It was 1986 and my 12th birthday. We were living in the mountains in Sonoma County or Napa, I can’t quite remember. We moved so often that most of my childhood is a blur of nonsense. I do remember it was beautiful and living out of a van in the mountains wasn’t all that bad except for the crazy monster that lived with us. She was constantly in need of being fucked up and I am not even sure why she kept us around. She just treated us like shit. We cramped her style for sure. My monster had bought herself a Trans-Am with t-tops or whatever those are called that are on the top of the car. But it was the classic Trans Am with the bird on the hood, the big gold bird. The car was dusty black and it was super fast. My grandmother had died and left all of her children some money. She was the treasurer of Torrance county for many many years and was known and loved by many people. I loved my grandmother. She taught me how to play Uno and made me watch baseball, the Dodgers only she was a huge Dodgers fan and well she should be if she was a true Los Angelian. Anyway, when my mother got her money she bought guns, drugs, and cars with her share of the inheritance money. We were already homeless and I guess she didn’t think it was important to put her two little girls in a house and enroll us in school. So we lived up in the mountains while she drank all day long and played sniffelupagus monster with her nose candy. On my 12th birthday, I woke up and stepped outside of my tent and I remember feeling old and it was just another day for me. Even though at 12 you’d think I’d be upset about not being like a normal 12-year-old, well I didn’t know what the fuck that was so I guess I was content. My mom used some of her inheritance money and bought me a bike and a puppy for my birthday. That day she was to teach me how to make stew on a camping stove and that was my big 12th birthday surprise because every woman should know how to cook stew regardless of the living situation. So I learned how to cook stew over an open flame and I occasionally just rode my bike around the campground and played with my new puppy. I wish I could remember the puppies name. I blocked this memory because it hurt too much. I hated losing my animals it was always heartbreaking. My mom had been drinking all day and at some point she pulled out her shotgun to show us how tough she was or something not sure what was going on inside of that monster brain of hers but she did threaten me with it later that night when I refused to get in the Trans-Am to drive down the mountain so she could buy more booze. She was totally wasted. I finished cooking my stew which I guess was edible I don’t remember the food. The evening turned into a nightmare and I must have argued with my mother for at least an hour trying to get her to not drive that fast car down a winding one-lane mountain road. My little sister was only 9 at the time and was going to turn 10 two weeks after my birthday. Young lassie. My mom was beginning to get really belligerent and abusive, her usual self. She kept pushing us to get in the death mobile and I kept saying “No, no mom you can’t drive, you’re drunk”. She would just laugh or say some shit out of her mouth like, “you’re full of shit”, “you don’t know a fucking thing”, and so on and so on. Well, there was no way in hell she was going to leave us alone in that safe campground. Oh, yea I almost forgot to mention that when I woke up that morning most of our food had been stolen and some of our camping gear and other things I can’t quite remember. So that was the beginning of my 12th birthday. I think that’s why she wanted to teach me how to make stew. We probably only had potatoes and carrots or some shit left to cook. Whoever ripped us off in the middle of the night must have been very very quiet. I was sleeping outside in a tent and my mom was sleeping in the lime green VW bus she also bought with the inheritance. At some point, her nagging for us to get in the car became straight up abusive and violent. “Get the fuck in the car right fucking now and don’t make me tell you again”! The monster yelled. And she flashed her damn shotgun at me like if I didn’t do what she said she just might have to teach me a lesson or shoot my damn ass. Who knows she was a crazy person. We got in the Trans Am. I was already aware we were going to get in an accident. I just knew. I don’t know how I did, but I did. I even told my mom, “mom we are going to roll this car down the mountain if you drive” she told me to “shut the fuck up and get in the car”. So we had no choice but to go for the death ride. I made sure my little sister was sitting in the middle of the back seat thinking if she was in the middle maybe she would be safer. I made sure the seatbelt was secured on her. I then put mine on and made my mom put hers on as well. All the while I keep telling her we’re going to get in an accident and you shouldn’t drive anywhere. At this point, I am almost begging her to get out of the car and grab my sister but she wasn’t having it. She took off fast in the campground. We were high up in the mountains in Northern California. I remember it being such a beautiful place to have such horrifying events take place. I wish I could only remember the beauty but I don’t, I tried for many years to not remember any of it. We started down the one-lane, curvy mountain road and I turned to my sister in the back seat and told her to hold on. And yes my puppy I got for my birthday was also in the car. I almost forgot to mention that. My little sister also got a Himalayan kitty, you know the ones that have the smooshed up faces. I guess my mom bought it for her so she wouldn’t feel left out or maybe mom just bought them both at the same time to knock out both of our birthday gifts. I don’t know how many puppies she would bring home and eventually get rid of or sell for dope so I was accustomed to not getting to attached because I knew at some point I’d come home and the animals would