by Caela Carter
But Adam would put his arm around me and I’d lean back into his chest. I’d match my breath to his and watch the colors dance. Then I’d be sleepy enough to go back to bed.
Other times I’d wake up in the middle of the night and Adam was not in the burgundy chair with a laptop in his lap. Then I’d remember that I’m actually a bad girl and I’d go looking for all the answers a bad girl isn’t supposed to have.
I’d eavesdrop.
The last time I did that, I heard a lot. Adam and my mom were fighting again. There had been a lot of fights, but I could tell this one was different. It was a quiet fight and no one was talking about dishes or laundry. This was the fight that all the other fights had been covering up.
“You’re not going to tell Alma,” Mom had said. There was a band of light under their bedroom door so I pushed my ear against it and listened. “She’s too young.”
“Do you think she’s not going to notice?” Adam yelled. “You think one day I’m not going to be here and she won’t start asking questions?”
“She asks questions,” Mom said, quiet.
“She asks questions all the time!” Adam yelled. “She asks about her dad almost every day. When are you going to start giving her the answers?”
The fighting had started after Adam had taken me and Mom out to lunch and he’d asked me about the Bold Idea.
“She’s too young to think about this stuff, Adam,” Mom said.
I hated when she said that. It might be true, I’m too young. I should be making my brain different than it is. But I still think about everything.
“This stuff is the truth,” Adam said. “About me. About her father. About herself.”
“I don’t want her to turn out like . . .” Mom didn’t finish.
“Mercy.” There was a long pause, and then Adam said, not quite as loud, “I think we’re at a crossroads.”
“What do you mean?” Mom said.
“I can’t . . . I don’t think I can live with myself if I have to keep doing what you’re asking me to do.”
Then I heard Mom crying.
“I understand how this snowballed,” Adam said. “But I really think you . . . we . . . you owe her the truth.”
It was funny. He was giving me the truth by having this fight. I could see what was coming so clearly, even though I knew Mom wouldn’t sit me down and explain it. My friend Sharice said that when her parents got divorced, her mom sat her down and told her. She let Sharice yell and then let her ask questions. I knew that wasn’t how my mom would handle it.
Adam would just be gone.
“I’ll tell her,” Mom said. “I’m just . . . She’s not ready.”
“I can’t do this anymore, Mercy,” Adam said.
They were both crying and I was about to cry too.
My dad was dead.
My not-dad was leaving.
There are no sounds in my house tonight, of course. Mom doesn’t make noise all by herself. Still, I get out of bed and tiptoe down the hallway toward her room. Her light is still on.
She’s awake. Or else she fell asleep with it on, like me.
I press my ear against the door. I hear nothing.
I wonder if her light will stay on all night.
I know mine will.
The next morning all the rain has burned off and I’m sweating through my purple leggings within seconds of showing up at the bus stop. It’s too hot for the first-day-of-school outfit I picked out with Julia. I didn’t know it would be like ninety degrees at eight in the morning. No one told me, of course, because I haven’t seen anyone today.
This morning my mom didn’t get up. I made myself some oatmeal, brushed my teeth, got dressed, and then waited outside her door. I stood there and rolled my fingernails against white painted wood, sort of knocking but not loud enough to wake her up if she was sleeping. I knocked hard with my brain. I knocked and knocked in my mind. But it turns out mind-knocking doesn’t wake anyone.
I gave up.
If my dad were alive, he’d drive me to school every single day. I’d never have to take the bus. He’d wake up early to make me blueberry pancakes like Julia’s dad does. He’d take my picture and then send it to all his friends saying something about how he can’t believe his baby is starting the sixth grade. He’d be proud of me.
I feel like the loneliness of this—of the first day of sixth grade with no parent, no picture, no breakfast, no fanfare—is so thick it’s hanging around me and making me smell. So maybe it’s OK that I’m sweating. I’d rather smell like sweat than like loneliness.
I’m the only one at the bus stop, which is usual because I’m here a few minutes early and that’s also how it was last year, just me waiting for the bus most days. But last year Mom and Adam drove me on the first day of school and took my picture. And Adam even waited with me at the bus stop on the second day of school to make sure it came for me.
Now I’m standing in the early morning with the sun beating down on my frizzy hair and the heat radiating off the sidewalk and into my black flats. And I’m alone.
After a few minutes a woman and a younger boy rush down the street, his backpack flying behind him, her hair coming out of her ponytail. “Is this the bus stop?” she asks, all rushed and hurried.
“Yes,” I say.
“For PS 125?” she asks.
“Yup,” I say.
“Good,” the woman says, breathing too hard. “We’re new in town and I was worried we would miss it. Here, Jackson,” she says. She pulls him over to her and starts smoothing his hair with her palm. “This is Jackson,” she says to me.
Jackson is wiggling like crazy, trying to get away from his mom’s big hand. He’s almost as tall as me even though he’s younger.
“I’m a new third grader!” he announces.
“I’m Alma,” I say. “Sixth grade.”
“What a big girl,” Jackson’s mom says, grabbing him by the arm and pulling him back to her. “Standing out here by yourself.”
