The Secret Side of Empty (28 page)

I
t feels like we’re wading through soup, an angry bruise of a sky swirling above us as we walk home from the bus stop to the apartment. Jose, who rarely whines, is whining. I am holding my brand-new Argentinian passport in the back pocket of my jean shorts. My mom had insisted that we go into the city to the Argentinian consulate to get a passport of my own, separate from hers. I think it’s dumb, but I went along. Even though it’s not from the country I want it to be, I’m happy to have my first grown-up document. Add it to my high school diploma, and I guess I’m officially an adult.

When we walk into the apartment, the atmosphere is even thicker inside. My father is sitting in the living room in a robe, staring off into space. As we step through the door, he says, “Where the hell have you been?” His mood is as dark as I’ve ever seen it. He is not used to my mother going anywhere without telling him first.

“Oh, hello, Jorge. I thought you were at work,” says my mom, and it’s more than a little bit of an accusation.

“I said. Where. Have. You. Been?”

“We went to get Monse her own passport.”

“Well, isn’t that special. Your very own passport, huh? And now you’re a big high school graduate, too. I guess you must think you’re something,” he says.

I look away. And wait for it.

“I asked you a question!”

“No.”

“No? You don’t think you’re better than me?”

“No.”

“I think yes, you do. I see it in your snotty attitude.
Look at me when I talk to you
!”

I look at him. I know there is no way out of this without a beating. I know the signs well—the twitch of his eyebrow, the menacing way he’s trying to look bigger. I can almost feel his mood, hot like the stagnant air around us. It breathes like pure frustration and hatred.

I just want to avoid another beating.
Not another one
. I am done, so sick of trying so hard to get the formula that makes it stop, but never finding it. Not silence. Not defiance. Not truth. Not lies. Nothing makes the hitting stop when he decides he’s going to hit.

I get up and go to my room. I put the passport on top of a stack of books. I will take it to Chelsea’s house tomorrow. It will be safer there.

He screams, “Get over here.”

I go back into the living room.

“Where is your passport?” he asks. His face is contorted.

“Why?” I ask.

“Why?
Why
? Because I asked, is why! You will go in your room, and you will hand that passport to me right now.”

“No.” I don’t know where that comes from.

He looks like I just shocked him with a taser or something. Little fish mouth. For a second it’s almost comical.

“What did you say?”

“No.” I don’t even care about the passport. I care about making a stand. Somehow I just know that today, here, is it.

He gets ice cold, logical, like he’s about to explain a math concept. “This is how it’s going to go. You’re going to go in your room and get me your passport. You’re going to hand it to me. And if you don’t. I’m. Going. To. Kill. You.” Then he turns calmly to my mother. “And if you try to stop me, I’m going to kill you first. With my bare hands.”

Quietly, his back and his little hands touching the wall, Jose starts to cry.

My mother grabs my hand. “Monse, please, just go get your passport. It will be fine; just don’t argue.”

I walk into my room. I’ve given up more before. The passport doesn’t matter. I close my eyes and say this to myself a couple of times. I walk over to the passport. I hold it in my hands and stare at it.

It doesn’t matter. But even as I tell that to myself, I don’t believe it. It’s a strange little hill to hold, this passport. But maybe this passport is the only thing I have that says I’m me. The truth of me, that I am here.

I won’t turn it over.

I open it, and start to tear sheets out of it. I remember the woman at the consulate saying not to let any pages get torn out of it, because that makes it invalid. I know he is stronger, and he will get the passport. But he won’t get it in any usable form.

My mother walks into my room and stands in the doorway. I look up at her as I tear out another sheet. She strangles a sob. “Oh my God, Monse.”

The sound alerts him. He comes into my room and pushes her out of the way. His eyes land on my passport, jagged pages jutting out of it.

“Are you crazy?” he screams. “
Are you crazy
?”

“You wanted the passport. You’ve got the passport.” I hold it out to him.

He smacks it out of my hand. The pages flutter to the floor. The swing of his arm rips the model airplane clean off its plastic wire. I hear it clatter to the floor. A wing smashes off. He’s got a crazier look in his eyes than usual. He grabs a fistful of my hair. He starts to hit me in the back of the head. His fist hurts worse than anything I’ve ever felt before, like a rock pounding into the hardness of my head with the skin of my scalp caught in between, getting pummeled. I don’t think he’s ever hit me closed-fist like this.

I’m not going to stand here and take it this time. I have to hit back. I swat at him, but he’s got at least half a foot of reach on me. From the angle he’s holding my hair, I can’t even twist around to hit back. He is hitting me hard. My mother is screaming. Jose yells, “Stop! Stop!” My father shifts his weight, knocks the lamp over. I feel things in my head rattling from his punches. It hurts, bones that aren’t supposed to move feeling like they’re scraping out of the way, little explosions in my head. It hurts.

But suddenly, it doesn’t.

It is the freakiest thing, but now I can’t feel it at all. I am numb, weirdly happy, at peace. The quiet sounds like you feel when you put your ears underwater. I float up to the ceiling, looking down on the whole scene. I see my room, my futon half open, the lamp knocked over where my father kicked it down. I see the passport pages scattered on the floor. I see Jose’s
SpongeBob
pillow on his bed. I see the stack of papers, scattered, the books all over the place. They don’t matter. Nothing matters. It is so peaceful here, by the ceiling. It is heavenly quiet. I watch a man punching a girl, her body doubled over while he punches. I have love for her, but I am free of her. I am free.

