Don't Let Me Go

by Catherine Ryan Hyde

  “Nobody bought it.”

  “It just appeared?”

  “Mrs. Hinman made it for me. I have to go tell her thank you.”

  “Later,” her mom said.

  “Why not now?”

  “Because I have to go with you, and I’m tired, and I need to sit down for a minute.”

  “You don’t have to go with me.”

  “Oh, yes, I do.”

  Grace sighed.

  “OK, fine. Whatever. I’ll just practice my dancing and you tell me when you’re ready.”

  Grace’s mom opened the door and let them both inside.

  Grace ran straight to her tap shoes, thinking — for the twentieth time, at least — how lucky she was to have been wearing them when her mom stole her. She got them on in no time, too. It was easy with these tap shoes, because they fit. Just lace them up and dance.

  But then she decided to take a minute to run into her bedroom and put on the new blue dress. She’d never danced in a dress before, and she wanted to see how it would feel. She slid it over her head, liking the soft feel of the cloth.

  Then she looked at herself in the mirror, and drew in a loud breath.

  “I look pretty,” she said out loud.

  It wasn’t just the dress, but the dress definitely finished off the look. The dress took the newish haircut, and the nails (Rayleen had fixed the one she’d lost) and turned them into a package of…well…pretty. And there was another thing, but Grace was only just now noticing it. She’d lost weight, without even meaning to. Without even trying. Must have been all those hours of dance practice.

  She smiled at herself in the mirror, which she had never done before, then ran into the kitchen to dance.

  Grace’s mom was sitting on the coffee table lighting a cigarette, and she made a face when Grace began tapping on the kitchen linoleum.

  “Whatever happened to smoking outside?” Grace asked, making a similar face.

  “I need to keep an eye on you every minute. Do you have to do that tapping thing? The noise is giving me a headache.”

  “Yes, I have to do it,” Grace said, without missing a step. “I have to do it for hours a day. I have a performing thingy coming up, and I want to be good.”

  “It’s giving me a headache.”

  “You said that already. I have to go to Rayleen’s and get my pajamas.”

  “We’ve been through this.”

  “I’m not sleeping in my clothes again tonight. I need my pajamas.”

  “You can call her when she gets home and ask her to put them out in the hall. Since when do you need to dance for hours a day? You never did before.”

  “A lot changed while you were gone.”

  Grace’s mom finally took the bait and yelled at her. “I wasn’t gone that long! Stop saying I was! I’m sick of it!”

  Grace’s feet stopped moving. She stood with her feet apart on the linoleum, as though she wanted to be sure nothing could knock her over. She looked right into her mom’s eyes, but her mom looked away.

  “Look at me, Mom.”

  Her mom glanced, quickly, then looked back down at the rug again and took another puff of the cigarette.

  “Well, it’s all true,” Grace said, “whether you look at it or not. I tap dance, and I speak Spanish, and I have a nice new haircut that would’ve cost a lot of money if you’d had to pay for it…” Grace could hear her voice rising, but didn’t think she could stop that if she tried, and besides, she had no reason to try. “…and I have nice fingernails and a foot manicure, and I’m wearing a dress that was made just especially for me, and I have a cat!”

  The part about the cat helped her finish off with a particularly convincing shriek. Because they’d been debating the issue of whether or not Grace had a cat ever since her mom had stolen her.

  Grace wondered if Billy could hear her through her ceiling (his floor), and if it made him smile a little to hear her be brave and stand up to her mom, or if it worried him to hear any kind of fighting. She didn’t want to worry anybody, especially not Billy.

  “And one of our neighbors shot himself and you don’t even know it!” she screamed. “And that’s how long you’ve been gone!”

  Grace’s mom got quieter, instead of yelling back. She did that sometimes, but only when she was really mad.

  “You do not have a cat,” she said. “And I’m having trouble understanding why you’re yelling as loud as you can after I just told you I have a headache.”

  “I do have a cat. He’s a calico, and his name is Mr. Lafferty the Cat.”

