Hand Me Down (23 page)

“What’s going on?” I say when Mom quiets. I haven’t seen her this pissed off in a long time.

“You! I’ve had it with you.”

“What did I do?” I say.

“Get in the car,” Mom says even-toned and low-pitched, pressing down her hair with her palms and then smoothing under her eyes with her fingertips. “You’re leaving.”

My stomach clenches. She can’t be taking me away again already. “Why?”

She looks me in the eyes for the first time since she arrived. Her green eyes look glassy for the split second before they harden and she says, “You know why.” She gets back in her Ford Taurus. “You think you’re so smart,” she says, her hand on the armrest, her leg hanging out the door. “Emancipation is not a freakin’ joke, Elizabeth.”

“I wasn’t joking,” I say. “I wanted to talk to you about it.”

Her eyes burn holes in my cheeks from five feet away. “You’re going to wish you were joking,” she says and swings her leg into the car.

“But I didn’t even file,” I say. “How did you find out?”

“Go get your stuff,” she says.

“Can we at least talk about this?” I say. “Don’t you want to know why I thought I’d be safer on my own?”

Her eyes show fear for a split second before they narrow again. “Would you like me to call that court mediator for our talk?” she says and her voice is full of venom. She slams the metal door and starts the car. A Rod Stewart song drifts out of the window. “If you’re not back down here in ten minutes, I will come upstairs and drag you out by your hair, you ungrateful snot.”

In her room, Rachel cries while I shove shirts and underwear into my backpack, which has become a familiar task. “I am so sorry for you,” she says.

“I’m sorry you had to see that,” I say as I roll up a pair of shorts. “Do you want your swimsuit back?” I say. “I can change really fast.”

“You can keep it,” she says. She paces the room and tears keep sliding down her face.

Rachel watches me pack my toiletries and tie my shoes to my backpack strap by their laces. She doesn’t blink. “Your mom is fucking crazy,” she says suddenly, and sobs harder. “How come you’re so normal?” she says.

“I’m not,” I say. My hands tremble and tears blur my sight as I try to zip up all my clothes crammed into the big pocket of my pack
In some ways I’m just like her.
I inhale a shaky breath and slump onto Rachel’s bed.

“Why aren’t you freaking out?” Rachel says.

I look up at her. Her mascara is smeared in black smudges around her hazel eyes and gray lines stain her cheeks. “I am,” I say. “But I’ve told you about my mom before, right?”

She snorts air out of her nose in an almost laugh. “I kind of always thought you exaggerated for effect.” She wipes at her eyes. “You should call social services, or something. Seriously.”

“She’s not that bad,” I say.

Rachel stares at me. “I would be balled up and shivering in a corner right now if I were you,” she says and sits next to me. “Where do you think she’s taking you?”

“I have no idea,” I say, the perpetual lump in my throat scratching its way to the surface. “And that’s really scary,” I say, my voice shaking. Rachel puts her arm around me and I turn into her shoulder and release the tears I didn’t want Mom to see. “What if she sends me somewhere far away from everyone?”

We both jump when Mom honks the horn. Rachel’s eyes widen. The horn blares again, and Rachel looks afraid and younger than me in this moment.

Rachel says, “Would she really come up and drag you out by your hair?”

“Probably not,” I say, but I don’t want to test it.

Rachel squeezes me again and cries into my neck. “I love you,” she says.

“I love you, too.”

“I wish you really were one of my sisters.”

“Me, too,” I say.

In the car Mom barks, “Buckle your seat belt,” and doesn’t say another word for miles. Images of teenage boot camps invade my mind, and I imagine endless push-ups and group showers. I picture a mental institution where I’ll be medicated for my attitude, and not allowed to use real silverware at mealtimes. I might have pushed too far this time, and I’m not sure what Mom is capable of these days. I keep the swelling mass in my throat down by convincing myself she can’t afford any excessive forms of punishment, but I can’t keep my lungs from their rapid inhalations.

After forty silent minutes in the car I know where we’re headed, and my breath starts to slow to normal. No Christmas lights shimmer on the boats lining the causeway into Sonoma County this evening, no black abyss to cross in the dark without directions. Mom’s tan fingers squeeze the wheel like a coiled python, and her eyes never leave the road ahead. I sit as close to my door as I can manage, my thigh pressed against the armrest, my shoulder touching the cool glass. I’m jealous of the moving air outside, wafting
through the tall green grasses, brushing the rusty-brown cattails, soaring above the wetland, free to go anywhere it wants.

