Rhythms of Grace (3 page)

Bus fare.

“Make sure you have your key and come straight home,” she said before slamming the door.

Where else would I go after walking home in the dark? The moon? “I-I will.”

But I didn’t come straight home. I died first, scratching and screaming and trying to fly. I died loud and bloody, but nobody heard me, not even God.

So I came home and went to bed.

I had taken the bus.

Or at least I had tried.

There was a boy there, his face covered in a ski mask, though it wasn’t quite cold enough. He had sad eyes and an unlit cigarette. I wished I’d worn my tennis shoes instead of trying to show off my new cowboy boots, two-toned black and gray. I don’t know why I said hello—maybe because we were there alone, waiting for the bus, and since it was still in my safe neighborhood, I didn’t have the sense to be scared yet. That was saved for the other end of the line.

The boy-man just nodded, mumbling to himself. I checked my watch. How often did these buses come again? There was nobody to ask, but I’d figured one would come eventually. Then he threw down that cigarette, the one that had never been lit, and smiled at me. It was a cold smile, the scary kind. I could see that, even through the mouth slit in his ski mask. When he grabbed me, I knew that no bus was coming tonight. That he’d only been waiting for me.

Mom says I should have run then, that I should have known how to get away. I tried to run, but my new boots were cute and pointy. I never was too good with heels and pointy toes. I ran a little while, but I fell behind the oak tree.

And he covered me.

The leaves danced like even they couldn’t see, daring to be beautiful while I was dying. Maybe they were giving me something to look at, something to numb the pain. It didn’t help.

Nothing did.

No matter how much I bit and kicked and scratched and yelled, no matter how hard I tried to rise up and fly, he just kept on. Fighting just made it hurt worse and I figured I’d die soon anyway, so I tried to think of heaven and stuff like that.

Mom said that was stupid too. She said that I’m a woman now, and I should have known what was happening. Evidently,
women
know these things. Information like that would have been valuable beforehand, but being just a girl who died at the bus stop, I really wouldn’t know.

It doesn’t matter what Mom thinks anyway. Not now. She didn’t see his eyes. Only Daddy could have stopped him and he was in Cleveland. There’s nothing left but this pain between my legs, between my ears. There’s a buzzing sound that won’t stop. They said at the hospital that’s from him slamming my head on the ground. That was the only time I saw Mom cry. She never apologized for not taking me. She never will. She thinks it’s my own fault.

Maybe she’s right. I wanted to dance, to fly, so bad. It felt so good. Maybe God didn’t want me to have that. I don’t know. It doesn’t matter now. I’ll never dance again.

Miss Joyce doesn’t believe that. She said that I should write it all down. The police said so too. They said to try and remember all of it. I’m trying to forget it. Daddy is still in Cleveland. This morning I walked to the bus, holding my stomach, feeling for the line where he broke me in half. Nobody spoke to me. They’d already heard my story, recounted by the mothers over breakfast. I watched as the gate went up for our school bus. It lowered quickly, letting down the little flag I’d read so many times before.

Safety is our business
.

I would have laughed but it hurt too much. Someone should tell the people who write dumb things like that or show people in bed on TV and make it look like something wonderful. Some other girl, one without bloody boots and a black eye, one who still had stickers on her Rubik’s cube, should tell them. They were grownups. They should know these things.

3

Ron

It always starts fast and horrible like a bug flying up my nose. And usually when I’m sleeping. Brian warns me if he can, but sometimes she comes back walking. Once, after she’d been gone three nights straight, she came back crawling. It’s been six days.

Sometimes she can’t find me in the dark. Maybe, if I lie real
still . . .

“Run! She’s in the back!” Brian’s voice hissed up through the broken window before the rain drowned him out. I jumped off the bed and was almost under it when a cold hand choked my neck. I vowed not to cry.

“I missed you, hon. Did you miss me?” my mother said, her warm breath a steam of cheap beer and stale cigarettes. I nodded, swallowed, wondering if she really meant it, if she ever had meant it. Sometimes, at the beginning, it was hard to tell. By the end though, there was never any doubt. She lit up a Marlboro from the smell of it and took a deep drag. I bit my lip, trying to pray to Brian’s God, begging silently for her to put it out. And not on me. After a sweaty kiss on my cheek and an assurance of her love, my mother answered my prayer, tossing her cigarette somewhere on the floor and stomping it out. I grabbed for her hands. Just in time. She was coming at me.

“Ow! Cut it out, will you, Ma?”

Her answer was another blow. Despite the dark, she could see my every move. Even if she hadn’t seen, she’d know anyway. I’d learned every bit of my bob-and-weave act from watching her. It’d never worked very well for either of us, but it made the time go faster somehow. As punches rained down on my back, I turned and grabbed her fists. Her hands didn’t hurt so much. Not anymore. It was the other things . . .

“Stop it, okay? Just stop it!”

She laughed, sounding eerily like my father used to when he was dealing out the punches to her. Didn’t she remember how it felt to be on the other end?

“You want to make this hard, do you?” she said, grabbing a fistful of my hair.

I gritted my teeth and yanked my head away. It felt like I left some hair in her hand. My head ached, but I didn’t care. I was sixteen. Long past begging. It didn’t do any good anyway.

“You think you’re a man, boy? I’ll make a man outta you. Don’t worry.”

Teetering on a broken heel, she lit into me again—this time scratching, digging at any flesh she could find. I ran back to the bedroom, hoping Brian was still outside the window in case I needed to jump out of it. He’d catch me, I was sure of that. The problem was, my mother caught me first, just as I was trying to get a running start.

She tripped me from behind and we flopped onto the bed. The broken springs that I avoided at night jabbed into me now. My mother kept screaming at me, but I tuned it out, listening to the rain pounding against the window and the rattle of Brian’s bike chain instead.

