Darnay Road (32 page)

Granma
and Aunt May are united in this. Aunt May is the one who gave me permission to
go to the dance. But just to the dance. And she went out on a limb for Easy and
Cap. But not now. Now everything is under review.

I
couldn’t even get some mercy when I concocted a story about how Easy wanted to
see the church, with going away he was having spiritual thoughts, questions
about being Catholic. And we were in the choir loft as I was showing him around
and we got to talking about things and fell asleep. That’s all.

I
must of said it a million times. We weren’t doing anything wrong.

And
it’s sort of exactly what happened. But it’s a point of view thing. My point of
view being different from Granma’s and May’s. If something happened they didn’t
approve of, well I approve so get off my case.

It was a day of
firsts—mostly good. But I’m not sure what is to follow. I do know this, they
can’t separate us. So they better not try. We didn’t get lost in sleep. We got
lost in what we shared and then we went to sleep. It was peace. We fell asleep
in God’s hand, not that they will believe it.

Last
night, I dreamed of my mother. We sat around Granma’s table and I told her
about Easy. I said Granma wouldn’t let me see him for a week. I said it was so
unfair and I wished she was alive and she said, “Life is moving. It keeps
moving Georgia. It goes from one thing to another, one place to another, but
it’s never over.”

I
told her I didn’t know.

She
said there is a lot I don’t know. A lot. But whether I know it or not, it
doesn’t make it any less real or true.

Then
I woke up and stared at my ceiling. I may be in prison, but my mother, of all
people, got through.

I
got out a notebook and turned to a clean page and wrote myself a note before I
forgot.

Life
keeps moving. One…thing…one place to another. Never over.

We
know it on the inside. We know. We’re too special…too special to die. You can
kill a body…but not their soul. The soul can’t die.

Easy
is going away but he’ll keep moving, until he moves back to me. If he stays in
this world, we’ll be together again. If he’s killed, he goes to another…level.
That’s all. He goes to another realm. I won’t be able to follow until I’m done
here, whatever it is I’m meant to do, but he’ll just be far away…like upstairs.
He’ll keep living because Mom told me and she knows. She’s there too. And for
the first time I face that. I don’t have a mother. And for the first time I can
see some good come out of it. She’s done something for me besides given birth.
I’m thankful for that. But she’s reached out and let me know.

I
write this. “I’m a free thinker. They can lock me in my room but they can’t
stop my mind. I love Easy and we can’t die.” Georgia Green, February, nineteen
hundred and sixty-eight.

I
feel stronger then. I feel patient.

I
hear what Easy whispered in that loft—all of it. I feel the mysterious move
into me.

Darnay
Road 55

It’s
Monday and I hear her come up the stairs presumably with my lunch. I look up
from where I sit on the floor listening to Jefferson Airplane on my record
player. I am feeling very, very sorry for myself.

“Granma…,”
I say turning down the volume. I am going to tell her again how unfair this is,
how she can do anything at all to me that she wants once Easy is gone, just
please, please let me see my own boyfriend.

“He’s
here,” she says. She isn’t holding the tray like I thought.

“Can…I?”
I’m already on my feet, my heart slamming just thinking Easy is here, in this
very house and she is going to have some mercy on me. Us. Did I brush my teeth?
I don’t even care.

“Your
father, Georgia. He’s downstairs.”

“What…why
did you call him?”

“The
school called him. He wants to see you.”

“You
called him.”

She looks down at the
floor, my betraying jailor, keeping her hand on the doorknob. She’s not sorry,
but she’s not angry either. She’s rattled. He’s her son and she hasn’t seen him
in a long time.

“Mother
Superior, Sister Baptista, called him,” she says.

“She
has no right. I don’t want to see him. It’s been…two years.” I’m indignant.

He
came right after the wedding. The new wife’s idea. She was with him of course.
They had a doll and upstairs in my room, when they came in fact, I’m secretly
reading Aunt May’s borrowed/stolen copy of Elizabeth Elliot’s,
Let Me Be a
Woman
. The doll sat on the living room floor until Granma finally put it on
the pile for Good Will.

“You
can say no and I’ll tell him, but I think he’ll come up here,” she says. “I
understand it’s not what you want. But he’s here now…and he’s your father.”

She’s
always understood most things. But she doesn’t seem to understand now. It’s
like we split. Like an atom. I love her, but I’m looking at her and I feel
alone. She is no protection. She’s not stopping this.

