Don't Let Me Go

by Catherine Ryan Hyde

  “I thought she didn’t care about that,” Grace said, not sure whether to be elated or angry, or even what other options might be available to her in that moment.

  “Me, too. When I first brought it up she didn’t seem like she did. But back then it was all sort of theoretical, I think.”

  “In English, Yolanda,” Grace said, knowing it sounded grumpy, but not caring enough to fix it.

  “It was more just this idea of a county lady. Like just something you talk about. Now it’s gonna happen for real, and she knows it. So…next two or three days are really key. If I could switch around and get my days off now, I’d do it, but it’s too late. I already traded with somebody. But, if she feels the pressure and stays with it. You know. After a few days maybe I can really talk to her. Like I used to. Maybe get somewheres. Anyway. I’ll come back tomorrow. I don’t know what else I can do.”

  Grace felt rooted to the spot, like a copy of Grace cast in cement instead of the real thing. She heard Rayleen walking Yolanda to the door, and they were saying something, but she didn’t even look up.

  A minute later she felt Jesse’s hand on her shoulder.

  “Hey, little one,” he said. “Don’t look so down. It was good news. Remember?”

  “I know,” she said. “I know. But before I was just all down about it, but now I’m scared, and that feels even worse. Because, like Yolanda said, you feel like it’s not really real. You have no idea how many times I thought she was clean. Before. But then it didn’t last. I can’t get happy about it. Not yet. I can’t. I’m too scared, and I feel like I’ll jinx it. I don’t want to go to school tomorrow. Rayleen, can I stay home from school?”

  Grace looked up to see that the door was closed and Yolanda was gone.

  “Wouldn’t that be worse?” Rayleen asked, sitting close beside her. “Just staying home and worrying?”

  “I’m afraid I’ll throw up in school.”

  Rayleen sighed.

  “Maybe I can help,” Jesse said. “I can do some reiki on your upset stomach. It’s an energy work that helps the body heal itself.”

  “But you won’t be there when I’m in school tomorrow.”

  “But I can teach you how to do it for yourself.”

  Jesse rubbed his hands together to get them warm, and maybe also to fill them with some kind of energy, and then he put them near Grace’s tummy but not on it. That seemed odd to Grace, that he didn’t actually touch her tummy. And she said so.

  “Is that cause I’m a kid, and men aren’t supposed to touch kids?”

  “No, that’s how it’s done.”

  “But you’re not touching the spot that hurts.”

  “But the energy is. It jumps the gap.”

  So Grace waited, and felt, and tried to believe it.

  “I do feel a little something,” she said, because it was either true or very close to true. Or maybe because she really wanted it to be. “But maybe you always feel something when somebody’s hand is that close.”

  “Right,” Jesse said. “You feel their energy.”

  “But it doesn’t always help.”

  “Because it isn’t always reiki. It isn’t always a healing energy. Why don’t you just try closing your eyes and feeling what’s going on in your stomach?”

  “OK,” Grace said.

  That meant she was talking too much, and Grace knew it, but she decided not to waste time feeling hurt about it. It felt like too much trouble.

  After a while she decided she probably was a little more settled inside, but maybe only because she thought she was supposed to be. But then she decided if it felt better it didn’t matter why.

  “But that’s just my upset stomach,” she said. “Maybe you should be doing what’s really the trouble. Maybe you should do my brain or something, because my stomach is only upset because I’m nervous.”

  “Your brain has nothing to do with it,” he said.

  His voice was very calming. Grace liked his voice a lot.

  “It doesn’t?”

  “Very little. The emotions that are making you sick live in your gut.”

  “They do?”

  “That’s why you feel them there. Just close your eyes and don’t think for a minute.”

  So Grace tried to do that.

  “Was that a minute?” she asked, about a minute later.

  “That was seven,” Jesse said in that calm voice she liked so much. “Let me show you how to do this on your own at school tomorrow.”

  And he did.

