Mario’s on everyone’s case again.
“Does this sound familiar?” he says. “When your girlfriend’s been out, do you check her odometer to see how far she went?”
“Don’t everyone?” Kelly says.
“How else you know if she’s telling the truth?” Tiny asks.
“I’ll take that as a yes for Tiny and Kelly. Thanks for your candor.” Mario scans the room. “Anyone else? Or do you interrogate her about where she’s been, listen to her answering machine, call her names, or isolate her from her friends?”
No, no, no, no. I shake my head. None of this applies to me. Or does it? I study the water beads pooling under the A.C. unit and remember about Elsa.
“What if you don’t like her friends?” Tiny asks.
“I don’t know, Tiny,” Mario says. “What if you don’t like her friends?”
“Then she ought not to hang with them.” When Mario doesn’t answer, Tiny continues, cracking his enormous knuckles. “I mean, I don’t want Donyelle going around with people got a bad ’tude toward me or our relationship. Her girlfriends all talk trash about a guy, acting like she’s all that and could do so much better,” he says, and I nod.
“And you don’t like that?” Mario says.
“Would you?”
“And what you say goes?” Mario pretends he’s confused. “Donyelle has no say? She can’t make her own decisions?”
“That ain’t what I said.”
“Repeat what you said then. I misunderstood.”
“Forget it.” Tiny flops back in his seat.
“I knew what you meant,” I mutter.
Mario hears, and I think he’s about to challenge me, but this guy named Ray raises his hand. Ray’s one of the older guys in class. At least, he’s through school. He’s sort of serious compared to the rest, which is probably why I figured him for a kiss-ass from day one.
“I understand,” he says when Mario calls on him.
“What do you understand, Ray?”
“You’re saying it’s controlling behavior to separate her from her friends? We shouldn’t do that.”
Gold star for Ray.
“That’s what I’m saying,” Mario says, like he knows Ray’s a bootlicker too. He turns to me. “I saw you me-tooing before, Nick. Let’s get your input.”
“Aww, don’t call on him,” Kelly interrupts. “Richie Rich is too big to talk to the likes of us.”
Everyone looks at me then, so I’m cornered. I hit Kelly with a look. But I decide he’s not worth bothering with. Instead, I say, “I agree with Tiny. I mean, should I spend time with people I don’t like just because they’re her friends?”
“Not necessarily,” Mario says. “But can she?”
“We were always together,” I say.
“Maybe that was part of the problem.” I shrug again, and Mario says, “What about your guy friends? I’ll bet they hang with people you may not like. Do you say, ‘Hey, Bubba, it’s him or me,’ or do you just go along?”
I go along, I think, remembering Tom’s friendship with Saint O’Connor. I’d spent hours, days of my life with that knuckle dragger. “That’s different.”
“How so?”
“Because if I told a guy to choose between me and someone else, he’d tell me to screw off.”
“Because you have no power over a guy, no control the way you have with a girlfriend?”
“No. ’Cause if you say that to a guy, he’d think you’re queer.”
“And if you say it to a girl, she’ll know you’re a control freak.”
I look around the room. Everyone’s pretending fascination with what Mario’s saying because they don’t want to talk themselves. Was I a control freak? If I hadn’t done stuff like that, would Caitlin still be around? But I go for broke. “So I’ll find someone else,” I say. “They all have the same thing between their legs.”
This gets some chuckles, some raised thumbs. But Mario shakes his head. “Somewhere down the road, Nick, I hope you’ll find they don’t all have the same thing between their ears. The good ones don’t put up with macho mind games.”
I’m coming up with a response when a voice interrupts.
“Why don’t you leave him alone?”
It’s Leo-the-cool. I gape at him, and Mario says, “What?”
“You said no put-downs, didn’t you?” Leo says. “That was one of your rules.”
“Confronting someone about their beliefs isn’t a put-down,” Mario says. “Challenging attitudes is the point of this class.”
“That’s a load of crap,” Leo says. “All you do here is play mind games and make people feel stupid.”
I’ve recovered from my shock enough to scowl at Leo. “I don’t need you to defend me.”