  “Maybe the cat exists,” her mom said, still in that scary-quiet angry voice. “I’m not saying there is no cat. I’m saying he can’t be your cat, because you can’t get a cat without my permission.”

  “Well, you weren’t there to give permission, and it’s too late! And I got him, and he’s mine, and I’m going to go see him right now, and you can’t stop me!”

  And, with that, Grace marched over to the door.

  Her mom got there first, though, and put on the safety chain, which was too high for Grace to reach.

  Grace grabbed a chair and hauled it over to the door, but Grace’s mom just grabbed the chair back and started to haul it away from the door again, but by that time Grace had already started to climb up on it. It just all happened so fast.

  Grace hit the floor with her right hip and shoulder, and it hurt, especially the part on her hip.

  “Ow!” she said.

  “Well, I’m sorry, but you shouldn’t climb up on a chair while I’m moving it.”

  “Well, you shouldn’t move a chair while I’m climbing up on it,” Grace said, still down on the rug.

  “Why are you being so awful, Grace? You’re not usually like this.”

  “Because I want to see my friends, and I want to see my cat, and you won’t let me.”

  “They tried to take you away from me.”

  “No, they didn’t! They just took care of me! It was all my idea! I didn’t want to be around you when you were loaded! I hate being around you when you’re loaded!”

  In that quick and very dark moment, Grace’s mom stood over her, and just for a split second Grace thought her mom was about to haul her off and smack her. Which she had almost never done before. Then again, they’d never had a fight this bad. At least, not out loud. But it was almost as though Grace could see the urge move through her mom. Fortunately, it just kept going. A minute later Grace’s mom was talking in her quiet voice again.

  “You’re giving me a headache. I have to go take some aspirin. Don’t you dare go anywhere while I do.”

  And she walked away, through her bedroom and into the bathroom.

  Grace looked at the door. She rose to her feet, but her hip still hurt when she put her weight down on that side. She thought briefly about pulling the chair back to the door again and unlocking the safety chain, but she figured her mom would catch her fast enough that it wouldn’t do a bit of good anyway.

  So she just hobbled into the kitchen and went back to dancing. It hurt her hip to dance, but not enough to stop her. Nothing would have been enough to stop her. Instead she just winced a little on every step.

  Her mom came back in a few seconds later.

  “Did you take your aspirins?” she asked.

  “Yeah,” her mom said. “I did.”

  “You sure that’s all you took?” Grace asked, still dancing.

  “Don’t push your luck with me, kiddo.”

  “Do you even still have all those drugs in the house? Because, if you do, you’ll probably take them. Sooner or later.”

  “New subject,” her mom said, without much of any kind of energy at all.

  “That’s not just my opinion. Yolanda always says that to you.”

  “More dancing,” her mom said. “Less talking.”

  So for the next twenty minutes or so, Grace danced, and watched her mom to see what she had really taken. It shouldn’t take long to find out, she figured, because if she’d only taken
aspirin, she’d stay awake. No real need to argue, she figured, when you can just wait and watch.

  When her mom nodded off on the couch, with her head tipped back and her mouth open, Grace slid the chair over to the door again, climbed up on to it carefully (tap shoes were not ideal for this) and unlocked the door.

  Her mom did not wake up.

  She clicked her way up all three flights of stairs to Mrs. Hinman’s apartment and knocked on the door.

  “It’s only me, Mrs. Hinman. Grace. I just wanted to show you how nice I look in my new dress and tell you thank you for it.”

  She tried to talk like she had some energy, and like she was happy, so Mrs. Hinman wouldn’t think she didn’t like the dress.

  “We all thought you had to stay downstairs with your mother now,” Mrs. Hinman said through the door while she was undoing all those locks.

  “Yeah,” Grace said, no longer bothering to hide her depression. “I sort of did. It was sort of like you thought. But it didn’t last very long.”

  Billy

  Knock. Knock. Knock. Pause. Knock.

  Billy glanced into the kitchen to read the clock over his stove. Rayleen was home early. He scooted Ms. Lafferty the Cat off his lap, and she ran into the bedroom.

