by Justin Sayre
I don’t move, and I barely look at her. I’m going to let her have her say, and maybe then she’ll let me go up to my room. But she’s started in with spoiled, so I might be here for a while.
“You just do what you want around here, don’t you? I asked you a question!”
“Yes,” I answer, even though I don’t know what she’s talking about. It’s better to tell her what she wants to hear, as long as it gets me upstairs.
“You’re talking to me like that? I will slap the black off you, girl.”
“Yes, ma’am.”
“You have no respect. Not for me, certainly. Barely for yourself. Look at you.” Janet says this as she walks closer to me. I don’t move. “Look at this skirt. Where did you get that?”
“Papa sent it to me from Milan,” I say, focusing on the steps and nothing else.
“That worthless bastard. You’re just like him.” Janet takes another sip before she really starts in on me. “Look at you. You think you’re something, ’cause you’re light skinned with your skirt from Milan.”
“I have to go upstairs,” I say, moving closer to the step.
“You ain’t got to do nothing,” Janet says, grabbing me hard by the arm and pulling me down the one step I’ve been able to get up. My folder, phone, and books fall from my hands, and I almost fall with them. “All you have to do is stand here and listen to me when I’m talking to you. It’s you and me, we’re about to have this out now. You follow?”
I need to get away from her is my only thought, and I’m looking for a way out. There’s a slight chance I could sneak past her, but only if she moves a little farther to the left. It’s my only shot to get away. And I need to take it soon.
“Don’t you just walk around here like nothing’s wrong. You act like you’ve got it all together, and you don’t. You’ve got nothing without me and you never will.” Janet takes another step over, circling me, and it’s then I take my chance. I run up the stairs two at a time, and she grabs after me but misses. She falls on the steps, cursing and screaming up the stairs, but I don’t turn back, not once. I run into my room and lock the door. Janet is screaming from the steps, using every curse she’s ever thought of and warning me what’s going to happen when she catches me.
I hear her scramble up after me. I stay still and keep my back against my locked door. I close my eyes and wait. Even when she starts banging on it, warning that if I don’t open this door, right now, she’s going to kill me. I keep my eyes closed, waiting for her to stop.
“I brought you into this world, and I will take you out,” she screams, and pounds on the door. She pounds for a long time. I never move. I never even open my eyes. She goes back downstairs, muttering to herself angrily again, she falls down the last few and must have spilled. She curses loudly and throws the mug against the front door. I hear it smash. Then she gets up and goes to the kitchen, I’m guessing to get another drink.
I’m safe, at least for now. I open my eyes and look around my room. She’s already been in here and torn everything apart. Every one of my drawers is dumped out. She’s ripped most of the pictures off the wall that I’d cut from “the rags,” even the picture of her in Harper’s last year. This isn’t the worst, but it’s bad.
There was the time she busted the tires on my bike because I was “ungrateful.” Or the time she smeared makeup all over my walls because of the way I dress. Or the time she hit me so hard, you could see the outline of her fingers on my cheek for a week, because I came home late from Ducks’s house.
She slams around for the first hour, but by the second she’s having an argument with herself or me or whoever else she imagines in the kitchen. She runs to the bottom of the stairs to yell up to me. “You hear me, I’m not doing that!” and “Nobody can take that away from me. Not you and certainly not him.” That bit is, I’m guessing, about my father, but I have no idea what any of it means. I try not to listen, because it’ll only make me madder and I still have a lot to fold and put away.
I should have known when she called me “light skinned” I was really in trouble. She only gets mad at me for having lighter skin when she’s really drunk and mad. It also usually means she’s been drunk and mad for a while. It’s not just a flash of anger that on other nights she laughs at or forgets in the next second. When she gets so mad that she hates a basic part of me, she’s out for blood. The key now is to stay away until she passes out. But judging by the yelling, that won’t be for a few hours.
