Authors: Renee Lewin
It was scary seeing girls crying in the hallway or in the cafeteria or in class, girls that clearly had gone out with Joey. Much gossip surrounded each one of his relationships and added to his reputation. Even scarier was that some of the girls he dumped didn’t cry at all. They quite happily let him go, even giving him a hug and a kiss on the cheek to send him on his way, off to another chick. He appeared to have this power over most of the girls in town, which wasn’t too hard since most of the girls were so simple it was laughable. His influence was unsettling. Plus, he began making smart remarks to me about Raul and commenting on things that didn’t concern him, telling Manny he could still go to college or that I shouldn’t be left alone to watch my father. What the hell did he know about loyalty to your father? Joey’s father wasn’t even in his life.
I stared uninterested at the movie, glancing over at my dad every once in a while to make sure he was okay. I could tell by his body language if something was brewing in his mind. His shoulders would slump over like a gargoyle and his eyebrows would furrow as he shook his head back and forth or tapped his foot feverishly. He was still sitting on the stool smoking his cigarettes. He was calm.
I heard a sound like someone tapping a stick on an empty Campbell’s soup can. Dread pulled the warmth from my skin. Was I hearing things like Daddy
did
?
Things that weren’t really there?
The sound got louder and finally Manny, Joey, and Dad turned their attentions away from the television. The windows started to rattle. I stood up along with Joey and parted the curtains with a nervous hand. Elementary school boys were encircling our house, giggling and running and smacking fists or sticks against the steel siding of the trailer. Joey stormed outside. When the boys saw him in the doorway their little jaws dropped.
“What do you think you bastards are doing?”
“Joe Kinsley,” they whispered, astonished. Most of the kids ran but a few were too scared to move. “We did it on a d-dare. They dared us to tag Crazy Eddie’s house,” one of the boys stammered. “We’re real sorry.”
“Who dared you?”
“The
Tormentas
.”
“Let your friends know, if you mess with the Roberts, you mess with Joey Kinsley!” he roared. My mouth fell open at his declaration.
“Now get out of here!”
The little boys ran for their lives and disappeared behind various trailers. Neighbors were peeping outside their windows. All the commotion startled my father and he began pacing the house, looking through all the windows for any more kids.
Manny, Joey, and I stood on the front porch scanning the area. Manny and Joey walked past me to go back inside. Felipe, a little boy who lived in the trailer adjacent to us, walked out of his house tossing a baseball in the air. I waved at him and he smiled and waved back. I turned around to find my dad running out of the house toward me. I put my hands up and onto his shoulders to push him back. “Get away!” he screamed at Felipe. “Leave my family alone!”
“Dad!”
I pleaded for his attention while desperately trying to hold him back. Manny bounded out of the house toward us. Poor Felipe ran away frightened.
Dad looked from a retreating Felipe to me. “You’re keeping communication with
Them
aren’t you?”
Manny grabbed Dad by the arms, pulling him backward toward the house. “I saw you make a signal. You signaled those boys as a distraction, didn’t
you!
”
“No Daddy. I would never do that.”
Manny struggled to get Dad up the stairs, but Dad wouldn’t cooperate. Joey stood in the doorway watching. Dad maneuvered out of Manny’s grip and rushed toward me again. My father must have misjudged the distance between us and the speed he was going. He didn’t mean to crash into me. I fell backwards and scraped my palm on the concrete at the foot of the front steps.
Then Joey was on him. With his arms wrapped tight around Dad’s midsection, he picks him up and tossed him back into the house. “I’m sorry,” I heard Dad whimper. “I thought she, I thought she...”
I stood up with Manny’s help and we rushed back into the house, quickly locking the door behind us.
“
It’s
okay, Dad. I know you didn’t mean it,” I said.
Joey grabbed my hand to examine it. The heel of my palm was bleeding. He held up my hand so Manny could see it and then gently released my wrist. “This is the shit I’m
talkin
’ about Manny!”
Manny lowered his eyes as if guilty.
Joey turned to me. “And you heard what that kid said, Elaine. Raul, your “boyfriend”, and his boys sent those kids over here. Are you just going to let this continue?”
How dare he criticize my brother, my boyfriend, and me when he had no idea what we were going through? Who was
he
to criticize
me
?
“Get out of my house, you bully. Get out!” I yelled at him.
Joey stared at me with a bit of surprise in his cold blue eyes. His gaze made me swallow, but I stood firm. He broke the stare, walked over to the coffee table and picked up his beer. Gulping it down, he walked past me and out the front door. I clenched my fists as a breeze of his warm, soapy scent filled my nose. Through the window, I saw him toss the empty bottle into the garbage can by the park office building as he walked down the dirt road.
“I’ll get you something for your hand, Laney,” Manny mumbled and headed to the bathroom.
