Chapter IX – Anthony’s Second Step-Father, Eddie

When Anthony was eleven, Timmy and I got divorced.  Honestly I can’t remember how this affected Anthony.  I do know Timmy had been a part of Anthony’s life for the past six years and this was the only father he’d ever known.  I was also thankful the boys would no longer have to see Timmy and me fighting and hoped they wouldn’t think this was normal when they got married.

While Timmy and I were separated waiting on our divorce to finalize, I started dating this man named Eddie.  Anthony and Eddie never really cared much for each other but they tolerated each other the best they could. 

Not long after my divorce to Timmy was final Eddie asked me to marry him.  I thought his proposal was rather classy because he did it in the presence of all three boys because he wanted their approval. They all three were happy for us.

On July 15, 2000, Eddie and I got married at his mother’s house in Collinsville, MS.  I was very nervous about this marriage but I went through with it anyway.  Since this was my second marriage and Anthony was twelve, I asked Anthony to give me away and he proudly agreed. Kevin, age six, was the ring bearer.  Brett, age four, escorted Sara Beth, age one, the flower girl.  Sara Beth was Eddie’s niece and she was so precious.

When Eddie and I first got married we lived in a cabin in Ridgeland, MS. This was a very special cabin because it was haunted. I know some of you are thinking yeah right, but seriously it was.

Before Eddie and I got married Eddie lived in a small community where there was nothing but cabins. He lived in a one bedroom cabin which was too small for all five of us to live in. There was only one cabin in that community that had more than one room and we were both wishing we could have that cabin but someone was living in it.  Eddie told the landlord, Cindy, if it ever became available to please let us know because we wanted it.

About a week before we moved in together Cindy called Eddie and told him the cabin was available but there was one problem, the man that lived in there had shot and killed himself in the cabin.  Eddie asked me if that would bother me and I told him no, so a week later we moved in.

The guy that shot himself was named Will, so we named our ghost Will assuming it was him. The story was at 1:00 a.m. Will came home from his girlfriend’s house where they’d been fighting, his roommate was sitting at the bar eating a bowl of cereal, Will put a gun to his head, pulled the trigger and died.

The following is the layout of the cabin so you will better understand the story. When you entered the cabin you walked in the kitchen, the living room was to your right, a bedroom was behind the kitchen, and a bathroom was off to the right of the bedroom.  If you walked through the kitchen to your left was a laundry room the length of the cabin and off of the laundry room was a master bedroom with a bathroom.

After hearing the story about what happened in that cabin a lot of Anthony’s friends wouldn’t spend the night with us.  We never told the younger boys what happened because we didn’t want them to be afraid to stay in the cabin and Anthony promised us he wouldn’t tell them either and to the best of my knowledge he never did. 

A lot of strange unexplained things happened in the cabin.  The first night we were there I left our bedroom door open and the kitchen door open so I could hear if the boys got up during the night.  Kevin was seven and Brett was five so they were still young and I still got up with them if they got sick or needed something to drink during the night. 

At exactly 3:00 a.m. I was awaken to what sounded like someone in the kitchen had taken their arm and raked everything off the counter into the floor.  I jumped out of bed and went into the kitchen to make sure one of the boys hadn’t fallen trying to get in the cabinet to get a drink.  To my surprise when I walked in the kitchen everything was still on the counters and nothing had been moved.  Not only that but both boys were sound asleep, talk about eerie.  That morning when we got up I told Eddie what happened, he just laughed at me and told me I was imagining things.

The next morning at exactly 3:00 a.m., I heard the same sound but this time I pulled the covers over my head and went back to sleep. 

A couple of nights later Anthony spent the night with us and the next morning he told me at 3:00 a.m. he heard everything falling off the kitchen counters and when he got up to see what happened nothing was moved.  I just looked at him and told him I’d heard the same thing two nights in a row and Eddie told me I was imagining things.  Anthony was a little scared after that but he’d still spend the night with us.

One night Wyatt came over to spend the night and he swore he’d never come back.  After the boys had gone to sleep the fish tank light would turn on and off and the T.V. would turn on and off as well.  This scared the living daylights out of Wyatt and that was the first and last time he ever stayed with us in the cabin.  These are just a few of the things that happened while we were living there. Just for the record, Will was a good ghost he never harmed any of us.

