The Best American Essays 2016

by Jonathan Franzen

  When Boogie and Papo came over, one of them kicked my sneaker. Then Papo said, “Think they’ll notice if I piss in their mouths?”

  “I’ll fuck you up,” Kilo said.

  “You dead?” Boogie asked, giggling.

  “My eyes are open,” I said.

  “Don’t mean you can’t be dead,” Boogie said.

  I didn’t look over at Kilo, but I could hear him breathing beside me. He wasn’t laughing like the rest of us. I wouldn’t realize it until much later, after the Krypto and the Olde English had worn off, after that miserable fall with my mother, after going back to my father’s house, after Kilo had cheated with a girl from the barrio and gotten her pregnant and named the baby Mikey, like he hoped this Mikey would be the one to save him. After hating her for stealing him from me, after stealing him back years later, even if only for a little while, after the two of us, trying to be those same two kids we’d been, got drunk at the beach on a Saturday night, snorted an eight ball in just a couple hours, after he watched me take one bump of scutter after another and told me to Slow down, ma and Watch out, baby girl, go easy, that’s how motherfuckers OD and I told him that that was exactly how I wanted to go and that it would be the best way to die and that nobody would miss me anyway, after he snatched the baggie from me, took my face in his hands, his breath rank like stale cigarettes and Hennessy, and said Don’t ever let me hear you say that shit again and I don’t wanna lose you and after I let him hug me and thought about the two of us lying in the grass that Halloween when we were only thirteen and fourteen, how we were just kids but seemed so much older, already so tired, so damn tired it was like we’d been fighting a war. That’s when it would hit me, that Kilo wasn’t that different from me, that maybe back then he’d also been dreaming about dying. Maybe it was seeing his homeboy shot down right in front of him and having to look in the mirror every day, face himself, accept that he was still here, still alive, Mikey’s memory like a ghost that was always calling.

  But that Halloween, the two of us on the grass, all I knew was that I felt nothing and everything all at once. Boogie and Papo lingered for a while, joking, smoking, laughing, and I didn’t even notice when they sneaked back to the party. I couldn’t tell how long we lay there—could’ve been minutes, could’ve been hours—but I sat up when we almost got trampled by a pack of kids running wild through the yard toward Titi’s building. There were like six or seven of them, boys and girls we went to school with, sprinting, pushing each other out of the way, calling out, “Move!” and “Run!” and “Go-go-go-go-go!”

  Later, in the middle of Titi’s living room, with the music turned down and their eyes wide, everybody listening and holding their breaths, they would tell a story about how they’d been hanging on the corner of Seventy-Seventh and Harding. How a couple of them had been sitting on the hood of a car, while Kilo and I were passed out in the yard or pretending to be dead or whatever it was we were doing. How some guys in a pickup had pulled up right next to them, how the passenger had rolled down the window, pulled out a gun, and asked which one of them had thrown the eggs. And while I stood there, the spinning in my head already fading, the dancing and the laughing and Kilo’s face against my neck already like a dream I was sure to forget, I wouldn’t feel guilty for egging those guys, and I wouldn’t feel bad that my friends almost got shot because of us. I would resent them for being that close to death. I would imagine, like something out of a movie, the truck pulling up, the slow opening of the tinted window, moonlight reflecting on the glass, then the barrel of the gun, like a promise.

  I walked into the school counselor’s office one afternoon, on a whim. I told myself it was because I had a math test during fifth period that I hadn’t bothered to study for, that I didn’t want to see Ms. Jones’s face in front of the class as she handed out the test, how she’d be staring at me as I took one and passed it back. Truth was I couldn’t care less. Every time Ms. Jones called me to her desk and asked, her voice almost a whisper, why I hadn’t turned in any homework that week or the week before that, or why I never brought books to school, I just shrugged, rolled my eyes. The last three times, she’d threatened to send me to the principal’s office if it happened again. Next day, same shit. I’d walk up to her desk again, cross my arms, say, “My bad,” and act like it was the first time in my life I’d ever heard of books or homework. Eventually Ms. Jones gave up, like I knew she would.

