Should do, but often don’t. Sister Timothy starts class without a word, just taps her yardstick on the desk and says, “Geography, please.” Everyone takes their homework from their desks, except Nenny, who’s been led to believe she’s been excused, in a note from Mother Superior herself: “My deepest condolences to your family. As far as work the children have missed, be assured they are excused.” But Sister Timothy must not have seen the note.
“Nenny, your homework, please.” She hasn’t even finished flipping through the stack, and it’s clear she’s just illustrating some point.
“I don’t have it,” Nenny says.
“You’ll have one week to catch up.” She glances at Nenny over the ridge of her spectacles, as if to be sure Nenny’s heard.
The day goes on like this. Nenny gets called on for questions she couldn’t possibly know the answers to, is beckoned to the board to take notes, is told over and over to read certain passages aloud. It doesn’t take long before the day’s message is clear, to everyone: you will not get any soothing or comfort here, just a solid, first-class education.
But when the final bell rings, Sister says, “Nenny, you’ll stay.” Everyone lingers a minute to stare before they trickle out the door.
“I hear there’s been a death in your family,” Sister says from behind her desk.
“Yes, ma’am.” So she did get the note.
“Charles’s mother?”
“Yes.”
“I imagine that’s not been easy.” But, strangely, she says it in a way that demonstrates she’s never imagined anything at all.
Nenny nods. It’s clear they are not bonding—you can’t bond with a piece of steel. Still, Nenny had not expected any special treatment, and certainly not this: Sister Timothy acknowledging, however distantly, that this whole thing has been hard. If charity is a branch, a line of salvation and mercy that we extend to one another in our darkest hours, then that might be what this is. It’s not soothing, and it’s not comfort, but in her own bizarre, chiseled way, Sister Timothy is perhaps extending the thinnest branch. It’s enough to make Nenny begin to cry.
“Now, now,” Sister says as Nenny sniffles. “Let’s keep things in perspective. She wasn’t your mother, after all.”
And there goes the branch.
Night
BEFORE THEY moved in, Dad bought Nenny a bed and cleared the junk out of his office so she could have her own room. It’s darker than her room at Mom’s. At Mom’s there’s a window overlooking the street, but this room is like a vault. It faces the alley and the back of the Christian radio station. There’s a mural of an angel there, sort of flying or leaning forward, holding a microphone instead of a trumpet. The angel doesn’t really have a face, just the shadowed suggestions of one.
The boys sleep in Dad’s room, and Dad sleeps on the couch. It doesn’t even fold out, and when he wakes in the morning his face looks flattened and mowed, but he doesn’t complain. At breakfast he struggles to stay awake, yawning and rubbing his eyes, while other times he stands with one hand on the counter and the other on his back, wearing a look of having been stabbed. He doesn’t say anything (The couch sucks. You kids take up too much space), so Nenny doesn’t either (The bed is lumpy. I don’t want to sleep in this dark room). All those things Rick used to say about sacrifice are finally sinking in. She hangs a poster of the New Kids above her bed and pretends this is working, pretends this is home.
But then night comes. Night arrives as a soundless bully, shoving and charging and slamming into the room. To the left side Nenny rolls but does not sleep, and to the right side she rolls but does not sleep, and straight above is the ceiling light like a watchful eye. She misses Mom. She longs for Mom like being torn apart, a dull ache of longing like a ribbon unspooling from the center of her chest. Kensington is only a few miles from here but seems forever away. She traces the route in her mind—up Brookside to Citrus to Wabash, past the YMCA and the high school, past the 7-Eleven and the orange groves—and hates distances, hates roads, wishes hungrily and desperately and feverishly that she was in her other house, asleep or not, it doesn’t matter, only that Mom is just down the hall. Nenny loves Dad, but Dad is not enough.
She hears his snores coming down the hall and thinks, How can anyone sleep with night like this, when someone’s been killed? Two men, three men—however many men—how can you sleep when they haven’t been caught? Night comes and with it filthy blue jeans and calloused hands, breath like a wet ashtray and hair that hasn’t been washed, yellow and crooked and horrible teeth, killer teeth, men stomping their boots and walking away, stopping however briefly to fold a dead woman’s clothes.
