by R. H. Herron
“Laurie!”
She shrugged. “So we can walk out to the ambulance now or I can take her myself in my car.” The last part was an enormous falsehood. She wasn’t calm enough to drive right now.
“I’ll go in the ambulance with Mom.” Jojo’s voice was small but clear.
“Okay, then.” Laurie stood, catching herself as her knees buckled the slightest bit. She felt Omid’s hand on her elbow and was grateful for it. He extended his other hand to Jojo, and together they helped their daughter stand.
Jojo swayed, and the color drained from her face. Suddenly she looked green.
“Emesis bag,” snapped one of the medics to another.
A blue bag appeared just in time, and Jojo vomited into it. God, later she would be so furious. She’d vomited once in public when she was eight, right into the school cafeteria’s trash can, and she’d never gotten over it.
Laurie pushed the hair away from Jojo’s face and rubbed her back. Her daughter swayed again. “How about we sit another minute.”
Jojo spit into the bag, then took the Kleenex someone gave her and rubbed it over her face. She sat back down on the bed. “Oh, my God.”
Her breath was foul—onion and rum and something meaty. Laurie took the bag and twisted it and put it on the floor. ID might need the contents later, which she tried not to think about. “I’ll get you a wet washcloth.”
Jojo’s fingers gripped into Laurie’s arm.
Laurie made an effort to soften her face. “Right there.” She pointed at the open bathroom door that Omid and another officer were partially blocking. “I’ll be back in one sec, I promise.”
She moved past the men and into the bathroom. What was the protocol on this? This was some kind of a crime scene. She shouldn’t touch anything if she could help it. But goddamn it, a washcloth would help Jojo.
Of course there wasn’t a washcloth. A scented candle yes, and an expensive bottle of pump soap. But there wasn’t a single towel in the whole bathroom, not even a guest hand towel. “Just a second, Jojo. Omid.”
Omid broke off in midsentence. “Yeah. What are you doing?”
Laurie just pointed at their daughter, whose face was still pale green.
He nodded and went to Jojo, putting his arms around her like a coat.
There had to be a washcloth somewhere.
Laurie yanked open the closet door.
It was dark inside, and deeper than she’d thought it would be, and it smelled strange, almost metallic.
Laurie took a step inside, the bathroom light behind her casting an odd shape on the floor.
She ran into something on the floor that felt soft and heavy.
Slowly the shape took form.
A leg, twisted the wrong way. An arm bent at the elbow, the hand resting against a low shelf, as if casually waving hello. The body was propped halfway up, the head leaning against a laundry basket.
A buzz started inside Laurie’s head. She smashed her hand into the wall next to her, banging against it until she found the light switch, and the closet lit up.
A young man wearing a black sweatshirt and jeans lay at her feet. He was handsome—at least the right side of his face was good-looking: strong jaw, wide cheekbone, expressive eyebrow. The right side of his face was clean, bloodless. His one intact eye was open wide, the pupil startlingly matte instead of shiny.
But where the left side of his face should have been, there was just a bloody, lumpy mess—the top of the head caved in, the left eye scrambled, the cheek a mass of red viscera and raw tissue. Below that, the white bone of his jaw gleamed. Blood pooled to his chest and dripped down his side, soaking into the white carpet. His mouth hung open, the lower left lip split sideways, hanging below his jawline.
Laurie’s right hand went to her own waist—it wasn’t until she couldn’t grab her gun that she realized she’d gone for it for the first time in seventeen years. She tried to yell, but her lungs were somehow empty.
She staggered backward, shutting off the light. Don’t let Jojo see. She shut the closet door. “Omid,” she managed, her voice strangled and too low for anyone to hear. She pushed past an officer and made it to the bed. Scooping her forearms under Jojo’s armpits, she pulled her daughter to standing again.
“Mom?”
“We’re going. Now.”
“Laurie?” Omid stood, his arm going to Jojo’s back, as if to steady her.
