“Gray sweatshirt, blue jeans, gray sneakers, pink smock. Uhhh . . . wait, how you spell smock again?”
Every day, we have to be checked back in the house by nine, or they’ll call the marshals, track us by our anklets that won’t let us go more than a three-mile radius away, and throw us in juvie. No questions asked. Ms. Reba calls it AWOL, when girls don’t come home on time. Don’t really know what that means though.
Another part of my parole is twenty-five hours of community service a week. They assigned me as a candy striper at Greenview Nursing Home, where I change pissy sheets and feed diabetic ice cream to the dying. It’s actually the most peaceful part of my week. No one bothers me and I’d rather be surrounded by the semi-dead than what passes for the living at the group home.
There are five floors at Greenview: first floor, assisted living, for those who still have their senses but can’t be bothered with the real world. A hundred-dollar cable bill would give them a stroke. Second floor, old and tired, for those whose batteries are dying, becoming slow-moving toys no one wants to play with. Third floor, hospice, for those literally knocking on heaven’s door, waiting for someone to answer. Fourth floor, purgatory, for those slowly losing their sense of self; and the fifth floor, hell. Otherwise known as the dementia ward, for those possessed by demons who took over the bodies of the people you once loved. I prefer the fourth and fifth floors. Familiar circumstances.
It’s five o’clock, time to meet Ted.
The dining hall at the nursing home smells like baby jail; like old cafeteria food, piss, and moldy flesh. He is at our table under the vent, bobbing his head to some music. He jumps up and glances around before kissing me, his lips lingering. I fall into his hug, wishing I could stay folded in his arms forever. There is literally nothing better in the world than his hugs.
“Hey,” he says.
“Hey.”
“Class was fun?”
“Fascinating.”
He chuckles and we sit down to eat. Turkey meat loaf, mashed carrots, chicken broth, and a white roll.
“Babe, you missed it,” he says. “Lady from 207 rolled up on the lady from 110 for flirting with her boyfriend.”
“By rolled up, you mean . . . in her wheelchair?”
“Yup! They were about to throw blows before Ms. Legion stepped in.”
“I thought he was messing with 420?”
“Nah, that was last month. She caught him pinching some nurse’s butt in the TV room. Now she can’t even remember his name. And he got 121 sneaking him cupcakes when he knows his blood can’t take all that sugar.”
“Damn, 211 is a pimp.”
Ted’s smile fades and he slides an extra milk on my tray.
“Still no period?”
I sigh.
“Still no period.”
My period is now ten days late. We both know what it could mean but refuse to acknowledge it. Life is hard enough as it is.
The first time I ever saw Ted, wheeling a woman from the second floor into the community room, all I noticed was his knuckles, cut up and scarred like he’d been punching through brick walls all his life. He reminded me of a Hershey’s Kiss with his rich, smooth, dark chocolate skin, slick with Vaseline that glowed under his pink scrubs. Pink meant he was a candy striper from a group home, like me. You’d have to be stupid to volunteer for this type of work. Our eyes locked for a moment too long. I’d buried my hot face back in my book because I’d felt them, the butterflies Momma always told me about, terrifying but exciting.
“Anyways, I got you something.” His voice snaps me back to the now as he digs into his book bag, pulling out a black plastic shopping bag, placing it in my lap. It’s square, thick, and heavy.
“What’s this?”
“Something you wanted.”
I slide the bag half off. A book, Kaplan SAT Strategies, Practice & Review. My smile is so wide it feels unnatural. I make sure no one’s watching before I kiss him.
“Thank you.”
His rough hands caress my face, eyes soft and searching. He always looks at me like that, like I’m the most amazing thing he’s ever found. He is sort of amazing too. Who knew I would find the one person who understands me, no words necessary, among the half-living.
“You know your feelings are showing?”
He grins.
“I know, right. My bad.”
I kiss him again, the sparks addicting, and his hands rub against my thigh under the table. I can feel the new Band-Aids on his fingers, probably from school. Ted is studying to be an electrician, out of juvie six months for a crime he won’t tell me about but swears he didn’t do. I don’t pry; don’t want him knowing what I’ve done either.
