Hand Me Down

by Melanie Thorne

  Noah cried at night; all night most nights in the beginning. Terrance and Jaime slept through his screams but I lay awake and listened to his high-pitched wails and wondered what could possibly be so distressing at his age. Mom sang lullabies and church songs in her soft soprano, rocked him in the yellow recliner, put him in his crank up swing. Sometimes he stopped screaming long enough to eat, which he did with his eyes closed, his mouth around Mom’s nipple, his little cheek muscles working like a pulse. Mom’s strong arms held him close, her free hand smoothed the downy wisps of black on his head, traced the side of his jaw with her pinky finger, tapped his round, dime-sized nose. Once, I watched him open his mud-brown eyes and gaze up at Mom as if she were the only thing he could see and she was, literally, his whole world. She grew him inside of her from nothing and I thought, I came from that place, too.

  Noah’s pale skin darkened each day, and the red spots faded, and after a few weeks he looked less like a big creased worm with arms and more like a baby. Jaime and I did extra chores and whatever Mom asked without arguing. We washed piles of spit up towels, baby onesies, and Terrance’s new work jumpsuits. We washed Mom’s pajamas and sweatpants and our own laundry. We took poopy diapers to the dump; cleaned bottles, hospital-green nose plungers, and tiny thermometers. We walked to the liquor store four blocks away to buy milk, eggs, toilet paper. I cooked spaghetti and fish sticks and frozen pizzas for dinner. Mom said thank you for almost everything we did, but her voice was robotic, and she didn’t say much else except her quiet cooing to Noah.

  After a while, Mom went back to work. Noah started smiling, but he still cried at night. I listened to Mom tell him about her day, her coworkers, her grant-writing projects advocating assistance for abused women. She talked to him as if he were a normal person while he screamed like it hurt his throat. One night I got up to pee and saw Mom standing at the kitchen window with all the lights off, silhouetted in the moonlight, swaying her hips and shoulders with Noah in her arms, her heels planted two feet apart. She stared out the window at the starless sky and rocked.

  “Mom?”

  She turned and whispered, “I think he’s asleep,” without interrupting her swaying. Black rings made caves around her eyes and dried tears glinted on her droopy grayish skin. “But I have to keep moving.”

  I whispered, “Want me to wake Terrance up?”

  “He has to work tomorrow.”

  “So do you.”

  She turned back to the window. “I did this for you, too, you know,” she said, her eyes wide open in their caverns. “Rocked you, took you for drives. You cried all the time except in the car. Worse than this, worse than Jaime, but it was night when your dad couldn’t stand it so I’d wrap you in a blanket, put you in the car seat, and drive around the neighborhood playing Joni Mitchell until you fell asleep.” She rocked her hips and swung her arms, stared through the glass at the night.

  “At least Terrance doesn’t do that,” she said. “He doesn’t yell like your dad if I couldn’t get you to be quiet. I hear him still, in my head sometimes. He’d yell with his voice scratchy and he’d throw things and I’d say, ‘Shh, baby,’ over and over, but you wouldn’t stop and he hadn’t hit you, I never saw him hit you, but you could fall if he hit me and I was always tired, too tired to drive, so sometimes I’d just sit in the car in the apartment parking lot and let you scream.”

  Goose bumps moved up my arms and mostly bare legs, covered to midthigh by one of Mom’s old T shirts. I took a step toward her. She was crying. “I’m sorry I let you scream,” she said, staring straight out the window. A few distant stars looked like tiny blemishes in dark paint. “You were never afraid of him, and I was so scared,” she said, still moving to her own rhythm. “I’m so scared,” she said.

  I wrapped my arms around her soft waist, under where she held Noah, and she kept rocking so we swayed there together until the sky was spotted with twinkling white defects.

  Jaime and I are sleeping on the couches tonight and since Jaime is still shorter, even if only a little, she gets the love seat. These slate-blue sofas have been around longer than Terrance and with him gone we try to pretend he never existed. Jaime says, “The house smells funny now.”

  “Yeah,” I say. It smells like musty sweat and hot metal. I say, “It smells like Terrance.” We are eating microwave popcorn and watching Twister.

