Preface: This post is going up on May 5th. I do not personally celebrate Star Wars day, but I know a lot of people who do, so in honor of the holiday, I decided to name my dad Anikin. I like this, because it kind of makes me like Luke Skywalker— though I would rather be Han Solo.
You may also have questions about the naming conventions. SO, my pen name/radio persona is “M. Milkweed”, but I got by just “Milkweed” for short. Now, in the blog, my narrator’s first name appears to be “Milkweed”. I’ve just revealed my father’s name to be “Anikin Milkweed”. I believe, canonically, that makes my name “Milkweed Milkweed”. What do you think?
Enjoy reading about divorce and such 🙂
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She told me to find a place to stay for the night. She told me my sister was going to a friend’s house after school. Melissa was going to spend the afternoon getting things together before my dad and Kendra got home.
When he did get home, she was going to tell him what was happening, and then she was going to leave him. It wasn’t going to be that simple— obviously. That’s why she didn’t want me there. There would be screaming. There would be objects slamming. It was going to be an all-night affair. But when it was over, and when she finally got out, she told me she was going to pick up my sister and drive back to Colorado.
I knew why I couldn’t go. I had to finish out the school year, and I wasn’t her kid anyway— legally speaking.
Melissa told me that she’d been talking to my mom. My mom was going to help Melissa take my dad to court.
It was a lot to take in, but I was unfazed. I knew that if she stayed, things would only get worse, not just for her, but for my sister and me, too. I thought she was making the right decision.
The split was reminiscent of when my mom left my dad in 2005. He just had a way of driving people to that point. The point of having to pack up everything and haul ass across the country to get away. I didn’t blame Melissa at all. I’d haul ass too if I could have just to get out of the situation we’d been in. I’d already tried once. She knew that.
When I got home, I packed an overnight bag and put on my swimsuit. I texted Wesley and asked if I could stay at his house that night.
Sure.
I told him I was going to the pool. It was still early, he was probably just getting on the bus. Then I turned my phone off. I walked down to the pool and laid in the quiet sunlight for an hour or so. until Wesley showed up with a couple of other kids from our grade. We splashed around listening to Fetty Wap and focusing on the end of the school year. The prospects of 10th grade. No longer the de facto bottom of the totem pole.
After the pool, Wesley and I walked back to his house in our dripping suits. We went the back way to his house to avoid the possibility of my dad catching us on a drive-by. I had no idea what was going on by then. We made dinner together, yellow squash and zucchini vegoodles in lemon sauce— Wesley had taken a culinary class that semester. We ate together and watched Charmed. We watched together until we fell asleep on his living room couches.
I woke up around 7:30 the next morning. It was unusual for me, but I was anxious.
I turned my phone on. I had a dozen messages from my dad. All of them frantic, swinging between asking me where I was and telling me to come home. Demands and commands. All angry.
I wasn’t afraid. The minute Melissa told me what she was going to do, I braced myself. Even if I thought it was the right decision, I believed that I was the one who would face the consequences for her actions. I was going back to Colorado in June for summer vacation. If and when my dad found out that I knew anything about what Melissa was doing and didn’t tell him, there would be screaming, name-calling, interrogation, and then the silent treatment. That would go on for about a month, and then I would be free. I just had to survive.
I braced myself on the walk home. I focused on the good things. I focused on the nice evening I’d had with Wesley, the fresh morning air, the periwinkle sky. Melissa and my sister were halfway to Colorado.
Things were eerily calm when I got home. My dad and Kendra were waiting for me at the kitchen table. They asked where I was. I told them I was at Wesley’s house. They asked why I’d gone there. I told them that Melissa told me to go to a friend’s house and turn off my phone. They asked if I knew anything else about what she was planning. I said no.
My dad seemed to accept this. At least, he didn’t push any further. It was out of character, but I was relieved. I thought for a moment that maybe the whole thing had caused him to have a change of heart. To question himself. I wondered.
Things were bizarre, and they only seemed to get stranger. Enter Fred Jones. Fred started coming around to our house about a week after Melissa left. He was a middle-aged white guy. He had light hair and a surprisingly flattering haircut. He wore polo shirts and khaki cargo pants. He was wearing the same outfit every time I saw him, and I saw him a lot.
