Before, After, and Somebody In Between (13 page)

I throw the bottles back, my brain thonking against my skull. I have no idea if Jerome’s back in school yet, but I leave ten minutes early to avoid him just in case. I trudge along through five inches of new snow, my bandaged foot boiling in pain.

Shavonne catches me outside of homeroom. “You’re back! Oh my God, I’m
so sorry
about that baby. You okay? What happened? Hey, how come you didn’t call me back?”

She shuts up as a shadow falls across the lockers. I cringe instinctively, expecting Chardonnay, but it’s only Miss Fuchs. “Did you bring a note explaining your absence, Martha?”

“I forgot,” I say quickly before Shavonne can butt in.

“Ignorant bitch,” Shavonne spits out when Miss Fuchs flits away. “Ain’t like she don’t know why you been gone.”

Another shadow falls, this time Mr. Hopewell. Wow, my own personal welcoming committee. “Can I talk to you for a minute, Martha?”

I squeeze my books to my chest. “I got to be in homeroom in a sec.”

“I’ll write you a pass.”

I leave Shavonne stranded in the middle of the crowd, and follow Mr. Hopewell to the music room. “I heard what happened. You doing okay?”

I nod, forcing myself not to glance around. All those instruments, all those music stands, all the empty, waiting chairs…

“If you need to talk to someone, I’m sure the counselors will be happy to help. Or you can talk to me, if you want.”

I nod again. I must look like a marionette. Speak to me, and an invisible hand jerks my strings.

He gives me a curious glance, then gets down to the nitty-gritty. “I was hoping you’d stop by to tell me why you dropped out of my class.”

“I don’t have a cello anymore.”

“What happened?”

“… I had to turn it back in. The contract ran out.”

“Well, I wish you would’ve let me know. I have a loaner you can use. Normally I hang on to it in case somebody forgets theirs, but you can use it in the meantime, till we can work something out.”

My cheeks flame up. “I don’t have the money for a new one, so, like, what’s the point?”

Mr. Hopewell’s craggy brown face instantly sags. “Martha,
playing an instrument isn’t like reading a book. You can’t put it down and pick it back up again any old time the mood hits you. You were off to a great start. I hate to see you throw it all away.” He marches off and comes back with the cello while I chomp on the nail of my one good thumb. “Oh, it’s old, and kinda banged up, but it has a wonderful tone. Here, play something. How about that Schubert piece we were working on?” When I don’t move, he lowers the cello in surprise. “Martha, c’mon. What’s up?”

My eyes blister as I stare at that instrument, pretending it’s nothing but a hunk of steel and wood—but my fingers are throbbing, positively dying to touch it. If I could just play it for one second, if I could just hear a few notes. Touch those cold strings and that warm, smooth wood…no, wait, wait, wait!

Reality check: Momma was right. People like me don’t go to ritzy music schools, and people like me don’t end up at Juilliard.

I am not Jacqueline du Pré, I will never play Elgar, so let him keep his damn cello. I couldn’t take care of the last one, and look where it got me.

I edge toward the door, struggling to sound normal. “Nothing’s up. I just don’t feel like it anymore.” I glance at the clock: thirty seconds till science. Will Jerome be there?

“Martha—”

“I’m sorry, okay? But I just can’t do it!”

I stumble out blindly without waiting for a pass. Suddenly I can’t stand the idea of facing Jerome.
Does he know, does he know, does he know it was me?
Instead, I go to the john where Shavonne and I hang out, sit down on the toilet, and study the graffiti. Left-handed, I add a few comments of my own, mostly about Chardonnay. Then I open a notebook and begin to doodle, and the doodling eventually turns into:

Dear Daddy—

The words blur, and I rub my eyes roughly. I chew the end of my pen, thinking and thinking—and then start to write stuff I’ve never dared to put down in my journal:

I wish you were alive. I need to talk to someone. I hate my life. I hate everything about it. I wish I could go to sleep and never wake up. Why couldn’t it be me instead of Bubby? Why am I alive when I’m always so miserable?

My hand cramps. I read it over twice. It sounds like a suicide note to me.

Clank!
A shoe hits the stall. “Hey, why ain’t you in English? You got a test to make up.”

English? What about biology? How long have I been in here? I rip the letter from the metal spirals, tear it to bits, toss it in the toilet, and flush with my foot.