  I didn’t know what I’d say when I walked into Ms. Gold’s office. She was known in most cliques as the counselor for the losers, druggies, troublemakers, kids who got suspended, kids who fought or brought knives to school, kids who flunked so much they were already too old for Nautilus—kids whose parents were drunks or junkies, or whose parents beat them, homeless kids, bullied kids, kids with eating disorders, or brain disorders, or anger problems. So naturally, when I showed up at her door, she knew exactly who I was.

  “Come on in, Jaqui,” she said, her voice hoarse, like she smoked a few packs a day. “Have a seat.” She ran her hand through her long mane of orange hair, and I noticed her fingernails were long as hell and painted gold. She dressed like she was a young woman—ivory pencil skirt, short-sleeved blouse, black high heels—and smelled like floral perfume. She was an attractive woman and wore lots of makeup, but up close, you could tell how old she really was. Older than my mother. Probably a grandmother. This made me like her right away.

  I stepped inside the small office and sat in the nearest seat. It was bigger than I’d imagined, with a few chairs set up in a circle. I wondered how she knew my name and if there would be other people coming.

  “I’ve been wondering when you’d show up,” she said, sitting at her desk chair. She leaned over and opened a drawer, rummaged through some files, then pulled one out. “I was going to get you out of class if you didn’t make it over to me soon.”

  I tried not to look surprised. “For real?”

  She smiled at me a long time, looking me over, studying me. Then, finally, she said, “I know all about you.”

  I doubted that she knew all about me, but at the same time, I was afraid of what she did know, and how. “Like what?”

  She opened the file and put on her reading glasses, flipped through the pages quickly. “Well,” she said, “I know you’ve been suspended quite a few times.” She observed me from behind her reading glasses.

  “Okay,” I said, not surprised to find that everything she thought she knew she’d read from my school records.

  She kept going, not taking her eyes off me. “I know you’ve been in a number of fights, in and out of school, that you ran away from home a year ago and the police picked you up two weeks later, that you were arrested last month for aggravated battery, and you have a hearing coming up.” She took her glasses off and waited.

  I took a deep breath but said nothing.

  “I know you’re angry,” she said, really emphasizing the word angry, “but what I don’t know is why.”

  I shrugged and looked down at my sneakers, suddenly feeling like I’d made a mistake, like I’d rather be faking my way through Ms. Jones’s math test than sitting there being questioned.

  “So why don’t you tell me,” she said, closing the file without even looking at it.

  “I don’t know,” I said.

  She nodded. “Why don’t you tell me about your situation at home?”

  I had no idea what she meant by “situation,” but I just shrugged again, rolled my eyes like I’d done so many times with Ms. Jones. “What do you wanna know?”

  “Let’s start with what brought you here.”

  I considered telling her that I’d just wanted to get out of class, but somehow I didn’t think she’d like that. I crossed my legs, uncrossed them. “Sometimes I live with my father,” I said, “and sometimes I live with my mother.”

  “So they share custody.”

  I shook my head no. “I just go whenever I want.”

  “Where are you living now?”

  “Most
ly with my mother. But sometimes I don’t sleep there.”

  “So where do you sleep?”

  “Friends’ houses, boyfriend’s house, the beach.”

  “The beach?” she said, raising her eyebrows.

  It could’ve been her expression, the way her face contorted into something I read as disbelief, then anger, then pity, even though she was supposed to be the counselor for all the school’s fuckups, so she was supposed to be the woman who’d heard it all, seen it all. Or could’ve been something else—that I’d admitted this for the first time, confessed it to someone other than my delinquent friends, even though it wasn’t really anything, nothing compared to what still needed confessing. That once, last year, I stood in front of the mirror in my father’s bathroom with a box cutter, determined to slit my wrists, but then couldn’t do it, and instead I carved up my upper arm so deep it left a scar. That sometimes I saw myself climbing up on the concrete balcony in my father’s high-rise building, saw myself sitting on the edge, leaning forward, letting the pull of gravity take me. That even though I didn’t like to think about it, I found myself catching feelings for girls, that sometimes when I was around Boogie the swelling in my chest and throat was like a bomb that was ready to explode.

