Tales From My Closet (23 page)

“Don’t tell me that John called you, too.”

She stared at me like I was a Martian from Mars, until, finally, and with a little quiver in her voice, she said: “My father got really angry. Then he hit me. So I’m hiding out here. Me and my mom and brother, too. You know. For safety. Because he was, like, out of control.”

“
What?
”

“He hit me really hard. So we came here.”

“Here?” Truly, I was more puzzled than ever.

“John’s my cousin,” she said.

That’s when I noticed two things: first, that Robin had obviously been crying, and second, that her left eye was swollen and purple.

“Oh God!” I yelled. “I wish I’d never written the dumb thing, okay?”

It was bad enough, my hiding out in Weird John’s Ping-Pong room, with half of Western High thinking I stabbed Becka, Becka herself in the hospital, my mother in a state of shock over Dad, and Dad about to get home to find that I’d defied his orders and disappeared. Plus, I’d written something so mean that Becka had gone and slit her own wrists, and Robin’s dad must have found out about it, too, and hit her because of it. Only that didn’t make sense. On the other hand, nothing else did, either.

Because in all my bad times, all the times that I was the new kid in school, or Dad didn’t seem to have a clue who I was, or Mom pretended that everything was hunky-dory when it wasn’t, never — not once — had I been so miserable that I’d wanted to hurt myself. I’d never even threatened to hurt myself. I’d never even
cried
.

“I’ll take care of you — I’ll look after you — no matter what you’ve done,” WJ said. “We all will, right?” Then he lunged for me, holding me so close to his chest that I could smell his full smell: deodorant and powder and hair gel and sweat, mixed with cigarette smoke and mint gum. It was my lowest, most humiliating, most shameful moment ever — trapped in Weird John’s Ping-Pong room, with Weird John’s arms around me, and Polly and Robin just staring at me, as if they, too, thought I’d gone and murdered the girl. Even worse, as John held me close, I relaxed into him. But the worst moment of all came when, all of a sudden, I started to cry.

W
hat I remember
best is my mother sitting by my bed in the hospital, holding my hand while doctors and nurses rushed back and forth, attending me. “But why?” she kept saying. “Why did you do such a thing to yourself?” Her face was the color of rain clouds, and there were small speckles of light brown under her eyes. “Why? My darling, why?”

I just turned away, letting the IV drip into me, the painkillers, the sleeping pills.

“Why?” I heard her say as I drifted into a beautiful, painless sleep.

Several hours later, when I woke up, the only thing I heard was the beeping of a machine by my side. There were green curtains pulled partly around my bed. Mom was sitting in the corner. Daddo was pacing.

“How do you feel?” he said.

“Tired.”

“They gave you something to help you sleep,” he said, taking my bandaged palm very gently in his hands. He smelled like he always smelled: like antiseptic soap and mint tea. “Does it hurt?”

“Not much,” I said.

“Good,” he said, kissing me on my nose, like he had when I was a little girl. I closed my eyes.

When I opened them, he was gone. “He’s taking a walk,” Meryl said. Then: “What happened? For God’s sake, Becka, tell me. Did something happen in Paris? Was it that blog?”

“You know about the blog?”

“Everyone knows about the blog. Those girls who did it — well, they’ve pretty much owned up. I’m fond of Judy Gandler — and I like Ann’s mother, too. We used to carpool together! But don’t worry. Your father and I will see to it that the girls will be severely punished.”

For some reason, even from within the sawdust that my brain had become, I felt nothing but fury — but not at either Um or Ann. Instead, it was my mother I was angry at. So angry that I wanted to do to her what I’d done to Danny’s drums. Except I couldn’t. I felt so tired and so weak, my limbs heavy, like when once, a couple of years earlier, I’d fainted during field hockey practice. Suddenly I remembered another time I’d been sick — I think it was with bronchitis. I’d been little then, and in the middle of the night Meryl had carried me from my bed to the bathroom, where she’d rocked me on her lap as she blasted the shower to make steam.

“No,” I said.

“What do you mean, ‘no’?”

“I mean, that blog didn’t have anything to do with it.”

“What?” She was weeping now, not even bothering to wipe the tears away. “If it didn’t have anything to do with that blog . . . I just don’t understand.”

But I did. There was no other place to go, no one to turn to but Meryl herself. I looked at the lowered ceiling, how the panels looked like they might fall in.

“Why did you try to kill yourself?”

“I didn’t.”

“Are you sure?”

I nodded, but even that hurt. Even if I hadn’t bled to death, I was choking on my own anger. She didn’t understand anything! Suicide? Me? But as usual, she had to stamp my behavior with a label that she’d gotten out of a book.

“Who, or what, made you do this to yourself?”

I took a deep breath. “You did,” I said.

Then I fell asleep.

Even after they let me go home, the only thing I wanted to do was nap. My stitches itched, everyone at school was sure to be talking about me, and just about no one — other than Aunt Libby, that is — called. Danny wouldn’t come near me, even at dinner, and when we passed in the hall, he made a little darting semicircle around me to make sure that there was space between us. Nor did it help when my parents announced that they were going to have to punish me for busting up Danny’s drum set. They just hadn’t yet figured out what the punishment would be.

“You’re kidding, right?” I said.

“Sorry, kid,” Daddo said.

“Dad’s right,” Meryl said.

“What are you going to do to me?” I said.

“We’ll let you know,” Daddo said.

“Oh, great.”

Meryl kept apologizing all over the place for not being what she called “there” for me and, true to her Merylness, suggested that the two of us go into mother-daughter therapy,
together
, a suggestion that was so ridiculous I wanted to scream. She felt so bad that she was getting on my nerves, because somehow, and once again, she’d turned my misery into something that belonged to
her
.

