Rodent (12 page)

I push arms through sleeves, jam shoes on feet. Bang the elevator button. Jacquie’s voice in my ear: “Happy birthday, eh?”

Out on the sidewalk, headlights whiz by. One car hits a puddle and showers our legs with muddy brown water.

Evan starts to cry. “That car got me wet. I’m wet now.”

Maisie holds my hand, not speaking. Her tights are speckled with mud.

“Let’s go to the park for a while,” I say, squeezing her palm. “You get to go to the park instead of going to bed on your birthday!”

She doesn’t move. “Why did Uncle Richie break that bottle?”

“He just got mad about something,” I tell her. Maybe it’s time I start being honest with her. She sees everything. “And he had too much to drink.”

“Why did he have too much to drink?” she asks.
Question of the decade, Maisie
.

“I don’t know.” I zip up her sweater and pull her hood over her hair, then lace up Evan’s shoes properly. Our breath balloons out around us, frosty. I rub my arms.

“You didn’t bring a jacket,” Jacquie says, watching me. I shake my head.

“Let’s go.” I motion toward the park, a few blocks away. Streetlights glare down on the still swings and chipped red monkey bars.

Evan runs ahead to the swings, sitting on the wet seat. “Push me!” he calls to anybody listening.

Maisie finds an empty swing and plants her toes in the damp sand, swaying from side to side.

“Should I start apartment hunting?” Jacquie stands close to me, her warm arm against mine.

“How can I leave them?” It always comes down to this.

“You can’t be there forever,” she says. “We had to learn to survive.”

And look how good we turned out. I push Evan on the swing until he complains about being cold. Then an attempted game of hide-and-seek goes bad.

“It’s scary in the park at night,” Maisie says.
You think?
Some homeless guy with a shopping cart and gray clown hair wanders by. I’m checking for needles everywhere Maisie and Evan step.

“I have to pee,” Evan says, and the park is done.

I take them to the store. Of course, it would be Arif at the counter.

“Do you mind if we use the bathroom?” I ask.

He shakes his head, eyes drilling into my head as I herd them to the back of the store.
Yes, Family of the Year, I know
.
Dragging under-dressed kids around at some ungodly hour
.

“Can you go check what’s happening?” I say to Jacquie, wrestling with the button on Evan’s pants, which are soaked from the knee down. “I’ll wait here with them.” She nods and disappears.

We stand inside the main door until she comes back, Evan’s nose pressed against the glass. I feel like I should say something to Arif, but I don’t know what. He stops watching after a while and restocks the cigarettes.

“Dad took off. Your mom’s there—in a piss-poor state but okay,” Jacquie says.

I thank Arif and drag the kids back to the apartment. Maisie’s face is pale, her lips a thin line. Evan’s a wreck. “I can’t walk,” he says, bursting into tears for the tenth time tonight. I hoist him up and carry him the rest of the way, my arms aching and wet where his pants press against me.

Adrenaline gone, just a heavy dread as I push open the apartment door. Maisie ducks behind me and sees it first, while I’m pulling off Evan’s jacket.

“My house!” she gasps. I turn.

One side of the dollhouse is smashed, a bottle still embedded in its side. Smiling mother and tiny dishes are soaking in a pool of amber from another nearby bottle.

She opens her mouth and lets out a sob—a gulp of pain. I catch her as her thin legs buckle. I lie back as I cradle her and stroke her hair. “We’ll fix it. We’ll get another one. It’s okay.” Again and again. But it’s not okay. I can’t buy another one. I can’t fix any of it.

Jacquie takes Evan and steps around us. After a few minutes, I hear the toilet flush and the tap running in the bathroom. Murmuring voices, then the click of his bedroom door.

“C’mon.” I stand and pick up Maisie like a baby, straining to keep my balance. She clings to my neck, her cheeks wet.

As I turn to carry her to the bathroom, I see Mom at the table. Makeup smeared. Face red and puffy, nose running freely. Her head on the table, mouthing silent words. I turn Maisie so her back is to Mom. One more thing she doesn’t need to see tonight.

A sound as I pass. “What more? What more could I do?”

The words reach me in fragments. I’m not even sure I heard them. Mom’s eyes look past me, into the dark kitchen. Look through me.

