The Sky Beneath My Feet - By Lisa Samson Page 0,64

never push anybody around physically, I don’t have any illusions that the kid who spat out “hippie losers” really believes in his own superiority.

“You don’t get it,” he says.

“What’s there to get? It’s illegal, Eli. You can go to jail just for possession.”

He shrugs. “A lot of things are illegal. Speeding is illegal, but look at you.”

I glance down at the speedometer, and sure enough. I ease my foot off. “All I’m asking is that you’ll promise me you won’t do it anymore. All right?”

Nothing.

“Eli, come on. Just promise me—”

“I’m not going to say something I don’t believe. I’m not going to promise not to, because what if I do? I’d be lying.”

“You mean you’re going to smoke more dope? You want to be a stoner, is that it?”

“Whatever. You’re not even listening.”

“Eli, I’m trying.”

This isn’t how I imagined the conversation going. I expected our visit to Mission Up to shake him up. Mission accomplished. I expected him to be cowed into submission. Not so much. Somehow, I had assumed that confronting him would do the trick. There would be tears, repentance, maybe some denial. I expected him to try to charm me, to reassure me, to do anything to win back my favor. Instead, he’s defiant. Brazen.

“What you’re saying is, you might want to keep smoking weed.”

“Maybe,” he says. “I don’t know.”

“What about the kids at your school who got suspended? You wanna end up like them?”

“Of course not,” he says. “They’re stupid.”

“Because they got caught?”

He nods. “And anyway, it shouldn’t be illegal. Pretty soon it won’t be. I don’t know what the big deal is. There are more important things in life.”

“I want what’s best for you—”

“Don’t worry about it, then. I’m not stupid like those kids.”

“No, Eli, I’m not saying I don’t want you to be caught. I don’t want you to be hurt. There’s a difference.”

“It doesn’t hurt me,” he says. “That’s a myth.”

I’m clutching the wheel with white-knuckled intensity, frustrated by the knowledge that I am losing the argument. That for all my waiting, I went into this unprepared. It never occurred to me that, confronted by the fact he was smoking marijuana, his response would be, “So what?” It’s another slap in the face, a much more painful one.

“If you won’t do it for yourself, then do it for me.”

“You can’t guilt me into something I don’t believe in.”

Oh really?

“All right, then,” I say. “But I don’t know what your father is going to think about this.”

I hate the sound of that sentence, but it’s out before I can stop myself.

“Well?” I ask.

Eli laughs.

“Stop that,” I say.

“Are you kidding? Believe me, if you ask anybody in the neighborhood who in this family is smoking weed, they wouldn’t say it was me. Look at you people! You’re all crazy. You with your Rent-a-Mob. Dad holed up in his shed. He belongs in a straitjacket, if you ask me.”

Maybe we both do.

I feel like I’m going insane right about now.

chapter 12

The Reflecting Ditch

At the back of the bus, on a row all to myself, I study Mother Zacchaeus’s lapel pin and contemplate rejection. First Rick rejected me—because abandonment is a form of rejection, and moving yourself into the backyard shed clearly qualifies as abandonment. Then the eccentric nun (eccentric is putting it mildly) rejected me—because slapping someone in the face and accusing her of kidnapping is also a rather obvious form of rejection. Eli was next. After our little talk, he shut down around me, restricting himself to monosyllables. When I tried to put a stop to his afternoon bike rides, he simply ignored me. The silent treatment qualifies as rejection, doesn’t it?

At least I still had Jed. But now he’s rejected me too, though in the gentlest of ways. After begging me to accept Marlene’s invitation to accompany the Rent-a-Mob to the demonstration in D.C., coaxing me against my better judgment to remain open to new experiences, to go boldly where no man has gone before and so on, the moment we boarded Chas Worthing’s chartered bus, Jed detached himself from his mother and sat on the row just behind Marlene, never taking his eyes off her from the time we left Towson until we hit the gridlock around the Capitol Beltway.

“You’re all alone back here,” Chas says.

He plops down across the aisle from me.

“I’m fine.”

“Everyone’s glad you decided to come.”

“Yes, I know.”

They had all lined up first thing and let me know. Some apologies seemed genuine—Barber, for example, when he wasn’t twizzling his mustache,