The Life and Times of Darren Quiet a story told in snipets

AGE SIX

“Happy New Year”

Is what his mother would surely have said to him if she hadn’t left him alone to celebrate the new millennia in one of her new ‘client’s vans. He’d tried to tear up to make her stay but the effort was in vain; that technique hadn’t worked since Dad had died. Speaking of things that happened because of his father’s untimely demise, Darren hadn’t seen his mother drink a drop of alcohol till the funeral but she hadn’t stopped drinking since.

The upper-class, slang-savvy fourteen year old who lived up on the hill behind their homely shack and insisted her name was Mitzi called his mother a ‘lush’. Darren didn’t know what that meant exactly but the sound of the word fit her. Dad’s mother, who ‘absolutely did not want to be called Grandma Natalia I don’t care what your father said because he’s dead and I get the last word’, called her a Dipsomaniac which Darren didn’t know the definition of either but sounded distinctly less kind.

After don’t-call-me-Grandma-Natalia and her family had ripped the rug out from under his grieving, recently-widowed mother's’ feet and taken the house, his mother had just given up. She picked up a bottle, tossed it back, and kept at it. She’d disappeared for a week after the service leaving him in a motel 6 in what was soon to be a running theme and come back in a tie-dye shirt and smelling like smoke.

That same day she’d packed them both up and out of the motel and into their current ramshackle abode. There was no explanation as to how she got the house or from whom. She was different. Sometimes, in the middle of the night, she’d get weepy and curl up on the couch hugging a pillow. Sometimes, she’d disappear for days before showing up knocking at the back door, barley able to string a sentence together. Darren barley spoke out anymore, he knew she wouldn’t listen or possibly even hear him.

To say she was a lenient parent was like saying the universe was big. That is to say, a major understatement. To say that Darren was happy is, in contrast to the previous statement, like saying . Or, a major overstatement. To say he despised his mother was, well, not quite true, as she is his mother. She was quite literally the only person he knew and came into regular contact with.

Other people he didn’t really know but saw on a less-than-regular-basis included his mother's ‘clients’ for what she called a spiritual massage, the vague, hungry people who came around back at odd hours asking for ‘Madam nickel-bag’ or simply ‘Miss. Nickel’ (and has taken to calling him Little Nickel), and the doctors at every hospital, ER, and private practice in a ten mile radius that his mother took him to to treat his ‘depression’ that his mother had helped him get very good at faking (though he barely needed to) to get prescriptions that he never saw again.

But other than them, who he didn’t truly talk to anyway, he knew no one else. They had become estranged from his dad’s family after he died, not that they were all that close to begin with. And his mother’s family is all dead or at least that’s what she told him. He should have been put in school the previous year but his mother said, when she was sober, she didn’t trust the institutions (mind-controlling, subliminal-messaging, thought-implanting bastards) and, when she was having a bad trip, she said it was because she didn’t trust him not to grass on her.

Well, she’d said it to the fern in the corner, not him, and she’d also told it not to tell Darien, but he hadn’t exactly been eavesdropping. He’d been sitting on the couch in plain sight nursing a cup of cocoa when she’d burst into the living room through the bead curtain babbling about ‘coppers’. She always got British when she was less than lucid on his depression meds. She got Irish when she drank unless it was vodka.

AGE SEVEN

The social worker had taken him back to his mother’s house to gather his things. He’d already packed up his clothing, what little of it wasn’t muumuus, overalls, or poncho’s when he had gone to live with the temporary foster family they placed him with. Miss Lucy had told him he had thirty minutes to gather the possessions he couldn’t live without or say goodbye and had left him with a friendly pat on the shoulder. He could do it in five. The room seemed degrees warmer without her solemn expression and soul-sucking navy suit to bring it down, as his mother would have said. He looked around with tired eyes.

The swirls and splatters of paint on the walls had been his mother’s idea, of course. As had the Arabian lanterns, the tie-dye drapery over his bed, and the strange 'herb' garden she insisted he grow in his closet even though she never cooked with any of it on the rare instances she did cook. The plastic stars on his ceiling had been her idea. And the mismatched pillows in the corner were scrounged up at yard sales and on the side of the road on trash day at her insistence in lieu of seating in the room. Of the couple things he had chosen, his globe had been smashed and soon after up-cycled into one of his mother's sculptures out in the yard and his rulers had suffered a similar fate. The room was barely his. He'd certainly never considered it such. And now he was finally getting out.

It had been a Tuesday sometime in September when it started. Someone was sent to the house wondering why ‘little Daisy’ didn’t show up for the first couple weeks of school. It snowballed from there; a full investigation. They found him nursing a sprained ankle and using the stove to make his lunch and went on about letting a small child use the stove, let alone forcing him to. They found his mother's ‘herb’ garden in his closet but didn’t seem as surprised by that, they just gave each other knowing looks.

It was the small things he remembered, not the date, or their names, but that the woman had a hideous broach on her lapel and that the man had an odd way of speaking (a lithp he thaid). They told her not to resist but she never was one for listening to authority. They took him away for a while to wait out the ‘pending investigation’ and ‘court date’. He stayed at a temporary foster home and saw plenty of the inside of the local courthouse to last him a life time.

He promised himself never to commit a crime so he would never have to come back. Or at least, never get caught. His mother stayed ever optimistic, but without her ‘fix’ she had aged. Her eyes had twice as many wrinkles and her hair twice the grey. She made a joke about that, “I’m more of a Gray now than ever, wouldn’t my in-laws hate that” and he politely reminded her that they were dead and she was on the stand.

