Before, After, and Somebody In Between Read online

  Me.

  I did it. I took the money. And I’m the one who put Bubby in the crib.

  Yep, just dropped him in and told him to “go night-night,” and then sprinted the hell out of there before Aunt Gloria could grab another hanger.

  I didn’t know, I didn’t know, I didn’t know what would happen!

  But I took the money.

  I put Bubby in that crib.

  My journal is on the bed right where I left it. I flip through it briefly, twirl my pen, but I can’t write about what happened, not one single word. What do I write besides “Bubby is dead”?

  I wham the notebook into the wall, thinking that it’s a mistake, that nothing happened at all. Just another twisted, endless dream, like when Momma lumbered naked through the park, hollering my name.

  I mean, Bubby could be up there right now, chewing on his sock monkey. Watching the window. Waiting for Martha to come back.

  But if he were, I wouldn’t be hearing those sounds from upstairs. Spurts of grief. Soft, endless wailing. Grandma Daisy doing her “Jesus, Jesus” thing, only quieter now. Like she’s giving up.

  So if Bubby doesn’t exist, maybe I don’t, either. How would I know? How does anyone know? I jump up and push my face in front of my dresser mirror. Okay, I have a reflection—that must count for something. Long wild hair, raccoon eyes, a scratch on my chin from Bubby’s fingernail, probably.

  “Martha,” I whisper.

  The face stares back, and her empty look tells me the name means nothing to her at all.

  21

  I miss four days of school because every time I take a step it’s like jamming my foot into a box of barbed wire. Shavonne keeps calling, but I refuse to come to the phone. I can’t talk to anyone.

  Momma wouldn’t let me go to Bubby’s funeral, and now she’s really laid down the law about me going upstairs. “You are forbidden to stick a single toe in that house. It’s too dangerous.” And with Jerome’s window boarded up, I can’t even sneak in.

  At first I argue out of general principle. After all, it’s the same house. Are we any safer down here?

  But do I want to see that empty crib? The bullet holes in the plaster? Grandma Daisy’s face?

  Fact Number One: I took Anthony’s money.

  Fact Number Two: If Anthony could’ve paid up, none of this would’ve happened.

  Fact Number Three: If Jerome finds out, he’ll hate me forever.

  Poor Jerome. No dad, no mom, and now his baby brother is—gone. I’ve never seen him cry, not even when Aunt Gloria bashed him with that hanger. But I bet he’s crying now. Crying out loud, with his mouth open, the way Bubby used to cry.

  Momma doesn’t have a clue what I feel like, why I can’t stop crying, and how scared I am about ever facing Jerome. Sober today, she corners me in the john. “Martha, please stop this crying. You’re gonna make yourself sick.”

  “I don’t care, I don’t care!” I’m already sick. I crouch on the bathroom floor, thumping my head against the wall as Momma tries to pull me up. “I want him back. I just want him back!”

  “Martha, c’mon. Have something to eat. You’ll feel better.”

  “No!” I may never eat again.

  Still, she hovers, and then jolts me to the bone with, “You know what I been thinking? I been thinking about that cello of yours, and …well, maybe soon as I find me another job, we can see about gettin’ you another one. Think you’d like that?”

  She’s only being nice because she’s afraid I might hang myself in the shower. I know she doesn’t really want me to have another cello. And the next time she gets drunk, or pissed off, she’ll burn that, too. Like she burned Daddy’s violin.

  “No,” I say into my raggedy towel. “I don’t want another cello.”

  “What?”

  “You heard me. I don’t want one.”

  “But why?”

  How can I say it out loud, that everything’s my fault? And that she’s right about me, too, how everything’s always about me. Me, me, me! That’s why I stole Anthony’s money, and why Bubby is dead. All because of that fucking cello of mine!

  “I hate it! I’m never gonna play again.”

  “But why, sugar pie?”

  “Stop asking me that! I don’t want to, okay? I don’t want a freakin’ cello, and I don’t want any music lessons.”

  “Well, what do you want?” As if anything she could give me could make a difference, could make any of this better.

  I can’t tell her the truth without hurting her feelings. She already knows how I feel about Wayne, and that I don’t want her to drink. Why waste my breath?

  What I want is to start over—but not with her. With me.

