You Take It From Here (11 page)

“My kid reached out and grabbed a giraffe on her mobile today. That’s the biggest thing ever to have happened in her life so far. It’s so depressing, considering how much life she has left that I’m in charge of monitoring. So I decided to cut off one of my pinkies, for I intend to erase myself inch by inch until I no longer have to be here.”

I was five years old the first time she told me just how much she wasn’t interested in young people.

“I’m sorry,” she had said. “I know you were trying to tell me about the new swings at school. But I can’t seem to force myself to care, Danielle. Can you understand that your mother finds children to be boring? Will you please learn one interesting thing to talk about with me? Or try to speak your child-babble in Spanish. At least then we’d be doing something enriching.”

That led to my horribly misguided decision to start a book club with my mother. I thought that maybe if I’d come to her like one of her peers, a thinking female who drinks wine and makes art, she’d see I was just another human being who loved her and wanted to spend time with her. The most grown-up book in my collection at the time was
Lord of the Flies.
I don’t know what bad adult had gifted a six-year-old that literature, but there it was on my pink bookshelf, sitting underneath my ceramic elephant piggy bank.

I sent my mother a formal invitation to our book club meeting. I’d crafted it with construction paper, spelling out the word
book
in macaroni. I drew sparkly crowns and smiling houseflies around the borders. I saved a box of grape juice I wanted to use for my wine. I settled into my bed one night, ready to dive into my intelligent, thought-provoking book club selection.

Lord of the Flies.

Even the wisest, most world-experienced child might have difficulties understanding that novel. I was only six. I remember sitting at the foot of my bed desperately trying to comprehend these disgusting boys and their weird way of talking. The only character I could relate to was Piggy. He was stuck outside this world, trying to get in, trying to be heard.

Consequently, I was so traumatized by the description of his death, my mother found me at the foot of my bed in tears, heaving, having my own fit of
ass-mar.

“What is wrong with you, Danielle?” she asked. She often said my name at the end of her sentences, as if she had to remind herself just who this person was who resembled her around the eyes, and walked into her kitchen every morning in pajamas.

“Piggy!” I shouted. “Piggy died!”

“Sure,” my mother said, dismissively. “That was a given. But what about the conch?”

“The conch?” I didn’t know what she was saying, because I hadn’t yet heard the word spoken. I was pronouncing it like
konch
, but she was calling it a
kankh
, making it sound like the dirtiest of words. “You mean the shell?”

“Yes, the
shell
, Danielle. You’re completely ignoring the fact
that the conch shattered at the same time Piggy died. That conch represented their last attempts at civilization, at common sense, at morals. That’s the real tragedy. I can’t believe you didn’t see that.”

Toward the empty space where she had been standing in the doorway, I mouthed,
“I hate you so much.”
I couldn’t put voice to those words. She never heard me say how I felt.

Standing outside your door, faced with my first moment of motherhood, I had a swirling terror in the pit of my stomach that I was about to say or do something that would scar you forever. I’d accidentally toss you off a shame cliff and your head would shatter like Piggy’s. Somehow, despite my best efforts, my voice would find that deadened disdain my mother’s took when she spoke to me, letting me know I’d ruined her dreams as early as initially failing to abort myself inside her uterus.

You were flung across your bed; facedown on that puffy green-and-pink comforter, crying into your forearms, shuddering in misery. Your hair dangled in stripes of black and gold, making your head resemble a discarded pom-pom.

Standing in a teenage girl’s room during a tantrum is not unlike auditing Acting for Drama Majors. You’re technically sitting to the side; you don’t have to participate, but you can’t help feeling all the emotion in the room. I could practically see squiggle lines of hormones coming off your body, floating into the air, sailing over toward my face. If dogs were around, they’d be whining. If cats could wander past, they’d instantly go into hissing fits. It’s just too much passion, too much angst, so much sadness. Over a haircut.

As I searched for something to say, I worried that if I waited much longer you’d begin slamming your face with your own palms, martyring yourself on your bed, not just to punish me but to punish
the world
for making you be alive in it.

“Your mom made me come in here,” I said, establishing blame early on.

You muffled your reply into your elbow. “I don’t care.”

“You know how much hair means to her,” I said.

Your head slowly rose and lowered, the world’s saddest bob.

“More than it means to normal people,” I added.

You’d gotten to that part of the cry that was mostly shivering and gasping, so I gingerly took a seat at the edge of the bed, waiting for you to finish thinking about how hard everything in life is and why do they make it so unfair and why were you ever born and thirteen is hard.

Then I told you a secret. “The worst haircut I’ve ever gotten in my entire life your mother gave to me.”

That got your eyes poking out. Your sweet face was wet and shiny, sweaty around the temples from hating everything. Pink-cheeked and blotchy, cry-face had reduced your eyes to puffy dots. I didn’t say it then because it wasn’t the time, but your little, hot head emerging from your arms reminded me of how you looked the day you were born. Angry, damp, and purple, looking for someone to blame.

“Your mother is never going to admit this, by the way,” I said. “She heard people just flat-out tell me how terrible my hair looked. She’d roll her eyes and nod at them, like she’d
been saying the same thing and I refused to do anything about it.”

“She’s so unfair,” you whined.

“She really is. And that was awhile ago. She’s seen pictures from that time; she knows how bad it was. She still hasn’t apologized. She pretends it didn’t happen. She’ll do that with this, too.”

“No, she won’t. She’ll bring it up for the rest of her life.”

You either didn’t see me or didn’t notice how I winced.

“She always thinks she’s more important than everybody else,” you moped.

