6.LOSING
The taxi driver is kind enough to carry a couple of boxes into the apartment. Kara and her son are loaded up with bags as they enter their new semi-furnished home in the suburbs. She feels hopeful that turning this fresh page of her life will bring better things.
Upon returning to the taxi to pay the driver and collect the remaining odds and ends, Kara and her boy encounter a curious onlooker. After a moment, this elderly woman offers a “hi” as a greeting then looks the apparently blond late 20-something in jeans and a T-shirt and her eight-year-old hooded progeny up and down. “Is that all you possess?” she asks with a shake of the head.
“Oh, I got rid of a lot of old stuff. I wanna reboot, you know?”
“Reboot.”
“I want to make a new start, that is.”
“I see. Trouble can follow you, wherever you go. Take it from me.”
Kara does not voice a reply. Instead, she feigns a closed smile and prods Tyler, her son, to move on and enter the apartment. They go in and she pushes the door closed behind them.
They leave most of the belongings unpacked for the moment while they exit to shop for a few food items at a grocer one block away. “Maybe you’re new around here?” inquires the middle aged grocer who looks to be Mediterranean in origin as he packs two paper bags with the purchases. He is cautious about making conversation and does not make eye contact.
“Yep, that’s right.”
“You from another state?”
Kara simply nods without divulging any facts.
“Take care. Maybe I’ll see you.”
“Probably. Obviously, we living around here now.”
As they return, she perceives a guy peering out the window at them, and a couple standing in on the lawn in front of the low rise building stop talking, and turn to stare. “Hey, there,” says one of them.
Kara looks up briefly and just replies with “hi.”
Kara is intentionally unfriendly beyond common cordiality. Life has been unkind to her and now she is a runaway from a bad relationship. Not being able to get a legal restraining order, she is especially afraid for her safety and the security of her boy.
Orphaned, Kara was brought up by a foster parent as of age thirteen. Mona, the foster mother, was always cool with her foster daughter, embittered by a rough divorce. She retained custody because of her good income from alimony and employment as a retail clerk and had a history as an adequate mother but did not have any other children to support at home these days. Kara felt that she was probably more interested in getting supplementary did not particularly like girls, but was rather one of those women wounded by misfortune who took out their frustration and pain on other females instead of facing the real enemy, the patriarchal order. She seemed to resent the attention and successes of other women, and thus found it hard to express affection or approval towards Kara. Well, that is how Kara interpreted the situation. She is not communicating with Mona. She has not even told her where she and Tyler have gone.
Mona always criticized Kara when problems with Kara’s partner cropped up. She blamed Kara for inciting anger in him after one of his violent episodes, and never voiced support for Kara even when Kara took herself to the hospital following one such incident. Kara feels all alone with little protection.
No, Kara is not interested in making friends at this point. She is only interested in earning a livelihood for the sake of Tyler’s welfare and establishing some peace and stability in her life.
She does have a couple of good friends whom she met in high school. However, Kara is worried for their safety as well as Tyler’s and her own, so she has not told them her whereabouts and her plans. She only met them briefly to tell them that she was going away that night and say “goodbye.” She wishes she could talk to them for they are her sole source of support, aside from government authorities and counselors whose job it is to “show empathy” but say no to requests for assistance at every opportunity. That is how Kara sees things, from her experience.
Kara does not feel she has the energy to fight all the time. She cannot struggle to scrape together a living and fight her ex, her former foster mother, the system and the attacks on her reputation. It is too much. She is instead trying to escape and get a grip on her life.
In Kara’s present state of mind, she feels that she has been persecuted all along. There was a social stigma against single parents, and she thought that most people had viewed her in a very negative light because she was of a single parent family and because she and her mother of the day were poor.
Actually, though, her father was widowed when Kara was just three. Her biological mother had died suddenly in a car accident while driving alone on a busy highway. Kara never learned much about that accident, because her father never spoke about it. He tried to hide his pain but it showed in his heavy drinking. For all the havoc her father wreaked, Kara made an effort to recall that he had been shocked and pained by his wife’s death. Perhaps he blamed himself, like some people say can happen to a survivor. They talk about “survivor guilt,” too. Who knows? Not Kara.
