“Three.”
“I’m pretty sure it was two years ago, honey,” Mom said.
Boy, no part of reality got past Mom’s red pencil. “It was while you were still married to him, ergo, three years, Mom. Lester was there at the table when we talked about it.”
You had to persist with her, or she would reallio-trulio rewrite all of history in her head. And bam, conversation over.
Things were beginning to make sense to me. I had an icky feeling. “What happens to the money if I don’t go to college?”
“Oh, you’ll go to college,” she said confidently.
God knew I wanted to go. The way things were trending this week, who knew what would happen? “What? Happens? If? I? Do? Not? Go? To? College?”
She fidgeted. “Well, I suppose the money reverts to me. I wouldn’t take it, honey. You’ll go to college.”
“Not if my academic record is ruined because I’ve been held back a year over some mindwhacky reason Howard cooked up,” I snarled. “Does Howard have access to that fund?”
A funny look crossed her face. As if the idea that Howard would steal my college money was more plausible than that he’d sneak into my bedroom at night. My bowels knotted up. “No. I’m sure he doesn’t.” Which meant exactly nothing.
I wanted to sit and think about all this and put the pieces together in my head, but this was not the moment. “You’d better go. Sooner or later they’re going to come in here and throw you out, because I don’t get visitors for very long here.”
She looked guiltily over her shoulder. Had she sneaked in here? How on earth? “Visitors?” she said quickly. “Who else have you seen?” Her voice rose. “Are you telling me that they let other people in here when they wouldn’t let me in?” Now she was distracted from the trust fund. She sounded steamed. “How dare they keep me away from my own daughter when they’re letting other visitors see you?”
I sighed, feeling ickier by the minute. “They dare because they suspect you of colluding with Howard’s molesting me, Mom,” I said. Boy, was she avoiding thinking about that. The pain came back, a sharp, urgent, food-poisoning-style ache in my stomach. If I could poop it all out, all the disgust and agony and bad stink of this conversation, I’d consider myself lucky. As it was, it would probably take years of therapy, i.e., forever, because I planned never to go near a therapist again as long as I lived.
She watched me, the way she had watched me every time I’d said this bald fact in this conversation. That was creepy. Usually Mom didn’t listen at all to me. She didn’t even wait to see how I reacted. She knew how she wanted me to react and she would pretend she’d gotten the right reaction, because life was better that way, right? and then she would roll right over me.
I watched her back. When she didn’t speak, I reminded her, “I didn’t know this, but apparently it’s not uncommon for abusive families to try to lock their own kid out of the house and get the cops to take her away. Fits the profile.”
She flinched her face away, as if dodging a fly. Her eyes weren’t on me any more.
I began to realize that her self-kidding about the whole Howard thing had gone really, really deep. When did you see the signs yourself, Mom? Two months after the honeymoon? Two weeks? How hard have you tried to make this marriage work?
I felt sorrier for her then than I had ever thought I could. Mom really sucked at picking husbands. My dad was probably the numero uno screwup, being that he was serving multiple life sentences. But I’d thought she’d been trending upward, until she divorced Lester. I prayed hard right now that she would get rid of Howard before he did any more bad things.
“I wouldn’t leave you with him,” I said. “Otherwise I would have left already.”
“That’s,” she began and swallowed. “That’s not a smart way to try to induce me to leave him.”
“Because you’ll never leave him?” I said, suddenly angry. “Because it’s better to have a lousy marriage with a mindwhacking federal offender than to stand on your own two feet and protect your child?”
Oh hell, I’d gone too far. That was just mean, Melitta, I thought. I’d been so determined not to get sarcastic or blow my top in this conversation, and then I had to go and say that. I shut my eyes. “I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to be harsh.”
In a little while she’d be gone. I opened my eyes, not because I wanted to see her but because I knew I’d kick myself forever for not looking at her as long as I had the chance.
She looked hard and tired and angry with me. “Sometimes, young lady, we don’t get everything we want.”
