When You Go Away

by Jessica Barksdale Inclan

  Carly's heart was pounding, but she couldn't do it, couldn't look at her mother. Ryan wasn't looking either, his skateboard shoes sliding back and forth over the dust on the linoleum. There was movement she felt with her shoulders and legs, and her grandpa was standing, his arms around her mother. Carly felt her mother's sadness, the same heavy air that had hung in the bedroom for two months. But still she couldn't look up, and she reached out for Ryan, who seemed to have been searching for her at the same time, and they held hands while their mother cried into Grandpa's shoulder.

  Then there was a pause, the space before something had to happen, like just after something bad happened and the punishment that would follow--a slap on the playground and the time it took for so-and-so to get the teacher or the yard duty. Anything could happen then. She and Ryan could get up, beg the guard to open the door, and walk into the parking lot, a place where their mother couldn't go. Nothing had been said yet. Nothing was changed. But any second her mother would say something to make everything worse, and they all had to go now, now, now.

  "Carly? Ryan?" her mother said, and Carly sucked in a breath. It was too late. She moved her head up toward her mother, who was standing in front of her and then kneeling down. She had to force her eyes to look at her mother's face. And it hurt, all the muscles in her cheeks and forehead not wanting this, this look at a new, terrible mother.

  Her mother smelled different, wrong, like the soap in the girls' bathroom at school, pink and grainy, the paper towels brown and rough. Her skin was blotchy, red and white, her pupils huge, floating in a shimmer of water, her hair flat and stringy against her head. Her body was hidden in ugly orange clothes, and she held one arm close to her body.

  Grandpa Carl was wrong. This wasn’t the Mom she remembered. This wasn't her mom at all. This was some Peri Mackenzie put together by someone else, a Frankenstein mom someone was trying to pass off as hers. This was the woman who had done all those crazy things in Arizona and who had left Brooke. Her real mom was somewhere else, maybe in the jail still or, even better, far, far away, on vacation in Maui, a place they all loved.

  But then this fake mom turned her head slightly and smiled wide, none of her teeth showing, stars of lines at her eyes, and Carly shook her head. It was her mom. This was her mom's smile, the smile that even Brooke could mimic. They all used to sit around her bed and say, "How does Mom smile?" and Brooke would tilt her head and break into as big a quiet smile as she could, not one tooth showing.

  "Mom?" Carly asked, making sure.

  "Yes."

  Carly glanced at Ryan, who was looking up now, too. He knew it was Mom, the one who had left them for real. So much was going on her in her body, Carly wasn't sure what to do. Her fingers tingled, and her thigh muscles burned. Inside, her stomach was full of bubbles and even lower, something was churning away. She had to go to the bathroom. She squeezed herself shut, but whatever it was wasn't going to wait.

  "I have to go. I have to go now," she said, turning to Grandpa Carl.

  "We just got here."

  "The bathroom."

  "Oh," he said, standing up, looking at the guard behind them, who had already opened the door.

  Carly stood up, clutching her stomach, and ran toward the guard, who motioned to another guard down the hall. Hearing her grandpa behind her, she ran, all her feelings pressing against her guts like spikes, scraping down her body desperate to get out. She wouldn't make it, she knew, not in time, but the guard held the door open, and she rushed in, ripping the button off her new jeans as she pushed them off, and sat on the toilet. It was fast, but it took forever, so much locked inside her. Would she ever be able to stand up again, weak and jittery after the waves pulsing out of her body?

  She must have fallen asleep for a minute, her forehead on her knees, sweat in her eyes. She sat up and flushed the toilet, not sure if she was done, when she heard the door open a crack.

  "Carly?" Her grandpa sounded scared, as if she'd fallen in and disappeared.

  "Don't come in!" she said, breathing in to test the air. This was so embarrassing. Things like this never happened safe at home, always at a Burger King or a park or at a skating party. Now all the guards would remember her as the girl who sat on the toilet for an hour.

  "Are you okay?"

  "I think so."

  "Is it--is it a female thing?"

