Chapter 2 — Jessica and Anna
At 7:30, Rick came out of the basement, like he always did every school day, and headed up to Jessie’s room, from which he could already hear the alarm clock blaring. He pushed the door open and headed for the night stand to turn off what he thought was the most obnoxious-sounding alarm he had ever heard. He had bought it for exactly that reason, because Jessie could sleep through an atomic blast at ground zero. Jessie lay sprawled across the bed, face down, half a leg and arm hanging over the side. He grabbed both and yanked her off the bed and put her on her feet. She appeared to be asleep standing up. Rick had learned over the years that the only way to wake Jessie up was to physically remove her from the bed. He checked the alarm clock; it had been set for 7:00.
He laughed. “Why do you even set it?”
“So you’ll hear it and wake me up,” she mumbled as she brushed a cobweb of hair out of her face with her hands and staggered toward the bathroom. He looked around for her clothes. She often slept in whatever she planned on wearing, but now she had on shorts and a sports bra. He laid out some clothes and headed downstairs to Anna’s room.
Rick and Anna’s rooms were identical to Alex and Jessie’s, and directly below them. Anna’s room was originally Rick’s study until she turned thirteen and decided she required her own room instead of sleeping in Alex’s room on the pullout bed. That was nearly two years ago, and Rick had been using a corner of the basement rec room as his office since then — always promising to build a wall around it but never finding the time.
Anna was nearly fifteen now. She had been living with the Williamsons since she was five, when her mother, Rick’s cousin, abandoned her to his care. All Anna had known of her father was that he was black, which anyone could guess from her dark skin and kinky hair. Rick had finally told her about him when she turned fourteen. Anna’s father was jailed for life for murder before she had even been born, leaving her mother with a drug addiction problem and no help raising a baby. Anna had no desire to seek out her father since he had never yet bothered to try to contact her. As far as she was concerned, Rick was her dad now, and she was totally proud to be considered his daughter.
Anna was extremely tall and very skinny. She kept her hair straightened, past her shoulders, and shiny with a dozen chemicals, as if hiding from her ancestry. Just a hair shy of six feet tall, she nearly looked Rick in the eyes now. He figured she would surpass him before she turned sixteen; one thing he had never told her about her father was that he was 6’ ll”.
Headstrong, often moody, belligerent, and even mildly violent at times, Anna listened to and respected only Rick. She often called him Dad at home, but always ‘Uncle Ricky’ in public — because it embarrassed him.
“Time to get up!” Rick yelled through the door as he banged on it. Nothing. Anna either woke up at the drop of a feather or joined Jessie at ground zero — it was a crap-shoot. Rick was always leery of barging into Anna’s room. Not only did he feel like he was invading her privacy, but she also had matured physically in the last couple years, often creating awkward moments when he had to wake her. Thank heavens today wasn’t one of those embarrassing days, he sighed in relief after opening the door to see her well-covered with a knee-length nightshirt she often wore around the house. He shook her shoulder and her eyes opened wide, but the rest of her didn’t move for a few seconds.
Awareness finally registered on her features and she jerked her face up out of a puddle of drool and blurted, “Oh my gosh! What time is it?”
“It’s 7:35, sleeping beauty. When are you going to start setting the alarm clock?”
“When you stop waking me up, which I know you’ll always do right after you get Jess up,” she stated matter-of-factly, as if he were a dolt for not recognizing the rules of the game.
Rick thought he sensed a pattern here. He sometimes felt he was their servant, but they enjoyed it, and truthfully, so did he. But he recognized they really needed to start learning some responsibility. As he sat on the edge of her bed he chided, “You know, you’re almost fifteen. I think you can start getting yourself up soon.”
“Soon,” she repeated. “Soon, like when I’m 29?”
“You have to grow up sometime; lord knows the rest of you is…”
She moaned. “Yeah, it’s because I’m growing so fast that I need more sleep,” she hypothesized.
Rick patted her on the leg. “Right,” he said as he rose from the edge of her bed and headed out the door. “Breakfast will be waiting, your highness.”
He headed to the kitchen, where most of the breakfast was ready, keeping warm under a heat lamp. He had bought the restaurant-style food warmer for this purpose; he had gotten tired of fixing breakfast twice every morning — once for Alex, and then a second time for Jess and Anna. Now he could cook almost everything at once and keep it steaming hot for the next shift. All he had to do was fry some eggs because they didn’t keep well under the lamp. But that only took a minute.
As he started cracking the eggs in the skillet, Jessica came down the stairs. She had put on a pair of jeans and t-shirt, ignoring the outfit Rick had laid out for her. Oh well, he thought, if that was her way of rebelling against authority, he might just make it through her teenage years.
Her long dark brown hair was now neatly brushed back into a ponytail and stuffed through the hole in a ball-cap. She was very slender with long legs which were well-muscled by her two different dance classes which were each held twice a week. She loved Barbie dolls and stuffed animals, but for some reason dressed like a tomboy at school. Rick thought, Why try to understand her? She’s ten. Enough said.
Anna came out of her room, still in her nightshirt, as he was cracking the second egg, her timing impeccable as usual. “How many eggs do each of you want?” he asked.
“One,” Jessica replied instantly.
Anna considered her answer a moment before answering, “Four.”
“Wow,” Rick commented under his breath, but knew his growing girl was apt to eat like a truck driver quite often. He finished cracking the eggs into the skillet, loaded a plate with the previously cooked vittles for each of them, flipped the eggs over easy before adding to the plates, and delivered the finished product to the table. As he set each plate in front of the girls he kissed them on top their heads. He then poured each a glass of juice, and sat down to join them.
I pamper them too much, he thought, then smiled; he wouldn’t have it any other way. He watched a few minutes in silence, enjoying his orange juice. “You girls need to hurry up, it’s 7:50 now,” he said as he rose from the table and headed back downstairs.
“Why don’t you just take us to school, then we could sleep another twenty minutes every day!” Jessie asked.
“No thanks!” screeched Anna, holding her hand up in the classic ‘Stop’ pose.
Rick chuckled and shook his head before continuing down the stairs without comment. He had quit taking them to school because it embarrassed them; they were far too mature for their daddy to take them to school.
Girls!
Anna finished eating first and went back to her room to get dressed and put on some makeup. She thought Rick didn’t know she wore makeup, but he did and had let her do it anyway so she’d think she was getting away with something. He had always told them they couldn’t wear makeup to school until they were sixteen, but had realized that was a silly rule because girls just love to wear makeup for some strange reason. He never bothered to tell them he’d changed his mind, hoping to use it as a bargaining chip one day. But nobody had ever questioned the rule!
Anna and Jessie left the house at 8:05, after running downstairs to give Rick hugs and kisses. It took twenty minutes to walk to school. The tardy bell rang at 8:25, but somehow they always got there on time.
Anna was forced to walk with Jessie, and of course this was torture for the older girl, but still better than the horror of being driven by a parent. Anna was all about appearances. Every morning she managed to turn a grumpy, slee
py teen into a fashion model in the brief time she spent in front of the mirror, an art of which she was extremely proud.