Crazy Horse's Girlfriend (9781940430447) (20 page)

I shook my head. “You're the trash. You two leave Mike alone constantly, and then tell him who to be. Tell him what kind of an adult he should be. And God forbid he becomes the kind of adult you two are, with your love of things. It's disgusting the way you live.”

“The way
we
live is disgusting?” She said, and began to laugh snottily. “How about you people, with your trailers and houses bursting with dirt and children—”

“Enough! Both of you!” Mike's father yelled. He was standing over Mike, his hand cupping the side of his face tenderly. He turned back to Mike. “I'm sorry son, I'm so, so sorry… ” he said. Several men in scrubs came in and pushed Mike's dad gently out of the way. They began to work on Mike and though I still loved him, I went out into the hallway as hospital staff began rushing into his room. I could not stand to be in there with his mother one more second and I knew I had to find Jake. In the waiting room, I didn't see him. I went to the large windows, the flash of a blue and red light attracting my attention. Jake was being pushed into a police car outside. I ran out into the rain and tried to talk to the cops, but they only brushed me off by telling me that the appropriate people would be contacted. They drove away, their lights growing dim in the distance. I walked slowly back inside, now soaked, the sliding doors opening and closing behind me in a whoosh, and walked over to the chairs Jake and me had been sitting at only twenty minutes ago and sat down. My bag was still there. I picked it up, feeling sick and useless and exhausted.

Outside, it was dark, but the fluorescent lights of the hospital were good enough to see by. It took me a few minutes, and in that time I became even more soaked, but I found it. It was a small green beast, and the dent in the passenger side door made it at least sort of easy to find. I fumbled with the keys, my hair now streaming water, the keys falling through my hands. “Shit,” I muttered, beginning to cry and trying not to completely lose it. I knew I had to get home, get out of there. I picked the keys up off the pavement and got the door open, threw my bag in the passenger seat and sat down. That's when the smell hit me. “Fuck!” I yelled, hitting the steering wheel. I'd forgotten that Mike had puked in the car and my stomach and sense of smell had been particularly sensitive ever since I'd gotten pregnant. I started the car, rolled the windows down and headed for the gas station I could see a few minutes down the road from the hospital. I parked in front, opened the door and headed straight for the bathroom. I pulled as many paper towels as I could from the dispenser, wet some of them, pumped soap on the wet towels and marched over to the car. After a few trips, things were next to tolerable in the car and the rain had started to let up some. I washed my hands in the bathroom, dried off as best as I could with more paper towels and got back into the car.

I pulled onto I-70 after a few turns, heading west, the mountains in front of me, their snow-capped blueness only reminding me of the wonderful time I had with Mike on Mount Evans. I began crying and hit the steering wheel, hard. I hit it again, until I heard a honk from off to my left and realized that I was swerving slightly. I took a few deep breaths and tried to calm down but all I could think about was Jake and Mike and Julia as the sun came up and I got closer and closer to Idaho Springs. I just had to hope that Mom had not noticed my absence. I looked at the clock on the dash. It was around 5:00 AM. I could probably get home in time to sneak through the window and get a few hours of sleep before Auntie Justine would wake my mother with the call. I didn't know what was going to happen to Jake this time. I remembered talking with Mom about him the last time he went to juvie, and she'd said that if he got caught again, he would be tried as an adult, but maybe she was just being dramatic to try to scare me. That would be something she'd do. And as to Mike, I would never be able to forgive him for calling me a… that. It had hurt me deeply, and the image of him lying in bed, his long brown arms sitting placidly on top of the thin, white hospital blanket, calling me that word, kept running through my head over and over like a torture device set to infinitely re-set. His mouth, the “o” of the word, his face twisting around it. And the coke. And the fact that his parents had moved him to get away from it. And the fact that he had lied to me about why they had moved here.

