Finding Joy

by Laurie Woodward

  Smack! Rapid fire strikes shot off from two pairs of arms. Child against adult. Girl against man. Victim against perpetrator.

  Mom’s screams did nothing to stop the conflagration. Too many years of fuel. I punched and punched. Not giving a shit as to how loud she cried or how much my face was swelling.

  She got behind me and grabbed my waist. “Stop, now!” she said, dragging me off him.

  I stumbled back, raised an arm toward her but then gasped when I realized what I was doing. A tear-stained face looked at me accusingly.

  “What’s wrong with you?”

  Ronny placed a hand on Mom’s back. “She’s a spoiled bitch, that’s what.”

  Shaking my head, I backed up. Only now feeling the fire on my cheeks, I cupped them and froze. I hate him, fucking hate him.

  After lowering my hands, I ran to my room. With a loud door slam, I fell onto the bed and buried my face in a Tide-scented pillow. Pounding the mattress, I screamed, “I didn’t do anything!”

  Asswipe.

  And I’d really been trying lately. Not getting high so much. Working on my grades, friggin’ joined the school paper, even wrote two articles that got published. I tried getting home before curfew. Wasn’t my fault I couldn’t get a ride.

  Why do I even try? No matter what I do, things suck.

  A smoldering something changed in me that day. It blistered into a scalding char that burned under my skin. And the tears that flooded my pillow did nothing to smother it.

  I fucking give up.

  Thirty-Seven

  Joy

  Can’t take it anymore. I’m leaving.

  I slammed my journal shut and reached into the bottom of my jewelry box where I keep my babysitting money. Shoved the few dollars I had into my big suede purse with the fringe, along with a t-shirt, undies, and my diary.

  Mom and Ronny were gone, at the Country Club or something like that. No, I wasn’t babysitting Kyle, he’s fourteen now and doesn’t need it. Anyhow, he was staying the night at Rick’s.

  I thought about calling my real dad. Maybe this time he’d come around. I actually dialed his number. Hung up when she answered. She wouldn’t want me there. No one wanted me.

  I did call Lisa to tell her my plan. Her voice got all high and excited as I outlined how I’d do it. She promised to bring me food and shit.

  I was shaking by the time I got to the kitchen. Tore the bread trying to spread peanut butter. The sandwiches ended up kind of lumpy by the time I was finished. But I had supplies.

  You’d think I’d be too scared to go out into the field at night… that the idea of coyotes or mountain lions would keep me away. It was just the opposite. The further I got from home, the safer I felt. And when I jumped over the barrier bordering our neighborhood at the dead end, a strange calm came over me.

  The moon was barely a sliver. A sharp sickle, like a reaper’s scythe grabbing branches from the stand of eucalyptus that covered acres near our home. I glanced up, imagining that silvery point grabbing me by the collar and yanking me back.

  Like Ronnie had when I’d come out of the bathroom after our fight last night. Jerking me closer as he bunched up the t-shirt fabric in his hand. Then he rasped in my ear, “When you’re eighteen, you’re out of here.”

  Keeping my arms crossed over my chest, I swallowed hard and nodded. My swollen face was still tender, so I kept quiet. I didn’t want his fist to move off my t-shirt.

  Ronnie heaved several breaths. I stared down the hall wishing the darkness would swallow me. Moments passed.

  “Get out of here. I don’t want to look at you.” He released my t-shirt and shoved me toward my room. “Little bitch.”

  Fine. Then I’ll get the fuck out, I thought.

  Before starting today’s plan.

  About a quarter mile into the stand of eucalyptus trees stood the remains of the neighborhood fort we girls had built a few summers before. Knowing that most of it had long since collapsed, I spent the afternoon taking fallen branches and leaning them against a couple of trees, so I’d have walls for my new home. Next, I wove thinner ones into a patchwork pattern to make a new roof and laid it on top. Then, I took some thick branches to reinforce the sides in case the nights got windy.

