Where I Live

by Brenda Rufener

  When I finally break loose, Seung’s gone.

  He doesn’t see me knee Reed or punch below the belt. He doesn’t hear me shout his name or Bea whip open the door and scream for help. Seung doesn’t stick around long enough to watch an orange Toby Patters charge Reed like a man-padded football sled and slide him across the hall until his body folds like a tossed towel.

  Chapter Twenty-Two

  IT’S BEEN SIX DAYS SINCE I kissed Seung.

  Five days since Seung watched Reed Clemmings kiss me.

  Five days since Seung and I last spoke.

  There is a correlation between kisses and Seung’s icy shoulder, but I’m having a difficult time trusting myself since my mouth lies to friends. Don’t even get me started on the way my lips freeze at the most inopportune times. I don’t even know who they are anymore. I even BS myself, talking about my body parts like they’re separate entities. Basically, I’m going bonkers from believing it was okay to hide my true self from the people I love.

  “I’d invite you to Seung’s house tonight to study,” Ham says, carrying seven book spines on how to crack the SAT code, “but he says he’s through with you and your lies.”

  I stop. “What about my lies?” I’m shocked at my defensiveness. Ham hears it, too.

  “What about you, Linden? From what I hear, you’re preoccupied with Reed. How can you kiss Seung, then immediately jump on that monster?”

  “I knew it!” I jab my finger into Ham’s chest.

  “Knew what?”

  “Seung refuses to hear my side of the story.”

  “What do you expect, Linden? Reed is a creep, a freak. And partially responsible for my limp.”

  “You don’t limp.”

  “I have a dip when I walk. Had it since the monkey-bar incident when I was a kid. Some would call it a limp.”

  “Some would certainly call you something.”

  “Watch my ass when I walk, Linden. You’ll see it.”

  “No thanks.”

  “Do it.”

  “Never.”

  I push open the front doors of the school. Gold Nugget greets us beneath the awning. Ham calls shotgun and I groan, extra loud. When I sidestep toward the back door of Seung’s Volvo, a motorcycle engine pops behind me. I turn my head to watch a replay of the bad movie I starred in earlier.

  The actual scene unfolds like this: Reed rips off his helmet. His bangs fall into his eyelashes and stick. He brushes dirt off the front of his pants and pats the back. He tilts his head before looking at me through a blanket of bangs. Then he shapes his fingers into a gun, cocks his thumb, and mouths, “Bang.”

  I gasp and reach for the car door handle.

  Seung revs the engine and shifts from park to drive. The tires squeal and I’m left with the familiar scent of burned rubber topped with a cloud of rejection.

  Chapter Twenty-Three

  The Night Before the SAT

  I SHOULD BE STUDYING WITH Ham and Seung, in the warm basement of the Rhee residence, not here in the dugout with moonlight reflecting the words typed on my SAT packet. The public library closed at nine, school doors locked earlier than expected, and with all my energy spent chasing after Seung, I forgot to slip the shank in the fire-escape door. I’m huddled on the wood bench, squinting to read about Important Items for Test Day.

  Seung shunned me in the hall, even when I shouted his name. It’s unlike him to avoid me this long. He’d normally cave by now. A smile, wink, tickle on the ribs, would cause him to crumble. But not this time. Not after seeing me kiss the same guy, twice. I never kissed back, Seung. But he didn’t stay long enough to know that.

  I lean back on the bench, shut my eyes, and picture my future. Brick buildings, bell towers, winding sidewalks, and warmth. Lots and lots of warmth. I rub my arms, then my neck. Tomorrow marks my moment to shine. Perform well on the SAT and take another step in the direction my mother wanted me to go. More distance, away from my past.

  My mother would be proud. She wanted me to get an education.

  “In order to get ahead in life, Linden,” she’d say, “you have to read. You have to write. You have to finish school, no matter what. Don’t do what your mother did.” She’d dropped out of school when she couldn’t conceal her pregnancy any longer.

  “My mother made me do it,” she’d say, “with a push and shove from school officials. Nobody wanted a pregnant girl shuffling the halls of a public high school. Not back then. Might give others ideas, they said. Cause a domino effect. A contagion.”

