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Authors: Cynthia D. Grant

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BOOK: The White Horse
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What was wrong with her? She was trying to stay focused, but sitting like this made her butt hurt. Forget about your butt. There's nothing wrong with your butt. That losing thirty pounds wouldn't cure. See what you're doing? That negative thinking? You're not managing your stress; it's managing you. What she really needed was a twelve-step group for people addicted to self-help books. She could retire on what she'd already spent.

Empty your mind of confusion and doubt. Embrace your thoughts, then let them go. There is only this moment. And all those papers on the table. All those misspelled words, incomplete sentences, double negatives. She don't know nothing. She hadn't heard from Raina. The kids said she was back with her mom.

How on earth could Raina have been so stupid? If she didn't stay in school she was doomed. Can't she see she's repeating the pattern: alcohol and drugs, and babies too soon, so the whole damn thing goes on and on?

It made her want to scream.

But I feel so calm. Serenity is spreading through my body. There's nothing I can do. She doesn't want my help. Sometimes childhood is such a deep wound, the resulting adult is merely scar tissue. Gee, that's deep. You can't write her off like that. She's just a kid. Her eyes look dead. But there's a baby growing in her belly.

Why wasn't it ever my turn? It isn't fair! All those visits to the doctor, all those stupid tests. Thinking: This is it! Then the spots of blood. Oh, dear God, no. Don't let this happen … I don't want her baby. It's probably messed up. Now you're writing off a helpless infant! You used to think love answered every question. But life's too big, and I'm too small. Except for my butt. What time is it? I should call Mom back, but she'll say, Where were you? and I'll say, On the floor, and she'll say, Doing what? Meditating, I'll say. Then she'll say—why call her? I can have the conversation by myself.

A mantra might help. I feel so peaceful. These jeans are so tight I can barely breathe. Teacher found dead. Foul play ruled out. Official cause of death: her pants.

Will you knock it off? No one cares about your body. Boo hoo, poor me. Don't even start. I should go to the gym, take a yoga class. A frozen yogurt class. Will you give yourself a break? It's not like you have to wear a
WIDE LOAD
sign. You bought that stupid membership, you might as well use it. Exercise more. That's good for stress. You don't need to starve, just cut back on the junk food. I wonder if Raina is eating.

Forget about Raina. Forget about her baby. You are deeply relaxed, so completely at peace that there is only this moment. And all that ice cream in the freezer. You shouldn't buy that stuff. Shouldn't keep it in the house. Just bring a spoon and eat it in the store.

Enough. Empty your mind. Let thoughts flow through you like a river running toward the sea. But how could she go back to her mother? She jumps into the flames, trying to warm herself, and freezes to death, again and again.

Does anybody really care? Does the Superintendent think school is important for these kids, or does he view it as a holding tank, jail with grades? At least while they're in class they're not stealing his hubcaps. Doesn't he realize—I am so wise. It's a wonder the world isn't breaking down my door. Margaret Johnson: Sees all, knows all. Ask me anything. And pass the Cheetos.

Shut up and be serene. Let thoughts flow through you like a nose running to the sea. Ricky's out sick. Or so the story goes. It doesn't do any good to call his parents. Half the time no one answers and when they do, it's like, Ricky who? Oh, yeah, our son. He went to school. No, he didn't. Are you sure? Positive; his chair is empty. Well, I don't know, he's around here someplace.…

If I'd had a child—but you didn't. You didn't. The problem is, you can't accept it. You're either looking back, or ahead, with dread, so you're never in the present. It escapes your attention.

Which may have something to do with my inability to focus. On my nose or anything else.

It's time to move ahead, to get on with my life, not keep waiting for everything to fall into place. Mr. Right gallops up on his white horse.
YOU'RE LATE!
Oh, he says, the traffic was crazy.…

When I was in college my roommates and I loved to talk about the lives we would have someday: our award-winning careers, the guys we would marry, the children we planned on, a girl and a boy, as if delivery were guaranteed.

They say God always answers prayers. Why did He say no to me?

