14. Cori - Age 16
Chapter fourteen
TWELVE-AND-A-HALF YEARS AGO
I rushed into the trailer like a demon was chasing me. It had been about fifteen minutes since my conversation with Deck, so fourteen minutes since controlled panic mode had set in.
“Johnny!”
I liked to believe that Good in a Crisis would be written on my gravestone when I died. I wouldn’t allow myself to give in to the fear coursing through my veins until I knew my brother was safe.
My single-minded determination to find him was probably the reason I didn’t notice the glass scattered all over the floor until I felt a sharp edge cutting through the sole of my worn-out shoes.
“Motherfucker!” I yelled, jumping up and down as I grabbed my foot.
A large piece of brown glass stuck out. I must have stepped straight down on top of it because it had punctured the bottom of my shoe and lodged in the ball of my foot.
I winced in agony as I pulled out the glass, throwing it out the still-open door of the trailer as blood began seeping onto the floor.
Not knowing what else to do, I gently pulled the shoe off while balancing on my other leg, unsurprised to find my sock soaked in red.
The pain was intense, and it wouldn’t stop bleeding. FML. I needed to save my brother from the neighborhood thug, and apparently, I had to do it while performing an impression of John McClane in Die Hard .
We didn’t have bandages or really any medical supplies on hand, so I grabbed a nasty dishrag from the sink and pressed it to my foot.
I gripped my ankle, trying to decide my next move, when I finally noticed the rest of the room.
The couch cushions had been relocated to the floor, and everything was knocked off the counter. At first, I thought maybe the place had been tossed. But it didn’t look quite messed up enough for that. None of the drawers were pulled open, and our shitty TV still sat on its stand under the window.
The glass I’d stepped on had been part of a broken beer bottle. The neck of the bottle hung off the dining table, like someone had smashed it against a hard edge to prepare for a bar fight.
Was I too late?
“Johnny!” I screamed again, hopping up and down as I worked my way around the shattered glass—with difficulty since small shards were everywhere. I’d almost made it to my bedroom when I tripped over one of my coats, which had been thrown on the floor.
I fell hard on the linoleum, bracing myself with my hands. Another sliver of glass cut across my right palm, while my left hand came down on a sea of tiny glass bits. I saw the evidence of the shallow cuts in my skin as a spiderweb of blood appeared.
Even though my hands were bleeding, they weren’t as bad as my foot, so I was able to push myself up.
Stumbling to my room, I grabbed a clean pair of socks from my drawer and put them over my hands as makeshift bandages.
The cuts bled through the fabric, but they didn’t look nearly as bad as the dishrag on my foot, which was drenched in crimson.
I desperately needed to wash these wounds, but I had to take care of my brother first.
Hobbling, I pushed open the door to the main bedroom and found Johnny there, passed out next to our mom. Thank god!
I hopped over to him and shoved his shoulder. “Johnny! Johnny! Wake up!”
He rolled over onto his back and flung an arm over his eyes dramatically, like the dim light was brighter than the sun. Mom didn’t stir at all.
“Jesus Christ, Cori.” He dragged out his words, following them with a lazy stomach scratch. “Why are you shouting?”
“Get up!” I poked him again. “You need to get out of here. And what the hell happened to the living room?”
He turned back onto his stomach, his eyelids drifting shut.
“Nuh-uh.” This time, I bent my elbow and used it to crunch down into his shoulder blades. “Don’t go back to sleep. You need to get your butt up.”
“Ow!”
“Get up!”
“Alright!” He waved his arm in the air to stop me from digging into his back again. “I’m up.”
But he wasn’t up. He barely moved. It was like he wanted to go back into the dumpster.
“Johnny. Get. The. Fuck. Up. NOW!”
He managed a glare. “I am up. I just said.”
“No. Get up! As in, out of bed. We need to move you.”
“Wait. Huh?” He sat up a little against the headboard. Finally, some progress!
That was when I realized. In all the shouting and jostling, my mom hadn’t made a peep. As concerned as I was for Johnny, that wasn’t normal.
“What’s going on with Mom?”
She hadn’t been around for a few days. But the last time I saw her, she seemed to be doing pretty well.
I’d been working on schoolwork when she came home, and we sat at the table for an hour eating Chicken in a Biscuit crackers while I told her funny stories about kids at the Center.
