Before, After, and Somebody In Between Read online

  “But Momma, if I keep playing, I can get a scholarship to Great Lakes.” I wave my rumpled brochure. “Mr. Hopewell says I got a real good chance. And look—ninety percent of their graduates end up at Juilliard. Don’t you get it? I could—”

  Momma laughs, but not like she’s amused. “Martha, I hate to bust that bubble of yours, but people like us don’t get into no Joo-lee-yard.”

  “What? What people?” Perfectly frozen, I wait for her to say it.

  “Jesus Christ, do I gotta spell it out? Poor people, Martha. Hillbillies. White trash.”

  “I am not white trash!” I kick the closest chair. “And if we’re so damn poor, how come you can buy all that beer?”

  “Hey! If you had to put up with all the shit I’ve had to put up with in my life—”

  She launches off on one of her poor-me rants, and I have to shout to be heard. “So what? Just because your whole life sucks, why do you have to screw up mine?”

  But Momma can outshout me any day of the week. “My life didn’t suck till I married that father of yours, and you’re just—like—him! Always picking fights, always acting so high and mighty. And both of you with your goddamn music!” Momma kicks that same chair, hurtling it across the floor. “And now I gotta listen to you cryin’ about how I’m such a crappy mother. I don’t deserve this!”

  “Well, you’re the one who lets Wa-ayne slam me around!” Saying his name is like biting into a turd.

  “You keep this up, I might let him do it again.”

  “Good! Then I will call the cops and both your asses can sit in jail.”

  She comes after me finally, but I’m one step ahead of her. “Selfish! That’s what you are, a selfish brat. Me, me, me, that’s all you think about! Never mind that we ain’t got a pot to piss in. Never mind me, never mind that I’m finally happy!”

  “You’re not happy!” I scream. “You’re drunk all the time!”

  “Since when do you care? All you care about is that good-for-nothing cello.”

  “It’s not good for nothing. You’re good for nothing!”

  Stone dead silence. As Momma’s face crumbles into blotchy pieces, it hits me what I just said. But before I can think of a way to make it better, she draws herself up and points to the front door. “Well, seeing as you hate me so much,” she says quietly, “maybe Wayne’s right. Maybe you oughta get the hell out of here.”

  At first I think she’s kidding. Then I realize she’s not. “Momma, I’m sorry I said that, I just—”

  “Don’t you tell me you’re sorry! You think you’re too good for this family? Go find yourself another one.”

  Breathing hard, I force my feet into the kitchen. I dial Shavonne’s number with a shaky finger, but it’s busy… busy… and then busy again.

  “Didn’t I tell you to beat it?” Expressionless, Momma cracks open another can of beer and stares at the TV.

  “I’m trying, Momma. But I don’t know where to go,” I croak, fighting back tears.

  “That’s your problem, missy. You better think of something.”

  How can I leave with no place to go? Sick to my stomach, I throw some clothes together and climb the fire escape through a torrent of snow. The first thing I hear as I tumble through Jerome’s window is: “I told ya, man, I don’t know nothin’ about no money!”

  Jerome’s mattress is hanging limply off the bed, and Jerome and Anthony are nose-to-nose. Neither of them pays me a bit of attention.

  “Don’t you be frontin’ me, man. I had it stashed there for weeks. It ain’t even mine, and now they be wanting it back, so stop fucking with me!” Anthony howls that last part, and I can smell his panicked sweat.

  “Well, it ain’t me who took it,” Jerome snaps. “I didn’t even know it was there.”

  I sit perfectly still, lips cemented shut.

  “You lying to me, nigga, you gonna be dead, you hear me?”

  “I ain’t lying, man. Swear to God, I didn’t touch it.”

  A car horn blasts and Anthony jumps, eyes bulging in horror. With an eruption of F-words, he shoves Jerome out of the way and bolts from the house.

  Because it would look too fishy if I said nothing at all, I casually ask, “So what’s going on?”

  Now that the coast is clear, Mario lugs a squirming Bubby into the room and plunks him in my lap. Bouncing Bubby, I pretend to listen while Jerome explains how Anthony owes money to some big-time dealer. Supposedly he had some of it stashed under the mattress, but gee whiz, now it’s gone.

