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    Gilly’s Divorce or Don’t Make The Mistakes I Did and Gilly’s Manual And Advice On Coping With Your Divorce
    Gilly’s Divorce or Don’t Make The Mistakes I Did and Gilly’s Manual And Advice On Coping With Your Divorce
    Gilly’s Divorce or Don’t Make The Mistakes I Did and Gilly’s Manual And Advice On Coping With Your Divorce
    Ebook142 pages1 hour

    Gilly’s Divorce or Don’t Make The Mistakes I Did and Gilly’s Manual And Advice On Coping With Your Divorce

    By gay toltl kinman

    ()

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    About this ebook

    The first part of the book is fiction, and the manual is non-fiction.

    In Divorce, Gilly, 11, tells how she copes, some days not at all, with the impending divorce of her parents. Her younger sister, Honey, gets into serious trouble, and her two older sisters complicate matters. Mom gets a boyfriend and Dad gets a girlfriend.

    In her Manual and Advice on Coping With Your Divorce, Gilly gives advice about what she learned so that others won't have to go through the same heartbreak, and thoughts of suicide.

    LanguageEnglish
    Publishergay toltl kinman
    Release dateFeb 6, 2012
    ISBN9781466135062
    Gilly’s Divorce or Don’t Make The Mistakes I Did and Gilly’s Manual And Advice On Coping With Your Divorce

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      Book preview

      Gilly’s Divorce or Don’t Make The Mistakes I Did and Gilly’s Manual And Advice On Coping With Your Divorce - gay toltl kinman

      CHAPTER ONE

      SURPRISES

      Are you and Mom getting a divorce?

      What makes you ask that, Kitten? Daddy looks a little surprised. It’s Saturday morning and he’s lying on the sofa reading a book. He always does that. And then he falls asleep.

      I ask him now because Mom’s at work. And my baby sister, Honey, is over at her best friend’s house. I don’t want them to hear me asking Daddy the question I’ve thought about for a while. I especially don’t even want Honey to have any idea of what I fear most.

      Everything’s normal. Like it is every Saturday.

      Why is my heart pounding so fast?

      How to answer him?

      With the truth?

      Because you and Mom are always arguing. Mellissa says that married people who always argue are going to get a divorce. I say it real fast so maybe he won’t hear it all and think I said something else.

      Are we really always doing that? Always arguing? His voice is soft, sad-like. I’m sorry if that’s what made him sad. But I want to know. I need to make plans for my life.

      When you and Mom talk, I go on, a little slower this time because I’m having trouble catching my breath. My heart is pounding so fast. You both sound mad. Just like you do when we do something wrong.

      It’s not that they yell at each other. They just talk real cold. It usually happens on the weekends. That’s about the only time they’re both home together. And usually when we’re all eating. When they start, just even the first word, Honey and I ask to be excused. We go into the living room and turn up the sound on the TV. Mom and Daddy never seem to notice that we leave. They just keep at it. Whatever I eat always goes bad in my stomach.

      I had no idea. Maybe we do. No, Kitten, we’re not getting a divorce. Maybe we couldn’t even agree on that. He smiles and pretends he made a joke. What else have those eleven-year-old eyes and ears noticed?

      I’m going to be twelve in a month. Actually, more than a month. It’s almost the end of September and my birthday is on November 7th.

      That means I’ve known you all your life. That’s a favorite joke of Daddy’s. But I think he’s trying to change the subject. So I just blurt out the rest of my answer.

      Mellissa says that’s the way her parents acted before they got a divorce. I want to know what’s going to happen. I don’t like those kinds of surprises.

      No one does. Least of all, me, Daddy says. Only he’s not smiling any more.

      CHAPTER TWO

      SISTERS

      Daddy calls me Kitten. My real name is Gilly, short for Gillian.

      My youngest sister is Honey. She’s nine. Daddy calls her Honey something. Honeybunch, Honeysuckle, Rose of Honey, Honey-baked Ham. Daddy keeps making up names with honey in them. Some of them are really funny. It has to do with what’s happening at that moment otherwise it’s hard to explain why they’re funny. Like one time we were looking at perfume and he called her Eau de Honey.

