Jayden's Revenge: The Tale of an American Family (2 page)

Jayden
is
beginning to worry about her dad
, but
she
is
also
growing increasingly
fatigued
by him
. He
is
n’t sleeping anymore
,
is
troubled with nightmares
,
and
is
missing work. The way that
he
found
Philip
is
torturing him. He ke
eps
saying that it
was
his fault for not doing something sooner
,
and
he
keeps
apologizing for Philip. Ja
y
den
feels
as if she
is
the only adult left in the house
,
a responsibility she is growing tired of more each day
.
Her sympathy is t
urning into apathy
,
and her pity is fermenting into a cocktail of rage and
disappointment.
Having already been handed
a lifetime of misery from her deranged mother
, she was hoping
, in light of her freedom from Brenda,
for a glimmer of serenity, and instead
she is handed an inept waste of a man
who
was once her father.

She
fears that Derrick
realizes
that
all of the misfortune is somehow her
fault and that
what
happened to her mother is a direct result of her being bad at school.
She fears this, but he hasn’t said anything. He just drinks and tells her he’s
sorry. They
both know the apologies are meaningless
, but inconsequence has never slowed him
.

Brenda was called into the principal’s office to pick her up that day. She and Philip were caught smoking at lunch. Perhaps the two most troublesome students in the history
of
Hamilton Schools,
Philip and
Jayden
were
in constant confl
ict with the teachers and staff.

She had, of course, blamed Philip and said that the cigarettes were his. She had stolen the cigarettes from Brenda that day before school
,
as she had done so many times before. She often used Philip as her scapegoat
because
he was older and willing to take the blame for her.
They both knew h
e would do anything for Jayden
, and
she
used it to her advantage. Jayden was a master manipulator when it came to Philip. She really missed him.

Her behavior
has
n’t
calmed since the death
, but perhaps the level of scrutiny ha
s somewhat
abated
because
s
he
is
alone with Derrick
,
and
it appears
as if that piece of the world
is
coming unraveled as well.
Teachers don’t razz her for
assignments
, the old fart
on
the golf cart doesn’t chase her off campus,
and she
just
kinda
wafts through their system, in and out like the smell of a
carcass
you can’t quite locate
.

She
is
glad to be going to Samantha’s slumber party;
she
needs
to be around kids again. She
has
spent the summer grieving and watching her father fall into an alcoholic pit.

I hope he is going to be
all right
—
she
thought
as
her father pull
ed
in
to the cul
-
de
-
sac where the Bingham’s live. As the car roll
ed
to a
stop,
he start
ed
to cry
;
the look on his face
wa
s
lost, like
a cat in a
bathtub
–
scared
and looking for a way out.

“Are you going to be ok
,
Dad
?”

“Sure
,
sweetie, I’m just tired is all.”
He
pause
d
,
and then
offer
ed
,
“Listen
kiddo, you don’t need to worry about me, OK? Daddy is going to be just fine
. A
little relaxing at home, maybe take a long
overdue nap and just take it easy. You deserve to have a good time today and enjoy yourself.”

“Alright
,
Dad
, thank you so much!” she squeal
ed
as she hug
ged
his neck.

He presse
d
the unlock button on the panel of his Lincoln
as she reache
d
for the door handle
.

“Do you have your cell, sweetie?”

“Yeah
,
Dad, it’s in my bag
.
”

“
Ok
…
well
,
call me if you need me, and I will be here in a flash, but don’t call
because
you are worried about your old man…
.
J
ust
g
o be a kid tonight,
o
k
ay
,
Sugar?”

She
nodded
in agreement and wipe
d
the tear that ha
d
formed on her cheek.
“Have fun
,
J.J.
,
and
don’t forget to grab Sam’s gift out of the trunk”

“
Ok
ay
,
Dad, see you tomorrow
.
”
She says,
and then
adds cautiously, “H
ey
, D
ad?”

“Yeah
–”

“Maybe don’t drink tonight,
okay
?”

“
Okay
,
honey, I’ll take it easy…
.
I love you.”

“Love you
,
too, Dad
!”

She walk
ed
to the door and turn
ed
to give him a wave, which he reciprocate
d
while beginning
to pull away from the curb. She fe
lt
a blanket of relief once she
could not
read the license plate on their car. It ha
d
n’t occurred to her that she may never see him
smile
again, but in
that
moment she
was
just glad to out from under his melancholy shadow.

“Samantha is no longer allowed at your home
,
” Derrick recalls as the last thing
Cynthia
Bingham had said to him before Brenda was sent away. Jayden and Sam were close growing up, had been inseparable during the summer
s in fact
, but once Jayden started to run with Philip she became more and more like him
…
and like her
aggressively spirited
mother. The Bingham family
, she stated,
did not like to associate themse
lves with such “run
-
of
-
the
-
mill
trash
”
and therefore she and Sam were no longer allowed to associate.

In light of the tragedy and the Bingham’s publicly Christian reputation
, Cynthia
eventually
changed
her tune and
reached
out
to Derrick
to offer
support. His daughter
wa
s
suddenly welcomed back into their pretentious little home with their whiney little yapper dogs.

He waves to Jayden and sees
Cynthia Bingham lo
oking out the window. They lock
eyes for a
short
moment, but in t
hat brief
exchange,
her eyes say
more than enough.
She feels sorry for us
he thinks angrily
. She
clearly
dislikes
him
, but i
s being “Christian” and allowing his daughter a chance to pretend she
is
normal; the
disdain
is
still in Cynthia’s face.

