Hand Me Down (27 page)

“What does that mean?”

“He wrote me a letter.”

She hesitates. “Well, that’s nice.”

I shake my head. “Tammy was supposed to be back from Africa but she hasn’t called me.”

“Didn’t Jaime tell you?” Mom says. “Tammy and Sam are in Australia.”

“Australia?” I suddenly feel itchy, like baby ants are hatching under my skin.

“Then they’re going to Ireland. She said she’d call when she got back to the States.”

I scratch my forearm and my eyes burn. “Okay, thanks,” I say. “Bye.”

“Liz, wait, please,” Mom says. “I understand why you’re angry.”

“Congratulations.”

“If I come visit, will you talk to me?”

“Will you admit you married a creep?”

“Liz,” she says.

“You want to talk?” I say. “Let’s talk about how dangerous Terrance is.”

“He’s not dangerous.” I can almost see her roll her eyes as she draws out “dangerous” in a mocking tone that sounds like a teenager mad at her parents.

“You know exactly what he is,” I say and realize as soon as the words are out of my mouth that she must, and she’s still standing up for him. “You work every day to protect the world from men like him, and yet you gave him free rein to prey on your daughters.”

“Stop exaggerating,” she says. “He’s not violent like your dad.”

“He’s worse,” I say, the baby ants now crawling and squirming over my body like Terrance’s words. “And you’re blind.”

“It’s that attitude that’s keeping you at Deborah’s, young lady.”

“I thought it was your husband showing his penis to strangers.”

She hangs up.

We arrive late to Jed
Smith Middle School’s Back to School Night and speed walk across the parking lot and through the long,
slat-roofed hallways. Deborah’s arms are full of signed permission slips: flute for Ashley, drama club for Jaime, cheerleading for them both. My sister, six months ago smoking cigarettes and ditching school, now chatters nonstop about dance moves and pom-poms.

I sit in one of dozens of yellow plastic chairs next to Deborah in her flowered jumper dress and listen to the principal discuss the new lunch menu, explain the locker assignment system, and introduce the teachers up on stage while Jaime and Ashley giggle and whisper and look around the auditorium for other kids they know, their soft features overwhelmed by bright lip gloss and shiny eye shadow.

I watch them and think about how they spend so much time together these days, I hardly recognize Jaime. She’s given up her dark flared jeans and blue eyeliner for frilly pastel skirts and pink eyelids. She and Ashley brush each side of their long hair one hundred times each night and apply creams and rinses and masques to their flawless skin. They tell each other they look beautiful, that Darin likes Ashley, that Bobby likes Jaime, that their boobs are bigger than they were yesterday, “for sure.”

I listen outside Ashley’s bedroom door sometimes, sit with my back against the wall, knees hugged to my chest like they might provide some comfort.

“Of course Kelly is uglier than you.”

“Amanda is totally not his type.”

“Is this zit totally obvious?”

“Does this skirt look good?”

Often, I can’t distinguish Jaime’s voice from Ashley’s, both
high-pitched and breathy like they’re always excited. I remember when Jaime sounded just like me and wonder when she’ll start to sound like herself.

I ask Deborah if I can go outside and Matt says, “Me too?” so we head out the green double doors into the late-afternoon fog and muddled orange light. We find a place to sit outside on the bleachers that edge the school’s deep green football field. The sun has begun its descent into the west, and I stretch my legs onto the bench below and bask in the glow.

To my right, Matt plays his Game Boy, some kind of alien shooting adventure. We’ve been throwing a football around in the backyard and kicking a soccer ball in the Cranleys’ driveway the last few weeks. It’s good for both of us to get outside and stretch our wings. Once, Matt kicked the soccer ball right into Ashley’s ass as she danced around in her Daisy Dukes and she lost her balance and fell forward into her vacated lawn chair. I high-fived him and we laughed until she screamed, “I hate you both!” and ran inside. Jaime wavered for just a second before following Ashley up the porch steps to the big brown door, but I understood: she can’t play for both sides. At least now Matt can kick and throw. We’re still working on the catching.

The delicate fog drifts are getting thicker, the sun darker orange-red and lower on the horizon like a giant, perfectly round nectarine. Goose bumps start at my sandaled feet and run up my tan legs and I shiver. Summer is ending and I still don’t know where I’ll be starting school. Deborah has signed me up for the local high school and everyone seems to think I’ll be staying here,
sharing a room and feeling like it’s unsafe to be honest. Soon they’ll add my name to the chore list, and I’ll have to start a new school again. I’d get to live with Jaime, but even so, I’m pretty sure it’s not what I want.

