Thank you everyone for the kind reviews so far. I really wanted to use this chapter to explore why Santana is so emotionally messed up and why her home life is less than desirable. Hope you enjoy...review :)
PS this chapter contains some mild drug use
It's almost eight when I pull back into the driveway. My father still isn't home and I'm not shocked. I'm sure he took an extra shift because it would be less aggravating than coming home and dealing with mom. I check my reflection one last time before heading inside. Maybe she's in bed already…yeah right. She'll be perched at the front door waiting to hear every detail of where I was. Unfortunately for her, I learned how to lie from good old dad, who still had a secret bank account and a string of affairs she didn't know about. I don't blame dad for running around, because she's an intolerable drunk. I often think of stashing a few extra moms off to the side.
I take a deep breath before I enter the front door and kick off my shoes. I don't see her sitting in the living room where she usually waits to ground me.
"Kitchen, Santana. Now," I hear her growl. Damn, so close.
"Ma, I'm sorry I was gone so long…I ran into Quinn at the library and we started talking about our project, and Brittany left her back pack in my car so I had to go back to her house," I lied.
"I told you to be home for dinner," she replies, rinsing out the glass I know she just gulped her Dewar's out of.
"I'm sorry ma," I gulp, waiting for the barrage of spiteful words and drunken blows surely coming my way.
"Sit down, I'll heat it up," she replies, putting the class in the strainer and drying her hands with a tattered dish cloth. Is she serious? Normally she'd be wailing on me by now. Her eyes lock with mine then for only a moment and she glances lower at my swollen cheek.
"What happened to your face, boo?" she asks so sweetly it nauseates me. What is going on?
"Oh, that. I uh…was on the phone when I opened my car door and caught the corner with my cheek. Stupid…wasn't paying attention," I say with a light chuckle, showing her it was no big deal. She nods, half buying it and reaches into the freezer. She walks over to me with a bag of frozen peas and presses it onto my face.
"Hold that there for a while," she instructs me, and I sit down. Mom hasn't been this nice to me in years...ever since…
"Mom are you okay?" I ask.
"Of course, why?"
"It's just…usually you and I don't get along so good since…Angela," I start, my voice cracking. Five years ago my older sister Angela was killed in a car accident. She had just graduated high school and was on her way to Ohio State on a full ride for pre med. She was my hero, my best friend. Even though my mother always made it blatantly obvious that Angela was her favorite and I was just an accident, Ang always looked after me. She read the songs and poems I wrote for school and assured me that singing wasn't a waste of my time like mom always said. The day of her funeral I heard my mom telling my dad that Angela was heading places…that it should've been me.
"I don't want to talk about that," she replies putting my plate down in front of me. I never told my mother what I heard that day five years ago. I've always wanted to…but to hear those words twice in a lifetime might be too much. I nod acceptingly and dive into my food, my stomach reminding me that I haven't put anything but saltines and a few accidental gulps of toothpaste into it in days. I feel my mom's glare burning through me as I eat and I glance up.
"Hungry?" she asks. She's either drank her way past violent and obnoxious and right into a stupor, or something bad is about to happen. Judging the smell on her breath I guess the first, and am grateful for this as I nod and continue eating. I think about asking her where dad is but shrug it off, knowing that may well be the thing that sets her off. She plays with the discarded bag of peas as I finish inhaling my food, hardly taking time to breathe. I finish with one large gulp, and it's then when I take my plate to the sink that I see the empty bottle of scotch sitting there. I turn back to my mom, who now has her head down on the table, most likely sleeping. I shuffle to the fridge and take a few large gulps of milk right out of the carton, a habit I have been pounded on for several times in the past, and wipe the residue from my upper lip.
"Ma?" I say, trying to shake her awake. She grumbles but doesn't move much. She's wasted.
"Ma, come on…go lay down," I coerce her. After a proverbial tug of war I manage to get her on her feet and help her to the couch. She plops down, eyes closed, too drunk to function. I cover her with a blanket and turn the TV on for her. I hate when she gets like this, but it's better than the hitting. I leave her there to sleep it off and as I head upstairs my back starts to seize in pain. I know mom has Percs hidden somewhere…I remember her constantly leaving work early for "pain" and sitting on the phone for hours with her doctor trying to get them to renew the prescription. She tosses back a few at a time when the booze doesn't take the edge off.
I rifle through her medicine cabinet and it's chock full of all the primetime players for chemical dependency…Xanax, Oxys, Vicodin, Percs…ah here they are. I sprinkle two into my palm and look at myself in the mirror. For good measure, I flex my arms, trying to make myself believe I can be tough. Fuck. No wonder that girl kicked my ass. I need some more tone. I'm about as ripped as Hilary Duff. I've always considered myself tough, but Jamie's punches hit like wrecking balls, whereas mine would be about as brutal as a declawed pregnant cat swatting at a fly on a Sunday afternoon. I toss the Percs into my mouth and swallow them dry. Tonight I sleep, tomorrow I start training.
As I walk to my room I am taunted by the few pictures my parents leave hanging up. Most of them are of Ang, and I can't help but feel weaker as I stare into her eyes.
She'd handle this better than I have. She damn sure would've protected Brit. She always had the answers.
But where is she now? Where is she when I have no answers? When I'm putting my body through hell just to feel alive?
The pills are working their way through my blood quickly. Her smile is burning through me. She's judging me. She's telling me I'm wrong.
"Stop running…stop running…" I hear her voice. A bead of sweat drips down my forehead. My blood is boiling. I'm spinning.
"Stop running,"
"What do you want from me?" I scream, hurling my fist into the picture. The cheap plastic busts and I drop to my knees in tears.
I pick up the wrinkled picture and sob into it. It's then, in this moment as I sit, holding my dead sister to my chest that I realize my mother was right.
It should've been me.