Give, a novel

by Erica Carpenter Witsell

“Why? She doesn’t want to come, Mom.”

  Her mother snorted. “Emma’s twelve.”

  “So?”

  “She’s twelve! Who lets a twelve-year-old make a decision like that?”

  “But she doesn’t want to!”

  “Jessie, it doesn’t matter. I’m her mother. I deserve visitation—at the very least. And if Len and Sarah deny me that, I have to take action. I can’t just sit back and let them take my daughter away from me.”

  “But Mom! They’re not taking her away. Emma doesn’t want to come. Aren’t you listening?”

  The line went silent for a moment.

  “Mom?”

  “Jessie, it was not my fault you had that cyst. What happened last summer—Emma is not allowed to blame me for that!”

  Jessie moved her hand over her abdomen instinctively, her fingers probing at her scar.

  “Mom,” she said quietly. “It’s not about the . . . It’s not about what happened with me.”

  “Of course it is. Emma has always been perfectly content to come visit before.”

  “No, Mom,” Jessie said quietly. “She hasn’t.”

  Jessie closed her eyes, awaiting her mother’s disbelief. How, she wondered, could this possibly be a revelation to her mother?

  “What do you mean?” Laurel said. “You girls . . . You love it here.”

  Jessie sighed. It was true. Even Emma, she knew, loved Baymont.

  “Mom, it’s not about that. It’s—” she hesitated. It seemed impossible to put into words. “Oh, Mom. It’s just everything. Everything that’s ever happened. The pirate ship. Raisin. The dam. The things—”

  The things you do, she was about to say, but stopped herself.

  “Well,” Laurel said stiffly. “I had no idea you blamed me for all of that.”

  “I don’t. But Emma—”

  “Oh, but Emma does.”

  “No. That’s not what I was going to say.”

  Emma is just different, she thought.

  “Mom, it’s not that she blames you. She . . . She just doesn’t want to go anymore, okay? Why can’t you just let it be?”

  “Why? Because I am not about to let Len and Sarah take my daughter away from me a second time!”

  “Mom! Please! Please, just don’t do it, okay? Please don’t take Dad to court. Please!”

  “I’m sorry, Jessie. I’d fight for you, too. You know that, right?”

  Jessie and Laurel didn’t speak again until the summons came. Jessie knew it had come because her father’s face went white when he saw it.

  “Sarah!” he yelled. “Oh Jesus.”

  He left all the other mail on the kitchen counter and strode down the hall with that one envelope. She could hear him tearing it open as he walked.

  Jessie followed him down the hall, but he didn’t notice. He walked into the office where Sarah sat at her desk, and swung the door closed behind him.

  Jessie stood listening outside the door as he began to read the letter aloud. She heard “summons” and “complaint” and “custody” and her stomach plummeted. Oh, why hadn’t Laurel listened to her? She ran to her bedroom and flopped onto her bed. How could her mother do this to her?

  “Hey Betty Boobs! Can’t you winch ’em up any better than that?”

  Jessie stared at the oily green bus seat in front of her, pretending she didn’t hear.

  “Come on, leave her alone,” she heard another voice say, and for a moment the awful twist in her stomach loosened a little. She strained her ears. Was someone really going to stick up for her? She wanted to turn around to see who it was, but stopped herself. She knew better. Best not to look, not to react, not to show any sign of having heard.

  “Leave her alone,” he repeated. “You know cavemen never wore bras.”

  The two boys laughed loudly, and it was worse now, because of that little bit of hope she’d had.

  Suddenly Jessie turned in her seat, knowing that she shouldn’t, that it would only make it worse. But there she was, raising her middle finger at them and telling them to shut up, why don’t you.

  “Oooooh!” they laughed, clutching each other. “We’re scared now! What you gonna do, titty-drop us?”

  “Ha! She’d knock you out. Ka-boom! Thirty pounds of hairy titty right on your head. Bam!”

  Jessie blinked back her tears. If they saw her cry, it would only be worse next time.

  “Hey, Crow Magnum? What you doing tonight? My friend here wants you to titty-drop him.”

