by Cydney Rax
“You son of a bi—”
I lashed at his cheek, but he ducked before I could make contact. After scowling for a couple minutes, Derrick stepped square in my face and raised one eyebrow, never once averting his eyes.
“Unless you want to end up in the emergency room, I advise you to keep your hands to yourself.”
“Look, Derrick. I don’t care what you say. I don’t care about your threats. How can you come into my home, judging me over something you don’t know anything about? To listen to you, anyone would think that I’m totally unsupportive of Lauren. But that isn’t even the case, it’s not even what this is about. Quite frankly, Derrick, I think the only reason you’re saying all this stuff is because you’re jealous.”
He scoffed. “About what?”
“Don’t act shocked. None of this even begins with Lauren and me. This has everything to do with how we broke up a million years ago and the fact that you never got over it. No one I’ve dated was ever good enough for you, so it doesn’t matter that Aaron is in his twenties. Steve was thirty-eight and you gave me hell over him, too. Well, let me tell it to you like this. Even if you were the last man on earth, I would never want your sorry, broke, uneducated, weak, and trifling ass again.”
“Look, Tracey. I’m going to say this and then I’m going to leave—”
“You don’t have to say shit, you can get the hell out now.”
“You are about the worst so-called mother I know, and I wish I’d never stuck my piece in your dried-up—”
“Ahhhhhh, get out, get out, get the hell out of my house right now.” I grabbed Derrick by the arm, ripping his dress shirt at the sleeve, and trying to shove him into the door. He bumped the corner of his head and looked at me like I was insane.
“If you ever need help,” his voice cracked, “don’t call me.”
“Don’t worry. As a woman, I’m more of a man than you could ever be.”
He spat at my cheek.
I ducked.
Spat back at him and gave him the finger sign.
And then he was gone, making the door slam hard behind him.
Lauren 32
I’m at home sitting on my own bed. I have decent clothes hanging in my closet, a part-time job that provides spending money, and reasonably good health, yet I can’t shake this overwhelming feeling of abandonment, depression, and insecurity.
I couldn’t help hearing my parents screaming all those horrible things at each other. Since I’ve never lived with both of them, hearing the sounds of hate, of clashing wills and viewpoints, was a rare occurrence. I wanted to cover my ears with my hands, but somehow my hands just weren’t large enough. So I stretched out on my bed, face resting on my fist, and rocked back and forth, hoping no one would get hurt out there. Felt my hurt was enough for everybody.
I don’t understand my mom. Seems like she’s living in a dream world. She always has an excuse for every poor decision she makes. Blaming her actions on my dad. Holding him responsible for her falling into a relationship with Aaron. She has to have a few loose screws, and a couple of nails, too. But I’ve been told few people like to admit they’ve done wrong. There could be concrete evidence, actions recorded on camera, and the accused will still proclaim “not guilty.”
Once I was certain my dad had left the apartment, I began going through all my piles of old magazines. I have subscriptions to Teen People, Seventeen, and Teen. I’ve saved every issue from the past few years, stockpiling them in a few legal-sized storage boxes. But that night I started ripping the magazines apart. I went through every advertisement, every article, every stupid claim of how the teenaged life was supposed to be so wonderful, and ripped the pages to shreds. Beyoncé’s smiling face—tattered in a dozen pieces. Britney Spears’s beautiful eyes—well, she couldn’t see a thing after I got through with her. My hands and shoulders vibrated as if they were trying to warn me that my actions were going too far, that I’d regret what I was doing, but I kept ripping the pages into a heartfelt nothingness. Once I’d created a mountain of colored trash in the middle of my floor, I decided to go and get three plastic garbage bags from under the kitchen sink.
When I walked in the living room, Mom was crouched on her knees, crying and muttering to herself. I saw boxes and boxes of shoes, some of them looking unworn, and she was placing all those shoes in several black garbage bags that were spread next to her on the floor.
“Mom, what are you doing?”
She sniffled and wiped her nose but didn’t look at me.
