Rodent (7 page)

“Isabelle,” next to my ear.

“Hmmm.”

“Isabelle.”

“What?” I sit bolt upright, take in Evan next to me, the pattern of the towel pressed into his cheek. Maisie is beside me, waiting.

“What time is it?” I twist the clock toward me. “Maisie, the alarm hasn’t even gone off yet. What are you doing?”

“I’m ready.” She points at her clothes—she’s fully dressed. She even has her shoes on. “I packed my lunch too.” That should be interesting.

“Maisie, this isn’t a good day.”

“Please.” She says it like a statement. “Please take me to school.” The tears from yesterday are gone, and she’s prepped for some hard-core bargaining. “I’ll run to the bus stop the whole way.”

I consider telling her to ask Mom, but that would just be cruel.

“Okay. I’ll be up in a minute.”

“It’s stinky in here,” she says on her way out.

I lie back on the pillow and close my eyes. Concentrate on the sour taste in my mouth, my heavy limbs. I don’t want to think, remember.

I’ve said some cruel things over the years—meant every word—but I’ve never hit her before. Once, when Claude slapped her, I tried to kill him. Literally. Mom had to lie across my body while Claude pried the paring knife from my fingers. Then she kept lying there to shield me from him, her pregnant belly crushing me. When she wouldn’t move, he turned to grab something—a kitchen chair maybe—to swing.

Out the front!
I had whispered, pushing her off me. As he turned back, I snatched the nearest thing—a white coffee mug—and flung it at him. Caught him above the eyebrow, a red gash. Mom pulled Maisie from under the kitchen table and headed for the front. Me, out the back door, the devil at my heels. Over the garbage bags and into the alley. I found Mom, and we ran. It was November. I only had socks on my feet.

He’d stopped at the door, watching us go down the street, but didn’t follow. Too many witnesses. We spent a couple of weeks squatting in someone’s basement, then went back home sweet home. We picked up where we’d left off with Claude—nothing changed.

Maisie was three. I hope she doesn’t remember.

Now I’ve done the same as him. I swallow. One foot in front of the other—that’s how I’ll get through this day.
Don’t think about anything
.

Maisie reappears at my door. “Are you coming?”

Evan’s fever seems to be gone. He doesn’t stir at my hands on his cheeks and the back of his neck.

I skip the shower and opt for a ponytail today. Lunches. I check Maisie’s—not bad. A peanut-butter sandwich and a package of instant oatmeal. I switch the oatmeal for a banana. Maisie waits at the table, coloring something in her school notebook while I get dressed. I try not to look at the disheveled heap on the sofa, blond tips poking out of the blanket.

Right before we head for the bus, I scoop Evan from our bed. He makes a squeaking noise and rubs his eyes. I lay him at the end of the sofa by Mom’s feet, his head on the arm of the sofa. Pull the blanket over him and put a glass of water and the barf bowl beside him on the floor.

“Mom.” I shake the lumpy blanket and pull my hand away. “Mom,” I say a little louder. She stirs. I feel every heartbeat in my chest. “I’ve put Evan out here with you. Take care of him today.”

No response. Maisie comes to stand beside me, regarding the two lumps on the sofa. I don’t have the courage to apologize, to say what I’m sorry for. Not in front of Maisie and Evan. Maybe not even to myself. The nausea washes through me again.

“Let’s go,” I say, and we head for the bus stop.

* * *

If anyone is stalking me today, I don’t notice. My world has become very small—the size of my desk in English. Words around me sound hollow, tinny. I jump at the thump of a textbook on the floor, the scrape of a chair.

As soon as class starts, Mr. Drummond asks us to pass our
Hamlet
monologues to the front.
Hamlet
monologues. As if, in the middle of all that, I was able to write a monologue.

A tap on my shoulder, and a sheet of paper appears with Will’s chicken scratch in black pen. I turn around to see if more are coming, but that’s it. I send it on up the line. Mr. Drummond collects them all in a neat pile and drops them on his desk. He’s looking for readers again.

“
Hamlet. Act 1. Scene 3
. Isabelle, will you be our Ophelia?”

I feel a jolt at hearing my name—a small burst of terror. It’s quiet. I can’t look up, can’t look him in the eye. Why can’t the tall guy sit in front of me?

“No, thank you,” I say, barely above a whisper.

If he’s looking at me, I don’t know. Will he try to force me?

