Something Wicked (30 page)

“Get out of here!” I shout, storming toward the middle-aged, muscle-headed man with a ball cap and a goatee.

He holds up his hands like he’s surrendering. “Hey, hey … take it easy, Honey …”

“Melissa!” my mom shouts. “Stop! Put it down.”

“Who the fuck are you?” I insist, still on the attack.

Wham
. Black. Black. Throbbing in my ears. Then ringing.
My face pains. I can’t see. Then little bits of light come into my eyes. Then little bits more. And I start to make out the guy standing in front of me, but I look harder and I see it’s my mother.

My mother hit me! “You fucking hit me …” “Melissa! Melissa!” she shouts, shaking my shoulders. “What the fuck? You fucking hit me?” I keep shouting,

because I just can’t believe it happened. “Melissa! Melissa! Look at me. Are you crazy? What are you going to do with the bat?” Her voice trembles.

I look over her shoulder and around the room for the guy. “Where is he?” My hands are still gripping the bat. My fists get tighter. I’m ready to use it.

I feel her hands on my hands. She pushes the bat down.

“He’s gone, Melissa. He took off when he saw you.” “You hit me?” I question her again, still a little out of it. “I’m sorry, Hon.” She reaches out a hand to stroke my cheek. “Ow!” I pull away at her painful touch. She reaches her hand back out and with a finger gently

dabs just under my eye. “You’re bleeding. It was my ring. Oh God, I’m sorry.” She pulls me into her. My arms reflexively go around her back, but I’m still holding the stupid baseball bat. I won’t let it go.

“Is the door locked?” I ask, pushing her away. Without waiting for an answer, I go through the kitchen, bolt the door, and put the chain on. “Who was that? What if he comes back?” I scream.

“I’m calling Giovanni.” My mom heads toward the phone. “No! Don’t!” There’s panic in my voice. Too much panic.

She turns and looks at me inquisitively. “Why not? What’s
wrong
with you lately?”

“Just don’t. We don’t need him. You’ll wake him up.”

She lifts up the receiver. “He’ll understand. He’ll come stay on the couch.”

She breaks down crying when she talks to Giovanni on the phone. I know he’ll be up in a few seconds. I leave the room to inspect my eye in the washroom mirror. The cut’s not deep, but I’m already puffy. So I get some ice from the kitchen, wrap it in a tea towel, and then go into my room. I sit down, my back against the door, head in hands, and wait. Wait. And I hear Giovanni come in through the kitchen. I hear my mom crying. I hear his murmuring for a long time. Then I hear them both walk through the living room. I hear two sets of feet pass. I hear her bedroom door shut. I feel sick to my stomach.

I lie with my face pressed against the dusty hardwood floor. I just can’t believe it happened. This night. That man. My mother hitting me. Just when things were getting better, things got worse. I want to cry, but my eye hurts too much and I’m all dried up anyway.

Sixty-Seven

The
sound of the phone ringing in the kitchen wakes me up the next morning. I’m still lying on the floor. I hear footsteps then a gentle knock at my door. “Melissa? That was Sue who called. We need to be there by eleven.”

“Where?” I ask groggily. I can’t make things out clearly anymore.

“Court. Remember?”

I forgot. I’m supposed to go to court today. I’m supposed to stand before a judge and say how great my life is going, that I’ve turned things around. I’m not supposed to tell him that I almost killed a stranger with a baseball bat last night.

I peek out to the living room. My mother’s bedroom door is open. There’s no sign of Giovanni or his shoes or his tool belt or his smell. In the washroom, I stand staring at my face in the mirror, my stupid fucking face. Will my life ever really change? Trouble seems to find me even in my sleep. I try not to feel sorry for myself, because feeling sorry for yourself gets you nowhere. And in some ways I feel good, because I stood up for me and my mom and I’m strong and I’m going to go

far in life. I’m going to get out of the fucking boat if it’s the last thing I do.

“We’ll put some makeup on it. You won’t even be able to tell,” my mom says, squeezing into the washroom. She bends down and takes a shoebox full of old makeup out from under the sink. “Sit on the toilet seat and let me do my magic. I know a thing or two about this.”

I don’t say anything but just do what she tells me. I’m sort of mad at her for bringing that guy around. I thought things had changed. Then I think of her and Giovanni together while I stare at her rounded belly in front of my face.

“I’m so sorry about last night,” she says.

“Who was he?”

“Ahh.” She waves her hand in the air. “It was stupid. Some guy from the tavern. I shouldn’t have brought him home. He seemed okay, but once he saw my belly, he got real angry.”

“You shouldn’t bring strange men back here. We’ll end up dead.”

“I know,” she says. “I’m sorry. Sometimes I’m so stupid.”

“Yeah, you are,” I agree.

