Catching Tatum (33 page)

Like I said, my mom was lucky: she had a man. In their social circle, Clayton was actually a pretty dang good man; he came home almost every night, he kept a job that paid the bills, he even cooked us dinner most weeknights while watching reruns of
The Honeymooners
, which I hated. Yeah, he was a great guy. Ha! All he expected in return was a clean house (which my mom could never keep clean enough), a stocked bar (which he accused us of stealing from), and kids who kept their mouths shut. Because of Clayton's awesomeness, Mom didn't have to work like most of the women we knew. She could stay home, which was a good thing because her drinking habit would have gotten in the way of a real job. She had the shakes almost every morning when we left for school (that's if she wasn't blacked out from the night before), and she was drunk or on her way there by the time we got home, yet she still contributed financially by babysitting Lizzie.

Lizzie's mom, Brenda, was one of my mom's drinking buddies who liked to listen to the loud music too. She wasn't lucky like my mom—she was single, and busted her butt to make ends meet. Lizzie's dad was a three-time loser, back before they even had three-strikes laws. He was locked up for something—murder, I think. He was a biker, I guess; Lizzie doesn't talk about him, and I know better than to ask about bad memories. She really doesn't like to talk about the past unless it's about the good times.

So anyway, Lizzie's mom, Brenda, raised her alone but needed help. She worked as a residential house cleaner until she failed a drug test; then she took anything she could find for a while. She was a cashier at a grocery store, then a convenience store; she worked at a mill doing something, but I don't know what. She always worked on the swing shift and got welfare to cover the difference—and the child support the locked-up loser didn't pay. Later she found her true calling as a dancer, but that's Lizzie's story to tell, not mine, not really. I'll save it for when it comes in to play. All that matters for now is that Mom helped Brenda out by watching Lizzie and because of Brenda's schedule she stayed the weekends with us and almost all the weekdays too, and Brenda paid her for it. I don't know how much, but I think she and Clayton relied on the money to make our own ends meet.

I'm pretty sure Brenda and Clayton slept together. I don't know if it was an affair or only a booty call thing they did when Mom was passed out, but I'm almost certain it happened. Clayton was the kind of guy who wouldn't let an opportunity like that go; Brenda had a reputation for sleeping around, and she was indebted to us. She gave my mom money for watching Lizzie, so she had to be paying Clayton with something too for him to put up with another sniveling brat hanging out around his house all the time. Sex is all I can figure she gave him for his kindness to her daughter. Justin and I would never talk in front of Lizzie about what kind of a woman her mom was.

Justin got into plenty of fights over Brenda’s reputation. People talked about what Brenda did after she started dancing. The guys probably talked about it because they got dances from her themselves. Kids at school made fun of Lizzie for it too. If Justin caught her crying because of something someone said, he would find out who called her mom a name and beat him up. It worked out well for Lizzie but not so much for Justin. Whenever he got suspended for fighting, which happened all too often, Clayton would let him have it.

“You like to fight, huh, boy?! Fight me then, and I'll show you what's up. Fight me, punk!”

“No, Dad,” Justin would always say before Clayton would give him a famous sucker punch, sometimes knocking him to the floor.

“You like it? You like fighting?”

“No, sorry.”

“You're right, you're sorry! Is it going to happen again?”

“No.”

“You sure about that? 'Cause this isn't the first time. When are you going to get it through your thick skull that you can't be fighting in school?”

Justin never cried or showed weakness, but Lizzie did, her big brown doe eyes would pool with tears that spilled over onto her pink cheeks when Clayton bellowed at him. Clayton only allowed him bread and butter on the days he stayed home, telling him that's all he would get in jail if he kept it up, so we would save bits of food from our dinner and take it to him afterward. I don't know what Justin did while we were at school, but on the days he was suspended, Lizzie and I always knew he would be there to get us when the yellow doors opened.

ALSO BY LUCY H. DELANEY

Waiting on Justin
Amidst tragedy and despair, Justin and Haylee seek an answer to the age-old question: Is it possible for love to bloom in the harshest of climates? A touching and tender story about a love worth waiting for.

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