By the time Hannah and I arrived in Savannah, Aunt Sandy was in a relationship with the pool woman.  Her name was Margaret something-or-other, and it didn’t last long.  Payback is a bitch (no pun intended) because Aunt Sandy caught Margaret kissing another woman outside of Six Pence pub, just like in that Juliet Robert’s movie.  Except with lesbians.

Aunt Sandy was alone for a long time, but she’s been seeing a woman named Kendra for about a year now.  Kendra waits tables at two upscale joints downtown.  She does well for herself and her kid, a creepy boy named Paul that I’m convinced wants to have sex with Hannah, even though she’s fourteen.  There are plenty of girls at school who gave it up before that, but Hannah won’t be one of them.  Of course, Hannah would have to give a damn about something else that Queen Guinevere and all that nonsense before she was in any danger of popping her cherry.

Kendra comes over a lot, but doesn’t stay the night usually.  She’s kind of conservative that way.  I wouldn’t care if she tramped around naked in the house, as long as she keeps Aunt Sandy occupied and out of my hair.  The problem is, when Kendra comes she usually brings Paul, and it falls on me to keep him out of Hannah’s bedroom bower.

I know Aunt Sandy loves me and Hannah, but she tends to smother us.  There’s not much I can do about it until I graduate and move out.  Maybe I’ll take Hannah with me.  Me and Hannah in New York: a pagan and an Arthurian nutcase.

We’d fit right in.

*****

So dinner at the Olive Garden didn’t go so well.  I got sick right after we left, and Aunt Sandy had to pull over and let me ralph out the car.  Classy.  Hannah did just what I expected—she ate nothing and looked at her book instead.  She talked when Aunt Sandy asked her a question, but that was it.  After I puked up spaghetti and bread, Aunt Sandy took us through the Wendy’s drive-thru.  I almost threw up again when Hannah started eating her Jr. Bacon Cheeseburger and fries.  Wendy’s has the worst fries in the world, except the ones Aunt Sandy buys and Kroger and puts in her Fry Daddy. Disgusting all around.

Hannah and I wait in the car while Aunt Sandy checks us in at La Quinta Inn just off I-285.  At least Aunt Sandy left the car running, because it’s still hot as hell outside even though it’s ten o’clock at night.  That’s Georgia for you.

I hop over from the passenger side into the driver’s seat, seized by a sudden, wild idea.  “What if we just take off?” I say. 

I expect Hannah to take me at my word, and she does.  She finally puts the damn book down and says, “We can’t, Ellen.  What would Aunt Sandy do?”

 “Who cares?  She’s got money.  And look, she’s at a hotel, so it’s not like we’d be abandoning her.  What do you say?  Wanna drive to New York?”  I put my hand on the gearshift, ready to go.  I can’t believe how serious am I about this.

 Hannah thinks about it…or at least I want to believe she’s thinking about it.  She spends more time in her head than anyone I know, and I know some freaky-deaky kids.  I’m glad she’s not a cutter, but I could see it happening.  “Here comes Aunt Sandy,” Hannah says, clearly relieved.

 I’m clearly pissed.  “There goes our chance at fortune and fame, sister o’ mine,” I mutter and crawl back into the passenger seat.

 ”Well, we’re all set!” Aunt Sandy announces like she’s got tickets to the circus.  “Let’s head to the room.  Maybe we’ll find something good on TV to watch!

We settle into the room.  There’s two beds, which means I’ll have to sleep with Hannah or Aunt Sandy.  The sofa in the room is too small.  I consider my chances of sleeping well on the floor.  As I ponder my fat, Aunt Sandy and Hannah get ready for bed.  They both wash their faces and brush their teeth with no conversation.  Aunt Sandy has finally gotten used to Hannah’s weird silences.

I click on the TV and channel surf.  We get HBO but there’s a boxing match on.  The rest of the stuff is all reality shows and home improvement junk, so I flip the remote on the bed and dig my phone out of my purse.  Now that I have a decent signal, I can see if Adrina wants to text.

