Harder (19 page)

My fists keep closing, clenching tight, my forearms pumped up with blood and violence that won’t do any good here. Not in a school, not in Putnam. I can’t fight my way out of this. Can’t yell my way to a solution.

“You have any suggestions?” I ask Caroline.

She ducks her head and whispers a question to Frankie. Frankie whispers something back. They go on like that for a few seconds, and then Caroline says, “She wants me to tell you for her. Would that be all right?”

“Yes.”

“Let’s do it over there.” She leads me to the opposite side of the closet-room, as far from Frankie as we can get, and refuses to start talking until I sit. I straddle a chair, fold my arms across the back, wondering why she’s going to so much trouble to get me ready for this.

Then she tells me, and it’s worse than anything I could have guessed.

I thought Frankie missed her friends back home, and that maybe she was embarrassed of her boobs, uncomfortable with her body—but what Caroline tells me is there’s a kid, this slimy little Clint fucker, who’s been giving Frankie a hard time on the bus every morning and every afternoon. He’s been saying perverted shit about how she looks, her body, sexual stuff that no ten-year-old should be thinking about.

On Halloween, the teacher moved the kids’ desks into a new arrangement with groups of four desks clumped together, and now Clint’s is right next to Frankie’s, so she’s been hearing his shit all day long, day in and day out.

She took it and took it until she couldn’t take it anymore. Then she attacked.

I run sweaty palms down my thighs. “I’m going to kill him,” I say.

Caroline’s hands are on my shoulders. She’s right behind me, talking soft. “No, you’re not.”

Frankie’s huddled into a ball on the seat of her chair.

I can’t breathe right. It’s not Clint I want to kill. I did this to her. Me.

The whole time she was a baby, I was afraid. If she slept longer than usual, I worried she’d died in her sleep. I wouldn’t be able to make myself look in on her because I was so sure it would come true.

I worried she wasn’t eating enough, wasn’t eating right, wasn’t growing the way she should be.

I worried she wouldn’t have anything to wear to school, and when she had a fever I worried that her brain would fry and it would make her stupid. I worried when I found out about all that recalled Tylenol that I’d given her too much and she was going to get asthma or seizures or whatever.

When I was in middle school, Frankie was a toddler. Mom would leave her at the neighbor’s, Mrs. Dieks, and I would come off the bus and straight to Mrs. Dieks’s place to pick her up. Most of the time I’d find Frankie in nothing but a diaper, slapping her fat little palms on the coffee table, wreathed in smoke and babbling at the TV.

She’s a terror
, Mrs. Dieks would tell me, and I knew even when I was twelve years old that Frankie wasn’t. She was normal. Curious. It was Mrs. Dieks who was too old to be watching her.

I could tell from the way she looked at me—like I might be carrying a disease—that Mrs. Dieks didn’t like me. I could guess from the bruises on the softest parts of Frankie’s thighs that Mrs. Dieks didn’t like my sister, either.

But there was nothing I could do about it but tell my
mom, who blew it off.
She falls down
, my mom said.
I’m sure they’re from accidents
.

I remember being so upset, I threw up. Wiped my eyes, rinsed out my mouth from the bathroom tap, and swore it was the last time I’d count on my mom for anything.

You’re going to have to fix this
, I told myself.
You’re going to have to make it better for her
.

But what could I do? I was a kid, barely older than Frankie is now. I carried my sister home the second I got off the bus, changed her diaper, rubbed the diaper rash cream in as gently as I could.

Once she was in school during the day, we both got off the bus at the same time. Mom was working. Frankie was mine to worry about.

When I got my driver’s license, I could drive her around. I had money of my own to buy some of what she needed—clothes and food and treats. Even when I left her behind to come to Putnam, Frankie was my first priority, my principal worry, my sister,
mine
.

But now she
is
mine, legally my responsibility, and I’ve failed her. I brought her here where she’s vulnerable. I left her alone too much. I knew something was going on, but I didn’t want to hear it.

“It’s my fault,” I say. “All of this is my fault.”

“You’re wrong,” Caroline replies.

