Jaime’s tangled blond ponytail rounds the corner and I think of all the times I brushed her hair. All the times I made her laugh, cooked her dinner, helped her with her homework, kissed her scraped knees or cut fingers. I threatened her bullies at school, walked her home, and tucked her into clean sheets. I smothered my fear during Dad’s rampages so I could sing her to sleep without my voice shaking. To be close to her, I will try to accept this new home and she’s not even my daughter. I don’t understand how Mom can walk away.
“How could you leave us?” I say, sinking down into my chair, a vise closing around my throat. My lungs squeeze in my chest near my pounding heart and my palms bead with sweat. “You said we were your blood.”
“When you’re older and married, all of this will make sense,” Mom says. I hang my head. “You’ll see,” she says, but the words are strained.
I say, “I guess we will,” but I’m certain she’s wrong.
After Mom leaves, I lie awake in Deborah’s guest room on top of the perfectly made twin bed and stare at the empty ceiling. I’m still wearing Rachel’s bikini under my clothes because it’s the most familiar thing in this house besides Jaime’s breathing in her bed a few feet away. I clench and relax my shaking hands, grind the river silt between my toes, and inhale deep, unsteady breaths.
Jaime’s cold toes are suddenly pressed against my shins and her nose is inches from mine as she curls up facing me on the bed. Her thumb rests loosely in her mouth and without taking it out she says, “Don’t cry. Now we can live together again without our stupid parents.”
I hadn’t meant to cry. “You like living here?” I say.
She shrugs. “It’s not as scary as Dad’s.” Jaime pulls her thumb out of her mouth and wipes the shriveled skin on her shirt. “It’s safe to sleep here, Liz.” She hugs me. “I promise.” She climbs into her own bed and I hear the rustle of sheets as she wraps herself like a mummy. She says with her thumb back in her mouth, “You don’t have to keep watch.”
My aunt Deborah and her husband, Winston, have a bread machine. It has a timer. At night you can put all the bread ingredients into its rectangular tin pan: the flour, milk, salt, yeast, and whatever you want for flavor, and then put the pan into the white plastic machine, set the clock and voila, fresh bread is ready in the morning.
I watch Deborah close the lid and set the timer. “We always have homemade cinnamon bread hot and fresh Saturday mornings,” she says as she wipes off the white-tiled countertops and puts the perishables back in the refrigerator. Deborah’s kitchen is done in a “French country style,” she told me earlier, pale yellow, deep blue, and white. White cabinets have rooster knickknacks on top, a wallpaper border displays blue-ribbon-wrapped straw hats. “Right out of the machine, the butter melts down into the bread and it gets all smushy and yummy, and so good, Liz, I promise.” Deborah says, “I promise,” the same way my dad does, and my gut warns me not to trust her.
It is my fifth night here, but I know enough not to ask to watch TV. It’s past ten P.M. and technically, I should be in bed. Winston is a computer programmer who spends his weekends researching military history and combat procedures for his future novels, and this house runs on rules: bedtimes for school nights and weekends; TV, computer, phone, and video game time limits; a rotating chore calendar for the kids, to which Jaime’s name has been added, I notice. She is supposed to vacuum tomorrow.
Deborah says, “It’s time for bed, Liz.”
“Okay,” I say, but I don’t move.
She hugs me. “Try to get some rest,” she says. “Good night.” Deborah disappears up the stairs. Her soft socks on soft carpet make a nearly silent exit.
I doubt I’ll sleep tonight, either, but standing in the kitchen in the dark by myself doesn’t help, so I head toward the guest bedroom off the side of the family room, where Jaime has been living the past few months. Two twin beds with matching sky-blue comforters awash with sunshine-yellow flowers rest against white headboards with carved white daisies. A sunflower wallpaper border coats the top foot of wall space around the room, two white nightstands and a white dresser sit near the beds, with a blue lamp on the dresser top. It looks like a stage set or a model home and feels just as phony.
