I blinked. “I thought your power was out.”
After sucking in on her cigarette she gave me a once-over. “I was out paying the bill.” She sniffed and rubbed a hand under her nose. “Don’t judge me, Trista. You left me here alone.”
As I watched her, I wondered what she had expected of me. For me to stay with her, long term, supporting her as she wasted her life being a slave to her many vices? “I’m not judging you, Mom. I was just surprised.” She was slouched as she stood by the door, facing me just a few feet away. She had a curve to her back from an accident she’d been in years before, and it always struck me how very fragile she was.
“I thought you moved to Colorado,” she said casually as she dropped a plastic grocery bag in the chair by the door.
I hadn’t really moved; it’d been more of a stopping place before I knew what my plans were. I wasn’t sure how to explain that, so I just shrugged and stepped into the kitchen to run the dishwasher I’d filled earlier. “I haven’t settled anywhere just yet.”
“You did the dishes?”
I nodded and grabbed a can of soda from the fridge.
“You’re not better than me,” she said, stepping around the connecting island that separated the tiny kitchen from the living room. “Don’t forget it.”
Flicking my fingernail on the soda tab, I said, “I never said I was. I just did some light cleaning to help you out.”
I met her gaze, seeing as she peered at me, looking me up and down. “You’re getting fat,” she finally said, poking me in the stomach.
Flinching back, I ground my teeth together. “I’m perfectly healthy,” I told her, not really believing it. It’d been so easy to see my flaws when they were reflected in my mother’s eyes. I hadn’t realized until now, as I stood on her sticky vinyl floor, just how easily influenced I was by her. I’d always wanted to make her proud, to make her happy to have me as her daughter. I worked so hard to make her see me, that sometimes I sucked up the criticisms she gave me because at least she was giving me attention. At least she was acknowledging my presence, as troublesome as it was for her.
“Did that boy dump you for gaining your spare tire?”
I would not touch my stomach and come away with loathing, I told myself. I hadn’t ever been in love with the body that carried me through life, but in the last week, I’d learned to respect it. For what it endured, from the mountain climbing to the heartache. Even if my insides shook under the trauma I’d delivered it, my skin still held me together. I couldn’t hate the body that Jude had loved, I told myself.
“You don’t have any food in your fridge,” I said instead of answering her question. “Do you need groceries?”
Her eyes took on a twinkle and I wished I’d said anything else. “Why, got some cash burning a hole in your pocket?”
“No.” I thought of the backpack with grandpa’s cigar box. “But I can pick you up some dinner if you want.”
She eyed me carefully. I could sense she was deciding what to do with the little bit of knowledge I’d given her. Finally, she said, “Sure. Athen’s Pizza has a deal right now—free breadsticks with a large pizza.”
Athen’s Pizza was nearby, but because it was a mom-and-pop style business short on employees, the service was slow. Which meant I’d have enough time away from her to breathe. “Okay.”
“And get me a six-pack. Not the cheap stuff, since you’re buying.”
I closed my eyes briefly before giving her a smile that didn’t reach my eyes and slinging my backpack over my shoulder. “I’ll be back,” I told her on my way out the door.
When I was younger, grandpa would slip me money here and there—to help pay for my school lunches when my mom hadn’t been grocery shopping in a while. It had continued into high school, when he’d slipped me money for school supplies and new clothes when my jeans had begun to climb to my calves. My mother had never been a provider except for the roof over our heads, and even that had been in jeopardy more than once.
And I’d learned after the first time she found my cache of twenties to hide them in separate places. So if she found one hiding place, she wouldn’t find them all. I’d hidden money in a pillow that I’d opened along the seam, in textbooks and in Jane Eyre, under the mattress, inside an empty hairspray bottle, and had even safety-pinned money on the inside of my curtains. She often found one of my hiding places, but the cost was usually just a couple bucks here and there. I knew better than to keep money on myself.
So, as if I had an ominous premonition, I shoved a stack of bills in my car’s glove box and then slipped a few under the frame that held a photo of Ellie and me. A smarter person would leave and not return, but I always felt obligated to provide for her like she was the child and I was the parent.
I hid a good amount of money around my car and left just a thousand in the cigar box in my backpack just in case. After tucking a few more twenties in the back pocket of my jeans, I pulled into the grocery store first and grabbed her some essentials—milk and bread and cheese and bananas. I’d lived on that exact diet for several years, so I knew it would do for my mom.
When I returned with the pizza, there was an unfamiliar car in the parking space I’d occupied before. I stared at it uneasily as my car ticked after turning it off. I wondered who it could be, but resigned myself to spending at least dinner with my mom before leaving to see grandpa.
The sounds of laughter and a deep masculine voice caused my skin to prickle. The hair on the back of my neck stood as I paused at the threshold into the house. The voice was familiar, but not in a way that was welcome.
Pushing open the door, my eyes met my mom’s first and I took in their glossy state. She’d tied her hair back, but a few tendrils had escaped and were now plastered against her face. When I turned my head, my upper body broke out in a sweat.
My mother had had many boyfriends over the years, many of them repeats—the kind of people you wouldn’t close your eyes around. And sitting beside her on the sofa with a smug expression on his face as he took me in was Doug, the biggest douchebag I’d ever known.
I’d first met Doug when I was twelve and he had asked me when my boobs would grow in, sharing a laugh with my mom over it. She’d dumped him months later after a broken nose, but he’d come back a couple years later, with a bag full of gutter glitter for my mom to suck up her nose. He’d been a cocaine dealer then, and had first gotten my mom hooked on it even though she couldn’t afford it. When he’d come back around when I was sixteen, he’d said selling was too risky so he just used instead. And he’d asked me then, after several lewd glances, if my boobs were real or toilet paper stuffed into a bra.
He was the kind of guy who made you want to take sandpaper to your skin, just to slough off the way his eyes slid over you like you were there for his benefit.
He stood and used both of his hands to smooth back the thinning comb-over. “There she is,” he crooned. I gripped the grocery bag tighter, remembering all the times he’d brushed up against me just to intimidate me. Each time, I’d had to swallow bile. “Your mom said you were out getting us pizza.”
I could do this. I could drop off the pizza and groceries and walk out of here, without a care in the whole world. Preparing to do just that, I turned into the kitchen and set the bag down.
“Whatcha got there, Sunshine?” he asked on his approach. My back tightened, like I was bracing myself to be hit by a car, but he stopped just next to me in the kitchen and peered into the grocery bag. He reeked of some kind of heavy cologne and I leaned away to keep him from suffocating me with it.
“Just some food for Mom.” I dropped the pizza on the counter, ignoring the growl of my stomach over the pizza’s smell. “I have to go now,” I said with less conviction than I felt. Doug made me shaky, from my voice down to my tingly feet.
“Why go now? Come on,” he said, lowering his voice and sliding closer next to me. I trained my eyes on the gold flecks in the cheap countertop. “I brought some snow. Wanna do a line?”
“No,�
�� I said firmly, backing away. Unfortunately, that caused me to back right up into the counter. “I’m not interested.” My stomach flip-flopped when he came closer, trapping me up against the corner of the kitchen.
“Don’t be such a party pooper, girl.” His voice was like velvet suffocation, and I searched for a way to get away from him.
“I really have to go, Doug.” I put my hand in my front pocket, feeling for the sharp grooves of my key, deciding to use it if I really needed to.
“I don’t think you do.” With one hand, he clamped on my wrist and yanked my arm up out of my pocket. Before I could react, he used his other hand to grab my keys from me and then immediately shoved them down the front of his pants.
The shudder rocked me to my toes. I knew what he was doing, the game he was playing. He’d put me in a difficult position and I wished, fiercely, to have the courage to punch him where the keys were, in the hopes that they’d cut his dick.
