Before, After, and Somebody In Between Read online

  Before, After,

  and Somebody in Between

  Jeannine Garsee

  Contents

  Cover

  Title Page

  Dedication

  1

  2

  3

  4

  5

  6

  7

  8

  9

  10

  11

  12

  13

  14

  15

  16

  17

  18

  19

  20

  21

  22

  23

  24

  25

  26

  27

  28

  29

  30

  31

  32

  33

  34

  35

  36

  37

  38

  39

  40

  41

  42

  43

  44

  45

  46

  47

  48

  49

  50

  51

  52

  53

  54

  55

  56

  57

  Acknowledgments

  Imprint

  For Chuck, Beth, and Nate, with love,

  and for Joan Garsee, my second mom

  1

  Okay, I’m sitting on the edge of my bed, listening to Beethoven and scribbling in my notebook, when Momma shuffles up behind me and smacks me in the head. Not hard, mind you. Just enough to get my attention. “Ow!”

  “Will you get up off your butt and do something already?”

  “I am doing something. I’m writing in my journal.”

  “Well, I don’t care if you’re rewriting the damn Constitution. We still got boxes to unpack and I ain’t doing it all myself.”

  “Hey, I am unpacked,” I remind her, waving my arm around at my puny new room. Ugly brown walls, paint cracks now hidden by all my Elvis posters, a tower of books stacked by the door because Momma won’t blow any money on a bookcase. My old black trunk is shoved in one corner, one key secretly taped to the bottom, the other stashed in a hole in the windowsill.

  “Hmph. I see.” Momma clumps over to the window to survey my breathtaking view of the driveway and rusty fire escape. “Dang, how can you think with all that racket?”

  At first I think she’s talking about Beethoven. Then it dawns on me she means the Lindseys, the family upstairs. We’ve lived here less than a week and I haven’t officially met them, but I’ve seen the kids playing outside. Brothers, I guess—a boy about my age with geeky black glasses a lot like mine, plus a shorter, heftier kid, and a curly haired baby. There’s an older, scarier guy, too, maybe sixteen or seventeen, with baggy pants, chains, and a stud through his bottom lip.

  The Lindseys are black, by the way. I’m not. In fact, except for Momma and Wayne, I’m probably the only white person on the block. On the next fifty blocks, as a matter of fact. I’m surprised Wayne lives here since he’s such a bigoted redneck, but his grandparents or somebody left him this house, so he rents out the upstairs. Now Momma and I are sharing the downstairs with him.

  I’m not thrilled with any of this, but what can I do? Face it, Momma’s crazy. The craziest thing she’d done before this was ditch me last June for two whole days with nothing to eat but a bag of Fritos. When she finally showed up, dead drunk and with two black eyes, she ranted and raved half the night about how all men are scumbags, then barfed in my lap and passed out cold. Well, when she didn’t wake up the next morning, I ended up in a so-called group home for adolescents, surrounded by the biggest weirdos and losers on the face of the planet.

  Anyway, Momma was shipped to detox, and from there to rehab, and that’s where she met good old Wayne. According to Momma—eew!—it was love at first sight. With both of them originally from West Virginia, maybe they bonded over a bowl of pork rinds or something. Now here I am, stuck in the bottom half of a roach-infested dump in one of the worst neighborhoods on the east side of Cleveland. The eleventh place I’ve lived in the past six years, but at least it’s not another trailer park or a room over somebody’s garage.

  “Well, it gets on my nerves,” Momma complains, still hung up on the Lindseys. I think they’re using the ceiling over my head for basketball practice. “I don’t see how Wayne puts up with it. Maybe I oughta head up there myself and tell ‘em to knock it off.”

  “Go for it, Momma. Better ask Wayne for one of his guns.”

  Momma turns, folds her arms, and sends me one of her looks. “I’m not so sure I like your attitude, missy. Now, you gonna help me finish up with those boxes, or what?”

  I sigh and slap my notebook shut. “Yeah, yeah. Be right there.”