I pulled off the highway and into town, first passing the Derby, the cowboys who looked like cowboys but weren't cowboys but volunteer fireman still probably sitting inside, drinking cup after cup of watery coffee. The neon lights of the Safeway, the kids who basked in the brightness of its twenty-four hour promises. The streets mainly empty, a few lonely cars crossing the pavement to get their owners to work in the dawn. The trees looked like they were being set on fire, the sun just beginning to really move up and into the sky. I pulled into the driveway quietly and got out. I walked over to my window and slid in. I sat down on my bed, grabbed the baggie of weed out from under it, looked at it and my pipe and set them both down on my lap. I couldn't. I just couldn't. I slid them both back under my bed, pulled my clothes off and put an oversized white t-shirt on that had once been my mom's and crawled into bed, thinking that I would never sleep, never.

 

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9

 

“Margaritte!” Mom yelled from upstairs. “Get up here right now!”

I had been in a half-sleep state for a while and so when Mom yelled, I finally had good enough reason to open my eyes. I rubbed at my face.

“Margaritte do you hear me? If you don't get up here right now, I'm going to come down there!”

“Why don't you?” I muttered to myself, rolling out of bed and sitting on the edge of it. I pulled on a pair of old grey sweatpants and walked grudgingly upstairs. Mom was standing at the top of the stairs, her hands on her hips, her mouth in a small, thin, purple line.

“Mom—”

“Mom nothing. You come here, sit down. You have a lot, and I mean
a lot
, of explaining to do.”

“I—”

“I said sit down!”

“I have to go to the bathroom!” I said, running.

“You come back here right now!” Mom yelled. I kept going. The nausea was unreal. I ran into the bathroom, threw the door closed, locked it and went down on my knees in front of the toilet. I was sick for about five mind-bending minutes. When I was done I had to rest my head on the edge of the seat before I could remember my own name. “Dear God,” I muttered, lifting my head and standing up. I felt light-headed, but like I probably wasn't going to puke again. I opened the cabinet door under the sink and pulled a sponge and some spray out from under it and cleaned the toilet up. I put it away, and washed my face, hands. Looking into the mirror, I could see how pale I was, my eyes two angry black slits in the middle of a puddle of yellow. I shook my head and opened the door, ready to face the pain. Mom was sitting at the kitchen table, an expression of intense irritation on her face.

“I know why you were sick.”

“Oh?” I said, panic rising in my voice.

“Your auntie called about thirty minutes ago.”

“Uh huh,” I said, sitting down and putting my face in my hands.

“She told me about that little incident of yours and Jake's at the hospital.”

“Mom, I—”

“No. You don't understand. Your cousin is going to jail this time. Real jail. What he did to that boy… it's called aggravated assault. And his record is long. He'll go to court but it looks like he'll be in jail for a while, Margaritte. And right now, they've got him in juvie, again. What I can't figure out is why he hit that boy. Why you two were there, in that hospital, in the first place? Who is that boy?”

I lifted my head out of my hands and looked at her.

“I don't know.”

She looked back at me angrily. “Why are you… who are you protecting? What's going on?”

I sighed. I had told the truth, in a way. I didn't know who he was. I had thought I did. At least she didn't seem to know that I was pregnant.

“Mom, his name is Mike. He's my… well, he was my boyfriend.”

My mother blinked, rapidly. “You have a boyfriend?”

“Yes. Well I did, I guess. I didn't want to tell you because, well, I don't know. Because I didn't want you to worry about me,” I said, and then laughed. I got up and went over to the counter and poured myself a cup of coffee, knowing that it probably wasn't the best thing for my stomach but wanting the comfort, the familiarity of it. I swirled cream and sugar into the coffee and sat back down, the irony of what I'd just said echoing inside my head.

“When did you meet him?”

“A few months ago. He seemed nice. But it turns out he has a drug problem. And he was mad at me because… because I didn't want to do something for him and he cheated on me with Julia. And well, you know how Jake feels about Julia. And then we saw them at a party together.”

“You were at a party last night? Goddamnit, Margaritte. I guess grounding you wasn't enough. I don't understand why you insist on screwing up your life,” Mom said, shaking her head. She looked down at the table, her distorted reflection looking back at her in the white plastic swirl of the tabletop.