Where Mom is taking me is the only place left, and Jaime’s already there so it makes sense. Whatever happens next, at least we’ll be together.

Mom grips my wrist with
her strong-boned hands and jerks me from her light blue sedan toward the Cranleys’ house like I’m a criminal. She pushes me into a painted white chair at Deborah’s kitchen table, tells me not to move, and whacks the back of my head with her palm while Deborah gets tea.

“You better freakin’ behave yourself here,” she says and pinches my forearm. “This is your last option.”

“What about Tammy’s?”

“She won’t want you back,” Mom says. “Not after I talk to her.”

“You’ll lie,” I say and know she would.

Deborah returns with a tray carrying two mugs painted with little roosters, and sugar in a white ceramic serving piece. Mom sips her tea and talks about my future like I’m not right here.

“She needs better influences,” Mom says to Deborah. “More stability.” Mom’s eyes shine with tears that weren’t there when she hit me two minutes ago. “I don’t know what’s wrong with her.” She leans forward and whispers, “She went to the courthouse to talk to someone about emancipating herself.”

Deborah puts down her mug. “What?”

“Like Drew Barrymore,” I say.

Deborah’s blue eyes scrunch with concern behind her glasses. “You’re still growing, Liz,” she says. “There’s plenty of time to be an adult.”

“I’m more mature than Mom,” I say.

“See?” Mom says. “Listen to that disrespect—”

“Respect is something you earn—”

“Not when you’re a child,” Mom says, and smacks the back of my head a little softer this time with just the tips of her fingers. It makes me wonder if Dad hit her harder when we weren’t around. Deborah clears her throat. “Liz, things won’t be so bad here.” She smiles and pats my hand, her nails a soft peach color that clashes with her orange hair.

“Parents are supposed to take care of their children,” I say, my chest prickling with familiar pain.

“Enough, Liz,” Mom says, sighing like she’s bored. “We’ve been over this.” She positions her fingers in a pyramid above her nose, her thumbs under her chin, and shakes her head with her eyes closed. For a second I think she might cry; that maybe she’s realized that Terrance isn’t worth giving us up. For just a sliver of a minute, hope sneaks into my gut like it’s not sure it belongs, and I want so much to invite it to stay.

But Mom opens her eyes and spreads her arms out, gesturing to Deborah’s suburban-housewife kitchen. “This isn’t the worst thing that could possibly happen to you,” she says. “It’s not like you’re homeless or hungry or dying. Nobody is beating you. You’re not a Third World slave child,” she says. “Stop complaining.”

“Mom?” Jaime’s voice is suddenly in my ears and she appears,
rubbing her eyes, her hair frizzy at her forehead and temples. “Liz? What are you doing here?”

Deborah widens her eyes at me and Mom, and puts an arm around Jaime’s shoulders. “Did we wake you?” Deborah says and leads Jaime away from us.

Jaime’s tangled blond ponytail rounds the corner and I think of all the times I brushed her hair. All the times I made her laugh, cooked her dinner, helped her with her homework, kissed her scraped knees or cut fingers. I threatened her bullies at school, walked her home, and tucked her into clean sheets. I smothered my fear during Dad’s rampages so I could sing her to sleep without my voice shaking. To be close to her, I will try to accept this new home and she’s not even my daughter. I don’t understand how Mom can walk away.

“How could you leave us?” I say, sinking down into my chair, a vise closing around my throat. My lungs squeeze in my chest near my pounding heart and my palms bead with sweat. “You said we were your blood.”

“When you’re older and married, all of this will make sense,” Mom says. I hang my head. “You’ll see,” she says, but the words are strained.

I say, “I guess we will,” but I’m certain she’s wrong.

After Mom leaves, I lie awake in Deborah’s guest room on top of the perfectly made twin bed and stare at the empty ceiling. I’m still wearing Rachel’s bikini under my clothes because it’s the most familiar thing in this house besides Jaime’s breathing in her bed a few feet away. I clench and relax my shaking hands, grind the river silt between my toes, and inhale deep, unsteady breaths.

Jaime’s cold toes are suddenly pressed against my shins and her nose is inches from mine as she curls up facing me on the bed. Her thumb rests loosely in her mouth and without taking it out she says, “Don’t cry. Now we can live together again without our stupid parents.”

I hadn’t meant to cry. “You like living here?” I say.