A pause. “Very well. Rachael, will you give it a try?” Out of the corner of my eye, I see Rachael’s hand waving; she’s dying to be Ophelia. Twit. He assigns the other parts as well. I can tell some of the guys aren’t too thrilled about it, but no one else says no.

To stay awake, I doodle a maze of squares in the margins of my paper, trying to keep my eyes open. Every time my thoughts creep back to the moment I hit Mom, I jerk away. Can’t. Won’t. It’s too much right now.

When the bell rings, I’m the first out of my desk and heading for the door.

“Isabelle,” Mr. Drummond says in that voice that somehow echoes in every corner, “can I see you for a minute, please?” As he says it, I’m poised mid-step in front of the entire class. They file out past me, some turning to stare. I catch Celeste’s eye as she walks by, still unreadable.

Once they’ve all left, he settles in the chair behind his desk, buttons stretching across his hard belly. He regards me, not unkindly, as I stand stiffly in front of him.

“Isabelle, I saw your test score yesterday. And today, no monologue from you,” he says.

I say nothing, not helping him out at all.

“It’s clear to me,” he continues, “that you’re not doing the reading or the work for this course.” Still nothing. “Are you expecting this to be easy? I see you on a dangerous path here.”

Dangerous
. I’m trying not to get killed at school or let my brother and sister die at home, dodging hunger, fists, homelessness, foster care. I’m pretty sure
Hamlet
is the least dangerous thing in my life.

It must be clear on my face, because he straightens in his chair. “You’ll have to catch up on missed work after school today, if you intend to stay in this class.”

“I can’t,” I say instantly.

“Can’t? I think it’s time for you to prioritize. The decision is yours.”

Heat creeps from my gut upward. I feel like driving an elbow right into that round paunch.
Prioritize
? What the hell does he know? And I just dropped Social Studies too. I don’t think I can lose another course.

“I pick up”—I swallow hard, trying to drive down the lump in my throat—“I pick up my sister after school, across the street.”

“Can she come here and wait with you?”

“No, she—” I shake my head and look away. How can I explain the whole sequence, how it all comes down to me? Picking up Evan, my job, babysitting Mom and getting her off to work. A careful line of dominoes, all depending on my push to carry it through. Even half an hour late, and none of it will work.

Voices float past in the hall. I wait for them to fade before trying again.

“I look after my brother and sister when my mom…” I can’t continue. I feel the hot tears now. Hate him. I hate him. “When my mom…” I can’t push out that final word, beat one more lie out of that sentence. When my mom what? Checks out on a daily basis? I turn and watch the yellow leaves tumble across the sidewalk.

Mr. Drummond leans in and tries to finish it for me. “Goes to work?”

A laugh catches in my throat, like a bark. I sniff and wipe my face with my sleeve. I think the tears will stop now,
but they keep spilling from the corners of my eyes. “Mostly drinks. Sometimes works.” I give a bitter laugh. How strange on my lips, the truth. I focus on his feet, scuffed loafers poking out from under the desk. I should run. Lock myself in the bathroom. Switch schools. But here I am, in front of this walrus, coming unglued. Something about my confession knocks me off-kilter, like the beams have fallen and the ceiling’s caving in.

I turn from him now, walk to the window and cry. Now I feel it too, that awful, stinging shame from last night. I completely crumble. I have no idea what Mr. Drummond does while I blubber. I hear a scuffle of feet in the hallway, and Mr. Drummond crosses the floor and closes the door. The clock hums on the wall.

Mr. Drummond drops a box of Kleenex onto the desk beside me and wedges himself into one of the chairs. “Look, Isabelle,” he says, “you’re not the first person to come from a crap family. At least you’re still here, in school. I didn’t finish high school until I was twenty-one.”

Is he saying what I think he’s saying? I reach for a tissue and try to mop up, eyes stinging.

“Are you able to do the reading and finish the assignment this weekend?” he asks. I nod.
Don’t ask me to say anything else.
Those four words—
mostly drinks, sometimes works
—are more than I’ve ever said. To anyone. “Okay, fair enough,” he says.

I drop into a chair, my legs suddenly weak. Exhausted in every bone.

“Didn’t get much sleep last night, did you?” he says. Clearly I’m not as good at faking it as I thought. I shake my head. “Go to the infirmary now,” he says. “Get some rest.”

