Waiting

by Carol Lynch Williams

  And I know you have reason to be.” Taylor looks at me in the reflection. His eyes have gone glassy. Is he going to cry? “I’m sad too. He was my best friend. Not my brother. But I can’t stand that your dad and mom didn’t show up tonight.”

  He doesn’t cry. I turn off the light, sit on his lap, and let him hold me in the darkness, my ankles curled around his.

  I take Taylor home, walk him to the front door. There’s a light on and we stand on the front porch and I kiss him good night.

  I drive away, conking out the car only once, on a hill.

  Mom’s still not home.

  I clean the kitchen, go to bed, say my prayers on my knees, covered by the sheet and lightweight blanket.

  I say the things I usually say to God: “Why? Why? Why?

  Let my father see me again. Let my mother care. Please don’t let it hurt so much.” But I notice something. Where the pain is? I feel a little hope, too.

  I’m almost asleep when I hear my father in my doorway.

  “Good night, London,” he says, his voice low, like he knows I’m asleep and there’s some unwritten rule that he’d better not break. “I love you.”

  I love you.

  “And I’m sorry.”

  I open my eyes. “Daddy?”

  But he’s gone, and to tell the truth, I’m not sure if he was a dream or not.

  In this dream I stand with Jesse.

  His hair is long, past his shoulders, and when he looks at me, I can’t look him in the face.

  When he kisses me, I feel so good inside, I think I’m healed.

  All that time with Taylor and I dream of Jesse.

  In the morning, even before I open my eyes, I can’t wait to get to school.

  I want to see Jesse.

  And I want to see Taylor.

  And I want to see Lili.

  I throw back the covers, hurry to the bathroom, and shower.

  The water’s hot, and I’m so grateful for hot showers every time I take one, because believe you me, I know what it’s like to bathe in cold water and even what it’s like to take sponge baths, which are okay if the weather is warm. I suds up my hair, grateful for sweet-smelling soap, grateful for the new day and a tub.

  Am I a freak? As I wash my body, I think, It’s supposed to be a year when people start to feel better and it hasn’t been a year but I think I’m feeling okay. A tentative okay feeling. I smile into the shower spray. Even with Mom being crazy—I’m used to that—I’m okay this morning.

  As I step out onto the bath mat and dry off, I decide that nothing is going to ruin the day for me.

  Mom sits at the dining room table sipping coffee. She’s dressed up nice, but she doesn’t raise her eyes to me when I set my books down. How can she be so perfect in her ignoring me?

  Something tough runs down my spine—makes me stand taller. I think, To hell with this, because nothing is going to ruin my happy-ish feeling. And I am sick of her game. I think that, over and over, as I go into the kitchen, pour myself bran cereal, and make myself toast. Then I do something I haven’t done since before I quit begging her to talk to me. I take my food into the dining room and sit down in the chair next to hers. I’m so close I can smell her perfume.

  “I missed you at dinner,” I say, and take a big bite of cereal. I’m shaking, and I think the bran is going to get caught in my throat and then maybe I will die too, like my brother, but it turns out I can swallow. Maybe all this bran and stress will just end up as diarrhea.

  Mom proves she can swallow too. Keeps swallowing her coffee. Holds her cup in both hands. She looks off across the table, away from me. I can hear Daddy in the bathroom. Just up, I bet. Lately I am to school before he leaves for work, but I’m not so sure my mother ever sleeps.

  “It was pretty good,” I say. “Stroganoff. Your favorite.”

  Nothing. Not even a slurp in my direction.

  She won’t ruin this almost good beginning of a day. I won’t let her. Anger wants to bubble up, but I push it down.

  “I’m thinking of maybe making curry tonight. Another one of your favorites.”

  Still nothing.

  “Unless you want something else. I could make hamburgers.” My hands tremble, and my eyes fill with tears. I fight to keep my voice steady. In the other room the shower goes on.

  Mom picks up her saucer and walks away, into the kitchen. I hear her put the dishes in the sink. She has to walk past me again to get out of the house. I’m glad. She hesitates. I can hear her waiting.

  So she knows I’m alive. She knows!

  I keep talking. “Or a pizza. I can go with Taylor, you remember him. I can go with him to the store and get what we need for that. Fresh basil and mozzarella.” My feet have gotten me up and walked me to the doorway, like they have a mind of their own. My mother stands at the sink. Looking into it. She’s so thin. But she’s dressed to perfection and her hair is done and . . . “What do you think of that?”