Compared to most of the people in the world, my life is a piece of cake. A great big slab. With ice cream, please. Whining when I come home from the grocery store because there's too much food to fit in the cupboards. If only there were more cupboards! Then I'd be happy!

We're talking tragedy, folks. Major inconvenience.

I've got so much to be thankful for: family and friends, good health, enough money, a car that usually runs, a home.

And a job that is driving me insane.

Forget about the job. Focus only on this moment, on the air flowing into and out of your nose, like a river flowing to the sea. Inhabit the eternal, the living present. Embrace infinity.

And tomorrow don't forget to ask Janessa if it's true she's engaged to that pimp she's been seeing.

Chapter Eighteen

Her mother was going to blow, she could feel it.

She hadn't taken off her coat since she'd come home from work. She sat at the kitchen table, smoking, while Don explained why it was such a rip-off that he'd been turned down for disability.

“You'd think with this back, and the whiplash too—”

A minor fender bender. He was planning to sue. He went on and on about the money they'd get, while her mother's eyes grew colder and harder.

Raina was sitting on the couch, watching TV with Brandy and Lyn, while Jimmy ate a big bag of chips.

“He won't want supper if he eats all that.”

“He's all right,” Lyn said.

“He's getting fat.”

“Two-year-olds are supposed to be chubby. You don't know nothing about kids. Mind your business.”

She didn't want to share a place with Lyn. She'd asked Granny if she could move in with her, but Granny said no. “I'd love to, honey, but this place is for senior citizens.”

Lyn would have to do her share of the work. She wasn't gonna be no baby-sitter so Lyn could take off with her idiot boyfriend who hung around all the time when he wasn't selling crank. Lyn kept hoping she could live with him. So far he hadn't asked.

The baby tumbled around inside her. Calm down, baby. Did it know her voice? They'd said so, in that class she'd took. She'd missed the one about breathing and labor. Lyn said forget the breathing stuff; once the baby started coming you got through it any way you could.

“I thought I was gonna die,” she'd said proudly. “You can't believe how much it hurts.”

She'd told Raina about this girl she knew, or maybe she'd seen her on TV, who was pregnant and went into the bathroom to pee and the baby's hand was sticking out.

She tried not to spend much time at the apartment. She dropped by the Laundromat to visit Bert and sometimes she went to the library. It was too noisy to read at home.

Things would be different once she got her own place. But how was that going to work? She didn't have any furniture, not a thing for the baby. Her mother said she'd help. She'd help Lyn, anyway. She might like Raina better when the baby was born. A sweet little baby. Unless she'd messed it up. At least she wasn't worried about AIDS anymore. Her fingers shook so bad when she'd made the call, she could hardly punch in the numbers. Then cried with relief. Her mother had caught her, said: It's always a big drama with you.

She was trying to be good. Had only messed up once when she went to Kimmy's and Pam showed up with her kids. Queen of the junkies. Arms and legs like sticks. Even Kimmy thought the kids should be taken away. Pam got on the phone and called her mother for money, pinching the baby to make him cry. Hearing him, she said, made her mom feel guilty. The other little boy wouldn't say nothing to no one. He stood around with his jacket on backwards, the hood hiding his face.

Raina felt so bad, she'd had a cigarette. Then a beer. What difference would one make? Then some people came over with a bunch of wine, and the next thing she knew she didn't know nothing and the baby was floating in dreams.

Sometimes she wished she could unzip her skin and step out of it and run away.

Why had she come home? She'd been so stupid. Her mother didn't love her. That would never change. She pictured herself trying to explain it to the teacher: See, my family doesn't believe in giving a baby away to strangers. We'd rather keep it and mess it up ourselves.

“That's bullshit,” her mother was saying.

“I'm just telling you how it went,” Don said. “I told them I couldn't work, with this back. And now this thing with my neck. They don't listen.”

Her mother went to the fridge and popped open a beer.

“Where's dinner?” she said.

“Wasn't nothing to cook.”

“You're supposed to get food stamps.”

“I'm gonna, pretty soon. But the caseworker said—”

“Don't you know you can't take no for an answer? Those people don't give a damn about you.”

