How to Make Friends with the Dark

by Kathleen Glasgow

  Lupe and I simultaneously burst into tears.

  We are in deep, drunk shit, and we know it.

  * * *

  • • •

  A lot happens when you drink, drive without a license, and mow down a mailbox and a lawn ornament. In a converted ice cream truck. When you are sixteen.

  I sit in the front of the truck for I don’t know how long, my chin warm and steaming from the blood pouring from my lower lip, listening to Lupe whisper, “Oh God, oh God, oh God,” over and over, her voice shaking. I’ve never seen Lupe scared before, and I don’t like it.

  I whisper, “I’m so sorry,” but I don’t know if she hears me. My entire body is shaking; my teeth chatter like loose stones in my mouth. I feel like one of those Halloween skeletons dangling from posts on a windy night.

  Bodies cluster around the truck, ask if we’re okay, open the doors, peer in. I hear sirens in the distance.

  “Don’t move them,” someone says. “They could be really hurt.”

  Lupe staggers out of the truck anyway, and falls on the ground. An old woman with curlers in her hair peers down at Lupe and asks, “How many?” and holds up three bony fingers.

  Glass is everywhere. In my hair. Stuck in my dress. Shards in the blood on my chin. Someone undoes my seat belt very slowly. “Stay still,” a voice says. “Help is coming.”

  The voice is familiar, but I can’t seem to place it, and my eyes have grown so heavy I can barely see.

  “What were you girls thinking?” His voice is sharp, but then softens. “You could have died.”

  I turn my head, trying to make the blurry face stabilize.

  It’s hard to make him out in the dark, with my alcohol-misty eyes.

  The figure fumbles in his bathrobe for his glasses. My heart sinks.

  “Grace Tolliver, my God. And is that Lupe?”

  Walrus Jackson stares at me. He leaves camp every night after dinner to go back to his house.

  The disappointment in his eyes is heartbreaking.

  “My God, girls, what possessed you?”

  The police come. An ambulance. A reporter with a camera and microphone.

  32 days, 5 hours

  JAILS SMELL. THEY SMELL like vomit and old food and fright and anger.

  They put Lupe and me together in a small room and ask us questions. The incredibly bright lights sting my eyes. Things are blurry and I don’t understand all the questions. My head is starting to throb.

  My stomach is jumping, but it’s Lupe who throws up in a trash can. They bring a new one and a napkin for her mouth.

  “I’m so fucked,” she whispers. “I am so, so screwed. My scholarship.”

  I want nothing more than to go to sleep, but the female police officer has given us bottles of soda and I’m jittery and awake.

  Lupe says, “My mother is going to kill me. I’m dead.”

  The female police officer scratches something on her yellow legal pad and murmurs, “Probably.”

  The police officer, whose tag says F. Ruiz, clacks away at a laptop. “I’m showing an open case file in child protective services. Is that true?” She raises her eyebrows at me. “Your mother is deceased, your father is incarcerated, and there is no other relative to act as guardian?”

  I lick my lips. My mouth is dry and dirty. I think I might be tasting glass dust from the windshield on my tongue. “No, I mean, yes, my mom is dead, but my sister, my half sister, she’s my guardian. Shayna Franklin. You can call her.” I say her phone number.

  F. Ruiz keeps typing. She frowns. “I’m not seeing it. Did you and your sister fill out your paperwork for guardianship and have your hearing? Nothing is firm until a hearing with a judge and a home inspection.”

  My heart drops. Lupe mumbles, “Oh crap.”

  “She said…she said she was doing the paperwork. Soon. Maybe it’s just not processed yet? I don’t know.” Things move slow, Karen had said once. The last I saw the manila envelope from the state, Shayna had shoved it into her bag.

  I feel the press of tears behind my eyes. The front of my dress is Rorschached with blood. Blood in my hair. Blood on my face.

  I stammer, “Y-you can call my sister. Just call her. She’ll clear it up.”

  But maybe she won’t. My head is clearing. The 911 call. Ray. “Hey, you know, could you maybe check on her? I think something might have happened to her. I had to…call 911.”

