Every August since my divorce, on a night I never tell anyone about in advance, I have gone through the clearance racks at the discount store off Route 50 in Kankakee with a folded envelope of cash in my back pocket and a list in my head of exactly what my two kids need and exactly what they can live without for one more year. I have done this seven Augusts in a row now. I did it the August my car needed a new alternator and I drove it anyway, grinding, for six more weeks. I did it the August I worked two extra weekend shifts at Meadowbrook Manor bathing men who did not remember their own daughters’ names, just so Cody could have shoes that fit and Bree could have a coat that zipped. I have never once told my ex-husband’s new wife, Shauna, what any of it cost me, because for six years Shauna has been telling half of Kankakee that I don’t take care of my own children, and I made up my mind a long time ago that I was not going to hand her the satisfaction of watching me defend myself.
What ended Shauna’s story was not anything I said. It was my eight-year-old daughter, standing in a fluorescent-lit school hallway on Meet the Teacher night, in a new dress I had put on layaway in June, saying six sentences in her matter-of-fact little kid voice that did more to clear my name than three years of gritted teeth ever managed to do. I want to tell you the whole thing in order, because the order is the only way it makes sense, and because the woman standing at that clearance rack every August deserves to have the whole story told about her, not just the part where she finally got to stop being quiet.
What happened next changed everything… FULL STORY on the next page.
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