  I want my whole life to rewind and begin again from scratch. I want to be born another person, in a different part of the world, with different parents.

  I’m so sick of Martha Kowalski and her big stupid mouth and bigger, stupider dreams, I could rip my own throat out and not feel a thing.

  But out loud, all I can say is: “I want you to go away and leave me alone.”

  22

  Finally, the next day, I decide to go back to school. I roll out of bed, pull on some clothes, and nibble on a Twinkie, hoping the sugar and chemicals will blast this headache away for good. No such luck, and while I’m scouting around for the Tylenol, I find something else: a whole stash of prescription bottles with other people’s names on them.

  Damn. Did Momma really quit her job or did she get fired for swiping drugs? No wonder she’s been so nice to me lately. All mellowed out on some old fart’s Xanax.

  I throw the bottles back, my brain thonking against my skull. I have no idea if Jerome’s back in school yet, but I leave ten minutes early to avoid him just in case. I trudge along through five inches of new snow, my bandaged foot boiling in pain.

  Shavonne catches me outside of homeroom. “You’re back! Oh my God, I’m so sorry about that baby. You okay? What happened? Hey, how come you didn’t call me back?”

  She shuts up as a shadow falls across the lockers. I cringe instinctively, expecting Chardonnay, but it’s only Miss Fuchs. “Did you bring a note explaining your absence, Martha?”

  “I forgot,” I say quickly before Shavonne can butt in.

  “Ignorant bitch,” Shavonne spits out when Miss Fuchs flits away. “Ain’t like she don’t know why you been gone.”

  Another shadow falls, this time Mr. Hopewell. Wow, my own personal welcoming committee. “Can I talk to you for a minute, Martha?”

  I squeeze my books to my chest. “I got to be in homeroom in a sec.”

  “I’ll write you a pass.”

  I leave Shavonne stranded in the middle of the crowd, and follow Mr. Hopewell to the music room. “I heard what happened. You doing okay?”

  I nod, forcing myself not to glance around. All those instruments, all those music stands, all the empty, waiting chairs…

  “If you need to talk to someone, I’m sure the counselors will be happy to help. Or you can talk to me, if you want.”

  I nod again. I must look like a marionette. Speak to me, and an invisible hand jerks my strings.

  He gives me a curious glance, then gets down to the nitty-gritty. “I was hoping you’d stop by to tell me why you dropped out of my class.”

  “I don’t have a cello anymore.”

  “What happened?”

  “… I had to turn it back in. The contract ran out.”

  “Well, I wish you would’ve let me know. I have a loaner you can use. Normally I hang on to it in case somebody forgets theirs, but you can use it in the meantime, till we can work something out.”

  My cheeks flame up. “I don’t have the money for a new one, so, like, what’s the point?”

  Mr. Hopewell’s craggy brown face instantly sags. “Martha, playing an instrument isn’t like reading a book. You can’t put it down and pick it back up again any old time the mood hits you. You were off to a great start. I hate to see you throw it all away.” He marches off
and comes back with the cello while I chomp on the nail of my one good thumb. “Oh, it’s old, and kinda banged up, but it has a wonderful tone. Here, play something. How about that Schubert piece we were working on?” When I don’t move, he lowers the cello in surprise. “Martha, c’mon. What’s up?”

  My eyes blister as I stare at that instrument, pretending it’s nothing but a hunk of steel and wood—but my fingers are throbbing, positively dying to touch it. If I could just play it for one second, if I could just hear a few notes. Touch those cold strings and that warm, smooth wood…no, wait, wait, wait!

  Reality check: Momma was right. People like me don’t go to ritzy music schools, and people like me don’t end up at Juilliard.

  I am not Jacqueline du Pré, I will never play Elgar, so let him keep his damn cello. I couldn’t take care of the last one, and look where it got me.

  I edge toward the door, struggling to sound normal. “Nothing’s up. I just don’t feel like it anymore.” I glance at the clock: thirty seconds till science. Will Jerome be there?

  “Martha—”

  “I’m sorry, okay? But I just can’t do it!”