  The second she’s gone, I spring up, tuck my journal under my arm, slide open the screen, and swing my legs over the windowsill. Hmm, can I do it? Tossing the notebook ahead of me, I manage to scramble onto the last rung of the fire escape, then climb halfway up to where I can sit and write in peace. Ha! She doesn’t like my attitude? Well, I’m not wild about the fact that we’re now playing house with some hulking, tattooed, gun-crazy Neanderthal I never even laid eyes on till last week.

  I barely write two words when something small and hard whacks the back of my head. I jerk my face up to see that hefty kid leaning out of a second-floor window.

  “Who you spying on, bitch?” he bellows down, tossing another marble.

  “I’m not spying on anyone,” I snarl back, rubbing my head. “And don’t call me ‘bitch’!”

  The boy starts to mouth off, but he’s elbowed out of the way by the kid with the geeky glasses. “Back off, Mario! Or I’ll tell your old lady you’re throwin’ crap out the window again.”

  Mario growls something not very nice and immediately vanishes. The geek leans over the sill with that chubby, springy-haired baby balanced on his hip. “Hey, don’t mind him. He looks big, but he ain’t even twelve yet.”

  “I thought you two were brothers.”

  “Naw, cousins. His mom’s my aunt Gloria. Anthony’s his brother.”

  “That scary-looking dude?”

  “Yeah, that’s him.”

  “So who’s that?” I ask, pointing to the baby, who grins at me around all the grubby fingers in his mouth.

  “My brother De’Andre. We call him Bubby, though. Who’re you?”

  “Martha. Who’re you?”

  “Jerome. Hey, wait a sec…” The kid disappears to dump the baby somewhere inside, then hops through the window and plops down a few rungs above me. I hear the baby howling in protest, but the boy doesn’t seem concerned. “So, like, are you related to that guy or something?”

  Wayne? Puh-lease! “No, he’s just—he’s a friend of my mom. Why?”

  “Just wonderin’. I ain’t seen him bring many people around. Girlfriends, maybe.”

  “Well, I guess he won’t be bringing them around now. Unless he wants my mom to slit his throat in his sleep.” I giggle, imagining Momma’s reaction.

  When Jerome smiles, his gorgeous white teeth make him look a bit less like the world’s biggest nerd. “She sounds a lot like my aunt.”

  “Nope, nobody’s as crazy as my mom.”

  “That’s what you think.”

  “Trust me. She’s crazy.”

  “How crazy?”

  On one hand, I’d like nothing more than to keep everything a secret. On the other hand, if Momma falls off the wagon anytime soon, things could get very unpleasant around here. “She drinks, she takes pill
s. She even OD’d a while back, and she had to go to rehab—that’s where she met Wayne—and now she’s sober, and, like, goes to AA meetings all the time, and—” Okay, time to shut up.

  Jerome doesn’t seem the least bit disturbed. “So where’s your dad?” he asks, banging his heels on the metal rung.

  “Dead,” I blurt out.

  “Dead how?”

  “Promise you won’t tell?” He nods rapidly, and I admit, “He got stabbed to death in prison.”

  I wait for Jerome to run screaming in the opposite direction, which is what people normally do when they find out about my dad. But all he says is, “For real? For what, drugs?”

  “No! He just gambled a lot, and I guess he wrote some bad checks, and then he stole some money, and—”

  “You serious?”

  “Duh. Why would I make it up?” As he soaks this in, it occurs to me that he hasn’t said a word about himself. “What about your mom and dad?”

  “Nothing. They’re just gone.” He nods at my notebook before I can beg for the details. “So what’re you writing?”

  “It’s my journal. I write down everything that happens.”

  “Wow, that sounds…boring.”

  “No, it’s not. I have fifty-two of them so far.” And all of them locked in my black trunk in case Momma decides to poke around. She’d kill me if she ever read some of the stuff I’ve written about her. I don’t do it to be mean. I do it because, well, I’ve always done it. A habit, I guess, like biting my nails.

  Jerome eyes my notebook a bit more critically. “So what are you gonna be, a writer or something? A journalist?”

  “Um, I think you have to go to, like, college for that?” No point in telling him what Momma thinks about college.

