Back To You ~ (Cazzie Fanfic)

Compartmentalizing

When she was 7 years old a social worker had come to Izzie's home. The nice woman had kind eyes, a skirt suit, shoes with no scuffs on them and dark brown hair secured into a short ponytail at the back of her neck. She had asked to speak to Izzie's mother. Izzie no longer remembered what time of day it was but when the woman with the kind eyes learned that Izzie's mother had been "asleep," on the couch, "since yesterday" her lips flattened into a straight line. The next thing Izzie remembers is sitting next to the woman at the kitchen table with her baby brother on her lap. Two uniformed adults were crouched at the couch where Izzie's mother sat slumped and belligerent. Izzie fed her brother a bottle and watched while the woman filled out forms, made calls and wrote things down in a small notebook. Izzie was fascinated by the notebook which had a snap to keep it closed, slots for plastic cards and a small sleeve for a pen. But her favorite part was the calendar. It stretched over two pages and the boxes were filled with small writing, some crossed out, some highlighted. The woman told Izzie it was a "day planner."

Izzie still remembers her saying "I'm afraid I need to reschedule our 3 o'clock for 5 o'clock," into her phone before drawing a line through the text in one small box and writing something new below it.

Izzie doesn't think about that day very often because then she inevitably thinks about what happened after, when she hadn't seen her mom for a while.

She shakes her head, to get rid of the thought, and stares at the drugstore rack filled with small plastic and faux leather bound planners. She wonders if the social worker, with her clean shoes and busy calendar, was the beginning of her penchant for organization. Or maybe her ability to create order out of chaos began the first time her mother locked herself in her bedroom, as Izzie's baby brother screamed hungrily, because she "just couldn't deal with this right now." Izzie had gone over and picked up the screaming infant carefully. She had felt so overwhelmed and scared. But she'd found a bottle and some formula and then very carefully read the instructions, even though she couldn't pronounce all the words.

She had tested the liquid by taking a sip herself and then offered it to the baby. He had been too worked up to suck at first and Izzie had cried, not knowing what to do. But she didn't give up; holding the plastic nipple to his wailing mouth, singing and speaking softly to him until he finally began to suck from the bottle. While she'd fed him she had coached her little sister, who could barely reach the counter, through the steps of making a peanut butter sandwich for dinner.

Izzie picked out a large, deep blue-green planner and made her way toward the register, grabbing a carton of milk and a package of toilet paper on her way. Mentally she planned the reorganization she'd have to do in transferring all the information over from her old planner to her new one. It irked her to have to do it halfway through the year but there was no way her old planner could keep up with her work schedule, summer track schedule, fall semester, college application deadlines, her siblings' schools and childcare schedules, SNAP info, the little kids custody schedules AND everyone's doctors and insurance information... and Casey. There was also Casey's schedule. If they were ever going to see each other she had to keep track of that.

The day planner was the kind of thing... one of many... that Izzie kept secret from her classmates. And anyone who dared to ask about it, or the calls she had to take privately (or the days she just didn't show, with no explanation,) was immediately shut down. She'd found the best way to avoid having her Clayton classmates think she was lame or weird was to project total confidence, look them up and down with practiced boredom and say, with disdain, "Why do you care?" Or just crack a joke, preferably at someone else's expense. It was a survival tactic. And Izzie was nothing if not a survivor.

As she paid for her items she pondered whether to try and hide this from Casey. It was the kind of thing Casey wouldn't get. She'd roll her eyes, smirk and say "Ok, ELSA," when she saw this much larger, thicker planner. She would ask why Izzie couldn't just put everything in her phone like a normal person. Sure, Casey understood more than many people did what it meant to be responsible for someone else, because of Sam. But you can't grow up with a mother like Elsa and have any clue what it was like to be Izzie.