2. Delia
Two
Delia
O ur van, which isn’t some fancy new camper van that seems to be all the rage these days, shimmies and bounces down the cracked streets as we approach the main drag. No, our van is a 2003 EuroVan with almost two hundred thousand miles on it. We share the bed, which is lumpy and when it’s really humid out, kind of smells. There’s a tiny kitchenette and a fold-out table top. That’s it besides the two front seats. It is not glamorous at all.
The town itself isn’t so bad. It’s more or less as mom described it. Old buildings, but mostly well maintained. A few eye sores stand out, but for the most part, the shop owners seem to keep the main street looking tidy. There are only three stop lights on the whole road. The sidewalks aren’t crowded but aren’t vacant either. I stare at people as we drive through. Harried looking mothers with small children or babies, making their way in and out of shops, arms loaded with shopping bags. Some summer dirt-smeared kids running up and down the sidewalks. A couple men leaning against brick buildings, cigarettes dangling from their lips.
Forehead pressed to the passenger seat window, my favorite find appears, an older woman, wild silver hair, screaming at a kid who’s probably no older than twelve. The kid appears terrified of the silver witch with the tan skin, but honestly, I bet she’s secretly really cool. A boy, maybe my age, tall and lean with a short mop of curly brown hair exits an adjacent shop and strides right to the smaller boy. His biceps stretch the fabric of his tee shirt tightly. He’s tan and athletic looking. He pushes his hair from his eyes, flashes an irresistibly devastating smirk, the warmth in it makes my belly flip. He says something to the silver haired woman, who immediately backs off her tirade. We roll to a stop at the traffic light.
The older boy turns toward the street. Our eyes lock. His hazel eyes bore into mine. He cocks his head and grins. A grin with two perfect dimples. My cheeks flush as I immediately yank my forehead from the glass and scooch back in my seat out of view as a blush creeps up my neck.
Mom laughs as she glances at me, hunched down and out of sight. “See something you like?”
“What? No. Ew. Don’t be gross,” I say.
“There’s no shame in looking at attractive young men.”
“Mom!” I shriek. But she’s not listening to me. She’s staring out the window, presumably at the boy, and waves.
She waves at him.
I’m mentally begging the light to turn green. Which thankfully, it does.
“It’s green. Go.” I snap.
“Jeez, kiddo, you’re in a mood.” She playfully tries to swat at my arm but I yank it out of reach.
As she pulls through the intersection, I sit up in my seat again, but don’t look out the window, just in case he’s still within sight.
“I’m not in a mood. I just don’t need you flirting with teenage boys,” I gripe.
“I wouldn’t have to if you did,” she quips.
I roll my eyes. “Gross. What’s the point of flirting with anyone when we don’t stay anywhere long enough to bother with dating.”
“Hey,” she says and looks at me before directing her eyes back to the road. “You don’t need a lot of time to have a little fun.”
I would give anything to exit the van at this moment. Anything. I envision morphing into a cloud of smoke and filtering out through the seams of the van door or tossing my door open and hurling myself on to the road. But as always, I’m stuck with my mom.
“Can we just not?” I ask.
“As you wish,” she says unaffected.
“How much longer? I have to pee.”
Mom glances around a wisp of nostalgia in her eyes. “Not long enough,” she breathes out.
“Huh?”
“Nothing babe. We’ll be there shortly. ”
Sighing, I let myself zone out. I estimate that I have spent thirty-five percent of my life spacing out. I am shards and slices and pieces, made out of broken things—this is what I think about when I space out. Well, it’s a recurring theme of what I think in my checked-out mental state. I’m a bunch of broken fragments that somewhat make me whole. A little bit of water baby, mixed with a dollop of secret journal keeper and a smidge of nature enthusiast and perhaps a dab of rebel whisked with some people-pleasing tendencies.
***
I listen to music, and I watch what passes. I see animals. Snake plants on windowsills. And then we pull down a dirt driveway at a sign that reads Lands End . The house rises into view—roof first—black with green moss growing at one shady end, followed by white siding, a front porch with some peeling paint, and flowers hanging all over it. It’s all bursting with possibility. Apple tree blossoms explode with sleeves of perfect pinks and there are wild blueberry bushes everywhere.
Mom passes the house and disappointment washes over me. Of course we’re not staying there. She pulls around a bend in the road, which is really just two tire-beaten strips in the ground. The lot is covered with trees. Big, old, stately trees covered in lichen.
