A Hole in the Universe

by Mary McGarry Morris

  “Well, thank you. That’s very nice of you,” the woman said as the man went up the steps two at a time. Jada watched to see if he took a key from a hiding place, but he used his own to get inside.

  “Yeah, well, Gordon, he never likes crap around, you know, so that’s why.” She walked across the lawn with the woman. “I’m Jada. I live over there.” She pointed.

  The woman held out her hand, introducing herself as Lisa, Gordon’s sister-in-law.

  “Oh, yeah, you’ve got two kids, right? A boy and a girl. I seen you here before.”

  “You’ve got a very good memory.”

  “Yeah, phonographic, that’s what my teachers all say.” She grinned. “But then hardly anybody ever comes here. A priest did once. And Delores. You know her?”

  The woman said she did. Opening the door, she said she’d better go give her husband a hand.

  “Need any help?” Jada stepped closer.

  They didn’t, but Lisa Loomis thanked her. They’d come to check the house and pick up a few things for Gordon. She slipped inside.

  “How’s he doing?” Jada asked, face at the screen. “Probably not too good, huh?”

  “He’s all right. Gordon’s a very strong man. He’ll be fine. I know he will.”

  “Lisa!” her husband called from the stairs. “I can’t find any slippers!”

  “Yeah, it’s like, how can they do that?” she said as Lisa Loomis stepped away. “How can they arrest him? He’d never do something like that. And he didn’t. I know for a fact he didn’t.”

  She came back to the door. “What do you mean? How do you know that he didn’t?”

  Her husband rushed up to say he didn’t have much time. His next appointment was in forty-five minutes.

  “Because,” Jada said. “Because I know he wouldn’t hurt anybody. Especially an old lady, even though she was a bitch.”

  “You shouldn’t say that. That’s terrible,” Lisa Loomis said.

  “Will you come on?” her husband snapped.

  “Well, it’s true. She treated him like crap, and now look, just because he was nice, they blame him. It sucks. It really does!” she called at the closing door.

  She sat on the step, waiting. “Hey!” She jumped up when the door opened. The brother came out carrying a green canvas bag. “I just wanted to ask you,” she said, following them to the car. “Would you tell Gordon I said hi?”

  “Yes, I will. That’s very nice of you,” Lisa Loomis said.

  “Watch out, them prickers, they really hurt,” Jada warned as Lisa Loomis opened the car door. “And tell him I’m watching the house for him. I’ll keep the freaks away,” she said at Lisa’s window as the car backed out of the driveway. “I won’t let the place get all crappy looking. I’ll keep it nice!” she called as Lisa waved. “Fucking snob, can’t even talk to me,” she muttered.

  The office was freezing. Jada stuffed the paper into her pocket, then folded her arms and tried to stop shivering.

  “Sorry for that,” Mr. Crowley said when he returned.

  Mr. Crowley didn’t look like a mister in his jeans and black T-shirt. He was a young guy with a bony face and closely set eyes that narrowed with doubt whenever she spoke. It was the second time he’d been called out to see someone. The place was a zoo, junkies lined up, waiting outside a door marked MEDS and the waiting room filled with even more of them.

  “We’re a little shorthanded today. Now let’s see, you were telling me about . . .” He looked for the paper he had been writing on. He shuffled through the stack to his right, then pushed back in his chair to look down at the floor. “It was right here. Well, anyway.” He ripped a new sheet from the pad. “I remember most of it. Your name is Jana and your mother is addicted to crack and she needs to be placed in one of our programs.” He raised his eyebrows: Was that right so far?

  “It’s my aunt. I said mother, but she’s, like, really kind of my aunt.” She had to be careful. What if he’d gone out both times to call Social Services or the cops?

  “What’s your last name, Jana?”

  “Brown.”

  He wrote it down. “And your age?”

  “Seventeen.”

  He looked at her. “Seventeen?”

  “In a couple months.”

  He didn’t believe her. “Your address?”

  “Why, what’s that matter? It’s not me, I’m not tryna get in rehab. Is that what you think?” He did. She could tell, he thought it was her.

  “No, I know. It’s just for our records. Standard procedure, that’s all.”

