Chapter 12
MICAH
I sank down in the passenger seat of Mom’s car, watching the thick trunks of trees rolling by, their branches lacing together above us two people holding hands. This was Ada’s favorite road. Mom used to drive it all the time when Ada and I were kids, and Ada would always say it was like a tunnel that led to a magical kingdom.
There was no way this road didn’t remind Mom of Ada too. She did things like this, touching on memories of the Ada from before. I had to know Mom believed that deep down Ada wanted to get rid of the pain and torture she put herself through. And I could be there for her and help get her back.
I needed Mom to see that Ada wanted to get better and that she wanted to be a part of our family again.
But Ada had been silent since the roller derby night, ignoring my calls and texts. My phone had become glued to my palm as I kept constant vigil for a signal from her. I checked to see if I’d missed any texts while I’d gone to lunch with Mom but found nothing.
“When did Dakota say he’d be able to pick up his car?” Mom asked, mistaking my obsessive watching for Ada for something else. I’d lent my car to Dakota when it broke down on the ramp off the highway.
“Tomorrow at the latest,” I said, flipping my phone over my thigh. “That car is becoming a money pit, but he had to drain his savings to pay for all of Evelyn’s summer camps. I offered to help, but he wants to do it his way.”
“If that’s what he does, then that’s what he does.”
I’d heard Mom say that before about Ada, but with far less compassion in her tone. I swallowed down my urge to scream. Why would someone choose to be miserable? My parents cut Ada off, and they suffered every second for it. Dakota was always scrambling to make it by. Ada kept saying she wanted to get better, and yet she turned around and used all over again.
They wanted change in their life—sobriety, connection, stability. The answers were right at their fingertips, and no matter how hard I tried, everyone in my life refused to get help.
“I wish you would’ve let me pay for lunch for going out of your way to get me,” I said, needing to shift lanes with this conversation.
Mom glanced at me and gave me a smile that didn’t quite reach her eyes. “It’s not going out of my way if I get to see my son.”
The spirit of Ada was in her words, and it left a tightness around her eyes. It was torture to watch the pain flicker through her, how her hands gripped the steering wheel harder. But in a blink, the pain was gone.
Mom had learned to hide her grief. Grief was exhausting, and it wore down every muscle and bone until it the body was nothing but ash. She didn’t conceal it out of humiliation; she did it because for her it was the only way to survive.
I turned away and let my eyes fall shut. Ada was trying. I saw it in her eyes, that plea for help. It made me realize she wanted to live. This was the first glimmer of hope I’d felt in a long time.
Mom pulled up to my apartment complex. I knew I only had a minute to convince her before she would turn around and drive away. My pulse sprinted through my body with such fervor I felt it jab up my spine and into my head, making me dizzy.
But I held on, refusing to give up on Ada. She needed us more than ever. “I think Ada’s ready to get back into rehab.”
Mom took a sharp turn into a parking space and put her car into park. She unbuckled her seatbelt and exhaled, like she’d been unable to take a full breath the entire drive home.
“I really wish you’d stop pushing this on me.”
I chanced a glance at Mom. Her shoulders sank, and her chin trembled with a mix of disappointment and defeat. I braced myself for a flood of emotions that I had become familiar with in the past year—frustration, annoyance, anger. Mom didn’t look like any of those things.
She looked resigned.
“Ada wants to get better. I invited her to a roller derby fundraiser, and she actually showed up. Can’t you see she’s trying?”
“Was she high?” Mom asked, her eyebrows lifted upward. When I couldn’t muster an answer, she shook her head. “Do you know how many times she’s shown up for something and ruined it because she was so high she couldn’t even remember who she was? We’ve put her in rehab, again and again. Your father took out money from his retirement to send her across the country for the last one. And she left after a week.”
I pressed the heels of my hands into my thighs, a blend of unbearable sadness and loneliness pulling opposite directions in my chest. It hurt to breathe. “I don’t know how you can do it. How can either of you wake up every day knowing you gave up on her?”
