Don’t Let Me Go(10)

Only, that night, Grace’s mom wasn’t stopping her. So that’s why it was good and not so good at the same time. Good, because Grace snagged a record amount of candy; but not so good, because her mom was getting sleepy again, and that’s why she didn’t put a stop to the situation.

So then Grace started to get mad, because she was beginning to know that her mom took drugs for the headache, real drugs, big drugs, and it made her mad because when other mothers got a headache they just took aspirin. At least, all the mothers of all the kids she knew from school. And the more Grace saw her mom leaning on her hand and then falling asleep and falling off it again, the more Grace decided to eat candy.

So she popped up where the basket was, and reached in front of a lady, and just grabbed every single piece of the red licorice. She could get her hand around all of it at once.

Then she went and sat in the corner, with her back up against the wall, and ate licorice and felt mad.

Then the meeting was over, and people were putting on their jackets to go, and some of them kept smiling at Grace like they were feeling sorry for her, which Grace hated more than anything.

After a while a tall man came over, and he had a gray mustache, and he squatted down to be the same tallness as Grace, and then he said, “That’s your mom, huh?”

By now Grace’s mom was resting with her head down on the table.

“Yep,” Grace said, like she wasn’t too happy about it, but then she reminded herself to be careful about things like that, because her mom was still the only mom she had.

“She’s in no shape to drive you two home,” the man said.

“We don’t even have a car,” Grace said. “We came here on the bus.”

“Oh. Maybe Mary Jo can drive you home. Mary Jo?”

This woman came up to them, pretty short and little, with gray hair and a wrinkled face, and the tall man got Grace’s mom on her feet and sort of steered her out to this lady Mary Jo’s car. It was a very small car, the kind with only two seats, and they belted her mom into the passenger seat up front, and Grace had to fold herself up small in that space behind the seat-backs.

While they were driving home, Grace had to tell the lady which way to go to get to their apartment house, and also she had to answer a lot of questions, all at the same time.

Like, the lady asked her, “Do you know who your mom’s sponsor is?”

And she said, “Yeah, it’s Yolanda.”

And the lady said, “I don’t know a Yolanda.”

And Grace said, “She’s from the other program.”

The lady looked surprised, and said, “She only has an Al-Anon sponsor?”

And Grace said, “No, not that other program, the other other program. The narcotic instead of alcoholic one. That one.”

“Oh, right,” the lady said, after a minute. “That explains why she doesn’t smell like she’s been drinking.”

And then all of a sudden Grace minded the lady, and the questions, and the whole night, and the everything. She just suddenly minded everything in the whole world, and wouldn’t talk to the lady any more, and was in a bad mood. She wanted more licorice, but she’d already eaten it all.

She had to help get her mom into the house, and it wasn’t easy. Then she thought that would be the last worst thing to happen that night, but it wasn’t, because the lady wouldn’t leave. She made Grace find Yolanda’s phone number, and she called Yolanda and told her she wasn’t going to leave until Yolanda came over there, because she couldn’t see fit to leave a child alone like that. That’s how she said it. She couldn’t see fit. Grace had no idea what that meant, but it made her mad. But, at that point, pretty much everything would have.

After a while Yolanda showed up, and Mary Jo went away, which was a relief. Grace was supposed to say goodbye to her, and thank her for the ride, but she didn’t want to, and she was feeling extra-stubborn, so she wouldn’t.

After she left, Yolanda looked down at Grace with that pity look Grace hated so much. She hated that look more than anything.

And Yolanda said, “Well, kid. Looks like we have ourselves a situation here.”

? ? ?

Yolanda stayed the night, and took Grace to school the following morning. Grace didn’t think about it too much during the school day, because if Yolanda wanted to…sort of…add herself to the situation…that was OK. That certainly wasn’t the end of the world. Yolanda was a little scary-bossy on a few rare occasions, usually when dealing with Grace’s mom, but mostly she was pretty OK.

So, it was after last bell, and Grace was walking down the hall toward the door, slowly, eating a candy bar that she’d traded most of her lunch for, and the candy was so completely taking her attention that she walked right into another student — not once but twice. When she stepped outside, she finally looked up, scanning around for Yolanda or her mom. But neither were there, and her face fell.

A woman waved.

“It’s me,” the woman said. “Your neighbor. Rayleen. Remember me?”

“Yeah,” Grace said.

Then she looked around some more.

“I’m here to pick you up.”

“You?”

“Me.”

“Why you?”

“Why not me?”

“Where’s Yolanda?”