Hope

By Jessica Cussins

“Thomas? Jessica? Can you both come to the living room for a minute?” My brother and I looked at each other anxiously; Mom rarely called us by our full names like that.

“Be right there,” I called out, as my curiosity got the better of me; my brother trailed behind.

“What’s up mom?” he asked already eager to get back to the safety of his room.

“I’m not sure of the best way to say this kids, so I’m going to come right out with it. First, I want you to know that your father and I love you very much, and none of that is going to change, but… we’re getting a divorce.” An intense silence followed her words and hung in the air. I became very aware of the hard wooden chair I was sitting on and of the light that was streaming into the room too brightly, giving my mother an almost angelic glow around her. It seemed to mock the darkness of her words and pain in her eyes.

“What?” My brother was the first to speak, though it sounded more like a gasp.

“We’ve tried so hard to make it work, kids, God knows I’ve tried, but I can’t live with that man anymore; I think this is for the best. “ She kept talking but I stopped hearing her. That man? My dad? Where was he now? Shouldn’t he be here for this? Questions swirled through my head as I struggled to understand the complexity of what was going on. Why had this happened?  Where would we live?

My mother’s escalating voice caught my attention.

“You both will be going back and forth between my house and your father’s; we’ll try doing one week at mine and the next at his, and see how that goes. Are you understanding all of this?” I wasn’t sure that I was. I saw my brother force back tears as all 13 year old boys must do, whisper “goodbye mom,” and storm off to his room, slamming the door behind him. I felt my own tears falling over my cheeks, and clung to my mom for comfort. I heard my brother calling me to come into his room, to be with him, but I did not go. I was afraid to let go of my mother, afraid that if I left she might not be there when I came back.

            It hadn’t always been like this. I was only nine then and we had just moved to Champaigne, Illinois, a small town outside of Chicago. It was supposed to be for the better. The year before, my mom and I had lived alone in New York and my brother and dad had lived in San Diego; we had come here to be together.

I was born in Oxford, England, but lived there for only one year before my family moved to California. We lived in sunny San Diego, in a beautiful wooden house on a quiet dead end street overgrown with jasmine flowers and wild grass. Some of my earliest and happiest memories are from that time. We only lived there for a handful of years, but it remains the place I have stayed the longest in my life and a place that I will always gaze back at with warmth. My mother, father, brother and I all lived together then. I was the baby of the family, not more than six years old when we would leave forever. But for a family that would not last long, we had an amazing amount of love for each other. I’ve since found that nothing can compare to that sense of love and belonging. Through everything else, it is nice to know that such a time existed.

We used to walk all together on Sunday mornings to a little café for brunch, and spend entire days at the beach to have dinner on the sand as the sun went down. My dad would hold me if I’d fallen or gotten upset and even as the tears slid past my cheeks tell me that I was being brave, making me instantly want to be. We had a large backyard with jasmine that lined the entire back wall, slanted flowerbeds with stone steps through the middle, and a tree house I used to hide away in with friends. We had a pool that my dad built with chairs around it where we all used to sit and enjoy the sunshine. Perhaps the most magical times were when we went swimming at night. The bottom of the pool was lined with almost black tiles, and when I was underneath the water, I felt that I had found another world. Submerged in absolute darkness and quiet, feeling my body effortlessly glide through the water; I felt like I was free.

My father has a new pool now, another one he built, again with almost black tiles. Perhaps he too missed that feeling of freedom, but that wouldn’t come for many years after this.

We left San Diego for Paris, France briefly and then for New York. I still don’t know exactly what prompted these moves, but there was always talk of jobs, and of making the family “work”. My second year in New York was spent only with my mom in a new area, at a new school, while my Dad and brother moved back to San Diego. After a troubling year of living apart, we all moved to Illinois to be together again. We first lived in Champaign, a small town outside of Chicago, and then moved to Urbana, Illinois, an even smaller town, half way through the year. I was in 4^th grade then, and I figured I had become pretty good at the whole moving thing. When I began 5^th grade at the same school, I realized it was the first time I had ever started a school year knowing anyone. I reveled in the new experience and enjoyed being one of the oldest at the school. That year brought my first taste of romance, wonderful relationships that would be talked about for weeks and then last a couple of days. There were trips to the mall, sleepovers, first kisses underneath shielding trees. The dramas and excitement of the year helped block out the newfound uncertainty I found at home. My Mom’s new boyfriend, his impeccably clean white house, my Dad’s depression and brother’s rebellion, my Mom’s apartment with all the furnishings from the sixties in a strange part of town, and eventually her and the boyfriends shared new house in varying shades of brown. Later, I would look back on it all as a relatively stable time. The next year, we all split up.