And then the moment is over. My mother gives him a shove, and I’m not sure how, but she knocks him off me. I screech back into my body. All the sound comes back, and it’s ugly—screams, cries, grunts. My brother is hysterical.

But there is something else, a juice that runs through me. I am alive. It feels amazing.

I run.

I go down to the first floor, to the Cheese Lady. I pound on her door. She opens. I fall inside, slam her door behind me.

“What’s the matter?” she asks.

“I need your phone.”

“What happened?”

“I just . . . I need to call the police.”

I wait for the cops outside. They’re here in a couple of minutes. Nothing much happens in Willow Falls, so it doesn’t take them long. The back of my head throbs. I reach in my hair and pull out big handfuls where he held it.

The cop walks up. He is enormously tall, with an upturned nose and icy blue eyes. He has hands the size of dinner plates. He is wearing scary storm-trooper pants. He only has about a quarter inch of hair buzz cut all over his head. In the friend-or-foe continuum, he definitely looks closer to foe.

“What’s the situation?” he asks.

I take a deep breath. “I just . . . my father was hitting me and I just needed help.” He gets some details from me—my name, address, my father’s name—and writes them all down. His badge and his uniform still look dangerous to me, like the enemy who could undo me. But I push that aside and try to find the real enemy in my mind. I calm down and tell him what happened.

“Did you want to press charges?” he asks.

“No, I just want you to go upstairs with me and stand with me while I get a few of my things.”

“And then? You have somewhere to go then?”

“Yes.”

The policeman goes upstairs with me. My father is like a whole other person, back to that sinister calm self. “If you’re going to arrest me, would you give me a moment to put on some clothes?” he says.

“One thing at a time now. Right now I’m just getting some information for a report. And the girl just wants to get a few things.”

“You can’t take her out of here. She is a child and she’s under my control.”

“Well, sir, according to her date of birth, it seems she just turned eighteen. Is that right?”

“Yes.”

“That makes her an adult.”

“In my country, the legal age of adulthood is twenty-one.”

“I’m not sure how things are in your country, but in the United States she’s an adult at eighteen and she can go wherever she wants.”

I look around my room for things to put in my backpack. This time I know I’m really never coming back. But it feels good. I stuff in all the clothes I can fit. A few pictures. Nothing else matters. Everything else can be replaced.

Jose, big booger trails running out of his nose, walks over to his bed and hands me the
SpongeBob
pillow. He is in full post-sob hiccup mode. I feel like I should argue for him to keep it. But I really kind of want it. I kiss him on top of his head, tuck the pillow under my arm, look up at the beanpole cop. “I’m ready.”

I give him Chelsea’s address. Somehow he knows where it is.

“Hey, kiddo, you okay?”

“Yeah.”

“You need to go to the hospital or something?”

“No.”

“I’ve got two daughters, and I have to tell you, I don’t understand how people can hurt children.”

I smile at him. I try to imagine him out of uniform, at his daughters’ sports games, a cheering father, not a potential threat with a nightstick and a gun and the phone number to the immigration authorities. He’s huge, filling up the cop car, his head almost touching the roof of it. But his blue eyes aren’t icy. They crinkle up around the edges, giving him an almost sweet air. His smile is very kind.

“I don’t understand either,” I say.

“But you know, you go out there and live a good life and don’t worry about all that.”

“I will.”

“You call us if you need anything else, or a copy of the police report. Anything. You stay safe now.”

“Thank you.” He is nothing like what I thought he would be. He waits for the door to open before waving and driving away.

Chelsea’s mother is the one who opens the door.

“M.T., are you okay?”

“I’m kind of not okay. Can I sleep over?”

“Of course.”

“I mean . . . can I stay for more than just a night or two? Until I can find a place?”

“Tell me what happened.”

And so, I do.

I
T
FEELS
LIKE
A
NIGHT
OF
ENDINGS
. W
ITH
C
HELSEA
SLEEPING
next to me, I fire up the laptop. I write a message to Nate:

“Hey, I just wanted to write and say thanks and sorry. Thanks for being a great boyfriend. Sorry for all the times I freaked out or seemed distant. One day I hope we can sit together and I’ll be able to tell you the reasons why. I hope you’re doing great.”

I close my eyes and imagine where he might be in a few months. On campus somewhere, his freckles darker from his time on the boat, his room messy but not disastrous. I wonder if he wears the golf shirt I bought him, or if the gag copy of
Hamlet
I gave him still sits in his room at home. I let the smell of him wash over me, the
I love you
Post-its, the snuggling in his family room. It makes me a little sad, but mostly it makes me grateful. He came along and changed me, made me a better me. And maybe that’s a pretty good reason for someone to be in your life, even if just for a little while.

S
ince I’m usually at the park first, I sit on the back of a bench to wait. Always the same one. As soon as Jose sees me, he starts a full-on run and jumps up on the bench and onto me with such force that I’m afraid he’s going to knock me down backward. My mom walks at the same pace the whole way, except when she’s about ten steps away from the bench. Then she speeds up. We do double cheek kisses hello. I like that better than hugging.

We walk over to the playground slowly. Jose runs ahead of us, his pants looking a little like flood pants because he’s grown two inches since the summer and his hair is long. I smell the brown acorn air—the crunchy leaves air—and know it is going to turn cold soon.

“You still have my
SpongeBob
pillow?” Jose asks every week.

“Yep, I sleep with it every night.” Which sounds like a lie, except it’s true.

“How are you?” asks my mother.

“I’m good. How about you guys?”

“We’re fine.”

I have decided that this is the week I’m going to tell her.

“I got into a college,” I say.