Anyway, his father took up with someone new after a couple of years, a woman not well educated but who appeared to be bright and kind to Kara. The girl was well cared for in many respects, despite her father’s drinking, because Lou (Louisa-May) paid her a lot of attention, even attending parent-teacher meetings and other school activities in place of her father and sending her to piano and skating lessons. Her father managed to hang onto jobs as a mechanic, at least enough to keep a roof over their heads and food on the table. For her part, Lou worked part-time in the evenings as an emergency services responder. Alone with Kara at home on the nights when Lou had to work the late shift, her father slipped into bouts of drinking. When she was eight, Kara remembers, she found him in tears a couple of times. Mostly, he seemed distracted. Lou used to tell her that Kara reminded the man of his wife, and asked her to understand. Kara began to feel guilty and blame herself for her father’s poor behavior. Yet, he tried to be responsible and, Kara guessed, Lou was no doubt a great comfort and source of some happiness for the sad man. However, the relationship did not last, and Lou left when Kara was ten. Lou kept in touch, sent gifts and visited but she explained to Kara that it was difficult to see her after she and her father had split up. Kara would still like to talk to Lou now, but thinks it might be risky.
Kara’s father was her sole provider and parent after Lou left. He had intermittent girl friends but remained troubled. He did not talk to Kara much, except for occasionally asking her about her day and her homework. He offered to help her with homework sometimes. Kara began to take over the housework, preparing some meals, doing the laundry, dusting and vacuuming the bungalow, and so on. Eventually, her dad found it hard keeping a job, and ended up with a bad reputation. When she was thirteen, probably when he thought Kara was old enough, he walked away. He thus came to be known as a dead-beat and a drunk, adding to the agony of the gossip and causing more frowns that Kara had to endure at school.
While teachers offered encouragement to other kids around her, they generally rolled their eyes and neglected her. She was put in the classes of poor under achievers who were not expected to “succeed.” Kara felt the intense shame and suffered from the negative notoriety. She withdrew from school activities by high school, when it counted the most, and did only what was required. She showed up, attended classes, did what school work was necessary, but kept basically quiet.
She was forced into the company of other social rejects, and that’s how she acquired a couple of close friends. She told them about the nasty foster mother. Together, they used to make jokes about their foster parents. They even drew pictures of them and threw things at the pictures one day. Meanwhile, her foster mother’s derision about Kara only increased because of Kara’s apathy and she did not tolerate her friends well. That is why Kara rarely invited them over. She got in trouble for getting home for dinner late, and sneaking out in the evenings to go hang out with these two friends.
Mona tried to rein her in, but another problem cropped up: enter Simon. Simon was a year older and an attractive muscular drop-out who liked to flirt with and impress the female high school students by hanging out with some of the high school boys sometimes. They were his customers who bought cannabis from him. Simon was not a big time dealer. He had a full time job at a factory and just took in a little extra income from the illicit trade off the job. He liked to brag to the school kids that he was already making money. He told them that school was a prison, and that he relished his freedom outside the school system where he could be his own man.
Simon’s talk influenced Kara. She saw him as an ally who understood the unfairness and prejudices of the school system. She started thinking about dropping out and he encouraged her, though Mona would not let her. When she turned 17, however, Kara ran off with Simon.
The authorities tracked them down when Simon was caught stealing. Moving away had disrupted his job and his side-trade, so that he found himself short of cash for awhile. The police questioned them then merely issued Simon a warning. They were of age and could live together and independently. They gave them information on community and employment services, then informed the foster program. Kara grinned when she realized that Mona had been cut off. The last time she saw her was when she had to attend the meeting to sign the papers. She was free.
She gained more freedom after Simon left. She had a happy time until she got pregnant and that scared him. He was too young and restless. He took off one night after a fight. The law tracked him down after a while and made demands for child support, which he coughed up once in a while, and reluctantly. Kara never saw him again after that night he abandoned her.
At that point, she was 18 and too old for child services. She had to turn to welfare, and endure more social stigma as a single parent herself. They gave her counseling and medical support through her pregnancy. She was on housing support and got food stamps and some money for groceries, baby care items and clothing. It was not enough so she tried to sell Avon products from her apartment on the side, which put her social assistance money in jeopardy. She had to be very discreet about the Avon job. It was good in that she got to meet some other people, but it drew little extra income, so it probably did not matter with respect to her social security entitlements.
