Outcast

by Susan Oloier

  August. My punishment was lifted in time to fly to Florida with my mother. I wanted to stay behind in Arizona and be with Chad. But life—or rather my mother—couldn’t be that kind. So I was forced to go. The trip was just a different form of punishment, if you asked me.

  My father claimed he had pressing work to attend to at the bank, so he stayed behind. Smyrna Beach was muggy and uncomfortable. The trip was entirely different than when we last went.

  I spent the week lounging in front of the television set, watching I Love Lucy and Leave it to Beaver on cable—a luxury we never had. Instead of listening to the dialogue between the Ricardos, I eavesdropped on my mother and my grandparents in the kitchen. They speculated over Becca’s whereabouts, but never took measures to find her. Gossip seemed more titillating than the truth, and guesswork proved more interesting than fact-finding.

  They tried to push me to go to the beach, but I had no interest in going alone. Occasionally, I walked to the shore, reliving my moments with Chad. I took only myself and a package of Camels. It was the only opportunity to smoke. I needed to try to quit. For him. But the stress of Florida was just too much.

  I stepped inside from one of my smoking expeditions and overhead another of the many discussions in the kitchen. My mother spent her entire vacation in that room. Her visit to Florida must have been as dreadful as mine was.

  They were deaf to my return. My grandmother offered advice to my mother. It sounded like another dead-end gossip session about Becca until the words marriage counseling were spoken. I eased onto the stairs to glean more information.

  “He won’t talk to me. He blames me for her disappearance.”

  “You are not to blame, Joyce.” It was my grandmother. “You didn’t force that girl to get pregnant, and you certainly didn’t make her have an abortion.”

  My mother ignored my grandmother, continuing with her confession. “He doesn’t sleep in the same room with me anymore.”

  My father. He held my mother accountable for what happened to Becca. How could he not? She was overbearing and judgmental. She never let us express ourselves as individuals. She wanted us to model our lives after hers. Anything less was unacceptable. I started to see things from Becca’s point of view. I understood why she had to leave. My father saw it all along. So did Aunt P. But it took Becca leaving for my dad to make his frustration known. If Becca had never left, none of this would have come to the surface. My father would have maintained a vow of silence, allowing my mother to dominate us all as usual.

  The truth didn’t always unearth promising rewards. In this case, it exhumed a treasure chest filled with heartache, marital problems, and pain. Perhaps some things are best left buried. At least before, we all knew what our role was. Now everything was unclear. If Becca was home, maybe everything would return to normal. But I didn’t know if I wanted her back.

  The trip to Florida was a therapy session for my mother. That was all. It seemed as though a lifetime had passed since we first arrived in Smyrna Beach. In reality, it was only one week. Nonetheless, I was relieved when the plane departed for Phoenix, leaving behind the worst vacation I remembered and taking me back to Chad.

  My mother left her car in long-term parking. We said nothing to each other until we were safely inside the vehicle. I waited for the right time to talk to her about things that weighed on my mind, but that never seemed to come.

  “Where’s the gift from Aunt P?” I knew a confrontation was the last thing my mother needed.

  Instead of answering, she used the question as an opportunity to voice her opinion. “I don’t want you accepting anything from that woman.”

  “Why not?” My nerves sparked with anxiety. I longed for a cigarette to diffuse them.

  “I’m not in the mood for this conversation right now.” She hyper focused on navigating through traffic to avoid an honest discussion with me.

  Normally I would back down, but I wanted to start a fight with her. I realized the only way to capture her attention and to receive an honest answer was to make her angry. She said things in rage that she’d never reveal in calmness.

  “I’m sure Aunt P’d be mad to know you’re keeping it from me.”

  “Penelope is not your mother. I am.”

  “Unfortunately,” I mumbled toward the passenger’s window.

  She heard me, just as I wanted her to. She said nothing, concentrating on the road ahead. Her silence was more frightening than her fury. Her fingers tightly wound around the steering wheel, but she collected herself before striking back.