I don’t remember who told me, but I recall that the lichen on trees makes its own food which struck me as strange since it appeared to me that they were consuming the plants and trees they grew on.
Mom backs in just so, so that the one spotlight of sun through the trees is just outside the door.
“Welcome home kiddo,” she says and nudges my arm gently.
I suck in a deep breath and swing my door open. Home sweet home . A new place because Mom burned another bridge. Mom often did this. She falls in love. It falls apart. We pick up and leave. She catches her breath in the camper van, reminding herself to breathe, that she is still alive, that she still has me . That life is still an adventure, and we should live it to the fullest.
I grew up thinking all kids had a mom that played with them the way kids play together. I thought it was perfectly normal that we spent most of our time outdoors despite whatever weather we were having. I didn’t realize that other kids didn’t have moms who were home all day long—readily available to be at their beck and call. Even the stay-at-home mom kids didn’t have a mom like mine. Those kids weren’t in charge of comforting their parents when they cried or nudging and prodding them for dinner or lunch or ‘oh hey, today’s actually a school day mom, are you taking me?’
That was the time when I was blissfully unaware that the life I led was altogether different. Some of my best memories are from then. Giggles and joy and so much laughter. That was before I worried about my mom. Before I had to grow up and start paying attention .
I realized people only took vans on camping trips, that they didn’t live in them for more than a few days—maybe a week at a time. Although we always had a roof over our heads, we did spend weeks, sometimes, in the van before finding said roof.
People didn’t move every year. The longest we’d stayed anywhere was a school year and sometimes not even that. It took me a while to figure it out because I was happy . I didn’t mind starting a new school each year when I was little. It was an adventure. I always had the best ‘what did you do over the summer’ stories and my mom was my only daily person so there was no reference point for anything else. I had clean clothes on my back, food in my belly and a mom who splashed in mud puddles with me, took me skinny dipping, chased me around with whirlybirds stuck to our faces and danced in fields and let me stay up late to learn constellations. We were besties.
Until sixth grade.
Until Amber Maher invited me over to her house for a sleepover and her mother asked me questions, that I apparently didn’t give the correct answers to, at dinner. Until someone said the words ‘basically homeless’ in her kitchen when they thought I was out of earshot and then looked at me in a completely different way than before the rest of the night. It wasn’t until then that I woke up and began to notice the ebb and flow of the world around me, how it functioned and how different it was from my life .
Even then, it didn’t bother me at first. I never felt unloved and the various ‘friends’ my mom seemed to keep wherever we went always treated me kindly. I thought maybe we were just getting it right, the whole life thing.
***
“Whose house was that?” I ask while pulling out some gear from under the bed.
“Hmm?” Mom says.
I hand Mom our chairs and ask again.
“Oh. He’s a nice man. We’re going to settle in here and then walk over to the house. I’ll introduce you.”
“Does this nice man have a name?” Irritation bubbles inside me. Of course we moved for a guy.
It figures.
“Heath.” She says the name like a bitter pill— weird . I let it go. Mom seems put out and frazzled which is weird enough considering move-in day is usually the best day of wherever we land. The first week is when she pushes the excitement of exploring a new place and making new friends.
“That ice cream shop in town looked cute. Maybe we can go after dinner?” I suggest.
Mom shakes her head. “Not tonight.” I pout at her. “I promise you’ll forget all about ice cream in a little bit.”
I don’t understand why she thinks that. I basically have a one-track mind when it comes to desserts but again, she looks so off that I let it go and help her set up the rest of our stuff. I really hope we’re not living in the van. The spot is gorgeous and private but that also means no water hook-up and no toilet .
Which sucks. Hopefully, this is just a couple nights before she finds an apartment or house to rent.
“Do you know when school starts?” I ask.
It’s August and a lot of the schools here start before Labor Day rather than after. If I’m honest, having school to attend is often better than having nothing to do all day long in a camper van. Maybe tomorrow I can walk into town and look for a job too. Sock away some more money in my ‘oh shit’ account.
I keep most of my money there for our ‘oh shit’ moments, like a tire blowing out, or gifts or oil changes, or dances that require dresses that my mom has no savings to be able to purchase. I keep a checking account and mom keeps a checking account and the difference between the two is that my checking account is a place to put money and basically not spend it unless necessary , and mom’s checking account is a place money goes to magically disappear.