  But I couldn’t say any of this. I didn’t know why. But right then, sitting in Ms. Gold’s office, the last place I’d expected to be even an hour before, I started to cry.

  The second time was that winter. Holiday break. My mother was off her meds, and we’d been fighting for three days straight. We screamed at each other because there was no food in the house. Because my music was too loud. Because, my mother claimed, there had been a woman in the apartment going through her things and I’d been the one to let her in. Mami always had these stories—a woman who came into our living room and moved all the furniture while we slept, a man who kept looking in our windows at 2:00 a.m., people sending her messages through the television or the radio, a fat guy who came in and ate all our food while my mother stood in the kitchen, paralyzed with fear.

  That morning my mother woke me before sunrise as she paced around the apartment talking to herself, refusing to take her pills or let me sleep. I covered my head with my pillow, and she pulled it off, started shaking me. I needed to get up, she said, help her check all the windows so nobody could get in the house. I turned over, my back to her.

  She shook me again, yelled, “I said get up!”

  “Fine!” I said. “I’m up.” I’d already learned that when my mother was like this, I had no choice but to do what she ordered. So I ran around the apartment checking all the windows—the living room, her bedroom, my bedroom. I made sure the deadbolt on the front door was locked, then got back into bed.

  Ten minutes later my mother burst into my room, insisting that I’d left the windows open again. But this time I didn’t get up. I was awake but refused to indulge her. She yelled. I yelled back. She threatened. I threatened back. Then she left.

  She came back with a steak knife, pointed it at me like it was a sword.

  “Who are you?” she asked.

  I jerked up and hit my head on the wooden beam of the top bunk. “What the fuck are you doing?” I jumped out of bed and on instinct grabbed my pillow, the closest thing I could use as a shield.

  “Tell me who you are,” she said, “because you are not my daughter.”

  I should’ve cried, begged her to stop, to put the knife down. I should’ve apologized and told her I loved her. But I didn’t.

  “Are you serious?” I asked. “I never wanted to be your daughter! You’re not my mother. You’re a crazy fucking crackhead!”

  She stood there for a while without saying a word.

  I kept my eye on the knife, gripping the pillow with both hands.

  “You are small,” she said finally, “like a fly. You are so small I could squash you. You are nobody. You are nothing.”

  I didn’t believe what my mother said—not at first. I took it the same way I always took her rambling—everything she said was nonsense. But after she turned back for her room, left me standing there with the pillow in my hands, everything quiet except for the sound of my own breathing, something changed. It was like a switch that got flipped and everything that happened after was mechanical.

  Dropping the pillow on the bed, the beeline for the kitchen for a glass of water from the tap, a car horn blaring across the street somewhere.

  My mother rushing to the living room window, peeking through the blinds.

  The bottles of my mother’s prescriptions on the counter, untouched for weeks.

  My mother running back into her bedroom, slamming the door shut.

  The first pill, a drink of water. The second pill, another drink. The third, fourth, fifth, another drink.

  My mother coming back out of her bedroom, pacing back and forth. Bedroom, living room, bedroom.

  Another pill, another drink. Bedroom, living room. Another pill and another and another.

  The car horn again.

  The way my mother walked past me so many times but never once turned to look at me, to see me killing myself again and again.

  The wanting, more than anything else, to sleep.

  My mother saying, “You are small.”

  My mother saying, “You are nobody.”

  My mother saying, “You are nothing.”

  The second time, I swallowed all my mother’s pills, locked myself in my room, didn’t sit to wait until she found me. The second time, I slid a dresser in front of the bedroom door to keep my mother out. The second time, I woke sick to my stomach, stumbled out of bed but couldn’t get the dresser out of the way in time to make it to the bathroom, so I threw up all over the carpet in my bedroom. The second time, I woke to find that, again, I had not died.

  In my bedroom, spewing a foul white foam that I assumed was my mother’s pills, and then the Kentucky Fried Chicken that Kilo had brought over late last night—blowing chunks of chicken and mashed potatoes and macaroni and cheese—I was sure that if I didn’t die of a prescription drug overdose, then the retching would kill me. I bent over the mess on the carpet and the vomiting turned to dry heaving.

