Breaking Night

by Liz Murray

  The morning I arrived with Mr. Doumbia, Ma was spreading a generous serving of mayonnaise across Brick’s roast beef sandwich as he sat, waiting to be fed. Smoke from their cigarettes filled the air. Through it, the Platters sang “Only You” from a junk radio on the table. Lisa had opened the door and greeted me with a limp hug. She was wearing dark lipstick and gold hoop earrings that seemed bigger than her face.

  “Pumpkin!” Ma cheered when she saw me. “You’re here!” She wrapped her arms tightly around me, still holding the greasy knife in her hand. Hugging her, I immediately felt the weight loss, her delicate body like a child’s in my arms. I was growing taller than her, larger. The difference struck me, made me feel somehow older than she was. “I missed you, Ma,” I said softly into her ear, while I watched Brick behind Ma, signing papers that Mr. Doumbia had fanned out across the kitchen table.

  “Feel good to be free?” Brick asked, choking on a laugh through his smoker’s cough. His question made me feel gross and I didn’t answer him, but pulled back to see Ma smiling at me, looking into my eyes. “I’m so glad you’re here, Lizzy.”

  “Don’t forget.” Mr. Doumbia removed his sunglasses to speak, a toothpick wagging from his bottom lip. “This is a probationary trial. We’ll see how school goes, then we’ll know if the placement is working or if Ms. Elizabeth cares to return to the system.”

  Even though school at St. Anne’s had been no more than a sewing class in a spare room with a woman named Olga, I had technically passed the seventh grade in the system. The day after my arrival at Brick’s, I was scheduled to start the eighth grade at Junior High School 80. Ma had to register me. “Penny Marshall and Ralph Lauren went here, ya know,” Ma told me as we crossed Mosholu Parkway headed for my new school. “Only his name back then was Lipshitz. Imagine, Ralph Lipshitz clothing. Like anyone would buy shit.” I didn’t laugh. “It’s a really good school, Lizzy. I wish I could go back to school. I never finished high school, ya know. I hope you finish,” she added, more to herself than to me. I was unsure if I could finish a straight week of school, but the thought of returning to St. Anne’s made my stomach lurch.

  Security directed us to a small office, where we waited to see the guidance counselor about my class placement. Kids were changing classes, swarming in and out of the office. Looking at their backpacks and bright clothing, seeing them laugh and chase one another through the halls, I felt older than all of them. Stepping in the office just then, I suddenly realized that I was embarrassed by my mother.

  She spoke in loud shouts over the heads of the passing children, entirely unaware of her language, telling me obscenity-laced stories about her new friends in the neighborhood bar, Madden’s. Since getting off cocaine, she’d been consistent with taking her meds but they gave her a nervous twitch, as though her arms and legs were being jerked upward by invisible strings. The scars on her arms had never been so obvious to me until we sat under the bright lights of the junior high office; punctured and injected thousands of times, they’d healed into light purple marks concentrated mostly over her larger veins. Seated there, I was sure everyone would know they were track marks.

  Another student, a boy my age, waited across from me with his mother. The mom was neatly dressed in a feminine business suit and pumps. While Ma spoke, the woman shifted uncomfortably, running her fingers repeatedly over her thin necklace and whispering to her son. Ma had recently cropped her hair into a short mullet, and she had on one of Brick’s rebate T-shirts that read MARLBORO, WHAT IT MEANS TO BE A MAN. I shrank in my seat.

  When the counselor came out to take the next in line, she called out the boy’s name. Ma rose to cut in front of the boy and his mother, hearing only the word next. “No, Ma, they’re next,” I stammered, but the woman waved us ahead. “No, no, you go ahead.” Ma had already taken a seat in the office, oblivious.

  Junior High School 80 segmented its students, like most other schools, into “top” to “bottom” classes. That is, smart to dumb classes, which they coded with names like Star, Excel, and Earth levels.

  “You’re here so I can determine what level class is most appropriate for you,” the counselor, an older lady with bookish features, explained.

  “Well, she’s smart,” Ma said decidedly. “Put her in your smartest class, that’s where she belongs.” I was hammered with guilt. Here I was trying to figure out how I could disassociate myself from Ma, and there she was, sticking up for me, proud of me for no real reason at all.

