Before, After, and Somebody In Between

by Jeannine Garsee

  Best-case scenario: a nasty blurb on my high school transcript.

  Worst-case scenario: ten to twenty years in maximum security.

  Oh, God. It’s true. I’m officially insane.

  Uneasy, I glance around, pull the gun out of my pocket, and ditch it in a mound of snow piled up high against the building. What the hell was I thinking? Heart whamming against my ribs, I linger outside as long as I can, then slink into homeroom where Chardonnay’s jaw drops like a trapdoor. Obviously she figured I’d never show my face here again. How I wish I could’ve made her day.

  Miss Fuchs jumps on me immediately. “You’re late, Martha. And Mr. Johnson wants to see you after the bell.”

  I’ll just bet he does, and this time I won’t let him bully me. I’ll say I’m going to the newspapers, to the TV stations, and I’m getting me a lawyer, and—

  But halfway down the hall, Chardonnay’s breath flames the back of my head. “Sure hope you kissed your momma good-bye this morning.”

  Okay, not a problem. There’s a gazillion people around, right? But Chardonnay keeps her voice low, growling in my ear that if I don’t keep quiet, I’ll be picking my kidneys up off the floor. She’s not joking, either, because I feel something sharp poking into my backbone. She forces me into a one-eighty toward the nearest stairwell while a gang of tough, sniggering homegirls hem us together. Funny how I never noticed Chardonnay has friends of her own.

  Neurons exploding, I drop into a hard crouch. Chardonnay kicks me in the head as she trips over my shoulders, and bam! Together we roll down the last couple of steps. Whatever she was holding skids across the tiles, and I snatch it up in a move that’d make James Bond proud. An X-ACTO knife, huh? Probably swiped it from the art room. Bet old Blubber Butt never took an art class in her life.

  The breath oomphs out of her as I jump onto her stomach, noting with satisfaction how her stooges scatter. Still, she manages to gasp, “Get off me, bitch!”

  I guess it’s the word “bitch” that makes me want to hurt her. First I hold the blade up to make sure she sees it, then I touch it lightly to her zit-ravaged cheek. I’m panting so hard and so fast that my breath fills my ears, along with the Fight! Fight! Fight! chants that echo off the walls.

  “You ain’t gonna do it.” But she’s swiveling her eyes like a cow in a slaughterhouse. “Girl, get real. I wasn’t gonna cut you. What’s wrong with you? You can’t take a joke no more?”

  Ha, some joke. I hold the blade steady, puckering her cheek. She crumples into a blubbering bag of terror, and I can smell her fear—but instead of strength and power, I feel nothing but numbness.

  “Why?” It’s all I can think of to say.

  “Please don’t cut me, please don’t cut me…”

  I move the blade one millimeter closer, but it’s like watching somebody else’s hand, like it doesn’t belong to me at all. “Just tell me why you keep doing this to me.”

  “Martha!” Well, well, if it isn’t old Mr. Johnson. “Put that thing down! What do you think you’re doing?” Huffing and puffing even harder than me.

  “Not—until—she—tells—me—why.”

  “Martha?” Mr. Hopewell. Man, the whole damn faculty must have shown up for this. So where were they two minutes ago when Chardonnay was about to gut me like a fish? “Martha? Come on, baby. You don’t want to do this.”

  “Don’t tell me what I want! You have no idea.”

  I sense him moving, and hope he doesn’t grab for the knife. “You got to think about this, baby. Think before you do anything. Please.”

  Baby, huh? Funny, he’d never dare call me that in class. I shift my weight, remembering how many times I’ve seen this same scene on TV. Keep ‘em talking. Distract ‘em. Do anything you can do till the SWAT team shows up.

  Chardonnay squeezes her eyes shut and starts sniveling again, only this time she’s saying, “Get up, get up! You sittin’ on my baby! C’mon, girl, be real. Don’t hurt my baby, ple-ease.” The palm of her hand taps my thigh. Just taps, taps, taps it, a gentle drum beat—the first time she’s ever touched me without causing serious pain.