  Mom comes in from the hallway. “Noah is finally asleep,” she says. “All that sugar.” She laughs. “Did you see him hit the piñata?”

  “He had fun,” I say.

  Jaime says, “It was good cake.” We all sigh and watch the screen: cows floating in front of Bill Paxton’s brand-new red truck, mud spraying the windshield, Helen Hunt’s hair still flawless despite tornado wind speeds.

  Mom says, “I need to talk to you girls about something.”

  I pause the movie and we both look at her and then at each other. We know how these talks go. She sits in one of the beige-and-pink-cushioned chairs at the table and faces us, now wearing cotton pajama pants and a big yellow T shirt. Her hair is in a ponytail for the first time I’ve seen since Terrance was released. She has a hickey on her neck. “We are buying a house.”

  Jaime says, “A real house?”

  “I thought you couldn’t afford a plane ticket,” I say.

  Mom says, “We got evicted.”

  “What’s that?” Jaime says.

  “Because of Terrance?” I say.

  “Someone called the landlord and told them about Terrance’s record,” Mom says and shakes her head. “Like people can’t change.”

  I say, “Who called the landlord?” but I have a guess after today’s talk with Jaime.

  “Terrance wants to raise Noah in a house.”

  Jaime says, “I want to live in a house.”

  “We’d like you to come live with us,” Mom says and Jaime and I both freeze. We look at each other with eyebrows cocked and heads tilted. Mom says, “This second appeal is going well, and we should know by the time the house is ready, but I think God has answered our prayers.”

  “What if the appeal is denied?”

  “It’s in God’s hands.”

  I say, “But will you make Terrance leave?”

  She takes a deep breath, closes her eyes. She stands up. “You girls are my blood. Nothing is more important than that.” She kisses each of our foreheads and stands in her bedroom doorway. “You can come home in June, I promise.” She smiles and I think she believes it. She says, “Good night,” and closes her hollow door.

  Jaime and I lean toward each other across the coffee table. Jaime whispers, “I don’t want to live with Terrance.”

  “The appeal will get denied,” I say. “She’ll never make him leave.”

  “If we live with Dad, we can do whatever we want.”

  “Except relax.”

  “He’s not that bad,” she says. “He doesn’t drink in the car anymore.”

  “Without Crystal, he can do whatever he wants, too,” I say.

  “At least he’s trying,” she says. She frowns and pulls away from whispering distance. “We can’t all be perfect like you,” she says, and it stings more than I would have guessed for a line both my parents have said to me before.

  I turn off the TV, my throat tightening. I know Jaime’s memories don’t include the beatings I remember. I know she never hears Mom’s pleading in her head—Please, David, think of the girls—or the thuds of hard knuckles against soft flesh. It wasn’t Jaime who cleaned tobacco spit out of Mom’s hair, or knelt on the bathroom floor to remove glass shards from the soles of her feet with tweezers, hands slipping down metal slick with blood until my fingertips were bleeding, too. Jaime doesn’t remember the look on Dad’s face as he punched his wife, eyes wide and unseeing, his jaw fixed, teeth grinding millimeters to the left and right as he swung. She’s never had to watch her father come at her with that face or his fists, see that he doesn’t care who she is in that moment, and know that she can’t defend herself.

/>   Jaime doesn’t remember because Mom and I worked hard to shelter her. Until today I was proud to have done such a good job. Now, I have to make her see that Dad is dangerous without deepening the divide that’s grown between us. If I lose her, it was all for nothing.

  We spend Sunday packing our stuff. “Or I’ll do it for you,” Mom says as she’s putting on nylons and a dress without cleavage for church. When she leaves to pick up Terrance at Gary’s, Jaime and I make pancakes and eggs in our pajamas, and watch the rest of Twister together on the floor.

  Later, in the nine by nine-foot room that used to be mine, Terrance’s leather weight bench and his dumbbells have forced my bookcase and dresser to the corners. My bed, part of a bunk that Jaime and I shared when we shared a room, is back on top in Noah’s room. Dust coats the few books and knickknacks I left behind, and I put everything in one box. My journals and favorite books and clock radio are already at Tammy’s.