There’s nothing to eat in my room, and by seven o’clock I’m starving. My homework is on the stairs, so I won’t be able to get it done until she passes out. I’m going to be up all night. I look under my bed for my laptop at least, but she’s taken it. She’s funny like that, she rarely breaks important or expensive things. She doesn’t want to be reminded of how bad she’s gotten, and the cost of a new laptop or a phone would be a big reminder. I’m alone in my room. It’s getting dark and there’s nothing to do but sit here and wait.
For some reason, I don’t turn on my lights. I don’t want to draw any attention to my door. I don’t want to get her up here again, slamming and cursing at me.
I lie on my bed for a long time, thinking about all the things downstairs that will have to get cleaned up tomorrow. All the tears and apologies she’ll make to me if she remembers, and the laughs if she doesn’t. The garbage bags full of paper and glass that have to be taken out in the morning. My homework will have to wait until then, I guess.
She yells and bashes around until almost ten. By eleven she starts to get tired. By one o’clock, the house is still. I’m tired and almost falling asleep myself, but I open the door slowly to see if I can hear anything. Music still plays from her office, but it has been on all night. I look down the stairs and see my books and phone still there. She hasn’t touched them. I take the first step out of my room, trying not to make any noise, then another, and then another. I go down the steps slowly and pick up my papers without a sound. Still I have to check on the rest of the house.
I go down the stairs, making sure to skip the creaky stair and to step over the broken mug near the front door. The broom is in the corner. She must have stopped halfway through cleaning or forgotten about it altogether. All the lights are still on. And something is smoking in the kitchen. I run as quietly and as quickly as I can on the hardwood floor to the tile of the kitchen to see what’s going on. The kitchen is a mess, with papers and pictures all over the island. Two empty bottles of vodka sit in the middle with a third on the floor. There’s smoke coming from the stove, so I slide over to see what she’s done. She was trying to make hard-boiled eggs, I guess, but she forgot about them and left them boiling. Now all the water is boiled away, and the eggs are black and crackling. The pot is ruined and almost burned straight through.
I turn off the burner and grab oven mitts to take the pot off the stove and put it in the sink, but the sink is already full of all her other dirty and broken dishes. I don’t know what to do. It smells horrible.
I decide to dump this in the backyard. There’s nothing else to do with it, but that means I have to walk through her office, and I think she’s in there. She’s passed out, probably, but if she wakes up and thinks I ruined her eggs myself, she’ll get crazy all over again. I just can’t take any more tonight. I need to be so quiet.
I walk slowly to the door of her office and push it with my butt, until I turn around and see her. Her music is blasting, but she’s out cold on the carpet, with another bottle rolled under the couch. The floor around her is littered with papers and envelopes. This is where it all started. Maybe she got something in the mail? Who knows and who cares.
I tiptoe to the back door. She’s sprawled out on the carpet, her face pillowed by her arm. She’ll be fine for the night, even if she throws up, which with how many empty bottles I’ve seen, she’ll probably do.
The blackened eggs are smelling worse, so I hurry to the b
ack door and open it with a free hand. I toss the eggs out into the yard. Something will eat them or maybe not, I just need to get rid of them before I throw up myself. It’s cold outside, but it’s like stepping into something special and dark, where no one can see you. It’s an escape from everything inside with every light on. I look up at the sky and I can see my breath smoking out in front of me. I drop the ruined pot a little farther off from where I’m standing.
There are barely any stars in Brooklyn, the lights of the city drown them out. But tonight there are three, almost four, stars I can see. Seeing them makes me cry. Mostly because I’m tired, but also because they’re there, and they see what’s happened. It makes me feel a little less alone.
I go back into the house and start turning out lights. Janet hasn’t moved, she’s out for the night. I take my papers and phone up to my room. I brush my teeth and go to the bathroom—I’ve been holding it in for hours. In the mirror, I see how tired I am. I look how I feel. I turn out the light. I’ll have to be up even earlier tomorrow to do my homework.