  Carly hadn't even checked, not paying attention for weeks and weeks, but this had definitely not been that end. She wasn't a woman yet. That's why she had to run like a baby down the hall. "No. It's my stomach. I feel better. I'll be out in a minute, okay? Close the door."

  Her grandpa almost said something and then didn't, the door clicking softly against its frame. She wiped herself and flushed the toilet again. This time, she didn't tuck in her shirt but pulled it over her waist to hide the missing button. Grandma Mackenzie would be irritated with her if she didn't look for it in the corners of the white bathroom, but all she wanted to do was wash her hands and get out of this building forever.

  When she walked out, the guard smiled at her. Grandpa nodded at the guard and then put his arm around her shoulders. "Are you all right?"

  "Can we go now? Can we just go?"

  "Don't you want to talk with your mother?"

  If the woman in there was some sort of fake mom, an imposter, well, Carly could go in and say anything she wanted to. But it was real her mother, the one who had sung her Good Morning Sunshine and read her I'll Love You Forever and The Giving Tree at bedtimes.

  How could she tell her grandfather that for the past few months, she'd pretended that another woman had taken her real mom's place, and that it was so much easier to hate that woman? But how could she hate her mom? And how could she tell him that she did? She hated her mom and her dad. She didn't ever want to see them again. All she wanted was to go to Rosie Candelero's apartment and sit in her kitchen, eating a bowl of something warm, something that filled her up. Nothing that was listed on any stupid diet. Grandpa and Ryan and Brooke could come with her. But no one else. Not ever.

  "No. I want to go home." She meant Monte Veda and her own room, her shelf of books and CD's, her friends, Maxie the Wonder Dog playing in the back yard with an old tennis ball, her father laughing, Leon making Brooke giggle. But it was all gone, like a delicious dream. "I mean, I want to go back to your house."

  "Carly, you know you have to go back with your dad. It's not my call. You know I'd have you in a second."

  "I don't care. I'm not going back there, and I'm not going to talk to that--that person. I'm leaving." She turned left down the hall toward the entrance.

  "Wait. Let me tell your mother what's going on."

  Carly stopped and looked back at her grandfather. "Don't call her that. Don't say that again. She's not my mother anymore."

  FIFTEEN

  After the visit with her father and children, Peri let herself be led back to her cell, ignoring the looks the other women gave her as she floated by. Her body was numb with what had happened (or hadn't happened really) and the drugs she'd taken earlier. All she wanted was sleep. That's what had worked before, pulling the blankets over her head and drifting into the place between wakefulness and dream, where noises from the real world entered her head and were twisted into imagination. A place where Peri didn't have to do anything.

  But once she lay down on her cot, she realized that plan wouldn't work here. The blanket was scratchy, rough, worn, the fluorescent light on, the din from the outer room rocketing into her cell and pulsing around the small rectangle. Peri heard every card slapped down on the Formica-topped tables, every female voice talking about lovers and children and the "Shit they were in." And Sophia-- her legs dangling from the cot above her, her scabby ankles and hairy shins swinging back and forth, back and forth like a pendulum in a body care nightmare--blew smoke up toward the light, the blue gray plumes sinking and sliding over Peri.

  For maybe one, two minutes, she closed her eyes, but all she saw was Carly running toward the door, her
arm around her stomach, her father's shrug and quick retreat. Then there was Ryan looking at her with Graham's eyes, waiting for her to say something that would fix everything. But she hadn't had anything wise to say. For a long time, all she could do was put her hand on his arm, feeling how his boy bones had changed into a man's. When had that happened? When had the hair pushed out of his chin? When had his voice grated into a uneven version of Graham's? It couldn't have transformed so completely in the week she had been gone, so she simply had not noticed. Or cared. While she was tending to Brooke and herself, a slave to her and her child's pain, everyone else had gone away. She had probably missed more than Ryan's puberty--what about Carly? Had her breasts grown into the bras she'd bought her? Had her period come? And what about herself? Unlike her children, she hadn't changed at all, simply gone backwards, inwards, away from everything that mattered.

