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While Cheyenne and I are waiting in the driveway for the Teen Moms van to pick us up, Irma shuffles out in her bathrobe, her hair sticking up all over and her eyes barely open. It’s about three hours before Irma ever gets up, except on those rare times when she has to cover an early shift for someone at work.
“You better not have any crazy ideas in your head about taking that baby away again,” she says.
“The only idea I have is to finish my credits so I can graduate,” I tell her, shifting the still sleepy Cheyenne in my arms.
“No court’d give you custody, you know—hysterical laughing jags, crying jags, peeing your pants, no means of support.”
Irma pauses, then changes her tone.
“I’ll talk to Rudy,” she says. “I know he’s not perfect. He shouldn’t be acting that way.”
“If that magazine rack had hit me . . .”
“I know. I know. He shouldn’t drink at all ’cause it just gets him going. I’m gonna tell him to stop.”
“Like you have so much influence over him,” I say, thinking
how he shoved her around last night.
“You didn’t have to make things worse with your back talk! I’ve warned you about that mouth of yours.”
For a moment, I see that same hard look on her face that Rudy gets when he’s being the Rudy I don’t like.
“I’m telling you, Melissa, don’t do anything crazy. I won’t be so nice this time. If you’re not here when I get home from work today, I’ll have the cops on your tail in no time. You pull another stunt like before and you’ll lose this baby forever.”
Cheyenne stirs and smiles. “Gramma,” she says.
Irma softens. “Good morning, Sweetheart. Gramma loves you.”
“The van,” I say, standing with Cheyenne, grabbing our backpacks and limping to the open door and up the steps. Cheyenne waves out the window until we’re at the end of the block, and Irma stands waving back.
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In English my mind keeps wandering. I run a finger over my pants leg, where my bruised and pounding shin is hidden from sight. Over and over my thoughts get caught in a replay of last night. The magazine rack smashing against the arm of the couch. Rudy’s stony face. I should have gone to the halfway house, stuck it out, like Daphne did. But now . . . could Irma really take Cheyenne away from me? Just thinking about it gets my heart pounding fast. I try taking deep cleansing breaths, like I learned to do in the shelter. It helps a little, but then, when I think again of Irma’s threat—it starts all over, pounding heart, sweating palms.
No one loves Cheyenne the way I do. Irma says she loves her, and I guess she does, but I’m the one who feeds her, and bathes her, and takes care of her when she’s sick. I’m the one she runs to when she’s hurt. God. I can’t stand the thought of not being with her. That couldn’t happen, could it?
In Peer Counseling we’re watching the end of a movie that we started earlier in the week. It’s called “Priest” and it’s about this gay priest who gets caught with his lover, and then makes the headlines of a tabloid. It’s a really good movie, but I can’t follow it today. At the end, a teenage girl comes to take communion from the gay priest and he holds onto her, sobbing and sobbing. I don’t even know why he’s crying, but just seeing it gets me started and I can’t stop. Like I couldn’t stop laughing last night.
I run from the room, embarrassed, and into the restroom. Leticia follows close behind. I splash cold water on my face, take deep breaths, and gain control.
“This is more than being sad over the movie, isn’t it?” she says.
I nod.
“Tell me,” she says.
“It’s just, things are hard for me sometimes,” I say.
She smiles and dangles her keys. “Aunt Myrna’s bean soup. That’ll help.”
I feel too nervous to go to lunch, but I don’t know how to get out of it, with Leticia being so nice.
“Okay,” I say.
At Pandora’s Box Lunch, Leticia orders bean soup for both of us, telling her aunt I need some magic beans.
“That’s exactly what I need,” I say. “Magic.”
Myrna pretends to go faint with surprise over Leticia’s order of something other than her usual bacon, avocado, tomato sandwich.
We take our soup and bread and sodas to a small table in the back. It’s funny, but Leticia is right about the soup. It helps. After about the third bite, I don’t feel quite so stressed. Not that my problems have gone away, but at least my palms aren’t all sweaty and my heart’s not racing.
“Thanks,” I say to Leticia.
“Wanna tell me?” she says.
I take another spoonful of soup, not exactly wanting to talk, and not sure where to start, even if I wanted to.
“Remember back at the beginning of school, that day I was all down about my gramma having to go to a convalescent home?”
I nod.
“And I hadn’t told any of my other friends because it seemed too terrible to say out loud. But then, I told you, because you always listen like you really care.”
Again I nod, remembering Leticia crying about how her grandmother didn’t even know her anymore.
“I felt better after I talked to you. Not that it changed anything, except I didn’t feel so closed up inside. You know what I mean?”
“Yeah, I do,” I say.
“You know you can trust me not to blab?”
“Oh, yeah, it’s not that, I just don’t know . . . well . . .”
There’s what seems to be a long silence, then I ask Leticia, “Finished with your lunch?”
She looks at me, puzzled.
“Yeah, I’m finished. Why?”
