Tribal Journey Read online

  Then he screamed something that I could understand.

  “You whacked-out squaw! I should’ve never got mixed up with you!”

  Then came a loud crash, like a glass being thrown against the wall. That was followed by the sound of large furniture being overturned. Mom let loose a fearful yell. That was it.

  I ran out of the room and down the hall to check on Zak and Shauna. They were in their room with the door closed. I opened it and looked in on them. They were watching their Finding Nemo DVD for the hundredth time.

  “We heard yelling,” Zak said. “What’s going on?”

  “I’m going to find out. Stay here and keep watching your video.” I closed the door and took the stairs three at a time.

  When I got to the kitchen, I found Mom on the floor moaning. My father was standing over her. A shattered glass lay beside her. The kitchen table was on its side.

  “You sorry excuse for a father!” I screamed as I ran full force at Dad. I hit him in the stomach with my head and knocked him against the cabinet. He hit it with a thwack. Then he bounced off the cabinet and landed on the floor across the room from Mom. He must’ve passed out from too much alcohol, because he didn’t move.

  I stood and looked down at this man who had tortured us for years.

  “You’re never going to hurt Mom again, do you hear me?”

  I kneeled down beside Mom. A red knot was forming on her cheek where Dad had hit her. Her chin was bleeding. She seemed a little dazed.

  “Come on,” I said. “We’ve got to get out of here.”

  I helped her to her feet. Then I slung her arm over my shoulder. We walked toward the living room. I pulled the car keys off the hook where Mom kept them and headed for the front door.

  “But what about Zak and Shauna?” she said weakly.

  “I’ll put you in the car and then go up and get them.”

  “Where are we going?” Mom asked.

  “First to the hospital emergency room to have you checked out. I’ll figure something out after that.”

  Mom nodded and allowed me to lead her to the minivan. I put Zak and Shauna in next. They were scared and confused. As I drove to the West Seattle Hospital a couple of miles away, I explained what was going on.

  After helping Mom get into an examination room, I returned to the waiting room to watch my brother and sister. They found some toys and children’s books to keep them busy. I texted Ron.

  “Call me as soon as possible. Emergency!”

  In a few minutes my phone rang.

  “What’s up?” Ron asked when we got connected.

  “There’s been a major disaster at my house. Mom and Dad got into it. Mom was hurt. So I drove us to the ER, where we are now. Zak and Shauna are with me.”

  “That’s radical, dude!”

  “Ron, this is serious. We need a place to stay for the night. Away from my dad. Do you think your parents would let us spend the night?”

  “I don’t see why not. Let me talk to them. I’ll call you back.”

  I closed my phone and felt very tired. I closed my eyes and felt the emotional impact of what had happened.

  What a hard, crazy night. So much for quality family time.

  Chapter 3

  Spring Break

  Ron’s mother called a short while later. She said they’d be happy for us to spend the night at their house. So after the hospital finished treating Mom, I drove us to Ron’s house.

  “Irene, I’m sorry to hear of your troubles,” Ron’s mom told my mom.

  “We’re so grateful for your hospitality,” Mom said.

  “We’ve got a spare bedroom upstairs that you and your little ones can share. Jason can bunk with Ron in his room.”

  We settled in for the night. As I lay trying to fall asleep, my mind replayed those horrible images. My father standing over my bleeding mother. The anger that boiled over in me. My physical attack on Dad. Us escaping into the night. Only after we had left the house did fear creep into my thoughts.

  And that’s the last thing I remember before nodding off.

  The next morning, right after breakfast, Mom gathered us kids together for a private family meeting.

  “There’s a place called the Chief Seattle Family Center not too far from here,” she said. “They have rooms for families in situations like ours. I’m going to apply for us to move in there for a while.”

  “But what about our toys and clothes?” Shauna asked with a worried look.

  “And all our DVDs and video games?” Zak added.

  “We’ll pick up those things one day while your father is at work.”

