Don't Fail Me Now(12)

I nod. I was expecting her to be a hard-ass, and I’ve already prepared for this exact conversation. “I can buy all the groceries,” I say. “I already know what the kids like to eat, and I’ll get whatever you need, too. I’m good at couponing. Plus, I’ll do all the dishes and laundry while we’re here, and on nights I don’t work I can cook.”

Aunt Sam looks at me in disbelief, and for a second I wonder if I’ve overshot and promised too much, even more than she was expecting. I’m really not looking forward to playing Cinderella for the next four days, but at least no harm can come from getting on her good side.

“Honey,” she finally says, in a tone that strips the word of its endearment, “that’s nice, but what I mean is I need some rent money. I can barely afford this place, and I’m not going to pay to give up what little privacy I have.”

Now it’s my turn to stare in disbelief. My aunt’s apartment is a tiny one-bedroom with water-stained walls and holes in the floor that are covered with duct tape. I don’t know how much nurses make, but Aunt Sam is pushing forty. There’s no way she can’t afford the rent on this shithole.

“How much?” I ask, mentally calculating the maximum I can possibly afford and still make Mom’s bail. If I have $200 in the bank and my biweekly paycheck is $279.34, like usual, I can pay Aunt Sam $79 this week . . . if I somehow avoid stopping for gas. But there’s no way she could ask me for that much a week—that would be over $300 a month, which would be insane, even for her.

“Six hundred a month,” she says flatly.

I’m too shocked to control my anger. “What?!” I shout. “That’s crazy. I don’t even make that much!” Mom asks me for $250 a month to split the gas and electric bills and help with groceries, which leaves me more than half of my paycheck to use however I want. I try to put money aside (for college, I tell myself on good days; for the next time she needs bail, on bad ones), but lately I’ve been too embarrassed to wear the ill-fitting hand-me-downs and tag-sale stuff she gets for me, so I spend most of my extra cash on clothes. I look down guiltily at my skinny jeans and Nine West boots. I should have been saving more money. I knew something like this would happen again. I wanted to believe her, but deep in my bones, I knew.

Aunt Sam takes another drag of her smoke and shrugs. “Can’t you pick up more shifts?” she asks.

“I’d have to almost double my hours.” I wouldn’t have time to do my homework except on the weekends. Cass and Denny would have to spend five or six nights a week loitering at Taco Bell, instead of just three.

“Hard work builds character,” she says, tapping a long, gray piece of ash onto the sidewalk, where it scatters onto my scuffed toes. I decide to try a more practical appeal.

“My mom left me a voicemail this afternoon.” That gets her attention. “If I can post her bail, she can get out, and you won’t have to deal with us. I’ll have enough money at the end of the week, so if you can just wait, we’ll be out of your hair and I can still pay you $75 for the four nights.” I’m not, as my mother suggested, going to ask my aunt for any of the bail money. I’m pretty sure that would end with me getting cursed out.

Aunt Sam presses her lips together and looks down at the ground. “She’ll never learn,” she says.

“What?”

“Your mother,” she says, louder now, her eyes tired and angry. “Every time she gets herself in trouble, someone’s there to fix it. Get knocked up in high school? Here—have a townhouse! Arrested? No problem! Three times? Still no problem!” She tosses her cigarette butt on the ground, stomping on it like a cockroach. “I know you think you’re doing the right thing, but believe me, if you get her out she’s just going to do it again. And again, and again, and again. She’s been doing it her whole life, and she’s not going to stop now.”

“Someone has to help her,” I say.

“Why?”

“Because . . .” I filter through potential reasons in my head, all of which boil down to unconditional love. Because you help people you care about. No matter what. You just do. But I know my aunt and I are at an impasse when it comes to the definition of love, so I go with my mother’s suggestion from her voicemail. “Because she’d do it for you,” I say.

“If you believe that, you don’t know her very well,” Aunt Sam says, lighting another cigarette. “Did you know when Grandma and Grandpa died they left a safe in the attic? Inside there was some jewelry, old stuff, from a few generations back, that Mama never wore because it was too flashy. She used to let me try it on. Just me, never Maddie, ’cause even then she had sticky fingers. She even left it to me in the will. But when it came time to collect, guess what? It was gone.”

“The safe was gone?” I ask.

“Oh no, she’s too smart for that,” Aunt Sam says. “The safe was there, lock intact, but it was empty. ‘Mama must have decided to sell it off,’ Maddie said. I can’t believe she kept a straight face.”

I frown into the smoke. Mom complains often about Aunt Sam’s resentment, but I never once entertained the notion that it might be deserved.

“Then there was the time I asked her to take in my mail and water my plants while I went on vacation,” my aunt continues. “You know I never asked her for any money all those times I took you in. All those things I paid for. I just asked for a one-time favor, and when I came home my bonsai was dead and three of my packages had gone missing.”