Allegedly

by Tiffany D. Jackson

  New Girl comes running downstairs. She is always moving so fast in here, like someone is chasing after her all the time. She spots me and stops short.

  “You had them move me.”

  “Yeah.”

  “Why?”

  I sigh and turn to her, rubbing my temples.

  “’Cause, you just like me. And aren’t you tired of getting your ass beat?”

  She thinks about it then nods.

  “Thank you.”

  “No problem.”

  “So, are you really pregnant?”

  “I guess so.”

  “Are they gonna let you keep it? I mean, after everything that’s happened?”

  I cock my head, moving the pain to the other side.

  “Would you believe me if I told you I didn’t kill that baby?”

  She shrugs one shoulder, mouth twitching.

  “I don’t know. I guess . . . it depends.”

  “On what?”

  “On if you know what really happened to her.”

  Those big puppy eyes of hers flicker around my face and I almost want to tell her. Instead, I close my eyes and lean my head back. She waits, then jumps on the computer, typing like she’s trying to break the keyboard.

  “What are you doing?” I ask.

  “I’m sending a note to my lawyer. About Tara and Kelly and Ms. Stein. He has to use this for my case.”

  “You have a lawyer?”

  “Don’t you?”

  I don’t even know anymore.

  “Why do you need a lawyer?” I ask.

  “Trying to get emancipated from my parents.”

  Emancipation means freedom. That’s all I know.

  “What do you mean?” I ask.

  “It means you can be free from your parents.”

  That’s crazy talk. You can never be free from your parents.

  “You’ll be like an adult,” she says, typing away. “And then they can’t make decisions for you anymore. It’s a legal thing. You can do whatever you want and live alone.”

  Why have I never heard of this before?

  “Can I do that?” I ask, unable to hold back my shock.

  “I don’t know. You gotta ask a lawyer. But first you gotta get exonerated.”

  Exonerate, that means to be free of blame. I’ve read about it before, but New Girl keeps on explaining like I’m stupid.

  “It means they appeal your case so you’re clear of all your charges. And it won’t be on your record. It’s a clean slate.”

  A clean slate?

  “They can do that?”

  “Didn’t your lawyer try?”

  I don’t say nothing. My lawyer did so little before, I’m sure he did even less after.

  “How come you know all this stuff?” I ask, feeling defensive that I know nothing.

  “I’ve been doing a lot of research. For a while,” she says, like it’s no big deal. She clicks on a few more links. “Mary, come here! You got to read this.”

  My body locks up, the usual reaction to strange kindness, and I stare through her. Doesn’t seem like she’s up to something, seems okay, so maybe she really is trying to help. I join her at the computer while she explains what an appeal is, showing me a whole bunch of articles on people getting freed after being proven innocent. Then she shows me a website for this organization called the Absolution Project.

  “They help people just like you,” she says. “And they have a lawyer in New York! Your case is perfect for them. If you didn’t do it, you should call.”

  She writes the number and address down on an old supermarket receipt. But I don’t see how any of this is going to help me keep my baby. If Momma won’t say what really happened, it’s going to be a waste of time calling. I shrug and slide the number into my pocket.

  “I have a boyfriend,” Joi giggles. “His name is Markquann. He works at Macy’s in the shoe section, so I get the dope discount. He goes to Brooklyn Law. He got his own place in Canarsie with one of them big black leather couches that’s like an L and a big-ass flat screen. Like . . . the biggest you can get. He treats me like a queen y’all! He says he’s gonna marry me.”

  There are several lies in this story that she is too stupid to recognize. But she’s so happy. Even though I can’t stand her, I’d hate to be the one to crush her hopes and dreams. Leave it to the rest of the house to do that.

  “He got his own apartment? And he works at Macy’s?” Kisha cackles. “Bitch, are you stupid? Niggas make seven dollars a hour there!”

  “He’s studying to be a lawyer too? Ha! You playing yourself,” China adds.

  Joi’s grin starts to fade.

