Hand Me Down (16 page)

Jaime screamed as he twisted the barbs free and her skin broke. Blood spurted out over his hands and the grainy wet sand around them. He tied a bandana around her foot and said, “There.” His face was pallid, his skin fleshy and bloated, glistening with sweat
as he rinsed his hands in the slow-moving green water. On his knees he crawled toward his fire-truck-red ice chest. Jaime whimpered, her foot covered in dirt and a bloody brown do rag, her face streaked with sandy fingerprints and salt. I reached for her shoulders and she curled into my chest and cried, wiping her face all over my Strawberry Shortcake T shirt.

“It hurts,” she said, and I squeezed her hand.

Dad opened a beer as I rocked Jaime back and forth in the mud of the riverbank, something I’ve done a thousand times since that day. Dad leaned his head back, exposing his soft white neck to the darkening sky to take a sip, and said one of the few true things he ever told us. “It always hurts.”

Sam doesn’t talk to me
at dinner, even when I make slurping noises with my pasta. It’s in a lemon cream sauce Tammy made from scratch and it is so good I almost don’t care that I can’t feel my toes. Sam doesn’t say anything at all until Tammy tells me she’s booked my flight home, and that I’ll stay the whole week.

“Where am I going to sleep?” I say. “Is Terrance leaving?”

“I’m sure your mom will figure something out,” she says and smiles at Sam. I recognize the making-nice look from Mom’s face. One of the few things they have in common, apparently. “I booked us a flight, too.”

“Is that so?” Sam says, raising his eyebrows. “To where?”

“Hawaii.”

“You’re going to Hawaii?” I say.

“Sounds perfect,” Sam says. He wipes his lips with his blue
cloth napkin before he kisses her but I still want to throw up. If my napkin were paper, it would be in shreds.

After another school day of worrying I get a letter from Rachel that says she’ll be in Reno for spring break.
My mom says hi, and remember to focus your breathing.
She says your mom is creating major karma with you that’ll even out in another life. I told her that doesn’t do jack shit for you right now.
She writes about her newest boyfriend, Frank, who is seventeen and drives a brown Ford pickup in which she let him feel her up in the front seat. She writes,
Did you and Dean make out yet?
I wish.

Jaime calls as I finish reading. As soon as she says hello, I say, “Are you okay?” but it’s such a relief to hear her voice.

“We might be moving out,” Jaime says. “Me and Dad spent the last two nights at Steve’s.”

“Because Dad’s drinking?”

“And ’cause he lied about a bunch of stuff.” She sighs. “Crystal thought he was the one making dinner and cleaning until she came home early one day.”

“Is he looking for a job?”

“Not yet.”

“Then how can you move out?”

“I don’t know,” Jaime says. “Geez, lay off the third degree.”

“Aren’t you worried?”

“I have you for that.”

I say, “Why are you whispering?”

“I’m not supposed to call long distance.”

“I can call you back,” I say. “Give me the number.”

“We can talk at Noah’s party,” she says. “Mom said we can spend the weekend.”

“You talked to her?”

“Yeah, she kept calling while we were gone so Crystal finally told her where we were. Not in a nice way though.” She laughs. “Mom wouldn’t repeat what she said.”

“Of course not,” I say, but I’m thankful.
At least she called
. “Are you really all right?”

She says, “Are you?”

I smile. She’s definitely not stupid. “I love you,” I say.

A few weeks later,
I tell Tammy I want to go to Hawaii as she puts her toiletry bag together: Handi Wipes, Band-Aids, shampoo, toothpaste, floss. “I love the beach,” I say.

“We’re hiking in the jungle.”

“The whole time?”

“When Sam leaves, you and I can go on a trip, okay?” Tammy seals plastic baggies around each bottle containing liquid and then puts them all in one big plastic Ziploc. Her lace up trail shoes sit in a grocery bag, her sunscreens in another Ziploc.

I say, “Can it be a no hiking trip?”

“Are you packed?” Tammy selects earrings from her wooden jewelry box and wraps them in a little cloth pouch.

“I don’t want to go home.”

She stops folding L. L. Bean T shirts and REI khaki shorts with pockets galore, and looks at me.

I say, “Every time I think about Terrance, I get sick to my stomach.” The iron smell of his breath, the slick feel of his fingers, the throaty groans he makes—things I shouldn’t know at all.