“So,” he says, nuzzling behind my ear. “What’s it like being the baddest chick in the old folks’ home?”
“The baddest?”
He laughs, eyes widening.
“Calm down, babe! Baddest, like the hottest. Like, beautiful.”
“Oh.”
“I’m saying, I don’t wanna have to fight 211 over what’s mine.”
My face burns and I shy away from his stare.
“I’m sure you can take him.”
I flip the book over. The price, thirty-nine dollars and ninety-five cents.
“Whoa, how’d you get this?”
Ted rolls his eyes.
“Don’t worry about it, aight. You need it, don’t you?”
Ted’s allowance is like mine. There is no way he could afford a forty-dollar book and still live.
“But, where’d you get the money?”
“Baby, just—”
“Did you steal it?”
He sighs, playing with my hair.
“You really wanna know?”
Thoughts wander but I don’t flinch at them.
“No. Not really.”
We finish dinner and head to the elevators, standing side by side like a pair of parallel lines. He moves his hand an inch closer, brushing his knuckles against mine. My eyes close; the slow static shock stings my fingers, leaving me warm and breathless. Doors open. Ms. Legion, the nursing home director, steps out and we part like the Red Sea.
From the Deposition of Ms. Ellen Rue—
Mary Addison’s Fourth-Grade Teacher
The best way I could describe Mary is gifted. She was one of the brightest, most brilliant students I ever had. She could read at an eighth-grade level and excelled in mathematics. I once gave her a math test fit for a sixth grader. She finished it in thirty minutes, scoring a 90 out of 100.
There are 756 pages in the SAT prep book. If I study fifty pages a week, I’ll be ready to take the exam by December. That’s if the mice don’t eat my book first. They’ve already nibbled on the edges.
Ted and I have a plan. Since he’s older, he’ll be off parole before me, hopefully by the time he finishes school so he can get a job and an apartment. I won’t be released until I’m nineteen, maybe longer. Until then, I’ll take half of my allowance each week and save for school. That is fifteen dollars a week for fifty-two weeks, which comes out to $780. Times that by four years, I’ll have $3,120 by my first semester. Ted will take care of us while I go to school and study business. Then we’ll open up our own hardware store, get married, and put the past behind us.
I wrote the plan out in my cosmetology notebook.
In order for colleges to potentially overlook my conviction, I have to fall in the ninety-eighth percentile, 200 points less than perfect. Verbal I can handle with no problem. I read the whole dictionary one time because I didn’t have anything better to read. Math will be tricky. Sure, I’m real good at counting in my head. I always counted out the rent money Momma kept in the coffee can above the stove. We were always short and Momma would yell at me for counting it wrong. I counted right; we were just short. But the SATs have these graphs, shapes, and formulas I’ve never seen before, and my GED class only covers the basic stuff. I’ll have to learn the rest on my own. On top of all that, I don’t want the girls or M
s. Stein knowing what I’m up to. They’ll only screw up my plan. So this all has to be in secret.
“Aye! What you doing?”
Damn, I really hope Tara isn’t talking to me. But the room is mad tense and quiet, so I know something is up. I keep my back to them, bedsheet like my own personal tent, and continue flipping pages. Maybe if I just ignore her, she’ll go away.
“Aye. Psycho! I said, what you doing?”
She yanks the sheet and the book falls off my bunk, slapping the wooden floor. I can’t untangle myself fast enough to jump down and grab it before she does.
“What’s this?”
The whole room is staring at us but I can’t focus on anything else besides the book Ted gave me in her fat, greasy hands. It’s like she’s touching him, my Ted. Just the thought of that makes me itch from toes to fingertips. My tongue detaches itself from the roof of my mouth and pushes out some words.
“Give it back,” I mumble.
The whole room freezes and Tara’s mouth drops. They’ve never heard my voice before. Someone in the background whispers an “Oh shit,” and Tara grins.
“Or what?” RIPPPP! She tears the cover.
“Give it back,” I say, wishing I could talk louder or at least sound dangerous.