She had mentioned a plan to spend time with a special friend for the next few days, but that was nothing out of the ordinary.
Now, as she lay on the bed with her skirt hitched up to the middle of her thighs, I registered the bruises behind her knees and on her arms. One of her ankles looked swollen too.
“Oh. She’s just strung out, I think,” Johnny said.
“You think?” Shuffling over to her side of the bed, I raised one of Mom’s arms. When I released it, it dropped to the mattress like a stone.
“Yeah. You missed it. There was kind of a bad scene, I guess. When Mom came home.” I was about to demand he elaborate when Johnny suddenly sat up straighter. He brought a hand to his throat and frowned. “Cor, can you grab me a glass of water?”
When he grimaced again, I looked around and saw a small cardboard box in the corner. Handing it to him, I said, “If you need to throw up, do it in here unless you think you can make it to the bathroom. I’ll grab your water.”
He scrunched his face at the bloody sock mittens on my hands but didn’t ask about them.
I hopped eight feet to the little bathroom at the back of the trailer. I didn’t want to risk the gauntlet of broken glass in the main room again, so I picked up a cup from the sink counter—Johnny would just have to deal with the toothpaste residue around the rim—and filled it with water.
When I brought it back into the bedroom, he asked, “Why are you limping around?”
“Glass through my shoe. You need to be careful out by the kitchen till I get it cleaned up. Now tell me about the ‘bad scene’ you were talking about earlier with Mom.”
I sat down on the edge of the mattress, applying pressure to the wound on my foot, trying to slow the bleeding while he talked.
Johnny cleared his throat. “After you helped me shower yesterday, I went right to bed.” He stopped to take a sip of water.
“It’s hard to explain, but my body felt different than it ever has before…
I can’t remember much about them putting me in the dumpster, but I think Chi-chi’s guys might have stabbed me with something. ”
“Okay.” I exhaled. He’d been so out of it yesterday. I’d been terrified. Thank god he seemed okay now, other than looking like he might hurl up his insides.
“Anyway, I slept all the way through the afternoon and night.”
“I know. You were still out when I went to school this morning. That’s why I put you in Mom’s bed instead of the couch, so you could hopefully sleep off whatever was in your system better.”
“Right. Well, I was starting to wake up, probably around noon, but what really did it was Mom coming in with some dickbag. I don’t know what went down, but there was a loud crash, like maybe a window broke, and then shouting.
The next thing I know, this guy is standing in the doorway of the bedroom.
My eyes weren’t totally open, but enough that I saw he basically flung her down on the bed, and then he—”
Johnny’s face contorted with anger.
“What?” I asked.
His eyes narrowed. “This part I remember exactly. He called her a ‘stupid, useless whore bitch’ and then walked out. I don’t even know if he noticed me in the bed.”
Stunned, I gulped hard. I loved my mom, and stuff like this never got easier.
There was no way to fill in the blanks until she woke up.
I guessed the window-breaking noise Johnny heard was the bottle shattering, and the shouting would explain why things had been flung around the living room.
I didn’t know who this guy was, or where her bruises had come from.
Had he beaten her up? Or was he her rescuer?
Was he some sort of pimp? As far as I knew, this was the first time my mom’s work had ever made its way into our home.
It was the reason I never faulted her for being away so much.
What seemed like neglect from the outside felt like her watching out for us from the inside.
Because it meant shit like this didn’t get brought into our house.
But now it was here. And my mom wasn’t waking up. And my foot would not stop fucking bleeding.
And Johnny was still in danger.
Sighing, I mentally rearranged the plan I’d had in mind half an hour ago.
“Johnny, you need to get out of here. Go to Rosa’s house. Lupe will let you in if she’s not home yet.”
“Why?”
“We don’t have time for questions. I ran into Deck. Chi-chi’s after you. Deck said you need to hide while he and Cruz take care of things.”
Johnny put the cup down on the nightstand. “Fuck that! This is my shit, too. I’m not going to hide like a little bitch while Deck and Cruz take care of things.” He tried to stand but immediately wobbled on his feet.
I pulled him back down by his wrist until he sat on the edge of the bed with his legs swung over. “Johnny! Knock it off. You know full well you’re not in any position to do anything. Just fucking lie low like Deck said! Then he doesn’t have to worry about you too!”
“Am I a fucking baby, Cori? You think I can’t take care of myself?”
I wanted to slap him.