What I Remember Most

by Cathy Lamb

  Placing both boys with one family has proven to be impossible, I’m told, because they both have severe behavior problems. Adopting them out with their behavior problems will also be near to impossible. They will probably live the rest of their childhood as foster children and then will be moved into group homes if they’re not incarcerated for the violent tendencies they have already shown. It’s ironic. It’s tragic.

  What, Grenadine? Yes, the Berlinskys are going to jail. Hang on a minute, I’m getting to that part. I am sentencing you both to ten years in prison. Yes, I said ten, Grenadine. It is the maximum I am allowed to sentence them by law. No, I can’t send them away for a hundred thousand years. Mr. and Mrs. Berlinsky, if it were up to me, I would put you both in kennels like you did Grenadine. I would deny you food and sanitation. Then I would take you out back and shoot you like we used to shoot rabid raccoons when I was a girl growing up in the backwoods of Mississippi.

  Your sentence will begin immediately. There is no possibility of early parole.

  Grenadine, from all of us, every single person in this room, I apologize. This should never have happened to you. You did nothing wrong; nothing was your fault. The system failed you. The Berlinskys failed you. Everyone failed you.

  I wish for you, Grenadine, nothing but the best for you in the future. I want to thank your new foster parents, and I want to thank Dr. Chakrabarti and your nurses for all that they have done to help you.

  To Mr. and Mrs. Berlinsky, I’m sure you will not be popular in prison. The inmates, I hear, do not like child abusers.

  What, Grenadine? Yes, you’re right. Mr. and Mrs. Berlinsky are pieces of shit. Is there anything else you want to say to them?

  MISS WILD: Yes. I want to spell more words. G.O. T.O. H.E.L.L. That spells go to hell.

  JUDGE CARRADONE: Thank you, Grenadine. I believe they are headed that way. Court adjourned.

  21

  That night, after my shift at The Spirited Owl, I turned off all the lights in the bathroom, filled the claw-foot tub with hot water, and opened the window so I could see the stars as I soaked.

  I was so grateful for a bathtub. So grateful for a bed. So grateful for the pans in my kitchen. I had a roof, a door that locked, and a couch. I had my own Laundromat. I had not one but two decks, and I was not living in a home with an engine and headlights.

  I would sleep under a pile of blankets. I would not be peeing out my car door in the middle of the night, or in my pee cup, waiting for some creepy man to attack me. I would be able to keep food in the fridge and make hot soup whenever I wanted. I had heat.

  I added more hot water for the third time. Outside, it started to snow.

  I was inside.

  I sniffled.

  I snuffled.

  I slid down so I was entirely covered in hot water in my claw-foot tub to give my bones a break.

  I came up only when I had to laugh so I wouldn’t choke on the water.

  I slept in until eleven o’clock on Saturday morning, buried under blankets. I felt like I was getting my energy back, my health back.

  I padded to the bathroom in my thick socks, delighted that my first pee of the day did not involve me secretly and furtively squatting like a fool beside my car.

  I washed my hands in warm water and played with the soap bubbles like a kindergartener. I couldn’t see the scars on my hands with the bubbles all over the place. I made coffee, added whipping cream, then scrambled back into bed with a huge red mug.

  My bedroom had a view of the mountains straight in front of me. From my bed I could watch the weather. Watching the weather from bed rather than the back of a car is always more pleasing. I had put my pink, ceramic rose box for my lily bracelet on my dresser, and I opened it up and put my lily bracelet on.

  I finished my coffee, then picked up my sketch book.

  My art, my creativity, was coming back, too, all in a rush, as if it had gotten stuck in my homelessness. I drew a picture with a handful of colorful pastels of a window. Outside the window I drew a wishing well. The wishing well would eventually have trinkets coming out of it—dice, brooches, faux stones, tiny gold stars, and sequins. A little girl was running toward it wearing a crown of daisies and yellow ribbons . . .

  I drew three hummingbirds. I would use sparkly netting and wire for the wings . . .