I hover over Jaime in the moonlight, her thumb tucked in her mouth, her hair a knotted mess behind her head. It’s July and still she wraps the blankets tightly around her, cocoon style. Only her face sticks out, which looks less like mine than ever. I listen to her heavy breathing, the same sound she made when we were little and shared a bed. Not snoring, just the sound of full lungs expanding and contracting, air forced through small nostrils. Her jaws are loose, her eyebrows relaxed. It’s like when I held her hand so she’d sleep through breaking dishes, slamming doors, our mother’s crying, and just like then I am jealous of her closed lids and deep breaths and dreamland, but also glad that at least one of us feels secure enough to rest.
I haven’t slept through the night since leaving Rachel’s. During daylight my eyes can close without the panic that comes after the sun goes down, and while everyone goes about their busy summer lives just like they did before I showed up, I take naps curled like a cat on the carpet or the couch, wherever there’s a warm red glow on the back of my eyelids. When I lie still in the dark, my mind releases armies of memories that tramp across my closed eyes and churn the acid in my stomach into white-water fists. Snapshot images play in loop tracks like slideshows: Mom’s pale face shoving screaming toddler Jaime into my arms as Dad’s fist collides with her jaw; Jaime’s unmoving figure on the floor of Dad’s pickup, blood trickling down her cheek; Terrance licking his lips as his sagging shorts and bare chest lean over me; Mom’s hard eyes as she left me here like I’d been dismissed.
I’m sure Mom thought this would work. That I’d want to rebuild my life around Jaime, go back to being defined as the big sister, and part of me thinks it would be easy. I could slip into my old role, my lines memorized, my act perfected over the years. There is no room for originality or deviation from the standards here; the point is to shape me back into the obedient and compliant child Mom needs me to be. In exchange for stability and a chance to live with Jaime, I am supposed to surrender myself. I understand the trade-off. I’m just not sure it’s worth it. I think I might be ready for a different function in this family, a new part, like a starring role in my own life and a fresh location. Even with Deborah’s good intentions, she’ll never understand me the way Tammy does.
I kiss Jaime’s forehead and feel my way through the dark hallway to the bathroom, my nighttime refuge. I paint my toenails with some cranberry-colored polish I find in a back cabinet and sing to myself. I envy Jaime’s ability to ignore the “reminders” Tammy talked about, the constant weight of past wrongs. Tammy said I should try to make peace with the hurts, but if they keep repeating, how can I move on? In the mirror I notice a string of red bumps running down my left cheek. In my head I hear Jaime call me pimple face, which she did when she wanted to be mean. My shoulders slump in my reflection. We don’t even spend enough time together to fight anymore.
Out in the family room I step gently on my newly painted toes, the tan carpet spongy like short-clipped grass under my feet. The quarter moon shines through the locked windows and lights up the space enough for me to see the furniture in the family room: the gray sectional couch, the recliner by the fireplace. This fireplace burns real wood, though, since Winston says it’s a “fire hazard,” it never gets used. The dark timber mantel displays a ship in a bottle, and a gold-framed painting in pastels of three women wearing bonnets and laughing in a grassy meadow that is definitely not an original.
The light from the windows increases as I survey things that don’t belong to me: Ashley’s Tiger Beat and Teen Vogue magazines on the floor, Matt’s handheld video console, a pair of his little socks bunched up by the TV, Jaime’s pink plastic Hello Kitty makeup case and scrunchie on the couch. Outside, the sky is gray-blue and hazy. Lingering fog filters the rising sun and it figures t
hat even during summer I can’t get away from the gray.
I pick up one of Ashley’s girly magazines just as Matt comes down wearing Bananas in Pajamas pajamas. I smile. “My brother loves that show,” I say and picture Noah singing along with the talking bananas, clapping his small hands. “He has those same pajamas,” I say. “A few sizes smaller.”
“I didn’t choose them,” Matt says and plops down next to me. “Mom buys all my clothes.” He yawns, and with his eyes half-closed shoves a cartridge into his SEGA console. “Want to play?”
I shrug and take the controller he hands me. The game is Primal Rage, dinosaur combat. I control a red, fire-breathing T. rex named Diablo and as soon as I learn the maneuvers, I pretend Matt’s bluish-purple velociraptor is Terrance and attack it with a vengeance. I think of his damp lips on my ear and deliver a spray of fire. I think of his heavy-lidded stare and stomp on the velociraptor’s head.
