All Good Children Page 5

  “I wasn’t going to hit her. I just wanted to scare her.”

  “Why?”

  He scoops his omelet onto his plate with the spatula and takes the skillet over to the sink before he sits down. “I told you, she was being a brat.”

  “How?”

  “Why does it matter, Mom? It’s over. Can I eat now, please? In peace?” A forkful of egg is already in his mouth on the last syllable.

  “All right, Jason, you’re right. It doesn’t matter. What matters is that you’re eighteen, you’re not a kid any more, okay, and she still is. So you can’t solve your…disputes through threats of violence, intended or otherwise. Got it?”

  “Mom—”

  “I’m serious. You want us to treat you like an adult, start acting like one.”

  I can’t believe those words just came out of my mouth. They remind me bitterly of all the times my own mother screamed them at me, before her hand came down. The difference is that my hand is at my side and my voice is even, and Jason will never appreciate this difference, and that makes me feel okay for saying the words in the first place.

  Jason doesn’t say anything, he just shrugs and continues his noisy chewing.

  “Where’s your father?”

  “Still asleep. He wants me to wake him after breakfast.”

  “He doesn’t want to eat?”

  “I don’t know, Mom, Jesus.”

  “All right, all right. I guess I’ve pestered you long enough.” I want to reach a hand out and ruffle his hair, or bend a little and kiss the top of his head, and I nearly do, but there’s that sighing again. I grab my purse and walk out of the room.

  The shower is still on so I go to our bedroom. Jay is lying on his stomach, his large feet poking out from beneath the down comforter. His breathing is heavy but he’s not snoring, so I know he isn’t too deep into dreamland. I tiptoe to my vanity and sit in the chair to remove my shoes. The relief is like a bullet hitting me from behind, I don’t expect it and it is incredible. I lean back in the wooden rocker and it creaks beneath my weight but not as loudly as my own bones snap and crack as I rotate my ankle in lazy circles. I slouch, I close my eyes. That’s the stuff.

  Shifting from the bed draws my lids open. Jay is sitting up, rubbing a hand across his bare chest, ruffling the dark hairs there, and breathing deep, looking at me over a big yawn. “’Orning,” he says through it.

  “I didn’t mean to wake you,” I say, smiling at his tousled hair, which he attempts to smooth down with dry hands.

  “Ah, I shoulda been up an hour ago,” he says.

  “Jason certainly seems ready to go.”

  Jay stands and cracks his back, picks up a pair of jeans from the floor and pulls them on over his boxers. “Kid’s got a lot of energy, and enthusiasm. He really likes running this place.”

  “Mmm.” I close my eyes again and rub my temples. “Better he burn off all that energy helping you than chasing his sister all over the farm.”

  I hear Jay open a dresser drawer and a second later his voice is muffled by the t-shirt he’s no doubt slipping over his head. “Siblings fight. It’s what they do. They’ll get over it.”

  “Jason’s too old to still be doing this.”

  I feel him next to me before his warm hand cups my shoulder. His lips are centimeters away from my ear, his breath soft and inviting. “And you’ve worked too long and hard to be worryin’ about this just now,” he says, and kisses my forehead.

  “Lower,” I say, my voice as light as air.

  I feel his smile, his laugh. “Like here?” His lips find my nose.

  “Little lower.”

  “Here?” My chin.

  “Tease,” I say.

  He kisses me proper, with so much tenderness I struggle not to melt right off that chair. When he pulls away, it’s all I can do to keep from throwing my arms around his strong neck and digging my nails into his shoulders so he can never let go.

  “Get some sleep, Junebug,” he says, then he caresses my shoulder with his thumb and leaves the room.

  No sooner has he stepped over the threshold than the front door slams and the screaming starts up again. I hear my husband calling for order and my son shouting curses he didn’t learn from me, and then heavy footsteps clomping up the stairs to the attic.

  In the hallway, Jay stands with his belt and socks still in his hand, shaking his head at the attic door.

  “What did I miss?” I ask.

  “June,” he says, sounding exasperated, which is not a good sign, considering the early hour. “Get yourself back to bed, I’ll take care of this.”

