Hand Me Down (3 page)

I whisper, “For you.”

She whispers back, “I’m sorry.”

I think about how long she stayed with my dad; how she prayed for him every night kneeling in front of her bed, and every morning tried harder to please him through his hangover. The gerbils drop dead, and in my vacant stomach I know she’s made that choice again.

Mom opens her mouth, so I try to tell her with my eyes that I know what she’s going to say, that I don’t need to hear it out loud. But this woman sitting in front of me with my cheekbones and small wrists and wavy hair won’t look at my face. My eyes and throat burn like the room’s on fire and my ribs feel shattered under the weight in my chest, but she says without flinching, “You and Terrance cannot both live here.”

Mom swears it will be
temporary. “We will file appeals,” she says, sitting at the kitchen table she bought at Levitz right after she married Terrance, in one of four matching beige-and-pink cushioned chairs they’ve probably had sex on. “You’ll be back before you know it.” Her nearly translucent gray tooth gleams behind lips taut in an asymmetrical smile.

“Couple weeks,” Terrance says, “tops.”

Mom says, “I promise.”

“It’s too bad, Liz,” Terrance says, staring at me as he licks mayonnaise off his fingers. “I really enjoy having you around the house.” He smiles with salami in his teeth.

Little asteroids land and smolder in my throat. This can’t be real. This is some kind of sick joke. “Mom,” I say. “You’re not serious?”

“Liz.” Mom swallows and runs her fingers through her bangs. “Everyone agrees that Terrance needs a stable home during this period of reintegration.”

“What about my home?”

“Pastor Ron thinks that cohabitation is essential for the survival of our marriage.” She shapes her hands into fists and brings them knuckle to knuckle at her solar plexus. “Terrance and I need to
rebuild our foundation, create a solid union able to endure hardship.”

My mind is reeling, spooling barbed wire around my brain. “I did everything you asked.”

“You were doing great.” Mom starts to smile but it fades into a frown. “But Terrance needs his family. It’s important that we stay together right now.”

“More important than your children?”

“It’s not that black and white,” she says. She lowers her chin to her chest. “Noah is staying.”

A noose cinches around my neck and I almost choke. “Was that supposed to make me feel better?”

“Since Jaime is already at your dad’s,” Mom says and sighs, “it’s just you.”

It’s just me
. My vision goes fuzzy and Mom’s image turns fluid. She becomes squiggly lines and shaded circles. Her blurred lips keep moving but the water travels to my ears and I hear crackling static. I’m tumbling in the ocean, sand scraping my skin, saltwater filling my lungs and stinging my eyes.

“Liz?” Mom calls my name and slowly she comes back into focus, her face softer, her eyebrows furrowed with concern. Her head tilts to the left and her eyes look wet. “I know this seems hard,” she says. “But it will only be for a little while.”

“What can I do?” I say, tears spilling onto my chest. “Tell me what to do so I can stay.” Every cell inside of me is clenched and heaving. Nausea swims through my gut, but I kneel in front of her and seize her hand, which I’m surprised to find is the exact same size as mine. “Please.”

She looks down at me and brushes a strand of hair from my forehead. “I wish no one had to go.”

I squeeze her clammy fingers. “Then don’t make me,” I say, my voice cracking. “Don’t make me leave.”

Mom takes a deep breath and as she exhales, her curly blond bangs float out from her forehead and lie flat again. She whispers, “I didn’t make the rules.” She slips her hand out of my grasp and looks away, her lips trembling.

I stand up, clutching my stomach. “But you picked him.”

She shakes her head but her tears stream like mine. She stares at me with bulging eyes and covers her mouth with both hands to suppress a gagging sound. “I’m so sorry,” she says.

“It’s not like it’s the end of the world,” Terrance says.

I turn on him and in my head I stab his heart through his muscle-shielded chest. “You should leave,” I say. He snorts. “This is because of you,” I say.

“It’s because of whoever called my parole officer,” he says.

Mom holds up a hand. “Maybe something good will come out of this whole thing,” she says and half-smiles. She inhales and releases it in uneven bursts. “God does work in mysterious ways.”

“Is He punishing me?” I say. “What did I do wrong?”

“Oh, Liz, your teenage hormones are making this feel much worse than it actually is,” Mom says. “Think of it as an adventure.” She twists her wedding ring around her finger and closes her eyes. “That starts tomorrow night.”