  And then Grace agreed that it was probably best to go to school in the morning, and not just stay home all day, throwing up and worrying. After all, at the end of a whole day doing that, where would she be? Just facing a few more days that looked and felt exactly the same.

  It must have been a good thing to decide, because Jesse and Rayleen both liked it a lot.

  • • •

  On the way home from school the following day, walking side by side with Felipe and learning the Spanish words for “luck” and “happiness,” Grace saw her. Ms. Katz. Which was neither suerte nor felicidad in Grace’s opinion.

  It was just one block down from their apartment house. Ms. Katz drove by in a silver car. A little silver Honda or something. Not the kind of car you’d really notice or anything, and Grace had no idea why she’d even looked inside. But she had. And it was Ms. Katz. There was no mistaking her. Grace’s stomach knew her when it saw her.

  “She came early,” Grace said to Felipe, rubbing her hands together to heal her poor tummy if she could. “That county lady. She came early.”

  “Oh. Why are you holding your stomach like that? Are you sick?”

  “I’m trying not to be.”

  “Maybe it’s good she came early. Your mom was clean yesterday. So maybe it’s good.”

  “How do I find out, though, Felipe? I have to know how it went! I can’t wait for Yolanda to come, that’s in hours! I’ll die!”

  “I guess you could go ask her.”

  “No, I can’t. She can’t see me until she gets thirty days. You go ask her, OK, Felipe? Please?”

  “I don’t know, mi amiga. She hates me so much.”

  “Oh, my God, I have to know. Please, Felipe?”

  “OK, mi amiga. OK. No guarantees, cause I don’t even know if she’ll talk to me. But I’ll try.”

  • • •

  “Why are you holding your stomach like that?” Billy asked. “Are you about to be sick?”

  “No, I’m trying not to be,” Grace said, impatiently. “It’s reiki. Jesse taught it to me. Otherwise I’m just going to explode because Felipe is taking too long.”

  “I think that’s good, though. Maybe it means she’s talking to him.” Then his voice changed. “Grace Eileen Ferguson! Are you biting your nails?”

  Grace woke up as if from a dream, and looked down to see that she had torn into her right thumbnail.

  “Geez, Billy. I’m getting more like you every day. I think you’re rubbing off on me, and not so much in a good way. Oh, my God, here he comes! I hear him walking!”

  She ran to the door and threw it open wide, and Felipe came in.

  “She wouldn’t talk to me,” he said.

  Grace’s hands automatically found their reiki position again.

  “Not at all?”

  “Not really. But I told her it was for you, not for me. I told her you were really scared about how it went with the county lady, so she said if I waited she would write you a note. So here’s the note.”

  Felipe held a folded scrap of bright yellow paper in Grace’s direction. She recognized it as torn off the message pad her mom kept by the phone. Grace had thought for more than a year now that it was silly to keep a message pad by the phone, since nobody ever called them any more. Not even Yolanda. Yolanda always said it wasn’t a sponsor’s job to go chasing after her mom, that her mom had Yolanda’s number, and if she didn’t use it that must mean she didn’t want help.

  “What does it say?” Grace asked,
afraid to touch it.

  “I dunno. I figured it was private.”

  “Oh,” Grace said. “Right.”

  She took the note from him. It didn’t burn her. It didn’t bite.

  “Here, I’ll read it out loud,” she said. Because Billy looked like his tummy could use some reiki, too. “‘Dear Grace, I was clean when the lady came from the county today. I’ve been clean for two days. I did it for you, baby. Twenty-eight more days and then I get you back. Love, Mom.’”

  A long silence.

  “That’s good, right?” Billy asked.

  “Well. Yeah. Sure.”

  “You don’t look happy,” Felipe said.

  “I’m scared to believe it,” Grace said.

  “But the county lady was here, and she didn’t take you,” Billy said.

  He was trying to improve the mood of the room. Grace could tell. But he was also right, she suddenly realized. Whatever happened in the next twenty-eight days, there was still the point that Ms. Katz had come and gone and Grace was still here.