“Bathroom. Nobody cleared the closet.” Laurie’s brain stalled. Just the code came to her, nothing else. She whispered in Omid’s ear, so that Jojo wouldn’t hear. “187.”
“Out.” Omid helped them to the hallway. “Get her out of here.”
“Mom, what’s going on?”
“Follow me, baby.”
Behind them, Omid roared, “Who the FUCK was supposed to clear this section?”
Laurie felt Jojo curling into herself again. “Come on. Can you walk?” They moved down the hall and toward the front of the house. “I’ve got you.”
“Jojo!”
The shout came from the right, from the kitchen. Kevin Leeds, the football player, was seated at a round table, his shoulders twice as broad as the chair he sat in. Detective Nate Steiner sat across from him, a report sheet in front of him.
Laurie tried to drag Jojo along with her, but Jojo was quicker, lighter, suddenly not wobbly at all, surprisingly strong. She jerked out of her mother’s grasp and dodged past Officer Jorge Rogers, heading for the table.
“Kevin! What’s going on? What the hell happened to me? Why am I here?”
Leeds stood, but Steiner was fast, reaching to press him back into the seat. “Don’t even think about getting up.”
Laurie yanked Jojo’s arm. “Don’t talk to him.” She pulled again.
Jojo wrenched herself away. “What’s going on? Did you do something?”
The football player, huge compared to Steiner, stood. “I didn’t even know you were in the house. This shit is insane. Tell them.”
“I don’t know what to tell them! I don’t remember—”
Laurie got hold of Jojo’s arm again and dug in as hard as she could. “Don’t talk to him. Don’t say another word.” She felt someone behind her shove her to the side, and she tugged Jojo along with her.
Omid.
He was a barrel of gunpowder lit with a dry match. He threw himself at Leeds, both arms around his waist, kicking the chair out of the way as they went. Leeds might have been used to being rushed on the field, but he hadn’t seen this one coming, and Omid had the man rolled onto his stomach, his arm pinned high up behind him in less than four seconds. “Give me your cuffs,” he panted at Steiner.
Laurie smashed Jojo against the counter, blocking her body so that she couldn’t get closer to the men.
“Daddy!”
Omid’s knee was in the middle of Leeds’s back, and he was leaned forward, saying something urgently into the football player’s ear. Laurie couldn’t hear the words, but she had a good idea of what they were.
“He’s okay, they’re okay, we’re getting out.” Laurie jerked her chin at Rogers, who nodded. He and Laurie flanked Jojo, and together they pushed her from the kitchen, out through the expansive living room, and into the front yard.
The night sky was lit by the flashing lights. Neighbors gawked with wide-eyed stares. One called, “Everything all right?”
Jojo was sobbing. Laurie’s face was wet, too, though she hadn’t realized she was crying until she wiped her eyes with the back of her hand. Then the medics had the ambulance open, and Laurie was helping her daughter climb into it, and they were settling Jojo onto the gurney for the short, ten-block ride, strapping her in and motioning for Laurie to secure herself as well.
She’d been bored. An hour ago Laurie had been bored, complaining about coffee. And now life had spiraled onto a different plane, and she di
dn’t recognize anything but the hand she held in hers, the hand that was alive and warm.
Jojo was alive. Someone else was dead—brutally so—but Jojo was alive.
That was all that mattered for now.
FIVE
THE PLASTIC, CHEMICAL scent of the hospital burned Jojo’s nostrils, a sharp assault. How could anyone work with that shoved up their nose constantly?
She inhaled again and coughed.
Her mother turned abruptly, looking up from her phone. “You okay?”
Of course I’m not.
“Sorry,” Mom said. “Texting Dad. He’ll be here soon.”
Fear filled the space between Jojo’s shoulder blades. “Whatever.”
“Baby, it’s going to be okay.” Mom leaned forward. “What you need to do now is just breathe. Like we learned in that stress class. In through the nose, out through the mouth. Do that now.”