I think I’ve lost the capacity to speak. I hear him calling the office as I leave.

* * *

The admin assistant waves me toward her as I enter. “Mr. Drummond called down. He said you were sick.” I see her examining my face, which feels swollen to three times its normal size. It’s probably not a tough sell.

She leads me by the elbow to a room behind the main office area, like I’m about to collapse at any second. “Here you go.” She points to a sterile-looking bed pushed against the wall of a small room. A few cabinets run along the other wall, painted an austere white. “Do you want a glass of water?” she asks.

“Yes, please.” I clear my throat.

She brings the water and returns to her desk, the door hanging ajar between us. I close it, twisting the knob so it shuts silently. Pull the blinds closed, take off my shoes, lie down on the crinkly bed.

Out in the office, I hear snatches of the most boring conversations imaginable. The click of fingers on a keyboard. On the other side of the window, the crunch of gravel under tires in the parking lot.

Maisie is safe in her class, being the helper. Evan is with Mom. She won’t leave while he’s there. My head spins in a dizzy circle when I close my eyes. I sleep without dreaming.

NINE

Jacquie stops by before lunch on Saturday, all cleavage in a little tank top.

“What
are
you wearing?” I ask.

“Hey, you got it, flaunt it.”

Jacquie once tried on one of Maisie’s shirts and said,
Not bad
. Her belly-button ring was peeking out the bottom and her boobs bursting out the top.

Not bad for a stripper
, I had said.

“Wassup, pup?” She bends down to Maisie, tickling her. Maisie screeches and runs for the sofa. Evan tackles Jacquie’s legs, sitting on her foot and wrapping himself around a calf. She drags him around the room—her thin dark hair swaying—before asking, “Where’s your mom?”

“Still sleeping,” I say.

“Hard night?” Jacquie winks.

“I don’t think so. She had to work late.”

It’s weird. The day after the “incident,” I had come home to Mom and Evan sitting on the sofa, coloring. Crayons spread out on a cushion. Mom was drawing pictures on lined paper and giving them to Evan to color in. I didn’t know she could draw a frog.

“I ate some toast!” Evan said. Maisie squeezed in to join them.

Mom smiled at us, not meeting my eye. A slight red blotch marked her left cheekbone. She got up to have a shower once I was in the door. I gave her space.

When she was in the bedroom, I went in, shutting the door behind me. “Mom.” Not sure what to say next. She turned away from me, almost shyly, and kept getting dressed. “Mom, I’m sorry for…what happened.” Still couldn’t say those words out loud.

She stopped, one leg in a pair of tights, her back to me. “Isabelle, do you really believe”—she pushed the words out—“that I never should’ve had children?”

That was what upset her the most? “No, Mom. I don’t really believe that.” Don’t I? “I just get really mad at you sometimes.”

She nodded and wiped her eyes on the back of her hand. “I’ll do better,” she said.

“Don’t say that.”

“I’ll do better.”

I had left before the anger could take root and rise up again. But she has been sober the past two days and even helped make school lunches before she left for work.

“Do you think we could leave the brats here for a while?” Jacquie reaches down and pinches Evan’s nose.

“I want to come!” they howl in unison.

“If you stay here, I’ll bring you back a surprise,” she says. Howling stops. She sees my face and says, “What? I’ve got a bit of money.”

“Wake Mom up if you need help,” I tell Maisie.

We take a bus to Goodwill to check things out. We wander around, looking at all the stuff we would need to move out together. We do this at least once a month, talk big.

“Look, a lamp for five bucks,” Jacquie says.

“Ugly.”

“So what? It gives light, right?”

“Look, this teapot has a cat on it.” I hold it up to show her.

“And that’s better than the lamp?”

We test out the reclining chairs and shake the book-shelves for sturdiness. I find an area rug that matches one of the chairs.

“It wouldn’t take that much,” I say, “now that I’m working. We could have everything we need in a couple of paychecks.”

“I could pay the rent if I left school.” Jacquie tries on a pair of ski boots discarded near the shelves.

“You want to be a dishwasher all your life?”

“Look at you, Little Miss Ambitious.”

The truth is, I haven’t thought a day past my high-school graduation. I picture the school doors opening and me running away as fast as I can. A quiet apartment. A job in a coffee shop, maybe. Jacquie tells me about the parties we’ll have,
and maybe that will be okay. I don’t think much about that part.