And I could, easily. He was inches from me. But I remembered the black eyes my mother had worn and poorly hidden under caked makeup. Doug wasn’t afraid to hit a woman unprovoked. I didn’t need to provoke him when he had the keys to my only means of escape.
So I just stood there, pinned against the counter by a man who revolted me, trying to think of a way out. I had to get my keys back. I couldn’t leave my car, and all the money inside, to Doug.
“Knock it off, Doug. I want to go.” I realized I’d left my backpack with my cell phone inside my locked car, and I was truly trapped then. Fear blanketed me, but I didn’t want Doug to see me sweat. It would only excite him.
“After dinner, you can go.”
I shoved him, to give myself space to breathe, but he remained steadfast, pressed against me. “Seriously. Let me go.” I tried to force strength into my voice, but the truth was, with his hips pressed up against me, I was feeling whatever power I had slip away.
“What else do you have?” he asked in a voice that was probably meant to sound seductive, but all it sounded like to me was danger. He pressed a hand against the front pocket where my keys had been before curling his fingers into the opening of the pocket. Immediately, he shoved his hand into my pocket and felt around, coming dangerously close to the apex of my thighs. My legs jumped then, and a cold sweat prickled my back.
I fought against him, knowing his game, and shoved against him with a frenetic energy that surged through my veins. When he moved far enough to give me space, I stepped away from the counter and tried to move around him, but—once again, before I could react—he spun me around and put his hands in the back pockets of my jeans as I was bent painfully over the counter, the hard edge pressing against my rib cage. Wincing, I bit my lip to keep from hollering out. I pushed away from the counter, trying to free myself, but he had at least a hundred pounds of muscle on me and so my struggle was fruitless.
Droplets of sweat gathered along my forehead, and I bit down harder on my lip to keep from crying. I never felt as powerless as I did when someone larger and stronger than me pinned me like I was nothing.
His fingers curled in the pocket, a grope that was sexual enough to make me want to vomit. I looked over my shoulder and glared at him with all the anger I could manage to pull into my eyes.
“There it is,” he said happily as he came away with money. With one hand, he squeezed my ass while he smelled the money with his other hand.
After delivering an elbow to his chest, he backed away enough for me to move away from the corner and I sucked in a breath.
I said a hundred swear words in my head, feeling so fucking stupid for letting Doug take advantage of me. “Give it back,” I said, sweat dripping into my eyes.
“Nah, I don’t think I will.” He gave me a grin that was more violating than his hands had ever been. “You’re welcome to some powder,” he gestured toward the living room, like he was some game show model gesturing to the grand prize vacation in Maui.
“I’ll pass,” I said bitterly, wrapping my arms over my chest. Internally, I was screaming. How had I let him take such control over me so quickly? A glance at the couch showed my mom to be smiling with her head dropped back on the couch cushion. She was completely oblivious to what had happened.
I took a deep breath, swallowing the lump in my throat as I watched Doug count the bills he’d taken from my pockets. I’d put myself in this position, at the mercy of a man who was merciless, with not a single person in the world to help me, to defend me. It was a very lonely reality, and I wished—not for the first time—for Jude to be at my side.
“Come on, girl. Relax. Look at your mom—look how content she is.”
I didn’t believe that a child of a drug-addicted parent could easily live through the damage inflicted upon them and then decide to become a slave to the drugs themselves, too. I had not an ounce of desire to ever try anything my mother snorted up her nose or lit with her lighter. And after Ellie, well, I was in no hurry to be under the influence of any illegal substance.
“Fuck off, Doug,” I said, hoping the venom would mask the fear. But I could feel the way my throat trembled.
“Ah, sweetheart. You wish.” He grabbed his crotch and made a lewd gesture before I looked away, clenching my jaw. I didn’t want him to see how he affected me—he got off on that sort of thing.
“Give me my money back.”
“No can do. Your mom owes me money.”
I curled my lip. “Take it from her, then.”
He stepped toward me, which caused me to step back. I hated this, hated showing my vulnerability to him. “You know as well as I do that she doesn’t have it. So it’s take it from you or take it out on her.”
