Chinese Handcuffs (13 page)

“Let it ride, Marva,” Wolf said.

“You know,” she said, “I don't mind that you guys are assholes. That's why I ride with you. What I don't like is that you're
stupid
assholes.”

No other Warlock would even consider speaking to Wolf in that manner, and Marva did it with astonishing regularity.

“You got a million-dollar drug business going, plus a hundred other illegal activities cookin', and you're willing to risk it all to get even with a punk high school
kid.” She shook her head in disgust. “What do you think the newspapers are gonna do with it when this kid turns up beaten bloody or dead? Cops'll be on us like grease on Fat Jack's hair.”

Wolf hadn't taken his eyes from her. “Forget it. The kid is meat.”

“And the Warlocks are pusses,” Marva said. That was pushing it, even for Marva, and she stood to walk to another table.

Somewhere in the night, through the cocaine-leaden, beer-soaked, angel-dusted haze, Marva's words worked their way to a soft spot in Wolf's brain and started a nest there. He began to let it be known through the evening that the Warlocks were off the Hemingway kid's case. It was challenged often enough, and Wolf made enough counterthreats, that the idea lodged in, and he would not let it go even in the semisober hours of early morning. Somehow, through Marva's words, a fraction of Dillon Hemingway's actions became heroic, and it was a big enough fraction to save his skin. But a line had to be drawn. Hemingway needed to know it was a line he would not be allowed to cross again.

 

Dillon lies on the ground, waiting for the worst. He can almost feel the first steel-toed boot boring deep into
his gut, but instead is helped to his feet. His first instinct is to swing and try again to run; but he's gasping for air and flat beat, and something tells him to take his medicine and maybe he'll come out alive. He opens his eyes to see Wolf staring back, smiling. “Good run. Had you all the way, though.”

Dillon raises his eyebrows, still trying to catch his wind. “I s'pose so,” he says. “Thought I could make it to the river.”

“You were gonna jump in the river?”

Dillon nods. “It was my only chance.”

“Didn't you hear Eddie tell you we just wanted to talk?”

“Yeah,” Dillon says. “I heard him.”

“So why the hell didn't you stop?”

“I didn't believe him.”

Wolf nods, still smiling. Finally he says, “Look, kid, I'm sorry your brother snuffed himself, okay? This is a shitload more energy than we wanted to spend to tell you everything's even. Long as you're done playing Lone Ranger.” Wolf sticks a finger hard into Dillon's chest. “But don't mess with us again. You'll lose more than just wind.”

Dillon puts his hands up in the air. “No more Lone Ranger,” he says, so relieved he thinks his legs will
give away. “I'm done.”

Wolf nods again, looking Dillon straight in the eye. “You better be,” he says. “You better be.”

When the last biker disappears into the brush, headed for the street, Dillon sinks to his knees at the fence and throws up his lunch.

 

Jennifer experienced the same order of insomnia as did Dillon after the conversation in the car, though she responded differently. Because her interior world had been so deeply invaded all her life, her consistent tendency took her
outside
for comfort, focusing on challenges, past and present. Introspection left her feeling empty and powerless, her sense of guilt for her sexual complicity with T.B. being so great. As many times as she told herself how much she hated it, and
him,
and as much as the weight of responsibility for her mother's and Dawn's very lives held her down, she could never get past her awareness of the soiled, obscene harpoon that lay wedged in her soul. Introspection lead to one question: What's wrong with me? How dirty and awful must I be to have
always
been someone's target? So she looked outside; she played games—basketball games.

She visualized the tough ones, saw her opponents at their best and herself at hers. She ran defensive
sequences over and over until she could actually see herself moving to the right spot at exactly the right time. And she imagined games in the future, previews of the toughest coming attractions. She would visualize all possible situations. When the game rolled around, Jen owned her opponents. That was where she went on nights like tonight, when her life troubled her, the same place she went on the nights when T.B. came into her room.

But tonight she lay more than merely troubled; she was unable to get away. Tonight was the first time she had said anything about the continuing horror of her existence since she was eleven, when she had sounded the alarm only to have it silenced. And even though she trusted Dillon Hemingway more than anyone—with the possible exception of Coach—since she had trusted her grandfather, still, any leak in that stainless steel box around her heart sent waves of panic through her. Only in containment was there any real control. If her real feelings ever started spilling out, well, she might just discover the pit of her pain and rage to be bottomless.

