July 21, 2016
Whew!  Story almost lost to the computer....but amazingly showed up on my desktop this morning!!  I tried to post it yesterday and somehow managed to lose it or so I thought.  Either the computer minions or my amazing husband placed it where I could find it and share with y'all today.  (Sorry, recently watched Bridemaids and the y'all kinda of stuck with me :-)

From Punk to Pearls
MPOTOCKI

Black.  Katie was so tired of black.  Ever since Kelly, or K-9 as she had asked to be called, had embraced the punk side, everything she wore, used, liked or that was in any way affiliated with her, was black.  Katie hoped that her daughter was just going through a phase as all teens do, but this was a bit much for a phase.  She had herself, gone through a phase or two finding herself as a teenager, but it had been mostly for show and to irk her extremely straight-laced parents. 
   
Kelly was immersed, body, mind and soul.  The line was drawn at painting her room black but that didn’t stop her from tacking up dark, apocalyptic images or just black paper.  Katie opted to drop that fight though she did stick to her guns about dead, dying or violent images.  She certainly couldn’t control what Kelly had going on in her heart or head, but she could certainly keep it from her home.
   
Katie glanced at her watch as she closed Kelly’s bedroom door.  The night blinds kept all light out so time there was a perpetual night.  Very much a reflection of their current relationship.  As Kelly traveled along the punk path, the exchanges between mother and daughter became as equally dark.  They were short, staccato interchanges edged with anger and bitterness from Kelly and frustration and hopelessness for Katie.     

Katie’s eyes moistened as she walked back into the light of day, remembering the day Kelly was born.  Everything was white and sterile and after working for 34 hours to push this little creature from her interior, Katie met Kelly for the first time.  She saw a beautiful baby girl with five little fingers and five little toes and so much potential wrapped in that little bundle, topped off with a pink and blue striped hat.  Her husband, Hank, said she looked like a little old man to which Katie scoffed back that she was the most beautiful baby ever.
   
As Kelly grew from baby to toddler to little girl, she was the sweetest most happy person that Katie had known.  Everyone remarked on it even after spending only a few moments with Kelly.  The therapist Katie began seeing after Hank had been killed in a train wreck told her that Kelly needed to come too.  That she needed a safe place to share all her feelings of grief and abandonment and anger where she would not be judged but helped to work through those to come through to the place where she could accept the tragedy in their lives.  Kelly refused to go.  Katie begged and pleaded and bribed, but Kelly would have none of it.  That is when she began to turn to the darkside.      The therapist said that this was a natural reaction and that it would pass, but Katie was becoming more and more sure that it would not pass and the feeling that it left her with was one of despair and fear.  Fear for the life of her daughter.  Dancing at the edge of her thoughts and terrorizing her in her dreams at night, was the thought that Kelly would kill herself or others at some point.  Katie was reaching the end of her rope and running out of ways to tell herself it was OK, that it was a phase and she’ll be her happy, social self again soon.  The slamming of the front door brought Katie back from her thoughts.
   
“Hello Kel, I mean K-9.”  “How was your day?”
   
Another door slamming was her only response.  Kelly had retreated to her other sanctuary, the basement, to paint or write or do whatever else she did in the sub-darkness of her existence.  Katie, as always, worked very hard to embrace the positive and headed to the kitchen to make dinner.  She would make tacos, which usually brought at least a ‘thanks’ from Kelly.   It had always been her favorite meal.  At least Katie would be able to hear her voice.  Something that Kelly rarely used these days, at least at home in the presence of her mom.
   
Kelly marched loudly down the stairs and dropped onto the futon.  It had  been a long day at school, filled with taunts and jibes by her classmates who no longer cared to  try and accept her new incarnation.  After her dad died, they cut her some slack.  It had been over a year now and they were tired of letting the opportunity to poke fun at her go.  She had no friends.  Even the other punk and goth kids didn’t want to hang with her.  Of course, she put out no effort to try and make a friend.  She was perfectly miserable keeping a far distance from any emotion that might attach itself to her cold, steeled heart and that was just how she liked it.
   
She reached for the photo albums she kept hidden in a locked crate.  She suspected her mom of trying to open it to discover its contents, but Kelly was confident that even if her mom was able to pry it open, she would not discover it’s hidden contents under the false bottom.  This is where she hid her joy and happiness and the girl that she was before her dad died.  She dropped the book on the futon, got up and put on the loudest, darkest CD she could find and hit play, working the volume to the point just before she could expect her mother to pound on the floor in an attempt to tell her it was too loud.  Kelly stopped at the blood-red line she had drawn in nail polish on the stereo to indicate just how loud she could go before forcing an interaction with her mother.
   
