10

 

 

 

 

10

 

 

The way Momma and me walk back from the park, it’s the way we’ve walked unfamiliar high streets in the middle of the night. Dusty backroads with no streetlights. Highways that snake ahead to secret places we can’t reach. We walk with our arms looped together, our steps skittering in and out of time. She’ll squeeze me where she holds me and I’ll squeeze her back. She’ll nudge me with her elbow and I’ll smile. My mom and me, this growing up thing is something we’ve had to do together. Sometimes we’ll walk a long way before we talk.

“Crystal ball, crystal ball…” she whispers to me, just loud enough to hear over the background rush of cars and bikes and strangers’ footsteps passing back and forth.

“Round and small…” I say back.

“What will we have when we have it all?”

I haven’t thought about this in a while now. It’s been so long since we played this game.

“A house in the woods with a moat all around it,” I say. Then think. “No, a house on an island in the middle of a really big lake.”

“Why not a mansion?”

“I want something small and cozy,” I say. “Something pretty I won’t have to work hard to keep clean.”

“But won’t you have servants to keep it clean?”

“I don’t want servants. I want to be all alone. My place, all mine. No-one comes over without my say-so. And I want a big oak tree growing in the garden. With a swing hanging from one of the branches. I’ll sit outside and drink champagne under the stars, and then I’ll swing until dawn.”

“You? All alone? But then where will I stay?”

I have to think about this. “You’ll have your own house on the mainland, close to the city, because that’s where you want to be. But… you’ll have a secret rowboat so you can come out and see me anytime you want. You’ll be the only one who knows the way to the island. And for you, it’ll take no time at all. For anyone else, it’ll take forever.”

She laughs, half through her nose. “That’s cute, kid. Kinda sad, but cute.”

“Crystal ball… crystal ball…” I start.

“Round and small…”

“What will we have when we have it all?”

The crystal ball of mine she doesn’t know about, it throbs above my eyes as I wait for her to answer.

“A secret rowboat,” she says, squeezing my arm and huddling closer to me as we walk. “So I can visit my beautiful, amazing daughter and help her stop feeling so alone.”

“No yacht?” I say. “No private helicopter? No caviar pantry and closet full of suede jackets?”

I don’t know why I’m angry, but I am.

“Hey now,” she says. “Hey…”

Usually my momma and me are closest to each other when things go wrong, when we have the world against us and cheering each other up is a game we play. That’s not how I feel right now. How I feel now, it’s how I felt watching her and Susie dance in his tiny square kitchen a few nights back, his stereo pumping sound from the other room. Old-school rock n’ roll, the kinds of songs they play at pool bars when things start to get rowdy. I sat at the table where my momma and me eat scrambled eggs. I watched the two of them as they pushed and pulled and stepped close, and then back, my mother’s hair flying across her face when he spun her round. Something in my heart expanding so it pushed against my ribs and my throat. Something that is hard on the outside and hollow on the inside. The bigger it got the more it hurt, echoing and ricocheting inside me. Shoving my heart out the way, trapping the air in my throat.

When can I be like her?

Why can’t I be like her?

Dancing happy and free, loose and smooth and lively as a swath of silk floating in a dark tide. Sometimes just watching her makes me feel like a torn-up piece of cardboard, stiff and stinking with forgotten stains. Awkward, heavy, soiled.

“Sorry, Momma,” I say now. I try to smile. “PMS or something, I think.”

“Oh,” she says. “Oh.”

She knows it’s a lie, has to be.

“I don’t need caviar or suede jackets,” she says. She’s taken the laughter out of her voice. She’s talking soft and serious. “I need to know that you’re close, safe. You could give me a million crystal balls and a billion wishes. That’s all I’d ask for, every time.”

She stops walking when she stops talking. She makes me turn to face her. I duck my head, conscious again of my extra inch. My hair falls into my eyes.

“You’re my beautiful girl,” she says. She closes her arms around me, and leans to kiss me softly on my forehead. My secret eye flickers the instant her lips touch it. I fight the moment. Keeping it closed.

We’re blocking the walkway. The strangers passing clip us at the shoulders. Their annoyance swarms around them and crashes against us as they step by, sighing through their noses like snorting bulls.

It’s funny how predictable people are. How easy they are to poke.

“Don’t mind them,” Momma says, and hugs me tighter.

I don’t.