The Opposite of Everyone

by Joshilyn Jackson

  “I’m tougher than I look, you know. Maybe not a year ago. But now? After my dad was gone, there was only me. It was only me with my mother, those last weeks. It was . . .” He paused, the unspooled cable shaking in his trembling hands, seeking a word, but he couldn’t find it. He changed directions, saying, “I changed her diaper. Near the end, in hospice. There was a male orderly that day. Always before, it was these three girl ones in rotation, and I stayed out of the way. But that day, the regular girl was sick or something, and this guy was working. He was an old guy, too, like, near her age.”

  As he spoke, his shaking hands kept winding up the cable. Blackie pounced at the moving end, cute and thoroughly unhelpful. I looked at him instead of at my brother’s shaking hands as he talked on, unstoppable.

  “I could smell it, you know? That she needed—­ I could smell it. I was going to get that orderly, and she started crying. Mostly she was out of it, but not that afternoon. She shook and made this awful clacking gulp noise, and I hated it, and I knew that she was crying, so I leaned over her and I said, ‘What is it, Mama? What?’ My mom and dad were high school sweethearts. No other man had ever seen her without clothes on, she said. She’d always gone to women doctors, even. She was so skinny then, like this little dried-­up scrap of mother, and her skin was so loose on her it hung down in floppy creases.”

  Oakleigh was right upstairs, and now the kid was weeping openly. I was paralyzed in the face of all this naked loneliness and sorrow, and, worse, I couldn’t help wondering—­had Kai been so frail and helpless, at her end? Had anyone been with her? I didn’t want to hear any more, but he kept on, relentless.

  “She looked up at the ceiling, and she cried, and I talked about our old bird-­watching log we used to keep when I was little, and I cleaned her up. I made myself not gag because I didn’t want her to hear and feel bad. It was terrible, but I did it, because she was my mother. That’s what a family is, Paula. That’s what family does, except Hana doesn’t have any.

  “So that’s what we have to be. I want us to make something good for her. We have to, and I don’t know why you have to be so fucking scary. I’m trying to be friends with you, but every other minute I feel like you’re laughing at me or that you hate me. You’re what I got, though. And we’re what Hana’s got. We’re the only things at all—­”

  His voice had risen at the end, but then it cracked and he dropped his head and wept his guts out. After six fraught seconds, he turned his back and began stuffing the remotes and the rerolled cable back into the drawer, pushing gently at the kittens. He was still weeping as they both tried to climb into the drawer in a fluffy bother. He got the drawer shut, then scrubbed at his face with his palms.

  “I don’t hate you,” I said quietly. “For what it’s worth, you’re pretty fucking scary, too.”

  He only hunched his shoulders, snuffling and gulping. I had no idea what to do with a crying man-­boy in the middle of my awful client’s house, especially one who was telling me what a mother looked like when she was sick and slowly dying.

  One thing was clear: Hana had hit him like biology, too. I’d miscalculated both his depths and his investment. I wondered if he heard it as a heartbeat: find her, find her, find her.

  Meanwhile, upstairs, it had gone dangerously quiet. Oakleigh could come back at any second. I realized my discomfort was more on Julian’s behalf. I didn’t want Oakleigh’s disdainful eyes to see my brother, tearstained and flayed open. I walked over and handed him my keys.

  “I’m sorry,” I told him in the gentlest voice I owned. “I’m very bad at this. Go wait in the car, okay? I’ll finish here, fast as I can, and then we’ll talk.”

  He took the keys without looking at me, and he made his own way out.

  Damn, but I’d mishandled Julian, and misunderstood him, too, on several levels. I had to make a room for him, as well as Hana. Metaphorically, at least. But not right this second. I took a long, slow exhale and thanked the gods that I knew how to compartmentalize.

  I called the offices of Clark’s lawyer, Dean Macon, from my cell. I left a voicemail notifying him that I now represented Oakleigh. She came down when the cops rang the doorbell a few minutes later. The rest of the afternoon was simple, professionally speaking. Police interest in The Kittening was cursory, and we got our countercomplaints on the record. Afterward, Oakleigh swanned upstairs to take a bath, leaving me to call Nick’s PI firm. I asked them to send a fellow over ASAP to bug sweep and find Clark’s way in.

