Before, After, and Somebody In Between Page 25

  Professor Moscowitz shakes his shaggy silver mane, but he’s not interested enough to ply me with questions. He says (half in English, half in either Russian or Yiddish) that as far as he’s concerned I can call myself Jascha Heifetz as long as I show up, play well, and don’t throw my head around like a goddamn racehorse.

  “Heifetz wasn’t a cellist,” I argue before I realize this was a test.

  With a sneer of approval, he shoos me out the door.

  52

  Momma, true to form, waits till the day of my recital to run out for a new outfit. She calls in sick from work, and makes Larry drive her to Tower City because she wants a real dress this time, not some discount rag. It’s funny to see her all psyched up like this, because I’m not used to the “new” Momma. Every day she stays sober feels like a miracle.

  I decide not to wear the outfit I bought for Waverly’s spring concert (bad karma!) and instead find a long ivory dress with spaghetti straps in my overly jammed closet. With no blow dryer, no conditioner, and an outdoor temperature of ninety-five muggy degrees, there’s not much I can do with my crazy mop except twist it into a scrunchie and spray the hell out of it.

  At six thirty p.m., an hour and a half before the recital, Larry calls me from Tower City. “Bad news, darlin’. I kinda lost your momma.”

  “What do you mean, you lost her?”

  “We were supposed to meet in the food court, and I’ve been waiting for two hours. I was hoping maybe she took the bus home or something.”

  “Well, she’s not here, and my recital’s at eight!”

  “Well, how ‘bout if I come home and run you over, and then—”

  “No, no, go look for Momma. I can get there myself, unless you think I should wait …”

  “No, you go on ahead. Maybe we’re just passing each other up.” Poor Larry sounds like he wants to bawl. “Soon as I find her, we’ll be there.”

  Crap. Where is she?

  I ride the bus to the rapid transit, the rapid to Shaker Square, and make it to the studio with seven minutes to spare. My first real performance, not counting my audition, and here I am, too flustered to see straight. I glance around at the audience, at the other musicians—nobody I know, thank God—and then watch the door for Momma and Larry, waiting and wondering.

  At Professor Moscowitz’s impatient hiss from his seat at the piano, I jump up, trip over someone’s foot, and make my way to the platform. The studio is small, with just enough chairs for invited guests, so the two empty seats are sickeningly obvious.

  The second I touch my bow to the strings, the dread, the panic, instantly disappear.

  Yes, I am focused.

  Yes, I play beautifully.

  Yes, the nutty professor is bobbing his head as he plays along, and holy shit, what’s that on his face? No way! He’s never cracked a single smile the whole time I’ve known him.

  The applause rocks me, making me so giddy I practically float back to my seat. I did it, I did it—and everyone clapped! I’ll never forget that sound, and I want to hear it again, and again, because this is exactly who I was meant to be! I know it without a doubt. Nothing will ever change my mind!

  Afterward, Professor Moscowitz pumps my arm so hard he almost rips it from the socket. “That was extraordinary, Gina. Extraordinary!” And yes, other people are congratulating me, too, and shaking my hand, praising me from all sides. I’m stunned enough to forget about those two vacant seats, and all because Professor Impossible-to-Please Moscowitz called me “extraordinary” in front of witnesses, no less.

  On the way home, in the back of the almost-empty bus, my jubilation fades as it hits me: Momma had damn well better be dead! And when I hear voices shouting on the other side of my front door, I know she’s alive, but that Larry’s ready to kill her.

  “…never, never understand how you could do this, Lou Ann!”

  “I didn’t do nothin’ to you! I told ya, we just talked.”

  “Right, you talked!”

  The door smashes open and Larry barrels down off the stoop as Momma calls, “Now don’t go runnin’ off on me, Larry! Larry? Come back here!”

  Larry plows into me in the dark. “What happened?” I yelp. “Where was she?”

  “I said I was sorry!” Momma screams through the screen. “What more do you want?”

  “Go ask your momma what happened,” Larry says, jerking open his car door.

  “Lar-reee!” Momma comes flying down the steps. “Larry, ple-ease don’t go!” For a moment I swear she’s about to race after the car. I pull her back into the house before we end up on somebody’s camcorder. “Martha, stop him!” she pleads, clawing at my dress.