  I drew a double-wide trailer and surrounded it with wildflowers.... I would use buttons and fabrics for the flowers....

  Two hours later, I turned on my computer. I vowed I would not look at anything stomach churning, that is, e-mails from Covey coming from someone else’s e-mail account, as I’d blocked him, or from my defense or divorce attorneys. I would try not to read any other articles about myself or Covey in the paper. That unpleasantness I’d leave for Sunday.

  “Oh, my gosh,” I breathed. I read the e-mail, then read it again. “Yippee! Oh, yippee!”

  Kade Hendricks had e-mailed me. Moi!

  “Dear Grenady: As Bajal is on maternity leave, I have a temporary position available as a receptionist, starting Monday. I would be happy to have you at the company. The position involves answering phones, greeting visitors . . .”

  I giggled as I read the rest of the e-mail. Yes, a giggle. I am too old to giggle, but even with my tips, he was offering me much more than what I made at The Spirited Owl, plus medical insurance.

  I wrote back right away. I thanked him for the position, told him I understood that it was only temporary and that I would be there Monday at eight-thirty, as he had requested. “Thank you,” I wrote. “I look forward to working for your company.” I read it, read it again, studied the ceiling, walked around, read it again to make sure all the letters were in the right place, then hit send.

  I kicked my legs under my blankets. I wiggled with my arms flailing in the air.

  I might be going to jail, but I was no longer living in my car and I had not one but two jobs. Two.

  Because I am an utter geek, I said, “Yippee!” one more time.

  On Sunday I went to a thrift shop and Goodwill. I love shopping for used things at bargain prices.

  I bought four mismatched, hand-painted china plates and four teacups with saucers for two dollars each because they were so pretty and I need pretty around me badly. I bought a pair of two-foot-tall blue ceramic candlesticks for three dollars for my kitchen table, and a flowered teapot, even though I don’t drink tea. I would put it on my stove. I bought three glass vases—one crystal, one stained glass, one huge and blue—for two dollars each. I would put one in the kitchen, one in the family room, one in my bedroom. I also bought light blue Ball jars and two smaller blue vases for fifty cents each.

  Then came my splurge: I went to the big-box store at the end of town, used a coupon, bought sale items only, and brought home pink bedsheets, two queen-sized pillows and pillowcases, and a white comforter with tiny pink roses for my queen-sized bed.

  I also bought a white slipcover for the couch and a white slipcover for the chair. I went to a grocery store next and stocked up, my relief at having food again—and somewhere to store and cook it—immense. I sniffled my way through the aisles. I made sure I grabbed coffee and whipping cream.

  On the way home, I stopped at a garage sale at a sprawling home in the country. The owner told me that she and her husband were downsizing. She had huge throw pillows she’d used on her couch. The flowers on the fabric appeared to be deranged. I bought all eight for twenty-four dollars and headed to the fabric store.

  I went straight to the discount rack, with another coupon in hand, and got a deal a horse thief would envy. Two of the pillows would be yellow with white tulips, and two would have blue and yellow pansies mixed together. One would be candy cane red. I bought enough of each fabric to make tablecloths for my kitchen table.

  For the other three pillows, which would be on my bed, I bought pink-and-white-striped fabric.

  I felt reckless buying these things, but I had a job at Hendricks’ and The Spirited Owl! I had not had to come up with fi
rst and last month’s rent and a security deposit, which I had been saving for, and I had already made another payment to Cherie.

  I had to get the scent of homelessness off of me, the clingy cloud of poverty and desperation. I had to. Setting up an organized, colorful, decorated home was the only way I knew how to do it.

  When I returned to my home above the red barn, I washed the china and left it out on the counter so I could admire the plates and teacups. I pulled the white slipcovers over the furniture. Instant light. I made the bed. Pink and white, sweet and safe.

  I set the vases out and decided I’d spring for flowers.

  I was relieved to my core to have a home.

  After weeks of car living, I am still getting pleasure out of my toilet.

  Not in a weird way.