  “Neanderthals,” Jessie muttered.

  “What’d you call us?”

  “Neanderthals,” she said, louder. “Crow Magnum was way more advanc—”

  Their laughter buried her words. “I know you are, but what am I? What is this, fucking third grade? Go buy a bra, why don’t you? I hear Kmart’s having a special.”

  Again, the awful laughter. “Attention Kmart shoppers: Boulder Holder Blue Light Special, aisle two . . .”

  How could they not grow bored of their own stupidity? No, it went on and on and on, until at last the bus reached her stop. She had stopped her tears, but her face was burning. Even worse, there was a dampness between her legs that Jessie hoped desperately was sweat. But when she stood up, she felt the blood leaking out of her.

  She was off the bus as fast as she could, not even listening to their taunting now, just hoping, oh God please, praying that nothing was showing through her jeans. If she had bled through her pants, she would never hear the end of it. Please, just let her off the bus without anything showing and she wouldn’t care what they said ever again.

  As soon as the bus turned the corner, Jessie started to run. Her backpack held three textbooks and a novel; it bounced uncomfortably against her back as she ran. In front, despite her bra, her breasts bounced, too. She held one arm against her chest to steady them. With each step, the scar on her abdomen ached, and she felt the blood seeping out of her, soaking her underwear.

  By the time she reached the house, there were damp patches of sweat beneath the straps of her backpack, sweat dripping between her breasts, sweat dampening the hair that now clung to her temples. Stepping into the air-conditioned kitchen at last was like diving into the pool on a hot day. She paused for a second, relishing the cool, then peeled off her backpack. In another second she was racing for the bathroom.

  “Jessie?” she heard her father call. “Is that you? I need to talk”

  “Just a second!” she called back. “I’ve got to go to the bathroom.”

  “Oh God,” she said, after she had fought her jeans off her hips and could see. Her underwear was saturated with blood, a red oval in the crotch of her jeans, too. Quickly, she pulled them off. Had the blood gone through? Yes, but not much. She could see some blood where it had seeped through the fabric around the seam, but surely that had happened while she ran home? Surely no one on the bus could have seen . . .

  She put in a tampon and rinsed the underwear out at the sink, watching the water run red, then pink. There was a sharp ache in her abdomen now, not her scar but deeper, like someone was scraping out her insides with a grapefruit spoon.

  She rinsed out her jeans after the underwear, then hung them both in the shower to drip. She would have to ask Sarah if she could do a load of laundry later.

  She wrapped a towel around her waist and opened the door.

  “Jessie? Will you . . . Oh, sorry.”

  It was her father again, standing in the hallway, waiting for her. “Sorry, Jess. But I do need to talk to you. Just as soon as you’re ready.”

  She nodded and went to her room, found clean underwear and a pair of shorts. Her bra was damp with her sweat and felt clammy against her skin, so she pulled off her T-shirt and changed that, too.

  She looked away from the sight of her breasts in the mirror while she changed. She could still hear the boys’ taunting voices, their vulgar words and innuendos, and her throat tightened. Why couldn’t they just leave her alone? There were seven more months of ninth grade. Seven months of r
iding the bus, seven months of their relentless bullying. Jessie could see no way out but to wait, and yet the waiting . . . How would she stand it? She didn’t think she could.

  When Jessie emerged from her bedroom, her brother Jay was in the hallway. Four lines of green army men stretched from one wall to the other. Jay stood with his back to her, fiddling with the house plant in the corner.

  “What are you doing, Jay?” she asked.

  He jumped. “Nothing. Just setting up an ambush.”

  “I nearly tripped over all those guys.”

  “Sorry.”

  He didn’t sound that sorry. He sounded just like he always did: a regular nine-year-old boy, who loved battles and baseball and Super Mario Brothers. Not one of those things should have mattered to Jessie, and yet somehow they all did. Jay was just so normal. Jay didn’t get picked on at school; he got invited to birthday parties and swimming pools and sleepovers. Recently he’d even cut his hair in a spike; he used hair gel, for Christ’s sake. Gel, in the fourth grade.

