Life Before (6 page)

Tulane was my third choice, but together I’m smart enough, Mom’s broke enough, and Tulane admissions is still hurting enough from Hurricane Katrina that they’re giving me several significant scholarships. Kick. Ass.

Mom thinks school eleven hundred miles away is less kickass, but she promises to love me anyway.

Maybe she’s thinking about that when she digs in her purse and presses three twenties—
three
—into my hand.

“This isn’t a loan, and it’s not an advance. Consider it a graduation present for you and Gretchen, okay?” She’s tearing up again and I can’t really look at her. “We made it through. You and me. We did okay, right?”

Mom’s fingers smell of cilantro when she cradles my face in her hands. I hate it when she does this, but she’s so sincere.

And a little sappy.

And sixty dollars.

“You did great, Mom.”

She stretches her face really long and wipes her eyes with her thumbs. “You made it happen, kid. Even in the rough years—and god, were they rough!—even in the rough years, you made it totally worth it.”

She hugs me again—one of those hugs that’s so tight and so long that I’m glad Jill is outside.

“I am so proud of you, College Man!”

“Almost.”

“Okay, Mr. Almost. Dinner in about twenty minutes, and then we’ll get changed for the big night.”

The scent of generic dryer sheets wafts up through the deck as I settle back on the glider next to Jill. She glances at me and I mime a steering wheel and a thumbs up.

She gives me a high five and I go back to my playlist.

I’ve been working on it maybe ten minutes when a car tears down the street and screeches to a halt. A moment later, someone pounds on our flimsy front screen.

“Where is fucking Alexander?”

Gary. I freeze.

Ours is a split-entry house, so he can see right up to the kitchen from the front door.

“It’s just me in the kitchen!” Mom sounds carefree. How has she shed her fear of him while I hold onto mine with every atom of my being?

The front screen slams and Gary’s voice is closer. “You’re lying, Helen. Where is that motherfucking kid? I’m gonna send his head through plaster.”

I tug on Jill’s earbud cord and cover her mouth before she can protest. “Gary’s here.”

Silently, we move off the glider and tuck ourselves under the kitchen window where there’s a blind spot that will hide us. Toe to toe, our hips right up against the vinyl siding, we rest our heads on the house. Jill hugs her knees.

Gary yells, “You put him up to it, didn’t you, Helen? I’m gonna take care of you both at once. Where is that little fucker?”

Mom is only slightly flustered. “It’s graduation weekend. He could be just about anywhere.”

I learned my lawyer’s answers from her, clearly.

A thud rattles the house and I wonder whether our kitchen has a new hole in the wall.

Mom is cool. “Get out. Of my. House.”

Gary’s not cool. “You poisoned his mind. I am so tired of you people fucking with my life.”

“Well, you fucked with ours for years.” Swearing means Mom is either really pissed or really scared. Her voice, at least, is nonchalant. “I guess payback is a bitch, Gary. Now get out.”

The funny thing about a punch is that it sounds remarkably like any old thud. I’ve heard enough punches in my life to know that Mom just got one. Gary curses and I can hear them wrestling. The commotion wakes a hurt deep within me, and my wounds start to throb. The back of my head, where Gary first shoved me into plaster, pulses. My left arm, long since healed, throbs just like on that day six years ago, when I cradled it until Mom came home and took me to the emergency room. All the pain returns to my body as though this beating, too, is on me.

I hold my shins tighter and push my closed eyes into my knees so hard that I see white spots. I’m five years old again. I can’t control my breathing.

I can’t believe this is happening.

Gary’s timing is freaking impeccable. Mom is going to be all bruised at graduation. She’ll be back in long sleeves, for sure, and it will take months for her to be as happy and whole as she was last night at dinner. I am so tired of my parents’ shit. Let them duke it out.

Why does this keep happening to us? Why can’t we have a normal life?

Gary bangs the wall and snarls. “I have had enough of your bullshit and that kid’s bullshit and I swear to god I will kill him for this. He has fucked with my life one too many times.
I
deserve to be happy.”

Mom makes a squeaky sort of sound and something pounds furiously against the wall.