Raul’s friends may have sent those kids but not Raul. He had nothing to do with the dare. Although my dad wasn’t as easy to handle as I made him out to be, he was what was left of my father. Every now and then my real father would shine through and I would never betray that man by sending him away to an institution.
Never.
I walked over and rubbed Dad’s back to calm him and to let him know that I accepted his apology. Manny entered the room with some bandages for my hand. He seemed to be in deep thought.
“He didn’t mean it,” I said.
Manny speaks in a low voice. “I know but…this wasn’t the first time he’s gotten out of control. I wish I could say this’ll be the last.”
TWO
My family fell apart two years ago.
Restless, I sat in my third period English honors class. There were only a few weeks of my senior year left and I couldn’t wait to escape the impound known as Lorenzo High School. I had no friends there. I found the people who didn’t live in
Merjoy
Mobile Park snobby, and those who did live in my neighborhood were rude and jealous. My father owned the park in those days, and because I felt no need to seek out the acceptance of my peers, I was labeled stuck up from the very first day of high school. I really wasn’t full of myself back then, just uninterested in everyone’s immature social politics. After freshman year, however, I definitely looked down on most of them. It was the natural result of them stooping as incredibly low as they did to terrorize my family and me after ‘the rent thing’.
I was absentmindedly twirling a pen between my fingers when the principal’s voice came over the intercom system. “Emanuel and Elaine Roberts please report immediately to the principal’s office.
Emanuel and Elaine Roberts.
Thank you.”
I’d never been called out of class to go the principal’s office in my life, and not only did he call me, he called my brother, too. Everyone in class looked at me curiously. The pen I was twirling ceremoniously fell from my hand, rolled down the surface of the desk, and fell at my boots.
“Um, I guess that’s me,” I murmured. My teacher Mrs.
Warson
nodded. I shoved my things into my backpack and left the room, almost slipping on my pen on the ground, and went down the hallway in the direction of Manny’s class. As I neared the door, Manny came walking out with his backpack dragging along the ground. His worried brown eyes were a mirror image of mine. We proceeded to the other side of the school and to the principal’s office. Principal Wright, an unfortunate pot-bellied man who was probably colorblind because he wore lime green ties with burgundy shirts, was standing behind his desk. He scratched at his chins.
“Your father called. I think its best you guys get home as fast as you can. It sounded like an emergency.”
“What happened?” Emanuel asked.
Principal Wright shrugged and shook his head, blinking. “He just said they took her away, they took her. He kept repeating that.”
My stomach was in knots but it didn’t slow my pace. Manny and I raced to his truck in the student parking lot and sped to
Merjoy
. “It’s Mom, isn’t it?” I asked during the ride.
“Let’s pray, okay?” Manny suggested.
So I bowed my head. I said my ‘Amen’ just as we pulled up to the house. My dad was pacing the living room and wringing the hem of his shirt. “Elaine! Manny! You’re okay! Oh man,
They
took her!” He ran to me and grabbed me by my black jean vest. He searched my eyes as if not sure I was really his daughter. “Did
They
talk to you?”
Manny and I were in such shock over our father’s behavior that neither of us made a move to get his hands off of me.
“I said did
They
talk to you? Did
They
brief you!” Afraid, I could only shake my head. He calmed and his grip loosened. “Okay. I figure they would try to coerce my baby girl but you stayed strong. I have to stay one step ahead. One step ahead.”
“Dad?”
Manny finally spoke. “Let go of Elaine now.”
“Oh,” he removed his hands, “There you are, Sweetie. All better.”
“Where’s Mom?” Manny asked.
I tensed as Dad neared me again. This time he put his arm around both of us and wept. “She collapsed and the EMT impersonators took her away! I didn’t go with her because I knew what they wanted to do to me and I was afraid they came and took you guys too. I had to stay to make sure you guys were safe.”
The silence as Manny drove was crushing. The quiet gave me too much opportunity to think the worst.
My mother always made sure the whole family ate dinner together. She cooked the best dinners and she always baked the gooiest desserts. It’s a wonder our family wasn’t all overweight. I guess since the whole family helped out in keeping the trailer park clean and in working order we burned those calories off. Over dinner, Mom would get us to talk about our day, Dad talking about work and Manny and I talking about school. She would always crack jokes to make us laugh if we had a bad day.
“Don’t worry about Mrs.
Warson
,” she would smile. “She’s just grumpy because she’s getting up there in years. If she says something rude in class, just smile politely at her. Show her the teeth she wishes she still had.”
Every night, without fail, Dad would bring up one of his conspiracy theories. Things like UFOs and the Bermuda Triangle. “You heard about the government’s Tuskegee Syphilis Experiment back in 1930 and up until the seventies, right? Well, I know for a fact the government is conducting its own experimental testing of viruses and bacteria on hospital patients who are under anesthesia, all to develop methods of biological warfare. It’s happening here in the present and they’re not just testing things on black people now.
Anyone’s fair game.”