A Blue So Dark (16 page)

"Where do you think you're going?" Mom shouted at them. "The play's not over. Haven't you been paying attention? It's only intermission."

Yeah, that's the Mom I want-that's who I really wish I could find. But when I get to her side, it's like that freaky Angela Frieson has gotten there before me, and she's gutted Mom. Emptiness, that's all I see when she looks at me.

"Mom," I say, wiping my eyes. "I've got a pot roast in the oven, so we'd better get back. Aren't you going to be hungry? Don't you want a nice dinner?"

I grab Mom's wrist and try to pull her to her feet, but she brushes me away. "Don't," she says, pointing at the stage. "It's only intermission."

"No-no, Mom, this is an episode," I tell her softly, trying again to use Dad's word, just like I had on the bleachers after my middle school soccer game.

But this time, she frowns at me, shakes her head. "Stop trying to fool me, Aura. It's not funny, you know, making fun of me, fun like that. It's a play, obviously."

I collapse on my knees beside her, put my face in my hands.

"Don't worry, Aura," she says, patting my knee. "It always works out in the end."

And that just makes the tears come, as quiet and big as the drops in a summer rainstorm. I turn my face from her so she can't see.

The thing is, it doesn't always work out-not even on the stage. Not even on the big screen. I mean, I've watched plenty of late-night horror movies over at Janny's house. And I know that before the heroine finally offs the serial killer, he's already whacked a couple dozen girls and left them rotting by the roadside. Not everybody's the heroine, you know. Some of us just have bit parts in somebody else's story.

I'm terrified that the next time Mom needs me, I'm going to crack right in two. Because the longer this drama goes on, the more I feel like somebody that's going to get offed in Mom's journey. Maybe not literally dead, but a spiritual corpse, you know? I'll snap, and the me I've always known will be gone, never to emerge again.

And then what?

Then Angela Frieson will get her hands on me earlier than I thought.

When a loved one is immersed in a schitophrenie episode, you will find yourself unable to think about anything else.. 4nything. Else,

ho the hell am I kidding? I think the next morning, as I pull the Tempo next to the Crestview High curb. A stream of cars honk, angry, as they all veer around me and pull into the parking lot. Me with my pink schoolgirl sweater, like everything is just fine, the only thing that keeps me up at night is my complexion, loiddy-doiddy-di.

What am I going to say to the attendance secretaries? Or Mr. Mitchells, the vice principal that I've never even seen before in my entire life? Or Kolaite? Or Fritz? Is anyone really going to believe I had the stomach flu? Will a note I scribbled myself, hunched over the kitchen counter this morning, be enough for them to just send me on up to Bio II? At this point, would they even believe me if I sauntered in through the front door with an IV on wheels and my own personal nurse to monitor me because I'd been infected with the world's worst case of E. coli, details to be seen on the news at six?

Fritz is going to call me to her office, and I'm going to get reamed. She's going to practically put an ankle bracelet on me, like people wear when they're on house arrest.

I mean, that's the kind of bull that goes on in American high schools. Kid has pot in his locker two doors down from me, but Fritz'll come down on me, because I'm not six-foot-three, and I didn't spend the year before in the Brailly Alternative School, which is where all the violent kids get sent in between their stints in juvie. I'm not scary, so I get picked on.

And teachers act like only kids can be bullies.

I'm sure that if anybody knew what was going oncounselors A-Z and the vice principal and 01' Lady Kolaite and even Dear Abby herself-they'd tilt their heads and wrinkle their eyebrows and plead, Tell someone, Aura. Tell someone what you re going through. Tell someone how bad your mother is. Get help, get help. Like there's some sort of twelve step program Mom can go through and whoopee! No more schizo.

And then, when they're all in private, like in the middle of the faculty lounge-that off-limits-to-gypsies room that consistently sends the bitter smell of coffee dregs into the hall-they'd all say something completely different. I can just picture Fritz holding my sketch of 01' Lady Kolaite's face while the rest of the Crestview faculty settle into ancient Naugahyde chairs and shake their heads over that poor, poor Aura Ambrose.

Her mother is crazy, you know.

Yes, yes, I heard. She tried to keep it from us all. Very sneaky girl.

Such a pity, that one.

Yes, well, you know what they say about apples. Never do fall far.

I saw a movie once about a schizo.

We've all seen movies about schizos.

They're dangerous people, you know. The one in my movie, he killed someone in self-defense, or so he claimed-except it wasn't self-defense, because there really was no danger, he was just-

Imagining it all?

Right. Imagining the threat. So he killed this person just because he was paranoid, see?

Yes, yes-what if this girl is paranoid?

We could have another Columbine on our hands, you know.

The best way to monitor her is to put her in a bunch of art classes. Get her to put down on paper what's floating around up there in her mind.

Right-like art therapy. Get her to put it all on paper.

Easier to justify an expulsion that way.

Right.