It amazed her sometimes that she maintained as well as she did. She had read enough books and watched enough “Oprah” and “Donahue” to know she was probably badly emotionally damaged, but she
often wondered how she'd ever been able to function at all. Generally credit for that went to her grandfather. Through all the hazy, indeed often blacked-out memories of her past, her grandfather stood strong and tall and clear. She had known what was healthy then, what was real.

And there was Sarah, the therapist she had been sent to just before she turned six, after her real father was sent away. Sarah was a big, earthy woman, and the person most responsible for helping her six-year-old mind understand that what had happened with her father was not her fault, that because his late-night visits sometimes felt a little bit good, she was not bad. Sarah had actually joined Jennifer in her pain and rage and jumped over the cliff with her.

 

“What do you want to be today, J. Maddy?” Sarah asks, and Jennifer looks around the room at the possibilities. Sarah has called her J. Maddy from the first day, over her mother's protests, and that has helped J. Maddy feel strong. Sarah believes it is important for children to feel strong.

“I want to be a baby,” J. Maddy says now in answer to Sarah's question.

“Whose baby do you want to be?”

“Yours.”

Sarah cradles J. Maddy in her arms like a forty-pound Baby Huey, handing her a bottle filled with juice, which J. Maddy puts in her mouth while she sinks into the powerful woman's chest. Sarah rocks and hums and sings nonsensical songs for a few minutes, and J. Maddy immerses herself further into her. Then J. Maddy pulls away and says, “I don't want to be a baby anymore.” Sometimes it feels
so
good just to be held again for a little while. It was hard at first because Mommy wouldn't put up with it for a second and J. Maddy thought it was wrong—after all, she was six—but in Sarah's room it's safe, and nobody teases her or calls her names, and then after a while she feels strong and wants to go on to other things.

“Let's do noses,” J. Maddy says suddenly, crawling off Sarah's lap as the bottle drops to the floor.

“Who wants to do noses with J. Maddy?” Sarah asks, and all of the other five children raise their hands.

“So get 'em,” she says, and the bathroom boy runs to the cupboard and pulls out a large blue plastic box filled with rubber noses with elastic bands to fit around your head so they'll stay on, noses for every animal in the world and some that don't really exist, J. Maddy
knows, like the dinosaur noses.

J. Maddy doesn't call the bathroom boy that; she just thinks it. His name is Jeremy, and lots of times when he goes into the bathroom, he talks about how bad dads pee-pee on him and then throw him in the garbage. Sometimes he throws a fit when he talks about it, and then he's not talking at all but screaming. The kids have played the “Bad Dad in the Bathroom” game over and over for Jeremy, and the bad dad gets handcuffed and thrown in jail behind paper bars in the playhouse, and sometimes he stays there and sometimes he kicks the bars away and comes after them. Jeremy usually plays the bad dad because it's his game, but sometimes he wants J. Maddy to be it. It's a hard game because sometimes it seems that nothing anybody does will keep the bad dad down.

J. Maddy called Jeremy the bathroom boy once, and he punched her in the eye. “You can tell Jeremy you don't like to be hit,” Sarah said, at which time J. Maddy screamed those very words at him. “And you can tell J. Maddy you don't like to be called bathroom boy,” Sarah said to Jeremy, and Jeremy screamed it right back at her.

It was understood.

Today J. Maddy chooses alligator noses for every
one, and even though Michael wants the elephant nose, Sarah offers him the choice of wearing the elephant nose around his neck and the alligator nose over his face. That way, if there is emergent need of an elephant, Michael will be Johnny-on-the-spot.