My favorite part about living in this cabin was Anthony and I would get in the street and throw a football back and forth to each other for long periods at a time. We had more fun throwing that football and this quality time meant the world to me. Looking back, I am so glad I did that because I wouldn’t trade those times for anything on this earth.

While living in the cabin we owned two ferrets along with other animals. One of the funniest things that ever happened in the cabin was the ferrets finding my new toy, let me explain. Eddie had gone on a business trip to New York a few months prior to this incident and had asked a couple that he was with what would be a good souvenir to bring back for me. Believe it or not they told him a vibrator of all things.  Well, I never used the vibrator but stuck it in the bottom drawer of my dresser. 

One day I heard this noise coming from my dresser drawer so I opened the drawer and saw the funniest thing.  One of the ferrets had managed to turn on the vibrator and they were both lying up against it sleeping.  I laughed so hard I cried then I had to show Eddie what they had done.  At least something was enjoying his present to me.

One night not long after that Eddie and I had gone out for the evening and when we came home Anthony met us at the door.  He was grinning from ear to ear and said, “Mom, the ferrets found your toy.  I heard this vibrating noise coming from your room” Eddie and I just looked at each other and started chuckling because we knew what was coming next, “and I opened the bottom drawer of your dresser and the ferrets had turned on your vibrator and they were lying against it.”  Eddie and I both burst out laughing.

We didn’t live in the cabin long because my parents were trying to sell their house in Castlewoods, the one Anthony grew up in, and we decided to buy it.  In the mean time we had to wait on the lady that was living in the house to move out so we rented an apartment temporarily.

Shortly after we moved in the apartment Anthony stole Eddie’s car.  Although Anthony was now twelve years old he was still a problem child. Eddie had an old Toyota Corolla that sat in the parking lot because it didn’t have tags on it nor was it insured.  Anthony really loved this car and wanted it very bad but he was way too young to drive it. 

That summer Kevin and Brett had a young thirteen year old girl babysitting them, right up Anthony’s alley.  She was a very cute girl and his age, t-r-o-u-b-l-e. One day I called the house and Kevin answered the phone.  I asked him how they were doing and he told me Anthony and the babysitter had walked to the store to get some ice cream.  I blew up because Kevin was six and Brett was four and they had no business being left alone in the house.  If they were old enough to stay alone I wouldn’t have needed a babysitter. 

Since I was at work I called mother and asked her to go check on the boys because they were alone so she did.  When she arrived at our apartment she called me to let me know Eddie’s car was gone.  I knew immediately Anthony had taken the babysitter and the car and I was furious.  I reluctantly told Eddie what had happened and I picked up the phone and called the police.  I explained to the officer Anthony had stolen my husband’s car, he was twelve years old, had no driver’s license, the car had expired tags, and there was no insurance on the car.  Do you believe the officer told me there was nothing he could do because it was a family matter?  I then hung up the phone and called seven more police stations in the area and they all told me the same thing. 

I had finally had enough so the last officer I spoke with I explained to him if my son were to have a wreck we would lose everything we owned and I would sue the police department in return for not taking care of this matter.  That got his attention. The next thing I knew mother was calling me and telling me there are eight police cars in front of our apartment and one of them was a K-9 unit.  Well it was about time!!!

Mother said when the police officers went in the house, three girls jumped out of my bedroom window.  I guess Anthony and the babysitter had gone joy riding, picked up some friends and brought them back to the house.

I told Eddie what was going on and I was going home to take care of things. He told me I was to stay at work (oh I forgot to mention Eddie was my boss and he was the co-owner of several Subway restaurants in Mississippi). He left and left me there.  I sat there for a few minutes and I thought to myself, “If he fires me he fires me but I am going home.”  I then left work and went home.

When I arrived home a police officer had Anthony and the babysitter outside our apartment door with their backs up against the wall and they were in handcuffs.  I looked at Anthony and he looked at me and I told him how ashamed I was of him.  I then looked at the babysitter and told her she should’ve known better than to leave two children that young alone for any time and she was to never keep my children again.