  Yeah, standard procedure; next thing she knew, some social worker’d be banging down the door. “Look, all I wanna do is to get my aunt in. She’s too sick to come down. I told her I’d do this. She has to get on a list, right?” She pointed to his papers. “A waiting list or something?”

  “Yes, and right now ours is very long, but—”

  “How long?”

  “Three months, anyway.”

  “Jesus Christ!” She felt as if she’d been punched in the stomach. What would three more months of drugs do to the baby? And to her? “She can’t wait that long! She’ll be dead!” Having actually said it, she was limp with the certainty. Sometimes in the night she woke up afraid to move, afraid to feel a corpse at her back. “There must be some other places,” she said weakly. “Someplace she can get in faster.”

  “Well, yes, private centers, hospitals, but she’d have to pay. We’re state funded, so here it’s—”

  “Can’t you just put her name high up on the list? I wouldn’t tell anyone, I swear.”

  “I’m sorry, I can’t do that. It wouldn’t be fair.”

  “Fuck fair! They’re all out there getting their fucking shit and she’s not gonna make it! She’s not!”

  “I’m sorry, Jana, now you just calm down. You have to understand that those people also had to wait. It’s just the way things are.”

  She couldn’t believe that, couldn’t quit, couldn’t just give up and say, I’m nothing because no one cares, and that’s just the way things are. She closed her eyes. “Please? Will you please help her?”

  “That’s the other thing, Jana. You’d have to bring her in here. It’s got to be voluntary. She has to want the help. It’s the only way this works.”

  “She does, but she can’t. She’s too sick.” She looked at him. “She’s pregnant.”

  “Or it could be mandated by the courts.”

  “How does that work?” she asked, stiffening with his answer: If her aunt were arrested, then she could be ordered into treatment. She nodded dully as he handed her brochures and a list of hot-line numbers, some for emergencies, others informational.

  “Jana?” He patted her hand and tried to make eye contact. “Sometimes we have to hurt people before we can help them.”

  She grabbed his hand and leaned over the desk. “Whatever you want, I don’t care, I’ll do it, anything. I’m really good! Anything you want,” she said, feeling her face break into a thousand pieces as she tried to smile. “Just move her up the list, that’s all.”

  “No.” He shook his head with a futile sadness. “No, that’s not what I meant.”

  She dropped the brochures onto the desk and left.

  Feaster waited in the Navigator while Polie came to the door. She had to do a deal down by the canal. It was a guy and a girl. They were on their way there right now in a gray Volvo, so she had to hurry. No, she said. She didn’t feel like it. She was too tired. She started to close the door, and he pulled it open.

  “This is big and Feaster don’t wanna lose it. They’re down from Portland.”

  “Yeah.” She laughed. “Like I care, right?” Her mother had been up all night, crying and saying she was so sick she just wanted to die. Jada didn’t dare leave her alone for fear she’d take off and be gone again for days. Little by little her mother was getting clean. But it was taking its toll, leaving her weak from all the vomiting. A little while ago she’d been burning up with a fever.


  “Come on!” he said with a glance at the Navigator. “Now! There’s ten other places they can go.” He sounded frantic.

  “No. Not unless you tell me where Leonardo is.”

  “Leonardo?” he said in a high voice. “Who the fuck’s Leonardo?”

  “My dog. You took him, didn’t you.”

  “Jada?” her mother called from inside. “Who’s that? Who’s out there?”

  “Just a minute, Ma!”

  “Is that Polie? I gotta see Polie.”

  “Don’t fuck with me. I don’t want her out here. Not now.” He glanced down. Feaster waved for him to hurry. “Come on!”

  “Then pay me. In cash,” she whispered back, seizing on his desperation. “We need money bad. There’s no food here, and she’s really sick.”

  “You know he won’t. She already owes him too much.”

  “Too bad, then. I’m not doing it.”

  “Take the rocks, the extra, what you get for her, and sell ’em.”

  “Oh, yeah. And then I’ll be a big fucking dealer like you, Polie.” She laughed. “I don’t think so! Hey, you better go. Feaster’s got his door open.”

  “Here.” He handed her a ten-dollar bill.

  “That’s not enough.”

