My mother died when I was fourteen because of one bottle of Gatorade that she didn’t have.

Gatorade was my mom’s miracle potion. It made her sugar perfect, no matter how low it was. When her sugar was high and she was throwing up, she drank little bits at a time, enough to where she didn’t dry heave but not enough to make her sugar higher.

Orange Gatorade. When we lived at Apartment 1419, Camellia Circle, my little sister (two years younger than me) and I would walk out the back door and up the hill and down the street and cut through the apartments and down another street to a little parking lot with a Dollar General, a hot dog restaurant, a Mexican deli, and a haircut place. We would go to Dollar General with the three dollars she usually gave us and we would buy her a Gatorade, which usually only cost a dollar; the other two dollars were just in case. I would hold the money in the smallest pocket I could possibly find, and we would bring every cent we didn’t spend back to Mom. We wouldn’t take any risks. We knew how badly she needed that dang Gatorade.

Then we had to go and move far out in the country, way far away from any Dollar General or Mexican deli. We had an old guy who lived behind us and we had my mom’s asshole of a boyfriend. The old guy was kind of weird, but he was nice enough to bring my mom Gatorade once. It was red, not orange, but she appreciated it anyway.

The old guy had brought it because my mom’s asshole of a boyfriend worked all day. When the asshole of a boyfriend got home from work, he cursed my mom out, telling her she had a sugar daddy. That was the first and only time I ever, EVER heard my mom say what we called “the GD”. She highly disapproved of it. She got sick that night because of stress, because that’s really the only reason her sugar ever acted up. My little sister and I couldn’t walk five minutes to get her orange Gatorade from Dollar General. And my mom’s asshole of a boyfriend didn’t want to waste a single dollar on her.

Her diabetes finally got the best of her, but that one stupid little bottle of orange Gatorade could have saved her life.


No Gatorade.


No Mom.

Death changes so many things. Especially when it’s your primary and only caregiver who dies. My dad died when I was four. For some reason, that was also when my mom began to get those days and days of vomiting, when her diabetes really made itself evident. My pregnant older sister lived with her dad (we had different dads) when my mom died.

Moved in with my uncle John and aunt Jaime and my two girl cousins, one of whom is six months older than me to the day. Four girls, one lady, one guy, whole bunch of animals in one house. First year was a blur. Bad grades. Went to high school without passing math. Couldn’t stop reliving that freaking day. Only comfort was my dog…

I was in math class, working on those dreaded lessons on the computer. Why did I have two math periods, anyway? Oh, well; it made Mom happy. And I had an A in this class, so I was doing pretty well.

Something bad is about to happen.

I shivered. I always know when something bad is about to happen. It was big this time. I didn’t stop working, kept my face blank. I didn’t even hear the door open. It was Miss Roberts, probably my favorite lady at this school. She was the only sort of guidance counselor I had ever felt comfortable around. She was short and had pink streaks in her hair. She asked for me, which was pretty normal, so I paused my math and got up and followed her into the hall. This part is faded. She told me there was news for me. I asked her if it was good or bad. Bad? Well, I finally managed to get my locker open easily! She looked upset and I fell quiet. We got my sister. Went to the office into this back room, passing cops on the way. My older sister was there, and all these other people I don’t remember. Oh, no.


There was a lady with brown curls, vague freckles, and grey eyes. I remember her quiet voice and the exact words she said.

“Hello, girls. I know your mother’s been sick for a long time…years? I know she’s been through a lot of hospitals. Well, this morning, she…your mother…passed away this morning.”

There was this really long moment where I felt like I had been electrocuted, but really cold. Everyone stood still and no one breathed and no one spoke. Shell-shocked, I kept thinking over and over. I wouldn’t have cried if my little sister hadn’t immediately burst into tears. I hate when my sister cries. Oh, why couldn’t they have told us separately! After the really long instant of immobile time, one tear slid down my face, and I looked down and asked to be excused.

This one time, I was throwing a baseball (not a softball) back and forth with my older sister’s brother, John-John. I threw it to him and then I looked down at my dog, who had just come up to me. He was such a sweet little thing! “Hi, Peanut! I love y—“
BAM! The baseball slammed into my mouth out of nowhere! My tooth went through my lip. Needless to say, I kind of freaked out. My mom washed all the blood off my face and got me a new shirt. I held a bag of ice over my lip until the swelling went down. Then I told John-John I was sorry for freaking out and he told me he was sorry for accidentally hitting me in the face with a baseball. I still have a scar in my lip.

