Page 15 of I'm Not Yours
“Where is it?”
He clasped his hands together, his gaze not wavering. “Allie, I knew you were in Portland when I applied for the job here, then moved from New York. It was why I wanted to be here. I wanted to see you again. I was going to call you, but I’ve only been here a few weeks, and I wanted to move into my house and get settled before I did. I wanted to show you what kind of life I had, but honestly, I didn’t know that you were here in Schollton.”
“How could you? My dad only recently died. The property is in his name. He only bought it five years ago.” And why was it an issue?
“I didn’t research the property owners around me before I bought my land, I promise you that.”
“Of course you didn’t. Who does that? But what are you talking about?” My hands started to get cold.
“I looked around for quite a while, but then when I saw what it looked like out here, when I found the house, it was perfect, and I bought it.”
“Jace, where is your place?” My knees started to shake. “Look out those windows.”
I looked out my front windows.
“Do you see that house on the hill?”
I nodded. The Craftsman-style home with the decks. Gorgeous architecture.
“That’s mine.”
5
I stared at the urn, filled with my dad, functioning as a doorstop.
That probably wasn’t a respectful way to use my dad, but I needed to prop the door open in the second bedroom, and the urn was doing the job. In essence, then, my dad was currently opening a door. He had opened so few for me over the course of my life, so perhaps it was fitting that he do so now.
Anger and bitterness started creeping on in, so I put my hands on my legs and stood up—gingerly. My legs were still a bruised mess.
I took Bob and Margaret outside for a walk. Bob took off after a dastardly squirrel and Margaret followed, tongue wagging.
Spot the Cat and Marvin walked along the fence line together. They were friends. I would have to find them good homes. I would have to stop getting attached to all of them. That was hard when Bob and Margaret slept with me on the bed and both cats meowed at me as if we were friends having a normal conversation. When I meowed back, I knew I was losing it.
And what about Mr. Jezebel Rooster?
I took a deep breath. My dad’s animals sure were cute, even if he sure wasn’t.
My father had never liked animals. I had seen him kick two dogs. Yet these animals were obviously well cared for and personable. I didn’t get it.
I headed into the apple orchard and wandered among the trees. I wondered which tree it was that my dad had leaned against as he’d had his heart attack. I wondered how he’d felt. Was it instant? Did it take awhile to die? What did he think, staring up into those apple trees? Did he have regrets?
When I was a girl I used to steal apples out of an orchard near our trailer because there was often no food at home. I’d take some for dinner, for snacks, and to pack in my lunch bag. I brought two apples to school so my lunch bag would look as full as the other kids’ sacks. They would take out their sandwiches wrapped in plastic bags, fruit, two types of chips, cookies. Clearly their parents had lovingly packed their lunches.
I would take out two slices of bread with a thin layer of peanut butterorjelly—rarely did we have both at the same time—two apples, and crackers, if we had them. I looked forward to class holiday parties like other kids looked forward to Christmas, because of the cookies and cupcakes.
I knew there were free lunches at school for poor kids, but that would have required my dad to fill out paperwork, and he had refused to do it, yelling, “I am not going to take charity, you stupid girl. We don’t need it—now shut up!”
I was often hungry, but I didn’t want the other kids to know we were poor, either. He had rammed it into me that I was part of the problem of him not having money. He had rammed it into me that I was a burden, difficult, stupid, unwanted, and part of the conspiracy my mother had waged against him.
My dad always laughed at how many apples I could eat, but his laughter ridiculed me. I didn’t find it funny. Being hungry is never funny. He told me my face looked like the core of an apple.Hello, apple-core face. I never forgot that. He also said to me,Your brain is about the size of apple seeds.
I often went to sleep by myself in our trailer. My dad always said he wasGoing out for a short while, be back before a bullet could pierce that there tree. That meant he was going out drinking. He did that all the time. Money for beer, no money for food. The dark outside scared me, and I was usually freezing cold and hungry. I would grab my two blankets and settle in on the skinny bench in our trailer that served as my bed.
The outside noises—the rustling of an animal under our trailer, probably a raccoon, terrified me. Sometimes I’d hear people yelling at each other in other trailers. Cars backfired. People came in and out at odd hours. I always pulled the brown-haired doll with the yellow dress my mother made me close to my chest and went to sleep.
I moved back in with him when I was eleven, after my mom died, and he forgot my twelfth birthday. When I got home from school he was passed out on his bed, black hair back, scars prominent. I asked him where he got the scars one time and he shook me hard and told me never to ask again.
I made a “cake” for myself by slicing up apples in the orchard and piling them together on a paper plate like a layer cake. I sang myself “Happy Birthday,” thought of my mother, and cried the whole way through eating my cake. I was so lonely I couldn’t keep the apples down that day.
