by Ruth Lehrer
Once I almost got detention for sitting down and shutting up when we were supposed to be standing up and talking. When I told Duck-Duck about that, she called it a travesty of justice. I thought I would say that to the principal the next time he accused me of disobedience/defiance, which was forbidden according to page fifty-two of the Salt Run Middle School Code of Conduct.
Molly would have made a good lawyer. I think even Duck-Duck was impressed. Molly talked to the lawyers, she talked to the Social Service ladies, she talked to the police, and they all came up with rules. Keely was my mother, so she had a claim on me, they said, but not if she didn’t clean up her act. How do we know you won’t disappear again? they asked Keely. This was something Molly had said. We need to see that you can provide a good home, they said. Molly also had said this. Good home meant cooking and cleaning and going to parent-teacher conferences and group therapy. The Social Service ladies laid down rules. Fishkill stays with Molly and Duck-Duck, they said, until Mom cleans up her act. This meant no-drinking rules and clean-pee-test rules. This meant getting a job, even if it was just McDonald’s, and keeping it for six months. This meant showing up for group therapy with other screwed-up mothers every Friday at ten o’clock in the morning. It meant family therapy with me and one of the Social Service ladies.
I would have added a test to see if she could learn how to make a peanut-butter sandwich and if she could buy milk, bread, and Yodels without being reminded, but Molly didn’t say this, so the ladies didn’t either.
In general, I was relieved, because six months was a lot of time, and it would be next to impossible for Keely to keep going to therapy for that long. Maybe she would get bored and move to California. Maybe she would fall into the river again, this time without any help. I felt guilty when I thought that, but I couldn’t take it back. Even inside my brain.
Keely made a big fuss and put on a lot of lipstick for the meetings with Social Services, but she wasn’t a good lawyer like Molly was. Keely said she didn’t drink anymore. She went on about the Four Freedoms, and the ladies looked at one another and took more notes, like they were going to add another rule to the list, but they didn’t.
Keely had trouble with rules. She had the hardest time following the group-therapy rule. The first meeting she missed because she forgot to turn on her new alarm clock. The second meeting, she showed up late, and they had already locked the door.
“You’ve got to get here at ten o’clock sharp,” the front-desk woman said, “or they close the group. Everyone has to feel safe, you know. How can anyone feel safe if people just come and go whenever they want?”
The third group meeting, Keely actually made it inside the room, but then she went out to the bathroom and never made it back in.
“She stayed for affirmations,” said the group leader, “but walked out while Debra was talking about her son’s tonsillectomy.”
Each time, the Social Service ladies would chase Keely down and explain the rules again. They would talk about “family reunification” and about “living up to your part of the bargain.” I could never be sure if Keely forgot or if she just had no intention of living up to any part of any bargain.
Once a week we had supervised time together in the Family Center. There were rules about that too. Keely had to show up on time. She had to call if she was going to cancel or if she was going to be late. We had to stay in the Social Service lady’s office or the Family Center visitor room, where they could keep an eye on us. We had to sign in and sign out.
“What do they think we’re going to do?” complained Keely. “Watch dirty movies?”
Even if we had wanted to watch movies, the television channels in the visitor room were controlled by the front-desk ladies, who would change the channels if you asked, but certainly would have said no if something looked too interesting. The TV sound was always turned up so high that you had to yell to hear each other. It was usually turned to cartoons or soap operas. Once it was on Law & Order, but then a five-year-old boy came in, and they turned it back to cartoons.
I decided to use all this free time to confront her.
“Look at this story in TV Guide,” I said, shoving the magazine at her. “You think that’s true?”
“Sure,” she said, shrugging and pushing the magazine back to me. “If they wrote it, it’s true.”
Then I picked up the Auga-L shake box, which she always carried with her. “Look at this shake label,” I said. “Don’t you spell low-fat with a hyphen?”
Keely just shrugged again and didn’t even glance at the box.
“Here,” I said, “right near the comments about Serenity.”
