3. Andy #2
“I’m in the closet,” Pip whispers. Like she’s afraid to be heard. Like she’s not safe in her own fucking home, and my fingers clench into a fist. Sheer willpower is the only thing stopping me from putting the same fist through a wall.
“Do we need to call the cavalry?” Our code word for the police—more specifically, Uncle Harlan.
“I … I don’t think so. They’re just being loud, and they’re smoking weed, and Mom has her glass pipe out.”
Motherfucker.
“Okay, baby. I’m going to stay on the phone with you. I will be there in twenty minutes.”
“Thanks, Aunt Andy.” The relief in her voice is all wrong.
I yank the keys out of my pocket and jump into Bocephus. My phone goes into the hands-free cradle, the call switches to speaker, and I peel down Main Street while pulling my seatbelt on.
Internally, I’m screaming. It’s the same shit that we grew up with. Alexandra is making her live through the hell that we survived, and she’s too blind to see that she’s wrong.
Piper shouldn’t even know what weed is. Or what her mother having a glass pipe signifies.
But she does.
And that breaks my heart.
I speed onto the interstate toward the small trailer park just outside of town.
“I’m here, baby. I’m going to hang up now. I’ll be right in. Get your bag, okay?”
“Okay.” The meekness of her voice kills me.
Music blasts my ear drums when I get out of my Jeep. Four strides and I’m up the porch banging my fist against the door with an eviction notice taped to it.
The music is so loud that they don’t hear my fist beating the hell out of the flimsy metal.
I twist the knob viciously and shove the door open past where it catches on the linoleum flooring.
Unlocked. Go fucking figure.
Alex’s living room is a war zone, and it hits my olfactory senses first. A smack to the face of weed, alcohol, and the cloying sweet smell of smoke.
There are half smoked joints burning in the overfilled ashtray.
Bottles of booze litter the coffee table surface.
Take out containers left to rot on the table and floor.
But what sets me off is the clear glass pipe with a hole in the top in the ashtray.
The clear liquid in the burned bottom a dead giveaway.
“Andy? What are you doing here?” Alex stands halfway off the couch before stumbling and falling back to it. The dude on the couch next to her has half of the buttons on his shirt undone, his hair is a mess, and the top button of his pants is undone.
My temper snaps like a piano wire strung too tight.
“Are you fucking kidding me?” I yell at my sister, pointing at the pipe.
“It’s not mine.” Alex holds her hands up, like that alone is enough to prove her innocence.
Three sheets to the wind, high as a fucking kite.
Why am I still surprised?
“Pip!” I shout.
Goddamn, why is the music so fucking loud? I can’t think over the noise—the noise and my anger. I stomp over to the stereo and yank the plug from the back. The silence is deafening.
“Andy …” Alex pouts from her spot on the couch.
“Pip,” I yell again ignoring my sister.
Her head pokes out of one of the three doors down the hallway of the single wide trailer.
Long red hair, the curls an exact match for her mom’s wisping around a face that shouldn’t be tear-streaked, or as scared as it is.
“Aunt Andy?”
“It’s fine, Pipsqueak. You can come out.”
Alex successfully makes it to her feet and moves toward me. “Did she call you?” She stabs a finger in the direction of her daughter.
“Of course she fucking called me! Her mom is getting high with a random man in her living room. She’s nine fucking years old, the music is so loud Satan himself is singing along, and the best you have to say is ‘it’s not mine.’”
“Now wait a minute—” the dude on her couch says.
I snarl and jab a finger at him. “You. Shut up. When I want you to speak, I’ll tell you.
” Softer, I say, “Pip, go get in Bocephus, please.” I wait for her to scurry by me, her backpack slapping against her back, and when the door shuts behind her, I turn back to Alex.
“I’m done, Alex. I’m so fucking done with this shit.
You promised you’d stay clean. You promised . ”
The word breaks against the war in my heart. The war in my soul. The endless battles of trying to save my sister from the demons in her mind, body and heart.
