He wrote a haiku with all the syllables counted out perfectly across the three lines.
Change is hard. Don’t be
Sorry. Be something great while
You are still so young.
I’m thirty-two minutes late, so I start to run, and even though I’m running, it’s hard to empty my brain because it’s turning around and around like a wash cycle, wondering what great thing I could possibly be.
Chapter 22
A Little Space
Even though I’m already thirty-seven minutes late, I stop in the lobby to get the mail because maybe if I do something helpful they’ll forget about most of those minutes. But as I walk up to the third floor I’m mainly worrying that they won’t have even noticed I’m not there yet.
As soon as I reach the second floor I can hear their voices, still loud and rising, back and forth.
When I get to the door, I slide my key into the dead bolt, and before I can even turn it, the door flies open and my dad is scooping me up in his arms like I’m five years old and not eleven.
“Oh, thank God,” he’s whispering, and because I’m eleven and not five, and in the seventy-first percentile in height for my age, I’m kind of falling out of his arms and we’re collapsing in a heap on the apartment floor.
Then Mom sinks to her knees and wraps her arms around us both and says, “Oh, my little Raindrop, I love you so.”
And why I start crying is a big who-knows. Maybe it’s because I’m so relieved that they stopped fighting long enough to notice I was late, or maybe it’s because this feels like the exact position we were in that night, except instead of brand-new wood floors it was rough pavement beneath my knees.
Guthrie’s guitar pick is digging into my leg, but we’re all tangled up and I can’t really move, and I don’t even try to adjust because I should feel it, pushing against me, reminding me of what I did.
Dad is crying too. I can tell because his shoulders are shaking up and down like they do whenever he laughs or cries. But I know he’s not laughing now. He’s holding me close and rocking me back and forth and his shoulders are bouncing and bouncing and I can feel his tears sticking to my face and mixing with mine.
Mom starts to say, “Oh, my little Raindrop . . .” again, but before she can finish, she sniffs and her voice catches and then she starts crying too. “You were thirty-seven minutes late,” she blubbers, and I can’t believe it because my mom never counts things out the way I do. “A long and terrible thirty-seven minutes.”
Dad’s shoulders are still bouncing, and he’s still holding me so tight that I couldn’t go anywhere if I wanted to, which I don’t.
Then Mom wipes the tears from her face fast and sighs big like this is the end of her crying and now she wants some answers.
“You scared us,” she says. “Where on earth were you? And why didn’t you pick up a phone to call us?”
I want to tell her I shouldn’t have to ask some store owner for their phone, I should have my own, but she’s pulling away from our heap and turning my chin toward her so I can’t look away.
“We called the school, we called the track coach, we called Ms. Dacie, and Frankie, and you were nowhere. Nowhere, Rain.”
And I’m mad that she won’t just stay in our pile on the floor a minute longer and let us cry and send little silent secret messages to each other about how much we miss everything and how sorry we are and how we’ll all try a little harder.
“Rain—”
“Maybe I should have a cell phone,” I say.
Then Dad cuts in, “She’s safe, Maggie. Just give it a minute, would you?”
“Are you kidding? Do you remember how scared we—”
“Of course I do. I just think we could—”
But before my mom can cut him off again and answer back, I blurt out, “I was having hot chocolate in the café with a homeless guy.”
That shuts them both up really fast, which is perfect because I wanted to yell shut up, but that’s something I’m not supposed to say. They’re both just looking at me, like I got their attention and I can go ahead and explain now, but instead I stand up, and I walk the nine steps to my bedroom.
Mom’s not the only one who can hustle off.
And Dad’s not the only one who can close a door.
They give me six minutes by myself before they knock quietly on my door, and all I do for the whole six minutes is lie on my bed and count the bricks on the building across the alley from window to window until I lose count and start over. It doesn’t empty my brain like running does, but it gets close. It pushes June fifteenth, and Dacie, and Reggie, and Nestor, and the Almontes, and all the hard changes, and Mom and Dad’s rising voices to the back of my brain because all I can really focus on is seventy-one, seventy-two, seventy-three . . .
