Hand Me Down

by Melanie Thorne

  He says, “How about a round of applause for our wonderful gospel team!”

  Their church is small, only a dozen or so people here today besides us, and we all sit as we clap and Deborah and her band join us in the pews. Their pastor is taller than Pastor Ron, but he’s not as interesting to listen to as he spews a speech about sacrifice in a monotone that doesn’t seem to register that Christmas should be celebratory.

  In the row behind the adults, Matt only has eyes for his Game Boy, and Ashley, Jaime, and I play hangman on blue-lined paper I ripped from the journal that was a gift from my aunt Tammy. She said writing is a great tool for dealing with pain, but I don’t write much. I carry the book with me to keep my hands busy with doodling, and because it reminds me of her. Ashley guesses “P.” I draw a head dangling from the already penciled noose.

  Brianna starts whining and kicking the pew in front of her when she sees Dad eating her Snickers bar. “That’s my candy,” she says.

  “David,” Crystal says. “What’s wrong with you?”

  “I paid for it.” He shoves the last bit of chocolate into his mouth as Brianna starts to cry.

  Deborah elbows Dad but he just sits there, smile on his face, chewing and staring beyond the pastor to the big wooden cross mounted on the wall and the metal crown of thorns perched on top of the dark wood at a forty-five-degree angle.

  Crystal says, “Hush, baby. Listen to the preacher.”

  Jaime guesses “R” and I draw curled hair on the stick figure.

  “You always do this,” Deborah says under her breath. “Nothing is sacred to you.” Dad shrugs and Deborah crosses her arms across her chest. Brianna’s crying gets louder, shriller, and less authentic. “Fix this,” Deborah hisses.

  Dad finishes chewing and swallows. “We’ll get you another candy, lassie,” he says, ruffling Brianna’s hair and working his tongue to get the nougat and caramel off his teeth. Fire ignites in Brianna’s eyes and she takes big gasping breaths in between cries, gearing up for full tantrum mode.

  Ashley guesses “B” and I give our stick woman a shoe. Brianna gets so loud the pastor stops talking and whispers to Crystal, “That little girl might want to behave if she wants to stay on Santa’s nice list.”

  Brianna sobs louder. Ashley plugs her ears. Deborah covers her face with her shaking hands. “No Santa?” Brianna says, standing up, her cheeks and eyebrows quaking. “No presents?” She makes little fists, opens her mouth like a bullhorn, and screams.

  “Now this is a show,” Dad says.

  “Of course, you’ll get presents, honey,” Crystal says. “He didn’t mean that.” She squints at the pastor, but Brianna is beyond calming. She wails and stomps her white patent leather Mary Janes. She shakes her head back and forth so fast her green-and-white bow dances a jig in her flailing hair.

  Dad smacks his lips and swallows the last of the candy. “I guess church can be fun.” He swivels his head to look at us and grins. “Maybe we’ll make this a regular thing, girls.” He pats Deborah’s leg twice like that makes it official.

  Deborah glares at Dad with a rage I imagine is backed by memories of noogies, jagged haircuts, and countless other torments of the rotten older brother who became my father. She says, “Not everything is about fun, David.” She jerks her head toward the exit and says through gritted teeth, “Maybe Brianna would calm down if she got some fresh air.”

  “Y,” Jaime says. “Dysfunctional family!” I shush her and fill in the missing letters in our game. She whispers, “I got it.”

  “Damn straight,” Dad says.

  Deborah’s jaw drops. “David!”

  “Fine,” Crystal says and stands on her fat-heeled sandals with stocking seams showing at the open toes. “Thanks for all your help.” She grabs still-screaming-and-thrashing Brianna and says, “Some family.” She marches out the back double doors, which are cheap aluminum and make a tinny clang when they close instead of the resounding boom you’d expect if this was a movie.

  “I’m so sorry,” Deborah says. She turns to the congregation, says she’s sorry again, and then scoots so low in her seat only a tuft of red hair is visible from behind.

  After the service, Crystal’s Camaro is gone from the small gravel parking lot. The rest of us ride back in the Cranleys’ SUV. “The nerve of your wife, David,” Deborah says.

  “I miss Aunt Linda,” Ashley says.

  Winston says, “You never should have left her, David.”

  Deborah says, “He didn’t leave her,” at the same time Dad says, “I didn’t.”