  “Let go of me!” I fling off her hands. “Where were you all day?”

  “Oh, great,” she snarls. “Now you’re gonna start on me, too!” She stalks back into the house and I follow on her heels.

  “You missed the whole recital!”

  “I’m sorry,” she says shortly.

  “Bullshit!”

  Momma’s head jerks in astonishment, but then she just plunks onto the couch and digs her fingers into her eyes. “I am sorry, sugar pie. I really did want to see you play.”

  “So why didn’t you show up?” I stomp my foot hard when she refuses to answer. “Where were you today?”

  “I was trying on clothes, see? And I went to put some stuff back, and I saw this guy watching me, and, well—it was Wayne.”

  I start to say “Bullshit” again, but my throat fills with sludge.

  “He’s workin’ down there now, cleaning and stuff. And I didn’t see Larry around, so I … well, Wayne, he looked so down, and he was so glad to see me. So we went and took us a walk, and we had a nice long talk, and—oh, don’t look at me like that! We just talked. Nothing else.”

  I think “rage” is a pretty good word for what I’m feeling right now.

  Rage, and something worse. Something that pushes tears to the edges of my eyes, but the rage fries away like water on a griddle.

  “You missed my recital because you went for a walk with Wayne?”

  “I’m sorry,” Momma rasps, hanging her head. “I swear to you, sugar pie, next time you have a concert, I promise I’ll—”

  “Don’t promise me anything!” I swing my cello case off the floor and head for the steps on rubbery legs. “I really hate you right now.”

  “I know,” she says sadly.

  53

  Momma disappears sometime during the night. She stumbles in close to dawn, and yes, she’s rip-roaring drunk. Larry’s back by then, and she won’t tell him where she was, who she was drinking with (like I don’t know!), or why she has sucker bites all over her neck. I smother my ears so all I can hear is the click-click-click of my ancient fan and an occasional cussword from Momma’s mouth. Larry slams out again, and I drift into a jerky sleep, twisted up in my sticky sheets.

  In the morning, Momma’s unconscious in a mountain of beer cans. This, after all her baloney about staying clean and sober, how she needs my help, blah, blah, blah. It’s bad enough that she’s drunk. Bad enough she’s missing work. But to be fooling around on Larry—and with Wa-ayne, of all people?

  I stomp outside, ready to explode into jagged pieces, thinking about everything else she’s done to piss me off lately. About the fact that not once did she ever ask me about Chardonnay. What happened, Martha? Why did you jump her with a knife? How do you feel about it now?

  Then again, I never asked her about that overdose. Never found out if it was an accident, or if she did it on purpose, or what she thought would happen to me if she’d kicked the bucket.

  Maybe now we’re even.

  Abandoning Momma in her nest of cans, I practice my cello for six hours straight, stopping only to make a pot of coffee and wolf down four pieces of toast. Her position hasn’t changed. I couldn’t care less.

  I dig up some money, drag the rickety grocery cart ten blocks to the store, stock up on essentials, and drag it back home. Larry’s still gone. Momma st
ill hasn’t moved.

  Eight p.m.

  Nine p.m.

  Except for one arm dangling off the couch, Momma hasn’t budged.

  At quarter to ten, a haggard Larry shows up. He stares at the couch. “How long has she been sleeping?”

  “All freaking day.”

  Momma flails her limbs as Larry snatches her shoulders. “What’d you take, Lou Ann?” Only then do I notice the dark stain under her butt, and my jaw drops in guilty revulsion.

  Not waiting for an answer, Larry tears the house up till he unearths the evidence. Momma doesn’t even duck when he throws the prescription bottle at her. She just sits there groggily, saliva swinging from her lower lip.

  “That’s it. I’m outta here, Lou Ann.”

  In silent, uncomprehending horror, I watch Larry haul out a suitcase and begin throwing things into it. Momma’s bottom lip vibrates as she sucks her drool back in, but she doesn’t argue, doesn’t cry, doesn’t say a word. She simply stares with hooded, vacant eyes as Larry wraps it up and heads for the door.