I was sent to an all-girls English boarding school at the beginning of sixth grade. At first, I refused to go; what did I know about England? I couldn’t remember anything about it besides brief visits with family over the years and these memories involved endless cold and rain that hardly made living there a comforting thought. Would I be ok without my family? Could I really find a place for myself in such a cold, foreign place? Fortunately, as it turned out, I didn’t have many other options. My Mom was pregnant and had moved to Boston with her boyfriend for a new job; once the baby was born, there would hardly be room for me in their small apartment. And my dad had never been the best at taking care of us. My brother stayed with him nonetheless, but it was decided that I should experience something different, so off I went.

            The school was called Benenden School for Girls, and was in Benenden village, in Kent. It was a huge school that spanned acres of land in the middle of nowhere, with only a few hundred girls. It was a culture shock to say the least; instead of slushies and ice-skating and kisses, it was about grace and work and lots of sheep. I tried to assimilate myself to my new world; I quickly picked up an English accent and learned to wear my school uniform with just the right mix of style and disinterest. I played sports and made the team for lacrosse, netball, and rounders. I was involved in dance, theatre, music, and took fifteen different subjects. It was definitely a far cry from what I had heard of American middle schools, but I slowly began to enjoy that. During breaks, I often stayed with my family in various parts of England, or occasionally at friends’ houses. I figured out the train and underground systems of England and in the way that living and traveling alone can, became much more independent.

For all of my efforts, I always seemed to be getting myself into trouble. My friend Jennet and I would randomly decide to run away to London in the middle of the night; we never made it, although we came close a couple times. We usually stumbled home just in time to be woken up for morning prayers by our house matron. One night we decided to tie our sheets together and abseil out of the window. Another night we climbed up to the roof and lay there staring at the stars, smoking “fags.”

On Sundays we all attended the village church. I remember feeling constricted by the way all of the words were pre-written on sheets and handed out to you as you walked through the door. I wanted more passion in the sermons and only really enjoyed the occasional hymn. On the way back to school, we all stopped off at the one village store and bought ‘tuck,’ our own food supplies which we kept in personal tuck boxes for times when cafeteria food failed to satisfy.

Shortly after I began at Benenden, my Dad decided he too needed to leave America. He quit his job, and leaving my brother to briefly fend for himself as a sophomore in high school, began living on a sailboat. He started off in Copenhagen and sailed around much of Europe before crossing the Atlantic. On longer breaks from school I would sometimes visit him on exotic islands, living on his boat. When I was twelve, we spent a summer together in Ibiza, partying at some of the biggest clubs in the world. It didn’t strike me as weird that I was clubbing in Europe before attending a single school dance until later.

I almost left Benenden a couple times. At the end of my second year there, I was homesick and my mom begged for me to come live with her.

“Just imagine, baby,” she said one night when I was visiting her in Cambridge. She was lying in her bed and I lay down next to her.

“We would be together again. You could go to school here, I could come pick you up after and we could walk home together; we could even stop and go shopping on the way. And you could have the chance to live with your brother before he goes off to college.”

“Yea, Mom, that would be great,” I replied, wary of letting my imagination roam too far. I often found that my emotions and imagination were too closely related; sometimes it was better not to think at all.

“And you could get to know your baby sister too,” she interjected into my musings, “She would love to have a big sister around. Why don’t you just come home, baby?”

“You told me to go to Benenden, Mom. It was what you wanted.”

“Well I changed my mind, Jessie, just please come home.”

I didn’t go home. I left the school year believing that I was, but my Dad forced me to reconsider.

