When my mother was young her parents changed hometowns like some people change shoes. By the time she was fifteen she’d moved at least a dozen times. When she grew up and had her own kids she repeated the pattern, packing us up and finding new places to live whenever things got too sticky. Then it was my turn. In the eight years after I had my children, we lived in twelve different homes in three different cities. Some people are stayers, planting deep roots. Some people are runners, always escaping something. I was a runner. When things went bad, I ran. But you can only run so far and so fast before you finally catch up with yourself.
Much of the time, I was running away from men. I was fleeing nightmares dressed up as fairy tales. But if I am truly honest about why I wound up in so many failed relationships, I can’t just blame the men. My relationships fell apart for different reasons, sometimes by my choice and sometimes not, but there was one thing that stayed the same, one obvious constant – me. I was someone who could not be alone – a creature who turned to men to escape her demons.
And, of course, I was missing the one relationship that could have spared me all of this torment. I had not yet realized the most important partner anyone can have is God.
Don’t get me wrong – I’m not saying there was a huge conga line of men in my past. There really wasn’t. I liked being in relationships, so I usually stayed in them for a long time – usually too long. The sad truth is I was introduced to men when I was just three years old, and that affected all the relationships that followed. I’m not going to tell you about all of them, because there’s no point in doing that, really. I just want you to know how I got from where I was to where I ended up – at the scene of a crash on a winter’s day, looking for my son.
After my divorce from Will, I got a job in the country-western bar. It was just like any other honky-tonk, a place where couples did two-steps and line dances and downed a lot of cheap beer. It was there I met a man named Nick. He was a little older than me, and rugged and charming – and he was also about to ship out for three months of training. When he asked me for my number I saw no harm in giving it to him, since I figured he wouldn’t be around.
While he was away we spent hours talking on the phone and sending each other long emails. And when he came back, he was kind and attentive and constantly saying how beautiful I was. One night, he told me he loved me and that he’d never felt this kind of love for anyone before. By then, I was in love, too, in the only way I knew how to be – head over heels.
So when I learned the truth about Nick – that he was married, with two small children – it was too late. He swore to me that his marriage was over, that he’d soon be divorced, that he wanted to spend the rest of his life with me, and I allowed myself to believe him. I’d learn soon enough Nick told many other women he loved them like no one else. My poor heart was starting to feel like a piñata.
Even worse, I was now an adulterer.
Something clicked for me after that. I vowed I would never, ever let another man break my heart. After Nick, I let go of that reckless, blinding yearning for passion and romance and gigantic love. I built a wall around myself, and for years I never let anyone in.
Unfortunately, I didn’t stop dating altogether. For a while I moved to Charleston to be with one man, then moved to Delaware when that didn’t pan out too well. There were a couple of airmen – fly-boys, we called them – who were appealing to me, because they were set to deploy and thus would be out of my life before they could do any damage.
One of them, it hurts me to say, was also married, something that should have stopped me but didn’t. It wasn’t that I was an uncaring person; it’s that emotionally I had all but bottomed out. I didn’t stop and think about how my actions were causing someone else pain. And anyway, I told myself, it wasn’t me cheating. That was his problem, not mine. The truth is, my relationship with him was easy for me: no feelings, no commitment and no broken heart. Today, it kills me to think of the wives and the children of cheating men. I’m sure I’ve contributed in some way to a family falling apart, and that fills me with immeasurable sadness. I should have had so much more respect for other people – and so much more respect for myself.
But back then, I was juggling my life the best way I knew how. I went to school all day, spent a few hours with my babies before putting them to sleep at my mom’s house, then went to the bar and slung beers all night. I was exhausted, but, for the most part, I was happy. I had friends, I was saving money and I was working toward my goal. My dream of finishing school and creating a better life for my kids was in sight. We were finally going to have the normal and wonderful life I’d always wanted, and no man was going to get in the way of that.
Then came Steven and the day he pulled up on his motorcycle.
What if Sabyre hadn’t needed to go to the bathroom that very moment? What if I’d pulled JP inside along with us? What if I hadn’t dated Steven in the first place? What if the world had spun slightly differently that day?
When I came out and saw JP was gone, I also noticed Steven’s helmet sitting on the driveway. He hadn’t even bothered to put his helmet back on, and I knew JP didn’t have one either. I stormed back inside seething with anger, waited a few minutes, then got in my car and drove to my mom’s house nearby. I figured Steven might have taken JP there, but he hadn’t. I drove back home and tried to busy myself with work, but when I looked at the clock I noticed JP had been gone half an hour. All at once, I felt that sickening heaviness in my stomach, and an urgent thought popped in my head: Get your shoes on.
Just seconds later, I heard the sirens.
The police had blocked off a street called Libra Street, and I remember thinking, Oh, that’s my sign. Libra is the one with the scales of justice – the goddess of balance. Ironic, since my life was all about extremes. I pushed through the ring of spectators and saw the fireman sitting on the curb, his body slumped, his head in his hands. Then I saw those tiny black sneakers, the ones with the Velcro straps. JP was in kindergarten and hadn’t quite learned to tie his shoe laces yet, so I got him shoes with straps. I don’t know why he was having so much trouble learning how to tie laces; he just was. And now those sneakers were in the street, the Velcro straps still fastened.