  She’d expected to be elated if that happened. She’d pictured it so many times. And in her fantasies she’d danced, and sung happy sentences of joy, instead of just saying them. Now, in real life, she just felt a little unsteady, and needed to sit down.

  • • •

  Yolanda came to Rayleen’s door at the usual time.

  Jesse got up and answered it, because Rayleen was taking a bath.

  “So,” Yolanda said before she even got through the door. “Want to hear the good news first?”

  “The county lady came early, and my mom was clean, and so she’s not taking me away,” Grace yelled.

  She hadn’t meant to yell it. She’d meant to say the words in a normal voice, but then they got away from her and ran wild.

  “Oh. You know already. OK. Did you hear about the follow-up visits?”

  “The whats?”

  “Oh. OK. You didn’t.”

  Yolanda took her by the hand and walked her over to the couch, and sat down, and sat Grace down. Grace figured you’d have to be stupid not to know that all those things added up to bad news. Her stomach iced over, and she didn’t know if reiki would help for that, and she got overwhelmed and didn’t try.

  “OK, Grace, it’s like this. Ms. Katz is going to be coming back between two and four times a month to check on your mom. To make sure she stays with it.”

  “Two to four a month?”

  Grace’s mouth felt numb when she said it. The words sounded fine coming out, but she couldn’t feel herself saying them.

  “She’s not stupid. She knows you gotta keep a good eye on an addict.”

  “Oh,” Grace said, because she couldn’t think of anything else.

  “But, hey. We got through the first one. So that’s good, right?”

  “Right,” Grace said. “Good. That’s good. I’m going to go see my friend Billy. And my kitty.”

  Just as she got to the door, she turned back to look at Yolanda, who didn’t look very happy.

  “Now you don’t have to waste any vacation days,” Grace said. “Hey. I just thought. Now you can come to my school when I dance. Remember I asked you, but you said you’d be all out of vacation days by then? Well, now you won’t.”

  “Yeah,” Yolanda said, like she was thinking about something else. “OK.”

  “You’ll come? Really?”

  “Yeah. I really will.”

  “Good. Thanks. If my mom does what she said in the note, she can even come, too. But we’ll see.”

  She padded across the hall and signal-knocked on Billy’s door.

  “It’s only me, Billy, let me in, OK?”

  Billy opened the door.

  “What’s up, baby girl? Are they going out on a date?”

  “No. I don’t know. I don’t know what they’re doing. I just want to come in.”

  “OK. Come in.”

  “You look nice,” she said when she sat down on his couch. “I’m sorry I always forget to say that. Every time I see you now you look really nice, in nice clothes and with your hair brushed and all, and I should have already said so a long time ago.”

  Mr. Lafferty the Girl Cat jumped up on the couch, and Grace held her close.

  “What’s wrong, baby girl?”

  “That county lady is going to come two times or maybe even four times every month to check on my mom.”

  “Oh,” Billy said. He sat close to her on the couch. “For how long?”

  “Like…I don’t know. Like forever. Or until she catches her loaded, I guess.”

  “Oh,” Billy said.

  “Yeah. Oh.”

  They sat that way for a long time. Grace was watching it get dark through Billy’s thin front curtain. It got dark a lot later these days. Grace had noticed that. The days just kept going by.

  Billy’s voice made her jump.

  “So, are you just going to be unhappy every day? Because something could go wrong next time, even though it didn’t this time?”

  “What choice do I have, Billy?”

  “I think that’s the one thing we do have a choice about,” Billy said. “Ms. Katz came today, and your mom was clean, and I didn’t see you spend even one minute being happy about it.”

  “Hmm,” Grace said.

  It made a weird sort of sense. Ms. Katz could take her away any time now. In a week, or two weeks, or next month. But she also could have today, and she didn’t. Grace could be gone right now, but she wasn’t.