  I can still hear her giggle as she stuffed a pillow in her shirt and waddled around the living room like a penguin. “Can you believe you were once this small?”

  My grandmother was the one who created the domino effect. She had my mother quit school, forced her to run away with the guy who got her pregnant. A guy who left us at the hospital with me still in the birth canal. But it wasn’t my grandmother’s fault. Had she known how I’d turn out, she’d have been proud of her daughter. I’d planned to show her proof when I arrived on the doorstep of her nursing home with a bag of cash and a photo of my mother. I’d planned to show her the kind of kid her daughter had raised. Resilient and resourceful.

  I figured my grandmother would recognize her daughter from the photograph, even if she didn’t know me. But a rosy reunion never happened. My grandmother’s head was full of dementia and her mouth packed with gibberish. It didn’t stop me, though. I wanted my grandmother to know her daughter did the best she could with what she had, which was nothing but a GED and me. I didn’t need nostalgia or long-winded talks digging up memories of my mother when she was young. I needed one spark, one flicker in her eye to acknowledge my existence. And then it happened one morning, when I’d woken in the chair beside my grandmother’s bed and watched as she swirled her bony finger around the frame of my mother’s face. She pressed the photo to her cheek and held it there until she drifted to sleep.

  When I woke again, the picture was on the floor and Eva, my grandmother’s nurse, was shaking my arm. “Linden, Linden. It’s time to go.” She rushed me out of my grandmother’s room before the doctor arrived and they pulled the blanket over my grandmother’s head.

  Eva took pity on me. I had no place to go. She let me bunk in a spare room stuffed with extra beds and brooms. “Makes more sense to sleep in a nursing-home living room reserved for visitors who never visit,” she said, “but this will have to do.”

  She scolded other aides for questioning my stay. She said, “She’s only here until school starts,” which was a few weeks away. I cleaned toilets, dusted furniture, and smiled a lot. I don’t know how, I’m not sure why. I guess I was happy to earn a roof over my head, and everyone was kind to me. But then school started and everything turned to shit. Eva told me her administrator was beginning to ask questions, but if I needed a place to stay, she could call the pastor of her church and see what could be done. Small-town churches barely have money to feed their own flocks, so I told her I had everything under control. She refused to quiz, even though her eyes begged for answers.

  Answers to questions could disrupt my future. I wasn’t ready, now or then, to bounce between strangers as a ward of a state. My mother leaned only on herself, and I was determined to do the same.

  So what if the dugout was cold, hard, and filled with ants. It took me about a day to learn how to bunk inside Hinderwood High. Took another day to learn how to hide in plain sight.

  In my heart, I know my grandmother caught a glimpse of the woman my mother had become, though they hadn’t spoken in years. The strong, sturdy mother who fought for her life and her child, even while she was dying. I wonder if my grandmother remembered her daughter the way I remember my mom. I wonder how many years pass before your memories fog and fade. How she combed my hair and wiped food from my lips with her knuckle. How she smoothed my eyebrows with her thumb while she read to me in bed. How she made sure the tags were tucked tightly into my shirts. My mother wanted more for me than she ever had.

  My
promise to you, Linden, is that I’ll always provide a choice. You won’t be forced to do something you don’t want to do. Not on my watch.

  She left me with options. An emergency fund stashed in an envelope. Money she could have blown on herself but never did. She left me with choices. None of which I ever wanted to take.

  It’s hard, sometimes, to not think about the what-ifs. Like if there was $5,000 in the envelope to begin with and only $3,000 when I needed it. If I had taken off my earphones and screamed before the beating, would there have never been blood? If I’d stayed with the social worker at the morgue, would I have lived a better life?

  I stop myself from remembering the past before I go the distance.

  I quit before my mother’s beating, before the blood.

  My mother wanted to live. For me. For us.

  She never deserved to die.