  While I waited for the PI, I went out to the car. Julian was in the passenger seat, reading something on his phone. He peeped at me as I got in, embarrassed, though by now the tearstains had faded and his eyes were only a little swollen.

  “I’m sorry I lost it,” he said. “It’s been a really stressful day.”

  I waved the apology away and said, with no preamble, “What if I hired you for the rest of the summer?”

  He let out a startled bark of laughter. “Yeah, because today has gone so well.”

  “I’m serious,” I said. “You could come in on your off days from the pizza place, once or twice a week. We could get to know each other a little more naturally, over time.”

  He looked uncertain. “I’m not sure I’d be good in a, you know, cutthroat kind of environment.”

  I realized I didn’t even know what he’d been studying at Berry, and felt ashamed of how little I’d asked Julian about himself. Not at this morning’s meeting, or even earlier, on Facebook. So I said, “What’s your major?”

  “Psychology. I want to be a therapist, eventually. I’m sure not cut out to be a lawyer.”

  “It’s not always this high stress,” I told him. “Take the internship. It’s only until the end of summer. I can promise you some delightfully bland phone answering when Verona goes to lunch. There’ll be quite a lot of very dull filing.”

  “Okay, now I’m sold,” he said, but I had gotten a smile out of him.

  “Did I mention it pays twenty bucks an hour?”

  “Holy crap, I suddenly love filing!” He cut his eyes at the ugly colonial house. “For twenty an hour, I might even love Ms. Winkley.”

  Money was so relative. It was a fortune to him, but I could pay him out of my pocket, like Catherine did when she hired her oldest son for the summer, and never feel it. The job would let me funnel cash to him. If the water got too cold, too deep, too full of sharks—­hell, just too wet—­he’d have the means to flee back to the sheltered world of Berry College.

  I didn’t think he would, though. The kid had metal in him, and he shared my driving urgency to find Hana. I had to respect that and find a way to merge our visions of the future.

  “Deal?” I asked.

  He nodded, and as we shook hands on it the guy from Nick’s PI firm pulled into the drive behind us.

  Turned out, Clark had removed an alarm contact from an upstairs bathroom window and reprogrammed the system not to register it. To reach the window, he had to sneak through a neighbor’s backyard, climb a tree, and slither and roll across the back of the perilous, steep roof. The PI tested the route and found it possible, but dangerous as hell. Clark had to be both in good shape, physically, and in bad shape, mentally, to take it. He’d literally risked his life, more than once, to pee in Oakleigh’s makeup case and spoil her shoes.

  I had them plug the hole. As much as I’d love to install nanny cams, I didn’t trust him not to creep in one night and strangle her. And that was assuming that she wouldn’t get another gun and shoot him right on camera first.

  The next morning, I took Oakleigh’s check and contract to the office. I tossed them on Nick’s desk, casual, as if I were the Paula of yore, who delivered BANK clients and retainers on the regular, and I was rewarded with his familiar grin. In this brave new world where finding Hana might have an after, I needed to mend fences with my partners, stat. I’d need time off when I had a sudden sister to
resettle. I spent the next ten days getting current on our every open file, reconnecting with our client list, and billing monstrous strings of hours. As I got my files in order, I had a disturbing thought: perhaps this was what nesting looked like, when I did it.

  I felt eyes on me all the time, though, that faint electric skin-­crawl that haunted the watched, as Nick kept popping by to check things that did not need checking. As the days rolled past with zero panic attacks, and I took on exactly zero pro bonos, both my partners relaxed. The chilled air of our offices rewarmed.

  When I felt anxious, when my heartbeat sped up, beating out the call to find her, find her, find her, I reminded myself that I was not alone in feeling it. Julian was waiting, too, and Birdwine was on the job.

