Nowhere but Home A Novel - By Liza Palmer Page 0,51

that something had happened to Merry Carole and the baby. She was pretty far along with Cal at that point and things had gotten almost unbearable for her at school. It was Laurel and Piggy Peggy’s mission to make Merry Carole’s life as excruciating as possible. Of course, Whitney was pregnant and shipped off to her grandparents in Houston at that point anyway, so . . . hindsight and all that. It never occurred to me that it was about Mom. Her domain was in the outside world and she rarely infected my school life. That was about to change.

I remember walking into the front office and seeing Merry Carole there. She was sobbing and inconsolable. I ran to her, crouching in front of her, pleading with her to tell me what was wrong. Please. What’s going on? I remember saying.

“Mom’s dead,” Merry Carole said, through sobs. It made total sense and no sense at all. I remember taking a deep breath and thinking, there it is. The news I’ve been waiting to hear for years.

“How?” I asked, not a tear falling from my eyes. I remember being eerily calm.

“Yvonne fucking Chapman shot her!” Merry Carole screamed. Merry Carole rarely swore, and I kind of loved that she screamed the F word right in the front office. It was freeing and wonderful. And no one could reprimand her for it. It was just going to be another trashy thing we Wakes did instead of behaving like “proper folks.”

“Yvonne Chapman? But where . . . where are we going to live now?” I asked, unable to process Mom’s death, so I reached for the next big issue: shelter. Merry Carole was only becoming more hysterical. I pushed my fears aside and focused on calming her down. She was too worked up. She was going to lose control, if she hadn’t already. Her crying had escalated into hysterics and she was struggling to breathe.

“Yeah! Her best friend whose husband Mom was fucking,” Merry Carole said, her voice cracking and breaking as it shrieked through the school.

“Okay, now . . . if we can just take this into a more private place,” the principal interrupted.

“Eat shit,” I said, my head whipping around at the man who seemed to be annoyed by how two girls were handling their only parent’s death. I remember hating that I hadn’t said something more cutting and brilliant in the heat of the moment. But I was sixteen, and despite wanting to be a grown-up, I wasn’t. And I’d just learned that my mom had died.

“All right now,” the principal said then, gripping me around the arm and pulling me away from Merry Carole. And that was when something just exploded inside me. Even all these years later I remember never feeling as terrified as I felt when that man pulled me away from my sister. I felt like a wild animal, clawing and wailing as he tugged us apart. So I punched him. I rounded on him with my only free hand and connected with the side of his bloated face. It was later documented that I “accidentally swatted him as he tried to calm me.” But I was completely out of control. In those seconds I thought it was possible to simply combust. I remember being pulled off the principal by people, teachers probably. They held me back, picked me up, restrained me, and I remember thinking—all someone has to do is tell me it’ll be okay. Comfort me and I’ll stop, I screamed inside my head. I heard Merry Carole sobbing, and I fought back because they wouldn’t let me be with her.

I howled, kicked, and finally freed myself only to lunge past the mob of teachers and administrators and wrap myself around Merry Carole, finally calming her and in so doing calming myself. Merry Carole and I held on to each other among the pacing, milling faculty as we let the reality sink in: we had no home, no possessions, no parents, and a baby on the way.

That was the worst day of my life.

So as I sit here today in the warden’s office, I know a thing or two about identifying with the victim’s family.

12

Brisket, ranch beans, coleslaw, white bread, peach cobbler, and sweet tea

I have to pass under a guard tower, more razor-wire fences, and another guard booth just to park in Lot B when I return from shopping. I gather all the ingredients and transport them to the back of the kitchen