Trigger (6 page)

“Um, I—no.” I lowered my head, but lifted it again in a hurry. Pragmatics, Hatch. “Credit cards. I came to see Mama Rush. I need to talk to her, please?”

“I’m sorry.” Her fingers were moving toward the button again. “Without an apartment number, you can’t visit a
resident. You’ll have to leave and come back when you know it.”

“Please?” My face heated up. Part anger, part frustration. “I’ve got to talk to her to see if she remembers me, to find out if she’s mad at me. It’s the first number on my list, and the second number’s already blown to hell—oops, sorry I cursed. Desert credit cards. I mean, thieves and murderers. I need a sock.”

Meki Shansu Residential Director’s fingers were millimeters from her blue button when a deep, scratchy voice behind me said, “Back off, Attila the Red. This one’s okay.”

The woman with the headset frowned, but she once more lowered her hand. Without comment, she strode away, probably to find some other thief, murderer, or credit card fiend.

I turned around.

Mama Rush was sitting behind me on a bright purple mobility scooter. Her right hand rested on the controls, and she had a half-smoked stubbed-out cigarette in her left hand.

“You finally got around to showing up, huh?” Her voice rasped like an old movie actress, but her fuzzy white hair and bowling-pin shape didn’t look so Hollywood. She had big black eyes, huge eyes, framed by gold-rimmed glasses, and when she blinked at me, I knew I was supposed to answer.

“Yeah. I mean, no. I mean, credit cards.” I fidgeted, clutching my memory book.

Mama Rush’s lips were as red as that blue-button woman’s dress had been, and when she smiled, she looked friendlier. The smile vanished as quickly as it came and the grumpy old general on the purple scooter returned. I
adored her. It was nice to find familiar feelings in the middle of all the strangeness.

“Well, come on back outside. If we’re gonna talk, I want to smoke.” She rubbed knobby fingers over her chin. Her gold and green robes whispered with the scooter’s movement, and the scooter barely made any noise at all. Just the softest hum against the royal blue carpet. I followed as fast as I could, noticing that I could still smell her. Smoke and apples, and something spicy I couldn’t name—except it lingered, even if she left. Just like Before. When I was little, I used to think she followed Todd and me everywhere we went. Smoke and apples. Something hadn’t changed. Thank God. Something was the same.

“Apples,” I muttered as we headed out side doors that swung open without us having to push a button or anything. Mama Rush was here, and she was on a purple scooter, and she was driving to a patio with lots of metal tables and metal chairs and stand-up ashtrays.

“Slow down, Apple Boy,” she called over her shoulder. I could see her big eyes in the rearview mirror of the scooter. “The way you’re hopping, you’re gonna fall.”

I did what she said. She was right, too. King Jersey the Apple Boy was about to fall right on his ugly freak face. Slower. Slower. Balance check. The present bag crunched and rattled as it swung back and forth. Slow. Slow. Slow steps over to the metal table Mama Rush had picked. She parked her scooter with a jerk, switched it off, eased up from the seat, and stood. By that time, I had reached the table.

All I could do was stare at her. Mama Rush. I was really looking at her, and so far she was talking to me.

“Go on,” she finally said, pointing her unlit cigarette at one of the metal chairs. “Sit.”

I put the memory book on the metal mesh of the table, started to sit, and remembered the bag.

“Here.” I thrust out my bad arm, bag dangling from my wrist. “I made you some presents. Only, I think some of them are broken. Apples. I fell on them and they got banged on my leg and stuff and I haven’t looked and—”

“I know. Leza told me.” Mama Rush sighed, tucked her cigarette behind her left ear, and worked at untying the bag from my wrist. She had long fingers like Leza, and her skin was the same perfect ebony, smooth and silky looking, except it had a few wrinkles. Funny. I always thought Todd looked more like her than Leza did. But that was Before and this was After and lots of things had changed.

“After,” I muttered. “Credit card apples.”

Mama Rush finished untying the bag and put it on the table. She didn’t react to what I said, not even a glance up to stare at my scars or anything. Instead, she yanked her cigarette out from behind her ear, fished a lighter out of her pocket, and settled herself in a chair. The green and gold robes cascaded like a waterfall between the arms and the seat. “Well, we’ll see what’s salvageable, you and me. Now sit down like I said, boy.”

