Before, After, and Somebody In Between (32 page)

“Let go of me!” I fling off her hands. “Where were you all day?”

“Oh, great,” she snarls. “Now you’re gonna start on me, too!” She stalks back into the house and I follow on her heels.

“You missed the whole recital!”

“I’m sorry,” she says shortly.

“Bullshit!”

Momma’s head jerks in astonishment, but then she just plunks onto the couch and digs her fingers into her eyes. “I am sorry, sugar pie. I really did want to see you play.”

“So why didn’t you show up?” I stomp my foot hard when she refuses to answer. “Where were you today?”

“I was trying on clothes, see? And I went to put some stuff back, and I saw this guy watching me, and, well—it was Wayne.”

I start to say “Bullshit” again, but my throat fills with sludge.

“He’s workin’ down there now, cleaning and stuff. And I didn’t see Larry around, so I … well, Wayne, he looked so down, and he was so glad to see me. So we went and took us a walk, and we had a nice long talk, and—oh, don’t look at me like that! We just talked. Nothing else.”

I think “rage” is a pretty good word for what I’m feeling right now.

Rage, and something worse. Something that pushes tears to the edges of my eyes, but the rage fries away like water on a griddle.

“You missed my recital because you went for a walk with
Wayne?”

“I’m sorry,” Momma rasps, hanging her head. “I swear to you, sugar pie, next time you have a concert, I promise I’ll—”

“Don’t promise me anything!” I swing my cello case off the floor and head for the steps on rubbery legs. “I really hate you right now.”

“I know,” she says sadly.

53

Momma disappears sometime during the night. She stumbles in close to dawn, and yes, she’s rip-roaring drunk. Larry’s back by then, and she won’t tell him where she was, who she was drinking with (like I don’t know!), or why she has sucker bites all over her neck. I smother my ears so all I can hear is the click-click-click of my ancient fan and an occasional cussword from Momma’s mouth. Larry slams out again, and I drift into a jerky sleep, twisted up in my sticky sheets.

In the morning, Momma’s unconscious in a mountain of beer cans. This, after all her baloney about staying clean and sober, how she needs my help, blah, blah, blah. It’s bad enough that she’s drunk. Bad enough she’s missing work. But to be fooling around on Larry—and with
Wa-ayne,
of all people?

I stomp outside, ready to explode into jagged pieces, thinking about everything else she’s done to piss me off lately. About the fact that not once did she ever ask me about Chardonnay. What happened, Martha? Why did you jump her with a knife? How do you feel about it now?

Then again, I never asked her about that overdose. Never
found out if it was an accident, or if she did it on purpose, or what she thought would happen to me if she’d kicked the bucket.

Maybe now we’re even.

Abandoning Momma in her nest of cans, I practice my cello for six hours straight, stopping only to make a pot of coffee and wolf down four pieces of toast. Her position hasn’t changed. I couldn’t care less.

I dig up some money, drag the rickety grocery cart ten blocks to the store, stock up on essentials, and drag it back home. Larry’s still gone. Momma still hasn’t moved.

Eight p.m.

Nine p.m.

Except for one arm dangling off the couch, Momma hasn’t budged.

At quarter to ten, a haggard Larry shows up. He stares at the couch. “How long has she been sleeping?”

“All freaking day.”

Momma flails her limbs as Larry snatches her shoulders. “What’d you take, Lou Ann?” Only then do I notice the dark stain under her butt, and my jaw drops in guilty revulsion.

Not waiting for an answer, Larry tears the house up till he unearths the evidence. Momma doesn’t even duck when he throws the prescription bottle at her. She just sits there groggily, saliva swinging from her lower lip.

“That’s it. I’m outta here, Lou Ann.”

In silent, uncomprehending horror, I watch Larry haul out a suitcase and begin throwing things into it. Momma’s bottom lip vibrates as she sucks her drool back in, but she doesn’t argue, doesn’t cry, doesn’t say a word. She simply stares with hooded, vacant eyes as Larry wraps it up and heads for the door.

“Sorry about this.” He pats my rigid shoulder. “I could
almost put up with the crap she pulled yesterday. But, well, there ain’t no way I can stay with her now.”

“She’s sick! It’s a sickness. You know she can’t help it.” If he can forgive her for Wayne, why can’t he forgive her for this?