The only time I ever interacted with Fred was the first time I met him. It was just after school, and I was home alone. Fred came knocking on the door. He did everything with a lot of purpose. He knocked with purpose, as in his knock was really loud and startling— like a cop knock. I approached the from the top of the steps door slowly, and I saw him standing outside with purpose, ax in his hands were on his hips and he was twiddling his leg impatiently. He knocked again, and since it wasn’t a cop or anyone too odd-looking, I answered.
“Hello?”
“Is Anikin Milkweed here?” he asked with a big, toothy smile. He had nice teeth.
“No, Anikin Milkweed is not here.”
His smile got even bigger. “Do you know when abouts he will be here?”
“Who are you? Are you our neighbor or something?” I was weirded out, but I couldn’t help being weirded out by most adults most of the time.
“I just have some paperwork I need to give him.”
“Can I take it?” I asked.
His smile faltered for a fraction of a second and got bigger still. I could see his gums.
“It’s gotta be Anikin Milkweed. It’s just business.”
“Right, right. Okay then,” I started closing the door.
“You can give him this, though!” he jutted his arm out and shoved a little sticky note in my direction. It was just a phone number, “Tell him to call it!”
“Okay,” I took the sticky note and put it in my pocket. “Have a good day.”
“You too–” I shut the door.
My dad did business with a lot of weirdos, so I didn’t really question the interaction. However, when I told my dad what happened and gave him the sticky note later that night, he crumpled the note up and told me never to open the door to Fred Jones again.
“In fact, don’t open the door to anyone, unless you are absolutely sure they are someone you know.”
My dad explained that Fred Jones was a process server. In order to serve someone with a civil suit, there has to be proof that they received the suit in question in the first place. The papers can’t be delivered by mail, because then the recipient can just say they never got them and not proceed with the case. The papers have to be delivered in person. Melissa, being out of state, needed to hire someone to serve my father on her behalf. Ergo, Fred Jones.
Ergo, my dad was dodging service. This meant that Fred Jones was going to be a fixture in our daily lives for a while. Fred was staking out our house. When I got home from school, he would start up on the door. He would knock until he tired himself out. On weekends, he would go all day. My dad started parking his car down the street. Whenever he left the house, he would have to climb into Kendra’s trunk and crawl out when the coast was clear.
Otherwise, life was pretty good. My dad and Kendra were being nicer to me than they had ever been before. They were taking me out for all sorts of little treats, they were driving me around to different plans like it was nothing, they weren’t screaming or yelling at me or each other at all. I was starting to think that maybe the family was just too chaotic. Maybe it just needed to calm down for my dad to remember how great I was.
I was hopeful for the future.
At school, the year was winding down. I had As in all my classes. The only reason I even had to take any of the finals I did was because of my attendance. I was ancy to have it all done and over with, ancy for summer break.
Solaria was still on my mind. I still saw her every day in our freshman Leadership class and every day at lunch. She looked beautiful, and it wasn’t just because she was standing next to Sid all the time. I could see she was taking risks with her style. She still had her black hoodie, but she was starting to pair it with cool black dresses and lacy blue tank tops.
There was a rumor going around that she was pregnant. I didn’t really believe it, but I wanted to talk to her, so I texted her about it anyway.
is it true?
no— don’t be dumb lol
The ice was broken. We started going back and forth, catching each other up on everything. I told her everything about Melissa and my dad and Fred Jones. She told me about her own family and caught me up on how things were going with her and Sid.
we went all the way during one of the pep rallies she said.
I was shocked. I asked:
in the gym???
no silly, in the woods behind the school.
I didn’t know what to say, so I said:
did you like it?
She informed me:
yeah, it was great.
I tried to be happy for her, but I wanted to throw up.
She asked me how it all started— our fight. I told her everything Freddie and Julien had said to me. She told me none of it was true, just like she had before when I wasn’t listening. She told me she was so sad and confused when it all went down. She told me she missed me. I told her I missed her, too.
It felt so good to have her back.
For the last week of school, we were completely back to our old selves. We were eating lunch together, we were texting constantly, we were fixated on each other. We were back in our own little world with our little stories ann our OCs, and our songs.