She shrugs. “It’s not as scary as Dad’s.” Jaime pulls her thumb out of her mouth and wipes the shriveled skin on her shirt. “It’s safe to sleep here, Liz.” She hugs me. “I promise.” She climbs into her own bed and I hear the rustle of sheets as she wraps herself like a mummy. She says with her thumb back in her mouth, “You don’t have to keep watch.”

My aunt Deborah and her
husband, Winston, have a bread machine. It has a timer. At night you can put all the bread ingredients into its rectangular tin pan: the flour, milk, salt, yeast, and whatever you want for flavor, and then put the pan into the white plastic machine, set the clock and voila, fresh bread is ready in the morning.

I watch Deborah close the lid and set the timer. “We always have homemade cinnamon bread hot and fresh Saturday mornings,” she says as she wipes off the white-tiled countertops and puts the perishables back in the refrigerator. Deborah’s kitchen is done in a “French country style,” she told me earlier, pale yellow, deep blue, and white. White cabinets have rooster knickknacks on top, a wallpaper border displays blue-ribbon-wrapped straw hats. “Right out of the machine, the butter melts down into the bread
and it gets all smushy and yummy, and so good, Liz, I promise.” Deborah says, “I promise,” the same way my dad does, and my gut warns me not to trust her.

It is my fifth night here, but I know enough not to ask to watch TV. It’s past ten
P.M
. and technically, I should be in bed. Winston is a computer programmer who spends his weekends researching military history and combat procedures for his future novels, and this house runs on rules: bedtimes for school nights and weekends; TV, computer, phone, and video game time limits; a rotating chore calendar for the kids, to which Jaime’s name has been added, I notice. She is supposed to vacuum tomorrow.

Deborah says, “It’s time for bed, Liz.”

“Okay,” I say, but I don’t move.

She hugs me. “Try to get some rest,” she says. “Good night.” Deborah disappears up the stairs. Her soft socks on soft carpet make a nearly silent exit.

I doubt I’ll sleep tonight, either, but standing in the kitchen in the dark by myself doesn’t help, so I head toward the guest bedroom off the side of the family room, where Jaime has been living the past few months. Two twin beds with matching sky-blue comforters awash with sunshine-yellow flowers rest against white headboards with carved white daisies. A sunflower wallpaper border coats the top foot of wall space around the room, two white nightstands and a white dresser sit near the beds, with a blue lamp on the dresser top. It looks like a stage set or a model home and feels just as phony.

I hover over Jaime in the moonlight, her thumb tucked in her mouth, her hair a knotted mess behind her head. It’s July and still
she wraps the blankets tightly around her, cocoon style. Only her face sticks out, which looks less like mine than ever. I listen to her heavy breathing, the same sound she made when we were little and shared a bed. Not snoring, just the sound of full lungs expanding and contracting, air forced through small nostrils. Her jaws are loose, her eyebrows relaxed. It’s like when I held her hand so she’d sleep through breaking dishes, slamming doors, our mother’s crying, and just like then I am jealous of her closed lids and deep breaths and dreamland, but also glad that at least one of us feels secure enough to rest.

I haven’t slept through the night since leaving Rachel’s. During daylight my eyes can close without the panic that comes after the sun goes down, and while everyone goes about their busy summer lives just like they did before I showed up, I take naps curled like a cat on the carpet or the couch, wherever there’s a warm red glow on the back of my eyelids. When I lie still in the dark, my mind releases armies of memories that tramp across my closed eyes and churn the acid in my stomach into white-water fists. Snapshot images play in loop tracks like slideshows: Mom’s pale face shoving screaming toddler Jaime into my arms as Dad’s fist collides with her jaw; Jaime’s unmoving figure on the floor of Dad’s pickup, blood trickling down her cheek; Terrance licking his lips as his sagging shorts and bare chest lean over me; Mom’s hard eyes as she left me here like I’d been dismissed.

I’m sure Mom thought this would work. That I’d want to rebuild my life around Jaime, go back to being defined as the big sister, and part of me thinks it would be easy. I could slip into my old role, my lines memorized, my act perfected over the years. There is no
room for originality or deviation from the standards here; the point is to shape me back into the obedient and compliant child Mom needs me to be. In exchange for stability and a chance to live with Jaime, I am supposed to surrender myself. I understand the trade-off. I’m just not sure it’s worth it. I think I might be ready for a different function in this family, a new part, like a starring role in my own life and a fresh location. Even with Deborah’s good intentions, she’ll never understand me the way Tammy does.