  But when word finally came, it wasn’t good. Birdwine sent an email, no title. Not even “Here is the information,” because there wasn’t any. I could tell he was ashamed, because he didn’t even sign it:

  I traced their route through four states before I lost the trail. There’s nothing. It’s dead cold, Paula, and I can’t do any more from here. I’m coming home.

  CHAPTER 8

  Joya is sitting sideways on my bed. The rooms here are small, just enough space for two twin beds, a shared dresser, and a closet. There’s a common room downstairs with desks for doing homework, an old navy-­blue sofa and loveseat, and some big donated beanbag chairs, but Shar, Karice, and Kim have practically peed in a circle around that territory. Joya rooms with Kim, so we default to my room. We can kick Candace out and lean on the wall, shoulder to shoulder, feet hanging off into space. After a year and a half, my place on this bed is so established I can feel a faint, butt-­shaped dent in the mattress where I fit.

  I’m out of place today. I have moved up, much closer to the scratched headboard, and put some space between our shoulders. Joya either doesn’t notice or doesn’t care. She’s so happy she’s having a hard time sitting still. I look down at our bare feet, my two, then a space, and then her two. She has doll feet, very small with round toes. She flexes them, back and forth, like they are waving. Happy feet, waving good-­bye.

  “You’re bouncing the whole bed,” I say. My feet are bonier and longer and very, very still.

  “Well, you’re bitching up the whole room,” Joya fires back, but she’s smiling and I’m not.

  Our voices sound so loud in all the quiet air. We are truly alone, with the whole cabin to ourselves. It’s rare to be the only two ­people in a building here, but everyone else has gone to the dining hall in the center building. Mrs. Mack said she’d bring me a sandwich if I wanted to skip the meal and hang with Joya. Joya’s going to a real restaurant with her mama. They will have a celebration meal of fried steak and mashed potatoes and pie, because Joya is not coming back. Everything she owns is packed up, sitting in two bags in our cabin’s common room.

  The longer we wait, the more bitter and dark-­hearted I become. It’s like I am steeping in something awful. I should have given her a quick squeeze, said bye, and gone to dinner.

  But that would have meant sitting alone in the dining hall. At meals, the black kids and the two white boys who talk and dress black have the tables near the windows. The white kids, including Candace, have the tables by the door. There are only four Hispanic kids. They keep to themselves, sitting on one end of the eight-­top nearest the kitchen, talking Spanish. We Gotmamas own the other end of their table. We’ve been a tiny nation to ourselves for over a year, but the problem of being a Gotmama is now clear to me: Someone’s mama is coming. It isn’t mine.

  Sitting alone in the dining hall, I would at least have hot garlic toast. Here, my guts twist, hungry in all kinds of ways, watching Joya get what I want most.

  “I’m missing spaghetti night,” I say, mean enough to spark her back.

  “Can’t you be happy for me?”

  “I am,” I say. I wish I were.

  “The way they’ve worked my mama over, it could have been you leaving first just as easy.”

  “I know.”

  Her mom got out of rehab months ago, but they made her move into a halfway house. All Joya got was supervised visitation. Her mama had to get a job, keep it, pass her weekly pee tests, save a certain amount of money. Every time she hit a goal, it felt like they’d add on another. But now she has her own apartment down south of the city with a dedicated space for Joya. Last month she got Joya for an overnight, and then for two weekends. Now, tonight, she’s finally taking Joya home for good.

  “So stop being a piss,” Joya says.

  “I’m not,” I say, pissy. Kai still has three months to serve, and who knows how long we’ll get jerked around when she gets out. “Or if I am, maybe it’s because you’re leaving me with such a pile of shit.”

  “What does that mean?” Joya says. She’s too deep-­down happy to get snippy fast, but I keep pushing.

  “I mean Shar and Karice. You’re the one who beat them down, but Shar never got you back. When you go, they’ll come at me.”

  She dismisses that with a wave of her small hand. “Bitch, please, like you can’t take them?”

  I could take the two of them, actually. I’m pretty sure. Joya did, and I’m taller and stronger and almost as mean. But they aren’t two anymore. “They have Kim now, too.”

