Hand Me Down (13 page)

Terrance said, “Ours was awesome,” and smiled all his crooked teeth at Mom. She blushed. I didn’t eat a bite of dinner.

Jaime and I had to sleep with the rest of the children of the divorced under the flimsy picnic netting instead of a real tent, and the mosquitoes and the wind bit right through my cotton sleeping bag all night. Most of the kids had spent the day swimming or hiking, had eaten a full campfire-grilled dinner, and were excited about sleeping in the “wilderness.” They lay fast asleep, their little chests rising and falling, and I would have given anything to be able to trust in the security of my parents’ judgment, feel safe here in the woods because Mom was close by, like I had once upon a time. But instead, I was wide awake, spraying every bug that crawled toward my face with insecticide, and praying to a God I was still unsure about to give me back my family.

Mom was in the women’s tent, maybe ten feet away, but I felt like she was miles in the distance. On the other side of the campsite sat the adult males’ tent, and Terrance the enemy. Several sets of snores
like semi-truck horns from men used to sleeping alone echoed out into the silence surrounding the dark towering pines. Next to me, Jaime’s thumb rested between her lips, her bangs a mess across her forehead. I wiped at a little brown smear on her cheek, melted chocolate from the s’mores Terrance had made earlier. “Want one, Liz?” he’d asked me and even though I love them, as I watched his hands turning sticks of marshmallows over the fire, all I could think was that he had touched Mom’s breasts, and God knew what else, a few hours ago, so no marshmallows for me, thanks.

I focused on the sky, and inhaled deep, cool breaths full of bright pine and earthy tree moss scents and asked the spotted gray moon for a sign that I wasn’t going to lose Mom, that Terrance wouldn’t really be able to steal the one constant I’d had my entire life. It hit me then, staring up at millions of stars, that the reverse wasn’t true for Mom. While I’d never had a life without her, she’d had twenty-three years without me. I had been a surprise, the beginning of the end of her freedom, and I guessed she resented me for that. Maybe Dad did, too. I turned to Jaime’s peaceful face. “We’re in for a bumpy road, little sister.” I kissed her sticky cheek and thought about how they’d planned to get pregnant with Jaime. She was the daughter Mom and Dad had actually wanted.

After that trip, Terrance was always around. We picked him up for church, we picked him up for dinner, we picked him up so he could pick up the laundry we’d washed for him. Mom stayed out past our bedtime even on weeknights to take him back to his apartment or give him another driving lesson in the summer twilight. She said she was teaching him to drive stick shift, but I had seen the hickeys on her neck.

The singles group spent a humid Saturday at the end of August hiking up Feather River Falls. When we got to the waterfall, a rainbow stretched across the pool where the river churned up white between granite boulders. Powdered river floated in a misty haze thick enough to blur my vision. I pretended I was alone on the planet, the first to visit this holy place where all sounds became the roar of water, all sights blurred into soft edges, and all things were impermanent. Small drops sprinkled my forehead like liquid dust and for a few minutes it felt like maybe there was a God, and maybe He was here, and maybe He does watch us and love us and want us to be happy.

On the walk down from the waterfall my mom saw graffiti on some rocks that said,
Squeeze my tits
and she whispered to Terrance, “Yeah, babe, please do.” They kissed with a smacking sound, Mom moaned a little, and I realized whatever God wanted for me, it was not happiness.

By the time school started, Terrance had mastered the manual clutch enough to drive us all to church, to Taco Bell, to the unemployment office, and he let his hand rest on Mom’s thigh with increasing frequency. I elbowed Jaime and pointed at his arm stretched across the two front seats. Her eyes widened. I stuck out my tongue and pretended to gag.

After one Sunday service, we sat outside Terrance’s parole office.

“Mom?” I said. Jaime had fallen asleep next to me in the backseat. “Are you and Terrance having sex?”

Alarm flickered in her eyes before they narrowed. “That is absolutely none of your business,” she said.

“How come he puts his hand on your leg?”

“It’s to show that he cares about me.”

“Is it okay to make out before you’re married?”

Her hands turned to fists in her lap. “This is not an appropriate conversation for an eleven-year-old.”

I said, “So it’s not a sin?”

Terrance was walking across the parking lot, his white high-tops bright between his skin and the asphalt. Mom stared at his chest without blinking until Terrance waved. Mom jerked back to life and swiveled her head to look directly at me with her eyes big, her nostrils flared. She said, “I don’t want you to bring this up again, okay?” I nodded. Terrance got in the car and kissed her, his black mustache covering her pink lips.

