Storms 01 - Family Storms

about it. Mama was pretty again, and I had new clothes and friends. We had at least as good an apartment as we had had with Daddy. Because Mama worked, I would start dinner for us before she came home. She would be so proud of me, and we’d laugh and tell each other about all the things that happened to both of us during the day. I’d have very good grades to show her, and then I would go off and do my homework. She would still do calligraphy, but now only for her own enjoyment. Because she was happier when she was doing it, she would do more elaborate pictures, and before long, she would be selling them to art galleries, not arts-and-crafts stores or bars. We’d have more money than ever, and Mama would start talking about buying a car.
    “We’ll go on trips every weekend, see beautiful things, and stop at nice restaurants along the way,” she would say. “I told you. We can get along without him, and we can keep the struggle from doing us any more harm, because we’re together, partners, mother and daughter, more like sisters, good friends.”
    She would hug me and hold me, and I would inhale the sweet scent of her perfume and hair, which was long and soft again. Men would be very interested in her, of course,but this time, she would be far more careful and go out only with responsible ones. Someday someone like that would propose to her, and our lives would improve tenfold. We’d live in a house, not an apartment, and Mama would not have to work anymore. This wonderful, well-to-do man would love me and be a real father to me. He’d come to parents’ nights and do homework with me and want to show me things and take me places, just as any other girl’s father would want to do with his daughter.
    It occurred to me that most other girls would think my dreams were too simple, too ordinary. They would be dreaming of being popular singers or movie and television stars. They’d want big houses and expensive cars, even boats. They’d dream of jewelry and fashionable dresses and shoes, love affairs, and romantic adventures.
    “Even your dreams are poor, pathetic,” they might say, and not want to be my friends.
    I’d have to be very careful about telling anyone about my fantasies. I’d have to pretend I wanted exactly the same things they did. In fact, I’d have to keep many things secret, especially our struggle. What I would certainly have to do is come up with a story. In my dream, when I explained this to Mama, she nodded, understanding my problem, and said, “It’s best you tell them that your father was killed in a car accident. That way, they’ll feel sorry for you and not mock you.”
    Exactly,
I thought. Daddy was dead to me, anyway. It was almost not a lie.
    I dreamed so hard I began to believe it was real. For a while, I was happy, and I felt no pain or discomfort, andthen someone in another bed screamed with her own pain, and I was ripped out of my fantasy and dropped right back into this gray ward, with other patients who I found out were also uninsured homeless or deserted people. One lady told another we were all in the “human Dumpster.”
    How long would they leave me in there? I wondered. Would I have to be there until my leg healed? And then where would they send me? What was being done with Mama? Would I ever see her, or would she simply be taken away and buried somewhere without anyone present? She used to say she would end up in Potter’s Field, a burying place for strangers, for people with no means.
    “Where is Potter’s Field?” I had asked her.
    “There’s one everywhere.” She had looked at me, considering whether to tell me any more. I was thirteen by then and not attending school. Whenever she was sober enough, she always expressed regret about my not being in school and often tried to teach me things.
    “It comes from the Bible,” she’d continued. “My father was a Bible thumper. He would read aloud from it almost every night he was home. You know who Judas was, right?”
    “Yes, he sold out Jesus for thirty pieces of silver.”
    “Good. Well, he regretted it afterward and went back to the high priests who had paid him. He threw the money on the floor. Afterward, he hung himself. The priests decided the money was tainted with blood and used it to create Potter’s Field, where strangers and the poor were to be buried. They called it Potter’s Field because it was located in a place where they mined clay for pots. As your fatherwould stupidly say, that