Moving to Kentucky by T.J. Butler
I cradle a faded accordion folder on my lap. It is full of letters I wrote in my teens, twin to one I sorted a few years ago. There’s little place for this in my life today, except when I’m writing. Then they are everything. I remove each letter, recalling the places I lived by the return addresses. The early letters from juvenile detention are written in pencil. I take a sip of wine, remembering the detention’s huge cotton underpants. I was thirteen, still growing. Later correspondence from group homes allowed pens, which can be used as a weapon; kids in the system are less dangerous when you remove the bars.
I sort the letters into chronological order. I take another sip. I’ve done this before; the wine, the sorting, and the tight feeling in my chest that may cause me to finish the bottle. I don’t need to read the letters to remember what they say, but I will because I’m a writer. There’s much fodder for essays and fiction in these letters. I’ve written little about my elementary school years with my mother before I wrote them. When I’m able to unpack my younger years and shape them into a compelling read, I will. I’m not there yet.
One of the piles contains letters the county sent my mother about me. I don’t need to read these either, but I will. When I did this before, I wept over the letters I wrote, then called out to my husband in fury about the county letters. I quoted my mother’s comments to the social workers, absolving herself of all responsibility. I narrow my eyes, imagining her with late-eighties hair, wide-eyed and innocent, talking with a social worker in a county office, “Tiffany is out of control. I don’t know why.”
I pick one from the pile I wrote and remove the letter from the envelope. It begins, Dear Mama, can I please come home? This is the first line in most letters. I read When are we moving to Kentucky? I wish I’d opened a different letter. Today, the phrase moving to Kentucky has little to do with packing boxes and driving west into the mountains, although I took it literally all those years. I know now that Kentucky was a golden carrot on a stick far too long for my teenaged arms to reach.
My mother shacked up with an old fling when I was six and my sister was two. He paid the rent. Maybe he told my mother she was pretty, or maybe he said he was the best she could do. My mother, with her menial job, no education, and a taste for fancy jewelry, wouldn’t have fared well trying to support two children in a Washington, DC suburb.
At first, I was precocious. I was a reader and loved big words. I soon grew into what he said was sassy. An early puberty arrived with backtalk, a messy room, and get the hell off the phone. Surely a grown man who is sober wouldn’t go to such great lengths to prove a child was asking for a fist or the belt. My baby sister wasn’t asking for it, blending quietly into the background. I took the brunt for both of us. Children aren’t supposed to fight back, but even that young, I couldn’t fathom allowing someone to strike me without striking back. My mother signed me over to the state at thirteen. I imagine it was easier for her to remove me and placate her boyfriend than allow me to stay and ask him not to hit me anymore.
Once I was a ward of the court, the county said I couldn’t go home until she moved away from him. My social worker offered her transitional housing. First, she’d move to a weekly-rate motel, and then an apartment program that might have been Section 8. She refused the motel; she didn’t trust the maids not to steal her belongings. For my mother, this arrangement was too large a sacrifice to make. It was then that Kentucky became a hopeful lie she told me. She said she’d move to her parent’s town and take me with her. Moving day never came. I didn’t stop asking until I’d aged out of the system, and it never occurred to me that she wouldn’t do it.
I pour another glass. I open another letter. I sip. I read. Dear Mama, can I please come home? When are we moving to Kentucky? In that letter, I bargained. She could try me out and give me back if she changed her mind. I spill wine on my lap, wiping my cheek with the back of my hand. I tuck the letter away and consider the girl I was when I wrote it, a shattered thing waiting for Mama to move and mend the pieces. Today, I’ve bonded the fragments of myself into glorious stained glass. I have a home of my own making, and it’s far from Kentucky.
T.J. Butler lives on a sailboat with her husband and dog. She writes fiction and essays that are not all fun and games. Her work appears or is forthcoming in Pembroke, Levee, New Plains Review, Flash Fiction Online, Tahoma Literary Review, New South, and others. Her short story collection, “A Flame on the Ocean,” will be released in 2021 from Adelaide Books. Find her at @aGalWithNoName and TJButlerAuthor.com.