  I stumble out blindly without waiting for a pass. Suddenly I can’t stand the idea of facing Jerome. Does he know, does he know, does he know it was me? Instead, I go to the john where Shavonne and I hang out, sit down on the toilet, and study the graffiti. Left-handed, I add a few comments of my own, mostly about Chardonnay. Then I open a notebook and begin to doodle, and the doodling eventually turns into:

  Dear Daddy—

  The words blur, and I rub my eyes roughly. I chew the end of my pen, thinking and thinking—and then start to write stuff I’ve never dared to put down in my journal:

  I wish you were alive. I need to talk to someone. I hate my life. I hate everything about it. I wish I could go to sleep and never wake up. Why couldn’t it be me instead of Bubby? Why am I alive when I’m always so miserable?

  My hand cramps. I read it over twice. It sounds like a suicide note to me.

  Clank! A shoe hits the stall. “Hey, why ain’t you in English? You got a test to make up.”

  English? What about biology? How long have I been in here? I rip the letter from the metal spirals, tear it to bits, toss it in the toilet, and flush with my foot.

  “So what’s your problem?” Shavonne lights up two Marlboros and hands me one as I lurch out of the stall. I stare at it idiotically. “Well?”

  I suck on the filter, and retch. “I feel like shit.” I throw the cigarette in the sink. “My head hurts. My stitches hurt. I’m in pain, okay?” Without a word she hands me a pill out of her purse, breaking rule number one in the Sacred Code of Student Ethics. “What’s this?”

  “Hell if I know. It’s my mom’s.”

  I don’t ask for details. I just gulp it with a handful of water.

  “Look, I know you strung out about what happened to that baby—”

  I fling my hands over my ears. “I don’t want to talk about it.”

  “I know you don’t, and that’s your problem. You need to deal with this shit, you know what I’m saying?”

  “Shut up!” Then I pull myself together, and add more quietly, “Just shut up, okay? I’m dealing with it fine.”

  “No, you ain’t. You just hiding your head, same way you always do.”

  “I’m not hiding!” I shout, pushing her out of the way so I can get to the door first. “And you’re not helping me one bit!”

  “Yeah, girl!” she jeers as I take off. “You just keep on running, ‘cause that’s all you know how to do, ain’t it?”

  I’ve got my hoody out of my locker and I’m out the front door before the guard realizes it was a human being, not a rocket-propelled grenade that shot past his face. My ears are numb with cold after less than three blocks. Twelve blocks later, my fingers are icicles, and snot has frozen on my upper lip. By the time I hit my own block, I can’t feel my feet at all. I hear Grandma Daisy saying: Tell that momma of yours she needs to buy you a real coat! Why bother? I like being numb. Maybe I’ll drop dead from hypothermia before I hit the front porch.

  Wayne’s big green truck with the stupid bumper sticker—I Shot Bambi’s Mom and Ate Her, Too!—roars to life in our driveway when I’m two houses away. I slow down and watch it veer into the street, one massive wheel digging a trench in the tree lawn, and then catch of glimpse of Wayne’s furious face as he zooms past without noticing me.

  I wobble into the house on my cold dead feet, expecting Momma to be all over me for ditching school again. But she’s nowhere in sight, and her bedroom door is shut. Whatever she and Wayne were fighting about, it must have been bad.

  “Momma? You okay?” When she doesn’t answer my knock, I shake the handle, but the door is locked, a very bad sign. This, in the old days, meant she wouldn’t be out for ages. “Momma?”

  Silence. I think back over what I said to her last night: “I want you to leave me alone.” Well, I guess she heard me for once.

  Shavonne’s crummy pill hasn’t kicked in, so I study the suspicious bottles I dug up this morning. Let’s see: Darvon, Valium, Vicodin, Percodan… hmm, Percodan sounds good. Maybe it’ll perk me up? I pop three, wobble to bed, and pass out cold.

  Barely an hour later, someone bangs on the front door. “Go away!” But the banging continues, this time on the back porch, which is like inches from my room. Pleasantly swathed in my narcotic buzz, I float to the kitchen and peer through the curtains. A heavyset black lady, long black coat, bulky satchel, dreads bouncing in the wind. Mary Poppins meets Whoopi Goldberg.

  “Martha Kowalski?” She opens the door without an invitation. “I’m Zelda Broussard from the Department of Children’s Services. Why aren’t you in school?”

  Shit, shit, shit.

  “I’m sick. I got a migraine.” And I am so, so-o-o stoned!