  “Well, I’m going to MIT,” Jerome says loftily. “Nuclear physics.”

  “What are you, some kind of genius?”

  “Got a four-point-oh GPA,” he replies with a smug grin.

  I pat my mouth in a fake yawn. “Well, so do I. And I’m a sophomore this year ‘cause I got to skip a grade.”

  “Get—out! Me, too.” Jerome scoots down one step closer. “You starting at Jefferson tomorrow?”

  “Yes,” I say slowly, and we stare at each other in speechless wonder.

  Jerome finally says it. “Wow. This is weird.”

  “Totally weird!” I burst out. Jeez, I didn’t realize till this second how freaked out I am about starting a new school. A big city school, too, unlike my other ten, way-out-in-the-boondocks schools. “Hey, I wonder if we’ll have any classes together.”

  “C’mon up later,” Jerome offers, “and we can look at our schedules. Maybe—”

  “Mar-tha!” Momma’s howl blasts through the window below me.

  I almost fall through the railing. “I’m coming! Shit.” Reluctantly, I drag my seminumb butt up from my perch.

  “Yup, just like Aunt Gloria.” Jerome shakes his head mournfully.

  “Trade you,” I offer, only half-kidding.

  Jerome snorts. “Right. That’s what you say now.”

  2

  I unpack the rest of the boxes in less than an hour while Momma sprawls on the saggy couch, sipping Pepsi and watching a soap. Fifty or sixty pounds overweight, with megableached hair that crackles like shredded wheat, she looks nothing at all like the mom who walked me to kindergarten, or braided my hair. Sometimes when she smiles, I’ll see a flash of that old Momma, but she doesn’t smile very much, unless she’s smiling at Wayne.

  “I’m all done,” I announce. “Now can I be excused?”

  “Excused for what?”

  “I want to go upstairs and hang out with Jerome.”

  Momma squints intently at a Monistat commercial, then swivels her head in slow-motion back to me. “I don’t think Wayne wants you hangin’ around up there.”

  “Why not?”

  “Wel-l-l, it’s all boys up there, for one thing. I don’t want you getting into no trouble.”

  “God, Momma! What do you think we’re gonna do?”

  “I know what you ain’t gonna do. I just don’t know what them boys ain’t gonna do.”

  I blow out a sigh. Best way to handle Momma is to butter her up, then turn around and do what I want. “You want me to make dinner tonight?”

  “Naw, don’t bother. Wayne’s gonna pick something up, so…”

  I lean closer. “Momma, you okay? You look kinda—” Out of it?

  “I’m fine,” she answers, mashing her thumb on the volume control.

  I take the hint and slink off to my room. Not fine, when it comes to Momma, can mean either “drunk” or “depressed.” Personally, I prefer drunk. At least I know she’s alive.

  A roach skitters across the floor and boinks into my toe. I leap back with a scream, snatch up my handy can of Raid, and blast the little critter with a lethal dose of foam. I grab my school schedule and rush out to avoid the fumes, and Momma pays no attention as I duck through the back hall and up the narrow staircase.

  A tiny silver-haired lady with a soft, wrinkled brown face answers my knock. Eyes enormous behind inch-thick glasses of her own, she leans on a four-footed cane and shakes her free fist. “Child, you either a Jehovah Witness, or you selling Girl Scout cookies—and if it ain’t the cookies, you better haul your heathen self outta here before you rile me up again!”

  “Grandma, that’s Martha,” Jerome explains over her shoulder.

  “I know who she is,” the old lady snaps with a not-quite-guilty smile, hauling me into the kitchen. “This great-grandbaby of mine got no sense of humor,” she adds sideways to me as Jerome rolls his eyes. “Be nice to have a little girl round here for a change. You got a granny of your own?”

  I shake my head.

  “Mm, mm. Well, you can call me Grandma Daisy. My momma, she named all of us after flowers. Daisy, Rosie, Violet…”

  “Mar-tha.” Jerome shuffles impatiently.

