The Way Back from Broken

by Amber J. Keyser

  “I don’t know why his lips are so dark,” she said quietly, taking back the picture. “Was your baby like that?”

  Rakmen jumped away like she’d bitten him, pressing his back against the door.

  Jacey stared at him, her eyes huge and almost round like the luminous eyes on some deep-sea fish. The drumming of his own pulse was louder than the rain on the thin roof.

  “Well,” asked Jacey. “Was she? Or he?”

  His breath came faster.

  “She.” Rakmen choked on the word.

  The girl smiled a little, like she was meeting his sister for the first time, like this was normal conversation. But normal people knew better than to ask questions like that. Normal people didn’t keep ashes in a dead baby’s room. Normal men pretended nothing had happened.

  Exhaustion rolled over him.

  Jacey pinned him with her eyes. “Was she born dead?”

  “No.” His answer barely escaped his constricted throat.

  “When did she die?”

  He scowled at her.

  “It’s a fair question.”

  He was not talking about this.

  “What was your sister’s name?”

  The guttural growl that escaped him drove her cowering into the corner. Scared of what he might do, Rakmen slid to the floor, his head in his hands. On the other side of the room, he could hear her crying.

  “Why’d you call me?” he demanded.

  She was crying harder now, but he couldn’t muster a shred of kindness. Anger was a whip coiled in his chest. His voice rose. “Why did you call me?”

  “To help us,” she whispered.

  Rakmen twitched against the door like he’d been skewered. He couldn’t even save himself. “You don’t know me.”

  “I know enough,” Jacey said, “because of what you said about the leg.” She paused, picked up the teddy bear. “Can you see them too?”

  “See who?” he asked, but he already knew. Of course he could see them. Every time he walked down the street, he could pick them out. Strangers limping along. Invisible amputees. Their pain palpable.

  “Rakmen?” His mom’s voice flew up the stairs like a rescue rope. He shot from the room, fled to the car, and slammed the door behind him. Panting and wiping the rain from his face, he bent almost double against the seething ache in his gut. He squeezed his eyes shut, blocking out the night, the house, everything.

  Only after his mother had started the car and had begun to pull away from the curb did he look back. In the upstairs window, Jacey’s round face glowed like a moon. The house seemed as if it might come apart like a wet cardboard box.

  His hands shook as he opened the notebook.

  There are no plates left.

  The crib is empty.

  Lips.

  CHAPTER 3

  Rakmen shuffled into the kitchen and blindly poured cereal into a bowl. The alarm clock had been an ice pick to the temple.

  “Morning,” said his mom as she measured coffee into the pot.

  He grunted and slumped into a chair on his side of the table, the side that kept his back to the pictures on the wall. Dora coming home, baby-fro sticking out all over. Dora asleep on his dad’s chest like a golden brown loaf of bread in a diaper. Dora nestled in Rakmen’s arms, her heart-shaped face beaming up at him.

  “You have a test today?”

  He nodded, scarfing breakfast.

  She pulled coffee mugs from the cupboard. “I checked your grades online.”

  Rakmen froze with the spoon halfway to his mouth.

  His mom turned to face him and crossed her arms over her chest.

  He glared at her. She was all brittle edges, but he was too tired to care. “Yeah, I know. Mr. Ruben is a jerk, and your new best friend, Mrs. Tatlas, hasn’t given a fair test all year.”

  His mom’s eyes narrowed. “You’ve got a month to get them up.”

  Rakmen’s dad came in, interrupting the mutual glare fest. “He’ll take care of business. Won’t you, son?” When some smart aleck at school heard that his dad was a nurse, they always flipped a load of crap. At least until they got a look at him. Before nursing school, he’d been a medic in the army. Biggest guy in the ER.

  “I was up all night because of that idiot teacher.”

  His mom was half out of her chair before his dad intercepted, eased her back down into the chair, and began to knead her shoulders. “Calm down, sweetie. Rakmen’s tired, that’s all. I’m sure he’ll pull it out of the bag. Right?” He raised an eyebrow at Rakmen. It was a look full of lifelines, red and white rings exchanged as if two drowning people could rescue each other.

