Before, After, and Somebody In Between Read online

  “But this isn’t my fault! She’s been out to get me from day one.”

  Her turkey neck quivers, and her one eyebrow flies up. “Martha. Now I know you might feel as if you, uh, don’t quite fit in here, but …”

  Blah, blah, blah, and bla-a-ah! She gives me everything except the old sticks-and-stones routine.

  “… so consider this a warning. Next time it’ll be a detention. And—!” She raises a pointy fingernail as I raise my butt up off the seat. “If you leave school again without permission, Martha, you may very well be suspended.”

  Well, fine with me. I deserve a vacation!

  10

  Wayne’s waiting in the kitchen when I get up in the morning. He went out last night, without Momma, came home late, and slept on the couch. Shoot me if I’m wrong, but I swear I can smell rancid whisky leaking out of his pores.

  “What?” he barks when he sees me sniffing.

  “Nothing.”

  He looks like crap, and it serves him right. He had no business drinking! So much for rehab, right? No wonder Momma’s still in bed again. Now she has a reason to be depressed.

  Biting my tongue, I put on a pot of coffee, go brush my teeth, come back to the kitchen, pour him a cup, and drop it in front of him with a significant clunk. He slurps noisily, and lets out a blissful “Ah-h-h!”

  I can’t be quiet any longer. “Does Momma know you were out drinking?”

  “Yep, and I already heard it from her, so don’t you start in on me, too.”

  What I want to do is ask him about that money he promised me, because Mr. Hopewell wants us to have our instruments by Monday.

  “Um…Wayne? Remember that cello we talked about? Well, I kinda need it by Monday.”

  It takes him forever to answer, like he’s busy thinking about something else. Then, half in a trance, he whips out his grimy wallet and holds out a pile of green. “Here. This oughta do it.”

  Wow! I snatch the money out of his hand before he can change his mind.

  Mr. Hopewell told us to get our cellos from a music store downtown at Tower City. It’s cheaper there, but on Saturdays it’s only open from ten till four. I call Shavonne who makes me wait two hours because her mom’s braiding her hair, and then we meet halfway and hop the bus to Public Square.

  First thing she says is: “Talked to Kenyatta this morning, and guess what? Guess what fat, ugly, foul-mouthed skeeza got her ass knocked up?”

  “Shut up!”

  “Swear to God. Can you even picture it? All that naked, sweaty blubber rolling all over some poor guy…”

  “Eew, stop.” Like I don’t see enough of Chardonnay’s blubber rolling around in the locker room.

  “I mean, how’d he even know where to stick it?” Shavonne screeches as the horrified lady next to us flees to a safer seat.

  They say there’s someone for everyone. I guess it’s really true.

  …

  Down at the music store, the snippy clerk digs up a cello, and only then does she inform me I need a “responsible adult” to sign the contract. “Just routine, dear. In case anything happens to it.”

  I say in my most responsible way, “Well, ma’am, my mom couldn’t come down here, but I do have the money.” I rustle it in her face. “So, like, can I take the contract home and bring it back next week?” It’s already two fifteen, and they’re not open tomorrow.

  “Sorry, dear.”

  “But I need it by Monday.”

  “Sorry, dear.”

  “Sorry, dear,” Shavonne mimics. “Yeah, you sound real sorry.”

  The lady shoots us a granite smile. “Excuse me, but if you don’t have any further business in this store, I suggest you leave.”

  “Hey, we been thrown outta better places than—”

  I wrestle her out to the sidewalk. “Shavonne! You’re gonna make it so that lady never lets me in there again!”

  “Yeah, well.” She shouts over my head in the direction of the door, “This ain’t the only music store in town, ya know!”

  Sometimes I wish she’d learn to shut her mouth.

  “Come on, come on.” I push her along. “Let’s go back and get my mom.”

  Because it’s Saturday, we have to wait forever for a bus. I squirm on the curb in front of Tower City, eyeballing a beautiful black coat in the department store window. Oh, I hope Wayne stays in this generous mood for a while. A new winter coat would really be sweet.

  I twist Shavonne’s wrist so I can peer at her watch: two fiftyfive. “Oh Go-o-d! We’ll never make it back.”

  “Chill already.”

  “I don’t want to chill. I want my cello!”