Even so, I’m wondering why he did.
“Sorreee,” he says. “Thought you did. Considering you got this look like an ant staring down a can of Black Flag.”
“You aren’t my mother,” I say. But that gets me mad. Why is he calling attention to me when I just want to be ignored? Why is he making me out like I’m some weakling? I feel blood coursing through my wrists, and I stand. I start toward Leo.
But Mario gets between us, real quick. “Are we still in my class?” His eyes are cold. “I know we aren’t ’cause there’s no fighting in here.”
“But he—”
“Not here. You take it to the streets if you have to, but not in my class.” He turns to Leo. “Hear that?”
Leo doesn’t look at me. “No biggie. I was just trying to help.”
Mario turns my way. “Nick?”
“I don’t need his help,” I say. “I’ve eaten as much shit as anyone here. He’s got no right to act like I can’t.”
Mario nods. “I agree with you. But fighting’s not what this class is about.”
“I don’t know what the hell it’s about,” I say.
“It’s about God kicking you in the butt so you’ll notice the mess you’ve made.” When I look at him, surprised, Mario adds, “Now sit.” He waits until I obey, then stares at me until I look away. He turns. “Next session, we’ll talk about eating shit. By that, I mean we’ll be discussing our families, our parents.”
He pauses like he knows the reaction he’ll get.
Stunned silence. Everyone who’s been shuffling around, getting ready to go, stops. He really wants us to talk about our parents? Like, about my father? Tiny says, “What’s that got to do with anything?”
“I know it’ll be painful for some of you—maybe all of us.” Mario walks around the circle, scanning our eyes. “But exploring the past brings out the sort of feelings that cause us to become insecure, controlling, even violent.” When Mario passes me, I don’t look at him. He sits, hands on knees. “Anyone have anything else before we call it quits?”
People start gathering books, keys, backpacks. Kelly’s recovered enough to volunteer. “I heard a wicked-ass joke.”
“Always got time for humor, clean humor,” Mario says.
“It’s clean.” Kelly flips a hand across his hair. “What’s the first thing a gal does when she checks out of the battered women’s shelter?”
Mario holds up his hand. “I don’t think—”
“The dishes, if she knows what’s good for her!”
People laugh, but me, I’m wondering what made Leo take my side. And what will I say about my father in class?
Later that day
I’m still thinking about my father hours later, instead of doing homework, instead of working on my journal. Fact is, my father is part of this story too. The next part. But I don’t want to write about him. And I sure as hell don’t want to tell Mario about him. Judge Lehman said she wouldn’t read the journal if I didn’t want her to. But how can I be sure? Finally, I open the wavy-edged book to a fresh page and write:
(DON’T READ. YOU SAID YOU WOULDN’T.)
Lights blazed on, and I saw the clock. 3:00 A.M. I blinked, tried to cover my face with the sheet, but my father pulled it away.
“What is this?” he yelled, shoving a paper in my face.
I said I didn’t know. I stood, then edged away, trying to focus.
But he came closer, screaming, “I will tell you what. A receipt for beer. Beer! Rosa brought beer into this house, so where is it?”
The beer for Zack’s party. I said, “I don’t know. Honest, Dad—”
“Liar! I asked Rosa. She says you took it.”
“She’s lying. Dad, I—”
“Thief! I did not raise you a thief, but you are one. When I was your age, I was away from home, working. You only steal from me.”
“I didn’t—”
He hit me hard in the face, and I stumbled back onto my bed. I lay not moving, not speaking. Arguing made his anger worse, and now I only wanted him to leave. He raged on about how hard he worked, what a lazy ingrate I was, but I stopped listening, my brain carrying me to an alternative reality, where I was watching someone else lying under my black bay window. Then, I went further. I don’t know if it was a minute or an hour. I stopped caring whether Rosa heard. I don’t even know if he hit me again. My mind took me to Caitlin.
Finally, he left. My cheek throbbed, and I knew I should go downstairs and ice it. Instead, I rolled over and fell asleep to the sound of his footsteps in the hall.