Cracked (4 page)

That is it. I swing the box onto my hip, pivot, and walk directly toward her open window. The look on her perfect old face is fear. By the time I take the five or so steps that put me right next to her car, her window has slid back up.

I decide I’m not taking her shit too. I’ve already taken adult-diaper-fulls of shit from my family today. I shout through the glass, “Lady, this job pays for my mom and Pop’s beer, bought me these shoes, and my bike. That’s all this job is. So, no,
my
job—
this
job—is not to take care of rich shits like you. Either get out of your carriage here and get the freakin’ tax receipt yourself, or tell Tomas to come back and get it for you. Then you can shove that tax paper up your—”

She puts the SUV in reverse and peels out of the parking lot. I’m sure she’s smart enough to fill in the word she didn’t stick around to hear. She looked pretty smart to me.

I carelessly toss the lady’s box into the holding room. Golf shoes tumble out as it lands in the corner. “Ha!” I shout to no one. Just what the poor slobs who shop at Salvy need. Golf shoes. Because they’re playing so much freaking golf.

I walk back outside to find that my mother has come out for her break. Lucky me. She sits on a broken beach chair and lights up. At first she doesn’t notice me. I’ve been out here unloading since I got to work. She scrunches her eyes. I guess she’s noticing my busted cheek. She jumps up and gets in my face. “What did you say to him? Don’t you know you keep your mouth shut?”

I know she’s talking about my grandfather. “Nice to see you, too, Mom. Don’t worry, I think he saved a case for you. He only killed one today.”

She steps on her cigarette and grabs me by the throat. I am probably five inches taller than my mother, but she always has the power.

“You shut your wise ass up. You hear me, Bull? That’s
my
daddy. You shut your stupid, wise ass up.”

Even though my hands are in my pockets, I can feel them shaking again. Mom releases her death grip on my throat but keeps talking. “When are you going to learn? Are you some kind of retard?” She pulls out another cigarette, lights it, and takes a deep drag. “One of these days you’ll learn to keep your mouth shut.”

I stay silent and wish my eyes could drill holes into her skull. I wish the cigarette smoke would pour out of the holes and. . . .

“Are you listening to me? What are you, deaf ? You stupid? Don’t you have something to say?” she barks.

Gotta love my mom. She yells at me because she wants me to keep my wiseass mouth shut. Then she yells at me because I have nothing to say. She’s a confused woman.

I shrug my shoulders and squeeze my hands into fists, pushing them deeper into my front pockets. I watch as she stands on her toes. Then she reaches up and smacks the back of my head. I instinctively pull my hand out of my pocket and rub my head.

“What did you do that for?” I ask her.

“’Cause you’re a shit, that’s why. A stupid shit. Don’t shrug your shoulders at me either. You gonna keep your mouth shut round Pop?”

“I guess,” I say.

She stubs her cigarette out, and we go our separate ways.

It isn’t until the bike ride home that I figure something out: My mother was trying to protect me. She kept saying she wanted me to keep my mouth shut around Pop. Of all people, my mom knows that keeping your mouth shut around Pop means your chances of getting your ass beat drops big-time. At least that’s what I think. It’s the only way she knows how to look out for me, other than threaten and yell and curse and insult me.

I realize something else as I pedal: My mom taught me that guys who hit girls are weak. I know my pop doesn’t feel that way. He rules his roach-infested castle with his fists. And my mom has been on the other side of his fury many times. He won’t punch the ladies. That’s where he draws the line. Instead, he prefers to open-hand slap, shove, and verbally beat down the loves of his life, the apples of his eye.

It’s funny that my pop blames me for my grandmother’s death. No, seriously, it’s funny. I was half-asleep on my bed/sofa one night when my mom and him were wasted and got into a shouting match about it.

“It wasn’t Bull’s fault thah mom died. You shoon’t tell him’nat,” my mother had gargled, a beer can in one hand, a cigarette in the other.

It had taken my pop like thirty seconds to respond to that mouthful. “You gettin’ knocked up like a whore unner tha boardwalk’s what broke her heart.”

I had squeezed my eyes shut. I remember I was nine and had known it was about to get ugly. I’d heard the crumpling of aluminum and then felt a crushed can pelt me in the calf.