I go to my room and lock my door, just in case.
CHAPTER 6
I only sleep a few hours before my phone starts buzzing to wake me up. I have to do my homework. I race through a lot of it, skimming over paragraphs and filling in guesses for answers, hoping I’ll have time later to check them. It’s going to be a very long day.
I go out of my room slowly. Usually after a night like that, she’s sorry, or at least pretend-sorry, so she’s good for a couple weeks. It’s why I don’t clean up after her. If she has to clean up her mess, she feels worse and that puts her on her best behavior for even longer.
Her music is still playing, but besides that, there’s no other sound in the house. I go to brush my teeth but try not to look in the mirror. From the bathroom window, I can hear the faint sound of bottles rattling outside on the street. It’s Wednesday, and I totally forgot to leave bottles out for Jen and her grandma.
I spit out my toothpaste and run down the stairs, being careful I don’t step on pieces of the broken mug from last night. I slide out to the kitchen to grab the two trash bags full of glass bottles I’ve put away for Jen under the sink. It saves Jen’s grandmother’s time, and it means she doesn’t have to be embarrassed anymore. Or at least anymore today.
The bags clink with the glass inside them. So I hold them tighter at the top, hoping that the harder I hold, the less they will be able to move. I sneak to the front door, with the bottles rattling as little as I can manage. At the door, I have to free up a hand, so I set down the bottles slowly, but I hear Jen’s grandmother getting closer outside, and I don’t want to miss them. I open the door, pick up the bag again, allowing for a little more noise this time, and rush out.
As I step out the front door, Jen and her grandmother are right next door. Jen’s grandmother gets up every Wednesday morning and takes her shopping cart, stolen from a grocery store, collecting glass and plastic bottles out of people’s recyclables. She takes them back to a grocery store and recycles them for money. She never returns the cart.
The first day I saw them, I had thought Jen’s grandmother was just a crazy homeless lady, but when I saw Jen behind her, carrying her schoolbooks, looking just like me, awkward and shy and clean behind her, I hadn’t known what to think. So I’d asked.
“Hey . . . hi,” I’d said, leaning down from the steps where I was sitting. Janet had been slamming around, looking for her wallet she’d dropped under the couch the night before. She was going to Paris, so I had to go out and keep the cab waiting for her. Jen didn’t look up at me that day. Her grandmother had made these strange smiles as she nodded at me, opening my gate and going right over to my garbage. Jen had stood by the gate, looking at her grandmother impatiently and with embarrassment. The car had come for Janet, but by then Jen and her grandma were three houses away.
From that morning on, I started putting out the bottles for Jen’s grandmother, to save Jen one embarrassment on the block. With how Janet drinks, there’s always a lot of bottles.
I barrel down the stairs carrying the two big bags of clattering bottles, and Jen’s grandmother almost claps, she’s so excited to see them. Jen sort of smiles, but her embarrassment never really goes away. I don’t want her to feel like that, especially with me, but I understand. I pass the bottles to Jen’s grandmother, who bows and smiles. Jen’s grandmother says something in Chinese to Jen, who thanks me for the bottles.
“It’s okay. I never mind doing it,” I say as Jen’s grandmother moves on to the next house. I step through the gate and follow Jen onto the street.
“Do you have parties at your house or something?” Jen asks.
I laugh, but Jen doesn’t.
“Oh, no, my mother is a drunk,” I blurt out, still laughing by myself.
Jen smiles a little but doesn’t know what to say, and neither do I, so I keep laughing. I can’t believe I said that. I’ve never told anyone that. Never said anything close to it. I couldn’t. It’s different with Jen today.
All Jen says is, “I’m sorry. Are you okay?”
For some reason, I keep laughing. “Rough night.” And then I look into her eyes and say, hoping she’ll believe me, “I’ll be fine.” I usually walk Jen to the corner, but this morning I make an excuse and go back to my house. It was easy to tell Jen the truth, but it’s hard to live with having told her. I still have to get ready for school.