  And don’t get me started on my shower.

  It was like old home week when I was in jail. A woman would come into the dayroom, and she’d be greeted like we were at some kind of family reunion. “Hey, Lonnie. How ya doin’? How’s your son?” or “D’Angela. You back in again? What for? Hookin’?” and “Glitter! Been a long time. You still with that shit? How your brother? What about your momma? Saw her last time I was out. She had that hip operation yet?”

  They talked, they laughed, they swore together. I didn’t know anyone. I wasn’t there to make friends, but I wasn’t there to make enemies, either.

  There was a guard there with a face like a skull, who reminded me of someone else I didn’t want to think about. He was bony, thin. He leered at the women. You could tell he took this job because he liked the power trip. I saw him watching me. I said, “Eyes back in your head, skull face.”

  The survival instincts I had honed for years came sailing right back in, along with the repressed anger and decimated self-esteem. The me who I had become—the artist who had a little green house and taught kids art—was completely gone, poof, as if she’d never existed, and I was back to slamming down my emotions, living with my guard up, fists ready to fly.

  I hated it. Hated who I had to become again in there to survive. I watched one Herculean-sized woman, at least six feet tall, lumber up to me where I sat on the floor, my back to the cold wall. “Now, aren’t you a pretty Barbie princess?”

  I didn’t respond, but I did stand up. I was not going to be kicked in the Big V sitting down, and I could see by the way she was judging me, and how her gaze settled on my crotch, that a swift kick there was not out of the range of possibility.

  “What? You can’t talk to me, girl? You got in trouble at your country club? What you do, steal the silver?”

  “Thought about it, but no.” I did belong to a country club, although it was in the city. I hated it. Bunch of fancy, brittle, wealthy people wanting to rub shoulders with other fancy, brittle, wealthy people in their quest to reach the top. They reminded me of vultures in Vuitton. I never fit in.

  She stuck her hand out and stroked my hair. I hit her beefy arm away so fast, I knocked her off balance and she stumbled.

  “You pussy bitch,” she hissed at me.

  “You try to touch my hair and I’m a pussy bitch? Don’t touch me.” I wasn’t even scared of Neanderthal Woman. I’d been in fights with worse. Plus I was ravingly pissed because of what he’d done to get me in here.

  “Fancy lady, aren’t you?”

  Not at all. If she only knew how not fancy I was.

  “Where you from, fancy lady?”

  Not much. Less than nothing. “Where are you from?”

  “I ain’t from your neighborhood, that for sure.”

  Oh, you have no idea.

  She glared at me; I glared back. I felt my temper trigger, like a switch, cold and controlled.

  “I asked you a question, Barbie princess. Where you from?”

  Barbie princess? Damn. Temper skyrocketed.

  She stepped up close to me, her face scrunched like a scrunched-up bag. She reached out a hand toward my chest, and I didn’t even think. My fist came swinging out in an arch, and I popped her in the eye. She fell to the ground. She scrambled up, swung, I ducked, and she smashed my cheek with her other fist. I threw a punch at her fat chin. She went flat down again and stayed there.

  I ended up in solitary for three days. Neanderthal Woman did, too.

  What’s funny is that women on the outside think they’ll never be on the inside, in jail. I’ll tell you, between the women you’re in jail with and the women you’re at the supermarket with, there’s not much difference. In fact, sometimes the only difference between them and you is that they had a weapon available when their life turned upside down.

  When I returned from solitary, a brain-mushing experience, Jane and her cat and pig were no longer my roommates.

  I missed the cat and the pig.

  I bought yellow daffodils with orange centers and purple tulips. I put them in the light blue Ball jars and the two smaller blue vases, then placed them on my window sill in the kitchen.

  Instant pretty.

  I so needed pretty. It calmed my nerves.

  “Hi, Millie.” I answered my attorney’s call outside the library.

  “Hi, Dina. How are you? How’s the weather?”

  “It’s still around. How are things going?”