Mom’s hands covered mine. They were small and delicate. She’d recently had her nails painted a soft pink. She spent more time on small things like this—hair, nails, even her clothes had changed. It was nothing but armor to hide the pain she carried every day.
“Micah, we didn’t give up on her,” Mom said, her grip tightening. “She gave up on us.”
My lips twitched to hold back the tears that blurred my eyes. “I have to believe she wants this. Because if I lose her, it’d be like—” I took a moment to stave off the hitch in my voice. “Like losing a half of me. And I don’t know how I’d be able to live without her.”
A sweat had broken out on my neck and temples, the heaviness of anger and betrayal making it impossible to breathe.
I needed out.
“Micah, please, let’s not fight,” Mom said before I slammed the door on her. We’d have to talk about this later, but right now all I had to say to her were words I knew I’d regret later.
My signal to Ada tickled my stomach, mixed with the scorch of dread, followed by the tingling numbness of knowing whatever I was going to find would scrape me raw.
Ada sat in the corner of my porch, her skinny arms wrapped around her legs and her chin on her knees. She rocked side to side, her gaze off in the distance, lips moving as she whispered to herself. Her dark hair was twisted in a sloppy braid, streaks of black running down her face from tears.
“Oh, fuck. Ada.” Each step was as if I was running in water, my feet dragging along the ground as I made my way toward Ada. She rushed at me and tugged me into a hug, her greasy hair thick with foul stench of cigarettes and weed. I swallowed the gag punching its way up from my stomach and scrambled to detach myself, cupping Ada’s sunken cheeks, unable to stop the frantic tremble of my hands. “Jesus, why didn’t you call me?”
“I was going to, but I figured fuck it, I’ll just come here,” Ada said in a rush as she raised her shaky hands up to her face and wiped away the wetness on her cheeks. She looked strung out, shivering for another fix. Of what, I didn’t know, and that was even more alarming than her losing the third prepaid phone I’d gotten for her in the last two months.
I closed my eyes and forced a breath through my pinched lungs. “Tell me what happened.”
“There’s some bullshit going on, and I wanted to know if I could crash here for a day or two until I— Mama?”
I swiftly followed Ada’s wide-eyed stare and landed on Mom standing in the distance. Her lips were folded into a tight line, hands hanging on her sides. The eyes we shared with our mother held none of her beauty, only a vacancy I’d never seen before.
This wasn’t our mother, whose smile always rested at the corner of her eyes, who had the best smile in the entire world. What stood in front of us was a shell of a woman who’d brought Ada and me into this world, who’d carried both of us in her arms, who’d held our hands when we needed her touch.
And now she was turning around and walking away.
“Mom, wait!” I reached into my pocket and grabbed my keys, shoving them at Ada. I pointed to the hallway of my apartment floor. “You go inside, and you stay there, you hear me?”
Ada’s lips trembled. “Micah?—”
“ Now ,” I said, surprised at the anger in my voice. A couple of my neighbors were poking their heads out of their doors curiously, and someone walking their dog stilled in their path, watching. “People are fucking staring, so get inside and wait. Can you at least do that?”
With a nod, Ada turned and walked away, casting a quick, longing glance at our mother’s retreating figure. I chased after Mom, my pulse ricocheting through my rib cage as I dashed in front of her before she could leave, putting both hands up to stop her.
“Please come with me,” I said, my voice thin and pleading. “She needs you. I need you.”
Mom placed a hand over her heart and shook her head. “I can’t. The person inside your apartment is a stranger. That’s not my Ada. I can’t be a part of it.”
Every time I’d heard Mom and Dad talk about how they had to cut Ada off, I always thought that it was temporary. I thought that if they’d see how much trouble Ada was in, they’d understand why it was foolish to let her go.
I realized now I was the foolish one for believing they’d take her back.