My guts felt like they were going to drop out of me. I sat down again, feeling utterly defeated. “Okay. I’m done with you, Mom. Please remember that I love you. I really wish—” My throat tightened up. “I really wish I could be—”
The door opened. I jumped up and turned my back to hide the tears burning in my eyes. Panicked, I hastily stretched and smoothed my body until I was my new, tall, skinny, sophisticated self.
“Dinner,” said the nurse cheerfully. Her voice changed. “What are you doing here?” Now she didn’t sound so cheerful, once she saw my mother was in the room.
I faced them.
“When did the doctor say you could visit?” the nurse demanded.
Mom looked at me, and her eyes popped. Her mouth opened and closed. That’s right, Mom. Now you know what it’s like to be unable to tell anyone the truth because nobody will believe you.
“Melitta, I’m sorry,” the nurse said. “I don’t know who let your mother in.”
“That’s not my daughter,” said my mother’s voice, cold and precise.
I turned to watch her march out.
The nurse was eyeing me. “Did you send for her? Did Doctor Andrews give her permission to visit?”
“She just walked in,” I said, feeling cold and solid like stone all the way through my whole body. “I never saw her before in my life.”
The nurse left eventually, after trying to quiz me about Mom’s visit.
I ran for the bathroom and pooped until I was empty. The Mom enema. Awesome. Feeling listless and weak, I washed up and came back to my dinner, which was disgusting, but I ate it, because I knew I wouldn’t get anything like responsible calories until breakfast, and the chocolate bars were beginning to pall.
I felt like a patient for the first time. Someone who had, say, been hit by a bus and flown forty feet and landed in a pile of old bicycle tires, miraculously no bones broken, but bruised and shaken, a little disoriented but perfectly calm.
I felt alive for the first time in two years. Weak, but alive.
Wow. Melitta’s prescription to cure depression: tell the truth and destroy your family.
The last of the jello went down, ugh, and then the diet pop. I kind of resented the diet pop. Did I look fat to them? Or did they just assume every female over the age of ten was trying to lose weight? Soggy peas. Dry, tasteless chicken breast. Rice. I drank a whole pitcher of water, and then another, because it settled my tummy.
At first I thought about everything else, flinching away from memories of my mother’s face, her anguished, Why would you say a thing like that? instead of the right answer, which was, No, Melitta, I did not know Howard did that to you, and I’m sorry, and it was wrong of him, and I hate him now, and I promise he will never touch you again because I’m divorcing him and sending him to jail if I don’t just icepick him through the eyeballs first.
Fat chance. She’d made her choice clear.
I looked around the hospital room and realized I was sick of it. My five-day paper would be up in fifty-six hours, but I had no patience left.
I’d stayed long enough to do what I had to do. It was done.
The finality of it slammed against me like too-loud music at a concert, so big that I couldn’t really figure it out. It was just a blow knocking me down.
I shut my eyes and forced myself to think about how I wanted to become the person I was meant to be. Taller, slimmer, smoother, in contro
l of my life, at peace with the world because I could make the world do what I wanted it to do. I decided then that I wanted to look older, too. Twenty-five would be about right for now.
Remembering Delilah’s lessons from my dream, I went to the mirror and stared at the person there, until she looked the way I wanted her to look. Taller. About seven inches taller. Wow.
My clothes were too tight in spots and too loose in others. I looked down. These capri-length jeans were gonna go, if I had anything to say about it. I was way sick of them.
I heard the door open. “Melitta?”
I looked around. The nurse was there, and with her, the doctor. Good. I wouldn’t have to send for him.
“Melitta, they tell me your mother managed to get in here earlier. I’m very sorry,” the doctor said. “I had an order against family visits. I don’t know who can have let her in.”
“It wasn’t me,” vowed the nurse.
I walked up to him and looked him in the eye. I had to look down to do it. “For the last time, I am not Melitta. I’m tired of waiting for you to get that. Now, you will either let me out of here, or I will sue this hospital for ten million dollars.”