Tyler gave her joy, though. She introduced him to Mona, who would babysit and bring in extra supplies. Kara had to give her credit for that, despite the fact that Mona would criticize and admonish her regularly. Kara’s two friends would visit. They had graduated and one was already married, but they remained loyal to Kara, thankfully.
By the time Tyler was five, Kara’s resilience was wearing thin. She had too little love and too few resources to resist Adam when he came along, even though she knew it would probably not work out for long. He was a customer at the store where she was working part-time at that point. She was still very pretty and slim. He was funny and charming. He appeared respectful and said he admired her for raising her boy on her own. He expressed sympathy for the tragedies and difficulties in her life, and shared some of his own sorrows with her. He had his own business in the building industry, producing and selling some kind of piping. He had a nice car and apartment. He drew her into his web. They eventually moved in together in a small house. He did not want her to work. She no longer qualified for social assistance, and Simon was sending in regular payments. She was a stay-at-home mom and content like that for the time being. She had enough free time and was rid of enough worries to work on obtaining her high school diploma. Kara hoped that she had a home again at long last, but Adam always avoided the subject of marriage.
In another phase of economic downturn, the building trades lost business. Adam had trouble keeping up with his and soon owed money, which he tried to hide from Kara but the problem grew too big to conceal. Adam became more anxious and frustrated. That is when his temper started to flare.
Here she was today after having escaped Adam’s ire and control. She was determined to set her life on a new course on her own terms, out of the clutches of government and men.
She and Tyler used aliases. She had to use their social security numbers and real names on formal records, but people in her life came to use their aliases. She did not get a telephone, listed or unlisted. Rather, she got a laptop and used aliases over email, etcetera, but avoided social media networks. She began taking courses online, though. Meanwhile, she worked in a gift shop, eventually being awarded a commission on significant sales then progressing to the position of assistant manager. As her life evolved, so did her personality. Kara allowed herself to gradually feel at ease, and acquired some new friendships. She began to feel confident. She started swimming lessons, and allowed herself the enjoyment of having coffee or a meal with fellow swimmers, customers and her son’s friends’ parents once in a while. She explained that she was saving for Tyler’s education, and had a slim entertainment budget, rather than divulging her secret. She and Tyler often got invited to birthday parties, the cinema, and short day excursions. She avoided the dating scene, though, telling people that she had to put Tyler first. Tyler, once he turned 10, began to advise her to “go out.” She was still afraid, though. Eventually, her social circle began learning about her situation as a woman having fled a violent partner, and sympathized, signaling understanding and vowing to help to protect her. She felt supported for the first time in a long time.
Her new friends set her up with Jim. She was ambushed. He was a lovely handsome guy, a career man in education who had married late and been divorced already. He had a daughter who lived with him. Kara lost her reserve in his presence. She really like him, so she started going out with him three to five times a month. He often came over accompanied by his daughter, and she brought Simon to spend time with him from time to time. Things were looking up.
People missed her when she failed to turn up to work one day, and missed a lunch date. Tyler, who routinely caught the school bus before Kara left for work, wondered where she was when she wasn’t home by six. Without a phone, he had faith that something come up, and patiently went about preparing dinner, as he often did. Usually, she would leave word with the school or a neighbour, or leave a note on the fridge for him. Checking his email, he saw there were no recent emails from her. Knowing her password, he checked and found no activity since the day before. By eight o’clock, phone and address book in hand, he knocked on the neighbour’s door to use her phone.
At the urgings of her friends and associates, the police began an investigation and put a call out for information. Her real name surfaced in the news. They tried to contact her father, only to find that he had died of cancer by then. Tracing her history, Mona and Lou found out about her disappearance and joined in the search.
Though foul play was long suspected, it was many years before her remains, clothing and a few personal affects were discovered lying in a creek bed in a neighbouring state. Some kids had brought home some jewelry and a bone found near the creek, which the parents turned into the police. Examiners figured she had been stabbed a few times but determined that the stabbings would not have killed her. Noting evidence of strangulation, the figured that she had died by drowning, probably having been strangled first and left with her head submerged in the water. Adam remained on the top of the list of “persons of interests” but it was a couple of years before he became a suspect, and a few more years for the case to build and a court to convict him of murder.
END