Hannah

There's a sign on the front door of the house that I've lived in for three years.

Eviction notice
You have 2 weeks from June 2nd to be out. Any questions or comments can be directed to me at 555-9873.
⁃ Don Walters

  Don fucking Walters. He is - was - our landlord. He owns the whole row of small, worn down houses in this neighborhood. Mostly he leaves us alone, but when he comes around, he always causes shit. Like today.

  I just got home from school, my last week of high school, and find this sign on the door. My mom's car isn't in the driveway like it usually is at this time of day, but I don't worry about it. I don't worry about much - even the damn eviction notice - until I'm shoving open the sticky, creaky front door and my stomach hallows out. Bile rises in my throat.

   It's very obvious she's gone.

   Not just like gone for the day. Gone, gone.

  The couch is still there but the rest of the room is empty. The kitchen is practically gutted. The garbage can is overflowing. I was just here this morning, six hours ago. How did she do this in such a short time? When I check the two bedrooms, I'm not even surprised by what I find. Empty rooms, besides the beds. All of her clothes and all of mine, gone. The bed's are stripped down to the mattresses. It's like she forgot I existed when she packed up and took off, sometime after I left for school this morning.

  She's not coming back. I can feel it.

  I'm not even eighteen, though my birthday is a month away.

  I'm on my own. Though even when my mom was around, she really wasn't much of parent. She'd take off for weekends, or even longer, over the last few years. Once she figured I could take care of myself, she didn't do much taking care of me.

  She always managed to have wine and beer in the house and she paid our cell phone bills, but we rarely had groceries. I had no money for anything extra. I ate a lot of meals at friends' houses over the last year.

  I walk to the fridge and open it, though I'm not expecting much. There's a carton of milk and some dressings, some rotten lettuce and a really horrible smell. I don't have money. I didn't apply to college because there was no way I could ever pay for it. I was going to get a job this summer and try to help my mom out.

  Now she's gone.

  It was just her and I - and her string of bad boyfriends- for the last few years. My dad was never around, after about my fifth birthday. We don't really have any other family, not that she'd ever told me about, anyway. I know there's some family on my dad's side, in Florida. That's all I know.

  I have three days of school left.

  I need to finish up and go to my graduation and then I can go. Get out of here. Go anywhere I want. I have gotten used to Chapel Hill, but I don't love it any more than any of the other places I've lived.

  But I don't know where to go. I don't know what I want to do after high school. I don't know who I want to be. But I have to figure this out, and fast. I wasn't expecting to have to decide any of this today, but things changed.

  My stomach is still twisted up as I grab my phone and call the number on the sign, without really thinking. Don's number. He's kind of a gross, older man who has hit on me more than once, but he's overall harmless. I think. I need some answers, so I'm hoping he picks up.

  "Y'ello? Don speaking!"

  I swallow hard. "Hi, Don. This is Hannah Kingston.. um.. Joanie's daughter-"

  "Hannah! Hi." He sounds surprised and confused at the same time.

"Hi, um, I was just wondering what's the reason for the, um, eviction?"

  Don sighs heavily into my ear. "Hannah, your mother hasn't paid rent in four months. I have given her plenty of chances. I thought she'd come up with some money, but..."

"I understand," I tell him, defeated.

  "Do you need help getting moved out?" he asks.

  He doesn't know my mom is long gone and that she brought as much stuff with her as she could. He doesn't know I'm alone, on my own now.

  "We're okay. We'll be gone by next week," I finish and then end the call.

  It's not hard to believe that she wasn't paying the rent, but she never told me. She kept that from me. That's what I'm struggling with now, thinking about how she'd sit here at this table in the kitchen and drink a bottle of wine to herself. She barely worked. I should have known this was coming.

  But I've always given her the benefit of the doubt.

  We used to be close, back when we were in Florida. I was born there, in Clearwater, and lived there until I was four. I had grandparents and an aunt and uncle and a cousin. But then my dad stopped coming home and my mom and I got very isolated from his family. My mom didn't have any family of her own, so she put me in the car and we just drove for awhile, a few days after my fifth birthday party. We stopped in a couple of different states over the next two years. When we finally settled here, in Chapel Hill, I was seven and I finally got enrolled in school.

  It was just her and I for a few more years, her going from job to job. She wasn't really a stable person, but she was my mom. She wasn't good at parenting, really, but we were always fine. It was all I knew. She loved me, in her own way. But sometimes she loved alcohol a little bit more. Sometimes she loved whatever guy she had warming her bed at the time, a little more.  I know our relationship wasn't perfect, but she was all I had for a long time.

  I always told myself that. She's not a bad mother. She's just struggling. She's just doing it on her own.

    But maybe she was a bad mother. She left me, her only daughter, behind.

   I stare at the bare walls that used to have some picture frames on them. I walk around the empty house and try to remember what used to be there, but it doesn't even matter. She took what she thought was important but she left her daughter behind. No note. No phone call.

  That's the kind of mother she really is.

*

There's three days of classes left, but they are mostly just showing up for attendance. Friday is Graduation and Saturday is the big party. How am I going to celebrate knowing I have nothing, no one, in the end?

  "You know the party is at Jason's parents' lake house, right?" Jessie, the only person I'd really considering a friend, tells me during second period.

  We've been friends for a year or so and she's not really like me -she's outgoing and wears bright colors and she's happy almost all the time - but she doesn't judge anyone, for anything. She's got a wide variety of friends but she seems to like hanging out with me. That's why I like her. She's never been to my house. We don't see each other much outside of school, but at school we are together, if we aren't in class.

  And I just told her that I won't be going to the party.

  "Yeah. I just can't..."

  "I thought your mom doesn't care if you go to parties," Jessie says with a laugh.

  That's an understatement.

  "She doesn't. But, I have... a family thing." I don't like lying, but I don't have another choice.

  I don't want Jessie to know that my mom's gone and that I'll be gone soon, too. Looking at her now, it feels wrong that I will likely never see her again, after Friday.

  The ceremony is long and the building is full of proud, happy parents and grandparents. The energy in the room the entire day is excitement - for graduation, for the future. I am just trying to get through the day without a meltdown. Luckily, I've always just tucked myself into the crowd and make sure not to stand out, so that's how this day goes, too. I don't know why actually graduating felt so important, but I figure I might want to show that I have a high school diploma at some point.

  It's mid-afternoon when the ceremony wraps up. I sneak out past the groups of my classmates with their families, but when I spot Jessie, I freeze. I want to say goodbye to her, but I know I can't. I'll text her when I'm gone and explain everything. She'll understand.

  It's a rainy day and I pull up my hood of my blue hoodie as I step outside and walk down the cement stairs, the envelope that holds my diploma tightly in my hand.  As I turn back to give the auditorium one last look, a crack of thunder makes me jump. This feels so fitting, the dreary, stormy day. It's a fifteen minute walk back to the house... the house that has nothing in it and isn't mine, not anymore.

  I sit outside on the porch, in the rain, for far too long. I think I don't want to go inside because of what that empty house represents. My loneliness. My mother, who abandoned me. It hasn't hit me yet. Maybe I'm still processing it, or I'm in shock. I know what has happened, but it doesn't feel real. I graduated high school and she wasn't there.

  She's gone, and I hate her.

  But I also miss her, somehow.

  I also wish she'd pull back into the driveway right now and tell me it was all just a sick joke.