  “Ladies, please,” Ms. Veronica says. “Let Joi—”

  “That nigga’s not your boyfriend,” Marisol says. “He just using you for pussy. You not the only bitch he fucking.”

  Joi rolls her eyes and waves her middle finger.

  “Whatever, y’all are just jealous ’cause y’all ain’t getting no dick in here.”

  Marisol laughs.

  “Oh, I got a man and he fucks me right everyyyyyy night!” She moans, grinding on her chair before giving Kisha a high five. All the girls laugh, except China.

  “Oh, word?” China huffs. “That’s not what you were saying last night!”

  The girls “ohhhhhhhhh!” Marisol stabs China with her eyes.

  “Fuck you, bitch! I ain’t no fag,” Marisol snaps. “You don’t know my business! I got a man, okay! His picture in my room.”

  I let out a laugh, thinking of Marisol talking about Trey Songz, staring down at her from his place on the wall, singing her to sleep. But the look she gives makes me immediately regret ever making a sound.

  “Aye, what the fuck you laughing at, psycho? Bitch, you have a man?”

  “Yeah, Mary,” Kisha says, “do you have a boyfriend?”

  “Don’t see how that bitch could have anything,” Tara mumbles, eyes on the floor.

  The air feels hot and muggy, like we’re in an old iron. Maybe they’ll stop. Maybe they’ll . . .

  “Well, clearly she was gettin’ some somewhere,” Joi laughs. “How else she get knocked up.”

  “Man, who would fuck her anyways?” Kisha asks.

  “Maybe she got some of that good grandpa dick at the nursing home,” China says.

  The girls laugh and laugh. I don’t say nothing. Neither does Ms. Veronica; real big help she is. They’re getting close. Too close. Close enough to figure it out without trying. My eye twitches like a hiccup.

  “Nah, maybe it was some young dude,” Kisha says, holding her chin like she’s thinking. “You know, some of them guy nurses be cute in them scrubs.”

  I try not to squirm, but my legs are ready to run. God, why did I laugh? Why!

  “So which one you let hit it, Mary?” China asks.

  “I bet if we went, we’d see him,” Joi says.

  The room spins as my chest tightens.

  Go. Run. Go tell Ted. Go tell . . .

  “I wasn’t allowed to have a boyfriend,” New Girl blurts out. The room shifts attention, her voice like a car alarm. She looks in my direction and gives a small smile.

  “I wasn’t allowed to date or talk to boys at all. My mom wouldn’t let me. She was . . . is . . . really overprotective.”

  “Is that why you tried to kill your mom?” Joi says with a smirk.

  I turn so fast my neck snaps.

  WHAT!

  “Oh shit, psycho didn’t know,” Joi laughs. “New Girl tried to kill her moms.”

  New Girl swallows and turns gray. She never told me. And I just let her move in with me. How could I be so stupid!

  “I didn’t try to kill my mom,” she says, flat as a board. She doesn’t sound convincing. Even Ms. Veronica raises an eyebrow.

  “Pshhh . . . yeah, right,” China says.

  “So wait, she tried to off her moms?” Kisha asks. “How?”

  “She pushed her down the stairs!” Joi says.

  The room gasps.

&n
bsp; “Yeah,” Joi snickers. “Her moms was coming up the stairs and she push her back down when she got to the top. And they were some big stairs!”

  New Girl’s eyes flood with tears, looking in every direction the story is coming from like a dog following a ball.

  “Oh, word?” Tara says.

  “Yeah, and you know what else. Her dad was allergic to peanuts. So New Girl made some soup and put mad peanuts in it, or something like that. He had to go to the hospital too; he almost died. She did it mad times till they figured it out.”

  “Damn, that’s fucked up,” Marisol says, and turns to her. “Yo, what they do to you?”

  “I didn’t push her down the stairs,” New Girl shouts. “It was an accident!”

  I know all about accidents.

  I didn’t mean to throw her . . .

  “Her moms still in a coma,” Joi continues as if New Girl wasn’t even in the room. “Been that way for a year. That’s why she’s here.”