  Grinning, I say good-bye to my new “grandma” and follow Jerome to his room. Swear to God, it looks like a war zone with peeling wallpaper, falling plaster, and moldy food scattered around. Well, now I know why we have roaches, but what’s with that falling-down ceiling? If I belonged to this family, I wouldn’t pay Wayne a dime till he got his ass up here and fixed it.

  Bubby, huddled in his crib in droopy training pants, stretches out his arms with a blood-curdling shriek of joy. Omigod, snotty face and all, he is just too cute! I swing him out of the crib while Jerome watches uncertainly. “Aunt Gloria wants me to keep him in his crib. He keeps messing his pants and won’t use the toilet.”

  “Duh! What is he, like, one?”

  “Just put him back, okay?”

  “In a minute.” I tickle Bubby’s fat brown thighs and blow raspberries into his belly, and he laughs so hard he chokes on his own spit.

  With a big old sigh, Jerome digs out his schedule. We sit side by side on the bed with Bubby in my lap, and compare notes. “Damn, only two classes together,” he says in disgust. “Science first period and English second.”

  “I hate science.”

  “Not me. I like it.”

  Well, he would, Mr. Nuclear Physicist.

  Bubby glances up with a stricken expression, and at that exact moment something very warm and very wet gushes into my lap. It takes me a second, but then I fly up with a yelp, a river of pee dripping down my legs. “Damn, I told you, this kid needs a freakin’ diaper—”

  “What the hell you doin’?” the infamous Aunt Gloria screams from the doorway, her long, cadaverous face twisted with rage.

  My vocal chords shrivel up into raisins.

  “Auntie,” Jerome begins as Aunt Gloria stalks over and yanks Bubby out of my arms.

  “Didn’t I tell you to use the toilet?” Bubby pedals his short legs, trying to escape, but she flips him over, smacks his butt, and dumps him headfirst into the crib.

  “Hey!” I shout as Bubby, sobbing, stuffs a sock monkey into his mouth. He gazes at me in shock and misery, like I’m
the one who betrayed him.

  “You stay in that bed till you quit pissing in your pants,” Aunt Gloria warns him, then whirls on me so fast I almost fall over. “Look, I don’t know how your momma be raisin’ you, but my boys do not entertain girls in their bedroom.”

  “But we were just—”

  “Out! And I catch you up here again, I’m gonna whup all y’all’s butts!”

  I look hard at Jerome, expecting him to argue. But all he does is jerk his head toward the door, then glance away like he’s ashamed. Why doesn’t he stick up for his baby brother?

  I duck out of the room and clatter back down the steps to find Momma parked in the kitchen, wolfing down a Big Mac. She points to a wilted bag. “There’s a cheeseburger for you, sugar pie. Wayne remembered you like ‘em. Wasn’t that sweet of him?”

  “Yeah. Sweet.”

  Momma knows I don’t like Wayne. She likes it even less when I let her know it, but doesn’t comment this time.

  “So where is he?” I ask.

  “Out in the garage looking for a wrench. Sink’s leaking.”

  Well, about time he fixed that. This kitchen reeks of mold, and I’m sick of standing in a puddle every time I wash a dish. I nibble on the burger, but the food is cold, and I don’t have much of an appetite now anyway.

  “Momma, you oughta see the way they treat that poor baby upstairs. That aunt of his hit him for no reason, and she, like, never lets him out of his crib, and—”

  “Martha,” Momma interrupts, munching a french fry, “didn’t I tell you not to go up there in the first place? You don’t need to be locking yourself up in some boy’s bedroom, anyway.”

  “Hello, we were looking at our schedules.”

  “I don’t care. It ain’t fittin’.” I splurt out a giggle, and Momma slaps a hand on the table. “Now what’s so funny?”

  “You sound like Mammy in Gone With the Wind.”

  She almost—almost!—cracks a smile at this. But then Wayne clomps in, swinging a wrench, tracking mud all over the floor. “You do what your momma says, little girl,” he commands, giving Momma a big juicy kiss before he drops to his knees and crawls under the sink. His pants sag dangerously low, and I never saw such a furry back on any living creature that wasn’t safely behind a ten-foot electric fence. “No reason for you to be up there with them people.”