The Blurry Years

by Eleanor Kriseman

  My mom drove straight past their house and then circled around again. “Checking for cars,” she said. She parked at the end of the block, and we walked down the street like we always did this. Just a mother and daughter walking home from school on a Wednesday afternoon.

  My mom knocked on the front door. “They’re not home,” I said. “Remember, we just checked for cars?”

  “I know,” she said, in a voice like she thought I was stupid. “I’m just knocking in case the neighbors see.” She tried the front door. It was locked, and for a moment I relaxed. But then she walked around the side of the house. There was just a chain link fence, and then there was Shadow, curled up underneath a tree, then running straight toward us. “You’re going over first,” she said, and held out both of her hands for me to step on. I fell over onto the other side, and Shadow tackled me to the ground, licking my face all over. My mom climbed over next.

  “This is disgusting,” my mom said, pointing at a pile of dog poop. “Absolutely disgusting. He doesn’t deserve this dog if this is how they’re going to treat her. Dog shit everywhere.” I’d just started using that word, but not out loud, and not to my mom. “Shit,” I would whisper to myself when I stubbed my toe, or spilled out the last powdery crumbs of cereal on the kitchen counter. “Shit, shit, shit.”

  There was a bowl of water by the back door, and another one beside it with a couple crumbs of kibble inside. The grass was nice, like the grass used to be in Bruce’s backyard before he left. There were even a couple of trees with patches of shade beneath them. It looked like she was okay. But then I looked down at her pacing back and forth in front of us. It almost looked like she was smiling. “Yeah,” I said. “Disgusting.” I didn’t see any other poop in the yard.

  We walked through the back door and right out the front, leaving it unlocked. It was that easy.

  Shadow was quiet in the car, and she settled into my lap even though she was too big for it. I moved my fingers through her fur. She seemed fine, but I would still give her a bath when we got back. I couldn’t stop smiling, even though I knew we’d done something bad. “Can she sleep in my room again?” I asked.

  My mom slowed to a stop at a red light and turned to face me. “Well, that’s the problem,” she said. “Bruce knows where we live, remember? So she can’t actually live with us, not for a little while.” I hadn’t thought about that, and it made sense, but then I didn’t get why we’d taken her in the first place.

  “Well, yeah,” I said, “but then where is she going to live? And why did we take her?”

  “God, Cal, I’m figuring things out, okay! She’ll be fine. We took her because that shithead didn’t deserve her, that’s why. We’ll find her somewhere to live. We just have to drive around for a little bit while I think.” She shook her head, like I’d said something wrong. Shadow leaned against me, and pressed hard into me every time my mom took a corner too sharply. “Fuck,” my mom said softly. “Guess I should have figured that part out beforehand, right?” She laughed.

  “Hey! What about Shauna?” she said. “They’ve already got Tubs. I’m sure Tubs gets lonely during the day, right?” Shauna was my best friend, the only friend I ever really hung out with. Tubs was their black lab. He was old and fat and loved to curl up in the squares of sunlight that came through their living room window. “Let’s see what they’re up to!” she said, and made a U-turn to head toward Shauna’s house.

  We walked up to the front door, Shadow close behind us. We hadn’t even brought a leash. Shauna’s parents weren’t home, but Shauna was, and so was her older brother Jack, who answered the door. He was in high school and listened to really loud music and only wore black. “What?” he said, without smiling.

  “Hi Jack,” my mom said, leaning on the doorframe like she needed it there to hold her up. “Me and Cal were just wondering if you and your family were in the market for a dog.”

  “What?” he said, and turned away. “Shauna! C’mere! Callie and her mom are here.”

  “Jack,” my mom said, and ran her hand down his arm. “I just thought you and Shauna might want a friend for Tubs.” She smiled at him. “Her name is Shadow.” She’s not your dog to give away, I thought angrily. I want her.

  Jack blushed, turning red like the pimples that dotted his face, and shrugged. “Dunno, I’d probably have to ask my parents.”

  Shauna ran to the door and hugged me. “Shadow!” she said. “How did you get her back? I thought she wasn’t living with you anymore.”