For an instant I think she sees me, blinks. Then nothing. I keep walking. She—all of that—is something I can’t touch tonight. Can’t even say one word. Even a word will open up something horrific, something I can never undo.

I get Maisie undressed. Bathroom. Drink. Find the koala, some shred of comfort. I curl up in the bed with her and hold her in the curve of my body.

“Do you want to sleep here?” I whisper to Jacquie, standing over us.

She shakes her head. “I’ll take a taxi home.”

I mouth “thank you” to her, knowing it’s not nearly enough.

“Same time next year?” She winks. I close my eyes, her words a bruise.

THIRTEEN

Monday morning, Will’s eyes light up as I drop my backpack by my desk. He doesn’t look away, waiting for me to give something back to him. A word, a smile. Something. I barely nod at him before sliding into my seat.
You don’t want this, Romeo
. How could I think for an instant that he could be part of my world?

I picture Will sitting on the ugly sofa as Uncle Richie hurls beer bottles and we all scatter like cockroaches. Isn’t that what every guy wants?
Congratulations, Will. You just won yourself a nice, dysfunctional family
. Even worse if he tried to help, to fix. The girlfriend who’s also a project. It’s for his own good that I walk away. He’ll never know about the Molotov cocktail he just avoided. Still, the ache in my chest makes it hard for me to lift my head today.

It started that night and hasn’t gone away. The worst was Sunday morning, as I tried to clean up Maisie’s dollhouse with her behind me, sobbing. I straightened the cracked
wall a bit, but it was still buckled and split. The dolls and furniture came out a little nicer—slightly stained but hardly noticeable.

“Look, Maisie. Good as new!” I held them up for her when they dried.

She looked at me, face flat, and wouldn’t take them from my hand. Like they were contaminated. The ache washed over me then, and I had to hide my face from her.

The only time the aching stopped was when Mom came out hours later. Maisie ran to her and tugged on her arm, her plaintive voice running on and on. She pulled Mom over to the house and pointed at the disaster. Too young to see Mom’s role in this, wanting her to set it right.

Mom raised a hand to her mouth, shocked. Anger like a fire engulfed every part of me. It radiated so strongly that when Mom turned her head to speak to me, she felt it—saw it—from across the room. Closed her mouth. She couldn’t look away.

I haven’t spoken to her since the night of Maisie’s birthday, around the time we had cake. That is my only power.

“You can’t stay silent forever, Isabelle,” she told me Sunday evening. “You’ll have to talk to me sooner or later.” That’s where she’s wrong. Why didn’t I see it before? My words only kept me tangled up with her, pulled into her mess. That endless back-and-forth tying us together. It’s my silence that cuts her from my world.
You will find out, Mother, just how little I need you
.

* * *

Mr. Drummond’s at the front, all wrapped up in
Hamlet
again. Enough bloody
Hamlet
already. He waves one hand as he talks, his voice carrying to every corner. He must like this part because he doesn’t ask anyone else to read. “
How all occasions do inform against me, / And spur my dull revenge! What is a man, / If his chief good and market of his time / Be but to sleep and feed? a beast, no more…”

I tune out until he gets to: “
How stand I then, / That have a father kill’d, a mother stain’d, / Excitements of my reason and my blood, / And let all sleep?.
..” A mother stained, and let all sleep. The words scratch at me.

“What’s Hamlet saying here?” Mr. Drummond asks. We all sit in silence, trying to avoid eye contact. After an awkward minute he answers his own question. “Hamlet has good reason to take action—his father murdered by his own brother, and his mother married to his father’s murderer—yet he does nothing. Meanwhile, he watches thousands laying down their lives for a piece of land that isn’t even sufficient to bury their dead.”

He turns back to the play. “
O, from this time forth, / My thoughts be bloody, or be nothing worth!
” He looks up at us. “So what’s Hamlet going to do?”

“Take action?” Rachael says.

“Take action.” Mr. Drummond nods.

At the end of class, Mr. Drummond catches me as I dash for the door, waving Will and me over.

“Where are we at with Words on the Wall?” he asks.

I look at Will for the first time since class began. “Can you fill him in?” I say. I don’t wait for a response. Out the door. Down the hall. Up the stairs two at a time, to the computer lab. It’s not as quiet as the library, but it’s easier to hide in. No Ms. Hillary pretending not to look over your shoulder.