  “The charges have not been dropped, if that’s what you’re unrealistically hoping for. I’m trying to work with the prosecution guys. They’re not giving in, those mules. They believe you were a part of this whole financial scheme.”

  “I’m not even remotely smart enough to be involved. . . .” She talked me through my semi hysteria. “Millie, is there a chance I won’t go to jail?”

  “Yes. No. Maybe. Those documents you signed are killing you.”

  I wanted to bash Covey to pieces.

  “A jury may believe you. A jury may also cook you on a spit like a pig. People are pissed off right now about rich people gashing others’ savings accounts. Also, Covey is prepared to burn you at the stake on the witness stand, like an accused witch. If you’re found guilty, you’ll get around five years, probably. If you plea bargain we can make a deal. We can minimize your jail time. The assistant U.S. attorney has offered eighteen months if you plead guilty.”

  “No!” I semi yelled that. “Hell, no. I will not do time for something I did not do. It ticks me off to even think about it. I will not agree to live behind bars. No way. Never. Let’s go to trial. I will tell the truth. No plea.”

  “Atta girl! You stud muffin! That’s what I wanted to hear, but I had to be upfront with you about where this might be headed. My boxing gloves are off, and I will fight for you with all my legal weaponry. I think you’re innocent.”

  “Thank you. I am innocent. I will not do time for this. I will not plea my way out of this and go to jail for Covey’s scheming. I’ll take a chance.”

  “I love a nasty, hair-pulling fight. Raises my testosterone level.”

  “Maybe you’ll turn into a man before my trial.”

  “Hope not. Women are so much smarter. It would be a detriment in the legal field to be a man.”

  “Thank you, Millie.”

  Her voice softened. “You stay strong, girl. We’ll get ya through this. Adios.”

  Sunday night I could barely contain myself. I set out my outfit for Monday at Hendricks’: cowboy boots; dark skinny jeans, because the other employees wore jeans; a burgundy silky blouse; and dangly silver earrings. I would also wear a belt with a silver belt buckle in the shape of a rose.

  I had talked to Rozlyn. She swore up and down she had not talked to Kade and had planned to do it on Monday. She gave me a hug when I told her about the job, and we danced around her living room with Cleo amidst the women-power quilts. “Yay! A new friend for Eudora and me at Hendricks’!”

  I washed my hair, braided it, and hopped into bed at nine o’clock. I would get up at seven o’clock to make sure I was there on time, which was ridiculous as I was only ten minutes away, but still!

  I had another job!

  And it had hea
lth insurance.

  “Hendricks’ Furniture,” I said into the phone. “Yes, he’s here. One moment, please.” I put through the call that Kade was expecting from a rancher in Wyoming, then I answered the phone again and sent that call off to Rozlyn, money woman and secret lover of Leonard.

  Hendricks’ was much less physically exhausting than The Spirited Owl. I sat in the lobby; answered the phone, which rang constantly; answered people’s questions; greeted people at the door; answered general e-mails from potential clients; and helped clients get the furniture they’d ordered when they came to pick it up.

  Another call came through for one of the furniture makers about a particular design, which I transferred to Sam Jenkins, who managed the production end of things, and then poor Dell DeSouza called again, begging to speak to Eudora Ziegler. Eudora dumped him a month ago. She is seventy years old and has been Kade’s secretary for sixteen years. She has the most gorgeous bone structure I’ve ever seen, high cheekbones, huge eyes, arched brows. She has pure white hair and she’s an elegant fashion plate. She always wears heels and matching necklaces and earrings. She is sharp tongued and blunt. I like her.

  Eudora used to work in Washington, DC, and abroad, she said, until moving here, but she won’t elaborate on what she did. She does speak four languages, however, including Russian, French, and Arabic, and seems to know an impressive amount about the history of foreign governments, which is curious, and the Cold War.

  It was the end of my second week at Hendricks’ Furniture, and I knew Dell and this sorry romantic saga well.

  “I’m sorry, Dell, you know Eudora doesn’t want to talk to you.”