Less than an hour ago, all Jojo had wanted was her mother’s arms around her. Now those grasping hands made her feel like she was going be trapped forever if Mom got hold of her. “Stop. I’m fine.” She unlocked her phone for the hundredth time, looking for a message from Harper. Where was she? She would know what had happened.
“You’re not.”
“You’re not.” What a stupid thing to say. But Mom wasn’t answering her about what had happened in the bathroom right before they left Kevin’s house. Every time Jojo asked about it, Mom just shook her head, like she was angry.
On a normal day, that would have driven Jojo insane. She would have picked and poked until Mom gave in and told her whatever it was.
This wasn’t a normal day.
Jojo flipped through Instagram on her phone, even though the pictures blurred into a dreary, wet mess.
“Can you tell me even a little bit about what happened?”
“If I could remember, I would.” Would she? Jojo wasn’t sure. And part of herself hated the fact that she was putting that look on Mom’s face, that disappointed one, the one that said Jojo was a major fuckup.
Another part—a small, vicious kernel that she wished she didn’t have—felt glad. Then that in itself sprouted guilt.
“You can’t remember at all?”
Jojo shook her head so hard it set up an instant headache behind her eyes. “I told you. What are we still doing here, anyway? Let’s just go.” She knew why they couldn’t, though. The intake nurse had said it to them gently. Rape test. We’ve called for an advocate, and she’ll be here soon to walk you through the process. All the r-words swirled in Jojo’s brain. “Did I get roofied?”
Mom’s lips pulled in at the corners, as if she hated the word, too. But her eyes were still soft. “They’ll check for that in your blood work. How do you know Kevin Leeds?”
Jojo wasn’t going to get out of it. Mom was annoying as shit, and as stubborn as Jojo was. And Mom was never dumb. She wouldn’t let it go. “We’re friends.” She hated that her voice shook.
“Friends.” Mom stared, her forehead channel getting deeper. “You and him.”
Jojo bristled. “You have a problem with that?”
“With the fact that my daughter’s hanging out with an adult pro football player? Yeah. I do.”
“Because he’s black.”
Her mother’s eyes narrowed. “Don’t be stupid. Because he’s probably thirty.”
“Twenty-two.” He’d graduated early and gotten drafted immediately.
“Jesus, Jojo.”
“So he plays football. He’s also really into baking bread. He goes to church. We’re just friends. Why do you have to make that sound disgusting?” What if Kevin was a bad man? Wouldn’t she have known? Jojo remembered again that she’d kissed him. How—why—had she done that? Had she already been roofied then? How had she ended up at his house?
“H-he’s . . .” Mom stuttered. “The flag-pin thing. He’s the one who wears it upside down, right?”
Jojo writhed on the hospital bed, pulling the blanket over herself tighter, wishing she could tuck herself in. “Oh, my God. You say that like it’s a bad thing. It’s a pin. He’s an activist, not a satanist.” Six months before, when he’d first been drafted, he’d gone onto the field with an upside-down flag pin on his jersey. It was tiny, but it had been noticed. Not by Jojo, not right away. She didn’t care about football, but guys she knew had talked about it. Kevin Leeds didn’t sing along for the national anthem, and afterward he always touched the pin and then raised his fist.
Had she gone home with him?
Had she—Had he . . . ?
Holy shit.
Mom said, “He wears the logo of our nation upside down. Encouraging dissent in front of everyone.”
Jojo stifled a groan. “He’s encouraging discussion, drawing attention to the fact that black people are still mistreated in this country. People of color like me, Mom.” She pointed at her own face. “Have you noticed?”
“You’re half Persian. You call that being a person of color?”
“You’re married to a brown man.”
“Jojo!”
“And you have a half-brown daughter.”
“Stop it. That’s ridiculous.”
Jojo stared. Even Dad joked about the cream in her coffee. They’d always laughed when people thought Mom had adopted her, when they wanted to give her credit for her passion for humanity. “What part of it is ridiculous? You think it’s not on my mind every day?”
Mom ignored her. “How do you know him? Tell me now.” It was inevitable. Mom was a pit bull with a piece of rawhide. It was going to come out.