be gone. Always a heartbreak. So down the mountain we go. I can tell she’s swerving some but not going to fast, yet. She picked up speed and I kept telling her to slow down, drive straighter, you’re going to fast but the longer we were going down that road the faster she would go and the turns were getting tighter and tighter and the road seemed to get narrower and narrower but I think the acceleration made the road seem like it was closing in. It was a mountain road with no middle divider and no outside white lines to guide you and there were no lights and it was a pitch black night. We were coming up on a turn and I knew before we got to it that this was the one we weren’t going to make, I told my sister to hold on. My mom started to hit the curve, was going to fast and lost control of the car and we went right over the side of the mountain the car flipping over an over again I lost count and I might have passed out. I was still holding onto my puppy. It seemed like forever and only a second that we were tumbling through the trees and then we stopped, dead. I opened my eyes and everything was so still after such a violent crash the stillness felt so odd. The radio was still playing, but the engine was silent. My mom wasn’t moving or talking. Everything was surreal, very dreamlike. I was upside down and we were crunched against one tree. One big tree. Right behind that one big tree was a vertical drop off. Straight down to death. The engine had died but the headlights were still on and then the radio stopped and the silence was deafening. In the middle of the forest, on the side of a cliff, being held up by one big tree I started screaming for my sister, she was no longer in the car. While the car was flipping over and over again the seatbelt I thought I had secured on her actually wasn’t and she flew out of one of the T-tops. It’s unbelievable she survived. I am not sure how far she flew through the air but I finally heard her calling my name, crying. Now this cliff we tumbled down was just that. Almost totally vertical. It was straight up forest. And hard to stay on your feet with how steep it was. I called out to my mom and nothing. Once, twice, three times screaming at her and nothing so at that point I thought she was dead so my main concern was getting my sister and our animals back up that mountainside that seemed just impossible in the jet black night and crazy brush everywhere. Somehow our little animals followed us up that cliffside. My sister and I helped each other climb back up that mountain. Out of sheer fear our mother was dead or even worse, she was alive and vicious. We had to get up that cliff and run all the way back up to the campground to get help. We had probably made it down that road two miles I don’t know exactly but it took forever to get back to camp. We finally made it back to the road and I have no idea how we did it. My puppy and her kitty followed us the whole way. When we got to the road we started screaming and running. I asked my sister if she was ok if she was bleeding or anything broken and she said she was fine. I could make out the back of her shirt it was a light color and noticed her shirt was really dark under the neckline and that’s when I grabbed her and checked her head, she was bleeding all over her shirt. I thought it was really really bad but it was a head wound and you know how bad those can bleed, so much blood it can look like you’re dying. We kept running and screaming up that winding road with our little animals following us or we’d stop and pick them up for fear of losing them. Still screaming and running, exhausted and barely able to breathe. It took forever to get back up that mountain and the whole time I was so mad thinking that my mom was dead. We finally turned a corner and saw a light, it was the campground and there were people out walking around looking for where the screaming sounds were coming from. Apparently, the sounds of us screaming woke up the whole campground so by the time we got to the entrance there were probably three or four families there trying to figure out where all the screaming was coming from. We could barely breathe from running up the mountain road with our animals and thinking our mom was dead. So our explanation for what was happening was coming out in spurts, “accident, “mom dead”. Thank god some of those adults were very kind and calmed us down. I called 911 not one of the adults because I wanted to be the one to tell them that I THOUGHT my mom was dead and if it was me telling them maybe they would come faster to save her. I have no idea how long it took and I don’t remember anything from the time I hung up the phone until the ambulance, fire truck and cops came to the campground. I think they found where the car went off the road on there way up the mountain. An ambulance took us back down to the scene to identify our mother and get checked out. We got back to the scene and immediately we were told she wasn’t dead. We were so relieved and terrified at the same time. They sat us down and asked all the appropriate questions to make sure we didn’t have massive concussions or head trauma. Not much was done in 1986. The scene was pretty crazy. There were a number of emergency vehicles and maybe a couple of cops. My mom was still drunk of course and I don’t remember if I even spoke to her even though I was so thankful she was still alive I was so angry for her doing this to us and on my 12th birthday. Horrible monster. She didn’t have a scratch on her. Breea needed a couple of stitches in the back of her head and my whole body felt like I’d been in a clothes dryer just tumbling around beating every part of my body. Happy birthday, you’re not dead. Turning 12 is going to be rough. I mean if it started off like this how the hell is the rest of the year going to be. 12 years old, almost a teenager. I just can’t wait. And maybe just maybe you will make it to 13.
Written by Solea K Lewis
Narrative Nonfiction
Likes
1050 Views
Share: