Before, After, and Somebody In Between (34 page)

I know she’s sick. I know she’s an alcoholic. I know she can’t help the way she acts sometimes. But if she’d—just—quit—drinking! She’s done it before, more times than I can count. So why, why, why can’t I make her stop drinking now?

Because nobody can do that, not even me. The sponsors say that, and Emilio, too, over and over till I’m ready to scream.

So when will I believe it? Tomorrow? Next week? Ten years from now?

And will it make me free, like Emilio says?

“I never woulda done it,” Momma adds hoarsely, and I know what she’s talking about. “I wanted you, sugar pie. And I did love your daddy. I loved him a whole lot. And maybe he didn’t love me, but he sure did love you.”

I guess I believe her. This time, anyway. It’s better than believing what she told me before.

She cries and cries till she’s all cried out, then honks her nose and lights up a cigarette. I don’t mention Wayne and neither does she. We sit there together thinking our own private thoughts till the sun crawls into the sky, turning the kitchen a muddy gray.

When it’s light enough to see, I throw out the plastic fish bowl, clean up the colored rocks and the water, and scoop up the shriveled bodies of my poor murdered fish. One by one, I drop them into the toilet and watch them swirl, swirl, swirl till they disappear forever in a gush of rusty water.

56

The rest of the summer, I stay as far away from Momma as humanly possible. She hasn’t hit me again, but she’s sinking fast. Her pathetic new pals hang around night after night, drinking and toking and even snorting coke. Momma joins right in, not caring that I can see her, not worrying for one second that I might blow the whistle.

I try to talk to Emilio, but I think he’s losing patience with me. He says
I
have to be the one to change the way I react, to worry about myself instead of obsessing about Momma. Ha, easy for him to say. It’s not his mom spending twelve hours a day in a burned-out coma.

And it’s not his mom, either, who’s keeping him out of the school of his dreams. No matter what Momma says, to me or to Zelda or to anyone else—my life will
not
end up a big pile of shit. Now I have to think of something fast because I have to register for Great Lakes in person, and a parent or guardian has to go with me. Forging Momma’s name on a piece of paper won’t fly this time, and now that Larry bailed, she doesn’t even pretend to care about my music.

I wait for a morning when she’s less hungover than usual and butter her up with a box of chocolate-filled donuts. Overjoyed, she digs in, and I casually announce, “You know, I do have to register for school this week.”

“I already did that,” she says with her mouth full.

“I mean for Great Lakes.”

The donut stops in midair. “I thought we settled all that.”

“Zelda said—”

“I don’t care what Zelda said.
I
said you could take lessons, and you’re doing that, right? What more do you want?”

“
God
! I want to go to that school, Momma.
That’s
what I want!”

She bangs down a fist, squirting chocolate across the table. “Jesus H. Christ, I am so sick of hearin’ about that school.”

“And I’m sick of you screwing up my life!” I scream back.

“Oh yeah? Well, living with you ain’t exactly a piece of cake, missy.”

“Ha! Then maybe you’d like it better if I dropped over dead.”

“Oh, don’t go startin’ that psycho crap on me. You wanna die so bad? Stop whining and go do it.” Wham! Out she slams.

Grabbing the donuts, I throw them on the floor and then jump on the box and kick it across the room. Forks and knives and spoons fly through the air as I jerk the silverware drawer out of the cabinet. Pawing though the mess, I search and search, but the most lethal thing I come up with is a rusty potato peeler. I even go so far as to poke it at my wrist, but I’m too much of a wimp to even nick my skin.

I fling it at the wall and sink to the floor, wishing I had the nerve to do something so horrible it’ll haunt her forever, for the rest of her life. But then I think about my cello and how Momma’ll sell
it on eBay, or maybe trade it for drugs if I drop over dead, and I know for a fact: I will never let her do it.

…

When Momma’s not back by chow time, I refuse to worry. I help myself to a beer, burrow into the couch, and skim through the few lousy channels we have. I do find a chopped-up version of
Blue Hawaii
but it hurts too much to look at Elvis’s sulky, gorgeous face. Damn Danny, anyway. He even ruined Elvis for me.

Twilight Zone’s
on, and a lady named Nan is driving her car cross-country. Somewhere along the line she gets into a crash, and from that moment on, everywhere she drives, this strange-looking hitchhiker pops up ahead of her. Problem is, only Nan can see him, and the more she runs into him, the more creeped out she gets.

Well, it turns out Nan
died
in that accident and didn’t even know she was dead. But what’s truly bizarre is, after a few beers, I start to wonder if that’s what happened to me. Did the cops really blow me off the fire escape that night? Did I imagine everything that’s happened to me since?

Maybe I never lived with the Brinkmans. Maybe I never met Danny at all. Maybe Bubby’s alive, Shavonne likes me, and Jerome is still my geeky best friend. Maybe my whole pathetic existence from the second I was born has been nothing but one endless
Twilight Zone
marathon.

I hunker down on the couch, trying to put a name to this funny sensation. I know what I must look like, sprawled on the couch, chugging Momma’s beer, trying to analyze the whole point of my pointless life. And then when I think about Josh and what we did in the van, I’d like to rip every inch of skin off my face. What was I thinking? How could I do something that stupid?

Easy. Because I was mad. Because I was sad.

And because, like Momma, I just had to get high.

The doorbell jangles, knocking the scary thoughts out of my head. I lurch to my feet and kick the empty cans under the couch. It might be Zelda. She’s
way
overdue for a visit.

I open the door and nearly fall over from shock.

“Hi, Gina.” Nikki’s hair is now chin length, pale and smooth. And get a load of mine: tangled, overgrown, with an inch of dark roots. I should be standing in flip-flops in front of a trailer, roasting wienies over a rusty oil drum. “Is this a bad time?”

I trip down onto the stoop, shutting the door firmly behind me. “Yeah. Kind of.” My flesh blisters with embarrassment as I watch her eyes roam, taking in the details of the yard and the front of my house. Overloaded trash cans. Screens dangling from the windows. Newspaper tumbleweeds hurtling across the lawn.

She spots the headless statue. “What’s that?”

“It’s a Bathtub Mary.”

“What happened to her head?”

“She came that way.” Along with the rest of the decor, of course. Nikki’s yellow Mustang is parked at the curb, and I’m happy to see she left the motor running. Clearly she doesn’t plan to hang around very long. “What do you want?”

Nervously, Nikki plays with her hair. “Well, I was gonna write you a letter because I have some things to tell you, but my sponsor said I should do it in person. I’m in AA now, you know? And there are these twelve steps we have to follow, like—”

“I know what the steps are.” I don’t need a whole dissertation.

“You do? Oh. Well, I’m trying to work through my ninth step. To make amends, you know, to all the people I hurt.” I wait, saying nothing, wondering where this is going, and why, oh why
can’t somebody fix those damn screens? “Well, I want to apologize for some of the stuff I said.”

“You don’t have to apologize,” I hear myself say. “Although I never did appreciate you calling me a slum rat.”

“I’m not doing it for you, Gina. I’m doing it for myself.”

Yep, same old Nikki. “Fine. Go for it.”

“Okay, I’ve got four things to say. First of all, I’m glad you called my dad when I got, um, sick that night. Yeah, I was pissed because you promised not to tell, but, well, you did me a favor. So, thanks. I mean it.”

Somehow “you’re welcome” seems incredibly lame.

“Okay, number two. Do you know why my dad made you leave?”

“Duh. You told him to.”

Nikki nods. “I was so mad at you for turning me in. Plus, you were right, I
was
kind of jealous. I mean, you’re always so sure of yourself, so strong, and everyone liked you so much.”

Me? Strong?

“Especially my mom and dad,” she continues, cheeks pinking up. “I mean, I kinda thought they loved you more than me because you were like all they cared about for a while. Kinda like Rachel, you know? Daddy always loved her more even though he’d never admit it. That’s what it felt like, anyway.”

I remember the fury on her face when she caught me and Claudia singing in the kitchen. “Well, I would’ve had to go anyway,” I mumble. “Not like I had a choice.”

A typical Nikki sigh of impatience. “Number three: what I did to you and Danny. Okay, I know he liked you, but you were just faking him out, and—well, it was wrong for me to tell him all your personal stuff. That should’ve been your decision. And I’m sorry it hurt you.” She halts for breath. “It hurt Danny, too.”

Hurt Danny? My muscles grow rigid as I remember our last date. Danny knew all about me before he even picked me up that night. He made me sit through that crappy movie, wondering what was wrong. Then, instead of asking me point-blank if what Nikki had said was true, he just tap-danced around it till he had me backed into a corner. Why didn’t he dump me when he first found out? Talk about fake outs.

I shift to the other foot. “So what’s the fourth thing?”

Nikki snakes her French manicure through her hair, and glances around, probably expecting a mugger. “This is really, really hard, but—well, my dad never told me about you. You were right. I lied.”

She stops and waits, and I wait, too, wondering why I’m so astonished at this last piece of news.

“When that friend of yours from that picture showed up, I knew you were lying. I even tried to get back into your trunk, but you’d locked it by then. So I looked around your room, and found this.”

She reaches into her sleek white clutch, and drops Shavonne’s mood ring into my hand. My eyes bug out. Funny, I never missed it.

“I’m the one who found it in Daddy’s car, in the backseat, so I gave it to him so he could give it back to Mrs. Addams. Then when I saw it in your room, I was like, God, that was
you
I saw in the car that night!” Pause. “Hey, pretty good costume.”

I squiggle the ring onto my finger. Almost immediately the black stone turns orange, and I hold it up to the sunlight, wondering what it means.

“Anyway, I was gonna ask Daddy about it, but I knew he’d never tell me. So I poked around in his office and found some stuff out about you, and—well, he leaves his computer sometimes,
so I went into it, looking. It wasn’t hard to find out who you really were. But he never said a word to me. Cross my heart.”

Why did I believe her? How could I not have known?

Avoiding my chilly stare, Nikki draws an invisible line with the toe of her woven sandal. “I heard Daddy tell Mom what you said to him that day. All those names you called him? You really hurt his feelings.”

“So? He hurt me first.” But without any venom, the words mean nothing.

“It’s my fault he hurt you, so don’t blame him. Blame me.”

I sneer. “So now what? Is this the part where I’m supposed to say, ‘Aw shucks, Nikki, thanks, I feel so-o-o much better!’?”

Nikki’s flush deepens. “No. But if there’s something you want me to do, something to make things right, will you let me know? ‘Cause I’d still like us to be friends.”

I almost do it, I almost say okay. After all, this must’ve been positively hideous for her. But why put it all on me?

“I gotta go,” I say instead. “And you better get out of here before somebody rips off that car.”

Before I can slink off, Nikki steps forward to pull me into a hug. She sniffs once, then twice. “Gina. Are you drunk?”

I shake myself loose. “Bye, Nikki.”

“Wait! You, like, reeeek of beer!”

“Why don’t you mind your own business, Miss Queen of the Ninth Step?”

“It doesn’t help anything, okay?”

“It makes me feel better!” I shout. “It doesn’t change who you are.”

“Hey, it just so happens I know exactly who I am. Now do me a favor and get your stick-butt off my porch.” I swing open the door, but she grabs the handle.

“You think you know who you are? So who are you, huh? Just think about it for a second.” As I force the flimsy door out of her grip, Nikki’s own hot antiseptic breath hits me through the flapping screen. “Oh, and that cello he gave you? He’d never let us touch it.” Her lips curl in a fierce knot. “Not even his precious Rachel.”

I slam the door, knocking loose that last hinge. I force down another beer, hoping to pass out and wake up when I’m twenty. Instead, I keep replaying that scene in Zelda’s car:
Traitordrunk-murderertraitordrunkmurderertraitordrunkmurderer!
How I told him I hated him, that I wished he were dead.

For once it feels good to let myself cry, to make all the noise I want without anyone hearing me. Rejuvenated, I jump up and march to the fridge, and snatch out every beer, every wine cooler, anything I can find.

My mom’s an addict. My dad was an addict. I may suck at statistics, but one thing I know? The chances of me growing up to be exactly like one of them are a whole lot better than me winning that scholarship.

Every bottle, every can, I pour down the drain.

I won’t let it happen. I swear on Bubby’s soul.

57

Momma’s been AWOL for two days, and now I’m spazzing out. Is she back in the hospital? Was she busted for drugs? Is her dead, battered body stuffed in a sewer pipe? There could be a thousand reasons why she hasn’t come home and none of them any good.