Written by Dastem
Angelica’s father worked as a prison janitor just up the road from their small, one-bedroom apartment. Although he usually stayed drunk in between his long work hours, there was never any doubt in Angelica’s mind that he loved her. He just wasn’t always good at showing it.
By contrast, her mother had run off not long after she was born. By the time she was ten, Angelica had all but forgotten about her.
Still, there were times, when things got bad, that Angelica would open her book; the one her mother gave her as a baby. She would take out the only picture she had of the woman who gave her life and gaze at it until she fell into a trance.
The tattered, faded and worn image of a young beauty smiling in the summer sun whispered fairy tales in Angelica’s ears. Being that her mother left when she was far too young to remember, those fairy tales were all she had to go on. The picture was their inspiration–
Angelica closed her eyes to visualize the woman who’d abandoned her. She imagined her living in a beautiful home somewhere with her new family. So, like a movie in her mind, Angelica would watch her mother playing with the siblings she’d never met.
Well, one morning, after a particularly heavy night of drinking, Angelica’s father woke his daughter up with a loud crash. Angelica didn’t think much of it considering the fact that he was always doing something strange at odd hours. Falling into walls was anything but abnormal–
On one hand, Angelica was amazed that he functioned as well as he did with as little sleep as he got. On the other, she knew that the years had taken their toll. Episodes like this were happening more and more frequently.
“Where is it?” She heard him slurring to himself.
“What are you looking for, Pop?”
“That picture… The one of your ma.”
Angelica felt butterflies take flight in her stomach, knowing that if she gave her father the picture, she would never see it again. So, she bit her lip and didn’t say a word.
“Ah, who cares,” her father eventually said when he couldn’t immediately find the snapshot. “…don’t even know why I’m looking.”
As Angelica got ready for school that morning, her father poured himself another drink. It was Friday, after all… his only day off. That meant he was going to spend the day nursing a handle of vodka until he descended into a state of complete oblivion.
“You know I love ya’, girl,” he said as she walked out the door for school.
“I know,” she replied.
“I loved her too… Your ma.”
“Yeah?”
“Yeah… It’s good she ain’t around, though, I tell ‘ya. She had her demons… even worse than me. She used ta’ say I had to raise ya… or else her demons would.”
Then, he paused for a few seconds before adding, “I know I haven’t been the best Pop for ya’, Angie, but damn if I haven’t tried.”
Her father’s words echoed in her mind all day long. Before she knew it, school was over.
On her way home, Angelica silently wondered what kinds of demons her father was talking about. Were they like the ones she felt inside her own chest? The ones tempting her to hate the world…
When she came around the corner to her apartment building, though, those thoughts immediately flew from her mind. They were replaced by a fear she had never known before.
There, in front of the building she lived in, were two police cars and an ambulance. They seemed to be working a crime scene. The whole street was cordoned off with yellow barricade tape.
The gurney next to the ambulance appeared to have a body on it, sealed up in a black bag. The paramedics were just about to load it into the ambulance.
An attractive young woman, dressed in brown slacks and a white blouse spotted Angelica from across the street. She quickly rushed over to the girl with outstretched arms and called out, “Angie?”
Angelica’s face went numb when she heard the woman say her name. It told her everything she needed to know… Her father was the one in the bag.
So, at ten years old, Angelica became a ward of the state, her father having died when he stepped off the curb into oncoming traffic. Why he was outside, nobody will ever know.
Angelica spent the next seven years, nine months and fourteen days moving through the foster care system. Some of the houses she stayed in were better than others. Some of the families actually seemed to care…
It never took long for something to go wrong, though, and when it did, Angelica would turn to the picture of her mother… Even if they were false, the memories she conjured up always made her feel more at home than any foster family ever could.
In fact, that’s part of what motivated her to keep her nose to the grindstone all through school. She even put herself through college, working as a waitress in a local cafe. Every teacher and professor she had along the way said that her dedication and focus was nothing short of spectacular… as though she had an internal drive to change the world.
In the end, Angelica succeeded in becoming one of the most passionate and influential social workers in the city. She was on the fast-track for a flourishing career in case management. Oh, the lives she would touch…
By the time she was twenty-five, she’d earned a reputation for being a hard-handed and ruthless adversary to abusive parents. Not once did she hesitate to remove a child from the home… so long as it was deemed ‘unsafe,’ of course.
In her mind, she was a savior to every child and the retribution that their abusive parents deserved. Yet, as Angelica would soon discover, when you live the life of a hammer, all you end up seeing are nails…
That realization came when a unique case hit her desk one day. The details were peculiar–
Evidently, firefighters pulled a five year-old girl named Lily from a burning building after she accidentally started a fire. According to them, the blaze was caused by a hotplate, which Lily used to make herself grilled cheese sandwiches with. Apparently, she forgot to unplug it.
Angelica got involved because the girl’s parents were nowhere to be found at the time of the accident. During their interview, Lily said that she’d never met her mother, and her father was gone a lot. She told Angelica that he had to “work.”
Oddly enough, the apartment was as beautiful and affluent as the surrounding neighborhood. It was obvious that the family had more than enough money to make ends meet. Moreover, the neighbors all spoke highly of Frank, the girl’s missing father.
“Oh, Frank’s a good man,” the elderly woman down the hall told Angelica. “It’s just the two of them living there, and he travels for work. I help take care of Lily when he’s gone. He’s doing the best he can, you know? Sometimes it just takes a village.”