 Adrina goes with me to Beach.  We haven’t been friends for that long, but she’s a cool girl.  She wants to learn about Wicca and I’m happy to teach her.  She’s got a fucked-up family, but who am I to judge?

I send a few texts, but get no response.  I didn’t bring my laptop, so I can’t chat.  I’m going to be forced to talk with Aunt Sandy while she goes through the channels until she lands on a Hallmark or Lifetime Channel movie.  Or…wait.  While Aunt Sandy is still in the bathroom putting on face cream and Hannah stares at the wall, I slip my hand in her purse and grab her bottle of pills.  Illegal, I might add.  Hydrcodone to the rescue.  I take two and replace the bottle just before she walks back in the room, wearing a light blue nightgown, her face glistening.

“So, anything good on?” she asks.

“Nope.”

 “Let’s see about that.”  My aunt settles on the bed with a contented sigh and grabs the remote.  Before long, she’s settled on The Notebook, which she’s probably seen ten times.  Hannah crawls in bed beside her, book firmly in hand, and rests on head on Aunt Sandy’s shoulder.  I can’t believe it—I get the other bed all to myself.

As I do my own bathroom thing, I feel the pills kicking in.  My frustration with the tip, the embarrassment of heaving my guts out, even the hatred for my mom softens, then deadens, and then slips away all together.  My limbs turn to wood just as I finish brushing my teeth, and I slip into the bed all by myself.

Through a haze, I watch the pretty people who sprang from Nicholas Sparks’ imagination and made him a lot of money.  And then I fade into sleep.

Mom's home sweet home

I hate seeing my mom, but I don’t have a choice.  If I protested, Aunt Sandy would knock me out, tie me up, and throw me in the backseat.  I’d wake up, look out the window, and discover we were making the same long, terrible drive from Savannah to Atlanta.  If it bothers Hannah, she doesn’t say anything.  She hasn’t been talking a lot lately, which is not exactly out of character.

 My mother’s name is Danielle Radford, and she killed my father thirteen year ago.  She’s also my Aunt Sandy’s sister.  “There’s still good in her,” Aunt Sandy always says, like my mother is Darth Vader, eventually I’ll win her back from the Dark Side, and together we’ll turn on Emperor Palpatine.  But there’s no winning my mother back.  If there’s any good left in her, it’s going to be suffocated during her life sentence at the Metro State Prison, if it hasn’t already been.

We don’t talk about much when I visit, which makes me wonder why we go at all.  “Because you’re mother needs help,” is Aunt Sandy’s reply.

 “How can I possibly help her?” I ask.  “She barely knows me.”

 “Honey, she knows you.  You’re here first born, there’s always a connection there.”

 “And what about Hannah?”

  “Oh, she loves Hannah, too.”

 Aunt Sandy doesn’t want to see the truth: her sister is a monster.  She woke up one morning and confronted my father in the garage as he was getting in his car to go to work.  She shot him three times, once in the head and twice in the chest.  She called 911 on herself and waited on the front porch until the police arrived.  That’s what Aunt Sandy told us; Hannah and I were in daycare.  We moved from Conyers to Savannah then to live with Aunt Sandy, which is a kind of imprisonment all its own.  I hate Savannah.  I don’t give a damn about the history, or walking tours, or any of that stuff.  I want to move to a real city, like New York or Los Angeles. But you can count Atlanta out. 

“So what are you going to talk about?” Aunt Sandy asks brightly.  We’re somewhere between Dublin and Atlanta and I’m watching cars whiz by.  Aunt Sandy drives like an old lady.

I shrug.  “I don’t know.  The usual stuff, I guess.

“You could tell her about school.”

