Chapter 12

Corrine

12/24/2012
11:12:13 PM

BAM!

She slammed the door hard enough to break it in half.

“You get out of here before I blow your head off! I’ll kill you before you’ll ever get another cent out of me,” she shouted at the top of her lungs.

BAM!

Another door slam and the shrieking continued. “You lazy, good for nothing, thieving rat! I ought to blow your head off. Probably get a medal. People would say it was a mercy killing.

Get out of here and never ... Never ... NEVER come back!

You hear me? You set foot in this building again and I’ll finish the job!”

All through the tirade not a single person peeked out of their apartment. This type of dispute was common for the lady in 6-B. She picked up men, brought them home and soon after the fireworks began, resulting in an ugly scene, forced eviction and another new man. Her taste ran towards unemployed, criminal types, with either alcohol or drug problems, sometimes both. Many nights’ police officers intervened and the offending male was carted off to jail after a loud and lengthy altercation.

Corrine Chartofski was one of a kind. Everybody said so. She hated everyone and everything, it seemed. Because of her episodes Corrine was kicked out of no less than twelve apartment buildings, each one of lesser desirability than the last. The downward cycle continued until she found herself in the current abode, which could be described as the worst of the worst.

Even as the worst tenant in the worst apartment in Bethlehem, Pennsylvania, Corrine knew she was safe. The landlord was so tight he wouldn’t think of putting out a paying customer. Safety didn’t do much to curb her behavior. Christmas Eve was just another night and tonight’s lout was just as offensive as the rest.

Had one of her neighbors looked out, they would have seen tears streaking down her aging, angry face. Decades of cheap booze and occasional side trips into psychedelic narcotics had robbed her of any beauty she might have once possessed. Deep lines creased her red, blotchy face, making her seem much older than thirty-eight. Streaks of gray highlighted her red hair in a not very attractive fashion.

Violence temporarily over, Corrine watched her latest failed boyfriend stagger across the street to his old junker and drive away. Loneliness piled in as she contemplated another Christmas alone and bereft. Family was not an option. After a childhood of ever-increasing abuse at the hands of her mother’s parade of “uncles,” Corrine finally found the courage to run away and never looked back. The streets were a step up for her after the suffering at hands of her tormentors. At least on the street she got paid for what those men took from her at home.

Satisfied that he wasn’t coming back, Corrine calmly walked back into her apartment, locked the door and sank down on the broken couch to weep. Her tears were silent and heartrending but there was no one to hear or see and no one to comfort her. In the quiet that followed the violent episode, she thought of her grandmother back in Stroudsburg. Granny always greeted her with a smile, hugged her in a way that did not make her cringe and lavished love and attention on her as if she knew.

On the day Corrine ran away she tried to call her Granny but no one answered. Scared that she would be caught and dragged back home, she stuck out her thumb and went where the first truck took her, which was Bethlehem. Cold, lonely and scared, she found a home among the hookers. Pretty soon she was one of them, working, eating and living out long, empty days that turned into long, empty years.

Because she was young and fresh, she was often in demand. As time and the ugliness of her trade robbed her of her youth, her looks and her dreams, she drifted down in price and quality of customer until she hit bottom and found herself trapped in an existence she wouldn’t wish on an enemy. Not for the first time and not for the thousandth, she thought of her little Angel.

The pregnancy shattered her image of life on the street. Discovering she was pregnant, after three mornings of nausea in a row, she purchased a cheap home pregnancy test and followed the directions. Instead of fear, anger, or a fast trip to the abortion clinic, she found herself deliriously happy.

“I’ve made a whole person,” she shouted to no one, in the stall of the diner’s ladies room. “I’m gonna be a momma!

Determined to make changes, she checked on the local pregnancy crisis center, for help getting off drugs and out of the life. They were polite but insistent that she contact her mother for support and wouldn’t take no for an answer. That was a non-starter and she realized she was going to have to go it alone.

Four months into the pregnancy, one Christmas Eve, a drunken coward, angry because of his insignificance, beat her so badly she lost consciousness and then her baby. Waking up in the ambulance she screamed for them to save her unborn child and could tell by their embarrassment that it was already too late. The sadness drove her deeper into depression, farther from reality and closer to destruction, all the time.

The hospital refused to give her the baby’s remains. With nothing to bury, the hurt stayed fresh. The sting was like that of a paper cut to her soul. She named her lost, little girl, Angel and celebrated her birthday every Christmas. She would forever be her mommy’s Christmas Angel.

“Angel.” She spoke softly, with a gentleness in her voice that would have shocked her neighbors. “Baby. Nelson is gone. I kicked his butt out of here. He wasn’t much but at least he was someone to come home to.

I miss you, Darling. How is the weather in Heaven this Christmas? Are they taking good care of you? Do you get to run and play in the sunshine with all the other little babies that never got to live? I think it’s soon time for me to leave and join you. I’ll know you the minute I get up there, Baby. I can see you in my head all the time. You would be twelve this year and I wonder if you’ll know me...

“Twelve is awful big. I bet you’re as tall as me and just as pretty as spring rain. Your Great Grandmother would have been so proud of you. She would love you just as much as she loved me and almost as much as I love you.

“It’s terrible cold here. I need a drink to get warm but it’s late and I need to eat worse, so I’m gonna get dressed real warm, lock the place up and go find somewhere open before I starve.”