  When she walks past, she shoves me aside, hard. But I pretend like that hasn’t happened. And that weird mouth of mine takes over.

  “I’m here and you know it.”

  Mom goes to her room, grabs a sweater from her bed.

  Goes to her nightstand and gets her purse.

  Outside I hear the horn beep. It’s Taylor, come to get me, the Living Girl. Mom slips off her house shoes and goes to her closet.

  I feel so much pain watching her that I can’t hold it in.

  Tears stream down my face. The horn sounds again.

  “I have two boyfriends,” my mouth says. I wipe at my cheeks.

  Her shoes are on. She shoves past me a second time.

  She’s touched me! Twice!

  “Neither guy knows about the other.” I want to sob, but I don’t.

  She’s down the hall. I’m right behind her. I feel like I did when I was three years old, running after her for a hug and she was chasing Zach. Something burns in my throat.

  “That’s one of them out there right now. And the other one brings me home to this empty house. With his sister.

  She’s called before. You’ve spoken to her. Lili.”

  Mom’s at the front door.

  “Taylor’s pretty good-looking. Remember him? Zach’s best friend? Check him out when you leave.”

  She opens the door and walks away from me to her car, and I feel like screaming I want to scream at her tackle her knock her to the ground make her love me again but instead I say, “I’m having sex with them both,” then turn around and walk back inside to get my school things, after throwing a wave and smile at Jesse!

  Not Taylor! who comes toward the front door.

  Gosh, I hope he didn’t hear me.

  Did he?

  How loud was my voice?

  Why did I say I was sleeping with Taylor and Jesse?

  Why did I say it in front of people?

  My heart pounds in my throat.

  Does my mother care?

  Did it bother her?

  It must have affected her a little, or she wouldn’t have run like that.

  Except,

  except she could have run just because she hates me

  so

  much.

  I had no idea.

  Like she had no idea.

  How could we know?

  But they were fighting with him, not me.

  He’d gotten someone pregnant. I hadn’t.

  He had depression. They knew.

  It wasn’t about me.

  But that’s what it’s become.

  I have to do a lot of deep breathing before I can step outside.

  I stand in the dining room, look toward the foyer, wonder if I can make it to my book bag and then out the door and then to school and then back home again before cracking wide open.

  “She doesn’t get the control,” I say to the light over the table. “Or the power. She doesn’t run me anymore. I get to choose.” But the words don’t free me. In fact, I wonder if I’ll even be able to stop crying.
/>   So I stand there. Try to breathe. Try to stop weeping.

  Try not to be horrified. And when the knock comes, I let out a yelp of surprise. I can’t go to the door, can’t say anything; I wait, trembling, hoping for a miracle.

  The front door opens a bit and Jesse sticks his head inside, and there we are, looking at each other, and I had forgotten they were coming to get me. That Taylor traded shifts. Like I’m a job. I feel that way again now.

  Jesse doesn’t say anything like, “Are you ready to go?” or, “We’re gonna be late.” He just walks inside, closing the door behind him, and it’s so dark in here, and watery like the ocean too. No, those are my tears, and that’s why I have the upside-down-in-the-salt-water feel.

  I’m rooted between the foyer and the dining room, maybe sprouting leaves now. My books are steps away, and Jesse is so tall coming across the room like that. “Sex with two guys?” he says, and he has this funny look on his face, like he’s not sure if he should laugh or not, or maybe he’s disgusted with me, because I sure am. Then he has his arms around me.

  We stand there, his arms tight, and I haven’t moved still and I can’t move until Mom is back inside, screaming.

  She never says a word to me, even in her fury. Just hollers at Jesse, a kid she’s never spoken to before.

  “Get the hell out of here. And take this piece of trash with you.”

  “You make me sick with your promiscuity.”

  “I’ll call the police if you don’t leave.”

  Like that, I’m free. I can move.

  That thing Jesus says about how the truth shall set you free? Guess what? It’s Mom’s lies that make me free, make me move, grab my books, leave the room. Jesse’s saying something (to me? to my mom?), then taking my hand, pulling me along.

  I bump into a chair, bump into the doorknob. Jesse keeps walking, running his mouth, his words coming out fast and loud. I glance at his face, see that’s he’s mad—and remember Zach.

  It was before Zacheus went to bed.

  Taylor had been over, trying to see me, and I wouldn’t have any of it because it felt like bad things were getting ready to happen. Our house was like a pot of boiling water overflowing.