  “Well, what’s all this shouting about now? Did she say something, do something?”

  “It’s… It’s nothing, June. It started last night, she… Look, I’ll take care of it, okay, I don’t want you worryin’ about it.”

  “’Cause keepin’ it a mystery ain’t worryin’ at all,” I say, my Southern syntax creeping out. He drops his socks and starts on looping the belt around his waist, still shaking his head, his mussed hair waving in the breeze caused by this movement.

  The water for the shower finally shuts off. The silence is overwhelming.

  “Jay…”

  “She packed a bag.” His voice is so low, yet I still hear those words as if he shouted them into my ear with a bullhorn, drilled them into my bones. He can’t even look me in the eye when he says it; he’s talking to the carpet but it’s got nothing to say back to him.

  When I finally find my voice, I squeak out, “When?”

  “Last night. Jason caught her, tried to stop her, they got into it. I guess he’s still pissed, but he’ll calm down. Look, I made her put everything back, everything’s all right.”

  The tears in my eyes steal the words from my throat. I just look at Jay and he can’t even look at me; he never could keep eye contact and tell a lie at the same time.

  I move toward the attic steps. Jay’s gentle fingers on my elbow slow me but they will not stop me. I want to scream at him just to have someone to scream at but I am already halfway up the stairs and he does not follow. Maybe he does understand; everything is not all right—none of us are fool enough to believe it is—but we try, dammit, at least we fucking try.

  Jordan’s clothes are scattered all over the floor, as they always are. Her stuffed animals are in a neat bunch on the floor near a chair. The window is open slightly and the birds are singing to the sun. On the bed, Jordan is stuffing a bundle of unfolded underwear into the duffel bag we bought her when she joined the track team last year.

  She knows I’ve reached the top of the stairs but she avoids turning her head to look at me. She reaches for a pile of jeans on the floor.

  “What are you doing?” The words are wet and desperate, but she doesn’t even pause. All of her jeans have holes in them; she won’t wear the new ones I buy for her.

  I stride across the room with a speed akin to flying and rip the pants out of her hands. “I asked you a question.”

  “You know what I’m doing” is all she says as she bends to pick up another article.

  We never sent Jordan to preschool because the hospital opened a new daycare and it was free. But she wanted to go to school so badly; she didn’t sleep a wink the night before her first day of kindergarten. We got her brand new school shoes, sleek and black with straps and buckles just like the grown-ups wore, had her jumper pressed, matched the color of her lunchbox with the bows in her hair. She was so excited. When I pulled up in the parking lot she almost got away with leaping out of the car door before I’d come to a complete stop. She ran ahead of me into the building; we’d visited in May so she knew where the classroom was and she headed right for it. It was all I could do to pull her attention away from the other kids, all the new crayons and books, to pay attention to me long enough to say goodbye. That’s when the fantasy broke, and the tears came, and the shrieking, and she clung to my arm and begged me to stay.

  That fear is gone from her now, replaced with a coldness, a bold r
esolve that I do not recognize, and I do not like it. I can’t see it in her eyes because she will not look at me, but I hear it in her voice. She has given up.

  No.

  “No.” I take the clothes from her hand again, pick up the duffel bag and empty the clothes back onto the floor. “I won’t let you do this.”

  “You don’t have a choice,” she says.

  “Yes I do,” I say, trying to put force behind it, conviction. “Yes I do. So do you. We all do.”

  “What—” and she finally looks at me, empty eyes and a wry smile, creases in her pale pink skin that she’s too young to have, laugh lines and thought lines, stress, reality “—pack now or pack tomorrow? I choose now.”

  “You have no idea, Jordan,” I start, but there are so many ways to finish that sentence:

  You have no idea how much I’ve sacrificed for you, how hard I’ve fought. You have no idea the things I’ve seen and the things I’ve done, the things I know irrevocably and inevitably, and still I fight to hold on to you, to keep you safe, to shield you from these cruel truths. You have no idea how painful it is to drift through your days with a broken heart because your only daughter has given up, given in, given over, rejected your counsel, your hand, your love, and your hope. Most of all, Jordan, you have no idea what I will do, despite all this, to keep you with me, to keep all of my babies with me.