  In my room at Tammy’s, Alanis Morissette and The Beatles look down at me from either side of the fold-out bed. She rigged a string system so I could hang posters without putting holes in the wall, and I also have an Escher sketch and a Picasso print Tammy bought for me at a gallery in Park City. And even after I heard Sam tell her it would decrease their property value, Tammy let me stick plastic glow in the-dark stars to my ceiling.

  In this room where I used to sleep, Terrance has redecorated the walls with Metallica and Black Sabbath posters, a dartboard, and pictures of shiny hairless men showing off chests as big as tractors, arms carved and tight, oiled up and flexed. His guitar stands in front of my dresser, the light wood backlit by the dark green paint on the drawers. His fingerless leather weight gloves sit on top where my makeup used to live.

  I move his guitar and open the top drawer. Most of what is left I put in a Goodwill pile. I have a whole closet full of nice, first hand, and hole-less outfits at Tammy’s. I no longer need these hand me downs, flood jeans, and stretch pants. There are a few nice dresses in the closet, a few pairs of summer shoes worth keeping, and sleep shorts I can wear if Terrance moves out. I stick them in another box along with stuffed animals I don’t want to take but can’t bring myself to throw away. I move Terrance’s guitar back in front of my dresser but I turn all the tuning pegs in different directions, one so tight the string snaps. I stand there picturing all the parts of him that could snap like that with the right pressure: bones, tendons, windpipe.

  Jaime comes in and sees me staring. She says, “Let’s break it.”

  “Mom would know.”

  “So?” Jaime picks up the wooden neck and lets the body dangle. “How else can she punish us?”

  “What if we can actually come back?” I say.

  Jaime rolls her eyes but puts the guitar back on its metal stand. “Did you hear them on the phone this morning? It was like déjà vu.”

  “Tammy was the same before Sam came to visit,” I say. “He called every Sunday at five A.M.”

  “Dad calls Crystal a psycho bitch,” Jaime says. “And then they make up and have really loud sex.”

  “Mom and the idiot, too.”

  “It’s nasty.”

  “I try not to think about it,” I say and she nods. We stand there quietly for a minute, the sun shining through the blinds on the window, making shadow stripes across our feet and the brown carpet. Jaime plucks the thickest strings on the guitar and they vibrate like footsteps in the empty apartment. She puts her thumb in her mouth and sighs, and I wish I could offer her more than this instability, something better than our parents. All the things in my head sound like Hallmark cards, but I want her to know that I will never let her down. I decide on, You can always talk to me, as a starting point, but before I get it out she pulls her thumb from between her lips and says, “You’ve French-kissed a guy before, right?”

  Our talk is better than shredding Terrance’s Forty-Niners cap or scratching his CDs would have been, and by the time Mom comes home I know that if Jaime and Dad actually get an apartment and she asks me to, I will move in with them.

  I let Dad hug me before Jaime gets in his pickup. His dark orange beard is rough against my cheek but he doesn’t smell like beer. “You look weird,” he says to me.

  I say, “You look unemployed.”

  He smiles and wags a finger at me. “You got that cleverness from me.”

  “I was being serious.”

  “A serious pain.” He laughs.

  Jaime says, “Dad.”

  “I know, I know,” he says. “She’s always serious.”

  “You’re so clever,” I say. “Why don’t you go into advertising?”

  “Good night, Liz,” Jaime says, tossing her backpack into the black bed of his pickup. “Thanks,” she says and gets in the cab. We smile at each other.

  “You could come have fun with us, Liz,” he says.

  “You mean drink too much?” I stand on tiptoe and check in the truck bed for alcohol.

  “Just as frigid as your mom,” Dad says, shaking his head. “Where are you spending the night?”

  I put my hands on my hips. “Why do you care?”

  “You could still come back to our place,” he says. “We’ve got a couch with your name on it.”

  “No, thanks,” I say. “I’d like to sleep without shoes on.”

  “Fine, hoity-toity.” He gets back in the cab. “But you better not be staying at your mom’s if Terrance is there,” he says. “You know the rules.”