“I guess,” I say.
“Your mom and dad didn’t want to come and see you off on your first day?”
My neck burns and I feel like punching her.
“My dad’s dead,” I say.
I don’t usually say that. I have to be so angry to say that out loud.
I don’t think I knew I was quite that angry this morning until I said those words.
“I . . . I’m sorry,” the woman says. Jackson breaks loose and runs a few feet away. She looks at me with these gray eyes that are begging me to say “It’s OK” and I know I’m supposed to say “It’s OK” because she’s a grown-up and that’s the polite thing. But I don’t. I don’t say anything. I don’t have to be a good girl. I don’t even have to pretend to be a good girl. No one is here to make me.
Jackson saves us by shouting “The bus is coming! The bus is coming!” We both look where he’s pointing and see the big yellow bus rolling over the hill.
My heart slows with relief.
The bus pulls up and the door creaks open. I step inside as Jackson’s mom tries to wrestle him into a hug behind me.
“What’s your name?” the bus driver asks me. She’s a big, tall woman with blond curls popping out the sides of a white hoodie, which she’s wearing even though it’s a million degrees on this bus.
“Alma McArthur,” I say.
She checks a clipboard hanging by the side of her seat. She mumbles, “Who is Alma McArthur?”
That has to be the worst question of all.
Behind her a girl calls out “Alma!” I glance up and see some faces I remember—Annette and Sharice—girls Julia and I play with at recess or whisper with at lunch, girls who we didn’t see all summer. I’m itchy to get past this driver and hug them.
“I’m sorry,” the driver says. “I don’t have an Alma on my bus. Just one kid at this stop, Jackson Clark.”
“That’s me,” Jackson says. He climbs on the bus and shoves past me.
“I’m sorry. I’m so sorry,” hi
s mom is saying behind him.
“But . . . I’m on this bus,” I say. “I got a letter and everything.”
“I’m sorry, kiddo. I can’t drive you to school if your name isn’t here on my list.”
“But . . . this is my bus stop.”
The driver just looks at me.
Behind me kids start to snicker.
“How . . . How am I supposed to get to school?”
“I don’t know, kid.” The driver moves around in her seat, looking past me. “Is your mom or dad here?”
The sweat on my face is threatening to turn to tears. I’m not angry enough to pull the my-dad-is-dead card anymore. I’m not angry at all. I’m sad. I’m a sweaty, teary mess. The driver sees my almost-tears.
“Go home and talk to your mom, OK?” she says softly. “Is she home?”
I nod. I can’t speak or I’ll cry.
“Well, tell her to call the school and get it fixed. I’m sure she can work this out.”
My mom forgot more than to say good night. She forgot to sign me up for the bus. School has always been the most important thing to her. More than the piano. More than family, even. How did she forget something like this?
I squeak, “OK.” But I don’t move. I’m frozen.
“I’m sorry, Ms. Alma. I have to ask you to get off the bus now.”
The kids behind me laugh. I walk down the steps of the bus and suddenly I’m on the sidewalk again. Alone.
I trudge home. I’ll have to wake up my mom and ask her to drive me to school. Then I’ll have to remind her to register me for the bus.
I have no other options.
After a summer without her, Mom is still my only person. My only alive person.
I don’t know how to do this, though. I don’t know how to be the one who remembers to sign me up for the bus and who makes my own dinner and breakfast and cleans it up. My mom has always been the organized one. I’ve always been the mess.
I try not to tell myself how this would never have happened if Adam were still living with us.
How this never would have happened if Dad were living with us.
I run across the dead grass in the yard and open our blue front door. I go through the entryway and I’m accosted again by the empty living room, nothing there except a small couch and table covered in papers.
“I don’t know,” my mom is wailing. She’s on the other side of the wall in the kitchen. I freeze and listen as if it’s the middle of the night.
“You have to find her!” she yells. “I woke up and she was gone. She’s never done anything like this before.”
I’ve never heard Mom sound like this. Out of control.
“Why are you so calm? A twelve-year-old girl is missing!”
She’s talking about me?
I shout, “Mom? I’m in here.”
“Alma!” she yells. I hear her drop something and then suddenly she’s all around me in the biggest, softest, warmest hug of all time. “Alma, Alma, Alma. Don’t you ever do that to me again,” she says.
“Do what?” I ask, my voice muffled by her shoulder. She’s hugging me so tightly my glasses are askew on my nose.
“You scared me half to death! You cannot do that to me. You can’t. You hear me?” She pulls back to look at me, then buries me in the hug again. “I can’t lose you too. I can’t lose you.”
But first she says she can’t lose me too. This is the closest we’ve come to talking about Adam.
Questions rush through my brain like water out of a dam. All the Bad Questions swirling in me just when my mom is loving me the most. I freeze, hoping she’ll say more.
Instead she says, “Where were you?”
Adults are allowed to have questions in this house. Any questions they want. And kids need to answer them. Only adult secrets are good secrets. Kid secrets are all bad.
I have a lot of secrets. This isn’t one of them.
“The bus stop,” I say.