  Chapter Twenty-Four

  Three Hours Before the SAT

  MY EYES POP OPEN THIRTY minutes before dawn. My nose drips, acting like my alarm clock. I rub my arms and legs and check my pulse. Every day I wake, I’m alive. Today it feels okay to be alive.

  I consider jogging a lap on the track to amp up my heart and fill my lungs with a burn. I immediately unconsider the lap when my stomach stabs and jabs and aches. After a few side bends, I massage my belly and inhale-exhale five hundred times. Anticipation is my word of the day. A day destined to form my future. So, to hell with stomach cramps. When I start to jog, the pinpricks punch. I diagnose the pain right away, and it sure isn’t hunger. I tug at my waistband before bending over and checking my pants.

  Oh, how lovely. My period and no tampons.

  It’ll be at least an hour before the school doors open and I can race to the bathroom to stuff toilet paper in my underwear. My stomach twists, pain punching me right below the belt.

  Come on, Linden. Get your head in the game. This is your day. Your ticket to an education you promised your mother you’d get. I reach into my bag and dig for a ball of brown paper towels. I unbutton my pants, ready to stuff my underwear, when gravel crunches, like footsteps, behind me. I whirl and drop what was supposed to be my makeshift pad.

  “Hey,” Seung says.

  I say nothing. I don’t need to. My face says it all.

  “What are you doing here?” he asks, his hand circling the dugout.

  I gulp and stiffen my legs, my posture. My underwear sticks to my body.

  Seung steps forward. “You’re not talking? To me?” He shrugs his shoulders. “Figures, Linden.”

  What figures, Seung? That I love you?

  “Why are you in this dugout?” His face scrunches like he’s mad. Maybe confused. “Tell me, Linden. Now’s your chance. Why are you here?” His face softens, his eyes wet.

  I tried, Seung, but you didn’t want to hear. And now I don’t think I have the courage. I clear my throat. Kick dirt onto my shoe. Stare at my feet.

  “Well?”

  I inhale. “I guess I needed a quiet place to study.”

  Air deflates from Seung’s chest. He turns around and mumbles, “That’s what I thought.”

  “Seung?”

  He waves his hand with his back to me. “You had your chance. A million chances”

  “Seung.”

  He walks toward the road without turning.

  “Seung!” I’m shouting now. “Please! I never kissed him back!”

  Seung turns; his head won’t stop shaking. “That’s what you think this is about?”

  Twenty feet separate us, but it could be twenty miles. That’s how distant he feels. All I have to do is tell him the truth. Tell him why I’m here, in the dugout. Risk losing him over the lies or maybe shrink the gap between us.

  But he doesn’t wait. He takes off jogging until he blends in with the gray sky.

  I walk to the corner of the dugout, sit, and bury my head in my hands.

  I have to be real with Seung. Tell him where I live. Stop hiding from the truth. After the SAT, I’ll answer his questions. Every single one of them.

  I stand and brush the butt of my pants. A breeze rustles the trees. When I whip around for my backpack, a ten-dollar bill flutters like a leaf and lands in the dirt.

  Seung?

  Chapter Twenty-Five

  Seventy-Five Minutes Before the SAT

  I SHOULD BE AT SCHOOL, sitting on the front steps, cramming words my brain has no more capacity to contain. I should be preparing to take the biggest, most important test of my life. But today I question the validity of my beliefs.

  Sitting on Seung’s front steps, I legitimize myself to an audience of one. He won’t talk, but I only need him to listen. Besides, I think he knows anyway. I just need him to hear the truth from me.

  I unzip my backpack. “Dinner rolls I took from your kitchen. Bacon, wrapped in brown paper towels.”

  Seung stares at my hands filled with food, then slowly shifts to walk inside. I pause, unsure if he wants me to follow or never speak to me again. He hears my thoughts, cracks the screen door, and whispers, “Come in, Linden. You need to eat breakfast.”

  I trail him to the table and continue spilling truths. “I paid you back with help on chapter four’s trig problems sixteen and twenty-four. It’s what I owed you for the dinner roll and bacon slice.”

  Seung pauses and makes a popping noise with his mouth. He won’t talk, but his eyes are warm and inviting, just like his home.

