Getting Somewhere (10 page)

Oh, if only she could talk to her dad. He'd have a shit fit if he saw the work they are supposed to do, and he'd have Ellie and her high and mighty ideas so tied up in knots, she wouldn't be able to speak for a week. Lauren's dad doesn't like women in charge. He doesn't even really like Lauren's mother when it comes right down to it, sees her as weak and clingy and dependent. Which she is. He doesn't know Lauren saw him that time with the woman from his office when they were coming out of that expensive Italian restaurant downtown. She has tried not to think about it, never told anybody, can't imagine what made her think of it just now. Lauren doesn't exactly blame him, but she'd kill Jason if he ever cheated on her. She wonders what Jason is doing right now, has to stop her mind from dredging up a list of all the girls he could be hanging out with while Lauren is stuck here with a bunch of dykes and juvenile delinquents.

She doesn't belong here. How pathetic is it when your best option for an ally is a homeless drug addict? Well, she sure did get Sarah's attention with the Adderall. Oh yeah. She's going to have that girl in the palm of her hand, no problem. Once an addict, always an addict. Right, Mom?

Lauren looks up from her plate, squinting her eyes as the lights suddenly go off. Oh god, what now? This place is about one tiny step away from being little house on the prairie. The loss of electricity would definitely send it over the edge.

But then Cassie is coming through the door from the kitchen carrying what looks like a chocolate cake, and for a second, Lauren can't take her eyes off of it. The flames from the lit candles are flickering against Cassie's smooth skin, the tiny sparks reflecting in her eyes as she carries the cake into the dining room, moving almost like a dancer around the table in a wide circle so as not to trip over the chairs. Cassie surprises Lauren by passing her right by and, instead, placing the cake ceremoniously in front of Grace, retreating to her chair like a browbeaten servant. Grace seems surprised, too, sits back in her seat as if the cake represents some threat, and the look on her face, clearly lit by the candles in the darkened room, is peevish. Lauren didn't know they'd also be celebrating Grace's birthday, and though Grace doesn't seem all that happy to be included in the celebration, Lauren is even less thrilled about it. And why do they have to do this right now? She hasn't had time to prepare.

Now, Ellie has gotten up and is opening a drawer in the hutch behind Grace's chair. She pulls out what at first looks like a pile of cardboard, but turns out to be birthday cards she has clearly made herself and hands one to each of them, Sarah first, then Lauren and then, almost hesitantly, Grace. Lauren's has a drawing of a hummingbird hovering in front of a red blossom on it and, even though it looks like it was just done with magic marker on cardstock, Lauren has to admit that it's not half bad. Inside, the words, evenly spaced across the page in fancy writing, each letter a different color, say, “Happy Birthday, Lauren. Thanks for giving us the chance to celebrate you. I am honored to know you. Love, Ellie.”

Lauren doesn't know what to think. She wants the pounding in her heart to feel familiar, like the rage she is so used to, but this is a feeling she's not sure she recognizes. Whatever it is, she's not going to let it get to her. This is how they win, and it's just like she tried to tell Sarah—if you aren't careful, you can get sucked right in. She closes the card and turns it face down, slips in under her napkin so she can intentionally/accidentally leave it behind. She hears Ellie's voice as if from under water saying, “Do all three of you guys want to blow out the candles, or should we just let Grace do it?”

Before anyone has a chance to answer though, there is a loud screech and Jenna has shoved her chair back from the table, jumped up from her seat, nearly tipping the chair over, and rushed out of the room, the front screen door wrenched open with such force that it bangs against the side of the house, slams shut with a solid
thwack
.

Nobody speaks or moves for a long moment, and when Ellie finally rises, clearly intending to follow Jenna out, Grace places a hand on her shoulder, pushes the cake toward Donna with the other, and gets up herself and leaves the room.

Lauren doesn't know what was supposed to happen next, other than eating cake, but it's obviously not going to happen now. Though a part of her is pissed at Jenna, hates the way the girl always figures out how to get all the attention, Lauren quickly decides that this is perfect, suits her needs exactly.

And besides, it has given her an idea. She lifts her napkin and takes out the birthday card, thumbs the edge without really looking at the drawing, her thoughts beginning to spin. Before anyone says another word, Lauren, too, has risen from her chair and slipped out of the room.

THURSDAY, JUNE 14

“I CAN'T BELIEVE I HAVEN'T SEEN A GUY FOR, LIKE, OVER
a month. I feel like I'm going to go crazy. Isn't that driving you nuts?”

Jenna shrugs, keeps working. It doesn't do any good to answer anyway. Lauren will just keep talking.

Lauren is sitting next to the row, but she's not weeding. She seems engrossed in picking the last remnants of nail polish off her thumb, oblivious to the fact that Jenna is gradually moving away from her as she frees adolescent beets from a near mat of ground ivy and lamb's-quarters.

Lauren is careful about turning her body in minute increments so as to catch the best angle of the tanning sun. Her legs are stretched out in front of her, knees bent to prevent her calves from touching the dirt, and she has coated her skin with some kind of oil. Jenna tries to picture the mother who would have packed suntan oil and nail polish when she was helping her daughter prepare for a prison farm.