Returning to the futon, she gingerly picked up and held the photo album and started at the beginning:  the day she was born.  This album went until her first birthday.  Since her mom took most of the photos, those that had anyone other than herself in them were of her dad.  She felt the rage and anger and sadness begin to creep up within her like a bad case of acid reflux.  She could taste the bile and choked it back with a slug of Coke, continuing her dive into the abyss that used to be her life.  Hardly caring that her face was wet with tears and the photos blurred through tear-soaked eyes, she lingered on every happy moment she saw in the book.  She didn’t remember any of it, but she could read volumes in the faces of the others in the photos.  She so very much wanted to go back to that place but was so very, very lost.  She missed her dad something fierce and missed her mom almost as much, which was even worse because her mom was here.  Kelly just didn’t know how to start to talk to her mom, so didn’t. 
   
She stood, closing the album after reaching the last page,  setting it down in the false bottomed crate.  Before she closed it, she took out the sweet, sweet bearer of feeling.  Her father didn’t often shave with a blade, but when he did, he used the pearl-handled straight razor that had been his father’s.  Kelly had taken it the day he died, not knowing why at the time.  Now it was her only friend.  She reached for the red towel she kept folded in the basement bathroom, closed the bathroom door and took off her clothes.  Staring at herself in the mirror, she saw a corpse riddled with gashes and scars from either the accident that had taken its life or the life that had created the accident.  After lying out the towel on the floor, she sat down upon it, leaning against the door and searched for the spot on her milky flesh that was begging to meet her friend.
   
Katie always wondered what Kelly did in the basement that caused her temporary abatement of the blackness.  It never lasted longer than a few hours, but she would bound up the stairs in her pink robe without her usual grimace and for that brief few hours, it was like it had been before.  Kelly was by no means chatty, but she would respond when asked a question and occasionally offer a unsolicited comment, a slightly less obscure glimpse into her life.  Katie would absorb that time and try desperately to hold on to it like a life raft, knowing that the seas of their existence would soon again rise and swell with the return of the darkness. 
   
Only once had Katie asked Kelly what she did in her time in the basement that always resulted in a more tolerable mood.  Kelly had not talked to her for nearly a month after that and Katie decided, upon recommendation of her shrink, that she not ask again.  She did; however, check the basement thoroughly for drugs and alcohol, finding only the usual bathroom vanity items that she herself had put there. 
   
She did find the locked trunk and dwelled on that for a few days before busting into it only to find the photos and pieces of their lives from before Hank had died.  Katie really wanted to believe that those glimpses to happy times past was enough for Kelly to come back to her, if only for a little while, but her gut told her that was only part of it.  She felt there was more, but could not find evidence of it and Kelly sure as hell wasn’t going to volunteer that particular bit of information.
   
Katie was very lucky this evening as Kelly was so much more herself than usual that they actually watched a movie together, popcorn and all and she was the recipient of a half-hug along with a ‘Night, Mom,’ from Kelly before she headed up to bed.  Even thought the hug was only a few seconds, it felt like years to Katie.  Her human contact since Hank had died was virtually non-existent, even though Kelly was there.  As a little girl, Kelly had always wanted to snuggle and cuddle.  Neither Hank nor Katie could deny her this request.  Even as a teenager, she would still toss out the occasional group hug or plop down on one of their laps after a long day at school.  This stopped the day that Hank didn’t come home from work.
   
The day started like every other day with fights over the bathroom, quick breakfasts and the gathering of briefcases and backpacks.  Air kisses were given and they all headed their separate ways for the day.  Kelly to school.  Katie to yoga class and Hank to the train station to catch the 7:40 into the city.  Absolutely nothing special about that morning.  It had been the same as hundreds before it.  Kelly sent her usual texts to her dad at lunch and study hall, complaining how bored she was and how she couldn’t wait until the day was over so she could do what she wanted to do.  Both of them knew that meant eating in front of the computer or TV, but wasn’t that what the life of a teenager was all about?
   
Hank called once he arrived at the train station, usually about 6:15pm, to find out if anything was needed from town before he drove home.  It was Katie’s cue that if dinner was not started, that it should be soon.  It took him about 20 minutes to drive to their house from the station.  Katie looked forward to those 20 minutes, eagerly anticipating news from the outside world.  After Kelly had been born, they had decided that it was best if she stayed at home.  It had be wonderful and Katie was thankful that she had been able to raise her daughter without the need for daycare or outside help.  It had been hard at first, but she grew into it and found it hard to consider doing anything else.
   
She and Hank had talked about her going back to school or finding a job once Kelly started high school.  Though Katie wanted to do something, she just didn’t know what.  She started taking classes at the community college to try and find herself.  She laughed whenever she thought about that turn of phrase.  Most people find themselves after high school and/or college.  Here she was, at 40, trying to find out who she was.  It was scary and exciting all at the same time.  She definitely gravitated toward the arts, which shouldn’t have been a huge surprise.  Katie had always like making things with her hands and had considered going to college for art.  Her parents, on the other hand, were not going to allow their daughter to fall into the pit of starving artists and bullied her into learning something practical.  Katie ended up getting her degree in business and spend the first few years out of college as the executive assistant for the CEO of a company her uncle worked for.  She hated it.  At least until she met Hank.