So, I’ve been living with Rudy and his mom, Irma, since Cheyenne was four months old. I don’t think Irma was dying to have us move in with her, either. Rudy wanted us though, and with Irma it’s pretty much what Rudy wants, Rudy gets. He’s her youngest son. The two older boys live in Texas now, so Rudy’s it. But Irma’s okay. She’s crazy about Cheyenne, so that’s something.
Anyway, I’ve been at Hamilton High long enough to have friends. It’s just that I’m so used to being a loner I don’t know how to be anything else.
After school I get in the yellow Teen Moms van and ride to the Infant Care Center with Christy and Janine. I guess they’re the closest to being my friends of anyone at school. We always talk about our babies. Janine’s baby, Brittany, is two months older than Cheyenne, so I usually know what’s coming next. Brittany started walking, and then two months later, Cheyenne started walking. Brittany started saying “no” to everything, and about two months later, Cheyenne started to say “no” to everything. They seem to be following a pattern. Except Cheyenne already says more words. Secretly, I think she’s smarter than Brittany, but Janine thinks Brittany’s some kind of genius. I guess that’s how moms are. Some moms anyway. Maybe not my mom.
We get out of the van at the center and walk inside. This is my favorite time of day, when I watch Cheyenne, her blond curly hair falling over her face, playing on the floor or sitting at the table with juice and graham crackers. She’s got hair like mine, only mine’s darker now than it was at her age. And she has blue eyes, the same as me. But she’s built like Rudy, short and stocky.
I watch, loving her, and then the moment comes when she first sees me and her face brightens with her biggest smile. She runs to meet me, and I kneel down so she can reach her arms around my neck.
“Mommy, Mommy,” she says, and I hug her and twirl her around. Brittany and Ethan come running to their moms, too.
“Cheyenne’s had a runny nose today,” Bergie (Ms. Bergstrom) says. “Be sure to check her temperature before you bring her out tomorrow.”
“Okay,” I say.
“Brittany, too,” Bergie says, turning to Janine.
I give Bergie my homework packet. A requirement for having Cheyenne in the Infant Care Center while I go to school is that I have to be involved in a parenting class. The unit I’m working on now is Discipline for Toddlers. It helps me understand things better. Like how even little kids need to have some say over their own lives. I wish Rudy were taking the parenting class with me, because we disagree a lot. He thinks I spoil Cheyenne, and I think he says no just to be saying no. He plays with her though, and makes her laugh. I think my mom was right about Cheyenne needing to be around her dad, even if Mom was mainly saying that to get rid of us.
Cheyenne gets her backpack with diapers, a change of clothes, and empty bottles, and walks with me to the van. The other two moms carry their kids’ backpacks, but Cheyenne always wants to carry her own. At the van, Cheyenne clutches her backpack with one hand and tries to get a grip on the first step with the other hand.
“Can I help you?” I say, reaching down to lift her into the van.
“No! Baby help!” she says, frowning at me. She manages to get one knee onto the lower step, reach the railing with her free hand, and pull herself up to the next step, still juggling the backpack. She walks determinedly down the aisle and climbs into her favorite seat, the next one up from the back.
“Baby help” was one of the first things Cheyenne learned to say. One day when she was only about a year old, I started to help her into her car seat. She started crying in frustration, saying, “Baby help. Baby help.” At first I didn’t understand what was wrong, or what she meant. Finally, I got it. I lifted her out of her seat, stood her on the driveway beside the car, and let her climb back in on her own. It’s been “Baby help, baby help,” ever since.
“I believe that is the most determined child I’ve ever seen,” Bergie says with a smile. I know that’s saying a lot, because Bergie’s been in charge of the Infant Center for a long time, and she’s known hundreds and hundreds of kids.
“I’m proud of her,” I say. “You should see her fixing her cereal in the morning if you think getting in the van is determined.”
“Well, good for her,” Bergie says. “We all need to be determined in this world or we’re lost.”