  Finally the bus chugs along, but when we get back to my house, Momma and Wayne are nowhere around. I scream my lungs out while Shavonne tries to shush me. “Jeez! No big deal, just go back there on Monday. Whole damn orchestra ain’t gonna fall apart.”

  “Yes, it will!” I kick a chair halfway across the kitchen, then snatch up Wayne’s coffee mug and heave it against the wall. Damn him anyway! How come he didn’t know I’d have to sign a stupid contract?

  Shavonne jumps aside as Grandma Daisy hobbles into the kitchen. “Lord have mercy! What’s all the racket down here?”

  I hug myself, too upset to even speak, as Shavonne blabbers out the problem, and next thing I know, Grandma’s jangling her car keys and ordering us into the car “right quick.”

  She has to slam on the brakes when Aunt Gloria rushes out. “Y’all get outta that car, you hear me? Granny, you know what the doctor said, you too blind to be drivin’!”

  “It’s an emergency,” Shavonne begins, but Grandma Daisy can hold her own.

  “I ain’t that blind,” she snaps. “And girl, I’m gonna run over your foot, you don’t step outta my way.”

  Laughter explodes from Shavonne. Aunt Gloria ignores her, and points a finger at me instead. “You hear what I said? She ain’t drivin’ you nowhere—now get out of that car!”

  Grandma Daisy winks at us, then guns the motor and slams the car into reverse. Aunt Gloria has to leap into her own petunias to avoid certain death, and in less than fifteen minutes we’re back at Tower City. Ignoring the No Parking signs, Grandma Daisy crunches the front tire against the curb and then limps through the revolving doors, jabbing her cane, poker-faced and dignified.

  “I am this child’s grandmother,” she informs the gawking saleslady. “Now where’s that contract at?”

  The lady looks at me, then back at Grandma Daisy who stares right back, eyes fierce and hugely magnified behind her bifocals. “May I see some identification?” She squints at Grandma’s driver’s license. “Ma’am, this expired four years ago.”

  Grandma Daisy thumps a bony fist on the counter. “You see that picture? That look like my face? Good, that’s all you need, ‘cause I ain’t here for no driving test. Now you hand over that paper and give this little girl her cello, or things’re gonna get ugly around here fast.”

  The saleslady believes her, and Grandma Daisy signs her name to the three-month contract. At the very last second, I spy a blond girl with a cello on the cover of a CD, bow frozen in midair, so I snatch it up and pay for it out of what’s left of Wayne’s money. Then I wrap my arms happily around the big plastic cello case—a coffin with a handle is Shavonne’s opinion—and lug it to the car.

  “Thank you, thank you!” is all I can say, but Grandma Daisy waves me off, wrenches the steering wheel, and aims the car into a snarl of horn-blowing traffic. Shavonne shrieks as we barely miss the front end of a Hummer, but I hardly notice. I’m too busy hugging my cello case, and thinking about Monday.

  11

  Momma and Wayne have been gone all night long. To keep myself from totally freaking out, I spend Sunday on the couch listening to my new CD. The blond girl is somebody named Jacqueline du Pré and wow, the music almost has me gasping for breath. Edward Elgar’s Cello Concerto in E Minor. So beautiful, and so sad, it actually hurts me to listen—but is it the music itself or just the amazin
g way she plays? Is this something you can learn to do, or do you have to be born with it?

  Born with it, I bet. But how do you know if you are?

  By the next morning, still no sign of Momma or Wayne. To Jerome’s immature amusement, I lug my new cello the whole thirty blocks to school and store it in the music room where Mr. Hopewell swears it’ll be safe. Well, it better be safe or Grandma Daisy’ll skin me alive.

  Instead of a last period study hall, I now have music class. This is just for strings, and there’s only like ten of us in the room. So what happened to the other thousand who signed up for the violin? Guess that twenty-five bucks a month weeded most of them out.

  Mr. Hopewell, the Bill Cosby clone, goes over each instrument piece by piece. Then he walks around, and, one by one, twists our limbs into the correct positions for our instruments. Mine goes between my legs, so lucky thing I’m wearing jeans.

  “Relax,” Mr. Hopewell says with a chuckle, but when I lean into the chair, he pokes me in the back. “And sit up straight. No slouching.” So which is it, relax or sit up straight?