  “Yeah. Sure, Dad,” he said. “Gotta run so I’m not late for school.”

  “And I’ve got to get all crazy with the bed pans.”

  It was an old joke that reminded Rakmen of a time when laughter came easily to all of them. “Bye, Mom,” he said, pecking her on the cheek and bolting for the door before she could say anything else.

  . . .

  A pack of girls in low, tight pants were talking about Marissa’s baby as Rakmen shoved his way through the front door at school.

  “I heard Tyrone showed up at the hospital,” said one.

  “Yeah, and Marissa’s mom screamed at him for getting her knocked up,” said a blond girl. “They had to call security.”

  “But you know what?” This was a short, round girl with hoop earrings so large that Rakmen was pretty sure poodles could leap through them. “She named the baby Tyrone Jr.”

  “Bet her mama flipped out.”

  That girl didn’t know crap about mothers flipping out.

  “Hey, man,” said Juan, catching up with him. “You ready for this test?”

  Rakmen shoved his backpack into his locker. “Not even a little.”

  “Shoot. Same here.”

  They pushed through the crowded halls. His stomach twitched in anticipation of whatever hell awaited him inside. The test wouldn’t go well. No surprise there. Chromosomal defects. Heritable disease. Pedigrees. It was all a blur. Mrs. Tatlas in the middle of the night. He’d been in her house. Seen her in goddamn pajamas.

  “We missed you at the pickup game last night,” said Juan as they slid into biology a few minutes before the bell. She wasn’t there yet. He had a few minutes left to breathe. “You know,” said Juan, nudging him to get his attention, “you could come back and play with us.”

  Rakmen shrugged and sat by the far windows.

  “Suit yourself but I don’t see why you ditched us.”

  “Didn’t ditch you.”

  “You haven’t come for a game in almost a year.” Juan frowned at him. “That’s called ditching, asshole.”

  The rest of the class rumbled in, the girls shrill and the guys loud. Rakmen’s head was already pounding from lack of sleep, and even on a good day, school was like being bludgeoned with a hundred radios all set on different stations.

  “You know,” said Juan, scanning the classroom shelves full of animal skeletons, mounted birds, and stuff in jars. “This class used to be kinda cool. Remember how Mrs. T was all gaga into squid and photosynthesis and crap? She turned lame lately. You notice that?”

  Rakmen wanted to puke. Instead, he shook his head. “Nah. Always sucked.”

  “Amen, brother. Here’s to going down in flames.”

  Since there wasn’t any point cramming for the test, Rakmen pulled the Metro section of the morning paper out of his backpack and got out his notebook. Site of former meth lab contaminates local well. African-American church damaged by arson. Gray whale calf washes up near Newport.

  Juan leaned over. “Why do you keep all that downer stuff?”

  Rakmen slid the notebook under the newspaper. He couldn’t explain how bad news tacked him to the ground, how it kept him unsurprisable. Juan wouldn’t understand.

  The roar in the room settled when Mrs. Tatlas came in.

  Rakmen kept his eyes glued to his desk.

  “Quiet, everyone. You know the dril
l.” Her voice was worn thin like the carpet in the basement of Promise House.

  As the rest of the students cleared their desks, Rakmen retrieved his notebook and added one more line. Marissa.

  Mrs. Tatlas began to distribute the stack of tests tucked under her arm. “This is your last unit test before the final in June, which is, I remind you, cumulative. So don’t forget everything you learned for today.” She didn’t look at him when she passed.

  Rakmen scanned the first page of the test. An essay on the evolutionary significance of mutation worth fifteen points.

  “Bitch,” Juan whispered to his desktop. “I hate long answer.”

  Rakmen skipped to the second page. He could feel Mrs. Tatlas up there at her desk sucking the air out of the room, and wanted to scream. Thanks to her, he hadn’t slept. He was flunking for sure. And that girl—

  Even now, Jacey clung to him. He could practically feel her sweaty hand squeezing his own hand numb. He could see her in the dim light of the nursery, box of ashes crushed against her chest.

  Rabbits. They’d been rabbits on the fabric of her nightgown. Not dogs.

  And now he couldn’t forget that either.