  F. Ruiz flicks her eyes to me. “About what?”

  “Her…her boyfriend was angry.”

  “A domestic call?”

  “I guess.”

  She makes a note on the yellow legal pad. “I’ll try to check on it. I still have to call your caseworker. I can’t release you to anyone but a caseworker or legal guardian, and coupled with the infractions you’ve incurred tonight, I’m gonna be frank, it isn’t looking good.”

  F. Ruiz gathers up her Styrofoam coffee cup, her laptop, and her yellow legal pad and leaves.

  Lupe says, “You are in way worse trouble than me, Tiger. Oh man. Because you were driving. And where the shit did you learn to drive that way, anyway? Girl, you are lethal. God, my head kills.”

  Lupe and I stay in the room with the windowed door for seven hours. I know this because outside in the hall, through the window, I can see a round clock on the wall. The hours tick by. I have a tremendous headache and spots float in front of my eyes. Paramedics came after the accident, but they said we’d be okay.

  Lupe sleeps, her head down on her arms on the table, like when they used to make us put our heads on the desk at Thunder Park Elementary, when we misbehaved.

  At 6:04 a.m., F. Ruiz comes to get Lupe. She shakes her awake roughly. “Your ride is here. And a coach. Are you the girl I read about in the papers with the pitching scholarship to the U?”

  Lupe nods slowly, sitting up. Her face is puffy and swollen and there’s a bruise on her cheek I didn’t notice before. Tiny Band-Aids line her forehead where she was nicked by minuscule pieces of windshield. “Yeah.”

  “Your coach looks pissed.”

  Lupe stands up. She looks down at me sadly.

  “See you, sis. Stay cool.”

  Before F. Ruiz closes the door, I blurt out, “What about me? Who’s coming to get me? Did you find out about my sister?”

  She shrugs. “Nobody. There wasn’t anyone out there when the police went to check on the 911 call. You’re with us now, girl. Shoulda thought of that before you got drunk and took a joyride.”

  * * *

  • • •

  From 6:04 a.m. until 7:22 a.m., I do nothing. I can’t sleep. I don’t even get up and pace the room. I just sit, staring at things. The wall. The floor. My bloody dress. I rub my fat lip. It stings, and I bite back tears.

  I miss everybody.

  At 7:22 a.m., the heavy door opens and a woman I don’t know comes in. She frowns down at me.

  “Grace Tolliver?”

  “Yes. Where’s Karen? She’s my—”

  “Not anymore. I’m Luisa. I’ll be your caseworker from now on.”

  “I don’t…I want Karen. What’s going on?”

  Not-Karen says, “You know what’s happening, Grace? Do you have any idea?”

  I hang my head, tears swimming in my eyes.

  “You didn’t just take a car and drive without a license. You got drunk and took the car and drove without a license. And then you drove over a mailbox. We’ve got destruction of private property, driving without a license, driving while intoxicated and underage drinking. Let’s hope those home owners don’t press charges. We’re looking at serious stuff, Grace. You have a record now. We’re going to see a judge as soon as they can find a hearing time.”

  Not-Karen sighs. “Look at your lip. Gracious. You probably should have gotten stitches for that. Why didn’t the paramedics take a look at
that?”

  I ignore her and stand up. I’m wobbly and sick. “Where’s Shayna? Is she outside? Is she mad?”

  She gives me an annoyed look. “Is that the sister?” She opens the folder she’d tucked under her arm, licks a finger, and flicks some pages. “No, she’s not outside, Grace, and she hasn’t answered her cell. It doesn’t even look like she’s done the paperwork we sent her. I’m not surprised. Sometimes raising a kid is too much for people. What happened during your home visit?”

  “What home visit?”

  “You were supposed to set up appointments for home visits.” She looks down at her file again. She shakes her head. “We contacted your sister on three occasions, it looks like, and never heard back.”

  “No, there must be some mistake.”

  This can’t be happening.

  My head is pounding. I lean on the table. I can feel sweat breaking out on my forehead.