  We try a few notes, and the first ones sound awful, like a garbage truck, maybe, rolling over a raccoon. But the stuff my dad taught me dribbles back into my memory, and—wow—I’m playing this thing! Actually churning out real notes. Well, sort of.

  Mr. Hopewell notices. “Not bad, Martha,” is his only comment, but it’s the way he says it that thrills me to the bone. “Okay, people, listen up. I want you all here every Monday, Wednesday, and Friday one hour before the first bell. This is not negotiable.” He gives me a thumbs-up, probably because I’m the only one not groaning.

  Back home the house is still deserted, and I’m having visions of an orphanage right out of Oliver Twist with cold gruel, vicious bedbugs, and nightly beatings. Jittery and distracted, I try to concentrate on my cello, holding it with perfect posture, applying the exact amount of pressure to the heavy strings. But now the bow feels clunky and awkward, and my notes screech eerily in the silent house.

  I heave the bow onto my bed. “Goddammit. Where are you guys?”

  My mind spits out the worst-case scenarios: Car accident? Kidnapping? Murder, or even worse, one of those murder-suicide things? I check Wayne’s gun cabinet to see if anything’s missing, as the black hole in my stomach grows bigger and deeper.

  What’ll I do if they never come back? Last time she dumped me, I ended up in that group home with all those freaky, pathetic kids. Oh, please, no way do I want to go there again!

  …

  Tuesday and Wednesday pass without a word. Wayne’s job calls twice, and I put on a fake-Momma voice and jabber about some family emergency. A suspicious Grandma Daisy starts inviting me to dinner—good thing, too, since we were low on groceries even before Momma took off—and Aunt Gloria glares at me, biding her time, setting traps. Every night when I go to bed, I lie there in the dark, trying to sleep, but imagining the worst.

  Finally, Wednesday night, I can’t stand it any longer. Leaving the TV on to ward off burglars, I sneak up the fire escape to spend the night upstairs. Bubby cuddles with me on Jerome’s bed, while Jerome takes the floor with minimal bitching.

  “You sure your aunt won’t come in?” Already I’m shaking at the thought.

  “She never comes in here at night.”

  “Who takes care of Bubby if he wakes up?”

  “Who do you think?”

  I tickle Bubby’s belly. “Are you my wittle baby? Are you my wittle cuddly-wuddly baby boo?” Bubby giggles and wrenches my nose hard. “Ow!”

  “Can’t you go stay with some relatives?” Jerome’s voice floats up from the floor.

  I snort. “I don’t know any of my relatives, and they wouldn’t want me, anyhow.”

  “How come?”

  “ ’Cause my dad had to drop out of college when my mom got pregnant with me. He was gonna be a music teacher, and he ended up working in some factory. I guess they disowned him or something.” That’s what I’ve always been told—that, and that my dad always thought he was so much better than Momma. The same thing, I might add, she always accuses me of. “Anyway, I never met my dad’s family. My mom hates their guts.”

  “Do you miss your dad?” Jerome asks unexpectedly.

  The only sound is the ticking of the clock, and a tiny snore from a suddenly limp, heavy Bubby.

  “I can’t hardly remember him,” I say at last, curling my arms around Bubby and snuggling him close. “But yeah, I think I do. You miss your folks?”

  “Well, my mom, yeah. It’s stupid, but I do.”

  “Why is it stupid?”

  Another long silence. “My mom’s a junkie. She had Bubby in jail, and then, when she got out, she just never came back. And I don’t even know who my dad is. I never met him in my life.”

  Man! I prop myself up on one elbow. “You never told me that.”

  “Maybe I don’t feel like broadcasting it, okay? Bad enough I gotta put up with Aunt Gloria and Anthony and all that drinking they do, and all that pot and other stuff they think I don’t know about, and—”

  We hear a sound in the hall as someone, maybe Aunt Gloria herself, struts past the door. She stops, like she’s listening, and we both hold our breath so long, it’s a miracle we don’t suffocate.

  By the time the footsteps fade away, neither of us feels like talking anymore. Besides, Bubby just peed on me, so what do I do now?

  12

  Thursday evening I ferret through Momma’s room, looking for money. I find some change in a coat pocket, a couple of singles on the dresser, and a Ziploc bag full of pot under a pile of Wayne’s undershirts. Wow, what a shocker.