  “Okay, everyone, let’s calm down,” Ms. Veronica says, trying to take back control of her meeting. China waves her off like she is a gnat. New Girl has the shakes. She sniffles before letting out a weak whimper.

  “It was an accident,” New Girls cries.

  “If it was an accident, then why you in here?” Kisha says, laughing.

  “’Cause it wasn’t no accident,” China says. “Ain’t no one in here ’cause of some accident.”

  Ain’t that the truth.

  The moon pours through the window like milk into a dirty glass. First night in our new room and neither one of us can sleep. I move half an inch and the mattress springs creak beneath me. At least it’s not a bunk bed, just two simple twin beds on opposite sides of the room. One closet, one desk, a table lamp, and a wooden chair. The best part about our room is also the worst part. A big window, with ugly thick black bars blocking our view of the world. Reminds me of baby jail. Actually, everything about this house reminds me of baby jail.

  I counted the bars once, the mesh metal against the small window in my cell. Four hundred and sixty-six little squares. Forty-six cement blocks made my room with ninety-two lines, seventy-four cracks in the floor, twelve diagonal lines in the glass on the door. I counted everything . . . over and over again.

  “Are you awake?” New Girl whispers.

  “Yeah.”

  “Can’t sleep?”

  “Guess not.”

  “Mary . . . we’re friends, right?”

  Friends? I don’t even know what that means. I haven’t had one of those since Alyssa. I didn’t have friends in baby jail. And what makes us friends? Even though she is the only person I talk to, other than Ted, can we really call each other friends? I mean, we’re way more alike than different so I guess there is no other word for it.

  “Yeah, I guess so.”

  I look over and see New Girl snuggling tighter to her pillow, smiling.

  chapter seven

  Notes from Dr. Alex M. Spektor,

  Chief Psychiatrist at Bellevue Hospital, NY

  Could she have been misdiagnosed with ADHD? It is possible. One of her teachers mentioned she fell asleep frequently during story time. Another report stated that when Mary was first taken into custody, she slept for almost seventeen hours straight. Lack of sleep is often confused with ADHD. But to prescribe a child Ritalin and Catapres, a medication that treats aggression, when Mary showed no signs of such behavior? It was erroneous, irrational, and excessive. Further, if she were on the medication and dosage as prescribed, she would not have had the strength to carry out the crime. The combination would have made her highly lethargic. One could almost say the prescribed medication was a form of pacification. But, from what?

  “Yuh went up forty points in math.”

  Ms. Claire hands me my latest scores by the church basement steps after class ends. The scores are proof that practice makes perfect, just like she said it would. This is my third time coming here. She hosts the workshop in some church off Flatbush, near all the West Indian people, the “coconut heads” Momma used to call them. She lets me come for free. It smells like a thousand of Momma’s old Bibles, and everything inside is red. Red carpets, red windows, red cushions on the folding chairs. Funny, I haven’t been to a church in years, but here I am, still coming to learn.

  “Here, take a look at dis list. It’s 250 of di hardest SAT words. Dis different than what I gave the other students. Yuh know those words already. I want yuh to learn these.”

  I take the list and read the first word. Abjure: to reject, renounce.

  “Yuh don’t haf to tell me about yuh life if yuh don’t want but, are yuh in school at’all?”

  “Yes. Vocational.”

  “What they teaching yuh?”

  “How to do hair.”

  She snorts.

  “Chuh! Means yuh not reading properly. Yuh need to start reading more.”

  “I do read.”

  She raises an eyebrow.

  “What’s di last book yuh read?”

  “Push,” I admit, disgusted with myself.

  “Precious? Lawd Jesus, no! Go to the library and pick out some books for yuhself. And yuh need to start reading a newspaper every day. Circle the words yuh dun know. Okay?”

  Can I go to the library? No, probably not. They probably don’t let convicts have library cards.

  “Okay, meh see yuh in two weeks,” she says. I nod and start to walk out, but she grabs my arm.

