Read Online Instructions for the End of the World by Jamie Kain - Free Book Online Page A
Authors: Jamie Kain
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she has me.
âMeet me in the parking lot around five thirty, okay?â
She gives my arm a motherly squeeze, and she looks, for once, vulnerable. I nod and finally break free.
Giving up the idea of escape on my bike, I cross the grounds toward the woods, and soon I am in the shade and protection of the trees, where I know my way better than probably anyone else. I follow trails so faint only the deer know they exist, and I go deeper and deeper into the woods.
My mother will say she is a recovering addict. She will say she is sober (she loves to use the word sober, like itâs a ticket to forgiveness for all past sins). But the only relevant thing is that she is an addict.
I canât remember a time before this was the most important fact about her.
I have the misfortune of being her only child, so whenever she decides sheâs going to get back on the motherhood bandwagon she directs all her misguided energy at me. This has led to a lifetime of unfortunate childhood memories. Like the time when I was twelve and she baked weed-laced brownies for my birthday party, and all my friends got either really high or really sick.
Or when I was nine and she drove me and Laurel and Pauly to the movies in town, but then she forgot about us and we spent half the night looking for her car, only to find it sometime after midnight parked outside a bar, her in the back seat making out with some guy.
My least favorite memory, though, is from the time right after my dad left us. I was six and Annika was alternating between depressive, drunken benders and periods of remorse when she felt the need to make sure I was okay. I was attending a Waldorf school at the time, since it was before the village school got started, and she showed up at school early to pick me up, for some reason I canât recall now. But she was drunk or high or something, and after sheâd come stumbling into the classroom to get me, the teacher refused to let us leave, with her so clearly unfit to drive. So Annika threw a raging tantrum right there in front of all the other kids whoâd been in the middle of doing finger painting, and I was standing there with my blue-stained fingers, watching my mother fall apart, until the police came and we had to ride in the back of the police car back to the village.
Every time I see a police car, I think of my mother, that horrible day, and my half-finished finger painting of a sunflower against a royal blue sky. I wish I still had that painting, so I could burn it.
Since returning from rehab, though, she is different in some way I find more disturbing than reassuring. She has a higher power, and she is taking things one day at a time, and she has given herself over to God-with-a-capital-G. Even Mahesh doesnât dare to question her on this.
Being a woman like Annika, who was raised by her university professor parents in Heidelberg to believe in science and literature, to be skeptical of everything, to value learning above all else, I guess this is the kind of rebellion she is drawn to, first with her commitment to Sadhana Village and now with thisâthe rebellion into that which cannot be proven or disproven.
Faith.
I wish I could have some kind of faith in her, but I donât.
I donât know how much time has passed, since the following of deer trails has become a meditation, but I realize with a start that Iâve led myself back to the edge of the woods that look out on the house where Nicole is living. There are no cars parked there now, but I can see her outside, dragging a piece of lumber across the yard toward the old garden and orchard.
I squat against a tree trunk, amid the faint, musty smell of decaying leaves, and I watch.
I donât know why I watch, but the bad feelings from the dream thatâs been dogging me begin to fade and she takes shape as a real person again, her hands in work gloves as she pauses to brush sweat from her brow with a forearm. She moves again with
âMeet me in the parking lot around five thirty, okay?â
She gives my arm a motherly squeeze, and she looks, for once, vulnerable. I nod and finally break free.
Giving up the idea of escape on my bike, I cross the grounds toward the woods, and soon I am in the shade and protection of the trees, where I know my way better than probably anyone else. I follow trails so faint only the deer know they exist, and I go deeper and deeper into the woods.
My mother will say she is a recovering addict. She will say she is sober (she loves to use the word sober, like itâs a ticket to forgiveness for all past sins). But the only relevant thing is that she is an addict.
I canât remember a time before this was the most important fact about her.
I have the misfortune of being her only child, so whenever she decides sheâs going to get back on the motherhood bandwagon she directs all her misguided energy at me. This has led to a lifetime of unfortunate childhood memories. Like the time when I was twelve and she baked weed-laced brownies for my birthday party, and all my friends got either really high or really sick.
Or when I was nine and she drove me and Laurel and Pauly to the movies in town, but then she forgot about us and we spent half the night looking for her car, only to find it sometime after midnight parked outside a bar, her in the back seat making out with some guy.
My least favorite memory, though, is from the time right after my dad left us. I was six and Annika was alternating between depressive, drunken benders and periods of remorse when she felt the need to make sure I was okay. I was attending a Waldorf school at the time, since it was before the village school got started, and she showed up at school early to pick me up, for some reason I canât recall now. But she was drunk or high or something, and after sheâd come stumbling into the classroom to get me, the teacher refused to let us leave, with her so clearly unfit to drive. So Annika threw a raging tantrum right there in front of all the other kids whoâd been in the middle of doing finger painting, and I was standing there with my blue-stained fingers, watching my mother fall apart, until the police came and we had to ride in the back of the police car back to the village.
Every time I see a police car, I think of my mother, that horrible day, and my half-finished finger painting of a sunflower against a royal blue sky. I wish I still had that painting, so I could burn it.
Since returning from rehab, though, she is different in some way I find more disturbing than reassuring. She has a higher power, and she is taking things one day at a time, and she has given herself over to God-with-a-capital-G. Even Mahesh doesnât dare to question her on this.
Being a woman like Annika, who was raised by her university professor parents in Heidelberg to believe in science and literature, to be skeptical of everything, to value learning above all else, I guess this is the kind of rebellion she is drawn to, first with her commitment to Sadhana Village and now with thisâthe rebellion into that which cannot be proven or disproven.
Faith.
I wish I could have some kind of faith in her, but I donât.
I donât know how much time has passed, since the following of deer trails has become a meditation, but I realize with a start that Iâve led myself back to the edge of the woods that look out on the house where Nicole is living. There are no cars parked there now, but I can see her outside, dragging a piece of lumber across the yard toward the old garden and orchard.
I squat against a tree trunk, amid the faint, musty smell of decaying leaves, and I watch.
I donât know why I watch, but the bad feelings from the dream thatâs been dogging me begin to fade and she takes shape as a real person again, her hands in work gloves as she pauses to brush sweat from her brow with a forearm. She moves again with
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