She made like she was looking and then said, “I don’t have my reading glasses.”
“You can’t read, can you?” I said.
She pretended she didn’t hear me and started rummaging in her purse.
“You never could.”
She stopped, her hands drooping into her bag. I suddenly felt bad. What was the point of making her admit it, anyway? But I couldn’t help myself.
“How’d you get through high school if you couldn’t read?”
“I don’t know,” she said. “I only made it through tenth grade, anyway. They gave me Ds so I’d pass. I could draw real good, though.”
“I could teach you,” I said. “It’s not really all that hard.”
Keely stood and walked to the window. “Nah, it’s too late. I don’t need it anyways.” And she put on her coat and went out, as if for a smoke. I watched cartoons for twenty minutes, but she never came back.
“How was your visit?” Molly asked when she picked me up.
“Fine,” I said. “What’s for dinner?”
Keely and I had to go to family therapy together every week as well. Keely talked and complained, and the Social Service lady therapist analyzed, and every once in a while she said, “Fishkill, do you have any feelings about this?” and I said, “No, not really,” or “Naw,” or just shrugged.
“This is your therapy session too,” the Social Service lady said.
“Uh-huh,” I replied. She couldn’t force me to talk.
It wasn’t until the second meeting that I found out this particular Social Service lady had gone to school with Keely.
Her name was Candy. She didn’t look like a Candy. If she did, she would have had red hair, worked in a bakery, and iced cakes for a living. Instead, she looked like a Social Service lady, complete with a gray suit, a clipboard, and many lists.
Keely and I were in the waiting room when that news finally came out.
“Candy acts like she’s hot stuff,” Keely said, “but she’s no better than me. We grew up together.”
“Really?” I said. “You were friends?”
Keely shrugged. “Kinda. We went to elementary and middle school together. We went to high school together too, but I didn’t see her much, and then I was gone after tenth grade.”
I guessed why she didn’t see her much. Same as now, the dumb kids and the smart kids never saw one another unless they played sports. Keely definitely would have been one of the dumb kids, and I doubted she played sports.
“What was Mom like when she was little?” I asked Candy during one of Keely’s frequent bathroom visits. The Social Service ladies got upset if I called my mother Keely.
Candy looked at me and set her face to friendly remembering.
“She was pretty quiet. She could draw really well, though.”
That’s what Keely had said, but I’d never seen her even pick up a crayon.
“What did she draw?” If Candy had answered beer bottles, I might have believed her.
“Flowers,” said Candy, “and portraits.”
“That’s a crock,” I said. She definitely had Keely confused with someone else.
“Don’t curse,” said Candy.
I hadn’t even realized crock was a curse word.
It was hard not to say bad words. They had so much more power than regular words. The rules for curse word
s were complicated, though. Grandpa didn’t blink if anyone said hell. Teachers choked if I even said, What the hey.
Fuck was really bad. Screw was a little better. Most of the time. For most people.
Grandpa liked curses, but he could wreak havoc without using any of those words, real or made-up. Animal dung and a scary anatomical reference could do it every time. I almost admired him for it.
I invented bad words in my head. Twisted tough words that made people gasp and choke. Stickack your momma. Gazz you. My favorite invention was You ant-eating piece of piss pie. I saved it as my secret weapon.
“Sorry,” I said to Candy.
“Apology accepted,” Candy said. “Next time, think before you speak.” She started packing up her clipboard and her pens. “Next time we should talk about plans for Christmas.”
“Sure,” I said out loud. But in my head I silently added, You ant-eating piece of piss pie. The words had a nice ring.
Christmas was coming, and this seemed to worry Duck-Duck and Molly.
“It’s our first Christmas here in the new place, and we’ll be alone,” explained Duck-Duck.
“What do you mean ‘alone’?” I said. How were they alone if they had each other? Or was she trying to give me a hint — that they’d be alone without me? That I needed to go away and give them their special day? It was hard to find a place to hang out on Christmas. Everything was closed. Even the library. Plus it was cold outside.