  He opened the door, and stared out into the hall, at no one. But of course it was not no one. With the possible exception of one plywood dance floor he’d overheard, it’s quite rare for your door to be knocked upon by no one. He was just staring at the wrong level, the Rayleen level. He could see, in his peripheral vision, that someone was there. It was just someone lower. Someone closer to the floor.

  He turned his gaze down to Grace’s ruined face. She was crying, her nose slightly runny, her face streaked with tears. She was wearing a blue dress, one Billy had never seen before. In fact, he had never seen her in a dress of any kind. And this one was brand-new, and fit her perfectly.

  He reached down and picked her up, and she wrapped her arms and legs around him and cried on his shoulder. Rather sloppily, but he really didn’t mind. The warmth of her in his arms, and the impact of her emotion, made his knees feel runny and weak, so he took her to the couch, where they sat down as one.

  She did not let go.

  Her tears made Billy feel as if he might cry as well, even though he was not yet specifically sure what they were crying about.

  “I’m sorry I couldn’t let you know where I was,” she said in a blubbery voice.

  “Well. You did. Sort of. You did that signal-knock on my floor.”

  “But that was so long later. You must’ve been going crazy.”

  “I felt better after you knocked.”

  “Did you bite all your nails away?”

  “I didn’t really have much of any to begin with.”

  “Does that mean yes?”

  “Pretty much.”

  “You know I would’ve let you know where I was. If I could. Right?”

  “I never once doubted it. Where’s your mom now?”

  “Three guesses.”

  “Oh.”

  They stayed that way for a moment or two longer. Billy had passed the point of too much human contact, and felt the need to withdraw. But he didn’t withdraw. He just sat still with the feeling.

  Suddenly a shriek pieced his eardrum on the Grace side.

  “My kitty! My kitty! My kitty!”

  Grace launched off his lap, hurting his thigh and leaving one ear literally ringing.

  Ms. Lafferty the Cat had strolled into the room, and the cat was headed toward Grace, and Grace was headed toward the cat. But something was wrong, Billy noted. With Grace. Physically wrong. She wasn’t walking correctly. She was favoring her right hip or leg. She was limping.

  “Grace. What happened?”

  “Nothing happened. I’m just saying hello to my cat.”

  “You’re limping.”

  “Oh. That. That’s nothing.”

  “Did you have an accident?”

  “Sort of. Hello, Mr. Lafferty the Cat. I missed you. Did you tell Billy thanks for taking such good care of you?”

  “What kind of accident? What happened?”

  “Oh, it really wasn’t anything. Well, I mean, it wasn’t much. My mom and I just had this big fight.”

  To his surprise, Billy found himself standing on his feet, with no memory of having risen from the couch.

  “Your mother hurt you?”

  “Well, yeah, sort of, but I don’t think she…”

  But Billy was out the door and down the hall before he could hear the end of the sentence. He trotted down the basement stairs and pounded on that awful woman’s door.

  Pounded!

  As he did, a place in his gut began to tremble, the way it would if someone else had been angry, or creating a disturbance. But this wasn’t someone else. This was Billy. It never had been before, not once in his life that he could recall, but now it was, and he was unable to stop the process. It felt as if he were being frightened by the angry behavior of someone else entirely.

  “Mrs. Ferguson!” he screamed. Screamed. He felt the strain in his throat from raising his voice so sharply. “Mrs. Ferguson! I need you to come to the door! Now! I know you’re not really awake but, frankly, I don’t care! I wish to have a talk with you! Right now!”

  He paused, still and trembling. For quite a long moment. He pressed his fingertips to the wood of her door to steady himself.

  Apparently she was not going to answer.

  But he had passed a point of no return in this horrifyingly new territory, and he needed to have his say. So he spoke his piece anyway, right through the door, hoping it would somehow enter her consciousness through a rear entry the way a person in a coma knows when you’ve been reading to her. And he said it in a loud and aggressive voice, which frightened him, even though the voice was his own.