I find a computer near the back corner, facing the door. Don’t want any surprises creeping up behind me. I log in and bring up Google. Spend the next half hour trying to find information on becoming emancipated as a minor. Is there a legal process? Can I just leave? I find a jumble of information. Some sites say there’s a legal process. Others say you can leave at sixteen if you can support yourself.

Who would know for sure? I think of sweet Miss Yee. She would try to help, but that’s the problem. I don’t need some naïve do-gooder messing around, trying to fix my broken life.

If the websites are right, I’ll have to be able to support myself to move out. Choose between being free and being in school. I know what Jacquie would say. Still. I’ve seen what’s out there for people who don’t finish high school. Look at half of the people in my apartment building, shuffling around like they’re in a zombie apocalypse. How could I ever do anything better for myself?

And all the old worries about Maisie and Evan surface. Could they dodge bottles in the middle of the night or make supper from a box of macaroni and a bottle of mustard? I could take them with me. I’m already doing all the work. No, someone would come after us for sure. Maybe when I’m
eighteen I could sue Mom for custody. Spill my guts about all the crap. Or I could live nearby and visit every day, make sure they’re okay. I could buy them a cell phone and teach them how to use it if they need me.

Thoughts swarm my head, possibilities heaped one on top of the other, cutting each other off. I close my eyes. Muddled. Tired. The room spins in a slow circle.

The lunch bell rings while I’m still mucking around, nothing accomplished. I don’t feel like going to the meeting today. With Zara and her damn clipboard. Damien’s props. Will’s hopeful eyes. Do I have to? It all seems really pointless now. I end up hiding in the computer lab for the rest of the lunch hour, checking the doorway for a group of angry freaks in costumes.

In Spanish class Damien asks, “Hey, what happened to you today? We don’t have a poem from you or Will. Zara almost had an aneurysm.”

“There was something I had to do,” I say. I know which poem I’ll use.

* * *

When I open the apartment door, I can smell supper cooking. The living room is clean. There are a few coloring books on the table. Maisie and Evan run to them without even taking off their shoes.

“I saw these on sale today,” Mom says to me, motioning toward the books.
Yes, coloring books. Those will fix everything
.

I drop my backpack on the floor and turn to leave for work. With this kind of routine, I can easily make it until the end of the year without saying a word to her.

“Early today!” Rupa says as I walk through the door. Arif, at the other till, watches me but doesn’t say anything. Hasan’s not in tonight, so I’m busy running around, stocking shelves and helping customers. There isn’t even time for me to clean the bathrooms.

Five minutes before the end of my shift, Rupa waves me into the back room. I stand there, not wanting to come. She’s going to sit me down and tell me that times are tough and they don’t have any more hours for me. Or they have to slash my already pathetic wage. Or they don’t want any funny business between their son and me.

She’s smiling, though, so I follow her. Once I’m through the swinging door, she leads me over to a box filled with cereal and cans of soup.

“Arif and I noticed that you”—she pauses and looks away—“take good care of your brother and sister.” She doesn’t seem to know what to say next. I start to squirm. What do Maisie and Evan have to do with my job? “We wondered if you might like some extra food for your family?” She’s actually blushing. “Better eat the cereal right away. It expires soon. I’m sorry for that.”

I didn’t see that coming. She nudges the box toward me and smiles. I look in it again—easily a week’s worth of wages in food. I don’t know how to thank her without sounding trite.

“Wow. Thanks” is the best I can do.

As I haul the food home, cans clanking, a warmth edges over the ache. There’s even a box of Evan’s favorite cereal.

* * *

“Shakespeare?” Zara says. “Really?”

I could have picked Justin Bieber. She should be happy. “Yes. That’s what I choose.” I stare her straight in the face.

“Sure.” She shrugs.

Damien, across the circle, nods. He’s wearing a seventies shirt with a butterfly collar. I humor him today and slip on an enormous pair of cowboy boots. They’d probably fit Will’s big boats.

“And you?” Zara turns to Will now.

“Still don’t know,” he says. “I don’t read a lot of poetry.”

“Choose a song,” Damien suggests, and all the others pipe up at the same time. Probably trying to keep Zara from keeling over dead. Amanda’s bumblebee antennae wave above her head as she talks.