I knew I had to bring you back from mother-hate, because Smidge was expecting a full report and I couldn’t lead with, “Well, she’s done crying and now she blames you for everything.”

“I don’t know if that’s it,” I said, most unconvincingly.

“It
is
it. She’s so mean.” That got you worked up into a new round of heaves and whimpers.

“She just has a lot of conviction,” I said. “And pride. She knows she gave me a bad haircut. You know what she said when I last brought it up? ‘It was the
style
at the
tiiiiime.
’ She insisted it would have worked on me if only I believed in it. Like a haircut and a fairy are exactly the same.”

You turned your head to the side to wipe your face. “What did it look like?” you asked. “Your hair.”

“Oh,” I said, trying to sound like I was searching for the words. I reached out and stroked your head, pulling on a few strands.
“This,”
I said, grandly gesturing toward your severed locks.

You laughed as you swatted at my face, catching me under the chin as you sat up, folding your knees.

“I hate it,” you said, playing with the toes of your socks. “My hair. That’s really why I’m crying. I’ve been crying since last night when I did it. I was going to tell Mom that, but she freaked out before I could even say anything. But I know it looks bad.”

“Kind of a light term for this. It looks like you were hazed.”

You gave the most miserable mumble. “I know.”

“I think your mother wants me to beat you up.”

“You should.”

“I can’t hit a crying girl. That’s just mean. But look at you: can’t we just say I did
this
to you?”

You placed both hands on top of your head and pressed down, as if you were trying to shove the hair back inside your skull so it could spring back in a new style, like snakes from a trick can of peanuts.

“I just wanted to look
different
,” you said through clenched teeth. “My old hair made me look like a baby, and Aubrey’s a grade older than me and—”

You halted right there, knowing you’d accidentally said too much.

“Aubrey?” I asked. “That’s a boy’s name?”

“Don’t tell Mom. She’ll kill me if she knows I cut my hair for a boy.”

This was turning out to be quite a time for secrets in my life.

“Do you think he’s going to like your hair? This Aubrey?”

“No. I just thought . . . he’s cool, and I didn’t think he’d like me if I was cute.”

“Well, you know,” I said, “mission accomplished.”

You kicked your legs out in a tiny tantrum. “Now Mom’s going to start on all the nicknames.”

“There will be a lot of nicknames, I’m afraid.”

“I don’t know what to do. I don’t want to be grounded! Ugh! I hate everything!”

I recognized we were hitting a critical moment. I had to keep you from spiraling out. You were a ticking time bomb; my clippers were halfway through the red wire and you were sitting there, holding up the green one, taunting, “Are you sure?”

“Maybe you could write your mom a letter of apology?”

That is what I said to a thirteen-year-old. It came out like a sad, weird question, totally showing my cards. I had no idea what I was doing and was just trying to keep from saying anything real.

You spotted my weakness immediately, your torso twisting like you were agonizing through your own personal exorcism. You flung back onto your bedspread and wailed, “A letter!”

I should’ve cut the green wire.

“Well . . .” I started, but you were writhing around so much you’d think I’d just dumped acid straight onto your skin.

“I’m so sure!” you yelled. “You write letters to Santa or your congressman. Not your mother! Like she’s the editor of my life, or something?”

I can tell you now that I didn’t have a random coughing fit just then, Jenny. I was covering up the fact that your teenage angst caused a giggle fit I desperately wanted to hide. It made me remember I was never going to be thirteen again, and I was just so happy about that.

“You’re right,” I said, trying to control my breath from
shuddery chuckles. “That was a dumb suggestion. Don’t write a letter. I’m sorry.”

I got up and adjusted the blankets around your tortured body. I figured since I was leaving you just as I’d found you, there was no real harm done. I never called you an ungrateful brat or a crybaby, so I was already doing better than my mother would have done in that situation.

Smidge was waiting for me in the hallway with her coach face on, sizing me up like I’d just gotten cut from the softball team. Eyes narrowed, mouth bent into an unimpressed frown.

“That was fast,” she said, her interrogation beginning with a statement.

“Well, that’s just how I mom,” I said.

“Did you beat her?”

“No.”

“Did you tell her she looks like shit?”

“I used other words, but yes.”

“Is that why she’s crying?”

“She’s crying because she’s thirteen. And because she doesn’t like the haircut.”

“Good,” Smidge said, pushing me aside as she headed toward your room. “Then she won’t mind when I beat it off her.”

TEN

I
found your father hiding in the backyard garage. Henry might have defined it as “working,” since he was busy sanding a table while Tucker hunched over a workbench, rewiring a lamp. Those boys could call what they were doing whatever they wanted; I knew they were hiding. The dead giveaway being they were down to one beer, which they were now sharing just to avoid going anywhere near the house.

I slid inside the garage, shutting the door behind me in an attempt to absorb a few minutes of quiet. The men watched me, smiling. We were equal parts chicken shit and independent observers, able to step away from the situation. Not even Henry could be asked to genuinely care that much about his daughter’s haircut, which is why I nominated him to go in there to bring us back some beer.

Tucker seconded. “It’s your house, man.”

“Such betrayal,” he said, clutching at his heart. “And here I thought I was among friends.”

“I’d also like a soda, if it’s not too much trouble.”

I’d be lying if I said I never thought about Henry, if we’d
be a good couple. We make each other laugh, and Smidge always says we’re the same kind of patient. But Henry’s so quiet it can be hard for me to keep a conversation going with him. He often seemed miles away, politely nodding whenever I paused for breath. I assumed we’d grow bored of each other; the kind of relationship where we retreated to separate rooms to read books we will not swap. Meals eaten while watching television programs.