I walk down the aisle and take my place beside Cheyenne. She already has her safety belt buckled.
“Mommy. Buckle,” she says.
“Okay, Okay,” I say, kissing her on top of her head.
“Buckle!”
I buckle my belt, wondering at how insistent she is that I buckle-up. I don’t think either Ethan or Brittany notice any of that stuff.
***
Rudy’s car isn’t in the driveway when Cheyenne and I get out of the van. I’m glad. Maybe his boss finally gave him more hours. Rudy gets frustrated because we never have enough money. Like right now he wants new speakers for his car stereo but he can’t afford the kind he wants. I get a welfare check once a month, but, except for a few dollars for clothes for the baby, that all goes to Irma to help with food and household expenses.
There’s a note on the refrigerator from Irma, telling me to do the dishes from last night and to put away the clothes in the dryer—her dishes and her clothes. She works part time at Kinkos and she’s always too tired to do anything else. I do all the housework and laundry. I don’t care, but it seems like she could at least say please or thank you now and then. On the other hand, I guess it was nice of her just to take us in. I know she feels crowded sometimes. We all do. The house is two bedrooms, one bath, a tiny kitchen, and a small living room. The four of us, and our stuff, definitely fill up every inch of space.
“Juice, Mommy,” Cheyenne says.
I pull her high chair up close to the counter where I can watch her, and give her a cup of apple juice. I fill the sink with hot sudsy water and wash Rudy’s and Jerry’s beer mugs from last night. I blow dishwater bubbles for Cheyenne and finish Irma’s dinner dishes. Then I take the baby from her high chair, change her diaper, and wash her hands and face. After that, I gather up her toys and my books and take her into the living room where she can play while I do my homework.
It’s nearly six o’clock when I hear the rattle of Rudy’s loose and leaky muffler. I pick Cheyenne up and walk to the door to meet him.
“Hi, beautiful women,” Rudy says, giving us each a peck on the cheek. I don’t smell beer.
“Hey, Missy. Old Murphy wants me to work full-time on this new remodel job he just got. In two weeks, I should have some bad sounds in my car,” he says, smiling, giving me the thumbs up sign.
“How about it, Baby,” he says, taking Cheyenne from my arms and holding her high over his head. “You and Daddy’ll go cruisin’ and blast out the oldies, huh?”
Cheyenne smiles and a big glob of drool lands on Rudy’s forehead.
“Thanks, Cheyenne,” Rudy says sarcastically, handing her back to me. But he smiles. I think we’re going to have a good evening.
“Maybe you should get your muffler fixed before you put money into new speakers,” I say.
“Nah. That muffler will last for a while. I want something I want for a change.”
“What about school, if you start working full time?” I ask.
“Ah, shit, Melissa. It’s just that Independent Studies crap anyway. It doesn’t mean anything.”
“But it’s a way to get a diploma,” I say.
“I can learn more from Murphy . . . You and your diploma, anyway. You gonna be ashamed of me if I don’t get that piece of paper?”
“No. It’s just that, well, later on you might need it.”
“Then I’ll worry about that later on,” he says. “What’s for dinner?”
“I don’t know. I haven’t started it yet.”
He gives me that look, like a cloud just settled on his face and a storm may be coming up. “How come you never have dinner ready for me when I get home?”
“You could at least have stuff started.”
“Yeah, well if I’d started anything last night it would have been burned to a crisp by the time you got home.”
We could fight. I can feel it. I don’t want to, but it might happen. We look each other in the eye, then I look away. Rudy reaches out and touches my cheek, on the spot with the cover-up make-up.
“Come on, Missy, let’s go to Domenico’s and get a big old pepperoni and cheese pizza.”
“Pizza?” Cheyenne says.
We both laugh. The cloud has lifted.
I grab sweatshirts for me and the baby, and we walk together to the car. Rudy starts to lift Cheyenne into the car seat.
“Baby help! Baby help!” she says, pushing at him.
“Okay, okay,” he says, and puts her down.