“Getting rid of poison. Shedding my life of things that don’t belong.” She continued to open up all these shoe boxes, taking out one shoe, then the other, and sniffing them, but returning each pair to the box, and then chunking them into a bag.
“Mom, those are brand-new shoes, some of them.”
“Don’t matter. They came from Steve and I’m tired of looking at them. He’s not in my life anymore, and these shoes won’t be, either. Storing them in my closet won’t prove a doggoned thing. Goodwill can have ’em.” Her tone was harsh, but I knew the harshness wasn’t reserved for me. I heard the misery and regret in her voice, saw it in her hands, and grimaced at the signs of exorcism rampaging through her body.
Feeling eerie, I left my Mom alone and I went to get some garbage bags of my own.
WEDNESDAY NIGHT THE PHONE RANG. Mom answered. It was Daddy calling to speak to me. He knew I’d be going out of town tomorrow, and I guess he wanted to touch base.
Right before we murmured our good-byes, Mom waved and motioned at me to give the phone back to her. I did, and went to the kitchen to finish rinsing off the chicken wings for our dinner. Her voice traveled around the corner and right into the center of my ear.
“Derrick, I’ll be taking Lauren to the airport in the morning. Can you pick her up on Saturday? . . . Well, you don’t have to get smart, I was just checking with you.”
I heard a hush settle over the room where Mom was. “Look, don’t start, Derrick. I have things to do just like you. Could you just promise to be at Hobby on Saturday at five? Southwest Airlines.
“Damn his trifling ass,” she hissed, slamming the phone. I didn’t know which hurt worse, the instrument or my ears. I tried not to think about it and resumed washing the chicken wings, turning over the pieces and making sure the water swam strongly across the wrinkled, smelly skin.
“Your father sure knows how to get me in a mood.”
“Mmmm. Mom, I wish y’all could get along for just one day, one hour even,” I said, and wiped my nose with my shirtsleeve.
“Shoot! Ain’t easy to do, with a man like him. He’s always pissed off about something. So negative.”
I just stopped and looked at her.
Mom ignored my stares and started removing the salt, black pepper, and paprika from the cabinet.
“So, Lauren, you packed already? Got everything you need?” Her scratchy voice struggled to sound soothing.
“Uh, yeah, I just have a few more things to pack. It’s only for a couple of nights, so I don’t plan to take much.”
“Your uniform?”
“You haven’t seen it yet? It’s on my bed. Go look at it. Maybe I’ll try it on for you, once I season the chicken and put it in the oven.”
“Okay, darling.”
I shuddered when she said that. What an odd and strange thing to say to me. I cast the freaked-out feeling from my mind and continued preparing the meal.
Mom was gone for a long time. Too long. I had even started cutting up the white potatoes when I noticed her plodding into the kitchen. She held my nylon camera case in one hand and several photos in the other.
My face felt like it had been ripped open, and I dropped a potato on the floor. It rolled all the way across the linoleum, sounding like a steam-roller, and landed near Mom’s foot. I averted my eyes and knelt to pick up the potato, but she smashed my hand with her foot.
“Excuse me?” I said glaring up at her.
“Lauren, what you call yourself doin
g, girl?”
She lifted her foot and I stood up, holding the stray potato. She flashed some photographs in my face.
“Mom, why are you going in my stuff? That’s my stuff.”
“If it’s your stuff, then what am I doing in it? Huh?”
“Y’all may have taken pictures together, but you did it using my camera, my film.”
She shrieked and slapped my face with the photos. Didn’t hurt, but that wasn’t the point. I tried to snatch the pictures from her but, in a brief struggle, ended up tearing one photo. She held one half. It was a shot of Mom and Aaron hugged up together at a mall. I’m guessing they asked someone to take their picture. Aaron was standing close to my mom, cheek to cheek. I held the other half, the one that showed my mother smiling wide while Aaron gripped her right breast. I couldn’t believe she’d pose like that using my camera.
She stood huffing, breathing hard like she was hyperventilating. I guess everyone develops breathing problems when all their sensibilities leave.
