34. Montana
34
Montana
I t’s cold. Uncomfortably cold. Like being in an interrogation room designed only to bring discomfort and the urge to spill secrets.
The aluminum chair makes a god-awful noise against the tile floor as I scoot closer to the table. I peer to the left and see a mother and her young boy at the table next to me. She brushes his curls back out of his face before whispering something into his ear. He nods, slumping back into his seat, looking bored as ever. To the right of me, a woman with overgrown roots nervously scratches at her bony elbow, rocking forward and backward as her eyes dart to the steel door and back again and again.
A loud buzzing sound shrieks as the steel door opens, and a handcuffed man walks through. The mother sits up in her seat, a smile dusting her lips that never quite reaches the rest of her face. A few moments later, I see her.
She looks brittle and worn, weighing no more than ninety pounds soaking wet, clothes two sizes too big clinging to her skeletal frame as she approaches my table. She looks worse than I remember, and what I remember was horrific.
“Monnie-baby, hi,” she says, her voice bringing me some semblance of nostalgia. “I’m so happy you’re here.”
Wrinkles bunch in the corner of her cloudy eyes, the eyes that used to light up at the sight of cash in my hand. Her skin reminds me of the inside of a spoiled apple with its pale yellowish hue. The sores on her face are more pronounced in these fluorescent lights, and the older scars scattered across her forehead and cheeks are more visible than ever before. Her hair is like straw, thinning and dried to a crisp. The drugs have definitely taken their toll on her. She was once beautiful and full of life before she left him for the streets. Phil did nothing to try to keep her. He left us to rot, letting her succumb to her addictions while pretending to take the high and mighty road of redemption to Christ.
“I’ve missed you, Momma,” I reply, reaching for her hands across the table.
I grip her cold, bone-like fingers in mine, and her smile deepens. My heart fills with comfort and a sense of belonging I’d been missing since she got locked up. She’s the only real family who’s ever cared about who I am or noticed I existed. I’m big enough to see that her dependencies took away the good parts at the end and the trauma I endured because of it, but her heart was always there for me. She always loved me, as unusual as that love was. Shane was wrong. Was I naive to grasp the scraps of love my mother offered me? No. When you’re dirtied by the mud of trauma, even a slight rain feels momentous. It’s the only thing you hold on to. The only thing you focus on. I was glad she gave me that because it was more than anyone else ever had.
A guard walks up in my peripheral, his black shoes and gray pants all I see. “No touching allowed.”
Our hands part, and my mother frowns at him.
“I’ve missed you, too, baby.” She folds her hands before her on the table, her shoulders slumping. “It’s been horrible here. I-I’ve been treated so horribly.”
My chest tightens, simply imagining it. I’d seen her failed attempts at staying away from the hard stuff. The withdrawals transformed her into the worst version of herself. The vomiting, the shakes, the headaches and fevers, the cold sweats, the inability to stand or talk…it was always my mission to help her find that middle ground. That place where she could still function so I could stay with her, keep her alive, so I had a chance at any sort of future of my own.
It worked well in the beginning. The money I earned from my CyprusX was more than I’d ever seen in my lifetime, and working from my bedroom was easy enough. I knew at that point how to please, and how to use my looks to my advantage. But I was still at the mercy of the evils I’d found a way to navigate.
“They’re awful,” she continues. “They don’t understand what it’s like. You understood. You understood my needs and always took care of your Momma, didn’t you, Monnie?”
“I don’t know how it happened,” I say, running my hands down my face. “I don’t know how this happened. I never wanted to leave you. For you to get locked up.” My eyes fill with tears.
“I know, baby. I heard you went with your dad—”
“Phil,” I correct her.
“Phil. I heard you’re staying with Phil and his new wife, Rebecca, was it?” She sounds loopy or almost drunk, slurring the names as if her brain is beyond fried.
I scoff, shaking my head. “Kathy,” I correct her. “No, he dumped me on his new stepson and friends.”
She gnaws on her bottom lip, a habit that’s always been hers when feeling the guilt of her own decisions.
“It is what it is, Ma,” I say, shrugging it off.
I don’t want her feeling worse than she already does for being in here and subjecting me to these men. Kevin, her favorite party buddy, and now Phil, the deadbeat dad. She always claimed me, though, especially when Phil never did, and it meant something to me.
“And is your music stuff going well?” she asks, absentmindedly itching up and down her forearms across the many scars.
It warms my heart that she remembers, but I still feel the need to elaborate to refresh her memory of the details. So much of what she knows is foggy. I don’t blame her. At least she tried. She always tried, despite her addictions. Phil had no hindrance yet chose to be the negligent parent.
“It is. I play the cello, and it’s a difficult instrument, but I found a home in it. Playing it just feels…right to me.”
Her mouth tips into a smile, exposing her worn yellow teeth.
“Oh, Monnie, that’s so wonderful. Just wonderful.” She closes her eyes as if imagining.
I offer her a light grin, then roll my lips in, pondering my next question.
“Have you heard anything more from your attorney? Any word on an appeal for wrongful conviction?”
She was arrested for possession of 10 grams of heroin with the intent to distribute, but never in my life do I remember her having enough to sell. She’s always been scrambling for her next hit. She’s not the type to even monopolize on the drug industry. She’s only needed it to stay alive.
Her eyes widen, and her mouth drops open. She frowns. “I thought maybe you were here to tell me something.”
My face drops, brows furrowing as my heart sinks at her dejected look.
“I was hoping you had a new attorney for me? To help get me out of here?” Her hopeful pleas tear me down piece by piece. “You know I didn’t do it, Monnie. You got to convince them. You’re my only hope on the outside. Maybe you can find one of those real fancy lawyers, the ones that they pay the big bucks for?”
She reaches for my hands again, gripping them tightly in hers despite the officer’s close proximity.
“You gotta get me outta here, baby. You just have to. I can’t live like this anymore. I can’t.” The desperation in her eyes is overwhelming. She stands across the table, attempting to pull me to her. “Monnie, I didn’t do it. You know I never sell. I never sell!”
“Step away!” the officer yells.
“You gotta save me, baby, just like before. You always helped me. I need money, please. I-I just need some money. Those drugs weren’t mine! It wasn’t my fault!”
Tears stream down my face. I want nothing more than to save her. She’s all I have.
“Hands off!” The officer grabs her upper arms, attempting to pull her off of me.
Her fingers press into my arms, clinging to the only lifeline she has left.
“He brought it all over! He said he was a friend of yours. He was your friend! But they don’t believe me!”
Her words make me pause.
“What?”
“Your friend!” she yells, stumbling backward into the guard. He yanks her back, taking her through the steel doors as I scramble around the table toward her.
“What friend?!” I scream as a different guard grabs my wrist, pulling me back.
“The Mothman.”
Tears blur my vision as I try to understand. The guard pulls her cuffs, yanking her back through the doors.
“The Mothman. It was him! The Moth—”
The steel door slams shut, the lock securing as my body becomes limp in the guard’s arms. A sickness in the pit of my stomach twists and expands, my entire body feeling weighed down by her words.
The Mothman.
Realization strikes me like a bolt of lightning, stunning me still.
It can only mean one thing.
The reason my mother was taken from me and arrested under false pretenses—all of it was Shane’s doing.