Halfway around the edge I saw them, a bunch of boys from the high school, with Jackson right in the middle. I stopped and Lucas slammed into me. I grabbed his shoulder to keep my balance while he screamed, “I caught you! You’re it!”
“We’re not playing tag.” I set Andy down and pretended to tie his shoe while I watched the boys.
I knew almost all of them. Miguel, the clown, and Wallis, the best basketball player the high school team has had in years. But I couldn’t tear my eyes from Jackson. I tipped my head at a neck-wrenching angle to see him through both my hair and glasses. Jackson, with his ice-blue eyes and straight black hair. Everybody’s friend, except mine. He didn’t know me, but every other kid in high school got to call him a friend.
My feelings for him proved I was just like any other girl, didn’t they? Those eyes, that smile, the one he gave to every person he saw. Not to me. He wouldn’t see me, but I responded like a real person. At least he gave me undeniable proof that I was alive, that I could be normal. If only…
“Aidyn, come on,” Lucas yelled. He grabbed my hand and jerked, and I landed on my knees. Gritty sand dug into my skin, and I bent my head in pain. I heard the older boys laughing. I tried so hard not to look, but I had to. Jackson stood a little apart and stared at me, his eyes shadowed.
Great. He had noticed me this time; he knew me now. He wouldn’t know my name, unless he’d heard Lucas, but he’d know me as the klutz.
He turned and melted into the group, and I finally noticed Lucas. “Did I trouble you?” he asked.
I laughed. Where had he gotten such an old-fashioned way of talking?
He touched my cheek with butterfly-wing-fingers. “Mommy says you’re troubled. We say
God bless Aidyn
every night.”
I sat down flat on the sand and gaped at him. So Mrs. Donaldson taught these little kids how to pity me. I didn’t need it! And if I didn’t need the money, I’d quit babysitting. But it wasn’t Lucas’s fault his mother was a busybody.
After a minute, I pulled my head from my bent arms and took a breath to settle my thoughts. “I’m not troubled. Just don’t pull on me like that, OK?” By then Jackson and his friends had disappeared. It didn’t matter.
I walked through our apartment door a little after five, and there was dinner on the table, heaping plates of spaghetti smothered in sauce, and salads. Balanced and healthy. Wow. And to round things out, a tumbler of wine at Mom’s place matched the cup of milk at mine.
At least we weren’t pretending she wasn’t drinking anymore.
My stomach knotted but at least I knew what to expect.
Mom finished off that first glass before she even took one bite. I wondered if she’d eat at all, but after she refilled the glass from a pitcher in the fridge, she sat down and motioned me to join her.
“How was your day?” she asked.
I picked at a string of pasta with my fingers.
She took another drink, then a bite. Maybe she thought I wouldn’t notice how she’d polished off that first glass. Maybe she thought she could fool me into thinking she had Kool-Aid in there. Maybe she was too far gone to care.
When Mom first started drinking, I saw nothing wrong with it. I was only nine and as miserable as my mother, and I felt so safe when she relaxed and smiled and sometimes laughed. I’d missed her laughter the most since Dad died.
But she never stayed—safe.
Now, she couldn’t stop drinking. Her words slurred. If she tried to walk she’d stagger, and if she dropped something she wouldn’t notice until it hit the ground. If I told her she was drunk or asked her to stop, she’d get mad, tell me I was only trying to ruin her good mood.
“Remember we’re going to Mass tomorrow,” Mom said.
I stared at the stringy pasta in my sauce-stained fingers.
“Aidyn?”
I shrugged.
Another long drink. “Set your alarm. We’ll go to the nine o’clock service.”
I glared at the glass. “You’re going to have a hangover,” I told her. “You’ll never make it.”
Her face went tight. “I’m not drinking.”
“What about that?” I pointed.
“It’s juice. Did you think I would drink in front of you and lie about it?”
Think? I knew. “Yes.”
She blinked. “Yeah, well, maybe last week I would have.” She pushed the glass across the table. “Smell it.”
“No thanks. You probably got vodka or something like that.” I pushed it away, glad to see some slosh onto the table. “If you’re up, why don’t you wake me? That way I won’t end up setting my alarm for nothing.”