“That kid cryin’ every single goddamn second of its life is what killed my Bonnee. First you broke her heart, and then
he
killed her.”

I’d heard a chair slide across the kitchen floor, and then my mom screaming, “You killed Mommy! You killed her. Not me, not Bull. You beat her up the day before. I saw you do it! She hit her head when you shoved her. I . . . I . . . saw.”

I’d opened my eyes to a squint—I didn’t want either of them knowing I was awake. I’d watched my drunk mom pound on Pop’s arms and back, and then slide down onto the floor while he just sat there. He hadn’t hit her back. He’d drained his beer, crushed the can against the table, and threw it directly at me, again. That time it hit my foot, but I’d stayed perfectly still.

I distinctly remember having to swallow the smile that had threatened to form on my fake-sleeping face. Up until that moment, I had been convinced that I really had killed my own grandmother. That she really had died from nonstop infant
crying. It had been pounded into my skull for nine years. Kids believe what their parents tell them. Kids believe what their grandfathers tell them even more. And my grandfather had a way with words.

I actually had to turn over on the sofa to face the wall so I could let the smile out.
I didn’t kill my grandmother. It wasn’t my fault. My pop killed her, not me.
I’d repeated it that night until I fell asleep.

It had ended up being a pretty decent night for me.

I HAD BEEN LOOKING FORWARD TO EUROPE. NOT TO
spending quality bonding time with Mom and Dad, but to getting away from them. They were happiest when I wasn’t around. My presence always seemed to snuff out their candles. So I planned to abandon them as much as possible and wander Europe by myself. I had crafted my setups weeks ago.

Mom, Dad, why don’t you two go to breakfast (or lunch, or dinner) together and relax?

Mom, Dad, I’m going to stay back today and work on these calculus workbooks I packed. You two go on and spend time together.

Last night’s decision to disinvite me was absolute. My mother left me a note on the counter this morning telling me my airline ticket had already been cancelled. She ended her note with,
P.S. I’m so disappointed in you.

Feel the love.

During my walk to school, I realize my parents will leave for their trip two days into summer vacation, which is in a week. I am certain they will dream up insane amounts of schoolwork as part of my punishment while they slide down the canals of Venice and sip expensive French wine. And then I realize I’ll be rid of them for fourteen days—in a row. Fourteen days is a long, long time.

A horrible thought stabs my happy balloon. What if they fly my grandmother up to watch me? Oh, God.

“Move, Victoria!” Bull screams into my ear as he rides by me on his bike in the parking lot. He pedals like he’s being chased by the devil, jumps the curb, throws his right arm backward, and gives me the finger. And then he’s gone round the corner, out of sight. I wish for him to get hit by a car. For a parent not paying attention as they leave the parking lot to smash right into him. With each step, I long to hear the sound of screeching tires and screams of pain.

No crash. His stupid bike’s chained up.

He finds me at lunch, too.

“Asshole, you’re in my seat,” he says.

This, of course, is an impossibility. I don’t ever sit in the same seat twice. I move. I scout out places where I can be alone. I just want to be left alone. Today I chose a seat in the far left corner, facing the window, facing away from the tables of laughter and friendship.

He repeats, “Asshole, you’re in my seat.”

I decide to ignore him. I can see other available seats. And I reason that silence works on my parents, and they’re Albert Einsteins compared to his amoeba brain. I want it to appear as if I don’t care. That Bull calling me an asshole means nothing to me. So I take a sip of my chocolate milk and ignore him.

Bad idea.

I wish at that moment I had chosen to face the cafeteria, so my back wasn’t to Bull. His beastlike fist lands midway down my back. The punch must’ve been subtle, fast enough to go unnoticed in this cafeteria of happiness.

His punch makes my body do two embarrassing things. First, I spit my mouthful of chocolate milk all over the table, ending with a magnificent crescendo of dribble and effectively chocolate-milking the front of my white golf shirt. Second, I choke. The chocolate milk that had already passed the back of my throat, in a defiant swallow, decides to suffocate me.

I can’t breathe. At all. Instinctively, my hands go to my chest and I try to punch air back into me.

Bull can only see the back of my head. He can’t see my bulging eyes filling with genuine panic. I still can’t breathe. He thinks I’m ignoring him.

