Danny’s in the hall when we come in. A towel tucked in his pants.
He thumbs to the kitchen. “Hey, Sherry, I made dinner.”
Mom shakes her head. “We’ve got to talk.”
“Something wrong?” he asks.
I stand between them. “I have to go to the bathroom.”
“So, go,” Mom says.
When I come back, they’re in the front room. Danny’s in the armchair and Mom is on the couch. She slaps a spot beside her.
“No,” I say, standing at the wall.
“We’re doing this,” Mom says.
“I’m tired and I don’t feel right. I need to lie down.”
“You know something, Angelyn? I’m tired and I don’t feel right either. Come here and lie down if you want to lie down.”
“No,” I say. “Not there.”
Mom says, “Why not?”
I make my mouth tight.
Mom nods to Danny. “Say something to her.”
“Act right,” he tells me. “It’s past time.”
Head down, I fold my arms.
“Let’s do this in the kitchen,” he says.
Danny’s made tacos. He takes his time setting them up. My gut is like iron.
Mom taps the table. “What’s the occasion?”
“I picked up a job today,” Danny says over his shoulder. “A lady wants me to install new gutters. If she likes the work, she’s got more that needs doing.”
“You’re getting paid up front?”
“Half now, half when the job is done. Same as always.”
Mom grunts. “It’s been so long I’ve forgot.”
Danny sets the platter on the table and sits beside her.
“Sherry, what’s going on?” he says.
The tacos look foul, flopped in a slab, grease weeping through the sides. Pooling on the plate. The spice smell gets up my nose.
“Angelyn was in trouble today at school,” Mom says.
“That’s not new,” Danny says.
“This kind of trouble is.”
“What’d she do now?” he asks.
“While we were out of town,” Mom says, “Angelyn spent the night at a teacher’s house. A male teacher’s house.”
Danny takes a couple of tacos. “That’s deep.”
“Shut up,” I say. Under my breath.
“We had a little meeting about it,” Mom says after a pause. “The vice principal, the teacher, Angelyn, and me.”
Danny crunches. “Is the guy in trouble?”
The question hangs. Mom doesn’t answer it. She looks at me.
My heart beats faster. “Mr. Rossi shouldn’t be in trouble.”
“He shouldn’t be,” I add.
Danny swallows what he’s got. “Sherry, you want to call her off?”
“You can look at her, Dan,” Mom says.
“What?” he says. I’m frowning.
“Angelyn thinks you’re scared to look at her.”
“Don’t tell him that,” I say. Then: “He is scared. He is!”
Danny says: “Your mother told me not to.”
“Mom, you did?” I ask, and we’re quiet.
“Do you want to look at her?” Mom is hoarse.
“Hell no!” He’s loud.
“That teacher picked up some funny ideas somewhere,” Mom says.
Danny’s looking at me now. “What are you stirring up?”
I search him. Dull brown eyes, and nothing reflected back.
“I’m not stirring up anything,” I say. “People are seeing it in me.”
What you put there.
“Am I being accused of something?” he says, staring now.
Mom nods to me. “This is Angelyn’s show.”
“It isn’t,” I say. “Mom, I don’t know what you want.”
“Sherry, she pushes herself at people,” Danny says. “That’s the problem.”
I do not. The words catch in my mouth.
“She pushed herself at me.” He waves in my direction. “Twelve years old, and built almost like that.”
“Don’t say how she’s built.” Mom is almost absent.
I lean in. To cover myself. To talk to him. “I didn’t push. We were friends. You said so.”
Danny’s lip curls. “She was all over me.”
“Mom.” I sound like a kid.
She’s head down, listening.
“Okay. I was all over Mr. Rossi. I really was. And he wouldn’t. He said I was a child—a child to him now.”
“That’s what this is,” Danny says. “She’s protecting this guy.”
“No,” I say. “It’s not about that. Mr. Rossi doesn’t like me anymore.”
Danny’s eyes play over me. “That’s ’cause he got caught.”
Mom looks up.
“So—” I say, “no one would like me unless they were messing with me?”
Danny puts a hand on Mom’s chair.
