This Raging Light (6 page)

“Mom.”

“Lu.”

“Do you need to go to the hospital?” I kept my voice steady. “For your neck?”

“No, baby. Let's just sleep now. Only a few more hours before I need to go get your dad.” She tucked a piece of Wren's hair behind her ear, wiped away some of the sleep sweat on her forehead. “Let's rest our eyes. There'll be so much to do when we wake up again.”

“Okay,” I said, wanting to ask her questions about what was coming, about what had happened. Was he drunk? On drugs? Would she really let Dad come home after what he did to her, after what he said about us? I already sensed that there would be a before and there would be an after, and that the divide happened when my father put his hands on my mother's neck, or maybe when he said he didn't love her. There is no real recovering from that, is there? Some things can't be unsaid, undone.

“Is Dad going to be okay?” I ventured in a whisper.

“Of course. We're all going to be fine.”

Mom smiled at me then, little creases pinched at the sides of her mouth, and reached her arm across Wren to rest it on my side.

“He's a good man, you know,” she said.

She sounded so desperate for it to be true that I had to turn over. I knew she wasn't smiling because everything was going to be okay. She was smiling because it wasn't, and there was nothing else for her to do.

Wrenny's face has angry couch
imprints on it when I pull her book off of her chest, her cheeks flushed with pink sleep. She throws an arm around my waist, and we count stairs up. She never opens her eyes. She doesn't have to. This is her home, and her feet know the way. She's never lived anywhere else.

“One,” I say.

“Two,” she yawns.

All the way to thirteen. She makes a left.

“Where you going, Wrenny?”

“Mom's room.”

“I think you should sleep in your own room tonight.” I mean, at some point this has to change, right?

She looks at me like I deposited my brain at the bottom of the stairs.

“I don't like it in there.”

“Did you brush your teeth?”

“Yes,” she says, and she looks me up and down. “Before I fell asleep on the couch.”

“Okay,” I say, like that's the reason we're going in Mom's room again, and not because I don't have the energy for arguing.

“You look like a rock star,” she says, grinning now.

Like a trollop,
I think. “Thanks,” I say.

She runs a hand along my arm. “Sticky.”

I do the same to her cheek. “Yeah, you too.”

“And you smell like a burrito.”

“Just keep the compliments coming, cookie.”

“Well, you do. And maybe also a taco.”

She makes straight for Mom's bed, the rumpled sheets left from this morning, all the rushing, no time to make it. She crawls in, watches me as I get undressed and reach for a towel. There's no way I'm getting into bed without a shower. There's a sound not unlike peeling Velcro when I take off the short shorts and tank. I wrap myself in the towel, then hold it open, let myself cool down.

“What are you doing?” Wren asks. “You're naked.”

“I don't know what I'm doing.” I cover myself. “That's a very good question, though,” I mumble. I start to head for the bathroom.

“Are you leaving me?”

I stop in the doorway. There's something in her voice.

“I'm just going to shower,” I say. “I don't want to get in bed smelling like Mexican food.”

“Can I come?”

“Into the bathroom with me?”

“I don't know. I don't want to be by myself.”

But I do.

“I'll sit on the toilet,” she says.

“No, Wren, you stay in here.” Clock says eleven thirty. She's going to be a mess in the morning.

“I could get in with you.”

“Into the shower?”

Nods.

“Stay here. Sleep.”

Her eyes fill. Jaw sets hard.

“You can wait for me in there, I guess.”

I run downstairs and flip on the dishwasher, then take the shortest shower ever, just long enough to get soapy all over and rinse it off. As the hot water trickles over me and I am wishing for the motel water pressure I remember from going to gigs with Dad, I push my face into the tile. I wish I could go right through it, disappear into it, disintegrate and never come back. My shoulders shake, my face tightens, but I do not cry. I only press harder until my nose hurts and I think I might accidentally break it.

