Life Is Funny (7 page)

“I don't care.”

“I do,” he goes.

“What's your problem?” I ask him.

“Huh?”

“You have to do the right thing every time?” I sound like an asshole. I can't help it.

“What are you talking about?” he goes.

“You have to be so perfect?”

His father slides out from underneath some car on the other side of the garage.
“¿Tienes algún problema?”
he yells over to Sam.

“No es nada, Papi,”
Sam yells back.

“Do you ever break one goddamn rule?” I'm going. “Do you ever just do something for the fun of it?”

He gets real still.

“My whole life is a goddamn broken rule,” he tells me, real low, real calm. Then he steps in close, like Dreadlocks Dean did that day, and his voice stays quiet, but it's hard and mad as anything. “Do you know how
fun
it is to be a bastard half spic with a mother who'd rather fingerpaint in some other country than live near you and a father who has to kiss rich white ass daily just so he can make his goddamn rent?” He backs up, glaring at me with this disgusted look, like he's the coach and I'm the spaz retard.

“You always know what to say, don't you?” I tell him, sarcastic as hell. I'd take it all. I'd take his life any day. I'd take his father in a second. “You always know what to do.” I want to be him so bad it makes my blood hurt. “With the girls, with the cars, with me. With everyone.”

He sort of blinks, and then he shakes his head, like he's sorry for me or something. “Whatever,” he goes, and then suddenly I get scared I'll either start bawling or else rip his face off.

“You know what?” I tell him. “From now on just stay the fuck away.” And I'm gone.

*  *  *

I'm so pissed off I don't even get what's going on until I'm in the apartment and the door is closed. My parents are in the foyer, and he's mad again. She's got blood on her mouth and over her eye, and her sleeve is torn. She's got the keys and mail table between them, holding it up by the surface so the legs stick out to sort of protect her, but he's twisting it out of her grip.

“Go to your room,” she tells me, the way she always does.

He yanks the table away from her and tosses it behind him. Then he grabs her and shoves her up against the wall. She throws up her hands, and I walk around them into the kitchen. I hear the punch, which doesn't sound like much in real life but turns eyes the shiny color of olives in five minutes flat, and I pick up the phone.

I dial that stupid, stupid number they make TV shows off of and try to keep my voice steady, so if they replay it on the news, I won't sound like an idiot.

“What is the location of the emergency?” they go, without saying hello.

“Two-fifty-one Baker Place,” I say. “Between Seventh and Eighth Avenue.”

“What's the nature of the emergency?” they ask.

“My dad's beating the shit out of my mother,” I go.

“Stay on the line, please,” they tell me.

So I do.

*  *  *

My mother starts to cry when they cuff him. She never cries.

That goofy Gingerbread kid watches from his stoop. He's got his basketball tucked under one arm, and I can see his fingers tapping it, fast, like he's typing or sending Morse code.

My father stops in front of me as they walk him to the squad car. They let him lean down to whisper in my ear. The kid stops tapping and shifts the ball to his other arm.

“Do you see what you've done?” my dad goes, really quiet, nodding over to her. She's still crying, slumped against our front door. “Do you see?”

Grace

China

Ebony

Sam

Carl

Monique

Molly

Drew

Caitlin

Hector

MY MOTHER IS a lunatic. She has a routine for everything, and if you do anything to screw it up, she falls apart. My mom falling apart is something you don't want to see. The problem is, her routine's always changing, so it's next to impossible to figure out what you might be doing to screw it up. Which means you never know when she's going to fall apart.

She's a receptionist at some fancy ad agency on Madison Avenue in the city. I'm sure her stupid routines must get screwed up at work, but Madison Avenue probably doesn't let her get away with any falling apart. They should use her in one of their ads. For a psych ward.

