Fear of Our Father by Stacey Kananen & Lisa Bonnice

Author:Stacey Kananen & Lisa Bonnice
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Penguin Publishing Group
Published: 2013-04-24T04:00:00+00:00

CHAPTER 21

The Year It All Fell Apart

Before Grandpa died, he and Mom were helping us house hunt. We lived on the far south side of the city and wanted to live closer to where the family lived on the far northeast side, especially in light of the problems that Cheryl was having at home. Mom thought it would be good for us to live nearby, instead of a forty-five-minute drive away, in case the kids needed a place to spend some time, and because Cheryl was having issues with Daniel. Cheryl had talked, in the past, of sending him to Cherokee School, which is a school for children with severe emotional and behavioral problems. Mom was extremely unhappy with that idea, and she began to talk about taking Daniel away from her. She told Cheryl, to her face, “I’ll take your son and I’ll raise him. You’re not putting him there. He’ll live here.”

In my opinion, that wasn’t the answer. I thought, “Your daughter needs help. Yanking her kids will only make it worse.” My mother could have raised Daniel perfectly well, and they were very close. But I didn’t think that was the answer for that family. I thought Mom was overreacting, maybe overcompensating for our childhoods—trying to make up for not being able to protect us.

Mom went with us to look at a house around the corner from her and said, “It’s a great buy. You should do it.” She was helping me and Susan to figure out how to do a budget. She had our bank account and paycheck info and was doing an overhaul on our finances. So when she advised us that it was a good deal, we decided to go ahead and get the house after we came back to Florida from Grandpa’s funeral. Our new house had a big yard and a nice-sized pool. The house was big, too: living room, dining room, kitchen, family room, four bedrooms, two bathrooms, screened-in back porch, two-car garage.

In the meantime, Rickie’s life was a mess. His wife left him, and he was living in a horrible little trailer. When Susan and I moved in to our new house, at the end of March 2003, he helped. Susan and I took the week off work, and we all busted our butts and got the job done.

It didn’t take long for the subject of the two extra bedrooms to come up—one of the rooms was for Ann when she came to visit, but the other two were empty—and we invited him to move in. It just made sense. He was floating aimlessly, with no anchor, now that Mary had moved back to Georgia.

He was on unemployment and worked occasional freelance electrician jobs, so we didn’t charge him rent—he worked on the house in exchange for a roof over his head. He bought plenty of groceries and definitely held up his end of the bargain. Our new house needed plenty of fixing up. He earned his keep by being the man around the house.

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