It seemed for a small time she might be able to get off easy, with a slap on the wrist and mandatory rehab. Then they found her other stash. And then they found her client list and interviewed them. After that there were a couple new charges to add to the list of criminal negligence and neglect: solicitation, whatever that meant, and possession of mind-altering narcotics as well as intent to sell. There were a lot of words thrown around that he didn’t understand but her charges were burned into his mind as “the honorable judge Lakewood” listed them off and his mother stood there in prison orange with a split lip and bruised cheekbones.

The verdict, Guilty, unanimously. The evidence was piled on so thick it was a wonder there even need to be a trial, but constitutional rights and all that. They took her away in handcuffs. She tried desperately to meet his eye and he looked deep into her baby blues. Later, friends and lovers would ask where he got his gorgeous eyes and he would remember semi-fondly, but for now it was just the sad eyes of a junkie. She was only just now being put away, but she had been going for years. Ever since his father died.

They packed him up and shipped him over to Michigan to live with his father’s sister. He left behind New Mexico’s orange sunsets, blue twilights and heat that settled like a blanket in the mornings. He left behind his mother, holed up in some state prison and, well, that’s about all he left behind. That’s all he’d had. It was sad if you thought about it too long, so he didn’t.

He’d never been religious (more of his mother's influence), he’d never seen the inside of a church, but on the plane he prayed. Amidst tired business men and half-asleep, he’d prayed to God that it wouldn’t always be like this. That he may have a rock to steady him and a path to guide him. That he wouldn’t always be this alone.

AGE EIGHT

Starting school so early into the year would have been much worse if Richard hadn’t been there. They were in mostly different classes but they still had lunch and science and art together. (Richard told him they were lucky to have so many classes together but any number less than all of them was unacceptable to Darren) He probably would actually have needed to see that counselor if he hadn’t had Richard. And wouldn’t that have been embarrassing, ‘oh, I’m totally fine after living with my neglectful mother who I then watched get dragged off to jail but I’m having trouble adjusting to school’ so thank god for Richard.

Also an upside to having a future-billionaire bestie, any odd looks he might have gotten were quickly averted. ‘Don’t upset the rich kid’ seemed to be the prevailing motto. He doubted he’d have to worry about bullies, even with his long hair, freckled and glasses that you could drive a truck through. He didn’t think he would have any worries this year. His relatives had plans for him though.

The office he’d been sent to was cozy for most people he assumed. But the place just reminded his of his mother. It was completely irrational; of course, the room looked nothing like his old home. But it was the closeness of everything, chairs and bookcases jammed together affectionately. It was not a good first impression.

The Doctor was even worse. He was old. Not too old but enough to have smile lines and forehead creases and think that a kid could be happy as a clam as long as there’s enough butterscotch. Maybe not that old but this was no time to be soft. He needed to get out of this endless loop of counselors, therapists, and quacks.

He had been defensive at first, talking fast to get his point out before it was waved off as baseless, childish ranting.

“Don’t expect me to be like any of your other cases who could probably benefit more you’re your time than I can. People never seem to think about what affect sending a child to a psychotherapist has on a child. Send any, well, most any, child to a therapist and even if they have no problems, even if they are sane and rational, they will think there’s something wrong with them. They will wonder why they were sent here, what could be wrong with them, and with the imagination of a child, it’s far too easy to think things up. Every fumble, every mistake is suddenly a symptom, every twitch a tell for some bigger issue.

“I know you think I must be repressing it. That everyone must see something I don’t. That there must be something wrong with me and because they imagine and they fret they get anxious and paranoid but send me to the doctors because they’re the ‘normal’ ones. The premature and unnecessary solution has created the problem. But maybe that’s just me.

“I realize my mother was an unfit parent and that’s why the CPS took me to go live with my cousins. I was there for the trial, I saw. I know a lot of kids in protective custody must be messed up by whatever caused them to be there. I’ve met them and I’ve talked to them and I’m not one of them.

“I’m not ‘in denial’ either. Nor am I suppressing anything. I’m not the most well adjusted kid but I highly doubt therapy can make up for a missed and messed-up childhood.”

The good Doctor Mebenga shifted in his suddenly uncomfortable chair. He’d had his fair share of deceit from kids who were scared and reverting back to their base response of fight or flight. He’d seen enough big eyes looking up at him asking about the mommy he knows they saw commit suicide but can’t seem to remember a thing. He’s seen too many of his patients broken, either in spirit or in body.

The boy before him was none of these. He was confident in his speech and his posture was slouching as if bored and it wasn’t a feint to put the Doctor at ease. There were no tense muscles beneath his clothing. He wasn’t ready to bolt at the drop of a hat or curl in on himself at the next loud noise. This was not a broken boy.

He seemed to be waiting for Mebenga to say something, to argue. He’d planned this entire thing out, hadn’t he? Down to the pauses. No wonder his speech was so confident, it was a speech. But it was one he believed in and wanted perfect, not one he was given to memorize to cover something up. Mebenga leaned back in his chair, putting his notepad aside, giving the young boy his full attention.

Darren seemed a bit put off by this so the Doctor waved a hand, gesturing for him to continue his tirade. He would see where this would go.

When he started again, his voice was shakier, less confident. But it built up steam.

“I’m, ahem, I am aware of myself. I know myself. I have an obtuse phobia of the ocean, and not because of my mother’s teaching method when it came to swimming. I’m not afraid of all deep water. It’s because of my internet access, deep sea terrors, and horror stories on the Discovery channel. It’s self-diagnosed but that’s my point! I know me better than anyone and probably better than anyone ever will. And I don’t need therapy”