Sisters of Heart and Snow (9 page)

•   •   •

A couple of months
after the drug incident, on a summer night, my father caught me parked in a car, late, with another boy. The boy was dropping me off and I hadn't wanted to be dropped off yet, so I'd whispered,
Why don't you park down the street?
and there we were, steaming up the windows a few houses down, where the streetlight was out. I don't remember the guy's name or what he looked like, particularly. He was just another boy who paid attention to me, and that's what I needed. Suddenly there was a violent rapping at the window. “Unlock this car right now.” My father pounded the glass with his palm. He was, though then sixty-six years old, still a big, burly man.

I screamed and fixed my clothes. “Don't unlock it.”

But the boy, scared, unlocked the car, and my father opened the passenger door and yanked me out by my sleeve. A glass bong fell out of my pocket, shattering on the asphalt. He put his arm around me tight and ushered me back up the street, my arms pinned to my sides, and into the house, slamming the front door as hard as he could. He turned to me. “So it's boys
and
drugs. What are you, a prostitute?”

I looked around for Mom. Nowhere. “No,” I whispered, edging toward the stairs. My heart thumped and I suddenly became drenched in sweat. I needed to get to my room, where I could lock my door and cry.

“I will not have you bringing shame into our family,” Dad said, his voice low. He leaned into my face, his breath smelling of old garlic and sulfurous red wine. Broken capillaries lined his red cheeks, a map with roads leading nowhere.

I gripped the banister and took one step up. “I'm sorry.” I wanted to hide my face, to crawl under my bed like a little kid, holding on to my stuffed Easter bunny for dear life. “I won't do it again. I promise. I'll be good.”

“You already promised that!” Dad shouted. “How many chances do you think you get, Rachel? I'm not taking care of any baby. I'm not bailing you out of jail. I'm done.”

Drew appeared at the top of the stairs, her face white. “Rachel? Dad? What's going on?”

“Go back to bed!” I shouted. I didn't want her to see this.

“Now you're a slut and a dope addict? Fantastic.” He straightened and took in a deep breath. I had the impression he was getting himself under control. He closed his eyes. “You need to get out of my house.”

“What?” I thought I must be dreaming; Dad was talking like a bit player in an after-school special. I flushed, heat spreading from my torso up to my face. Mom appeared behind him. “Mom?” I said, hoping she would stand up for me.

She didn't. “I wish you'd listened to me.”

Dad folded his arms, his face turning a normal color. “There's a Japanese saying.” He stared at me emotionlessly. “I'm surprised your mother hasn't taught it to you.
Ichi-go, ichi-e
. One chance, no mistakes. You make a mistake, you have to live with it. Now. Get your stuff and get out.” Dad stepped aside. “Tonight.”

“I'm only sixteen.” A wail worked its way into my voice. Oh my God. Was he really kicking me out? Where would I go? Nobody in our neighborhood kicked their kids out unless they were serious drug addicts. Was I one?

My mother came out of her sewing room and moved to the middle of the living room, her gaze fixed on my father as though he was a wild tiger.

He glared at me. “I left home at sixteen. You need to get your head on straight.”

At last my mother spoke up. “Give her until morning.” Her voice was assertive.

My father's eyes opened wide, genuinely surprised, as if he'd forgotten the existence of my mother altogether. Some of the bluster deflated out of him. “Be out by eleven a.m. I'll be back from golfing then.”

All night, I ran through a mental list of people I could call and ask for help. I couldn't stand the thought of their sympathetic, polite voices. My swim team knew what I was up to. I saw them whispering at school as I walked out to the parking lot at lunchtime.
Sorry, my parents said no
,
I imagined them saying, while secretly thinking,
You brought this on yourself. Deal with it.

I had to pick someone, though, or else I'd be sleeping on a park bench. Who would be most likely to help? Who had the kindest mom? I chose Jenn. We didn't talk much anymore, only cursory hellos in classes, but she'd been on swim team with me since grade school. Her family lived in University City, another suburb on the other side of the mountain from La Jolla, a few miles more inland. I used to go over to her house to play, after swim practice sometimes. She was an only child—her mother wanted more, but couldn't have them—and her house was the kind of Kool-Aid-and-cookie place a kid longs for. More often than not, I'd whisper-ask Jenn if I could eat dinner with her, and she'd ask her mom.