I ran to my room. No matter how much I hoped, nothing would ever change.
Especially me.
3
Sunday morning I checked the clock as soon as I woke up, and groaned. Not even seven yet. I had more than half an hour to wonder if we were going to Mass or if Mom had blown it the night before and couldn’t face the world today.
I stared at the gray light that sneaked through the blinds. I’d left the window open and now the cold seeped in. I’d forgotten my heavy blanket even though the last few nights had been chilly. One more thing I’d screwed up. I couldn’t get anything right, and terror struggled in my chest. I told myself that blankets aren’t a big deal, and then realized I already knew it. I was scared about Mom. And if Mom had stayed sober, that left me free to panic about Mass.
I used to believe what they told us at church. I used to pray God would make us be just like the Holy Family, because they were three people and my family had three people, and the only difference I could tell was that I was a girl. Only Dad died, and Mom wasn’t anything like Mary. And me—well, I wasn’t anything good, not like their kid. Still, even after Mom got to being regularly hung over on Sunday mornings, I’d go to Mass. With the church just a few blocks from our apartment, I’d walk. I’d find myself a seat and feel, just for a little while, as though when I got home everything would be OK. After all, I kept praying. God wouldn’t tell me no
again
, would He? Only He did. But I kept going until the Sunday after the Shannon thing.
One night, her parents went to a party, and Shannon came to our apartment. Mom joined us as we hunkered on my bed. Shannon and I each had a soda; Mom had her bottle. She was great, at first, telling us stories that made us howl with laughter. But the stories got scary. Not ghost-and-monster scary, but confusing-scary, and way too grownup for a couple of twelve-year-olds. Rather than stare into Shannon’s confused brown eyes, I studied my hands, my ragged cuticles.
Mom’s drunkenness froze both of us, and we listened like mute toys plunked down after playtime.
When Mom threw up, Shannon called her parents. I had things cleaned up by the time they came to get her, but I couldn’t do a thing about Mom.
At school Shannon told me, “I’m not allowed to be friends with you anymore.” She looked like she’d been crying, but she didn’t look sorry. Mom scared her, and anyway,
Shannon
had plenty of other friends.
The next Sunday, there I was, sitting in the stiff pew while the church filled, watching people give each other hugs then find a seat and pull out the missalettes or a Rosary for meditation. And then I heard a familiar voice. Shannon’s mother said, “No, let’s not sit there.”
I turned. Shannon’s little sister argued with their mom and pointed at the long stretch of empty pew next to me. But the woman just shook her head and dragged the kid to the front of the church.
I got up and walked out. I didn’t have any friends left, not even God. Why should I go talk to Him when all He did was ignore me?
Shannon’s family probably still went. They were the good kind of people. I bet they’d be really happy to see Mom and me.
I heard Mom bumping around in the bathroom, and my stomach clenched. Then a crash. I pulled the sheet over my head. We weren’t going to church after all. I knew that before I even got up, but I’d probably get to do a lot of cleaning.
A few minutes later Mom tugged the sheet out of my fingers. “Come on, Aidyn. You get up earlier than this for school.”
Something about her eyes and her voice startled me. She
wanted
to take me.
“Aidyn?”
“What broke?”
“Did that wake you? Sorry. I tossed an old bottle in the trash and missed.”
I didn’t think she was lying, but I couldn’t tell.
“Come on, honey.” She stroked my hair as casually as if she did it often. “I don’t want to be late.”
Of course not. She had her agenda, whatever it was.
But did I want to face Shannon and maybe other kids I knew from school? They’d see me, and they’d see Mom. Would this give them the message that I could do normal things like them, or would anyone notice me at all? I shrugged under the shower, trying to loosen my muscles and answer myself at the same time. I’d gotten too used to my own invisibility.
As I got in Mom’s car and tried to buckle the seatbelt, a flashback smacked me into the Fourth of July and Mom driving home that night, drunk. I swallowed. Mom hadn’t even known what day it was by that time. We’d gone to my grandmother’s, but Mom got into a fight with someone, and we left before my uncle started the fireworks. They’d flashed all over the place, though, little islands of bombs going off around us. Mom started screaming, something about them trying to get us, about getting home before they killed us. It would have been trickier to get us home before
she
killed us. We were all over the road. Once we plowed right through the middle of one poor family’s display set up in the middle of the street. I shut my eyes and prayed we wouldn’t hit anyone. As far as I could tell, God answered that one, and I went out the next day and checked the fenders for dents and dried blood.