“Rain?” Dad taps lightly on my door.
“Open the door, please,” Mom says.
“We just want to listen, Rain,” Dad whispers. “Promise.”
But I just keep counting the bricks, squinting my eyes to make sure I don’t skip any.
“Rain . . .”
Their voices make me lose count, and that makes me mad because all the thoughts I don’t want to think come rushing back in and before I can crack my knuckles and start again, I yell, “Leave me alone!”
And at that exact second I start feeling bad because even though they’re the ones yelling and hustling off and hiding, I’m the one who did anything wrong.
There’s another soft knock on my door, and I’m secretly relieved that they aren’t giving up and leaving me alone like I told them to.
“I’m going to go pick up some dinner,” Dad says. “When I get back, we’ll all eat together.” Then he taps three quiet taps on my door like he’s saying all right then, or goodbye for now. “We can eat in there if you want,” he adds. “But we’re eating together.”
“OK,” I agree, because if my dad is going to put on shoes and go outside the apartment, and talk to people, order food, and carry it back, I can open my door too.
I hear the click of the dead bolt lock and picture Dad walking down Broadway and reading all the menus in the restaurant windows. He doesn’t know any more Spanish than hola, so I bet he comes back with burgers from the bar next to the café, the one with picnic tables outside, and the chalkboard menu, and the French fries that come in big fancy cones. That’s another place where my skin matches most other skin. But now I’m wondering what it was before, and if a family like the Almontes owned it, and if someone like Nestor worked there, and where they all are now.
Then Mom’s voice says, “Maybe we can talk about you getting a cell phone. For safety calls only, so we know where you are.”
I don’t say anything.
“But until then, if you are going to be late, even five seconds late, you have to ask to use the phone where you are to call us.”
I think about how embarrassing that would be, to ask the backward-baseball-cap barista if I can use the phone to call my mom.
“I’m just going to sit right here against your door until Dad gets back. OK, Rain? In case you want to talk.” Her knees crack like loud, snapping twigs the way they always do when she bends them, and even though her knees are fine and she’s athletic like I am, Guthrie used to cover his ears every time Mom bent down, and he’d call her Old Crotchety and laugh.
I get up from my bed and sit down on the floor too, leaning my back against my door, and I can feel her weight against me, and it feels good, being back-to-back with Mom. We sit there quiet, just breathing, for a whole minute before I say, “Old Crotchety.”
And that gets Mom to laughing. Her chuckles rise up and up until I hear her trying to catch her breath. “I haven’t thought about that since . . .” But she’s hooting and snorting so hard she can’t finish and I can hear her stand up and sit back down again, making her knees crack. “Old Crotchety,” she repeats, and laughs. “Old Crotchety . . .”
I feel her sit down against the door, so we’re back-to
-back again. And then something changes and I’m 70 percent certain her laughs are turning to cries. Then I’m 100 percent certain because I hear her sniffing and heaving.
I turn around and put my hand on the door and press hard and hope she can feel it. I lay my cheek by my hand too and whisper through the wood, “It’s OK, Mom.” And maybe it’s because there’s a door between us, but she doesn’t try to stop. She cries so hard it vibrates the door against my cheek and I pat three little pats and tell her it’s OK because even if it’s not, I can’t think of anything else to say. She cries for two minutes and forty-five seconds, and the whole time I press my cheek into the door and pat my hand where I think her back is.
Then she stops, clears her throat, and stands up. And I hear the faucet running and plates clanking.
Then I hear the dead bolt unlock. Dad’s home with dinner.
“What’d you get?” Mom chimes, as if she didn’t just cry for two minutes and forty-five seconds.
“Tamales,” he answers. “I don’t even really know what they are, but they looked good, and the woman selling them was really nice.”
