A/N: Trigger warning: this chapter contains child abuse, mentions of past eating disorders and a anxiety attack.
Chapter twenty one:
JACKIE
"Mom, what do you want to talk about?" I ask, going straight to the point. I just want to get this over with, maybe I can even spend the night with Steven again if I sort those legal issues with my mother fast enough.
Everyone literally just left, I can hear the noise of Steven's car engine and I know he's leaving too. Now it's just me and my mother, like she wanted to.
The little energy I had left went away with Steven. I'm completely and utterly drained. I don't even know how I've managed to survive this day. Everything has been so irrevocably painful, I don't know if I'll ever get past this.
And I feel like garbage, I can see how everyone's worried about me, and it makes me feel bad. The only two people that I'm comfortable around are Steven and Donna, I feel like everyone else is pitying me, even though I know that they are not.
Is it normal? To feel bad because there are people worrying about you? I feel like it isn't. At the same time I want to be honest with them and tell them how I'm really feeling, I don't want to overwhelm them, I don't want to be a burden. Especially with Steven and Donna.
My mother looked at me and feigned a sweet smile as she poured more wine in her glass "Let's wait until all the staff is gone" She says, pointing to the kitchen where the staff was finishing cleaning everything up.
I sigh and go sit on the living room couch, I lean my head on my hands and I close my eyes for a few seconds. I'm so fucking tired.
I have a killer headache, I've barely slept since Steven told me about my dad two days ago, and I know that if I don't sleep soon I'm probably going to end up passing out from exhaustion or something similar.
I open my eyes and I look around this huge living room. It's a beautiful room, but it's not home. This house stopped being my home the second daddy was arrested.
Home is where the heart is, and currently, my home is at the Forman's. Probably sitting in his special chair in the basement, with his arms crossed and scowling because I'm not there. I wish I was. Hopefully, my mother will be quick and blunt about whatever it is that I need to sign, and then I'll be able to sneak in to see Steven today.
I don't know how much time passed, but I saw my mom paying the staff, and a second later, they were gone.
Huh, I never really stopped to think about how my mother managed to pay for this whole thing. I could've pitched in, I have money, but she hadn't even asked for it. Maybe this is what this whole thing is about.
She looks at me and I sigh before following her to the kitchen. I can't wait until this is over.
"You look like you could use a drink" My mom says "There's more wine in the fridge if you want to"
Just the mention of alcohol makes me sick "No, thanks" I answer
My mom just stares at me and opens up a new bottle of wine for her. The silence is deafening, why can't she just get this over with?
"So, why are you back with that filthy boy? I thought you got rid of him" My mom finally says, sipping on her wine
I sigh, I really don't want to discuss Steven with my mom now "Yes I am, and please let's not talk about Steven now"
"I'm not stupid Jacqueline, I know what that boy did to you" My mom says with a sly smile "I told you he wasn't good enough for you, and you had the audacity to yell at me for it. And then, he runs away and marries a stripper. People talk, I know everything"
My eyes fill with tears, who the hell does she think she is? She doesn't know anything about Steven and I! Marrying that whore was the biggest mistake he ever made, and he regrets it deeply, he told me many times, and I know he's not lying, I can see it in his eyes. And he made up for it, he changed, he's doing his best, he loves me so much.
Besides, I doubt that that's the problem my mom has with Steven. I know what her problem with him is, and that's why I yelled at her the last time I saw her.
"Bullshit, you know nothing about me and Steven. Nothing relevant" I say, glaring at my mother "You and I both know why I got so mad at you the last time"
"You yelled at me and acted like a spoiled little brat because I was looking out for you!" My mom says, clutching her wine glass
"No, I yelled at you because you said that I couldn't date a half-black man! You said he wasn't good for me after you found out his father is black!" I yell, losing my temper
"So what? That's why he did what he did! It's in his blood!" My mom yells back, and good God I feel like throwing up. Who the hell thinks like this?
"What the hell is the matter with you?" I mutter, I'm disgusted by her words, this… this is not okay "How can you say that? How can you judge someone's character based on the color of their skin? Don't you have a soul?"
No, she doesn't. That was a stupid question.
My mom takes a deep breath and finishes her drink. I know that's what she does when she wants to regain her composure.
"I noticed he kept feeding you today" She snarls, and my heart stops for a second, she's going to attack my appearance again, it's what she always does "Haven't you learned anything from me?"
"You know what? I'm not doing this, mom" I say, raising my hands in the air. I'm tired, I'm frustrated, I just buried my dad along with a part of me, and now my mother wants to kill what's left.
"Are you blind? Don't you realize what he's doing?" She mutters angrily "He's trying to make you fat so you won't leave him!"
I stare at her like she's crazy. What the fuck is wrong with my mom?
"Because he knows that no one else will ever want you if you're fat" She continues "Then you will be stuck with him until he gets sick of you, and you're going to end up fat, poor and alone!"