“That’s no excuse,” Angelica replied coldly. “No child should be left alone.”
When Frank finally showed up the next day, the police were waiting to take him into custody. Of course they interrogated him, the way police do. Being that he was a lawyer, though, Frank knew just what to say to ward them off.”
When Angelica sat down with him, however, it was a different story…
She explained that Child Protective Services made their decisions independent of law enforcement. Even if the police let him go, he still wouldn’t get Lily back. She said, “If you want any chance of seeing your daughter again, then you’ll have to talk to me.”
Her ploy worked, because Frank eventually broke down and told her everything.
He said that whenever he disappeared, it was to go to a house on the other side of town… That was where he spent all his time getting high on heroin.
“I see,” Angelica said condescendingly. “So, it’s a “trap house”?”
“No, it’s not like that!” Frank insisted. “The woman who runs the place has rules… If you don’t follow them, you can’t go there.”
“So? Who cares? Why wouldn’t you just go somewhere else?”
Frank looked appalled. “Somewhere else? You don’t understand… The guys who go there aren’t crackheads. They’re like me… Doctors. Lawyers. Some of them are even in politics. You wouldn’t see any of them buying dope in any alleyways, put it that way.”
“Oh, I get it. It’s an upscale trap house.”
“Look, it’s the best for what it is… a safe place. Kids aren’t allowed to go there and we know the drugs are clean. “Mother” makes sure we all stay responsible… She says if we don’t keep our jobs or do what we’re supposed to do in our regular lives, then she’ll cut us off… and she will, too! She’s done it before. Nobody ever questions Mother.”
“…Mother? As in your mother?” Angelica asked bitingly.
“No, no,” Frank replied. “That’s just what everyone calls her…”
The more he talked, the more Angelica realized that Frank really believed in “Mother”. He insisted that she was the only reason his addiction hadn’t devolved into something far worse. He repeatedly called her an angel, and even claimed that she’d saved his life… and Lily’s.
“She told me something once that really stuck with me,” he explained. “She said that if we don’t raise our children, then our demons will do it for us. She gives us a place to let those demons out in a controlled environment… almost like therapy.”
Angelica was dumbstruck. The memory of what her father said the last time she saw him suddenly came rushing into her mind. It sent her careening into an emotional whirlpool of vengeance-fueled bitterness.
Suddenly, the world became one big “nail”.
-Dastem
After that, Angelica did everything she could to locate the house Frank told her about. She wanted to make sure that “Mother” faced the justice she so righteously deserved. In her eyes, it was Mother who was responsible for all the pain she felt in her own life.
She even lied in her findings report by claiming that there might be children living in the house. It was enough to ensure that she was the one assigned to accompany the police when they finally went to raid it…
Angelica stayed outside while the police stormed the house. With speed and surprise on their side, they were all anticipating a smooth apprehension of the woman they’d all come to know as “Mother”.
Unfortunately, Frank wasn’t the only person with deep loyalty to her. In fact, every person in the house refused to step aside when the police entered. They were all determined to protect Mother. One patron went so far as to pull a gun! He was standing right outside the bedroom where Mother was hiding…
Angelica listened in horror as a short-lived barrage of gunfire rang out. When the police started trickling out the front door a few minutes later, she ran to find out what happened.
“She didn’t make it,” one of them said. “Bullet went through the door… got her in the chest. Mother’s dead.”
Now, I’ll tell you this, friends, and I hope you’ll take it to heart:
Sometimes fate is cruel and sometimes it’s sweet. Most often, however, it’s both. Wrapped together in a single package, it leaves each of us spending our lives peeling it apart, searching for meaning amid the tiny slivers of whatever truths we can find. All the while, we struggle to see the bigger picture…
For Angelica, that bigger picture was just as tattered, faded and worn as the one in her book. It was created by a lifetime of facing demons. But, whose?
When the police brought the body bag out and Angelica asked to see her, the sound of the zipper told the truth–
The “Mother” everyone was talking about was her mother.
The people in the house were arrested, of course. Frank went to prison as well. They were probably the most fortunate of the house’s patrons, though.
The ones who weren’t there that day were left to their own devices… Without Mother there to regulate them, each of them descended in a hell of their own creation.
Some of their falls took place in the public eye. Some were far quieter. A few went by way of suicide. Yet, make no mistake, all of them danced with the devil.
For Angelica’s part, she just went home. It had been so long since she’d last opened her book–
She took it down from the shelf and glanced at the title: A Wrinkle in Time, by Medleine L’Engle. It easily fell open to page 87… right where her mother’s picture had lived for so long.
Angelica took it out and held it up as tears started gathering in her eyes. Just before she lost her composure, she noticed something she’d never seen before; a faint underline beneath one of the passages in the book… It looked like it had been made with a dull pencil.
The words it underscored were these:
“If you aren’t unhappy sometimes you don’t know how to be happy.”
Now, if this story seems tragic, it’s because it is. Tragedy is what the world is made of. Yet, where there’s darkness, you’ll always find a glimmer of light. Where there are lies, there is always a kernel of truth.
In the end, Angelica ended up adopting Lily. In doing so, she dedicated her new purpose to healing scars rather than creating them. Though she never knew what a proper mother would do or say, nor did Lily know what a proper daughter should hear. So, by a twist of fate, they both made the perfect shields with which to fight their demons with.
So I ask you, which is which?
Was Angelica’s mother a slave to her demons? Or did she save her daughter from being raised by them? What’s the moral of the story to you?
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