When I check on Wren, she's sleeping in steam, her eyes closed again, head against the sink, mouth open.

We are lying in bed together. I curl myself around her. She lays her head on my arm, and I hold her so tight.

I'm not sure anymore which one of us is more afraid to be alone.

It takes me about two weeks to get a groove on. Get up at five. Do homework. Get Wren and me ready for school. She takes baths while I do my work next to her and try not to get the paper wet. I walk her to school a little early, drop her off, then go myself. Charge through the day the best I can, pick Wren up from school, run home, cram as much housework as possible into the half hour I have, then run to work four days out of five. I have to make all the money I can.

I took a hundred dollars and bought myself three pairs of shorts, all black, and some matching tanks. Shane gave me a pair of her shoes so I didn't have to buy those, and my feet don't hurt so much anymore. I work from four until around eleven, then take my stacks of money home. I line up our bills in order of importance, get money orders from different places around town, and pay as I can. I have covered electric, gas, and phone so far. Better late than never, right? Still, as soon as I'm done paying one batch, more will come. Oh yes. They will come.

It's a thing now. Four nights a week, Eden drops me off at work in my car, and then when my shift is over Digby picks me up, then takes Eden home. Eden does homework with Wren so I don't have to worry about that, and when I get home Wren sits on the toilet while I rinse off, and I talk to her through the shower curtain, then we climb into bed together and cuddle up close until we both fall asleep.

I don't think about Mom except sometimes as I'm waking up, when the phone next to me starts bleeping and buzzing at me to wake up. I see her bright blue eyes then, no light in them, the way they looked just before she left. Whatever barricades I have raised against them are at their weakest. So I take a second. I breathe. I stare into those eyes and then I fold them up. Once because she left us, twice because she hasn't come back, three times I fold her eyes, until they are so small, they are just meaningless blue dots, and then I blow them away.

Eden is waiting outside on the
porch when I get home from work Thursday night. I twitch inside Digby's truck, hug my jacket tight around me. I told her not to do that. The neighbors might see. She's smoking, but doesn't get up when she sees us pull into the driveway, only takes another drag.

Digby mutters, “You know I'm going to be the one filling her oxygen tank when she gets emphysema.”

“Yeah, or me.”

“We can take turns,” he says.

“You care about stuff.” I nudge him.

“Whatever.” He studies the steering wheel. “I'll take care of my business, always. Eden's my business.”

“Let me go see why your business isn't moving.” I get out, as always, with that feeling like something is missing, like my usual wave isn't quite good enough. It's because I want to put my lips against his, inhale him into me, take him with me. I don't want to say goodbye. Ever. No wave will satisfy. “Thank you,” I say.

“Stop saying that.”

“Thank you?”

“Or, actually, say it ten times right now and then don't ever say it again.”

I giggle like a dummy and get out of the car.

“You owe me ten.” He says it so seriously, I almost stand there at the window and do it, but then the side of his mouth turns up and I walk away.

“Chatty,” Eden says.

I realize my cheeks hurt from smiling, and I force my face to relax. Gaw! What is wrong with me?

“I thought your fixation was cute at first, but maybe a reality check?” she shoots without preamble. “He has a girlfriend.”

Digby's passenger window is open and I want to shush her, but I can tell she is in a mood. I don't say anything, but if the zipper on my hoodie went all the way up, I would pull it right over my face.

“What's the matter?” I say.

She crushes her smoke and waves away the last of the slinky fog. “Good news or bad news first?”

“Bad.” My gut is a rock. What now?

I start pulling weeds from our little patch of grass to distract myself.

“I can't do this for you anymore,” Eden says. “Babysit Wren.”

I almost have money to pay the cable bill so Wrenny can keep watching her cooking shows. I try to imagine her life without them and I can't.

“I'm falling behind in ballet.”

Of course she is. I hadn't even thought of it. She said she could only do two nights. I just buried it.