  That seemed to satisfy them—for now.

  “Since we’re here, can I help Ron with those chores I asked you about?” I said.

  “Tell me again why you want to help him with his chores?” Mom was suspicious.

  “Well, we want to use his mom’s car to visit friends and go to the beach and do stuff during spring break. He has to earn points to use her car.”

  “I see,” Mom said. “Okay, I guess. As a matter of fact, we can all help Ron’s mom and dad with chores to repay them for letting us stay.”

  The first thing Ron and I did was clean the garage. We took everything out and put the stuff in the driveway. Bikes, tools, lawn mower, storage boxes—the usual garage stuff. Then we hosed down the floor and brushed it with soapy water. While the floor dried we moved on down the list of chores. We finished the list by lunchtime. Yay!

  During lunch Mom reported that she had called the family center. A family had just moved out, so they would have space for us Monday afternoon. Another yay! So the plan was for us to go home late Monday morning after Dad left for work and get whatever we needed.

  In the meantime, we enjoyed being with Ron’s family for the weekend.

  At about eleven o’clock Monday morning, Mom drove Zak, Shauna, and me back to our house. We made sure Dad’s car was gone before parking in the driveway.

  “Okay, let’s do this quickly,” Mom said. “We don’t want to be here when your father comes home. Each of you grab a suitcase for clothes and a box for other things. That’s all the room we’ll have at the center.”

  We went inside and gathered the things each of us thought were most important. I took my binoculars, skateboard, swimsuit, and summer clothes.

  Zak filled his suitcase and box only with toys, games, and DVDs. So he had to go back upstairs and dump half of that stuff to make room for clothes.

  Shauna did exactly what Mom had asked, bringing down a collection of her stuff. It was all neatly folded, stacked, and arranged.

  Mom had to pick up extra things like her checkbook, wallet, and some important papers. As we were driving to the center, she said she’d need those as we started living on our own.

  “What do you mean ‘start living on our own?’” I asked. “Aren’t we going to move back to our house after you and Dad work things out?” She pulled the car over near a park with a playground and turned off the engine. We all got out.

  “Zak and Shauna, why don’t you go over and play on the swings or the slide while I talk to your brother,” Mom said.

  The pair happily raced to the slide to see who would go on it first. Mom and I sat down at a picnic table.

  “Jason, what you did for us the other night was very brave. I am really proud of you.” I blushed a little. “Your father and his drinking and fighting have only gotten worse over the years. I’ve begged him to get help, but he refuses. So, thanks to you, I’ve finally gotten up the nerve to get us away from him—for good.”

  I was confused.

  “You mean we have to stay in the shelter forever?”

  “No, just for a while. Until I can make other arrangements for us and end things with your father.”

  “Divorce?”

  “Yes, I’m afraid so. But you, me, Zak, and Shauna will be together. And the shelter will help us find a home we can afford. Your father will still be your father. When I’m sure he’s not going to hurt any o
f us, then we’ll arrange visits. Okay?”

  “Okay,” I said. Mom was right. We had to be away from Dad for a while.

  So we drove to the shelter and moved our stuff in, what little we had. The people who ran the Chief Seattle Family Center were very nice. They said a school bus picked up and dropped off kids there every day. Though our room was small, there was a nice shaded play area out back. There also was a library with a study area for doing homework.

  Mom tried her best to get us three kids to look at the bright side of it all. “Be brave and hopeful,” she said. I was trying to do that, and so was Shauna.

  But Zak was the least convinced. He just knew we were going to end up living out on the street someday soon. In a cardboard box.

  As I arranged my little corner of the room, Ron texted me. “How’s the new place?”

  “Small & depressing, but it will have 2 do for now,” I replied. “When can we get the gang 2gether & go 2 the beach? I need a change of scenery and a swim.”

  “2moro at noon,” Ron shot back. “Send me ur address so I can pick u up.”

  “All rite. Now ur talking!” I sent him the address and told Mom about the plan. She was fine with it. I was relieved.

