Termination Dust

CHAPTER 4

CHAPTER 4

Kimmie hoped the rest of the morning would pass smoothly. Some days her stepfather was tired enough that he left Kimmie and Pip alone. Chuck had never said so, but it was tacitly understood that all the chores now fell on Kimmie since Mom wasn’t here to do them. After her shower, she wrapped her hair up in a towel and headed to the kitchen to start on Chuck’s coffee.

“What you all dressed up for?” He was already at the folding table in the dining room, sitting before a dirty, empty mug. A painted picture of the Grand Canyon chipped away from its enamel.

Kimmie glanced down at her jeans and sweater. “I’m going back to the daycare today.” He must have remembered. Since Chuck’s trailer didn’t have a landline or any cell reception, Kimmie’s coworker Jade had stopped by the house yesterday to beg her to return to work. Chuck had been in the middle of a half-drunk, half-naked outburst even though it wasn’t even dinnertime yet. Kimmie had been embarrassed, more on Jade’s behalf than anything else.

“When you gonna be home?” Even when he wasn’t drunk, Chuck had the tendency to slur all his syllables together, making the noises that took the least amount of muscle control or mental effort.

“Three,” Kimmie answered, “like normal.”

Chuck’s biggest stipulation when it came to Kimmie’s work at the daycare was that she clocked out before the school-aged kids got dropped off. Pip always went with her, and Chuck didn’t want his son picking up bad habits or germs from the elementary-aged students. Every once in a while, his demands left the center with an uncomfortable staffing predicament, but Chuck was resolute. The day Kimmie and Pip came home at 3:08 instead of 3:07 would be the day her stepfather marched to the daycare himself and told her coworkers she quit. He’d made that threat multiple times, and Kimmie knew he’d follow through. Since the daycare got her out of the house, and more importantly gave Pip the chance to play with kids his age and toys besides crushed beer cans and spilled sunflower seeds, Kimmie would do anything in her power to keep her job.

Even placate her stepfather, whose bare stomach bulged over his flannel pants as he sat half-dressed at the table, waiting for his food.

She grabbed two slices of white bread and threw them into the toaster. While she reached for the coffee, Chuck mumbled something.

“What’d you say?” she asked.

He glowered at her, as if her inability to understand his pronouncement was a reflection of her own mental incompetence instead of his embarrassingly poor diction. “I said I’m gonna need you home now. No more daycare for you.”

Kimmie had been prepared for this conversation and was actually surprised it took four whole days until he brought it up. Thankfully the extra time gave her plenty of time to fine-tune her argument. She wouldn’t go into details about how the daycare was such a better environment for Pip and might even help him to start talking in full sentences soon. There was no reason to appeal to Chuck’s fatherly nature since he didn’t possess any at all, so she answered Chuck in the language he understood best.

“We won’t be getting Mom’s welfare anymore. I was thinking if I kept working at the daycare, I could help with the budget.” Kimmie was treading dangerous waters. There was no way Chuck could concede to being dependent on an uneducated girl in her twenties, but she also knew that the fool was capable of doing simple math and had to realize he couldn’t afford all that booze on his disability payments alone.

She held her breath, waiting for a response, not knowing if her stepfather would reluctantly give in or begin a loud and obnoxious tirade that was certain to wake up Pip. For years, she’d tried to stash away little bits of pocket change from her paycheck, storing up a small but treasured cache of one- and five-dollar bills. She’d imagined it might eventually turn into enough to convince her mom to take Pip and leave. It wasn’t living expenses they needed. As snobby as her sister and her rich Anchorage husband might be, they wouldn’t turn away their own flesh and blood. Mom’s biggest fear had been that Chuck would demand to keep Pip. Even though there was no court in the nation that should award someone like Chuck sole custody, Mom wouldn’t leave without enough money to hire the best lawyer in Alaska just to be sure.

Kimmie never mentioned her plans, but Mom found out about the extra money lying around. Toward the end of each month, when Pip hadn’t eaten a hot meal at home in weeks and Chuck was bellowing for more beer, her mom would sneak into her room and whisper, “Don’t you have a little something? Just to hold us over a few more days?”

And so Kimmie would relinquish the ones and the fives she’d managed to stash away. Eventually, Chuck realized what she was doing. From that point on, he made her sign her paychecks over to him.

At present, Kimmie had $2.23, all in change, to her name, which she kept hidden beneath the torn lining of one of her winter snow boots.

From his spot at the table, her stepfather glowered at her. He was probably straining to do the calculations, figuring out if having a fulltime slave to wait upon his every need was worth giving up so he wouldn’t have to live off his disability alone.

“Home by three,” he grumbled. He slammed his empty mug on the table and then slid it toward Kimmie to fill with the black sludge he called his morning coffee. “And no school holidays.”

Kimmie turned her back to him, figuring that now was not the time to let her stepfather see her smile.

As long as she and Pip had that job at the daycare, that job away from Chuck, she could plan. She could scheme. She could call her sister from Jade’s cell phone and beg her to come and pick her up.

Pick her and Pip up, actually.

How a girl Kimmie’s age with no real job experience, no education, and no future prospects could assume guardianship of her half-brother against the wishes of his biological parent still remained what seemed like an insurmountable impossibility, but as long as she got those few hours alone with Pip each day without Chuck’s constantly surveying every move she made, she was going to figure something out.

She had to.