  “He may as well have,” Winston says.

  “Thanks, man,” Dad says. “Merry Christmas to you, too.”

  “A man takes responsibility for his actions,” Winston says.

  Dad mutters, “Walrus.”

  Crystal and Brianna are on the front porch playing jacks when we pull into the driveway. Deborah clears her throat and shakes her head, her orange hair fluffing out like a lion’s mane. “It’s Christmas,” she says. “The most wonderful time of the year.” She opens the passenger door, a smile stretched too wide across her face. “Okay, troops,” she says, standing like a doorman at the edge of the metal frame. She sweeps her arm in a gesture for us to move out. “Let’s go celebrate the birth of our Lord!” she says like an infomercial announcer.

  As we file out of the SUV and walk toward the door, Crystal stands up and brushes off the butt of her dress. She props a hand on her hip and sneers. “I could have jimmied your lock, but I thought it was more polite to wait.” She smiles at Dad. He smiles back. Crystal turns to Deborah. “Not that you deserved my hospitality after the way you treated us.” She steps aside so Winston can unlock the door.

  Deborah’s eyes bulge, and she looks like a ball of wax in a lava lamp, her face growing bigger as she puffs her cheeks so big it seems painful.

  “Yeah,” Dad says. “What happened to ‘the guest is always right’?”

  “That’s the customer, David,” Winston says. He places his beefy hand over Deborah’s and says, “My wife tried her best to make you feel included.”

  “Whatever,” Crystal says, pushing past him into their house. “Thanks for being so accommodating. I can’t wait to get the hell out of here.” Her thick heels clomp on the tile as she walks away.

  “I guess we’re leaving,” Dad says as Deborah gapes at him. “Girls, go get your stuff.”

  “I’m sorry,” I say to Deborah as we hurry past her.

  “Don’t be sorry,” Dad says, straightening his shoulders to stand taller. “Be strong.” He raises his fist for emphasis as we head upstairs. Jaime and I collect our underwear and pajamas and tennis shoes and toothbrushes and are still shoving clothes in and zipping our packs closed as we walk out the door.

  “You girls are always welcome,” Deborah says. “Don’t forget your Bibles.” She hands us our still-wrapped gifts.

  “Not us, though, right?” Crystal stomps out the door and across the driveway, carrying a bag full of presents in one hand and pulling silently crying Brianna along with the other.

  “We won’t be joining you next year, sis,” Dad says, wobbling as he hoists two duffel bags onto his shoulders.

  “Why don’t you let the girls stay for today?” Deborah says. “They don’t need to spend Christmas in the car.” I can almost hear the unspoken ending to that sentence: with you. When I was six and we left Dad for good in the middle of the night, Mom knew Deborah would take us in. We lived here for over three months. Deborah babysat me and Jaime with Ashley so Mom could go to Al Anon meetings, and she lied to Dad when he called demanding to know where we were. Deborah’s loyalty to Mom bore the price of Dad’s anger, but she probably helped save our lives.

  Dad tosses the bags into his truck bed. “Girls, this gravy train is moving out!”

  I catch Deborah’s eye. “We’ll be okay,” I say.

  “Are you sure?” she says. “I can keep you here until your mom can come.”

  “I’m sure,” I say. At least, I’m sur
e he’s sober, which means our odds are better than usual.

  Deborah hugs me and Jaime, her perfume too sweet and fruity. She tucks a hand under each of our chins and says, “I love you, girls.” She kisses the tops of our heads. “Be safe.”

  Dad shouts from the azalea bushes at the edge of the driveway, “I’m peeing in your flowers.”

  Winston says, “Grow up, David.”

  “I don’t think he’s kidding,” Deborah says, rolling her eyes. “Inside, kids.” Ashley and Matt wave at us as they scurry into the big house they’ve lived in since they were born, to their own rooms and stable lives.

  I hear Dad zip his pants as Jaime and I climb into his truck. “Thanks again for your hospitality,” he says loudly and laughs.

  Deborah blows us a kiss and then rushes into the house, her eyes watering. Winston stands in the doorway glowering through his thick black-rimmed glasses at Dad. “Your sister loves you, David,” he says. “But you are no longer welcome here.” He slams the door.

