Dreamsleeves (12 page)

T
here's a crashing sound out in the kitchen and I bolt upright in bed.

“Cheap bill box,” my father shouts.

He's talking about the brown wooden container hanging on a nail on the kitchen wall. There are three sections labeled in a swirly gold script,
Bills
,
Memos
,
Letters
, but the whole thing is filled with bills. It probably fell on the floor when my dad yanked it off to bring to the table, where my mom will be sitting with the checkbook and a pen and a worried look on her face.

Bill night is never a good night.

I open my radio-receiver ears as wide as they will go.

“What the hell?” my father shouts and I jump up, fear burn-tingling like Fourth of July sparkler sparks all up and down my skin.

“Look what they charged for that ambulance, when you should've been watching your own kids.”

I hear the freezer door open, ice cubes snap-crackle-popping up in their little blue-sectioned tray, then clinking down in a glass, my father unscrewing the cap of a liquor bottle, pouring it in, splashing in some ginger ale.

I wonder how many drinks he's had. I check the green glow time on my clock. It's ten o'clock. He's probably had six or seven by now.

“And I thought I told you to pay the electric,” he says.

My mother mumbles something.

“Well, how much were groceries?” he says.

My mother mumbles something.

“What?!! What the hell are you buying?” he shouts. “I haven't had a decent meal this summer. All you feed us is crap.”

That's not true
. I get out of bed to go stand by the doorway near the refrigerator.
Mom makes good meals for us
.

“Food's expensive, Roe,” my mother says. “And diapers and baby food. A gallon of milk just went up again and a pound of hamburger is nearly two dollars.”

Is that all?
I think.
Two dollars?
I remember seeing a receipt for my father's booze in the bag from the liquor store.
Twenty-eight dollars and forty-four cents
. My mother could have purchased fourteen pounds of hamburger with that much money.

“You know my commissions are in the gutter,” my father says.

And I suppose that has nothing to do with your drinking!

The refrigerator door opens, the light casting a goldish glow on the wall. The refrigerator is the only new appliance my family owns, everything else is hand-me-downs, or should I say hand-me-ups, from Nana. Mom wanted the “avocado” color, but my father said, “No, gold.” I see from the hand that it's my mother opening the door, maybe getting some soda. I step back so as not to be seen.

“Well, maybe if you didn't eat so much,” my father shouts, “you wide load.”

I hear a shuffle and a yelping sound. I move quickly around the corner. My mom is in the refrigerator. She braces a hand against a silver rack to push herself back up. When she turns around, there's a line mark on her forehead from where it hit the metal.

I snap and rush toward my father. “Did you push her?” I scream.

My mother is crying. “No, honey, I tripped.” Her hands are on her stomach.

“I'm going to bed,” my father says. He swats the bill box off the table and kicks it across the floor, where it collides with the broom; the handle slams down on the linoleum.

I hug my mother. “He pushed you, didn't he?”

She shakes her head no, but I know she is lying.

“Just go back to bed, A, please,” she begs me, wiping the tears from her face.

I hang the bill box back on the nail. I stand the broom up by its dustpan.

I hate him … I hate him … I hate him … I hate him
beats like bongo drums in my brain.
What can I do? Who can I tell? How can I make him stop?

I lie awake until I think of something to do.

Getting out of bed, the first sound I hear is the faint
tick, tick, tick
of the brown clock on the living room mantelpiece, the ledge that's supposed to look like a fireplace where we hang our stockings on Christmas Eve except there's no real fireplace and no chimney for Santa to slide down. I picture the chimneys on “our house” in the country. The house we'll never own.

My father is snoring on the couch. In the kitchen, I glance at the clock: nearly midnight.
Hurry, Cinderella, you don't have much time!

I fill the teakettle and set it on a burner.

I take six Lipton's tea bags from the box and put them in the teapot.

I lift up the kettle before it whistles and make the strongest pot of tea I've ever made — dirt-dark brown like the liquor in his bottles.

One of the bottles is newly opened, not too much drunk out of it yet. I pour three-quarters of the liquor down the drain and then I replace the missing liquor with tea.

Maybe my father won't notice. Maybe it will still taste the same, but it won't make him so mean.

Back in bed I can finally go to sleep feeling better that I took some action. A little midnight tea party, we'll see if it works. At least I did something. I tried.

I
n the morning I lie in bed listening to my father retching in the bathroom. It's worse than I've ever heard.

Good
. Serves you right, for hurting Mom last night.

