Hand Me Down (28 page)

Tammy calls Deborah’s the next
day while I’m out by the pool, but Ashley tells her I don’t have phone privileges. Hours later when I come inside, I rip the phone from Ashley’s hand as she smirks, but I restrain myself from elbowing her in the ribs or punching her braces and coating the inside of her mouth with tiny cuts. “You can’t use the phone,” she says. “You’re not allowed.”

“I’m not trying to steal your mom,” I say. Ashley stares at me. “I’m sorry she ignores you, but it’s not my fault.”

Ashley says, “My mom feels sorry for your pathetic family.”

I sigh. “I know.”

“Because you’re losers.”

“Some of us are trying to change that,” I say. “You have something in your teeth.” She jumps up and runs into the bathroom.

I dial Tammy’s number as I walk into Jaime’s room and pace back and forth on my toes, bath towel wrapped around my waist, a T shirt thrown on over Rachel’s bikini top. My throat is dry, my hands tremble. I put my tongue between my teeth to keep them from rattling.
Please be there
. The phone rings three times and I can see the white base and handset sitting on her phone table in the kitchen next to her Georgia O’Keeffe address book and pile of grocery coupons.
Pick up, pick up.
Four times and I can see the rosewood floors and cabinets, the antique table and green place mats to match the green walls we painted. Five times and Sam’s voice says to leave a message.

I say, “Tammy? It’s me, Liz, and I miss you so much. I just wanted to talk to you. There have been some big changes here and I heard you went to Ireland and…” I start crying. When her answering machine beeps I throw the phone at Jaime’s bed and cry until the acid rivers have been drained.

At dinner, the doorbell rings
as Winston is saying grace. He ignores it until we say, “Amen.” Biscuit barks when it rings again, a quick, shrill ding-dong, and Deborah jumps up like she was waiting for a package. She says, “I’ll get it,” and glances at me. I pretend not to notice, but wonder what she has up her “Project Elizabeth” sleeve for this evening.

“Probably a salesman,” Winston says. “We don’t need a new vacuum!” He flaps his flowered paper napkin open and tucks it into the collar of his blue work shirt, now unbuttoned at the top.

“What if they’re selling Bibles?” I say.

“We don’t need any more of those, either,” he says.

Matt says, “Dad, can we get a basketball hoop?” His napkin is also tucked into the neck of his T shirt, though he never makes a mess.

“Whatever for?” Winston says.

“For playing basketball.”

Ashley says, “How about a karaoke machine?” She turns to Jaime. “Wouldn’t that be awesome?”

“So awesome,” Jaime says.

Winston says, “Kids, we’re not buying anything. It costs enough to feed this house.”

Deborah says, “Liz,” from the door just as Winston says, “Who was it?” and stands up. We both walk toward the entryway.

Mom stands near the door in too-tight jeans with Noah on her hip. I guess she was serious about visiting. “See, I told you I would come to see my girls,” she says and sets Noah down on the white and tan tile. He rubs his eyes and clings to Mom’s knee. “Don’t I get a hug?” she says and moves toward me, arms out in front of her.

I stand there, frozen and scowling, so she settles for rubbing my shoulder, her smile fading.

“Hi, Mom,” Jaime says, coming up behind me. She hugs her and Mom’s smile perks back up, but her shiny, grayish tooth peeks through her lips and I know she’s faking it.

I pick Noah up and kiss his cheek. He smells like corn chips and Johnson’s Baby Shampoo. “Hey, little man.”

“Linda, what a surprise,” Winston says, glancing at Deborah and hooking his thumbs under his black belt.

I put Noah down and he whines so I pick him back up. “Liz!” he says and snuggles his baby face into my neck. “Come home.” Rubber bands snap in my chest, but I will not cry.

Deborah says, “Linda, would you like to join us for dinner?” She leads Mom into the dining room. We all follow, Biscuit jumping as high as Mom’s cleavage and her swatting at his pointy nose each time.

“Oh, no, I don’t want to impose,” Mom says. “We already ate.”

“We’re almost finished,” Deborah says. “Liz, would you like to skip doing your dishes to spend some time with your mother?”

Ashley glares at me as I set Noah down and kiss the top of his head. “No, thanks,” I say and sit at the table.

“Give her a little while,” Deborah tells Mom. “She’ll come around.”