  Her voice is firm. “There’s no mistake, honey. There’s going to be an investigation into her fitness to be your guardian, after all this, if we can even find her. And I don’t see an effort on her part to make this work, frankly.”

  She checks her phone. “It’s time to go. I’ve got some other pickups.” She raps on the door and the guard comes back.

  “I don’t…Where are we going? I want to go home.” My voice sounds high and frightened, like a kid’s.

  Not-Karen is matter-of-fact. “You’re going to juvenile detention, Grace. You drove drunk, stole a car, destroyed private property, and you don’t have a legal guardian. You’re going into the system.”

  I can’t hold it in anymore. I throw up all over my shoes, and Not-Karen’s.

  HERE IS WHAT HAPPENS when you go to juvenile detention, which turns out to be a low-slung, brick-and-cinder building in Sierra Vista.

  You ride in a white van with four other girls. Everybody stares straight ahead, or checks their nails. One girl just cries, but silently, tears running down her face and neck.

  Not-Karen rides in front. She’s in charge of all of you. She’s the one who gives all the paperwork to the woman at the front counter, who sits in a kind of half-cage, half-desk contraption. There is a metal detector you have to go through, and a pat-down. Two of the girls have been here before, because the guard at the metal detector says their names. Hi, Raisa. Hi, Trini.

  When you look back, Not-Karen is gone.

  They fingerprint you.

  They make you sit for hours in a hot room with the other girls. One by one, you’re called out to sit in another hot room, where you get photographed for an ID, asked questions about your periods and health and are you pregnant do you think you could be pregnant have you ever been pregnant are you currently on medication are you on drugs are you hiding drugs on your person are you withdrawing from drugs.

  The girl-bug stirs. You are nothing now.

  They take you to yet another small white room, where a woman runs her gloved fingers through your hair, your mouth, your ears, looking for you don’t even know what. Then you strip, and they do even more horrible and embarrassing things in embarrassing places, and if you didn’t feel like nothing before, you do now.

  They give you a beige jumpsuit with a front zipper and plain slip-on sneakers, three pairs of underwear, two flimsy bras, and wait while you hand over the dress and change. You ask, Will I get my dress back? and the guard says, You’ve got other worries now, girl.

  Another guard shows you your bunk in a huge room filled with bunks. They assign you to a sour-faced girl named Wee-Wee with lots of holes in her ears and she walks you around an entire building filled with sour-faced girls, pointing out the showers, the nurses’ office, the psych office, the dining hall, the TV room, the tiny library. “Don’t even try to get in to see the psych,” she says. “The line is always too long. Better off seeing the nurse. At least you get to lay down and stuff. Take a load off.

  “We got classes,” she says. “Like if you’re here a while. Math and stuff.”

  Bored, she ticks off her fingers what will get you demerits, what will keep you “in good.” She looks around covertly and then leans close. She smells like old milk and pudding. Then she pinches your arm very hard, says, “Dig? That’s as nice as I’m gonna get,” and walks away.

  You sit in your bunk trying not to cry, because you’ve seen television shows about prisons, which is the closest thing to where you are now, and you know what happens to people who show weakness. You wish you had the superpower to become invisible right now.

  The beige jumpsuit is itchy. The shoes are too big. The bra is too thin and doesn’t have underwire, so your boobs feel loose and uncomfortable.

  You choke back tears, because no one should see you cry, here.

  You wonder how you got from there to here. From a mom to none. From a friend named Cake to a girl named Wee-Wee. From ashes to darkness to ashes to foster to kid prison.

  In a little while, you get up and walk to the library, because it’s the only place you remember how to get to. You don’t make eye contact with anyone. You stay there, in the stacks, holding yourself, trying to cry without making a sound. The smell of books is familiar, and makes you feel better, but not much.

  Not much at all.

  You wish like hell your mother would come to get you.

  32 days, 15 hours

  THE JUVENILE DETENTION CENTER is called Ignacio Ortiz Girls’ Rehabilitation Center. I stay in the library the first morning I get there until a bell rings and another girl in the stacks looks at me and says, “Lunch. Can’t be late. Get a demerit.”

