Breaking Night (16 page)

“I don’t know how you even live here. You’re old enough now to
do something about it
.” She raised her voice momentarily, but then said with an unsettling calm, “There are places for girls like you.”

This part of the lecture was hardest to hear. She was just the type of person Rick and I would chuck a water balloon at from the roof, I thought. I imagined her reaction: the shriek she would let loose on impact, how it would flatten her cheap hairdo. I’d do it myself, I thought, and I’d fall down laughing.

“You won’t like the homes I can put you in. And let me tell you, if you won’t clean here, you
will
clean there. They’ll have you scrubbing toilets. And the girls there are violent.” I saw myself doubled over toilets dirtier than my own at home, blackened along the edges, slimy and slippery. Large, evil-looking girls dressed in rags stood behind me to supervise. “But I’ll take you out of here if that’s what you want. All you gotta do is not attend school and you
will
go.” Here came her favorite part; you could tell by the half smile on her face, like she worked all day just to be able to deliver this one line. “It’s shape up or ship out, Elizabeth; pick one,” she said.

Her face twisted into something between revulsion and exasperation. “Don’t you want to get your life together, young lady? You ever think about that?” She enjoyed this; I could sense it coming off her, like heat. There wasn’t a trace of good intention in any of it, I knew in my gut. Like so many social workers who disciplined me, Ms. Cole enjoyed being angry; she savored the performance.

Where was the caring that would have made her words effective?
“Get your life together.”
People said things like that all the time, but who could explain, nuts and bolts, what they meant? Who was trying to
show
me why I should care about school and keeping an apartment clean? Didn’t adults see the size of those words, the way they were bigger than my understanding, and how the gaps between were wide enough for me to fall deep inside them? What was the connection between what I woke up to every day and the vague goals she expected of me? What was she talking about? If an education and a job were so important, then why didn’t my parents have either?
“Get your life together.”
What did that even look like? Was I supposed to make sense of that myself? If not, how could I decipher it from Ms. Cole’s lectures? Especially when she explained things to me with such angry self-righteousness.

I was furious, but I did my best to appear calm, especially as Ms. Cole delivered the punch line when I walked her to the front door, briefcase in hand, her long, curly nail wagging at me.

“You know, Elizabeth, if I really wanted to, I could take you today. Actually, I could come in here and take you any day I want to. Remember that. I’m just being nice.”

If this was her being nice, I couldn’t imagine Ms. Cole’s idea of antagonistic.

Back inside, Ma was already lying down, pillow drawn over her head. The clock said it was just before three; Lisa would be home soon. I was shutting my bedroom door when Ma spoke, muddled from under the pillow.

“Lizzy, did you pack groceries today? I mean do you have any cash? I could really use five bucks.”

“No, I’m broke today, Ma.”

She turned over and made a noise, half moan, half grunt. There was a penny stuck to her butt cheek. A tremble ran up my body, then quickly subsided. I didn’t know whether or not I wanted to be upset at her, or if she just made me sad. I went to my room and sprawled across my bed, realizing that I felt only numb. Ma began crying into her pillow, loudly. I stared up at the ceiling and felt absolutely nothing inside.

That night, Leonard Mohn came by with a paycheck. He, Ma, and Daddy binged for hours. In my bedroom, I could hear them make their rounds, beer bottles clanking, footsteps, the front door opening and slamming continuously. At one point, I came out and called Rick and Danny’s house. I cupped my shirt over my nose to filter the cloud of cigarette smoke and made plans with the guys, to hang out until the sun came up. We might sneak into the movies or just walk and see what we could find to do.

As I pulled my sweater over my head to get ready, something in Ma and Leonard’s conversation caught my attention. They were whispering about something, about someone. Leonard’s neurotic foot-tapping drowned out some words. I stood perfectly still and listened.

They were discussing a man Ma knew from the bar. From what I could tell, someone she had known for a while, and had recently begun to connect with. His name, or the nickname that everyone knew him by, was Brick.

“I don’t know, Leonard. He listens to me, ya know. I like that. I’ve missed being with a man who listens. We have a good time together, ya know?”

It was a man Ma was
seeing
.