“So what’s your problem?” Shavonne lights up two Marlboros and hands me one as I lurch out of the stall. I stare at it idiotically. “Well?”

I suck on the filter, and retch. “I feel like shit.” I throw the cigarette in the sink. “My head hurts. My stitches hurt. I’m in
pain,
okay?” Without a word she hands me a pill out of her purse, breaking rule number one in the Sacred Code of Student Ethics. “What’s this?”

“Hell if I know. It’s my mom’s.”

I don’t ask for details. I just gulp it with a handful of water.

“Look, I know you strung out about what happened to that baby—”

I fling my hands over my ears. “I don’t want to talk about it.”

“I know you don’t, and that’s your problem. You need to deal with this shit, you know what I’m saying?”

“Shut up!” Then I pull myself together, and add more quietly, “Just shut up, okay? I’m dealing with it fine.”

“No, you ain’t. You just hiding your head, same way you always do.”

“I’m not hiding!” I shout, pushing her out of the way so I can get to the door first. “And you’re not helping me one bit!”

“Yeah, girl!” she jeers as I take off. “You just keep on running, ‘cause that’s all you know how to do, ain’t it?”

I’ve got my hoody out of my locker and I’m out the front door before the guard realizes it was a human being, not a rocket-propelled grenade that shot past his face. My ears are numb with cold after less than three blocks. Twelve blocks later, my fingers are icicles, and snot has frozen on my upper lip. By the time I hit my own block, I can’t feel my feet at all. I hear Grandma Daisy saying:
Tell that momma of yours she needs to buy you a real coat!
Why bother? I like being numb. Maybe I’ll drop dead from hypothermia before I hit the front porch.

Wayne’s big green truck with the stupid bumper sticker—I Shot Bambi’s Mom and Ate Her, Too!—roars to life in our driveway when I’m two houses away. I slow down and watch it veer into the street, one massive wheel digging a trench in the tree lawn, and then catch of glimpse of Wayne’s furious face as he zooms past without noticing me.

I wobble into the house on my cold dead feet, expecting Momma to be all over me for ditching school again. But she’s nowhere in sight, and her bedroom door is shut. Whatever she and Wayne were fighting about, it must have been bad.

“Momma? You okay?” When she doesn’t answer my knock, I shake the handle, but the door is locked, a very bad sign. This, in the old days, meant she wouldn’t be out for ages. “Momma?”

Silence. I think back over what I said to her last night: “I want you to leave me alone.” Well, I guess she heard me for once.

Shavonne’s crummy pill hasn’t kicked in, so I study the
suspicious bottles I dug up this morning. Let’s see: Darvon, Valium, Vicodin, Percodan… hmm, Percodan sounds good. Maybe it’ll perk me up? I pop three, wobble to bed, and pass out cold.

Barely an hour later, someone bangs on the front door. “Go away!” But the banging continues, this time on the back porch, which is like inches from my room. Pleasantly swathed in my narcotic buzz, I float to the kitchen and peer through the curtains. A heavyset black lady, long black coat, bulky satchel, dreads bouncing in the wind. Mary Poppins meets Whoopi Goldberg.

“Martha Kowalski?” She opens the door without an invitation. “I’m Zelda Broussard from the Department of Children’s Services. Why aren’t you in school?”

Shit, shit, shit.

“I’m sick. I got a migraine.” And I am so, so-o-o stoned!

She shoves her card under my nose: Zelda Broussard, with a bunch of initials after her name. Masters degree in what? State-Sanctioned Home Invasion? Still, I feel a sympathetic twinge because “Zelda” is so much worse than “Martha.” “I’ve been asked to follow up on a few things, Martha. Evaluate your home situation, hmm?” She has a funny accent, Jamaican, or whatever. “Where’s your mother?”

“Taking a nap.”

“Perhaps you’d care to wake her up?”

“I can’t. She’s got a migraine, too.”

“I see.” Skeptical gray eyes gleam out of her dark round face, harder and colder than the bottom of an iceberg. I’d never seen gray eyes on a black person before. “I’ll wait.”

“Yeah, well, you might be waiting a long time.”

“Well, then I’ll just have to talk to you.” I do Shavonne’s eye-roll, but it has no effect. “I understand you were in the hospital recently, and the people there seem to think you’ve been abused.
When they asked you about it, apparently you denied it. Is that true?”

“Is what true?” That I was abused? Or that I denied it? She lost me. Plus my tongue feels bigger than the rest of my mouth, and the flowers on the crappy kitchen wallpaper are dancing in time to her words.

