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Esther
When Zoe came into the apartment, Esther looked up from the television. “Hi, honey.”
Zoe gave her a weak smile and then came and sat down beside her. She seemed to be favoring her sore leg.
“Are you all right?”
“So, I’m not very good at this,” Zoe said without looking at her. “So I’ll probably butcher it, but I need to tell you that I’m sorry. Like, really, really sorry. I don’t know why I did what I did, and I shouldn’t have. Obviously. I didn’t mean to get as drunk as I was. I was only going to have one little drink, but they tricked me into drinking moonshine.” Her whole body tightened in anger as she spoke.
At first Esther didn’t say anything. She hadn’t been expecting an immediate confession and apology, and she was encouraged by it. But wasn’t there something dangerous lurking just beneath the surface of this confession? She thought so, but she couldn’t quite put a finger on it.
Zoe wouldn’t look at her.
Esther tried to think of something to say. “I wish you’d answered your phone. It would have been much better if you had told me you were all right. I was scared to death.” She wished Cathy were there. She would know what to say. Maybe she should pack Zoe into the car and go over to Cathy’s house for this conversation.
“I’m sorry. I thought that if I answered the phone that you would come get me. And I didn’t even know how many times you called until today when I saw the missed calls. I must not have heard it ring some of the time.” She wrung her hands. “Or I don’t remember,” she said more quietly.
This child was in pain. What was causing all this pain?
“Zoe, can we talk about it? I want to understand.”
“We are talking about it,” she said brusquely.
Esther didn’t appreciate her tone. “Fine. Well, actions need to have consequences, and I’ve come up with some.”
Zoe’s face snapped toward hers. She obviously hadn’t been expecting that. “But I apologized.”
“Yes,” Esther said slowly, trying to be gentle, even though her sympathy was fading. It occurred to her then what had bothered her about Zoe’s initial confession. “You say they tricked you into drinking moonshine.”
Zoe nodded.
“So, are you saying that this is all their fault?”
Zoe’s mouth fell open. “I didn’t know it was moonshine! If I had, I never would have drunk it. Those guys were crazy! And they wanted to hurt me. They hate me. Everybody hates me!” She stood up as if she meant to stomp off, but the tiny apartment offered nowhere to go. She stormed into the kitchen and ripped the fridge open.
Esther got up and followed her, stopping in the narrow entryway to the kitchen. Now Zoe was trapped in the kitchen.
“Don’t eat anything. I’ve got a boiled dinner in the oven. Look, I’m sorry that they were dishonest with you. That was horrible of them. But you need to take responsibility for what you did. You chose to go to this party, and you chose to drink a mystery beverage.”
She snorted. “Mystery beverage. Whatever.” She slammed the fridge door shut.
“Please don’t break my fridge.”
“Are we done?” She put her hands on her hips.
“Not even close.”
Zoe’s eyes flitted around the kitchen, looking for an escape.
“I still need to tell you your consequences. But first, why don’t you tell me who these kids were. I should probably contact their parents.”
Zoe’s eyes grew huge. “You can’t be serious.”
Esther didn’t say anything.
“No. You are most definitely not contacting their parents.”
Esther took a long breath, trying to stay calm. “Please think about that. If you change your mind, let me know. I’m sure they don’t know how dangerous their moonshine is, and I don’t want them hurting someone else.”
Zoe’s face twisted up into a rage that also managed to be patronizing. “They don’t know?” she said with too much volume? “They don’t know? Are you kidding me? No, Gramma, you’re the one who doesn’t know anything. These aren’t some church kids out having harmless fun. Maybe that’s how it was in the sixties, but these people don’t even have parents to call. They’re animals. They were trying to hurt me.”
Esther waited a beat and then, trying to keep her voice even, said, “And yet you drank their moonshine.”
Zoe let out a loud, frustrated grunt and stomped toward her as if she were going to push her out of the way. For a second, Esther was scared, but Zoe stopped. “Would you please move?”
“Not yet. Consequences.”
Zoe whirled around and leaned against the wall. “What?” Her jaw was hard as a rock.
“You’re going to do ten hours of community service.”
Zoe’s head fell.
“With Rachel. At the church.”
A tear squeezed out through Zoe’s closed eyes. “You can’t be serious.” She slowly turned her face up and toward Esther, and something about her expression, coupled with this movement, sent a chill down Esther’s spine. Something was really wrong, here. For a second there, Zoe had looked almost malicious.
As soon as she had the thought, she pushed it down. It wasn’t malice. Zoe was just a teenager, out of her mind with hormones and the aftereffects of alcohol.
“Zoe, sweetie, I’m one hundred percent serious. You broke our window. Do you know how much money—”
“Window?” Zoe screamed. “I didn’t break your window!” She reached up with both hands and grabbed at her hair as if she meant to pull it out. “Are you crazy? Why would I break your window? Are you seriously”—
Esther tried to interrupt, but Zoe only grew louder.
—“that out of touch with reality? I’m not a bad person. I’m not a criminal! I only went to a party, which is something every single kid in America does, except for maybe your precious Jason!” She spat out Jason’s name as if that would somehow injure Esther.
It didn’t. Esther thought maybe Jason DeGrave was their only hope at this point.
“What I was going to say is, I started this church with six of my friends—”
“I don’t need a history lesson!”
Esther lost it. “Let me finish!” she hollered, and the action felt foreign to her throat. She hadn’t hollered in decades.
Zoe stopped, surprised.
“And we poured everything we have into that church!” She was still louder than she wanted to be and tried to temper her voice. “We don’t have anything more to give. So the fact that you broke our window hurts more than you can know.”
Zoe looked at the floor, but her hands balled into fists. Slowly, as if every word were its own sentence, she said, “I didn’t break your window.”
This refusal to admit it hurt Esther more than the broken glass.
“You will do ten hours with Rachel, cleaning and repairing the church.”
“Or what?” Zoe growled.
Esther wasn’t prepared for this, didn’t have an answer. She said the first thing that came into her mind. “Or you go back to Missouri.”