“Waterfall,” I said, and I sat.

chapter 5

Mama Rush lit her cigarette and smacked her yellow lighter down on the table, all the while keeping her gold-rimmed eyes trained directly on mine. I felt like she was staring into my busted brain, counting how many cells I had left.

“You look better than you did last time I saw you.” She took a drag, then pointed to her throat. “Got those tubes out and everything.”

“Yes, ma’am.” I squirmed in my chair, pressing my good hand against the cover of my memory book. I was keeping it in front of me on the table, a white shield with my name down the spine.

“You stupid, or you got some smarts left?”

I smiled. My muscles relaxed, even on my bad side. Something hadn’t changed. Mama Rush hadn’t changed. She wasn’t talking to me like I was an alien or a freak. “Freak smarts. I mean, I’ve got some smarts. My words get messed up. Stuck on things, like waterfalls and credit card blue. It’s harder in the real world. Waterfalls.”

She nodded, taking another slow draw on her cigarette. “That’s what all the pamphlets said. Stuff about how thoughts and words keep running through your head, and how you’ll say them whether or not you want to.” Drag, exhale. “I’ve been reading a lot about brain injury. And Leza pretty much gave me a blow-by-blow of your fight with Todd, before you ask.” Drag, exhale.

Smoke swirled around her, making her look like a gold and green djinni rising out of the metal chair. A djinni with white fuzzy hair and a low scratchy voice. It would have been cool if she could grant wishes, but then, she sort of was granting a wish just by seeing me.

“Djinni,” I said, then put my good hand over my mouth.

“I don’t care what you say, so long as I can understand you when it counts. Put your hand down.”

I put my hand in my lap. She fiddled with her cigarette, then stared at me in that brain-cell-counting way. “I didn’t come to see you again because it was too hard to look at you all messed up like that.”

My turn to nod. I sort of wished I smoked.

“Hate hospitals, too, if you’ll remember.”

Another nod from me. I did remember. “Leza said it’s my fault.”

“What, you shooting yourself in the head? I’d say yeah, that’s a definite.” Mama Rush cackled, then puffed her cigarette nub once more before discarding it into the stand-up ashtray beside her.

I didn’t cackle. For a second or two, I couldn’t even breathe, and not because of the smoke. Because Mama Rush believed it. Mama Rush thought I’d been shot in the
head—and she sounded pretty sure I was the one who pulled the trigger.

Mama Rush believed I shot myself.

If she believed it, then I should believe it, right? But maybe she only believed it because everyone told her that was what happened. Okay, so I didn’t have a car wreck, but somebody else could have shot me, right? I tried to breathe and coughed. I wondered if I should ask her how she found out, just to be sure, but then I remembered what I was really trying to ask her.

“Not me and well—that. I mean, you.” I pointed back to the building. “Being here. It’s my fault, right?”

This time I got raised eyebrows. Two fuzzy white eyebrows. “Hadn’t thought of it that way. Back in the day, when I first retired from the counseling center, I took care of Todd and Leza.” She pulled out a pack of cigarettes and placed them on the table beside her lighter. I couldn’t make out the label, but the pack was green. It matched her robes. Green. Green and gold.

I tensed a little, trying not to let my nerves make my thoughts go nuts.

“Nothing like an old social worker in a house full of young people,” Mama Rush continued. “Todd, his anger bugged me, and Leza kept staying home to look after me—then, yeah, you did what you did and all in all, I thought they needed their space and I needed mine.” She took out a fresh cigarette. “Besides, my boyfriend lives over here in the wing next to mine. It’s easier to see each other when we don’t have to drive.”

“I can’t drive,” I said, feeling sympathetic. “Keep failing the adaptive test.”

“The written part?”

“No. The therapist part. Four hours, everybody staring and taking notes.” I waved my good hand. “Yuck.”

“You mean, to get your license, you have to drive around with a bunch of therapists for four solid hours?” She lit her cigarette and clucked between puffs. “That’s nasty. They don’t even do that to us old folks. Not yet, anyways.”

“Brain injury.” I tapped the scar on my temple.

“Stupid-mark, that’s what I see. Your big red stupid-mark.”

My finger rested on the temple scar. “Stupid-mark,” I agreed. If I really did shoot my own self in the head, that was yeah, a definite, like she said.

“So now, maybe since you got such a big stupid-mark so early in your life, you won’t need another?”