“I know it’s a sickness. Hell, I’m sick myself. But I already been down that road, darlin’, and I ain’t going there again. I can’t live with somebody who can’t stay sober. Anyway,” he adds, “your momma needs more than AA. I think she needs a shrink.”

Momma makes a burbling noise, tumbles off the couch, and staggers to the kitchen to gag into the sink. I wince when her face accidentally smacks the faucet. “Should I call 911?”

“Naw, if she can walk, she’ll be fine.” Larry picks up the brown bottle and shows me the label. Valium, twenty tablets. “Looks like she only took a few.” He squints at the bottle. “Who’s Wilhelmina Kirchner?”

“How would I know?” I have no idea where Momma gets this junk. Maybe she mugged some old lady coming out of the drugstore.

Larry thrusts a few bills into my sweaty hand. “You’re a nice kid, Martha. You keep up with that cello.”

A minute later he’s gone, and that’s too bad because, missing tooth and all, I really liked that guy. I suppose I can’t blame him for not wanting to live with someone like Momma. Neither do I, but I don’t get that choice.

…

Luckily Larry’s right, and Momma’s fine in the morning, not counting the fat lip she got from the faucet.

“I’m sorry, sugar pie,” she slurs around my homemade ice bag. “I swear I just don’t know what come over me yesterday.” Same old Momma, same old script.

Life truly sucks.

54

I love, love, love the main public library downtown, a monstrous building with marble floors and wall-to-wall books in dozens of rooms. It’s my new favorite place, and I’m here at least twice a week. If I could find a bed, and a place to practice my cello, honest to God, I’d never go home.

Today, staggering under the weight of my loaded backpack, I barely make it back to Public Square to catch my bus when something bops me on the back of my head.

“Yo, Miz Martha!” Anthony falls into step. “Been missin’ me, sweet thang?”

I grind to a halt, swinging my pack hard. “Get away from me!”

“Yow!” He grabs his arm and doubles over. “What the—?”

And then another voice says, “Yo, dawg. Leave her alone.”

“Damn, JoMo. This ho can’t even be civil to me no more.” Anthony straightens up to give Jerome a shove. “You mess with me again, I’m gonna kick your ass.”

Jerome is in no way intimidated by this. “Get outta my face. I wanna talk to my friend.” Anthony, outraged, slinks away. I stare
after him in amazement as Jerome gives me a wide grin. “How ya doin’?”

“I’m fine.” I eye him up and down. He’s gotten even taller in the past couple of months, and his braids are longer, bulging out of his do-rag. “How about you?”

“Cool. I’m cool.” His glasses are gone, and something else is different, too. Something not very nice. “Damn, girl. You lookin’ fly!”

“You, too.” Whatever that means. “What’re you hanging around him for?” I nod toward Anthony who snaps his teeth in my direction.

Jerome fidgets strangely. “Um, I moved in with my mom, and Anthony, he been stayin’ with us.”

For ten full seconds I can’t even speak. “You’re living with her now? Does that mean she’s, you know, is she—?”

“Straight?” Jerome snorts, a disturbing sound. “Hell, no. She ain’t never gonna be straight.”

“But—” I shut my mouth. I have enough problems of my own. “Well, you’re still at Jefferson, right?” Didn’t he say his mom lives in the projects?

“Nah, I dropped out.”

He pretends to cower as I shriek, “What do you mean, you dropped out? You’re only fifteen.”

“So? I’ll be sixteen next year. Then my mom’ll sign the papers.”

“What’re you gonna do in the meantime? Break the law?”

He smirks. “Report me, why don’tcha? Shoot. Think I care?”

It dawns on me now what’s not quite right about Jerome. He sounds so much like Anthony that if I shut my eyes, I’d never be able to tell who was who. “What about MIT? What about that scholarship you wanted?”

This is not my Jerome, the Jerome I knew so well. This isn’t even the same-but-not-the-same Jerome who surprised me at the Brinkmans’ last spring. This Jerome stands there spouting crap about a GED, and how he’ll never get into that college because he “ain’t the right color.”

Fuzz bristles on the back of my hot neck. “Why’re you acting this way? You trying to show off for that jerk-off cousin of yours?”

Jerome blows air through his lips. “What way? I ain’t acting no kinda way. And hey, what about you?”

“What about me?”

“Look at you! You think you all that?” His eyes sweep over me, and I know what he sees: me, in one of Gina’s fashionable summer ensembles, glitzy brand-names displayed on both my purse and my backpack.

