Geek Girl (17 page)

“Sorry, sensitive subject,” I say. He just sits quietly with me, rubbing his hand up and down my back. I know Trevor; he might still be curious, but he won’t bring it up again. He won’t be angry or disappointed if I don’t tell him. My sure knowledge of that is what makes up my mind.

“You heard what I told Mrs. Green,” I begin, and he tenses for a brief second before resuming his rubbing. “My only memories of my father are shades of purple and black, lots of violence. I don’t remember a lot of the specifics of life with him other than those impressions. Most of what I know comes from what I’ve read in the reports written about my life.

“I don’t have any real feelings concerning him, you know? Other than fear.
That
is a feeling that I associate with him,” I say. Trevor pulls me a little closer.

“He was killed by the cops when they were called to the house. One of the neighbors heard gunshots. He was shooting at me.”

I don’t tell Trevor, but that is a crystallized memory—always there, always clear. The fear of my father that I experienced that day and the utter hopelessness of knowing that there was no one to protect me were burned forever into my mind.

“The cops came,” I continue, “and he wouldn’t put his gun down, claiming he had the right to shoot me if he wanted to. He aimed at me, they fired at him, and he died.”

I shudder with the memory of all of the blood on that day, and Trevor wraps both arms around me, reminding me of just how safe I am now.

“So they sent me to live with my mom. She hadn’t wanted me originally, which is how I ended up living with my dad. She had . . .” I pause, looking for a word that can describe her life. “Issues, I guess,” I finally settle on this all-encompassing description, inadequate as it is.

“By the time I went to live with her, she was living with her second husband, just another model of my father, another abusive lowlife. I wasn’t really a welcome addition to the house, but she had to take me. There wasn’t anyone else.

“I have to give her props,” I say, shrugging. “She at least tried a little. I lived with her until I was twelve. It wasn’t exactly like living here with the Grants, or what it was like for you growing up. It was better than it had been at my father’s because her husband only beat me occasionally, and then only if I did something to draw his attention. But at least she didn’t beat me. She actually tried to protect me a little. Not that she’d win any mother-of-the-year awards since she was so wrapped up in her own misery and ignored me as much as possible. And mostly
he
was unaware of me.

“But when I turned twelve I started to—” I stop abruptly, glancing up at Trevor, embarrassed. As usual, he’s instinctively doing the right thing, which is to not be looking at me. I clear my throat and continue.

“I started to
change
.” I emphasize the word, refusing to say that I began to develop, not looking like such a little girl anymore.

“And because he was a pig, he noticed
that
, and then it was hard to avoid him.” I stop, hating to remember the next part, the part where he had come into my room and tried to force himself on me. I clearly remember the overpowering sickly-sweet smell of his sweat as he crushed me beneath his large, heavy body, the revolting smell of his breath on my face, his rough, probing, demanding hands. I shudder again at the memory, and Trevor pulls me over onto his lap, pulling my head down against his neck, arms firm around me, holding me together.

I breathe deeply of Trevor’s clean smell, of his goodness and purity, and the memories I have of Trevor replace those of that horrible night. Trevor has often held me close, never with anything even slightly resembling demand or expectation. I wind my arms around him, holding him close, grateful for whichever fate has put him in my path.

I take a deep, bracing breath and continue.

“He didn’t rape me,” I say quietly, firmly. “He probably would have, but my mother came in then and saw him. I still don’t know if she was angry that he was trying to hurt me or if she was jealous that he had turned his attention to someone other than her, but either way, she killed him. So now she’s in prison.”

I point at the box.

“That box, which you’re so curious about,” I growl at him, then kiss him on the jaw so that he knows I’m not really upset, “contains all of my worldly possessions. Not much to show for seventeen years.”

I pull away from him but don’t move off his lap. I lift the box over and hand it to him. He looks at me questioningly.

“Open it.”

He flips the lid open with his thumb and peers in. My birth certificate lies in the bottom. My mother’s wedding ring from my father—a cheap, thin, gold band—is in there. There’s a wrinkled Polaroid of my parents—my mother barely more than a girl—and myself when I was a baby. At first glance, it would seem they’re happy, but if you look closely, you can see the strain and stress showing around their eyes and in the corners of their forced smiles. A key to a ’69 Camaro from my almost-brother, who gave it to me as a going away gift and told me someday I could come back and he’d fit a car to the key for me. A few little odds and ends from my various foster families, nothing of any real value.

Mostly it’s full of letters. Trevor flips through them, not really looking. Then he notices what they are, and he goes back to the top, looking at each one individually. When he realizes what they are, his eyes come up to meet mine, horrified.

“She sent all of your letters back?”

“Unopened,” I say, turning one over to show him.

“Maybe you should go see her. Ask her why,” he murmurs, making the comment that puts the thought into my head, one I never expected—or wanted—to have.

“No.” My answer sounds firm, final. It’s really anything but.

He tosses the letters back into the box, and his eyes go soft with sympathy.

“Don’t feel sorry for me,” I command, recognizing that look.

He only shakes his head.

“I can’t help it. It kills me to think of how hard it’s been for you.”

“Don’t, Trev. I can’t take it. I don’t want you to feel sorry for me,” I repeat.

He gives me a wry grin, but even that is laden with his sorrow.

“I can’t help it. It’s how I’m built.” His excuse is lame, but lame or not, I recognize that it’s the absolute truth.

“You’re such a geek, Trev,” I sigh resignedly.

“I know.” He reaches up to caress my cheek with his warm hand, his smile less sad now. “But that’s why you love me.”

“Yeah.” I lean in and kiss him. “It is.”

We sit silently for a few minutes.

“Hey, Trev?” I ask softly.

