Talk

by Rachel Zachary

  The walls didn’t leak and the heat didn’t go straight up through the roof, we could sit with a big window with thick green curtains (not old blankets or sheets they had hung up for privacy) and downstairs there was a common room filled with big squishy armchairs and sofas. We shared a kitchen with the other guests and a laundry room down in the basement; Mary was amazed that everything worked. The light in the refrigerator always came on whenever somebody opened the door, the food stayed cold and fresh, the stove wasn’t rusted or greasy and it ran on electricity instead of gas or matches so we didn’t have to measure how much we had or worry about running out. The washing machine filled with water and it stayed filled, and there was real soap instead of baking soda for us to use.

  The showers always had hot water and everybody kept to themselves.

  There was the worry that if we bought food and left it in the cabinet somebody would steal it and eat it themselves like Mom and Dad had done back home; but we were careful to eat everything we bought and label what we saved and never had much trouble.

  There was a bodega just down the street that sold the best coffee and made spicy little tuna rolls where we went to read, listen to music and do our homework. With the help of the welfare office Mary had gotten set up going to a public school and was assigned a tutor to catch up with the rest of the class, not that she needed it, and was on track to graduate in a year with the rest of the seventh, going on eighth graders.

  I had never been happier.

  I was working seventy hours a week, I learned how to make challah rolls with cranberries and the perfect way to flip a burger so it didn’t blacken or char. And when I wasn’t at the diner manning the cash register then I was hurrying off to job interviews and to the library to read. We had a roof over our heads, food in our bellies and money that was going in our pockets. And there had been no word from Mom or Dad.

  Chapter Fourteen

  Four years after I had moved out of the jeep, Mary and I had moved out of the hostel and into a apartment that we could afford in East Harlem. The brick building was slowly being overtaken by ivy and graffitti, the elevator never worked and we lived on the top floor. But there were two small bedrooms an even smaller living room and all of the appliances (oven, refrigerator, shower, toilet) came with the apartment and they worked. It was small but it was ours.

  Mary was a Junior in high school (she had skipped a grade). One morning while I was helping Mary get ready for school, I got a phone call. I was getting ready for work, I had quit working at the diner and got a job working as a english teachers assistant and as a substitute teacher. I had gotten a associate's degree in English at the manhattan community college.

  “Susie? It’s Mom!” Mom said.

  I stopped making Mary’s lunch (A peanut butter and strawberry jam sandwich, after years of fast food jelly she fell in love with jam).

  “I couldn't believe it when I saw that your name was in the phonebook, it’s like you’re some kind of celebrity.” Mom said, voice watery and excited.

  “You won’t believe the adventures your Daddy and I have had. But I’ll tell you about it later.”

  “Later?” I asked concerned and confused.

  “Your Daddy and I are back from California.” she yelled. “We’re coming up to see you girls!”

  The first thing I did was panic. The second thing I did was think about what I was going to tell Mary.

  ***

  I put off telling Mary that Mom and Dad were back for three days. I called in sick to work and laid in bed. I looked around our apartment, listened to the too loud music that the neighbors always played upstairs, to the dogs barking down the street and the kids roller skating and laughing below my window.

  I thought about my job, my students, the stack of papers I still had to finish grading, the baby shower I had been invited to attend next week. I had a life here, and so did Mary. I didn’t want mom or Dad to be a part of it. I didn’t want them to be back here. I was afraid.

  Still, when Mary came home from school with a tub of chicken noodle soup from the bodega I told her that Mom and Dad were back in town and would probably be dropping in to see us at some point.

  Her face had turned red and her bottom lip did that little wiggle whenever she was trying not to cry. She had shouted and cried, she told me she never wanted to see either of them again before locking herself in the room.

  Two days later Mom and Dad showed up on our doorstep, Dad pulled me into a big hug while mom came in and started looking and touching everything and talking about how nice the apartment was and how well we had done for ourselves and everything that she and Dad had been up to.

  Which wasn’t much, mom had been drinking Dad had been picking fights and wound up in and out of jail a few times and they had been living on the streets. They had been homeless. Dad kept me in a tight hug and kept calling me peanut and baby girl, and I could smell the familiar scent of tobacco and sweat on his skin but it didn’t make me calm.

  My stomach churned and I slipped out from under his grip and went to stand beside Mary in the doorway to our bedrooms. Mom was too busy scolding Mary to notice.

  “Well,” she said. “Aren’t you going to say hello to me or your father? Come here where’s my hug?”

  At that Mary lost it, as the years passed she and mom would always get into the worst fights, with Mary calling mom a loser and a drunk and calling Dad the worst excuse for a father and with mom calling her an ungrateful little witch. They always seemed to patch things up but it never lasted.

  “It’s okay,” Dad says with a hand on mom’s shoulder. “Don’t rush her we’ve got plenty of time to catch up.”

  My head jerks up at that, Mary says she’s going out for a walk and that they better not be here by the time she gets back. I want to ask her to stay, to not leave me with them but I am silent. The door slams. Mom goes out after her shouting her name.

  I grabbed my coat to follow them, half to get out of the apartment, half to get away from Dad.

  “Wait,” Dad says crossing the kitchen and casually blocking my path as I try to slip past him.

  “Let them have some time to themselves. What’s wrong baby?” Dad asks. My palms are sweating I don’t know I want to say. What’s wrong with me? He isn’t some stranger he’s my Dad, but I can’t stop my heart from racing.

  “Come here.” he said, “You know you’ll always be my girl.”

  “Don’t worry I won’t be going anywhere.” Dad said.

  “We’re going to be a family again.”

  Chapter Fifteen

  It was raining the day mom and Dad moved in with us. Mary was angry but I didn’t have it in me to let them keep living on the streets. Especially when I knew they would only be a few blocks away. Mom lit up like a christmas tree, she went over everything. she rubbed the blankets on her cheeks and wouldn’t stop talking about how soft they were, she checked the dishes for chips or cracks not that there were any and walked barefoot over the rug a few times.

  She played with the thermostat making the apartment too hot and too cold. Dad was comfortable with just sitting on the couch and watching her or watching me, Mary made it a point to never be around always staying at a friends house or going out to eat or to study just so that she didn’t have to come home.

  I promised Mary that they would only be staying with us for a few weeks, a couple months at the most while they got their act together and found their own place. Dad was working though I didn’t know where but he brought home enough money to pay for groceries or the electric bill. But a few weeks turned into a month, then two months, then three, and somehow it became a year.

  And every time I came home there was more and more stuff, more clutter, more of mom and Dad than there was of Mary and me.

  Mom had bought afghans and pillows and large posters and paintings that covered up the walls and the cloth pull out couch had been replaced with a large brown leather one that Dad had bought (with money from who knows where) and put in the living room one
day when I was at work. There were old books and magazines and junk stuff from the street that we used to collect when we were living on the street old clothes, old books, old magazines, old pots and pans things that were trash and belonged in the trash but kept finding its way back into the house.

  Mary was at her breaking point and I was reaching mine. Whenever she was home they were fighting, Dad had lost his job but he still came up with money every now and then, usually enough to but a six pack or enough cigarettes to last him and mom for a few weeks, and he’d always come home drunk or angry enough to be mistaken for drunk and ready to pick a fight with somebody.

  I felt like I was a kid again living in that crappy burned down house in Dogtooth. I felt like I hadn’t escaped.

  ***

  I was twelve first time I decided to run away. It was August and I had just gotten a whipping for stealing a box of granola from the grocery store because we hadn’t had anything to eat for three days, I decided that I wasn’t going to be hungry again and that I was going to get out of Dogtooth. I didn’t even care if I finished school, if I even went to high school. I didn’t know what I would do when I left, or when I would be leaving or where I would go, only that I had to leave.

  I knew that it wouldn’t be easy.

  Mary was four, Dad was in between jobs and Mom was going through her art phase, she was painting and drawing everything and anything she saw and living the life of a starving artist, which wasn’t as romantic as people in the books and movies made it seem. I had been hoping that Mom and Dad would get us out of Dogtooth, but they seemed to love the way we lived. Or they didn’t have a problem with it. I knew that if I was going to get out, I had to do it myself. I needed a plan.

  I started saving up.

  Over the summer Mom had secretly started taking money from Dad, because we were always on the move Dad didn’t put his money in the bank, any bank. And he didn’t file for taxes because the government didn’t need to know anything or take any of his money. He kept a little of his money in his pockets, but the rest he kept in old grocery bags that he stashed in the glove department and under the bench seat in station wagon. Dad would give Mom some money for groceries or baby food for Mary but most of the time the money stayed where Dad put it.

  I was always late for school every morning, as soon as Dad left for work or to go out for drinks Mom would have be stand out in the middle of the road and watch in case Dad came back home while Mom broke into the station wagon. She would take as much money as she could each time, a couple twenties, a few tens, and she she would always slip me some money every now and then for helping her. I kept all of it in a sock in in the back of my closet and underneath the floorboards. I had thirty dollars saved up so far for my escape fund, (I had forty dollars but I had used ten dollars to buy a new pair of jeans when I had ruined mine when I’d started my period).

  Other than the stolen money I didn’t have much else, I didn’t get any allowance and Mary was to young for an allowance. I started doing odd jobs, I would babysit some of the younger kids in the neighborhood, I would take out the trash, pull weeds, mow the yard, plant bulbs, clean the gutters and the anything to make a few bucks.

  By October I had saved up eighty dollars. I didn’t tell anyone about it. After a particularly nasty storm and a few weeks without power (mom hadn’t paid the electric bill and Dad was in between jobs) and the food that we had, had spoiled I didn’t trust Mom or Dad not to take the money.

  After a week Dad had gotten a job working for the electric company and the money started to come back in. When Dad wasn’t home and when Mom was sleeping on the couch I would bring Mary out with me into the driveway and sneak into the station wagon and take a few bucks. I was afraid of being caught but I figured after everything that had happened Dad owed me.

  I was taking care of Mom, and Mary. I had covered for sure that he got to have his beer and I had put out his cigarettes and replaced them when he had fallen asleep so that he didn’t burn the house down. I told Mary all about my plan, how we were going to be leaving one day. Mary was still to young to understand but she knew enough to keep a secret and to be excited.

