A Sinner’s Child

I was only ten years old when mother and I were involved in a fatal car accident heading home from a New Years Eve party with a few of her coworkers. The roads were slick with a glaze of black ice as a light snowfall began to trickle down through the crisp cold air. It’s been five years since then, and I still recall hearing my mother scream as she slid into a nearby telephone pole. The impact projected her still intoxicated body out the front window, shattering the glass and landing on the frozen, white powdered ground nearby.

Cars passed by as I laid next to my mother’s unconscious body, which steadily bleed from the mouth. It had to have been at least half an hour before I heard the faint sounds of sirens off in the distance. The paramedics took us in an ambulance and immediately started treatment on mother. However, her pulse became too weak due to her substantial blood loss and she quietly passed away a few hours later. I was fortunate to walk away with only a few painful bruises left by the seat belt.

My grandparents, who were the one’s who took me in, said she died because she was a sinful human being. I never did understand why nor did I ever understand the tension in their relationship. Often times when they would talk over the phone, I’d hear my mother screaming and weeping downstairs in the unfinished basement of our home. When we would seldom stopover them during the holidays, mother would keep her distance-even sometimes taking a small walk around a nearby lifeless park. Regardless, my grandparents believed my mother’s poisoned ways would one day find their way into me.

From the day they claimed me, I lived a very unusual life compared to the other children on my street. Pap and Gram practically isolated me from the r...

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...e stupid, absurd mistake. Soon enough I was able to convince myself to not care. I was able to teach myself that no matter who you are, there would always be someone there to judge you. That’s just how people are, especially when it came to high school.

As this idea flourished, I was making friends without the fear of my name speculating throughout the district. I was hanging out with a group of kids that evolved around the music genre of rock, metal and punk styles. Drugs were a commodity within the clique so when someone brought them out, I’d furtively walk away without anyone noticing. Even though I promised myself I wouldn’t touch these substances, I wasn’t exactly all innocent. I began to stand up against my grandparent’s strict house rules. More and more I would stay out past curfew. I’d neglect my phone and missed many anger-filled phone calls from gram.