“Yeah?”

“Did you call me ‘honey’ before?”

He chuckles softly against my neck, and I can’t help but grin. He is such an utter dork.

So I decide it’s time to go and see her. The decision isn’t made lightly. The Grants’ desire to adopt me, as well as Trevor’s comment and sorrow over the returned letters, has planted the seed—I can’t keep it from growing.

I ask Pat to take me. It doesn’t seem fair to ask the woman who wants to be my new mother to take me to see my old mother. I don’t ask Trevor because he’s been treating me like fragile glass since our conversation. I know he’s told his parents because his mom is suddenly being really nice to me. His dad gave me a quick, hard hug, then ruffled my hair and challenged me to an arm wrestle.

Pat didn’t even blink when I asked him to take me even though it’s a two-hour drive—each way. He thinks it’s a good idea, didn’t even ask why suddenly I want to see her. I think he knows. He even takes the day off work, a gesture that means more to me than it probably even does to him.

Deciding what to wear takes me two full days.

I want to dress soft, with easy makeup and calm hair to show her that I’m a good girl, that I’ve turned out well, that she has had no negative impact on me.

I want to dress as harshly as I can, with the hardest, most severe makeup I can manage, the shortest, tightest skirt, black lips, poofed hair, so that she can see just what her neglect has cost.

I finally decide to go just as I look these days—something of a compromise between the two extremes.

We go on a Wednesday. I have my iPod plugged into my ears, music blaring. It’s rude, I know, something I wouldn’t have cared about before Trevor the Polite got hold of me. I am a bundle of shaking nerves with tremors shimmering across my skin, and I don’t have it in me to make small talk.

I close my eyes and pretend to be asleep just in case Pat tries to talk to me anyway, wishing I really could sleep. Thankfully, Pat leaves me alone, not even glancing my way, ignoring me as completely as I am him.

The two-hour drive seems to take forever, and yet all too soon we are pulling through the security gate at the penitentiary. My tremors step it up double time, my stomach clenching.

In order to be let in to the inner sanctum, you have to play a kind of game with the guards at different posts. Lots of suspicious looks at us, a walk through a metal detector, and a thorough frisking—me by a female guard who could probably kick my butt with her little finger, and Pat by a big, burly guy who I wouldn’t want to tangle with. I suspect we’re getting off fairly easy when Pat flashes his DEA badge.

Finally—too soon—there’s only one iron door left between us and
her
. I feel dizzy, wondering if I might throw up on the clean white floor. Pat sidles over and gives me a one-armed squeeze.

“I’ll be right out here,” he says meaningfully. “Take as long as you need. I have plenty of reading material to choose from.”

He gives me a lopsided smile as he indicates the three outdated magazines on the small table next to an uncomfortable-looking orange vinyl sofa. I try to smile back but fail miserably. He ruffles my hair and kisses me on the top of my head.

“You’ll be okay,” he murmurs. “She can’t hurt you now. You’re safe.”

I nod tightly, then turn back toward the guard, who watches sympathetically. I’m probably not the first semi-orphan to grace this waiting room coming to see her wayward mother.

“Ready?” he asks, then without waiting for an answer—or maybe just not giving me a chance to chicken out—he twists a key from his overloaded key chain and the door swings open. He steps in and waits for me to follow, which I do quickly because chickening out is sounding really appealing right about now.

There are about a dozen tables scattered throughout the room. I’m surprised; I had been expecting glass partitions with a phone handset. This feels too intimate.

Three tables are occupied. At one table sits a large woman and a man with two small children, probably her family. I wonder briefly what took her away from them and whether she regrets the distance. Another table has an old woman who looks like a sweet grandma, though she’s wearing the prison-issue white jumpsuit. She’s being visited by another woman who could be either a daughter or a granddaughter.

The third table is taken by a skinny woman with long brown, lanky hair. She half stands as I enter but shifts her eyes behind me toward the guard and quickly resumes her seat. I also glance back toward the guard, and he nods me forward toward this stranger. I take a tentative step forward, then stop again.

“Sheila, you have a visitor,” the guard calls harshly, retreating through the door and slamming it with a reverberating clang.

“Jennifer?” the skinny woman, who doesn’t look familiar at all, asks.

Fear chokes me—not a fear that she might harm me physically, but a psychological fear that I can’t even put a name to. I’m frozen, staring at this small person. My mother hadn’t been small, had she? I remembered her as someone much bigger than me, much tougher. How can this woman, who is thin and shriveled and no taller than me, be the same woman?

She reaches up with one of her hands that had been resting on her lap beneath the table, and the chain connected to the cuff linked about her wrist drags loudly up the table. As if the action and sound is a switch, I feel myself unfreeze and my fear drains away. I nod and move to sit in the chair across from her.

She smiles hesitantly, turning her palm up in a helpless gesture.

“Hi—” I begin but stop short of calling her “mom.”

She sighs as her shoulders droop a little.

“Jennifer, you’ve grown up so much.”

“Well, that happens to the best of us,” I say, using my sarcasm as a defense.

She shakes her head, eyes darting everywhere—my eyes, cheeks, lips, hair, neck, arms that are resting on the table—as if she’s trying to take a thousand tiny photographs to store away.

“I—” She breaks off, then sighs again. “This is a little awkward, huh?” she asks with a humorless laugh.

“I don’t know you,” I blurt. She jerks a little in response to my words. “I mean, I know
who
you are, of course, but you’re a . . .”

“Stranger?” she asks when I fail to finish my sentence.

“Yeah.” I nod, looking down at the scarred tabletop and tracing a carving with my finger. Apparently, JS hearts HM, if the table is to be believed.