Problem Child, page 10
“Where the hell have you been?” she barks.
“Living my best life, obviously. How about you?”
“Your daddy almost died from a stroke and you didn’t do shit to save him. Now look at him! He’s a cripple.”
“Looks more like a drunk to me. That wheelchair in the corner has dust on it.”
“You little—”
“Let’s skip the endearments and drawn-out hugs, all right? I’m not here for a reunion. Where’s Kayla?”
My father drops into a recliner and lets it rock violently beneath him. “You look good, Jane!” he yells, as if I’m not standing four feet away.
“Thanks.” My dad never took care of us and never protected us. He could also be a mean drunk. I couldn’t count on him for anything, not food, heat, transportation, or safety. But he never sneaked into my room at night to molest me, and his drunken slaps were halfhearted at best, and that’s better than a lot of girls get from fathers.
My mom, on the other hand, was a cruel bitch: overcritical one day, ignoring me the next. She’d bring me a half-eaten cake from some church basement, pretending she’d made it herself, then call me a little pig for eating it too quickly. She’d take me to Wednesday services and ask the women to pray the devil out of me, then take off in the car and let me walk home wondering if I’d see her in a few hours or a few days.
My very first memory is being alone and scared at night when I was three or four. Lightning and thunder and wind knocking trash against the thin walls of our house. My brother was eight and already a bully. He told me our parents were never coming home and he was going to sell me for fifty dollars to a man he met that day. “I got him up from twenty,” he sneered.
Nobody cared about us. We were the white trash of the neighborhood, and family matters weren’t anyone else’s business in this part of the country. It’s not like we were being beaten half to shit, and plenty of kids my brother’s age were cooking and cleaning for younger siblings.
I wasn’t dying. I wasn’t even starving, really. I was just terrified and bereft. No call to involve the authorities in that.
That was back when I still felt fear. When I still cried. When I still needed love and safety. I can almost remember what that felt like, but not really. It’s more like watching a movie of some pitiful little stranger.
I hate remembering that I used to need these people. They disgust me now, and that weak little girl disgusts me too.
“Your brother’s locked up again,” my mom whines, trying a different tack, since confrontation didn’t work, “and we’re just barely getting by.”
“I brought you some fries,” I say, gesturing toward my dad’s hand stuck deep in the bag. “They’re still good.”
“I don’t want fries,” my mom declares, though she slides right over to snag a few. “We need real help. A minivan to help get your dad around. A lifting recliner. He can’t hardly get up out of that chair. Look at him, Jane!”
On cue, my dad gets out of the chair and stumbles toward the kitchen, mumbling something about ketchup.
“Tragic,” I sigh. “Now, where the hell is that granddaughter of yours?”
She glares at my dad, his perfectly capable body silhouetted by the fridge light. “How the hell should I know?” she mumbles.
I drop into my old seat on the sectional and put my feet up on another corner. “Traditionally—and I know you have no experience with this—the adults in the home keep tabs on any child who lives there.”
“Child?” she spits. “That girl thought she was a grown-ass woman. She treated us so badly, Jane. Her own grandparents.”
“Mm-hm.”
“You don’t understand because you abandoned us. You don’t know what she was like. Men pounding on our door at all hours of the night looking for her. She’s a nasty little slut.”
Having heard it all before about my own teenage self, I just roll my eyes and wait for her to move on.
“I gave her a place to stay because she couldn’t get along with her mama, and that was more than I owed her.”
“So she paid you rent?” I drawl, knowing full well my mom doesn’t have a grandmotherly bone in her body.
She blows a raspberry through loose lips and I grimace with distaste. “Not enough rent,” she mutters. “We had to feed her.”
“Right. I’m sure there were home-cooked meals nightly. Has she come by or called even once since last month? Has she texted? Dropped by to steal something from your purse? Anything?”
“No.”
Shaking my head, I close my eyes and take a deep breath. Much to my disgust, this place actually smells like home. Old cooking oil and the rose perfume my mother favors in between shampoos. The smell of my childhood, underlain by a chemical pleasantness of new walls and carpet that I never experienced in my youth.
I don’t feel any of the things I should be feeling. Nostalgia or sorrow or love. All I ever felt in my last few years in my parents’ home was anger and restlessness as I worked toward a scholarship just so I could rub it in their worthless faces. But even those feelings are hard to remember now. My parents have no power over me. When this discussion is over, I’ll walk out of here and leave them to their misery. I guess all I feel right now is victory.
“Just tell me what happened,” I say with weary impatience. “Did she leave with that Little Dog loser?”
“She didn’t leave with anyone, not that it’s any business of yours. She took off on her own. I’m too old to go chasing after stupid girls doing things they shouldn’t be doing.”
I glance at my mom. “What things?”
“What things do you think? Men. Weed. Drinking. Hell, her full-time job was hitchhiking, as far as I could tell.”
“Did she catch a ride out of here?”
My questions seem to push her over the edge, and my mom snaps. “What the hell are you doing here, Jane? You don’t give one goddamn about your family! Your daddy almost died and—”
“This is getting us nowhere,” I interrupt, rising to my feet as I slap my hands against my thighs for emphasis. “Let me check out her room. Maybe there’s something there.”