He looked at his clipboard, then up at me, seeming nonplussed. “Well—”
“Did you look at this Melitta person’s medical records before you had me drugged and incarcerated in her name? That woman who just left was her mother. Even she said I’m not her daughter. I’ve been telling you I’m not this Melitta since I got here. When are you going to let me out?”
“Um, I didn’t have you brought here,” the doctor said, rather cravenly I thought. “Your stepfather—”
“I don’t know who you’re talking about,” I said. “I want out of here, now.”
“If we could just have some form of identification,” the doctor said wretchedly.
“Why? I think you are not required to fingerprint me or anything before you let a completely healthy total stranger out of the loony bin.” I was having fun. This conversation would finally go my way. “But I’ll tell you what I’ll do for you.” I looked at my watch. “My little sister should be back from Indonesia today. I’ll see if she can come and get me out of here now. Release me as soon as she gets here and we’ll call it good.”
He practically fell off his own shoes with relief. “Yes, sure, that would be great. Do you want my phone?”
“Thank you,” I said and, producing the lair’s phone number from the slip of paper in my too-tight jeans, I punched it into his phone. Someone answered. I said, “Jee?”
There was a pause. “Hold on a minute.” More pause. “I think it’s the kid,” someone said on the other end of the line.
I waited.
Then a voice I mostly recognized came on. “Hi,” Jee said breathlessly. “You okay?”
“I’m glad you’re back,” I said quickly. “I’ve been kidnapped and stuffed into the loony bin. I was at a high school pep rally, visiting Sanjay, and this squad of crazed paramedics jumped me and sedated me and brought me to the hospital. I’ve been waiting out a five-day paper ever since.”
“Holy shit,” Jee said. “Do you want me to come get you?”
“Please,” I said. “And bring me some clothes. This clamdigger outfit has gone completely stale for me.”
“I’ll bring you warpaint and diamonds and sweet designer duds,” Jee promised. “Damn, you should have called earlier.”
“I had stuff to do,” I said curtly. “Hurry up.”
Then I handed the phone to the doctor. “Please tell her where we are. I don’t even know the address of this stinking place.”
He looked pale, but he told Jee what she needed to know. When he hung up he said, almost fawning, “If there’s anything we can do to make you comfortable—”
“You could get me another two dinners just like that one. I’ve been starving to death in here. And knock before you enter this room, okay? It’s disrespectful to walk in without permission.”
It was a real pleasure to see him nod and smile nervously and shoo the nurse out and close the door softly behind him.
Jee came. She brought clothes—such clothes! If they were designer duds, I couldn’t see a label, but omigod they were gorgeous and they fit my new body perfectly. I was now as tall as she was, a good six feet, and I looked great in the white slinky top with matching slinky and clingy pegged ankle-length knit pants and a real lizardskin black belt with a chunky gold buckle and low black shoes with an ankle strap, omigod I looked foxy. She did something to my hair that I hoped I would remember how to do, and then she made me up until I looked like a supermodel. The finishing touch was a pair of five-inch gold hoop earrings. I looked dangerous and grown-up and completely unlike my old self.
The nurse came to take away the empty dinner trays and nearly fell over backward when she saw me.
I asked her for her phone. “Will you take some pictures of me and my sister, please, so that we have evidence for the court case?” I said sweetly.
She didn’t. She ran out without taking the trays.
Jee and I exchanged glances. I hadn’t told her anything. “Not here,” I’d warned. “Whole story when we get out of here.”
When the nurse came back, she had the doctor with her, and a woman with a nice suit who looked like she’d been dragged out of a meeting and called down here for an emergency. Hospital administrator, I guessed. Or the hospital lawyer.
“If you would be kind enough to sign a release,” she kept saying, and I ignored her.
“Which way is the exit?” I said sweetly.
The doctor pointed. The nurse scurried ahead to get all the doors open for me. Jee took pictures with her phone of me talking to each one of them.
It was just like the extraction from the Field Museum. Slick, quick, hassle-free.
Only difference was, I wasn’t laughing when we tumbled into a cab outside the hospital.