“Has anyone hurt you?” I shake my head. “Is that the truth?” I nod my head. “Would you tell me if they had?”

My head stops moving as I pause to reflect. What am I supposed to say to this lady? That Wayne bashes me around and Momma lets him? Even bashes me herself when the mood happens to hit her? “Can you like, come back some other time? My head really, really hurts.”

“Well, I would like to talk to you about that incident the other night. The shooting?”

My thumbnail quivers between my teeth like a windup toy.

“Martha, I know you were friends with the little boy. You must be very upset by all this. I just want you to know I’m a certified counselor, and if your mother agrees, I’d like to talk to you sometime. Hmm?”

I pretend I didn’t hear that “little boy” part, and that “hmm” of hers is highly annoying. “I thought you were a social worker.”

“I do work for the county, but I also have a private practice.”

Well, la-di-da. “My mom doesn’t believe in counselors. She says they’re all quacks.” At least I don’t tell her what Momma thinks of social workers.

The lady sighs. I can tell she’s a smoker by the way she keeps fumbling with her purse. Yawning enormously so she’ll know how bored I am, I fall back into a chair and plunk my head into my arms.

She takes the hint and drops her card on the table. “When
your mother is feeling better, have her give me a call.” She says “mudder” instead of “mother,” which would crack me up if I were in a better mood. “And you can call me yourself, too, if you need anything.”

“Anything like what?”

“Anything at all,” she answers with a humanoid smile. As soon as she leaves, I pitch the card.

…

By morning Momma still hasn’t risen from the tomb, so I take it upon myself to scribble another note for Miss Fuchs:
Please excuse Martha for all her recent absences. Her injuries are not severe but they hurt like a bitc
—I scratch that out—
but they are extremely painful. She has been very stressed out. I’m sure you know why. Sincerely, Lou Ann Kowalski.
Even a forensic scientist couldn’t declare this a fraud. I’ve been doing it for years.

I can hear Mario and Jerome fighting about something upstairs. They sound so normal that I start to wonder again if this whole gruesome week has been nothing but a nightmare…

And when I hear Jerome’s knock, I know I’m awake.

“Hey,” he greets me, like nothing ever happened.

“Hey.” I step outside into a raging wind. “Um, you okay?”

“Yeah. It’s tough, but, yeah, I’m okay.”

“Sorry I missed the funeral. My mom …” I shrug.

“That’s okay. Granny passed out, and they had to carry her out. Then Mario punched one of my cousins and knocked out a tooth.”

Sorry I missed it. “Is your grandma okay?”

“Yeah. She misses him, though. Man, we all do. I can’t get used to him not being around, and Mario, he—”

“Jerome, stop. Don’t talk about it, please?”

“Hey, I know you feel bad. We all feel bad. Mario, he cries all
the time, and you know he ain’t no crybaby.” Jerome’s voice catches, and he stops walking. “But Granny, she always says you gotta talk out your miseries, ‘cause if you don’t talk them out, they just eat you up alive.”

Talk about him? I can’t even think about Bubby. If I think about him now, I’ll go crazy for sure.

Jerome surprises me then by reaching for my books. He curls a cold hand around one of mine and says, “Okay, forget it. We gonna be late.”

So he doesn’t hate me after all, which means he doesn’t know about the money. For the first time in days my brain doesn’t feel like somebody’s mashing it through a meat grinder. Finally I can breathe. Finally I can cry. And I do exactly that as he pulls me along the icy sidewalk.

23

Life, more or less, returns to “normal”—but of course that doesn’t last. A week before Christmas vacation, I come home from school to find Momma and Wayne huddled together on the couch, drinking as usual, but now toking as well. Looking guilty as hell for one microsecond, Momma struggles to sit up, figures it’s too much effort, and falls back into the cushions.

Wayne cocks a jolly brow. Hard to believe this is the same guy who once gave me money for a cello. “Take a hike, little girl.”

Seething, I stomp off to the kitchen. My day has already sucked beyond belief. Now
this?

Shavonne’s been absent for a couple of days, and I’m dying to know why. I punch her number into the phone and stretch the raggedy phone cord into my room so I can have some privacy, and not inhale those putrid fumes.

“So what’s up?” I ask her. “Where’ve you been?”

“My mom ain’t doin’ so hot. She wants me to stay home with her for a while.”