The black-and-white clock on the library wall was oversized and easy to read. She would wait twenty minutes more, until the hands pointed to a few minutes past five. Then she would pack up her books and walk carefully down the pitted stone staircase to the side exit. If she walked at her usual pace, she would reach the front door of her house around 5:25. She had to be home by five-thirty or her mother would start to worry.
That’s what Judith told people. “If I’m not home by five-thirty, my mother will start to worry.” But “worry” was a euphemism. An entirely truthful girl would have said this: “If I am not home at exactly five-thirty, my mother will start panicking. At five-thirty-one, she will call my father at work. At five-thirty-two, she will call the police, and at five-thirty-three, she will call the local hospitals. At five-thirty-five, she will sit at the table and start crying. She will tell my sisters and little brother that I am most likely dead, hit by a car or kidnapped by a child molester, and that will make them start to cry. And then, when I walk in at five-thirty-six or five-thirty-eight, she will scream at me and wring her hands. She will call me irresponsible and selfish. I will apologize and promise never to be late again. She will go into her room, slam the door and refuse to come out. I will hug my sisters and tell them everything is fine. I will rock my little brother on my lap until he isn’t scared anymore. I will finish making dinner if my mother has started it, feed my siblings and get them ready for bed. My father, after getting the five-thirty-one warning call, will work late that night and come home between nine and nine-thirty. I will leave a plate for him wrapped in tinfoil on top of the stove. He will eat it alone at the kitchen table, knock on my door before he goes to sleep and call out ‘good night.’ And in the morning, we will all pretend it never happened.”
The first time Rose behaved that way, Judith thought her mother must have been upset about something else. But then it happened a second time and a third. So Judith tried her best never to be late, not from the library or anywhere else. The trouble was, she could never predict when her mother might “worry.” On school days, it was settled that she had to be home by five-thirty from the library. But what if she took Teddy to the park? Or walked to the drugstore for a candy bar on a Saturday afternoon? How many times had she come home to find her mother agitated and hysterical, sometimes when she had only been gone for fifteen minutes? She had lost count.
Judith tried to get her mother’s attention whenever she left the house, to set a return time so they both knew when she was expected. But half the time her mother forgot the time they had agreed upon and ended up “worrying” anyway. Judith tried leaving notes, detailed and clearly printed with her return time circled in red pen. But her mother claimed she never saw them. “How am I supposed to know that I should look for a letter when my child is dead in a ditch somewhere?”
“But I’m not dead in a ditch.”
“How could I have known that? You were twenty minutes late!”
“Mother, please. I’m not late. If you had just read my note—”
“Stop talking to me about notes! I won’t be tormented like this!”
Experience taught Judith a few things. She stopped defending herself. She stopped responding to the accusations. She learned that if she apologized right away, the recovery time was faster. So she apologized, over and over, until apologizing felt just the same as having an ordinary conversation. She grew accustomed to it.
In the old days, Judith might have talked to her aunt Helen about the situation. But she felt uncomfortable doing that now. Ever since Teddy’s accident two years ago, Judith’s mother and her aunt barely spoke to each other. Things had been bad before then, but after Sol’s party, they had gotten worse. For years Judith had been trying to figure out the source of the tension between them. She paid close attention whenever the two of them were together. But no matter how attentive she was, she couldn’t uncover the source of the hostility. All she knew was that she no longer felt right talking to her aunt about anything having to do with her mother. She talked to Aunt Helen about school, her sisters and even her father. But discussing her mother felt like a betrayal. The topic wasn’t difficult to avoid—Aunt Helen never asked about her mother anyway.
Rose started “worrying” about Judith a few months after the accident. She worried about the other children too, but since Teddy was home with her all day and Mimi and Dinah still went to the school across the street, Judith was the primary object of her mother’s distress.
Judith knew that if she went directly home after school each day, she might be able to prevent some of her mother’s outbursts. But, as much as she wanted to avoid causing her mother additional anxiety, she knew that if she gave up her outings and changed her routine to pacify Rose, her own obedient nature would take over, and slowly the few freedoms she had managed to retain would be lost. There were so many days that she longed to go home—she wanted to play with Teddy and her sisters, or she wanted to have a piece of the apple cake she knew was left over from dinner the night before. But even on those days she forced herself to walk to the library. If she didn’t have any homework, she would pick out a book to read or look through the college brochures she borrowed from the school counselor. Eventually she stopped looking for books. The brochures became her escape.
Judith would open the college booklets and imagine herself in the photographs, walking on the campuses and chatting with the students. She would live in a dormitory with other girls her age, and no one would cry if she was five minutes late returning from a class. Her mother wouldn’t have to worry about her anymore—there would be dorm monitors to keep track of her.
Judith was just a junior in high school, but one of the counselors had spoken to her in the fall about the possibility of graduating early, in the same class as her cousin Harry. “I really think you should consider accelerating your program here,” Mrs. Morhardt suggested. “You’ve already taken most of the classes we have to offer, and you’ll have more than enough credits to graduate at the end of this year. Why waste time reviewing what you already know when you could be expanding your knowledge?” Mrs. Morhardt made it sound so simple. When she asked Judith if her parents had given their permission, Judith told her yes even though she hadn’t dared to mention it to them. The few friends Judith had at school didn’t know about her plan. In truth, she didn’t consider it a plan at all because she hardly gave it any thought. She had gotten some forms from Mrs. Morhardt and applied to a few colleges back in December, but she was convinced that none of her applications would be accepted. Judith couldn’t imagine that anyone would actually take the time to reply to her letters. It was already April, and there had been no news. Judith would tell Mrs. Morhardt that she would stay in high school and graduate with her proper class. She was resigned to another year of afternoons at the library.
Judith looked at the clock again: 4:48. She got up to stretch her legs and ran her finger over the top of one of the bookcases. It was caked with dust and turned her finger black. What an uninviting place this was. Three round tables had been thrown between the bookcases, with mismatched wooden chairs surrounding them. The only light source was a dim fluorescent fixture that flickered and hummed every few minutes. The clock ticked. Soon it would be time to leave.