When I get back in the house, Janet’s awake. She’s walking around the hallway looking at everything she’s done and probably remembering none of it. I can see it on her face before she realizes I’m there. As I close the door behind me, she looks over at me.
“What went on here?” she asks me.
“You don’t remember?” I ask.
“No,” she says, looking at me, then at the broken mug on the floor.
“Yeah,” I say. I half want to lie, but I half want to tell her the whole truth, down to every nasty thing she said and how I had to hide in my room. But for now, yeah is enough. She starts to cry. She rubs the heels of her hands into her eyes. She puts her hand out to me, and without even thinking, I shiver and move to the side. Her eyes widen, like she can’t believe it. I expect her to get angry, but all she can do right now is cry.
“Oh, baby,” she says through her hands covering her mouth. She’s crying all alone. Just like I was last night.
“I have to get to school,” I say, and walk up the stairs. When I get to the top landing, I look back and see her sitting on the steps, her head hanging between her shoulders. She’s still for a minute, but then her back starts to shake.
By third period I’m exhausted, so I ask to go to the bathroom to splash water on my face. After the third splash, Ellen comes out from one of the stalls. She’s looking down at the floor. Then she looks up, sees me. I watch her compose her face into a look that is completely innocent but it’s totally a lie.
We’re both hiding out in the bathroom.
“Sick?” Ellen asks.
“I’m tired. I didn’t sleep,” I answer, drying my face. “Are you all right?”
“Yeah. Why?” Ellen asks, getting a little rough. But then she seems to decide, and this part I can see her think right in front of me, that I will catch her if she gets too angry, so she stops. “I just needed a break from class. I’m not into it today.”
I laugh a little. “Me neither.”
“Why didn’t you sleep?” Ellen asks, looking at me through the mirror.
There’s a lump in my throat, and I know if I swallow or open my mouth in any way I will burst into tears. I just look at her in the mirror and splash more water on my face so she won’t be able to tell if I start to tear up even a little. Everything is right on the edge, so I don’t say anything.
Ellen waits for something, but she knows me better than that. She puts her hand on my back and says, “Only four more periods, then we’
re out.” Ellen leaves me right after that. She’s a good friend.
After school, I’m supposed to hang out at Allegra’s house, but I ask if I can just get a ride home. I’m not feeling great. In the car on the way to my house, she keeps talking about nothing, and I’m listening a little, but mostly I’m just trying to stay awake.
“Am I, like, boring you?” Allegra asks.
“No, why?” I say, opening my eyes, which I am sure isn’t helping my case.
“Are you sick?” Allegra asks, looking at me for a second before she goes back to her phone.
“No. I’m just tired. I didn’t sleep,” I say, getting quieter with each word because I don’t want Allegra to ask why I didn’t sleep. Though she probably won’t anyway.
“Were you worried about Ryan? Jeez, I didn’t think you liked him that much,” Allegra says loudly, smirking to herself.
“Sure,” I say. I’m bobbing my head off the window near my seat, just wanting to get closer and closer to my house, which gets me closer and closer to my bed and farther and farther away from Allegra.
“See? I, like, knew it. And he’s totally into you. Like, it’s a little weird, not that, like, liking you is weird, don’t think that. It’s just, like, that he’s, like, so out about liking you. He smiles at you and follows you around, always says nice stuff to you. It’s, like, romance or something.” Allegra smiles.
There’s something in the smile that I can see even with my eyes almost shut. She’s listing all the things Ryan does to me and wishes Brian would do them to her. And then she gets mad.
She looks at me like I’ve stolen something.
“It’s nice, but it’s not, like, anything serious,” I say back.
“It could be though. He really likes you,” Allegra says. She gives me that look again.
“Yeah, but I don’t even know if I like him. I mean, he’s nice and, like, cute or whatever.”