The Exact Location of Home (10 page)

Mom is on the phone when I get home. Her face is red.

“Beck, I don't know. I don't
know
.” She must be talking to Aunt Becka, which is weird. Even though they only live a few blocks away, she and Mom don't talk much.

Mom sighs hard. “Well, no. I mean, I'm not sure. This all just happened. The letter says we have until the seventh, but I just want to take care of this now and find a new—” She stops mid-sentence when she sees me.

“Hey, Mom.” She doesn't say hi. She just looks and me and then I guess remembers she has the phone in her hand.

“Sorry. Yeah, he just got home,” she says into the phone. “No. He doesn't.” Another sigh. “Well, now. Obviously. I don't have much choice, do I?” Long pause. Quieter sigh. “I know…. I know. Sorry. And thanks. We'll see you tomorrow night.”

Mom puts the phone back on the hook but doesn't turn around. She tips her head up and looks at the ceiling like she left something up there. I look up, too, but all I see are cobwebs in the corner, a little smoky looking. Probably from the day I burned the pizza.

Mom finally turns to the cupboard, gets two glasses, and clinks them full of ice cubes. She fills them with water and slides one across the table. “Sit down, okay?”

I sit. I drink my water, even though I'm not thirsty, and I wait.

“We're going to be staying with Aunt Becka for a while,” Mom says. She takes a drink of her water. That's all she says.

Usually if you wait and look at someone long enough, they'll talk. They'll say something—anything—just to get you to quit being so quiet and looking at them. Mom doesn't.

“But we don't like Aunt Becka,” I say finally. That totally comes out wrong. And even though Aunt Becka drives Mom crazy, she'd never admit that.

“Aunt Becka is doing us a huge favor and letting us crash in her guest room for now. We're going to look for a new apartment.”

“When?”

“We're moving tomorrow.”

“Tomorrow! We can't move tomorrow.”

“It's what we're doing, Kirb.” She takes my almost-full water glass and dumps the rest in the sink. The ice sounds like glass breaking on metal. Like my life smashing into pieces here at the kitchen table. Mom's overreacting.

I decide to tell her I know. “I found the letter from Mrs. Delfino's son. That guy's a jerk, but he can't just throw us out because you missed a month of rent. He has to—”

“Three months. It's three months now.” She shoves the glass into the dishwasher. This time, the sound of glass breaking is real.

Mom swears and reaches in for the broken glass, then pulls her hand back fast, like something bit her. Drops of blood drip onto the dirty knives and forks.

“Mom.” I jump up, rip off two paper towels, and hand them to her. “Here.”

Her eyes are wet, but she's holding her breath, trying not to cry.

“Mom, listen. He can't just write a letter saying he wants the rent or we have to leave tomorrow. There's got to be a whole process or something he has to go through. Don't people have to go to court or something to throw you out of your apartment?”

“He did that a month ago.” Mom picks up a manila folder from the table and waves it at me. “He'd been advising his mother on her finances and saw that rent wasn't being paid on time. Marietta was wonderful about it. She so wanted me to get this nursing degree. But he filed the papers for her anyway.”

I reach for the folder. At first, she shakes her head. Then she half laughs, half sighs and hands it to me.

I skim the papers inside. Most of it's legal stuff I don't understand. My eyes stop on the line that gives us a deadline.

Thirty days.

Thirty days from the date of the court document.

And there it is on the top of the paper. September 3rd. Two days after last month's rent didn't show up.

“So we have until Saturday? That's it?” The folder shakes in my hand. I look around the kitchen. At the gauzy yellow curtains Mom brought from the old apartment where she and Dad lived when they first got married. At my last science test taped to the loud old refrigerator. At the clay handprint on the windowsill. The one I made for Mother's Day in second grade. I can't believe she kept it there so long. I look at the blue glass vase I got Mom at a yard sale last summer. She loves the way the sun shines through it and makes blue shapes on the table. It's full of little purple flowers—the only ones still blooming in her garden out front.