“Why’d you steal these pictures, Lauren?” she asked, flashing five others.
“Mom, when I got the film developed, I didn’t know y’all were on the roll until I saw the pictures myself. Besides, what difference does it make? I already know about you and Aaron, so it’s like who cares?”
“I care, Lauren. It doesn’t matter if you didn’t approve of us seeing each other, but you’re moving into different territory when you do things like this. That roll of film was in my room, in my drawer.”
“Mom, I’m aware that two wrongs don’t make a right, but hey, you brought this on yourself.”
“Right,” she fumed, “go ahead and blame me. Everybody else does.”
“Don’t even bring my daddy into this. He doesn’t have jack to do with this.”
She opened up her mouth to speak, but it seemed like her conscience snatched her words before it could find her voice. I noticed her mouth moving, eyes flickering, her emotions unraveling like a water hose.
“Save the theatrics, Mom. You don’t have to audition for the part you’ve already won.”
She put her hand on her hip and laughed like I was the joke of the day.
“Listen, young lady, this is the final word. If you and Aaron had as great a relationship as you say you had, then he never ever would’ve looked my way.”
“Mom, you’re so full of it. If it weren’t for you—”
“If it weren’t for me what?”
I didn’t say anything.
“No, no, Lauren. You can’t blame that one on me. Even if you didn’t have sex with him, haven’t you figured out by now that if Aaron really gave a damn about you, the lack of sex wouldn’t have made him dump you?”
My hands went for her neck—outstretched, heading straight for the part of her body that allowed such venom to pour from her mouth. I grabbed her flesh with one determined hand, squeezing and twisting until I heard her gurgle. Her eyes watered, then bulged, wider and wider, and she fell back against the counter.
“Ahhhhkkkkk, let g-go.” Her screeching voice escaped from her throat, sounding like seven hundred screaming women trapped inside a well.
I let go.
Stared at her.
Looked at my hands, which were trembling like branches bracing against a strong wind.
As her voice scrambled toward the ceiling, I opened my mouth as wide as I could and my mangled emotions blasted through my soul. “Ahhhhh, ahhhhh, ahhhhh, I—can’t—take—this—anymore.”
One second I was in the apartment, the next second the menacing sky was my ceiling. Don’t even remember opening the front door. Never knew I could run so fast. The sky was blacker than the nucleus of midnight. I felt afraid, but my legs didn’t seem to care. They were moving like the wheels of a train, moving like they had no alternative.
And I felt like a child being introduced to the periphery of insanity.
“Mmmmm, mmmmm, please, please, God help me, please. Oh Lord, oooohhh. I can’t take this anymore. Why am I going through this?”
My voice belonged to a screaming bat that was fleeing the dungeons of hell. My insides crawled with ugliness, and I felt like a witch. Didn’t care how my hair looked, or about how wretched my face must’ve appeared.
All I knew, I was in the streets.
Near a Fiesta grocery store.
I had no money.
Had no sense.
But I knew a pay phone when I saw it.
I could barely distinguish the keypad as my fingers reached out and touched their way to my freedom.
“This is the operator. How may I assist you?” came the professional-sounding voice.
“I need to make a collect call to . . . oh, to uh . . . two-eight-one . . .”
“Yes?” she said, a little less professionally.
I gave her the number to call and my voice rose higher and higher.
I heard a concerned gasp.
“What’s your name, sweetheart?”
“Lauren” (sniff) “just Lauren.”
Pause.
“One moment, Lauren.”
My fingers clutched the phone as if it were my lifeline. I shivered and shook in the chilliness of the night. Could feel pedestrians walking past me. Yelling, talking, laughing. Acting like all was well in the world.
“Hello.”
Thank God he was home.
“This is the operator. Could you . . . would you please accept a collect call from Lauren?”
“Lauren? Uh, yeah, sure. I’ll accept.”
“Lauren?” he said.
“Hhhhhhh, hhhhhhhgggggg.”
