Loser's Bracket

“Shut up, bitch. I said no. He’s not here.”

  She didn’t say she doesn’t know Butch. “Where is he?”

  “Thanks to Frankie, gone.”

  “What did Frankie do?”

  Her eyes narrow. “He didn’t do nothin’, that’s what. Nothin’ Butch told him.”

  “Right, so Frankie wouldn’t behave and Butch put bruises on him.” It kills me that Sheila can’t remember what it was like to have some new guy show up and take the reins when he had never learned to ride, guys who thought that nothing but time on the planet qualified them to be the boss.

  “Frankie hit ’im,” she says, “so Butch hit ’im back. Told Frankie to take his best shot.”

  “Trading punches.” Jesus.

  “Frankie’s gotta learn not to hit. Butch was just teachin’ him. . . .”

  “Not to hit by hitting him.”

  “He was showing him how it felt, you dumb bitch!” You can tell when Sheila knows she messed up; she defends herself by attacking.

  “Sheila, how much therapy have we had? Between the two of us?”

  “Fuck therapy.”

  I start to tell her she had to learn some basics, but this is about to go off the rails.

  “You don’t have to worry, anyway,” she says. “Butch is gone. For good.”

  “Yvonne here?” I ask.

  “She got pissed an’ left.”

  “She gone for good, too?”

  “No! For now. What the hell, she has her own place. That’s none of your goddamn business anyway.”

  “I was just asking if you were alone.”

  “Damn right I’m alone. Kid like Frankie, how am I gonna be any other way?”

  I shrug. “You told me Yvonne stays here as much as her place.”

  “Yvonne thinks I can’t keep a man ’cause down deep I’m a dyke, like her. That’s why she’s here so much—thinks she can rescue me.” She snorts.

  I’m thinking, That would be good all the way around, but I don’t say it. “Let’s get a pizza.”

  “Where am I gonna get money for a pizza? Butch took . . .”

  “I’ve got money.”

  “Why you bein’ nice? You come over here to jump my shit about Frankie, and don’t say you didn’t.”

  I raise my hands. “No reason I can’t jump your shit over a pizza.”

  She looks back into the dark house. “Well, the TV’s busted. . . .”

  “Okay then.”

  We’re sitting on the floor next to a coffee table crafted from two cardboard boxes holding up an old door, killing off four meats with extra cheese.

  “So go ahead,” Sheila says. “Jump my shit.”

  I scan the dingy room. “How is anything ever going to be different, Sheila? I mean, you keep Frankie out of foster care by leaving him with us, but it’s drugs and people like this Butch guy and pulling it together long enough to take him back, and then . . . well, all over again.”

  She takes a bite of pizza, wipes her mouth with the back of her hand, looks at me hard. “You wouldn’t get it.”

  “I’ll try. I will.”

  She stares at me a bit longer. “Naw, fuck it. Doesn’t matter whether you’d understand or not. You’re right; nothin’s changin’. You wanna know what it’s like to be Sheila Boots? I got two gears, Annie. Either I’m either up in somebody’s face gettin’ ready to beat the shit out of them or getting them to beat the shit out of me, or I’m lookin’ for a way out.”

  “A way out?”

  “You remember that chick that loaded the kids in the car and took ’em into the lake? Susan somebody?”

  “Smith,” I say. “Susan Smith.”

  “Yeah, her. I’m not sayin’ I’d ever do that, but I sure as hell know why she did.”

  My heart pounds. “You’re not . . .”

  “No, I’m not gonna off the little shit an’ I’m not gonna off myself. I got too many people I want to piss off. And don’t you go runnin’ to your fancy foster folks, or your fuckin’ caseworker, sayin’ I’m over the edge, because I’m not.”

  I can feel her retreating into her armor. “You remember that time when I was in, maybe, third grade, and Nancy took me ‘shopping’?”

  “I remember a lot of times like that.”

  “Well,” I say, “this time, the store guy caught us and was going to call the cops?”

  “Yup.”