  It took me a few minutes to straighten up, to push the dresser out of the way, to wash my face and brush my teeth, to get my sneakers on and my hair in a ponytail, to stuff some of my things in my backpack and go.

  I walked past Normandy Park, feeling jittery and weak, headed toward the Circle-K, where I bought a small bottle of Gatorade and got some change for the pay phone. Outside, I sipped some of the Gatorade, then picked up the phone, my hands shaking. And then I threw up again, just liquid this time, left the receiver dangling, and bent over right there on the spot.

  Again it took me a minute to get myself together. Then I finally made the call. I put two quarters in the phone and dialed my father. The line rang four or five times before Papi picked up.

  “Hello,” he said, but not like a question, more like he was annoyed at whoever was calling. I was surprised by the sound of his voice, which I hadn’t heard in months—not since I ran away to my mother’s house. His voice stirred something inside me, and I couldn’t believe how much I missed him, how much I needed him. I wanted to ask him for help. I wanted to tell him everything that happened since I left, ask him to come and get me, take me home. But he’d let me down so many times, and I’d let him down so many times, I was sure it was the only thing we would ever do—let each other down.

  “Hello?” he said again.

  But I couldn’t do it. So I hung up.

  I stood there for a long time, feeling tired and weak and so sick. I considered just going back to my mother’s, getting back in bed, letting myself drift off. But I wasn’t sure if the pills could still work, if my body had absorbed some of them before I threw up, if there was still a chance I could die.

  I picked up the receiver again, but this time I called Kilo.

  Twenty minutes later, Kilo’s dad picked me up in front of my mom’s building. He was
driving his station wagon, Papo riding shotgun, and Kilo in the back. I got in, dropped my backpack on the floor, and thanked them for picking me up.

  “Where to?” Kilo’s dad asked.

  I gave him my father’s address in South Beach, and he made a right out of my mom’s complex.

  In the backseat, Kilo held my hand. I hadn’t told him that my mother had pulled a knife on me, or that just hours before, I’d swallowed her pills and gone to bed, that I woke up vomiting, surprised to still be alive. All I’d said on the phone was that I was sick and needed a ride to my father’s.

  I leaned my head on his shoulder, and he put his arm around me. In the front, Papo and Kilo’s dad were talking about the Miami Dolphins, Joe Robbie Stadium, what they planned to do this winter. When I called Kilo for a ride, I’d already known that I’d be leaving Normandy Isle for good, that there was no way in hell I’d ever go back with my mother, not if I could help it. I knew that my leaving would mean I wouldn’t see Kilo, Boogie, and Papo every day, and maybe I wouldn’t be able to stay out all night or hang in the streets whenever I wanted, that we could easily drift apart. But I was so tired.

  Kilo leaned over, kissed me on the cheek, then whispered something in my ear that I couldn’t make out. I told myself that he said, “I love you,” even though I knew it wasn’t true, but for now I needed it to be.

  I spent most of the ride to South Beach thinking of our time as if it were already in the past. How Kilo and I danced at the Nautilus Middle School Halloween dance, all sweaty and breathless and crazy. How once Papo introduced me to his neighbor as his sister-in-law, and afterward he always called me Sis. How we walked all over the place—the four of us shooting the shit from Seventy-First and Collins to Normandy Isle to Bay Harbor, even at three, four in the morning. How Boogie and I sat on a bench by the courts in Normandy Park, knocking back a quart, pretending we were grown and watching the pickup game. How Kilo and Papo acted like they were super-fly streetballers when really they were just okay. How in Kilo’s room the walls were all tagged up with spray paint and Sharpie, covered in bad graffiti, his homeboys’ names, their neighborhoods, and on the bedroom door, the largest piece: RIP MIKEY. How once I got so pissed that my name wasn’t written anywhere, I took his Sharpie and wrote JAQUI N BOOGIE on the wall next to his bed, then drew a heart around it. How he came when I called. How maybe he saved my life and didn’t even know it.