“It’s summer.”  We got out a week ago, which was a huge relief.  I go to A.E. Beach high school, though it’s more like where my mom stays than a school.  There are gang fights in the hallway, kids dealing drugs in the bathroom, kids being jumped at the bus ramp.  I’m one of the few white girls in my class, which is a problem all unto itself.  And let’s not talk about the shit kids give me because I’m Wiccan.

Aunt Sandy clears her throat and turns down the radio, which is fine because she listens to the worst radio stations in the world, stations that play garbage like Electric Light Orchestra and Bob Seger.  If I hear another Jackson Brown or Van Morrison song on this trip, I’m jumping out.  “Hannah, what will you talk about with your Mom?”

Hannah glances up from her book, another one she got from the library about stupid King Arthur and stupid Queen Guinevere.  It’s real popular now for kids to go through the Disney Princess stage, but Hannah trumps them all: she’s in a Queen stage and has been since she was five.  I’m sixteen and she’s fourteen; she doesn’t remember my father and only has sketchy memories of my mother.  That’s for the best, I think.

“I don’t know, either.  I guess I could tell her about this book.”

 “Mom doesn’t want to hear about Queen Guinevere.”

 Hannah looks hurt, and I roll my eyes.  She takes what I say so seriously.  “She might if I showed her this picture,” she says and holds the book up for me to see a painting of Queen Guinevere on a white horse, looking all regal and royal.

 “Yeah, that’ll break that heart of stone,” I say.

 “Ellen, watch your tone,” Aunt Sandy corrects me, a favorite pastime of hers.  Never mind the fact that Mom’s a murderer and serving a life sentence, never mind that I’ll never have my father back.  No, never mind all of that, Ellen, you’ve got to see the good in people.  Whatever.

“You can’t even bring that book in, anyway,” I tell my sister, who shrugs and goes back to reading.  I don’t even know why we brought her, because she usually just sits there and stares at our mother through the glass without saying a word until she says “Goodbye.” 

“We’ll put some money on the books,” Aunt Sandy says, “and your mother can get some reading material.  She always liked to read.”

 Aunt Sandy likes to tell us what Mom always liked.  Mom always liked being a cheerleader, Mom always liked boys and dancing, Mom always liked going down to River Street and watching the barges, Mom always liked being Girl Scout and thought the coolest thing was that Savannah was home to the Juliet Gordon Lowe birthplace.  Give me a fucking break.

 “Are we spending the night in that same god-awful hotel?” I ask. Since we got a late start today, we won’t be able to see Mom until tomorrow, which means another fun-filled sleep over at a rat-bag hotel.  I always hold out home that Aunt Sandy will at least put us up at a Jameson Inn where they have waffles for breakfast and not some dump where we’re likely to be held up, raped, and killed.

“No, we’ll try a different place,” Aunt Sandy says, and I feel moderately better.  “What do you think you girls will want for supper?”

 ”Steak and Shake,” I reply automatically.

 “Wendy’s,” Hannah murmurs without looking out.  The girl will only eat Wendy’s, which is insane since it’s the worst of all the fast-food chains.  But Hannah always gets her way, so I grit my teeth and wait for Aunt Sandy’s inevitable nod of approval. 

“We could try something different,” Aunt Sandy says, and I cut my eyes at her.  I don’t Something different?  Aunt Sandy is predictable as toast.

 “Like what?” I dare to ask, sending mental images of real restaurants at her.  God, even Shoney’s would be an improvement over Wendy’s.  I don’t dare hope for Steak and Shake.

“Maybe…the Olive Garden?” Aunt Sandy says.

I glance at Hannah in the backseat, who shrugs.  I think we’ve gotten off the Wendy’s hook when she says, again without looking up, “Just take me through the Wendy’s drive-through when we’re done at the restaurant.”

Great.  So we’re going to eat while Hannah stares at her plate and refuses to even nibble on the bread, or more likely, she’ll drag that book and stare at it while Aunt Sandy tries to resurrect our family’s dead art of conversation.  

 “We can do that, Hannah,” Sandy says. 

 See, that’s the aunt and I know and despise.