Snitch (The Bea Catcher Chronicles) (9 page)

Young teens, different races, male and female, seemingly wannabe rappers, are flinging gang-speak: “Wangsta gangsta’s all fo’ one. Wangsta gangsta’s one fo’ all.” They show off, posing for the camera, competing with one another like a litter of hyper puppies.

And there he is in athletic gear—Junior, in the middle of
the pack, smiling, dancing, with happy eyes, so different than at the station—tossing off some hand signals and fist-bumping a white dude, having fun, looking happy.

The video cuts to a homeless shelter; they ladle out soup. Cuts to the gang cleaning, washing, and painting over graffiti on a train boxcar.
That’s what Junior was talking about with, “I probably cleaned up your art.”

The video jumps to an outdoor track—in the middle of a race. A baton is handed off to Junior—the last leg in a relay. He crosses the finish line, and the clan runs up, huddles, high-fives him. They face the camera, sweaty, out of breath, and say in unison: “Make friends, not victims.” A chick, edgy as all get-out—thick, black eyeliner, safety pins lining the lobes of one of her ears, silver hoops in her bottom lip—jumps on Junior’s back.

Back to the coach: “You want a life? You in need of a family? You don’t have to run down the wrong road.” He jams his thumb into his chest. “Start running down my road. Credos Kidz—The Kodiak Kidz. We meet most afternoons, Skyline High. Four o’clock.”

“Bea, now!” my mom yells from downstairs. “It’s getting cold.”

“Okay, okay!” I yell back. “One sec.”

I change out of the baggy jeans and hoodie and back into my bell-bottoms, unpin the twists, pulling at the strands. I shake my head, and the coils kind of fly around freely—bouncing like little firework explosions. I line my eyes with chocolate brown
pencil, apply mascara; with my hair out of my eyes, my eyes jump out, catlike. Fearless.
Dang. I like this look.

The parents ordered in Chinese, and I stand at the kitchen counter stabbing prawns in a take-out carton, studying for my astronomy class. Mom and Dad sit at the table. They’re bickering as usual. It’s a hobby of theirs.

“I told you to tell them to hold the green pepper,” Mom complains, spitting one out in her napkin.

“I did, Bella. They must have forgotten.”

“I always check before I pay.”

“Then I guess you should pick up the food from now on,” he murmurs. “I thought you’d be happy I got home for dinner.”

“What a treat. I should’ve put out the good china.”

“Aren’t you going to sit, Bea?” Dad asks, ignoring Mom’s barb.

“I’m studying for an astronomy test, and it’s easier up here on the counter with my book.” I also don’t want to be hit by a flying dumpling—you never know with them.

Dad’s cell rings.

Mom gives him the evil eye. “Work I suppose?” She makes no attempt to hide her frustration, slamming her iced tea down on the table.

Dad answers abruptly. “I’ll call you later, okay?” He hangs up.

Mom turns on me. “What’s with your hair, Bea?”

Whoa . . . okay, that came out of nowhere.
I swallow the shrimp with a little help from my Diet Coke. “I’m trying out a new
style. Eva Marie did it. She’s applying to cosmetology school, and I thought I’d let her practice on me.”
And I wanted to have a gangsta look going on while I sat with a punk who confessed to murder in a holding cell this afternoon.

Dad smiles. “I like it, Bella. Makes her eyes pop.” He nods his head in sync with his chewing.

“I thought so, too, Dad. Thanks.”

Mom fidgets, tops off her iced tea, pushes the starchy kernels around her plate with chopsticks, as if she’s writing out a secret code.

Dad stops her hand. “You’re not hungry?”

She pulls her hand away. “I’m just tired. You got home so late last night. I couldn’t fall back to sleep.”

“I’m sorry, Bella. The dinner with the provost went on longer than I thought.”

“Uh-huh.” She lifts her hair and clamps it in a high, messy bun. “I finally fell back to sleep about six, and slept in till . . . what?” Her pocketed phone
pings
with a text—she ignores it. “Was it after eleven, Bea? Is that when you came home?”

I’m outlining the constellation Serpens, labeling the stars in its tail, and look up at her question, thinking for a second about this morning’s encounter, and with my pen on the paper, the letters
MC
end up on the tips of a northern hemisphere star.

MC? What does that mean?
And then a dark, thick, bushy moustache appears on the mythological serpent handler’s face, and I shut my eyes—no way I want anything else snapping in my head. I avoid, at all costs, drawing while making eye contact
with my parents for exactly this reason.
TMI—I don’t want to know their secrets.