Mom’s voice lectures in my head: “clear rules,” she says, “regular church attendance.” She paces and wags her finger at me. “You need to learn about making the right choices,” she says with a straight face, the engagement ring she bought twinkling on her hand as a reminder of who she chose. Not only did she ditch her own daughters for a sex offender, but she allowed him to touch us, hug us, spend time alone with us, all the while knowing, probably better than anyone, his inexhaustible lust. I think of the occasional hints of worry in her voice, her hesitation and chirping laughs full of nerves when she asked about our lunch together last fall, and I know she suspected. But she did nothing.

In my head she reprimands me for my attitude, tells me I need to treat Terrance with respect and kindness, accept him as family. She invited a lion into our den of lambs, turned her back on the slaughter, and then has the gall to say, “I am still your mother.”

“Then act like it, you stupid bitch, or I’ll stab your fucking eyes out,” I say out loud. I think for a second that Matt might tell on me despite our recent bonding. “I wasn’t talking to you,” I say, releasing my fingers from their grip on my knees, nails leaving crescent moons in my bare skin.

Matt smiles, his newly emerged adult teeth big between his chapped lips. “Well if you do that, I’ll have to saw off your ears with a butter knife.”

“Okay,” I say.
Huh
. “Then I’ll chop off your feet and glue them to your back so you have to walk like a cockroach.”

“Fine,” he says, fingers still tapping away at his red-and-black buttons. “I’ll cut off your fingers, fry them up, and make you eat them like sausage.”

“Gross,” I say. “I’ll throw up the finger sausages and make you lick it off the dirt and then I’ll slice out your tongue and make you swallow that, too.”

He laughs. “I’ll pull off your arms and stuff them up your butt so your guts explode with poop.” He hunches farther over his screen.

I picture Mom’s cheekbones, her blue-green eyes, her rounded chin. I think of her snapping photographs as Terrance pressed his hips against mine. “I’ll shave off your face with a cheese grater and feed the gooey mess to Biscuit.”

“Eww.” He giggles an evil giggle and rubs his hands together. I smile at him. “Okay,” he says and pauses his game. He takes a deep breath. “I’m going to shove your hair down your throat so you can’t scream and then rip open your belly, pull out your intestines, and tie your feet together. And when you fall, I’ll wrap the rest of your slimy entrails around your fat neck and squeeze until you freakin’ choke.” Matt’s hands clench into fists, his little fingers red and white on top of his khaki shorts.

Matt’s eyes are focused somewhere past the grass, on the trees at the opposite end of the field, huge maple trees, their broad, five-fingered leaves catching the wind and rocking their dark branches, waving like coral arms against a backdrop sea of blue-orange sky. He’s not blinking.

“You want to talk about it?” I say. I get it, I do. All the anger, all
the fire shooting around inside. “Sometimes it’s good to let things out.” I think of my recent increase in recording my thoughts, the pages of rants in my journal.

Matt lets out a long breath and says, “Did you know the small intestine is twenty feet long?”

I say, “You are such a boy.”

“So are you sometimes,” he says. He unclenches his fists a little and peels his brown eyes away from the swaying trees. “That’s why you’re cool,” he says and punches my shoulder. He looks a little taller, a little thinner in the face than when I first moved in; some of his baby fat has melted away. If he learns to come out of his shell, he’ll do fine.

“You think I’m cool?” I say.

“Well, yeah,” he says and shrugs. “But consider the source.” I laugh.

In the growing dusk the fog is thick and gray-yellow, the sun’s outline no longer visible beyond the clouds. The trees are like charcoal shadows on a swirling pencil-sketch sky. I hope Jaime still thinks I’m cool, but I also think if she doesn’t, it’ll be okay.

Winston leaves for work at
seven
A.M
. and after the alarm beeps but before Deborah gets up I call Tammy’s number. I hop around on the tan carpet in my bare feet. I cross my fingers. I visualize Tammy in her leapfrog and lily pad pajamas, walking across her wood floors in her pink house slippers, picking up the white cordless handset, and saying, “Hello?” but it’s just Sam again on the machine.

A letter comes from Rachel. She writes,
I did it!! Frank took me camping and we did it under the stars and it was so romantic and I can’t wait for you to visit so I can tell you all about it. With details
. A smiley face winks at me next to the period and “details” is underlined twice.
My mom said she had a dream that you were going on a long journey and came to her for new shoes. She told you to follow your heart, not your feet, and you grew wings and flew away.