  The counselor’s laugh was insulting. She explained that finding my placement was a matter of looking over my records from the last school I’d attended. I fumbled nervously with my hair scrunchie, twisted between guilt, nerves, love for my mother, and fear that I would only disappoint her, prove that her faith in me was unfounded.

  It took only a moment for the counselor to skim my file before cheerfully announcing, as though to make it sound fun, “I think we have the perfect place for you, dear.” She pulled out the Earth class availability list and began writing my name on some official form, beside the name Eight Earth One, which, she informed me, was a “solid” class.

  “They’re at lunch just now, Elizabeth. You can join the Earth program with Mr. Strezou when they return at twelve,” she said, passing me a note for my new teacher. As Ma and I rose to leave, she added, “I hope you go to school from now on; it would be a shame if you didn’t. You’re not getting any younger, dear, and these things have a tendency to go either way.”

  Ma and I lunched outside on slices of pizza and watched cars zip by, seated on a metal grate in the grass just outside of the school. Nearby, behind the chain-link fence bordering the schoolyard, children screamed and played. I ate my pizza quickly and watched Ma smoke, her slice barely touched beside her. A woman crossed the street with three small children and a stroller. There wasn’t a piece of graffiti anywhere in sight. Bedford Park was so different, I thought; everything was.

  Ma decided to tell me stories of when she was in junior high, about how she and her brother and sister would go to the others’ classes and tell the teacher a sob story about how sick the other was, so they would get excused from class. Then they would all meet out behind the school and go shoplift or sneak into the movies all day. We shared a laugh, but Ma became serious with me quickly.

  “But I wish I’d done things differently, Lizzy. I regret not going and I can’t change that now, it’s too late. Don’t do that, Lizzy, you’ll end up with no goddamn options when you get older. You don’t want to end up stuck,” she said, shrugging her shoulders.

  “Why, are you stuck, Ma? Do you feel stuck living with Brick?”

  “We’re lucky to have him” was all she said, and I let it go.

  Ma’s complete vulnerability occurred to me again. There was something about sitting out there with her, under the open sky, in this unfamiliar neighborhood while we ate lunch paid for with this strange man’s money, that made me see Ma’s small size, her near-blindness, her total lack of capability given the odds against her. She really had no options other than moving in with Brick. If Ma felt she had to leave our home, where else would she have gone? What else could Ma have done for herself, for Lisa and for me? She’d used the word stuck. Maybe I shouldn’t bother her about Brick, I thought. Just for now.

  We sat in silence and I drifted for a moment. Someday, I thought, I’ll pass this schoolyard and she won’t be around anymore. The thought had caught me off-guard. I decided to create a mental snapshot of the moment: us sitting by ourselves, eating. Ma’s body, full of life and motion. We loved each other; nothing could change that. “I’ll always be in your life . . . No matter how old you get, you’ll always be my baby,” she’d assured me that awful night on University Avenue when she told me that she had AIDS.

  I reached down and plucked two fluffy dandelions from the patchy grass at our feet, then passed her one. She held it in the same hand as her cigarette and studied it curiously. “Thank you, Lizzy,” she finally said.

  “Make a wish, Ma
,” I laughed, “but don’t tell me what you wished for, or it won’t come true.” I pretended not to notice her embarrassment. We held hands and blew dandelion puffs into a thousand directions; some fluttered and stuck in her dark hair. I thought of wishing to have more options, to do well in school. But I wished for Ma to be well again instead.

  I never found out what she wished for.

  Eight Earth One was comprised of students who’d been teamed together since the sixth grade. So the twenty-five-plus thirteen-year-olds in my new class were divided into tight cliques, several small groups of best friends. The afternoon I walked in, clutching my note from the office with my red book bag slung over one shoulder, our teacher, Mr. Strezou, was conducting a math lesson. He was in his mid-thirties and wore a dark blue button-down shirt with worn khaki pants and loafers. Skimming my office note, he crinkled his brow into a dozen lines.

  “Welcome, welcome . . . Elizabeth.”