  Friday after school, I load up on books at the neighborhood library, avoiding anything with a picture of a screaming woman on the cover, or anything by Koontz or King, my two gruesome favorites. A fantasy trilogy and a couple of old-lady mysteries ought to take my mind off of Momma for a while.

  Back home, I find the Lindseys’ rent check taped to the kitchen door. I peel it off, then instantly freeze, sensing a demonic presence.

  “Where they at?” Aunt Gloria demands in my ear.

  I spit my heart out of my mouth. “W-Who?”

  “You know who!” Jostling me aside, she barges in, searching for body parts and traces of blood. All she sees, though, is a very clean kitchen, bright and sparkling and smelling like lemony Pine-Sol. “I ain’t paying no rent money to some smart-mouthed child, that’s for sure.”

  I force myself not to look at the check. Rent money! Wonder if I can cash it …

  Squinching her forehead, she marches into the living room to survey Wayne’s gun cabinet, hands on her hips. “Mm, mm, mm.”

  I decide not to bring up the fact that she’s trespassing, and that if Wayne does show up, he’ll pump her full of buckshot. “They’re out of town,” I say lamely.

  “Till when?”

  “Till, um… till Monday.”

  “Fine. They ain’t back by Monday, I’m reporting this bullshit. I don’t need no child burnin’ the whole damn house down around my head.” She snatches the check out of my fingers. “And I’ll give this to your daddy when he gets back.”

  “He’s not my daddy,” I snarl, forgetting to be scared.

  Aunt Gloria sails out with a snort. The instant she’s gone, I slap the chain on the door, then ball up on the couch and munch my nails. First the cops, then the social workers, and then I’ll be adopted out—to who, some pervert with a photo studio in his basement?

  Where is she? Where is she? Oh, I can picture Momma perfectly, laid out in a satin dress, in an ivory-colored coffin, pale hands folded sweetly over a wooden cross—no, wait, not a cross, maybe a single white lily…omigod, omigod! Please let her be okay!

  The evening drags like a crippled rabbit. I listen to Elgar again, then put on some cartoons, conk out around midnight, and by four a.m. I’m hopelessly wide awake. I take out my cello and work on my notes, but the screeching of the strings makes the roots of my teeth throb. St
ill, I keep at it, ignoring the occasional warning thump on the ceiling, till my body aches, my fingers flare into torches…and just as I’m getting the hang of it, I hear the front door clatter open, and Momma’s “Yoo-hoo!”

  She’s alive! I race to the living room where she sweeps me into a hug. She kind of stinks, but not like booze. More like someone who hasn’t seen the inside of a bathtub in a week.

  I hold my nose as she smothers me, then chisel her off when it gets to be too much. “Where were you all week? Why didn’t you call me? I was freaking out! That bitch upstairs wanted to call the cops, and there’s no food in the house, and I can’t believe you did this to me!” Seconds ago I was so happy to see her. Now I’d like to punch her lights out.

  “Oh, sugar pie, I’m so sorry. But Wayne, he took it in his head to drive down to West Virginia to see his daddy, and I thought we’d only be gone a couple days, but …well, Wayne, he and his daddy got into a fight and then he kinda went off on a bender, and then I couldn’t get back, and his daddy don’t have a phone, and …” She stops to blow her nose. “I’m real, real sorry.”

  “Momma, you can’t just take off whenever you feel like it!” Why do I always feel like I’m the mom around here? “And where’s Wayne anyway?”

  Momma’s face crumbles again. “Last I heard, he got picked up for drunk driving and was lookin’ for somebody to bail him out. Not me,” she adds, lifting her chins. “I hooked up with some real nice AA folks down there, and they passed the hat to get me the bus fare home. And you’d be proud of me, sugar pie, ‘cause when I saw Wayne like that, and how damn nasty he got? Well, I told him it was me or the booze. And he picked the booze.”

  I start to ask why the AA folks didn’t let her use their phone—but then her bottom lip quivers and she heaves out a shuddering breath. Poor Momma. It’s not her fault Wayne turned out to be such a pathetic jerk!

  “Well, never you mind,” she insists, squeezing my hand. “We can do without him just fine. First thing today, I’m gonna go look for a job. There’s a nursing home right close. Maybe I could be a nurse’s aide again.” I wait for her to notice how nice the house looks, but she flips back her dirty hair and trudges to the kitchen. “So what’s to eat around here?”