Things We Do in the Dark(42)

The social worker (you can call me Deb) explained on the drive over that due to the child abuse charge, Joey would have to stay separated from her mother for a while. In the meantime, her aunt Flora and uncle Miguel in Maple Sound had agreed to take her in. Joey was surprised. She couldn’t imagine what sales pitch (witchcraft) the social worker had used on Tita Flora and Tito Micky, but it must have been some serious hocus pocus for her mother’s sister—and greatest enemy—to take in Ruby’s only child.

The apartment somehow seemed smaller and shabbier than it had been only two days before. Or perhaps Joey was just seeing it through the social worker’s eyes, which were full of compassion as she looked around, taking in the broken dishes, the cracked photo frames, and the busted lamp on the floor.

“Take your time,” Deborah said. “I know this must be difficult.”

Joey pulled Ruby’s old suitcase from the closet and began to fill it with what few clothes she owned. She took a few of her mother’s things as well. The hair dryer. The Mason Pearson hairbrush Ruby had splurged on after she got her first job in Canada. Her signature lipstick, MAC “Russian Red.”

Deborah lent her a second suitcase, which Joey filled with as many of her mother’s books as would fit. Danielle Steel, Judith Krantz, and Sidney Sheldon were Ruby’s favorite authors, as they all wrote dishy, sweeping sagas filled with drama, broken hearts, and angst. Joey read all the novels, too, and discussing them with her mother was always when she was happiest. It was the one thing they could do together that never resulted in a negative outcome.

Everything else in the apartment, Deborah told her, could remain until the end of the following month, when the unit would be put back on the rental market.

“But where will my mom go?” Joey asked. “After the trial?”

Deborah touched her shoulder. “It may be a long while before she comes home, honey.”

In every place she and Ruby had lived, Joey learned to find a secret hiding spot, a place where she could store things her mother wouldn’t find. One of those things was the necklace from Charles. Ruby had sold hers in a rage when Charles dumped her (for the third time), and Joey, becoming familiar with the pattern, told her mother that she had lost her own necklace at the park. Except she hadn’t. She hid it, so Ruby wouldn’t sell hers, too.

“What are those?” Deborah asked when Joey pulled the necklace out of a loose floorboard near the radiator. She didn’t seem surprised that Joey had a secret hiding spot. She also wasn’t referring to the necklace. She was looking at the stack of small, pretty notebooks that were also in the floor.

“They’re my diaries,” Joey said. “I think I’m just going to leave them here.”

“That would be a shame. What do you write about?”

Joey shrugged. “Everything, I guess.” She picked them up. “Why, did you want to read them?”

“Would you like me to read them?”

Joey shrugged again.

The social worker made no move to take them, remaining perched on the edge of the bed. In that position, Joey couldn’t help but notice that Deborah’s body was shaped like a potato. Ruby, who always had strong opinions about other women’s bodies, would have said she was fat. But when Deborah had hugged her two nights ago after the arrest, the woman had felt so soft, so safe, her rolls and squishiness warm and comforting. She was a pillow in human form, the exact opposite of Ruby.

“I would like to read them,” Deborah said. “It might help me know you better, so I can support you the best I can. But it has to be okay with you, Joelle.”

“Whatever. I don’t care.”

The diaries were now in the back seat.

A strawberry-shaped air freshener dangled from the rearview mirror of Deborah’s Honda Accord. It was fuzzy like an oversize scratch ’n’ sniff sticker, and though it didn’t smell anything like strawberries, it did make the car smell nice. Ruby’s car always smelled like smoke.

“You doing okay, Joelle?” Deborah glanced over, the sunlight reflecting off her smooth, poreless dark skin. “I’ll need to stop for gas soon, if you need to go to the bathroom.”

If Deborah meant okay as in not currently injured and not physically ill, then sure, Joey was okay. She stared straight ahead, aware of Deborah’s black curls bobbing to the mixtape in the cassette deck. The social worker seemed too old for Young MC, but she knew all the words to “Bust a Move.” She’s dressed in yellow, she says hello …

Deborah glanced over again, still waiting for an answer. Finally Joey shrugged. She knew adults hated when kids did that, but not Deborah, who seemed to understand that sometimes there were no words. Sometimes the answer was a shrug.

“When will they let me see my mom?” Joey looked out the passenger-side window, where she could see her reflection. She appeared translucent, like a ghost (I wish I was a ghost).

It took Deborah a few seconds to answer. “I wish I knew, honey. But I bet your aunt and uncle are excited to see you.”

The social worker said it so kindly that even though she knew the opposite to be true, Joey couldn’t bring herself to disagree. She’d only been to Maple Sound once before, a few years earlier. The visit had been a disaster. It was the day she met her grandmother (lola) for the first time.

It was also the day she realized that her bad mother also had a bad mother.