Return
IT’S THE Friday of their first weekend back at Mom’s. Nenny is nervous and doesn’t know why—but of course she knows why. She spends the school day trying to concentrate, but her mind keeps wandering off. A deep hungry need surges through her, a need that would embarrass her if spoken out loud. She pictures entering the house on Kensington Drive, the smell of spaghetti and meatballs, everything as it was a week ago—the beanbag chair still in the den, the seascape painting still on the wall—pictures what it will be like when Mom rounds the corner when Nenny and the boys come in. Nenny should be practicing her spelling and doing math, but instead she’s imagining running through the hall and leaping into Mom’s open arms, and Mom dropping to one knee to catch her, to hold her close, to stroke her hair. Nenny, I’ve missed you so much! I hate it when you’re not here!
None of that happens. Dad picks them up from school and this time walks them to the door. Bubbles knocks formally instead of walking in, which is weird because a week ago this was their primary home. Rick answers the door and his face registers surprise to see Dad standing there, holding Tiny’s Scooby-Doo suitcase. When Rick reaches out for a handshake, Dad takes his hand sort of limply, as if he doesn’t quite remember what purpose a handshake serves. The two men don’t talk much, and after a minute Dad just says, “Well, okay,” and walks back to the car. Nenny and the boys won’t see him again until Monday. It’s hard to fathom how he survives on his own.
Nenny’s need for Mom is so great she’s almost shivering. She wants to run to Mom like a hungry wolf, a week’s worth of longing catapulting through her blood—but the need is quickly compacted and compressed, because when Mom rounds the corner from the kitchen, she looks not like she wants to be leapt upon or clung to or hugged but rather as though some part of her, something essential, has been erased.
“Hi, guys,” she says, toweling her hands. She hugs each of them distractedly, shoulder squeezing and quick, the kind of hug a camp counselor might give. “Put your things away and wash up. Dinner will be ready soon.” Nenny and the boys wait as if for something else, but she’s already back at the stove. Kat and Charles are not around.
Nenny feels crazed. What is happening? Rick hardly greeted them, is already in the den watching the news. Neither has asked how their week was, how they’re doing, what life is like at Dad’s, if they want to move back. They’re acting as if Nenny and the boys are returning from a quick jaunt around the block. She looks at Bubbles for confirmation, to see if he feels it too, but he refuses to meet her gaze. Eyes fixed down, he trudges up the stairs. Even Tiny is quiet. So it’s clear: everything has changed. They are now visitors here.
Kat is on her bed when Nenny comes in, writing in a notebook on a pillow spread across her knees. Her hand moves steadily, as though she writes all the time, which she doesn’t. Nenny sets her backpack on the floor, and Kat keeps working—not rudely, just focused. It’s so quiet she can hear Kat’s pen scratching across the page.
Finally, Kat looks up. “Hi,” she says. She’s wearing a grey sweatshirt and jeans, no makeup or earrings, and looks at Nenny with a steady, not-bitchy gaze. “Hi,” Nenny says meekly, then searches for something else to say. She doesn’t know what to do, so she leaves for the bathroom and closes the door. Nenny feels misplaced and unwanted, or worse than unwanted: unseen. Mom always notices if
something is wrong with Nenny—and now that’s not even true. Something shifts inside her, and it’s like a knob being turned, but she can’t break down because that wouldn’t be fair. Like Sister Timothy said, it wasn’t her mom who died. Turning on the faucet, Nenny scoops handfuls of water and brings them to her cheeks, splashing her face over and over so she will not cry.
Charles is standing in the hallway when she opens the door. Nenny starts; she had no idea he was there.
“Took you long enough,” he says, shoving off from the wall. “You got the squirts or something?” He says it as an accusation, something to embarrass her, and it works. It’s only been a week since she last saw him—he and Kat are still out of school—but he looks as if he hasn’t washed or slept in months. His hair is slick with grease and there are dark circles under his eyes, purple like bruises.
“Move. I gotta pee.” She steps aside, and he pushes past her, closing the door. In the bedroom, Kat’s still writing on her bed, this time with headphones on. She doesn’t seem to notice Nenny coming in. Nenny takes out a book and tries to read, but the lack of chaos and noise is too foreign and isolating. She wants so much to go home, to be home, but she doesn’t know where home is anymore, if it even exists.
