Gem & Dixie
Page 18
I didn’t think they should be spending back child support on more brand-new clothes, but I took the bag and didn’t say anything about it. Their problems weren’t mine anymore. “Thanks. I’ve been washing this outfit like every night, so this is good.”
“You’ll like what I picked out. Gotta keep your new style up.” She glanced across the cafeteria, then back at me. “What’s it like at that lady’s house?”
“I like it. She has pet birds.”
She put her backpack on again and pulled a felt-tip pen out of her pocket. “Give me your hand.”
I held out my palm. It was the arm with the tattoo, which showed because my sleeves were pushed up. The pen ink was cool and wet.
“This is the number of that phone we got. Call me when you get a new one so I have yours.”
I nodded.
“Do you want anything else? From home?”
“No. You can get rid of everything, and have your own room, finally.”
“What if you—” One of Dixie’s guy friends had come running up behind her and grabbed her shoulders to surprise her. “Shit!” she shrieked. “Don’t do that, asshole,” she said, and pushed him away, laughing.
“I’ll see you later,” I said, before she could finish asking: What if you come back?
“Yeah,” she said. “See you later.”
29.
I KEPT adding little bits to my family history for Mr. Bergstrom. He didn’t ask for it, but I found myself coming in with new pages almost every week. I was remembering more about my mom, more about my dad—sometimes good things that made me doubt myself again and wonder why I couldn’t just have waited to leave until after graduation. Mr. Bergstrom reminded me that nothing and no one is all good or all bad, and that’s what makes it so complicated. He also said I had a tendency to downplay my problems or compare them to other people’s and that I shouldn’t do that. He said people like me, with my kind of background, had to be careful to not abandon ourselves by thinking our problems are not important or not big deals. They can be big deals to us, even if they aren’t to anyone else.
“Abandonment is what you learned,” he said. “It will always be your first instinct.”
Leaving, running. He says it will probably be something I’ll want to do again at some point, but right now I find that hard to believe. I didn’t want to leave Mrs. Murphy’s that whole year, and no one made me.
Anyway, whether I remember a good thing or a bad thing, no matter how small it is, I add it to the history.
I remember how Dixie told me my dad said I had a good singing voice. I don’t think she’d make it up.
I remember there was this one time from when Dixie was a baby and my parents were too tired to get up and make me breakfast, and I came into their room looking for them and they didn’t get up but Mom said, “Just crawl in.” She scooted over to make room for me. I climbed over her and lay down in the warm space between their bodies. We stayed there a long time.
That was all I had, but I was sure I’d think of more, remember more. At least I hoped I would.
I even did a part for my history all about Mr. Bergstrom, but I knew I wouldn’t be able to get through it reading aloud without getting all emotional. So I just sort of stuck it in his hand right at the end of one of our appointments.
He worked hard with all my teachers to make sure I graduated. When I did, I wanted so bad to get him a present but I didn’t have any money. After the ceremony, he gave me a little box and when I opened it later it had some gift cards for clothes, groceries, phone minutes. He asked if he could hug me and I said yes, and I couldn’t help but cry a little bit. I think he did, too.
I ended up staying with Mrs. Murphy until I turned eighteen, through to graduation and some months after while I saved money. She helped me find out about programs and resources and things, and got me appointments with social workers and nuns. She introduced me to a girl—a young woman, I guess—Alicia, who had also lived with Mrs. Murphy, years ago. Now Alicia has her own apartment that she shares with two roommates, not that far from my old neighborhood. I’m closer to her than I am to anyone.
Nothing against Mrs. Murphy. We got along good. Life at her house was very quiet. She liked routines and peace and predictability—they worked for her like medication, she said. My routines and my birds, she’d say. They sort of worked the same for me. I told her about how I had tried, with little things—the way I arranged my room at home, my cigarettes—to create my own sense of peace, but the way life with my family was, those things hardly made even a small, peaceful dent.
“Oh, I can imagine,” Mrs. Murphy said. “You were swimming upstream, that’s for sure.”
You’re going to have enough shit to shovel your way out of down the line was how Uncle Ivan had put it that night in the hallway.