  “What’s going on?” Jack said. We all looked at Shadow and her yellow-toothed grin, wagging her tail furiously.

  “Nothing!” my mom said. “We just can’t keep her anymore, you know, we’ll be moving to an apartment again soon, and it’s just not fair to keep her cooped up all day. So we thought you guys might want to take her. Free of charge.”

  “Uh, I dunno,” Jack said. He leaned in so Shauna couldn’t hear and said in a low voice, “I think they’re kinda waiting for Tubs to kick the bucket.” I heard it, but she didn’t. He stopped whispering. “I don’t think they want another dog. Tubs just shits all over the house and begs under the table.”

  My mom nodded, and ruffled Shadow’s fur. “Uh huh,” she said. “Well, just a thought! You sure? She’s pretty great.” She held Shadow’s floppy ears up on either side of her head.

  “Yeah… sorry,” Jack said. “You should probably go, though. My parents are gonna be home soon.” Shauna’s parents didn’t like my mom that much.

  “I get it,” my mom said, nodding. “We’ll take off. See you soon, Shauna. Good to see you, Jack.” Jack closed the door, hard.

  We sat in their driveway for a while. “Well, we have a couple choices,” my mom said.

  “We can bring her back to Bruce, and have her live in that shithole. Or we can give her to a place that will find a really good family for her. What do you think?” I wanted to bring her home with us, more than anything. But Bruce’s backyard hadn’t seemed that bad. She’d seemed happy there, even before she’d seen us.

  “She can’t come home with us?” I said, real quiet.

  My mom sighed like I was stupid. “Where do you think he’s going to look first, Cal?” She turned around to look at me from the front seat. “He doesn’t deserve her,” she said. “We don’t really have a choice.”

  “Then I guess we give her to someone else,” I said quietly. I was getting it now. We hadn’t stolen her for me.

  “You’re damn right,” she said. I was trying not to cry. We drove for a little while then pulled into the parking lot of the Humane Society. “Give her a kiss before we go inside!” she said. She unclipped Shadow’s collar and shoved it inside the glove compartment. “Remember, we just found her, right? We don’t know her.” I nodded.

  “She’s a sweetheart,” she said, as we made our way to the door. “Someone’ll pick her out right away. Cal, I swear we’d keep her if we could.” We walked inside, Shadow trotting along after us. It smelled like pee, and there were whines and howls and barks coming from the back. And my mom just left her there like it was nothing.

  Shadow didn’t get it. The woman at the counter had to hold her back when we turned to walk away. “It happens sometimes,” she said, apologizing to us. “They latch on to whoever’s kind enough to bring ’em in.”

  Bruce came by late that night. He didn’t even knock, just barged in. He still had keys. “Where’s my fucking dog?” he yelled. My mom was dozing off on the couch. I was in my room. “I let you stay in this house for free and you go and steal my fucking dog. What’s wrong with you? Where is she?”

  “I don’t know what you’re talking about, Bruce,” my mom said, in a sleepy voice. “Did something happen?”

  “Yeah, my fucking dog disappeared out of my backyard, that’s what!” As Bruce yelled, I heard his footsteps coming closer and closer.

  “Don’t you dare wake up my child!” my mom screamed, but she didn’t follow him. My door swung open, and I blinked as he flipped on the light.
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  “Damn it!” he said, his anger deflating. I guess he was expecting to see Shadow curled up next to me. “Cal, you haven’t seen Shadow, have you?” I was too scared to tell him the truth.

  “No,” I said, eyes wide, biting my lip.

  He sat down on the side of my bed and started to cry. “I’m sorry, Cal,” he said. “I’m so sorry.” He covered his face in his big hands and wept at the foot of my bed. I didn’t know what to do so I just patted his back for a while. “I’m going crazy,” he said. “I’m sure she just got out, I just had this…” He shook his head. “I’m so sorry I woke you up. Go back to sleep. I’m gonna go drive around the neighborhood and see if I can find her.” I heard him apologize to my mom, and the front door open and close. I closed my eyes but the knot in my stomach was getting bigger and bigger.