  Around him pencils scratched, and the second hand on the clock above the door lurched through each minute. At the front of the room, Jacey’s mom sat woodenly, scanning for cheaters. Rakmen scattered Fs and Ts beside a series of statements without bothering to read them and scrawled in the short answers. The multiple choice section was pretty much as bad as he’d expected. With ten minutes left in the period, Rakmen flipped back to the essay. He kneaded his temples, trying to dredge up some crap answer for her.

  Mutation is random changes to genes, he wrote. Lots of times it happens in junk parts of DNA. Those mutations don’t really matter. But when an important gene gets zapped, there’s an opportunity.

  Uneasiness swept over Rakmen. When he looked over the bent backs of his classmates, Mrs. Tatlas was staring at him, dark smudges ringing her eyes, her skin pale and papery. She nodded sharply before dropping her eyes, and he was reminded of a emaciated bird.

  It’s not like the X-Men or anything where a mutation gives you super powers. That doesn’t happen. Even those rare good mutations are kind of dumb—a better enzyme or curly fur or something like that.

  Sometimes the animal dies. Other times it gets cancer or comes out deformed.

  The textbook had shown color pictures of fruit flies with legs poking out where eyes should’ve been. Blind horses. Frogs with five legs.

  It’s usually bad. The weak die. That’s natural selection.

  During the autopsy, the doctors had measured Dora’s malformed heart. It was twice the normal size from trying so hard to do its job.

  Mutation made Darwin not believe in God.

  CHAPTER 4

  When Rakmen stepped into the basement at Promise House, Jacey super-glued herself to his side.

  “I saved you a seat by me,” she said, tugging on his arm.

  In the month since she’d first showed up in the foyer, their moms had become friends. Mrs. Tatlas was everywhere. They drank coffee. They went for walks. They always left Jacey with him. Never asking. Always expecting. Thanks for watching her, Rakmen. She loves you, Rakmen. You’re the best, Rakmen.

  Jacey told every single person they met from checkout clerks to bus drivers that he was practically her adopted brother. She was like a puppy, always underfoot, but not nearly as cute.

  Rakmen pulled free of Jacey’s grasp and fist-bumped D’Mareay and D’Vareay, who were busy elaborating their tabletop graffiti. “What’s up?”

  “Not much,” D’Mareay said. “Crazy white chick wants us to draw our support network.” He pointed at Keri. Her butt was all they could see sticking out of the art supply cupboard.

  “Yours is mainly skulls, huh?” said Rakmen, nodding at the table. “I can’t believe she lets you do that, man.”

  “We’re expressing ourselves,” simpered D’Vareay in a terrible impression of the art therapist.

  “We’re like black Van Gogh over here,” said his brother.

  Rakmen noticed the traces of neon paint on D’Vareay’s jeans and wondered where their real project was. “Don’t cut off your ears.”

  D’Mareay replied with another Keri quote. “Art is long, man. Very long.”

  Rakmen pretended not to see Jacey’s puppy eyes as he made his way to his spot on the puke-colored couch at the far end of the basement. Molly was already there, curled around her sketchbook. She didn’t need Keri handing out assignments. She was always drawing.

  “Hey you,” she said, sweeping her hair out of her face and leaving a gray smudge of charcoal on her forehead. “How’s tricks?”

  “Tricky, I guess.” He sat beside her and caught a whiff of strawberries. “Whatchya drawing?”

  She held out the sketch pad.

  A warped network of metal bars sprang directly from a meadow. Rakmen could practically feel the breeze whispering through the blades of tall grass. They rolled in gray-shaded waves across the paper. Amid all that rustling and growing, the cage Molly had drawn was fixed and immobile. He leaned closer, charcoal dust tickling his nose. The wind had pinned a moth inside the cage, pressing its tiny body against the bars.

  “Whoa,” he said. “It’s really good but kinda scary.”

  Molly ducked her head, smiling. “I knew you’d get it, but don’t tell my mom.”

  “Your secret’s safe,” said Rakmen, giving his shirt collar a tug, “but I don’t think this is exactly what Keri had in mind with her little assignment.”

