Bobby, the white boy who’d been flirting with Sam the day before, slid down to our end of the table, too.
“Whatcha guys doin’?” he asked, smiling at me, and then turning to Sam, who poked her tongue out at him. “Hey,” he yelled. She exploded into laughter, so did he, and then so did I.
Bobby’s hair was a wavy brown puff that sagged over his hazel eyes. He had this perpetual smirk on his face, a sort of half smile, as though he was always about to laugh at something. Any time I looked at him, that little half smile made me always ready to laugh at something, too. Sitting there with him and Sam instantly made me happy.
Another friend was with Bobby, a tall guy in baggy jeans who introduced himself as Fief. “They call him that because of that cartoon mouse in that movie,” Sam told me. “ ’Cuz of his ears, he looks like him.” Fief was Irish, slightly red-faced, with slightly big ears. He resembled someone who might have been in my family, I thought.
“ ’Sup, guys,” he said, sliding over.
For the entire duration of our lunch period, we talked as a group, apart from the hundreds of kids around us. I was one of them, jumping in, making people laugh, suggesting plans outside of school. When the bell rang, we walked upstairs together, parted in the halls, waving back at one another until we passed through our individual classroom doorways, out of sight. For the first time ever, I had no doubt that I would be at school tomorrow.
Brick’s work schedule dictated the routine in his house, and every day was a carbon copy of the last. Each morning, I awoke at 7:15 a.m., to the oldies DJ playing “Happy, Happy Birthday” for the daily birthday movie ticket raffle. As the radio called out listeners’ names, a thick cloud of cigarette smoke from Brick’s Marlboros came floating above Lisa’s head and mine, in the living room where our bunk bed was stashed in the corner. I could hear him shouting for Ma to wake up.
“Jean, Jean,” he’d grumble. “It’s morning; time to go.” She’d prepare the coffee and get us on our feet while he showered. It was the closest I’d ever come to having a responsible routine. Certainly it was unique to Ma, who always had trouble waking up, until Brick yelled moistly into her face and sometimes pulled her off the bed with a rough jerk of the arm in order to make her listen. I knew that what caused her exhaustion was no longer drugs (she finally wasn't using any), but the illness progressing. From overhearing their conversations, I knew Brick knew she was ill. But he didn’t show any awareness or sensitivity in the way he treated her. Watching him in his wrinkled, too-tight boxers standing over her small, resting body revived a growing sense of anger I’d felt since I’d first met Brick. Anger that arose in me each time he’d called Ma away from the phone, interrupting our delicate conversations, back when she’d first left. No one had ever bothered Ma while she slept, especially not Daddy. He never needed anyone to start his day for him, much less feed him. Thinking of his independence sent a wave of worry through me. Was he doing okay on his own? The phone had gotten cut off on University again and we hardly spoke anymore. I both wanted and didn’t want him to see the way Brick was treating Ma. I also wondered whether Daddy’s lack of attention, his life of secrets, had caused Ma to gravitate to Brick in the first place. But this couldn’t have been what she’d expected.
Soon after, Brick and Ma would head out together, him to work, Ma to the bar, where they came to know her so well that she was served before the general customers came knocking, while the glasses were still being wiped clean and last night’s stools had yet to be lowered off the counter. There was no real reason for her to get up in the morning except that Brick said, “This is when people wake up,” and so she did. To kill the time, she went to Madden’s and drank. By noon, she would return home, drunk beyond the capacity for speech.
Lisa beat everyone at getting up in the morning, except that it was not like before, when she made it a point to get me up for school, too. Maybe it’s because we were sharing a space—the living room—for the first time, but Lisa was more aggressive with me than ever. She had developed a hair-trigger temper with me, snapping if I asked her even the most basic questions.
“Lisa, is there any more toilet paper?”
“I don’t know, Liz, you live here now, too, can’t you figure it out?” I couldn’t help but feel as if I had invaded her space.