I tapped the scar. “One.” Moved my finger to the C-scar on the other side of my head. “Two.” Then to my throat, to the healed tracheotomy hole. “Three.”

Mama Rush let out another loud cackle. “Well, if you got three stupid-marks, I’d say you’re all through with stupid for a while.”

“All through.” I grinned and only thought about my half-flat mouth for a second.

A minute passed, with Mama Rush doing her impression of the gold and green djinni with white fuzzy hair. “You going back to your school when the time comes?”

“Green Rangers. Yes.” I grinned again. “Like your robes.”

She looked down at her colors and chuckled. “Yeah, well. Listen, about school—are your parents making you go to the same school, or are you just an idiot?”

“Idiot?” I meant to say,
what?
Or,
why?
It really was
harder to think out in the world. Lots harder to talk. Pressure. “Fuzzy white.”

“Boy, do you have any idea—they did assemblies about you. Three or four of them. Had doctors and suicide preventers and all kinds of folks talking to the kids. Two others tried to off themselves after you—did you know that?”

“N-No.” My hands started to shake, first the bad, then the good. I thought about Kerry Brandt hanging up on me, and me hanging up on Alan’s mom.

Don’t waste my time
.

I’d rather you didn’t call here
.

“I’m not sure you’ll find much welcome there,” Mama Rush said.

“But I’ve got to go back. I asked to go back. How could I go anywhere else? The answers might be there. People who knew me before I looked like … like this. I can do it. Up and forward.”

“Oh, I see. You want me to give you platitudes.”

“Platitudes.” I was feeling like a parrot, wondering what she wanted me to say. The stupid-mark in my right temple tingled. I pressed against the jagged dent, thinking for the hundredth time, too bad it wasn’t a magic mark like I’d read about in books. At least that would be worth something. If it kept me from being stupid for a while, though, maybe it was a little magic at least.

Mama Rush just sat waiting and smoking, a dark djinni of knowledge who wasn’t about to share a bit of wisdom with me.

“Smoking isn’t bad for you. Is that a platitude?”

“No, boy.” Her huge eyes reflected disappointment. “That would be a flat lie. I’m an ancient overweight black
woman with hypertension. These things’ll kill me, probably sooner than later.”

She took a drag and let out a slow plume of smoke. I watched it curl through the air, inching toward me until a breeze blew it to nothing. Smoke. Plume. Nothing. These things’ll kill me. I wished she wouldn’t smoke them.

“Let’s try this again, Jersey. I could tell you that going back to your old school takes lots of courage, that the other kids might have some trouble, but sooner or later they’ll come around. I could tell you that you’re better off than you were, that shooting yourself in the head made you stronger.” She paused, drew on the cigarette, and stared at me.

“Lies,” I said. My scars itched, but I kept still. Smoke.

“Lies. Of a sort, yes. Designed to make you feel better. I could give you truths instead, but truths hurt a lot.”

“That’s okay. Truths from you, please.”

“You were a big-time athlete—and a big-time player.” She talked in a hurry, like she intended to finish no matter what. “You had a future in sports or at least in college, just like my grandson. Then, God knows why, you went home, put your father’s pistol to the side of your thick head, and you pulled the trigger.”

“How do you know that? For sure, I mean. Thick head. Trigger—me, pulling it. How do you know I shot myself?” I realized I was talking fast, too, almost imitating her. I was about to ask again because I couldn’t slow down, but she knocked me quiet with a glare that would have dropped a charging rhinoceros.

“What did you ask me?”

That didn’t come out fast at all. That question came out slow, trickling, each word overpronounced, and her lips
barely moved. Even with brain damage, I knew better than to open my mouth. Putting on a suit of armor might have been smart, but I didn’t have one.

She didn’t take a puff or twitch or anything. “I can’t believe …”

Socks. Socks. Socks. Socks. Thick head. Trigger. Armor. I wanted to scream. By the time Mama Rush spoke again, I felt like I’d been sent to hell and dragged back out.

“You listen to me like you’ve never listened before. If you ever want to get better, if you ever want to fix anything in your life, you own up to your choices.
You
did this to yourself. You shot yourself in the head, boy. Now look me in the eye and say it.”

My mouth fell open. My brain shouted for me to do it that second. But I couldn’t. How could I own up to something I didn’t really believe?