Hand Me Down Read online

  Suddenly Terrance’s voice is louder and he opens my bedroom door without knocking. “Liz, Mom said for you to order a pizza.” His bare chest chunks bounce as he crosses my room.

  “You can’t order a pizza?” I say. Green veins still bulge under his naturally tan skin, darker for the summer spent lifting weights in the prison yard. I close my eyes and visualize his blood vessels popping.

  “She said you can call in time for her to pick it up on her way home.” He stops in front of my bed, extends his arm to give me the phone. “You know when she gets off work.” He skims my hands with his warm, greasy fingers and leans toward me. “I just know when she gets off,” he says and laughs his hyena-ish cackle. Like Dad, Terrance only makes inappropriate jokes when Mom’s not around.

  He puts one knee on my bed and I press my back into the plaster behind me. “You can’t tell time?” I say, looking to my right, away from his sweaty skin, his sagging jersey shorts displaying his hip bones, his beady eyes that follow me like an eerie painting. He edges closer and I picture ruptured arteries, his heart shredded and leaking.

  “I want pepperoni and sausage and green peppers and, mmm, how about a supreme combo or something?” He licks his lips. “Order something I’ll like,” he says and pats the top of my thigh. He winks at me as he turns, and his parading butt crack leaves my room.

  I slam the door and call Rachel. “He doesn’t wear shirts,” I say. “He invades my personal space like it’s his hobby.”

  “Isn’t it?” Rachel says.

  “I wish my door had a lock.”

  “Are you practicing your visualizations?” Rachel’s mother, who lives in Reno, is an active Wiccan. She left Rachel’s dad a few years ago to “pursue her destiny,” but I think mostly she reads tarot cards for tourists in a casino hotel lobby. Her suggestions often work, though, and no one else is offering me any advice.

  “Yes,” I say. “But he doesn’t seem to be bleeding yet.”

  “You have to really focus or it won’t work,” Rachel says. “My mom just won a thousand dollars.”

  When my mom gets home, we eat pizza from paper plates at the dining room table. We usually watch sitcoms or game shows or sports with dinner, the TV on in the living room a few feet away. Terrance taught Noah the NFL theme song and how to howl like Tim Allen in Home Improvement. I have kept my promise to be nice and refrained from asking if he sees anyone he knows on COPS or America’s Most Wanted.

  Terrance is glued to Wheel of Fortune tonight. “Dairy Queen!” he shouts at the screen.

  “Ice cream!” Noah says, slapping his hands in the smeared cheese and tomato sauce covering his plastic high-chair tray.

  I say, “Dairy Queen is not a person.” I pick all the sausage off my pizza and take a small bite.

  “Noah, honey, eat your food,” Mom says. “More pizza, babe?”

  “I sure missed pizza,” Terrance says.

  “Babe,” Mom says. “Do you like your new workout equipment?”

  He turns from the TV, his chin shiny with grease. “Yeah, babe, thanks.”

  “I need new shoes,” I say.

  “It’s way nicer than the weights they had when I was in where I was at,” he says.

  “I’m glad,” Mom says and kisses him, soaking up some of the oil from his face. She wipes her mouth on her Pizza Hut napkin as Terrance turns back to the TV.

  Terrance says, “Tampon opener!”

  “That’s not even a thing,” I say, rolling my eyes.

  “Hey, Liz,” Terrance says, reaching for his fifth slice. “You have a pile of turds on your plate!” He laughs and Noah laughs, and Mom chuckles, too. She laughs almost every time Terrance does.

  I visualize the fake chandelier above the table falling on Terrance’s head as he leans over and breathes on the little pieces of gray-brown sausage on my white plate. “Are you gonna eat them?” he says.

  I lean back from his open mouth and say, “All yours.” His dark hand grabs the pile of meat and shoves it into his mouth the way Noah eats Cheerios.

  Terrance often takes Mom out after dinner, even on weeknights. They go to movies, to clubs, to bars, and then come home after midnight, my mom spewing sorority girl giggles that sound surreal escaping from her forty-year-old lips; scary, too, since I have never before seen her drink more than a glass of wine. Sometimes she can’t hold herself up and Terrance carries her, her lipstick on his face, her skirt hiked up her thighs, once missing a shoe, both of them laughing too loud.

