"Do not let your happiness depend on something you may lose." a quote my mother always told me. A rule she herself followed, for many reasons. Most likely starting with her alcoholic father, who used to kick her and her mother out of their own home on a regular basis. The house we had lived in together she bought with her own money, and she vowed to me at a young age that nobody would ever kick her and I out of. If only she knew what the future held for her. If only I had known. She passed away, June 12th, 2015, I was sixteen. She died from a heart attack, it was no secret that my mother had a food addiction. I watched her eat herself to death.
Of course, I was taken away from my home. If my mother knew that, maybe she would have tried harder to lose weight. My uncle Gary, her brother, took me in. Uncle Gary lived a much different lifestyle than we did. We was a very rich man, he created a computer software much more advanced than anyone had ever seen before called Saycer. He was rolling in cash, the people ate it right up. I never saw much of Uncle Gary, he lived on the other side of the country. He grew up in Virginia where my mother and I lived, but quickly moved on to Seattle Washington in his early twenties. He met a korean woman there named Sun-Jung, but we just call her su for short. I think Sun-Jung stands for goddess in korean. Who knows? Probably the Koreans. None the less, Su was nothing short of a goddess. Long beautiful black hair, big brown eyes, tan skin that looked beautiful on her petite body.
My grandma always thought Su married her son Gary for his money, but that is not true. Gary married her when he was twenty-six years old. He did not become rich until he was thirty-four. He swore to my mom it was love at first sight. She told him "cut the bullshit." I guess you could say my mom never really did believe in love. She met my father when she was seventeen. My father was a drug addicted and an alcoholic, how my mom put up with him for so many years, I have no clue. They separated when I was one. He had cheated on her with a woman who is now my stepmother. Of course I never cared for her, and she never cared for me.
My mother only dated one other man after my father, I believe his name was Mark. I was only 4 at the time but I remember clearly being picked up from school by my mother and going straight to Marks apartment. It was a nice little place, but very cold most of the time. Mark had two sons around my age. One night my mother and mark had sat on his couch smoking and discussing adult related matters. The couch was brand new at the time, a beautiful white couch that Marks mother had bought him for his birthday. Mark asked my mother to come to the kitchen with him, he ashed his cigarette in the ashtray and sat it down on the white couch, then led my mother to the kitchen. He had a surprise for her there, the walls and cabinets filled with pictures of their memories together a cake he had bought special with the words "Will you marry me" across it.
Little did Mark know, his sons and I were about to give him a surprise. One of his sons dumped the ashtray on the couch while the other used his hands and smeared it all over the white couch. I picked up a cup of whiskey Mark had sipped on throughout the night and dumped it on the couch along with the smeared ashes. Why? I was four, and it looked fun. We must have made a lot of noise because Mark and my mother ran back into the living room very quickly. You could see the anger on Mark's face, beet red with a vein in his forehead popping out like a jack in the box.
He grabbed both of his sons by their ears and led them to the bedroom that they shared with each other. All my mother and I could hear were the sounds of flesh being smacked and the whimper and screams that came flooding out of the boys mouths. Tears filled my eyes and I turned to my mom. She looked at me with tears in hers and picked me up and covered my ears. When it was over Mark slammed the door and came stomping into the living room. I was scared, I gripped on to my mother's sweater tightly and sobbed.
"Did you spank him?" Mark asked my mother. She replied quietly "No, and I would never." They started arguing over it. "We left all of that stuff near a white couch and there were three little boys in this house. How did you think this would turn out?" My mother yelled. "They should know better." Mark yelled back. My mother picked up her purse and her keys and carried me towards the door in her arms. She opened the door, and looked back at Mark. "I will not marry you." She said. She gently closed the door behind her and kissed my head.
She never got involved with another man, and she never raised a hand to me. News of my Uncle Gary's engagement to Su made her chuckle. As did love movies. Uncle Gary and his wife Su only had one son, Peter. Peter looked more like Su, black hair, tan skin, big brown eyes. He was only born a few months after me, but we lived two totally different life styles. He got everything he wanted, I mean after all he was born into wealth. Su started off teaching him when he was young, by the time he was six years old the kid was a genius.
He's seventeen now, like me. He goes to some private rich kid school and thinks he's better than everyone because he has a high IQ and lots of money. You bet the girls were all over that. I arrived in seattle a week after my mother had passed, it was summertime and Peter was not in school. He never talked to me much, kind of stuck his nose up at me. Every night for the first week he would bring home a different girl. All the girls looked the same, blue-eyed, blonde, and they were all ditzy. It was hard to sleep that first week, with Peter's room right next to mine and the constant moans from the teen girls and the bed creaking.
Things calmed down the next week, I was sitting on the couch watching tv and Peter walked through the front door alone. He sat down beside me. "It must be tough to lose your mom." he said to me. I froze. Peter talked to me. I managed to spit out a "Yeah." my face still looking shocked as hell. "Do not tell my mom about the girls I bring in at night." Peter ordered. I nodded, "I would never." I told him. Things got quiet, he finally spoke again. "I would lose my mom if you did." I was confused. "What do you mean?" I asked him.
He sighed. "I would lose her respect if she ever found out. I introduced her to my girlfriend Emma. A beautiful smart girl that she would approve of. She does not know about the other girls, neither does Emma." He told me. "Oh." I said. "Well I will never say anything." He stood up and headed towards the stairs. "Oh and one more thing." He added. "What?" I replied. "Emma's coming over for dinner tomorrow, Don't say anything to her either. He made his way up the stairs before I could even process what he said.