  My mom tiptoed in and lay down beside me. “We sure got him, didn’t we!” she said. “He’ll never find her.”

  “Yeah,” I whispered. There was something about my mom that made me always want to be on her side even when it made me feel guilty. “Yeah, we got him good.”

  She drifted off next to me, on top of the covers, and I pretended the warmth of her body beside me was Shadow until I finally fell asleep.

  03

  I was halfway to school when I decided I didn’t feel like going. I didn’t have to, not really. If I wasn’t in homeroom, someone from the office would call the apartment and leave a voicemail for my mom, who would already be at work. When I got home, I could erase the message before she had a chance to hear it. She wouldn’t care but I didn’t tell her. I didn’t do it often but I’d done it before.

  I liked school. I liked the beginning of the year especially, when everything was new. I liked lining up my pencils on the side of the desk next to my plastic sharpener with the clear catchall for the shavings. Having clean, new erasers to turn over and over in my hand, the cursive Pink Pearl logo rubbing off from the warmth of my palm. It was just the people that sometimes I couldn’t be around. The teachers who were nicer to me after the first parent conference. The girls who went to the mall after school. The boys who ran through the halls, slamming shut the open lockers with the palms of their hands. I couldn’t figure out if I wanted to be one of them or be friends with them or if I just wished they didn’t exist. If I didn’t have Shauna to talk to, I didn’t think I’d ever feel like going.

  I changed directions and started walking away from school on a side road off of Platt. The sun beat down hard on the part of my shoulders my backpack straps didn’t cover. I could feel them reddening already. I liked getting tan so I never wore sunscreen, but I hated the clusters of freckles on my shoulders. A truck slowed, then stopped beside me. I kept my eyes to the concrete. The tinted window rolled down slowly, and a man slung a hairy arm out the open window and waved me over. I stayed where I was on the sidewalk. A trickle of sweat slid down the small of my back. I reached beneath my shirt and wiped it away with one finger, keeping my backpack away from the dampness of my back so my tank top wouldn’t stick to my skin. I didn’t have anything on underneath. I wasn’t wearing bras all the time yet. My mom rarely did, except to work, where she said she’d get in trouble if she didn’t. I felt as if I were in a movie. The colors of the day were too bright and vivid for real life—the starched white cotton of his sleeve, the searing red of the car door. I felt like I was watching myself on a screen, acting, waiting for my cue.

  “Aren’t you supposed to be in school?” a girl’s voice said. I looked up. Tanya was leaning over the man in the truck, waving at me. Tanya had worked at The Colonnade with my mom until the manager’s girlfriend caught him and Tanya messing around in his car in the parking lot after work and made him fire her. That’s what Dell, one of the other waitresses, had told my mom. Tanya was trouble, she said. Tanya had long hair that she could put in a bun using only two chopsticks. She was short, but she always wore sandals with huge cork platforms. After she put on lipstick, she would stick her pointer finger in her mouth to make sure none of it got on her teeth.

  Dell had told me once that my mom bragged about me, that she said I was “no trouble at all.” I didn’t say anything when Dell told me, but I had felt a blush rising to the surface of my skin that I couldn’t help, like trying to push yourself under the surface of a pool and floating back up to the top despite your churning.

  They were waiting for me to say something. “It’s a holiday,” I said, and immediately regretted it. The man smiled. The sidewalk shimmered in the late-morning heat.

  “A holiday, huh?”

  “It’s not actually a holiday,” I said, crossing one leg in front of the other. “I didn’t mean to say that. I was going to go.” I slung my backpack off one shoulder as proof. “I have all my stuff with me.” I looked up at them.

  “Get in,” Tanya said. “I’ll take you back home. It’s hot out. Don’t worry, I won’t tell your mom.” I exhaled. Sometimes it felt as if my life was just a series of moments where I hadn’t realized I was holding my breath until I let it out. Tanya hopped out and folded the seat back for me to climb behind. “This is Jeremy,” she said.