  “Sorry about this.” He pats my rigid shoulder. “I could almost put up with the crap she pulled yesterday. But, well, there ain’t no way I can stay with her now.”

  “She’s sick! It’s a sickness. You know she can’t help it.” If he can forgive her for Wayne, why can’t he forgive her for this?

  “I know it’s a sickness. Hell, I’m sick myself. But I already been down that road, darlin’, and I ain’t going there again. I can’t live with somebody who can’t stay sober. Anyway,” he adds, “your momma needs more than AA. I think she needs a shrink.”

  Momma makes a burbling noise, tumbles off the couch, and staggers to the kitchen to gag into the sink. I wince when her face accidentally smacks the faucet. “Should I call 911?”

  “Naw, if she can walk, she’ll be fine.” Larry picks up the brown bottle and shows me the label. Valium, twenty tablets. “Looks like she only took a few.” He squints at the bottle. “Who’s Wilhelmina Kirchner?”

  “How would I know?” I have no idea where Momma gets this junk. Maybe she mugged some old lady coming out of the drugstore.

  Larry thrusts a few bills into my sweaty hand. “You’re a nice kid, Martha. You keep up with that cello.”

  A minute later he’s gone, and that’s too bad because, missing tooth and all, I really liked that guy. I suppose I can’t blame him for not wanting to live with someone like Momma. Neither do I, but I don’t get that choice.

  …

  Luckily Larry’s right, and Momma’s fine in the morning, not counting the fat lip she got from the faucet.

  “I’m sorry, sugar pie,” she slurs around my homemade ice bag. “I swear I just don’t know what come over me yesterday.” Same old Momma, same old script.

  Life truly sucks.

  54

  I love, love, love the main public library downtown, a monstrous building with marble floors and wall-to-wall books in dozens of rooms. It’s my new favorite place, and I’m here at least twice a week. If I could find a bed, and a place to practice my cello, honest to God, I’d never go home.

  Today, staggering under the weight of my loaded backpack, I barely make it back to Public Square to catch my bus when something bops me on the back of my head.

  “Yo, Miz Martha!” Anthony falls into step. “Been missin’ me, sweet thang?”

  I grind to a halt, swinging my pack hard. “Get away from me!”

  “Yow!” He grabs his arm and doubles over. “What the—?”

  And then another voice says, “Yo, dawg. Leave her alone.”

  “Damn, JoMo. This ho can’t even be civil to me no more.” Anthony straightens up to give Jerome a shove. “You mess with me again, I’m gonna kick your ass.”

  Jerome is in no way intimidated by this. “Get outta my face. I wanna talk to my friend.” Anthony, outraged, slinks away. I stare after him in amazement as Jerome gives me a wide grin. “How ya doin’?”

  “I’m fine.” I eye him up and down. He’s gotten even taller in the past couple of months, and his braids are longer, bulging out of his do-rag. “How about you?”

  “Cool. I’m cool.” His glasses are gone, and something else is different, too. Something not very nice. “Damn, girl. You lookin’ fly!”

  “You, too.” Whatever that means. “What’re you hanging around him for?” I nod toward Anthony who snaps his teeth in my direction.

  Jerome fidgets strangely. “Um, I moved in with my mom, and Anthony, he been stayin’ with us.”

  For ten full seconds I can’t even speak. “You’re living with her now? Does that mean she’s, you know, is she—?”

  “Straight?” Jerome snorts, a disturbing sound. “Hell, no. She ain’t never gonna be straight.”

  “But—” I shut my mouth. I have enough problems of my own. “Well, you’re still at Jefferson, right?” Didn’t he say his mom lives in the projects?

  “Nah, I dropped out.”

  He pretends to cower as I shriek, “What do you mean, you dropped out? You’re only fifteen.”

  “So? I’ll be sixteen next year. Then my mom’ll sign the papers.”

  “What’re you gonna do in the meantime? Break the law?”

  He smirks. “Report me, why don’tcha? Shoot. Think I care?”

  It dawns on me now what’s not quite right about Jerome. He sounds so much like Anthony that if I shut my eyes, I’d never be able to tell who was who. “What about MIT? What about that scholarship you wanted?”