Laughing, she rips the first pages, crumbling them into balls on the floor.
I grab for the book and she holds it over her head, knocking me right on my ass. RIPPP! Another page. That itch in my toes sends a shock through my whole body and I launch at her feet. She topples over slow, like a black domino, screaming. The house shakes when she lands.
“Fight! Fight! Fight!” the girls scream, giggling. But this is a David and Goliath type of battle I have no chance of winning. So I jump up with the book and run out of the room toward the stairs, Tara clambering to pull herself up and chase after me.
“Fucking bitch! I’m gonna kill you!”
I tuck the book under my arm and race down the stairs. Tara comes thundering down the hall after me, each step like an earthquake. I can’t stop fast enough before slamming into the front door. Locked. It’s after nine; the door is bolted shut for the night. Tara trips down the stairs with a scream. I buckle back, jumping over her, and race to the back of the house. With all this noise, where is Ms. Reba?
Tara is at my heels. I duck into the kitchen, throwing a chair in her way. She falls again. Shit. She’s really mad now and I’m trapped. I claw at the window but the lock won’t budge. Where the hell is Ms. Reba? The noise had to wake her up by now. I know she’s always ten minutes late to the party, but damn! Tara gets up, madder than mad. It hits me that I’m hiding in the kitchen, near all the knives. Not the smartest move but Tara isn’t bright enough to even consider that. This was the same girl who taped a pen to a ruler for Christ’s sake!
“Fucking bitch!”
Clutching the burning radiator pipe, I cower in the corner, chipped paint splintering up my nails. I pull myself into a little ball on the floor and squeeze my eyes shut. Tara yanks at my shirt, trying to shake me off the pipe, banging on my hands to loosen my grip. Screaming, she gives up and starts beating me, fists slamming against my back like a raging gorilla. I clench the pipe and start to pray. The last time I prayed this hard, Alyssa wasn’t breathing.
Why won’t you breathe, Alyssa!
The lights come on and the fists stop. I look up and Ms. Reba has Tara in a chokehold, all out of breath from trying to beat me to death.
“Calm down! Calm down!”
Ms. Stein comes limping in.
“Jesus Christ, what’s going on?”
The book, sandwiched between the pipe and me, topples over as I let go, falling on my back with a gasp. Pain rips through me as I stare at the ceiling, catching my breath. Herbert flies over and for one insane moment, I wonder how he is surviving in this place while I’m the one being batted down like a fly.
Ms. Stein bends quicker than I thought she ever could and picks up my book, examining it like a Rubik’s Cube. I sit up and lean against the stove, the movement unbearable.
“What’s this?”
The floor is full of dust and belly-up water bugs. I don’t say nothing. Ms. Reba drags Tara into the living room, trying to calm her down.
“I’ll kill you! I’ll fucking kill you!”
“I said, what is this, Mary?” Ms. Stein barks.
I’m fighting to breathe and losing. Breathing hurts my lungs, which hurts my back.
“It’s . . . it’s a book.”
Ms. Stein’s eyes go wide and her head snaps to Ms. Reba. They’ve never heard me talk before either.
“Wa . . . wait. What did you say?”
“It’s a book,” I mutter again.
Ms. Stein doesn’t know how to react, thoughts all jumbled and thrown off by a few words. She frowns then blows out a huff of hot smelly air.
“I know that, dummy! What the hell you need a SAT book for, Mary? All this fighting and carrying on, waking folks up in the middle of the night over some book for a test you too stupid to take!”
A knot rolls into my throat and I try to swallow it back.
Don’t snap, Mary. Don’t.
I wouldn’t go to baby jail if I killed Ms. Stein. I’d go to prison, a real prison. I’d never see Ted again.
“You’re never gonna get into college! They don’t take killers in college!”
Don’t kill her, Mary. Don’t. Kill. Her.
Ms. Stein flips the book over and looks at the price.
“Where’d you get this?”
“It . . . it was a gift.”
“Bullshit! Ain’t no gift. Who bought it for you then?”
They can’t know about Ted. No one can know about Ted.