I started running toward the sneakers, and two cops came forward and stopped me. ‘That’s my son!’ I screamed at them. ‘Where is he? Is he okay?’ One officer put his hand on my shoulder and tried to calm me down; the other one knelt and zipped up Sabyre’s winter coat.
‘An ambulance just took your son away,’ the officer said.
He didn’t say whether JP was alive or dead, or seriously injured, or anything – just that he wasn’t there. Behind him I saw a delivery truck and a motorcycle on its side. I had another thought, clear as day:
This is it. This is your punishment.
It took me many months to find out exactly what happened, and only then because I met someone who lived on Libra Street and saw the crash.
Steven and JP were cruising on the motorcycle; no one can be sure how fast. My little boy was sitting in front of Steven, not behind him. Up ahead at the intersection, a pizza delivery truck was approaching from the right. There was a yield sign there, and the truck’s driver should have yielded but didn’t. He was only a teenager himself. The truck blew past the yield sign, and Steven saw it coming into his path. According to police, Steven tried to swerve to the right, but it was too late. He hit the delivery truck head on.
The first people on the scene saw Steven sprawled on the street, bleeding and unconscious. But there was no sign of JP at all. For a long time, they believed Steven was the only victim.
Then one of the responders crouched down to tend to Steven and happened to glance under the pizza truck. What he saw made him gasp and stagger to his feet.
‘Oh, my God, there’s a child under there!’ he yelled.
JP had been thrown under the truck. He was thrown at such a speed that his little head wedged inside the front fender well, and he dangled there, his legs and arms limp like a rag doll. The firemen arrived, and one of them crawled beneath the truck and sawed through the fender well to free him. That was the fireman I saw on the curb. The sight of my son’s skinny little body pinned and twisted inside the metal was just too much for him. He sat and cried for a boy he knew was somebody’s heart and soul.
Once I learned JP wasn’t there anymore, I grabbed Sabyre and drove like crazy to my mom’s house to pick her up. Then I sped the half mile to the hospital, blasting the horn. My mother pounded the dashboard in agony. I burst through the doors of the ER and searched frantically for JP. A nurse corralled me and asked me to fill out paperwork, but I just kept screaming and banging on a door, trying to get to my son.
‘He’s just a baby!’ I found myself yelling. ‘He’s just a baby.’
A nurse finally took me to the room where they had JP. I saw my son lying in a bed, crying, and I realized he was alive. His face was badly scratched and swollen, so swollen I could hardly recognize him. His tiny, delicate lips were mangled and streaked with blood. His right arm was broken and in a sling, and his left knee was sliced open and battered. Bits of asphalt and gravel were stuck on his face and in his hair.
I went to JP and put my hand gently on him and said, ‘I love you. I’m so sorry.’ I said this at least twenty times while I picked the gravel out of his hair. He was in too much pain to say or do much besides whimper; he just lay there, busted and broken, slipping in and out of consciousness. It was one of the most helpless feelings I’ve ever had in my life.
At some point, a doctor came over and told me JP was, in his words, ‘fine’. I took that to mean he was going to survive, because he sure as heck wasn’t fine. Then the doctor explained Steven’s injuries were more severe, and he might not make it. I hadn’t paid much attention to Steven, who was in his own bed a few feet away. He needed brain surgery, and they were going to rush him to another hospital for an emergency operation. I wanted to be mad at Steven – I wanted to scream in his face, ‘How could you?!’ – but I couldn’t be angry until I knew he would survive.
And then, once I knew he’d live, I could say, ‘I’m gonna kill you.’
Steven underwent emergency brain surgery and pulled through. In the end he sustained some brain damage but recovered more or less fully. The doctors told me JP had suffered a closed-head injury, meaning he got knocked around pretty good but there was no gash or opening. The worst, it seemed, hadn’t happened. JP was a mess and in a great deal of pain, but he was alive. He would live, and he would be okay.
On that day and in the days that followed, I talked a lot to God. You might think I cursed Him, but I didn’t. I knew in my heart the crash had been my fault. I’d made so many bad decisions in my life, and now one of those bad decisions had nearly killed my son. This was not God’s fault. I believed deep down this was a consequence of the life I was leading. I’d committed many sins, and now it was time for the price to be paid.
And so I didn’t curse God like I did when my grandmother died. I hoped, though He couldn’t possibly love me, that He would still love my innocent children. So I began praying again, this time begging God to heal my son.
A couple of days after the crash, I called JP’s father to let him know what had happened. I’d had very little contact with him, besides constantly fighting to get him to include JP on his insurance, which he was legally bound to do but kept putting off. Still, I felt JP should speak with his father, and I got them together on the phone. I stood beside JP’s bed and could hear his father’s voice through the receiver, but all JP kept saying was ‘Hello? Hello?’ Then JP dropped the phone and looked at me and said, ‘No one is there.’
My heart sank like a brick. He couldn’t hear out of his right ear. My boy wasn’t ‘fine’ after all. The punishment was just beginning.