  Suddenly all the signs click in my head. Dad inviting Jaime to live at Crystal’s. The call to Terrance’s parole officer. Dad and Jaime encouraging me to move in with them. I stare at him, taking in his freckles and blue eyes, thinking back to all his little comments. “Why didn’t I figure it out before?” I say.

  “What?” he says, mocking. “That us real Reids like to enjoy ourselves?”

  “It was you,” I say. Trying to collect child support money was not him taking advantage of the situation. It was the reason the situation was created. “You called Terrance’s P.O.” My hands form fists at my side. “This whole thing started because of you.”

  “I don’t know what you’re talking about,” he says, looking away from me and slamming the door shut.

  “I can’t believe you would rip our lives apart like that for money,” I say. My nostrils flare and I think of all the times he forgot to pick us up, or spent our dinner cash on booze, or made us sleep on the floor of some passed-out friend’s house. “You selfish prick.”

  “Liz!” Jaime says.

  “He set this in motion, Jaime,” I say. “You can’t trust him.”

  “Things are in motion,” Dad says, his voice harsh. He looks directly at me through his open window and lifts his eyebrows. “Maybe you should think about which direction you want them to move.”

  I bite the inside of my lip until I taste blood. “Is that some kind of threat?” I say, leaning forward so Jaime can’t hear.

  “I’m simply suggesting you carefully consider your options here, Liz,” he says, his lips turning up at the corners. He glances at Jaime. “Make family a priority.”

  My jaw tenses enough to make my ears ring. “I will never forgive you for this,” I say through gritted teeth.

  “Well,” he says. “No one can live up to your high-and-mighty expectations.” He turns the key and the engine roars to life. He sticks his head out the rolled-down window and smiles with an air of victory. “Not even you.”

  “Please don’t kill my sister,” I say.

  “I’ll do my best,” he says. “But accidents do happen.”

  “You’re mad at me, not her,” I say.

  “Call us when you lighten up,” he says. He puts the truck in gear. “Or if you decide to put someone’s needs before your own for once.”

  It takes all my muscle control to keep my feet on the asphalt, to not pull Jaime out of her seat, to not run after the truck bed where we spent more than one night half-asleep on the hard plastic parked behind Dad’s bar of choice. My body is
screaming for me to give in and say yes, okay, I’ll come live with you, you win, I’ll do what you want. But I just stand there, watching Jaime drive away with one of the two most terrifying people I’ve ever met, and feel ashamed.

  “Be safe, Jaime,” I say to the parking lot.

  Back inside, Mom says if we’re discreet, both Terrance and I can spend the week here. I can’t tell Jaime or Dad, but lying is better than sleeping at Tabatha’s, a woman who lives on the other end of the apartment complex with two teenage sons over six feet tall with no exposed skin un tattooed. Mom met her in the prison visiting room, “How convenient!” she’d said, and they often carpooled to Vacaville until Terrance got out. Tabatha’s husband has ten years left on his sentence.

  “She’s supposed to be gone,” Terrance says when he gets back from drinking with his cousins and I’m still here. “I could get arrested.”

  “So what else is new?” I say and Mom snaps, “Elizabeth.” Then she says to Terrance, “No one will know.”

  He points at me, glowering. “She wants me to go back,” he says. “She’ll call my P.O.”

  “I thought you two were getting along?” Mom says. She eyes Terrance. “Why would she do that?”

  Yeah, Terrance, I think, remembering the stickiness of that dive bar booth, him smelling my hair, threatening to torment Jaime. Why would I do that?

  A cloud of fury bursts in his eyes, but he transforms it to desire faster than should be possible. “Babe,” he says, running his hands up her torso. “I need to lay next to you tonight.” He caresses her cheek. “I missed you.” He lowers his mouth and kisses her neck, still glaring at me.

  Mom closes her eyes and says, “I missed you, too.” The anger in Terrance’s eyes fades to triumph as he nibbles at her skin. I am wondering how many layers I would need to sleep outside when Mom says, “But it’s Liz’s turn.”