  “You want to know about Aunt P’s gift?” It was a rhetorical question. “She left you the keys to a new car.”

  I was ecstatic! My own car. Endless possibilities revealed themselves to me as I pictured myself driving all over the Valley. A slew of questions scampered through my head. What kind? What color? And where was it? I was too stunned to say anything.

  My mother sensed my exhilaration. The sound of her voice splintered my thoughts. “Pretty thrilling to get such a big handout, don’t you think?”

  “Handout?”

  “You didn’t work for it, did you? As a matter of fact, all you had to do was quit your job to earn that car … according to her card.”

  “You had no right,” I shouted.

  “I’m your mother. I have the right to do whatever I want until you’re out of my house.”

  “You don’t control me,” I warned.

  “I control what you do and what you can and cannot have. And I won’t allow you to have a car, which you didn’t earn. I don’t want you thinking you can manipulate and use people to get what you want out of life.”

  “I don’t. Besides, I’ll be responsible. I promise. I’ll get a job, make payments to her,” I pleaded.

  “It’s too late. It’s gone.”

  “Gone? What do you mean?” I glared at the side of her face.

  Her eyes were fixed firmly on the road. “I gave it away,” she seemed to say to the pavement and the center lines.

  “Becca was so right about you. No wonder she won’t come home.” I yelled even louder.

  My mother cut through two rows of freeway traffic, making her way to the emergency lane where she stopped. The look in her eyes changed from anger to suspicion.

  “What do you mean she won’t come home?” She waited for a response from me. Though I said nothing, she gleaned what she needed from the fear that painted my face. “You know where she is, don’t you?”

  “Yes.” I stared directly at her, not allowing myself to be intimidated.

  “Where is she?” Now my mother implored me for information.

  “You think I’m going to tell you? After what you did?”

  I punished her with my secret. She desperately wanted to know where Becca was. She missed her. As much as they seemed to hate one another, my mother loved Becca, more than she loved me. As much as she begged me for Becca’s number and location, I refused to tell her. It was my first success at the manipulation she accused me of.

  My mother peeled into the driveway. The remainder of our trip was littered with a tomb-like silence. She marched out of the car with her bags in hand, leaving me behind. My father’s Chevy Blazer was gone.

  I dragged while unloading my two bags. I wished to be anywhere but inside the house with her. She stole my car, invaded my privacy. I hated her.

  When I finally stepped into the foyer, my mother was nowhere in sight. Before entering my bedroom, I looked across at hers. She sat on her bed, sobbing. A note slipped from her hand. She looked up when she saw me standing in the hallway. I said nothing to her because I already knew. My father was gone. Not just a trip to the Home Depot this time. He left us for good.

  I went to my room, offering no condolences, giving no encouraging words. I left her alone with her sorrow and the blame for all that happened to us. I no longer cared about the car because I no longer had a father to help me with my driving skills. It was all her fault.

  Sixteen

  T
he brief summer monsoon storms kicked up dust and blew it around in wind tunnels. Occasionally, I heard showers tapping on the windows, smelled the water seeping into the dry ground, but I never felt it. And the fleeting brush with it left me yearning for more.

  By the start of my senior year, I was grounded again. There seemed to be no ending to my punishment. It had no effect on me. I did what I wanted to do. My mother forbade me to see Chad, afraid I would meet the same fate as Becca did. She ordered me to go to church, thinking it would rescue me from temptation. There was nothing she could do to keep me in the house. Curfew became a joke. I refused to allow her to control me. I ignored her and did whatever I wanted. With my dad gone, it was even more miserable than usual. I refused to let my mother cling to me like a life preserver and drag me under.

  Chad picked me up in front of the neighbor’s house every morning, so my mother wouldn’t harass me about dating him. Grace and I grew apart. We hadn’t spoken to one another since the end of our junior year. When we finally saw each other in the hallways, we talked about the summer, and everything seemed fine between us. Then Trina & Company arrived. They waltzed past us, and Grace’s demeanor instantly shifted. Her smile disappeared, and she fell under their spell.