Her eyes go wide and her voice goes high enough to hit the ceiling. “The bus stop. What? Why? Why would you be at the bus stop? Where? Which one? Where were you trying to go?”
I don’t follow her into the panic. She thinks I’m about to get in the most trouble ever. But I’m not. I answer flatly. “School,” I say.
“School?” she says. Then she takes a step back and shakes her shoulders a little bit, like she’s shrugging off an invisible coat. She’s still in faded pink pajamas, not even wearing a robe. I must have really scared her. And I feel bad about it. I feel bad about trying to go to school.
“School,” she says, more calm this time. “Why?”
I lower my eyebrows. How do I answer that? Because I’m twelve? Because I’m in the same class with Julia? Because a letter came?
“It’s . . . It’s the first day,” I say. “But you forgot to register me for the bus. You have to drive me.”
I’m going to be so late. She won’t take me in her pajamas. It’ll be almost lunchtime by the time I get there and Mr. Hendricks’s whole class will be laughing about how I got rejected by the bus driver.
I’m thinking about all of that so hard I miss what she says.
“What?” I say.
“I never told you to go to school.”
“Mom!” I say. “I have to go to school.”
“I know,” she says. She turns toward the kitchen like the conversation is over.
“Mom!” I say again. “Get dressed! I have to go to school now.”
“Alma,” she says, still not looking at me and making her voice all high like what she’s going to say is no big deal. But I know when she does this it’s always a very big deal whatever she says. “I don’t know why you thought you’d be going back to that school.”
My heart stops.
“What?” I whisper.
Mom gathers her hair into her two palms. She begins to wind it behind her head. She’s putting her bun back.
“I didn’t take you to meet your teacher like we did last year. I didn’t take you shopping for school supplies. I didn’t drive you today like I did last year. Why would you think you were going back to the same school?”
I thought you forgot all those things. I want to say that out loud. But I think it might be worse than a question.
Her bun gets tighter and tighter.
“I’m not going to school?” I ask. My voice is quiet and squeaky. I’m scared.
“Of course you are,” Mom says. “School is your job. You’re going to go to an excellent school.”
“A new school?” I ask.
“I’ve got it all set up. Of course I didn’t forget to sign you up for the bus. I would never forget something like that. I have everything all worked out.”
But that makes no sense. She’s forgotten lots of things all summer. She forgot to tell me not to go to school.
How can I be going to a new school?
How can I have no say over what happens to me?
My hands are shaking.
I open my mouth but Mom cuts me off before any sounds come out. “Don’t question me today, Alma,” she says. “I really cannot handle it.”
I close my mouth.
I try hard to say something.
But my mom looks like a stranger in pink pajamas. Maybe it’s that I haven’t seen the tight bun in weeks. Maybe it’s that she’s making coffee and not on her phone or shuffling through endless piles of paper.
“Do not stand there and stare at me, Alma. Please go practice piano. I’ll set the timer.”
Or maybe it’s just that I’ve seen so little of her for months and months. Maybe we forgot how to be a family.
Eight
Where Is All the Furniture?
THE FIRST TIME I VISITED A graveyard I was five years old. I was with my mother. And I made a big mistake.
A coworker of my mom’s had died, but I didn’t know that because that wasn’t how she told me.
All I knew was that Lucy, my babysitter from down the street, had texted my mom and then my mom was
all upset. Suddenly, she was putting me in my heavy winter dress, which was dark purple. She pulled black tights onto my legs. It was July. She said I didn’t have anything else appropriate to wear and I would just have to be hot. She said it like it was my fault.
She strapped me into my booster seat and drove off without explaining anything. She was mumbling to herself about Lucy canceling and never having any help and everything being too hard. We pulled into a parking lot and Mom turned around and stared at me.
I knew something was weird. Something had been weird for days. I stayed as still as possible while she talked.
“This isn’t really a place for children,” she said.
I made my eyes not look out the window at the building we were sitting next to. I was only five, but even then I knew that church was a fine place for children.
“But I have to be here, and Lucy canceled, so I have to bring you with me.” She paused. “Do you understand?”
I nodded, a tiny movement of my head.
“You need to stay as still and as quiet as possible and . . . and try not to listen. There may be some sad people here, but don’t worry about them, OK? Don’t look at them.”
I didn’t move.
“My purse is full of jelly beans,” she said. “You eat them one at a time. You hide them from everyone. I want you to sit through this and think about jelly beans. Nothing else. Don’t worry about anyone but you. Don’t think about anyone or anything but jelly beans.”
“Why will people be sad?” I asked.
Mom had been sad a lot. She’d stayed home from work yesterday and I’d heard her crying when I was supposed to be playing with Lucy. But when I asked she told me she wasn’t sad.
Sometimes I felt like sad and bad were the same things. When I was sad Mom was so upset about it, it was basically the same as when I was being bad.
“Think about jelly beans,” Mom said.
Mom always told me what I should and shouldn’t think about. Sometimes other thoughts snuck into my brain though.
I nodded.
“When this is all over, we’ll go on an adventure, you and me. If you’re a good girl and you stay quiet and don’t ask any questions, we’ll have an adventure.”