Claire

In the beginning it was quiet. There was a sense of peace that you can't find somewhere with others around. It's the feeling of when you visit somewhere you completely forgot about but you remember it so very clearly from your childhood. It is the bittersweet feeling that brings you to want to explore it as you did when you were little. I always wanted to explore. When my mother still loved and cared about me, she would used to say I had quite the unusual thirst for adventure. And really she meant that I would go great places. When I came to Sonoma to visit her, everything I remembered was still there. The little cat that waved when you put it in the sunshine, the smell of burnt bacon from when she didn't know how to cook, and even the kindly un-dusted portrait of a clay mold of my kindergarten hand still hung on the cracked paper wall. Everything was there, but everything felt off in a way. A way that I'd been gone too long. I found her, lying on the floor. Bottles of whisky and bourbon lie around and stuffed under the couch. I wasn't surprised she'd been drinking. Ever since the accident, she stopped caring about us, and threw her life away. "God damnit mom why can't you ever not be drunk and lazy." She rolled over the slightest bit, still in deep weight of being tired and drunken. "What're you doin' here crimie?" She said stuttering. "I came to visit you as a surprise. You haven't been taking care of yourself." I picked her light and somewhat boney body up and put her on the couch. I laid an itchy blanket over her and half a second later she fell asleep again. I sighed and headed up stairs to see my old room, which was completely empty. I wasn't surprised my mom had sold all of my things. She had no money because she used it all on booze, so she took advantage of my items. Blake, my moms boyfriend, wasn't home today like I expected. He was off to a work meeting, as my mom calls it. Blake cheats on my mom, and then comes home drunk to abuse her. She will constantly defend Blake when I try to talk to her about it. The last time I saw her was when she kicked me out of the house. I was 15. Now I am 19, and I know better than to get in the way of her and Blake. I skimmed through the bits left of my room, and then went over to the small door and opened it to see the crowded space with pipes and chunks of dust. I remember how I would hide there when Blake would come to my room to hurt me, I remember how sometimes the pipes would burn me if I touched them and I would almost scream. I went back downstairs to find my mom surprisingly up in the kitchen and heating up a frozen packaged food container in the microwave. "I see you're up now. How've things been?" She looked at me for a minute still half drunk, and then finally said in a slur, "Been alright so far. Why'd y'a come here?" I walked around her to the single cabinet, which was empty with lots of dust. "I came to see if you were okay." "I'm doin' jus' fine with me and Blake, I don need any help from you." She sat down with her heated pasta and turned on the tv to watch the news. She looked like she hadn't seen the events on the news in the world in a long time. "Mom, where is Claire?" She looked down at her pasta for a bit longer than a moment, causing me to worry more. "At Aunt Mabel's house." Claire is my younger sister. When I last saw her, she was 5 years old. My mom always called her an accident because she didn't want a second child. She abused Claire the most. Everything Claire did that was wrong, I would always take the blame for so that she wouldn't get beaten. When mom sent me to my room after being punished, Claire would always be there to bandage my wounds and brush my hair. We would sing lullabies together till' we both fell asleep. When I was kicked out, I couldn't take Claire with me. I wrote hundreds of letters to her, and all of them were sent back to me. I didn't come to see my mom. I came to find Claire. If I knew one thing for certain, it was that I would do anything to bring her home with me.