  Mrs. Rhee bustles in from the kitchen and pushes a plate of cheesy eggs and orange slices in front of me. She suggests I eat and tells me the English muffin is on its way.

  Seung keeps popping his lips. His eyes so fixed on the wall behind me that I almost turn around to find the spot he’s staring at, through me. Mr. Rhee walks in with a miniplate of toasted muffins and sets it down in the middle of the table.

  He says, “Want some honey?” but nobody answers. We’re too busy not-staring at each other to reply. “Well, just in case,” Mr. Rhee says, placing the plastic bear beside the muffin plate before disappearing into the kitchen.

  Seung forks his eggs, holding them in the air for a moment before tossing them into his mouth. He overchews. He wants to say something, anything, everything, but says nothing.

  Instead, I won’t shut up.

  “I found Ham homecoming night. Found him before anyone else did. I made an anonymous call and ran. I would’ve had to talk to the police, you know, about me. About where I live. I got scared and took off. I believed with all of my heart that Ham was dead.”

  I share how I held Ham in my arms, kissed his cheek, and hid in the hills behind the school. I discuss our drive to the hospital, how I thought we were going to see Ham’s dead body. How I couldn’t handle viewing another dead body after seeing my mom, my grandmother. I don’t stop for air, or for eggs.

  I’m starving, about to take the biggest exam of my life, and all I care about is passing this test with Seung. I don’t know where I stand because he won’t talk. The only things I know for sure are my eggs are cold, blood is beginning to soak my underwear, and I’m in love with my best friend.

  Seung bites into a muffin, and the honey drips onto his plate. I watch him dip his finger into a pat of butter and put it into his mouth. I want to yell at him to listen, but I’m afraid if I do he’ll shut me out, of his house, his heart. I want to tell him I love him and I always have, but instead, I keep chiseling away at truths. Digging my way out of the hole I created with my own two hands. Rescuing myself.

  “I chose you,” I say.

  Seung looks at me this time, not through me.

  “You, and Ham.” I smile, remembering the day. “I saw you, Ham, on the first day of school. The way you hugged and patted and laughed. I wanted that kind of friendship. Simple and be-yourself.” I stare at my eggs, my eyes stinging with tears. “I wanted you. I always have.”

  We don’t talk. What else is there to say?

  Minutes feel like hours, and then Seung whispers, “You need to eat,” and I fork my eggs and take a bite,
then another.

  Mrs. Rhee returns and squeezes my shoulders with both hands. “You two kill it today,” she says. She sweeps my hair to the side of my neck, and I pinch the bridge of my nose. It’s impossible to feel a mother’s touch without my eyes burning. “Ten minutes until it’s time to go.”

  I nod, wipe my nose with my sleeve, and ask Mrs. Rhee if I can talk to her in private. She looks surprised and pleased at the same time. When I tell her about my period, she presents me with six pads the size of pillows, then offers a fresh pair of underwear. I accept. Even the underwear. I slip out of my jeans and into a pair of Mrs. Rhee’s jersey jogger pants. They’re as cozy as she is.

  When I return to the dining room, Seung isn’t there, and neither are our plates. I grab the bear filled with honey and head into the kitchen.

  “Why don’t you just say it?” Seung says, scraping our plates into the garbage disposal.

  “Say what?”

  “I already know, Linden.”

  “Know what?”

  He shakes his head, shuts off the water, and stands in front of me. We’re three inches apart. “I don’t get why you just won’t say it. To me.” He reaches for my hand.

  I’m too weak to grip because all my strength is pushing my pride aside.

  “The whole homeless thing, Linden,” Seung says. “I’ve known for a while. It’s obvious to those who look. We see.”

  Hearing someone else say your secret out loud hurts, in a good way. I blink and my eyes dump tears that run all the way into my mouth. I taste a mixture of salt and regret. Refreshment brewed with relief.

  I turn around, incapable of facing Seung, at least for a moment while I catch my breath. I drop my chin to my chest. He drapes his arms over my back and plants his cheek against mine.

  “I knew,” he whispers in my ear.