  When they wake up Noah they ignore his cries, and eventually I lie down next to his midget-sized body covered in Bananas in Pajamas pajamas, and pull the bunched Barney sheets up from around his tan feet, and massage his face even though he inherited Terrance’s dark skin and eyes and is sleeping in Jaime’s bed. I rock Noah and sing nursery songs the way Mom used to for Jaime and me until his breathing sinks and his neck relaxes, and I always wish someone would sing to me, too.

  “They’re disgusting,” I tell Rachel.

  She says, “Sex must be great.”

  “Not when it’s your parents,” I say. “Or gross people.”

  “My parents never did it,” she says. “I can’t wait to.”

  “I think I’m scarred for life,” I say.

  “It’s what I’m visualizing,” Rachel says. “Sex on the beach.”

  I shudder. “After listening to my mom and Terrance, I don’t think I can ever have sex in water.”

  “It’s a drink, too, you know,” she says. “I want to try both.”

  “Let’s move to Mexico,” I say.

  “We hella should,” she says. “Just you and me and all those hot guys.”

  Most days when I get home from school, Terrance is watching talk shows in which the woman’s baby daddy is sleeping with her sister, or the transsexual comedian with anger issues apologizes for attacking a man who called him a faggot. “What a fag,” Terrance says and I wonder how true the rumors about prison are. Once I painted Noah’s fingernails blue and Terrance made him cry washing it off. “My son is not a homo,” he yelled.

  Sometimes Terrance plays the acoustic guitar he bought with Mom’s money. It’s a honey-colored wood, classy, and he offered to teach me to play when he found me holding it in my lap and strumming randomly. He sat next to me on the couch, scooted until his thigh lined up against mine. “I’m a good teacher,” he said, tilting his head toward my neck. The iron smell of his breath, like warm blood, made my stomach churn.

  “You can’t really play,” I said. I pushed the guitar at him, trying to force him back. “You only know two chords.”

  He leaned over the instrument between us. “I can play,” he said. He trailed his fingers down my forearm from elbow to wrist and rested the tips on my skin like he was taking my pulse. “I’m really, really good, Liz,” he said and wrapped his hand around the guitar neck right below my fist.

  I retracted my arms and stood up, fighting to keep my face neutral. Our eyes met and Terrance smiled at me with his crooked mouth like he’d won something. He embraced the guitar I’d dropped, stroked the curved wood, and gazed up at me with heavy-lidded eyes. “You want to see?”

  I ran and didn’t breathe until I made it to my room. “He’s so creepy,” I told Rachel from under my covers.

  “Duh,” she said. “They don’t send normal people to prison.”

  Mom is home today when I get back to the apartment and she and Terrance are giggling in the kitchen. Terrance is even wearing a shirt, though I’ve stopped expecting him to. They notice me and quiet. “Hi, Elizabeth,” Mom says. She tries to smile but her lips spasm like little electroshocks and it just looks ugly.

  “What’s up?” I say, my pulse revving.

  “I”—Mom says and looks at Terrance, nods her head—“we. We need to talk to you.” She reaches out her left hand with the gold wedding band she paid for, but her arm drops as she touches my sweatshirt.

  “Do you want a sandwich?” Terrance holds up a display of salami and jack cheese. I stare at h
im. He says, “Man, I missed sandwiches.”

  We sit at the table. “What’s wrong?” I say. A thousand gerbils run treadmills in my stomach.

  “Well, Terrance’s parole officer called today.” She glances at Terrance, who’s not listening, just making smacking sounds as he chews. I imagine his face exploding. “Apparently someone called and stated their concern for the minor female living in this house given Terrance’s record.”

  Mom takes a breath. “So the officer—what a jerk—made it a condition of Terrance’s parole that he not be allowed to be near girls your age unsupervised.” The gerbils hit double time. “That includes after school and sleeping in the same house.” She rolls her eyes and waves her hand as if they’re being ridiculous. “Since I can’t supervise while I’m asleep.”