That makes me open the door fast and blurt, “They’re a traditional food from Mexico. You don’t eat the corn husk.” And that’s a fact, because I looked it up at Ms. Dacie’s.
“There’s my Rain,” Dad says, putting the brown paper bag down on the kitchen counter.
Mom is laying three place mats on the counter. It’s the first time since that night that we’ll actually sit down for a real dinner, all together. At home in Vermont, we never ate at the table again. But maybe here it’s a little different, because Guthrie never had a spot at this counter like he did in our old house, a spot that would just be empty if we laid out place mats and had dinner, a spot that would only make us think of how much we miss him.
Mom pours water into three glasses and puts out three plates and forks. Dad rips the brown paper bag down the side and shows us the steaming meat and cheese tamales, all perfectly wrapped and tied in corn husks.
We sit down and I put one on my plate and show them how to untie the husk and unwrap it. “You can eat it with your fingers or with a fork,” I say, but I know we’re fork people. Even when we order Chinese food. Mom always starts with chopsticks but gets frustrated with the little grains of rice, so she gives up and caves for silverware.
“They’re delicious!” Mom says.
And that’s a fact.
I’m happy that Dad didn’t get burgers from the chalkboard menu bar, even if it looks like a fun place to be and the food always smells so good when I walk by, because I think the tamal lady is nice too, and if people start buying burgers and fancy cone fries instead of tamales, I wonder where she’ll have to push her cart.
“So,” Dad starts. “Hot chocolate with a homeless guy?”
And the way he says it makes me laugh. He snickers too, until Mom says, “It’s not funny!”
But even she knows it kind of is, and lets out a little laugh.
“But really, Rain. What happened?”
I tell them about hearing them fighting and how I just couldn’t put the key in the lock and open the door so I left. I tell them how Ms. Dacie helped me with poetry so I ordered a hot chocolate and started writing at the café and that I don’t even know exactly how it all happened, but I recognized Nestor from the church kitchen, and all of a sudden we were drinking hot chocolate together and talking about how the café used to be a Laundromat.
“Rain—”
“I know,” I say. “I probably shouldn’t make a habit of having hot chocolate with strangers. But Nestor didn’t feel so strange.”
Dad scrapes the last bits of meat out of a husk with a fork. “You are always thinking of others,” he says. “I love that about you.” He starts unwrapping another tamal from the bag. “But we just love you so damn much, Rain . . .”
I’m pretty sure damn is something I’m not supposed to say, but when Dad uses the word it makes me pay attention and really believe him. And I’m 88 percent certain he can’t finish that thought because the words are caught in his throat.
“Just so damn much . . .” he repeats. “And if anything ever . . . If . . .”
Mom reaches over and taps his hand like they’re a relay team and it’s her turn to take over. “Your dad and I just want to keep you safe. And we would never forgive ourselves if you ran off and got hurt because we were fighting.”
And that’s a fact that I understand.
“That’s why . . .” Mom says. She clears her throat and takes a deep breath. “That’s why your dad and I are going to try giving each other a little space.”
I’m wondering how much more space they really need with Mom at her job all day and Dad in the bedroom, doing whatever he’s doing. And then my brain makes one hundred clicks and I realize they aren’t just talking about a little elbow room, they mean they don’t want to live together anymore, that they’re giving up, that they aren’t one out of four, and I try to take a deep breath and finish my tamal, but I have a feeling I’ll never like tamales again, which sucks. And it’s all my fault.
“Rain—”
“We think this is best for everyone—”
“It’s not best for me!” I snap. Then I do something I’ve never done before. I slam my brand-new dinner plate against the brand-new marble countertop that I’m 99 percent certain weren’t here when Reggie Muñoz lived in this apartment. I slam it so hard it cracks right down the middle into two pieces in my hands. The juice from the meat escapes and runs onto the counter and falls in big splats on the brand-new wood floor. I push back my stool and do something else I’ve never done before. I slam my door. And if I had anything hanging on my walls, it would have fallen to the floor and shattered too. That’s how hard I slam it.