  “Nancy talked him out of it?”

  She nods.

  “You remember what you said to me when we got back and Nancy was bragging about how she made the ‘old fool’ feel sorry for us, and I was laughing?”

  “What’d I say?” Sheila looks bored.

  “You took me out back and threatened me—said no matter what happened, no matter how many fosters we got stuck in or whatever, if I turned out like Nancy you would kick my ass.”

  “And I would’ve, too.”

  “Sheila,” I say, “you’re turning out like Nancy.”

  She swipes her hand across the coffee table, sending meat and cheese and crust flying. “I can still kick your ass,” she says, and our sisterly connection vanishes.

  I jump up; you do not want to be caught already down when Sheila comes after you. “It’s been a while since you’ve tried,” I say, and she takes it exactly how I meant it, rises slowly, fists doubled.

  “It wouldn’t piss you off so much if it wasn’t true,” I say, backing toward the door. I don’t know if she can take me or not. I’m in a lot better shape, and pretty tough as midsized chicks my age go, but I’ve seen my sister in fights before and she never stops getting up.

  She says, “Looks like this party is over.”

  And that ends that.

  July 20—Session #Who’s Counting?

  ANNIE BOOTS

  Came in with purpose today; not always the case. Intensity apparent in body language; marched in, sat, leaned forward, foot tapping, fingers drumming.

  Me: What’s up?

  Annie: Tell me again about Sheila. Me and Sheila.

  Me: What can I tell you that you don’t already know? Did something happen?

  Annie: Kind of the same thing that always happens. I get with my sister and things are going relatively well—we’re kind of understanding each other and then BLAM! It always ends in BLAM!

  Me: That’s been going on as long as you’ve been seeing me. Why was this time different?

  Annie: It’s not different, that’s the problem. When Sheila gets mad it’s just . . . exactly what I expect. No big deal there. What I hate is, that later it makes me crazy when I want her to . . . want me; you know, listen to me.

  Me: Remember, we’ve been here before, Annie. It’s always going to be a struggle for you when what makes sense won’t settle in your stomach . . . or your heart.

  Annie: So what do I do?

  Me: What can you do?

  Note: The rest of the session was spent on the struggle Annie will face all her life—the struggle between her brain and the hard wiring of her heart. If there is a takeaway, it’s this:

  Annie: You told me once you went through some of the things I’m going through.

  Me: I did tell you that.

  Annie: How did you, like, survive?

  Me: Truth? I got older. I got older and I got smarter. The feeling doesn’t go away, but it gets more recognizable, and I’ve learned to see it coming. It gets better, Annie.

  Annie: It better get better.

  Me: But you can’t just wait for that.

  Annie: I know, I know. I gotta make it.

  Emily Palmer, M.A.

  Chapter

  Five

  The uncool thing about swimming is I suck so bad the workouts are at least as torturous as I feared when Coach Rick said he’d be cranking up the yards. It’s possible Janine, kind, patient girl that she is, doesn’t like the way I twitch my bikini butt at her boyfriend, because she’s decided I should be a butterflyer and has taken me on as a project; “helping” me with my stroke when my arms are so heavy I can’t get them ou
t of the water to hoist up some sign language. Leah warned me about messing with her.

  “Your arms aren’t clearing the surface after the first two strokes,” she says. “You look like a sinking windmill. Work on shoulder flexibility.” Quiet, calm voice. Instructional. Instructions my body is not built to follow. “You’ll get it,” she says, and pats my wet head. “Never give up.”

  Go help someone who can swim. I canvass beyond the chain-link fence for Nancy.

  “We work out every day at noon,” I told Nancy after I signed up. “Just come down once a week. Bring Sheila; she’ll love how I suck. I’ll buy you lunch.”

  It doesn’t make sense that I care so much, but my heart goes back to those days when I was five and it was just the three of us in a hollowed-out single-wide, days when I would have done anything to make her, or Sheila, proud, make them want me.