I pull up my pant leg and show her my messed-up shin.
She gasps and leans forward for a closer look.
“Rudy?” she asks.
I nod.
“God, it looks horrible. Have you seen a doctor?”
“It’s not broken or anything,” I tell her. “I yelled back at him,” I explain.
“Nothing deserves that,” she says. “Are you going back to the shelter?”
I tell her how Irma threatened to take Cheyenne away from me if I left, and how much I want to graduate on stage, from Hamilton High School, and how confused I am.
“Sometimes I wonder if I’m losing it—like today I couldn’t concentrate at all in any of my classes, and last night I was like a crazy woman, laughing and laughing when things were so terribly sad . . . ”
“Give yourself a break, girlfriend. You’ve got a right to be crazy. I’d be crazy just tryin’ to take care of a baby and go to school, and I’ve got a mom who’d be on my side. And I’ve got aunts and uncles I could go to, too.”
Leticia slides a paper napkin across the table to me and I dab at my teary eyes.
“And here you’re not only having to do everything on your own, you’re takin’ all kinds of hits from Rudy and his mom both! You deserve to be crazy!”
Leticia laughs and I do too, only this time it’s a real laugh, not like last night.
We sit there, Leticia sopping up the rest of her soup with a piece of bread, me sipping what’s left of my Pepsi.
“You’re right,” I tell her. “It does help to talk.”
“Yeah, it does. But you’re still in a mess.”
I get a familiar feeling and excuse myself to go to the restroom. Inside the stall, I check my underwear. Yes! Something’s finally going my way. I get a tampon from the machine and go back in the stall. When I come out, Leticia’s waiting for me.
“You okay?”
“Much better,” I tell her.
“Listen, if there’s ever a way I can help . . .”
“Thanks.”
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By the time I get to Mr. Raley’s class at Sojourner High School, I’m dragging. All I want to do is just curl up somewhere and sleep for days.
There are only seven lessons left in my workbook, and two more weeks of classes. So far, I’ve not gotten less than ninety percent on any of my work in here. I’m going to make it. I know I am. I make myself find enough energy to get to work.
I turn on the computer, put in my disk and bring up my file. There’s the spreadsheet that Mr. Raley took to get copied, the one that set Rudy off. Why didn’t he just copy it on the machine in the office? Or at the other Kinko’s? Then none of that stuff would have happened last night.
I go to the next lesson, another spreadsheet task, and for a few precious minutes I’m so involved in what I’m doing that I think of nothing else. Then, as I go to the next step, I realize that what happened last night was going to happen again, no matter what. It could have been anything. Rudy is an abuser, and one way or another he’ll find an excuse to abuse me. Usually I just try to forget, but now I try to remember all the excuses he’s ever used for hitting me. I open the word processing program and start a list.
REASONS I DESERVE TO BE HIT, ACCORDING TO RUDY:
I talked to a friend.
Dinner was too early.
Dinner was too late.
My lipstick was too red.
I thought he should get his muffler fixed.
I don’t like rap music.
I feel someone behind me and turn to see Mr. Raley looking over my shoulder. I quick erase the file and bring the spreadsheet lesson back onto the screen. Did he read what I’d written? He’s looking at me, eyebrows raised, as if he’s got a question on his mind.
“I met your boyfriend yesterday,” he says. “Rudy? Is it?”
“Yeah, he told me you’d been in,” I say. “Look, is this part right?”
I point to the screen, to something I know is right, but I want to change the subject.
“Perfect,” Mr. Raley says, smiling.
“Listen, there’s something I want to talk to you about,” he says.
My stomach jumps with butterflies. He’s seen the list.
“There’s a company, Graphic Design Services, out in City of Industry, a bit of a jaunt, I know, but a good company with good benefits . . .”
What’s he talking about?
“I work there sometimes, in the summer and occasionally in the evenings if they’re desperate for help. Nice people . . .” he says.
What’s that got to do with why Rudy hits me?
“I don’t even know if you’re looking for a job or not, but you’d do well there. They asked for recommendations, and I gave them Jerry’s name, and yours.”
At first I can’t make the transition from thinking he was going to be all upset about the list he’d seen, and he’d know I wasn’t really so smart if I let anyone beat up on me, and he’d probably get a social worker to come out and get messed up in my life and . . .
“Of course, if you’re not interested . . .”
“No. No, I’m interested,” I say. “I just didn’t understand at first.”
“It’d be in their accounting department—not much money to begin with but plenty of chance for promotion because they’re growing so fast . . .”
“When would I start?”
“They want you to come in for an interview next Thursday. I’ve recommended Jerry, too.”
“Oh,” I say, disappointed. “Jerry’ll for sure get it.”
Mr. Raley laughs. “No, it’s not like that. There are two openings and I’ve recommended the two of you.”
“Jerry knows a lot more than I do,” I tell him.