  “I don’t see why it bothers you so much, Jessie,” Sarah had said when Jessie had pointed this out. “Just let him be who he is. He lets you be who you are.”

  Jessie knew Sarah was right, but still. She couldn’t help imagining what Jay would be like five years from now. There was no doubt in her mind that he’d be one of the in kids: popular and athletic, with clothes that were just right. She couldn’t stand those kids.

  To be fair, she knew Jay wouldn’t turn out like those boys on the bus. Despite all the clichés that made him so infuriatingly normal, Jay was a sweet kid. He never killed bugs, for example, which she supposed was another nine-year-old, boys-will-be-boys stereotype. Little green army men the exception, Jay didn’t like to see anything get hurt.

  Jessie knew that her half-brother was kind, funny, and smart, and yet not one of those qualities made her want to be closer to him. He was also perceptive enough to sense her disdain, and so he kept his distance from her, too.

  With Emma, he was different. When they were younger, he and Emma had often played together, making houses out of blocks for their stuffed animals, or cities for his cars. Jessie had overheard Sarah say once that Emma hadn’t gotten to enjoy a healthy infancy—because of Laurel—so that after Jay was born, Emma had regressed, talking baby talk and crawling around with him under the kitchen table.

  But it wasn’t just because of Laurel, Jessie had thought bitterly when she’d heard this. Laurel hadn’t wanted a divorce. She hated it when Sarah said things like that, when she made it sound like everything had been Laurel’s fault.

  Jessie was the only one in her family who defended Laurel. Of course, Sarah and Dad wouldn’t, and Jay hardly even knew her. But Emma . . . She didn’t know why Emma couldn’t see Laurel the way she saw her.

  Jessie remembered one summer in Baymont when she was eight or nine years old. The phone had rung in the early morning, waking Jessie. When she tiptoed into Laurel’s room, her mother was already getting dressed. The call had been from the Jacksons; the horses had gotten out. Jessie followed her mother while she pulled on work boots and headed to the barn for gloves and wire cutters.

  “What are you going to do?” Jessie had asked, skipping behind her, still in her pajamas.

  “Well, what do you think? I’m going to fix the damn fence. And then we’ll catch the horses.”

  They had followed the fence from the gate until they found the place where the horses had broken through. And then Laurel had fixed it, while Jessie looked on. That, Jessie had decided then and there, that was the kind of woman she was going to be one day. The kind that could fix a fence by herself when one needed fixing.

  But when they had arrived back at the house, her sister had greeted them at the door, wide-eyed and pale.

  “I woke up and no one was here,” she said tremulously.

  “The horses got out,” Jessie had explained to her importantly. “We were fixing the fence.”

  Emma had probably told Sarah about that morning, and Sarah had almost certainly told Dad. And so, in their minds, it became just another instance of Laurel’s poor choices, her unfitness as a mom. Only Jessie knew what it had really been like, that crystal-clear moment of revelation when she had understood for the first time that no man was necessary, that a woman could do anything she put her mind to.

  Jessie stepped over Jay’s army battalion and went to her parents’ office at the end of the hall. Inside, Len sat at his desk, his red grading pen in hand, but Jessie knew that he had been waiting for her by the way he pushed the pile of papers away when she walked in.

  “What are you doing?” she asked.

  “Just grading.”

  “Your students’ tests?”

  “Yes.”

  She craned her neck to see. Her father taught math at the university, but whenever she looked at the students’ work he brought home, it looked like no math she had ever seen: all shapes and symbols and letters, with very few numbers at all.

  “How’d they do?”

  He snorted. “Not great. How was your day?”

  She hesitated. She could barely remember the day before the bus ride. Really, it hardly mattered. Even the best days could be ruined during the fifteen-minute ride home.

  “Okay,” she said. She took a breath. What point would there be in telling her father? What could he possibly do that wouldn’t make it worse in the end? And yet she still longed to tell him, just so she could feel that there was someone on her side. “Dad, I—”

  “Jessie,” Len said quickly, “I’m not sure what you know. But Laurel is demanding . . . Laurel has taken me to court for joint custody.”