I sighed, took a sip of my coffee. “Mom, let me just tell the story, OK?” She was silent and so I continued. “So then Mike, my… boyfriend, he looked really sick. So me and Jake took him to the hospital. Then he called me something really bad, and that's when Jake hit him.”

Mom looked at me for a few seconds and then away, taking it all in. She stood up and walked over to the window. She looked out for a while, the cars zooming by, the white noise of late morning.

“Margaritte, you don't seem to understand the seriousness of this situation,” she said, her back to me. It was a warm day and she was wearing shorts and a big white t-shirt, not unlike the one I'd slept in last night. The window was open and the wind came in, the curtains billowing up, her t-shirt blowing back against her body. Looking at her, so concerned and upset with me, only made me sad. She had no idea how serious the situation really was.

“This will be on his permanent record.”

“But, what if I explain to the police… ” I said, trailing off.

“I think you know better than to think that will mean anything,” she said.

“But he was only defending me,” I said. “Really it's my fault.”

“No Margaritte, it's not your fault that he punched that boy. He shouldn't have done that. He shouldn't have done a lot of things. We've lost him, Margaritte, don't you understand that?”

I was silent. I could hear the traffic in our silence and it felt like little razors on my skin. I did feel like I'd lost him, like I had no one now. I loved my mom, and I knew she loved me, but her dedication to Dad at all costs made things very hard between us. Julia had betrayed me, Jake was in jail for who even knew how long, and Mike had turned out to be someone I didn't even know.

“You make it sound like he's dead.”

Mom turned around and looked at me. “I'm sorry, Margaritte. I didn't mean to put it that way. I know you love your cousin. But maybe this is for the best. He always gets you into trouble. Maybe now you can stay out of it.”

“Mom, you don't understand. Jake keeps me out of trouble.”

“I guess we aren't going to agree here. But one thing is true. I don't want you going to parties. You're sixteen years old. And your grades are terrible. You have only two more weeks of school before this year ends and I want you focusing on the books, do you understand?”

I nodded and looked down, and Mom turned back to the sink and started to do dishes. When she finished, she wiped her hands on the old blue dishrag we wrapped around the handle of the refrigerator door and sat down with me. We drank coffee, both of us trying to pretend that what she had just said to me was going to make a difference. We talked for a couple of minutes, trying to make everything OK, and then Mom went into the living room to check on the twins and I poured myself a bowl of cereal hoping it would stay down. After I was done and I had stuck my bowl in the sink, I walked downstairs and flopped onto my bed. Nothing was OK. I slid my hands down onto my stomach and looked, opening one eye and then the other and then both of them, feeling grateful that the nausea had at least stopped. It seemed like nothing had changed. It looked the same. But it wasn't. And now I didn't even have Jake. Poor Jake. I couldn't even imagine what he was going through. I would have to call my auntie tomorrow to see what I could do for him. I felt sad, empty and more exhausted than I could ever remember in my life. I closed my eyes and everything buzzed and then faded.

I woke up to the phone ringing and my eyes flickered open. I flopped one long arm over towards the phone and picked up.

“Hello?” I felt like I was talking from the end of a long, winding tunnel.

“What's up, girl?” It was Will. I laughed. I couldn't believe Megan hadn't killed him yet.

“How are you alive?”

It was his turn to laugh. “Oh, girl, you know I'm a survivor.”

“That you are,” I said and sat up. I felt better. At least as good as I could feel considering that my life had just somehow come up to the level of a telenovela.

I knew better than to confide in him as Will couldn't keep his mouth shut for nothing, and was also judgmental as hell. He could make you feel like shit in about two seconds flat.

“How's stuff?” I asked.

“It's OK. Megan's a fucking bitch, but she's gone for the day, so at least I don't have to deal with her ass.”

“Right,” I said, rolling my eyes.

“I gave her money for bills and she's still acting like a crack whore.”