Maybe Duck-Duck really did want me to go away. She seemed to want a double life. It was as if that same week she hadn’t giggled when Darsa fanned her nose and said I smelled like fish. I wondered why Duck-Duck didn’t get confused about whether she was at home or at school and whether she should be mean when she was being nice, or nice when she was being mean.
“Why are you acting like Darsa is so smart?” I finally said to her. “She’s just being mean.”
“Don’t be so sensitive,” said Duck-Duck. “She’s just being funny. She has a developed sense of irony.”
I guessed my sense of irony wasn’t developed enough. Maybe you needed homeschooling for that.
I tried to get my brain back into the Christmas spirit.
“It’s our first Christmas since Ellen left,” said Duck-Duck, “and Aunt Patty has to work this year, so she can’t come. What do you usually do for Christmas?”
“Well,” I said, “Grandpa usually went hunting.”
This was a nice way of saying he took his shotgun outside and shot cans, trees, birds, and basically anything that moved. Keely and I stayed in the house all day because it was too dangerous to leave. After hours of shooting holes in things, Grandpa would come inside and drink rum mixed with a little eggnog, and we would try to go out. Sometimes he let us; sometimes he didn’t.
“You think you got an invitation to Christmas dinner?” he would say. “No one in Salt Run wants to eat with you ugly bitches.”
The day before Christmas, the Social Service ladies called Molly and told her that Keely had requested a Christmas visit, and would Molly drop me off at the Family Center at ten the next morning? The Family Center apparently was where everyone who had supervised visits did Christmas.
“I’m sure it will make your mother very happy,” said Molly.
I didn’t tell her that I couldn’t think of a single time I’d ever seen my mother happy.
Christmas morning on Cherry Road was warm and friendly, just like in storybooks. There wasn’t any snow yet, but there was a pretty tree, hot chocolate, and presents for everyone, even me. This was a surprise. As we sorted out the wrapped boxes, I realized I should have gotten Molly and Duck-Duck presents too.
“Crap,” I said out loud, and they both turned.
“Sorry,” I said. “I didn’t get you guys anything.”
“Don’t worry,” said Duck-Duck. “There’s plenty.”
Plenty. What a thought.
Christmas presents for Duck-Duck meant big books about women lawyers, a new blue dress, and candy in a box. There were also bright-red mittens that fit Duck-Duck perfectly. There was a little computer that Duck-Duck turned on the minute she opened the box.
I opened my gifts slowly, since I’d never had Christmas presents before, unless you counted the box of crayons my second-grade teacher gave everybody in the class, and the Hershey’s Kisses my fifth-grade English teacher passed out the last day before break.
The first gift I opened was a cookie cookbook. Instead of a written table of contents, it had a list of pictures of all the cookies: round ones, square ones, cookies shaped like cigars, cookies with jam. Looking through that book was like being inside a bakery.
I also got four pairs of socks, a pair of green mittens, and a long scarf with green tassels. I got a box of candy too. Each piece looked like a fruit or a vegetable. They were so pretty, I wasn’t sure whether I wanted to eat them or save them forever.
Getting presents was a little weird. I mean, it was nice, because I’d never gotten presents before, but I also found myself wishing that I’d gotten the red mittens instead of Duck-Duck. I imagined what I would do with a little computer if I had one. It was weird, like finally getting a present wasn’t good enough; it had to be a better present.
At nine o’clock, Aunt Patty called on the computer. She was in Paris for work, so she wouldn’t be able to take Duck-Duck to New York City to shop. Aunt Patty waved to me, and I waved back. She had sent presents, but somehow they hadn’t gotten to us even though Aunt Patty swore she sent them in plenty of time for Christmas.
“You can open them on New Year’s,” said Aunt Patty. “Love to you all!”
I wondered about that. She had never met me, so was she really sending me love, or was it just a thing you said, like See you later or Thanks so much?
At ten o’clock, Molly dropped me at the Family Center.
