hair done or whatever, I’d drive Sarah’s car all the way down Third Street to my old neighborhood. I’d park just down the road from my old high school. I wore a scarf around my hair and a huge pair of dark glasses, and I just sat in the car and waited.
Sooner or later school would let out. I’d watch everybody stream by, toward the bus stop or their cars or the burger place around the corner. Usually I’d see a couple of people I knew. Sometimes I thought -- from a distance -- that I saw Ricky Jones. I'd duck down in my seat, fear pounding through me. It was never him. Part of me wanted to hunt him down and confront him with what he'd done to me. Maybe it would help me put the dreams and memories behind me. But I was terrified. Even thinking about him made me hyperventilate. My mouth went dry; I felt so dizzy I worried I might pass out. These attacks frightened me.
Some days, I’d see Maria. Once she walked with some girls from our homeroom. Mostly she was alone. She always had her big old black backpack on her back, loaded down with books, so heavy it made her shoulders ache. She walked with her head down, her eyes on the sidewalk. We used to always take Muni home from school together, and then sit in the kitchen at my house to do homework. Sometimes we’d make snacks and watch talk shows. We liked to make fun of all the losers on Jerry Springer, or flip through magazines to find hairstyles and catch up on celebrity gossip. .
Other days I parked by the clinic where my mom worked. I never saw her, though. Her schedule changed from week to week, so maybe my timing was bad. Maybe she was just taking some time off. Maybe she was drinking again. This last possibility froze my blood in my veins.
I knew her patterns the way I knew my own face – or had known it, before.
Mom would be okay for a few years and then it would start. First she’d have a drink with friends and come home pleasantly buzzed, whistling and jolly and full of grand plans. Then she’d start staying out later and later, with friends and then with strangers at the bars she preferred. Sometimes she brought men home and let them stay the night.
After a while, though, she wouldn’t need to go out at all. She would bring her bottles home from the liquor store and drink in front of the TV. Now she wasn’t jolly; now she’d get sad, then sink into silence. Finally I’d find her passed out on the couch every the morning, and in spite of my pleas she wouldn’t get up for work anymore.
A few weeks like this and our savings would dwindle and disappear; I’d have to find churches that gave out free groceries, or haul Mom downtown to apply for food stamps and government checks. After a couple of months she’d hit rock bottom. She would drink so much she’d give herself alcohol poisoning. I would haul her to the emergency room, scared half to death she might die on me. She would recover, cry, and promise to do better. And she would, for a while.
I could never figure out what started it. Sometimes the cause seemed obvious: she got dumped by some guy she was seeing, or laid off from a job, or had a falling out with a friend. Other times we were coasting along pretty happily and then all of a sudden, wham, like a piano falling from a blue sky.
It gnawed at me, this worry that Mom was drinking again. Who would take off her shoes and tuck her under a blanket? Who would make oatmeal for her, with brown sugar and raisins, when she had a really bad morning? I imagined her alone in our apartment and I decided I couldn’t wait any longer.
I’d wanted to give her a little time. Two weeks would have to be enough.
CHAPTER FOURTEEN
I planned everything so carefully. I didn’t want her to slam the door on me, so I would wait until she came outside. I didn’t want her on the defensive immediately, so I needed to disguise myself. I needed to know what to say to her, word for word; I wrote it out and memorized it.
On the day I’d chosen, a Saturday, I picked an outfit Jamie would have