Hand Me Down

by Melanie Thorne

  Sam turns his head back to the TV, a black-and-white film I don’t recognize. He says, “For now.”

  Tammy stays quiet this time and I’m smart enough not to say anything. I visualize Sam’s giant hat-covered head bursting like a firecracker, the tattered brim floating down from the blast to rest on his bloody stump of a neck as my own throat clenches and my eyes burn.

  “Let’s talk later,” Tammy whispers. She keeps her eyes trained down at her lily pad pajama pants. She pats my leg and her hand is icy. She says quietly, “I’m glad you had a good day.” Her thin hair hides her face and she still doesn’t look at me as I spread the purple blanket across her knees and disappear from the room like a ghost.

  Upstairs I put my hat and gloves on and shiver under my blankets until the warmth spreads out across my skin. Tammy and Sam laugh downstairs and I know that Sam is her other favorite person on this planet and that if it came down to choosing, she would pick him. I wouldn’t blame her. I am not her daughter.

  When the movie ends, Tammy comes upstairs. “Hey, kiddo,” she says and sits on the edge of my bed. “You warm enough?”

  I stare out the window where it’s getting dark outside, the gray-blue sky turning purple, shadows rolling across the red brick and white wood of the condos behind us. She says, “I want to apologize.” I roll over and look at her. “For Sam’s nastiness earlier.” I sit up and pull my comforter around me. “He’s used to having things a certain way,” she says. She pauses. “He’s not used to kids.”

  “He’s condescending,” I say.

  “He’s trying to talk to you,” she says.

  “He lectures.”

  “He’s pretty smart, you know,” she says.

  “He always wears that stupid vest,” I say.

  She laughs and hugs me. When she lets go, she puts a hand on each of my shoulders and lifts them up so I’m sitting fully upright. “That vest was a gift from me for our first overnight backpacking trip together,” she says, smiling. “I think it looks good on him, even if it’s a little aged.” She kisses my forehead. “Just like us.”

  She pulls her arms away and rests them in her lap. Her fingers are long, thin. Like me and Jaime, Mom and Tammy don’t have many childhood photos, but there is one framed in the hallway here of Tammy playing piano. She’s outside in a garden, wearing a pale green dress and a matching ribbon in her hair. At sixteen her skin is smoother and lighter but her face looks exactly the same. Her fingers look at home on the white keys, perfectly posed and just the right length.

  “Elizabeth,” she says. “I know Sam can be difficult. And I will talk to him about being nicer to you, but we’ve been together a long time and he is not used to sharing me. Since he’s only here for a little while, I was hoping you—”

  “I’ll stay out of the way,” I say.

  Tammy says, “That’s not necessary.” But she looks relieved. “And I will talk to him about his…”

  “Jerkiness?”

  “Severity,” she says. She hugs me again and smiles. “I love you,” she says.

  I say, “I love you, too.” But I know firsthand what people do to those they love.

  She tugs on the ties that hang from the earflaps of the hat I’m wearing. “Dinner soon,” she says, pulling the hat down into my eyes and pushing lightly on my head. She laughs and it’s a sound I haven’t heard in a while.

  I fall over onto the bed and lie there, wishing we could go back to before Sam showed up, when Saturday mornings were about us together, hanging out in our pajamas and eating homemade waffles, cracking up at games like Read My Lips or slapjack, when Tammy seemed lighter. Now she walks on tiptoes with her shoulders stooped, like at any moment something could jump out and attack.

  “Tammy?” I say and then decide not to ask because I don’t want to know the answer to a question that’s still only a possibility. She stood up for me today. I haven’t lost her yet.

  She says, “Yes?”

  I smile and push my hat up out of my eyes. “Thanks,” I say. Tammy smiles back and squeezes my hand. She gets up and leaves me huddled under the blankets in the darkening grayish-purple light from the window, wondering about the day Sam forces her to answer the question I was too afraid to ask.

