Amber Eyes (2 page)

I opened my mouth to say something else, to ask her why, to remind her we were at a public place, but she placed a finger on my lips. The bittersweet taste of her skin paralyzed me, like I’d just been hit by one of those tranquilizing darts they use on lionesses in African parks.

“Shhh,
Aaleksss
,” she whispered, my name caressed by her tongue and lips. “I’m not kidding. You
do
look too tomboyish, but I
luv
the look. And I don’t give a damn if anybody says we’re lesbians. I want to be your girlfriend. You don’t have to answer me now, just think about it.”

Had I just been announced America’s Next Top Model winner, I’d have been less stunned. I even doubted whether I’d heard right. The bustle around us and her whispering might have twisted her words.

“Th-think about it?” I stammered. What I really wanted was to yell: ‘Yes, I want to be your girlfriend, Jenny!’ but everything was happening so fast, it was so new to me, and seemed so wrong that my tongue got tangled up. Besides, I was scared. Clara Benson and her gang had bullied me when I’d arrived at this school three months ago and they only stopped when I started to hang with Jenny. I imagined what would happen once somebody caught us kissing in the restrooms: Tons of gossip. People labelling us as a pair of ‘dirty dikes’. Lipstick signs on the girl’s restroom mirror:
Zimmerman rides Jennifer Edwards.

Jenny rose from her chair, leaned both hands on the table and stooped across it until her freckled, upturned nose stood only a couple of inches from mine. Her floral perfume suddenly made me feel high as if I’d smoked weed, tons of it. I was now the one breathing hard.

“Yeah, think about it. I’m deadly serious. Just don’t mess around with any other girl while you make up your mind, deal?”

She approached me so close, our lips touched. Hers tasted way sweet, like strawberry and candy. Like vanilla Häagen-Dazs ice-cream. The football guys at the nearby table, the only people still lingering the cafeteria beside us, were all staring. I hoped none of them were aiming their cell phone cameras at us because I didn’t want to be the hot topic on Facebook tonight. Jenny apparently had no such fears. She raised her middle finger and flipped them off. I wanted to bury myself under ten tons of earth.

When I finally rose from the table, not a single kid lingered in the cafeteria, not even the football players or Jenny. The baseball game had ended too, and the bleachers were empty. I dragged my feet towards the exit, forsaking my tray on the table. It felt like I was walking on cottony clouds floating in the sky. I took a hand to my hot lips.

I think she kissed me.

I couldn’t figure out if Jenny and I had kissed like crazy or if it’d only been a brief contact that had made time eternal. While my heart wished it’d been a crazy making out, my mind trusted it’d only been as ethereal as the brush of a bee’s wing. Either way, my first kiss ever represented my debut in a play I’d never even rehearsed for.

June 27 4:44 pm

Mid-afternoon. I was fed-up mopping the trailer while I kept an eye on the kids who played outside. The floral-scented Lysol reminded me of Jenny’s perfume, the only reason why mopping was bearable.

Yago’s trailer? From the outside, it seemed brand-new. All aluminum. Glistening at sunrise and shining at dusk. With a white picket fence and a nice flowerbed. A cool place to live in, don’t you think so?

Crap! It meant living in a freakin’ metal bread box on flat tires in a shitty trailer park. It meant getting iced up at sunrise and fried at dusk. Guess who took care of the flower bed and had repainted the picket fence at gun point? Yours truly.

Yago himself—like Shakespeare’s Iago, but with a ‘Y’—was a stinking, three hundred pounder over six feet tall. His kids? Good boys. I was actually fond of them. Prob was Yago set a bad example. The three could litter anything from beer cans to cookie crumbs and even puke in less than five minutes.

Blame Mom. First, she started to date Yago and, after a coupla months, we moved in with him. They slept together in the trailer’s tiny back bedroom, except when he beat her. Then she would take my bunk bed in the living room and I would end up on the threadbare couch, scared to death and unable to sleep. I might even cry, depending on how much he’d beaten her. Add another bed under mine for the twins, a kitchenette, a dining table big enough for three, our old bulky TV, and you’d get the perfectly-crappy, forty-year-old trailer. We even had a curtain instead of a bathroom door—zero privacy.

I was almost done mopping when the door slammed open and my mom stumbled in. Her heavy lavender perfume clashed with the Lysol’s, shrinking the trailer beyond its minute size. I had to open a window—both aromas couldn’t simply share the same space. “What are you doing here, Mom? It’s too early, isn’t it?”