Rage churned in my stomach, bubbling something acidic up my throat. “All you have to do is love her. Not money, not your house. Just your love.”
With eyes lined with tears, Mom brushed a knuckle against her nose and sniffled. “This is me loving her, Micah. I’ll never stop loving her. But I can’t keep putting myself out there expecting she’ll get better. Expectations are just premeditated resentments, and I’ve run my course with them.”
I was in this entirely on my own. That knowledge paralyzed me, cementing my voice against my throat. I watched Mom get into her car and drive away, like a daydream I couldn’t wake from.
With great effort, I managed to shake my arms back to life and move. Each step to my apartment was like treading over glass, and if anyone was a witness to me falling apart, I didn’t have it in me to care.
Ada shot up from the couch when I came into the apartment, her voice small when she whispered, “I’m sorry.”
Her bottom lip had a fussy cold sore, dark baggy circles turning her once vibrant blue eyes dull and sunken. Her misery inside of them was deep, her shoulders rounded forward as she wrapped her scarily thin arms around herself.
She’d shrunken into a little girl again, lost and alone. It ripped at my fragile heart, knowing it’d never stop bleeding for her. I licked my dry lips and lifted my hand to her. “C’mon, let’s get you cleaned up.”
Ada took it, her trembling palm cold and clammy, as I walked her to the bathroom. While I got a bath going for her, I half listened to her babbled nonsense as she rocked on the toilet.
“Okay, it’s ready for you. I’m gonna get you some clothes,” I said, closing the door on the way to Ada’s room.
She’d taken the smaller room of the two on purpose. I always knew Ada’s spirit was bigger than Knoxville, and I’d spent my entire life preparing for the day she’d leave. When Ada began to fall apart, I relied on my faith that she would go on to do the things she was destined to do and began to pack up her room. Her belongings were kept safe inside rubber bins, away from any harm. Wiping my face, I quickly made up her bed and grabbed a clean T-shirt.
“You ready?” I asked on the other side of the door. Ada weakly responded she was, and I braced myself as I stepped inside.
Ada’s forehead rested on her knees, and I was grateful that she couldn’t see my jaw dropping in horror. She’d lost so much weight the knobs in her spine were visible, her back marked up with bruises.
I gritted down the scream rearing in the back of my throat and grabbed a washcloth from under the sink. Ada didn’t move when I kneeled on the floor next to her or when I began to wash her back.
The person I had been trying so hard to get back didn’t exist anymore; I didn’t try to stop the burn in my eyes or the tears that rolled down my cheeks. Ada was quiet the entire time, her eyes remaining closed as I wiped the makeup off her face and washed her hair.
“I set up your bed for you,” I said to the door when Ada wanted to be done with her bath.
“Don’t want to sleep in that bed,” Ada said while she got dressed.
I combed my finger through my hair and gripped at the strands at the base of my neck. My patience tapped out. “Okay, fine, if you want the couch, you can have the couch. I’ll get a blanket for you.”
I didn’t give her the opportunity to say anything back, yanking the door open and heading to the living room to set up the couch for her. Ada had left the bathroom and ended up in my bedroom, sprawled out on her stomach, her hands tucked under her chin.
“I wish she didn’t hate me,” Ada whispered, her sleepy words slippery on her tongue. “I’d give anything for her not to hate me anymore.”
“Shh, she doesn’t hate you,” I said, keeping my tone soothing, kicking off my shoes and wet T-shirt. I changed into a tank top and crawled into bed next to her, resting a hand between her shoulders, counting her breaths. “Oh, Bubbie, I wish I knew how to flip the switch in your mind that makes you do this. I miss you so much. Just tell me what it is, and I’ll do whatever it takes to help you get free.”
It fell on deaf ears. Ada was already asleep, softly snoring into the pillow. I lay there, too exhausted to keep my own eyes open. If I woke up and she was still here, it’d be a miracle. I prayed she would be, but I knew deep down she’d be long gone when I woke up.