  “You have no idea, Jordan… We don’t know what’s going to happen. Nothing has been decided. Put your things away.”

  “No.” She stands up. She’s almost taller than me, another heir of her father’s strong build.

  “Then leave them on the floor,” I say, still hugging the duffel bag to my chest. “I’ll take this.”

  She doesn’t say anything else, and I take this as the best I’m going to get in the way of acquiescence. Tears are still dangerously close to the surface, and I turn to walk away so I can shed them alone. But her words stop me, her cold, unfeeling words.

  “Goodbye, Mother.”

  The edge of my vision begins to blur and go black. I look at her and she meets my eye. Unblinking, she meets my eye.

  “What did you say?” It’s so hard to get the words out.

  “I said goodbye.” Her voice, so flat. So unbelievable. Then she shrugs. “Just practicing.”

  My hand shoots out. I feel the light duffel bag brush the tops of my feet as it falls to the floor but I do not feel her face against the skin of my palm. Her cheek is red but she doesn’t touch it. I don’t know if she cries out because all I can hear is the blood rushing through my veins, my heart furiously pumping. But there are tears in her eyes now. There are tears in her eyes.

  Through clenched teeth, I instruct her, “Go. To. School.” When only the water in her eyes stirs, I add sharply, “Now.”

  She runs for the stairs, swiping up a pair of faded jeans on her way. I listen to her fast feet scramble down the stairs and disappear in the carpeted hallway. I cup my hands over my mouth and scream.

  THREE

  JORDAN

  THE BELL RINGS AND WE don’t move. We never do. We never have to crawl through the halls with our partners in crime, snaking in and out of lockers, loading up for the next room, the next one and a half hours of staring at the back of dandruffed heads and failing to feign interest in the monotone drone that only occasionally finds its way to our ears. Ours is a larger room, two in fact, merged together through the careful demolition of one adjoining wall, and we only share it with a quarter of the ones who have to share those other rooms. We still sweat, we still stare, we still feign interest. We just do it, you know, apart.

  This is the Learning Disability wing of the high school my parents make me go to because it is the “law” and we are abiding citizens despite what difference it makes. Not really a wing but a floor, the basement actually, renovated for us so we can go to the same school as the “normal” kids, the ones who don’t need one-on-one attention, the ones who can slip through the cracks unnoticed because they’re as mediocre as the kid next to them, and we can still feel “included,” even though everyone sees you take the stairs down instead of up and the only space you ever share with them is the lunchroom—if they let you. I’m not bitter or anything, just realistic.

  Here I am realistically sitting next to my obese neighbor who also happens to have a rare skin condition commonly known as Lack of Bathing-itis. If he lifts his arm to scratch at his armpit, which he does quite often, I have to look away and breathe shallow. There’s a window I can pretend to look through, admiring the cracked sidewalk and tufts of brown grass, until it’s safe to turn back. His name is Barney, unfortunately, and no one talks to him, at least they haven’t in the entire year I’ve sat in this seat, wondering how much more weight his chair can take, counting the beads of sweat on his forehead when I’m particularly bored.

  We share a table, we don’t have desks. Another “inclusive” tactic. Two to a table, seven tables, fourteen kids. There are extra tables against the wall in the Activity Room (this is the Class Room); they bring them out if our numbers grow. Most people these days have the common decency to home school their deficient children, either that or place them in the ranks of the “normies” and it’s not really surprising to me to see how easily they fit in, pulling down those good ol’ C’s and high D’s. Avoid the stigma, live your life, not that it matters anyway.

  For the record, I don’t have a learning disability. I have a behavioral problem, and after several incidents of “acting out” and a neat little stamp on my permanent file declaring me the proud new owner of Oppositional Defiant Disorder, they didn’t know where else to put me, so here I am. The quickest way to forget about me, I guess. Though, honestly, they could’ve just let me stay on the farm. What authority figures am I going to challenge there—the cows?