“Um, nope. I haven’t looked,” she says. Her eyes dart toward the house and back. “But the high school’s called Mt. Morse if you want to google it.”
While she’s distracted and behaving rather nervously, I grab her phone and look up the high school calendar. First day for Seniors is September second. That gives me twelve days to figure out classes, summer reading if there was any, and hopefully find a new outfit.
I stuff a banana in my mouth wishing it were bacon-dusted fries as I set her phone on the bed. Mom flits about, in and out of the van, setting up camp. I lie belly down on the bed and pull out my journal.
August 2022
We’ve landed in our new home. A tree lined plot of dirt. On the way in town Mom embarrassed me. Or maybe I embarrassed myself. She caught me ogling a guy. Not just any guy really, an ovary-exploding kind of attractive guy. Hazel eyes. Dimples — yes plural. Naughty grin, tan skin, muscles. My god — the muscles. I swear boys go from gangly twigs to full-on men over the course of a summer. When his eyes caught mine the molecules between us zapped and buzzed with chemistry. So embarrassing.
Obviously, I freaked out and ducked out of sight because I am graceful and oh so cool and made for flirting. I’m a natural at being awkward. Then mom had to go and wave at him. Like she actually lifted her goddamn hand and waved. Sometimes I wonder if she has any boundaries at all.
In that moment though, when she waved, I honestly thought my head had disengaged from my body with mortification and tumbled to the footwell between my flip-flopped feet…and still she didn’t even notice. She wore that mischievous grin that made her eyes sparkle and laughed.
I wish I knew how to be as bold as my mother sometimes. If there’s one incredible trait she possesses…it’s unabashed boldness. The ability to give zero fucks about how people perceive her is downright admirable. But that boy…I don’t know…it felt like a spark of energy when his eyes locked onto mine. Is that even possible?
“Delia, it’s time.” Mom’s voice floats through the window. I set my journal down, pen inside the page, like a bookmark, and slip on my sandals.
The sun is low in the sky, hanging full and saturated like an overripe orange. Offering mom a smile I say, “Ok. Let’s go meet this Heath dude.”
“He’s not a dude, he’s an old man.”
I scrunch up my face. Since when does mom go for old men? She swats at me. “It’s not like that . This is important.” She smooths my flyways in place and gives me a once-over before nodding to herself.
“Was I supposed to dress up for this?” I ask, glancing down at a fitted black tee shirt and cut-off jean shorts.
“No babe, you look perfect. As always.” She kisses my forehead.
“What’s up with you?” I ask. “You’re being weird.”
Mom cups my face between her hands and looks deeply into my eyes. “I’m sorry,” she says before grabbing my hand and walking us down the path, toward the house. What’s her deal?
My palm grows sweaty as we approach the house. It’s not the house that makes me nervous. It’s cute and has been loved and is not scary at all. In fact, it’s a place I’d love to call home permanently. The location, the style, all of it is something I’d conjure up in my dreams. It’s mom who’s throwing me off. Making my stomach twist and turn into a knotty mess.
I’ve seen my mother nervous exactly twice in my life and neither time was good. I can’t shake the feeling that we’re walking into something sinister.
She stops on the first porch step and turns to me. “Behave, ok. Best foot forward. You only get one chance to make a first impression.”
I blink back my unease. Behave? First impression? I’ve never heard my mother utter anything more unlike her. She pushes up the steps to the door. I swallow back the lump in my throat.
The door swings open. A man fills the door. He is tall, has white hair and has jean overalls on.
With a stunned expression, he says, “Jennifer? What are you doing here?” His voice breaks as he speaks the last word.
Who’s Jennifer?
“Hi Dad.” Mom says. The air in my lungs ceases to exist. I can neither pull in air or exhale it. I’m frozen in shock. “There’s someone I’d like you to meet.” Mom turns to me, a shy smile tugging at her lips. “Delia, this is Heath, your grandfather. Come say hello.” Her eyes are brimming with tears, and I can plainly see her struggle to keep them from spilling over.
Has there ever been a more awkward moment? I don’t think so. I’m fairly certain my expression is a replica of the man’s standing before me.
Shock and awe. I feel so many things, too much. Humiliation, anger, curiosity, heartbreak, excitement. I’ve been electrocuted with emotions. Mom tugs me up the last step to her side. As a shield. A possession. A prized trophy to show off.
As an offering.