  That’s when the numbness lifts and all my feeling surges back. The mind-blowing pain behind my burning eyes. The floor, hard and cold under my knees. The hill of flesh heaving under my butt. The evil, oily sensation of the knife in my hand. And the lightest weight of Mr. Hopewell’s fingertips on my shoulder.

  “I just want her to stop,” I whisper.

  “This isn’t,” Mr. Hopewell says, just as softly, “the way to do it.”

  Oh, Momma. Momma, where are you?

  “She’s not worth it, baby. She’s not worth it at all.”

  Chardonnay’s eyes fly open, watching in disbelief as Mr. Hopewell snakes a slow hand around my wrist. He must’ve figured I’d never really hurt her. Otherwise, why would he take that chance?

  I let him pry open my fingers and take away the knife.

  25

  Click, click, click on the keyboard: Martha Georgine Kowalski, age fourteen years and nine months, five feet four inches, one hundred and nineteen pounds, brown hair, brown eyes, no distinguishing marks or obvious deformities.

  Flash! Mug shot.

  Squish, roll, squish, roll ten times. My fingertips are caked with black ink by the time they finish immortalizing me in their system with all the other “juvenile offenders.”

  One blue flannel shirt with a missing button, one red T-shirt, bleach stains duly noted, one pair of blue jeans with a ripped knee, one pair of stinky socks, one pair of beat-up nylon Reeboks, a pair of pink flowered underpants minus half the elastic, one plain white bra with a safety pin in the strap. No money, jewelry, keys, trinkets, or anything else that speaks of a real life.

  I get to keep my underpants, but not the bra, on the off-chance I might try to do myself in. Ha! As if this whole ordeal isn’t humiliating enough, why would I hang myself in a public building with some raggedy, stretched out, hand-me-down bra?

  No, I’m not in a cell, just in a very small room, but I feel like a hamster trapped in a shoe box. If only I knew how to chew my way out.

  When I hear the jingling of keys and the clank of a lock, I stare at the door in half-relief, half-dread, knowing it has to be Momma, ready to bust me out of here—but no, it’s that social worker with the ratty dreads, Zelda Broussard.

  “Where’s my mom?” I demand.

  Zelda ignores my question, makes herself at home in an orange plastic chair, and without beating around the bush, asks for my side of the story. So far she’s the only one who seems to want to hear it.

  “Well,” she says when I finish my rant, “as things now stand, there is one thing working in your favor. Your music teacher told the police you were defending yourself, and that the weapon belonged to that other girl—Chantilly?”

  “Chardonnay,” I spit out.

  “Well, thank God you didn’t hurt her.”

  No, thank God I left that gun outside. One quick bullet versus one dinky little art knife? Yes, it’s true. I could’ve killed old Blubber Butt.

  My body shivers as the truth sinks in. “If I tell you something, will you promise not to turn me in?”

  “I can’t promise you anything, Martha,” she answers, crossing her chunky legs.

  Not the answer I wanted, but I confess anyway. “I took one of Wayne’s guns to school.”

  “You what?”

  “I didn’t take it inside, I swear. I left it in the snow.”

  “Where? Exactly where?”

  I tell her where, and she mumbles some not-very-professional words as she whips open her cell and commands one of her minions to get back to Jefferson High and start shoveling through the snow. She listens for a minute before flipping the phone shut, and I brace myself for the worst: somebody already found it, and somebody’s dead. What else could make her look at me with that odd, strained expression?

  Instead, she says carefully, “Martha. Your mother was taken to the hospital this morning.”

  I b
link. “Why?”

  “A drug overdose.”

  “What?” Oh, God. Why didn’t I check on her this morning?

  “It’s okay. She’s going to be fine, but—Martha, how long has your mother had a drug problem?”

  “She doesn’t,” I say weakly. “She drinks, that’s all. Well, she does take pills sometimes,” I add, remembering the stash of brown bottles. “But she’s not, like, this crazy drug addict, okay? You know, with needles and stuff.” I don’t mention the pot.

  “Well, she had a lot of narcotics in her system. She will be in the hospital for a while, and hopefully, after that, we can get her into a good rehab center. But what this means is,” she continues, “even if the judge does decide in your favor, I’m afraid you will not be able to go back home.”