“Don’t call me Mom. It’s Laura, call me Laura. Is it so difficult for you to remember a five-letter name?” She leaned on the wall and took a hand to her forehead, squeezing her eyes shut. “God, my head.” The sound of a fire truck siren screamed into the window and she grimaced, squeezing her eyes even harder. Then she collapsed on the couch, dropped her purse in the corner, and stared at me. “Take off those dark sunglasses, Alexandra. You shouldn’t wear sunglasses indoors. That’s why other kids at school call you names and say you’re a freak. Isn’t it enough you look like a boy?”

Wow, tone it down, if you please. I pulled my cell phone and checked the screen. It was barely quarter to five, totally early. Either she had a problem at work or she was playing hooky.

“Never mind,” she said. “I’m glad I found you here.” Mom pulled a small mirror out of her purse. “God, look at my hair! Bet people on the street think I’ve just escaped from a madhouse.”

I scanned her messy Happy Hamburger uniform, her ruffled hair, and her glassy, amber eyes and nodded. People would really think she’d just gone nuts. Moreover, she was not blinking at all.

Omigod! She was drunk, barely by mid-afternoon.

“Are you okay?”

My words somehow gave her a sudden adrenaline burst, or so it seemed. She got up and began to storm through the cluttered trailer, eluding my attempts to corral her back to the couch. She opened drawers and picked garments at random: a pair of shoes, a blouse, slacks. Then she searched the bunk beds. My hand flew to my mouth when I realized all her dress buttons were unfastened, showing off her naked back. Her bra was gone. I wondered where on earth she’d left it.

“What’s going on?”

She was searching even under the mattresses, but we were not hiding money there anymore. Had she forgotten? Or was she just desperate?

“It’s okay, sweetie.” She rushed into the back bedroom, kicking its door open. Within minutes, she dashed back out, heavily burdened with clothes.

“Lemme take that.” I removed the bundle from her trembling hands and placed it on the couch.

“Look, it’s okay.” She put her hands on my shoulders. “I’ll be back in a few days. Meanwhile, be good to Yago and take care of the twins.”

Back in a few days? What the hell?

“Have you been drinking?” A stupid question in view of the evident. I could smell it on her breath—her perfume couldn’t disguise it—but I had to ask.

“Just a li’l to be brave enough to quit my job.” Mom produced a small traveling bag from another drawer and forced in her bundle of clothes and shoes.

“But… you’re, like… gonna find a new job, aren’t you, Mom?”

She slammed her open palm on the table. “Don’t call me Mom, for God’s sake! No, I won’t be searching for another job. Not ever again.”

I gulped, walking backwards until I leaned on the trailer’s door. “You’re scaring the hell out of me.”

Mom stopped short before me and caressed my cheek. “It’s okay.”

“You’ll come back, won’t you?”

She withdrew her hand and pursed her lips. I pulled the sunglasses down a bit and glared at her over the rim. Our eyes locked. A buzzing fly passed between us.

She threw her arms up in the air. “I’m fed up with Yago. That’s what’s going on. I just met this guy Zachary a coupla weeks ago and he asked me to travel to Lake Taylor with him. Coupla days, both of us, no kids, chilling out. I really need it.” She put her hands together as if praying. “You know how much I do. He’s a few blocks away, waiting for me in his car.”

Now I knew where she’d left her bra.

She had to be kidding. We’d just moved in with Yago in March, she couldn’t possibly be dating a new guy… unless she planned to move again.

“He’ll take me to Orlando to live with him.” Omigod! She really planned to move again. She began talking very fast, but I didn’t pay attention. “He’s got a lovely place … he’s shown me pictures … he’s a Disney World officer … five years my junior …”

Minutes ago, I could hear the twins playing outside the trailer and the Route 133 rumble. Now, it seemed a parallel universe had just sucked them up, leaving Mom and me alone, surrounded by sheer silence. I couldn’t believe she intend to ditch Yago. The freaking aggressive guy had already beaten her twice because he sniffed she was cheating on him. Looks like he hit the nail on the head.

“Mo—”

“I’ve finally made it. No more problems. No more money shortages or living on coupons ever again. I’ve finally found a man who’ll take care of me.”