She swats me gently on the shoulder as if she’s completely offended, but laughs immediately afterward.“We’ll get through this, Hon,” she says, and kisses me on the tip of my nose. “Let’s take one day at a time. Let’s get through this court day.”

Sixty-Eight

I
sit between my mother and my social worker, Sue, on the bench outside the courtroom, waiting for them to call my case number.

Sue hasn’t commented yet on my bruised face, but this close up she must see it. I figure she thinks some guy is messing me up and she’ll ask me about it later. Meanwhile, she and my mom make small talk. I can tell my mom is trying her best to avoid the issue of my black eye by bombarding Sue with question after question, about nothing important.

I stop listening to them, lean back into the bench, and close my eyes. I’m so tired from last night that all I want to do is sleep. It’s crazy how calm I feel. I’m not even worried about what the judge will say. If I go to jail, then I’ll get out of my house for a while. If I don’t get convicted, then I’ll think again about moving into that group home. It’s that simple.

My head starts to bob up and down. But instead of sleeping, this instantaneous flash of my life happens, the way they say it does before you die. Everything all at once, yet played out in detail. It’s like my entire sixteen years are captured in a
moment. Then I jerk up my head, the way you do after you dream you’re falling.

And for a second, a split second, maybe just a millithousandth of a second, I feel like everything that’s happened to me has been worth it. Like somehow, next time, I’ll know just a little more, get closer to doing the right thing, saying the right thing. I’m proud of the changes I’ve made, even if they are small. Maybe I’m not doomed like Sisyphus. Sure, I will roll the rock up and down, but there will be a summit. An end. And my arms will be that much stronger from all that pushing and chasing.

I feel a hand grip my knee and am startled out of my dozing. “That’s us! You’re lucky that Rachel didn’t call the police about the property assault,” Sue says, tapping me gently on the thigh. “Don’t worry. It’s likely they’ll drop the break-and-enter charge. You’ve got a good judge.”

Sixty-Nine

The
judge is a kind-looking old man with greying hair and laugh lines around his eyes. He sort of reminds me of Anthony Hopkins—when he played a quiet butler in a movie, not when he was Hannibal Lecter. After a while of blah blah blah to no one in particular, he finally directs a question to me. “Well, Melissa. It’s been three months. You’ve had a chance to reflect on your actions. I see you’ve been going to counselling regularly and you’re passing your courses. I know there was some recent trouble, but I’m assured you have good supports in place. I have your latest report card here in my hand. Good grades …”

As he’s talking, I stare him down with my black eye that’s no doubt revealed itself under the pasty foundation diluted by sweat. I keep staring, letting him get a good look at me, wanting him to notice the cracks in my face, the way Ms. Dally did, because in a way I still want someone to fix me. To give me another chance. Send me somewhere else, away from everyone I know.

I wait and wait. Staring. I do it long enough for it to become awkward. But he seems clueless. He just goes on about the
consequences of my actions being a chain effect, and how it’s often the parents, the mothers, who bear the stress of a teen who just can’t make things work …

“Do you know what you want to do when you graduate from high school?” he asks.

My mom takes my hand and squeezes tightly, cueing me to respond, to say the right thing.

“When I graduate from high school? A veterinarian,” Echo says, which is the right answer, because he smiles at both me and my mom and relaxes in his chair.

“How wonderful.”

I take it back. Kids are not the only ones who see only black and white. Adults do too. I think there’s this phase as a teenager where things are murky, when the truth is naked and raw. You see people wholly. You see all the hypocrisy and the contradictions, the intertwined good and bad. But it’s so stressful and confusing to see things this way that eventually you stop looking. The little window of perception closes up and you learn to keep it shut. You jam it with something so it doesn’t open up again. And just like that, people are put back into their blacks and whites, a little more categorized, but clearly divided all the same.

Then you get older and you forget that you are seeing only one side of people. I suppose it’s easier to go through life that way. But if you really stopped to think about it, you would understand the jerk who pushes you out of the way, or the bitch in the coffee shop lineup who sighs and mutters about the noisy kid, or the punk who keys your car … You’d know there’s something behind that behaviour. But you don’t care.
It’s too late, because you’ve learned to be an echo for so long that even you have forgotten who you used to be.

“So tell me, Melissa, how things are going. Better?” the judge continues, his hopeful eyes awaiting my response.

I feel my heart pound in my chest. What is the right answer? So maybe I’m not doomed to be Sisyphus, but I’m not quite ready to completely let go of Echo yet. I don’t know if I ever will be. Freestyle says, “You can’t change the system. Never try. It’s a machine that will keep running with or without you. Stick a wrench in it and the interruption is only temporary. It will rev up again and you’ll just be left tired and without a wrench.”

Up. Up. Up.

“Better,” Echo repeats, and forces her best smile.

a cognizant original v5 release october 27 2010