Tammy finishes folding and sighs. “Me, too,” she says. She sits down next to me on her bed, the leaf-print bedspread fluffing between us, and drapes her arm around my shoulders.

I lean my head into her warm chest. “And you know how Mom changes her mind,” I say. “What if she won’t let us stay with her?”

Tammy kisses the crown of my head and stands up. “You can’t worry about things that may or may not happen.” She kneels and rummages through a drawer in the side of her bed frame. “You just have to deal with whatever comes.”

I wring my hands together. “How?” I say. I sound so young I’m not sure it’s my voice that comes out of my mouth.

Tammy stops poking through patterned Lycra and pats my knee. “You trust your instincts,” she says. “And call me if he does anything”—she pauses and stares into space like she can pluck the appropriate word from the air—“creepy,” she says.

I mutter, “He’s always creepy.”

She cocks her head to the side. “You’d tell me, or someone, if he was ever…inappropriate with you, right?”

I think of all the ways he’s been inappropriate, but Tammy means illegally. I nod.

“Good,” she says, clearly happy to be changing subjects. “Now, which suit?” She holds up a flowery green-and-black one-piece swimsuit with the sides cut out and a racerback two-piece with orange stripes.

“Why not ask me?” Sam says, appearing in Tammy’s bedroom
doorway. “Oh, definitely the black,” he says and swoops Tammy up in his arms. She doesn’t squeal like Mom but her long arms go around his shoulders and she smiles with all her teeth. I disappear as promised.

Sam and Tammy leave for Hawaii the next morning. They hold hands walking through the gate; just another couple on vacation in their linen pants and button up shirts. I spend my flight to Sacramento visualizing myself with toes buried in white sand, lounging next to palm trees with the glinting sapphire blue of the ocean stretching forever in front of me.

As my plane descends into California’s Central Valley, I know the grasslands and meadows, the water-soaked rice fields, the tree-lined streets, and squat foothills of home will be visible soon. The early evening sun sits low in the sky, and from the plane it looks close enough to touch. It glows a deep hazy orange, and its outline shimmers on the horizon as the pilot announces we’ll be landing in ten minutes. The countryside below is sectioned off in squares of green and brown, with rivers that look like chocolate milk running across the checkerboard farmland. I already know what the air will smell like when we land: earthy dirt and fresh cut grass, silty river mud and wet tree bark, roses and cherry blossoms. Manure, car exhaust, skunk, and sometimes raw sewage are mixed in, too, but it’s the smell of home.

Terrance’s giant Mexican family shows
up for Noah’s party: his dad and stepmom, Gary and Carol, his aunts, uncles, cousins, and their kids of all ages, his twin half-cousins Jorge and Jose, who have also been locked up, and his grandma Lucero, a seventy-eight-year-old woman who brings her own gallon of gin and says, “No thanks, dear,” when my mom offers her anything more than a glass. Terrance grills hamburgers on the barbeque and all his male relatives hold cans of Budweiser, and the women, except Lucero, nurse red plastic cups of gin and tonic. They all have black hair and Noah’s tan skin, and I’m not sure how but Mom is as dark-skinned as Jaime and I used to get during summers spent at the apartment pool, and her dirty blond hair doesn’t stand out as much as the gold in ours.

Kids from Noah’s day care are here, too, two- to five-year-olds, some in diapers, some with parents, all running around the grassy courtyard outside our apartment building. Tablecloths cover the picnic tables and one holds buns, pickles, onions, tomatoes, plastic bottles of ketchup and mustard, and white jars of mayo. Mom’s famous potato salad and Gary’s special smoked wieners in barbeque sauce sit in bowls next to the sodas and beer on another
table. Terrance pulls burgers and hot dogs off the flames and piles them on plates. Mom runs around, herding children, setting up the piñata, asking if anyone needs another drink, accepting invitations to family camping trips and summer concerts. She wears a low V neck spandex T shirt and a jean skirt, and smiles her big-toothed, small-lipped smile that looks genuine unless you know her.

We watch her from the table farthest from the barbeque and Jaime says, “When did Mom start wearing tight clothes?”

I say, “You didn’t have to see her nightgowns when he first got out.”

“Is this a new jacket?” She fingers the foamy black microfiber raincoat Tammy bought for me. It’s not a hand me down and it fits well. I don’t tell her it’s from Gap. I shrug. “Salt Lake is cold.”

“Dad won’t even buy me new underwear.” She picks at a hole in the vinyl checkerboard tablecloth. “Too bad Aunt Tammy hates me.”