  “Tell me about it,” Molly groaned. “I started with the meadow because I was thinking about how when I’m sad I like to walk in the arboretum near my house. But my parents won’t let me go alone and then—poof—before I knew it I was drawing bars. Freud would have a field day with me.”

  Rakmen raised an eyebrow, stroked a pretend goatee, and in a wretched German accent said, “Tell me about your mother.”

  He’d meant to make her laugh, but instead her face fell, and she touched the scar on her temple. Her lower lip trembled, and scent of strawberry lip gloss wafted over him. Juan and the guys would ride him hard about that lip.

  “There’s this new girl at school who I’ve gotten to know,” said Molly. “She’s really nice.” Rakmen watched her darken the shadows of the cage. “She was at my house yesterday, and we were talking about going to the Rose Festival Fun Center. My mom totally butted in and started going on about some girl who got decapitated on a roller coaster and another who was raped by a carnie and how the Rose Festival brings in all the meth heads from the east side . . . ”

  Molly’s drawing pencil dug into the soft paper.

  Rakmen laid his hand over hers. “You’re going to ruin it.”

  She shrugged. “It’s already ruined.”

  Rakmen wanted to say I’m sorry and you’re right and that sucks all at the same time. He tried to smile in a way that said those things but probably looked like he had gas. He suddenly wanted to kiss the center of the scar that was not her fault. Instead, he pulled his hand away.

  “She said we could go to the movies,” said Molly, “as long as she drove and sat in the back of the theater. I could tell my friend thought she was totally creepy. I mean, who does that?”

  “Dads afraid of boyfriends?”

  “I know.” Molly flopped back against the couch, face tilted to the ceiling.

  Rakmen stared at the pulse in her neck. He wanted to catch it and hold it in his cupped hands. It would flutter there like a moth. He tore his eyes away from Molly and pulled out his notebook. Cages. Carnies. One single moment is enough to change everything.

  “Hey.” Jacey appeared in front of them, sucking furiously on a lock of hair. Without waiting for an invitation, she wormed her way between him and Molly on the couch. “Look at this,” she said, patting the scrapbook she held in her lap. “Keri says it’s a yearbook for dead babies.”

  Rakmen tried to prod her off the
couch, but Molly scowled at him over Jacey’s head, and he edged over to make space.

  “It’s a memory book, not a year book,” Molly said, sliding an arm around the girl.

  Jacey opened the album, and Rakmen stared at the ancient paneling on the opposite wall. “For dearest Kylie, because God needed you in heaven,” Jacey read.

  Rakmen wished she had a mute button.

  “Why does God need a little girl?”

  “I don’t know,” said Molly, all the ruin in her voice.

  Rakmen had echoed Jacey’s question every time some well-meaning neighbor had patted his mom on the shoulder and reminded her that everything happens for a reason or that God has a plan. Jacey turned the page, and a plump little boy with blue eyes stared out at them from a soft-focus Sears photo-center shot. The hand-lettered caption read Our Guardian Angel.

  “I wanted a brother, not an angel,” said Jacey. “It sucks being an only child.” On the other side of her, Molly was rigid. Her sister had been her best friend. Jacey paused at another baby. Gold foil letters proclaimed She Watches Over Us from on High. “Why didn’t my brother have one?”

  The paneling on the opposite wall was brown. Near the floor there was water damage. Higher up, it was scuffed and dented. A stack of metal chairs tilted into the corner.

  “Rakmen,” Jacey demanded, pulling on his arm. “Why didn’t Jordan have his own angel to keep him safe?”

  “Angels are bullshit.”

  Jacey stared at the baby’s picture. “Yeah . . . ” she said, finally. “That’s what I think too.”

  On the next page, a dark-skinned boy in a toddler-sized University of Oregon jersey clutched a football to his chest. “Is he their brother?” Jacey asked, nodding toward to the twins.

  Molly nodded. “That’s D’Shawn.”

  “What happened to him?”

  “Cancer.”

  Jacey pointed to the dates under little boy’s picture. “It’s almost his birthday.”

  The pressure of the air around Rakmen changed. The mildewed basement choked him. Calendars were dangerous. Dora’s birthday was a month away and then two weeks later, the anniversary of her death. They were coming for him.

  Jacey pushed off the couch, taking the memory book with her.