“No,” I argue, unable to dodge the stinger in my chest. “But I’m not the one who like turned into some weird, freaky—” I stop, because there’s really no word for it. Or maybe there is, and I’m afraid to say it.

“I didn’t turn into nothin’,” Jerome whispers, and for one second I see a flash of my old friend, and I think, No, it’s okay. He’s still Jerome, and I’m still me, and we haven’t changed
that
much! But then he blows it with, “You, though. Ha! Livin’ up there with them rich folks now, I guess you ain’t used to hanging with us niggas no more.”

I feel my knuckles smash into his stomach before I realize what I’m doing. His fists jerk up, and for one quick second he almost hits me back. “I’m not one of your freaking homies, Jerome. Don’t you even
think
you can talk to me like that.”

“Damn, girl. Who taught you that move?” He rubs his stomach with a weak grin, but when he sees I’m not laughing, his face grows hot and dangerous. “You know somethin’? I don’t even
know who you are. I don’t remember what you look like. You ain’t even Martha no more.”

My arms turn to cement. My mouth and my feet don’t exist. It’s like his words have turned me into one giant block of nothingness.

“And if
you
wanna go to college,” he goes on, “then hey, do it! But I got better ways of making money without bustin’ my ass at MIT.”

That’s when I notice the big gold ring on his thumb, shaped like a snake with dazzling red eyes. And his flashy watch and all the bling decorating his neck and, yes, his
own
designer-name clothes. Either he’s holding out on his mom as far as that money is concerned, or he’s got a new source of income. I’m betting on number two.

“Yeah. Drug money.” He starts to protest, and that only makes me madder. “Oh, don’t lie to me, Jerome. I’m not stupid, okay?”

“You ain’t stupid, huh?” he repeats, his words dripping with contempt. “You took that fucking gun from me, remember?”

Yes, and that’s not all I remember. “So? It wasn’t even loaded! Why’d you give it to me then, and let me think it was loaded? That was a really dirty trick, I hope you know.”

“How’d I know if it was loaded? It was Anthony’s piece, man. He told me to get rid of it, so that’s what I did. And you were stupid enough to take it.”

“You
told
me to take it! You never said it was Anthony’s.” I never would’ve touched it if he had.

“Well, I’m tellin’ you now. So, yo, thanks a lot, bitch.”

He’s off the curb and halfway across the street before my pitifully stunned brain reacts. “Did you tell Anthony you took that money? Huh? Did you?”

“Yeah, I told him!” he yells back. “And it don’t even matter no more.”

“He killed your brother, Jerome. Don’t you even care?
He killed Bubby!
” I scream this after him, forcing edgy bystanders to detour around me in wide circles. I keep on screaming it till he’s lost in the crowd, and not one time does he bother to look back.

I cradle my backpack on the jarring ride home, sick to my stomach, sick in my heart. Okay, I know I’m different, but in a good way, right? Who could possibly like the “old” Martha better?

Jerome’s right about one thing: I am so utterly stupid. Too stupid to know Gina from Martha, or Martha from Gina, and too stupid to care. But worse than that, all this time I’ve been too stupid to realize that the one person I thought would be my friend forever was never my friend at all.

55

Momma’s out of a job again, out of AA, and back to cruising the bars with a bunch of scummy new friends. Nothing I do, nothing I say, makes the least bit of difference. That, I think, is the most depressing thing of all.

Me, I’m still doing the Alateen thing. I even changed my cello lessons to different days so I can get to the church in time for the opening prayer. A lot of the stuff they talk about sounds very familiar: Being afraid to bring home your friends because you never know what shape your folks’ll be in. Hoping they don’t humiliate you at school functions. Going out of your way to pick fights with them, just to pay them back for making you so miserable.

And again and again the sponsors try to drum it into our brains that
we are not responsible for anyone else’s addiction!

“Doesn’t that make you feel, well, helpless?” I zero in on Emilio who shows up at every meeting. Either he’s secretly stalking me, or he basically has no other life. “Like no matter what you do, there’s no way you can stop them?”

Emilio shrugs. “I don’t feel helpless, I feel—” He thinks for a second. “Free.”

“Free? You gotta be kidding.”

“You don’t get it yet, Martha. You have to, you know, pray a lot, and keep working the program. There’s a lot of stuff you’re gonna find out about yourself.”