Dad tries to change the channel and singsongs, “I’ve got two girls with birthdays coming up this month. Two very important birthdays.”

“Don’t remind me,” Mom mumbles.

“Turning forty is a wonderful thing, Bella.”

“Really, Richard? Tell me about it, please. Impart your knowledge about what it’s like being forty for a woman. I’d love to hear it.”

Dad’s face sags, and he obviously doesn’t know what to do with that—doesn’t want to touch it—and I don’t blame him. He focuses on me. “So, what do you want to do for your special day, Bea?”

Get my own apartment.
“Oh, I don’t care. Not much, I guess.”

“I know. How about we celebrate at the Gandy Dancer, at the train station? You love that restaurant . . . watching the trains chug in.”

Watching me hopping on one, getting out of town.
“Sure, sounds great, Dad.”

“You used to get so excited when they barreled in—when you were little.” He chuckles at the memory. “Sound good to you, Bella?”

She’s gazing at the rain pounding at the window above the sink. The wind has picked up, and it’s pouring down sideways, spitting at the window, leaving angry exclamation points. “What? Um, sure.”

“Settled.” Dad focuses on me. “Any college acceptances you’ve heard about?” He tries to hide a smile.

I knew this was coming. . . .
“Well, Chris got into U of M. But of course you already know that, since it’s your department.”

Dad’s smile grows as he slaps his hands on the table.

Mom jumps. “Jesus, Richard.”

“It was hard keeping that from you.” He walks behind me and squeezes my shoulders. “We’re looking forward to having him in the art department.”

“He’s excited, too, Dad.”

“How about Willa? Did she find out anything?” Mom asks.

“Yup. She did it. Her dream school—she got into Cornell.”

“Ivy League, wow. Good for her.” I can feel my dad’s words scorch my back and his disappointment splatter against me like uncooked rice pellets.

“That’s nice for Willa,” Mom says.

“Yeah, and it seems Zac got in, too,” I say.

“I saw the banner hanging on the fence when I drove by.” My dad digs into my carton of shrimp.

“It blows my mind,” I can’t help adding.

“Why’s that?”

“Because he’s a bit of a moron. Not exactly the brightest bulb in the school. Guess they needed a two-hundred-pound wrestler at Cornell.”

“I doubt that, Bea. It takes a lot more than being good at a sport to get into Cornell,” Dad says, mouth full. “And, don’t forget, his parents both graduated from there. A legacy applicant.”

“Whatever. He aced the SAT and won’t shut up about it.”

“There you go,” he punctuates. “That’s quite a feat.” My dad jump-shots the now empty Chinese carton across the kitchen. The orange sweet-and-sour sauce dribbles on the floor as the carton flies through the air and nails the trash can, successfully scoring two points.

“For chrissake, Richard. Watch what you’re doing.” Mom jumps up, wrings out a sponge, and starts to wipe the spillage.

“He was just having fun, Mom. Chill. You’re acting so jiggy-like.”

“Fine—have fun.” Mom throws the sponge at Dad. “And then clean up the fun.” Her cell buzzes again in her pocket. This time she pulls it out, reads a text, and smiles.

“Who’s that, Bella?” my dad asks, dutifully wiping up the orange goo on the floor. “And why do you get to answer at dinner when I can’t?”

What, are they in junior high?

“Oh . . . it’s about that job. You know, the mural in Bloomfield Hills.” She takes her plate to the sink, scrapes the rest of her dinner into the garbage. “And it’s
after
dinner now, by the way.”

“You’re not going to finish?” Dad puts his hand on the small of her back. She steps away from it.

“No, I’m feeling a little . . . jiggy-like.” She darts her dark eyes at me. “I think I’m going to lie down upstairs for a bit.”

I watch her climb the stairs, reading a message on her phone and smiling . . . for the second time today.
Weird.

Dad’s eyeing me, and I know why. I don’t want to have to
list all the universities that everyone else got into—
everyone but his daughter
.

Wendell comes to the rescue, and texts:

WENDELL: r U coming to the 8pm meeting?

I close my textbook. “I’ve got a meeting tonight, Dad. I should get ready.”

“Really? Your mother told me you missed the one in the morning, so you went to one after school.”

“Oh, well, I kind of missed that one, too. I got suckered into helping Eva Marie—you know, with my hair, for her portfolio and shit. . . .”

He clears his throat.

“I mean, stuff.”