“Merry Christmas,” she said. “Say hi to your mother for me.”
I found Keely sitting on a metal folding chair in the far corner of a room full of screaming kids.
“Welcome to Hell,” she said.
I couldn’t believe the number of people in Salt Run who required supervision. Maybe they were visiting from other towns because other towns had no supervisors?
“Molly says hi.”
“Whoop-de-doo,” she said. “I bet Molly doesn’t have to spend the day with fifty screaming brats.”
The more Keely went to therapy, the more she reminded me of Grandpa and his curses.
“I brought you something,” she said.
Before I could feel bad for not getting her a present, Keely pulled out a vanilla shake and a small booklet.
“Merry Christmas,” she said.
The shake, apparently, we were supposed to share. The booklet was the Auga-L product manual.
“Gosh, thanks,” I said. Keely never picked up on sarcasm.
“I thought you could read about the Auga-L Principles,” she said. “Then you will understand why they are so important. You were always good at the reading thing.”
“It’s a little noisy in here for reading,” I said. On the other hand, what else was there to do? The clock said 10:05. Molly was coming back at noon. “Okay, I’ll read it if you tell me where you were for five months after you fell in the river.”
Keely handed me the pamphlet but showed no signs of disclosing anything. I began to read.
“ ‘Auga-L, the Serenity Company,’ ” I read aloud. “How can a company be selling serenity? It sounds like bad logic.”
“Keep reading. Just take it in. Make your mind an open vessel.” She took a few deep breaths. Was she relaxing, or just trying not to hit me? It was hard to tell.
“Uh-huh.” I kept reading: “ ‘New and Improved Shake of the Century. Bringing patterns of peace and prosperity to your person.’ ”
Not even the lady poet in the famous people cemetery talked like this, but I didn’t say that to Keely. She seemed almost happy.
“ ‘With each swallow, REMEMBER: Every time you have a pro
blem, think of the Four Freedoms: Cleaner, Concentrated, Secure, and Free — C.C.S.F. — and an answer will come to you.’ ”
Remember was written in fancy pink script so you wouldn’t forget.
“ ‘Ingest this freedom and spread the good news to all that you meet.’ ” I guessed this was what Keely was doing, spreading the news. I did wish she wasn’t spreading it so thick on Christmas, though. “ ‘In our go-go-go lives, we often wish for the simple life. Drink our nonglycemic, higher-protein, low-fat shake, and you too will say, Simple, Simple, Simple.’ ”
“Simple, Simple, Simple,” chanted Keely.
“I have to pee,” I said. I got up and pushed my way through groups of people to the other side of the room. At the ladies’ room, there was a line of little girls and their mothers, and I took my place behind a little girl holding a big cookie shaped like a reindeer.
“Where’d you get the cookie?” I asked.
She pointed to the back corner of the room, and I could see a table with soda and plates.
“Why are you here?” I asked her.
“I’m being supervised, stupid,” she said. “Because it’s Christmas.” She took a big bite from the reindeer and chewed with her mouth open. Her hair was tied with a pink hair clip, but some was falling down in front of her eyes. When she chewed, a few hairs went in and out of her mouth.
“Are you here with your mom?”
“With my pop.” She chewed off her reindeer’s head and started in on the feet. “Mom said he was in jail for stealing and for diddling, and that’s why I have to be supervised.” She pushed the little girl in front of her in line, who shoved her back. “Why don’t they have more potties here?”
“Good question,” I said. I didn’t mind the lines. The longer the lines, the longer I would have away from Miss Simple.
“Do you live in Salt Run?”
“Mom lives in Albany. Dad used to live in PinPoint, but now he lives in half a house in Salt Run. I guess that’s why I can’t visit, since maybe it doesn’t have enough potties for everyone.”
It took me a second to piece this together. “Half a house”— a halfway house. Then the little girl got her turn to use the toilet. I watched as the women and girls came out of the stalls. Everyone’s skin looked gray and pasty, but maybe it was just the light.