“Do you hear me? Do you have anything to say, Helen? I am going to wipe him off the face of the earth.
I
deserve to be happy.
I deserve to be happy.
”

Mom is probably curled up on the floor at this point. The best defense is making Gary believe he’s won.

“Oh, goddammit,” Gary says, and the house is quiet.

Jill stares at my hands, which grip hers so tightly my knuckles are white.

I am not in the mood to clean up my mother’s wounds today. I am not in the mood for drama when I am meant to be graduating and moving—

Jill presses herself to the back of the house, wide-eyed.

I hear it, too: Gary’s breathing is so heavy and close that I hold my own breath. He’s looking out onto the deck, just a few feet above our heads. I look up and see only my mom’s window boxes, the poppies’ petals spilling over the edge.

Please don’t see us. Please.

Jill’s book lays fanned open in full sun. She cries silently and I mouth the words, “I’m sorry.”

“Me, too,” she mouths back. She is brave enough not to run down the deck stairs and back to her own home.

A minute later, we can no longer hear Gary’s breathing.

When his engine rumbles, Jill starts sobbing. “I thought it was over!” She still grips my hands in terror.

I wish it were over.

“What if he had found us?” she asks.

I don’t know. Gary must know that Jill’s family is aware of the abuse already, but he would have freaked if Jill saw him in action. Or maybe he wouldn’t have hit Mom at all if he’d known we were there. Jill, at least. If he’d seen me, I’d have had my share, for sure. He wouldn’t really kill me, would he? He’s just pissed.

Jill stands up and peeks into the kitchen. “What can I do to help?”

Mom will be mortified that Jill was around for this.

“You know, it’s going to take a while to get Mom ready for tonight. I can handle this. You go home and read and calm down before it’s time to go. I’ll see you at the music hall.”

Jill peeks into the kitchen again, unsure. “She might need moral support.”

“I can handle it. I’ll bandage her body and galvanize her spirits for graduation. You go home and let music put you in the right mood for the night.”

Halfway to the steps, Jill says, “I want the computer back by five.”

“Roger.”

Jill runs down the back staircase, crosses through our neighbor’s backyard, and heads into her own house.

Better Jill than Gretchen, because there are some things I would never in a million years share with a girlfriend.

I am so beyond the bullshit of my parents’ relationship. At least we aren’t lying about it anymore. For years, Mom totally bought into Gary’s excuse that he beat her because he loved her, and he beat me to keep me in line. We don’t accept his lame apologies anymore. We just acknowledge that he’s a jerk and leave it at that.

So, this changes our plans for the evening. I’ll offer to accompany her to the hospital and she’ll refuse. She’ll sit through my speech in extreme pain—pain that will forever be attached to her memory of this night—and afterward we’ll spend the night in the boring confines of the emergency room. I say a silent prayer she won’t require stitches this time.

I want to move forward—with Gretchen, with this summer, with school a thousand miles away—and Gary has just set my mind back ten years.

Here I am again, cleaning up a mess my parents made. No one else has to put up with this shit.

Heaving a huge sigh, I slide the screen door open. Inside the dining room, I bend to work on a hangnail and think about how I want to play this. I need to strike the right tone or she’ll rescind the sixty bucks and car offer. I need to come off as light. Maybe:
I guess Renee spilled the beans, huh?
Mom is always talking like that: spill the beans, Bob’s your uncle, don’t teach your grandma to suck eggs.

Instead, I say, “He probably only needs one ticket for graduation, now, huh?” I turn to find Mom lying face-up on the fake linoleum tile, her eyes wide open.

What am I supposed to do?
I grab her wrist. Do I use my thumb or absolutely not use my thumb to check for a pulse? I can’t remember. I use my fingers on her neck instead, but feel nothing.

Must be the wrong spot.

I run my fingers up and down her neck and finally yank down her T-shirt and lay my ear over her bare chest.

Nothing.

Seventh-grade CPR was ages ago. Something about ABCs?

Pushing on her chest, I’m terrified I will break her.

Blow into Mom’s mouth and I swear I feel air leave her lungs.

I blow again. Nothing.

“Somebody help me!” My scream incites a sense of urgency and I pull out my cheap phone to dial 9-1-1.