Jenn came to my house only a handful of times, where we'd play Barbies for a couple of hours after swim practice, until her mother came to pick her up. “Can I eat dinner here?” Jenn asked once in third grade.

It seemed only fair, though I was afraid of how my father would act. “I don't think you'll like what we're having,” I said.

“It doesn't matter. My mother says you say yes to the company, not the food.” She grinned her cheerful gap-toothed grin. “I can pretend to like almost anything. Except anchovies. You're not having those, are you?”

I admitted we were not, and went to ask. My mother, after hesitating a moment, agreed. We needn't have worried, for my father smiled cheerfully at my friend and complimented her swimming skills. “One of the best, for sure! Keep it up, you're going places,” he'd said, and passed her a buttered roll. But we'd gone to different junior high schools, and in high school we'd been friendly, but never hung out at each other's houses again.

I called Jenn at the mostly decent hour of eight-thirty in the morning. Her mother answered. “Rachel! Oh my goodness. I've been wondering how you are.” Barbara was one of those comforting moms who wore sweatshirts with pictures of kittens on them and had a pleasant, huggable layer of natural padding.

Though I hadn't meant to, at the sound of her kind voice, I burst into tears again and blubbered out the whole story.

I thought she'd be surprised at how I'd acted, how my father had acted, but she passed no judgment. “You'll stay here,” she said firmly.

“It's just for a few days.” I thought my father would cool off, change his mind, that at the very least my mother would contact me.

Instead, I was erased.

I saw my mother a week later when Jenn and her mother drove me to pick up my things from the house. “I can go in there, if you like,” Barbara said. “You can wait in the car.”

Mom stood in the garage, glancing nervously down the driveway as if she was afraid Dad had enlisted the neighbors to spy on her. I knew my father had told her not to contact me. As far as he was concerned, they had no daughter. “No,” I said.

All three of us got out of the car, Jenn at my side, her blond hair in a ponytail, arms crossed and feet planted into the ground like she was my bodyguard. Barbara squeezed my arm. I felt braver with them. I addressed Mom. “Where's Drew?” I hadn't even had a chance to say good-bye to her. “I want to see her.”

“At music lessons. I'll tell her you're at Jenn's.” Mom's voice sounded normal. Not cheerful, not sad.

I hesitated, then nodded, taking this to mean I'd still get to talk to my sister occasionally. This, at least, lifted some of the burden from my chest. “Tell her to call me. When Dad's not around.”

“I will.” Mom kept her hands behind her back, as if that absolved her of any complicity. It made me angry to see her standing there so emotionlessly. As if she didn't care. I won't care, either, I told myself. Not a bit.

We started loading boxes from the garage to the car. After a few minutes, she turned abruptly and went inside.

“Not even a good-bye.” Jenn shifted, shook her head. “Shit. That's cold.”

“Jenn, language!” Barbara took in a deep breath. “Rachel. Your mother loves you. This has to be hard for her. She doesn't have many choices, so she
has
to do what your father says.”

“Nobody has to do what a man says. It's America!” Jenn flung out her arms.

Barbara folded a box top closed. “This is why I'm raising you to be independent, Jenn. Why it's important to have a college degree. Even if you end up getting married to a great man, he could get injured or die. You always need a backup plan.” Barbara hefted up a box that was too heavy for her and heaved it into the trunk. If Barbara had any faults, it was her tendency to lecture. Maybe Jenn had heard it all before, but I soaked it up.

Jenn rolled her eyes. “You're such an optimist, Mom.”

Despite my hurt, I understood. Mom was completely dependent on my father. “You can't work,” my father would tell her when she wistfully mentioned finding a job. “It's impossible. Besides, who'd want you? You haven't worked for almost two decades.”

We finished loading the boxes into the trunk. I stood there mute, my insides churning. I wished my sister was there to say good-bye. I wished I could take her with me. Well, she was barely home anyway, and my parents still liked her—she'd be all right.

Barbara shut the hatchback of her station wagon and regarded me with a furrowed brow. She didn't fully understand our family dynamics, couldn't comprehend my father's nature.