  I pulled the tarp and sleeping bag I’d snuck from the garage out of the black garbage bag. Afraid someone I knew might ask me why I was lugging a sack toward the field, I’d invented a cover story about playing Santa in an early Christmas party. Lame, I know, but luckily no one stopped me to test its feasibility.

  After smoothing the blue tarp, I placed a couple of logs in the corners to hold it in place and set up my bed. Pretty cozy, if I did say so.

  With my hut ready, I’d gone home and waited for nightfall.

  The eucalyptus boughs hung in the night like a drowning woman’s hair at sea. Overhead, the crescent moon dipped in and out of wispy clouds, mocking me. A reminder of how light hid in life’s mist.

  I took three more steps. Broken branches and dead leaves crunched under my feet. I halted, cocking an ear to listen for trailing footsteps.

  A slight breeze picked up and the eucalyptus forest creaked and groaned as if saying, Look at us, Joy. Heeding the silent message, I noticed how each had its own unique personality. Some were straight and tall, like Kyle after he solved one of those puzzles he loves so much. Another was bent, my mother shrinking from Ronny’s blows. Close to the fort was a half-fallen tree that seemed to be fighting to keep its root in the soil.

  My voice sounded flat and empty when I said, “That’s me.”

  Hitching the fringed purse back up to my shoulder, I trudged the final yards to the fort. The Girls Only chalked sign had long since faded to white, but the old chair and wooden crate were still there.

  I reached inside the collar of my jacket and slipped off the abalone pendant which was embedded with a single shard of sea glass. Even in the dim light it sparkled.

  In memory, I heard Carl’s voice. You are as amazing as the sea that surrounds this island.

  I smoothed a finger across the seashell, palmed the pendant, and held it tight in my fist.

  After a moment, I pocketed the necklace and used a branch to brush away some of the spider webs from the entrance. Then I crawled inside.

  Thirty-Eight

  Kyle

  During our sleepover, Rick’s dad came in saying that my mom was on the phone. With shaking hands, I lifted the receiver to my ear. Mom’s quivering voice asked where my sister was. When she and Dad got home, Joy wasn’t there.

  “I dunno. She was home when I left,” I said, shrugging. Then a weird shiver went down my back, like when Rick and I’d peeked around the corner to where his parents were watching that scary movie in their bedroom. The psycho murderer holding up a chainsaw on the screen was so real, I almost thought he might jump out of the TV and attack me.

  Mom said Joy was probably just pulling one of her stupid pranks and hung up.

  Our sleepover kinda went downhill after that. We’d planned on having a pig-out, challenging each other to eat as much junk as we could stuff in our faces and we even started. Rick set out all kinds of chips, cookies, and even a big tub of ice cream. And I started to stuff my face, but that shaky weirdness stopped me mid-munch.

  “Kyle!” Rick said, chocolate sauce dripping down his chin. “You’re not even trying.”

  I shook my head. “Just thought I’d give you a head start to even things up.”

  “Seriously?” Rick pointed both hands at himself and then at me. It was a ridiculous thing to say. He is about a foot taller than me and probably outweighs me by about twenty-three pounds. Plus, he can eat faster than just about anyone I know. Like some sort of cartoon superhero with devour powers.

  Hey, I like that. Devour power. I should tell Joy and maybe she’ll put it in her journal. I grinned. Then I remembered Mom’s call and my smile stopped halfway.

  “Okay, it’s my stupid sister. She’s missing. Probably snuck out to smoke or meet her dumb friends,
knowing her.”

  Rick got kind of quiet just then. Picked a napkin out of the holder. Smeared the chocolate sauce away. “She’s done this before?”

  “She used to be out late all the time. But this year things got better. Until…” I clamped my mouth shut. I could NEVER tell about last night. It was Joy’s fault, anyhow. If she didn’t yell so loud, Dad wouldn’t have had to punish her.

  “I wouldn’t worry. My dad says that we high school kids do all kinds of stupid stuff. That’s why he wants to keep ‘the lines of communication open’, whatever that is.”

  “She is so stupid. If she’d only think once in a while, then maybe she wouldn’t get into so much trouble.”