I feel tears leaving my eyes. My mother isn't making any sense, this doesn't make any sense. Nothing makes sense anymore. Steven loves me and he's worried about me. He's just being a good boyfriend. I'm not falling for my mom's crap, not again.
I keep trying to remind myself that I don't need her. I don't. I have the Formans, I have Donna and Bob, I have Steven, Eric, Michael and Fez. Pam Burkhart is a toxic person and I do not need her in my life. Nor do I want her in it.
But fuck, it hurts, hearing those words from my mother hurts. And what hurts the most is the fact that her words still have the power to destroy me.
"You look like a mess, I was ashamed of you today. Your hair is flat, you're not wearing any makeup, you have these hideous dark circles under your eyes…" She start to point out all of my flaws "You don't look like my daughter at all, you make me sick" She finished
I take a deep breath and I try to control myself. I know I look like crap, and I hate looking like crap. But I'm exhausted, I don't have the energy to curl my hair or apply makeup all the time. Just the thought of it makes me tired. I'm drained.
"I'm not doing this, mom" I repeat. I also don't have the energy to argue with her, not today. I'm too weak to do so.
"Because you know everything I said it's true" She says with an arrogant smile
"Why did you ask me to spend the night here?" I go straight to the point, I want to get back to Steven, I don't want to be here anymore. "Do you want money? I can get you money if you leave me alone"
"Don't be silly, I have exciting news!" My mom smiles brightly, and I wonder how the hell did she manage to do that? She was attacking me seconds ago. She removed something from her purse, and…
"Is that a ring?" I ask, staring at the object
"It's an engagement ring" My mom says, placing the ring on her finger "Mommy's engaged!" She says, grinning from ear to ear. And what the fuck?
"Excuse me?" I choke out after a few seconds
"Oh, you're going to love him. He paid for this whole thing by the way, so don't worry about money, I have plenty now" She says excitedly "His name is Pierre and I've met him in Hawaii, he's french and filthy rich!"
My dad's body is not even cold yet and my mother is engaged to another man? Her new boy toy paid for my father's funeral? I can't believe this.
"He proposed a week ago, I was going to send divorce papers to your father, but he's dead and that makes my job a lot easier! Less paperwork to worry about" She says, and I'm stunned. I thought there was no way she could be more insensitive, and she managed to prove me wrong in every possible way. Can't she see that I'm dying inside?
"Anyways, I'm moving to Paris in a few months so I can be with him, that's why I asked you here. I'm selling the house" She deadpans
I lean into the kitchen counter, this is too much information for me to process. My dad loved this house, he had it built from scratch. Every single furniture from this house was picked by my dad, the rooms were built exactly the way he wanted to. When he heard I moved in with Donna, the only thing he asked me to do was to not sell this house, he wanted to live here again once he got out of prison.
"No" I say, without even thinking twice
"No what?" My mom asks, checking herself on her pocket mirror
"You are not selling this house, daddy loved this house!" I say
"Jackie, this is a very expensive house, and since you're an adult, half of it it's yours, so I can't put it to sale without your signature" She says, rolling her eyes "You'll get half of the money and it's not like your father is coming back here"
The tears are running down my face, I tried to wipe them off but they just won't stop flowing down my cheeks. I look incredulously at my mother, she's… God, she's horrible.
"The papers are here on the counter" My mom pointed to the papers "I've drawn tiny stars on the places you're supposed to sign"
I continue to stare at her, I don't have anything to say. There are no words to describe how I'm feeling right now.
"Now, I'm going out with the LOPPs for drinks, you can leave the papers signed over here, I'll pick them later" She says, grabbing her purse and coming closer to me. I can feel the liquor radiating from her breath, and it makes me want to puke. She pats me in the head before leaving through the front door.
I want to scream, I want to break something, but I seem to be frozen. I can't move, I can barely breathe right now.
I want my dad. More than anything right now. So I drag myself into the only place in the house that I can actually feel his presence. His office.
Daddy spent so much time there, that his smell is stuck to that place. That room always smelled like his cologne, even after he was arrested. Before I moved in with Donna, I used to sit on his chair for hours, it was the only place in the house where I felt safe.
As I enter my dad's old office I feel my heart breaking all over again. The room is almost empty, and it doesn't smell like him anymore. I can see that my hands are shaking, and I can barely breathe right now.
There's no chair, there's no smell. My mom must've had his office cleaned sometime, I don't see why she would do this though.
Unless she thought she could find some money hidden in here.
Then I remember the ugly truth I'll have to learn how to live with for the rest of my life. My father is gone and I'll never get to see him again.
God, I wish it was her. I wish I buried my mom today, not my dad. Does that make me a shitty person? I wouldn't feel this way if it was her. I wouldn't be in so much fucking pain.
My heart starts to thump loudly inside of my chest, I can hear the blood passing through my ears, and I can see my chest moving up and down. I can't breathe, my whole body is shaking and my vision is blurred because I can't stop crying.