  The music was loud and I was working on keeping my face blank like I didn’t care about anything and also trying to figure out who was singing until I realized we weren’t heading toward my apartment, that Tanya didn’t even know where I lived. “Um,” I said quietly, but neither of them heard me, so I said it again. “Um, I didn’t tell you my address?”

  Tanya turned to Jeremy and I saw an expression appear and disappear like a shadow on the side of her face. “Your mom won’t be home till later, right?” she said. “If she’s still working the mid-shift.” She was. I nodded. “What are you gonna do at home all by yourself?” she said. “Come hang out with us! We’re going back to our place.” I was uneasy. I couldn’t figure out what she wanted from me. When you couldn’t tell what somebody wanted from you, it was hard to know how to behave. Tanya seemed like she was trying to be my older sister but also kind of like she was making fun of me.

  I was in the car. I was way too far from home by now. I didn’t have a choice. “Sure,” I said. “But I want a burger first.” I said it tough, trying to disguise how helpless I felt. She laughed.

  “Sure, we’ll get you a burger,” she said. “There’s a Burger King right by Jeremy’s. Fries?” I relaxed a little bit. This was fun. She was right. This was better than being home alone. I didn’t care why they wanted me around.

  I sat with my burger and fries, recovering from the sting of Tanya asking if I wanted a Happy Meal, which they didn’t even sell at Burger King. I was too old for Happy Meals and she knew it. I wiped my greasy fingers on the backseat in silent revenge. My cheeks burned. We turned right off Hillsborough onto a small road, and immediately Jeremy swerved right again, into a parking lot. It was one of those apartment complexes so big that the parking lot was like a maze, twisting left and right and opening up to paths that just led to dead ends. He pulled into a spot and stopped when the wheels bounced off the curb. “We’re here,” Tanya said. I looked at the dashboard before Jeremy turned the car off. My mom would be at work for another six hours. It was fine.

  The apartment was heavy with the smell of smoke, a smell I’d recognized but hadn’t known what it was until then. I didn’t smoke any weed with them because Tanya said my mom would kill her if she ever found out but I was glad, because I was a little scared to try it. I sat sandwiched between the two of them on the couch, our warm thighs touching as they passed the bong back and forth over my lap, bubbling and exhaling and coughing and laughing. The television was on in front of us, but it blended into the background—I couldn’t understand any of the words anyone was speaking, and the image kept flickering and changing too quickly for me to keep up with it. It felt safer to stare at the coffee table where my feet were propped up, at my sandals and the dirt underneath my toenails, at the magazines and sketchpads and Ziploc baggies and piles of change and pencils, at the mugs stained from paint and coffee, the
crusty plates that a line of black ants was idly crawling over.

  “Oh, shit, I think she’s getting a contact high,” Tanya said, laughing. “We should stop, Jeremy.”

  “Nah, she’s okay,” he said. Everything seemed as if it was in motion, and it felt better to stare at something slow, something still. I didn’t know how to say that in words, suddenly, but it didn’t worry me.

  “I’m okay,” I whispered, and put my hand on Tanya’s thigh to reassure her. It was so smooth. My legs were tan, and covered in blond hair you could barely see. I hadn’t ever felt like shaving my legs, though I’d watched my mom do it a million times before going out on a date or to the beach. But I had just been thinking about how they looked. Not about how smooth they felt. I ran my hand all the way down her leg to make sure the whole thing felt that way.

  “What are you doing, you freak?” she said, laughing, but not in a mean way. “Jeremy, she’s totally high.”

  “Can I shave my legs?” I asked.

  She shrugged. “Sure, I guess.”

  I sat on the rim of the bathtub with my legs near the faucet as Tanya ran the water. The fluorescent light was bright, and I closed my eyes so I could concentrate on how everything felt instead. The cold smoothness of the porcelain seeping through my shorts, the warm water blasting onto my legs, the lightness of the shaving cream as Tanya sprayed it into my open palm. Tanya nudged me, and I opened my eyes reluctantly. She handed me a disposable razor from a pack underneath the sink. “I’m not gonna do it for you,” she said. I gripped the razor and drew the blade slowly up my leg.