  He gave her another ten. “That’s all I got.”

  She ran inside, but her mother had fallen asleep or passed out, one or the other, same difference; at least she’d be all right alone for a while.

  “Come on!” he said when she came to the door. He grabbed her arm, and she jerked back.

  “What’d you do to Leonardo? You drowned him, didn’t you.”

  “Jesus Christ.”

  “Tell me and I’ll go.”

  “Yeah.” He nodded. “All right?”

  “Fuck you!” she cried. So Thurman hadn’t lied.

  He grabbed her and steered her down the stairs.

  “Why? Why’d you do that?” Her voice broke as she struggled to hit him. “He was just a little dog, a puppy.”

  “Shut up! Just shut up!” He pushed her into the Navigator.

  Feaster turned up the music. He bobbed his head to the beat and twirled his straggly chin hairs. His silky blue shirt clung to his knobby shoulders. The back of Polie’s neck glistened with sweat. He kept glancing at her through the mirror. The Volvo was parked in the weeds by the canal. Feaster turned down the music. They drove by to be sure.

  “Maine. It’s them.” Polie gestured at the license plate.

  “So where’d you take him?” Jada leaned forward between the seats, then repeated the question when he didn’t answer.

  “Someplace. I don’t know. The river.” Polie glared at her.

  “Take who?” Feaster asked.

  “My little dog, Leonardo. The asshole drowned him.”

  “What the fuck did you do that for?” Feaster looked at him in disbelief.

  “Marvella, she said to. She hated that dog. And the smell, it was making her sick.”

  Jada sat back. Her mother had done this, had killed the one thing she loved. They could do whatever they wanted, and nothing would ever stop them. A deadness came over her, but it felt good. Walls went up, windows slammed shut, doors closed. Nothing was ever going to work out, and knowing that with such absolute certainty was almost a relief. There was nothing in her heart, no ache or prayer to say. The sunstruck brick of the mills kept flashing by in this wild orbit, ’round and ’round in the purple rocket, no cops, the right car, crazy the way they even stopped for red lights, but they were alive and she was not.

  “Here.” Polie shoved back a plastic bag. “Take out five rocks. Fifty’s theirs.” He parked by a weedy lot on the corner and told her they’d be giving her five hundred dollars. This time count it first, Feaster instructed.

  Her hand felt numb as she removed the five rocks and put them in her pocket. “How come only five?” she asked, struggling to care as she shoved the bag inside her underpants. Pride was all she had left, but it was burning up the last of her energy.

  “Jesus!” Feaster groaned. “Tell her, will ya tell her?”

  “After that last fuck-up,” Polie said, smirking at her in the mirror, “you’re lucky you’re getting—”

  “She’s not getting rid of it,” she interrupted, smiling. “She won’t. I know she won’t.”

  Feaster spun around. What was she waiting for, cops? Get out! Now! he told her.

  She walked slowly, kicking stones as she went. She looked back and waved. Actually, cops would be perfect right now. Arrest Polie and then her mother would be too far along to get rid of it. “Bastard, no-good bastard,” she muttered, approaching the car. A baby was screaming. The driver rolled down the window. It smelled inside: dirty diapers and sour milk.

  “Hey!” the driver said. He was older than she’d expected. Thin gray hair, gray mustache. The woman was young and skinny. Her eyes settled on Jada’s with a glassy vacuity. She tried to smile, but her mouth only hung open, drooling. In back, a little girl sobbed, her pale, sweaty head turned against the car seat. “Shut up!” the driver screamed at the frantic child, making her cry louder. “Whatcha got?” he asked Jada, checking the street in his mirror.

  “I don’t know. What do you got?”

  “Here.” He handed her a wad of new bills folded in half. “Jesus, do something, will you?” he snapped at the woman.

  “What?” the woman shrieked with a hounded look. “Do what?”

  “Sounds like she’s sick. She’s got a fever or something,” Jada said as she tried to count. The piercing cries seared like a hot knife through Jada’s numbness. Desperate, crackhead assholes, bringing their baby. What if the cops come? Don’t they care? No, this was all they cared about, the shit between her legs. That’s all her mother cared about.