  “What?” Fiery tops spin in my head. I feel dizzy. “Does that mean—”

  “It’s silly really,” she says. “There’s no reason for such an extreme response, but, you know, the system stinks.” She sighs.

  I stare at her freshly cut and colored hair, her manicured nails. I think of all the food in the cabinets she bought for him: twelve-packs of soda and beer, doughnuts, Doritos, beef jerky, pork rinds, sunflower seeds. All the money spent on toys for him while she said she couldn’t afford to buy me shoes. I think about how she’s ignored me for weeks, gone to bars with Terrance and come home late, taken days off work to take him shopping, skipped church to stay in bed.

  “But I was trying,” I say.

  “I know,” she says, dropping her eyes to the tabletop.

  I whisper, “For you.”

  She whispers back, “I’m sorry.”

  I think about how long she stayed with my dad; how she prayed for him every night kneeling in front of her bed, and every morning tried harder to please him through his hangover. The gerbils drop dead, and in my vacant stomach I know she’s made that choice again.

  Mom opens her mouth, so I try to tell her with my eyes that I know what she’s going to say, that I don’t need to hear it out loud. But this woman sitting in front of me with my cheekbones and small wrists and wavy hair won’t look at my face. My eyes and throat burn like the room’s on fire and my ribs feel shattered under the weight in my chest, but she says without flinching, “You and Terrance cannot both live here.”

  2

  Mom swears it will be temporary. “We will file appeals,” she says, sitting at the kitchen table she bought at Levitz right after she married Terrance, in one of four matching beige-and-pink cushioned chairs they’ve probably had sex on. “You’ll be back before you know it.” Her nearly translucent gray tooth gleams behind lips taut in an asymmetrical smile.

  “Couple weeks,” Terrance says, “tops.”

  Mom says, “I promise.”

  “It’s too bad, Liz,” Terrance says, staring at me as he licks mayonnaise off his fingers. “I really enjoy having you around the house.” He smiles with salami in his teeth.

  Little asteroids land and smolder in my throat. This can’t be real. This is some kind of sick joke. “Mom,” I say. “You’re not serious?”

  “Liz.” Mom swallows and runs her fingers through her bangs. “Everyone agrees that Terrance needs a stable home during this period of reintegration.”

  “What about my home?”

  “Pastor Ron thinks that cohabitation is essential for the survival of our marriage.” She shapes her hands into fists and brings them knuckle to knuckle at her solar plexus. “Terrance and I need to rebuild our foundation, create a solid union able to endure hardship.”

  My mind is reeling, spooling barbed wire around my brain. “I did everything you asked.”

  “You were doing great.” Mom starts to smile but it fades into a frown. “But Terrance needs his family. It’s important that we stay together right now.”

  “More important than your children?”

  “It’s not that black and white,” she says. She lowers her chin to her chest. “Noah is staying.”

  A noose cinches around my neck and I almost choke. “Was that supposed to make me feel better?”

  “Since Jaime is already at your dad’s,” Mom says and sighs, “it’s just you.”

  It’s just me. My vision goes fuzzy and Mom’s image turns fluid. She becomes squiggly lines and shaded circles. Her blurred lips keep moving but the water travels to my ears and I hear crackling static. I’m tumbling in the ocean, sand scraping my skin, saltwater filling my lungs and stinging my eyes.

  “Liz?” Mom calls my name and slowly she comes back into focus, her face softer, her eyebrows furrowed with concern. Her head tilts to the left and her eyes look wet. “I know this seems hard,” she says. “But it will only be for a little while.”

  “What can I do?” I say, tears spilling onto my chest. “Tell me what to do so I can stay.” Every cell inside of me is clenched and heaving. Nausea swims through my gut, but I kneel in front of her and seize her hand, which I’m surprised to find is the exact same size as mine. “Please.”

  She looks down at me and brushes a strand of hair from my forehead. “I wish no one had to go.”

  I squeeze her clammy fingers. “Then don’t make me,” I say, my voice cracking. “Don’t make me leave.”