Now I couldn’t wrestle that nightmare from my mind.
Freshly-shampooed hair drifted across my cheek. Warm hands curled around mine and snapped the lock. Mom tipped my chin up. “I’m sober, Aidyn. I won’t hurt you.”
I whispered, “OK,” but only so she’d start the car and not read my mind anymore.
The nine o’clock service is the most crowded at our church. I saw a couple of families whose kids I babysit and kids from school. I caught Jackson staring at me from a few pews away and ducked my head. If I’d known he’d be there, I’d never have gone. If I’d known, I’d have come years ago. I wanted to die.
My old Brownie leader, from way back when I still did a few normal things, inched into the pew behind us. She glanced at me, frowning. She must know all about Mom. I bet she wondered why we thought we had the right to be there.
Then I turned and saw Shannon with her mother and the rest of her family.
I jammed my hands between my knees and bent my head. I hoped she hadn’t seen me. Did I want to be invisible so she couldn’t ignore me anymore? Or did I want her to notice how I ignored her?
I squeezed myself as small as I could and remembered religion classes. Shannon and I had gone together, always. I remembered the frilly First Communion dress my grandmother bought me, and how, even at the old age of seven, I couldn’t resist sucking the egg-shaped pearly buttons on the collar. I remembered the sweet flat taste of the Host and how clean I felt after going to Confession. I remembered how I believed that if you went to Confession, you wouldn’t even
want
to be bad anymore. My father swung me in circles so my pure white skirt billowed like a bell. He’d been so strong, so loving, not sick at all then. Mom had been sober, too. Why couldn’t everything have stayed safe?
Mom touched my arm and motioned me to stand. I remembered how we would stand and sit, how I’d measured the boredom of grown-up voices flowing over my head by the kneeler, and how many times it went up and down. I remembered feeling safe here, so long ago, before Dad got sick. I wanted that safety, the peace it brought, so bad.
When it was time for Communion, nausea pushed against the back of my throat. The wine! They served wine at Mass, real wine. How could Mom say she’d quit drinking when she was coming to a place where they served booze to anyone who wanted it?
I let her get in front of me, and I glared at her back, and when she passed by the Chalice without glancing at it, I remembered. I remembered that it is supposed to be the Blood of Jesus, not a ploy to get drunks to church.
After we knelt in the pew Mom whispered, “We should have gone to Confession first.”
Oh, yeah, just like I’d gone before my first Communion.
“Next week,” she said. “It’s right after the meetings—” She stopped, gave me a quick look. “We’ll see. We’ll figure it out, won’t we?”
We? I bent my head as if I needed to pray really hard, and I knew
we
would not figure anything out.
Just before the closing prayer a woman walked onto the altar, and the priest handed her the microphone. “Hi, I’m Lucy. I want to remind all the teens to come to youth group. We’ve got big plans for you guys, and everyone is welcome.”
I leaned closer to Mom. “This church sure has a lot of meetings.”
“Don’t they?” She sounded calm, but her hands tightened on the back of the pew.
We barely got outside when I heard someone yell, “Hey, Aidyn!”
I froze. Someone here noticed me? Someone saw me here with my mom and still called out to me? I turned to see who it was and thought that freezing was not enough. Melting into nothing would be better.
Jackson walked toward me. “Aren’t you coming to group?”
I opened my mouth. Group? Was that the stupid Alateen meeting or the youth group, or what? Whatever, I hadn’t been invited. “No.”
He turned, and even though I was kicking myself for being so stupid as to say no, I still watched the way his mouth quirked up on one side and sort of folded over itself on the other. Instead of walking away, he held his hand out to my mom. “Hey, Mrs. Pierce. You better make her come. You’re the mom, aren’t you?”
This could not be real. Mom had stopped drinking, and Jackson Killain knew my name, not just my first name but my last. I was delusional.
“Doesn’t sound like she wants to go.” Mom smiled back at him, and I could see he’d charmed her as much as me.