  Rick nodded, then pointed at the pile of food in front of me. I shrugged. And reached for a spoon.

  Thirty-Nine

  Joy

  All in white she wanders through mist, a wraithlike figure on a rocky shore. She makes her way toward lapping waves but as she reaches foam, her feet remain dry. She steps forward, rising up above the gentle tide. Pedaling on air, she glides further out to sea.

  Seeking succor, the woman lifts her ethereal arms to the sky. Shards of light sprout from the abalone necklace around her throat and rise through clouds toward the obscured orb overhead.

  Shivering, I rolled over and squinted. Still in the dream’s grasp, I looked for the ocean but only saw midnight blue. I blinked several times and cocooned my head out. A cold breeze rustled leaves and dim light filtered through the branches overhead.

  Branches?

  For a few moments, I didn’t know where I was. Then my cheek brushed against a zipper and it all came back in a flood. The party. Pointing fingers. Running through streets. Trying to find my way home. Ronny’s fists meeting mine. They hated me. Packing up. Fixing the fort. Using my jacket as a pillow the night before.

  I pulled out my journal and began to write.

  December 12, 1979

  In the dimness, shadow giants reach long fingers toward me as I wait for the bright orange orb to rise over the horizon. Peering through my wall of green, I rise and peer at the last stars in the westward sky. The rustling leaves remind me of that night when the electricity went out and our only light was a stone-hearth fireplace.

  It is so quiet here in my eucalyptus hut. I cock an ear, straining to listen for friendly sounds. Imagining a friend approaching with a warm cup of cocoa and soothing words. For a while, this fantasy takes hold of me and I start to smile.

  But then I remember. And sigh.

  I set my journal down and rummaged in my purse for something to eat. My peanut butter and grape jelly sandwiches were smooshed under deodorant, tampons and Clearasil, but I didn’t care. I gobbled them up anyhow.

  I gotta pee. Shit.

  Now, I’d been camping and knew how to pop a squat, so number one wouldn’t be a problem. But number two in the field? No way.

  What was I going to do?

  Praying no one would come along, I ducked behind a tree for a quick tinkle and then stole back inside my leafy fort. That’s when I began to realize that I hadn’t really thought this out very well. What would I do if it rained? How was I going to take a shower?

  And what about school? Would I become one of those burnouts dealing weed at the park?

  I didn’t have long to think about it because a few minutes later, there was a shuffling sound. Not knowing what to do, I threw my sleeping bag over my head and crouched down. Maybe whoever it was wouldn’t see me if I was hidden.

  “Joy?” Kyle’s quavering voice came from outside.

  Don’t do it, I thought, as I burrowed deeper under the fabric.

  His voice was so small when he called, “You in there?”

  Shit. I threw off the bag. “Come on in. You would, anyhow.”

  He pulled aside the branches that served as a door and tiptoed inside. His face was pale and his eyes were round and hollow, like skeletons, or those poor kids in the third world countries they try to get you to adopt on TV. Did I cause that? I got a guilt pit in my gut.

  “Hey.”

  “Hey yourself.”

  “You slept here, huh?”

  “Nahh. Up in the tree. I was just hiding from you.”

  “Really?”

  “No! Of course, I was here. Where else would I go?”

  He shrugged and drew a circle in the dirt with his left toe.

  We both just sort of stared then, not saying anything. Kyle picked a leaf off of the wall and started to tear it into perfect fractional pieces. He never did anything without mathematical precision.

  “You need to come home.”

  “No. I can’t. They hate me.”

  “Don’t know about that. But you need to come home. Now.”

  I shook my head.

  “Remember that time Mom made a drink wrong?”

  You mean when Ronny cut her arm. Why can’t Kyle admit his dad is an asshole? “Yeah.”

  “It feels like that right now.”

  I narrowed my eyes. “What do you mean?”

  “He picked me up early from Rick’s, so mad…”

  “You’re afraid he might do something, to Mom?”

  Something else I hadn’t considered in my runaway plan. Ronny hadn’t hit Mom in, like, years, until that day. The day red became a new color in our home. When I wasn’t there to protect her.

