Don’t Let Me Go(5)

Grace always had trouble with that. Loud came naturally to her, and quiet took a lot of work, and if she let down her guard for even one tiny little second the loud would come marching right back in again.

Grace’s mom got up from the table and came back to the kid part of the room, and all three of the other kids gave Grace that look. You know. That “you’re gonna get it now” look.

She took hold of Grace’s arm and walked her outside.

It was dark out there, and kind of cold. People always think it doesn’t get cold in LA, but it gets plenty cold sometimes. And, also, they were in a neighborhood where it’s not so smart to be outside, but Grace figured her mom must’ve thought they were close enough to the people inside to be OK. Well. She didn’t know what her mom thought, really, she just knew what she thought, which is that she would yell like the devil if anybody came up to them, and run inside for help. And she knew her mom must’ve felt safe enough, because she lit a cigarette and then sat down on the cold street with her back up against the church.

She ran a hand through her hair and sighed real big, and Grace could see a sort of embarrassing rip in her jeans.

“Grace, Grace, Grace,” she said. She seemed too calm, and Grace wondered why she wasn’t getting mad. “Can’t you ever just be quiet?”

“I try,” Grace said. “I try to be quiet, really I do.”

Her mom sighed another time, and puffed on her cigarette, and she seemed to be moving kind of slow.

So then Grace gathered up everything she had that was brave, and she said, “Are you on drugs again?”

She braced for her mom to get mad, but nothing happened.

Her mom just blew out a long stream of smoke, and stared at it all the way out, like maybe if she watched closely enough it might sing and dance or something, and Grace remembered thinking she was pretty sure her mom used to do everything faster.

When her mom finally said something, this is what she said: “I’m going to meetings. I’m at a meeting right now. I still call Yolanda every day. I’m working my ass off here, kiddo. I don’t know what more you want from me.”

“Nothing,” Grace said. “I’m sorry, I don’t want anything more from you, that’s fine. I’m sorry I was too loud. I was trying to be quiet, really I was, but then Curtis Schoenfeld was a boogerhead to me. And when I was trying to be extra-nice to him, too. He’s such a liar. I wish I didn’t have to go to meetings with him. Couldn’t we go to different meetings, with no Curtis?”

A really, really long wait while her mom decided to answer.

“Like which ones? They don’t all allow kids, you know.”

“Like that nice AA meeting at the rec center.”

“Right now I need the NA ones more.”

“Oh.”

“Just play with Anna. And…you know…the one with the weird name.”

“River Lee.”

“Right.”

“I wasn’t playing with Curtis. You don’t have to play with Curtis for him to be a boogerhead to you. He just is. There’s no staying away from it.”

Grace’s mom stomped out her cigarette and peered at her watch, extra-close in the dark, as if it had to touch her nose before she could see it.

Then she said, “Deal with it for another twenty-five minutes, ‘K?”

Grace sighed loud enough for her mom to hear. “OK,” she said. But it came out sounding like the F-word guy trying to say “pleased to meet you” and not sounding very pleased.

All three of the kids were staring at her when she went back in.

River Lee said, “Did she yell at you?” in a sort of almost-whisper.

And Grace said, “No. Not at all. Not even a little bit.”

She was being kind of snooty-proud in front of Curtis, and she knew it.

Nobody went back to playing right away, which was weird, because then they pretty much had no choice but to listen to the meeting. This ratty-looking woman, the kind of person you see sleeping on the street, shared how her kids got taken away when she went to jail for helping her boyfriend rob a bank. All behind drugs. They gave up the kids because they wanted more drugs, and that seemed like a good trade at the time.

Really depressing.

Then some other people shared, and they were sort of medium-depressing.

Some meetings weren’t depressing. That nice AA meeting at the rec center was much better, Grace felt, because the people there had more time in the program, and usually it didn’t make you want to kill yourself.

After the meeting Yolanda came up to Grace, and smiled down from way up above her, and Grace smiled back.

“Hey, Grace,” she said. “Do you have my phone number?”

Grace shook her head and said, “No, why would I have your phone number? It’s my mom who’s supposed to call you, not me.”

“I just thought you might want to have it.”

She handed Grace down a piece of paper with the numbers on it, and Grace read them off to herself, though she wasn’t sure why. Maybe because it felt like school, like homework, as if Yolanda were saying, “Look at these numbers and see if you know what they all are.” Grace knew her numbers really well, but did it anyway.

“OK. Um. Why would I want to have it again?”

“Just in case.”

“Just in case what?”