Chapter 4 - A Shield In The Smoke

**The following is part of my memoir. Please go to this page for more information, as well as an easy-access list of each chapter.

Jessie was excited to spend the weekend with her daddy.

Ever since the day she came home with her mom and little brothers to find Daddy moving his belongings out of their trailer, she was heartbroken, and nothing made sense anymore. She loved him so much and couldn’t understand why he wanted to live anywhere but home.

The news that she’d get to go to his new place—without annoying little brothers this time—made her forget about those sad thoughts. Eagerly, she packed a small bag to take with her, and couldn’t get into his car fast enough.

On the short drive, classic rock music played through the speakers from the Magic 105 radio station. They drove past her school, and she told him all about her good grades, tetherball wins, hopscotch, and about a boy who got into trouble for kissing her ankles while her legs dangled from the monkey bars. They stopped at the grocery store and Daddy picked up some of her favorite things: SpaghettiOs with Meatballs, Little Debbie snack cakes, Kool-Aid packets, and a giant bag of sugar to make them sweet.

His trailer was small and noisy, the air thick with cigarette smoke. As the day faded into evening, more of Daddy’s friends came to visit him, too. By the time it was dark outside, Jessie felt that the trailer had gotten even smaller somehow. And noisier. And smokier. But she didn’t care—she was with her Daddy and didn’t want to be anywhere else.

Jessie sat cross-legged on the carpet, a notebook open on her lap. She drew pictures because Daddy liked to draw, and she loved anything that made her feel closer to him. Rock music poured from the stereo while the TV flickered in the background, but the jumble of adult voices swallowed both.

She looked up suddenly, startled by a feeling she couldn’t explain. It was as if she sat inside an invisible bubble that muffled every sound…except one.

Daddy’s voice.

He stood nearby, talking to a tall man with brown-gray hair and a thousand lines carved across his face. The man’s lips moved, but Jessie heard nothing from them.

He glanced down at her…a slow, unsettling glance that made her look away quickly. Something icy slid beneath her ribs. A danger she didn’t understand, but recognized all the same.

Daddy’s expression shifted to something that she had never seen before. His shoulders stiffened. His jaw hardened. The beer can in his hand dented under his grip.

“That’s my fu*king daughter!” Daddy said, voice sharp enough to cut the air.

They were the only words she would hear, the only ones that mattered, and she never forgot them.

I loved my time in Southern Pines Mobile Home Park in Little Rock in the 80s, mostly, I think, because it was the last place my dad lived with us as a family.

But I have so many other memories from there, all of which helped make my childhood wonderful and unforgettable: My friends, Felicia, Brandy, Marybeth, and my best friend, Debbie. I remember waiting impatiently at Brandy and Marybeth’s home for Michael Jackson’s Thriller to come on the radio so we could record it onto a cassette tape. At Felicia’s, we often played with Barbie dolls in her bedroom and made Friendship Books and paper fortune tellers. It was at Debbie’s that I watched my first (and last) horror movie, The Texas Chainsaw Massacre. We had so much fun—I even went on trips with her and her mom!

Baseline Elementary School in Southwest Little Rock was another era of my young life, whose memories are as rich, vivid, and cherished as those of Lifeline Baptist Church, Greers Ferry Lake, and Southern Pines.

I loved school. And school loved me.

I remember that no walls separated the classrooms. I could stand on my tippy-toes, peering over a bookshelf, and see the fifth graders far away on the other side of the building. I can still smell the food from the cafeteria-slash-auditorium and hear the crackling of the intercom in the speaker when announcements were made.

Each morning, every student in the building would stand, place their hands on their hearts, sing “The Star-Spangled Banner” and recite “The Pledge of Allegiance”.

My yellow Cabbage Patch Kids lunchbox and thermos sparked ridiculous joy. I know it sounds silly, feeling pure delight over a plastic lunchbox, yet there I was, beaming like it held treasure.

The Space Shuttle Challenger disaster in 1986. The whole school sat cross-legged on the green carpet, eyes locked on the boxy TV rolled into the room. A girl behind me braided my long hair while history unfolded in horror right before us.

The Scholastic Book Fair and field trips were the best days, except for that one boring courtroom visit where I fell asleep and got scolded. I was nine. What did they expect?

The tornado scare that sent us into the hallways, knees to chests, while a freight train of wind howled just beyond the school walls.