“There's leftover macaroni and cheese.”

“And that's supposed to feed five people? Here I am, working my butt off all day while everybody else just sits around.”

“They wouldn't give me nothing,” Don said. “Not a dime.”

“So where'd you get those cigarettes?”

“Buddy of mine. He loaned me some money.”

“You don't got any friends.”

“You calling me a liar?”

“You better change Jimmy,” Raina told Lyn.

“Soon as this show's over.”

“Come on, he stinks.”

“Change him yourself, if it's such a big deal.”

Raina scooped up Jimmy and took him into the bedroom. She laid him on the bed and wiped him clean. He wriggled with delight when she sang to him and looked into his eyes. Lyn's mind was always wandering to the TV set. The other day he wouldn't stop fussing and Lyn had spanked him and pushed him away. Raina figured out the label on his shirt was scratching and he didn't have a way to say it. She tore it off and he was fine, smiling at her, his baby teeth shining.

Little boy, she thought, you don't stand a chance.

Her mother was waiting when she came out of the bedroom.

“So what're we supposed to do about dinner?”

“I don't know,” she said. “I can go to the store.”

“You shoulda thought of that before.”

“I didn't have any money.”

“So I suppose I'll have to pay for it.”

“Yeah. Unless your boyfriend's got a secret stash.”

“Leave him out of it.”

“Gladly,” Raina snapped. “I'm sick of him coming in the bathroom when I'm in there.”

“Try locking the door.”

“Try kicking him out.”

“I don't know what she's talking about,” Don said.

“Ask Lyn. She knows.”

“It's no big deal,” Lyn said.

“Yes it is. You're just too dumb to know it. You want your kid around a guy like that?”

“She's lost it,” Don said.

“You better shut your mouth,” her mother said. To her. “If I kick you out, you got nowhere to go.”

She saw the whole thing then, as if it were a movie she'd seen so many times, she knew what would happen next. Like standing in the road, in a dream, in a movie, watching a speeding car coming at you. But you can't move your feet; can't get out of the way. And you have these lines you have to say.

“The only reason you want me around is for Lyn. So she can use my money to get a good place. Or you'll get stuck with her and Jimmy.”

Her mother's face got so mad and scary, Don looked like he wanted to hide under the couch, and Lyn and Brandy sat frozen, while the TV blared. But Raina saw the joy in her mother's eyes; the sweet relief of rage.

She had always been her mother's favorite; the child she most loved to hate.

“I shoulda never asked you to come back,” her mother said. “I shoulda known you'd act like this.”

“You're the one who's acting. You don't feel nothing. Not even for your own kids.”

“You're crazy.”

“It's like you're in some dream and you can't wake up.”

“You are one ungrateful bitch.”

“I'll tell you something else: A mother shouldn't talk to her children like that.”

“Not unless they're assholes.”

Her mother's eyes glittered, always the sign that the fuse had been lit. The other kids would hide while the one she hit cried. Unless it was her. The tears came later; in bed, wanting to die, thinking: God, please take me. Then she'd wake up the next day and it would start again.

But she wasn't a little child anymore.

“You don't know how to love us,” Raina said. “I guess you would if you could. If you were in the mood.”

“You stupid little shit. You moron. You slut. You think you're better than me because you go to school? You're nothing. Knocked up with some junkie's kid. Probably fucked it all up when you were using.”

“Look who's talking.”

“As of this moment you're out on the street. With all the other losers. That shouldn't be too hard.”

“Not with a mother like you.”

There was a flicker in her mother's eyes. A wound. Then they flared in an ecstasy of hate.

“I didn't want to have you. Tried not to. Didn't work.”

“Good thing, or I wouldna been around for you to beat on, and watch the other kids when you passed out.”

“Fucking liar.”

“Seven years old. Why'd you leave me in charge? Were you so stupid or did you just not care? Yeah, I know you had a terrible childhood. Me too.”

BOOK: The White Horse
2.35Mb size Format: txt, pdf, ePub
ads

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