Chapter 59
CHAPTER
“IT WON’T MATTER,” Emi says, her body swaying. “Once something is in print, everyone believes it.”
She’s right. I watch her teeter, powerless. The next gust of wind will carry her away.
“All the kids at school are going to think my father is a rapist. That I’m repulsive! You have no idea how bad it’ll be.”
I recall when she was bullied and how hard it was for her. It might not be acceptable for kids to ridicule Emi about this, but teenagers can be unbelievably cruel, especially when hiding behind social media, using it to do their dirty work.
“I do understand,” I say. “But all the bad things people said about me when I was a child were true.” Emi puts her hand back around the post and her body steadies.
She wants to hear more. “My mother, I called her Mama J, was an addict. She slept with men, sometimes six in a day. I was there, either in the tent we shared, the front seat of the car we lived in, or watching TV in a seedy motel while she had sex in the bathroom.” I wipe the rain from my eyes.
“Sometimes the men were quick. Other times they hurt Mama J or talked to her like she was a piece of trash. Worse than trash.”
Bend over. Scream my name. You’re a fucking whore.
“When I asked if one of those men was my dad, Mama J had no idea. The only thing she was sure of was that he was one of her customers, or a drug dealer willing to trade for sex. She told me to forget about having a father; that whoever he was, he’d be disgusted by me.”
We’re the shit on the bottom of someone’s shoe, Mama J said. Knowing that makes life easier.
What if I don’t want to be the shit? I asked.
Slugs can’t turn into butterflies, can they?
“I’m so sorry, Penn.”
Even now, Emi is kind. “I’m not telling you this for sympathy. Whether or not I was a child of rape, need, a drug exchange, or indifference, it doesn’t matter. What matters is that that I see my own value. I wish I’d learned that lesson sooner. Otherwise, they win. Is that fair?”
“No,” Emi says in a small voice.
“Would you want that for me?”
“Never.”
“I don’t want that for you, either. Emi, choose to define yourself. Don’t let them do it. We only lose our power when we give it away.”
I reach out a hand. She hesitates, then takes it and falls into my arms. I hold her for a very long time, until her quaking stills. Until I can bear to let go. “Your real friends, like Circe and Char, will still love you,” I promise.
“What about my mom?” Emi asks, panicked again. “People are going to believe it happened, that she was raped! How’s she going to get through this?”
My stomach heaves at the thought. But Val is one of the strongest women I know. “There will be awful moments, but you’ll help each other through them. That’s what family does. Now let’s take you home.”
When we get to the truck, I power off both of our phones and put them in the back bed.
Far enough that Aletheia can’t listen to us.
I make sure the truck’s radio is off, but that doesn’t feel good enough, so I reach into the glove box, take out a screwdriver, and ram it into the radio’s screen so that even when I turn it on, nothing happens.
“Why?” Emi asks, her pale, pruned hands nervously twisting on her lap.
“Aletheia is always listening,” I explain.
“How are you going to stop her? I mean, she’s, like, a supercomputer.”
“I’m not sure.” I can’t. But I can protect the people I love by letting them go … even Circe. What’s left of my heart scatters like ash in the wind.
Emi says, “I won’t tell my mom about this—I want you to be friends again.”
I shake my head. “Secrets never stay buried.”
“Does Circe know about your childhood and Mama J?”
“Yes. I didn’t tell her for a long time. That was a mistake.”
“Why?”
“She can’t love me if she doesn’t know all of me.”
Emi asks, “Does my mom know?”
“No.”
“Are you ever going to tell her?”
Val may want nothing to do with me after what I’ve done. “I’m not sure.”
Emi nods. “Why do you call your mom Mama J?”
“It’s what everyone called her.”
“But you’re her kid.”
“She didn’t like me calling her Mama. I think … I think it reminded her of all she wasn’t.”
“Where is Mama J now?”
The memory of the last time I saw her hurtles toward me …
Time to go, Mama J said the day I left for freshman year of college.
A bus pulled up. Its oversized door wheezed open.
I’ll come home every weekend, I said. SFPI was only thirty-five minutes away from our apartment.
I was afraid to leave her alone for too long.
There was a time Mama J seemed larger than life, Demeter in a T-shirt with a lightning bolt on the front and moneymaker jeans.
Now she resembled a grasshopper, skin the color of dried parchment, sharp elbows and knees, brown hair thinning and threaded with silver.
The years of drugs had stolen her looks, and a few teeth.
Mama J scowled. What did I tell you about looking back?
I swallowed the lump in my throat. Don’t, or I’ll get sad or trip.
So? Scram.
I hesitated, like a bird whose cage door has finally been opened, afraid to fly out into the wide world. The driver put his bus in gear.
Mama J rapped her bony fist hard against the glass until he opened the door again. Her cheeks blazed red as she said, I never wanted a kid. Then she turned her back on me and walked away.
I hefted my small duffel, climbed aboard, didn’t look through the rear window as the bus pulled away. I shed my past with each mile. By the time the bus reached SFPI, my tears had dried.
Halfway through freshman year, a neighbor sent a message to the college that found its way to my dorm room. Mama J was back on the streets. I thought about going to Button Bridge and searching for her tent. Instead, I set her free, too.
By the time I learned Mama J had died, she’d already been buried at sea, beneath the Golden Gate Bridge, where the unclaimed remains of the city’s poor, forgotten, homeless, and drug addicted are scattered …
Now I tell Emi, “Mama J died while I was in college.”
“Did you get to say goodbye?”
“We did. In our own way.”
“What did the J stand for?” Emi asks.
“June.” She never told me. I read it on her death certificate and imagine looking back to the promise of the girl she once was, sharing her name, would’ve made Mama J too sad.
I turn left, wind down the street to Val and Emi’s house. The rain has turned into drizzle and a few stars prick the inky sky; one falls and bleeds orange.
Emi says, “It’s going to be rough for both of us.”
“Yes,” I agree. “Then things will get better.” But that’s not true for me.