Permanence Marker

NOTE: This is a response to Whining Stranger's summer writing contest, so it's just some fiction. According to Word, it's 500 words on the nose, including the title . . . Permanence Marker Many things called permanent aren’t. My mother's “permanents” from the salon - gone in a matter of weeks. Your permanent record may exist after graduation, but no one cares. Permanent teeth can be knocked out. My dad left the summer I was 10, while I made friends at Camp Shenandoah. I came home full of stories, which I soon forgot. My mom hadn’t found the words to tell me. Still in shock, she let me into the half-empty house. Dad and his favorite things, gone. Wordlessly mom handed me a note: “Sorry, honey. It didn’t work out. Nothing lasts forever.” Didn’t work out? Mom hadn’t been hard to live with before, for me, anyway. After, things changed. My life’s two chapters: “Before” and “After”. After, I never went to camp. Though employed as a receptionist, Mom feared we’d be starving and homeless without dad’s paycheck; she scrimped and hoarded – reused plastic baggies, made toothpaste from salt and baking soda (tasted awful, but “We saved $1.50 per tube!”), cut our hair herself, and worst for me, bought our clothes at Goodwill (even our undies – yuck!!). She sold anything we didn’t “need” (her opinion) at ever-more-frequent yard sales. My camp-friends, faraway girls I could vaguely picture, became my only friends. In junior high, kids didn’t want a friend in outdated clothing who couldn’t go to the movies. Embarrassment prevented me inviting kids over, we never even had soda. Emailing from the library turned into my social life. The emails, at least, I could be sure wouldn’t be sold. Mom discovered eBay - our house grew emptier. At 15, I started waitressing. Half my tips went to mom. I saved some, but indulged occasionally on new clothes or a movie. Slightly more “normal” now, I made a few real-life friends. One day, I came home to a For Sale sign. Mom said she’d take the first offer. She’d warned me this might come, but after all I’d lost, I couldn’t bear to see my home go, too. Alone in my room, I shook, cold, because we rarely turned on the heat. Scared, because soon we’d have nothing. Not even our house. I crept to the closet, where I’d hidden as a child. But this would be gone, soon, too. Still in my uniform, I drew my Sharpie from my apron. I scrawled on the floor “Sharon lived here. It didn’t work out. Nothing lasts forever.” Mom died 3 years later. She wouldn’t go to the doctors because of the $10 copay; a simple infection killed her. Packing up her few things, I found a key. It didn’t fit anything in the apartment, nor at her job. The key opened a security deposit box. Inside piles of cash stared up at me, under her journal, entries for hundreds of checks Dad sent, and matching entries, where she’d added the same amount. I don’t know why. I bought our house two years later. Paid cash. I may sell it someday. Nothing lasts forever.