My lips are stuck together. Dry. I’m so dry. “Water,” I manage to croak out.
Max dabs my lips with water. I run my tongue over my lips, trying to get things working. More water dabbing at my mouth, maybe a cloth? A sponge?
Slowly, the room comes into focus. Max in a chair beside me. William sitting next to her. “Where...?” My voice is all raspy.
“You’re in the hospital,” Max says.
My head feels strange. I reach to rub my forehead, but Max takes my hand and gently puts it back on the bed.
“You’ve got stitches,” she says. “A big bandage around your head holding a gauze cap...You got beat up. Remember?”
I start to shake my head no, but damn! It hurts!
“Do you know who it was?” William asks.
I close my eyes, let the voices fade. “Let’s not push that now,” Max says.
I drift further away. Then there’s a light shining through my eyelids. I blink. The light moves away. I blink again, then focus. A man, gray hair, tiny pointy beard at his chin, bending over me, smiling, holding a small flashlight. Max, still in her chair beside my bed.
“Hi, Eddie. It’s Eddie, right?”
I give a nod, a tiny one, so it doesn’t hurt.
“What’s your last name?”
“Barajas,” I creak out.
Max dampens what I now see is a sponge and gently wipes my lips. She puts a straw in a glass of water and holds it to my mouth, but I can’t manage to get any water through it, so it’s back to the sponge.
“Eddie, I’m Dr. Googooian, your neurologist. I’m here to help figure out how you’re doing. Okay?”
A tiny nod.
“I’d like you to follow this light with your eyes. Understand?”
Nod.
He shines the light to my right, clear at my edge of vision. I look as far to the right as I can manage without turning my head. He slowly moves the light from the right to my far left, then up and down, then in slow circles. I follow. He turns the light off, then sits in the rolling chair where William was sitting before, and rolls to the foot of the bed where I can see him without turning my head.
“What’s your address?” he asks.
“406 North Cloverly Avenue, Hamilton Heights, California.”
He looks at Max. Eyebrows raised.
“Right,” Max says.
He asks a whole bunch more questions, grade in school, names of friends, how many donuts in a dozen, etc., etc., etc. “You’re doing great, Eddie!” he says, smiling.
Then it’s stuff like wiggle your toes, hold up your left index finger. Right index finger. Just a slight pause when he sees I don’t have a right index finger. Then he makes a quick adjustment to right thumb. When he’s finally finished with his version of Simon Says, he asks, “Now, do you know why you’re here?”
“Hurt,” I say. Like every single inch of my body hurts, but I don’t want to say that many words.
“Do you know how you got hurt?”
“No.”
“Okay. That’s to be expected after any traumatic experience. Your memory of that time will probably come back in the next few days, or weeks. What’s the last thing you can remember before you woke up here in the hospital?”
I think back through blank time.
“Friends? School?” he asks.
Was it Miss May’s class? Yoga? “Yoga?” I say.
“What day was it?”
“Wait. The beach.”
“What day was it?” he asks again.
Can’t think.
“Sunday,” Max says.
“Sunday?” Dr. G. asks.
Tiny nod.
“Tell me more about the beach,” he says.
Everything’s murky, like trying to drag memory from the bottom of a muddy lake. I close my eyes, try to see Santa Monica... “Cold,” I say.
“It was cold out?”
“Cold water.”
“Were you alone?”
I’m being sucked back into the murk.
“Eddie? Can you tell me if you were alone?”
I manage to mumble, “Friends.”
“I’ll be back a little later,” the doctor says, touching me lightly on my shoulder. “You’re doing fine.” He takes what looks like a TV remote from the table beside me. “We’ll raise your head a little,” and then, as if by magic, the top part of my bed rises a few inches. He puts the glass with the bent straw in front of me, and I manage a swallow.
“I’ll check in with you tomorrow,” he says, and is gone.
IT TURNS OUT, I HAVE a broken metacarpal bone on my left hand—that’s a small bone that goes from my wrist to the first knuckle of my middle finger. For that, I’ve got a half-cast thing that goes from below my elbow to where my fingers start.