I can't be here anymore. So I ran into my old room. This absurdly pink room that my mother decorated because 'that's how a girl's room should look like'. At the time I haven't protested, I looked up to my mother then, I wanted to be like her.
But what I treasured the most in my room was now in Chicago, it's the picture of me and my dad. I love that picture. Daddy took me to a farm and spent the whole day with me. I learned how to ride a pony, we picked up apples together and he played with me the whole day. It was one of the best days of my life.
I miss him with all of my heart. He's never going to kiss my head in the morning before leaving for work, and he's never going to hug me and call me his "kitten" again.
He will never wake me up on Saturdays mornings to have our special breakfast at the bakery again, he will never write me a letter or call me on Thursdays, he's gone. He's buried underground and he's now worm food.
My father is actually dead. Someone killed him and took him away from me.
He's never walking me down the aisle and handing me to Steven, nor will he ever meet his future grandchildren.
This hurts so much, I want it to stop. I just want it to fucking stop because I can't deal with this.
This is killing me. My father died and I feel like he took a big chunk of me with him.
What the hell am I supposed to do now?
I lean into my old dressing table to try and control my breath, and I see a picture sitting in there. A picture of my and my mother, taken in a studio, because she needed to pretend like she had a daughter sometimes.
I wasn't her fucking daughter, I was her toy, something she could play with and leave it behind when it wasn't interesting enough anymore.
She ruined me. She made me vain and shallow, she convinced me that love can only be bought and that poor people are bad. She made me feel bad about myself and my appearance, she taught me how to starve myself and how to induce vomit whenever I had the audacity to eat. Having a thin daughter was way more important than having a healthy one to her.
She should be the one who's dead.
I took this picture and I threw it in the wall, wishing I could throw it at my mother. For a very small fraction of a second, I thought I could breathe again.
I try to take deep breaths in order to calm myself, but everytime time I open my eyes I want to hurl. This is not my room anymore. The bedroom is a place you're supposed to feel comfortable in, and I definitely don't feel this way here. My bedroom is in the back of a dingy basement with a small military cot, my bedroom has blue walls, a WFPP poster and a Janis Joplin poster, my bedroom is also back in Chicago, with a picture of me and my dad on the nightstand.
This is just… The girl who once adored this bedroom doesn't exist anymore.
Fuck this, fuck everything. I don't know what possessed me, but next thing I knew, my dressing table was broken on the floor. There's huge chunks of what was once a mirror scattered through my room. I take my lava lamp and I throw it on the ground too, along with all of the professional pictures my mom used to make me take. Everytime time I had to have a picture taken my mom made me skip meals for days.
Everytime I threw something, I aimed at my mom's imaginary face. I hate her. I fucking hate her, she ruined my life.
I feel a sharp pain in my arm, there's a broken piece of glass on top of my dresser, I have no fucking idea of how it ended up there, but I cut myself in it when I tried to sweep all the clutter off the top of my dresser.
I can feel the blood dripping down my arm but I ignored it completely. The pain in my arm is absolutely nothing compared to the pain I'm feeling in my heart.
They say a person's room is supposed to represent them in a certain way. I look around at the mess I made, and that's accurate. I managed to break all the breakable objects in here. Now this room represents me.
A fucking broken girl with a shitty mother and a dead father. A dead father.
There's nothing left for me to destroy anymore, and suddenly all of my rage is gone, and all I feel is this awful sadness. If there's a God, then he hates me. I was finally achieving happiness for the first time in my life and now the one person who loved me unconditionally during all my life ceased to exist.
I can't deal with this, I just want to fall asleep and never wake up again. I just want everything to be over because this is the worst feeling in the world.
My legs trembling and I feel unstable in my feet. My knees buckled and now I'm kneeling in the floor, I feel tiny pieces of glass on my knees and fuck this.
I let out an agonizing scream, not because of my knees or my arm, but because of how my life went to crap all of a sudden. I don't know what I did to deserve this.
Fuck this life, I don't want to deal with this anymore. I bury my face in my hands and I scream again, hoping it would make it go away.
It didn't.
My body starts to shake with uncontrollable sobs, and I give in to them. There's no need for me to repress them now. I'm alone, and remembering that just makes me cry harder.
I don't know how long it's been, but I feel strong arms lifting me up and suddenly I'm being pressed up against a chest, his chest. I would recognize this touch, this smell anywhere. I wrap my arms around his waist and I decide to cry it all out.
"Shh… It's alright baby, I'm here" I hear Steven's voice, and for the first time since I was left alone with my mom, I feel like I can breathe again.
A/N: So… This was definitely something. Please let me know your thoughts in a review or something, I really liked this chapter, but I'm also feeling really insecure about it.
Writing Pam lines made me sick, I hate people that think like her, and I hated having to write that. Racist people disgust me.
Jackie was always a bit innocent. She didn't know what the real world was like because she grew up privileged (financially). And whatever innocence she had left, died along with her father.
Next chapter will be up next week, we will get to see what Hyde was up to after he left the reception and the repercussions of Jackie's breakdown.