  “Come on, London,” Taylor said. “We need to talk.”

  “I can’t,” I had said. “Things are going on with Zach and Rachel. I kinda need to help out.” I stood on the porch, blocking the front door. It was hot and humid and the mosquitoes were so thick you could almost hear them buzzing as a group. Inside the house Zach was swearing, Mom was hollering, and there was the rumble of my daddy trying to smooth things over.

  My arms were folded, and I wondered if Taylor could hear them? How could he not? All that was going on inside. “It’s not a good time for me right now.”

  Taylor hardly let those words come out of my mouth.

  “What about me, London?” He’d said that right in my face. Too close. I felt his breath on my skin. “What about us?”

  There was a crashing noise—I can’t remember what broke now—but I looked at Taylor and said, “Are you kidding me? Can’t you hear what’s going on? This is what I have to do.” Then I went inside.

  Later I figured out Heather had been asking Taylor to do things. I mean, I saw them together at school the very next day. And Zach told me he’d beat the crap out of his friend if I needed him to. He wouldn’t have said that, I realized later, if things weren’t so bad between him and Rachel.

  But that night, when I walked in the house, I saw it had become a war zone. Mom had broken several household items, and Daddy was trying to calm her.

  Zach was livid. At this point he thought he’d marry Rachel. That they’d take their baby and do the Teen Mom thing. It never occurred to him that Rachel would let her parents convince her of an abortion.

  The deal is, Zach didn’t get mad often.

  He got sad.

  But that day.

  That day, as Taylor drove away from the house, Mom called Rachel a whore. And that was it.

  “She’s a whore. A slut. A Jezebel,” Mom said.

  “Mom.” That was me. Those words coming out of her mouth, and about wonderful Rachel—I would have laughed if I hadn’t seen Zach’s face change. It was all so bizarre. Daddy must have seen the change too, because he stepped in between my brother and mother.

  “Zachy,” I yelled.

  But my brother seemed to hear nothing but the name-calling. He knocked our dad aside. Knocked him to the floor. And he was on Mom in a moment. Had her by the shoulders. Pushed her to the wall. Said, “I have had enough of you, Mom. You’ve done enough. Shut the hell up. Don’t you ever say anything like that again.”

  “You’re hurting me, Zacheus Lee Castle. Remove your hands from my person right now.”

  I hurried from Daddy’s side, moving across the room.

  Tried to get to my brother. Daddy stood too.

  “I’m done talking to you,” Zach said. “I’ll not speak another word to you the rest of my life.”

  Mom laughed, but I saw the look on her face. The gauntlet had been thrown down. “You won’t talk to me?” she said, and laughed again.

  I reached out for Zach, touched his arm. He looked at me, and his eyes filled with tears, his face splotchy from anger. “You tell her, London,” he said, his voice almost a whisper. “Tell her I’m done.”

  I was caught there in the middle. Daddy stood behind me.

  “Tell her.”

  “He said, Mom . . . ,” I said, faltering, not wanting to say anything at all, but Mom was too fast. “Don’t either of you speak to me,” she said.

  And Zacheus didn’t. Not even one more time. Not the rest of his life.

  “Okay, wow,” Jesse says. He still has my hand. “Wow.”

  He pulls me to the van. Lauren looks out the window—what’s she doing here?—and she isn’t happy. Then she must see my face, because she opens the door and so does Lili and they jump out and run to meet us. All three of them stand around me.

  Tears keep running down my face, and I feel like perhaps something has broken. Nothing as clichéd as my heart.

  That broke months ago, anyway. I think maybe my eyes have a malfunction or something.

  What’s weird is that the weather has changed overnight.

  It’s warm this morning.

  “What is it?” Lili says, and her arms are around me, and Lauren is petting Jesse, who says, “I’ve never seen anything like that in real life.”

  “What?”

  “Her mom. Her mom is messed up.”

  Messed up? My mother? Of course. Of course she is.

  “I can take my brother’s car,” I say. I have the keys in my bag. I dig around for them. “I want to be alone.” I try to say the words, but nothing comes out but alone.

  “Oh, London,” Lili says, and she hugs me close. “Come with us.”

  “Get the hell out of here!” The last word screams up, high, higher, and I’m sure that if I were to look in the cloudless sky, I’d see the last sounds of my mother there, proving she hates me.

  We all turn and there she is. On the porch. Looking so beautiful but so . . . so angry. My mother. “Take her away.