Her garden that won't be her garden for much longer.

“We have until Saturday, but I'm working double shifts at the end of the week. We're moving our stuff tomorrow.” She picks up her purse and starts rummaging in it.

“Mom, I can't—I have a social studies test tomorrow. And a science chapter to read. And I've got math and—”

She whirls around with her truck keys in her hand. “Has it occurred to you that this might be inconvenient for me, too? I can't have you acting like a six-year-old right now. I can't. Go do your homework. I'm going to the liquor store to get boxes.”

She lets the screen door slam behind her. She hates it when the screen door slams. But maybe since we won't be living here any more, it doesn't matter.

I walk to the door and watch her get in the white pickup truck Dad left with us. The driver's door doesn't open right anymore, so Mom has to get in the passenger side and slide over on the seat. I press my forehead against the cool glass, watch her put the keys in the ignition, wait for the truck to back out of the driveway.

It doesn't.

Mom just sits there, her arms folded in front of her over the steering wheel, her head down, her shoulders shaking.

After a while—maybe five or ten minutes—the truck backs out of the driveway. Slow. Like the way you'd pull a sliver out of your hand little by little so it won't hurt.

And then it does anyway.

It's another crummy day.

Crummy because Kevin Richards shoves me into my locker again and is then too smart to hang around and make himself late for gym. Crummy because Gianna's not at lunch. Crummy because I don't think I'd want to see her even if she wasn't busy making posters with Ruby. Crummy because I wanted to go home and try fixing the stupid toaster again, but instead, I'm here at the clinic after school for rabies shot number two.

“Kirby?” A nurse dressed all in pink calls me in for my shot. She's bright and chirpy and irritating to death.

“Well, we're not in a very chipper mood today, are we?” She says and clucks her tongue on her top teeth. “But I guess if we're getting poked in the arm, that's understandable.

She wipes my arm with rubbing alcohol and gives me the shot. “There. You stay out of the bat cave now.”

It's a double-crummy day when I get home.

Packing up all your stuff—everything you own in the world—and cramming it into seven Absolut Vodka boxes has a way of making you feel pretty insignificant.

The planetarium does that, too. When you're at a show and they zoom out from earth to the solar system and then the galaxy and then the whole universe and earth is so small it's not even a speck any more. But that makes you feel small in a good, awestruck sort of way.

Packing your stuff in the vodka boxes—some of them have ants crawling on them from sitting on the sidewalk outside Bell's Liquor—is completely different.

 

“Take your shoes off!” Aunt Becka stands at the top of the white-carpeted stairs that lead up to her gourmet kitchen and scowls down at my sneakers. My arms are full of books in a vodka box, so I try stepping on one heel with the other foot. I lose my balance, spill half the box of books onto the slate floor, and fall against the wall.

“Careful of the art!”

I'm at least three feet away from the picture, a painting of a sour-pussed lady staring out a window. She looks about as happy to be here as I am.

I take off my shoes and start picking up books.

“Really, Laurie. You said he'd be no trouble.”

Mom sets down a box of nursing books and wipes hair from her eyes with her sleeve. “He is no trouble, Beck. Kirby's a good kid.”

Aunt Becka wheels around, goes to the kitchen, and starts opening cupboards. “Let's see,” she says loud enough for us to hear. “I've had to do extra grocery shopping to take care of feeding
company
for … what … ? Two nights? Three? Four?”

Mom presses her lips together like she's afraid of what will get out if she loosens them up.

Aunt Becka wasn't like this when she and Mom were growing up. She's Mom's older sister, and they were close until Aunt Becka left for college. In January of her sophomore year, she met Richard—he was Professor Kline to her back then—dropped out of school, married him, and moved into his house.

This house. With the white carpet and sourpuss paintings. But without much of Richard now. He gets lots of research fellowships and travels to South America and Africa, which is probably good because when he is around, he's not the nicest guy. I've seen Aunt Becka with bruises on her wrist that look an awful lot like someone's hand wrapped around it—hard. I heard Mom try to talk to her about it when she and Aunt Becka had to work together to clean out Grandpa's house after he died three years ago. That was a rough year for Mom—the same year Dad left—but she still really wanted to help. Aunt Becka told her to mind her own business because obviously she didn't know anything about marriage.