Anyway, I had the same way-too-surprised feeling both times, the same cold electrocution. I wasn’t sure what to do other than put my hands over my mouth and wail. Except when my mom died, I didn’t scream. I let one tear out because my little sister’s crying shattered my heart and then I asked to be excused. I remember thinking that no one would leave me alone and let me react. I couldn’t cry in front of people, especially complete and total strangers! I sat in a small office across the hall for half a second after that request, and I had put my hands over my mouth and sucked in a deep breath, not really sure what this was accomplishing, when Miss Roberts came in and I dropped my hands and looked at her with what I hoped was a blank face. Miss Roberts was a friend of mine, but I didn’t want her to see me cry, although she had before.

I don’t remember the next few hours in chronological order. Here’s what I do remember:

1. Being asked if I wanted to go home. Yes, please. (I still hadn’t reacted.) But I want to eat lunch here (there’s nothing to eat at home, lady, but I would never tell you that), if that’s okay. I remember seeing my best friend Dalton on the other side of the line, mouthing to me, “WHAT’S GOING ON? ARE YOU OKAY?” I blinked and shook my head vaguely, and he frowned out of worry and turned away. I didn’t tell him what had happened until the next day in Science class (I insisted on not missing a single day of school), the only class we had together. (“What happened? Why were you crying in the lunch line yesterday?” “My mom died.” “Oh.”)

2. This one guy Miss Roberts and I passed by in the hallway leading away from the gym. I don’t remember where we were going. He asked us how we were doing, a question that people usually answer with, “Fine. How are you?” but I couldn’t figure out how to answer him. He had already walked away. Miss Roberts whispered, after he had left the building, “I don’t think he should have asked you that.” She thought I hadn’t answered because I was angry with him for asking, but that wasn’t true; I just didn’t know what to say.

3. Finally being able to react in my lovely blue room we’d just moved into. Crying for a long, long time. Every time someone knocked, I would swallow and wipe my face and erase every trace of emotion that could ever have been there. Open the door and answer questions in a polite but cold tone. Close the door and go back to muffled sobbing in my pillow.

4. Sami (Samantha), my pregnant older sister, coming in my room to sit with me for a few minutes. I know we had a better conversation that day then we’d had in years, but I don’t remember a word of it. I hadn’t ever seen Sami cry, either, that I really remembered, and she cried then, a little. I do remember that I told her that she should name the baby after Mom if it was a girl.


5. Tons of decisions and responsibilities suddenly being dumped on me. Well, really, there were only a few: I had to keep my little sister with me and NOT LET US GET SEPARATED NO MATTER WHAT because we were close and my mom would never want us to live apart; I remember having to choose where to live and then having that decision made for me, which saved me in the end; and I had to choose what to take with me to my uncle John’s house and what to leave behind in a storage unit. If I could go back in time, this is the moment I would change; nothing else. I would tell myself to grab my dad’s blanket and my Angel Catcher book and the Series of Unfortunate Events that had taken me eight years to collect and my dog’s favorite orange and yellow sweater, because my mom’s asshole of a boyfriend didn’t pay the storage unit and everything in it was gone within a month or two.

You may be thinking, Where exactly is this story going? Well, it was really supposed to be my anger at finally getting to read by mom’s autopsy report sixteen months after she died, only to discover that her death could have been changed by a bottle of freaking Gatorade, but then I started giving an account of her death. Well, I might as well give this piece of writing a point. I’ll tell you about a major effect of her death: my salvation.

I was angry the day before I got saved. And by angry, I mean that I had been having this quiet anger building up in me for months, ever since we moved out of 1419. We didn’t move directly out to the country; first we moved to Minnesota with another family, and then the mother of that family threw a fit at my mom because she thought that my mom owed her money and then she threatened to throw our $300 TV down the stairs because it hadn’t yet been hooked up or anything and it was just sitting there in the hall and then we called the cops on her and after the cops left, we left. We went back down South and stayed in her boyfriend’s house for a few months; then my mom dropped my little sister and me off in Mississippi to stay with her parents while she and her boyfriend went to the next state over to find a house, which ended up being the house she died in.