“Do your parents let you play this violent death match stuff?”
Matt leans toward me. “I convinced Dad it was a prehistoric learning game.” My eyebrows jump and he grins. “It does teach survival skills,” he says. “So it wasn’t really a lie.”
I laugh as his aggressive dinosaur leaps at me with teeth bared. “What if you get caught?”
“They trust me,” Matt says. “It’s you guys they think will lie.”
“That’s good to know.”
“Mom says it’s not your fault. That you and Jaime were in bad situations,” Matt says, his fingers clicking away on his controller as his dinosaur completes flying kicks and underbelly attacks on my much slower T. rex. “She said you had bad influences.”
I sigh. “What does your dad think of us?”
Matt hesitates, and that’s enough confirmation for me. Deborah can be as charming and convincing as my dad, and I bet Winston doesn’t have much of a chance to say no when she puts her mind to something.
I say, “Do you ever read?”
“Sure,” Matt says, “I read science books about flying and space engineering and entomology and—”
“Are you into guns?”
“My dad has guns,” he says. I know. I also know he keeps them loaded in a safe in his office, a safe taller than me.
“Does he let you use them?”
“Not here.” Matt’s birdlike dinosaur pecks at Diablo’s neck and rips off a strip of red flesh. Blood sprays everywhere but fades before hitting the pixilated background grass. “But sometimes he takes us to the shooting range. He says it’s important for our safety.” My neon-green life box at the top of the screen runs out, and I die. Too bad Terrance doesn’t have a life meter that’s running low. “You’re better than Ashley,” Matt says.
“Thanks,” I tell him and pat his head, which has yet to outgrow that baby phase of being twice the size of his body. He looks like a giant doll no one would ever buy. When Matt was little, he pounded his head repeatedly against walls, floors, doorknobs, and once, the concrete driveway. These days, I understand the impulse and I wonder if he remembers what was so horrible he wouldn’t stop until he was tied down or passed out.
Matt sniffs and says, “Mmm. Saturday morning bread.” It does smell good, and it reminds me of waking up in Connecticut the first time we visited Tammy. Each morning she toasted cinnamon-raisin bagels and scraped real butter across the top. The fog rolled away from the surface of the pond behind her house, revealing jungle-green plants and trees growing at the water’s edges near cattails and lily fields, their lush, thick canopies stretching out over the moss-coated surface. We sat on bar stools at Tammy’s kitchen counter and watched the humid stillness, sometimes broken by a lethargic dragonfly or a leaf too heavy with sweat dropping its puddle. She asked us questions like, “If you could go anywhere in the world, where would it be?” and promised to take us there when we were older. “When you graduate from college,” she told us, “I’ll take you anywhere you want.”
The cinnamon smell draws me from the dinosaur battles on screen to stare through the clear plastic square on the bread machine designed for viewing, but all I see is gray. “How do you tell when the bread is done?” I ask Matt, who is on level twelve with his velociraptor.
Deborah answers from the stairway. “It beeps. It’s supposed to be done at eight, but then it needs to sit for a minute.”
It’s too early to listen to Deborah’s list of things she thinks she can do to cheer me up. She won’t talk about what happened, she’ll only say things like, “Try to look on the bright side,” or, “Positive attitudes put problems in their place,” as if I’m depressed because my favorite TV show got canceled. She says things like, “Oh, come on, Liz, it’s not so bad. If you come to the mall I’ll buy you a new outfit.” As if presents and cinnamon bread can protect me from the real dangers she doesn’t want to address.
The bread machine beeps while I am looking through the window in the top and I jump. Deborah presses her hand against my back for a second and I jump again. She says, “So, what do you want to do today?” I shrug. “I thought maybe we’d go shopping,” she says.
“You don’t need to buy me anything.”
“Do you have a dress for church?”
My nostrils flare out, but I bite my tongue, literally, and taste blood. “I’m sure I can find something.”
“I want you and Jaime to sing with me on the worship team,” she says and my eyes go wide. “Oh, don’t worry, not tomorrow of course, but soon. Jaime already agreed. You two have such heavenly voices; I can’t wait to hear you in practice.”