  This is not my Jerome, the Jerome I knew so well. This isn’t even the same-but-not-the-same Jerome who surprised me at the Brinkmans’ last spring. This Jerome stands there spouting crap about a GED, and how he’ll never get into that college because he “ain’t the right color.”

  Fuzz bristles on the back of my hot neck. “Why’re you acting this way? You trying to show off for that jerk-off cousin of yours?”

  Jerome blows air through his lips. “What way? I ain’t acting no kinda way. And hey, what about you?”

  “What about me?”

  “Look at you! You think you all that?” His eyes sweep over me, and I know what he sees: me, in one of Gina’s fashionable summer ensembles, glitzy brand-names displayed on both my purse and my backpack.

  “No,” I argue, unable to dodge the stinger in my chest. “But I’m not the one who like turned into some weird, freaky—” I stop, because there’s really no word for it. Or maybe there is, and I’m afraid to say it.

  “I didn’t turn into nothin’,” Jerome whispers, and for one second I see a flash of my old friend, and I think, No, it’s okay. He’s still Jerome, and I’m still me, and we haven’t changed that much! But then he blows it with, “You, though. Ha! Livin’ up there with them rich folks now, I guess you ain’t used to hanging with us niggas no more.”

  I feel my knuckles smash into his stomach before I realize what I’m doing. His fists jerk up, and for one quick second he almost hits me back. “I’m not one of your freaking homies, Jerome. Don’t you even think you can talk to me like that.”

  “Damn, girl. Who taught you that move?” He rubs his stomach with a weak grin, but when he sees I’m not laughing, his face grows hot and dangerous. “You know somethin’? I don’t even know who you are. I don’t remember what you look like. You ain’t even Martha no more.”

  My arms turn to cement. My mouth and my feet don’t exist. It’s like his words have turned me into one giant block of nothingness.

  “And if you wanna go to college,” he goes on, “then hey, do it! But I got better ways of making money without bustin’ my ass at MIT.”

  That’s when I notice the big gold ring on his thumb, shaped like a snake with dazzling red eyes. And his flashy watch and all the bling decorating his neck and, yes, his own designer-name clothes. Either he’s holding out on his mom as far as that money is concerned, or he’s got a new source of income. I’m betting on number two.

  “Yeah. Drug money.” He starts to protest, and that only makes me madde
r. “Oh, don’t lie to me, Jerome. I’m not stupid, okay?”

  “You ain’t stupid, huh?” he repeats, his words dripping with contempt. “You took that fucking gun from me, remember?”

  Yes, and that’s not all I remember. “So? It wasn’t even loaded! Why’d you give it to me then, and let me think it was loaded? That was a really dirty trick, I hope you know.”

  “How’d I know if it was loaded? It was Anthony’s piece, man. He told me to get rid of it, so that’s what I did. And you were stupid enough to take it.”

  “You told me to take it! You never said it was Anthony’s.” I never would’ve touched it if he had.

  “Well, I’m tellin’ you now. So, yo, thanks a lot, bitch.”

  He’s off the curb and halfway across the street before my pitifully stunned brain reacts. “Did you tell Anthony you took that money? Huh? Did you?”

  “Yeah, I told him!” he yells back. “And it don’t even matter no more.”

  “He killed your brother, Jerome. Don’t you even care? He killed Bubby!” I scream this after him, forcing edgy bystanders to detour around me in wide circles. I keep on screaming it till he’s lost in the crowd, and not one time does he bother to look back.

  I cradle my backpack on the jarring ride home, sick to my stomach, sick in my heart. Okay, I know I’m different, but in a good way, right? Who could possibly like the “old” Martha better?

  Jerome’s right about one thing: I am so utterly stupid. Too stupid to know Gina from Martha, or Martha from Gina, and too stupid to care. But worse than that, all this time I’ve been too stupid to realize that the one person I thought would be my friend forever was never my friend at all.

  55

  Momma’s out of a job again, out of AA, and back to cruising the bars with a bunch of scummy new friends. Nothing I do, nothing I say, makes the least bit of difference. That, I think, is the most depressing thing of all.