  But here I am. So. I don’t know what time it is; there’s a clock above the white board but I don’t care to look at it. We get out when we get out, counting the seconds only makes it worse. Mrs. Henrick handed out our mathematics worksheets a few minutes ago, before the bell rang. We’re all at different levels but it doesn’t matter in here; the book is divided into sections so we can work at our own pace. I worked ahead yesterday so today I can sit and listen to the hundreds of feet stampeding above me, an occasional eruptive chorus of giggle-girl laughter, and lean subtly closer to the window when Barney shifts his weight.

  Mrs. Henrick is the main teacher for our class, but she has two aides who work one-on-one with anyone who’s struggling. They’re both young, younger than her by a generation, fresh out of college or maybe still in. Trying to make a difference, trying to convince themselves they care about us, our nation’s youth, Our Future. The only ones who care about us are the Over, and we wish they didn’t because then we would be free. But I’m tired of daydreaming and I never make wishes. Guess I’ll work on some more algebra equations.

  “Did they come for you yet?” It’s Barney. I look at him sidelong. He’s talking to the guys at the table behind us, Billy Rushman and Everett Scout. They glare up from their open workbooks and don’t say anything.

  I can’t tell what Billy’s problem is, but Everett is dyslexic and has a touch of ADHD. One of the aides is usually at his side for most of the day, except at math time. Numbers he gets. Everything else makes his face flush red and his fists slam into the nearest solid surface.

  “They came for me on Sunday.” Barney’s going on, probably because they’re still looking at him, he’s encouraged. “Two more days and I’m safe, boy. It kind of makes me nervous.”

  “Oh yeah, tardo?” Billy finally responds, low and mean. Can’t even come up with a better insulting nickname. “Are you scared? You should be, you have a lot to offer.” He spreads his arms wide and wiggles around, like he’s rolling blubber, just to make sure Barney gets it. Everett snickers.

  Barney turns back to his workbook, red faced and sweating harder. His breath comes out hard from his mouth. Fuck it if he starts to cry.

  “They came
for me yesterday,” Billy is telling Everett now. I can’t tell if Barney is listening, but his shoulders shake. “What about you?”

  “Nah, not yet.” Everett is fifteen, he’s been waiting two years for the Liaisons to come.

  “He was such a homo,” Billy says. “Double-breasted suit and some shit. Kept playing with his fruity cufflinks. I swear the whole interview I was just afraid he was gonna make a pass at me.”

  They both laugh at that. Then, “Hey, did they come for you?”

  Something pokes me in the shoulder. I turn enough to see Billy and Everett looking at me, Billy’s pencil extended across the gap between our tables. Great.

  “Did they?” he asks again.

  I just nod, one nod, quick and final, and turn back around. Barney’s knuckles are whitening, bloodless, gripping his pencil. He’s pressing too hard, his paper begins to tear.

  “I bet they take her,” Billy whispers to Everett, loud enough for me to hear. “Fine piece like her.”

  “Shut up, Billy,” Everett says, but he’s laughing.

  “She’ll go into Breeding, no doubt,” he says. “At least I hope so. That’s where I plan to end up. Hell, I’d volunteer right now if they’d let me!”

  “Fucking sick dude,” Everett laughs. They’re getting louder, heads are turning, the aides are trying to ignore them. Mrs. Henrick looks like she might get up from behind her desk, but her dry-erase markers are oh so captivating.

  “Hey.” The poking resumes. “Hey, Jordan. Jordan. See you there, yeah? Try to stay fresh for me.”

  The laughter spills into my ears. Barney moves in his seat but I’m quicker. I push away from the table, knocking my chair into their table. Billy’s fingers must have been on the edge because he yelps and flings himself back, and he’s on his feet now and my hands are at the collar of his shirt. The aides are yelling and the kids are cheering and I yank and Billy’s face hits the table and there’s a cracking sound louder than the blood rush in my ears and I know I’m smiling and I want him to see I’m smiling so I pull on his hair and turn his bleeding face to me but his eyes are closed, closed and wet and fuck me if I don’t smile wider.