“I
barely know the guy,” I say.

It
hurts her. Because it’s true.

“You
have to show respect. Even if you don’t like it. We do the things we have to
do,” Granma says and she looks old. I’m sorry I’ve given her so much trouble.

“He
doesn’t have a right….”

“Right?
Don’t be foolish. Brush your hair and come down.”

She
leaves me then like we’re strangers. Like she’s the maid giving me a message,
and not my granma, the one who would be the first to tell me I didn’t have to
go down if I didn’t want to. But she hasn’t seen him either and I think it
hurts her and I think she misses him even if she wants to strangle him.

But
not me. I don’t want to see him. I just want Easy.

She’s
with him—the wife. I come in the kitchen where they sit at the table, but not
Granma. She is making coffee. I was going to learn how—for Easy. Now I stop in
the doorway.

Stanley
looks at me like I’m a ghost. “Well I’ll be damned,” he says.

I
guess that’s as good as hello. I lean in the door and fold my arms.

He
stands up and jars the table, the salt and peppers. Granma has poured steaming
coffee into the good cups carried home from the grocery. She turns holding
these. I expect her to tell me to come in the room, but she doesn’t. I know her
and I see a flash of sympathy in her eyes, in her mouth, the first since before
I got in trouble.

“You’ve
grown,” Stanley says.

“They
tend to do that,” Granma says. I know she’s on my side.

“Looks
more like Renee,” he says to his mother. Then he looks at his wife as if he’s
not allowed to say the name—Renee.

“She
is my mother,” I say pushing off and going for an apple which I make enough
noise biting into.

“She
likes apples,” Stanley says to no one in particular.

“You
remember Stanley’s wife Marsha,” Granma says setting the cups before each of
them.

I
shrug. “Yeah.” I mean—the doll she must have picked out for me sticks. She
didn’t know me then either.

“Georgia,”
Marsha says as though coming to life, “I have some pictures of your…of Troy and
Sandra.”

I take another crunchy
bite of my fruit. Fruit. Funny.

Grace
Slick breaks out in my head, “When the truth is found to be lies, and all the
joy within you dies.” I’ve been listening to it over and over. I want somebody
to love. I have somebody to love. So why am I stuck in the kitchen with these
people?

“Well,
the school called me,” Stanley cuts through my music. He sits, keeping his
hands in his pockets.

Marsha
has found the envelope with the pictures in her big fat purse. But she’s
holding them now, in the opening, and she’s looking at Stanley like she could
kill him. Maybe she wanted a smoother landing, but the pictures are worse than
Stanley cutting to the chase.

“Yeah,
Sacred Heart,” I tell him.

“I
know the name of the school Georgia,” he says morphing into the cop right
before my eyes.

“Oh,”
I say.

“I
wanted to make sure,” and he turns his attention to Granma, “that things
were…,” he doesn’t say what, just nods his head at her.

“I
have some tuna fish…,” Granma says.

“Oh…no
Ma, that’s okay,” Stanley says.

Marsha
cuts in, “We were wondering if you and Georgia would like to go out for a
meal?”

“I’m
a…grounded,” I say, pitching the rest of the apple into the trash. It lands so
solidly and wastefully I have to remember not to smile. Do they even imagine I
would want to go to dinner with them?

Stanley
whistles. “Good job, Ma.” He means, good job Ma for grounding my daughter’s
ass.

My
temptation to smile is officially over. “So you go,” I say to Stanley, to all
of them. “You all go. I’ll be fine here.”

“Do
you really think we’re going to fall for that?” Stanley says.

I
don’t answer.

“Where
is that boy? The one they found you with?” he asks.

“Why?”
I say.

“He’s
a good boy, just had it hard,” Granma says going to the fridge and digging out
the little bottle of cream.

“Federal
prison is full of guys who’ve had it hard,” Stanley says. He’s sitting
straighter, mostly looking at Granma, but every now and then, me.

“You
don’t know him. He’s a soldier. He’s only got two weeks here and then I may not
see him again for years!” I yell this. I hadn’t planned to, but it came out
that way. He doesn’t know Easy. He doesn’t know anyone like him.

I
see Marsha’s hand move on the table and grip Stanley’s arm. Does he need
restrained? I am not afraid of him.

“You’re
fourteen,” Stanley says loudly.