“You’re dead, Victoria.”

I think he may be right.

In one fast motion, he slams my head into my plate of French fries and I’m out cold.

Guess what I see?

Me, with a crown and a red cape lined with white fur, holding a jeweled scepter in my left hand and shaking the hand of Johann Carl Friedrich Gauss with my right. I’m in Germany. I’ve time-traveled back to the eighteen hundreds to meet Johann, which has always been my wish. This is so real. He’s telling me I’m the new Prince of Mathematics. There’s a crowd, a huge crowd, and they’re all cheering my name. “Vic-tor! Vic-tor! Vic-tor! Vic . . .”

Except someone is shaking me.

“Victor! Are you okay?”

It’s not Bull. He’s long gone. Actually, most of the cafeteria is empty. There are just a few stragglers left. Patty Cullen is shaking and talking to me.

“I think you passed out, Victor. Do you want me to walk you to the nurse?”

I say no.

She pulls a flattened French fry from my forehead.

I say thank you.

Out of the entire school I
am
thankful it was Patty Cullen who revived me and removed the fry.

She smiles gently and tells me it’s no big deal.

I wish I could smile back. This is the first time she’s said a word to me since we had to do that science project together in eighth grade.

She asks me one more time if I’m really okay. I nod. She nods back and then walks away.

I’m alone and alive and covered in chocolate milk.

But I still feel like I’m dead.

Patty Cullen must’ve kept quiet about me passing out into my French fries, because no one asks me about lunch. Who knows if she even saw what Bull did to me? As I walk through the hall to go grab a sweatshirt from my locker, not one teacher or student asks me what is on my shirt, or what happened, or a single question about anything. It’s amazing how invisible I am to everyone at school, except Bull.

My first-grade strategy of keeping to myself and staying quiet has really worked. One kid, Andrew Quinn, tried to strike up a friendship with me in second grade. At first I’d
entertained the thought. It had felt good to have a kid look at me, you know, really see me. We’d played together for an entire week. Then he had asked me to come over to his house and play.

My parents had effectively ended the friendship when they found out Andrew lived on the other side of town in an apartment. And he only had a dad. No mom. My mother forbade me from “socializing” with him. She’d told me she had hired the cafeteria workers to report back to her if they saw me playing with him.

I’d believed her.

I remain invisible to kids.

Of course, I come home to an empty house. Empty of people. Jazzer greets me like I am her hero. Her prince. Jazzer always sees me.

“Hey, girl. Come on,” I say and then scoop her into my hand.

We climb the stairs as one. As soon as I open the laundry-room door, I strip off my humiliation-stained shirt, spray the heck out of it with stain stuff, and get a load of laundry going. I let Jazzer sit on my bare neck; she feels so warm and soft.

She’s the only one whom I’d consider a friend. Which is pathetic for obvious reasons, like she’s a dog, but also because she’s eighteen years old. Teacup poodles usually only live for
around eleven or twelve years. My one and only friend is on borrowed time. I did some research online and found a blog by this couple whose teacup poodles made it all the way to nineteen and twenty years old. I visit their blog at least once a week just to read that one post.

“Jazzer, you’re a good girl, Jazz,” I say. She licks my earlobe, like usual, and nuzzles her tiny head right under my ear. It’s her thing.

I walk out of the laundry room and across the hall into my bedroom. My mother had one of the five bedrooms transformed into a laundry room before they even moved in. She said she refused to traverse two sets of stairs like a common maid. If I know my father, he treated the project like God himself had asked for the laundry room. My mother has that effect on him.

She likes to tell people the tale that he had it up and running—with brand-new machines, custom cabinets, imported Italian tile floor, and three thousand dollars’ worth of designer wallpaper—as her welcome home gift.

Jazzer jumps off my neck and sits on my bed. I throw on a navy golf shirt and a clean pair of shorts. “Bull said I was in his seat, and then he punched me in the back today. The prick.”

She tilts her head to the right. That’s how I know she’s listening. Her eyes never leave mine either.

“I think I died today, Jazzer. I know I passed out, but I think I crossed over to the other side. When my face was in my tray of French fries, I swear I had a vision. Like I was dead. I was the Prince.”