The officer then told the two of them to sit on the stairs outside that lead up to the next floor so they did.  When they were sitting there I started talking to Anthony and I said, “You know I am the reason you are in handcuffs right now?  I called the police on you.”  He said, “I know”.  I said, “You know I love you right but what you did was illegal and you can’t do things like that.”  He said, “I know.” I then walked in my house to find about four other officers wandering through my house looking for drugs.  They explained to me the reason they did that was because Brett had a pacifier in his mouth that the babysitter had given him. He then explained that teenagers who had pacifiers usually put some type of drug on them and then sucked the drug off of the pacifier.  I told the officer I didn’t think she was doing drugs but I appreciated them looking out for my children.  Little did I know but this was just the beginning of many more encounters with the police.

Anthony spent the weekend in jail because I refused to bail him out since I was the one that put him there in the first place.  One of the things I always told my boys when they were growing up was, “If you go to jail for something you did wrong, don’t waste your one phone call on me because I will not bail you out.” My father wouldn’t speak to me the entire weekend because he didn’t support what I’d done and my sister had very little to do with Anthony once he got out of jail. I love my father dearly and it hurt my feelings that he wouldn’t speak to me.  Not only would he not speak to me but he wouldn’t get off of the bed either because he was very depressed his grandson was in jail. 

That weekend I took the boys to see their brother in jail because I was hoping this would teach the younger boys they didn’t want to be there.  We walked in this very small room with a glass window in it and a phone that we picked up to talk to Anthony.  When we entered the room the door locked behind us and we couldn’t get out.  That was rather scary because I am Claustrophobic and knowing I was in a small room with two children and I was locked in didn’t feel very good. I would’ve never made it in jail.

When Anthony walked in his room he was wearing an orange jumpsuit and it just broke my heart.  I hated seeing him like that and I didn’t want his brothers seeing him that way either but I was hoping this would make them realize they never wanted to be there. 

Anthony spent the weekend in jail and then they let him out on probation.  I was the one being punished because he wasn’t allowed out of the yard and if he did go somewhere I had to go with him. What a bummer.

When we lived in the cabin we had two ball pythons named Adrian and Rocky. Since we were living in an apartment we weren’t allowed to have our snakes so mother kept them at her house.  Rocky would get gas all the time and you’d have to put him in a bath tub with water in it to help him pass the gas.  One night we were at my parent’s house and I noticed Rocky’s stomach was big so I put him in mother’s bird bath outside to help release the gas but he never did.  The next morning Anthony called me and told me Rocky wasn’t a boy snake and I asked him how he knew and he told me because Rocky had laid nine eggs.  I was so excited to have baby snakes and that very day I sold all nine.  I was selling them for $100.00 each so once they hatched I’d have $900.00 for doing absolutely nothing.  

A couple of days later Mother called me and told me my snake eggs were black and she thought they’d been burned but couldn’t figure out how.  When I got to her house sure enough the eggs were black and were no longer alive.  When I started looking around I noticed the heating pad had been turned up to three but it was supposed to be left on one.  This is what caused the eggs to burn.  I later learned Anthony had turned the heating pad up in order to keep the snake eggs warm.  Bless his heart he was trying to do the right thing but in the long run cost me $900.00, oh well.

Anthony failed the seventh grade that year and had to go to summer school.  Because he wouldn’t behave in class mother would have to go to school with him and sit in class. How embarrassing that must have been for him being in the seventh grade and having his grandmother in class with him. He didn’t pass summer school either so he remained in the seventh grade another year.

When school started back, sometime during that year, they had a school dance which Anthony invited me to. I was very flattered he asked me to go with him to his dance but explained to him you didn’t take your parents to those types of things plus I didn’t know how to dance.  He begged and begged me to go plus he told me his friends wanted me to come and they would teach me how to dance. I finally gave in and went to the dance only to sit on the side and watch them all have a good time.  Whenever they weren’t dancing they would hang out with me.  At one point they were playing the song “I Wanna Talk About Me” by Toby Keith and to this day every time I hear that song I have the memory of going to the dance with Anthony. I was very flattered his friends and he wanted me to come to their school dance.  Looking back, that was a very fun memory I have with him.