  Mario immediately gets defensive. “Well, I didn’t take none of his money. Whaddaya think, I’m gonna steal from my own brother?”

  “Nobody said you took it,” Jerome says patiently.

  “Well, I don’t believe that dawg had no money.” Mario scratches his broad belly, deep in thought, then, oddly, throws Jerome a quick hand signal before slouching off to his own room.

  “What was that?” I ask faintly.

  “What was what?”

  “That thing he did with his hand.”

  He gives me an incredulous look. “You asking me? I got enough on my mind.”

  I stare out the window over the top of Bubby’s curls, afraid my shifty eyes are about to give me away. I feel like a crook, a criminal, the lowest of the low, and not just because I took that damn money. Anthony owed me. It was rightfully mine! I’m just so sorry Jerome got dragged into this whole mess.

  Now the extra hundred-and-some bucks stuffed in my pocket are burning my thigh like a red-hot poker. I kiss Bubby to hide my face, and he squeals ecstatically and smacks me in the mouth with his sock monkey. “Ouch, don’t do that, silly!”

  “Ba-ba-ba-ba-bah!” he replies, digging his nails violently into my chin.

  Jerome settles back on the lopsided mattress. “So what’s up? You and your old lady fighting again?”

  I nod. “She threw me out.” Saying it out loud makes it worse, and all the more real.

  “How come?”

  I jerk my head back as Bubby grabs at my mouth, and I tickle his belly through his Oscar the Grouch shirt. Bubby pushes me away and goes after my glasses instead. “I don’t want to talk about it,” I mumble, dodging Bubby’s happy, flying feet.

  Za-zoom! Like the Wicked Witch of the West minus the puff of orange smoke, Aunt Gloria materializes out of thin air. She knows I’m here every time no matter how quiet we try to be. “Why y’all trying so hard to aggravate me to death?”

  “She can’t go home,” Jerome says quickly before I can shush him. “She had a bad fight with her mom.”

  “You think I’m running a homeless shelter here?”

  I hear myself begging, “Please! Just for tonight?” Momma might cool off by tomorrow, but what do I do in the meantime? “I promise I’ll be out first thing in the morning. Please, please, please?”

  She sneers. “And where you think you gonna sleep?”

  Maybe she does have a flicker of humanity after all. “She can have my bed,” Jerome offers. “I’ll sleep on the floor.” Outraged, she informs him, “Slave days is over, fool. You ain’t givin’ up your bed to no white girl in this house.”

  Then again, maybe not.

  “Not tonight, not tomorrow night, or any other damn night,” Aunt Gloria continues, spinning on her heel back toward the door. “I ain’t gonna be raisin’ no damn zebra babies!”

  Okay, message received, over and out. Swallowing hard, I untangle Bubby and set him gently in the crib.

  “Ba-bah!” he wails, clawing at my shirt. “Shush,” I whisper. “Go night-night.”

  Bubby rocks in his crib, tears in his eyes, sock monkey in his mouth, and I stick my feet back through the window without a word to Jerome. If I’m embarrassed, he must be perfectly mortified. Zebra babies? As if!

  What’ll Momma do when she finds out I’m still here? Why, oh why, does she hate me so much? Because I want to go to college? Because I don’t want to end up like her? I hunch up on my bed, keeping as quiet as possible as I scribble everything that just
happened down in my journal. Beyond my door, I can hear Momma opening beer cans one after another. Well, when she passes out, maybe I can give Shavonne another try.

  Slumped against the headboard, I fight to stay awake, but my chin droops lower and lower…and next thing I know, I’m watching fireworks on the Fourth of July. I have Bubby on my lap, and both of us laugh and clap at the dazzling explosions. Momma appears, smashed and naked, and stumbles through the crowd, calling “Yoo-hoo! Sugar pie!” Clutching Bubby, I try to worm my way through the throng of laughing people, praying she won’t see me—

  At first I think it’s the fireworks that wake me up: Pop-pop-pop-pop! And the sound of exploding glass, the gunning of a motor, shouts from the street, and sirens in the distance. I can hear Grandma Daisy shrieking, “Jesus! Jesus! Jesus!” and it’s the most terrifying sound I ever heard.