  I follow her and just do everything she does. Show my ID card, get a tray, join the line, drink some weak Kool-Aid, nibble a cracker, wonder where my bloody dress is, and listen to the noise around me, girls chattering, shouting.

  At another table, a girl jostles another girl with her elbow and the other girl stands up and slaps her across the head. The other girl shrinks away.

  I move my elbows closer to my body.

  There are guards, even though we are just kids. Guards walking slowly up and down the cafeteria aisles, faces set, eyes bored.

  The Wee-Wee girl is down the table. She eats methodically: crackers first, sip of Kool-Aid, scoops of pudding, then the white-bread-mayonnaise-yellow-cheese sandwich.

  It’s pretty much like the school cafeteria, only some of us, I have a hunch, have stolen cars or punched our parents or stolen stuff from a store or maybe even worse things.

  I don’t want to know what those things are.

  There are so many of us who’ve done something wrong.

  There are probably a lot of broken-back stories in this place, too.

  A bell rings and everyone stands up suddenly, trays clattering. Another line to put your tray in a bin, drop your utensils in a bucket.

  I don’t know where to go. Girls push into me, shove me out of the way, and Wee-Wee appears, exasperated. “What’s wrong with you? Just move. You want to get hit?” she grumbles, taking my elbow and leading me out of the rushing pack of girls. “It’s like school. We do something different every hour, okay?”

  She takes me to a kind of gym, with rows and rows of girls doing jumping jacks. Touching their toes, reaching for the sky.

  A burly man stands at the front, dressed in sweats. He blows his whistle at us. “Front of the line, ladies, if you get here late,” and Wee-Wee groans, because now we have to be in front of everyone else, and I guess she likes the back, where no one can see your butt.

  It hurts to do the exercises, because my body is sore from the accident.

  She takes me to a class. “Health,” she whispers.

  We watch a video about taking care of your baby. The lady in the video holds a supremely fake-looking baby. It’s a White baby and the Black girls in the room laugh. That’s not MY baby, they shout.

  The lady in the video shakes
the fake baby. Never shake your baby.

  She puts the fake baby in a giant bed and climbs in next to the fake baby. She pretends to fall asleep and roll over on the fake baby. Never put your baby in a bed. Put your baby in a crib.

  She holds the baby with one hand, under her arm, and lights a cigarette with the other and blows smoke and watches television. Don’t smoke around your baby.

  One girl waves her hand dismissively. “Shit, my daddy and mama smoked up around me all the time and I turned out just fine.” She laughs and high-fives with another girl.

  The lady holds a bottle of soda to the baby’s fake plastic mouth. Babies need breast milk or formula, not sugary drinks.

  Some of the girls cry. Wee-Wee whispers, “They miss their little ones.”

  “Where are their little ones?” I whisper back.

  Wee-Wee shrugs. “Not here.”

  After dinner, I sit with Wee-Wee at the back of the rec room. The girls watch Chopped on a television hung high up on a wall. It’s behind a cage.

  Someone switches the channel to local news. “My auntie bought lottery this week. I wanna see the numbers.”

  And suddenly there I am.

  Mesa Luna Teens’ Ice Cream Truck Spree. “Two teens decided to…almost turned deadly…damage to home owner’s property included…”

  I can’t even breathe. They don’t show our photos or say our names, but they show photos of the busted mailbox that I ran over, a fence I flattened, and the Jellymobile, whose front is crushed beyond repair, and everyone in Mesa Luna knows that truck, so now they all know what happened. Or part of it. Probably.

  #girlfelon #orphandelinquent #jellythief

  My mother would be so upset, if she knew. If she could see this.

  I went from regular kid to full-blown criminal in a little over a month.

  I go back to my bunk. I’m afraid to turn on my side, so I stay on my back. I have to go to the bathroom so badly, but I’m afraid to. I try to be as still as possible so I don’t jostle all the pee in my body.

  No one talks to me. Girls buzz around, change into sweatpants and T-shirts, brush and braid hair. At a certain point, a kind of alarm sounds and the ceiling lights shut off, all at once.