  I nodded without saying anything back. Disappointing teachers was so much worse than never getting to know them at all. I decided, before I even walked in, to avoid connecting with the teachers at 80.

  “You can take a seat wherever you like,” he said, crumpling the office stationery into the wastebasket and returning to the next math problem. “Who can get number four?”

  All but one seat was taken in the noisy classroom; keeping my eyes on the ground, I plopped into the seat and hoped to go unnoticed.

  Someone had carved the word Phreak into my new desk with a pen, scratching the soft wood with angry little lines. As I ran my fingers over the inscription, someone began taunting me. Giggles, familiar to me from grade school, stirred up one row behind me. Heat flushed my face and a lump surfaced in my throat. Here we go again, I thought. I took in a big breath and hung my head, hoping to stick it out until the bell rang. Somehow, despite my having learned at the group home to shower daily, to change my clothing and underwear, and even though I wore Lisa’s old clothes instead of my defective ones, I’d managed to attract the same kind of negative attention. I ran down a mental checklist of what I could possibly have done, when I realized that the laughter wasn’t directed at me.

  I turned around to see a pretty Latina girl and a white boy sitting beside each other shooting spitballs back and forth at close range. Something about their playfulness drew me in; they simply looked so happy. The girl shot another spitball and missed, accidentally sending it across the crowded room, into another girl’s hair. No one seemed to notice. The fugitive sight of it there caused them to laugh so hard together that I couldn’t help but laugh, too. I saw the Latina girl catch me staring. I turned away quickly. My heart started to pound quickly.

  As Mr. Strezou tapped out math problems across the blackboard, I could hear the girl telling vulgar jokes to the boy. Something about it reminded me of Ma’s dirty jokes, the ones she came home telling after a night of White Russians. I was sure Mr. Strezou could hear the girl, and I wondered if she was provoking him. I watched, oddly entertained, waiting to see what he might do. Then, out of nowhere, the girl spoke directly to me. I thought she must be addressing someone else, but she leaned forward, swatted her hand on my desk, and came in close.

  “You know, next month is my thirteenth birthday. I’m going to celebrate by wearing a trench coat to school.” I wasn’t sure how to interpret her smile; no one really ever talked to me unless I was being set up for a public joke at my expense. I waited to see what she would do next.

  “You know what I mean,” she went on. “Only a trench coat. Then I’ll flash all the teachers.” She grabbed the collar of the white boy and laughed into it with him. I laughed, too, this time openly, along with them. Had she really just spoken to me? This is when you should say something back, I told myself; say something.

  “Are you really going to do that?” was all I could think of. “That would be so funny,” I added. Mr. Strezou called out, “That’s enough, you guys. Especially you, Bobby, cut it out. Samantha, I need you to get this one, number nine.” He extended the chalk outward.

  “A’ight, I got it. Check this out.” She snapped her fingers, rising from her chair and striking a showgirl pose, which included a full sweep of her curvy body and another flash of her bright smile. As she stood, revealing her full profile, I saw that I’d underestimated her beauty. The boy, Bobby, laughed hysterically watching her.

  “It’s right here,” she said. Raising the tips of her fingers to a gathered pinch, she exclaimed, “Arrsh!” and sat back down, abruptly.

  “Um, I don’t really know it, Mr. Strezou, sorry. Can’t help you out there actually,” she told him, as though the answer were somehow for his benefit. The class was a mixture of silence and laughter, with the exception of a few kids in the first row who sucked their teeth. A dainty girl rose and accepted the task in her place.

  When class let out, I followed Samantha through the crowd and started down the stairwell that was parallel to hers, pretending to travel close out of coincidence. I wanted her to notice me again. Together, we began circling the caged, symmetrical staircases, making the rounds until we shared in a laugh, and then the circling became a kind of game, a race helter-skelter to the bottom. When we got there, side by side, heaving for breath, we became friends.

  “What’s your name?” she asked, pressing her palms to her thighs. I almost said Elizabeth, but thought again when the name echoed in my head from the mouths of angry social workers, angry group home girls, and, worst of all, Ma’s crazy voice, the voice from her breakdowns.

  “Liz, my name is Liz,” I said, testing out the shape and feel of it.

