Authors: Chris Crutcher
“You leave and you’ll get
nothing
from us,” Maxwell says. “There will be no money for college, there will be no allowance, there will be no car, there will be no
nothing.”
“If you give her up, I wouldn’t take a bag of Cheetos from you.”
“You’d be smart to go to your room before you say something you can’t take back. This conversation is over.”
Montana turns back to her mother, who sits silent, staring at the table. Montana kneels in front of her. “When you guys go to bed tonight and ask each other if I’ll really do it, I’m telling you, my word is gold. I will take my stuff, and I will hate you for the rest of my life.”
She stalks to her room.
When Montana sees Tara standing defiant in that corner, she’s looking straight into history. She knows no matter how Tara tries, when she feels like that, it goes one way; a handful of poop where it doesn’t belong. The only explanation is, “I get
mad.”
What’s happening to Tara now might as well be happening to
her,
and Maxwell West has put himself in her sights. It boils down to the Maxwell Wests of the world, from blocked
newspaper articles to “You are
not
going out with Trey Chase” to “If you leave here you won’t get a thing” to a throwaway six-year-old girl. She visualizes her mother sitting at that table, defeated, and she wants to slap her into the next county.
It’s everywhere. Remington and Holden are simply Maxwell Lite; second and third verse, same as the first. If she takes them on, she ends up at the school board meeting, where
he
wields the gavel. But what the hell. Why not? Mari was right; you don’t have to win.
“You can stay at my place if you want,” Trey says. The two stand next to Montana’s locker.
“Right. I’m going to stay at your place after you’ve already propositioned me.”
“Listen, the safest place in the world for you, if you don’t want me in your pants, is at my grandmother’s place. I’d run into two-hundred-thirty-pound linebackers all day before I’d let her catch me getting birthday suited up with a girl in her house.”
“I was going to ask Dr. Conroy….”
“She’s a teacher. She’ll have to get permission from your parents, or go through some legal bullshit to make it cool, and in the end, Maxwell West gets his hooks into it. A lot of work for a place to crash.”
“You sure she won’t mind?”
“You got a cell phone?”
Montana pulls it out of her purse, drops it in his extended hand. He dials. “Grandma…Trey…I know, but you answered anyway…. You’re right, it could have been a telemarketer. You could have bought me something cool. Listen, would it be okay if Montana stays with us for a while?…I don’t know, a
while
…No, no, none of that…Yup, the room farthest from mine…”
He holds the cell against his leg. “You’re not on the run, are you?”
Montana shakes her head.
Into the phone: “Nope, Grandma, she’s just leaving home, and she’s close enough to eighteen, by the time they got it sorted out…All right, she’ll probably come over after school. I’ll see you after practice.”
“Reservation for one at the Hotel Mary Jane,” he says, and hands Montana back her cell.
Dr. Conroy waits in Principal Remington’s office. He will be returning from lunch presently. She has ten minutes before the bell and feels the urge to get this issue into the open. He will be angry, or at least petulant. They’ve been through this, but Montana wants one more shot and is willing to
face her father at the school board. She expects him to lay the blame one step above him, so she will have this meeting twice today; once with Mr. Remington and once with Dr. Holden. The answer will be the same, and she will request time at the next school board meeting. Holden will say the school board is drowning in business, and Dr. Conroy will say she will be more than happy to wait till the end of the meeting but they should probably schedule a good bit of time because there will likely be students present. Holden will threaten; Dr. Conroy will remind him she has tenure and is doing this by the numbers. At some point within a month, they will have a hearing on Montana West’s article on medical marijuana.
Ah, public education.
“Hey, Trey, could you take me over to Social and Health Services during lunch?”
“You can get a better sandwich at Subway,” Trey says, turning to shove his backpack into his locker, “but sure. You applying for Social Security?”
“Huh-uh,” Montana says. “I’m gonna try to find my little sis. Mrs. Crummet—she’s Tara’s social worker—said she’d be happy to talk with me.”
“A social worker will talk to a kid?”