  “Eh eh, where yuh think yuh going with no coat! Yuh leave it downstairs?”

  I shake my head.

  “Well . . . where’s yuh coat, gyal?”

  That’s a good question. Because the one coat I had disappeared in the house a couple of days ago. I shrug, staring down at my feet. She sucks her teeth and pulls the green scarf off her neck.

  “Here. Keep your neck warm at least before yuh catch cold. Meh betta see yuh wit proper clothes next time.”

  It’s soft and smells like her perfume, like oranges and flowers. I wrap it around my neck twice.

  “Thank you,” I mumble.

  She glances at my stomach like she wants to say something, then changes her mind.

  “Well, lata then. Be safe.”

  That is real hard to do nowadays.

  “Mary! Come help us take groceries out the car!”

  Ms. Reba has the front door open with an assembly line of bags from the car, straight into the kitchen.

  “What’s all this can stuff for?” Marisol asks, smacking and popping her gum.

  “Storm’s coming. Stores were packed, but I got what I could.”

  “This storm ain’t gonna be nothing,” China says, unloading cases of water.

  “Mary! Would you stop daydreaming and bring this inside,” Ms. Reba snaps.

  Feet swollen and back aching, I carry a few bags full of sardines and lima beans into the kitchen. I’m tired all the time now. Bean is a weight on all my veins. When I come back out, Ms. Carmen pulls up with Kelly in the passenger seat. She steps out of the car, and I look away quick to keep my jaw off the ground. No one else does the same. They all stop and stare.

  Kelly’s face is a lumpy red tomato, shiny and slick with some type of gel. She is a melting wax candle covered in plastic, hands and arms wrapped in white bandages.

  “Oh shit,” Kisha mumbles.

  Joi runs over to Kelly, welcoming her home. Kelly is all polite-like, as if she is a solider returning home from war, deserving medals and standing ovations. She tried to kill me! She doesn’t deserve a medal or sympathy.

  Kelly walks toward the door in silence, the wind tossing her blond hair around. New Girl trips over herself, trying to get out of her path, like Kelly is a brewing storm. She steps inside, but not before taking one good long look at me, through her puffy eyes and reddened cheeks. The glance lasts only a short second, but makes it perfectly clear.

  Kelly is going to kill me.

  Once we finish unpacking the car, New Girl and I run to our room, both thinking the same
thing: survival.

  I slam the door shut and we push the dresser in front of it.

  “What if she gets in here at night?” New Girl whimpers.

  Not “if,” more like “when.” I move the table lamp closer to her.

  “If she comes in, she’ll be coming for me. When her back is turned, just hit her over the head with this and run.”

  New Girl swallows; her face goes rigid, like she is trying to imagine herself being capable of such violence.

  “What about you?”

  My heart beats faster. I lift the mattress and yank a piece of wood off the bed frame. It slips splinters in my fingertips, but I ignore the pain and prop the stick under the right side of my bed, within reach. I’d seen this once in baby jail. A girl attacked her roommate with a broken bedpost. They switched all our beds to metal frames two weeks later. I keep my knife hidden under my pillow. Don’t want New Girl knowing about it just yet.

  All that and I still feel like a sitting duck. Nowhere to run or hide. The window? There’s bars on it, but maybe we could break the glass and scream for help. But would anyone come?

  “Why didn’t they keep her or move her someplace else?”

  I don’t care why, I just wish they did. Ms. Stein must have brushed it off as some accident so she wouldn’t get in trouble. That’s the only way she’d be able to come back here. Bean makes its presence known by making it harder to breathe. I stare at the dresser propped up in front of the door, its weak wood not enough to save us. If Kelly comes for me, she’ll be coming for Bean too.

  I’ve got to get Bean out of here.

  The nursing home is alive and active, a complete oxymoron. That’s a word I learned in Ms. Claire’s class. The nurses and orderlies run in and out of rooms, prepping patients for evacuation. Ted is where I thought he would be. In the kitchen, looting through the canned goods. I stop and smile at him in the doorway.