“Take that downstairs, okay?” Mom nudges me with her knee, and I realize I'm holding her up, blocking the hallway with my box. I kick open the door to the basement and make it down the stairs without spilling more books.

I make five more trips from the car.

Shoes on. Outside. Shoes off. Downstairs.

Shoes on. Shoes off. Shoes on. Shoes off. Shoes on. Shoes off. Shoes on. Shoes off. All under Aunt Becka's dirt-hating eyes.

“I don't see why we're not in the guest rooms upstairs.” I set down the last box, drop my backpack in a corner, and plop down onto the sofa bed that's pulled out with a set of folded sheets on top of the bare mattress. There's an air mattress next to it on the floor with folded sheets, too.

“Because Richard's coming home from Argentina tomorrow and they may be having other company later in the week. One of Richard's visiting professors. Up.” Mom motions me off the bed so she can make it.

“But it's empty now. Don't you think it's weird they've got this huge house and we're in the basement?”

“Kirby, it's temporary, okay? This is what Becka gave us, and if you haven't noticed, I'm not exactly buried in better offers.” She flicks a sheet out and spreads it over the mattress.

“Because you won't call Dad.”

“That's right.” She tucks in the corners of the sheet. She doesn't look at me.

I stomp over to the corner where I dropped my backpack and slide down the wall until I'm sitting on the floor. I take out the GPS unit and start scrolling through the cache coordinates on there.

Mom holds a pillowcase in one hand and looks around. There aren't any pillows. She sighs and starts putting sheets on the air mattress. She doesn't ask for help. And I don't offer.

I glance at my backpack where science and social studies homework are waiting. There's math, too, but I didn't write it down, and I can't call Gianna or Ruby because I'd have to ask Mom to use her phone.

“I'm going up to see if Becka needs help with dinner.” Mom heads up the stairs.

“I'll be here in the dungeon.” I pull out my social studies book and notebook. We have to read pages forty-five through fifty and answer questions one to five on page fifty-one. They're easy—just copy-what-it-said-in-the-text questions. My brain might actually be able to handle this.

We're studying the civil rights movement. I read five pages about school integration in the fifties and the Little Rock Nine—the nine black kids who enrolled in
Little Rock Central High School and had to stand up to a whole bunch of white parents who didn't want them there. All they wanted was an education so they could make their lives better. I turn to a clean notebook page and look for a pencil to answer the questions.

There are two in the front pocket of my backpack, but one's brand new unsharpened, and the other broke at the end of yesterday's math quiz.

My pencil sharpener's screwed to the wall next to my closet at home.

No. Not home.

It's screwed to the wall at Mrs. Delfino's son's rental property.

I pick at the wood around the broken lead with my finger, trying to get some of it out in the open so I can write.

Little bits of pencil wood fleck onto the white carpet. Finally, a charcoal gray stub sticks out the end.

Question Number 1. Why were the Little Rock Nine prevented from entering their high school even after the integration ruling?

It's an easy question. The answer's probably right back on page forty-five, but it's a pain balancing the textbook and my notebook on my lap, and I can't concentrate and I don't feel like flipping back to check the answer.

Because life's not fair
, I start to write.

The pencil breaks again before I get to the F.

I spend all day Friday avoiding Gianna so I don't have to tell her what happened. I can't. Not after our conversation at lunch.

Gianna wants to go to that dance with me, and I don't want her all-of-a-sudden thinking about me as somebody in trouble. Somebody whose family got thrown out of their apartment. People like that are the ones you see in line with food stamps at the grocery store. They're people you donate used clothes to. People you try to help out when you bring in cans of corn for a food drive or drop money in a Salvation Army kettle at Christmastime. They're not your friends. Not guys you'd want to dance with.