  Mom takes a deep breath and as she exhales, her curly blond bangs float out from her forehead and lie flat again. She whispers, “I didn’t make the rules.” She slips her hand out of my grasp and looks away, her lips trembling.

  I stand up, clutching my stomach. “But you picked him.”

  She shakes her head but her tears stream like mine. She stares at me with bulging eyes and covers her mouth with both hands to suppress a gagging sound. “I’m so sorry,” she says.

  “It’s not like it’s the end of the world,” Terrance says.

  I turn on him and in my head I stab his heart through his muscle-shielded chest. “You should leave,” I say. He snorts. “This is because of you,” I say.

  “It’s because of whoever called my parole officer,” he says.

  Mom holds up a hand. “Maybe something good will come out of this whole thing,” she says and half-smiles. She inhales and releases it in uneven bursts. “God does work in mysterious ways.”

  “Is He punishing me?” I say. “What did I do wrong?”

  “Oh, Liz, your teenage hormones are making this feel much worse than it actually is,” Mom says. “Think of it as an adventure.” She twists her wedding ring around her finger and closes her eyes. “That starts tomorrow night.”

  I gasp like she slapped me in the face. “Tomorrow?” I cough and try to inhale but it’s like swallowing glass.

  Terrance laughs. “Man, those parole guys are real tightwads about their rules.”

  There’s a part of me that still thinks this can’t be happening. This is a nightmare and soon I’ll wake up. I pinch the inside of my wrist until it hurts. “Where am I going to go?”

  Mom reaches for me. “We thought—”

  “Don’t touch me,” I say, jerking away so fast I stumble. The barbed wire is in my blood, a million paper cuts slicing up my insides. I need to escape.

  She snorts an irritated burst of air out of her nostrils and says, “In a few years, this won’t seem so bad.” I move toward the door, light-headed, fighting to breathe. She says, “Trust me.”

  Never again, I think as I bolt outside into the fresh air.

  I run laps around our apartment parking lot; force my thighs to burn, my skin to sweat, my lungs to drown. When every single cell in my body feels singed and smoking and numb, I press myself into the wet earth and soak up the smell of grass and the quiet in the air, the cool softness under my back. I inhale and exhale with the wind, slowing my pulse, calming my heart. I lie there on the damp lawn and watch brown oak leaves float against the pink-orange sky and land on the concrete sidewalk with a crunch.

  Mom said it’s just me, but she’s wrong. She may have forgotten Jaime, but I feel her absence like an amputated limb, a part of me missing but still a constant pha
ntom presence. When I learned about binary planets in seventh grade I thought of me and Jaime, connected by proximity and gravity, relying on each other for stability so we don’t shoot off into space. She’s had me close by since she was born and I figured the pull I always feel when we’re apart—like magnets or tides in my blood—was just as strong in her. When Jaime left, I assumed she’d come home the way salmon and turtles return to their birthplace. If I move, how will she be able to find me?

  The falling leaves shift to black outlines against a shadowed blue night and the temperature drops with the sun. I shiver. What if Jaime decides, like Mom, that she doesn’t need me at all?

  When I return to the apartment, Noah has been picked up from day care and waddles over to me. “Liz,” he says and hugs my leg. I poke his belly and pick him up, tickling his armpits. He giggles and I squeeze him close. “Good-bye, little brother,” I say, snuggling my nose into his soft neck. “You be careful,” I whisper and tap his tiny chin with my forefinger. He sticks out his tongue, something I taught him.

  Terrance and Mom are watching pro wrestling, oiled men in Speedos screaming threats into microphones and then trying to pin each other. Terrance rests one hand on Mom’s leg and holds a Budweiser in the other. I kiss Noah’s forehead and set him down on his wobbly legs. Mom doesn’t say a word as I walk past her to my room, just stares at the screen while Terrance rubs his thumb back and forth across the top of her thigh.

  I start packing, emptying drawers and making piles. A few minutes later, Mom opens the door without knocking. She stands there silent for a full two minutes, and then she scoffs. “You don’t even like living here, with Terrance, right?” She throws out her hands. “Why is this such a big deal?”