  “Nice look, Doctor Freckle.” Trina leered at me, her buttery-swirled hair tied in a French twist, her makeup applied with effort and precision. “Maybe you should go back to juvie where you belong.”

  Her cronies laughed. Grace cowered, not wanting them to see her with me. I refused to let them know I felt intimidated. They glanced at her but said nothing. No bad words for Grace. It was all suspicious.

  Chad inched beside me, and the group scattered like cockroaches. Despite their breakup, I suspected Trina still wanted to look good in front of Chad.

  “What was that all about?” Chad draped his arm around my shoulders and kissed me on the cheek.

  “She hates me. What’s new?” I watched her slink away, wondering why she detested me so much.

  “I have to go,” Grace abruptly declared. She acted strange. More so than usual. Something changed in her over the summer. The girl who saved me from Jerry Searfus was gone, replaced with a meek someone I no longer recognized or knew.

  Father Dodd convinced me to stay in the drama club. In lieu of performing on stage, I chose to work behind the scenes. No auditioning for me. It was Macbeth. More Shakespeare. Administration seemed addicted to the flowery language, deluded into thinking there was no ugliness behind the pretty words.

  Once again, Father Dodd seemed bored. After years of battling with administration to get Barefoot in the Park as the play of choice, he gave up. He decided to make this play a student-directed one. That way, he removed himself entirely from the equation. He attempted to coerce me to direct it, but Drama held little appeal for me. I had enough of it in my life, so I declined. So Trina became the director. That was enough to make me feel confident in my decision to work on lighting and props.

  The director also held the casting position. So she naturally cast herself in the role of Lady Macbeth. Chad obviously became Macbeth. Trina had her eyes on him, her claws ready to dig into him. They’d be spending oodles of time rehearsing together. I planned to watch her carefully. I had his heart now, so I didn’t plan to let it go.

  Trina & Company harassed me more than usual. Whether it was because of the locker room incident or my new look, they picked on me relentlessly. Whenever Chad wasn’t around, they took advantage of my vulnerability, drawing attention to me in the hallways by labeling me as slut, she-man because of my short haircut, and the everlasting Doctor Freckle.

  Trina was a constant blemish. English and art were the only classes I truly enjoyed, and English was tainted because of her. Somehow I managed to maintain all As. The stories woven within the paintings kept me forever mesmerized with Art. And the lure of escapism kept me reading the assigned novels in English.

  Mr. Gabrean, the English teacher, told us to start thinking about a project that would be due sometime in February: a twenty-page paper on a book of our choice. It would be worth a third of our grade, so he wanted to give us the opportunity to read and research months ahead of time. I chose Crime and Punishment. It seemed like a relatable book. In many ways, it was thematically perfect. In it, Raskolnikov murders a woman for money, but justifies his action by knowing he had rid the world of a worthless person. How apropos. Not that I had murder in mind, but I would have loved to live in a Trina-free world.

  Cassie and I no longer had the same lunch period, so I resorted to my old trick of going home sick in the middle of the day. Once again, it was Aunt P to the rescue.

  “I was worried. You haven’t called me since July.” It was September. I never bothered to tell Aunt P the news about the car or my parents. All of my energy was spent elsewhere.

  Aunt P was always reliable. No matter how many disagreements we shared or how many times we battled it out, she was always there for me. She was far from perfect. Like my mother, she tried to change me. She just happened to go about it differently. Her way was more palatable.

  “Thanks for the car.” I teetered on the edge of the seesaw, nibbling on a turkey sandwich from AJ’s. P dusted off a bench seat. I turned down another fancy restaurant meal. I preferred the park. It gave me the opportunity to smoke freely, a habit that had grown progressively worse since my father left.

  “You like it. Does it drive well?”

  “I wouldn’t know.”

  P shifted uneasily on the bench. She was out of her element in the outdoors.

  “My mother sold it.”

