“This’s as good a place to be as any,” he said. “I was just worried about you on the street by yourself. What about the baby? You get her back home okay?”
“Yeah. I did. But then the police stuck me in a foster home.”
“Oh crap,” he said. “Did not see that coming.” We sat quiet a minute, and I could almost sort of see him thinking about things, like maybe there were real wheels turning in there, like the old saying goes. “So how is it?” he asked. “Is it okay there? You gonna stay?”
“Not sure,” I said. “It’s not very okay, no. But I’m going to try to stay till you get out.”
“Okay. But here’s a tip, in case you change your mind. You know all that money I was stashing for a place to live? Well, it’s not that much money, but I think I should have a little over two hundred dollars in there. My wallet is in some paper packing stuff at the bottom of that plastic barrel. You know, just to the left of the crate. If things get bad for you, just go get it. Spend it all, I don’t care. It’ll never be enough for a place, anyway. I was fooling myself. I should’ve given it to you for food.”
It meant a lot to me that he said that, because I always wondered why we couldn’t eat better based on how much money he was able to save. But I felt like it was his money and he got to decide, and it wouldn’t be right to ask about it. I always figured it was because Bodhi barely ate—he was just one of those people who could live on dirt and air and do fine. One meal a day suited him and didn’t slow him down. Nothing did, ever.
“Why did you steal if you had two hundred dollars?” I asked him, and then I wished I hadn’t, partly because it wasn’t really my business and partly because I already mostly knew. It was part of his nature.
“If I’d had to buy food, you know how much I would’ve saved up? Zero. That’s how much. Don’t you ever get mad, Molly? Doesn’t it ever make you mad that they have everything and we have nothing and they’re just waiting for a chance to lock our asses up because we needed something to eat? Doesn’t that piss you off?”
I thought about five-year-old Lisa eating hot dogs and beans in front of us.
“It’s starting to,” I said.
“Good. Then go take that money and lay low and try to make it last till I get out and I’ll come and find you.”
“Thanks,” I said. “Nice to have a fallback plan, anyway.”
I didn’t have any specific thoughts on how likely I was to fall back, but my new foster home seemed like a place with a lot of trapdoors and cliffs.
Chapter Thirteen
Brooke: Ready
I stepped into the kitchen with the baby on my hip, and my mother hit me like a falling sandbag.
“I called David,” she said.
“Why would you call David?”
“Because you obviously didn’t plan to.”
“Oh,” I said. “I just forgot. What with everything that was going on. Why didn’t you just remind me?”
She never answered the question. For the second time in only a few days it struck me that maybe she didn’t know, either. She had chosen the most confrontational path through the world, and it had become her way. But she truly didn’t seem to know why.
“When is the baby going back to day care?” she asked. Hard voiced and loud. Veering the complaints in a different direction. Classic Mom move. Hit a dead end? Crank the wheel, punch the throttle. Keep driving.
“When we’ve been to the therapist a few more times and I feel like we have a better sense of how she’s doing.”
“If you don’t mind my saying so . . . ,” she began.
“I’m sure I will,” I said under my breath.
“What?”
“Nothing. I didn’t say anything.”
“I was just going to say that if you ask me, she’s doing fine and you’re the one with the problem.”
I gave up getting through the kitchen and up to my room. Which had been my original plan. I sat down hard at the kitchen table with my mother. And sighed. And Etta wrapped her arms more tightly around my neck.
“I think it’s a combination of the two,” I said. “But . . . so what if you’re right? I don’t get a few days to make an adjustment after a thing like that?”
“You’re the grown-up,” she said. She was deeply into her harping voice. It felt like a sharp tool, digging into me. Searching for something she could use to dig even deeper. “You’re supposed to screw your head back on and keep going. She counts on you for that.”
“So . . . in other words . . . just bury it and pretend it never happened? I think it would be better for Etta if I took the time to make my peace with it.”
She waved me away with one dismissive swoosh of her hand.
“Oh, that’s nothing but a load of New Age claptrap,” she said.
“I’m going up to my room.” I lifted myself and Etta out of the chair. It wasn’t easy without using my hands for leverage. She was getting big. “I’d appreciate being allowed to deal with this in my own way. I’d appreciate not being criticized at a time like this.”
I headed for the stairs, but she was not done. Which came as no surprise.
“You quit your darned job,” she called after me. “You were living under my roof before, but now you’re living under my roof and not even saving up to move out. Just living