“I
know how old I am! It doesn’t matter!” I yell.

“Really?”
he shouts.

Marsha’s
hand falls away and he stands up. “He going to pay your way in life because I’m
not going to fund a…..”

There
is gasping. Granma and Marsha.

“Go
on,” I say. “Go on.”

“What
am I supposed to think when I get a call…found with a boy. A soldier. That’s
worse. That means he’s too old for you, he’s been around. Do you have any idea
what a boy is after, especially one like that?” He looks at Granma, “Have you
taught her anything about it?”

He
looks at me. “Or we don’t have to. She already knows,” he flings his hand at
me. “Just like her mother.”

“Stanley,”
Granma says weakly.

“You
heard me right,” Stanley defends himself. “Her mother….”

“Stanley Green,” Granma
says more strongly, “not another word. Not another one.”

“All
I am is a check every month,” Stanley says. “That’s all her mother wanted, and
she’s the same.” He’s making his way around the table. “She gets knocked-up,”
he says to Granma, “I’m done.”

“I
hate you,” I tell him. I’m not waiting around to hear any more of this.

Granma
is asking Stanley to leave and I am running upstairs. I get in my room and slam
the door and go to my record player and put the needle on the forty-five and
Jefferson Airplane starts up. I turn the volume even louder and throw myself on
my bed.

I
scream into my pillow and there is hard knocking on my bedroom door and it
comes open. I roll quickly onto my back. I didn’t dream he’d follow me up here,
but he has. I can hear Granma and Marsha speaking sternly to one another behind
him.

“You
will not run out of the room when I am talking to you,” he says. He marches to
my record player and turns the volume down. I am starting to feel a little wary
of him.

“You
will go back to school and you will not see this boy again. Ma said he goes
back to Fort Ord. If I have to I’ll call the base and complain to his
commanding officer and make his life a living hell. They can’t ship him to Nam
fast enough to suit me. With any luck they’ll blow his damn head off as soon as
he lands.”

I
am up on my knees, facing Stanley. “Don’t you…he didn’t do anything. I’ll never
forgive you if you make trouble for him.” I’m trying to push away the picture
of Easy getting shot as he steps off a plane.

“Ethan
Caghan. He’s that white trash kid whose white trash old man died on the tracks
in sixty-three. I remember that case. He’s scum. Did you have sex with him?”

“I
hate you,” I say quietly. It’s so true in that moment it’s one of the most
powerful things I’ve ever said. Certainly to him.

He
blinks like I’ve slapped him. I’m surprised I said it and surprised he felt it
but it’s terrible and satisfying and I don’t take it back.

“I’ll
live,” he says nodding but I know he’s talking to himself.

I
almost say, ‘too bad.’ I almost do.

“Did
you?” as in did I have sex with Easy. “I can have you examined.”

My
insides explode. He can have me examined? It’s beyond me. I can’t keep up with
my outrage.

“No
you won’t,” I yell.

I’m
just now realizing what I’ve been spared from being raised by Granma. I had no
idea my father was this much of a maniac that he’s threaten to ‘have me
examined.’

Granma
is there calling his name, demanding he listen.

“Get
out of my room! Get out of my life! I hate you!” I yell with such feeling, such
truth.

He
rears back his hand, threatening to slap me.

I
fall back and roll off the bed, crouching on the other side of it. “Get out!”
I’m screaming like he’s already having me ‘examined.’

“You
think you can talk like that to me?” He puts a knee on the bed and lunges
across it, landing on his stomach and reaching for me. I move backwards on my
elbows and scream and kick at his hand.

Granma
moves for Stanley, hitting him with both fists.

“You will not do this!
You will not touch her!” she yells, and the sound of her voice is terrible.
I’ve never heard that sound…in her voice. I’ve never seen her hit anyone.

He
pulls back off the bed and stands. “Stop, Ma.” He’s breathy and worried.

“You
will not do her that way. I know you learned it from him, but you will not lay
a hand on her.” I have never heard her voice like that, deep and terrible. She
is breathing so hard she reaches a hand to the wall to steady herself. Some of
her bun is streaming down.

“Georgia,
it’s all right,” she says to me in-between hard breaths. I have wanted her
protection and finally it’s here, but it’s taking everything, too much. Now I
want to protect her.

I
get on my feet, one eye on Stanley, one on Granma. My bed separates me from
them.