  As I hop off the bus onto Tammy’s street the next day, the mountaintops gleam like frosted cupcakes, and the sun shines so bright off the snow it hurts my eyes. I hum a Lisa Loeb song as I skip up Tammy’s steps and unlock the door. I haven’t stopped grinning stupidly since my bus turned a corner and Dean’s waving figure and the mall where we’d spent the afternoon disappeared. We ate sour candy straws from the Sweet Factory and played Super Off Road and Zombie Attack at the arcade. We made fun of eighty-dollar T shirts in brand-name stores and the girls who bought them, and threw pennies into the mall’s basement fountain from three floors up. He didn’t try to kiss me during the movie, but as we watched the scene in Fargo when the wife runs around in the snow in her pink jumpsuit with a bag on her head on the big screen, we both laughed so hard that someone shushed us, and it felt like a bonding moment.

  “This was fun,” Dean said at the bus stop, rubbing his hands together. He looked at his feet, high-top Vans sneakers in navy blue and black. Then he asked for my number. My face got so warm I took off my hat, and I wrote Tammy’s number on his hand, his skin as cool as glass.

  Now, as I take off my shoes I see the square blue envelope with my name on it in Mom’s cursive sitting on the console table next to a note from Tammy that says, Went for walk.

  I get under my covers with the card from Mom. I know that this envelope probably doesn’t contain any of the things I wish she’d say to me, but for a few minutes I let myself imagine what it might feel like to hear them, to go home. Then I lift the baby-blue flap and pull out an invitation. A confetti-spotted, balloon-covered, store-bought invitation to Noah’s third birthday party. To be held at the Delacruz residence, Lunch will be served, the address and relevant information written in Terrance’s slanted loops that make me flash back to his letters under Mom’s nightstand.

  Mom’s round writing in purple ink covers the opposite side of the card: Elizabeth, I hope you’ll come to your brother’s birthday celebration. It won’t be the same without you. Noah asks about you all the time. We miss you. Love, Mom. My fingers tremble as I stare at the happy greens and golds of the balloons, the cobalt party hats and crimson confetti and Mom’s cursive until the shades blur together like watercolors.

  6

  A few days later on the phone Jaime says, “This is bullshit.” She received her invitation in the mail, too. “We never got parties like this.”

  “We never even got invitations like this,” I say. “Are you going?” Tammy said I could go home for Noah’s party if I want. She said she’d pay for the plane ticket, and I could stay all of spring break or just for the weekend, but I’m not sure yet. I don’t want to sleep at Dad’s.

  “Duh,” Jaime says. “He’s my brother.”

  I hear a crash that sounds like a pile of tin cans falling on cement in the background. “Is everything okay?”

  “Crystal and Dad have been fighting lately,” she says. “He used her credit card at a bar.”

  “What an idiot,” I say. “It’s like he’s trying to get caught.”

  “He says we don’t need her,” Jaime says and alarm bells scream warnings in my brain. He always needs someone to pick up his slack, and he’s not actually an idiot. He must have a plan to take advantage of somebody. I just hope it’s not Jaime. “Are you going to Noah’s party?” she says.

  “You know not to get in the car with him—”

  “I know, I know,” she says. “I’m not stupid.”

  “I didn’t say you were stupid.”

  She sucks her thumb and I hear yelling behind her. The shrill in Crystal’s voice is nothing like my mom’s quiet pleading, but my dad’s deep throaty grumbles sound exactly the same and I have to shake my head to remind myself that I am no longer five years old, shivering and afr
aid in a cramped apartment bathroom, holding my small hands over Jaime’s tiny ears. I say, “How’s school?”

  There is a crash that sounds like shattering glass and cracking wood. “Shit, I gotta go,” she says.

  “No, wait—”

  “I’ll call you later,” she says and hangs up.

  My mind spins through possibilities for that sound: a baseball bat smashing car windows, splintering dishes and cabinets, broken lamps and bones. Dad versus Crystal is sure to be unpredictable, and even if Jaime isn’t a direct target, without me, there’s no one to protect her from the crossfire. I dial Crystal’s number, knowing no one will answer and hoping I’m wrong. It rings and rings of course, and my hand folds into a fist around the plastic receiver.