“Oh Jeanie, don’t let go of a man who makes you feel good. I wouldn’t. Men with careers are so much more mature.” Leonard whispered the next part:
“Go for it, Jean
.
You deserve better.”

I could have thrown Leonard out of the house with my hands. There he was, one minute smiling in Daddy’s face and the next, telling Ma to go for another man. He was as two-faced as he was mean. Listening to them continue, it took me a while to fully grasp what had been going on, but I soon understood that Ma had been seeing this man for a while. I eavesdropped, hearing her describe the money he spent on her, their lovemaking, and how much she liked the fact that he didn’t use drugs at all, he just drank to ease his nerves sometimes. The descriptions became more fleshed-out as I stood there, each detail bringing Brick closer to being a real person, all the while threatening Daddy, and the foundation of our family.

Brick made a good living, with benefits, working as a security guard at a fancy art gallery in Manhattan. Ma boasted that he had been in the navy. In a neighborhood much nicer than ours, Brick had his own, large, one-bedroom apartment and was single. And apparently, I was not the only one spending nights far from home. I got the sense this must mean that Daddy knew.

My eyes made a full sweep of the apartment. In my absence, the house had gone from bad to awful. Everywhere, there were signs of deterioration: busted lights, empty beer bottles, and cigarette butts littered the carpet, more so than ever before. Moistness hung in the air. The grime had an airborne weight that you could feel as you breathed. With Leonard there as Ma’s new shoulder to lean on, with his money, my parents were getting high two and a half weeks out of the month, nonstop. Guilt struck me for all of my drifting; I’d abandoned my role in the apartment and in doing so, I’d let things fall apart.

Daddy came in through the front door, whistling. Ma and Leonard got quiet. I opened and shut my own door, coughed, took a step out into the living room. Ma walked through the room and went to remove her worn-out leather belt from a doorknob to use for an arm tie. “Just a second, Petie,” she called over her shoulder. Daddy was counting off change for a twenty to Leonard.

I opened my mouth, intending to say something to her, but shut it quickly when I realized I had no idea what. The beginning credits to
The Honeymooners
filled the TV screen, the theme music crackling. In no way did Ma’s gestures suggest that she knew I was in the room. I coughed, loudly. She glanced at me, for just a moment. “Petie, I’m getting first,” she said, marching back in with the belt.

Something had stolen away the affection between Ma and me and reduced our interactions to casual, distant ones. Since her diagnosis two years ago, our dynamic hadn’t been the same. I never discussed with anyone what Ma told me that night. Most times I told myself I might have dreamed it; I figured she never told Lisa because otherwise, I was sure she would have said something. It felt as if Ma and I shared a dirty secret, and this seemed to make her afraid of me. The distance she kept told me so. We hardly knew what to say to each other anymore, maybe because so much went unspoken.

Daddy got Ma high first. I could hear her begin to sniffle. Leonard Mohn was next. Daddy took his high to the bathroom, away from them, as he often did. I stood up to go meet Rick just as Leonard began wailing through his high again.

Telling me about her HIV had made me part of the landscape of painful things Ma shot up to escape. I was as certain of this as I was heartbroken by her abandonment. And when I was being honest with myself, despite tremendous efforts not to admit it, the knowledge of her disease made me want to avoid her, too. Being in Ma’s presence was being near the disease, near the knowledge that I was fast losing my mother—information that was just too painful to feel.

I slipped on my backpack, passing the kitchen. Leonard whined from inside, shouting, “Oh, God, Jeanie, my heart is beating so fast. Hold my hand.”

Seeing her clasp his hand sent an ache deep through me. I left quickly, just in time, I was sure, to avoid hearing that same, awful conversation again.

It was a weekday, less than one month later, when I met Brick. Ma let me cut school and brought me down to the art gallery where he worked so that the three of us could eat lunch together, his treat. As we exited the train on Twenty-third street, Ma began fidgeting and appearing obviously uneasy.

“Lizzy, do I look all right? You think this sweater is nice?” She wore a fuzzy pink V-neck sweater and hip-huggers, and she hadn’t had a drink or shot up all day. Her long, curly hair was pinned back neatly. It was the first time in years I’d seen her out of her T-shirts and filthy jeans.