  “Well, good to meet ya, Liz. I’m Sam.”

  “Cool. Do you want to walk together?” I offered, motioning toward the double doors.

  She must have said yes, because we ended up walking together, but all I can remember is that big, bright grin of hers, smiling at me.

  The next day, I sat alone at the far end of the cafeteria table, arming myself with a book, avoiding contact with the other kids. A foam lunch tray sat beside me and I was picking at my food when, out of nowhere, someone’s fingers landed—splat—in my applesauce. It was Sam.

  “You don’t wanna eat this,” she said. “It’s poison, I think they’re trying to kill us.” I laughed and looked up, smiling ear to ear. I loved how bold Sam was; she could make an ordinary day suddenly thrilling. She flicked the sauce off her fingertips. “Scoot over,” she said, plopping her sketch pad down on the table. Sam was penning a picture of a pouting fairy with a voluptuous body and a set of complicated butterfly wings. She was wearing what looked like her father’s button-down shirt. Undone in the front and draped over her woman’s body, it made her look like one of those girls in movies who look sexy in too-big men’s clothing. The sleeves were rolled up midway, revealing colorful, small, red-and-yellow ink drawings of flames scrawled onto her arms.

  “That’s so cool,” I said, lifting my bag to make room for her lunch tray.

  “She’s a slut, and her name is Penelope,” Sam answered without looking up. “This girl would do anyone, even Mr. Tanner, in two shakes of a lamb’s tail.”

  I laughed instantly, almost too loudly. Mr. Tanner, an older, head school figure with gray hair and rough skin, had entered the cafeteria right on cue. A moment earlier and her comment would have been different. She’s quick, I thought. We watched him stop and cup his hands, forming a bullhorn. Hundreds of kids across the cafeteria all fell into a hush. He spoke, and to my surprise, the cafeteria called out with him, “The outer yard is now op-en.” Sam rolled her eyes, returning her attention to the page; she was coloring the fairy’s wings in emerald. Her attitude was either temperamental or mysterious. “How long have you been drawing?” I asked. Kids began filing out into the schoolyard, holding apples or gulping down the last of their pints of milk. “I mean, your stuff looks good.”

  “Eh, it’s all right. What I really want to do is be a writer,” she said. “If I write one book by the time I’m thirty, I can die in peace. In fac
t, I’ll kill myself.”

  Almost everything she said was dramatic in that way. Over the years of our friendship to come, I would see her offend numerous bystanders with foul language, loud belches, and general socially unacceptable behavior. Back then I savored her rebellion; it made me feel accepted, understood somehow. Something about how offbeat she was synched up perfectly with how different, how separate, I felt from everything. Just by watching her be weird and borderline offensive was like testing out my own weirdness on the world, except when I was with Sam, the world’s rejection mattered less because we were with each other. This made her courageous, almost victorious, in my eyes.

  “What kind of things do you want to write about?”

  A boy sat down near Sam, interrupting us. He was black, dressed in semi-baggy jeans and a Tommy Hilfiger shirt—the typical urban style that boys my age wore, but neater and more put together.

  “What radio station would you guess I listen to?” he asked me, an eager look spreading across his face.

  It was happening again—another student speaking to me. I searched for his motive, too, and decided that sitting next to Sam made me look cool. It was as if I’d borrowed some of her allure for myself.

  “Come on, guess,” he insisted.

  “Um, I wouldn’t know, really.” I tried to look laid-back, like someone who casually made friends this way all the time. I said, “You can’t really guess those things, not accurately anyway.” Plus, I was embarrassed by the fact that I never listened to the radio and couldn’t name one radio station if I tried to.

  He seemed satisfied. “Didn’t think you’d get it. Z100. The answer is Z100. Most people think because I’m black, I like hip-hop,” he said. Sam looked up from her drawing and pointed a pen right into his face.

  “You’re a strange one . . . you go by your last name, Myers, right?” The boy smiled, bowed his head dramatically, and said, “Yes. And I like your drawings, Sam.” It didn’t surprise me that he knew her name, although she wasn’t sure of his. Sam must draw attention from guys all the time, I thought.