  Through two car windows I see Crystal smile a malicious and content, lips-curled up at one-edge smile like a gloating cartoon villain. Her car starts and in two seconds she’s speeding down the quiet neighborhood street.

  My arm goes around Jaime’s shoulders. So much for a nice family Christmas. I think of Mom and Noah with Terrance and his family, and my heart aches at the thought that we will never spend another Christmas morning at home with Mom just the three of us girls, eating cinnamon rolls and scrambled eggs, cuddling together on the couch to open handmade gifts like fuse bead key chains and threaded pot holders, and once, a crystal vase Jaime and I spent months coveting and secretly bought at Raley’s with saved babysitting money when Mom wasn’t looking. The blue glass vase still sits on her bedroom bookcase.

  Dad hops into the cab and brushes off his hands. “See, Liz,” he says, “how much fun life is living with your dad?”

  Jaime tilts her head into my chest and sighs. “This isn’t fun,” I say.

  “Come live with us, and join the twenty-four/seven party!” he says. “We’d have a blast.”

  “You would,” I say, but he’s already singing along to the radio. I hold Jaime closer like I can attach her to me if I squeeze hard enough. I press my cheek against her hair and my lungs contract. Tears well and feel heavy in the bottom of my lids, but there is no chance in hell I can make a home with my father. My one wish is that Jaime felt the same way because I’m not sure I can make a home without her.

  Before Terrance, Mom and I were a team. She checked Dad’s breath for booze when he came to pick us up, and I was responsible for keeping him sober until he dropped us off. My job was harder. My threats didn’t pack the same punch as Mom’s, and I couldn’t always keep him from stopping at a gas station and cracking open one of his ice-cold Olde English 800s right there in the parking lot. Then Mom realized that sending us to Dad’s was a good way to make time for Terrance, and started encouraging us to visit. She became too distracted with primping for her dates to sniff the air near Dad’s face before we got in his car.

  Dad liked to drive the empty farm roads near Crystal’s trailer park village on the outskirts of South Sac. I imagined if I could drive, I’d like these roads, too. Not because there were fewer cops and less traffic on these dark country byways, but because the lack of lights meant deeper night skies and brighter stars. On the few nights I won the parking lot negotiations, I loved to gaze out the window at the constellations’ glittering outlines: Orion and his crooked belt, the W-shape of Queen Cassiopeia, the Big Dipper.

  One Friday night, the sky was nearly black behind churning dark gray clouds. The long stretches of green and brown fields were bathed in weak light from a white sliver moon like a scythe. Dad sang along with the Rolling Stones on the radio, “I can’t get no…” He thumped his hands on the wheel, sometimes letting it go to do imaginary drum fills in the air while his pickup swerved left or right. “… Satisfaction.” He bobbed his round head to the beat ringing from his tiny speakers. “Sing with me, girls.”

  “Can we listen to my Mariah Carey tape?” Jaime said, pulling the flowered plastic case out of her backpack.

  Dad twisted the volume knob up and pretended not to hear her. “No, no, no,” he sang.

  “Shh,” I said. “Let’s just get to Crystal’s alive,” I whispered.

  Jaime said, “Stop being so paranoid all the time.”

  “You should thank me, you know,” I said.

  “For being bossy?”

  “For taking care of you.”

  “I can take care of myself,” Jaime said. She reached across me from the passenger seat and stuffed the cassette into the tape deck.

  Mariah’s soprano didn’t get a chance to escape before Dad pushed eject. “No fruity stuff,” he said. He tossed the tape into the pile of pork rind bags, Styrofoam cups, and empty cans on the floor at our feet.

  “Hey,” Jaime said, bending over her seat belt and digging her short arms down into the sea of Dad’s waste.

  Her head dipped below the glove compartment. “Just get it later,” I said. “Sit up.”

  “I can almost reach it,” she said and unclasped her seat belt. I heard the click of the buckle just as I saw both of Dad’s hands abandon the wheel to grip invisible drumsticks. He closed his eyes and we veered left into the oncoming traffic lane.

  “Get up, Jaime,” I said. “Now.” I double-checked my seat belt out of habit. Mom had trained us from the second we left our car seats.

  “When I’m driving round this world,” Dad sang, still drumming in empty space.

  “At least open your eyes, Ringo,” I said. “Jaime, do you want your legs broken?” I tried to grab the back of her shirt but she smacked my hand away.