“Yeah, Ma, you look real nice. Don’t worry. Why are you worried whether or not he thinks you’re pretty? Who really cares what he thinks,” I said.

“I do, pumpkin. I like him.”

The words, in their directness, shocked me. It had been a while since Ma and I had been straight with each other; it felt like she was testing it out on me.

“Your ma likes somebody. I haven’t had a crush in years.” She smiled nervously, discarding Daddy altogether.

I knew it was more than Brick making her nervous; it was me, too. After Lisa left for school and Daddy went downtown, it had taken me at least half the morning to convince Ma to let me join her. For the first time in a while, it was just the two of us—even if only for the time until we met up with him and right after, it was just us. I knew she felt awkward because so did I. And though I found myself snapping at Ma, I longed for her to hold my hand, to talk to me, to walk me through this experience. I wanted her to want my opinion, to ask how this whole thing made me feel. But instead, all the way over she’d spoken only about him; of how he was career-oriented, stable, a real family man. I kept quiet and worked out a half plan in my mind: I would check Brick out, and by my disapproving response, Ma would see his flaws, see the flaws in her thinking, too. Our family would be saved.

While we walked, Ma’s descriptions of the gallery seemed full of awe and admiration, as though its professional status were somehow a testament to Brick’s stability. We crossed the street toward a narrow and very tall building, the levels of which were divided floor-to-ceiling by large windows, through which I could already see paintings and sculptures. Ma rushed me in through the side door, an employees’ entrance leading to the gallery’s coat check, where Brick worked, nine to five, alternating between hanging people’s overcoats and standing watch over art.

“Everyone has to get a ticket if they wanna walk around inside the gallery during a show, Lizzy. Normally, you have to pay for ’em, but don’t worry, Brick will get us those for free.” She spoke with pride. I found that the more familiarity she expressed with him, the more of a stranger she felt to me. It made me regret spending so much time being distant. I panicked at the thought that she’d found something more exciting than us. She’d never talked so much about me or Lisa, or expressed pride over how hard
I
worked. As I watched Ma expertly navigate her way through the employee area and confidently maneuver a path to his post, I was suddenly aware of the numerous private visits she’d been making to the gallery. I felt somehow betrayed.

Brick was a bald, stout chain smoker who said very little, but nodded in agreement to most of what Ma had to say. He wanted her; I could tell by the way he stared openly, shamelessly, at her face, her body. I didn’t trust him. I was suspicious of strange men who bought you things; I assumed they were out for something, like Ron.

We ate together at a nearby diner, down the block. I was allowed to pick whatever I wanted from the selection of soups. With my complimentary gallery ticket stub set on the table in front of me, I ran my spoon in circles through my cream of mushroom soup and watched them flirt. Brick slid his hand over Ma’s at the lunch table, right there, rubbing it while she talked, in front of me. His nails were deep yellow, chewed to the quick. Even his fingers looked a bit gnarled at the tips, as though he chewed those as well.

She stared into his eyes while she spoke, not breaking away for a moment. I hadn’t known Ma was capable of such a long attention span.

“I told Lizzy about how big your apartment is, how you get lonely living there by yourself,” she said.

He gave her a confused smile and said in his five-packs-a-day voice, “Jean, I’m okay.”

She slapped his shoulder playfully. “Oh, I know you get lonely, Brick. He tells me he does, Lizzy,” she said, looking back at me for a moment. “You get lonely, Brick, you told me so.” Her laugh was nervous.

When we initially entered the gallery, headed for coat check, I had mistaken a younger man for Brick, a mildly handsome, dark-haired man standing beside him, until Ma approached Brick and threw her arms around his thick neck. He’d been stuffing a tip in his pocket when we arrived. Over Ma’s shoulder, as they hugged, he’d given me a small “
Shhh
,” with a wink and a smile that revealed a damaged set of yellowish teeth, as he pointed above to a tiny, silver sign that read:
NO TIPPING, PLEASE
. Ma couldn’t stop smiling and holding on to him, while I’d stood there, waiting, shifting my weight from foot to foot.