I knew what he meant by that. The bruising on his knuckles was reminder enough, and I had purple-colored memories of the many times I’d heard my mother scream, and even sharper memories of all the times I’d hidden.
And so, as a repentance of my past fear, I sucked up the fact that I’d have a few hundred less in my pocket. It wasn’t my fault that my mom leeched on to abusive drug pushers, but I didn’t have to ignore the pain she brought on herself.
As I stared at her, eyes closed and a dreamy smile playing on her lips, I wondered how the hell she had gotten here. A man had loved her and then left her and now she eschewed meaningful personal relationships in favor of a chemical reaction with a powder. I thought of my grandparents, of their steadiness, and wondered how she had curled from that to this.
“What kind of pizza did you get us?”
I hated the connotation of the word us when it slithered from his mouth. As far as I was concerned, there was no us. There was my mom and me, and in the same room happened to be the scumbag who had stolen from me.
“Pepperoni,” I spat, rubbing along my rib where it had been pressed against the counter. I knew I’d have a bruise soon.
“That’s boring,” he said mildly, lifting the lid and closing his eyes as he inhaled the scent. Everything he did made me shudder with loathing. He grabbed a slice anyway and then eyed me for a plate. “This shirt’s expensive,” he said with a laugh, like I knew what that was like. My clothes had holes and I hadn’t purchased anything that wasn’t used in years. “Don’t want to get grease all over it.”
I handed him a plate and then walked past him to the bathroom. I needed to prepare myself to spend time with him and my mother.
The water was ice cold as I splashed my face with it, and my hands cramped from its coldness. I flexed them into fists and squeezed even harder when I heard my mother’s laugh from the living room. She was so near-sighted to her own life that she couldn’t see her maybe-boyfriend/definitely-drug dealer in the kitchen groping her daughter. But with a sick twist in my stomach, I knew she wouldn’t have done anything anyway.
My mother was team herself, first and foremost. And she wouldn’t lift a finger to help me if it didn’t benefit her.
I turned the water to warm to help the abating cramping and let my hands just relax under the running water. The sink was dirty, wi
th hairs and dust and grime clinging to its entire surface. I thought to wipe it down, like I had done with the kitchen, but I didn’t want to lift another finger for my mother, not after having just paid for the high she was experiencing.
My time in the bathroom took longer than necessary, just so I could avoid being face to face with Doug again.
I looked at myself in the mirror, at the way my hair hung lifeless on each side of my face. I didn’t look like her—I had all the parts that belonged to the person she’d loved before she’d had me. Who had he been? By all accounts, my mother hadn’t been such a degenerate until she’d had me. She’d been with someone who had seen who she was and loved her—what had he loved about her? And why had he left her?
For years, I’d wanted to ask my grandfather about him. But I never had, and he was probably the last person I could ask. I wasn’t sure of who my mom was before me, but I got the impression that her relationship with my grandparents—her parents—had been strained. I wanted to know the history behind my brown eyes, behind my pale skin. I wanted to feel a sense of belonging, in the hopes that maybe I’d understand who I was.
I dropped a fist to the counter. I’d left Jude to find out who I was, with no plans for how to do that. I just knew I needed to do what my grandfather had told me to do, to find an adventure and chase it.
Sucking in a breath, I held it in my chest for a second before I let it go. I’d need all the patience in the world to deal with the two people who were likely devouring my pizza in the living room beyond the door.
My mother was still on the couch, her head still tipped back. Her smile was soft, her eyes dreamy, and if I hadn’t seen the same look on her face at least a hundred times in the last twenty years, I might’ve marveled how . . . soft . . . she looked. My mother was not a soft woman.
Doug saw me before she did and patted the seat beside him on the sofa, where his arm was draped over the back of the headrest.
Ignoring him, I sat in one of the seventies-style chairs across from him. There was only enough room for me in this chair, which would prevent him from inviting himself to sit beside me.
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