Though we didn’t talk talk, the way I do with Alicia or even the way I used to with Mr. Bergstrom, I did tell Mrs. Murphy some things. And I learned from watching her and how she made a calm life. But Alicia understands my life without needing any explanation. And she helped me find a tiny studio apartment the way she did, through the same church where Mr. Bergstrom and Mrs. Murphy go. Catholics are really organized.
Right now I’m learning how to do a budget. I’m only supposed to spend a certain percent of my money on groceries, and I have food stamps to help, too, but I like to keep my refrigerator and cupboards as full as I can. I skimp on the heat and electricity, keeping the thermostat at 52 and not turning on any lights until the sun goes all the way down. I can always put on another sweatshirt if I’m cold.
I wanted to live on one of the islands. I asked Alicia if she thought they could find me a place there but she said it’s way too expensive for what I make now, and especially with my job being in the city, it’s not a realistic option. That’s fine. Maybe someday.
I’m taking a few classes at the community college. My heart’s not in it that much, because I still have no idea what I want to do with my future other than picturing myself on an island, near water. Mostly I want to work and keep saving, because one thing I want to do is take a bus to Idaho to see Uncle Ivan and meet my baby cousin.
My job is thirty-two hours a week at a bakery that mostly does doughnuts. I go before dawn and tie on my apron and drink two cups of coffee to shake off sleep. I bake and frost, bake and frost, bake and frost, then work the register a little, too.
Dixie comes in sometimes and I give her my employee discount, with permission from my boss. I know what Dixie likes: the sunflower banana muffin. Or if we’re out of that, a double-chocolate doughnut. She dyed her hair lighter blond recently and cut it short, and last time she came in she had a new tattoo on her wrist, a tiny mermaid, like the one Mom has near her collarbone. I wonder what Mom thinks of it, and of her hair, but I haven’t asked Dixie, and when I talk to Mom we stick to the basics of how I’m doing and haven’t figured out how to say much more.
Talking to Dad was almost easy—telling him, that time on the phone, that he should have been better, and then I felt free of him, like I could see him or not see him again and I’d be all right. With Mom it’s different. Because sometimes she was good at being a mom. Those years when Roxanne was her best friend and they were going to meetings together . . . it really wasn’t that bad. Like the camping trip. Or dancing around the living room together. That’s what makes it harder with her. I don’t expect anything from my dad but I think I still want something from my mom. Alicia says dealing with people that were sometimes good to you in the midst of being bad is like digging through piles of dog shit with your bare hands to find a couple of tiny nuggets of gold and no one wants to do that.
I kept smoking after the Haciendas ran out, which surprised me because I didn’t think I was hooked. Mrs. Murphy didn’t let me smoke at her house, but I’d find a little time between school and the library, and when I moved out I could do what I wanted. I still kept it to one a day. There are two left in my current pack—one for today, one for tomorrow. Then I’m quitting because it’s
expensive and unhealthy. I’d taken the Haciendas because they were my dad’s and I wanted something of his. I’d wanted to be closer to some part of myself that’s connected to him.
Now I’ve decided the cigarettes don’t bring me closer to anything but my own nasty breath and a future case of lung cancer.
My manager at the bakery, Raúl, took forever to say my name right, Gem and not Jim. When I first started, I didn’t even realize he’d been talking to me when I heard Jim. After I got more comfortable at work I told him, “It’s Gem. With an ‘e.’” And he said, “I know. That’s what I’m saying. Jim.” A lot of people say it like that, and I used to never correct them. I feel different now, about my name. Honestly I’d thought about changing it after everything happened, like my parents changed theirs when they were around my age, like Kip had changed hers. Something easy to say, something anonymous. Like Mary. Mary Smith. Mrs. Murphy said, “Oh no, no. Don’t do that. You’ve got a good name. It’s unusual and it means something.” I’d never felt like it fit, I told her. I was too plain for it and not what my parents imagined when they gave it to me. “You might change your mind about that someday,” she said.
Raúl is maybe forty-five or something, and big, and there are always sweat stains in the pits of his green bakery polo. My first couple of days at work, I was scared of him because his voice is loud and he doesn’t smile a lot. But the other people on my shift—Jeff, Annie—kept saying stuff like Oh, that’s just how he is, and teasing him, and telling me not to worry. Slowly I realized that, along with Mr. Bergstrom, Raúl is really one of the nicest people I’ve ever met.