I stare at my tuna macaroni casserole; stab a couple of peas with my fork. I imagine they’re little green bullets, bullets I could load into one of Winston’s guns. I visualize the shots piercing Mom’s chest, splintering her skin, and in my mind I squeeze the trigger until it clicks empty.

Later that night, Mom knocks
on the guest bedroom door where I’m writing in my journal. I haven’t gone back to the counselor with her prominently hung wooden cross, but I consider this release of thoughts my own private therapy.

“Can I talk to you without getting verbally abused?” Mom says. I shrug, but mentally I am donning my armor, the exoskeleton made of silver shields and chain mail, and a thick helmet that protects my eyes. “That was a joke,” she says.

“Ha ha.” I sit up.

“You look pink,” Mom says and I know I’ve gotten sunburned, all that time lying out by the pool.

“It’ll turn tan,” I say. “Remember how brown we used to get?”

She smiles. “Like little Indians.”

Mom sits on the edge of Jaime’s bed. She jumps a little and then pulls a pager from her pocket. Her face tenses as she checks the screen. “You have a pager?” I say. “Didn’t you say those were for drug dealers?”

“It’s nothing,” Mom says, slipping the black plastic square back into her jeans. She crosses her legs and clasps her hands on top of
her knee. “Things are okay here, right?” I stare at her. “And it’s not that far from home,” she says.

I still have boxes at Tammy’s, boxes at Mom’s, and am living out of duffel bags here. “I don’t have a home,” I say. “Thanks to you.”

“I’m sorry, Liz, okay?” She grabs Snuggly from Jaime’s pillow and wrings his neck.

“It doesn’t matter if you’re sorry,” I say and close the journal that Tammy put in my Easter basket. We’d taken our decorated hard-boiled eggs to the top of City Creek Canyon instead of going to church, lay with the sun’s warmth on our faces and the creek’s clinking in our ears. I take a deep breath and prepare my shields. “I want to go back to Tammy’s.”

“That was temporary,” Mom says.

“I want to ask Tammy if I can live there longer.”

“What about asking me?” she says.

I say, “Can I live with you?” Mom makes an “uh” sound in her throat and shuts her eyes. “I didn’t think so.”

She sighs and drops her chin to her chest. “If it makes you feel any better, I’m pretty unhappy right now, too.”

I roll my eyes. “You married a flasher.”

“He made a mistake.”

“He shows other women his penis.”

“He has a disease,” she says. “An addiction.”

“If I start doing heroin, can I come home?”

“Watch your smart mouth,” she says, her head snapping up.

“Did you ever think that he might scare us?” I say, my heart starting to rev up. “That maybe he’s been inappropriate with your adolescent daughters?”

She stares at me for a full thirty seconds without blinking. Then shakes her head like she’s trying to erase what’s inside. “He would never hurt you girls,” she says. “He loves you.”

I scoff. “Love is not the word I would use.”

“He’s your stepfather,” she says.

“No, he’s your husband,” I say.

She opens her mouth, closes it, and pinches the bridge of her nose. She eyes me. “Do you want to tell me something?”

I consider opening up, liberating all the images of Terrance’s behavior from their flimsy cage in my mind, but she would never believe me. She can’t, because to admit the truth would be to admit she made the same mistake she’d made with Dad and endangered her children again for a man unwilling to change.

“Please just let me go back to Tammy’s,” I say, looking into her eyes, trying to make her see that this is what I want, what I need.

She turns away and stands up next to the bed, wiggles to adjust the waist of her jeans. “I’d prefer you stay close to home, with Jaime—”

“And her best friend Ashley.”

“In a family environment, with Christian influences—”

I say, “Don’t forget the guns.”

“Deborah said she’d love to have you.”

“So she can fix me.” I gather my knees to my chest, anchor my back to the wall behind me. “Tammy just wants me to be myself. To be happy.”

Mom straightens her glasses. “I know, I know. Tammy is soo great,” she says, mocking. “Did she bribe you or something?”

“You said you thought we’d get along,” I say and shrug. “You
were right.” And Tammy would never let a pervert into her house, or her bed, or her children’s lives.

“Liz,” she says, her voice sinking into her lecture tone. “I know how hard this must be.”

I try to clear the rising ache in my throat. “You don’t,” I say.

“I do,” she says and I think of her and Tammy moving out of their abusive stepmom’s place as teenagers, receiving money as the only form of support from their inattentive father, and I wonder why she’s doing this to me if she knows. “But I also know you need stricter guidelines,” she says.

