“Just go,” said my mother, and she waved her away.
Jenny squeezed my fingers once, hard, and then released me. She backed off slowly toward her car, a little red Chevy truck my father had bought her for her sixteenth birthday. There was such hope in that car. It was a gift for the future. I gave her a glance, then stared at my mother, watched her watch Jenny get in the car. I think there were fifty more things she wanted to say, and I could see her lipstick-stained lips holding back the words in the way they bent together in a hard line against the edges of her teeth. She was not crying, but I would not have blamed her if she did. Jenny was her blood. But everyone had to leave home sometime. It was the only way to become part of the world.
At last, Jenny started the engine behind me and our mother let out a gasp of air from between her lips and the word “curfew” spit out in front of her. It was the first word to make it to the top. “You better be home by curfew,” she said. “Do you hear me, Jenny?”
Jenny revved the engine and turned on the stereo, and curse words poured from the car, the rapper singing it all so Jenny did not have to. She pulled out of the driveway too quickly and the bottom of the car bumped against the curb and there was a loud crunch between the two. My mother winced when this happened.
And then Jenny was gone, off probably to a field somewhere, where she would stand against an elm tree and let some boy run his hands up and down her body like he owned her. But that girl did not know anything about love. She only knew about gratification. I walked to my mother and put my arm around her and she leaned against me a little and together we went inside to sit, as we always did, at the kitchen table. My father had made himself scarce. I never bothered asking where he was anymore. It had been months since I had seen him. He had relinquished any sort of ownership of the family.
My mother pulled two cans of beer from the refrigerator and popped the tops off them. I had always loved that sound. It was the sound of something exciting beginning. She sat down across from me and lit a slender cigarette. Behind her head were six framed prints of sketches of fruit: plums, pears, apples, oranges, bananas, and tomatoes. I remembered how we had sat around the table at dinner and argued sometimes about whether or not tomatoes belonged up there with the rest.
“I don’t even think it’s an ‘if’ or a ‘when’ anymore,” said my mother. “I think that girl’s pregnant, and she’s going to hide it till it’s too late and we can’t do anything about it.”
“How do you know?” I said.
“I’ve heard her puking a few times this week.”
I thought of all the skinny actresses in my magazines, flat boards in profile, and all the articles putting them on deathwatch. “Maybe she’s just bulimic,” I said.
There was a pause, and my mother and I both burst into laughter. We made mistakes in our family, but we were always hungry. Hungry was how you knew you were healthy. We were not that stupid.
“We’ve been fighting for days,” she continued. “Weeks, months, I don’t know.” She shrugged her shoulders sadly. “It just keeps getting worse.”
I felt bad for my mother, but it made me think I would not come around as much anymore. It was not that I wanted to abandon my family, but I did not think I could do any good there. Once I had moved out of the house, I had become powerless there. I would just get in the way, and I knew it would only get worse. Someone would ask me to choose sides. I was no good with conflicts. I just wanted to be happy. A girl in love, not a girl with problems. Even if they were someone else’s, I still felt marked by them.
“WHY ARE YOU THAT WAY?” said Valka. “I always think other people’s problems are other people’s problems. Like I got enough to deal with.”
“You are a liar, Valka. Look at where you are right now. With me. And my problems.” I laughed at her. “And you met me in a bar in Las Vegas. A poor crazy little farm girl on the run.”
Valka took a swig of champagne and tipped the bottle at me. “Well, you’re not poor now, are you?”
The money. Yes, that money.
I LISTENED TO MY MOTHER TALK for a while longer, list Jenny’s crimes against the family, against her. I wished I could talk about Thomas and his surgery. He had forbidden me from doing that. That was the worst part. That I could not tell her what was going on with me. And I was not even sure if she would want to know anyway.
I wished I could say, “Mom, I can’t feel him. And I don’t know if it’s him or it’s me.”
And then she would hug me and say, “Hang in there, little girl.”
Or she would say, “I can tell you how to fix it.” That would have been the best of all.
But to say anything to her would have been like admitting some kind of failure. All I felt was shame when I thought about it.