He crosses to the sink. “You’ll be getting your nine-month chip soon, right?” He flips on the faucet.

“Right.” I bite my lip, and the memory of that night, the mukluk, kicks me in the stomach again.

“Dad?”

“Yes, baby?”

“I’m sorry I’m not going to college . . . if I’ve disappointed you.”

His broad shoulders silhouette the window, and I see his reflection; see his face make the adjustment from honest disappointment to fatherly bullshit. “Oh, Bea, no. Don’t think that,” he says, collecting the dishes. “I’m not going to lie to you. I’d
love to have you at school, especially my school. Would love to show you off. But I trust that you’ll do just fine with whatever direction you decide to go. You’ve been through a lot. Your mother and I only want the best for you.”

“Whatever direction?”

“Sure. Why? Do you have something in mind?”

“Well, I was thinking about getting a job after graduation,” I boldly state.

He slings a towel over his shoulder. “But you already have a summer job. With your mother.”

“I, um . . . I don’t know how I feel about painting murals. It’s not really my thing, you know?”

He nods. He thinks the same thing, I can see it in his eyes—he hates the murals. It’s beneath the artistic persona that he proudly carries around with all his diplomas.

“But I’m afraid she’ll get super pissed and flip out, if I don’t help her out.”

He wipes rice off the counter. “Well, why don’t you look around, explore other possibilities.”

“You’d be okay with that?”

“If you find something else that interests you, sure. I could always talk to your mom about it first, go at it from a different angle, and maybe lessen the blow.”

I stand on my toes, reach up and over the counter, and hug him. “Oh, Dad, thanks. That means so much to me.”

He pats my back. “And then perhaps you’ll feel differently in the fall. It doesn’t have to be U of M, you know. There’s
Eastern, Kalamazoo, even Cranbrook Academy of Art—you could live at home, commute.”

My heart sinks. I pull away from the hug—my feet fall flat on the floor. “But you didn’t go to college—right away after high school. You took a few years off, right?”

Dad starts wiping the counter—again. “That’s right, I did.”

“Did you work?”

He wrings out the sponge. “I made money, yes.”

“How? What’d you do?”

“Oh, just odd jobs here and there.” He drapes the towel over the sink, walks over to me, and kisses the top of my head, just like he used to do when I was a little girl. The head that I’m sure he thinks
should
graduate from college—sporting the U of M blue and maize mortarboard. “I’d better see how your mom is doing.” He walks out of the kitchen. “Have a good meeting, hon. I’d bring an umbrella, and be careful driving. It’s slick out there.”

I don’t know the whole story—have never fully connected the dots. My dad is very private about his past, always has been, but from what he’s said, what Mom’s said, he grew up in the ghetto of Detroit, left home as a teen before he even graduated from high school, got his GED, and eventually applied and was accepted to an art school in Chicago. There he met my mom, knocked her up, had me, continued to study for years, leading up to his PhD, and landed the job at the University of Michigan.

Sounds simple, right?

Sounds like secrets and lies to me.

6 days
4 hours

T
he meeting is held at St. Anne’s recreational hall, in the basement. We carry around our stories—all different circumstances that got us here together holding hands—but have one thing in common: the nasty, ugly beast of addiction.

My dad was right. I should be going on nine months and hate thinking about that night with Marcus. But I made good on my side of the deal—accomplishing the thirty/thirty for Sergeant Daniels, and he made good on his—not telling my parents about the slipup last November. And I’ve been coming back every week to St. Anne’s.

Willa, now being sober, restructured the entire AA schedule with the same intensity she brings to everything. She complained that we needed a young persons’ meeting and stood at the door like a bouncer, checking IDs, allowing everyone under twenty-five in the door. Those who were older had to
meet in the upstairs choir loft. (Hah. . . . Sergeant Daniels wouldn’t have made the cut.)

She took control; dumped out the brown, tar-tasting water and brought in coffee from Starbucks; decorated the hall for Christmas, Hanukkah, Kwanza, and baked cookies accordingly (so as to not exclude anyone) during the holidays; hosted a sparkling apple cider New Year’s party complete with glitter-flecked hats and noisemakers; dipped strawberries in chocolate for Valentine’s Day; pinched anyone not wearing green on St. Patrick’s Day (me being one of them—green doesn’t look good on me, what can I say?); and tonight she switched the sugar to salt on the coffee table in honor of April Fool’s Day. And she is giggling her pert ass off watching the spit-takes.