A cracked rib—painful but will supposedly heal on its own. I’ve got a black eye that goes from my forehead, past my cheek, to the edge of my jaw. A black eye that’s more a cross between a Deep Aubergine purple and a Constellation Blue. They might be pretty accent colors on a side wall in one of those big San Marino houses, but on a face? Not so pretty.
The worst injury is to my head—a concussion—plus I’ve got about a four-inch wide shaved-bare strip of baldness with 27 stitches running down the top of my skull. Sort of a reverse mohawk.
Three nights in the hospital—Sunday, Monday and Tuesday—and Wednesday morning I go home. Max is on one side and William on the other, steadying me, as I hobble from the car, through the back door and into the kitchen. I get a whiff of chicken soup and realize how hungry I am.
They lead me to the living room and help me get settled in William’s recliner. Pretty special because nobody but William ever sits in his recliner, unless it’s the pest on his lap while he’s reading to her.
Buddy comes limping in on three legs, his right hind leg in a splint, wrapped tightly in bandages. He tries to stand on his good leg, trying, I think, to get close enough to lay his muzzle on my thigh like he likes. He can’t manage that with only one working hind leg, though. He gives a big Buddy sigh and lies down at my feet.
Max ties a dishtowel around my neck and brings in a bowl of soup on a lap tray. It’s the best thing I’ve ever tasted in my whole life. Two bowls, a pain pill, and I drift off to sleep.
Rosie comes over later in the afternoon. She rushes to me, arms out for a hug, then freezes in shock, dropping her arms to her side. “Oh, Eddie! Oh my God!”
She reaches toward me again. “Where can I touch you that won’t hurt?”
I manage to lift my least hurt hand and point downward to you-know-where.
“Eddie!” she says, then busts out laughing. I laugh, too, though it hurts like hell on the side with the cracked rib.
She takes my pointing hand and guides it gently to her face, where she kisses it and holds it against her cheek. “I’m so sorry!” she says, tears welling to the brink of overflow. “Who did this?”
“Didn’t see.”
“But why???”
“Don’t know...Missed you,” I say.
“I wanted to visit you in the hospital, but your mom said it would be better to see you at home...I left a card for you at the nurse’s station, though. Did you get it?”
“Yeah. Thanks,” I say, managing a smile. Rosie sits beside me then, telling me of the hassle of more college applications, and how the guy who teaches the Music Therapy class is giving her and Brianna good recommendations and she’s sure that will make a difference for that program and...I’m not sure what else because I guess I drifted off. When I wake up, there’s a folded piece of notebook paper leaning against my water glass. “I’ll see you tomorrow. Love you. Rosie. Xxoo.” The border is decorated with hearts.
AS DOCTOR GOOGOOIAN predicted, my memory slowly returns. At first, it’s like the sound track of a damaged film, parts clear, parts scratchy, frames of silence. Buddy’s yelp. William calling my name. Someone yelling, “Enough!” Sirens. Screeching brakes. Hands up! Then, slowly, things begin to fall into order. And
I get a new memory of William’s voice yelling, “Get off him!” and pounding footsteps running away.
When William gets home from work that evening, I tell him, “You saved my life. I’m remembering you saved my life.”
“You saved my life,” he says, which makes no sense at all, like maybe he’s joking, but I see he’s not. He says, “Yeah. Remember Devon Parker? Last year?”
I nod. Everyone remembers Devon Parker. He was the reason for the Black Lives Matter demonstration back in September. He’d been pulled over for a broken taillight. Just a few miles away—south Hamilton Park. Two cops. Cop asked for his license. Devon pulled it out of his pocket—one of those no-hack metal wallet things. Metal caught the light. Cop yelled “Gun!” and shot him dead. Thirty-two years old. Everybody remembers Devon Parker. Even the pest remembers Devon Parker. They kept the news from her, but kids learn a lot in school that parents don’t want them to learn.
“What about him?” I ask.
