Peas and Carrots (21 page)

“Your grandmother hasn't had much contact with your mother in the last five years,” Mr. Bradbrook added. “When there were threats made against your mother, Mrs. Matthews wasn't concerned for her own safety, and she felt she didn't need to change where she was living.”

“You guys asked her?” Hope worried that Mr. Bradbrook wouldn't answer her, but he gave a slight nod.

“Mrs. Matthews wasn't concerned about anything, that I can promise you.”

Hope looked back at Dess, who stood stiffly next to Mom, staring at the floor. Dess's face was a funny grayish shade, the same color as Jamaira's powdered formula. “I need some privacy,” she muttered hoarsely.

Hope blinked, then realized her mother was gesturing to her. “Oh, okay.” She glanced at Mr. Bradbrook and tried to smile. “Thanks for talking with me.”

“You're welcome,” he said.

Hope glanced back at Dess.
It's going to be all right,
she wanted to say, but the little polite, bogus words of comfort were worthless, and held the bitter taste of a lie.

Four years. For four years I told them to shred every letter. For four years she kept trying to talk to me, and for four years Farris, now Bradbrook, has kept every one. A letter a month.

I stare in silence at the folder full of letters as Bradbrook blah-blahs on at me about something. Why the hell did she keep writing?

She's always hated Eddie. When Trish got sick of Eddie or one of her other men beating her up and came crying to her mom, Granny Doris used to say that the Felon was like those nasty roaches, the kind that survive even after you spray everything at them, the kind that will be here just fine when they bomb us and end the world. Roaches never die. He knew Granny hated him, and if you mess with him, Eddie Griffiths
always
gets you back. If he found Granny Doris once, he'll find her in the hospital.

I'm not going to have that old lady's dying be on me. I
told
them somebody's got to look out for her.

As soon as I can, I leave the table. The couches in the family room are rough against my face, but I like sitting here in the dark, pressed into the fat, scratchy pillows. It feels like I'm sitting on a thick old woman wearing an ugly housecoat.

In the dim afternoon light, I pretend that I'm still little, sitting on Granny Doris's lap. I pretend that she's here, and not laid up, broken and bruised in some hospital. I pretend that I'm small and sweet like Baby, and still believe everything she says.

“Your daddy loves you all, but he's got things to do,” she used to tell me when he would leave Trish and me on our own in the little house. At first, we'd be fine, but then he'd stay gone. Trish would run out of drugs and cry for days, and then she'd pack us up and we'd go stay with Granny Doris in her trailer park for a while.

Your mama and daddy love you, but they need some time to work this thing out.
Trish would go to find him, and I would wait with Granny Doris. And wait. And
wait.

Your mama loves you, and she's going to get herself straightened out this time.

Like Bradbrook said, Trish stayed in contact with the Felon. Sometimes Trish went looking for him, and we found a motel close to where he was. Sometimes when she needed crank and she didn't find him, we moved and we moved, and she kept looking. Sometimes, she left me to look for him, and didn't come back. Sometimes, after she found him, Trish was so messed up on crank that she didn't think about coming back for me until she was broke and sick, or he'd beaten her up, and she was in jail. I'd call Granny Doris to come get me, and months later, after Trish did her time, she would find some tatted-up loser to drop her off, looking like a human skeleton, on Granny's front porch.

And it would all start over. No matter how many times he beat her up, no matter how many times she ran from him and hid, he'd hunt her down or she'd go back. Again and again Trish would choose my father, the Felon, over Granny Doris and me. Until it stopped.

Until the day I called Granny Doris to get me, and instead a social worker came.

I don't know why I wish for the days when I used to believe anything. I don't think a lie would help, even though that's what I want to hear right now. I just want somebody to say they can fix this, that I don't have to.

“Family is important,” Bradbrook keeps telling me. I hear that, but Granny Doris sure didn't. She left me and Baby hanging, the racist hag, and now, when she needs somebody, there's nobody. Trish is in lockup again, and other than Baby, Granny's all I've got. I'm all
she's
got.

Damn.

After the first few, the envelopes aren't even open. I pick up the one with the oldest postmark, tilt the yellowy notepad paper toward the light, and read the spidery script.

Dear Odessa,

I am so sorry that I couldn't take care of you this time. When you left up out of here mad today, I know you didn't believe it when I said it was best you stay with that lady from the state. Thing is, doctors told me I had no business trying to raise nobody's baby anymore, not with my blood pressure like it is. You're a big girl now, Odessa. Look after your brother. When you get over your mad, you write me and tell me how you're doing.

Your grandma,

Doris Lee Matthews

Some of the letters are just cards—for holidays; for my birthday, with a limp five-dollar bill enclosed; for Valentine's Day, showing a cross-eyed poodle with a glitter-covered bow; for my graduation from the eighth grade—and that one has a whole ten dollars inside. Some are just notes scrawled briefly on her little yellow notepad, and most repeat the same last line,
Tell me how you and your brother are doing.

I read quickly, grabbing the next letter and then the next letter in the stack, the pressure mounting in my head. The spidery handwriting has, over the past several letters, grown loopier and larger, the swooping capitals not as steady anymore.

Dear Odessa,

Today I am seventy. Your mama has been my only child now for just under forty years, and you have been my firstborn grandbaby for fourteen years.

I got a call from your social worker, telling me how proud she is of how you're doing at that high school. I am proud of you, too, no doubt about it. You keep it up, girl. When you got nothing else, you've got your brain to keep you going.

You come see me sometime, and let me know how you are doing.