She readied herself at around six A.M., staring into a large mirror on the side of Brick’s living room wall. But instead of searching her image or experimenting with facial expressions, Lisa approached her reflection the way an artist would her canvas. The process was graceful, and each time the transformation surprised me. She began with a dainty zippered bag from which she pulled all types of soft pencils and wands. First she lined her lips, then filled them in with a bright creamy red. Sometimes, if she was going out with her new boyfriend, she drew symmetrical upturned tails at the edges of her dark eyes, like Cleopatra’s. Lisa’s vision had worsened but then stabilized over the last few years, causing her to lean in, allowing just enough room between herself and the mirror for whatever tool she was using. She left in a brilliant flash of glistening gold hoop earrings and tightly gelled hairstyles, going either to school or—in the evenings—to a life she’d carved out for herself elsewhere.
Many nights she’d return with a faded version of the vivid artistry she’d left with, dark pigment rimming her lids, dull pink smudged around her lips like runny watercolors. I didn’t dare ask about the dense maroon blotches, like bruises, spotted around her neck, but quietly willed her to sit on my bottom bunk and confide in me about her boyfriend, and what being seventeen was all about.
“Do you have MTV?” Sam asked the first time she visited Brick’s house. On television, O. J. Simpson was crossing and uncrossing his legs in an LA courtroom. A camera zeroed in on his facial expressions as some new evidence was being revealed. We were cutting school for the day. I’d managed to be in semi-regular attendance for almost two months, so I didn’t think it would be too big a deal to miss a day or two at this point. Lisa wasn’t home yet, and Ma had already returned from the bar and passed out on Brick’s bed, bordered by an impossible amount of loose laundry, crates of cans, and stacks of old magazines. We sat on the couch in the living room, Sam painting her toenails a glossy black.
“I think we might have it, but you have to check. I’ve never had cable before.”
“Anything but this,” she said, hitting some buttons on the remote. A jumble of guitar strings shot out from the TV speakers. Sam curled her foot to her chest and puffed out her cheeks, blowing on her toes.
“This is a cool place,” she said. “Your mom’s boyfriend is almost never here, for real? And your mom sleeps all day?”
“Yeah, pretty much.”
“Sounds great.” Even though it didn’t feel great to live under a stranger’s roof and to have Ma drained of all her vitality, I knew from my one visit to Sam’s house why she thought so. I wasn’t delegated responsibility over a younger sibling. I didn’t have to deal with the intimidating father she described, around whom everyone at her house walked on eggshells. I hardly had to deal with adults at all, apart from my caseworker’s checkups.
Leaning on the arm of the couch, Sam reached to the back of her head. With one jerk of a single brass pin, her light brown hair, phone-cord curly, soft as silk, dropped from a tightly wrapped bun down to her waist. Colorful rubber bands were worked into a single, thin braid within the larger mass. Together, the range of color in the braid made a complete rainbow.
“Oh my God,” I marveled. “Damn, look at your hair. I had no idea it was so long. It’s really nice.”
“It’s a bitch to comb, I’ll tell you that much. My dad is the one who’s in love with it. If he likes it so much, he should grow his own,” she said, unraveling the bottom of the braid with her fingers. The smell of peach conditioner carried up to my nose.
A Nirvana video came on; Kurt Cobain filled the screen. “Oh, he is so hot,” Sam said, perking up. “Oh my God, I would so do him.”
The com
ment had taken me off guard.
“Yeah . . . I guess he’s cute,” I said. I didn’t know how to join in here; boys hadn’t occurred to me yet. They might as well have been bigger versions of females. The only difference to me so far was that every so often I found myself staring a little longer at one, or feeling slightly more curious or impressed by things they did. But I couldn’t say I’d ever really been attracted to any boy. I watched Kurt’s face, covered in blond stubble, as he strummed his guitar in wide circles for the camera. Studying his features, I imagined what it might feel like to cup his cheek, to hold his hand. Suddenly, his face became Bobby’s face, smirking his half smile at me.
“Yeah, I guess I would say he’s definitely hot,” I told Sam. I didn’t know why what I’d said embarrassed me so much. But from her face, there was no sign that she noticed.
“God,” she said, biting her fist. “Damn right.” She turned the volume way up.