“The cops thought I’d jumped you, robbed you, said I was going through your pockets, not that I was trying to check for bleeding and breathing, to see if anything was broken, frantic to get help. I’d beaten and robbed you: that was their take on it, and I was on my way to meet Devon Parker.”
William looks past me, toward the window, but his eyes are somewhere else, back at the side of the street, I guess.
“I was handcuffed against the car and the roughest cop had his hand on his gun, and I was bargaining with God, please let me live to raise Imani. I’ll go to church. I’ll paint the whole place for free. Just long enough to see her in college.
“I felt the cop pull his gun from his holster, and then I heard you shout, loud: ‘William! Dad!’ and the other cop got it, called his partner off, uncuffed me, let me go to you...”
I don’t want to look straight at William, and I don’t want him to look straight at me either because I know we’re both crying. And then he pulls me close to him, and even if it hurts my beat-up arm, it feels warm and safe and we’re both crying without caring, and I’m smelling the lingering paint and cleaner, the sweat and soap, the goodness of William, and maybe he really is my dad.
And then the pest comes running in and stops cold. “Who stopped ‘Frozen’?’” And we pull apart and start laughing, wiping our eyes.
“I was watching it! I just went to the bathroom and you turned it off! No fair!”
“We’re tired of ‘Frozen,’ Imani,” William tells her.
“Can I watch it in my room, then? On my tablet?” she whines.
William sighs. “Okay, Baby, for twenty minutes.”
“What if it’s not over then?”
“Then it’s not over. It’s not like you don’t already know the ending.”
“But I want to see it!” She stomps back to her room. “Twenty minutes doesn’t start yet!” she says.
William laughs. Sets the timer on his phone for 22 minutes, and I think, “What if? What if he wasn’t here to raise her?” How sad that would be! It’s more like William saved my life than I saved his, but either way, I’m glad he’s alive.
IT’S STRANGE, THIS in and out stuff. Like I drift off, and when I wake up, I’ve got another piece of memory back. And this time I remember. It was Jason. Jason’s squeaky voice yelling “Enough! Let’s get outta here.” I’m sure it was Jason.
Late in the afternoon, Brent stops by, looks me over, then says, “I’ve never even seen a face that color.”
“What color?” I ask.
“What? You don’t know what color your face is? You haven’t looked in the mirror?”
“Yeah, I have. But what color would you say it is?”
“I’d say it’s the color my arm was after that guy hit me with a baseball bat.”
“That was an accident.”
“Still turned the same color...What’d you tell the cops?”
“Everything I know, which is nothing.”
“Bro! You know who did it!”
“I don’t know. They came from behind. I didn’t see them!”
“It had to be those Patriot guys! They’re so pissed at you...”
“They’re pissed at everybody. Well...maybe not you, white boy, but everybody like me—or more like everybody who doesn’t look like them.”
“Yeah, but they’re hella pissed at you.”
Max comes in from the kitchen, hands me a glass of water and two pills. “Hey, Brent,” she says.
“Hey, Mrs. Max.”
“You want anything to drink? Lemonade? Sparkling water?”
“No, thanks.”
Max leaves, and Brent starts in again about how it had to be those guys.
“Can we please change the subject?”
“Okay, but...”
He’s quiet for a nanosecond, then, “My dad says he’ll buy me a car if I’ll get a calculus tutor, go to math camp, you know, let him off the hook for his lost bet.”
“Some bribe,” I say.
“I’m not going to do it.”
My head is pounding so hard I can hardly follow what Brent’s saying.
“I mean, I really, really want a car, but I really, really don’t want a math tutor, or to go to math camp, so forget the car...”
I wake to a kind of gray outside the window and wonder if it’s morning gray or evening gray. God, my head hurts, and my whole right side, like the crack in my rib has spread to all of my other ribs. Can that even happen? The light’s on in the kitchen. I hear Max and William shuffling around out there, catch the scent of the special sauce William always makes for pork and beans, so it must be evening, not morning. And it must be Wednesday ‘cause, you know, pork ’n beans.
