Chapter 12 Jane 4
You realize you’ve been waiting for it, that sometime along the way your fear alchemized into something much more dangerous, something closer to hope.
You wanted the pain to begin so it could be over with sooner.
So that you wouldn’t have to live looking over your shoulder at every cigarette-roughened laugh that tails off in a wheezing cough.
Deep down, you wanted to be reclaimed by the life you came from, the one where the electricity was always getting shut off and you could fit all of your belongings into a pillowcase when you inevitably got kicked out of wherever you were staying.
A world where you heard the headboard banging against the wall all night, while you pretended to be asleep, but secretly you opened an eye and tried to understand what was happening, whether that slapping sound of flesh on flesh was injury or love or a little bit of both.
And then there might be money on the nightstand, while she slept through the morning, and your stomach raged with hunger but you knew better than to take it, to even touch it.
And forget about telling her you were hungry.
You’re always complaining, she’d say. You’re no fun.
The woman in the diner who is not her, can’t be her, leans on the counter, brings her palm onto the bell.
Please ring for service, again and again, even though the waitress is still bustling behind the pie case.
Just a minute, the waitress says sharply.
The woman hasn’t turned, and by now you know it’s not really her, but the bell reminds you of the time she took you to the mall to have your picture taken with Santa.
She had been high then, too, pulling your arm too hard, dragging you toward the cottony mounds of fake snow while Christmas carols warbled, tinny and too loud, through the speakers.
She grabbed the bell out of the hands of the Salvation Army worker clanging for loose change.
Santa, santa, we’re here, she had yelled.
She pushed through the line, and when you stood before the man in the suit, you looked up to see Santa frowning down at you.
Julie’s here to see you, go ahead, tell ’im what you want.
She gave you a shove, too hard, and you landed in a sprawl in front of Santa’s boots.
A child behind you started to cry. Other children were always crying in response to you and your mom.
You closed your eyes and waited for all of it to end.
There was the crackle of the security guard’s radio, a voice over your head.
Ma’am. Ma’am, there’s a line. You can’t just butt in. Ma’am, you have to go.
That phrase has worked its way back into your brain, into your bloodstream. Ma’am, you have to go, you have to go. Go go go.
Back in the diner, Amanda snapped her fingers in front of your face to get your attention. Earth to Julie. Helloooooo? You owe seven bucks for the bill?
Amanda’s mom picks you up. You are driven home in this clean car, this safe little capsule of steel and glass, and it strikes you as absurd.
How protected you are, how completely sectioned off from the ugliness of the world.
Is it even real, to live this way? To sleep through the night without hearing glass breaking, a car alarm going off, shouting in the streets? Has this all been one long dream?
At home, your bedroom is immaculate. You’ve never left so much as a sock on the floor.
You know your aunt would never say this, but she wishes you would.
Wishes you, for once, would put a cup down without using a coaster, would forget to take your dirty sneakers off at the door.
But no matter how many nights you sleep in this bed, with its gingham coverlet that your aunt sewed by hand, or how many meals you eat that your uncle has cooked from his well-thumbed copy of the Joy of Cooking, or how many medals you earn and how many checks they write for your track uniforms and your Honors Society dues and your dresses for homecoming and prom, you will never believe that this life is yours, that there isn’t a shadow version of yourself out there, picking through dumpsters for scraps and checking the slots of pay phones for change, a shadow self that you are going to have to join one day, because a person can’t live split in two forever.
When you first came to live with them, your uncle wept when they said you had scabies, lice, a urinary tract infection, then looked at you with a face full of guilt.
For crying in front of you? For not stepping in earlier?
For waiting until you spent three nights in a home after your mom was arrested, simply waiting for someone to come?
You were like a stray dog in from the street.
This was a form of care, but why did it feel so much like punishment?
The doctor studying you, examining you with his blood pressure cuff and his tongue depressor and the little light he shined in your nose and ears, asking questions that embarrassed you.
The psychologist, who found different ways of asking you if anyone had ever touched you.
Any of the strange men—dealers, one-night stands—who used to come by the apartment.
She asked so insistently, reassured you, in so many different ways, that you could tell her anything, that you started to wonder if it was wrong that no one had.
How were you supposed to tell her they were always too high to even know you were there?
You pick Atlantic City because the bus fare is cheap, and you remember a mug from your first apartment: red, with Resorts Atlantic City written on it in white letters.
There was a single chip on the rim, but it was the thing from your childhood that was closest to whole.
But you don’t choose Atlantic City because you think she will be there.
She’s been dead for nearly a year by the time your bus from Baltimore pulls into the depot.
In a way, you’d been waiting for her death your whole life, the question always in the back of your mind.
Not if but when when when. A cellulitis infection took her.
Your uncle and aunt hadn’t needed to explain that she got it from shooting up.
And yet, she’s here in Atlantic City. She’s at the bus shelter, smoking a Pall Mall.
She’s waiting in line at Harrah’s for a pots and pans giveaway.
She’s at the McDonald’s near the bus depot, stirring six packets of sugar into her coffee, licking the pastry crumbs and grease from a cardboard apple pie container.
But it’s not your mother you’re looking for, it’s your shadow.
With every potential fuckup, every misstep, you felt her step closer—the girl you’ve been fated to become all along.
Now you’ve decided to just meet her, to reach out and shake her filthy hand.
One night you are walking along the dark boardwalk and stop in front of a psychic’s shop.
The lights are out and you stare at the gold evil eye symbol on the glass.
You let yourself feel held in its gaze for a moment, wondering what it sees.
A feral cat winds its way around your ankles, its whiskers holding the light from the moon.
Something lost recognizing one of its own.
YOUR FIRST night on the streets, you think of how you used to pee the bed every night when you originally came to live with your aunt and uncle.
You slept on the damp sheets the first few times, the wetness chafing your skin.
You wonder if even your aunt and uncle are thinking it: that you’ve turned out just like her, that something in you just soured, and you’ve started hitting the pipe, too.
But you haven’t—you’ve never even smoked pot.
Never even had a drink. You know it looks like ingratitude, but to you it’s the opposite.
Lightening their burden, removing yourself from all the things you never could believe you deserved.
The scholarship offer from University of Maryland.
You’d gone online and looked up the tuition.
Even with in-state rates you couldn’t believe all the money it represented.
You couldn’t believe that you had earned it—it felt too much like a gift, and gifts scare you.
Gifts always feel like they can be lost, reclaimed.
You would rather get the loss over with, or else it will hang over you indefinitely, the good, beautiful things in your life just a debt you’ll never be able to pay back.