  “I’ll be there every day, baby,” she said four weeks ago when I made the change between my best sport and my worst. She’s showed up once so far, waited outside the pool area long enough to say, “You’re not very good at that. Them other kids’re swimmin’ right on past you.”

  I should have known that if Nancy had only made a small fraction of my b-ball games, she sure wasn’t going to make practices.

  “Well, I enjoyed it. Keep it up. I’m meetin’ Walter.” That was our visit. My brain is wired backward. The minute she does show I’m ready for a fight, but when she doesn’t I get this . . . emptiness. It’s like those chicks who cut on themselves; no obvious upside, but every one of them says there’s relief when the blade or the piece of glass slices through.

  Today as I’m walking out of the dressing room I overhear Janine talking to Coach Rick: “I think Annie should swim fly in the relay, too.” That’s a mean girl.

  “Serious?” Rick says. “She looks kind of desperate in the water.”

  “I know,” Janine says. “But she’ll do it.”

  So now I’m the butterflyer in the fifty and the relay, which will teach me great humility.

  Our first meet is scheduled for late afternoon Wednesday at our pool, where we’ll swim against the suck teams from the other city pools. A-team meets have ticket prices and concessions and portable bleachers where swimmers’ parents sit on padded benches under a canvas overhang that shades them from the hot summer sun. Wipe that out of your head. Three wooden benches stand on the grass outside the pool, occupied mostly with homeless guys who heard the starting gun and came over to see if someone got whacked, or who saw the backstroke flags being strung and thought the carnival was in town.

  The meet is scored as five separate dual meets—each team swims separately against each of the others—so I can actually finish dead last and still get points against teams who don’t have anyone dumb enough to swim fly, or flyers with my same crappy stroke but less tenacity. This is my first formal competition, and though I have no identity tied up in being a swimmer, the anticipation of competition and the fear of looking like someone has thrown a cat into the pool, has my stomach dancing.

  The longest race for the younger kids is just twenty-five yards, and even I could navigate that, but my age group goes fifty—up and back—and I might as well be swimming the English Channel with an anvil tied around my neck. I thought I had it down, but adrenaline has leaked into my brain and washed out all Janine has taught me; the starting gun fires and three strokes into the race I’m cursing Janine like she’s the Antichrist. Three-quarters through the first lap I meet the first swimmer on her way back. Coming back I look like the person hired to pretend she’s drowning on the final day of Red Cross senior lifesaving class, and five feet from the finish my feet drag on the pool bottom. That would get me disqualified in the Special Olympics, and it does so here; basically I find a way to not earn points while still finishing dead last.

  Janine stands beside the judge as he writes out my disqualification slip. “Don’t sweat it,” she says. “You’ve still got the relay.”

  “You’re not really proficient, are you?” Marvin greets me as I exit the locker room.

  “What are you doing here?”

  “You know, scouting the town for comedy. Any Boots on the ground?”

  “If anybody showed, they were so embarrassed they left before they had to talk to me.”

  Marvin giggles.

  “What?”

  “Just picturing things that might embarrass your family.”

  We walk toward the bike rack; I could have come in the car but Spokane is getting better and better with bike lanes. One thing about living here: people like to be in shape.

  “Go out for AAU track.” he says. “At least there’s air.”

  “I’m too fast,” I tell him. “I’d be on the traveling team the first week.”

  “Sign up for something you suck at. Shot put, maybe.”

  It’s a thought, but probably a bad idea to put into my hands a weapon I could drop on Nancy’s foot.

  “You know,” he says, “you could make yourself sick doing what you’re doing.”

  “Don’t start.”

  “Just sayin’.”

  “Stop sayin’.”

  I peel off at the entrance to the parking lot of our branch library. “Come on in,” I tell him. It’s an hour till book club. I’ll buy you a pop.”

  “This is as far as I go,” Marvin says. “My library’s in my room—comes complete with keyboard.”

  Marvin rides on while I chain up my bike.

  So I’m standing in the middle of the main room, deciding how to kill the hour, when I hear, “Hey, girl.”