Ms. Stein puts her free hand on her hip. “Well?”
I guess I’ll have to lie. I hate lying but I’ve been doing it all my life. No sense stopping now.
“I bought it.”
“You BOUGHT it? You bought a forty-something-dollar book? You expect me to believe that? Okay then. Where’s the receipt?”
I can’t think. My back hurts too much to think.
“I . . . I don’t know. I . . .”
“Rule number five, Mary! Anything you buy, you have to show proof. And that means a receipt. We can’t have you stealing shit and bringing it in here.”
She stands smirking at me and my mind goes blank.
“So you don’t have the receipt?”
Eyeing over her shoulder, the entire house is in the kitchen, watching. New Girl looks straight frightened. There is no way out of this. There is no way I’m going to get my book back. I shake my head no.
“You steal some book you too stupid to read and cause all this goddamn commotion!”
“I didn’t steal it,” I mumble toward the floor.
“Oh really? Well, I’m just gonna hold on to this. And when you find that receipt, you can get it back.”
Ted finds me in the walk-in freezer, leaning my back against the icy wall. He pulls me out and takes me to one of the empty rooms on the third floor where a patient died this morning.
“Let me see.”
Wincing, I lift my arms and he slowly removes my smock and my undershirt. He unhooks my bra and turns me around. A quick breath whistles through his teeth and I’m happy I can’t see his face.
“Shit, baby . . .”
“I’m okay.”
“Your back is purple.”
I sigh and it hurts. The room smells stale of diapers, old shoes, and death.
“Just . . . lay down,” he says. “Hurry, we don’t have a lot of time before Ms. Legion comes looking for us.”
I climb into bed, whimpering with every movement, and collapse on my stomach. He runs out, returns minutes later with a few ice packs and gently places them on my back, covering them with a damp towel. The cold stings like hell, but it’s better than nothing. He slides into the small twin bed with me and our noses kiss. Having him near me, I start to heal.
“You aight?”
; “She took my book.”
He frowns, but doesn’t pry. It’s what I love most about us. No questions, no explanation needed. He rolls on his back and pulls me on top of him. Chest to chest, I breathe with him, his heart a drum in my ear. He sits his chin on top of my head and plays with my hair.
“It’s okay to cry, you know. You can cry in front of me.”
“I don’t cry.”
His fingers graze my cheek.
“You a bad liar, Ma.”
I exhale a calming breath and close my eyes.
“If I was, I wouldn’t be here.”
Two days later, Ted finds the receipt at the bottom of his book bag. He didn’t steal it after all. Which makes me wonder how he afforded it in the first place, but I don’t ask. I get to the house before dinner and slap the receipt on Ms. Stein’s desk. We stare at each other. Now would be the time for her to apologize, but she doesn’t. Instead, she opens her drawer and hands back my tattered book. I snatch it and walk straight to my room. Maybe Ted and I need a new plan, because I have to get the hell out of here. Soon.
The unfinished basement is the exact size of the visitors’ room above it, with a storm door leading to a junky backyard. Dark, damp, and always cold. I hate it down here. I hate therapy.
“Hi, ladies!” Ms. Veronica says in a nasal voice. She always reminds me of the lady on that show I used to watch with Momma, The Nanny. She looks like her too, mad tall, long black hair, and super white skin with lots of makeup. We sit in a circle of metal folding chairs while she runs at the mouth.
“How was everyone’s weekend? What did you ladies do? Who wants to share? Anything exciting? Well, I had a really nice dinner with my hubby on Saturday. We had Indian for the first time.”
First, let me tell you about Ms. Veronica. She is straight up the most un-relatable person to have ever entered the group home. Ever. She doesn’t belong here. But every Tuesday and Thursday she leads us in group sessions about anger, trying to make us discuss our feelings in order to find what she refers to as “peace.”
There is no such thing as “peace” in a group home.
Why is she so un-relatable? Because she is too damn happy all the time, mad optimistic. Thinking that everything will turn around with a snap of a finger and we’ll all live happily ever after. Sweet, but unrealistic. Some of these girls still use their fingers to count.
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