Your grandma,

Doris Lee Matthews

I scrub my face across the tweedy fabric, my stomach twisting. I promised when I was eleven I'd never run away again. But Bradbrook isn't listening, and I've got to see Granny Doris. I owe her.

On the bus, it's about eight hours to Rosedale; I checked the first week I got here. With the money from Granny Doris and my allowance, I have enough to get me on a city bus to Arden, and I can walk from there to Granny Doris's trailer park. In my sewing kit, I still have my key. Farris will know where to look for me once Bradbrook tells her I'm gone, but I'm hoping Mr. Carter will think I met somebody at Rob's party or something. If she wouldn't run her mouth, I'd tell Hope the truth, but that girl's
Hopeless
for real. She couldn't keep a secret from Foster Lady or Mr. Carter to save her life.

I won't miss anything—except Baby. But it's not like this place is home, so walking away doesn't matter. I walked in this house with one bag, and that's what I'll leave with. You can't lose what you never had.

I'm lying, but it helps.

It doesn't take too long to make my plans. I have two pieces of picture ID, and time to myself online. It's easy—too easy—to point, click, and leave.

My stomach boils with nerves, so I set up Foster Lady's sewing machine. I'm not feeling it, knowing Hope is going to hate me for everything the day after she wears it, but there's no point not finishing her dress now that I've got it this far.

I center the bulky fabric across the machine and line up the needle carefully. The only thing I can really do with a sewing machine is sew a straight line, but that doesn't matter—all I need is a line right now, to tighten up the seams I've already sewn. I've got fabric glue for everything else.

By the time Hope's grandmother comes in, the shoulder seams have two lines of stitches—just don't look too close at the threads hanging out all over the place—and I'm cutting the dress loose from the machine. All I have to do is fold down the cowl part and maybe glue some leftover fabric on some big buttons or something to make a cool neckline. One big, ugly cowl-necked sweater plus time, thread, and glue equals one cute off-the-shoulder mini–sweater dress. I didn't even have to shorten the sleeves that much.

“Well, look at that!” Ms. Amelie crows, holding it up. She prods the seams, and turns it carefully right side out, examining it closely. “Girl, you are an artist! Is this what you're going to school for? You're going to be a dress designer?”

I give a half smile. Ms. Amelie is funny, how she acts like everything I do is such a big deal. “Nah—I just make stuff like this for fun,” I say, picking up a piece of thread off the floor. “People who design dresses have to be able to draw. I can only do stick figures.”

Ms. Amelie clicks her tongue. “Just for fun—
pfft.
You don't need to draw if you can see the design in the clothes already. You could make good money opening a dress shop with clothes like this, Dess. Don't sell yourself short, now.”

I try smiling, but my face feels mannequin-stiff. Yeah, I'm sure all the big-shot designers have their moms doing time for using meth and their daddies doing time for selling meth and guns while riding with the Notorious Brotherhood. I can't imagine myself, in any kind of “someday,” growing up to open a dress shop. How can I, when I can't even imagine myself past this week?

Ms. Amelie seems like she reads my mind.

“It's not always going to be like this, Dess,” she says, and squeezes my shoulder. “You've got a lot going on right now, but this is gonna pass, and then you'll go on and there will be all kinds of possibilities opening up for you.”

Now my smile is real. She sounds like Rena, talking about “limitless possibilities.”

“Aren't you still working on Hope's costume for the Anguianos' party?” Foster Lady asks when I've sat on the floor in Baby's room for too long, watching him play.

“Nope.”

For the past hour, Austin has been scribbling out neckless, noseless people on sheets of scratch paper—Foster Lady, Mr. Carter, Hope, a floating rock with eyes that's supposed to be Jamaira, and me—with bright green hair and a pink mouth. Baby's drawn us all with orange and green crayons and given us all pink mouths. We look as alike as peas and carrots, but he asked me to spell “family,” so the word marches up the page in his backward, giant print. It matters very little in Baby's head how “real” families look.

Foster Lady sinks to the floor next to me, her thick legs bent, ankles crossed, in one of her yoga moves. She watches me in silence for a moment. “Dess, I hate to see you just give up.”

“I haven't given up,” I say with a frown, nudging a piece of crayon toward Baby. He draws so hard, he breaks them in half. “There's nothing to give up on.”

“I know you're worrying about your grandmother, but I hate to see you sitting here with the kids like you have nothing else to do,” Foster Lady says. “It's Thursday night—no movies, no homework, no phone, you're just…here.”

I shrug.

“Well, what are
you
wearing to the Anguianos' party tomorrow?”

I'd forgotten that
I'd
need something. I shrug again. It doesn't matter anyway.

“Have you decided not to go?”

I scowl. Hope would love to skip that sweater. Not
even.
“Oh, I'm going.”

“Well, then, let's go shopping. Let's find you a costume better than anybody's.”

“I'm not going in a costume. I'm going as myself.”

Foster Lady rolls her eyes. “Fine. Then let's get your ‘self' something nice to wear.”

I shake my head. I can't face the idea of the mall—stores full of strangers. “Nah. I'll wear jeans.”

Foster Lady looks at me for a moment, her eyes narrowed. Then she digs in her pocket, and dangles a set of keys. “Okay, how about this? We
could
go shopping…in my brother Henry's closet.”

Henry's—
I choke on my words and cough. It would be
amazing
to wear something of Henry's. I wouldn't even cut it up. I'd take one of his blue button-up dress uniform shirts and wear it with the sleeves rolled over my nubbly crocheted tank, belted, with skinny jeans, or—maybe Liesl's red miniskirt? Or maybe I could—

Foster Lady just watches me, a grin widening her face, making her eyes crinkle.