It was when she once again started up with the cherry soda routine that I knocked that stupid glass out of her hand and screamed: “Can you stop already?”

“What do you mean?” she gasped.

“It’s not about you, Meryl. It’s about me.”

“I know it is, darling — and I’m trying to help — to understand. . . .”

“But that’s just it,” I wailed. “I hate cherry soda!”

“You do?”

“That’s what I mean. You’re so caught up with you, you, you all the time — with your being my mother, the world’s great expert on being a mother — that you don’t even see what you’ve done!”

“I’m not following. I don’t understand —”

“Your
books
!” The words came in jagged lumps out of my throat. “Your books — they’re all about me! Your stupid cherry soda for the teenage soul. You’ve made a career writing about
me
! But it’s not about me, is it? It’s about you — you and your career. You and your being a better mother than everyone else. Only guess what, Mom? You’re not a better mother. You’re a terrible mother!”

She gasped like I’d punched her in the stomach. But I didn’t care.

“Every kid in school knows it’s me in your books. You even go on the radio to talk about me. It’s like the only reason you had me was so you could be famous.” My words came out with spit now.

“Famous? I’m not famous.”

“But you want to be. So you’ve turned me into a subject. A character! And what you’re doing — it’s like, it’s like you’re
poisoning
me. I’m
real
— and you’re supposed to be my mother, not someone who sneaks into my business and then uses me to get published!”

“But I’ve always shielded you — and guided you — and protected your privacy.”

“You’re kidding, right? Because guess what? You don’t protect me. You expose me. And then you humiliate me. And then you pretend that you care.”

Which was when I saw it happen: Right before me, she wilted. Wilted like a balloon animal and, her shoulders shaking, she walked out of the room and down the stairs.

A few days later, when I had to go back to school again, everyone acted like nothing had happened, either ignoring me completely or being superfriendly, like I was their best friend. I knew that everyone thought I’d tried to commit suicide, but I was too tired to go around setting the record straight. I was in no mood — for anything. All I wanted to do was get through my classes, do my homework, and read. Thank God I liked my room, is all I can say, because I spent most of my time there.

The last person I wanted to see was Um. But about a month after I got my stitches out, there she was, on the doorstep, with a small wrapped box that she handed to me, her face as red as her hair as she said, “I’m really sorry, Becka. I really am.”

My first impulse was to slam the door on her face, but for some reason, something about the way she looked — like a dandelion that had been stepped on — made me feel sorry for her.

“Thanks,” I forced myself to say.

“I really am sorry,” she said. “About the blog. And about your — your accident.”

She looked so miserable that, instead of slamming the door on her face like I felt like, I took a deep breath and said: “Why did you do it?”

She shrugged. “It’s kind of a long story.” Then, amazingly, the girl began to cry. And when I say cry, I mean sob, as in a gusher.

“I’m just really sorry!” she said again, her face and eyes turning as red as her curly hair.

“Okay, I get it!” I said. “Just, just . . .” I couldn’t think of what to say. “Just stop crying. It wasn’t your fault, okay? It really wasn’t.”

She looked at me the way she’d looked at me on that hot day last summer when I’d first met her: like I had two heads.

“I’m not an idiot,” she announced.

“I know you’re not,” I said.

“Whatever.” She looked away, and then she turned and trotted across the lawn.

“Did your mother make you give this to me?” I yelled in her direction, but she’d already reached her side of the street, and must not have heard me. I tried again: “Justine!” For half a second, she turned — but only slightly. Then she was inside.

That’s when I noticed that there was a for sale sign in front of her house.

They were moving again? No wonder the girl was a wreck. I’d kill myself if I had to move halfway through high school.

And not only that, but as I sat there with the box in my hand, I realized something that I’d kind of known all along: that blog about me was, in its own mean way, good, especially the pictures. Plus, it was a great idea. It was such a great idea that I should have thought of it myself. Of course, it would never go up again, not after everything that had happened.

Oh well
, I thought as I went back up the stairs to my room. Nothing would change. I’d somehow get through the year, and then, if I was lucky, I’d find something not too boring to do over the summer, and then, eventually, I’d go to college, and maybe even have a boyfriend, and leave all the awfulness of the year behind me. After all, after the way I’d acted, who would want to be friends with me again? I didn’t even blame them. Even
I
wouldn’t hang out with me if I didn’t have to. And as for my mother, she’d never really understand at all — not what she’d done to me or what I’d done to myself. My only hope was that, somehow or another, I’d grow up and be able to leave my old self far, far behind.

But just as I was thinking these thoughts and picturing the next two years sitting alone in the cafeteria and having kids avoid me in the halls, my cell phone starting ringing, and glancing down, I saw that it was Robin. I hadn’t spoken to her in ages and didn’t know why she was calling me now. She let me know soon enough, though. “I didn’t have anything to do with that blog,” she immediately said.

“I know.”

“But you said I knew something about it. But I didn’t.”

“Sorry. I was angry that day. And anyway, I know it didn’t have anything to do with you. Um just came over to say she was sorry, all right? She admitted everything. So don’t worry about it.” My voice was shaking when I talked, but I got it out anyway. Then I said it again: “Don’t worry about it. Really. I know you had nothing to do with it.”

There was a long pause, and then: “Justine came over?”

“
Justine?
”

“That’s her name.”

I swallowed hard. What had made me think it was cute to call the girl
Um
? “She handed me a box,” I said.

“What’s in it?”

“I don’t know.”

“Why don’t you open it?”

“You think I should?” I said. “What if it’s a stink bomb? Or a dead rat or something?”

“What?”

“I don’t even blame that girl for hating me,” I said.