  Red rage stained P’s face. She spewed obscenities about my mother, peppering her remarks with bitch and fucking bitch. I offered an insignificant apology, which seemed to calm her down. It was as though she realized my mother, the object of her hate, wasn’t there. I was.

  “My dad left.” I talked into the sandwich.

  I expected her to chortle, happy that my mother suffered a significant loss. She didn’t. Instead, she grew silent, glancing around at the trees and the playground equipment as if seeing them for the first time.

  “I’m sorry, Noelle. When?”

  “After Florida.” It took a Herculean effort to hold back the tears.

  “Is that why you called?”

  “No.” I lost my appetite, tossing half of the sandwich back into the bag. “It’s those shitty girls again.” I tapped a cigarette from its package and lit it. P’s glance was disapproving, but she refrained from comments. “They’re worse than ever.”

  “Forget about them, Noelle. They’re just green with envy. Look how you’ve blossomed. I mean, I love what you’ve done to your hair.” She made a move to touch it affectionately, but drew her hand back.

  “I doubt that’s it.”

  I took a long drag off the Camel, watching children play on the jungle gym. They looked so happy and free. They had no idea what problems lay ahead for them. Someday they, too, would grow up and have troubles just like everybody else. Some would be fortunate, others would be outcasts like me. I assessed the kids, all happy and getting along with one another, and wondered which would be which. I watched them, considering the moment they would realize that they were different from each other. It was inevitable. They just didn’t know it yet. They were green, too. Not with envy, but with an innocence, a blissful ignorance to the world outside their own.

  Suddenly, everywhere I looked I saw shades of green. In some way or another, everyone I knew wore a variation of it. Maybe I was green, too. Naïve, Becca called me. Perhaps she was right. I never thought problems out on my own. I always had to run to Aunt P to rescue me. A sophisticated person would never have to do that. Yes, I was green, too. In my own way.

  “Do you wish you had never done it?”

  “Done what?” she asked, perplexed.

  “Had the abortion.” The words poured out casually as I studied the cherry on the end of my cigarette.

  “Who told you about that?” She pretended the wooden be
nch was uncomfortable, not the conversation, as she twisted in her seat.

  I ignored her. It made no difference how I discovered the information. The point was that I knew, and she couldn’t change that.

  “One thing you can’t do is change the past or have regrets.” Her face was flushed. I know she worked hard to quell her emotion.

  “Do you think about it? The baby?”

  “I often wonder what she would have looked like.” Tears formed in her eyes. I never thought she was capable of an emotion other than anger. I tapped into her hidden hurt.

  “Sometimes I picture her looking just like you.” I glimpsed her with her eyes peeled on me and saw all the layers stripped away. She sat exposed in front of me. I saw a different P, one whose opaque vulnerability and innocence surfaced from beneath her translucent exterior. She shellacked her essence in arrogance, anger, and indifference. For a brief instant, it was all pared away.

  She wanted to share more, but there was too much reality entrapped in that moment, so we both resorted to our previous airs.

  “Living well really is the best revenge.” P drew me back to the previous conversation, suppressing her drudged-up feelings.

  “Not if they’re living better than you are.”

  Even though I dwelled in the wings, I noticed it. She made no effort to hide it at all. Every moment, every opportunity she received, she interacted with him, touched him, lured him toward her. The smiles he gave to her seemed like an offering of forgiveness. Of himself.

  I wanted to rip him away from her with the call of my voice. But I didn’t. I just stood behind the curtain and watched.

  I told myself I wasn’t jealous. He and I were a couple. I had his pendant, so why should I be worried about Trina stealing him away from me? He dumped her to be with me. Right?

  But a nauseating feeling crested in my stomach as I studied them onstage. As much as I pushed it down, covered it up, and squeezed the life from it, it was still there. They had a history, and it was sexual. If he liked her enough to do it once, why wouldn’t he do it again? Maybe he missed being with her. Maybe she was better than me. Maybe he realized that I really was a loser and an outcast and wondered why he ever claimed to love me in the first place.