  Noon the next day took forever to get here. When Ron arrived, I ran out to the car carrying my towel and swimsuit. My mom had given me a little spending money for lunch and snacks, so we were good to go.

  Technically, in Washington State, sixteen-year-olds weren’t supposed to drive other sixteen-year-olds unless they were related. Ron’s parents were sort of relaxed about those rules. Especially since his mom and dad both worked, and Ron often drove his brother to school.

  “We’re picking up Ben and Amy,” Ron explained. “Randy’s meeting us at Alki.”

  “Awesome!” I said. “How long do we have the car?”

  “I have to be home by six o’clock sharp for dinner.”

  “That gives us six whole hours. Let’s make the most of it. We’re lucky it’s another sunny day.”

  Alki Beach was really the only beach in the area. People from all over Seattle showed up there to hike, bike, roller-skate, and just soak up the sun, if there was any. The water was too cold for most people to swim in, but not me. Usually I dived in, swam like crazy for a few minutes, and then rapidly retreated to the warmth of a towel.

  We did almost everything there was to do at Alki, including having lunch at the Beachside Cafe. That’s where we hatched our plan to have a bonfire on the beach Sunday night. That would be our last night of freedom on spring break before we had to head back to school.

  The rest of the week went by smoothly, though I really didn’t get a chance to do enough swimming. But I could hardly wait until Friday. Mom said I was very helpful all week, so she decided I could use her car to go to the bonfire. Yay! That doesn’t happen very often. My parents were stricter than Ron’s about sixteen-year-olds driving other kids around. But Mom said it couldn’t hurt this one time.

  Ron would ride with me, since his house was on the way to the beach. Everyone else would meet us there.

  At about six o’clock on Friday, I told Mom good-bye and left the family shelter. I had a little money in my pocket and my cell phone on the car’s center console. In the back seat were all the fixings for s’mores, thanks to Mom. And in the trunk was some firewood I had gathered during the week. Everything was set.

  I was headed north on California Avenue. The traffic was a little heavy. It was Friday at 6:00 p.m., after all. Rush hour. After a few blocks, the traffic stopped moving completely. What was up?

  I put the car in park and stepped out on the pavement for a look ahead. Road construction. Orange signs read “Road Work Ahead” and “Flagman Ahead. Be Prepared to Stop.”

  Just great. I sat back down in the car and picked up my phone. “Stuck in traffic,” I texted Ron. “Don’t know how long. I’ll let u know when I’m moving again.”

  “No sweat,” he responded. “See u when u get here.”

  After fifteen minutes, traffic began flowing again. It was still thick and slow. When I got up alongside the construction site, I could see they’d finished working for the day. So I pushed on as fast as I could. There was fun to get to!

  Soon I was passing through the Junction, the old downtown part of West Seattle. At the intersection of California Avenue and Oregon Street, my phone alerted me to another text. I looked down at the phone in my lap to see who it was from. It was Ron.

  That’s when it came. Out of nowhere. BAM! In the split second that I was distracted, the light in my lane had changed from green to yellow to red. To my left, a driver in a hurry jumped from the line when his light turned green. I hadn’t cleared the intersection.

  My car was hit from the left side, the driver’s side—my side. The other driver must’ve been distracted, too.

  Crash! Bang! Crunch! My car flipped on its right side. In an instant I was hanging sideways from the seatbelt as the car slid on its side across the pavement. Slam! Directly into a corner light pole. All I could feel was sharp, burning pain up and down the left side of my body. Then I blacked out.

  Chapter 4

  Bottomless Pit

  I don’t know how long I was out. When I woke up, I found myself in a strange room, in a strange bed. I had trouble opening my eyes. When I finally got them open, I didn’t like what I saw.

  I was in a hospital room. There were machines beside my bed. They were beeping and making weird noises. I had a headache and a side ache and an arm ache. But I couldn’t feel my left leg.