I wonder if Rachel’s mom really does have a kind of gift. One sleepless night I’d repeated Jenny’s prayer from
Forrest Gump
, which we’d watched as a family with Deborah fast-forwarding drug and sex scenes. I whispered from on top of the yellow-flowered comforter three feet from sleeping Jaime, “Dear God, Make me a bird. So I can fly far, far away from here,” over and over. Emancipation didn’t work, but if I could fly away, that would be a fine alternative. I imagined my toes turning into claws, my nose lengthening, feathered wings unfurling from my back. I pictured the ground miles below and the infinite sky ahead until the rising sun made any chance of transformation seem impossible.

Deborah sits next to me at the edge of the pool and I angle the letter so she can’t read it. “Juicy stuff?” she says. I fold the letter and put it in the pocket of the baggy shorts I’ve been wearing all summer that have grown baggier each week. “Oh, Liz,” she says and sighs. “Who knew life could get this complicated?” I think of one night when we lived here and Mom’s Al Anon meeting ran late. I was curled on the floor in our room upstairs, holding Jaime’s Snuggly and crying. Deborah wrapped me in a blanket and made me warm milk. She watched TV with my head in her lap and I fell asleep to the rise and fall of her chest, the sweet smell of her
perfume. “I’d like to respect your mom’s wishes and make peace with you if that’s possible,” she says.

“I appreciate the offer,” I say. “But if Tammy will let me, I’d like to move back in with her.”

“Your mom thinks our place is a better environment.”

“It’s perfect for Jaime,” I say. “I’m thankful that she has you.”

Deborah leans back on her pale freckled arms, like Dad’s without tattoos. The sun shines dark yellow behind gray clouds tumbling violently in the wind that only feels like a light breeze down here. “Your father’s not speaking to me,” she says. “He says I robbed him of a golden opportunity.”

“It was him, you know,” I say. “He called Terrance’s parole officer. He thought he’d be able to get child support money from Mom.”

Deborah cocks her head to the side and frowns. “He’s not that good at strategy.”

“Crystal is conniving,” I say. “I bet it was her idea.”

“It does sound like his brand of selfishness,” Deborah says.

“Talk about a plan backfiring,” I say. It would almost be funny that he got the opposite of what he’d been aiming for, except he set this snowball of bad decisions in motion, and even now, the effects of this shit storm keep piling up on me despite the fact that he lost. “Jerk.”

“Liz,” Deborah says. “He may not be the best father, but there’s no need for that kind of language.”

“You should hear the things I say to myself,” I say. Deborah shakes her head but doesn’t say anything. The breeze picks up as the clouds darken to wet-concrete-gray above us. The wind is cool
and moist, like it just left the ocean, and smells like seaweed and sage. I wish beachfront property was one of my housing options. “You’ll keep Dad away from Jaime?” I say. She doesn’t need to know Dad used her. She’s safe from him for now.

“Yes,” Deborah says. “I think I can manage to protect you both.”

“Jaime is lucky to have you,” I say.

Deborah brushes off her hands and places one on my knee. “I’m afraid you’re stuck with us, too, Liz.”

“What about what I want?”

She pats my knee with her fingertips and stands up, her brown sandals slapping the cement. She kisses the top of my head but it’s not the gesture of comfort it is when Tammy does it, and my chest burns so hot I want to dive into the pool and inhale all that cool water.

“Dinner’s almost ready,” Deborah says and smiles down at me. “We’ll fatten you up, yet.” Dinner is probably meatloaf and canned green beans, or chicken baked in condensed mushroom soup next to iceberg lettuce coated with bottled ranch dressing. It’s the food I grew up eating, but after my exposure to Chez Tammy, it has become less appetizing.

“Thanks,” I call as she walks away. “Be there in a minute.” I know feeding six on a single income is hard, and that I was spoiled with Tammy’s love of food, but I yearn for halibut tacos with mango salsa, Tammy’s garden-grown herb and goat cheese salads and homemade dressings, her roasted-veggie pasta. I smell chicken pot pie and imagine inhaling the spices in Tammy’s kitchen instead: curry, cumin, cardamom, saffron, the scents of distant lands stirring up travel fantasies. I know Deborah is trying to help in all the
ways she can, but I also know this place will never feel like home to me even if I wished it would.