  Reaching back, the driver kept trying to force a pacifier into the child’s mouth. “Shut the fuck up!” he screamed. Again the young woman struggled to smile, looking longingly at Jada, the bearer of all happiness, all that she desired. Flailing her arms, the child kicked the back of the seat. The driver began to slap her legs, only to have her howl louder in outrage and helplessness.

  “Leave her alone!” Jada yelled, but he kept hitting her. “She’s not doing anything wrong. She’s a baby, that’s all. It’s not her fault.”

  She pulled out the bag and threw it into the car, spilling the glistening rocks onto the front seat and floor. The man and the woman were picking them up. The child’s screams followed Jada through the hot afternoon as she walked alongside the still, black water of the canal. The Navigator slipped up beside her. “Here.” She held out the money. Polie passed it to Feaster and told her to get in. She ignored him and kept walking.

  On her way home, she tried to figure out which of these houses was Delores’s. They all looked the same. She was pretty sure it was Lowell Street. She asked a few people if they knew Delores, but no one did, and Jada didn’t see her car anywhere. Her mother was probably climbing the walls by now. She knew she should go home, but for the first time in weeks she didn’t care. Just like Leonardo and the old bitch, that poor baby didn’t have a chance. One way or another she’d kill it, too. Hurt and disappointment, that’s all she was good at, the only things Jada had ever been able to count on her for. That little girl just now screaming from buy to buy, sick and hungry in her dirty diapers, that’s the kind of life it would have, if it was lucky, because this time there wouldn’t be any Uncle Bob and Aunt Sue, nobody but her to pick up the pieces, or some foster home that probably wouldn’t even let Jada come and visit.

  When she came to the projects, she leaned against the chain-link fence and watched some guys playing basketball. “Hey, Jada,” a voice called from the shade of the bleachers. It was Thurman.

  Jada sat next to him. He was eating a sub. His hair had sprouted to a black fuzz. He needed a shave. He had a job nights now at the pizza place, so his grandmother had let him back in. For a few minutes they sat in silence, watching the sweaty game while he ate.

  “I w
ent back there, you know,” she said.

  “Where?”

  “The woods. But Cootie’s dog, he was gone.”

  Thurman wiped his mouth with his hand. “Oh yeah?” He grinned. “Wanna go find him?” He stood up and flipped a heel of bread into her lap. “You can give him that!” He grabbed her hand and pulled her up. “C’mon,” he said, rubbing her belly as she leaned into him. “Let’s go.”

  “Oh, I don’t know,” she said, stroking his fuzzy head. “I should go home first. My mother, she’s sick in bed.”

  “She’s down by the tracks. I saw her. She was with some creep. One of them bums from under the bridge. Scary guy with no teeth.”

  Jada ran down to the railroad tracks, but no one was around. When she finally got home her mother was on the couch, holding a bloody towel to her nose. It wouldn’t stop bleeding. The blood was running down her throat, she said, gagging. Not knowing what else to do, Jada ran into the kitchen for a glass of water. Her mother’s hands shook so much that the water spilled all over her. Jada held the glass to her mouth. Her mother tried to take a sip, but she choked and blood gushed down her chin. Jada pressed the towel against her nose. She’d looked everywhere for a rock, she gasped through the towel, but couldn’t find any. She’d even gone out looking for Polie, but no one would tell her where he was. All she could get was shit some junkie shot her up with, some poison that was killing her. “I think I’m dying. That’s what it feels like.” Her skin was sweaty and greasy gray. Her eyes bulged out of her head.

  “All right. All right,” Jada said in a panic. “That’s why you gotta quit, Ma. For you and the baby.” She wished she had the brochures. Her head felt woozy.

  “I don’t wanna baby,” she groaned. “I just wanna life, that’s all, a normal fucking life like everybody else has.”

  “You will, Ma.” Jada ached to put her arms around her, but was afraid.

  “No, I won’t. I never will.” She doubled over, gagging and holding her belly. “Oh God, I’m so sick. I’m gonna die. I wish I could. I wish I could just die.” She was trembling so violently that her teeth banged together. “Get me something. Help me, baby. Help me,” she grunted, looking out in terror past Jada.