A Boy
IF YOU want to expose and mangle a boy’s humanity, wrench his mother from him at an early age. Take her, and watch the light drain from his face. Watch his skin pale and his eyes darken, his shoulders hunch like a creature curling so far into itself that it finally disappears.
In the hallways at school, across the cafeteria during lunch, Nenny watches Charles with the gaze of a cautious observer. Other boys slam the trash can lid and gurgle their milk, make faces and rude gestures behind the nuns’ backs, but Charles sits among them like a ghost. On weekends he plays video games for hours on end, eats without enthusiasm, and mostly just shuts himself in his room.
One Thursday, a few weeks after they’ve been back at school, Donnie Harlem slinks up to Charles from across the lunchroom. Donnie Harlem is puny and has deeply glazed eyes. His mother lives in Egypt and his father’s seldom around, and he lives with his aunt and uncle in an apartment behind the school. Everyone knows all this, in the way that everyone knows everything.
“Hey, Charles,” he coos, like they’re old chums, old pals. Charles is twice as tall as Donnie, but Donnie leans in anyway, both hands on the wobbly table.
Charles regards Donnie with tepid disdain, like considering an insect he can’t be bothered to squish. With his sandwich near his mouth, he looks at Donnie, then takes a bite.
Donnie leans in closer and glances around to see who’s watching. People are. Donnie’s the kind of kid who people watch, hoping he doesn’t watch back. The clatter of the lunchroom is nearly deafening, but a building scene is a building scene, and Donnie Harlem’s always building a scene.
He grabs a Cheeto off Charles’s plate and pops it into his mouth. Charles watches him chew.
“So,” Donnie says, and what happens next is horrifying because it is entirely true. He leans in again and without a flinch looks right into Charles’s eyes. “I heard your mom got her brains blown out.”
Take a boy, any boy, and move his mother to Egypt. Give his dad a drug problem, and make sure he’s not around. Throw a drunk, violent uncle into the mix, and see where the boy ends up. Put him in a room with an audience, face-to-face with another defeated, windblown boy, and see what happens. You’d be surprised what happens.
Nothing, really. The Charles of a month ago would’ve been blind with rage, would’ve pummeled Donnie until his face bled, as he did the boy at Happy Trails Park. But this Charles is new. This Charles has no need to defend what is sacred, because nothing is anymore.
He doesn’t say anything. Donnie waits, grinning, because he’s the kind of kid who wants this, wants anything, even if it’s getting punched in the face. But Charles just lays his sandwich on the tray, picks it up, and walks away.
Any Boy
SEVEN YEARS later, Donnie Harlem suffers a heroin overdose in his aunt’s garage. He is sixteen years old.
Take a boy, any boy.
Undone
BUBBLES BEGINS to take things apart. Normally he’s putting them together, building Lego complexes and Erector set towers—but now, if it can be undone, he undoes it. Radios, walkie-talkies, a tiny TV, whatever small appliance Dad won’t notice is missing. He finds a square of cardboard and lays it on the deck, duct-tapes the corners down, and with a pair of pliers and a screwdriver the size of his thumb, he dismantles each device piece by piece by piece. Gears and knobs and coils and springs are arranged into meticulous, neat rows, Bubbles with his legs tucked beneath him, crouched concentrated and low, not saying a word, not saying anything at all, while the sun rises and falls behind the crow-crowded trees. Soon there’s nothing left to deconstruct, and when that happens, he uses his measly allowance to buy gadgets at the Goodwill down the street—where the toys reek of rotten milk and the clerks have tired eyes—wears a camping headlamp in the middle of the day, takes Polaroid snapshots of the arranged parts because he read somewhere that’s what mechanics do. In any other home, this kind of behavior would swell the curtains with a hopeful pride—“Your brother’s going to be an engineer!”—but they don’t have curtains in the apartment; they only have blinds.