So I was angry. I was angry with my life, which in its entirety has been as crazy as that last paragraph you read; I was angry with the lady who almost threw our TV down the stairs; I was angry with all of my mom’s boyfriends; I was angry with the nightmares that stopped only when my dog was sleeping with me; I was angry at everyone who kept messing with my little sister; and I was angry at everyone who spoke at my mom’s memorial. Even more than I was angry, I was tired. I was sick of having to deal with everything. I needed help.

I was in a particularly tired mood the day I got saved. I honestly don’t really care when my little sister throws angry little fits when people joke around with her, but when she’s to the point of tears, don’t you agree that that’s a bit ridiculous?

I don’t really want to name the people who were messing with her; it was just someone who lived with us. She had been messing with my sister all day, stealing things and moving things and calling her a “fatty acid” (for some reason, she found science terms that sounded like vulgar words funny). My sister had cried at least three times that day. I was afraid to get mad at the girl messing with my sister because I knew she would throw a heck-raising fit at me and tell her parents and then, I don’t know, my dog would get kicked out or something. Finally, right before my sister went to bed, the girl told my sister that she had a present for her and left this little container on the coffee table in the living room. I told my sister about this exciting thing I had heard about on the Internet to make her forget about it, and after she had gone to bed, I took that stupid little container outside and opened it.

It was full of worms, and the girl knew full well that the only thing my sister is afraid of is insects (I’m not sure if worms are classified as insects, but she’s afraid of those, too). I had myself a quiet tantrum outside, throwing the container to the ground and stomping on it as hard as I could, throwing anything I could pick up, kicking anything that wouldn’t break my toes, finally just sitting on the ground and squeezing my head in between my hands.


I went back inside after maybe forty minutes, straight to my room.

I closed and locked my door and buried my face in my pillow and just lay still for a while, my dog sitting up next to me, watching the door, very alert. I took slow, deep breaths, not trying to sleep but not wanting to stay awake. My lamp was on and the overhead light was off, creating black shadows that terrified the living frack out of me. My sister is scared of bugs; I’m scared of the dark. We all have a pathetic fear.

So I was lying there, breathing very slowly, deep in this wordless thought that I think sometimes. I’ll have a big realization, but I won’t really think words. This time, it was about God. I’ve always known there was a God, but I never really loved Him or thought about Him until that night. Right after my mom died, my fear had accumulated inside me; I was on fire on the outside but pitch black on the inside. I would write terrible things on the backs of my unfinished math papers about God. The devil was choking the life out of me.

But that night, everything changed. I knew I had been a lying, stealing little delinquent, although it was on a small scale; I didn’t steal from stores, nor did I ever steal money, but I stole from my family. Scissors or tape or books or anything I found cool. After I got saved, I secretly put everything back, except for one thing that I couldn’t return, which was a coin from Guatemala that I had stolen from my mom’s last boyfriend. I had also lied a lot, which I continued to do until finally, just as I was getting sick of not ever telling the truth, they threatened to throw my dog out. I must make something clear: besides God, my dog is my absolute best friend in the world. He keeps away my nightmares, he protects me from anything, he smiles this little dog-smile at me sometimes when he knows he’s been a good boy, he acts all noble and cool when I put his collar on in the morning. If it starts to rain while we’re outside, I hold him with his little paws around my neck under my jacket, my hood pulled up over both of our heads because he hates to get wet. He’s small, but that’s actually perfect; he doesn’t have to stay outside. Looking back, I know my dog was a gift from God to keep my nightmares away. As I write this, I’ve had him for three years and one month.

Anyway, enough about my dog; that night I realized what a puddle of misery and deception and, well, wrongness in general I had been living in. I realized what an eternity of peace would be like, compared to an eternity of burning. I thought about God’s love for everything He created, my mom and my sisters and my mom’s boyfriends and even my little dog, Peanut. He loves the ones who hate him, like the atheists and the Satanists and the confused teenagers who think that all there is to life is sex and alcohol and wild parties. He loves me. And so I decided to love Him back. And now I’m on the path to a peaceful eternity. And yes, if you’re wondering, my life does seem a lot better.

That’s the end of this piece of writing, but it is by no means the end of the story itself.