“That’s what they
do,
dummy.” She punches him
playfully on the shoulder. Trey has kept his promise to his grandmother to stay away from Montana’s room and to refrain from openly obvious manipulations to get her out of her clothes. Montana has failed to do the same, however, and they are in danger of creating a seriously malevolent grandma. So far, they’ve been more cautious than Mari’s been vigilant.
“You think they’ll let you see her?”
“It depends on how she’s doing in her new placement,” Montana says. “If things are going smoothly they won’t, but if she’s the same toilet on wheels she was at our place—at the
Wests’
place—they’ll let me see her in hopes it will calm her down. It’ll be up to the family. Hey, I know this system inside out. I operated undercover for years.”
“Did a little stint myself,” Trey says.
“Serious?”
“You notice there’s a generation gap between me and my grandma. Grandma says she played it way too loose with Mom.” He laughs. “It’s taken my family a good long while to learn to control all the uncontrollable substances Grandma got into. My mom was like, all messed up when she had me, and I was born with a positive meconium drug screen. You know what that is?”
“Sure do. It means your momma was treating herself
as your bong, getting you high before you ever saw the light of day.”
“I didn’t lose her, though, like you did,” Trey says. “We both got placed with Grandma, and when Grandma finally placed my mother somewhere else, I was all for it.”
“That’s funny.”
“So I take my anger out on linebackers and you take yours out in bed.”
“Oh, ha! I’ll show you anger.”
“She’s having a hell of a time,” Sandra Crummet says to Montana over the table in the interview room at the Department of Social and Health Services. “She’s bossing them around, wandering the house at night like a Village of the Damned kid. They had to put an alarm on her door. She’s chewing on the back of the couch. It’s only temporary, but frankly we’re not having much luck finding a foster-adopt. Tara comes with quite a résumé.”
“Did you try to get my parents to reconsider?”
Sandra chuckles and shakes her head. “Of course. The first two tries I got your father, who wouldn’t let me talk to your mother. He told me to stop calling because he forbade your mother to change her mind.”
“The Great Forbidder.”
“Anyway, I figured out his crazy work hours and got through to your mom, but I had zero luck. She said you were gone, too. Is that true?”
“I told them Tara and I were a package.”
Sandra stares at her knees and shakes her head. “This system puts a lot of stress on folks. If it makes you feel any better, Tara keeps asking for you.”
Tears well in Montana’s eyes. “It makes me feel worse.”
Sandra pats her hand. “Well, we’ll see what we can do.”
“Listen,” Montana says. “Tell the foster parents to give her some things to be in control of. When she gets all bossy and shit, don’t just take everything away. It’s not personal. I’m telling you, once you’re like that, you’re like that. You can’t make it go away because people tell you it’s not good for you. Remember how you guys used to call me parentified?”
Sandra laughs. “God, yes. You were the best four-year-old mom I ever saw. And when your adoptive mother would try to take all your ‘’sponsibilities’ away from you, you pooped in the dryer.”
“Well, I’m still like that. God, Sandy,
anybody
pushes me around, I come at ’em like a banshee. I know that’s why I hate my dad so much.”
Sandra smiles, throwing up her hands.
“I’m not kidding you, Sandy. Tell the foster parents to give her things to do. And tell them not to worry if Tara makes them feel like shit.
She
feels like shit, and she needs the company.”
“That’s not easy to explain,” Sandra says.
“Want me to talk to them?”
Sandra looks Montana up and down, from piercing to piercing to black jacket to waist chain to black pants. “Yeah. Maybe you can show them your worm tattoo while you’re at it,” she says. “No, dear, this is not a family who wants to hear from Batgirl.”
“You know,” Trey says on the way back to school, “there’s this woman my grandmother plays poker with who’s raised at least a dozen foster kids. She doesn’t have any now, but she might go for one more, if Grandma lets her win once in a while.”
“Serious?”
“Yeah, you should hear some of the stories this woman tells. I listened to her one night when the game was at our place. Some of the kids she took in would make Tara look like Joan of fucking Arc.”
“Wait. Wasn’t Joan of Arc crazy?”
“That’s one theory,” Trey says, “but she was crazy good. These kids were crazy bad.”