“You don’t understand.”

“I
do
understand, and you’re wrong. But we can talk about that later. Right now, you need to focus on constructive solutions to this problem.”

“What’ll be constructive is if I bash that little fucker’s face in.”

I don’t mean it. I just haven’t got anything constructive to offer.

“It won’t help if you get yourself arrested,” she says. She braces an arm on the chair in front of me and leans close to my back to say, “Everything’s going to be fine, West. Trust me. I know this feels huge, but I was already talking to the counselor, and it’s really going to be okay.”

I grab her arm, wrap it across my chest, forcing her to drop into a seat behind me on the chair, pressed up against my back. When she puts her other arm around me, I cross mine to cover her hands and squeeze tight.

“Breathe,” she says.

I breathe in. Breathe out. Drop my head back until it rests against her neck, her shoulder.

I focus on Caroline. How right she feels against me.

I pitch my voice low and tell her, “It’s abuse. What he’s been saying to Frankie.”

“I know.”

“That kind of shit messes you up. I can’t fix it.”

“I know. But West, we’ll help her through it. I promise.”

I look at my sister, perched on the seat of a blue plastic chair with her knees squeezed in tight to her chest, and I try to make myself believe it.

From where I stand, leaning against the exterior of the school building, Frankie’s face is visible in profile.

She’s got her head bent, her hair pushed behind her ear and scattered over her shoulder. I told her to brush it this morning, but it looks like she forgot.

She’s sitting in my truck, and I’m pressing the back of my head against unyielding brick, letting the rough surface bite into the underside of my fingers.

All I can see is Frankie. The fine little-girl lines of her face. Her thin shoulders and scraggly hair and black sweatshirt.

Ten years old, alone in a cold car.

Caroline pushes my shoulder, a gentle shove. “West. I’m talking to you.”

“I heard you.”

I didn’t, though. I’m not quite inside myself. I’m set apart, noticing the pressure of the brick teeth on my palm, observing my sister, listening to a recording of everything the counselor said without feeling any of it.

Frankie needs enrichment. They haven’t got her test scores back, but she’s doing work above grade level in every subject.

She’s unhappy. She’s in his office three or four times a week. She’s walking out of her classroom to sit in the chair by his door or across from his desk, and that’s okay. She’s allowed to do that. He cleared it with her teacher. He gave my sister a safe space to go to when she needs it.

He’d like to see her make more friends.

He’d like to see her talking more at school, would love to give her more opportunities across the board, and he wants to know if I’ve thought about music or art lessons, because sometimes they help kids who are dealing with grief.

I guess that means she told him about Dad.

What else does she tell him when she goes to sit in the safe space he made for her?

What does she tell Caroline on their long afternoons together?

Obviously a fuck of a lot more than she tells me.

Caroline faces me. “West.”

“I’m going to quit at the factory,” I say.

“You don’t have to. I can pick her up every day. I don’t have any classes that late.”

“I need to be around.”

She reaches out with a fingertip and hooks my sleeve. I watch her rub the cloth between her thumb and her finger
like she wants to touch me but she can’t get close enough to do it.

“You should go,” I say. Never have I felt less like I deserved her loyalty.

She takes my hand.

I let her.

“Last year,” I say.

“What about last year?”

“I was pretending.”

“Which part?”

“The part where I had a life outside of taking care of Frankie.”

“But you
did
have a life here. It wasn’t imaginary.”

“Look what came from that, though.”

“You didn’t cause it. You didn’t make your mom get back with your dad, you didn’t kill him, you didn’t make it so Frankie had to see it.”

“She told you she saw it?” The knowledge sweeps through me, leaving me cold.

Of course she did.

My mother lied. My sister witnessed a murder.

She told Caroline, but she didn’t tell me.

“I’m sorry,” Caroline says. “I wasn’t sure if I should say anything, or when, or how to tell you—”

“I knew,” I interrupt. Because I did. I didn’t
want
to know, but I knew.

I think of Dr. Tomlinson then. Of terrible secrets that are never secrets. Not really.

“I’m supposed to keep her safe,” I say.