On the last day of school, we didn’t have a final for our Leadership class. Solaria, Wesley, and I “cut” class and walked to the Sonic. It was an elongated period for testing, so we had three hours to kill. We ordered breakfast burritos and got yelled at by the cashier for acting like hooligans. When we were done eating, we walked to the park and played around at the school-day-empty playground.
Solaria told us more about what it was like going all the way from atop the playground excavator. More about how awesome it was, and then a little bit about the unlucky case of poison ivy she contracted. I felt a morbid sense of justice.
I told them about how Jason had been acting. The toxic, twisted friendship we’d been maintaining.
“He’s actually expecting me to bring him a slushie on the way back from here,” I told them.
“Are you going to bring it to him?” Wesley asked.
“Probably not, he’s kind of an asshole.”
“You should get him a slushie,” Solaria said as she slammed the excavator into the woodchips, “then we should all spit in it.”
I looked to Wesley.
“I think that’s a great idea,” he said.
“Aren’t you friends with him?” I asked.
“Aren’t you?” he retorted.
I got the point. I texted Jason and asked him what flavor slushie he wanted.
Jason said:
blue.
We returned to Sonic with about 15 minutes left before the next testing period started. We ordered the slushie, and when it came out (disclaimer: gross gross gross— don’t do this to people even if they are annoying boys) we passed it in a circle and each added our own saliva to the mixture. I feel as though we said some sort of spooky incantation as we did it too:
Double, double
Itchy razor stubble
Ivy burns
Sticky spit bubble.
Jason happily drank the whole thing throughout our Geometry final. He only complained that it was a little bit melted when he got it.
I cackled when I said, “Sorry about that.”
“This is why people think you’re weird,” he said.
It didn’t matter. The year was over.
The next day, I went over to Julien’s house for the first time. I met his siblings and his parents. I saw some of the chaos, and I saw a lot of love. We went to his backyard, and I participated in the time-honored ceremony of burning our school supplies. Then he showed me one of the Leprechaun movies.
I wasn’t mad at Julien. I wasn’t even mad at Freddie. I was so over being mad at people, I wanted to swear it off for the foreseeable future. I just wanted peace, happiness, friendship, and love in my life. And I felt like I was well on my way toward it.
A week after school ended, I had my fifteenth birthday party. My dad and Kendra went all out. They let me invite as many of my friends as I wanted, they let me get every decoration that struck my fancy, the most elaborate cake, and the most outrageous snacks, the little plastic wine glasses I liked. The whole week had been one big Yes! parade.
The party was fabulous. We got full reign of the first floor for the whole night. I had the perfect proportion of girl friends from Daniel Island and girl friends from West Ashley in attendance. I had Annapolis and Solaria both by my side. We did all the best sleepover activities; we called boys, we played truth or dare, I subjected them to the game Pinochle and the movie Scott Pilgrim vs. The World. It is to this day one of the best slumber parties I’ve thrown.
I was riding high afterward.
The next day, after everyone went home, my dad and Kendra took me to talk to a court-appointed social worker. On the way there, my dad said:
“Tell them everything, tell them what life was like with Melissa around. Tell them about all the fights she would start. Tell them about the pills and how out of it she was all the time. Just tell them the truth.”
My dad is a very skilled illusionist.
I didn’t notice all the sleight of hand he was doing between the gifts and attention. When we were getting treats, he was mentioning, off-hand, that we were never able to do anything fun when Melissa was around. When he was picking me up from a friend’s house, he was asking himself why Melissa never wanted to help out. When setting up for the slumber party, he was pointing out that such a party wouldn’t have been possible with Melissa on the couch. He was changing what the truth was over the course of a few weeks.
I told the social worker exactly what my dad wanted me to. I told her that Melissa was unreliable, unmotivated, and uninterested. I talked about the fights and her sickness, but I told the story from my dad’s perspective. It’s what I believed. Even though just a month before, I’d believed the opposite.
That’s how impressionable I was. That’s how strong a drug my father’s attention could be. I would say or do anything once I had it.
I went to Colorado a day or so after speaking to the social worker. I was still excited to visit home, and I (for some reason) wasn’t expecting the Melissa situation to come up much. I was also still looking forward to 10th grade at West Ashley High School. When my mom told me I wouldn’t be going back to live in South Carolina…I had a meltdown.
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