  I turn around. “Walter! What are you doing here? Is Nancy . . .”

  He snorts. “You think it’s unusual running into me in the library. . . .”

  “Yeah, what was I thinking?”

  He waves his hand in a wide circle. “My sanctuary,” he says. “Come here to get away. . . .”

  “From Nancy?”

  He smiles. “From everything. But you’re right, she’d never look for me here. I tell her I’m going to the Corner to play some cards.”

  “I’ve got a mother who’d rather have her boyfriend in a bar than a library.”

  “Your momma doesn’t want me getting too smart.”

  “How would she know?”

  “Stop it. You gotta give her a break ever so often.”

  “Every so often I do.”

  “You here for your book club?”

  “I am.”

  He looks me over, closes one eye. “You don’t always strike me as the literary type.”

  “It’s not like we read Shakespeare,” I say.

  “Oh yeah? What dost thou read?”

  “Lotta stuff—stuff that’s recommended by other kids, or that’s just popular. Sometimes it’s fiction, sometimes real stuff—nonfiction—that just makes us smarter about the world; you know, events that a lot of people don’t know about or just about unusual people. Like big guys with small brains who cover themselves in tats and ride Harleys.”

  “So,” he says, “like real heroes.”

  “Yeah, like that.”

  “You’re a funny girl.”

  “So,” I say, “we both like books.”

  He nods toward a couple of overstuffed chairs, so I follow him over, where he sits. “Naw,” he says. “You like books. I love books.”

  I sit, too. Walter’s been around off and on for a long time, though in different capacities at different times. He knew Nancy and Rance back in their major drug days, and he’s way older than they are. But in recent times, he’s been the only guy I’ve seen Nancy with. Their relationship has changed, though I’m not sure exactly how.

  “Does Nancy know this about you?” I ask. “Your thing with books?”

  “What possible good would that serve?” he says.

  “What kind of stuff do you read?”

  He glances around the cavernous room, waves a hand over it all. “Perty much anything,” he says. “Ever’thing. Didn’t get a chance to finish college but hey
, almost any book you’d find at a university is one you can find here.”

  “You went to college?”

  “Don’t look so surprised. When you get there, look around. There’ll be plenty of scurrilous dudes.”

  “How come you didn’t finish?”

  “War.”

  “Really? Which one, like, World War Two?”

  He laughs. “How are you at math?”

  “I get by. Cheat when I have to. Why?”

  “Bet you cheat a lot. If I’d fought in World War Two, I’d be in my nineties. I get that I haven’t kept myself up, but I sure as hell don’t look ninety. It was Vietnam. ’Nuff said.”

  What I get is the “’nuff said.” Walter’s an enormous man who you wouldn’t want to meet in a dark alley, but if there’s a side of him that’s like that, I’ve never seen it. However, it’s pretty clear he doesn’t want to talk about the war, and “’nuff said” is all I need to let it drop.

  Chapter

  Six

  The book club is a different world for me—different from my Hatfield-and-McCoy existence with the Howards and the Boots, and different from my jock world, though we do have some jocks.

  Books are my escape into reality. In case you haven’t figured it out, my life is like some dark fantasy. It’s impossible to predict. I take my friends through the losers bracket when they beg me not to, just so I can have an extra shot at spending time with people who likely won’t show anyway, and if they do, we’ll squabble. I lie to people who have gone far out of their way to take care of me because the truth of my motives seems crazy and I’d be embarrassed telling it. Half the time I lie to myself because it’s . . . it’s just easier. I’m too smart for my own good, I guess, because I know all that—and have the vocabulary to describe it—and it causes huge arguments inside me, which probably means I shouldn’t read so many books. How’s that for circular thinking?

  But I’m not about to stop reading books.

  It’s funny how I got in here. I saw the sign over by the teen section about three years ago, walked over to the desk, and said, “So how do I get into this book club?”

  Sharon the Liberrian, as we call her, looked me up and down and said, “Show up.”