“Um.” My face feels stiff, my tongue is swollen, and I can’t make my mouth form words.
“So you’ll need something pretty to wear, and we might as well start looking today.” My brain is overloading with things I can’t say, filling like a balloon and ramming my skull from the inside. “The early bird gets the worm,” she says.
“I feel ill,” I say.
“You just need to eat,” she says. “You hardly touched my famous meatloaf last night.” She slices me a big piece of squared cinnamon goodness and slathers it in butter. I have to admit it is delicious. She cuts and butters slices for Matt and herself and we stand in the kitchen eating fresh bread and staring out the window at the azalea bushes near the driveway.
After my second piece Deborah says, “So, should we get going?”
“Going where?” Ashley says as she staggers into the kitchen like she’s drunk.
“I don’t know if I’m up for the mall,” I say.
Deborah huffs her lips together and sounds like an unhappy horse. She lifts her hands and says, “What teenager turns down new clothes?” Those of us who have sex offender stepdads who don’t need any encouragement.
Ashley says, “You said you’d buy me a new swimsuit.”
Deborah says to me, “Do you need a swimsuit?” and Ashley gives me the evil eye behind her mother’s red hair. She makes an L with her thumb and index finger and raises it to her forehead.
“I have one,” I tell Deborah, and wonder what Rachel is doing today without me. “Thanks, though.” What I wouldn’t give to be lying out by the river, coconut tanning oil on my skin, drugs blurring my thoughts, talking with Rachel and laughing at her jokes.
“You must need something,” Deborah says and it’s true, but she can’t provide the things I need.
I say, “Sleeping pills?”
Deborah frowns. “That’s not funny, Liz.”
“Sorry,” I say. “Did my mom tell you how long she plans to leave me here?” I ask and my voice strains just a little.
Deborah reaches over to hug me and I let her. She smells like laundry detergent and artificial fruitiness. “Let’s talk about that later,” she says. Deborah puts a bread crumb in her mouth and then licks her fingers. “Okay, troop,” she says and claps her hands together. “Time to start the day.”
Ashley groans, but my days and nights and naps blend into each other without clear stops or starts and I wasn’t kidding about the sleeping pills. I can feel mys
elf slipping deeper into a pit of quicksand, being swallowed bit by bit. Every day it’s harder to move my feet so I stop struggling and don’t bother to scream, even when I’m trapped up to my waist and can’t move my hands, even as my mouth fills with thick, grainy mud. No one has noticed yet that I’m sinking.
At dinner, Deborah spoons more mashed potatoes onto my plate even though I haven’t eaten any from the pile already there. Fried chicken and peas also sit untouched in front of me while Winston is on his second serving. After prayer, this family dives into their food, shoveling like stable boys until their plates reflect their faces.
“Matt,” Deborah says. “Tell us your Bible verse for tomorrow.”
He clears his throat and swallows his chicken. “‘Seek ye first the kingdom of God and his righteousness.’”
“Very nice,” Deborah says and Winston nods, still chewing. She says, “Girls?”
Jaime and Ashley look at each other, take a breath, and say simultaneously, “‘For God so loved the world that he gave his only begotten son that whosoever believeth in him shall not perish but have everlasting life.’” They take deep breaths and giggle.
“Good job, girls,” Deborah says.
Ashley says, “What about Liz?”
“That’s okay,” I say, pressing drifts of potato through the tines of my fork.
“If you learn, you won’t feel left out in Sunday school,” Matt says. I smile at him, but this is something I do want to be left out of.
“I don’t think I’ll go to Sunday school,” I say and the table goes silent. Winston stops chewing. Jaime cringes. Ashley smirks. “We all go to Sunday school,” Winston says.
I’d gotten spoiled living with Tammy. Sunday mornings we hiked on wildflower-coated foothill trails humming with singing birds while the sun rose, biked up City Creek Canyon and sketched pine trees or the brook skipping over water-smoothed rocks, took naps under the swishing sound of waving birch and oak branches and broken rays of sunshine. Nature is Tammy’s church, and if I had a choice, it’d be mine, too.
Hand Me Down Page 19