She'll come home one day and fall apart because I didn't make dinner for us. Then the next day she'll fall apart because I made dinner but she was planning on ordering in pizza. Then the next day she'll fall apart because she called ahead of time to tell me to order pizza, but I ordered it from the wrong place. I'm not allowed to defend myself. When I try, she says, “Don't talk back! I don't want to hear it!” Then she stomps down the hall to Walker's apartment.

I don't know how he can stand her, but he's kept her for over two years. He works for the city or something. He's okay, but he takes up too much of my mom's time. Even though she's a lunatic, I never really get to see her, and that sort of bothers me. I keep thinking if we had more time, I could talk to her about certain things that Ebony and China talk about to their mothers.

One thing I'd want to tell her about is how it can be at school. I know we can't afford private school or anything, but the girls here are really hard on me. Somebody's always wanting to fight. Somebody's always calling me stuck up or a bitch. It's bad enough I'm white, but I think the way I look makes it worse. When I used to go with my mother to the city sometimes, people would stop me on the street. They would give my mother their cards. They always wanted to know what agency I was with.

It's nice being good-looking because it's one less thing to worry about. But it's hard, too, because when you stand out in ninth grade, people always want to start with you. If you're a cute guy, it doesn't matter how you act. But if you're a pretty girl, things are different. If you're too nice, they call you weak. If you're not nice enough, they say you think you're better than they are. The whole thing sucks. The only way out of it is to get famous. If I started getting modeling jobs and got famous, then I'd be a celebrity instead of just a pretty white girl, and then they'd want me to be their friend instead of wanting to start with me. So I got accepted with this fancy agency a couple of weeks ago, and I'm waiting for them to get me work. My mother is excited because she thinks I could make enough money to send myself to college. Walker doesn't like it. “Keep your head on straight,” he keeps telling me. He thinks I'm going to make it.

Ebony and China are the best. They understand me pretty well, and they never give me a hard time. I told them right off the bat, way back in sixth grade, that my mom might be weird around them. I figure it's better to let people know up front and let them decide if they want to have anything to do with you. I told them how my mother's a fake. How she'll say all the right things but she's kind of racist. How they'd see through her in a second. I was nervous maybe they'd dump me after that, but they were cool. By ninth grade there's not that many groups that are mixed. Everybody usually ends up with their own. Me and Ebony and China are one of three mixed groups left. We don't care.

We spend the most time at Ebony's house. She's got eight-year-old twin sisters, and her mother's a real estate agent. Ebony's mother is really cool. She knows a lot of poetry from when she used to be a teacher, and she uses it on Ebony when she's trying to make a point. Ms. Giles keeps the twins' artwork stuck to the refrigerator with magnets that look like orange slices dipped in chocolate. Ms. Giles's first name is Grace, just like me.

China's mother is nice but not as cool as Ebony's. She's a pharmacist. She brings home all kinds of sample medicine all the time, and when China is sick, they never have to get prescriptions. China's mother has really short hair, and she wears big earrings. She calls China baby, and she called Ebony that once, too, when Ebony was crying because her dad had called the night before, drunk, from somewhere in North Carolina. I never had a father. Just some man who slept with my mother once, and she didn't know she was pregnant until he was long gone anyway. China's father is a cameraman for
Sunset.
I've only seen him a couple of times. He's got a pierced ear, and he has the same slanty eyes as China, and he calls China's mother baby.

When China screws up, she gets grounded and loses her allowance. China gets ten dollars a week. Ebony gets seven. I don't get an allowance. I have to ask when I need money for something. Depending on whether my mother's routine got messed up, I either get it or I don't.

*  *  *

My mom is partly crazy because she's an alcoholic. She's not drinking now because she went through all these programs that the ad agency had to pay for. She's been sober for five years. But once you're an alcoholic, you're always an alcoholic. She still has to go to AA meetings once a week and twice on holidays. That's another reason why she's so busy. She's got work, AA meetings, and her therapy, too. She's been in therapy for five years. I went with her once. Her therapist was this woman who had a birthmark on the left side of her lip, spreading into her cheek. I didn't hear a word she said because I was busy trying to figure out if that birthmark was getting bigger right in front of my eyes or if I was just imagining it. I squinted a lot, trying to see it from all angles, and my mother said later the woman thought I had a twitch. My mother was laughing so hard when she told me that, she wet her pants. She showed me the stain.