And can you believe she bought the whole thing about us wanting to put her in the accelerated arts and letters program because she's "talented?" Puh-lease!

And while I'm at it, how do I think I'm going to get through the whole day? Do I really think that I'll be able to leave Mom alone for eight solid hours? Isn't that a little like putting a dog in the backyard with the gate wide open, and expecting her to still be rooted in the exact same spot, just like a good little girl, when you get home from work?

God, I wish I could just shut the door on her and head out into another part of my life. Yeah, I wish I could turn my whole stupid, stinking life into a giant chest of drawers. One compartment for Mom, one compartment for long-lost friends (make that friend, singular), one for Dad and his new family, one for the complete and total malarkey that the world likes to call high school. I'd be so careful to make sure nothing in one drawer got misplaced in another-because it would be utter disaster, like if the material from your undershorts and your sports socks could somehow create a bomb just by touching. Put one pair of panties in the wrong drawer and blam! The entire house is blown to smithereens.

Blam!

A knock on the passenger's side window makes me jump so hard, my head whacks the roof of the car. I'd gotten so wrapped up in my own thoughts, I hadn't realized that the tardy bell had sounded.

Everyone's already gone inside, and here I am, the Tempo still idling at the curb. I'm right where I pulled over, staring at Crestview like a peeping Tom, trying to decide if I'm really going to head on over to what is becoming my usual space at Kmart two blocks south.

It's Mr. Groce, Security God, glaring at me through the window like he's discovered a machine gun in a violin case that I've been carrying to school for three days. So I lean across the passenger's seat and roll down the window, trying to look as innocent as possible-blink the eyelashes, smear a weepy expression across my face. Will it work?

"What's your business here?" Groce growls.

It doesn't. Figures.

"My business?" I chirp.

"Crestview High students are all inside their classrooms. Visitors are required to obtain a pass from the office. And since you don't have a Springfield Public School parking sticker displayed prominently in your windshield, I have to assume you are a visitor. No loitering is permitted on school grounds."

I nod.

"Ever," he adds.

I realize he's not joking or being smart-he really doesn't know who I am. He's forgotten all about me. So I put the Tempo in drive and take off. But less than a block away, I have to pull over again because I'm laughing so hard. Earlier this month, I was a student. Gypsy scum that Groce personally locked out of the cleanest bathroom in the school. This morning, I'm a security threat.

Another knock-this time on the driver's side window-makes me choke on my own laughter.

"What now," I start, and when I turn to look, I can't believe it, of all the rotten luck. Janny Jamison, out for a walk with her kid. I am just so not in the mood for another confrontation.

"You didn't go in," she says, when I finally roll the window down.

"What?" I ask, like an idiot.

"You didn't go into school," Janny says again.

"So?"

"So-how bad is she now? Your mom? Is she getting worse?"

"What, you care all of a sudden?"

"Look, don't try to pretend I didn't see you at the grocery store in the middle of the night, all right? Don't pretend I wasn't at your house watching your mom try to spin the world backward."

And if life could ever really be a chest of drawers, Danny's just knocked it over, letting all my undergarmentsmy horrendously private things-start blowing out in the open. I want her to shut up. I want her not to know so much. Because instead of helping me, all she's doing is showing me everything I'm screwing up.

"You should be in school, Aura."

"And look at you, Ms. Teen Mom USA," I snap. "The picture of scholarship yourself."

Janny doesn't get peeved like I expect her to. She doesn't tell me what a bitch I am or that I can just go rot in my own miserable hell, if that's what I want. She doesn't tell me to piss off, like she told all those boys along the Florida coast when they teased us and called us lesbos because we still held hands like a couple of babies. She just gets this disappointed look on her dishwasher-worn face. You know, that motherly disappointment. It's the worst.

"Look, Aura. I gotta take care of him," she says, pointing at her son, who I guess got over his ear infection, because even though he's still all squirmy in his stroller, he's at least not screaming his head off. "I got to, all right? That's my job. I'm his mom, right? That's what I do. I spend all day wiping his nose and changing nasty diapers and burping him, because that's what I signed up for. Maybe I didn't mean to-maybe I signed up on accident, but that's what I got now, okay?"

So?

"So, I'm telling you, after all I've gone through for him-after all I still go through, being a single mom and all, and all I'm bound to go through-I don't want this kid to give up his life for anything. I sure as hell wouldn't stand for him to give up on an education so he could stay home and wipe my ass. I'd just rather slit my wrists, is all."

"Poetic," I say through a glare.

"What are you waiting for, Aura? You waiting for her to try to hurt herself? Are you? You waiting for her to commit suicide, Aura?"

"Janny!" I scream. My mouth flaps like a broken screen door, I'm so offended.

"Look, I've been getting on the Internet at the library, and one in ten schizophrenics kill themselves, okay, so-"

"You think I don't know the numbers?" I snap at her.

"Aura, I'm just saying-"

But I can't stand to listen. Not to one more syllable. So I hit the gas and take off again.