She was already pregnant with Noah.

I pull off an A
on my next algebra test but my overall grade is not so good. None of my grades are up to Tammy’s standards or my own. With Sam around, Tammy and I no longer run errands or go shopping or take walks. She does those things with Sam. So far, I haven’t heard them having sex, though my brain often plays a radio show of Mom and Terrance’s late-night rendezvous as a cruel sort of preparation.

All I do is lie in bed wrapped in my blue Macy’s comforter and wool throws, reading about lives that aren’t mine, preferably lives that take place in warm locales. I browse Tammy’s bookshelves like they’re my own personal library, choose titles like
Siddhartha
,
Like Water for Chocolate
,
Fahrenheit 451
—anything that sounds
interesting—and devour each in a few days. Sometimes Dean’s voice narrates the books in my head, and his soothing inflections make the stories better.

The live Dean continues to play with my hair in class, and one day I tell him I have a C. He says, “How is that possible?”

“I never do my homework.”

“Why not?” he says. “This stuff is cake for you.”

My eyes fill up halfway and threaten to run before I can stop them so I wipe at my left eye like I have something in it. Sam’s insistence that hats can replace the heater is making my scholarship dreams harder to reach. Even in the house my fingers are too cold-stiff to write English essays or math problems, and Tammy and Sam giggling together downstairs makes it impossible to concentrate. Now that I never miss class, I’m behind on take-home assignments. It’d be funny if it weren’t my future.

“Maybe we can do it together sometime,” he says. I nod three times, unable to maneuver my mouth. He fidgets with his pencil. “Do you want to hang out after school tomorrow? It’s discount movie day downtown.”

Yes, of course, yes
. The bell rings. “Yeah,” I say and manage to smile at him.

“Great,” he says, putting notebooks and books into his backpack.

“Great,” I say.

I write to Rachel in biology,
I think I have a date. It’s the British guy with the sexy accent. He’s a junior and totally cute.

Biology is the only class I have an A in right now. I got 104 percent on the last test without studying at all. Today we are learning about viruses.

“We would call viruses intelligent if they were alive,” Mrs. Rayler says. She has tons of energy and a tendency to repeat herself, which is why I can only half-pay attention and still do well. She also doesn’t believe in homework. Mrs. Rayler continues and I write to Rach,
Terrance is like a virus. He latches on to vulnerable cells and reproduces but we cannot call him intelligent. I can’t believe I’m going out with an older guy.

When I get to the condo, it’s still early afternoon but Sam and Tammy are watching a movie. Since Sam arrived, Tammy has often rearranged her schedule.

“Hi kiddo,” Tammy says as I take off my boots and coat.

“It’s cold in here,” I say. The fake fireplace churns little blue flames tipped with orange, but the warmth only radiates about four inches. I sit down next to Tammy on the couch and pull the throw over me. “I had a good day today.” I rub my hands together. “I think I even have a date tomorrow.”

“That’s great,” she says.

“He’s British,” I say and she smiles. “He has the coolest accent and he invited me to a movie.” Sam turns up the sound on the TV.

“Where did you meet him?”

“He’s in my math class, he’s—”

“Oh, for God’s sake, would you two please quit your yapping?” Sam says. He turns the sound up on the TV to almost max.

I say, “You talk all the time when I’m trying to watch TV.”

Sam’s eyes go wide. He says, “The difference is, I live here.”

The air is ripped from my lungs like he punched me in the chest. I can’t breathe for a second as I wait for Tammy’s reaction.
This is it. This is when she’ll have to make a choice, and my history of being in this position tells my gut to get ready to leave.

“Sam,” Tammy says, surprise and irritation in her voice like a mom who witnesses her child do something she just forbade. “She lives here, too.”

My ribs relax and I almost burst into tears. I didn’t expect her to stand up for me. I start to smile until I see Sam glaring at me from under the dark brim of his hat. His brown eyes squint with loathing and I can’t figure out what I did to earn it. He shifts his glower to Tammy and she sucks in a quick breath like she’s been slapped.

Sam turns his head back to the TV, a black-and-white film I don’t recognize. He says, “For now.”

Tammy stays quiet this time and I’m smart enough not to say anything. I visualize Sam’s giant hat-covered head bursting like a firecracker, the tattered brim floating down from the blast to rest on his bloody stump of a neck as my own throat clenches and my eyes burn.