  Without an insufferable stepdaughter to focus on, would he turn on Mom? When I got suspended, he was full-on pissed and took it out on me. Once. But the day I was at Lisa’s, Mom bore the brunt.

  In some ways, I was her shield, armor and protector. A buffer between Ronny’s fists and her face.

  I had to go home.

  “Joy?”

  I knelt down and began to roll up my sleeping bag.

  Forty

  Joy

  Lisa blew a long wisp of smoke over my head. “Seriously? You did that?”

  “Yeah. I’d had it. Ronny and all his bullshit.”

  “You got cajones, girl. May be a full-on freak, but you got cajones. You sure you’re a chick?” She raised an eyebrow and pulled on my collar to look down my shirt. “Hmm. Don’t know. Could just be muscle.”

  “Hey!” I slapped her hand away then stuck out my chest. “I don’t know what you’re talking about. I say, ‘Raquel Welch, watch out because these itty-bitty titties are your new competition’.”

  “More like Burt Reynolds. Are you getting some hair there?” Lisa reached for my shirt again with a giggle.

  I curled a lip. This was an old joke. Lisa was always giving me a hard time about my small boobies.

  I peered through the ceanothus branches to make sure the campus police weren’t looking our way. Nodding to Lisa, I poured the water out of the bong and shook out the ash. Then I stood and brushed the dirt off of my knees.

  Usually, getting high at lunch made the empty field look like something out of a fairy tale. But this December, it just looked grey.

  “Are you sure this was Columbian, Lisa?”

  “That’s what Frankie said.”

  I opened my dry mouth and ran a tongue over teeth that felt like paper. “Doesn’t feel like it.”

  “You still got cottonmouth?” Lisa asked.

  “Yeah. Wish I had a beer.”

  She giggled. “And you used all our water on the bong.”

  We started walking back toward the parking lot. It’s a good thing Hillview is an open campus. That way, the badge can’t harass us for being off it. Our cover story when we steal over to the field to smoke is that we were walking to 7-11 for snacks. And we’re always sure to keep a few Snickers and Red Vines wrappers in our purses for proof. Or if we’re caught in the parking lot, we say Lisa forgot a book in her car.

  And adults buy it. Man, they’re stupid.

  “The colors are just… dull. No rainbows. Maybe I should try hash.”

  “Or something better.” Lisa raised her eyebrows twice.

  “Like what?” I rubbed my forearm where Ronny had grabbed me when
I’d gotten home, wishing there was a drug to fade bruises.

  “Acid. It’s the best.”

  “When did you, Ms. Goody-Goody-I can’t-ditch-class, ever try acid?”

  “You don’t know everything about me.”

  I crossed my arms. “Okay, then tell me.”

  “Last summer, when I was staying a couple days at my cousin’s, he had some Orange Sunshine. We took some before going to the pool.”

  “Weren’t you scared?”

  “All those stories about kids jumping off buildings thinking they can fly are bullshit. Made up to scare us away.” Lisa rolled her eyes.

  “Yeah. Like Reefer Madness,” I agreed, referring to a 1930’s anti-drug movie that had a bunch of kids go crazy after smoking pot. “So?”

  “At first, I thought maybe he’d played a joke on me, maybe given me candy or something, because nothing happened. Brian is always messing around. But while I was swimming, the water started to change. Like it was freakin’ alive! And I was part of it.”

  “Really?”

  “Yeah, like I was liquid. Diving deeper as all these colors flashed around. And the sounds! So trippy. Then I swear I became a mermaid. And not just halfway. I had a bright green tail that propelled me through the water… Man!”

  “That sounds so bitchin’.”

  “It was.” Lisa looked off in the distance as if reliving the experience. “I’d score you some but it’s not easy to get.”

  “I know. We live in Smallsville.”

  “I hear that some of the Cholos had some last week.”

  “Who, Frankie?”

  “You could ask him, but I think he just deals pot.”

  I rubbed my arm again and looked up at the grey December sky. Nodded. “I will. I full-on will.”

  Forty-One

  Joy