  “You may not hurt Grace. Do you hear me? You may not. Ever. Not ever again. I’m right here. Right upstairs from you. And I will not allow it. You hurt this girl again over my dead body. Do you understand me?”

  No answer.

  Billy turned to see Grace standing at the top of the stairs, holding her cat, her mouth gaping open, her eyes wide. A mirror of sorts. He turned back to face the door.

  “I hope you’re listening to me, Mrs. Ferguson.”

  “She’s not really a Mrs.,” Grace half whispered from the top of the stairs.

  “It doesn’t matter,” Billy said evenly. “The rest applies.”

  He pounded on the door one more time, three pounds, each one ricocheting like gunshot in his sore and shaky gut. The inside of him felt sandpapered, skinless, like a raw and open wound exposed to additional damage.

  “Never again!” he screamed.

  He felt a tug on the leg of his pajama pants, and it made him jump.

  “Billy,” Grace whispered, in a voice quieter than a normal Grace whisper. It would have been whispering for anybody. “Billy. You’re out in the hall.”

  The sandpapered expanse of his gut returned an exhausted pang.

  “Actually,” he said, “I knew. This time I knew.”

  He felt both of her hands wrap around one of his.

  “You better come back in,” she said. “Come on. I’m taking you home.”

  • • •

  “I feel like a wet dishrag,” Billy said.

  He sat slumped on his couch, Grace sitting next to him, cat on her lap. Both Grace and the cat stared at Billy constantly, as though he might be about to spontaneously combust.

  “You look pretty bad, too. I can’t believe you said all that stuff.”

  “It needed saying.”

  “All kinds of stuff needs saying, all the time. But it’s not usually you saying it. Even Mr. Lafferty the Cat was surprised. Weren’t you, Mr. Lafferty the Cat?”

  “We changed the cat’s name,” Billy said weakly.

  “You can’t change his name. And who’s ‘we’?”

  “Felipe and I.”

  “You can’t change
his name. I promised him.”

  “Well, see, the problem is, she’s not a him. She’s a her.”

  “He’s a girl?”

  “She is. Yes. So we’ve been calling her Ms. Lafferty the Cat.”

  “You can’t change his name. I mean her name. I promised her that was her name. So her name is just going to have to be Mr. Lafferty the Girl Cat.”

  “Oh, I think not,” Billy said, feeling as though these simple words were exhausting his last crumb of energy.

  “Why not?”

  “Don’t you think it’s a bit long?”

  “I’ll ask him if he minds. I mean her. I’ll ask her if she minds.” Grace held the cat up to her ear, pressing her face against the soft fur of the cat’s side. “She says she doesn’t mind.” A long silence. Then Grace said, “She couldn’t even stay clean for three days.”

  Billy said nothing, having no idea what to say.

  “I meant my mom, not the cat.”

  “I knew what you meant.”

  “She knew I’d be gone again the minute she got loaded. And what did she do? She got loaded. I guess she loves drugs more than she loves me.”

  “Addiction is a weird phenomenon,” Billy said, barely over a whisper.

  “Have you ever been addicted to anything?”

  “I’m addicted to staying inside my own apartment.”

  “Oh. Right. But you just went out.”

  “True.”

  “Because my mom not hurting me was more important.”

  “I guess so.”

  “So why can’t my own mom do that?”

  “I wish I knew.”

  “It sucks.”

  “It does. Yes.”

  “Don’t tell Rayleen I complained.”

  “I think she would agree that you’re entitled in this case,” he said. “Some things just require complaint.”

  But, meanwhile, Billy was thinking, Sure, I broke my addiction for a minute or two. That doesn’t mean I could do it from here on out. But he didn’t say that out loud to Grace, because he didn’t want to strip away her last shred of hope. If she had one.

  • • •

  Billy looked up sometime later to see Rayleen standing in his living room, holding and hugging Grace. Grace must have let her in. Had he fallen asleep, or just slipped into a coma of emotional exhaustion?