  One night in December, when I had been saving and stealing money for almost five months, I came home with three twenties that I had stolen from the station wagon and five dollars I’d made from shovelling snow. I went upstairs shouting a quick hello to Mom and Mary to hide it in my sock. The room was a wreck, the mattress was flipped on the floor, the sheets were slashed, my books and clothes were on the floor and Mary was sitting in the middle of all the mess crying and screaming. I didn’t have to check but I did anyway to see that the sock with all of the money was gone.

  I knew from the damage and the way Mary was acting that it had been Dad. Mom would have just snuck around, she would have found the sock and put it back and pretended like she didn’t steal anything or even know it existed. I knew it was Dad, I couldn’t believe that he had done this. That he would do this to me. I got Mary cleaned up and waited for Dad to come home. It took until just an hour after midnight, and I heard him thumping up the steps singing.

  My fists curled up and my face turned red. I wanted to punch him but I waited, and watched him kick of his shoes.

  “Hey baby.” Dad said around a cigarette.

  “You son of a bitch.” I said quietly. “How could you? You stole my money.”

  Dad’s face turned red and he started going off about how we were all moochers and that we shouldn’t keep things from the family and how the money went towards fixing up the station wagon and how he had bought groceries for the family with it, and how I didn’t need to worry about going anywhere because families stick together.

  “You’re a liar and a thief and I hate you.” I said.

  His face tightened with anger and Mom who had been sitting smugly at the kitchen table stood up.

  “Don’t talk to your father like that.” she said.

  “Why?” I asked rounding on her. “What are you gonna do? Send me to my bed without dinner?”

  Her face turned an ugly purple and screwed up like she was trying not to cry.

  Dad grabbed me by the arm. Hard. And raised his arm up as if he was going to hit me but then he turned and walked away.

  I walked away without looking at Mom who was quietly crying. She tried to say something to me about she tries to be a good mother but I didn’t listen to her. I walked up to my room and closed the door, the door knob had been removed so I put a chair in front of it to keep it shut. I sat on the floor for what felt like hours, the snow was still falling outside and the driveway was covered with thick flakes. I had sixty five dollars in my pocket that my parents didn’t know about but that wouldn’t be enough to leave. I slipped on a sweater and when Mom came up to tell me that dinner was ready I threw my shoe at the door and when Dad came up trying to be charming and coax me out promising that we could rent a movie I told him to go to hell.

  I knew why he took the money.

  If I really wanted to, I could have left and he knew that. He knew that I had enough money to get me a bus ticket and a map to find the nearest shelter. That with a couple hundred dollars and my two feet and thumbs I could get as far as Washington or New York.

  Chapter Sixteen

  Once when I was thirteen Dad came home in the middle of the night in a panic, shouting and yelling waking everyone up.

  “Pack your shit,” he yelled. “We’re leaving.”

  Mary was five and terrified but Mom and I were used to it and had already started to pack what we would need and what we wanted to keep in the back of the car.

  “What’s happening.” Mom asked Dad.

  “Are we in trouble?” I asked him. “Are the police after us?”

  “Don’t you worry about that.” Dad said, his eyes wide and bloodshot.

  “You trust your Daddy to keep you girls safe don’t you?” Dad asked.

  “Yes.” I said.

  “Atta girl.” Dad said and held Mary against his hip as he barke
d orders at me and Mom on what to take and what to leave behind. Most of the cookware and the army blankets, all of the silverware and our clothes. We had learned to take only what we needed nothing more nothing less.

  By the time we pulled out of the driveway Mary had fallen back asleep in my lap, and for the first time he followed the speed limit. We made it through two side streets and out onto the main road before a police car pulled up behind us. The flashed their lights and signalled for us to pull over. Dad gunned it. Dad said if the cops ever stopped us, they’d find out about him not paying taxes, and the station wagon wasn’t registered or insured (in fact he had stolen the license plates from another car that had parked beside us in the grocery store) and that they would find all of the cash hidden under the seats and think we had stolen it and they would arrest us and take us all to jail.

  We made it down onto the highway, weaving in and out of cars when he swerved into the left lane, right into a pair of headlights. I screamed but we swerved into the ditch hard and fast enough that I thought we might hit the car or flip onto the hood and made a U turn back around. We hit city limits in under an hour and were speeding through the countryside at ninety miles an hour. We pulled up next to an old barn and turned off the lights.

  We heard the sirens a few miles away and then a mile away and then it passed us. I kept my hand over Mary’s mouth in case they could hear us. Dad said we’d have to stay out here for a few days ‘roughing it’ and Mom said to think about it like a big camping trip until we could go home.

  Mom read in the paper the next morning how a nasty old pervert had tried to climb through a little girls bedroom window and that the police were still looking for him. I told Mom that I hoped they caught him. Dad who had been up all night had turned into an angry stranger and started cursing and breaking things and ripped the newspaper up and threatened to beat up Mom if she read anymore of that garbage in front of me or Mary and when he’d finished he said he was going to take a nap.