Brent. I guess I drifted off while he was here, like with Rosie, except there’s no heart-lined note from Brent resting against my water glass.
CHAPTER NINETEEN
The Lie
It’s no longer like climbing Mt. Everest to walk to the bathroom and back to the recliner. My mind’s cleared enough that I can read a few pages of The Grapes of Wrath before I get drifty.
After dinner (chicken and greens, so it’s Thursday) I’m back in the recliner and Max is on the couch near me, remote in hand, looking for a movie that might get us laughing. She says we can all use a few laughs.
We’ve just started “Young Frankenstein” when Joe stops by with more healing tea and a special cup that has a strainer and lid that go with it. Max pauses the movie.
“You’ve got to let it steep for at least five minutes,” he tells Max.
“Thanks,” Max says. “We’ll give it a try.”
Joe moves closer, looking down at my head. “That’s one ugly gash you’ve got.”
“Thanks,” I tell him.
He laughs. “Peppy misses you,” he says. “She was okay with Jason today, though.”
Wait. What did he say? Jason? “Peppy was with Jason today?”
“Yeah, well, you were in no shape to walk her, and Tuesday, you know, long day for me.”
“But Jason?”
“Hey, I know you don’t like Jason, but that didn’t bother Peppy. She liked him okay.”
Again, I hear Jason’s high-pitched Miss Piggy voice in my head, “Enough! Let’s get outta here!”
“He...” I want to tell Joe not to trust Jason with Peppy—not to trust Jason at all, but I can’t find the words.
“What?” Joe says.
“Jason’s...”
“What???”
“You shouldn’t trust him,” I manage to say.
“I know he’s caught up with the wrong crowd, but I’m not sure that’s who he is in his heart.”
“It is who he is,” I say. “Mr. 14 Words.”
“Well, you’ll be back on the job soon. Now drink one full cup of that tea before breakfast and another before bedtime. That’ll speed things along.”
As if on cue, Max brings in the tea cup and sets it on the tray beside my/William’s chair. “Tea for you, Joe?” Max asks.
“No, thanks. I need to get
back home.” Joe makes the Namaste gesture to me and leaves.
Max starts the movie again, but as funny as “Young Frankenstein” is, I drift off, not waking until the monster’s doing some song and dance thing.
“Bedtime?” Max asks. I nod. She raises the recliner to a sitting position. With her helping on the left side, and me using the right chair arm for support, I manage to stand, inch back to my bedroom, and ease myself onto the bed. Max brings in tea, a glass of water, and my bedtime pill.
“You should drink the tea, too,” she says, after I down the pill.
I take a sip and hand it back to her. She sets it on the table beside the glass of water, my phone, and a box of tissue. She fluffs my pillow, straightens the covers, pulls them up to my shoulders, kisses me on the forehead, and tells me “Sweet dreams,” like she used to do back when I was a little kid.
So tired. Fuzzy. I’ll be glad when I can get out more than a short sentence. When I can talk sense. When I can convince Joe that it’s crazy to trust Jason with his dog and in his studio.
Third day home. We sit around the table in the dining room. Six of us. Me, Max, William, Officer Harvey, Officer Romero, and Mario. I’m glad Mario was able to switch shifts with someone so he could be here for this interview. I mean, I know I didn’t do anything wrong or anything, but it’s still kind of scary to be grilled by the police. Mario knows cop-talk.
Introductions around the table, then chatter, who wants coffee, nice weather for December, how am I feeling...
Officer Romero is short and fat, with streaks of grey in her hair. She’s one of those special cops who’s always present when a minor is involved. Like Officer Goodridge back when I was only nine and had to make a statement about the pervert.
Officer Harvey is the guy who figured out William was a good guy, not one of the attackers. He starts off. “Tell us what happened on December 23, the night you were attacked.”
Mario takes a small tablet and pencil from his shirt pocket, like the tablet and pencil that Harvey has sitting in front of him.
“What were you doing right before you were attacked?”
“Buddy and I were almost home from our walk.”
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