I’m afraid of water. When I was six, Char threw me in the waters of White Creek in Wisconsin. He had been laying Less on his arms at water level, teaching her how to paddle with her arms. He had lowered her and she had spit, and he raised her back up. He talked her through it again and again, lowered her into the water. Again she panicked and could not keep herself above water. He did this for a while until she started crying, then he gently carried her back onto land, wrapped her in a towel and walked up to me with a snarl on his face. He picked me up, walked me in until he was about waist high, and threw me into deeper water.
Water instantly entered my lungs and my entire body went into panic mode. My heart rate went up, causing my breathing to rise. My flailing arms scared me and I started to scream. Water entered my lungs and I thrashed in terror. The current was carrying me downstream. I got my head high enough out of the water to see him standing in the distance, slowly getting smaller, with a mask of hate on his face.
I drifted downstream until my arms hit ground. I grasped and struggled until the creek got shallower, and I was able to get to my knees and my head was above water. I sobbed. I coughed a lot and cried some more.
He splashed his way to me, grabbed me by the hair. He dragged me back as I kicked and screamed for purchase until he had me back on land. He started kicking me and stomping me until Less was crying, then he left me there and walked hand in hand with her back to his van, casting a look over his shoulder at me with hate in his eyes.
That was what it was like for her. For Less, after the news came out that she had been molested, she was drowning and she needed help. Now just to remind everyone who has been reading this opus, Less had been instructed by Char during him and Rose’s divorce to make life hell on Rose so she would realize that Rose needed a real man to keep the kids in line and take him back.
She had done that perfectly and a war was started between Rose and Less that rages to this day.
Less was not to blame for her sexual abuse, but now Rose was having to defend her greatest enemy, and she resented it. It was not the crime of being hurt by Char that Rose hated Less for, it was the audacity to need her help and support.
Less was treated very well for the first few weeks after the news came out, but after that, Rose pulled into herself and started to get mean. She started to snap at Less, then yell. She started to ignore Less’s weeping and she began to hate her daughter all over again.
Uncle Ball lived with us at the time and he was being sweet to Less. All of his previous dismissals were tossed aside. He started bringing her Susie Q’s and Twinkies. He started watching movies with her, and Rose saw it all. She saw an ally shifting over to Less’s side, and she hated it.
Uncle Ball turned on a dime. He started tying nooses and hanging Less’s Cabbage Patch Kid in the rooms around the house. He wrote terrible messages on it and joked about it when Less would find that doll and scream. She slept with that doll every night, but Uncle Ball would take it when she was at school and hide it for a few days. Less would be desperate to find it. Then it would turn up hanging from the cabinet handle with a note pinned to its dress that said:
Please Momma help
They keep killing me
She started hiding the doll, and she would only pull it out when she was sleeping.
That was when he started creeping into her bedroom at night, grabbing the doll right out of her sleeping arms, and hanging it from her doorknob. Rose’s overall mood started to rise, and Less started carrying it around with her everywhere she went.
Then Uncle Ball would grab the doll right out of her hands and run. He would run to his bedroom and lock the door while Mumble and Rose laughed. Less would pound on that door and scream, and Uncle Ball would blare AC/DC and laugh.
Soon Less stopped carrying that doll. She stopped sleeping with it. She stopped grabbing it from where they hung it, and once the fun was over, Ball threw it in her room.
And she threw it in the trash.
Rose was happy again, and the house returned to normal. Less would do the tiniest thing and Rose would scream at her. Less would break out crying in the middle of dinner, and Rose would huff and roll her eyes.
I remember one time when Less started crying in the middle of dinner, about six months after the news came out, and Rose made the rest of us grab our plates, go into the living room, and eat on the floor in a circle without Less.
Well Less was desperate to prove she was better now and would not be a problem for Rose, so she hatched a plan. Breakfast in Bed. All summer every day Less would make breakfast in bed for Rose.
She decided it would be an omelet. Rose slept in late on the weekends, so Less would wake me up early and take me into the kitchen. She had no idea how to cook breakfast food, but she decided she would teach herself. She knew an omelet was an egg folded in half, and she started making them. She made one for me and she made one for her. Then she made another one.
She cooked for hours trying to get the omelet right, and I had to eat all the practice. One morning before Rose woke up, I ate six omelets. Then I threw up six omelets.
The next day Less made an omelet for Rose and we walked it into Rose’s room. Rose saw what it was, and was excited for a moment before she realized it was from Less. The glass of orange juice I brought, Rose finished. She shoved us out of the room and ate the omelet with resentment and distrust in her heart.
The next day, another omelet, and Rose blurts out, “This is great and all but I don’t even like omelets!”
The next morning, pancakes.
We knew the basics. Batter from the Bisquick box, pour it into the pan with butter. But after that came the flipping and Less didn’t know how to do that.
Imagine being ten or eleven years old, fighting to make a pancake work so your mother will love you because you have lost everything else.
Desperation.
And the pancake keeps folding and breaking, and soon there is a clump of batter and dough shaped like a great big ball on the skillet. I ate it, though it was barely cooked and it made me gag, and Less tried again.
Ten mornings before she figured it out. Two boxes of Bisquick, and Less made the perfect pancake. She made one for me and I loved it. I raved and she immediately made a pancake for Rose. Butter. Syrup. And back into the bedroom, waking Rose up at ten with Less’s pancake cooked to perfection and my glass of orange juice.
Rose took the meal with attitude.
The next day the same, and she complained that her teeth were going to rot out if she ate anymore pancakes. The only breakfast food that she really liked was egg sandwiches anyway.
And Less is back to work. She poured three eggs into the bowl and right into the pan. The bottom cooked, she tried to flip it over, and it folded in half. She melted cheese on it, and she had a piece of egg the size of a quesadilla with melted cheese. A piece of toast under. A piece of toast over and we are waking up Rose.
Rose decided it was inedible. She picked at it, but only ate the toast and drank my orange juice. Less ran upstairs crying, and Guardian tried to figure out why his mother was such a bitch.
The next day, Uncle Ball comes downstairs as Less is back at the oven standing on a chair trying to figure out an egg sandwich. He walks her through it at seven in the morning on a Saturday, and Rose’s alarm clock goes off before it is done. She strides into the kitchen, excited to be up before breakfast was brought to her, to find a perfect egg sandwich waiting on the table.
And my glass of orange juice. She chugged the orange juice and slammed it onto the table. She ate the sandwich as Less stood near smiling and hopping up and down on her toes.
“I don’t want to wake up to breakfast from now on. I can make it myself.” Rose motioned to the kitchen. “Every morning I wake up to a messy kitchen. It stops now.”
Less never made breakfast again. But it is a shame. Because she had taught herself to be really good at it.
She was drifting down river gasping and screaming for help. Rose was watching the water take her away.
For more about the series Reality of the Unreal Mind, visit Amazon.
Jesse Teller 
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