Somebody Pick Up My Pieces - Hardcover

ONE
 
“Miss Rodgers?”
There was a cop standing at her door. Charlotte eyed him wearily through the screen. “Yes?”
“Miss Rodgers, your daughter, Clarice Braxton? Called the station saying that she hadn’t heard from you and was worried. She asked us to check on you.”
Charlotte didn’t say a word.
“Are you alright, ma’am?” he eventually asked.
“I’m fine,” she said tersely.
The officer didn’t look convinced. “Are you sure?”
No, she wasn’t sure. Her children had turned on her and left her here all alone. How in the world could she be alright after her children had dismissed her the way the three of them had done?
“I’m fine,” she said, more convincingly.
He shook his head. “Call your children, ma’am,” he said, annoyed, before leaving. “They’re obviously worried about you.”
Charlotte slammed the door shut, sat down in her recliner, put her feet up, and stared at the television screen. The volume was turned down so low she could barely hear it. That was how she preferred it. After Camille, her youngest daughter, had moved out and left with Connie and Reesy, that house had felt like a tomb, cold, empty, and too quiet. Always quiet. Charlotte had learned to live with it, and to wallow in it as a reminder to herself that nobody gave a damn about her. They never did.
Less than ten minutes after that cop had left her front porch, the phone rang.
“Mom?” It was Clarice. “Mom, it’s me, Reesy. I know you’re there. The policeman said he saw you.” She sighed, irritably. “Mom, please. Don’t be like this. We’re worried about you. You haven’t spoken to me or Cammy since we left. You’re being silly.”
Silly? Charlotte was being silly? She angrily snatched up the receiver. “I’m being silly,” she huffed. “Silly is putting your nose in where it doesn’t belong, Reesy! Silly is making somebody believe with all their heart that you care about them when deep down, you know it’s not true!”
“Mom…”
“Silly is beating on your own mother, Clarice!” she said, letting go of bitter tears. “You’re never supposed to hit your mother! God saves a special place in hell for children who beat their mothers!”
“I didn’t beat you, Mom,” Reesy said, defensively, “and you know why I did it,” Reesy responded sheepishly. “I’m sorry, Mom. I am so sorry.”
Charlotte’s lip quivered. “I’m sorry too! Sorry I ever laid eyes on you again!” Charlotte hung up as abruptly as she’d answered.
She had loved Reesy more than the other two put together, until Connie, Charlotte’s oldest, finally managed to turn Reesy and Cammy against her with her lies and her ugly ways.
“You’re the one, Connie! Why the hell did you bring your black ass into my house?” Charlotte screamed.
“Momma!” Reesy tried stepping between Charlotte and Connie, standing toe-to-toe like two boxers.
“I always hated you!” Charlotte glared at Connie.
“I always hated you too, so that makes us even!” Connie shot back.
“You ain’t better than me, Connie!”
“Shit, Momma!” Connie smirked. “Who the hell isn’t better than you?”
Charlotte closed her eyes, recalling the rage she felt surging through her whole body as she swung her arm in the air, bracing herself to knock the shit out of that girl. And all of a sudden, she felt the sting and the heat from the slap across her face, not from Connie, but from Reesy.
Those girls had all expected for Charlotte to be perfect, but of course, she wasn’t. No mother is ever perfect. She’d only been fifteen years old when she’d had Connie, and what she learned about taking care of children, she learned on her own. She’d made mistakes with all of them. Charlotte could admit it to herself and to them. Charlotte had thought too much of herself when she was young, and had put her needs before the needs of her girls, but she had atoned for her selfishness. Charlotte had atoned for everything she’d done from taking off with Sam and leaving her two oldest girls behind to maybe being a little too hard on Cammy. She had paid for the things she’d done a hundred times over in ways they could never imagine. And she was still paying for it.
Hell is living twenty-seven years and not knowing if your children are alive or dead. She had had Cammy in that time, but there was no replacing her golden girls, Connie and Reesy, who she’d left behind in Denver. Charlotte had come to terms with the fact that she’d never see her girls again, until she got a letter in the mail from Reesy. Her baby had hired someone to find Charlotte, and for the first time in nearly three decades, she had finally had a prayer answered and a chance to go home again. But just as quickly as it had been given to her, those girls had brutally snatched it away from her. Lynn Randall had brought Charlotte to Murphy, Kansas, to save her life. Lynn had saved her, but she’d condemned her to this place, and Charlotte’s children had taken the key and left her here, like garbage, to rot.


 
Copyright © 2011 by J. D. Mason