“At least at detention, we got to catch glimpses of them, you know? Like at meals or headed out to the basketball courts. They were all pretty scrungy but still better than nothing, don't you think? Not that I'd ever really do anything with anyone except Jason, but it's kind of fun just to window shop, you know? It's not like the guys don't do the same thing, even worse,” Lauren says emphatically.

Jenna is barely listening. She is having trouble believing that the two of them are in the same place at the same time, that Lauren is trying to have a conversation with her. Jenna cannot figure out why Lauren seeks her out, follows her around.

Jenna had seen Lauren at detention, immediately placed her in the category of lifters since she obviously reeked none of the oniony, yeasty smell of hopelessness that hovered around the druggies or the other system rats like herself. Jenna has never even spoken to a girl like Lauren before, never wanted to be a girl like her either, couldn't have imagined herself setting foot in Abercrombie or Hollister, even if she'd had the money. But she still couldn't help feeling a little satisfied when her own real-life hard core status made detention feel almost like a vacation and gave her exactly the right skills for negotiating her position there. In fact, she had felt an odd and surprising pity for the girls like Lauren, the rich girls. It was like entering a foreign country with the wrong currency and no known exchange rate. Whatever might have been valuable on the outside was just a burden in there. The grayish globs of food must have seemed that much more unappetizing, the military discipline that much harder to tolerate, the urine and vomit-permeated bathroom smell that much more nauseating.

Lauren is now talking about her boyfriend, how they were always forging permission slips so they could get out of school, pawning the stuff Lauren stole and using the money to buy iPods and other MP3 players that they could sell for twice the price they'd paid. Lauren sounds almost angry when she says, “The stupid police never found out a thing about that. And I didn't tell them anything either.” She laughs a little maliciously. “I bet Jason was scared shitless I was going to blow it all. He should be down on his knees thanking me for that, don't you think?”

Jenna still isn't answering but Lauren doesn't notice, is busy rearranging her body, shaking her hair back out of her face.

“Why'd you run off like that?”

At first, Jenna doesn't catch what Lauren has said, having ignored most of what came before. She is just about to ask her to repeat it when it dawns on her what Lauren has asked.

Jenna decides not to answer.

“Did you hear me?” Lauren asks impatiently, rather loudly. “I asked why you ran away from the birthday party. I mean, it was great. Perfect. You totally screwed it up, which is fine by me. I just wondered why.”

“Yeah, I heard you.” Jenna stands up to stretch, bends again to pick up the hoe she'd brought out but didn't need after all, and notices Grace weeding infant corn in the next field. Jenna takes a deep breath and heads in that direction, stepping over Lauren's hand in the dirt. “You better get to work,” she says and moves away.

Jenna is heading toward where Grace is working, thinking maybe she should tell Grace that Lauren is slouching again since Grace seems to be the only one who can successfully scare Lauren into helping out once in awhile, but at the last minute, she changes her mind. Instead of turning left at the end of the row, she turns right, in the direction of the river.

She hears the sound of the water in her head even when she isn't there, lies in her bed at night and pictures what it must look like in the moonlight, wishes she knew which animals come to drink, what different birds there might be after the sun has gone down. She likes the songs, especially the orioles, and is hoping to learn some of them. She had no idea before she came here that all these different kinds of birds existed, probably wouldn't have known the difference between a starling and a crow, and feels that tightness in her chest, a surge of sparking anger in her veins to think of it.

Jenna goes to the river to rest her heart.

She has what she knows is a completely irrational and unfounded fear for her heart. Sometimes it's as if her heart is literally being pulled out of her chest, stretching her veins and arteries to the point of snapping. She is overcome with the rock-hardness of it, feels it pushing against the base of her throat, straining the muscles in her neck, blocking the signals to her brain. Meals seem to be the worst, even more than the counseling sessions, and the birthday party a couple of nights ago had sent her plunging toward the river.

She knows exactly when it started. She must have been about thirteen, old enough and long enough in the system to usually be second in command behind the foster parents. She remembers that night as clearly as if the images were tattoed on her forehead. They'd been watching some show about Siamese twins, all the bizarre pictures of babies conjoined at the chest or the head or the side because of some case in England where they'd done surgery to separate a pair and one had died. The weaker one was living off of the stronger one and didn't have her own aorta and one of the kids had asked Mo what an aorta was and she'd told him to ask Jenna. From the diagram on the TV, Jenna was able to understand that it was the main artery in the heart and had tried to explain that you can't live without one because it gives the rest of your body blood. Clay, this weak little boy whose hair was so blond, it looked white, adding to his strange little-old-man appearance, asked why the girls couldn't share their aorta. Jenna was at a loss how to answer, frustrated that she couldn't just watch the show without constantly being pestered, and turned to look at Mo and there she was, pounding her chest with her fist, her eyes wide, gasping for breath, her slippered feet kicking on the footrest of her recliner in little baby movements like someone just learning to swim.