“I want to be there for you, but I'm not going to enough classes. I want us to be all with our riverside plan, except I can't and still do what I want to do with my life.” She kicks the chair underneath her. “I don't want to let you down, Lu.” Her lip is doing a quiver thing. Not a good sign. “And all I can think is, if I'm this tired, you must be . . . And Wren is awesome. I don't mean that she's not—”

I drop my weeds, walk up the porch steps, and sit down on the bench next to her. “It's okay. I'll just have to figure something else out.”

What choice do I have?

I get it. Madame Renee is terrifying. The few times I've seen her, I've wondered how she gets her bun pulled so tight that her eyebrows meet her hairline. I wouldn't mess with her either. And to be honest, I hadn't really thought that Eden's dancing would suffer because of me. That's the trouble with letting people help. It always costs somebody something.

My brain is running through possibilities and coming up empty. I don't have anybody else. I never expected Eden to bail on me, and I'm not seeing another solution. Instead, I am seeing Wren and me in frayed and discolored woolen blankets walking the streets begging for alms. We have dirt on our faces and under our nails, and we shake in the cold. Because in this fantasy it is sometime in the 1600s and I have an English accent.

Digby honks.

Eden flips him off. “Hold your horses, cowboy!” she shouts.

It's late for all this noise, and I can see Smoking Guy's cherry from here.

Eden's voice drops. “My mom is going to get a phone call from Madame Renee any day now. I don't know why . . . I don't know why I thought this would work. I wanted to be your hero. I thought your mom would come back.” She throws her hands on my shoulders and we sit forehead to forehead. “What kind of person doesn't come back?”

“I don't know. What kind of person leaves in the first place?”

Eden pulls at the ends of my hair. “There are so many ways to leave.”

Leaving is easy,
I think.
Easier than staying.

“Lu,” she says, “I think you should tell. It's getting serious now. It's time for you to tell someone.”

“She can't.” Digby got out of the car, I guess. “So if you two are done making out, can we think logically for a second?”

Eden drops hands to her side. I pull back.

“Maybe the system isn't so bad,” Eden says.

“It must be nice in the land of ponies and rainbows,” Digby says. “The fairies and the leprechauns are such a treat.”

“Shut up,” Eden says.

“No, really, when you and the last unicorn land back on earth, let me know.”

“People are good,” she says, “sometimes.”

“No,” Digby says. “People have good
intentions.
Those are two totally different things. Someone is going to walk in here, and you know what they're going to see? Two abandoned girls, a dad put away—no offense, Lucille—one girl working in next to nothing—no offense, Lucille—to pay the bills, the house falling apart . . .” He looks at me.

“None taken,” I say.

“No social worker is going to leave things the way they are.” He leans against the porch railing. So close to me. “So she can't tell anyone.”

“Even though she turns eighteen in July?” Eden says.

Digby gives her a look.

She turns to me. “Lu, have you thought about maybe contacting your dad?”

I don't know how to say that I don't know where he is, that I couldn't get in touch with him even if I wanted to.

“I'll do it,” Digby says, after he watches my face for a minute. “Basketball season hasn't started yet. I can watch Wren for you for a bit.”

I almost fall over.

“But your mom . . .”

“I'm out with Elaine almost every night anyway.” I try not to let that sting. “And she has some big debate thing coming up, so she's busy. I'll tell her. She'll cover for me, and my mom will never know the difference. It'll be fine.”

“Ain't you a sweetheart?” Eden smirks.

“Well what, Eden?” He takes off his hat. Puts it back on. “You want me to sit here and do nothing while Lucille and Wren get thrown into the street? You think anyone is going to give her a break? They might get separated, or have to live in some juvenile center. I can help. So let me help, and don't give me a hard time.”

“Okay,” Eden says, tucking her knees underneath her bony butt. “It's a little more time, Lu, like he said. But it's just a Band-Aid. You have to figure something out. Something permanent, if she's really not coming back.”

My bare legs are starting to goose.