The Pieces of a Picture
When I was a little girl first starting school, I always drew pictures of my family because I thought I had the perfect American family. A dad, a mom, an older sister, two loveable family pets, a big house, and me. I thought I had the perfect life. For eight wonderful years I had no problems and nothing really bothered me. Then one hot, sunny, summer afternoon my parents took me and my sister downstairs for a talk. I was excited, thinking that we might go on a vacation somewhere exotic, not at all remembering my terrible nightmare from the night before. I became nervous when my parents looked at my sixteen year old sister and I with such grave faces.
“Chloe, Jill,” my mother said in a sad voice, “daddy and I want you to know that we love you both very much and only want the best for you two.”
I became nervous as the air grew tense. The scene made up in my head in the night came back to me and I was scared.
“Daddy and I need to have a little break from each other for a while. He’s going to be living somewhere else for just a little while so we can get things figured out.” My mother continued to explain in a shaky voice. I knew exactly what was happening. My nightmare from the previous night was replaying right before my eyes. It was just a matter of time before my father would be sucked away from me never to return again. I was too afraid to move, paralyzed to my seat. My perfect family was falling apart. I looked over at my sister expecting to see her crying, yelling all the things running through my head that I could not say, but I saw nothing. No fear, no sadness, no pain in her eyes.
“We’re gonna let you girls choose when you go out to see your dad as soon as he gets settled.” My mother told us waiting for our reactions.
“I don’t really care.” Jill said nonchalantly.
Rage ran through my body at her words. I was shaking with anger, hot tears brimming in my eyes about to spill over. How on earth could she not care about what was happening? How could this have absolutely no effect on her at all? My dad looked at me with concerned eyes.
“Chloe? Are you ok sweetie?”
There were so many things I wanted to scream at them but the words caught in my throat. Of course I wasn’t ok! I stood and ran upstairs to my room covering my face in my pillow, letting the fabric swallow my screams. I found a picture that I had drawn at school of my family and ripped my father off the page, crumpling the small piece of paper throwing it away. My parents came to my room frequently trying to cheer me up but I did not—could not talk to them. I cried only at home, not wanting my friends to see me. The years passed by and I was able to see my dad on the weekends, spending time with him out in the big field that surrounded his house. I later learned that the reason that my sister did not have much reaction to this traumatic experience was because my dad was not her dad. My mom was married before and I discovered that I did not have the seemingly perfect family that I had thought I did.

The years passed and slowly my sister and I grew closer as we both grew further from our mother. Soon she went to college in South Carolina and so did another part of my life. I found the picture I had drawn all those years ago and the strip with my father alone torn off the page. I tore another part of the paper with my sister on it so it was just my mother and I, and our home in the background. By seventh grade I had thought I had emotionally settled with my parents being divorced until Chris came into my life. Chris was tall, skinny, and had bleach blonde hair with a receding hair line. He seemed nice but I never felt comfortable when he was around. He was over so often I thought he was going to live with us but for some reason he had to move to Colorado for his job (I never did find out what he did exactly). I never liked having him around. He was quiet and all he did when I saw him was type away at his computer. My mother’s job required her to work late and I was left home alone with him a lot. I always stayed in my room afraid he might attack me when given the opportunity. Chris never actually did anything to me but I never got used to him. The same summer that my mom met Chris, my father met a lady named Janine. She was big and had short dark hair and was very loud. She was very friendly and kind, the complete opposite of Chris, but I still didn’t like her. I realized that the only reason that I didn’t like Janine or Chris was because I didn’t want to like them. It bothered me much more than it should have that my parents were seeing other people even though it had been five years. Eventually I started to warm up to Janine because she stayed around, unlike Chris. By the end of the summer I had decided that I could tolerate her if she was going to stay.


I had to again re-adjust my life around this new person and by the time I started eighth grade I had fallen into routine. I spent the week with my mom and Friday night Janine would come pick me up and I would spend the weekend at my dad’s house tucked into my room with a good book and some junk food. About two months into first semester my life took another crazy turn. My mom sat me down one night and said that we wouldn’t be able to keep our house. She said that she couldn’t keep up with the payments on our house. Our house was too big and my mom’s job didn’t make enough. All she told me was that we were going to have to move soon. She didn’t say when, she didn’t say where. All I knew was that I was going to have to leave the only home I have ever known. But what really freaked me out was when I asked if we were going to stay in Columbia and she didn’t know.
