Love Long Gone

When my mom saw that I wasn't saying anything, her impatience started showing.

"This is all your father's fault. He raised you to have no manners at all. He's old enough to be a grandfather, and he's still acting as unreasonable as ever."

I just stared at her. It was so absurd I almost laughed.

"Unreasonable? Dad and I haven't gone near you for three years. We've been living our own lives. Is that bothering you too?"

Her brow furrowed tightly. "What do you know about what happened between me and your father? You're just a kid."

I locked my eyes on hers. "I don't get it? Then do you? Does Caleb?"

Her voice turned cold. "When your father divorced me, did he ever think about you? He only cared about his own feelings. He never planned ahead for you. If he hadn't been so stubborn, you wouldn't be living like this."

I stared at her. Every word out of her mouth felt like nails on a chalkboard. "How dare you say that? You're the one who threw us out."

She acted like she hadn't even heard me. "Caleb's health is fragile. He can't handle stress. Asking you to move out back then was for everyone's good. And besides, he feels bad about the hard times I went through in the past. He wanted to live with me in the places I used to stay."

When I heard that, my hands went cold. Just like that, everything my dad and I had suffered through all those years became a joke.

My voice came out shaking with anger. "So what? Dad and I sleeping under bridges, sleeping on park benches — that's just too bad for us?"

She didn't say anything.

And I didn't give her another chance to speak.

"Do you know why my ear is messed up? Do you have any idea how Dad and I survived after the divorce?"

After the divorce, we lost everything. The day they kicked us out, I fought back as hard as I could. She slapped me to the ground. My ear started bleeding right there.

My dad rushed me to the hospital. After that, every time he tried to see her, they blocked him at the door. Security guards chased him away with sticks.

To pay for my ear treatment, my dad worked odd jobs all day long — anywhere that would take him. After school, I collected cardboard, handed out flyers, and sold tissue paper.

In the winter, when we had no place to stay, we slept on park benches. My dad would wrap his only heavy coat around me and shiver all night, coughing.

Then I started running fevers, over and over. One time, the fever got so bad, my ears wouldn't stop ringing. My dad carried me from clinic to clinic. In the end, he could only afford the cheapest medicine.

After that, my hearing got worse and worse. Eventually, I had to get hearing aids.

And my dad's body started falling apart too. He got swollen, then dizzy, and finally, he couldn't even stand up anymore.

The doctor said that because of the post-op infection, the rest of his liver was shutting down. The surgery would cost half 50 thousand dollars, and the follow-up treatment was a bottomless pit.