“Jerry’s been in my class a lot longer. But you catch on as fast as anyone I’ve ever had in class. You seem to have a gift for learning the ways of computers.”
“I like predictable,” I tell him.
“Me, too,” he says. “I was raised by a mom and dad who were both alcoholics. Boy, do I like predictable.”
We exchange a glance, like maybe we understand something below the surface. I still don’t know if he saw the list or not.
As soon as Mr. Raley walks away, Jerry pulls a chair up next to mine.
“Did he tell you?” Jerry asks, his braces showing through a wide smile.
“About the job?”
“Yeah. Cool huh? We’ll be seeing each other at the water cooler, just like in ‘Dilbert’.”
I laugh. “What if we mess up on the interview?”
“We won’t. We’ll practice with Mr. Raley before we go out there. Do you have your résumé done yet?”
“Résumé? I’ve never had a job in my whole life. What do I have that would go on a résumé?”
“You’d be surprised,” Jerry says.
He goes back to the desk where he usually works and prints something out, then brings it back to me. He’s listed things like being a counselor at a YMCA Camp, and being an aide for Mr. Raley, and warehouse duties for his mom’s Amway business.
“It’s only three shelves in our garage, but still, I keep track of stuff, and load and unload materials . . .”
“You drive to school, don’t you?” I ask.
He nods his head.
“Maybe you could call yourself a transportation director, too.”
“You laugh, but it’s all true, and it looks good, too,” he says with a smile. “Just wait.”
He gets his résumé disk and brings it back to my computer. We copy it, then use it as a guideline for mine. Really, there is more than I thought there would be—as an aide for Bergie I keep her files straight, answer the phone, keep the kids interested in play activities, clean up the sleeping area and keep the toys in order.
“So, you’re a file clerk, receptionist, educational play consultant, assistant maintenance engineer, and materials supervisor,” Jerry says, entering that information on my résumé form.
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Mr. Raley comes back to my computer to see what we’re laughing about.
“Very impressive,” he says, laughing with us. “You might want to tone it down just a bit, though.”
He stands over us, giving us ideas for how to re-word things. Then he pulls a chair up and enters a line right after the one I’ve written listing my experience with computers in his class, “Certificate of Completion, Computer Math, With Special Honors for Excellence.”
“Really?” I ask.
“Really. You deserve it,” he says, then walks away to help someone else.
“Cool,” Jerry says. “I’m getting one of those, too. We’re the only ones. I know, because I enter everything in Raley’s grade book.”
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I rush into Bergie’s class, full of my news.
“Guess what? I’m getting a special certificate in Mr. Raley’s class, and he’s got me set up for an interview for a really good computer accounting job.”
“Good for you,” Bergie says, but she looks more worried than happy.
“Mommy!” Cheyenne says, running to me, arms open.
I scoop her up. “Mommy’s going to get a good job, and buy you lots of toys, and new clothes, and new clothes for Mommy,
too . . . ”
“And Daddy?” Cheyenne asks.
“Maybe,” I say.
And then I realize there’s a lot I’ve not thought about in the excitement of good news. I’ve only thought about how nice it would be to be working, and not on welfare, and I haven’t thought at all about who would take care of Cheyenne while I was at work. And I haven’t thought about Rudy, or the mess I’m in.
“Cheyenne?” Bergie says, “Would you please take this baby doll to Ethan in the playhouse? I think he was looking for it.”
As soon as Cheyenne runs off, Bergie says, “Cheyenne’s grandmother was here today.”
“Irma?”
“Rudy’s mother. Mrs. Whitman.”
“Why?”
“She wanted to take Cheyenne—said she had a doctor’s appointment.”
“No,” I say, trying to make sense of it.
“I told her the only person Cheyenne could be released to was you. That’s the only name on file.”
My heart is racing. Was she trying to take Cheyenne away from me, like she’d threatened?
“I can’t take that responsibility, Melissa. If Cheyenne had a doctor’s appointment that her grandmother was going to take her to, you should have worked that out with me . . .”
“She didn’t have a doctor’s appointment,” I say, sinking down into one of the toddler-sized chairs, palms sweating, again in a state of fear.
“No doctor’s appointment?” Bergie says. “You’re sure?”
“No doctor’s appointment,” I say.
“But she was so insistent. I had to call security before she’d leave. She said she’d be back with a police escort. I told her to come ahead, I know where I stand within the law.”
“This morning she told me if I ran away again she’d get the
cops after me and I’d lose Cheyenne forever.”
I’m shivering, even though it’s about eighty degrees in here.
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“Could she do that, Bergie? Could she take Cheyenne?” I ask, through chattering teeth.
“Catch me up with what’s been going on since you got back from the shelter,” Bergie says, pulling another toddler chair up next to mine.
For the second time today, I spill out my story, only this time I’m more frightened and scared than ever. Cheyenne. I can’t lose Cheyenne. What if Bergie had let her go with Irma? What was Irma planning to do?