  "So what went down in there?" Sophia asked. For a second, her eyes still closed, Peri imagined her cellmate was asking about inside her body. Once she realized Sophia was talking about the meeting, her answer was the same.

  "Not much."

  Sophia jumped to the floor and sat on the toilet, crossing her legs and grabbing her elbow with one hand, her cigarette elegant in one hand. In any other place, in any other clothing, Sophia--with her long blonde hair and full lips--might have looked sophisticated. Peri blinked once, twice, and then rolled on her side, propping her head with her hand. There was a time when someone smoking next to her made her sneer and mention sotto voce the California law prohibiting it in a public place. She would have raised her eyebrows and whispered in Graham's ear something about ignorance, and he would have agreed, as he had with most everything she'd said until . . . until Brooke.

  "Whadaja do?"

  "Excuse me?" Peri asked, confused.

  "To get here. In this place." Sophia whirled her cigarette around the room and then took another drag.

  Peri flipped on her back and stared at the cot slats above her. What didn't she do? "I--I went crazy and left my kids at home and drove to Phoenix where I broke into my ex's house and almost killed myself doing so."

  Sophia nodded, as if this was something she was used to hearing or even something she had done. "What kind of crazy?"

  "I thought I was going to explode and kill people. Like I was filled with terrible chemicals or gas or something, and I would bust open and throw my kids around. The doctors said it was a psychotic episode. I'm on an anti-psychotic drug right now." The truth felt good on her tongue, a flavor she hadn't tasted lately.

  "That shit is horrible. They gave it to me once and I had this reaction. I couldn't stop staring at the ceiling and my toes and fingers like curled. My sister thought I was flipping out or something."

  Peri turned back to Sophia, watched her smoke and flick ashes on the floor. "Why are you here?" she asked.

  Sophia stared at her a moment, their conversation frozen in the cell air, and as she exhaled the dark cloud of her story, Peri heard something rattle in her cellmate's chest, a bad cold, flu, TB. "I was smoking crack and didn't notice I was having a baby."

  Repulsion curled in her chest, and she wanted to get up and walk out to the tables in the great room, asking to be dealt in. No wonder Sophia stayed mainly in here or fluttered around the edges of the group, bumming cigarettes. But then the truth that had just felt so good, pushed its hard steel line into her brain. She was the same as Sophia. She forgot to notice her own children, children who had been alive for years. She had left a five-year-old with MD and CP in her bed. For almost two months, she hadn't taken Brooke out of her bed. No appointments. No occupational therapy. No physical therapy. No music. No mother, really. She'd stopped touching her, stopped turning her as often as she should have. And when she couldn’t ignore the letters and calls from the school and the clinic anymore, Peri had moved so no one would bother them. My God. What had she been trying to do? Had she wanted Brooke to die so she herself could go back to her old life? Did she imagine that without Brooke, everything would be fine? She was no different than this drug-addicted woman sitting on the toilet in front of her. She couldn't whisper into someone's ear about the wastefulness of a drugged-out life, turning to her loving husband with a superior look in her eyes. There were no blankets big enough to hide her any more.

  "So we did kind of the same thing," she said finally, sitting up, hunching a bit between the cots.

  Sophia smiled. "We did?"

  "Well, yeah. I left--I abandoned my children."

  "You said that already."

  "Right. But one of them was . . . is bed-ridden. She has cerebral palsy and muscular dystrophy. I just left her there in her bed.

  "Man. At least I didn't even know I was pregnant."

  Peri made a sound that almost sounded like a laugh and shook her head. "At least."

  "But you were crazy. That's different. You didn't make yourself become crazy. I took those drugs on purpose. I needed them. Your brain just got fucked up. But man, you’re never going to get those kids back."

  Sophia stood up and threw her cigarette in the toilet. "You better think of what to say on Monday during that arraignment. Me. Well, I said all the wrongs things, and I'm still here on no bail. I'm a danger to the community and all my unborn children. Like I'm going to find me a big ol' dick the minute I get out there and get knocked up. I'm going to find me a big ol' rock of crack . . . well, that's probably true. But you watch it. You try to make them believe what you have to say."