      Mom used to get her mouth in a tight mode. She wants Honey to be called by her proper name. Mom named her after a favorite aunt or somebody. She told Daddy once that if he didn’t like the name why didn’t he say something at the time. Honey spoke up and said Honey was what she wanted to be called. And that was that. But Mom wasn’t too happy about it.

      My oldest sister is Baby. The way Daddy says her name you picture a cute baby all powdered and coo-cooing in her crib. Too bad it doesn’t suit her. Baby because she’s the first baby they had. Eighteen years ago. I don’t know if she likes the name or not. Probably not. She doesn’t like much of anything. The good thing is she isn’t around anyway so it really doesn’t matter. She moved out. That’s great, because I got her bedroom.

      Otherwise, I’d have to share one with Honey. Nobody wants to do that. Even Cindy, her best friend, won’t sleep over. That’s why they’re usually at Cindy’s place. Honey’s room looks like an atomic blast met a hurricane during an earthquake. That’s another thing that sets Mom and Daddy to talking cold. Mom wants the room straightened up now! Daddy says it’s her room, let her decorate it the way she wants. Mom says that throwing dirty clothes on the floor and furniture instead of hanging them in the closet is not considered decorating.

      When Mom gets on her case, I think it makes Honey just want to be messier. Hard to do.

      My next oldest sister, she’s sixteen, doesn’t have any pet name. And she doesn’t want one. Her name’s Elizabeth. Not Liz or Betty or Beth. Elizabeth. I think the name Elizabeth is really beautiful so I’m glad she’s not called anything else. Not that she answers if you do. Her name’s the only thing beautiful about her.

      She moves in and out of our house like a yo-yo. Her bedroom’s real small so I’d rather have Baby’s room. Besides, Elizabeth always comes back.

      She’s a real pain. She keeps doing dumb things like going out and not locking the front door when nobody’s home.

      And she just did another thing that made me really mad. Our uncle gave us a bunch of steaks when we visited him on his farm. My uncle raises the cows himself. He feeds them special stuff so that the steaks really taste super. Like no other steak I’ve ever had. It’s a real treat because we don’t get steak often, and because they’re so good.

      When I take a bite, it reminds me of my uncle’s farm. We stay there a few days every summer and it’s really fun. Mom and Daddy seem different. Quieter, and they laugh more. My uncle is Mom’s brother. He’s a lot older than she is. He’s more like her father. When we’re there, it seems like Mom and Daddy don’t have any need to talk cold anymore.

      When we came back Mom put the steaks in the freezer. And what does Elizabeth do? She takes them all to a barbecue with her weird friends. They were probably all so spaced out they didn’t know what they were eating anyhow. If they ate them. Likely, they threw them at each other. What a waste. And I had my mouth all set for one of those yummy, big, delicious, juicy steaks.

      But now the steaks are gone. And so is Elizabeth.

      Another thing—she won’t feed Boots and Scamper when it’s her turn. As far as she’s concerned, it’s never her turn. Not my pets, she says. Like she doesn’t play with them, too.

      Boots is a black, silly-looking dog, a Lab-Shepherd mix. Only he’s got one ear that sticks straight up and one that doesn’t. He almost looks like a cartoon dog. He sure isn’t the brightest bulb on the planet.

      Scamper is our calico cat. She’s smart and cute, too. I love them both. Which is why I seem to be the one who feeds them the most.

      Worst of all. Elizabeth uses the last of the toilet paper. All the time. I mean she uses a whole roll practically every time she goes into the bathroom. And never puts on a new roll. I don’t notice until it’s too late. They’re stored under the sink. Five feet away.

      About Scamper and Boots and Elizabeth. I take back that she doesn’t feed them. She does—from her plate which makes Mom mad. Haven’t I told you a million times I don’t want them fed from the table… and nahnahnah.

      Then she takes her plate into the living room. That alone is a definite no-no. To make it even worse, she feeds them on the sofa. And that makes Daddy really mad. Haven’t I told you a million times not to feed them on the sofa. It gets the sofa all dirty… and nahnahnah.

      Then they both yell at her and she yells back. She gets mad. And the next thing we know, she moves out.

      Again.

      Mom and Daddy try to find out where she is to make sure she’s all right and to ask her to come back. Sometimes they even find her. She’s always off staying with a bunch of weird kids until they get too flaky—even for her, then she comes

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