My Name Is Venus Black(98)

Meanwhile, Danny has mentioned transferring to the Bay area. But I warned him not to do it just for me.

“So where were you all day?” Inez asks again.

I sit down next to her on the couch. “First I went to the admissions office at Oakland Community College.”

She nods. She knows about my plans to attend school in the fall.

“And then I went to Sacramento to see Anna Weir.”

“What? Why?” She’s startled.

“I decided maybe we should think about doing that book,” I tell her. “I actually really liked her, and it turns out she had a rough childhood, too. She even said I could help write it. She gave me an outline and some prompters.” I hand Inez the manila envelope.

She stares at me wide-eyed while she pulls out the thin stack of papers. She meets my eyes. “I thought you hated this idea. You really think you’re ready for this?”

“I think so,” I tell her. “I guess we’ll see. Anna says we don’t have to be in a hurry. She seems to think our story is important. I never thought of it that way, but maybe she’s right.”





It had been Inez’s decision. After we got the room painted white, it still looked really bad, because we didn’t use primer and the knotty pine showed through. Even with the hole fixed and the walls painted, I couldn’t stay in that room.

For the next couple of weeks I slept on the couch and wrestled with what to do. I knew I couldn’t just live there with Inez and babysit Leo all day while she worked. Plus, Leo was not adjusting the way we’d hoped. His therapist said he was traumatized by the move and she suspected he was regressing. He spent most of his time in his closet, hardly ever spoke, and we couldn’t imagine him going to school.

One evening Inez sat me down. “Venus, this is no life for you.”

“I agree,” I told her. “I can’t keep doing this.”

“Do you still want to move to California?”

“Yes,” I told her. “But how can I? With Leo…” I shook my head.

“Leo isn’t doing well, obviously. And I’m scared for him,” Inez said.

“Well, I am, too! But what do you recommend?”

Inez pressed her lips together. “I’ve made a big decision,” she said. “I hope you’ll agree. I think you should move to California and get an apartment. I want you to call and see if those people—the Herreras—will keep Leo until I can sell the house and move down there, too. And then we’ll work it out. We can have some kind of arrangement where Leo can gradually get used to us again and hopefully, eventually, he can move back in with us. The Herreras could visit all they want. When I ask myself what’s best for Leo, that’s the answer.”



For a moment, I was too surprised to speak. “I thought we hated the Herreras! I thought we blamed them!”

“There’s been too much anger, Venus. I’m so tired of rage and anger. It’s Leo who matters now. When you stop and think about it, all of us are to blame in some way. We were all doing the best we could at the time. I think very few people are truly evil.”

“Not even you?” I asked.

And she laughed. “Well, I don’t know about that….”

“Not even me?” I added, smiling.

“Oh, Venus,” she said. “Oh no. Oh, never…”

After we briefly hugged—for the first time—I pulled away shyly. “Let’s not get ahead of ourselves.”



* * *



—

WHEN I FIRST arrived in Oakland, I rented a three-bedroom apartment near the Herreras’ and got a daytime waitress job. Almost every evening, I went to see Leo at the Herreras’ house. In the beginning, he ignored me. He’d say hello in response to my hello. But all his attention seemed to rest on Tessa. Leo trailed her around the house. And I trailed Leo.

After a couple of weeks of this, Tessa made it a point to run some kind of errand in order to leave me alone with Leo. At first, Leo got upset. But after a while, as I timed my visits to exactly seven o’clock, he came to expect them, to count on them, even.

Once Inez arrived, it took many more weeks to gradually transition Leo from living full-time with the Herreras to here. Some nights, Leo still cries for Tessa. But ever since we convinced him to use the phone, it’s better. He calls her and Tony often, says a few words, and hangs up. It seems to help him.



Inez is still not done unpacking, even though she joined me here in early May, after the house on Rockefeller sold. The rooms of the apartment we share are still dotted with boxes—the stuff you can live without, which it turns out is most of what my mother owns.

In the meantime, Inez and I have an understanding. We need each other, and in having a common problem to solve—the problem of loving Leo—we manage to do together what we couldn’t alone. Leo is often upset and confused. He’s like one of those beetles that keeps tipping itself on its back and then wondering why it’s stuck—and we take turns tipping him right side up again.

We have hard days, especially as Inez tries to stop drinking on her own. I keep telling her to go to A.A., but she resists. I think she is weakening, though. I noticed it really got to her the other day when I said, “Haven’t you let your pride get in the way long enough?”