Tiny, on the other hand, is mostly the same—totally annoying and always blabbing on and on. Manny Hernandez stepped on a bee and his foot “swoled to the size of a loaf,” but when they took him to the hospital, the doctor said it wasn’t a bee it was a “scorpsion” because its tail was still inside—even though every moron knows scorpions don’t live around here. He sawded on a show that kangaroos are reladed to T. rex, which is how come their arms is like this, he says, and holds them crooked in front of his chest. There’s one point five twillion stars in the sky, hamsters eat their young because they confuse them for pellets, you should always keep a first-aid kit in the car because one time Manny Hernandez’s dad reached between the seats and there was a piece of glass there and he cutted his finger real bad (and one starts to wonder, does Manny Hernandez even exist?)—on and on and on, his jabbering, blabbering world made of half-dumb facts and half-imagined scenarios and half lies, which is a lot of halves but you get the point: Tiny won’t shut up.
Until he does. Nights, the apartment is dark and still, the only sound Dad’s deep snores traveling in syncopated bursts down the hall like echoes of some barge. Nenny lies awake and listens, pictures Dad’s tongue clapping against the roof of his mouth, thinks of night, thinks of dawn, misses Mom terribly, thinks of Mom’s hands, Mom’s ears, the loneliness so fierce it’s like a hole carved in the middle of her, a hole carved right into her chest. She rolls onto her side and is seized by a thought that’s like being shook awake—which is that if she misses Mom this much and she’s just across town, what must Charles and Kat feel?—when, from her bed, she sees Tiny appear at his door. He stands there in his Star Wars pajamas, not looking sleepy, not looking lost, just looking, for what it’s worth, like a little boy. Moonlight pours through the window, lighting his face. Sometimes, Tiny goes quiet in the middle of the night, stands looking out the window before wandering down the hall, and in the morning is pressed sleeping against Dad on the couch, his thumb in his mouth, his legs flopped sloppily over Dad’s legs. It’s not a very big couch.
Roster
BY THIRD grade, not everyone has suffered a loss—but many have. Nenny surveys the room.
Michael Barber: Michael’s the kind of kid you feel sorry for without really knowing why. Pale white skin, teeth too crowded in his mouth. You could sort of see no one noticing if he got lost in a crowd.
Losses: His uncle, last spring. He was out of school for three days, and when he returned, he looked terrible. The bell had hardly rung when he took the bathroom pass and disappeared for twenty minutes. When he came back, it was clear he’d been crying, and it was sad, it really was, but it was hard not to be distracted by all the snot trailin
g out his nose.
Jessica Hall: Bright red hair and freckles, as though instead of being born she’d simply fallen from the sun. Jessica Hall wears sunglasses even on rainy days, and they look absurd on her freckled and sun-drenched face. It looks as though someone took an ax to her hairline, the burnt umber of her tender scalp. Everything about her is seared.
Losses: Her dog, Rosco, at the beginning of the year. She didn’t seem too torn up about it, though.
Katie Marion: Everybody loves Katie Marion, just loves her, and what’s not to love? Her with her stupid cheeks like polished apples and hair like a brushed doll’s. She’s got three sisters and they’re all alike: angels that the teachers fawn over for their talents and their manners and their perfect, perfect grades. Katie Marion knows the answers to all the questions, she always says her prayers, she shares everything she’s got, pretzels and Cheez-Its and stickers from a pack, and when they do the Pledge of Allegiance, she stands so perfectly erect, beaming and emotive and proud, that it seems like she actually does pledge allegiance. Katie Marion does not go through the motions. Katie Marion is the motions. She’s everything.
Losses: Who knows? Who cares?
Jill McKenzie: Nenny and Jill used to be best friends, two years ago in first grade, but then Jill got commercial famous and couldn’t be bothered with Nenny anymore. Commercial famous was a Ford print ad, where you couldn’t really even see Jill’s face, and a commercial on TV about juice. (The commercial was stupid and the juice wasn’t very good.) It’s not the fame that bothered Nenny; it’s what Jill did with it. She came over to play once and looked at Nenny’s dolls like they were dirty, and then threw up her milk and wanted to go home. One time Nenny saw her in the parking lot of Ralphs and Jill didn’t even get out of the car, just rolled the window down to say hi. That was the beginning of the end. Nenny doesn’t care, though. Now she’s got Boots, who likes to take walks and will talk about whatever and isn’t a snob in any way.
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