“This isn’t your house!” she screeches. “Why are you even here?”
“Because I love my family, Mama. Come on.”
She stares blankly at me as if she’s trying to puzzle out the words and the meaning behind them. Am I serious? Of course I’m not, lady; can’t you tell by the thick twang I just laid on?
I push past her and march down the short hallway toward the bedrooms.
“Hey! I’ll call the cops, missy. This is trespassing. You can’t just . . .” Her protest fizzles out, and I hear the swish-swish of her polyester shorts coming up behind me.
The room is tiny and messy, just a bed and a dresser and a dark blue sheet tacked up over the small window to keep out the sun. I remember those glorious teenage days of sleeping until 2:00 p.m.
“Have you bothered to look for her?” I ask.
“Look for her? Even the cops think she ran away. Such an ungrateful piece of trash can stay gone.”
I smirk. “Show me the worried-grandma act you put on for the cops. I bet it was a great show. You love playing the victim. Did you cry? Wail? Rage at them to do something for your little baby?”
She blows air through her teeth in a hiss, a warning that she’s about to lose her temper. The wet sound would have scared little Baby Jane, a warning of screaming and slapping to come, but today it doesn’t elicit anything more than an urge to shove her.
“You get outta my damn house if you can’t be respectful,” she growls.
I step deeper into the messy bedroom. “Speaking of: Where’d you get this house, anyway?”
“Fund-raiser.” The anger in her voice immediately slides into slimy pride, just as I knew it would. “After Daddy had that stroke, he couldn’t get around the old trailer in his chair. Doors were too narrow. Central Baptist was nice enough to host an event to help with a down payment and delivery fees.”
“Ain’t you proud.”
“Yes, I am, and I have a right to be. It’s a beautiful home.”
“Sure is, Mama.” I start sifting through a pile of crap on top of an old dresser that used to be Ricky’s. His name is still carved into the front of the middle drawer. A family heirloom.
“What are you even looking for?” she snaps.
“Any hint about where she might have gone.”
“She took off for the truck stop looking for a ride. That’s where she went: the hell out of here.”
This is new information. I’d ask which truck stop, but there’s only one that needs no name around here. The first big twenty-four-hour junction in the county seat, complete with showers and laundry facilities. The year they added a KFC, the kids in my school made so many chicken runs out there after class. “So she really did run away? On purpose?”
“Sure.”
I pause and turn to glare at her. “Did she tell you she was leaving or not?”
When she shrugs, I notice how much her shoulders droop now. She’s only sixty-five, but she’s already caving in on herself, skinny all over except her gut, and that center of gravity is dragging her in. “She didn’t say anything, but she was always out there looking for a ride, looking for money, whatever she did. That girl was mean as a snake, just like you, so either she’s fine or she got what she deserved. Who even knows?”
“Mean like me, huh?”
“Yeah. Sneaky. Beady eyes always watching me.” She’s losing her needy act completely now. “I was going to kick her out anyway. She had men coming around here like dogs after a bitch in heat. Nothing you can do for a girl like that.”
“I mean, you could try to keep grown men away from her. But that probably didn’t occur to you.”
She smacks her lips together, then barks out a hard laugh. “Men’ll take whatever anyone’s giving and you damn well know it. That’s just life. If you haven’t learned that by sixteen, good luck to you. Hell, you gave away enough yourself when you were her age; you should know.”
“Shit, Mama, I was giving it away by age seven, wasn’t I? Walking around here in tight shorts for any man you might rent a room to. How are they supposed to control themselves when there’s a hot ass around, right?”
“Oh please. You always were a little drama queen. You climbed up on his lap given half a chance every damn time. Didn’t look too scared to me.”
She told me their new friend would watch me when she and Daddy weren’t home. I was so happy at first. Hopeful. I pushed the last dregs of my best feelings into that warm hollow of hope and cradled them tight. I wouldn’t have to be alone in the house at night! Instead of Ricky ignoring my snotty crying, there would be an adult here to keep monsters at bay.
He was a dream come true at first. He cooked me actual food. SpaghettiOs and grilled cheese and burgers. Even homemade cookies. I can still remember the taste of warm oatmeal cookies. I was thrilled with this new arrangement. I was safe.
He told me I could call him Uncle Pete. I did. I asked him if he would take care of me. He promised he would. He said he loved me like I was his own little girl.
Then my parents left me alone with him for five days.
That was the last time I remember feeling anything much at all. They let him live here for six more months before he moved on.
Instead of punching my mother in the face, I start digging through Kayla’s belongings again.
“There’s no money in here, if that’s what you’re looking for.”
“Jesus Christ, Mama. What kind of grown woman would steal cash from a teenage girl?” I flash a wide grin over my shoulder so she knows I’m insulting her nasty, greedy, grubby little fingers. “Wait a minute!” I gasp. I even press a dismayed hand to my chest. “How do you know there’s no cash in here? You didn’t already paw through everything looking for it, did you?”
“I was making sure there weren’t no drugs in here!” she barks as I snort in disbelief. “What if the social workers came by to check on the environments?”