“You’re doing a good job. She’s a wonderful kid.”

“She’s fucked-up.”

“West,
everybody’s
fucked-up.”

“I don’t want Frankie to be like me.”

Caroline’s eyes glisten. Her throat works.

I pull her hand until her elbow’s against my side and I can put my other arm around her.

We stand there like that.

Past the parking lot, I can see the playground. They’ve got one of those spiral slides off by itself, and this huge play structure that has a climbing wall part, four different slides that branch off in different directions, a rope bridge, all kinds of shit.

There’s dried leaves gathered in the corners and against the fence—red and green and gold.

So much color at this school.

“I never had a counselor like him,” I say.

“Jeff?”

“Twenty-four years old. And that picture of his wife and his baby.”

“What about them?”

“You heard. He wants to see her settled in better. He wants her to reach her ‘full potential for achievement and happiness.’ ”

Maybe that’s a thing people say in Caroline’s world. She would’ve gone to a school like this, with school counselors and teachers and principals who wanted things for her. She has a father who wants the world for her. It’s such a foreign country to me.

Nobody ever talked to me about potential and achievement and happiness but Dr. T, and what I did to get what he was offering canceled out any part of me that might have deserved it.

She strokes my arm. “It’s good, right? It’s all good.”

I pull Caroline closer, position her in front of me, take her weight when she sags against me.

We watch my sister. She bends down and disappears,
probably fishing around in her school bag. Takes something out of it, drops her head again. She’s writing.

“If Jeff was her dad, he’d know what she was writing,” I say.

“Probably not.”

“She wouldn’t have nightmares. She’d have daydreams. Horses and unicorns, princes and castles, all that shit girls her age draw in their notebooks—that’s what Frankie would have.”

Caroline turns in my arms and puts her cold hands against my cheeks. “That is such a mountain of crap.”

“It’s the truth.”

“Even if it were true—even if she’d had a different life up to now, some sheltered life with unicorns and rainbows—sooner or later she’d grow up, and she’d get hurt. There’s no way around it.”

“You didn’t see her when she was a baby. There was nothing to her.”

She strokes her hands down my neck. “You know who I wish I could’ve seen? You. I wish I’d seen you when she was born. How old were you, ten?”

I nod.

“I want a time machine,” Caroline says, “so I can see you when you were eleven or twelve and she took her first steps. I want to see when she was learning to talk, and when you taught her to read.”

“She taught herself to spell first,” I say. “Went right from the alphabet song to phonics to spelling everything out loud, and then once she could spell she picked up
Fox in Socks
and read it to me. Didn’t miss a single word.”

“I bet you were proud of her.”

I was. I always have been.

Caroline flattens her hands against my chest and leans back to look me in the eye.

“She doesn’t need another father,” she says. “She’s got you.”

“I’m just her brother.”

“No, you’re not.”

“I’m her guardian.”

“Jesus, you’re stubborn.” Caroline steps away, turns to face the car, and points at Frankie. “Look at her,” she says. “Look at that girl and tell me you don’t know every single thing about her.”

“She didn’t tell me about Clint.”

“She’s
ten
,” Caroline says. “That’s old enough for secrets. But I met your mom, and I saw where you grew up. I’ve talked to your sister. I’ve seen her with you. You’re her father, whether you like it or not. You’ve been her father since the day your mom brought her home from the hospital.
Look at her
.”

I look.

I look for what feels like an hour.

I can’t tell Caroline she’s wrong.

I don’t know what Frankie’s writing about, but I know the way she nibbles on her lip when she’s got a pen in her hand. She gnaws the skin off that lip, and when it’s cold and dry out it cracks sometimes and bleeds, and I’ve got to get after her to put Carmex on it so it’ll heal.

I’d give my life for her without hesitating. Anytime. Any day. Under any circumstances.

That’s how it is, and Caroline’s right that it doesn’t matter what some piece of paper says. Me and my sister belong to each other deeper than words on paper, deeper than I can find the words to say out loud.

She’s my kid.

I guess that means I’m her father.

What a fucking terrifying thought.