Tell Me Three Things(9)
Suddenly, my gratitude toward the Batman turns to fury. How dare he hijack my grade? Unlike the rest of the loaded kids here, I’m hoping to get a scholarship to college. I can’t just trust his promise of an A. And what if Mrs. Pollack found out we didn’t work together? When I enrolled, I had to sign an honor pledge. Technically, this could be counted as cheating and go on my permanent record.
Tomorrow I will have to gather the courage to talk to the Batman and tell him that we need to work together or I’ll have to ask Mrs. Pollack for a new partner. I hate that I have five hours of homework and still need to find time to get a part-time job. I hate that Scarlett is not here. I hate Theo, who just came home and, though I was sitting right there in the living room, didn’t even have the courtesy to say, “Hey, how was your day?” I even hate my dad, who, I decided after my mom died, is easier to love than to pity, for bringing me here, for leaving me to fend for myself. Even he is nowhere to be found.
My mom used to get mad when I used the word “hate.” She thought it was an ungrateful, overly entitled word, and no doubt she’d be furious at me for using it in reference to my dad. But then again, she’s gone, and he’s married to someone else now. Pretty sure none of the old rules still apply.
To: Somebody Nobody ([email protected])
From: Jessie A. Holmes ([email protected])
Subject: And now an understatement
Hey, Spirit Guide. Not to sound unappreciative or anything, but can I just say: YOUR SCHOOL SUCKS.
To: Jessie A. Holmes ([email protected])
From: Somebody Nobody ([email protected])
Subject: tell me something I don’t know.
preaching to the choir. now please stop yelling. you’re giving me a headache.
CHAPTER 5
“Home, sweet home,” Dad said the first time we walked into his new wife’s house, and he spread his hands wide, as if to say Not too shabby, right? If our house in Chicago was low-ceilinged and squat and tough, what I thought of fondly as a wrestler of a house, this one is the prom king: tall and shiny-toothed and the effortless winner of everything. White couches. White walls. White bookshelves. It’s bad enough she’s paying my tuition. Now I’m terrified to add stain damage to my running tab.
No, not quite home, sweet home. It feels weird to complain about living in something out of MTV Cribs, and yet, I miss our house, which Dad sold to the Patels the first day we put it on the market. Aisha is now sleeping in my old room, which has been stripped of my vintage movie posters, and collage of book covers, and pictures of Scar and me making silly faces. Here, I’m tucked away in one of the many extra guest rooms, all of which are decorated so as to keep you from overstaying your welcome. I now sleep on an antique-style daybed—the sort of thing fit for a 1950s pinup girl to show off her garters, and not so much meant for, you know, actual sleeping. The en suite bathroom is equipped with monogrammed Tuscan soaps that look too expensive to touch, much less use. And the walls are decorated with the kind of abstract art that looks like the handiwork of a third grader. My only addition to the room, besides Bessie, my childhood stuffed cow, is a tiny photo of my mother and me from when I was about eight or nine. My entire body is wrapped around her thigh, like I’m a baby monkey, even though I was already too old for that sort of thing. She’s looking down at me. There’s love and amusement in her eyes, adoration and fear in mine. I still remember the moment it was taken. I was afraid of a new babysitter, convinced, for some reason, that if my mom walked out the door, she’d never come back.
“Don’t you love it?” my dad asked of the house, after he had carried my life in two duffel bags up the sweeping staircase to “my room.” He was so happy and excited, like a kid who had done good and wanted a treat, that I couldn’t let him down. He had turned helpless when my mom got sick. One day she was healthy, the captain of both of our lives, the one who organized everything, and then suddenly she was not. The diagnosis: stage four ovarian cancer. She became too weak to walk across the room, much less navigate the intricacies of the day-to-day: meals, rides, keeping us stocked in toilet paper.
Sapped and exhausted, my dad lost both weight and hair, as if it were him, not her, who was having the chemo and radiation. As if he were her mirror image. Or conjoined twin. One of them unable to function without the other. It had been just over two years (747 days, I count them), and I couldn’t help but notice that only recently had he started to put back on the weight, to look more solid. Again, finally, a man, the dad, not the child. For months afterward, my dad would ask me questions that made clear he had no idea how our daily lives actually worked: Where do we keep the dustpan? What’s the name of your principal? How often do you get checkups?
My dad worked full-time, and when he wasn’t working, he was busy negotiating with the insurance companies, dealing with the mountains of doctors’ bills that kept coming and coming, so cruel after the fact. Instead of bothering him, I borrowed his tired credit card. Set up auto-ship for paper towels and toilet paper, kept a grocery list, bought us granola bars and instant oatmeal in bulk. Because I hadn’t yet gotten my driver’s license that first year, I ordered bras online. Tampons too. Asked the Internet all the questions I would have asked my mother. A sad virtual substitute.