Jenna had done the right things, she is still sure. She called 911, lowered the chair into its full reclining position and pressed against Mo's forehead and lifted her chin to open her air passage. She was still breathing, or Jenna thought she was, and she didn't know CPR and probably wouldn't have been strong enough to perform it on Mo anyway, but she figured she was helping by herding the kids out to the kitchen and opening a box of cereal, getting out bowls and milk for them so they'd be distracted by a snack. The siren, of course, brought them all running, and Jenna had needed to herd them out again, screaming at them to get ready for bed while the paramedics tried to revive Mo, struggled with her enormous weight to get her strapped to a stretcher and out to the ambulance. It wasn't until the next day that Jenna found out she'd died on the way to the hospital, had never even been admitted. Jenna hadn't thought to call the hospital, had no idea what to do at all besides get the other kids ready for school in the morning and then sit and watch game shows all morning until sometime after lunch when the social worker showed up and said Mo had died.

Living at Mo's was about the closest Jenna had come to being happy since leaving her mom's. The woman wasn't particularly loving, had foster kids for the money. She'd even told Jenna that, didn't seem ashamed of it or feel the need to hide it. It was the truth and Jenna appreciated that, even respected it, and felt it gave her and Mo—Margaret Osborne was her real name—something in common: a desire for the truth and a utilitarian way of approaching it. Mo hardly lifted a finger, making the kids do all the work, as many as Social Services would let her have, and Jenna hardly minded that either, actually felt useful washing dishes and taking out the trash, vacuuming and cleaning bathrooms on Saturday. She enjoyed entering a neat living room, toys and books and magazines back in closets and on shelves, kitchen counters wiped clean, piles of clean laundry to fold while watching television with Mo after the younger kids were all in bed. And Mo barely cared if Jenna went to school, though she wanted to keep up appearances, would never let her miss enough to attract attention. This school was far easier than the last one Jenna had attended, and she had no trouble getting high grades without even sitting in the classroom or doing the assignments. Jenna didn't mind school work, but she hated being bored, still does. She was almost never bored at Mo's.

After that came a series of homes she can barely remember, as if her memory had peaked while she was living with Mo, and she had no capacity for it afterward. She remembers feeling angry; angry at the foster who wanted the kids to call her “mom,” which Jenna refused to do, angry at the parents who acted like they'd known Jenna for years, angry at the homes that were filthy, food that was half cooked, accusations of theft when something was misplaced, fosters who acted put out by her presence or who pretended they actually cared about her. But the faces, the voices, the other kids who came and went, none of that has really stuck.

What's stuck the most are the nights lying in bed with her chest aching, the fear that she would drop dead like Mo, the memory of the look in her eyes as the breath was sucked out of her. Sometimes it got so bad that all she could do was pack her meager belongings and slip out the door, no idea where she was going and no way of getting there but compelled to escape, as if she could leave her heart behind. She wasn't ever good at leaving, would get spotted within a day, sometimes even came back on her own when the pounding had lessened or when she realized it was only getting worse.

Jenna doesn't actually believe there is something wrong with her heart. She can run forever, climbs stairs without getting winded, goes for days with no pain at all, though she is always checking for it. Now that she's gotten older though, it is magnified as much by the humiliation as by the physical sensations, as if her body wants to keep her a child, wants to keep dragging her back to a time she'd rather leave behind, and all her anger is concentrated, like the force of a swirling cyclone, just under her breastbone. She is trapped by it until she can fight her way out, leave wherever she is and get to something free, like the place at the river.

The sycamore that fell before Jenna was here has a mate. Or at least that's the way she likes to think of it. Just feet from the remaining stump is another tree, only slightly smaller, slightly closer to the bank that sharply slopes to the water's edge. Weeks ago Jenna noticed that the base of the standing tree was hollow, forming a little cave of roots stretching down the bank. Jenna had climbed into the opening, just large enough for her to fit when curled in a ball. She had run her hands up inside the tree and discovered a kind of shelf, not wide or level or very tall, but dry, secret, satisfying in that way that nature can be when it displays a sudden or unexpected utility: a log to sit on, a perfect walking stick, a grapevine for swinging across a creek.

Now, Jenna keeps a water bottle there, a tin she found in the barn that she washed out and lined with a paper towel to put crackers in, a little writing pad that she made by cutting notebook paper into squares and stapling the top together, along with a pencil tied to a string, and her two books,
The Bean Trees
, of course, and now
Pigs in Heaven.
Grace told her it was about the same characters, Turtle and her adopted mother, and Jenna is savoring the anticipation of starting it, not sure what she's waiting for but not quite ready to begin. Today is not the day.

Today is for just sitting on the fallen sycamore and waiting, breathing, listening.

S
ARAH HAS STOPPED
a little ways back, afraid to come too close, in case Jenna doesn't want her here, waves her hand a little, simply says, “Hi.”

“Hi.”

“If you want to be alone, I can leave.”

Jenna surprises Sarah a little by shaking her head no, then says aloud, “Should I be coming in for lunch?”

It's Sarah's turn to shake her head. “I don't think it's quite time. I just see you coming back here sometimes, and I thought I could join you but if you don't want me to, I understand.”