  I throw open my window. More screams from upstairs—Aunt Gloria now, and can that be Jerome? Whathappenedwhathappened-whathappened? Teeth chattering in the frigid wind, I scramble onto the fire escape and make it up maybe two steps before the brilliant beam of a flashlight illuminates the side of the house.

  “Stop right there! Don’t move!”

  I freeze.

  “Show your hands!”

  My fingers fly up in the pool of light.

  “Now turn around! Slow-ly!”

  “That’s my daughter up there, you dumb son-of-a-bitch!”

  Momma? Omigod, what is she trying to do, get ‘em to shoot me down? Numb with dread, I turn, and something sharp pierces my sock. I hop up with a yelp, losing my balance—and the past fourteen years crawl, not flash, through my brain as I dangle one-handed from the metal rung. Tick-tock, tick-tock—and then my fingers slip, and I land in the driveway in a smattering of ice and glass.

  Momma grabs my head. “Look what you done,” she snarls at the cop.

  Stunned by the fall, astonished to be alive, all I can do is watch my own blood ooze into the snow, distantly wondering where all the glass came from. Not my window. Jerome’s?

  The cop wanders closer and tries to make nice in one of those calm, funny voices reserved for mad dogs and mental patients. “Ma’am, the paramedics will look at her as soon as they get a chance.”

  “She could be dead by then, you son-of-a—”

  “Look, lady. We got a dead baby up there. Just get her out of the way, okay?”

  Dead baby?

  I try to speak, but nothing comes out.

  20

  Bright lights, poking hands, and disbelieving whispers.

  “… drive-by shooting …”

  “… drug deal gone bad …”

  “… these streets kids, I swear …”

  “… about a year old, I think. Right through the chest, poor thing.”

  I clap my hands over my ears while people in uniforms finger every inch of my body like they’re searching for fleas instead of wounds. Twelve stitches in the foot, seven in the elbow, and five in the thumb. I scream my head off as they pick out the glass, never mind I’ve already been numbed with needles from head to toe.

  Nurses bombard me with questions when they notice Wayne’s belt marks, exchanging looks, making hasty notes on their clipboards. Groggy from the pain shot, I pick at the blood around my nails and refuse to answer. All I want is for this hideous dream to end.

  Unless, of course, I’m not really asleep. Maybe I’m dead, too, and stuck in my own personal version of hell.

  The knock-out drugs finally do the trick. When I open my eyes, the first thing I see is Momma dozing in the corner of the exam room. I remember where I am, and once I do, I’m sorry I woke up. “Momma?”

  Momma’s eyelids flutter. “Yeah, sugar pie. I’m here.”

  “Is Bubby dead?”

  “Hush,” she says softly. “You rest.”

  “Is he, Momma?” I have to know.

  Momma nods. “Gloria’s kid. Some guys came after him and shot up half the house. Lucky thing nobody else got hurt. Lucky thing,” she adds, like she knows that’s where I went, “you weren’t up there when they done it.”

  Lucky? Lucky thing Aunt Gloria threw me out, you mean.

  Hours pass. Momma’s obnoxious snores keep me awake as I watch the tiny window get brighter and brighter. I do everything in my power to keep my mind a solid blank. I don’t talk to the doctor. I don’t talk to the nurses. I won’t even talk to the policewoman who pops her head in to find out what I know, or if I saw anything at all.

  All I can see is Bubby, and I see him just as clearly as if I’d been there when it happened. I mentally follow the trails of the bullets that blew out Jerome’s window and pierced the side of the house. I imagine them ricocheting off the rungs of the fire escape, so close to my own window, and so close to me, sound asleep, trapped in that stupid dream.

  I picture the bullets in slow motion, sailing through Jerome’s room and over his sleeping head, spiraling between the bars of the crib, and burrowing deep into Bubby’s chest.

  I can see the splatter of blood on the wall next to the crib, a giant red flower with growing petals that drip, drip, drip all the way down to the floor.

  I see Bubby’s brown curls, long enough to braid, but nobody bothers to do it, and I’ve always been glad because I think it’s lame to put braids on a little boy, even if he is black, and black people do it all the time. But now these long brown curls are speckled with red.

  Red on the sheets. Red on Oscar the Grouch. Red all over his floppy gray sock monkey.

