“And did she? Talk to you, I mean?”
“Yeah, a little. She’s had a tough time.” My eyes fluttered closed at the feel of Levi’s fingers in my hair. I sighed, content and completely safe. “I’m going back tomorrow to speak to her some more. I… I want to help her. She’s so sad. You can see it in her eyes. She’s in a lot of pain inside. She’s completely lost.”
“That’s real good, bella mia,” Levi said and I smiled, loving how he spoke Italian to me, loving that he called me his beautiful.
I closed my eyes, feeling the safest I’d ever been, when the conversation I’d had with Lexi sprang to mind. My eyes opened when that thought then drifted to my mom, and how she’d feel if she’d seen me like this… happy… falling in love.
Tears pricked in my eyes, and I felt myself saying, “My mom told me to hide my voice from the world.” I felt Levi tense underneath me, but I didn’t move off his lap. I couldn’t look in those gray eyes without losing control. I couldn’t see his handsome face and the understanding I knew I’d find when I talked about her. Talked about that night… the day I got the news.
“From as young as I can remember, my mom told me not to speak to anyone but her. She told me that people wouldn’t understand us, that there was no place in this world for us.”
“Elsie,” Levi said when I paused. “Look at me, bella mia.”
I shook my head as my hands gripped onto his sweater. “I can’t, Levi. I can’t look at you when I tell you this… just let me tell you. If I see your face I won’t be able to get through it.”
Levi didn’t respond immediately, but then he said, “Okay,” and I relaxed as much as possible.
“I know I told you that my mom had a hard life, that she was never given a chance. She was my mom and I loved her with my whole heart. I felt sorry for her every day as she struggled to get through to the next… unless she had her drugs. Until she shot up with heroin… until she forgot.” I inhaled the strong scent of Levi’s spicy scent, taking the strength he gave.
“We were mostly on the streets. We would live in alleyways or doorways, sometimes with some of my mom’s ‘friends’, sometimes on our own. Occasionally we would have an apartment or a room when my mom would hook up with some new dealer or guy, but that never lasted long. All our clothes and worldly possessions in one small bag.”
Levi’s hand dropped to trace lightly up and down my back. I inhaled deeply. “And that was my life, every week living somewhere new, hiding from the world was the reality of our life. My mom always managed to get us somewhere long enough to have an address and collect her disability, but we never had a home.
“I went to school, I kept my head down and I cared for my mom who, most of the time, didn’t even realize I was there. Until she did, when she would make me feel like the luckiest girl in the world to have a mom like her. My heart ached at how broken she had been made by life. Her parents rejected her, hiding her from their snooty friends. She’d been isolated from receiving life’s tools. In most ways she was the child and I was the adult.”
I cleared my throat when I heard it beginning to break, and Levi’s arm came around my waist. He didn’t pull me close, but I knew he was telling me that he had me… he had me.
“One week at school, I could see a teacher watching me. I never spoke aloud unless I was forced to, so I never asked her what was wrong. I was fourteen, but I had no friends, no one to talk to or get help from. That month my mom was having a really hard time. You see, I washed our clothes, I stole us food… and I measured out her heroin.”
“Damn, Elsie,” Levi hissed.
I froze, knowing how bad that sounded. “She needed it, Levi. She needed it. I could measure it out in quantities I knew should could handle.”
“What happened next?”
I breathed through the gutting pain building inside. I breathed and continued. “The teacher had noticed that I was unwashed. I’d messed up and hadn’t handed in my assignments. We had just been kicked out of another apartment. The teacher informed social services, she’d told them she was worried I was being neglected.” I sucked in a sharp breath. “When they found us, we were in an alleyway, homeless, and I was measuring out my mom’s nightly dose.” I huffed a disbelieving laugh. “She was dazed, in need of her drugs when they took me from her.”