  Sam walks into the living room just as the panic in my muscles skyrockets and I hurl the phone at Tammy’s couch. My eyes sting with tears and I try to go up the stairs but he stands on the bottom step, looking down at me from six inches higher than normal. I can see the little brown hairs lining his nostrils as they flare out.

  He says, “I think more respect for property would be appropriate here.”

  “Sorry,” I say.

  “Especially when that property is not yours,” he says and steps off the last step, forcing me back. “You should always consider the consequences of your actions, child.”

  “I’m sorry,” I repeat and try to walk past him but he’s blocking the stairs. I feel the heat in my face, the red blotchiness in my skin. I look at the floor, the tiny spots of color in the weave of the white carpet, specks of green and pink and blue scattered like tossed seeds. I think of Jaime and me tossing peanuts to squirrels once while Dad slept off a hangover on a park bench. We shelled the nuts and ate them for dinner as the sun set and all the other families went home.

  “I believe a lesson in responsibility is in order. Maybe you should take notes.” He smiles and launches into his lecture, and I have to bite my lips to keep the scream in my throat from escaping. He stares down at me like a judge giving bad news, his big hands in the pockets of the old orange vest, all of his tanned wrinkles and condescending brown eyes creating a barricade.

  He wouldn’t care that Jaime is in danger, but I have to do something. “I just want to go to my room,” I say, opening my mouth as little as possible and staring at the not entirely white carpet. I’m not sure exactly how to guard Jaime from two states away, but listening to Sam is not helping.

  I interrupted him, and he pauses before he says, “Your room?”

  “Yes,” I say.

  “Your room?” He snorts. “I think maybe we also need to discuss the idea of ownership and the methods by which—”

  “Please just let me go up the stairs.”

  “Will there be more throwing?”

  I close my eyes and wish I could tap my heels together and be home. Except I’m not sure where home is right now so maybe the ruby slippers wouldn’t work. If they could take me to Jaime, I’d use them in a second. I swallow the storm in my mouth. “No,” I say without separating my teeth. “Can I go upstairs now?”

  Sam moves a little and I squeeze past him and take the steps two at a time. I shut the door and bury myself in blankets and clothes and everything soft and warm I can find in this room that I know really isn’t mine though I don’t think I’d call it Sam’s, either. I burrow under the pile of fabric and release silent wails into the fold-out mattress.

  There were few things my dad kept good care of, but one of them was the sunset-colored Ford Pinto he had when we were little and he still lived with us. He called the car his Orange Julius and on weekends he hauled out buckets and sponges and let us help him scrub it into tip-top shape. It was the only chore he did without Mom asking, and he couldn’t hold a beer at the same time. He turned up the oldies station and danced around in his flip-flops with Jaime and me. He squirted us with the hose if it was warm, and we ran around dripping with suds, slinging soapy bubbles at each other in the apartment parking lot and laughing. Together, we rinsed and polished and sang and giggled until the Pinto was shiny and we needed baths.

  Late one night when I was supposed to be asleep, I heard Dad’s keys jingle for five minutes outside the front door. He yelled, “Linda, God damn it,” and Mom unlocked the bolt. Shaking, he told her he’d been mugged at a stoplight, that the two-inch bleeding gash on his forehead was from the carjacker’s tire iron. He said he’d fought off the punk kid with a can of pork and beans.

  “He got all my cash,” Dad said. He grinned. “But you should see his face.”

  Mom stood in a blue cotton nightgown with her bare feet planted shoulder width apart, her arms crossed above her breasts. “Where’s the car?” she said.

  “I think I need stitches.” Blood ran over the moles on his left cheek, dripped off his chin into his cupped palm. “I’m bleeding.”

  Mom said, “How much did you spend?”

  Dad wiped at the blood in his eyes, and she plucked his faded brown wallet from the back pocket of his jeans. Mom opened the wallet and then threw the leather folds at him. “There’s nothing left,” she said.

  Dad pressed a Wendy’s napkin to his forehead. “It’s my money,” he said and sat at the kitchen table where I could barely see him from the crack between door and door frame. Behind me in our room, Jaime slept on her side, her thumb in her mouth, her stuffed polar bear tucked under her chin.

