My Name Is Venus Black(2)

While I eat, I wonder what my friends are thinking—or if they’ve heard what happened yet. Who is my best friend, Jackie, going to sit with at lunch today? I’m dying to call her, but I’m sure they won’t let me.

Since I might be here for a while, I hope they’ll let Jackie pick up all my assignments from school and bring them to me. I don’t want to fall behind.

It hurts to think of my teachers, because I know they won’t understand. Over the years, I’ve always been teacher’s pet, and now I can just hear them saying, “Venus Black? But she was one of my favorite students! And always such a nice girl.”

Inez would probably beg to differ with nice. She likes to remind me that smart isn’t the same as nice. She also insists that I have two personalities, one for school, and one for at home. Every time she comes back from a parent-teacher conference, she tells me how surprised she was to hear what a pleasure I am to have in class.

So maybe I’m not a pleasure to have at home. But did she ever think there might be a reason for that?



* * *



—



AFTER BREAKFAST, A guard brings me to a room half-filled with toys. My mother is seated in one of two blue plastic chairs situated next to a messy desk.

Part of me wants to rush into her arms and plead with her to get me out of here. I want her to comfort me and tell me it will be all right. But a bigger part of me wants her to know how much I blame her for what happened.

She must feel the same way, because she doesn’t get up or try to hug me. All she says is, “Venus.”

“Inez,” I say right back.

Before I sit down across from her, I make a big show of scooting my chair farther back from hers. Like she smells bad or something. Right off, I notice how horrible she looks. Her eyes are red and raw, and her face is all puffy like mashed potatoes. She’s clutching a white hanky that belonged to her father back in Greece, which she knows I think is super gross. It’s the eighties! Who still uses a handkerchief?

At first, she is all motherly and worried. She asks how they’re treating me, if I’m okay, and if I got breakfast. For a second there, she’s my old mom again, and her seemingly genuine concern threatens to crack my anger.

“Aren’t you going to talk to me, Venus? Are you really just going to sit there?”

That’s when I realize she’s suggested a good strategy. Just because you put me in a room with Inez doesn’t mean I have to talk to her. Which is something I never thought about before, how you can force people to do a lot of things, but speaking isn’t one of them. You can’t grab someone’s jaw and move it up and down and make words come out.

Eventually I hear her say, “How could you do this, Venus?”

How can she even ask that? She already knows the answer. Clearly she’s planning to act like she has no idea, so people won’t realize how easily she could have stopped this.

I continue trying to block out her words, but it’s hard to miss when she refers to Raymond. She’s trying to explain, trying to defend herself. “You didn’t give me a chance, Venus.”



What is she talking about? I gave her all the chance in the world. I manage to tune her out again for a while, until I can tell she’s getting angry. “You better smarten up right now, young lady,” she scolds. “Damn it. I can’t help you if you won’t talk to me.”

It’s a ridiculous thing to say, because she didn’t help me when she could have. I glare at her, hoping she’ll guess what I’m thinking, but she’s looking down at her hands.

I used to think Inez was pretty, in a Cher sort of way. I was always jealous of her straight black hair because I hated my wild curls. When people said we looked alike, I thought that meant I was beautiful, like her. But now I know it only means we both have black hair, the same Greek nose, and the same darkish eyelids.

Sitting here watching Inez’s mouth move, I notice she’s been chewing on her lips again. Small pieces of flesh stick up like bits of plastic in her bright-orange lipstick. The lipstick flashes me back to when I was little and she’d ask the Avon lady for lots of those tiny white tubes of lipstick samples so I could play with them later. But that’s a happy memory, so I squash it.

“Okay. Be that way, Venus,” I hear her say. “That’s fine if you’re angry at me. But for your own sake, we need to discuss your defense.”

I want to scream, My defense? What is your defense?

How does Leo do it? My little brother is so good at ignoring people that he should be in the Guinness Book of World Records. But they’d probably disqualify him, because he has something wrong with him that makes it easy for him to pretend you’re not there.

Leo is seven but acts more like he’s three or four. He has what Inez calls “developmental issues,” probably because he was born too early. My stepdad, Raymond, was super disappointed when Leo didn’t turn into a regular little boy. But Leo’s always just been Leo to me. So what if he makes weird noises and doesn’t want to be touched? He likes things to stay the same, and sometimes, he throws big tantrums. But really he’s the sweetest thing, which is hard to believe when you think about where he came from.



When I trace my life back to make it so Inez never met or married Raymond, I always get stuck here. Because what would I do without Leo?