I almost laugh. “Terrance can’t even keep his pants on.”

“Don’t you talk to me like that,” she says. She takes a breath. “I am still your mother.”

I say, “Not if I could choose.”

I think I see hurt flare in her eyes for a split second before she shoots out her arm and grips my chin with one hand. She squeezes my cheeks with her poorly painted nails.

“You’re not as smart as you think you are, and you are not an adult,” she says and digs her fingers deeper into my face. “I deserve your respect and this back talk stops now.” She releases my chin with a jerk and throws my head back.

I taste blood in my mouth and I have no snappy comeback. She smooths the thighs of her jeans with her palms and exhales. She says, “You will live here, where I know you’re being monitored.”

My shields feel cracked, but I can’t give up yet. “I don’t want to stay here,” I say quietly. In my head I’m mending all my armor, restacking my fortress.

“You don’t have a choice,” Mom says. I test my defenses, my battle
weapons: weakened but not useless. I shoot poison-tipped arrows from my eyes at her back. She turns to me, her hand on the knob. “This is for your own good,” she says. Her wrist rotates. I spring.

I throw my journal at her head and when she ducks, eyes reflected shock-wide in her glasses, I leap forward and slam the door shut so she’s trapped with me. I smash my palm against the white door. “You want to know why I don’t respect you?”

Mom spins faster than I thought she could move. She grabs my hand and twists me around, away from the door. “Because you’re a mouthy teenager who needs a good spanking,” she says and shoves me toward the bed.

Her hands feel like clamps and she’s twice my weight but I don’t stop struggling. “Because you’re a selfish bitch in denial!” I’m rammed face-first into the comforter, and I wait for the blow. I remember other spankings with long wooden spoons or plastic hairbrushes, Jaime and I lined up against our beds, butts out and eyes clenched, waiting for the slap sound that comes before the sting, but Deborah opens the door before Mom can whack me.

Deborah says, “What on earth is going on in here?”

“Elizabeth attacked me,” Mom says, loosening her grip. “She’s completely out of control.”

I jump up off the mattress, my hair in my face, my ears ringing. “You’re out of control!” My heartbeat throbs in my temples, blood pulses in my fingertips. I feel like I could breathe fire. I say, “I hate you.”

Mom takes a step toward me but I raise my clenched fists, let the lightning that’s always just below the surface flash in my eyes and she backs off. “What is wrong with you?” she says.

“This is my life.” I don’t blink, don’t take my eyes off hers, the greenish tint we share, our wavy hair, those cheeks worth showing off. I remember when she said she’d die for us.

Mom says, “You need to calm down.”

My fists, still raised to my shoulders, quake in the air. My skin itches over muscles ready to burst. Mom puts her hand to her mouth and her face crumples like a frameless paper lamp. She takes a step back. She whispers, “Just like David.”

I think of my father’s indiscriminate blows, his face vacant, his eyes bright and pupils huge, and I know it’s not the same. But it’s too close. Instead of the punch I want to launch I say through gritted teeth, “Maybe you deserved to get hit then, too.” It feels good for a second, satisfying, like breaking my fingers against her chin. Mom lunges and slaps my cheek.

Deborah gasps. “Elizabeth,” she says. “This is your mother.”

I cradle my face, look away from Mom’s glowing eyes. I wonder if mine look the same, evenly matched arsenals of rage in our round faces. “She’s doing a bang up job, too,” I say, rubbing my jaw.

Mom says, “I’m doing the best I can.”

“Nothing you do anymore is for us,” I say.

“It’s all for you girls,” she says. “I’ve been trying to keep you safe.”

“You unleashed a predator,” I say.

“He never hurt you,” she says, her eyes wide.

I feel the fire in my face again, barbed wire in my blood. I say, “If that’s what you think, then Terrance’s stupidity really has rubbed off on you.”

Jaime and Ashley come into the room in their nightgowns:
shiny yellow and skimming the tops of their knees. Ashley says, “Who was screaming?”

Jaime says, “What happened?”

“Girls,” Deborah says. “Why don’t you head back to your room.”

Jaime says, “I’m not leaving Liz.”

Ashley says, “I don’t want to miss the action.”

Deborah says, “Now, both of you.”

I stand taller, still kneading my cheek with my fingers, but proud of Jaime’s strength and glad to be on the same side again. “This is Jaime’s fight, too,” I say. “Mom abandoned both of us.”