“Let’s talk later,” Tammy whispers. She keeps her eyes trained down at her lily pad pajama pants. She pats my leg and her hand is icy. She says quietly, “I’m glad you had a good day.” Her thin hair hides her face and she still doesn’t look at me as I spread the purple blanket across her knees and disappear from the room like a ghost.

Upstairs I put my hat and gloves on and shiver under my blankets until the warmth spreads out across my skin. Tammy and Sam laugh downstairs and I know that Sam is her other favorite person on this planet and that if it came down to choosing, she would pick him. I wouldn’t blame her. I am not her daughter.

When the movie ends, Tammy comes upstairs. “Hey, kiddo,” she says and sits on the edge of my bed. “You warm enough?”

I stare out the window where it’s getting dark outside, the gray-blue sky turning purple, shadows rolling across the red brick and white wood of the condos behind us. She says, “I want to apologize.” I roll over and look at her. “For Sam’s nastiness earlier.” I sit up and pull my comforter around me. “He’s used to having things a certain way,” she says. She pauses. “He’s not used to kids.”

“He’s condescending,” I say.

“He’s trying to talk to you,” she says.

“He lectures.”

“He’s pretty smart, you know,” she says.

“He always wears that stupid vest,” I say.

She laughs and hugs me. When she lets go, she puts a hand on each of my shoulders and lifts them up so I’m sitting fully upright. “That vest was a gift from me for our first overnight backpacking trip together,” she says, smiling. “I think it looks good on him, even if it’s a little aged.” She kisses my forehead. “Just like us.”

She pulls her arms away and rests them in her lap. Her fingers are long, thin. Like me and Jaime, Mom and Tammy don’t have many childhood photos, but there is one framed in the hallway here of Tammy playing piano. She’s outside in a garden, wearing a pale green dress and a matching ribbon in her hair. At sixteen her skin is smoother and lighter but her face looks exactly the same. Her fingers look at home on the white keys, perfectly posed and just the right length.

“Elizabeth,” she says. “I know Sam can be difficult. And I will talk to him about being nicer to you, but we’ve been together a long
time and he is not used to sharing me. Since he’s only here for a little while, I was hoping you—”

“I’ll stay out of the way,” I say.

Tammy says, “That’s not necessary.” But she looks relieved. “And I will talk to him about his…”

“Jerkiness?”

“Severity,” she says. She hugs me again and smiles. “I love you,” she says.

I say, “I love you, too.” But I know firsthand what people do to those they love.

She tugs on the ties that hang from the earflaps of the hat I’m wearing. “Dinner soon,” she says, pulling the hat down into my eyes and pushing lightly on my head. She laughs and it’s a sound I haven’t heard in a while.

I fall over onto the bed and lie there, wishing we could go back to before Sam showed up, when Saturday mornings were about us together, hanging out in our pajamas and eating homemade waffles, cracking up at games like Read My Lips or slapjack, when Tammy seemed lighter. Now she walks on tiptoes with her shoulders stooped, like at any moment something could jump out and attack.

“Tammy?” I say and then decide not to ask because I don’t want to know the answer to a question that’s still only a possibility. She stood up for me today. I haven’t lost her yet.

She says, “Yes?”

I smile and push my hat up out of my eyes. “Thanks,” I say. Tammy smiles back and squeezes my hand. She gets up and leaves me huddled under the blankets in the darkening grayish-purple
light from the window, wondering about the day Sam forces her to answer the question I was too afraid to ask.

As I hop off the
bus onto Tammy’s street the next day, the mountaintops gleam like frosted cupcakes, and the sun shines so bright off the snow it hurts my eyes. I hum a Lisa Loeb song as I skip up Tammy’s steps and unlock the door. I haven’t stopped grinning stupidly since my bus turned a corner and Dean’s waving figure and the mall where we’d spent the afternoon disappeared. We ate sour candy straws from the Sweet Factory and played Super Off Road and Zombie Attack at the arcade. We made fun of eighty-dollar T shirts in brand-name stores and the girls who bought them, and threw pennies into the mall’s basement fountain from three floors up. He didn’t try to kiss me during the movie, but as we watched the scene in
Fargo
when the wife runs around in the snow in her pink jumpsuit with a bag on her head on the big screen, we both laughed so hard that someone shushed us, and it felt like a bonding moment.