“I know him through Harper.”
Mom thunked back in her plastic chair with a small oof. “Harper Cunningham?”
Of course Harper Cunningham. What other Harper was there? “Yeah.”
“You were with her tonight?”
“Yeah.”
“Where is she now?”
Jojo had no idea. Harper, where are you? Sudden fear jolted her. “What was in the closet that upset you?”
Mom said sharply, “Nothing. Wait, you two aren’t friends. You haven’t been friends for how long? Not since the arrest. What, two years ago?”
“We’re friends.”
“Jojo. I’m spinning here. You have to help me out with some of this. You have this whole secret life that I don’t know about.”
“It’s not secret. You’re just never around to see it.” It was a low blow, and she meant it to be.
Mom went white. “You’re right. Oh, baby, I’m so sorry.” She reached out a hand.
The whole of Jojo’s body recoiled, and she drew backward, hunching her spine into a ball. She couldn’t take care of her mother right now. “Can we just go home?”
Mom shook her head. “I wish we could.” Her cell phone pinged, and she grabbed it like it was on fire.
The curtain shook on its metal rod as a round-faced woman poked her head through. “Jojo Ahmadi? Can I come in?”
Mom said, “Of course.”
The woman didn’t even look at Mom, just at Jojo.
“I’m Gloria.” She held out a hand, and Jojo shook it. She was wide at the hip and the bust, and her hair was a wild mess of gray-black curls. She wore some hippie-looking blue dress that looked as comfortable as pajamas and a purple jersey jacket with an ink stain at the pocket.
“I’m Jojo,” she muttered, hating the hitch in her voice so much she wanted to punch herself in the face.
“I’m Laurie. I’m Jojo’s mother.” Mom stood up, making the space around the bed seem crowded. Jojo was caught on the bed. No way out.
“Hi, Mom,” said Gloria comfortably. “Why don’t you go ahead and stay seated. These teeny-tiny little cubbies, I just feel so claustrophobic in them sometimes.”
Jojo’s mother sat but strained forward. “What happens next?”
&nbs
p; Gloria responded as if Jojo had asked, speaking directly to her. “What happens next is I go with you to do the sexual-assault forensic exam.” She said it as if they were going to get a vanilla latte.
“We go, you mean,” said Mom.
Gloria’s smile looked real. “If that’s what Jojo wants. Jojo, do you want to do this with me and your mother, or just with me?”
“I’m her mother. I go where she goes.”
Gloria took a second to beam warmth at Jojo—she could feel it heating up her insides, which had been so cold ever since she woke up—and then turned to her mother. “And I’m her advocate. I’m here for Jojo.”
“So am I.”
Gloria crossed her arms. “I’m not your advocate, though. With respect, I’m going to let Jojo decide on her level of support.”
Jojo shivered and pictured the room she might be going to. When she’d gotten her first Pap smear, Mom had held her hand, and it had been half comforting, half mortifying. “You can stay here, Mom. I’ll go with Gloria.”
Gloria nodded. “I’m just taking her down the hall to my office. We’ll chat a little before we see the nurse. I’ll keep you posted as we go. That okay, Mom?”
“No—” Mom broke off and took a breath. “You’re right. I know you’re right. That’s why you’re the advocate. I know. But I’m freaking out—”
“Of course you are,” Gloria said in a friendly voice. “But Jojo’s our focus right now. Now, Jojo, why don’t you and I go for that walk down the hall? Put your shoes on. There’s no telling what diseases they got on the loose in here. Mom, I swear to you, I will keep you posted.”
It seemed childish to say aloud the mantra running through Jojo’s head, I want to go home I want to go home go home go home go home, so instead she nodded. “Okay.”
She slipped off the bed and stood. She glanced at her mother, who was blinking ferociously as if it could disguise the fact that the lower half of her face was tight in that almost-crying twist. Guilt swam up Jojo’s spinal column. She had done all this. She was the reason all this shit was happening, and she couldn’t even remember what she’d done.