We’ve been doing this for years. Years of me begging her to try—to try for Pip, for me. To get clean. To stay clean after I pay for expensive rehabs and it’s always the same. Broken promises. Heartache. Unending anxiety and worry when I see her name on my phone.
“I’m sorry,” she says dutifully.
The same useless apology that I’ve listened to for years. Hoping and wishing that it’d be the last time. The last time I would have to watch my sister make the wrong choice.
But she keeps doing it over and over again.
I can’t save her.
I can’t.
“I’m sorry too.”
I stalk out of the living room, pulling the door shut behind me. Piper’s green eyes find me over the headlights I didn’t shut off when I ran inside.
I can’t break yet. Not yet.
I climb into the Jeep and reverse out of the driveway. It’s not until we’re on the highway that the blockage in my throat clears enough for me to speak.
“Hey, baby. You got everything you need in your bag?”
Could Alex call the police and have me arrested for kidnapping her daughter?
Sure, but she won’t. Not when she’s got drug paraphernalia laying around her living room.
Not when Melinda Wicke, the case worker at CPS, has my phone number on speed dial and has dropped Piper off with me six times in the last four years.
Not when I’ve started building contingency plans for Piper on my own with Melinda’s help.
Piper’s hand finds mine, her little fingers wrapping around mine. “Yeah.” She nods.
“That’s great. I’ll take you to school in the morning, and then we can go to Grandpa Hal’s for dinner. They’re having lasagna tomorrow.” I inject as much cheer as I can into the words when all I want to do is rage and weep.
My throat burns. It burns like the fires of hell with suppressed tears and anger.
“Okay.”
She’s probably just as shell-shocked as I am. Every time I’ve come to get her, I’ve done a good job of playing at the sleepover angle. Doing my best at never giving her anything to worry about.
But this time … this time is different, and she knows it. She knows more than any kid her age should ever know.
And it’s time to put an end to that.
The drive to my house is silent. Piper is probably processing just as much as I am.
I need a plan. I need a checklist. A way to make progress in ensuring that my niece isn’t subjected to the same neglect and abuse that I was as a kid.
I’ve started the process, spitballed it with Melinda and a family lawyer.
But actually having to put that plan into place is another matter entirely.
I need to call social services. Melinda is an angel, and she’ll take my call, even as late as it is. She’ll have an idea of what to do. What steps we need to start with.
As we reach my block, I nearly sob at the truck in the driveway.
“Uncle Jedd!” Piper cries from her seat.
“Let’s go see what he’s doing here, shall we?”
Piper’s like a runner off the block, jumping out of the Jeep and making a beeline for the porch. As she hits the last step, Jedd opens the door. “Hey, Pip!”
Piper throws herself into his arms, and he hoists her onto his hip as I round the hood of the SUV.
“Have you had dinner yet?” he asks her.
Piper shakes her head as I reach for the forgotten bag on the floorboard.
It’s nearly nine o’clock at night, and my fucking sister didn’t feed her daughter.
I don’t even have the energy to be mad anymore. Just disappointed and heart sick.
I should have never let it come to this.
But I’d hoped …
“Okay, well let’s fix that. How do you feel about grilled cheese and tomato soup?”
“Can I have goldfish in the soup?”
“It wouldn’t be tomato soup without goldfish. What do you take me for, Pip? A doofus?”
He drills a finger into her waist, and a high pitch giggle erupts into the cold night.
I don’t even question how he’s here. Jem probably texted him when I took off without a word.
He’s here. And that’s what matters.
His eyes find mine over Piper’s head saying a million things I’ve thought myself.
This can’t keep happening.
She deserves better.
This isn’t good for her.
This isn’t good for you.
Like Piper, the second I hit the top step, Jedd holds his arm open for me. I step into his hug and take the little bit of comfort I can get from it, knowing that from this moment forward my life is about to change.
Everything is about to change, but the one constant I can count on is Jedd being there when I need him most.