“I’m not sure if we will be able to find an affordable house here. I have been looking here, but I just don’t know.”
My own mother not knowing what was going to happen to us was the scariest feeling of all. For all I knew my next home could be a cardboard box. I cried myself to sleep that night wondering how much longer I would be in this room that carried all of my memories. I wasn’t sad that night, I was terrified. I cried because I was afraid and angry. It was a given that I wouldn’t be able to continue to dance that year which also made me afraid. Dance was the only thing I had in my life that was completely constant. Friends come and go, family can even leave you but through all the hard times dance was what I could turn to, to let go of all the feelings and emotions I held up inside. It was my safe place and now I didn’t even have that left. The next morning I only told one of my friends what had happened and by lunch it seemed like everyone knew. I was angry that she told everyone but that’s not exactly something you can keep to yourself.
It wasn’t long before the Re Max sign was up in front of my house to stay there for another year and a half. Every morning I went out to the bus stop I saw that sign and was reminded of what was happening no matter how much I tried to forget. The agony and torture of never knowing when I was going to be torn away, replaced by someone else, stayed with me until finally we couldn’t keep our house any longer and the bank got impatient. In the middle of June my mom told me that the bank was giving us until the first of August to find a new place to stay and clear out all of our stuff before it belonged to the bank. Scared that we weren’t going to find another place to live I spent the majority of the rest of my summer at my dad’s house. Janine had been around long enough that I was comfortable having her around and she started to feel more like a friend to me than anything else. Of course I didn’t confide in her like I would my friends at school but she comforted me when I needed and never really acted like a step mom. Finally by July my mother had found a small condo that was only a few miles from our old house. I never went to go look at it until we started taking stuff from one house to another. I didn’t want to see it because I was afraid that I would like it more than my house. It’s a nice place but I don’t think I will ever feel completely at home there. The first night I stayed there was scary for me. I don’t know why but I felt like I was on another planet. I was in the same city, same school district and still close to home but I guess the emptiness of it scared me. The lacking of human interaction. It was completely spotless and had no character of its own. All the condos on the street looked exactly the same. The small condo felt big and sinister around me yet I also felt closed in, unable to escape. I was completely alone in my transition from place to place and it was terrifying. I couldn’t turn to my mom for help because every time I even hinted that I didn’t like it here she would start crying and yelling about how she was doing the best she could (I knew she was and I appreciated her fully but that didn’t mean I was going to love the place). I never felt like I could turn to any of my friends because lots of them had moved from different states before when they were younger and didn’t understand why this scared me so much. I’m sure they all thought I was over reacting to the whole situation and I probably was but I didn’t care. I was scared of being in this new place and I was scared that I had nobody to help me be brave. I looked through all the boxes in my room until I found what I was looking for—my drawing. The picture I drew all those years ago when my life was perfect, that had been torn to pieces. The pieces were crinkled and stained from years of being forgotten and neglected. I put all the pieces together like a puzzle, fitting everything back together. Tears fell down my cheeks onto the paper, smudging the marker as I tore another piece of the picture away. Now the only thing left was my mother and I standing alone, the other pieces hovering around us but not connecting. The pieces of my picture are still hidden away in my room, hidden from the world, hidden from disproving eyes filled with pity and criticism. I didn’t want people to pity me for there are far worse fates than mine. In fact, when I think about other more unfortunate souls, I realize I don’t have much room to complain. I still visit my old home sometimes and wonder what my life would be like if nothing had happened, if my parents hadn’t got divorced, if I hadn’t been forced out of my house. Its then and only then I realize how much all of this has shaped who I really am. I take out the pieces of my picture and try to fit them together, but the picture looks different, strange and alien almost. I think to myself that sometimes pictures look better when they’re distorted and imperfect than when they’re put together.