Sarah makes an alligator nest of paper sticks and other indigenous swamp material, and the kids begin to crawl around on their bellies, making huge alligator sounds that really sound more like lions and tigers. J. Maddy is the mother alligator, Jeremy is the daddy alligator, and the other kids are kid alligators. Jeremy can't be in the nest because he hurts the kid alligators, but J. Maddy keeps going away to play or watch alligator television, and Daddy Alligator sneaks in and hurts the kids. Everyone knows J. Maddy's alligator game because they've played it at least as many times as the bathroom game. The kid alligators scream and Mommy Alligator comes back and Daddy Alligator slinks off, but then Mommy Alligator goes off and Daddy Alligator thinks of a new way to sneak up on the alligator kids. Finally Gail, who is playing the J. Maddy alligator, bops Jeremy with a bad daddy beaner—a large foam rubber club—and all the other alligators roar and get foam rubber clubs of their own, and J. Maddy switches with Gail so she can be J. Maddy
alligator and Gail turns into the mad mom alligator and everyone beats Bad Dad Jeremy into the “Everblades.” Then, to everyone's glee, J. Maddy unveils Grampa Alligator. She has a beard from an abandoned Uncle Sam costume to go with her alligator nose, and when Mommy Alligator and all the kid alligators just can't cut the mustard, Grampa Alligator takes over. It is understood that when Grampa Alligator shows himself, bad dads shake in their scaly boots. Only when she feels particularly powerful does she allow herself to call on Grampa Alligator.

And that's the way it is in J. Maddy's life for months. All the kids in the group have had bad dads; some have had
lots
of them, and the children have games for each. Some also have bad moms, and there are games for them, too. Sometimes the moms win, and sometimes the dads win. But sometimes the
kids
win. It's very hard work, but J. Maddy is starting to feel strong.

After extensive work with J. Maddy's mother, Sarah even sets up a time for J. Maddy to tell her mother how mad she is that her mother didn't protect her. Her mother is able to tell her she is sorry, that it was
her
fault and not J. Maddy's.

It is
such
a relief.

Over the next few months J. Maddy is able to tell her mother things she thought she would have to hold inside her forever. There are tears and pain and nothing is easy, and sometimes J. Maddy dreads going in because she has something she knows will make her mother feel really bad, but each time they stay with it until it's all out in the open.

And with Sarah and the other kids, J. Maddy flies. Sometimes they're strong and sometimes they're weak; but they're always real and there are
no lies,
and Sarah just seems to join with them in every horror any kid wants to approach. J. Maddy loves Sarah, and she loves the other kids, and something in her heart is happy.

And then it's gone.

J. Maddy and her mother go into a big room in a big building one day, and there are people in suits and they use a lot of big words that J. Maddy doesn't understand; but it sounds like they're telling her mother that she's better now but that she should continue letting J. Maddy see Sarah, though she doesn't have to.

Linda promises that she will.

But when she doesn't have to, she doesn't. J. Maddy doesn't even really get to say goodbye to Sarah, her mother just keeps coming up with excuses not to take her, and pretty soon Sarah and the other children begin
to fade into the dark caverns of her memory. Mom keeps promising to take her back, and she even hears her promise Sarah that on the phone one day; but they don't go, and J. Maddy starts feeling tricked again. Good things always go away. She fights with her mother about it and one day even gets slapped for calling her a big fat liar. Her mother immediately bursts into tears when she hits J. Maddy, and J. Maddy takes care of her, telling her it's okay and she won't tell anyone.

 

She jumped off with us,
Jennifer thought, lying in the darkness. She remembered hating Sarah for a while because she thought Sarah was big and strong and powerful enough to come get her, to
make
her mother keep taking her back until she was finished. But no one could get through Linda Lawless's inertia. She just faded away and couldn't be touched. Sarah was powerful with Linda because Linda was isolated during that time; there were no men around. But men began to show up shortly after the day the people told Linda she was better, men J. Maddy didn't know, and though none of them really hurt her, many were strange and scary, and her mother left her alone in the house a lot to go with them.

The time is coming, Jennifer thought, to remember what Sarah said to both me and my mother: that kids have an inalienable right to unconditional care, and parents who don't give it are breaking a spiritual law. She remembered those words as if Sarah had spoken them yesterday. Someday soon, Jen would have to abandon her mom for whatever fate lay in store. She'd take Dawn, too, because no kids could live in the poisonous environment T.B. and her mother provided, no matter how much money there was. But someday soon she'd have to do what Sarah had told her a long, long time ago, seemingly in another world: Let her mother be responsible for herself.