H
e hates accepting her
pity. He
is
more than a little suspic
ious of
her
motive
,
but
,
then again, tonight
he does
n’t
really
care
what the motivation i
s
;
his daughter need
s
to be with kids. He
is
suckin
g the life out of her
,
and he kno
w
s
it. He
cannot
help himself. She
is
becoming a replica of the woman
he ha
s
loved and lost. He wants
to keep her safe and, hopefully, not let her b
ecome the monster that he fears
she w
ill
.

Her mother’s condition wasn’t dia
gnosed until she was in her mid—
twenties. She and Derrick already had two children by the time Brenda was old enough to
legally
buy alcohol. They did the best they could.

Derrick’s
mother was in and out of prison
,
offering him no stability, nor a mother to turn to for support
. He
decided
to
go
live with his father
permanently
at age fifteen
,
when she was sentenced to jail for forging checks
.
A
gain
.
His father
was a drunk and absentee, but at least he managed to stay out of jail and Derrick didn’t have to worry about w
he
ther the lights would come on when he flipped the switch.
Brenda
had
become the only
woman
, the only real person,
in his life by the summer of ’95.

When her
f
ather died
just before
Christmas of that same year, she moved in with Derrick and Mr. Weller. Her mother
has
also
been absent most of her life. She should, by all rights, have become
a
“
Ward of the State
,
”
but she was able to slip through the cracks
when
Derrick took over her father’s role as caregiver
.
Derrick had given up on
college—
not like he had a promising future to sacrifice
—
to be
with
Brenda.

The trauma of losing her father had put her into
a
destructive state of mind. Derrick and Brenda started smoking meth toge
ther when they were
sixteen
. Derrick always swore he would never do it; swore not to be like his mother, but women have a powerful effect on men. It
is
n’t often that he reminisced about doing
dope
or the beginning of his life with Brenda, but today he
can’t
get her
(or
it
)
out of his mind.

The feeling that you are invincible,
that you are
smarter and funnier comes almost at once when you stand up from the glass table holding your nostrils closed and feeling the deep burn in your sinuses. Neurons
fire
and out of nowhere you understand
things;
you can put the pieces of the puzzle together…
u
ntil you have been up for eight days with no sleep, living off bananas and
Red Bull
.
Smoking so many menthol cigarettes that your teeth feel like alien creature
s
that ha
ve
sprung from your jaw since the last time you
passed a mirror
.
Nothing makes sense at that point. You want the train to stop, but there is ice on the tracks.

He told Brenda that he wanted to stop the dope
;
she argued with him, tried to bribe him with sex and promises that they would cut back. Derrick, in a fit of heightened emotion and sleep deprived sensibilities, snatched the last
couple of
grams from her and threw
the
baggies
in the commode. She struggled with him but he kept her at bay with his free hand as he depressed the lever to flush. She grabbed his keys and left in a rage
–
undoubtedly
heading to
his mother
’
s trailer to get fronted again
–
before
he could stop her.

Brenda was arrested
after rolling Derricks truck on a poorly
lit
back road
that night
. Although
she
was
not seriously injured in the wreck, she was escorted
by police
to a local Baptist Hospital for testing and monitoring. The tests revealed that she was in fact intoxicated
on methamphetamine
, and that she was carrying a child. She was sentenced to juvenile detention and forced to attend a state program for drug addiction.

Derrick did the best he could to be a provider and a family man. He loved the idea of a child, and got a job telemarketing. It wasn’t much, but he was good on the phones. He made enough
for
a small apartment. He also sold pot to his dad and some of their friends in order to cover the shortfall. By the time Jayden was
born,
he was
making a steady income on the phones
and no longer sli
nging
weed
to get by. Although he was not of the legal drinking age, he and Brenda had developed quite
the
drinking problem.

Derrick
doesn’t
like thinking about this now, but he
has
been stuck in a state of morbid reflection (
a phrase he had learned from his sponsor
) since the last time he saw her.
He had made a concerted effort to stop drinking after the death of his son; gone to a treatment facility, gone to AA meetings, spoken
with his
sponsor. He
knows
that he could have prevented it
,
all
of it
, had he not been at the bar that evening. His sponsor had told him that although things were bleak now, God was good and had a plan; that everything was ultimately for
H
is plan and he would be better for the trials he had faced.
Psychobabble
Crap
!
–
What AA didn’t do was keep him sober and teach him to accept “God’s Will” as the ultimate
reason for anything horrible and everything good
;
what it did do was teach him to look at his part in the events of his life. He would never
forgive himself for leaving his children with that monster.

Brenda
had
always been troubled and somewhat violent; she
had struck
Derrick and threatened him on numerous occasions. She
had
attempted suicide three times that he was sure of. Although the meth use
had
dwindled down over the years since Philip
’
s birth, she
had
continued
to use other narcotics such as
Vicodin
and
Oxycontin
. Most of the violent exchanges in their household were a result of drugs and alcohol, but Brenda
was beginning
to show symptoms of a more serious problem by her 25
th
birthday. She
was
diagnosed with schizophrenia in the winter of 2005
shortly
after she stabbed
D
errick in the leg with a pair of scissors while he
sat
on the toilet. She was arrested and sent to an institution to be monitored. The medications helped her to stay level
,
and she was released to her husband’s care. He was usually good about administering her meds.

Usually…
He thinks as he grabs his bottle of
J
ack Daniels and switches of
f
the ignition to his Lincoln
.