Jee gave the cabbie the address on Ravenswood. I sank back in the cab seat, boneless with exhaustion.
“Are you okay?” she said.
I shook my head.
In the Lair, Beth took one look at me and folded me in her arms. I let her mother me. I needed some mothering, bad.
Pog said, “Now you are going to have margaritas,” as if she were the doctor making out a prescription.
Amanda handed me a joystick and pointed at the screen over our heads on the kitchen wall. Grand Theft Audio, a version I’d never seen before. All the girls had guns and all the men were getting the snot beat out of them. I thanked Beth for the hugs and picked up the joystick.
Margaritas turned out to be pretty good. My mother and Howard didn’t drink, and of course I was still underage, so this was my first introduction to girlie drinks.
I drank until I puked. Then I drank half a gallon of water and felt as fresh as ever.
“You want to talk about it?” Beth said.
I did.
I got to sleep in my new bed at the Lair that night. It was just a futon, Pog said, because they hadn’t wanted to spend five thousand dollars on a good mattress and bed until they knew what I liked. I was so tired, I’d have slept on the floor.
But it was nice to be in a room that I knew no one could just waltz into. I’d thought I would be uncomfortable here, have some period of adjustment. Nope. Slept like a baby. Woke to the smell of pancakes and bacon.
Turned out Pog was really into bacon. She must have cooked four pounds of it for the five of us.
“Can you believe I used to be a vegetarian?” Jee said, crunching. “Of course we didn’t see much meat in the cat house. But who knew bacon was so good?” She shut her eyes as if in ecstasy.
While Pog piled pancakes on my plate and Amanda hoovered pancakes off hers and Beth sent me commiserating mommy-looks, I ate and ate. This was making me thin, I realized. I didn’t ever seem to get full. Finally I pushed my plate away out of a kind of mental fullness.
The others picked up their silverware and brought it to the dishwasher, and threw out
their paper plates, while Pog looked on like a camp counselor making people jump into the cold water. They even cleared mine away.
When the table was clean, Pog poured herself another cup of coffee and sat down with me. “Okay, what’s on the agenda?”
“I feel like I must be cutting into your schedule,” I said shyly.
Pog hooted. “Girl, we don’t punch no clock around here. What’s the point of being a sex demon if you have a ‘schedule?’” She hooked her fingers.
This made sense to me. I thought a bit. “Well, I’d still like to nail Mr. Dorrington.
“The blackmailer?” Beth said, sitting down with her own coffee cup.
“Yeah,” I said, giving in to their diagnosis. “I need to rendezvous with Sanjay. He knows the gossip. And Ms. Waroo, I think.”
“Footnotes, please,” Jee said crisply.
Amanda tapped on her laptop. She hardly ever talked, but I could tell she was listening.
I explained how Sanjay and Ms. Waroo had come to visit me and the help they’d offered.
“You want to see them here, or go meet them? Should we be there, or will you do it alone?” Pog said.
I looked around the table. Each of these women seemed barely older than I was, on the surface. But their assurance, their grim expressions, and the air of menace they exuded suddenly leaped into focus for me. This was my team. My posse. My pack. My gang. I wondered if kids who joined the Latin Kings felt this surge of comfort and relief, Oh thank goodness, I won’t have to do it all by myself any more. My friends were armed and on my side.
“Are you still worried about protecting your mom?” Beth said.
“I don’t know,” I said slowly. “I’m done protecting Howard. I don’t care if Dorrington exposes him or if he shoots Dorrington. Solve all our problems, really,” I added. “I’m sick of any kind of intimacy with bad guys. If I have to deal with them, I’d like it to be with a pair of long-handled tongs.”
“Good,” Pog said. “There’s a growth moment.”
“Please,” I held up a hand. “Careful with the psychobabble.” She smiled and sipped coffee. “I think also I’m pulling some stuff together that I didn’t know before, and it’s making sense of what I did know.”
Coed Demon Sluts: Omnibus: Coed Demon Sluts: books 1-5 Page 51