  I pick at the hem of my shirt, flinging the word “judge” to the back of my mind. “Can I go see her?”

  She gestures widely at the room. “Well, hardly. In case you haven’t put two and two together, this is a jail you’re in, not the Holiday Inn.”

  “Hey, this is not my fault! I told them, over and over, that something bad was going to happen, and they all blew me off!”

  “Who blew you off?”

  “My counselor, the teachers…that idiot principal. The whole school, okay? I never would’ve touched her if I didn’t think she was gonna kill me.”

  “Martha, if you had trouble with this girl in the past, maybe you should have—”

  “Don’t tell me what I should’ve done!” I shout. “You don’t fucking know anything.”

  Zelda’s cold gray eyes connect with mine like a magnet. “Don’t curse at me. Trust me, it will not get you out of here any faster.”

  Pissed off—and embarrassed—I stomp to the window, a dirty glass square with crisscrossed wires, and cover my face because my head is pound-ing and pound-ing! “Forget it. You don’t know.”

  “Know what?”

  “You don’t have a clue what it feels like.”

  “What what feels like, Martha?”

  I punch the window with a tight fist. “When somebody wants to kill you!” I scream. I punch it harder a second time, but you can’t break this kind of glass. Not like Jerome’s window, where one good slam from Aunt Gloria can crack it down the middle. Where a single bullet can make it spray like a billion shards of razor-sharp snowflakes.

  “Martha.” And then louder, “Martha!”

  “What?” My breath fogs the glass.

  “You’re right,” she says, softer now. “I don’t know what that feels like. And no, I don’t know everything that happened. But I am here for you now, hmm? I can help you now.”

  The fight drains out of me like air out of a punctured tire. “No, you can’t. It’s too late.”

  “No, it’s not too late, and this is not the end of the world. I think the most they will charge you with is disorderly conduct.”

  “That’s good, right?” I mumble through my fingers.

  “Very good.”

  “So, like, this judge—when do I get to see him?”

  “Monday morning, nine a.m.”

  “You’ll be here, right?” Momma obviously won’t.

  “I’m not sure,” she hedges. “My vacation starts Monday, and I will be flying home to St. Lucia for a couple of weeks.”

  Ha, so much for helping me. “Huh. That figures.”

  Zelda reaches toward me and I dodge her hand, and then feel like a retard when she picks her purse up off the floor. I get another one of those “looks” as she rummages for a cigarette and fires it up blatantly under the No Smoking sign. “I wasn’t going to hit you.”

  I touch my warm cheek, almost wishing she would. Hit me hard. Wake me up.

  “Let me ask you something. How do you think your mother will feel when she finds out about all this?”

  I blink. “How would I know?”

  “Think about it, hmm?” she commands through a blast of smoke.

  “I don’t have to think about it. I don’t know—”

  My throat clamps shut as I’m struck by a long-ago memory. Momma, cuddled next to me on a big flowered couch, watching The Wizard of Oz, and Daddy nearby, tightening the strings of his violin. I didn’t get the end of the movie, so Daddy explained, “Dorothy dreamed the whole thing, honey.”

  Okay, I’m six, and yes, Daddy, I know it’s a dream, duh. But how could all those people, those farm guys, that carnival man, be all the same characters who followed her through Oz? That’s the part I didn’t get.

  Momma answered, “Well, sugar pie, it’s like this. You can dream you’re somebody else, like somebody on TV, right? And you think it’s real, and it’s real when you’re in it. But when you wake up in the morning, you’re you again. Now you get it?”

  Kind of, but only because of the way she said it, like she knew this would make perfect sense to a kid. Then Daddy launched into The Lollipop Kids song, and Momma tickled me and laughed, and I laughed, too, and, well, I don’t remember anything else. Except that they were happy. They didn’t always hate each other.

  And Momma wasn’t the Momma I know now.

  “I don’t know how she’d feel,” I finish hoarsely. “It’s like, she’s not even my real mom anymore, you know?”

  Zelda bends over to stub out her cigarette on the floor, the first thing she’s done that makes me want to like her a little. “Yes, she is. She will always be your real mom.”

  I guess that’s supposed to make me feel better.