He vomits and vomits as if he can't stop. The sounds he makes are so horrible, I almost feel sorry for him, almost.

When he's finally out and I get up and go into the bathroom, I see what looks like blood in the usual pink and yellowy splats of vomit around the white toilet seat and on the gray and white linoleum floor.
Blood
. That can't be good.

At nine o'clock, summer school is in session. I don't have much enthusiasm for teaching or anything now that Sue-Ellen disinvited me to her party. I hate that girl. And, Maizey? How could she betray me like that? Not even trying to stand up for me?

Beck and Callie are working on their spelling lists.

“Today's the letter
M
,” I tell Dooley, checking to make sure he's holding his pencil correctly. “Up the mountain, down the mountain, up the mountain, down the mountain.” D is still wearing his little red car dream tag on his sleeve. It's got smudges all over it and the stickiness is wearing off, but he wears it every day without fail.

Eddie's gotten really good at stacking the donuts. “One … two … fee …”

I hear car tires crunching the gravel in our driveway. My father.

“Good job, class. Keep working. I'll be right back.”

I walk into the kitchen. My father is pouring a drink. I stand there in the doorway watching him, frozen. Will he notice the difference from the tea?

He takes a swig, then rushes to the sink, leans over, and spits. “What the hell?” He picks up the bottle and sniffs. I try to turn quietly away before he sees me.

“What are you doing?” he says.

“Nothing.” My heart is racing. “Just wondered if you needed something.”

“Yeah,” he says, “a better brand of booze … cheap crap.” He opens the fridge and pulls out a can of beer, pops back the top, chugs it down, and then he's gone.

Maizey stops by while the little ones are napping.

“I thought maybe you forgot where I live,” I say.

She squints her eyes like this hurts. She looks around my kitchen. I imagine she's comparing it to Snoop-Melon's kitchen. I bet hers is beautiful with all new avocado-colored matching appliances, maybe even a dishwasher.

I feel like saying, “Traitor, why didn't you stick up for me in the park? Why didn't you pick me over Snoop …?”

“I fixed it!” Maize blurts out, all excited.

“Fixed what?” I say.

“You can come to Sue-Ellen's party again!”

Hope pops up like bread in the toaster. “Really? Are you sure?”

“Yep,” Maizey says.

“How?” I say.

There's a long pause.

“Maiz — ey?”

“All right,” she sighs. “I told Sue-Ellen about your father. About how strict he is to you and how you can't ever go anywhere …”

“What?! Maizey. Why? I can't believe you did that. I don't need that girl's pity. She already thinks she's better than me.”

Maizey looks out the window at the bird feeder, a guilty expression on her face.

“Maize, what is it? Please tell me you didn't tell her anything else about my dad. Please tell me you didn't….”

“Don't worry,” Maizey says. “Sue-Ellen understands. She said she has an uncle who's a drunk….”

“What??!! No, Maizey,
no.
You told her my father drinks? She'll tell every …”

“No, she won't,” Maizey says. “I made her promise.”

My blood is boiling mad. “You had no right to tell her my business, Maizey Hogan, and don't ever call my father a drunk.”

“Well, he is, A,” Maizey says. “Come on, you know that's true.”

My heart is booming. “You need to go, now.”

“Come meet us at the park at four thirty if you want,” Maizey says.

Us?
Uggh!
Us
meaning her and Snoop-Melon?
Us
used to mean Maize and me.

When she leaves I flop on my bed and cry. I watch Frisky trying valiantly to escape his pool house. He just gets to the top and then he slips back down again.

I am so mad at Maizey, but … I want to go to that party, to wear my new bathing suit and have fun like a normal girl and see Mike Mancinello.

I pull out my journal, the page opening to my “dreams for the summer.” I knew the first two wouldn't be easy, but I still have a chance with the third.
Please, God, help me get to that party.

When my mother gets home from work, I have chicken cutlets breaded and ready to fry, a lettuce and tomato salad, and potatoes peeled all set to boil. “Can I quick go to the park to meet Maizey for a while?”

“Sure,” she says, with a yawn. “Just don't be long.”

It's four thirty on the dot. They are not on the swings. Or the bench by the fountain.

“Psst. A! Come here.”

Maizey motions to me from the side of the maintenance building. I walk over.

Sue-Ellen and Maizey are huddled behind a clump of tall bushes. They are both wearing hot pants and swirly-patterned blouses and big hoop earrings, another matching outfit. Is Sue-Ellen treating Maizey to all these new clothes?