  I looked down at it. The whole leg, from my toes to my hip, was in a thick white cast. What was going on? What had happened? My mind was in a fog.

  Slowly I looked around the room. There was Mom asleep in a chair next to the bed.

  “Mom? Mom, what happened?” She woke up and looked at me.

  “Oh, Jason. I’m so glad you’re awake. Don’t try to talk. I’ll call the doctor to come check you.”

  “What happened to me?”

  “Don’t you remember? You were in a terrible car wreck. Two days ago.” As Mom left to find the doctor, the images of the accident flooded back into my mind. That made the throbbing pain in various parts of my body return. I moaned.

  My first thought was that I missed the beach bonfire with all of my friends. How terrible was that!

  The next few days were a blur. I slept a lot—when I wasn’t being poked, prodded, and probed by various doctors and nurses. They’d examine me and then go off to a corner of the room and talk to each other in whispers. None of them looked very happy.

  Finally one of the doctors came into the room with my mother.

  “Son, the doctor has some news to tell us,” she said, and then stepped back.

  The doctor, an old man with white hair and wire-rimmed glasses, moved in close to the bed.

  “Jason, I’m just going to give it to you straight,” he said. “We think you may not be able to use your left leg again.”

  “How long will that be?” I asked.

  “As far as we can tell right now, forever,” he replied. He paused for a moment to let that sink into my brain. “There was damage to your spine where the nerves from your leg connect to your central nervous system.”

  I thought I understood what he was saying. But I didn’t like it at all. I was too shocked to speak. Mom was crying as she rushed around to the other side of my bed. She bent down to hug me.

  “It may take weeks before you can get yourself around in a wheelchair,” he went on to say. “Maybe months. It all depends on you and how much you actively take part in your own recovery.”

  He went on talking, but I couldn’t hear what he was saying. It all became too depressing. I felt like I was moving through a tunnel away from Mom, the doctor, and the hospital room. Then the tunnel became a dark hole. I landed at the bottom of it. I think I passed out.

  As the days went by, I found out more about the accident. A nineteen-year-old girl was driving the car that hit me. She was tex
ting as she drove through that intersection. And she walked away from the accident with only a few cuts and bruises. How fair was that?

  “I blame myself,” Mom said. “I’m the one who let you drive the car.”

  “Don’t go there, Mom,” I said. “I’m the one who wasn’t paying attention.”

  For days Mom regularly tried to cheer me up. So did Zak and Shauna when they came to visit.

  My friends came by to see me, too. They all said they were so sorry about what happened to me. It sort of sounded like they were talking to me through a tin can attached to a string. I really couldn’t connect to them. They talked for a few minutes until they ran out of things to say. Then they left. And I was alone again.

  Mom brought schoolwork for me to do so I wouldn’t fall behind. But I didn’t care. I wasn’t interested in doing schoolwork. I wasn’t interested in anything.

  The nurses must have started giving me some new medicine. In a few days I didn’t feel like I was in a hole any more. I still felt sort of numb, but the hole was fading away.

  About a month after the accident, Mom came to my room one morning with a big smile on her face. She said, “Jason, you get to go home tomorrow. What do you think about that?”

  “Depends. Do you mean the shelter or our actual home?”

  “I mean our actual home. Soon after your accident I filed for divorce from your father.”

  “You actually did it,” I said.

  “Yes,” Mom said. “And the judge issued a special order that says your father can’t come near any of us until he gets treatment for his problems.”

  “Is that why Dad hasn’t tried to see me?” I asked. “I mean—I know I’m mad at him and all. And I’m not ready to forgive him. But he’s still my dad.”

  “It’s complicated,” Mom replied. “He asked how you were doing. But we can talk about that another time. For now, your father has moved out of the house so you could be in your own home to recover.”

  “That sounds pretty good,” I said.

  “Your father also agreed to go to counseling to get help with his drinking and his violent behavior. He may be ready for a visit in a few weeks.”