He’d gone home.

Sure he’d come back when it was over and sneak me into his room, but it wasn’t the same without him outside, waiting. It meant something to know he was out there, that as soon as she left, he’d come right in and take me home, smothering all my secrets under his mother’s quilts.

Mama got tired of fighting me and started singing a song I’d never heard. I couldn’t make out the words, but it sounded like the songs from Brian’s church that floated down the hill. I wished there’d been a service tonight.

Cold, hard rain coming in through the cracks and my mother drunk and crazy on my chest was all the hymn I had. For a little while, it was enough. I put my arms around her and smoothed her hair.

The street light clicked on, bright and blurry against the window. We both turned away from it, not wanting to see. I think that’s why she always came at night, so that she wouldn’t have to look at me. At herself. Tomorrow, she’d leave money on the table for me.

I’d take the money and wait a couple hours before Brian came and helped me limp back to his house, where I’d stay until Mama came for me in a few days, sober and pretty in a worn-out sort of way, standing on the sidewalk, thanking Brian’s mother through her teeth. We’d pretend it didn’t happen except for her saying sorry over and over. We’d get pizza and watch stupid movies, cut coupons and do homework. And then some man would call, come by . . . And then she wouldn’t come home. And when she did, it’d be like this. Only tonight, it was raining, so no one would hear me scream.

So far tonight I wasn’t too bad off, though. Scratches and bruises was all. We’d broken the bed frame and my last clean T-shirt was ruined, but I couldn’t think about that now. The picture frame I’d hidden under my mattress rested on the floor: face up, broken and smiling. I hoped she didn’t see it. I hoped she was drunk enough that she’d be passing out soon.

One hand on her back, my fingers eased toward the metal frame, one of the last things we still had from before. There were two photos inside—the top one of my parents as newlyweds, the one that I looked at to remind me of who Mama really was, and the one under that, a snapshot of me and Brian smiling on a hot day when everything seemed right. I memorized days like that to save for nights like this. It all evens out somehow.

She snatched the frame from me as quickly as I reached for it and sat up on the mattress. Like so many times before, I thought about giving her a good shove, running to tell everybody what they already knew. But I couldn’t. I wouldn’t. I was a man, not a punk. Men didn’t hit women and they never ran away. I looked like my father, but I wanted the resemblance to stop there. He was dead now, but still haunted Mama’s soul. Mine too. I’d never be like him.

She pricked her finger on the broken glass but managed to get into the frame. I sat up carefully, trying to gauge her reaction. Mama faltered for a minute as she looked at the wedding picture, squinting in the dim light to recognize her own happiness. She steeled her resolve when she saw the second photo. She crumpled them both in her fist.

“Been hiding this?” She dug up another cigarette and lit it first, then the pictures. Her hand was really bleeding now, but she didn’t seem to feel it. She was too busy trying to be him, even though she’d hated him.

But she loved him too. So did you. Just like you love her.

She slapped me out of my reverie. “Best live for today, Ronnie. Now for the last time, are you going to leave them niggers alone?” She reached for the radio and yanked the cord out of it.

I let out the scream I’d been holding back and rolled off the mattress, trying to avoid the broken glass. I knew what came next. This part hurt worst. How could I have been so stupid as to leave the radio out. It was Brian’s—set to wake me up. I’d been tired. So tired. The first lash sliced the air and landed across my shoulder blades, just under my arms. The cord came down again, this time around my neck. The plug whipped around and hit my temple. At least it wasn’t my eye. I hauled myself up and ran out of the room.

She chased slower this time, but my heart beat faster, sort of like Brian’s drum. I slumped in the corner, quiet, while she looked for me with the cord raised above her head. One time, she’d fallen asleep on the couch like that, with an iron cord over her head. I’d climbed out the window onto Brian’s bike.

Blood trailed down the side of my face. I must have moved or something because the cord came down again. I ducked to miss the plug, but banged my head hard into the wall in the process.

That made me laugh. I don’t know why, but suddenly everything was funny. Ridiculous. Everybody said I should just go to the shelter, go to foster care and be some old person’s boyfriend like the other kids I knew who’d gone. They said Brian’s mother was too old to adopt me and that there were other kids, black kids that she should take. My mother was in treatment, they said. A hopeful case.

I laughed harder at the thought of it, feeling hot and dizzy. So tired I wanted to sleep and never wake up. Maybe tonight I would be with Brian’s Jesus, the man of the cross and the shame. If God would have me, I’d be glad to come. I wasn’t so sure on the heaven thing, but anything had to be better than this.

Anything.

Maybe I’d go back to the shelter. Maybe nobody would touch me this time. I slid down the wall, but not before she got me one last time, with all her strength. I tried to catch the cord, but it cut my hand. I screamed, then cursed myself for screaming.

Punk
.

The room flashed black. When I saw clear again, Mama was bending over me again, trying to stand up. When she bobbled back and swung down again, I didn’t even try to block her. I closed my eyes, but not before I heard the screen door bang open and then the front door. I didn’t see them, but I knew. I took a deep breath to be sure. Vanilla extract and Afro Sheen. Yeah. It was them.

I squinted to see Miss Eva’s wrinkled hands around Mama’s wrists.

“Marie, put it down,” she said from somewhere so far away it seemed like a dream.

“I ain’t putting nothing down. This is my boy.”

She did put it down, though. Mama put it down and stepped away, backed up against the wall.

Miss Eva tried to talk to her while Brian helped me up.

“Thanks,” I said, not really looking at him. I’d told him never to bring anybody, but this time I guess I was glad. Still, my mother was shouting with Brian’s mother in the corner, and I didn’t know how it might turn out. Miss Eva talked calm, but I’d seen her snatch Brian off a basketball court while he was in midair. She was nobody to play with.