From first through fifth grade, I was an angel of a little girl and a straight-A student. I never got into trouble (well, except for that day in the courtroom), was Teacher’s Pet every year (I know it wasn’t a nice thing to be called, but…it was true!), and I won creative art and academic awards—I was going to “go places”, the teachers said.

Until I didn’t.

At least, not the sorts of places everybody thought I’d go.

When I entered sixth grade, not only did I change schools and trailer parks and friends, but everything else changed, too. It was around the time my dad left us, and my parents were going through their divorce. The killing of the rabbits had already happened, but it would be another year or so before my Grannie Nelson would pass away.

And a lot can happen in a year.

I smoked my first cigarette in fifth grade. In sixth, I slapped my first girl and skipped my first day of school. My dad was gone, and my sweet mom had no idea the storm that would become our lives because of his abandoning us. Part of me still carries heavy guilt, because she had escaped one abusive relationship with my dad and wound up in another one with me, that “angel of a little girl” who everybody had been so proud of.

But before I turned “bad”, I went to spend that weekend with my dad.

He’d moved from Southern Pines to another trailer park on Coffer Lane, within walking distance of my beloved Baseline Elementary. I vividly remember that day. How a shadowy darkness covered me, but couldn’t touch me. And that strange bubble that protected me from that darkness. Even then, I was in the presence of something divine.

Of course, my dad was there to protect me, too. I was Daddy’s Girl, after all. He never would’ve even for a second considered allowing something so evil and vile.

After 1988, at the age of thirteen, I can’t remember a moment when I was a child anymore, except for the day Grannie Nelson died and I ran off to play on the creek with my cousin Buckey. That moment, that death experience, didn’t play a part in my rebellion, but it did mark the last moment of my innocence. The last good grade. The last sweet little Jessie, who loved the country and her best friend, Dusty. It was the final goodbye to a life being devoured by the world.

That’s all I remember:

My great-grandmother dying in her room…

Me running toward the woods with Buckey…

Rebellion.

That precious, innocent little girl named Jessie was gone.

The first cigarette I smoked at eleven turned into a pack a day by thirteen. I missed my dad so much that I guess I wanted to be like him, and so I picked up his drinking habit, too. Skipping school became an everyday thing.

My mom was going through a lot, too, and it wasn’t long before she replaced my dad with a live-in boyfriend.

I didn’t like that one bit.

If I was rebellious before, having a man move in and replace my dad was like lighting the fuse on a stick of dynamite. It burned for a little while, slowly but surely making its way up.

I went from hiding my bad behavior to—BOOM!—parading it around, giving the middle finger to the whole world.

I lashed out at my mom whenever I got the chance. I stole her boyfriend’s marijuana, took it to school, and sold it. I stole from her and from my brothers and the corner store. I snuck out at night with friends and broke into cars. I skipped school so much that I eventually dropped out in the eighth grade. Thirteen years old. Full of rage. Full of regret that I would only realize much later. I did a lot of awful things I’m ashamed to admit…though I will, as the story continues.

That day in 1988, when I whispered to my cousin, Buckey, “Grannie Nelson is dying,” so was young Jessie—she just didn’t know it.

Despite my rebellion, doing whatever I wanted as long as it was bad, I remained a virgin, even though most of the girls I hung out with had already given their virginity away. It was the “in-thing” in the 80s to have sex even at a young age. You were either a tease if you didn’t give it up, a slut if you did, or so spoken for and loved by one person that others looked at you with envy.

That’s what I wanted, to be so loved by a boy who, in a way, could replace my dad, who had abandoned me. Unfortunately, I would never be spoken for, and no one ever looked at me with envy.

But that’s a whole chapter in and of itself. Or two. Or three…

One day, in 1989, while hanging out with my friends, I decided to run away with them to San Francisco.

A stolen truck.

Another perverted old man.

A hit-and-run in Greenville, Texas.

Making the newspaper and local news.

Juvenile detention.

All of that in just one incident, while my train-wreck life picked up terrifying speed.

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The text in this article is copyright © 2025 Jessica Redmerski.

Bible verses in this article are from the KJV - King James Version.

Music Credits:

“We Are the Stars” by Silver Maple via Epidemic Sound

“I Already Knew” by Miles Avida via Epidemic Sound

“Coma Visions” by Martin Klem via Epidemic Sound