“She doesn’t hate you.”

“She likes you better,” Jaime says. “You’re just like her.”

“She’s your family, too,” I say.

“So is Dad.”

“Is he looking for a job?”

“He had an interview yesterday,” she says. “And we’re looking for an apartment downtown where it’s cheap.” Through the hole in the tablecloth, she scratches at the green paint of the picnic table. Her nails are chewed to the skin like mine. “Dad circles places he can afford, and I call and make appointments.”

“How many have you looked at?”

“None yet,” Jaime says. She doesn’t have to tell me that Dad canceled, or didn’t show up, or couldn’t drive. “Some sound really cool.”

“You really want to live with just him?” I say.

“He said I can have the bedroom and he’ll sleep on the couch,” she says.

“That’s closer to the door,” I say.

“You could come, too,” she says. “Dad said if you live with us, we can afford a bigger place.”

“Does he think I have a job or something?”

She shrugs. “He’s still mad you went to Utah,” she says. “He says you abandoned us.” My nostrils flare. He’s not even here and he knows exactly how to get to me.

I almost say, “Is that what you think?” but I don’t know if I can handle the answer. I think of my room at Tammy’s, my full-sized bed, my glass shower doors, the homemade dinners. After life at Tammy’s, even with Sam around, TV dinners and sleeping on crumby couches wouldn’t come close to tolerable.

“It wasn’t my first choice,” I say.

“He said he’d share the child support money with us.”

“So that’s what he wants,” I say. I shake my head, where a little spiral of awareness is churning.

“Dad says you ruined everything,” she says. “He said we could have been a family again.” She lowers her head. “He says you’re being selfish.”

“Me?” He’s telling Jaime what to say to me so I’ll move in with him and he can take money he doesn’t deserve from Mom to continue to not take care of his children. I wish Jaime could see how
selfish he really is. “Jaime,” I say, putting my arm around her shoulder. “He’s manipulating you. He just wants cash so he can get away from Crystal.”

She shrugs off my embrace. “It’s not like I have anywhere else to go,” she says, rubbing her eye.

“You could come live with us in Utah,” I say. “It would be great to have you there.”

“No way,” Jaime says. “It’s too far.”

“Maybe he’ll work things out with Crystal,” I say. Since his plan for cash failed, there’s a good chance he’ll try.

“She swung a baseball bat at his head and kneed him in the balls,” she says. “Dad’s tired of her abuse.”

I laugh and Jaime says, “What?”

“Aww,” I say. “Poor Dad.”

“She’s really violent.”

I say, “It’s his karma for hitting Mom.”

“He didn’t hit Mom,” she says. “She lies.”

“She does,” I say. “But Dad still beat the shit out of her.”

“Whatever,” Jaime says and walks toward the apartment neither of us lives in but both call home. I watch the way her hips move, how long her hair is down her back, the blond strands that are darker than mine swaying with each step. She wears makeup now, blue eyeliner and thick mascara Mom would never allow but Crystal encourages. My little sister is almost as tall as I am, her boobs have grown as big as mine in the months we’ve been separated, and her voice scratches in her throat enough to reveal her smoking habits. Without my protective shadow, she’s sprouted like a weed and nearly closed the gap between us. I remember when
she couldn’t fall asleep without holding my hand; when two years felt like a chasm.

Noah is ripping bright-yellow and
baby-blue wrapping paper off boxes of LEGOs and Barney videos when Jaime comes back, reeking of cigarettes. “How obvious can you be?” I say.

“Whatever,” she says. “Mom’s not paying attention to us.” She coughs. “Half these wetbacks smoke, anyway.”

My eyes go wide and I say, “Jaime, you shouldn’t talk like that.”

She laughs. “Dad totally said you’d freak out.”

“What an ass.”

“You’re an ass,” she says and laughs again but it turns into a hacking cough.

“That’s what you get for smoking,” I say.

“At least I have fun sometimes.”

Noah opens books and clothes from the now tipsy aunts, a dancing chicken from Grandma Lucero, and from my mom, a lion puppet with a fuzzy mane, a two-foot tail, and big brown eyes. It wears a jean jacket with a gold star on the back and has a hole up its back for the puppeteer. Noah squeezes the furry animal to his chest. “He’s into puppets right now,” Mom says to the crowd.

“Simba,” Noah says.

“Simba!” a few toddlers echo.

“And
The Lion King
,” my mom says and laughs.