“Come here, sweetie.” Barbara opened her arms. She hugged me in a way I did not recall my mother doing since I was tiny, patting my back. I leaned into her peach-colored sweatshirt with a scene of lambs playing in a field, smelling her drugstore Coty musk. I sobbed, letting myself release all the tension, dribbling snot all over the lambs. I was nothing. My parents could let me go so easily. Like I was a cast-off in one of those boxes. Jenn thumped my back.

Barbara rocked me back and forth. “You're not a bad kid, Rachel,” she whispered into my hair, her breath warm on my scalp. “You have a good soul. You're just in pain, that's all.”

I looked at the lambs through blurred eyes. Nobody had ever told me anything like that. “How do you know?”

“I just do.” She pushed the hair off my sweaty forehead. I tightened my arms around her.

The garage door began grinding closed. I looked back to see Mom, her hand over the button, watching us with a pale face. The door hit the concrete with a final thud.

“Yeah, really. What do they know? Fuck 'em all.” Jenn flipped a middle finger toward my house.

“Jenn!” Barbara slapped her daughter's hand down in horror. “What's with the potty mouth?”

“Sorry. I've been hanging around with the swim team boys too much.” Jenn flashed me a grin. “Hey, Rach. Our summer league needs a manager. You might as well do it. It'll be fun. I promise.” She leaned over to my ear. “It's co-ed.”

I had to laugh. Boys were the last thing I needed, except maybe as friends. But with Jenn there, it'd be all right. “Maybe.”

“Maybe. Not maybe. For sure.” Jenn got in the station wagon, patting the backseat beside her. “Come on, Rachel. Let's go.”

“Nobody wants shotgun?” Barbara asked. “What am I, a chauffeur?”

So this was what a regular family was like. I relaxed a little bit, feeling less nauseated. Barbara would take care of me, I was certain. I shut the door and buckled in.

•   •   •

I lived with Jenn's family
until
I finished high school. “We could probably legally force your parents to take you back,” Barbara said, “but it's up to you.” I didn't want to go back. The only regret I had was at leaving my sister, but whenever I saw her, Drew seemed fine. We seemed to have lived different realities within a single family.

Barbara and her husband refused to take any rent, allowing me to keep the money I earned from a job I had cleaning up for an elderly neighbor. Later, Barbara and her husband, Harvey, got an affidavit to be my caregivers, so they could sign me up for school activities and medical care.

They moved back east shortly after I married Tom, and Barbara passed away from cancer ten years ago. Jenn's working for the State Department in Europe now, but we keep in touch to this day, exchanging Christmas cards and occasional e-mails. I honestly don't know what would have happened to me if it weren't for Jenn's family. Through them, I got to know what a normal family was like, in stark contrast to mine.

•   •   •

That was the last time
I saw Mom until I was pregnant with Quincy.

When I remember this, it's like it all happened last week instead of twenty years ago. A pit opens in my stomach and that feeling of abandonment, of being yesterday's stinky fish, hits me all over again. I wish I could time travel back and find teenage Rachel and give her a big hug like Barbara had. Lots of big hugs.

My father should've tried a heck of a lot harder. He hadn't even made an attempt to help me, the way I would if Quincy or Chase started acting out like that. I wasn't entirely horrible—I never stole, I wasn't robbing anyone. I was just lost.

In short, he should have been a parent. So should have my mother. Parents help guide their children. They're not just these guardians who provide money and shelter, who pay attention only when their kids shine.

For two years after the big to-do that got me kicked out of the house, my mother had obeyed my father's orders. I'd seen my sister a handful of times—it was easier for Drew to claim she was doing something else so she could meet me—but never my mother. I'd given up on my mother, knowing she either couldn't or wouldn't risk my father's ire.

During the last month of my pregnancy with Quincy, my mother appeared at our house with two armfuls of gifts, calling first to make sure we were home. It felt like we were making a mutually inconvenient but necessary appointment, as though she was coming for a root canal. I'd opened the door to her reluctantly. After I felt Quincy flipping in my womb, awakening with loud music or kicking at the sensation of Tom rubbing my belly, I couldn't understand how my own mother could have let me go. What, exactly, was my father holding over her head? Maybe it was my crazy primeval pregnancy hormones talking, but if someone had tried to come between me and Quincy, I'd have cut off his leg and beaten him to death with it. Needless to say, at eighteen, I was still angry at my mother. At her impotence and passivity.