She should be worrying about taking care of
me
instead. Back when we moved in with Yago, she’d told everybody she’d finally found a good man who’d take care of us. Just check her now: she was dumping him.

“But what about Yago?” I blurted, finally able to speak. My stomach had vanished, leaving a hole. “You’re ditching him. If you go for the weekend and leave me here, he’s gonna take his anger out on me!”

She took her time. Everything was so silent I could hear the gears moving inside her brain.

“Don’t worry about Yago. I’ll explain it to him later,” Mom kissed my cheek, pushing my sunglasses upwards. “Take off those sunglasses. Right now.”

Screw the sunglasses! I wanted to know how this was any different. Besides, while this was a hell hole, I didn’t want to settle in Disney World either. Jenny lived here in Somerset, I—

“Explain him later? Tell me what I should tell Yago,
today
. He’ll freak as soon as he finds out you’re gone. He’ll beat me to death.”

“Oh! Today… of course…” Mom frowned. “You don’t have to yell at me. I can hear you perfectly well.” She moved her hand as if dismissing somebody. “Just tell him I had a problem and will be back in a few days.”

“Seriously? Do you really believe he’ll take it that easily? He’ll freak out, throw things, and behave like a schizo.”

I couldn’t stay if she was leaving. On the other hand, I couldn’t leave Somerset either because Jenny had just asked me to be her girlfriend. What an impossible decision. I stood motionless for some seconds, staring at Mom like a retard. Then I pictured Yago again, behaving like a madman once he’d discovered Mom had ditched him without even a good-bye. In a blink, I decided to run for my life. I sprang to my bunk bed. “I’ll go with you!” I hated leaving Jenny, but I couldn’t stay here either.

I scrounged for my backpack. I grabbed anything I could quickly: jeans, T-shirts, panties… then I froze. Mom had just knocked over the bucket and mop as she wrenched open the door and walked out. Sounds poured in through the open door like a flood: car honks, kid laugher, dog barks, the wind.

“Zach said it should be only the two of us and no kids.” Her face peered in from behind the door. “If you need anything, find my mother-in-law. Remember her? She still lives in Abbeville. Her full address and number are in my little green notebook.”

The hair on my nape bristled. ‘If you need anything’ could only mean she had no plans to come back at all. About my grandmother, Mom had to be kidding again. I was four years old the last time I saw my grandma. The woman was probably dead by now.

“Wait!”

Mom threw me a kiss. The backpack fell out of my hands and its content spilled out on the floor. I dropped to my knees and frantically scooped everything back in.

“Need to rush. See you.”

I was still on my knees, begging. “Mom, wait—”

“Don’t call me Mom!” Her eyes sparked and her cheeks flushed, but then she paused and swallowed hard. “Listen to me. Yago likes you. You’ll be fine with him. Besides, you’ve a family here. You belong to a family, and I couldn’t give you one. I’m doing this because of you.” Her eyes lit up for a second, only to become glassy again.

Had alcohol softened her brain? We’d only lived with Yago for barely three months, who could tell what he’d risk doing? She said Yago liked me—in his bed, in the best case. A fourteen-year-old girl like me didn’t belong in Yago’s trailer. Mom couldn’t be doing this to me. Could she?

But she was!

I got to my feet, holding to the couch with one trembling hand while I grabbed the backpack with my other. I held it tight as if it were a bag full of gold. I opened my mouth, but no sound came out. My mind was blank, it needed a cold reset. When Mom let the door slam behind her, my legs vanished—at least that’s what it seemed like, because I couldn’t feel them anymore—and I collapsed on the couch. I could neither blink nor move my eyes. I stared blurry-eyed at whatever stood in front of me and sighed.

Each time Mom had ditched a boyfriend or vice versa, we’d always run away together, except for today. Today, she’d just discarded me, flushing me down the proverbial toilet and walked away. Long ago, one day at school, she’d promised me she’d never leave me, but she’d just flushed her promised down the toilet too.

# # #

I am six years old and this girl at school tells me a secret during recess. Her mother had run away from home with a guy and she’s now staying at her grandma’s. I totally freak out because it sucks. Also, because I fear Mom might ditch me too. I remember we once lived with my grandma in a very large house, but that’s all that comes to my mind. What would I do if Mom leaves me?

When she picks me up after school, I bolt into her arms and start to sob, hugging her hard. She pushes me back and frowns. “What’s going on with you? You’ll mess up my clothes.”