“You all right, girl? What’s up? Where are you?”
“Will you” (sniff) “will you please come get meeee?”
“Okay . . . okay. Where are you, Lauren?”
“I’m so sorry about all . . . she said all this stuff and I just . . . it’s just getting too . . . brrrrr . . .”
“Hey, I can barely understand you,” he told me.
I swallowed an ounce of thick mucus that had made its home in my throat. Wiped my heated tears. Steadied my heaving chest.
“I’m at the . . . I’m at Fiesta on South Braeswood and Gessner.”
“You sure? You don’t sound so sure.”
I shook my head so much it started hurting.
“I am sure. I know where I am. I do know.”
“Okay, baby girl. I’m coming to get you right now. Be there in twenty minutes. Do not leave.”
“Okay,” I closed my eyes. “I won’t. ’Bye. ’Bye.”
I hung up the phone. Slammed my back against the willing brick wall of the grocery store. Even though the wall was sturdy, it still felt like it was about to give way, my head twirling like I’d been spinning around inside a clothes dryer. Wanted to throw up, but was too scared of what might emerge.
I looked at my watch. It was close to nine-fifteen. I knew I needed to be getting ready to take my shower. Needed to be getting my mind ready to travel to Dallas. But here I was in a place I didn’t know I’d be visiting.
It was hard to digest everything that had happened. Never thought in a hundred years that I’d be going through some mess like this.
BRAD CAME AND PICKED ME UP AND drove us to his place. He held me close, listened to my rambling, and wiped away my tears. Even though he wasn’t Aaron, as far as I was concerned, he was the next best thing. And the more I talked to Brad, the stronger I felt. And maybe that’s why being around him got me thinking about certain things and how something had to give.
When I realized how late it was, I stood up. “I need to get back home.”
“Do you?”
His brow furrowed. He stepped up to me and challenged me with his eyes, refusing to blink.
I cleared my throat. “Yes, I do.”
“What about—”
“Rain check?” My voice was crushed with softness.
He nodded, pressed his nose against my hair until I felt his heat.
“No.” I shook my head with as much gen
tle honesty as possible.
Brad lifted his nose from my hair. His eyes crinkled with questions. “Let’s face it, Brad. If it weren’t for this Aaron situation, I wouldn’t be here right now. And us getting together would take zero effort. But I don’t want to just go through the motions when it involves something so precious. Do you?”
I placed my hand on the front of his pants and squeezed.
Brad’s stomach and legs pulsated with tiny jerks, but he whispered, “I’ll get my car keys.”
Tracey 33
After enduring sleep not even fit for a drunk, I got up grumpy and snapping at Lauren, who, not surprisingly, had overslept.
“Wake up, Lauren, I’ve been calling you three and four times,” I yelled, looking at the flashing lights on my clock radio. We’d had a thunderstorm during the night, and our electricity must’ve been disrupted.
“Mom, I am about to get up. It’s not my fault if my alarm didn’t go off.”
“Yeah, yeah, yeah, whatever. Just hurry up, we’ll have to fight rush-hour traffic on both the Loop and I-45 to make it on time.”
I hustled from the apartment, trying to lug baggage. We dodged huge raindrops and ducked inside the Malibu. I tossed Lauren’s travel items in the backseat, then patted my face with tissue. Soon we were advancing toward the freeway.
“Damn, it’s coming down hard this morning. Turn on the radio,” I said.
Every station we heard was dominated by the weather: flash flood warnings, predictions of at least ten inches of rain within hours. “Don’t go out if you don’t have to,” one reporter said.
Some roads out in West Houston were getting to be impassable; detours were being mapped as fast as Harris County could figure out what to do.
“Wonder if your flight will be delayed.”
Lauren didn’t answer. Instead she looked at me with closely knit eyebrows. “Mom, I’m kinda hungry. I hate airline food, and I got a taste for a big breakfast and a sausage sandwich.”
“Uh-uh. No. Lauren, there’s no way we’ll have time to run by McDonald’s and get you to Hobby by seven.”