I remember the last time my mother was drunk. I was eight, and we were at the Bronx Zoo. My mother was walking too fast for me. She wouldn't stop to see the animals. I wanted to look at the elephants and the gorillas. I wanted to just watch them for a little while. But my mother wouldn't stop. She made us walk and walk and walk. I needed to use the bathroom, but she wouldn't let me. After a while I could barely lift my feet. They were scuffing the ground when a man told my mother it looked like her pretty little girl was tired.
Keep your goddamn hands off her!
my mother screamed at him. Then she threw up. Then she fell asleep. It was right in front of the elephants, so I got to look at them for a while before they came to get us.

*  *  *

China says me and Ebony have a lot of anger. China reads college books, and she always knows stuff about people and life and that kind of thing, the way your grandmother might know. I guess China is wise, more than smart, but she's pretty smart, too.

We always meet under the bleachers during lunch because it's private, plus we see all kinds of good stuff from under there, like Mr. Stappio feeling up Ms. Manning and Denny Stephens selling coke to Mercedes Little.

Today me and China take our hot dogs into the gym and stoop over to Ebony, who's concentrating really hard on pulling a razor blade across her wrist. I just stand here like an idiot, not even believing what I'm seeing, while China smacks Ebony's hand, and the blade flies and then skids out from under the bleachers.

“Bitch,” Ebony complains, like cutting herself is no big deal. “I wasn't done.” Two thin lines bead red onto her skin, like a liquid bracelet.

“Are you trying to kill yourself?” China hisses. “Because if you're trying to kill yourself, you better tell us now. Right now!”

I clamp one of my cafeteria napkins over Ebony's wrist.

“Damn,” China says, while I pat down on top of the cuts. There isn't much seeping through, just enough to make the napkin stick.

“Bitch,” Ebony grumbles again. “I'm not trying to kill myself.”

I start breathing again. I didn't know I'd stopped.

“Doesn't it hurt?” I ask. I'm the weakest out of the three of us.

“It hurts”—Ebony sniffs, all proud—“but it feels nice, too. Like when you get tickled until you could die.”

“You're crazy,” I tell her. “Apologize.”

“Sorry,” Ebony says.

“Tell us you're not going to do it again,” I order.

“It feels nice,” Ebony argues. “Especially when you're mad.”

“Tell us!” I say.

“I won't do it again.”

“You better not,” China goes.

“What are you mad at anyway?” I ask.

Ebony shrugs.

“Her asshole father,” China says. “Right?”

“I don't know.”

“Bet you he called again last night, right?”

Another shrug.

“Was he drunk?”

He was probably whining about all the letters he supposedly sends that Ebony never gets. We spent practically all of seventh grade hating Ebony's mother, thinking she was throwing those letters away, before we figured out Ebony's father never wrote a mad scrap.

“Both of y'all,” China says, “ought to get into therapy.”

She's said that before. She thinks you can't have an alcoholic parent and not need therapy. I used to wonder who she thought is more screwed up, me or Ebony. But now with this razor blade thing, it's pretty obvious.

Ebony grabs my cheese puffs bag and pulls it apart while I shift my weight a little. The bleachers are hard and sharp in your back or your side. You have to move around a lot underneath them if you want to stay comfortable. I start to snatch the cheese puffs back, but Ebony's fingertips, already dusted orange, change my mind. They're bitten so bloody it makes you hurt all over, just looking at them.

“You shouldn't be cutting yourself,” I say. “It's fucked up. You don't have to get all fucked up.”

China says something better. “If I ever see you do that again,” she warns Ebony, “I'm telling your mother.”