Balancing the stupid phone on my shoulder, I get instructions for real CPR: straight arms, full weight behind each thrust.

Her ribs don’t crack.

I tilt her head, plug her nose
—of course! Plug the nose!
—and force air into her lungs.

My phone falls and lands on Mom’s face as I beg her heart to respond.

The dispatcher tells me to keep the rhythm of “Staying Alive” and she starts singing it. Mom raised me on disco, so I don’t need the help. I sing under my breath as I press and press and press and press and press and press and press and pray.

Someone yells through the front screen: “EMT!”

I yell down. “Here!”

Huge hands reach for my mother’s wrist. He doesn’t use his thumb. “I’ll take it from here, Alex.”

That’s not my name. I don’t correct him. I keep pounding on Mom’s chest. “Come on! Come on! Come on.”

Another EMT—a woman—touches my shoulder and says, “He does a good job. Let him work.”

I sit back on my heels as he starts compressions. He is much stronger than I am. More confident, too.

“Helen?” Jill’s mom hollers through the screen door.

S
EVEN

Jill’s mom, Janice, follows the ambulance at a brisk pace.

I’ve ridden this stretch of Route 46 dozens of times, hundreds. Every time we go to the courthouse or the good library or the Hot Dog Shoppe.

Right now nothing is registering. “He was looking for me,” I say about a thousand times.

Janice keeps her eyes on the road as we speed. “
Gary
was looking for you?”

“Yeah, Gary. He said he wanted to kill me. Mom told him I wasn’t there and they fought. He hit her, I think? Maybe he punched her out? Maybe that’s why she’s unconscious?”

_______

The EMT from the house sits with us in the waiting area. Janice recognizes him as Derrick Rhymes. She colors his mother’s hair and has heard his whole life story in monthly installments.

Derrick holds Janice’s hand.

Derrick asks how I am.

Derrick keeps Janice talking about anything outside this hospital.

And every time I ask him to, he walks through the swinging S
TAFF
O
NLY
doors and inquires about Mom. He swears he got a faint pulse out of her on the drive to the hospital. He promises doctors are doing everything they can. He says there’s a chance she’ll pull through.

She doesn’t.

E
IGHT

An hour after Jill walked across the stage to accept her diploma, police officers interrogate the two of us relentlessly. Separately, they ask us hundreds of questions to nail down our story and recreate a timeline.

Mom’s gone.

I sound like a coward. Every time I tell the story—and I’m on Retelling Number Seven right now—the person asking the questions says the same thing: You heard them fighting, but you stayed outside?

I sound like a coward
and
an asshole.

Some squat, balding police officer who reeks of tobacco repeats the question twice.

“Yes. I stayed outside. I didn’t see anything.”

He wants to know why I hung out in a seated fetal position for a few minutes after Gary had gone and why I sauntered into the house and gave myself a pedicure while my mother died on the floor.

My mother died on the floor.

Coward.

But what can I say? That I was too disgusted with my parents? That I wanted to pretend it wasn’t happening? That I was terrified?

The thing is, I never—not in a million years—thought he was killing her. I thought it was just another fight. He could have beaten her or beaten us both, and I didn’t want that. Not on graduation day. Not when I was going to stand in front of my entire graduating class and everyone else I’ve ever met. I couldn’t do that with a black eye and newly broken bones.

So, yes, I was craven. But I didn’t know he was going to kill her.

He killed her. Forever. She’s gone forever.

We now know that Gary strangled my mother after—presumably after—inflicting a few final scrapes on the left side of her face. I’ve had several run-ins with his gargantuan class ring before, so I’m guessing it was that. And at some point—either by Gary’s doing, or on her way to the floor after she stopped breathing—her left wrist was broken. This time her bones won’t heal.

After enduring a half dozen interviews, I don’t want to talk to anyone. About anything. Fact is, they still have that thick file about my family’s domestic violence. What more can anyone say?

Instead of waiting for the hospital to release Mom, I’m waiting for the police to release me. I excuse myself to the hospital bathroom, which is far down a sterile, white corridor. Lucky me, it’s empty.

I can’t even look in the mirror. Coward!