“I see,” I said, trying not to laugh. I wasn't sure what was funnier, the fact that Will had even come up with that or the image of Megan as a crack whore. If anyone was coming close to crack whore-dom, it was Will. Who the hell knew how the crazy fucker had gotten some money for bills. He wasn't saying shit about a job.

“So bitch, what are you up to today? Wanna go to a movie in Denver? You know, at the Mayan?”

“Why not,” I told him and got up off the bed. Will was the only person in my life who would go and see arty films with me, and I figured I might as well get out of the house and try to get out of my head, too. Dad was actually at work. Mom was taking the twins to hang at the pool because a bunch of people with babies were going to do that and then have some retarded picnic after. So she wouldn't know that I wasn't downstairs studying like a mo-fo.

“Cool. I just have to get out of this shitty fucking town.”

“Hear that,” I said. “See you in thirty minutes?”

“Sounds good,” he said and hung up.

I marched upstairs for a shower. No one was around. I showered, went back downstairs and got dressed and tried to figure out if my jeans were actually tighter than they had been the day before or if it was just my head. I sighed and headed out of the house, picking my backpack up on the way. I unlocked my car door and threw my backpack onto the passenger seat and slid in. After a couple of turns of the key, the car started and I backed out of the driveway and onto the road. On the way there I tried as hard as I could to push Mike out of my head, but it was hard. Stupid memories of him kissing me, laughing, holding me crept in. And then the image of him at that party with Julia. Of him calling me a whore in the hospital bed. I felt sick. I thought about how I'd told my mom that it was my fault Jake had punched him. How she had said it was Jake's fault. The thing was, I knew that when you did shit, it was your shit. But if it
was
anyone's fault besides Jake's, it was Mike's. If someone had hurt Jake, had said that kind of thing to Jake, I would have lost it and wanted to punch that fucker too. I rolled the window down and the quick, green smell of spring hit me as I lit my cigarette, carefully balancing the steering wheel while doing so
.

Pulling up to Megan and Will's place I could see that there was a pretty good parking lot party going, complete with mullets, tattoos and endless cases of Bud Light. I parked and got out and they shouted for me to join, one of them moodily slurring, “C'monnnnn,” as I walked past. I rolled my eyes and wondered if I'd sold any of them weed. When I got up there, I knocked and waited. I could hear laughter behind the apartment door. I was confused. I thought Will had said that Megan was gone for the day. Maybe she'd come back and Jesus had granted a fucking miracle and they were actually getting along for once. Will opened the door with a “Hey, girl” and I walked in. There was some strange dude sitting on the couch, smoking, leaning back and looking at me with an expression on his face like a sweet five-year-old girl's. I was surprised. He greeted me with another “Hey, girl”
and I said hey back and sat down. Megan was going to be pissed as hell once she came home and smelled that Will had been smoking inside again. Will gathered his shit together and we left, walking down the steps and into my car, past the parking lot party dudes. I looked curiously at Will's new friend in the rear view mirror. This guy was more than a loud voice in Will's room that woke the baby at three in the morning. This one was sitting in the back seat, his hand sat casually on Will's shoulder, though Will seemed to be trying like hell to ignore that he was doing it.

His name was Miguel and he was one of those beautiful Mexican guys who look more Indian than anything, except for this really wavy hair. And he laughed funny, like a donkey, slapping the back of Will's seat whenever I cracked a nervous joke. You could tell Will hated that, though he mainly stayed silent while Miguel and me talked, occasionally grunting at something we said, though Miguel kept trying to get him to be involved in the conversation.

Once we got onto Broadway, a little spring rain came up and I hit the windshield wipers, glad for the distraction of the rain and the mini-drama in the car, though I didn't understand why Will had wanted to bring Miguel along if he was just going to ignore him. I parked where I usually did, in the parking lot behind the theater next to the Walgreens, and we walked around and onto Broadway. I loved that street. Every time I was there I felt intimidated by all of the cool, thin, expressionless white people, though I also felt like there was more to life than what I saw in Idaho Springs. But I knew I wouldn't fit in with these people any more than I fit in with the mullets at home.