I gasp like she slapped me in the face. “Tomorrow?” I cough and try to inhale but it’s like swallowing glass.

Terrance laughs. “Man, those parole guys are real tightwads about their rules.”

There’s a part of me that still thinks this can’t be happening. This is a nightmare and soon I’ll wake up. I pinch the inside of my wrist until it hurts. “Where am I going to go?”

Mom reaches for me. “We thought—”

“Don’t touch me,” I say, jerking away so fast I stumble. The barbed wire is in my blood, a million paper cuts slicing up my insides. I need to escape.

She snorts an irritated burst of air out of her nostrils and says, “In a few years, this won’t seem so bad.” I move toward the door, light-headed, fighting to breathe. She says, “Trust me.”

Never again
, I think as I bolt outside into the fresh air.

I run laps around our apartment parking lot; force my thighs to burn, my skin to sweat, my lungs to drown. When every single cell in my body feels singed and smoking and numb, I press myself into the wet earth and soak up the smell of grass and the quiet in the air, the cool softness under my back. I inhale and exhale with the wind, slowing my pulse, calming my heart. I lie there on the damp lawn and watch brown oak leaves float against the pink-orange sky and land on the concrete sidewalk with a crunch.

Mom said it’s just me, but she’s wrong. She may have forgotten Jaime, but I feel her absence like an amputated limb, a part of me missing but still a constant phantom presence. When I learned about binary planets in seventh grade I thought of me and Jaime, connected by proximity and gravity, relying on each other for stability so we don’t shoot off into space. She’s had me close by
since she was born and I figured the pull I always feel when we’re apart—like magnets or tides in my blood—was just as strong in her. When Jaime left, I assumed she’d come home the way salmon and turtles return to their birthplace. If I move, how will she be able to find me?

The falling leaves shift to black outlines against a shadowed blue night and the temperature drops with the sun. I shiver. What if Jaime decides, like Mom, that she doesn’t need me at all?

When I return to the
apartment, Noah has been picked up from day care and waddles over to me. “Liz,” he says and hugs my leg. I poke his belly and pick him up, tickling his armpits. He giggles and I squeeze him close. “Good-bye, little brother,” I say, snuggling my nose into his soft neck. “You be careful,” I whisper and tap his tiny chin with my forefinger. He sticks out his tongue, something I taught him.

Terrance and Mom are watching pro wrestling, oiled men in Speedos screaming threats into microphones and then trying to pin each other. Terrance rests one hand on Mom’s leg and holds a Budweiser in the other. I kiss Noah’s forehead and set him down on his wobbly legs. Mom doesn’t say a word as I walk past her to my room, just stares at the screen while Terrance rubs his thumb back and forth across the top of her thigh.

I start packing, emptying drawers and making piles. A few minutes later, Mom opens the door without knocking. She stands there silent for a full two minutes, and then she scoffs. “You don’t
even like living here, with Terrance, right?” She throws out her hands. “Why is this such a big deal?”

“Are you serious?”

She says, “I thought you might be glad to get away.” She sounds almost hopeful.

“This is supposed to be my home.” I strangle the T shirt I’m holding and imagine strangling Terrance, my small hands around his neck, like squeezing mud through my fingers. “Anyone else would make him leave.”

Mom says, “He needs me.”

My throat closes around a spike. “What about us?” I say. I lower my head and let my hair fall into my face. “We need you, too.” I collapse on the edge of my bed.

Mom sits next to me and uses the back of her hand to push my hair behind my shoulders. “You’re always telling me you don’t.”

A sob rises up in my throat like a geyser, and even if I could put this sorrow into words, all my voice manages is a garbled, “You’re our mom,” before I’m bawling like I haven’t done since I was a kid.

Mom gently draws my head toward her, and I close my eyes and surrender to my convulsing chest. I let her wrap her arms around me as I lean into her shoulder. She smells like gardenia perfume and Suave Fresh Rain shampoo just like she did years ago when she still played games with us and read us stories before bed and rented PG movies the three of us could watch together on the couch sharing a big bowl of microwave popcorn.

“Shh.” She wipes tears from my cheeks and says, “I’m still your mom.” She presses her hand over my ear and temple, hugs my
head. “I will always be your mother,” she says and I cry harder because she doesn’t understand. A mother is a child’s home even more than where the child sleeps, and she is forcing me to give up both.

“It’s your job to take care of us,” I say, wiping my eyes.