  “OK, you’re right,” she said. “Yea, yea, Grace didn’t get taken away today. Every day I’m here I’ll say that little cheer. Hey, that even rhymes. Yea, yea, Grace didn’t get taken away today. Every day I’m here I’ll say that little cheer. See? Even that second part rhymes.”

  “It doesn’t scan, though,” Billy said.

  “What’s scan?”

  “Nothing. Sorry. I shouldn’t criticize. It’s a great cheer. Very good attitude.”

  “No, really. Tell me what scan is.”

  “When it works out right rhythm-wise.”

  “Oh. Right. That. Like a real poem. I could fix it with more yeas. Yea, yea, yea, yea, Grace dint get taken away today. I have to sort of say ‘dint’ instead of didn’t. But then it works pretty good. Billy. Teach me another kind of dancing, OK?”

  “What kind?”

  “I don’t know. Anything. I just want to dance, and I’m getting over-rehearsed on my tap dance for school, you said so yourself. So let’s do something different.”

  So Billy, because of his being Billy and all, taught her a waltz.

  You did it to the count of three, facing each other and holding hands, which was kind of nice because it was something they could do together. And then, after a few steps, he taught her how to step back and twirl. He held one of her hands above her head and she twirled. And then she made Billy step back and twirl, even though that’s the girl’s part, and even though Grace had to reach up high and he had to duck down low. It made them both laugh.

  So that was a good day.

  Billy

  It was twenty-three days later. Twenty-three once-daily “Grace dint get taken away today” cheers later. Exactly. Billy had been counting.

  Someone signal-knocked at his door in the middle of the day. Grace should have been at school, Rayleen should have been at work, and nobody else even knew about the signal-knock. Billy hurried to the door and opened it.

  It was Rayleen.

  “Hey,” he said. “What are you doing home in the middle of the day?”

  “It’s Jesse’s mother,” she said. “She took a bad turn. They took her from the nursing home to the hospital. It looks like it won’t be long now. Can I come in? I need to talk to you. It’s important.”

  He stood back from the doorway, and she came in.

  “Coffee?”

  “No. Thanks. I have to talk fast so my throat won’t close up. I stayed way too long last time. Took me days to get over it. So, really quick. Jesse wants me to be with
him. You know. When his mother’s dying. So I’m going.”

  “Oh. Good. So you want to know if Grace can be here tonight?”

  “Maybe not just tonight. I have no idea how long it’ll be. Could be days.”

  It struck Billy hard that Jesse was away. He wouldn’t walk with them to school in the morning. The best part of Billy’s day. How would he feel when Jesse left permanently? He put the thought away again, knowing he couldn’t take it on just then.

  “It’s fine. She can be here as long as she needs to be. But. Oh. You’ll be gone, too. For days. So…how’s she going to get to school in the morning?”

  “Right. That’s what I need to talk about. I was hoping…you.”

  “Me?”

  “I was hoping.”

  “Just me? Alone?” His voice rose alarmingly.

  “Well. You and Grace.”

  “Not on the way home it wouldn’t be.”

  Billy felt panic rising up through his words, feeding on itself.

  “But you’re doing so much better. You’ve been walking with us every morning. It must be starting to feel a little more natural by now.”

  “Oh, yes,” Billy said. “Very. It feels very natural. Probably because I never have to do it all alone any more.”

  “OK. Look. Bottom line, I think I need to go with Jesse. But I know this is asking a lot of you. I knew it would be. So I already called Felipe. He says he’ll do it if there’s really no other way. But he doesn’t get off work until after one in the morning. So it’s really going to cut into his sleep. But if the two of you could work it out…Maybe he could go with you tomorrow, and the day after you could try it by yourself?”

  Billy forced himself to take a deep breath.

  “I don’t know,” he said, “but we’ll work it out somehow. You just go. We’ll work it out.”

  Rayleen stepped in and threw her arms around him. Billy felt the warmth of her lips on his cheek. It didn’t move off a second later, either. The lips remained pressed to his face for what felt like an extended time. And much later, even after she’d hurried out the door, the warmth was still there to be felt.