  …

  On Monday morning, at one minute before nine, Zelda flies into the courtroom and runs circles around my own little wiener of a court-appointed lawyer. I huddle on my chair, trying to look remorseful as she blames everything, ha-ha, on that moron, Mr. Johnson. The school administrators, she says, failed to protect me from “an adult student with a history of antisocial behavior who has no business even being in the tenth grade.”

  She sure came prepared: Statements from witnesses who swear my so-called assault on Chardonnay was strictly self-defense. Notes from my teachers who insist I’m not a certified psycho, only a straight-A student who was pushed beyond the limit of human endurance. The judge agrees, orders counseling and probation, and then, no big surprise, booms out an F-word of his own …

  Foster home.

  26

  The Ten Commandments of the Merriweathers:

  1. Thou shalt worship no other gods except Mr. and Mrs. Merriweather.

  2. Thou shalt not talk back.

  3. Thou shalt hold hands with thy Keepers and say a ten-minute grace before every meal whether or not thou plans to eat.

  4. Thou shalt not shower more than twice a week.

  5. Thou shalt do all assigned chores in a timely manner. This includes the daily dusting of the Goddess’s ceramic clown collection without referring to them as “creepy little suckers.”

  6. Thou shalt not watch TV on school nights.

  7. Thou shalt keep thy eight p.m. curfew.

  8. Thou shalt not use the telephone without permission.

  9. Thou shalt have no expectations of privacy.

  10. Thou shalt keep these commandments, or find thy butt back on the street.

  I last four days.

  On the fifth day, at lunchtime, I bail out of my (twelfth!) new school with seven bucks to my name, raided from Mrs. Merriweather’s purse, and dump my books in the trash on my way out of the building. Anthony’s money is back at Wayne’s, and I could kill myself for that. I have no idea what to do, not one single clue, but I am not going back to the Merriweathers with all those rules, all that mind control, all those goddamn painted clowns with their beady, satanic eyes. And only two showers a week? I stink! My hair’s filthy. My own armpits gross me out.

  Nobody asked if I wanted to stay with these freaks. My opinion, as usual, doesn’t count for squat.

  I don’t realize I’m crying till I hear myself doing it. I duck into a phone booth in a gas station parking lot and crouch against the folding door, soaking snot into t
he sleeve of the itchy nylon parka foisted upon me by the clown gods. I’m mad, but I’m scared, and it’s scary how mad I am.

  Mad at myself, because yes, I admit it. It’s my fault I’m here.

  Mad at Zelda for flying off to the tropics instead of hanging around to make sure I survive.

  Mad at the Merriweathers for turning out to be assholes instead of the perfect TV family I’ve dreamed about my whole life.

  But most of all, worst of all, I’m so mad at Momma for picking this time to end up in the freaking hospital. Now here I am, stuck miles and miles away from my own neighborhood, with nobody at all, and not an idea in my head.

  The gas station guy trades me four quarters for a dollar. My frozen finger pokes Shavonne’s number into the pay phone, but nobody answers. With a shriek of frustration, I smash the receiver back down.

  Now what?

  Now nothing. Only place for me to go is back to the detention center. I guess even an eight-by-ten cell with a chicken-wire window beats going four days without a shower. I’ll make them find me a better place, or else they can just keep me there. Whatever. I don’t care. As long as it’s not the clown house.

  I’m so exhausted, and so cold, I barely make it to the bus stop. I don’t know this neighborhood, but it’s close to the airport, with jets thundering overhead like every five minutes. I have to stand for fifteen minutes in my squishy Reeboks, in a sudden flurry of heavy snow, waiting for a bus to take me in the right direction. I press my forehead against the vibrating window, watching brown slush spring up from beneath the wheels, and wish I could curl up on the seat and sleep for two days.

  I stumble off at Public Square and then zombie-walk the last twenty or so blocks to the detention center—too stupid to figure out which loop bus I need, but smart enough not to ask that nice policeman over there. Nervously, I hang around close to the door till two older guys stroll out, warming me briefly with a blast of hot air. Megapower attorneys in long coats, carrying briefcases and cappuccinos, obviously talking shop: “… kid’s got a record a mile long.”