I flop on my bed and try to block out their whispers from the kitchen. So I start counting the bricks on the building across the alley again. Sixteen, seventeen, eighteen . . . until a light turns on in one of the windows and I lose count. It’s the woman I saw before. She’s reaching for something in a high kitchen cabinet. In the next window over, the same man is sitting on the couch again, watching TV. I still don’t know if they are in separate apartments, living side by side, or if they live together but are just in two different rooms. Maybe they’re giving each other space. Or maybe she’s just reaching for a bag of chips and pretty soon she’ll join him in front of the TV and they’ll watch movies all night, like we used to.
I want to stay up so I can know the ending, but my eyes are feeling heavy, and when I lie back I crinkle the mail I brought upstairs for my parents. I pull it out from under me and push it to the floor, except I can’t help but see that one of the envelopes is addressed to Mr. Muñoz, as if I don’t already feel like a big pile of dry, cracked, untillable dirt.
I fall asleep pinching Guthrie’s guitar pick so hard between my fingers it’s leaving a big red crease, and thinking that in books the parents always get back together, and it’s never the kid’s fault if they don’t.
But I can’t forget what Dr. Cyn says, and one out of four is not great odds.
And I can’t forget that night, and how it is my fault. And how Guthrie would be here if I hadn’t done what I’d done.
Chapter 23
That Night
The pavement was rough, and little pebbles stuck hard in my knees, but I didn’t dare move, because if I did, if I shifted my weight and moved from this heap of arms and legs and tight-holding hugs and fast-beating hearts between my parents, I’d have to see it again—the flares sparking on the blacktop, the tape keeping us back, away from him, the silent, rotating lights of the ambulance.
Maybe we could stay in a heap like this, holding close for the rest of our lives.
Chapter 24
Plans
Nobody says wakey wakey to me this morning and tugs at my toes, because I’m up early. My brain wakes me up wondering if last night was a dream, if I really had hot chocolate with Nestor, and if Mom and Dad really said wha
t they said. I wake up in my regular clothes at 4:43 in the morning, on top of my bed, and Guthrie’s guitar pick is stuck to my right palm.
I finish The One and Only Ivan before the sun comes up. Then I change into my running clothes. Even though running by myself without Coach Okeke and the fourteen girls on the track team on my heels feels scary, and like I wouldn’t even know where to go, I still need to move, to erase my brain. So I decide I’ll run repeats up the steep hill from Riverside Drive back to our building stoop. It’s 100 percent impossible to get lost half a block from your own apartment.
I creak open my bedroom door and for one minute I think my dad is back looking for work because he’s not behind the bedroom door. He’s sitting on a stool in the kitchen, his laptop is open on the counter, and he’s jotting things on a notepad. And I wonder if he’s been there all night.
“Hi, there.” He says it so softly it’s almost like he just breathes the words out.
When I circle around him and peek over his shoulder I see that he’s not back looking for work at all. He’s looking up apartments in New Jersey.
“A whole different state?” I ask. “You need that much space?”
“We’re just looking at what we can afford. Trying to make plans.” He closes the screen. “I know this is hard, Rain. It’s hard for all of us. I’m sorry.”
Then Mom hustles into the kitchen. Her hair is wet from the shower.
“You’re up early! Good morning!” I’m not sure if she’s talking to Dad, or to me, or to Dad and me, or if people who are getting separated, but aren’t actually separated yet, even say anything to each other anymore, or if they just pretend the other person isn’t there, like practice for when they really won’t be.
“I’m going for a run,” I say.
Mom and Dad look at each other like they’re deciding which one of them is going to stop me.
“Just repeats up the hill from Riverside. I’ll be in sight of the building the whole time.”
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