  She shoves her card under my nose: Zelda Broussard, with a bunch of initials after her name. Masters degree in what? State-Sanctioned Home Invasion? Still, I feel a sympathetic twinge because “Zelda” is so much worse than “Martha.” “I’ve been asked to follow up on a few things, Martha. Evaluate your home situation, hmm?” She has a funny accent, Jamaican, or whatever. “Where’s your mother?”

  “Taking a nap.”

  “Perhaps you’d care to wake her up?”

  “I can’t. She’s got a migraine, too.”

  “I see.” Skeptical gray eyes gleam out of her dark round face, harder and colder than the bottom of an iceberg. I’d never seen gray eyes on a black person before. “I’ll wait.”

  “Yeah, well, you might be waiting a long time.”

  “Well, then I’ll just have to talk to you.” I do Shavonne’s eye-roll, but it has no effect. “I understand you were in the hospital recently, and the people there seem to think you’ve been abused. When they asked you about it, apparently you denied it. Is that true?”

  “Is what true?” That I was abused? Or that I denied it? She lost me. Plus my tongue feels bigger than the rest of my mouth, and the flowers on the crappy kitchen wallpaper are dancing in time to her words.

  “Has anyone hurt you?” I shake my head. “Is that the truth?” I nod my head. “Would you tell me if they had?”

  My head stops moving as I pause to reflect. What am I supposed to say to this lady? That Wayne bashes me around and Momma lets him? Even bashes me herself when the mood happens to hit her? “Can you like, come back some other time? My head really, really hurts.”

  “Well, I would like to talk to you about that incident the other night. The shooting?”

  My thumbnail quivers between my teeth like a windup toy.

  “Martha, I know you were friends with the little boy. You must be very upset by all this. I just want you to know I’m a certified counselor, and if your mother agrees, I’d like to talk to you sometime. Hmm?”

  I pretend I didn’t hear that “little boy” part, and that “hmm” of hers is highly annoying. “I thought you were a social worker.”

 
“I do work for the county, but I also have a private practice.”

  Well, la-di-da. “My mom doesn’t believe in counselors. She says they’re all quacks.” At least I don’t tell her what Momma thinks of social workers.

  The lady sighs. I can tell she’s a smoker by the way she keeps fumbling with her purse. Yawning enormously so she’ll know how bored I am, I fall back into a chair and plunk my head into my arms.

  She takes the hint and drops her card on the table. “When your mother is feeling better, have her give me a call.” She says “mudder” instead of “mother,” which would crack me up if I were in a better mood. “And you can call me yourself, too, if you need anything.”

  “Anything like what?”

  “Anything at all,” she answers with a humanoid smile. As soon as she leaves, I pitch the card.

  …

  By morning Momma still hasn’t risen from the tomb, so I take it upon myself to scribble another note for Miss Fuchs: Please excuse Martha for all her recent absences. Her injuries are not severe but they hurt like a bitc—I scratch that out—but they are extremely painful. She has been very stressed out. I’m sure you know why. Sincerely, Lou Ann Kowalski. Even a forensic scientist couldn’t declare this a fraud. I’ve been doing it for years.

  I can hear Mario and Jerome fighting about something upstairs. They sound so normal that I start to wonder again if this whole gruesome week has been nothing but a nightmare…

  And when I hear Jerome’s knock, I know I’m awake.

  “Hey,” he greets me, like nothing ever happened.

  “Hey.” I step outside into a raging wind. “Um, you okay?”

  “Yeah. It’s tough, but, yeah, I’m okay.”

  “Sorry I missed the funeral. My mom …” I shrug.

  “That’s okay. Granny passed out, and they had to carry her out. Then Mario punched one of my cousins and knocked out a tooth.”

  Sorry I missed it. “Is your grandma okay?”

  “Yeah. She misses him, though. Man, we all do. I can’t get used to him not being around, and Mario, he—”

  “Jerome, stop. Don’t talk about it, please?”

  “Hey, I know you feel bad. We all feel bad. Mario, he cries all the time, and you know he ain’t no crybaby.” Jerome’s voice catches, and he stops walking. “But Granny, she always says you gotta talk out your miseries, ‘cause if you don’t talk them out, they just eat you up alive.”