“Sorry, I’m not in the mood today.”
And Jared, bless his little heart, looked at me all perplexed-like, as if he couldn’t fathom what possible difference my interest made. But he wasn’t all bad. He was cheating on his girlfriend and he was evil to Evan Salinger, but he backed off when I told him no.
He sighed and adjusted his crotch. “This was a giant waste of time. I could’ve been out with the guys at Spinelli’s.”
“Sorry.”
He cocked his head and a mop of unruly brown hair fell over his eyes in a way most girls at Wilson found adorably scruffy. He looked at me hard, probably for the first time since we’d started meeting out there.
“You know, you’re sort of lucky I’m even giving you the time of day.”
I arched my visible eyebrow. “Is that a fact?”
“I mean, you’re really pretty. The one side of your face? You’d be so hot without that scar. What happened, anyway?”
I spun the Wheel of Tragedy. It landed on Earthquake.
“I was visiting family in San Francisco. Earthquake country. I was standing by a huge window when a 6.5 hit, and the window shattered all over me. Wrong place at the wrong time.”
Jared whistled low between his teeth. “Damn. That sucks.”
“Yeah,” I agreed. “It totally did.”
Once again, talking about my scar dredged up the horrific memories of how it got there. Jasper, the screw I dragged down my skin, his arrest, and then my mother.
I was the one who found her in the bathtub. My cheek, bandaged now and tight with itchy pain, woke me up in the middle of the night. I shuffled out of my room toward the bathroom to pee. I was holding my favorite stuffed blue whale even though I was too old for stuffed animals, and sleepily pushed open the bathroom door.
I couldn’t see her all at once. Not as a whole. Only flashes, like blood splatter on a white tile. My brain broke it down, reorganized it into a few words reminiscent of a poem we’d been studying in school that month.
So much depends upon
her
eyes glazed by vacancy
And white skin
submerged
in red water
A snapshot of sixteen words. Words, poetry…they would forever be my coping mechanism when counseling was sporadic or nonexistent. A consolation prize: to find my artistic passion at the hands of terrible tragedy. My mother’s death cleaved my life in half. The chasm left behind was so deep and wide, I couldn’t even see the shore of my past. Shrouded in black and gray mist, it was lost to me. She was lost to me, and so were all of our happy memories, before Jasper. They were trapped there on the other side.
I could’ve jumped into that chasm with my mother, but I chose to keep walking.
I can’t say it always felt like the right choice.
I got dressed, laced up my boots, grabbed my notebook and slipped out the window. I knew it was safe to sneak out. It would be a frosty day in hell before Gerry even thought about coming into my bedroom to check on me at night. He was probably snoring on his chair in front of the TV, another bucket of KFC tipping out of his lap.
I headed east toward the edge of town, where the new water park had been built. The night was sticky and thick. The streetlamps pushed the dark away in halos of pale yellow. Moths battered themselves against the bulbs. The cacophony of locusts or crickets or whatever bugs infested this part of the county at the tail end of spring was relentless. But they were the only sound. No cars drove by. It was only nine o’clock but Planerville had gone to sleep.
Once at Funtown, I climbed a high fence of chain-link draped in green canvas and dropped to the other side. The slides and sprinklers were shut off, but the park remained well-lit. New lamps and floods were set up at intervals and left on to deter trespassers. Such as myself.
I passed the tube slides, rising and coiling up like snakes. But they didn’t freak me out or anything. The memory of my mother in the bathtub faded. Instead, I recalled a vague memory of going to Tybee Island with her when I was four. The memory was grayed out, like a piece of moldy bread, but it was infinitely better than the bathtub.
We made sandcastles, or played in the mud. I can’t recall, but I can hear echoes of her laugh. Her laugh sounded more like a kid than a grown-up, and even then—to my four-year-old observation—her eyes looked a little loose in her head. Everything about her was loose and kind of jangly. Nerves, she told me when she was happy.
We moved a lot in her endless quest for solid employment, and when she was happy, she’d shout and dance me around whichever tiny shabby apartment we happened to be living in. “The light’s flipped on, Josie!”
Other times the light was off, and Mama stayed in her bed, sleeping. For days. I’d come to her and she’d peek her tangled head out and smile.
“Is the light off, Mama?” I’d ask in a tiny, fearful voice, and she’d nod and pat my cheek.