By Chloe Cook
Winter 2020 Kaplan Award Winner
Darkness is the first thing I see when I think of Jackie’s house. Dankness, darkness and dust pervades my thoughts as I bring my mind’s eye back into my ten year old body. As I watch myself entering this house of grief, a pit emerges in my stomach and chills caress my body like the fingers of death. Dark objects, the nature of which I cannot discern, line the living room and hallway creating a maze of dimly lit tunnels throughout the house. A musty smell of neglect and cigarettes fills my nostrils and it feels almost as if a brown film has formed on the outer surface of my skin and clothes.
In the depths of my memory, I stand in the entryway and survey the desolate space in front of me. Stained brown and gray carpet squishes underneath my toes as I pad my way into her living room. She is sitting on a rickety wicker chair in the corner of the room and barely looks up as I enter. A meek smile is all she can muster before her head leans back and her eyes glaze over once again. Above her head are angels. Their gowns are no longer white and their once porcelain skin is now stained with cigarette smoke, but they are still angels. They stand watch on her mantle and take the abuse in stride. Their eyes see all as they watch over Jackie and her daughter, my dear friend Cassi, who live in this squalor.
They watch my sweet Cassi stride, greasy-haired, into the filthy kitchen and begin crunching on an uncooked block of top ramen because the stove is buried under dirty pots and pans. They watch her slide onto the discolored scratchy couch which inhabits their living room and watch her watch cartoons with a bowl of cold cereal in her lap on a Sunday morning. They watch her avoid Jackie as Jackie pulls a bottle swiftly to her lips and takes a long forceful chug of foul potent liquid until she reeks of booze. They see everything and do nothing.
My dear Cassi’s room consists of a mattress on the floor, dressed in dirty sheets, an old beat-up vanity and a matching bedside table. A mixture of dirty and clean clothes coats her floor. I have to walk carefully to avoid stepping on anything while Brittany Spears’ hit song Toxic pounds its way into my eardrums. She strides over to the door and closes it. A feeling of relief washes over my psyche as a physical barrier has now been put in between us and Jackie. I take a sigh as my pounding heart abates and look up at her as I sit delicately on her bed.
Cassi sits down on the bed beside me and tells me that she has something important to tell me. Sadness fills her sullen eyes as she relays the news of Jackie’s recent diagnosis. A fog spreads over my thoughts as I hear her whisper the words Cancer and Leukemia softly into my ear. My young mind can not process the magnitude of the words that she is whispering, so I numbly respond, “I’m sorry, Cassi,” and hold her as she cries.
The year that follows feels like a lifetime. To escape her own home life, Cassi inserts herself into mine, and I welcome her. She has become my self- proclaimed sister as she began calling my mother “mama” as well. Sleepovers at my house are her lifeline, her only connection to the stability which she so desperately craves. We sit on the floor of my brightly colored room and play Barbies for hours next to my grandmother’s antique hutch. Our late night gossip filled whispers still sound in my ears as I remember us cuddling in my full size bed, evading the pull of sleep together. An old mailbox that we painted ourselves sits in between our houses, which held secret letters to each other that only we could read. We speak of flying snowmen during the wintertime and simulate safari adventures in the waist-high grass of her backyard during the summer. In spite of Jackie’s decrepit state, we are happy. However, this bliss can only last for so long.
Jackie’s decline is slow and painful. Her long, thick, gray hair slowly falls out as the chemo takes effect and the lines etched deep into her face from years of abuse now seem like caverns. By the end, the only thing that occupied her head were short wispy gray hairs and liver spots. Her voice, already exasperated by years of smoking, is but a soft whisper as she sits in that same wicker chair in the corner of her living room, underneath the angels.
When Jackie died, it was overcast. I remember sitting in a cafe with my dad and receiving the news. It isn’t a shock or surprise, rather, a finishing of an era. Although I feel no grief for the death of Jackie, my heart aches for what will happen to my sweet Cassi. I beg my mom to let us adopt her but ultimately I know that she wouldn’t be able to handle a child as troubled as Cassi. After all, my mother is sick herself.
Beautiful Cassi jumps from foster home to foster home for the remainder of her childhood. Slowly we lose touch as she succumbs to the disease of addiction, just as her mother had. The last time that I visit her, she is living with her drug-dealing boyfriend in a singular room in the basement of an ancient house in Wallingford. When I walk into the yellow-lighted concrete enclosure Cassi calls her new home, the cage housing her pitbull shook with a ferocity that scares me. A mattress which mirrors the one of her childhood sits on the dirty tiled floor of this forsaken place, only this time, instead of having one occupant, it has two. Cassi takes my arm and pulls me in close to her so the barking dog can see, while repeating softly, “be quiet, be quiet, this is my Chloe, this is my Chloe, she is good, this is my Chloe.” The barks become infrequent and then stop while Cassi holds me to her heart.
Watching the years of abuse which her boyfriend inflicted on my poor Cassi has turned this dog into a ferocious beast when confronted with a new stranger. Once he saw that I would not hurt her, she lets him out of his cage, he curls up in between us on the bed and falls asleep.
I look up at my sister Cassi and all that I see is a person wracked with sickness, grief and abuse. Her body heaves as it expels the poisonous substances from itself and then collapses in exhaustion. I do not know how many times she has detoxed, but this was the third time that she detoxed with me. She can barely keep down the saltines that I brought her and once she finished her laborious chewing, she slowly leaned her head back onto the wall in defeat and closes her eyes. I leave later that night and go home sobbing. This was the last time I saw my Cassi. I hope not forever, but only for now.