Haley Pickerell

September 2, 2014
English 491
Professor Kroll

The Houses
I remember the day we came to walk through the foundation of our house, just a month
before my thirteenth birthday. The unbuilt, unknowing skeleton of our future. My mother had
grabbed my hand, took me through the wooden door frame, and told me This will be your room,
well paint the walls pink if youd like.
It was all the way in the back of the house. Away from the inevitable fighting and nights
of sleeping on the opposite ends of the bed down the hall. The West Wing she called it, as if we
lived in the White House. Im sure the same scandal and privateness occurred there as it did in
our home.
That was the day Mom took me out back and we carved our initials into the wet concrete
with a small stick. We kneeled down and marked our home with our initials. K+H 06 as if we
subconsciously prophesied that one day it would indeed be just us two.
Divorce is a funny thing when youre a child. It doesnt make sense and it doesnt show
any signs until everything is in pieces, at least in my case.
I was five years old when Mom and Dad got divorced. I remember almost nothing about
it except for the house Mom and I moved into for those ungodly cold three months. It was just a
few blocks down the street from Dads house. Small, yellow, and on a street with the oldest
houses in our small town. From the outside it was quaint but the inside held bare walls and
freezing tile floors. The heater never worked, my mom didnt even bother with the cable, and I

spent many shivering days playing with my dolls alone. Boring is the word that comes to mind
when I think of it. An uncanny boredom that is rare when you are so young and imaginative.
I dont recall her being sad. More relieved than anything. Dad and her were so unalike it
was confusing how they were even together in the first place. Those next few years were filled
with alternating days at each house and the feeling of luck that I got each parent all to myself.
We moved around a lot for a few years. Apartments, condos, you name it. We finally
settled on a small two-bedroom house across the street from a park. I loved it. It was ours and
only ours. She let me get a kitten for my birthday and the three of us would stay up late on the
couch and watch Pippy Long Stockings for hours. Just the three of us on our little couch in our
little house. Perfect is how I remember it.
That is when He came into the picture. Medium height, medium build, medium looks,
nothing special compared to my gorgeous and funny mom. After a while of being together she let
Him watch me while she went out to dinner with a friend. I wouldnt even say goodbye to her.
Thats my first memory of me crying. I wept under my sheets for what seemed like hours
until she finally returned. I wouldnt forgive her for leaving me, I couldnt, but I did. And soon
they were happily married after a small ceremony with just their closest friends and family. I
wore a purple dress and hated my hair, thats all I will allow myself to remember.
I never accepted Him as anything other than Moms husband. He would buy anything I
wanted: a Tiffanys bracelet for Christmas, clothes whenever we were at the mall, trips to
Disneyland, but it was never enough, He would never be enough.
Mom was so happy with Him. He played golf competitively and she would get to go to
Hawaii and Carmel for a few days at a time to watch him play. I warmed to Him but only

because Mom loved Him so much and I loved her even more. I had to be strong. For her I
remember thinking to myself. All I did was for her.
They stayed like this for about six years.
It is blurry thinking back on it now.
Walking in from the car, through the garage, and into the larger, echoey house that would
soon be an image of abandonment. I cant remember if she told me while I was wheeling my big
red suitcase through the kitchen or if she followed me down the hall, into my room, and decided
that I should sit down on my bed. I would like to assume the latter, just in case I were to crumble
to the ground right then and there.
She buried her head in my small, crisscrossed lap. Her short, freckled legs dangling over
the far side of my bed: a heap of sadness and confusion.
I just dont get it honey she wept into my legs, What is wrong with us?
I didnt know. She didnt know. We were left to wonder why we hadn't been enough for
someone who I felt didnt even deserve us. Just us again, but somehow it felt lonely now.
One day I left for camp, the same camp I went to every summer with my church, and the
next week I came back and my life was upside down and inside out. My once happy and colorful
mom had become just a skeleton of herself. Only embodying the few characteristics that were
necessary to keep us afloat.
I remember eating a lot of pasta with tomato sauce for a while. It was easy, cheap. I
would watch her from our couch. She would hover over the hot stove, a pot of bubbling red
sauce steaming in front of her. Her eyes glazed over and her hand mechanically moving in circles
grasping a wooden spoon. I wondered what shed think about. Maybe wishing that she was
making dinner for three rather than two?

We would sit on opposite ends of the couch every night to have dinner. The television
playing repeats of House Hunters International.
They wont buy the first one shed say, its on the high end of their budget and it has
one less room than the last. It does have a nice backyard though, they could see the ocean.
I would nod, and keep eating, knowing that she was wishing that she was moving into
that spacious blue house on the bluffs of some foreign place where no one would know that she
was a twice-divorced mom of one.
I wish I could have known what was going through her head. I was so young and
unaware how to help. Suddenly I was no longer her daughter but her confidant. I was not ready
for that. She would cry to me and I would sit there, my thirteen year old mind racing through
things I could say to make her happy but nothing came to me. So I would weep with her. It was
the only way I knew to make her feel not alone.
At some point the tears finally gave out and her sadness turned into resent. She no longer
wished for Him back, but rather for Him to realize all that he lost by leaving us. That house
continues to remind her of every loving conversation between her and her no-longer-husband
that would never occur. It was time for change.
Mom is better now. She has since moved back into our old house. I wonder if shell ever
remarry or even date again. For one person to experience so much loss and rejection I wouldnt
be surprised if she could never be with someone. How does one even begin to think about that
after being hurt so badly?
Wounds heal but they leave scars, and Moms scars are big and scary and noticeable.