“You don’t know what you want,” he told me repeatedly, “you’re only doing this to please your mother.” And so I went back to Benenden for another year. When I finally left, I was more than ready to do so. I found there was only so much church and fields full of sheep I could take. I had begun to feel constricted by more than just the pre-written sermons. I missed the freedom of leaving school and having the rest of the day to myself. And I missed feeling like a part of my family.

My Mom had settled in Berkeley by then. I moved in with her, her boyfriend and their daughter, Charlotte. As the summer drew to an end, I found I would face another culture shock: attending Berkeley High School.

I began not knowing a single person at the school. Wandering around on the first day in a sea of three thousand kids, I got lost on my way to every single class. It was one of the most terrifying days of my life. Every day improved, though, and I found myself even enjoying it after the original horror faded away. I found friends to eat lunch with and talk to in class; friends that I would end up becoming closer to than anyone.

Living with my family again was also somewhat of a shock. I found it hard to follow my mom’s sudden rules and strictness. After years of her not being there, did she have the right? My relationship with her boyfriend was also tested. He decided at one point to move out; him and my mom were fighting and he claimed he couldn’t deal with the whole family thing. He never explained to me why he left on and when he eventually came back, he never took the time to talk to me about his change of mind. We haven’t gotten as close as I might have imagined, but our relationship is better now. He still doesn’t talk to me much, but I understand that he supports us and is good for my mom and I respect him for that.

I see less of my Dad. He ended up in Bogotá, Colombia, after sailing to the port in Cartagena. He was dating a Colombian woman and after she showed him her country, he decided to stay. Their love didn’t last, but his love for the country remains to this day. He lives in a beautiful part of the city known as La Candelaria with his new girlfriend Natalia and their one-year-old daughter Heloise. He has many more opportunities there and I think he is happier than he ever was in the United States. I visit him once or twice a year and have come to share his love of the country. I have made some close friends there and have had some incredible experiences exploring the culture, which I find fascinating. From the small roads with missing bricks that have been stolen to build impromptu shacks in poor neighborhoods, to the North, which is overflowing with designer stores, trendy bars, and pulsating clubs with beautiful people pouring out of them; I have found Bogotá to be a city of extremes.

My father’s house is in an artsy part of the city, full of cafes, museums and Universities. From the outside, the house doesn’t look like much, gray cement beautified by occasional graffiti. But past the large wooden door, it is a different world. You first step into a courtyard filled with trees and pre-Columbian statues; if you follow the wooden walkway; you then come to another courtyard, a kitchen, dining room and library to your right, and a few bedrooms to your left. If you carry on you come to the dance studio where Natalia can often be found giving dance lessons or working on the current piece she is choreographing. Beyond that is another garden where the house’s German Shepherd, Cookie, likes to stay, and a master bedroom with a spiral staircase on its side that leads you to the roof where my dad’s new hot tub and pool, with the almost black tiles, can be found.

I struggled for many years, feeling lost within the countless worlds I had known. I never knew the true meaning of “home” or felt that I had strong roots tying me to any background. There were days when I woke up and didn’t know where I was. There were times when I looked in the mirror and didn’t recognize my own image staring back at me. But eventually I came to understand that I don’t have to claim one home or culture; I can be a part of many. I have discovered my own ways of thinking about the world and of my place in it. They have come slowly, but they have brought me a kind of freedom. My family may be scattered, but it is strong in its own way. I know that they will be there for me and I hope to always do the same.

I don’t know where I will be next year and in some way it doesn’t really matter, but I couldn’t be more excited. I will be on my own, with everything ahead of me, and when I am out in the world, I think my tangle of roots may prove to be sturdier than the simpler ones I have envied in the past.

“Jess?” My friend Lilly whispered to me suddenly one warm Saturday night. We were lying on my bed, listening to music and deciding which party we felt like going to.

“Yeah?”

“We can do it all, you know?” The full moon was shining into the room, causing an almost devilish glow to dance around her. It seemed to mock the hope in her words and the innocence in her eyes. She stared straight into my own eyes and I understood that she meant something much more than attending all the parties that night.

“Yeah, I know,’ I replied.

“We can do it all.” We both lay back and smiled, “anything is possible.”