“Hey, Gem, you were supposed to clock out ten minutes ago,” he says now.
“I know. I’m meeting a friend and there’s not time to go home in between, so I thought I’d stay.”
“Clock out and get a doughnut and let’s go sit down.”
I take a buttermilk bar and put it in a bag, and Raúl and I sit at a corner table, him half-supervising Jeff.
“You’re not going to eat that?” he asks, pointing to my bag.
“Not right now.”
“So, who’s this friend you’re meeting?” Raúl leans heavily on his elbows, rocking the table toward him. “I thought we were your only friends. Right, Jeff?”
Jeff, from behind the counter, shrugs. “I guess she can have other friends.”
I like how they tease me. Once I figured out they weren’t making fun of me, that teasing is how they relate, it helped me feel like I belong.
“I do,” I say. “Not a lot, but some.”
Kip is on her first visit home since starting at Evergreen. It’s less than two hours from Seattle, but she usually stays around the dorms on weekends. Even though I’m closer to Alicia now, Kip is still one of my best friends. When you have a shared experience with someone who showed you some kindness when you needed it most, it sticks with you. We’re going to take the ferry together and hang out at her house tonight and tomorrow. Maybe go for a hike.
I get on ferries every chance I get—anytime the tip jar is a little more generous than usual or I need to see more trees. I usually stand on the outside deck for the whole ride unless it’s pouring down rain, at least for as long as I can stand it. Steady in my boots, steady on my feet.
Sometimes I worry about Dixie. I can’t help it. Dad is still in and out of her life, and Dixie still seems to get wrapped up in whatever he and Mom are into—their problems, their issues. Alicia is always reminding me I don’t have the power to be responsible for every single person in the world.
“Not every single person in the world,” I tell her. “Just Dixie.”
“Still not your job,” Alicia says. “Anyway, maybe what you’re showing her by getting out of there, having your life now, is the best way you can help. You should think about that, Gem.”
“Maybe.”
Alicia says we’ll always find each other, me and Dixie.
I know I can find Dixie. I wonder sometimes if she’ll find me. Like I told Kip, she’s the only other person in this world who knows what it is and what it was to be us. I don’t know if Dixie really understands this yet, but when she’s ready, I’m here. I’m staying right here.
Tonight when I’m at Kip’s, we’ll talk about it. We always end up talking about Dixie and Jessa because we both know a lot about sisters. We’ll talk, and stay up too late, and then I’ll sleep the deeper sleep I always get on the island. And I’ll dream about living there one day myself, about boats and bicycles and water, and a dog running next to me on the road, in the green, green afternoon light.
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ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Photo by Jeffrey Overstreet
SARA ZARR is the acclaimed author of five novels for young adults, including Story of a Girl and The Lucy Variations. She’s a National Book Award finalist and two-time Utah Book Award winner. Her novels have been variously named to annual best books lists of the American Library Association, Kirkus Reviews, Publishers Weekly, School Library Journal, the Guardian, the New York Public Library, and the Los Angeles Public Library and have been translated into many languages. She lives in Utah with her husband and online at www.sarazarr.com.
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BOOKS BY SARA ZARR
Roomies (with Tara Altebrando)
The Lucy Variations
How to Save a Life
Once Was Lost
Sweethearts
Story of a Girl
Gem & Dixie
CREDITS
Cover photo © 2017 by Margaret Malandruccolo
Cover design by Jenna Stempel
COPYRIGHT
Balzer + Bray is an imprint of HarperCollins Publishers.
GEM & DIXIE. Copyright © 2017 by Sara Zarr. All rights reserved under International and Pan-American Copyright Conventions. By payment of the required fees, you have been granted the nonexclusive, nontransferable right to access and read the text of this e-book on-screen. No part of this text may be reproduced, transmitted, downloaded, decompiled, reverse-engineered, or stored in or introduced into any information storage and retrieval system, in any form or by any means, whether electronic or mechanical, now known or hereafter invented, without the express written permission of HarperCollins e-books.
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ISBN 978-0-06-243459-3 (trade bdg.)
EPub Edition © March 2017 ISBN 9780062434623
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FIRST EDITION
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