  Mom punched her left palm with her right fist. “Tell me what you hit, David.”

  “I got mugged,” he said. “Can’t you see I’m hurt?”

  Mom took two steps forward and I could only see her back, her solid feet, and thick calves. “Did you drive the car home?” she said. “You promised you wouldn’t hurt your precious ‘Julius.’”

  Dad dabbed at his forehead with the napkin. His pale hands were trailed with drying brown blood. He sighed. “How did you know?”

  “Oh, please, David,” Mom said, shaking her head.

  He flipped her off and slumped in his chair. “At least I didn’t hurt our children,” he said.

  “Because I don’t let them drive with you.” Mom picked up Dad’s keys from where he’d dropped them by the door. She turned to him. “You better hope it starts.”

  He scoffed at her. “Or what?”

  I closed our bedroom door, tiptoed to the window, and looked out into the black night, at the black asphalt parking lot below. The Pinto sat under a streetlamp, the driver’s window smashed, the front bumper crunched and facing the sky more than the road.

  Then Mom appeared like a cloud, standing next to the scratched paint and twisted metal in her blue robe and white slippers. She pulled Dad’s keys from her terry cloth pocket and got in the car. The engine revved for a minute in the darkness and then she rested her forehead against the steering wheel and turned it off. When she lifted her head, her face a round, white orb, silvery streaks ran down the high cheekbones I’d inherited. Then she was hitting the steering wheel with her hands open, her palms slamming the hard plastic over and over. Her body rocked in the seat, her hair whipped her closed eyes and open mouth that seemed to be screaming even though I couldn’t hear her voice.

  Before Dad woke up in the morning, we had packed a few changes of clothes, toothbrushes, pillows, blankets, and food, and loaded them into the car. Mom had vacuumed out the broken glass, saved the pork and beans, and even found five bucks under Dad’s seat. She taped a note to the toilet lid, David, I have to protect my girls. Please don’t do anything you’ll regret later. Get clean and we’ll talk. We drove away in his beloved orange car and spent the next year sleeping on couches and in guest bedrooms, wearing the same four outfits, eating whatever food was offered, and moving each time Dad found us.

  I’m not sure if my dad regrets, or even remembers, the things he did: ruining mementos, photos, and other things we’d left behind, emptying their joint checking account and cancelling Mom’s credit cards, threatening Mom’s friends and breaking neighbors’ windows, but eight years later he’s still
not sober, and Jaime and I are back to living in other people’s houses, except this time we’re separated and by ourselves. I have a million regrets.

  In two hours Jaime still hasn’t called and Tammy is not yet home from work. I call Crystal’s number for the sixteenth time and let it ring twenty times before hanging up. Her whole life, Jaime has rarely been alone with Dad and now she lives with the man who knocked her down an escalator, broke her finger in a slammed door, and burned her with a barbecue skewer. If those things could happen while Mom or I were around, who knows what kind of “accidents” I’ve abandoned her to suffer without me. I need to know she’s okay.

  Sam is downstairs listening to NPR on the boom box in the kitchen and cooking, which means we’re either having pork chops or fried eggs on English muffins. I call Mom.

  “Hello?” She almost yells the word and I hear electronic buzzing and live drums in the background.

  “What’s going on over there?”

  “Jaime?”

  “It’s Liz. Have you heard from Jaime?”

  “Terrance and his friends are jamming,” she says.

  “Where’s Noah?”

  “He loves watching Terrance play,” and the next thing she says is drowned in guitar squeal. I hear, “Let me switch phones,” and then when she is back on, the ringing in my ears is louder than the background noise.

  “Jamming?” I say. “What is he, fifteen?”

  “What do you want, Liz?”

  “Have you heard from Jaime?”

  “Not for a few days.”

  “Crystal found out Dad’s been drinking.”

  “That’s too bad,” she says.

  “On the phone tonight I heard a crash and then Jaime had to go and now no one is answering.”

  “I’m sure everything is fine. You know your dad.”

  “Yeah, that’s why I’m worried.”

  Mom sighs. “You’re always worried,” she says. “It’s not healthy.”