We stand and wait while she struggles to climb into the car, then into the car seat.
“At this rate, Domenico’s will be closed by the time we get there,” Rudy says, jiggling his keys. He’s not as impressed with Cheyenne’s determination as I am.
At the restaurant we take a comer booth at the side, away from everyone else. Cheyenne likes to hang over the back of the booth and check out whoever is there and whatever they’re eating. Sometimes she likes to sing the ABC song for them. Some people think it’s cute and some don’t. The corner booth is safest for us.
Late that night, after Cheyenne is sound asleep in her crib and Rudy and I are stretched out in bed, he turns to me and puts his arms around me.
“Now that I’ll be making more money, let’s go to Vegas and get married,” he whispers. “How about next month?”
Getting married is something we’ve talked about doing since before the baby was born, but for some reason we never get around to it.
“Things will be better when we’re married because then I’ll know you’re mine for sure,” Rudy says.
“Okay,” I say, thinking of how Melissa Anne Whitman looked written out next to my Peer Counseling notes, how pretty the “W” was. “I’ll be eighteen next month,” I remind him.
“Let’s do it on your birthday. That’d be a great birthday present, wouldn’t it? And then I’d only have to worry about remembering one special day instead of two,” he laughs.
“The 27th,” I say.
“The 27th it is. I love you, Missy. I don’t ever want to hurt you.”
I feel tears welling in my eyes. I know he doesn’t want to hurt me, it’s just that he gets carried away sometimes, especially if he’s been drinking.
Rudy is the first person in the world ever to really care about me. Even after three years he still gets worried if I’m not home right on time. And if he has to work on a Saturday, when I’m home from school, he calls me during his lunch time and break times, too, just to see what I’m doing.
I don’t always like having to stay home all day just to answer his calls, but then I think how when I lived with my mom I could be gone for days before she’d even notice. Finally, with Rudy and Cheyenne, I’m important to somebody. I hold him close, feeling his heart beat against mine.
“Let’s pretend to make another baby,” he whispers.
“I’m on the pill, remember?” I whisper back.
“It’s just pretend,” he says, kissing me long and gentle, being the Rudy I love with all my heart, the Rudy I wish would never change. I slip my nightgown over my head as Rudy strips off his T-shirt and boxers.
“I love your skin against mine,” I whisper.
Rudy groans softly, moving his hands to the places only he has ever touched. Quietly, quickly, intensely, we make love. After, when we’re lying relaxed in each other’s arms, I ask Rudy if he thinks there’s such a thing as rape in marriage.
“God, you ask the strangest things,” he says, groggy. “Where ’d you come up with that idea, anyway?”
“We have this guest speaker in Peer Counseling this week. It’s one of the questions I copied from the board for homework.”
“No way,” he says, in his sleepy voice. “One of the reasons a guy gets married is so he can have sex whenever he wants. How could that be rape?”
“But what if the wife doesn’t want to?”
“It’s part of the bargain,” he says. “When you get married you belong to each other.”
“I think it can be rape, even if the people are married,” I say.
That’s your trouble. You think too much,” he says. Then I hear his deep, steady breathing and know that he’s asleep.
I walk into the Peer Counseling room and take a seat next to Leticia. Even though I’m a loner, Leticia and I talk sometimes. She’s super friendly, and talkative, so I don’t feel so shy with her.
“Which questions did you write about?” she asks.
I open my notebook and read them to her.
“Yeah, I chose that one about are you more likely to be raped by a stranger or an acquaintance. I thought stranger, but my mom thought acquaintance. I guess we’ll find out today . . . What did you say for the one about being raped if you’re married?”
“At first I thought no, because that’s what my boyfriend thinks. But when I talked with the girls from Teen Moms this morning, they said yes, even if people are married it’s still rape if a husband forces his wife to have sex against her will.”
“So what did you put?”
“I put both answers, because I couldn’t decide,” I say.