  Sophia stepped out of the cell and did her crazy-eight loop around the tables, touching a hand of cards, slipping a cigarette out of a player's pack. Peri lay back down on the cot and closed her eyes. Behind her lids, Sophia writhed on the filthy floor of a crack house, a baby between her legs, the bright blue of the crack pipe the only light in the room. As Peri slowly fell asleep, the baby turned into Brooke, and Brooke twisted on the floor, surrounded by beer cans and syringes, moaning "Ma! Ma! Da a u Ma?"

  

  "What about Graham?” Noel asked Kieran Preston as they sat in the meeting room in the jail. “What about what he did? Or didn't do?" It was Monday afternoon, an hour before Peri was to be taken to the cell below the courtroom to await her arraignment. She was glad Noel had driven in from the city to be with her for this. She'd never understood anything legal. Once, she thought she’d be a teacher, and she majored in liberal studies, learning how to play a musical scale and spell out words phonetically and understand the chemistry of wine. The law was then and now something only for TV and the newspaper, where writers reduced it to its essential parts.

  "Listen,” Preston said. “We have three things going on here, but today's arraignment has nothing to do with Graham yet. Trust me, he will factor in during the custody battle.”

  Peri looked up. Preston opened his briefcase and pulled out a few papers, nodding as Noel asked him a question. Peri saw that Preston didn’t even realize he’d said the word battle. He knew they were going to have to fight hard. And she would lose the kids. She knew it.

  “Right, right . . . So let’s deal with what is before us. First is the felony charge of child endangerment. That's what today is about. I'm working on getting the charge reduced to a lesser one, but today I have to get you out on bail. It's possible that the judge might want you to go to a facility for observation."

  "What?" Noel asked. "She's already been in a hospital. Observed for days. And then she's been here. What more can he want?"

  Preston leaned back in the metal chair, smoothing his hair away from his forehead. In another lifetime, she would have appreciated his smooth tan skin and blue eyes. She'd always been a sucker for eyes that color, light and translucent and full of ocean. Like Graham's. Like Graham's eyes.

  "We're pleading not guilty, Noel. By reason of insanity. It's documented. The judge has the option of wanting her at a facility. But I'm going to press for living with your father and seeing a psychiatrist, daily if necessary. I think it will fly. All the documentation from Phoenix supports it. Dep
ression with a psychotic episode. Temporary. Fine on the drugs. Remorseful. No future threat. All that."

  "But what about Graham?" Noel asked. "He's going to get the kids."

  "Now wait. Hold on. The felony charge is the first item. We've also got the complaint and the petition filed by Graham's lawyers for custody removal from the home. That's number two. A court officer has made a request for removal. The kids actually are removed already, and that's why they are with your ex-husband right now. The problem we have is that one and two are all mixed up. To remove kids permanently from a home on child endangerment charges, the court has to prove one of a few grounds. The truth is . . . ." Preston trailed off and sighed. Peri knew that meant she had already proven those grounds, destroying everything as she slid into fear. What hadn't she covered in the time since Graham had said goodbye?

  "The truth is that the court can prove a number of them: abandonment, desertion, imminent danger, mental illness. It's not going to be easy for us to fight back from that. It's not impossible, but it's going to be dicey."

  "So, I've lost them?" Peri asked, knowing the answer already. She'd seen it in Carly's eyes yesterday. Even if she could get them back, her daughter had left her behind.

  "Not yet." Preston cleared his throat. "So let's move to number three, the custody battle.”

  There’s that word again, she thought.

  “They’re related. They’re all connected,” Noel interrupted.

  “Yes, of course. But the juvenile court oversees this case."

  "Now we can finally talk about Graham," Noel said. "I emailed you the timeline of his actions."

  "I received that."

  "So?"

  "He's a deadbeat dad, no question."

  "And?"

  "He's petitioned for custody. The court appointed a guardian ad litem, whose role is to advocate for the children. There's also an investigation going on to see what's in the best interest of the children."