I open the top drawer of the dresser to find a combination of fun underwear full of pink cartoon drawings and racier white lace. Not so unusual for a sixteen-year-old. Disappointingly typical. When I shove the panties aside, I spy a little stack of business cards pushed into a corner. Not quite so typical.
The one on top is from a school resource officer she probably got in trouble with a few times. Beneath it are several more cards. One from the youth minister at Central Baptist Church, one from the head of a kids’ soccer league, and one from the owner of a local equipment rental company.
Hm. “Does Kayla have a job?” I ask.
Another raspberry from my mom. The woman is truly a master of Shakespearean buffoonery.
“Okay. Does she play soccer?”
“Yeah, right. She’d get her skinny ass kicked up and down that field.”
Interesting. I slide the cards into my pocket and poke around a little more. The dresser yields no more surprises, and the rest of the room is crowded with more boxes of my parents’ belongings. I have no idea what they’ve managed to accumulate so efficiently over the years. A bunch of crap anyone else would throw away, I suppose.
“I don’t know why you’re so worried about some niece you don’t even know,” my mom snipes again as I rifle through the clothing in the tiny closet. “You can’t even be bothered to worry about your own parents. We couldn’t find you anywhere! What kind of a bitch changes her number after her own daddy has a stroke?”
“The kind of bitch whose loving mother calls her a bitch all the time would be my best guess.”
“I call a spade a spade and a bitch a bitch. You are a goddamn devil child and you always were.”
Her insults used to enrage me, but I’ve heard them so many times, they inspire nothing but amusement. My mother and father made me who I am, so let them experience me in all my glory.
When I consider my childhood—and I rarely do—it’s strange to me that I turned out this way when others don’t. There weren’t years of horrific physical abuse. No incest. Nobody locking me in a crawl space or chaining me to a bed. It was just the drip, drip of emotional abuse and endless neglect accented with a dash of sexual assault, same as so many other kids in this world face.
I assume my genetics helped. My parents are both screwed up and narcissistic, and Ricky isn’t far from sociopathy himself. What a nasty little genetic brew my folks created.
Ricky caused more trouble than I did growing up, but my parents mostly left him alone. I’m not sure if that was straight-up misogyny or if my mother hated me in particular for some reason. It’s not even worth puzzling over. She’s worthless and mean, and I’m too strong to bother with her anymore.
“Do you think that Little Dog guy could have taken her? He’s gone too, or so people are saying.”
“Who knows, but he didn’t come around here looking for her like everyone else.”
I set down the pillow I was checking under and turn to narrow my eyes at my mother. “Who’s ‘everyone else’?”
There’s a quick flinch of the lined skin around my mom’s eyes. A deep swallow as her gaze darts away from me. “Friends. Acquaintances. Whatever.”
I could threaten her, try to force her into some kind of truth, but my mom is slippery if she’s anything. She’s conned so many do-gooders out of so many donations over the years, and pinning her down on her lies is like trying to nail snot to a wall, as the old saying goes.
She might even have less shame than I do. But she does love to talk shit about people.
“You said there were grown men coming around here. Boyfriends?”
“Boyfriends!” Her smile is a hard, mean line, just lips stretched straight over teeth. “More like customers, considering the cash they flashed around.”
“Did you tell the cops that?”
“Yeah, right,” she scoffs. “Like I want everyone in town knowing what my granddaughter is. One guy wanted it so bad, he paid me money! That girl must’ve sucked the chrome right off his hitch. Looked like a cop too.”
“What do you mean?”
She shrugs, still smiling tight and mean. “Serious. Bald. Wearing a sport coat. And I saw he had a gun on him.”
“And then you . . . sold him information about your teenage granddaughter.” I’m not the least bit surprised.
She blows another raspberry. “All I did was point him toward Little Dog’s place. Figured Mr. Man could ask his questions there and stop bothering me. You think I need all the neighbors gossiping about who’s knocking on my door day and night? This is a respectable home, despite her best efforts.”
“When was this?”
“Week after Kayla took off.” She tugs a cigarette from her pocket to light it. “We need to talk about Daddy now that you’re home. He’s your own flesh and blood.”
“I ain’t home,” I correct her, and walk straight toward the hall until she’s forced to back out of the doorway and let me through.
“You owe us,” she spits at my back.
“Lady, I don’t owe you shit.”
“We’re your family!”
“Fat lot of good that ever did me.”
When I pass my father, he’s set the fries aside and taken up his bourbon again. The TV is blaring now, our little family reunion insufficient to hold his interest. I breeze right past him toward the door.
My mom follows me outside. “You get back here.”
“A few minutes ago you told me to get the hell out of your house. I’m gettin’.”
“We need help. We’re out here suffering—”
“I can’t imagine that Social Security doesn’t treat you just fine, considering Central Baptist paid for a good chunk of this place. You ain’t gonna starve, Mama, and Daddy looks like he’s getting more than enough to eat. And drink.”
“So do you, you fat ass.”
“Oh, good Lord,” I mutter, nearly skipping down the ramp. The yard might be a dried-out mess, but damned if it isn’t a welcome sight now. Even the gray sky looks prettier now, but then again, I’m facing away from the steam cloud.