“Pass me that,” I said, reaching for her nail polish. Holding the jar, I worried that Daddy would somehow see me all the way from University Avenue and think I was being girly. I shook it back and forth in motions that matched the grating noise of the guitars, then twisted the top open and shouted over the music. “Yeah, I would so do him, too.”
Sam and I spent every day together. Ours was a hasty, overnight bond that we both swore would last until we grew into old ladies, pushing ourselves around some resort in Florida with walkers. In the meantime, we planned the next fifty years of our lives together. Right after high school, we would hitchhike to LA, where we’d become successful screenwriters, then eventually move to San Francisco when Hollywood became lackluster, after making more money and visiting more countries than we ever knew existed. Our neighboring houses would be on that winding hill in San Fran that I’d seen in Daddy’s postcards, and in Rice-A-Roni commercials. After our children (three each) grew up and moved away, we would buy big, old-lady sunglasses to wear throughout our sixties, and we’d tan on beach chairs in our connected backyards until our skin turned into living leather. New York would have to do for now.
In a way, though, what we hardly realized was that we’d begun our shared lives already.
Little by little, Sam began filling up drawers at Brick’s apartment, packing her sketch pad, tapes, shoes, and clothing into sloppy piles that mingled our things completely over time. Together, we wandered Bedford Park at all hours of the night. I always suggested she take us by Bobby’s, where we threw pebbles at his window. My heart would thump, waiting for him to appear. TV light flickering from his darkened room, he’d lean out to whisper to us, throw down bags of chips, and talk about wrestling or his latest video game endeavor.
Sometimes he’d have Myers and Fief over, and they’d sneak out to join us in the parkway, where we’d make fun of teachers and take turns telling stories. I told them about my adventures with Rick and Danny, about the fire at the old folks’ home and how Rick got electrocuted.
“I just told him ‘test this out,’ and he did it. His fingers were burned like toast!”
Sam’s favorites were the stories of the serial killers Daddy told me about. She liked hearing what psychologists believed motivated them to commit their crimes. It thrilled me to see my new friends get as scared as I was when I first heard Daddy’s stories, or to see them crack up in hysterical laughter at the very mention of Rick’s name.
But mostly, Sam and I were alone. We made rounds to the all-night diner on Bedford and Jerome, where we befriended the Mexican night manager, a stout, often drunk man named Tony. There, we fended off the cold and shared bits and pieces of our lives over plates of French fries smothered in mozzarella cheese and gravy, the diner’s ancient speakers crackling Mexican boleros through the air.
On those nights we spent together wandering around outside, Sam confided in me some very difficult things that were happening in her home. The exact details of these events she shared with me are private; however, I will say that she needed to be away from home, for her own good reasons. And the things she shared inspired me to want to take care of her, out of my growing love for our friendship, for the sisterhood we were building together. If she felt she could not go back home, I told her, she could always stay with me.
I began to sneak her in for sleepovers, without Brick knowing it. He had firmly warned me not to have any guests past ten o’clock, but given that he went to sleep precisely at nine thirty, the rule was easy to break. We took a bed sheet and strung it along the side of Lisa’s and my L-shaped bunk bed. Then, with an old paisley quilt from Brick’s hall closet, I cushioned the ground for Sam’s resting spot. All we had to do was open and then slam the front door in the evening, to give the impression she’d gone home, then tiptoe back through the room and conceal her. With Sam’s legs tucked beneath the top of the bottom bunk and her torso sticking out beside my head, I would pass her half my TV dinners, whole glasses of Pepsi, Oreos, or any of Brick’s endless rebate supplies.
I found that as wild as Sam could be, there was also something puppy dog-like about her, as though threaded through her tough, eccentric outbursts were subtle indications that she needed caring for. It was in the way she could walk into an elevator and never press a button, but just wait there for me to do something; or how when we crossed streets, she never navigated, but walked blindly by my side, in total trust. If I made one bad move, I thought, a truck would flatten us both; it was all in my hands. She was fine with that, and that was fine with me.
