7thriv

To even mention their father in our household meant a dose of scorn from me, and when the two oldest girls and I began arguing about friends they hung around with, about skipping school, about staying away from the house for days on end, he was on the phone telling them that they didn’t have to live with me.

No doubt he meant the girls could move in with him, but instead our daughters bundled up that permission and found some black-clad boys downtown who would help free them from the snarl of their parents entirely.

One night when they were 16 and 14 — so bound to each other that they’d practically become two halves of one self — the girls loaded their army packs and headed for the front door, where I stood with feet planted and arms crossed. We collided there, pulling and pushing and grabbing while their two younger sisters cried, “Stop it! Stop!” from the other side of the room.

I fell across a chair, my teenagers whirled into the night, and, a few hours later, they jumped on a freight train and headed off to who knows where. Amanda returned home three months later, wasted by drugs. Stephanie was missing for a year.