“You want to bring me up to speed?” Dr. Conroy and Montana sit at the large table in the journalism room, working on the final touches of the layout for the paper.
“On what?”
“I hear you’re out of your house, living with the Chases? Is that right?”
Montana blushes slightly. “Uh-huh.”
“I thought you hated football players. Is this situation chaperoned?”
“It’s chaperoned,” she says, leaving out
“except when we’re fucking.”
Dr. Conroy watches her, brow furrowed.
“Trey’s grandma is a mother bear,” Montana says. “You don’t have a thing to worry about.”
“Well, if I
did
have something to worry about, it wouldn’t be that you guys don’t use protection, would it?”
“No, ma’am.” Finally, something she can be truthful about.
“You make sure it stays that way.”
“Yes, ma’am.”
“I got the revised version of your medical marijuana article.” She holds it up. “I haven’t had a chance to read
it yet, but I went to see Mr. Remington. The wheels are grinding again, but he is pretty upset with me. Did you add to this? It looks longer than before.”
“A little. There’s an interview. Wait till you read it.”
“I’ll look it over, for all the good it will do. You know what Holden will say.”
Montana nods again. “Yup, but the faster we get their answers, the faster we get back to the school board.”
Dr. Conroy watches her a moment more. “How much of this is about you not living at home? Is this a vendetta?”
“A what?”
Dr. Conroy looks toward the closed door. In a lower voice, she says, “A ‘fuck you.’”
“No. Well, maybe a little.” She nods. “Maybe a lot.”
“I’m not willing to put the school paper in the middle of personal business between you and your father,” Dr. Conroy says.
“It won’t look personal, I promise. Dr. Conroy, he has to have everything his way. My mother just caves and does what he says. My foster sister has to find a new home because my dad doesn’t like to be inconvenienced; nobody ever stands up to him. Maxwell West says this, Maxwell West says that, and it just happens. He’ll talk
to the rest of the school board members before he even opens this meeting.
Jesus
could present our case and He’d lose. I don’t expect to see my article in print, but the word will get out when the paper covers the meeting.”
“Do you want to see your room?” Montana crouches before Tara, standing in the doorway with a paper sack filled with clothes.
“Uh-huh.”
“It’s the best one,” Montana says. “It has the biggest window of all the bedrooms and a brand-new bed. Whenever you come to visit, you’ll have all your own stuff.”
“Do you got a room?”
“Right across the hall from yours,” Montana says. “So, like, if you get scared, you can just run over and crawl in bed with me. Like when we were at home.”
Trey stands behind Montana, whispers in her ear: “Unless you don’t happen to be in there.”
Montana ventriloquists back, “When she’s here I
will
be in there.”
“I’m starting to hate this kid already.”
Tara says, “Can I live here all the time?”
“Huh-uh,” Montana says. “You have a new mom
and she doesn’t want to give you up because you are so cool. But I get to baby-sit, and you can come stay here if you miss me. And you always get to come when your new mom comes over to play poker with Trey’s grandma.”
“What’s poker?”
Mari, now standing in the doorway, says, “That’s when your new momma comes over here to play cards and I take all her money.”
Tara stares.
“Don’t worry, honey. I’ll give some of it back to her so she can buy you food.”
Montana puts a hand on Tara’s shoulder. “You know where you’re pooping, right?”
“In the toilet.”
“And what are you going to do when you get mad?”
“Be a bitch.”
Montana blushes slightly, smiles at Trey.
He says, “Peer mentoring?”
“We need to make sure you have a job when you’re over here,” Mari says, following Montana’s earlier advice. “Do you want a job?”
Tara nods enthusiastically.
“Okay,” Mari says, looking askance at Montana and
Trey, “you’re in charge of population control. This is a very important job. If you see Montana and Trey kissing too much, you know, like, if it gets
icky?
You bug them. Make them play with you. If they won’t, scream and yell and go all off.”
“You mean be a bitch?”
“Exactly,” Mari says. “And if you see them sneaking to Montana’s room, which is right next to yours, be twice as much a bitch. See, my grandson and your sister think nobody pays enough attention to them around here. You’re going to change that. Is that a job you think you can do?”