At night, under my bed, sometimes I could hear her crying softly. But whenever I asked her what was wrong, she’d brush it off, say it was just her allergies or that I was hearing things. But I knew better. Sometimes, when she snored in her sleep—a cute little whistle—I’d reach down and touch a piece of her hair, run it through my fingers, stare at how, in the darkness of our room, the moonlight turned it glossy as polished onyx. I will keep her safe, I told myself.
One evening, while I poured myself soda in the kitchen, muffled shouts came from Brick’s bedroom. No one responded to him, yet the muffled noises continued and sounded like half of a conversation. As I walked over to investigate, bits and pieces became decipherable.
“In my own goddamn house, I can’t even find a clean fork . . . didn’t ask for this . . . if you or those lazy girls of yours . . . group home . . .”
Was he yelling about unwashed dishes? All around me, dirt was ground into the floor; newspapers, yellowed with age, were scattered across the room; empty boxes of doughnuts and potato chips trailed from his bedroom as I walked an obstacle course around his crates of supplies. Brick complaining about a mess seemed insane.
Besides, my mother hardly ever dirtied a fork. The closest Ma came to eating food were the cocktails and sedatives she took randomly throughout the day—she never had an appetite anymore. Even if I put hot bowls of New England clam chowder on the nightstand (her favorite) or cut the crust from her tuna-fish sandwiches, the bowls were returned chilly and full, the tuna untouched. Sometimes I did leave piles of dishes, and I knew that was my fault. But could he really be screaming at Ma about it?
Through the cracked door, I peered in and saw that he was waving around a roll of paper towels, screaming, frantically sweeping it over Ma’s depleted body as she lay motionless, one arm protectively drawn over her head. He was in his underwear, a white T-shirt straining to cover his large, hairy stomach. A pile of dirty forks, which he must have collected himself, was clumped on the nightstand. He raised the paper towels over his head and grumbled, “You hear me, Jean? Do you?” thunking the roll on Ma’s head and face. I darted inside.
“What the hell are you doing?” I yelled. “She’s sick. Don’t touch—”
Before I could fully step into the room, Brick grabbed the door. “Good-bye,” he interrupted, slamming it with a force that broke against my foot, scraping the skin on my toes so hard that the cuticles peeled back in chunks. A surge of pure heat seared through me as I hobbled on one leg, holding my damaged foot in my hand. I almost screa
med in pain, but held it in for Ma’s sake. Black nail polish had chipped off on three of my toes; red blotches were rapidly forming under the nails in its place. At the sight of it, I tried, unsuccessfully, not to tear up.
Shoes would have been too painful. I tore open the hall closet and found a pair of oversized slippers, put them on, and stormed out, hysterical. Outside, the sky was transitioning from sunset to night. I started down the street, only half sure of where I was headed. When I passed strangers, I turned my face away, blocking my tears from their sight. Thoughts broke loose, swarming in my mind like a jumble of angry bees.
Ma was in a living hell and as much as I wanted to, I could not protect her. He was impatient with her at a time when she needed gentleness, when she needed someone to take care of her. And he didn’t need or want us there either; we were a burden. That much was obvious. It didn’t matter anyway because all I had to do was miss enough school and I’d be sent back to the home and Brick could be done with me. Mr. Doumbia was waiting if I messed up.
“You’ll end up just like your father, a no-good junkie drop-out,” Brick had taunted me once. This one day I couldn’t find the toilet paper, only I was sure we hadn’t run out because there’d been an enormous economy pack. Later, Brick screamed at me about flushing the toilet after we went, then he revealed the pack on the top shelf of his closet. He had hidden the toilet paper because someone had forgotten to flush. Not that I didn’t know already that something was off about him, but I realized then that he was as crazy as Grandma. Now he was putting Ma through a small hell over a pile of forks when she couldn’t possibly be weaker. The man was controlling and unstable, and Ma was powerless against him. I had to be away from it, from him, from Ma’s disease. It was too much.
A light sheet of rain drizzled down as I crossed Bainbridge Avenue, the wind whipping against my jacket, chilling me but seeming to strike fire along my foot. Across the sidewalk, people toted briefcases or clutched umbrellas on their return from work. I stumbled past them with my head held down, hiding my tears.