“Mr. Rossi didn’t mess with me.”
“All right, Angelyn,” Mom says.
“He stopped liking me.”
I’m pointing at Danny.
“Careful, now,” he says.
Mom turns to him. “Careful?”
Danny’s watching me. “She’s geared up for something.”
“When he—” I stop. “When Danny—”
“Just a minute.” He’s rising.
I’m standing too. “You stopped liking me when you got caught.”
“I didn’t get caught! It was that kid,” Danny says, “that dopey kid.”
“He wasn’t so dopey. Not about you.”
“I’ve heard enough.” Mom speaks evenly.
“Danny touched me.” I sag with it.
“You lie!” He shouts it.
I sit, arms curved around my stomach.
“Then you sit too, Dan,” Mom says, and I hear him sit, heavily.
“It’s a lie,” he says.
I raise my eyes. “I’m not lying anymore.”
Mom looks back at me.
Danny slouches. “Shut up. Grow up.”
“It’s hard to grow up,” I say. “When my boyfriend touches me, I feel you.”
“Boyfriend?” Mom says.
Then there’s nothing. For I don’t know how long.
“The girl never liked me,” Danny says.
“I loved you.” I search him again. “Did you ever—like me?”
His mouth works like he’s chewing tobacco. “No. I never did.”
“That’s a lie.” My voice cracks.
“Angelyn, you leave us to talk,” Mom says.
“He’s lying. He is.”
“Go.”
I tip the chair, leaving.
I hear Mom ask, “Has it started again?”
It’s what I think when I wake up.
How could she ask that?
I check the clock. It’s 8:15. Long past our time to leave for her work and my school.
Did she leave me here with him?
Mom is in the kitchen at the window.
“Why didn’t you wake me?” I ask.
She leans against the sink. “Have something to eat.”
The table holds one set of dishes, used.
“Those are mine,” Mom says.
“Where are his?” I ask.
“Danny went out on the job early.”
My stomach rumbles. I take an orange. I work on the peel, facing her.
“Mom, what’s going to happen?”
She turns. “We’re getting your backpack today.”
Sacramento is a two-hour run.
“You won’t get in trouble on your job, doing this?” I ask as we start.
“Let me worry about my job,” Mom says.
“You keep saying you want me to worry about it too.”
“Angelyn.” Her voice is strained. “I need a day to think. Away from here. Is that all right with you?”
Away. “Yes,” I say, sitting back.
Morning light floods the truck. We could be twins in ball caps and sunglasses.
I flip the visor down. Mom gets coffee for the drive. I sip Diet Coke. An hour later we stop to pee.
In Manteca we pick up Interstate 5 for the freeway part of the drive. The signs start for Sacramento.
“Do you ever wish we’d stayed?” I ask.
Mom jerks. “Stayed in Sacramento? No. Getting out is what saved us.”
“Oh.” I was five when we left.
“You don’t know what it means to me, coming back and having something now. A job. Some kind of life.”
What kind? I think.
“There’s plenty you don’t know.”
I look at Mom. “I didn’t say anything.”
“No one wanted us here. My family didn’t want us.”
“They didn’t?” I say.
“Danny’s the only one who ever gave me more. And I had to leave to find him.”
“Do you—love—him?” I ask, my mouth twisting. “After last night?”
Mom takes a long breath. “Don’t push me.”
“I heard you ask if it was happening again. It isn’t. What did Danny say?”
“He said no. He said nothing ever did.”
I watch her. “The way you asked him, you know that’s a lie.”
“We’re staying in Sacramento tonight,” Mom says.
“I’m not only asking him. I’ve got questions for you.”
I laugh.
Mom jabs a finger at me. “Don’t laugh.”
I’m leaning to the window. “It’s just— Mom, I said it all last night. If you didn’t hear me then, you never will. Or—is all of this my fault? ’Cause that’s how I am?”
“I want to know,” she says, “how bad it got.”
“Oh.”
I look out the side. Rice fields. The endless flats. I remember.
“You want to know—is it worth doing anything about.”
“What do you want me to do, Angelyn?” Mom’s voice is sharp and sour.
I don’t know, I think, and say it.