  “Kim’s not so tough. Just take your earrings out. Don’t wear even studs until you settle with them.” She sits up and curls her legs under her, getting into it. Joya likes tactics. “You have to hit Shar first, right off, hard as you can. Go for the face, she likes being pretty. You get her down, the other two will scatter off like bugs.”

  “I can handle myself,” I mutter.

  “Yeah, you can,” Joya says. She looks at me, sizing me up, and then nods. “You be all right.” It isn’t an assessment. It’s a command.

  “You be all right,” I order her back, and it comes out only a little bit resentful.

  Shar and Karice don’t really matter. I’ve been in fights plenty. They aren’t what’s wringing out my guts. I want Kai. I want Kai to come for me so bad it feels like a hundred mean hands twisting every organ in my abdomen.

  I don’t want to talk to Joya anymore, at all. I should move back down to my habitual place, sit shoulder to shoulder with her like always. If I would do this simple thing, we could run out the minutes in silence. Joya’s not one for tears and speeches.

  I can’t, though. I can’t make myself sit close to her. She isn’t Joya anymore. She’s some girl who is leaving me, some girl who’s getting everything I want.

  Joya seems to think we’re good, though. She’s helped me plan a Shar defense, so we must be golden. She creeps a little closer. Her eyes are very dark brown, but they look black in the dim light.

  “Paula? Imma call you, okay? We’ll still see each other.”

  I twitch one shoulder, noncommittal. She’s throwing me a crumb, but I’ve been moved around enough to know it isn’t real. She might call once or twice. She might ask to visit. But her apartment is forty-­five minutes away, in a different school zone, and her mama has a full-­time job. Time is short and gas is pricey. The truth is, we are finished with each other. She wants to pretend different and have some kind of moment? Screw her.

  “I mean it,” she says, pressing.

  “We’ll see,” I say, with some finality. I need her to shut up now.

  “My mama’s got a car. She’ll drive me here to visit.”

  A lashing blackness rises in me as she says what her mama has; what her mama, who is coming for her now, will do.

  “You won’t come back here,” I tell her. “I wouldn’t, and you won’t, either. Not unless your mama fails a pee test, and they drag you back.”

  Joya’s eyes narrow. It’s the thing we’re both most afraid of, and I’ve named it. We never do that to each other, talk about how her mama could go back to the pipe, how mine might not get early release. These thing
s could take our mothers from us, and we don’t invoke them.

  We talk about how mamas are, and what we’ll do and say when ours come for us. I’ve heard a thousand times about this dinner Joya’s going to eat tonight at Demy’s Blues-­N-­Burgers. I know Demy’s has signed pictures of Hound Dog Taylor and Muddy Waters on the wall. She’s described the potatoes mashed with Cheddar and chives so many times, it’s almost like I ate them myself a long time ago. She knows when Kai comes, our first meal will be her famous pancakes with the orange zest in the batter. Kai always helps me paint my room, and we’ve endlessly debated the color I should choose. We plan our lives with mothers in great detail, as if their coming is dead certain. Nothing else is bearable. It is a silent pact that binds us, makes us into Gotmamas. I’m breaking our most secret and unstated rule.

  “She won’t, though,” Joya says, and it’s more than a warning. It is a window, an offering. She’s made a space for me to take it back.

  “I hope not. But, damn.” I shrug, all world-­weary, like I regret her mama’s chances are so slim.

  Joya scrambles up onto her knees and rears as tall as she can go. It isn’t very tall. “She won’t though, and you know she won’t. Say she won’t.”

  I have a bitter flavor in my mouth, but it’s rich, too, as savory and sharp as lemon butter. I rise to my knees as well, taller than her, and I tuck my hair behind my ears, so she can see I didn’t need her stupid tactics. I already have my earrings out.

  “I’m just being honest,” I say. “It’s dumb to have this big good-­bye, when you’ll be back in six weeks. If your mama even makes it that long.”

  She shakes her head. “I’m smoke, bitch. I am gone, and your sorry ass is stuck here.” Her voice is loud and her black eyes shine, welling in her weakness. I’ve gotten to her, and I can’t help how good it feels.