  Jessie swallowed hard and looked away. She could sense her father watching her, waiting for her reaction. She didn’t know what to say, didn’t know how she was supposed to look. Finally, she nodded, a barely perceptible dip of her head.

  “So you knew?”

  “No,” Jessie said. “I didn’t know for sure. I knew maybe. I asked . . . I begged her not to.”

  “Well, she did anyway.”

  Jessie glanced up at him. “So now what?”

  “I’ve hired a lawyer,” he said, watching her closely. “But I’m not going to fight for something you don’t want. So I have to ask you. Do you want to . . . ? Are you happy . . . ? Do you want to keep on living here, with us?”

  For a second, Jessie felt as if her heart had stopped. She tried to breathe but couldn’t. She had a choice? Jessie had never imagined that it would come to that. When Laurel had said she was going to take her father to court, Jessie had envisioned only conflict— bitter testimony and hard feelings. She had never thought it would mean that she would be asked, for the first time, what she wanted.

  I want them to leave me alone, she thought, the torment of the day still hot on her skin. That wasn’t what her father had meant, she knew, but wasn’t that part of it? Moments ago, she had seen no possible way out. But now . . .

  For years, the idea of living year-round in Baymont had been like Jessie’s imaginary friend. Whenever her life in Bakersfield had felt hard or unfair—when her classmates teased her, or Sarah scolded her, or her father seemed to love her brother more—the alternate life she could be living with Laurel was her secret consolation. In Baymont, the clothes she wore to school would never matter, nor would she be punished for inconsequential things, like a capless marker left on her bed which had bled onto her quilt. In Baymont—and this was the crux of it, the one thing she knew positively but would never, ever admit to knowing—it was she who was the favored one.

  She thought of Baymont then, with its conifer-scented woods and rolling pastures, its lonely dirt roads and thickets full of blackberries. In the woods above the pond, she had found a perfect ring of redwoods, where saplings had grown up around the mother tree. The saplings now were thicker than she could circle with her arms; the mother tree had long since returned to the earth. The ground in the center of the ring was spongy and soft, and fine red needles blanketed the g
round. Jessie loved to lie on her back there, with the trees towering above her. In those moments, she felt, not alone, but whole.

  There was nothing like that here. In Bakersfield, Jessie’s only glimpse of wildness was of the hazy, orange mountains beyond the farms. In Baymont, there were horses, woods, long rides down abandoned roads so lovely they made her heart ache. And here? Here there were bus-riding bullies and awful, hair-sprayed girls, all the usual taunts and name-calling, plus a daily gauntlet of disapproving stares. Surely ninth grade in Mendocino could not be so cruel.

  “Jessie?” her father said. “You don’t have to decide—”

  “There,” Jessie said quickly. “I want to live there.”

  Later, in her room, Jessie felt ashamed of how quickly the words had tumbled out of her. She had thought only of Baymont, as if the wild beauty of the place alone would be enough to save her. She hadn’t thought of what it would mean to her father, or Sarah, or Emma. She hadn’t thought of her best friend or her little brother. She had been asked what she wanted at last and she had thought only of herself and her tormentors, while no one that mattered to her had even entered her head. Her face burned with the shame of it and her belly ached. She knew it must be her period, but it scraped away at her gut like guilt.

  She swallowed two Advils and lay down on her bed, curling her knees to her chest and closing her eyes. She tried to recapture the vision of Baymont she had had in the office with her father, but it felt now as it always did, a fantasy so worn its edges blurred, a dream so familiar and so impossible it couldn’t hold her faith.

  CHAPTER 25

  Emma

  Emma and Jay were both upstairs in their rooms, Emma with her homework, Jay on Atari, when they were called down to the kitchen.

  “Okay!” Emma bellowed down the stairs. It was too early for dinner, she thought, but she was glad to be called away. She paused at the door to her brother’s room; he was playing Galaga, she could tell by the sounds.

  “Mom called. You coming?”

  “I’m just gonna die first,” he said. He glanced up at her. “You want a turn afterwards?”