I sat on the rocky steps of my house and watched as the beautiful, brilliant Red Bird landed on the ground leaping to find any food it could eat. Its wings stretched and twitched as it jumped from side to side and moved in circles observant of any natural predators that might be nearby. Mama told me when I was little that when she passed, she would become a red bird and fly. I laughed when she talked about those kinds of things, but I never really thought much about it till the day she came back from the doctors and told Charlie and I she was sick.
“Lorelai, come help Mama,” said Charlie, my older sister. I ignored her and continued to watch the Red Bird soar through the sky, lifting its wings and chirping with joyful sounds. I wondered if Mama would turn into this intelligent creature and find a way to Charlie and I.
“Lorelai ! I won’t call you again.” I hurried into the kitchen and captured one more glimpse of the beautiful, brilliant Red Bird so that it would form a picture in my memory forever.
I arrived at the kitchen where Charlie and Mama were. Mama wasn’t paying attention to me since her sickness did something to her brain, but Charlie stared and boiled with anger.
“Where were you? I called you fifteen times!” I took in my surroundings making sure that I saw everything then I breathed deeply. Still looking at me, she waited for me to respond, but I couldn’t. If I said anything it would make this scenario worse and if I did say something, it would make this even worse! So either way I was in deep water.
“Lorelai, you’ve been ignoring Mama, instead you look outside at birds. You should care about Mama, and only Mama.” Mama looked at Charlie and said nothing. I walked to Mama and hugged her tightly, making her smile and hug me back, but I didn’t care if she didn’t know who I was, I love her.
“You’re just doing that out of spite to make me think you want to be involved in helping Mama. Go Lorelai, you’re making things worse.” I let Mama go and left the kitchen sad. I was disturbed to see that Charlie didn’t believe me, and she didn’t care about animals. But the real reason is that she doesn’t care about me, and she never will.
In my room, I peered out the window, sat on the edge to escape reality and watched our cherry blossom tree sway back and forth drooping petals. I stayed out there for hours and didn’t have a care in the world when the sky started to get dark, the wind picked up and rain droplets fell onto my hand. A big storm rolled in on top of our house. Thunder and lightning struck the house. I got scared, but saw how beautiful it was. Charlie went into my room with a fright, I rolled my eyes and ignored her.
“Lorelai, there is a tornado warning! We need to go into the shelter!” I shook my head at her and laughed, but sure enough she was right. Sirens blasted through the streets and clouds started to form. The thunder roared and the lightning hit down onto the ground. Charlie grabbed my hand and dragged me with her down the stairs to get Mama. Mama was peacefully looking out the wide window. Charlie held our hands tightly. The storm shelter stayed locked and we had no key because he had lost it years back. The best solution was to go into the basement, but we didn’t have one of those. Charlie and I prayed loudly that the tornado wouldn’t hit us, but I had a better idea. We could ask our neighbors if we could join them, but they were a mile down the road. I guess the best idea was to hide in the closet underneath the stairs.
“Open the door Charlie!” I said with a scared face. Charlie opened the door and we hid inside for various hours. I thought to myself, would the birds be okay? Would our house stay? Would our neighbors be safe? Not even God could tell me or fix this problem. We had to find out for ourselves.
The night passed and Charlie believed the storm had stopped. She went outside to check and she didn’t come back for about thirty minutes. She must have been horrified, I thought to myself. I held Mama and opened the door to find our roof was broken and I could see all the way up. I saw Charlie looking up knowing for a fact we wouldn’t be able to fix that with the amount of money we had. Charlie walked up to Mama and I with a sad face.
“We will have to go find grandma and live with her. Pack your things.” I ran up the stairs and went around any fallen pieces I stumbled upon. Hours later, we heard ambulance sirens. The sirens came close, and closer to us when we heard something outside. A young man came to the door and knocked on it. Charlie opened the door and let the man walk in. The man said he saw that our car was smashed and we couldn’t drive it, so he offered to drive us wherever we were going. Charlie agreed and told him we were going to West 5TH street NYC. We lived in New Jersey so it wasn’t that far of a drive. He nodded and told us to get in the car when we were ready.
When we arrived in NYC it was amazing up until the point when Mama passed away. Grandma kept us for as long as possible, but that wasn’t as long. We moved from family member, to family member over the years until Charlie was 21 years of age. It wasn’t easy for any of us, but we made it work.