Why Couldn't You Look Back, Mom?

"Please pick me up Mom, please hold me." I said as I jumped up and down with my arms extended.

I was three years old, wearing blue pull-on pants and a red tee shirt, screaming and crying for my mother to pick me up. I was scared and confused and didn't understand why she couldn't just pick me up and give me the reassuring kiss and hug I needed so badly.

She ignored me and went on with the task at hand. She was in a hurry; God forbid if my dad should catch her, it would have been a horrible scene.

Mom had five children who were all at school, except me, as I was the youngest. What I didn't know is that the two oldest ones were not actually my whole sisters, but my half-sisters. I would find out when she took the eldest two with her and left the other three of us with Dad.

The phone rang. "NO, no Momma, don't answer the phone. Pick me up, please." Jumping up and down, I cried in desperation. It was no use; she ignored my pleas and nervously plucked the receiver from its cradle. Somehow, even at the tender age of three, I knew who was on the other end of the phone - I don't understand how I knew, but I knew it was Johnny; the man Mom was leaving Dad for.

Momma quickly packed the car all the way to the roof, leaving the back window in total obscurity. She grabbed me and plucked me down into the front seat. There was hardly enough room for both of us.

I cried out of fear and confusion. As she backed out of the driveway, and passed house after house in a blur, still not a single word had she spoken. She drove to my grandparent's house on my dad's side and dropped me off in front of their home on the edge of the road.

I screamed, "Momma, Momma come back, please come back!" I remember seeing the back of her head and not one time did she look back. She drove off down the road, as quickly as she could drive. Not once glancing in the rearview mirror.

I don't know how long I was crying on the side of the road, before my grandmother came out and found me. I remember my grandmother asking me, "Where is your Momma?"

"Momma's gone," I cried. As she carried me into the house, my eyes followed the road in the direction Mom's car had traveled, until the front door closed; closing along with it, the world I once knew.