The time had come for us to move into our house but before we did Eddie wanted to paint the house.  Since Anthony was going to move back in with us Eddie let him pick out the colors he wanted his room to be.  He chose florescent green walls and pulled up the carpet in his room so he had concrete floors. He ended up painting the floors brown. Yeah, bad visual huh but he was so proud of that room because he got to decorate it himself.

Over the years Anthony made a lot of friends and one of them was named Justin but Antony called him JP. Not long after we moved in the house Anthony and JP had an old western picture made of the two of them together behind bars.  I used to tease him a lot about that picture and tell him that one day that picture would come true.  Little did I know it really would come true as you will read later on in the story.

Once we got settled in our new/old home Anthony started bring his friends to the house to hang out. There was a group of five of them that hung out all the time. If you saw one of them you saw them all. There was one girl in the group Carrie and the others were boys Wyatt, Shocoby, Chris and Anthony. They were a great group of kids and I loved them all. 

Chris had two younger brothers that were twins named Landon and Brandon and one of Anthony’s favorite things to do was bring the twins, one at a time, into my room and ask me which one of the boys it was.  I would get the name right then he would go out of the room and either bring in the other twin or the same twin and ask me which one that was.  I would always get the name right and he could never understand that.  It just blew his mind that I could tell them apart and a lot of times their mother, Cathy, couldn’t. 

Carrie (white) and Shocoby (black) were dating each other and Carrie’s mother, Sissy, disapproved of this very much.  The only way they could see each other was if they hung out with Anthony at our house.  Since they hung out at our house all the time I’d see how Shocoby would treat Carrie.  He respected her a lot and treated her like a lady even though they were still very young.  Sissy didn’t know this because she refused to allow Carrie to see Shocoby.  I tried to explain to her how they felt about each other but she wouldn’t listen to me, she was hung up on the black/white thing.

One day Sissy told me she was having some problems with Carrie and she didn’t know what to do with her and she was very ashamed of how she was acting.  I didn’t notice Carrie was doing anything wrong but Sissy apologized to me for Carrie’s behavior.  I told her not to worry about it and to make her feel better I told her about Anthony taking Eddie’s car. Sissy told me she wasn’t sure at the time who did it but now she was pretty sure it was Anthony, but recently someone had stolen her cigarettes from her purse. I told her I hoped it wasn’t Anthony but I would talk to him about it.  Anthony told me it was Chris but he’d take the blame to keep Chris from getting in trouble because Sissy thought the world of Chris.

The next day Anthony came home very upset because Sissy would no longer allow Carrie to hang out with him because he stole her cigarettes.  I thought that was going a little overboard but I respected her decision. This broke Anthony’s heart needless to say. The thing that impressed me the most was he was willing to lose his friendship with Carrie in order to save the relationship Chris had with Sissy.  My son was a good person and it was times like this you would forget about all the bad things he’d done and be proud of who he was.

One night Eddie, Anthony and I were at home and Kevin and Brett had gone to the church behind us.  The phone rang and Anthony answered it, then he said, “This is Eddie”.  Eddie and I both looked at him because we knew that wasn’t true.  Then he said, “Hold on just a minute you need to talk to Eddie” and he handed the phone to Eddie.  Eddie got on the phone and said, “We will be there in a minute.”  He hung up the phone and told me Kevin and Brett had stolen a lady’s wallet at church and we needed to go to the church to talk to them.  He also said the officer said we needed to bring Anthony for pretending to be someone he wasn’t because that was illegal.

I thought, “Great here we go again!!!” The three of us walked to the church to find my two younger boys in handcuffs. This was very scary because they were seven and five.  The police officer explained a lady had left her purse in the pew and the boys found it there so they, along with another boy decided to take the purse.  Kevin and Brett were saying the other little boy made them do it and he disagreed with them. 

The officer then looked at Anthony and told him he should place him under arrest as well because he said he was Eddie on the phone which is illegal to do.  Anthony told the officer he thought he was a solicitor and he didn’t want to bother Eddie with the call so he pretended he was Eddie.  Thank goodness the officer let him off with a warning and told him to never do that again.