“I’m trying,” she says. Mom opens her mouth like she wants to say something but doesn’t. In the living room, Terrance burps like he’s in a beer commercial and laughs. Mom sighs. “You always took such good care of yourself,” she says. “And of Jaime. I know you can handle this.” She squeezes me, and I ache to curl into her belly like I used to, sink into the safe softness of the body that made me.

But I duck out from under her warm arms and say, “That doesn’t mean I should have to.”

“We’re all making sacrifices,” Mom says. Terrance laughs again.

“He’s not,” I say.

She says, “How many times can I tell you I’m sorry?” She presses her forefinger and thumb to the bridge of her nose. “I don’t know what else to say.”

“Say you’ll let me stay,” I say, but I know she won’t.

She looks down at my flowered bedspread, shakes her head left and right over and over like a bobble-head doll, and tears trail down her spongy cheeks. I stare at her tired skin and developing wrinkles, the gray strands at her temple, her low-cut blouse, and wonder what happened to the whirlwind of force my mom used to be: taking beatings from Dad and walking with her bruised face held high. In the silence, our heartbeats start to sound like drums, the ominous thuds in movies that signal an execution.

“I love you,” Mom blurts out finally. She hugs me again and at first I remain stiff. But when she starts to pull away, I recognize this is good-bye, and I tighten my arms. Mom whimpers and holds me closer, her shoulder against my wet cheek, her strong hands rubbing my back. “I love you so much,” she says.

I wipe my nose on her shirt and let go. October wind breezes through my open window and I inhale the freshness, the earthy scent of dried leaves and wet grass and pine. Chilly air settles around me like a cloak, and I try to mimic that coolness. “Okay,” I say.

“Okay,” she says, patting my knee and half-smiling. Her eyes are puffy. She nods once like a judge after giving his ruling, so I guess these proceedings have concluded. I close my eyes and breathe deeply in and out, ten beats each, making my lungs expand and contract inside my chest.

When I open my eyes, Mom is in my doorway with her hand on the fake brass knob. “It’ll be okay, Liz,” she says. “God knows what He’s doing even if we don’t.”

She shuts the door and takes a deep breath outside my room. I picture her dolling up for Terrance, replacing her tight-lipped frown with a plastic smile, fluffing her hair, adjusting her boobs. She clears her throat and says with a cheerfulness that feels like lemons rubbed over my fresh wounds, “What’s so funny, handsome?”

I cross the room in measured paces, stand at the window with squared shoulders, and face the dark. As I watch the night sketch ghostly shapes in the darkness, a draft sweeps through the room, into my cramped chest, and plants a seed of ice deep inside. I
shiver and feel my skin prickle like thorns are emerging from underneath, protective spikes to ward off predators. With my eyes slowly drying, I cultivate those goose bumps across the length of my skin, and wear them like scales of armor.

For two months I’ve lived
with Terrance’s brother, Gary, and his wife in a small housing tract on the south side of town. I sleep in the bottom bed of a bunk set in their second bedroom and eat Top Ramen noodles, bagels, and once, a serving of Carol’s sausage and potato casserole. “You need to eat,” she said as she piled chunks of meat and starch onto my plate, a greasy heap that reflected the fluorescent lights above our heads. “You’re getting so skinny,” she said and covered the steaming mound in ketchup. I let their brown boxer, Rambo, eat all the sausage, and now we’re good friends.

I have a TV in my room and they don’t care when I turn it off so when I can’t sleep I watch Leno and Conan and infomercials for electric dehydrators, skin care products, and “all natural” waxing kits with guarantees of painlessness. Sometimes I read in bed with my clip on book light, magazines from Rachel or schoolbooks. I get sucked into the story of
Lord of the Flies
—children abandoned and forced to care for themselves—and stay up way too late reading. When the frenzied boys kill poor Simon on the beach, the words become blurry so I shove the green paperback under my pillow and remind myself that book characters are not real people. And my life could be a lot worse.

In the mornings I wait for Carol to finish her long, dark, wavy hair, which she first blow-dries straight and then re curls with a
curling iron into tight, controlled ringlets. She wears a foundation too pale for her face and a red lipstick that looks like paint against the white powder on her cheeks. She sits on the bathroom counter and leans into the mirror, her breath leaving fast-disappearing circles of fog on the glass. “Gary!” Carol yells and blots her coated lips. She smiles at her reflection, checks for red on her teeth, and unplugs the curling iron. A few minutes later they’re gone.