A sparkle in her eye told me she loved this
house already, she loved Pennsylvania.

Dad looked at me.

“What about school?” I tried to hide the desperation
in my voice. “School isn’t over yet, it’s almost Christmas. We can’t move.”

Dad leaned forward. “We’re moving the day after
Christmas. You’ll be on break, so you won’t miss anything while we switch your
schools.”

Adam and Thomas started talking about the bears they
were going to hunt and Kat asked if she could have a pink tree house. I looked
out the window.

Three hours away?
We didn’t know anyone who lived in Pennsylvania. All of our family was
here, in New York. We might as well move to Mars.

Mom smiled while she listened to the boys talk. Her
eyes met mine and suddenly went soft. Her smile retracted, and I noticed
wrinkles outlining the corners of her eyes.

My face pleaded with her to remember her promise,
begged her to remember. Whether she knew it or not she had let me down. My
shoulders slumped to my sides and I fought with the screaming voices in my
head. I guess this meant we were never running away to Grandma’s house.

At first Mom
didn’t believe me when I told her I was dying.

“You’re twelve.
You’re not even close to dying.” Mom poured her tea and sat down at the kitchen
table. “Didn’t you just invite Cristin to come over? If you’re not feeling good
then maybe she shouldn’t come over.”

“It’s not that
I don’t feel good, my stomach just hurts.” I pressed my hand into the lower
right of my stomach. “Right here. It just started hurting. Can I use your
heating pad?”

“Go ahead.” She
turned on the TV and dropped a dollop of milk into her tea. “While you’re up
there, bring me my pills?”

Dad sat at the
kitchen table listening. “Why don’t you try and use the bathroom, Brooke?”

The new house
in Pennsylvania boasted four bedrooms that quadrupled in size compared to what
we had in New York. All Kat and I had in our room was our bed and a small
vanity my cousin handed down when she got tired of it.

We struggled to
fill all the space; we needed two couches, a real dining room set, and dressers
since there was room for them. Most of the furniture was mismatched and thrown
together. The best part about the new house were the three bathrooms. Three.
One upstairs, one downstairs, one in my parent’s room. Kat and I could get
ready for school in the upstairs bathroom while the boys got ready downstairs.
It was heaven.

I clicked open
Mom’s medicine cabinet and pulled four bottles off the top shelf. White, cream
colored and pink pills slid into my hand as I counted out the different
dosages. I squeezed my hand around them. The heating pad Mom used for her back
was dangling over the edge of the bed and I picked it up as I headed to the
door.

I made a friend
on my bus, Cristin, and she got her period for the first time two weeks ago.
While the unfamiliar pain crippled my stomach I tried to smile through it
knowing I was finally going to get to hide tampons in my book bag too.

I stood at the
top of the stairs and gripped the handrail.
Geeze, this period stuff is no
joke.
My stomach felt tender to the touch and I shuffled one foot in front
of the other. Cristin walked through the front door as I reached the bottom of
the stairs. Her voice seemed muffled. My stomach flipped over and I caught my
breath.

“Hey, what’s
up?” She eyed me, “My dad just dropped me off. You okay?”

I shook my head
and doubled over, clutching the pills in one hand, heating pad in the other.
Cristin raised her eyebrows and took the heating pad. “I’ll go plug this in,
living room okay?”

I couldn’t
talk. I nodded my head, forced a smile. Sweat formed around my eyes and lips as
I trudged into the kitchen. Mom’s eyes were glued to the TV. A stabbing blow
dropped me to my knees and I cried out. “Ah, Mom, it hurts!”

“Brooke?” Mom rolled
her eyes, “Oh come on, Brooke. Do you want some ibuprofen? Do you want…”

The kitchen
spun into a white cloud. I could hear Mom screaming for Dad as my head hit the
kitchen floor. Pills scattered across the linoleum. Mom’s breath engulfed me,
she smelled like a smoky teabag. “Hang on, Brooke, Call 9-1-1! Oh my God. David
call 9-1-1!”

I woke up
confused in a white room surrounded by a curtain. Monitors hummed and needles
pulsed under my skin on both hands.

“Brooke, Brooke
honey, you need to wake up.” It was a masked ninja. How’d he know my name?

“Brooke I’m Dr.
Destachio. You need to wake up sweetheart. You’re just coming out of surgery
now.”

A nurse to my
left pushed the bed and I realized I was being whirled into a room. Suddenly
pain radiated through my stomach up into my throat. My body shook in waves.
“Pain…Pain medicine, please. Please.”

Dr. Destachio
smiled. “You got it kiddo.” He fumbled a tube going into my right hand. “There
you go, gave you some good stuff. I’ll be back to check on you soon.”

I didn’t
understand what was happening but I couldn’t stay awake long enough to talk to
anyone. Mom was there at one point but the weight of my eyelids wouldn’t let me
see her. I heard voices. Dr. Destachio’s voice.

“If you would
have waited any longer...” He trailed off. “Her appendix ruptured as we were
removing it. She was very lucky.”

Mom choked out
some words, I imagined her crying. “We called 9-1-1 right away, I knew
something was wrong when she told me she had a bad stomach ache. She’s a little
stubborn to see doctors but I told her it was important we get her to the
hospital.”

“You did the
right thing. If she needs anything, just let us know.”

I woke up hours
later and squinted while the sun turned my room a bright orange before fading
to black. A voice echoed from the TV. Mom shifted in the oversized hospital
lounger and flipped through Dr. Phil re-runs.

“Mom?” I didn’t
recognize my voice.

Mom shimmied
out of the chair and set her tea on the table next to her. She lowered herself
to my side. “It doesn’t hurt,” I said, following her eyes to the tubes sticking
out of me.