  “Leave me alone,” she said. “Let me do something without you for once.”

  “Getting shit from all of my girls,” Dad sang as the right two tires of the truck crossed the painted yellow divider.

  My fingers were millimeters from the steering wheel when Jaime sat up. “I found it,” she said, shifting into a crouch and waving the cassette. She beamed at me, her dimples poking holes in her soft cheeks, and I couldn’t help but smile back. “See?” she said. “You don’t always have to worry.”

  “Put your seat belt on,” I said, just as the left front tire hit something—a rock, a hole, a cat—and without hands to anchor the wheel, we swung off the road. We jolted up and then down over the hill of the shoulder, tires kicking up gravel and mud as we thumped through the grass and mucky soil of these farmers’ fields.

  My head snapped left, my tongue crunched between my teeth. My chest smashed against the fabric of my seat belt at each bump while my hips tested the strap across my waist. I shot out my right arm to brace Jaime, but she wasn’t there. Oh God, she’s on the floor. My knee slammed into the stick shift and I tried to force my head to the right so I could see my little sister, but my neck bounced at the mercy of the truck’s worn tires over an uneven surface, and all I could make out was her shape collapsed in the darkness at my feet.

  We skidded to a stop two feet away from a white wooden fence illuminated in the skewed headlights. Cows beyond lay in the damp grass, their legs under them, tags hanging from their ears like reflectors.

  “Fuck,” Dad said as he shook his head. “See what you did.”

  I took a deep breath. I should have grabbed the wheel sooner. I swallowed the blood in my mouth. Why isn’t Jaime moving?

  Dad opened his door and said, “I have to pee.” He stumbled out and tottered away toward a bush. “Be right back.”

  I fumbled with my seat belt latch, my fingers shaking and clumsy. I coughed and found my voice through a swollen tongue. “Jaime?” Her body was curled on top of the garbage. White light reflected from the fence in front of our bumper glared in my eyes, but it didn’t show me Jaime in the cave beneath the dashboard.

  “Hey, dork face,” I said, struggling under the seat belt. The ding from Dad’s open door was like an alarm, shrill and per
sistent, pulsating at my temples. “Jaime?” She lay on her side, her knees bent near her chin, one arm limp across her legs. Her blond hair covered her face and she didn’t move. I couldn’t tell if she was breathing. “Jaime!” I clawed at the seat belt buckle until it unlatched.

  On the floor at Jaime’s side, I swept her hair off her chilly forehead, pressed two fingers to her damp neck, and found a pulse. I placed my hand on her chest and put my ear to her nose. Air moved through her nostrils and her lungs rose up and down under my sweaty palm. I patted her down for crooked limbs and open wounds, and aside from a bloody cut on her forehead, she seemed to be unhurt. “Jaime, wake up.” I yanked on her eyelashes and she didn’t flinch. “Okay, drama queen,” I said, and shook her shoulders. “Enough already.” Her head flopped to the side on a neck made of taffy.

  The pulse at my temples increased to a vibration, a buzzing warning in my brain building like a swarm of bees. I tugged at her arm and pulled her face out of the trash. I cradled her head and lifted her upper body into my lap, my knee screaming at the pressure. I smoothed her clammy skin with my hand and wrapped my arms around her torso. “Hey, little sister,” I said. “I’m here.” I rocked us gently back and forth like I did at night when Jaime’s nightmares scared her into consciousness, like I’d done when Mom’s and Dad’s screams burrowed through the walls.

  I kissed her limp hand. “This isn’t funny, Jaime,” I said. I poked each of her fingertips with my nails. “Open your eyes.” It looked like she was sleeping, but she was so pale. Tears streamed down my face and for the first time in years, I didn’t know what to do. There was no pay phone nearby, no house with a friendly porch light. How long had it been since we’d stopped? A minute? Five?

  “Jaime,” I said softly. “Where’d you go?”

  Raindrop pings sounded on the roof. A cow mooed. I rocked with my back against the door handle and Jaime’s wilted frame against my bruised chest, swaying faster as I tried to force more air through my tightening lungs. Water splattered us from Dad’s still dinging open door, and I tilted my head toward the moon but its light was shadowed in charcoal clouds. I whispered in Jaime’s ear, my wet cheek pressed against her hair, “Don’t leave me here alone.”