Leticia laughs. “This is the only class on campus where you can get away with that. I doubt that old Horton takes two answers for a math problem—‘Ah, the answer is x = 1,272. Or else it’s x = 8,523.’ Wouldn’t he flip his cookies?”
It is a pretty funny idea. But in this class the actual answers aren’t as important as showing that we’ve thought about the questions. I wish more of my classes were like Peer Counseling.
Ms. Woods checks attendance while Paula gets started discussing yesterday’s questions. It’s much more likely that a person will be raped, or murdered for that matter, by someone they know than by someone they don’t know. And, she tells us, anytime a person is forced to have sex against their will, it’s rape. Married or not. “And rape has very little to do with sex and a whole lot to do with violence,” she says.
“Where I work at the Rape Hotline,” Paula continues, “we’ve found that rape and other kinds of abuse often go together. Many rapists have been abused as children and also, for some reason, many children who have been abused are also raped some time in their lives . . . So, how do you define abuse?”
As in the discussion yesterday, everyone yells out answers while Paula races to write them on the board. Being hit, kicked, shoved, ridiculed, put down, made fun of, are some of the things students come up with.
“My dad is always putting me down, saying I’m lazy, I’ll never amount to anything, stuff like that. Does that mean I’m an abused child?” Tony asks. “Can I sue my dad?”
“You can try,” Paula says, “but you’d probably need plenty of money for lawyers if you take that approach.”
Most of the students laugh, including Tony, but Paula goes on, all serious.
“I don’t know how extreme your case is,” she says to Tony. “But I do know that the chances are great that a few of you, maybe several, are right now living under abusive conditions—conditions that not only cause you great difficulty now, but will cause you difficulty for years to come. And some of that abuse is physical, and some is emotional, and it’s all painful and damaging. And if you’re in a situation where someone is telling you day after day that you’re no good, that you’re worthless, you are in an abusive situation and you need help with it.”
The room is absolutely quiet now, as if no one is even breathing. I wonder if it’s true that several of us are being abused. I wonder how many secrets are in this room?
“I think maybe the little boy who lives next door to me is being abused,” Leticia says. “His mom yells at him all the time. He�
��s really skinny, and he won’t even talk to me, like he’s afraid of me.”
“I’m afraid of you, too,” Josh says, and again there is laughter, and the mood lifts.
Paula passes out sheets with the names and numbers of hotlines to call if you suspect someone is being abused, or if you need help yourself. She talks about our responsibility to protect children who have no way of protecting themselves.
“I’m gonna call this hotline as soon as I get home,” Leticia says. “Anonymous reporting. Right?”
“Some are anonymous and some you have to leave your name with.”
“I’ll start out anonymous,” Leticia says.
We get a flier from a safe house for battered women. Besides their phone number there are two lists. “NO ONE DESERVES ABUSE” is the first one. It includes physical abuse, put downs, verbal abuse, having possessions damaged, interference with comings and goings, being harassed and spied on, being stalked, and being isolated. The second list is titled “YOU HAVE THE RIGHT TO” and it lists: Be treated with respect; be heard; say no; come and go as you please; have a support system; have friends and be social; have privacy and space of your own; maintain a separate identity.
I tuck the flier in my notebook and wonder about all I’ve heard today. I mean, I know hitting and kicking is abuse. Rudy doesn’t do that very often, though. And the thing about having privacy and a space of my own, how does anyone have privacy with four people sharing a small two-bedroom house? The right to have friends and be social? I think about Sean, and the friendship I’ve lost.
On Wednesday Cheyenne has a fever so I stay home from school with her. Sometimes Irma helps out at times like these, but she had to be at work early this morning. It’s impossible to do any schoolwork or housework with Cheyenne so fussy. I hold her and rock her and watch a talk show. It’s about this famous hockey player who beat his wife to death. Well, he hasn’t been convicted yet, but it’s only obvious. They’re comparing it to the O.J. Simpson case, where there was this history of abuse that kept getting a little worse and a little worse, until the wife ended up dead.
Beyond Dreams Page 4