  I make this awful, gasping sound just as a bushy-haired doctor in a black crocheted beanie, I mean yarmulke, appears. My tacky blue hospital gown is drenched, my hands slippery as ice.

  “Breathe,” he tells me, and I jump as he jams a cold stethoscope against my bare back.

  I haven’t taken a full breath for five minutes. I think I forgot how.

  “I can’t,” I rasp, touching my throat to make sure nothing’s choking me there.

  “Yes, you can. Deep breath. Good girl.”

  He smells like coffee, and has jelly smeared on the sleeve of his white coat. After listening to me force air in and out of my lungs, he turns toward Momma and calls her three times before she finally wakes up. I hope she slept off the beer, that he can’t smell any on her breath.

  Momma stretches, cracking her bones. “Good grief. What time is it?”

  “It’s after ten, Mrs. Kowalski.”

  Momma hefts her bulk out of the chair, reaching for her coat. “You feeling okay now, sugar pie? ‘Bout ready to go?”

  Dr. Yarmulke raises a finger. “Just one minute. If you don’t mind, I’d like to keep Martha here for a day or two to make sure she’s all right.”

  “She’s fine,” Momma argues. “Little banged up is all.”

  I study the rusty stain on my bandaged hand, amazed at the understatement.

  “Martha has been through a terrible trauma. She’s obviously distraught, and I think she could benefit from a couple of days in our adolescent ward.”

  Momma glowers. “Distraught? She’s just laying there!”

  “Still, I’d like her to be evaluated.”

  “No,” Momma says flatly. “She’s coming home with me.”

  The doctor ignores her. “Martha? Would you like to stay here and talk to somebody about what happened last night?”

  A long murderous silence follows while they wait for my answer. I think of all the old movies I’ve seen about wartime interrogators with their bamboo razors and electrical probes. Man, those guys had nothing on these two. No wonder people break down and confess to crimes they didn’t commit.

  “I want to go home,” I say at last.

  “Good. Let’s go.” Momma throws me my bloody clothes.

  But then the doc drops a bomb. “Mrs. Kowalski, I’d reconsider if I were you. We’re all aware of the fact that Martha’s been abused.”

  You could hear a feather drop. “What did you say?”

  “Abused,” Dr. Yarmulke repeats. “Somebody’s been h
itting her, and we’ve documented this clearly in her record. Martha, would you like to show your bruises to your mother?”

  What for? She already saw them. Oh, why can’t he shut up and let me go home?

  Momma’s face turns eggplant purple. “My daughter tell you that?”

  “No. In fact, she wouldn’t tell us anything.”

  “See? That’s the problem with you people, you got nothing better to do except stir up trouble, pokin’ your noses into poor people’s business. Who in the sam-hill do you think you are?” And on and on till I want to crawl into the wall. With my dumb luck, they’ll throw her in the psych ward. Then I definitely won’t have a way out of this rat hole.

  “Fine. Take her home. But let me tell you something, ma’am. Somebody will follow up on this, and if there’s any abuse going on, we’ll find out. Understand?”

  “Don’t you threaten me, buddy. What the hell’s wrong with you people? I’m her mother, for Christ’s sake. You think I’d sit back and let anybody beat on her?” As she scrawls her name on a piece of paper, I gingerly pull my clothes on over my damp blue gown. That last shot they gave me is re-eally wearing off.

  Wayne picks us up in his truck, and aside from a couple of his brainless wisecracks, nobody speaks on the way home. I see a cop in the yard rolling up miles of yellow tape, but other than that, the house looks oddly the same—flapping shingles, peeling gray paint, sagging porch, broken steps. I don’t look up at the fire escape, or at Jerome’s shattered window. I just walk into the kitchen and stand there, feeling helpless.

  “You want me to make you a hot dog or something?” Momma eyes me nervously, like she’s waiting for my head to start spinning around.

  “Uh-uh.”

  Normally I don’t get headaches—last one I had was my Halloween hangover—but the right side of my brain feels like it’s been stun-gunned (bubbybubbybubbybubby) and little golden crinkles dance at the edge of my vision (bubbybubbybubbybubby) so I head to my room and collapse facedown. Trying so hard not to think bubbybubbybubby …and trying not to remember that it was me who took the money.