“Wanna smoke?” Sue-Ellen says to me. Cigarette dangling from the side of her lips, she flicks the round top of a fancy silver lighter with her thumb,
click, click, click
, until a small flame appears. She sucks in, closes her eyes and smiles, and then blows the smoke out of her nose like a dragon, a beautiful blond-haired dragon.

“Here,” she says to me, holding a red and white pack of cigarettes out toward me. Marlboros they are. I quick think how my mother smokes Salems.

“No, thanks,” I say.

“Come on,” Sue-Ellen says, “don't be a baby. All teenagers smoke.”

“No, they don't,” I say. I stare at Maizey like
come on, back me up
, but she looks away. Traitor.

“People who are
in
do,” Snoot-Melon says.

“Guess what, A?” Maizey says. “They even have a ‘smoking area' outside the gym at Catholic High. You can meet your friends there between classes for a smoke.”

I consider this for a minute, this “smoking area” place. My father might control my life before and after school and on the weekends, too, but … you can meet your friends in the smoking area at high school — even friends who are
boys
? Interesting.

“Well?” Sue-Ellen says, smiles at me, not in a nice way, in a “dare you to” way.

“Sure, I'll try it,” I say.

Maizey looks surprised, then worried all of a sudden. “But, A, what if your father smells smoke on your breath?”

“That's what gum is for, dummy,” Sue-Ellen says, retrieving a green and silver pack of gum from the pocket of her shorts.

I notice a long, ugly scar on her leg.

“What are you staring at?” Sue-Ellen says, noticing me noticing the scar.

“Nothing,” I say.

“A school bus backed over me and tore my leg open,” she says. “Fifty-eight stitches, but loads of insurance money.”

“Oh, I'm sorry,” I say.

Sue-Ellen shrugs her shoulders. She takes another drag and blows out the smoke. “At least it wasn't my face.”

I consider that for a moment. What a curious thing to say.

Sue-Ellen stamps out her cigarette. She tap-taps a new one out of her pack and lights it like she's an old pro. “Here,” she says, passing the lit cigarette to me. “Suck it in through your mouth, hold it for a second, and then blow it out through your nose.”

I put the filter side of the cigarette to my lips and suck in like I'm drinking soda through a straw. The smoke stings my throat and nostrils and I start to cough.

“Good,” Sue-Ellen says, laughing. “One dare down, two to go.”

I cough and cough and then I take another drag, this time just sucking in a tiny bit.

“What do you mean one dare down?” I ask, coughing, blowing the smoke out.

“You did the first of the three dares,” Sue-Ellen says.

“What?” I say, confused.

“If you want to be in our ‘in' group you have two more challenges.”

“What are they?” I ask.

“Drink a can of beer and kiss a boy.”

I stare at Sue-Ellen, wondering if she's going to say something about my father drinking. I repeat “Drink a can of beer?” as a sort of test to see what she'll say.

“That's right,” she says, “drink a can of beer and kiss a boy.”

Sue-Ellen and Maizey laugh like they know the punch line to a joke that I don't.

I take a stick of spearmint gum and chew it as I bike home. Three dares, huh? Kissing a boy might be fun, but drinking beer? No way.

All I care is that I'm going to the party again. Hoorah, hoorah, hoorah!

When I get home, B, C, and D can tell I'm in a cheerful mood.

“Give us airplane rides, A,” Callie asks.

“Yeah, yeah!” Beck says, running over to join us, D following close behind.

“Me first,” Dooley says.

“No, D,” Callie tells him, “it was my idea.”

“That's right,” I say. “Come on, Cal.” I push the dining room table and chairs back to make room. “Face me,” I say to her.

I take my sister's little hands in mine and start to turn in a circle, faster and faster until her feet rise up from the floor and she's spinning round and round giggling and shouting, “Faster, faster!”

Beck is next, of course. “Do me faster, A,” he commands.

I try my best, but B's heavier. I have to
turn, turn, turn
quicker to lift him up off of the floor, but then, finally, he's airborne.

“You're getting so big,” I say, huffing from the effort.

“I know,” he shouts, laughing. “Do you see me, Callie?”

“Yeah, I see you,” she says, rolling her eyes.

And then, “Last but not least,” I say, “Mr. Dooley.”

D sets down his Matchbox cars and puts his warm, sticky palms in mine.

We twirl and he's off!

Dooley is light as a feather compared to Beck.

“Faster, A, faster!” he shouts as I spin him around and around.

His dream sticker falls off of his shirt.

Callie picks it up, sticks it back on him when he lands.

“There you go, D,” she says. “It's still good.”