I went over to Dad and I actually kind of shoved his chest a little—I was mad, and stupid—and I said, “We don’t need you. We were having a great Christmas Eve without you.” (That wasn’t really true. I’d tried to make Christmas cookies for Matt, but I didn’t put enough flour in, or something, and they were all too runny or burnt. And the presents I bought looked measly under that stupid silver tree we still have from when I was little. Mom didn’t get anybody anything, because she lost her Christmas money, and Matt just had some homemade stuff.) Then I said, “Who asked you to come here?”
Dad looked a little confused himself for a minute—he’s not used to being stood up to. Or maybe I just couldn’t tell what he was thinking behind the Santa beard. Then he said, “For your information, your mother asked me to come here. And last time I checked, we are the parents and we make the decisions around here.”
“Funny thing,” I said. “There must not need to be any decisions made except once a month or so.”
And then he hit me, knocked me back into the tree. I landed on the box that had Mom’s robe in it and smashed it. Matt screamed out, “Tish!” at the same time that Mom screamed out, “Ray!” The tree fell over behind me and all the Christmas lights went out at once.
All I could think was, Matt’s not supposed to see this. He’s not supposed to think Santa Claus acts this way.
Mom started pleading with Dad—to ignore me, I think—and Dad started yelling back, and then they were outside, yelling at each other so loud the neighbors had to have heard. I heard Dad say, “I know when I’m not wanted,” and then I heard his truck start. And then all we could hear was Mom crying.
And that’s been it, he hasn’t been back at all. Mom told me yesterday at breakfast, “Well, you drove him off. He left town again.” I don’t know how she knows—from some of his buddies down at the Alibi Inn, I guess. But she hasn’t said anything else to me, just looks at me real angry and tightlipped.
Matt looks at me kind of mad-like too, sometimes. He’s still confused. I’ve tried to talk to him, to tell him I didn’t mean to make Dad go away, to tell him I’d like it, too, if Dad were around all the time, being nice all the time, but that’s just not how things are. Matt nods his head and says, “Uh-huh,” when I ask him if he understands and, “Huh-uh,” when I ask if he’s upset with me. I know he doesn’t understand, though. I know he spends almost as much time crying as Mom does.
If Granma were still alive, she would understand. She would tell me I did the right thing. I think. Or would she be mad at me, too?
It’s strange how it’s such a relief now to go to work at the Burger Boy. I don’t have to think at all there, just punch in the orders and wipe down the tables and pull the French fries and onion rings out of the fryer when the buzzer goes off. I went over Bud’s head and asked Mr. Seagrave to schedule me for as many hours as possible over break. Nobody else wants to work, so I’m getting almost thirty hours this week.
Tish,
Okay. Your first three entries are rather short, but your last one more than makes up for that. I’m impressed that you were inspired to write during the break! That shows a real commitment as a journal-keeper!
January 12
Don’t read this, Mrs. Dunphrey.
Yeah, right, I am such a committed journal-keeper. Thank you very much for the compliment. It makes the rest of my life okay. (Not.)
Home still stinks. Bud’s being mean to me at work, making me scrub the bathrooms every two hours. And at school—finals are this week, and I’m screwing up bad. I just can’t concentrate. I even tried to study, but it just makes me do worse. I sat down with my biology book last night, and I ended up staring at the same page for two hours. Mom had the TV on too loud—all I could hear was laugh tracks. It didn’t make me feel like laughing.
January 15
Don’t read, Mrs. Dunphrey.
Everything stinks. Why should I care?
I think Matt hates me now. He cries all the time and keeps asking, “When’s Daddy coming back?”
Last night, I told him, “Look, you’re eight years old. Quit acting like a baby. Grow up.”
It didn’t help.
But he is eight. Why can’t he be tougher?
Oh, yeah, in other great news … I think I flunked the geometry final today. And Rochelle is mad at me because I won’t let her fix me up with this total skag, Billy Rogers.
January 20
Don’t read this, Mrs. Dunphrey.
You know how sometimes, it’s rainy and dreary for weeks, it seems, and everybody gets depressed and snappy because the skies are always gray—and then one day the sun finally comes out and it seems so great, you think, “I’ll never be unhappy again”? That’s exactly how I feel today.
Everything has been so bad since Christmas, I haven’t even noticed whether the sun’s shining or not. Mom’s still not really speaking to me—that’s still bad—but last night, Matt came up when I was watching this old Dracula movie on TV. He cuddled against me and he said, “You’re a good sister. I know you’ll never leave me like Daddy and Granma did.”
I started to tell him it wasn’t fair to put Daddy and Granma in the same category—I mean, Granma died. But it was so nice to have him not mad at me, I didn’t say anything. He kind of leaned his head on my shoulder and we watched the rest of the movie together. It was so old, it wasn’t scary at all, just funny. You could see the wires holding things up. And I know the castle in the background was cardboard, because it almost fell over once or twice. Matt and I laughed and laughed and laughed. Mom was at work, or maybe we could have gotten her laughing, too.
Then today, Rochelle told me I was right about Billy Rogers being a jerk, and she wished she was as smart as I was about men. (!)
And you know what else? I did better than I thought on all my finals. Even the geometry one was just a D, not an F. My semester grades are all C’s. (Hey, I know I shouldn’t be excited about C’s, but the thought of taking anything over again, or during summer school, was really making me sick.)
January 22
Don’t read this, Mrs. Dunphrey.
Oops. I totally forgot about this being due today.
It’s funny, I was writing on Wednesday about how good people feel when the sun comes out. Well, we’ve got this weird heat wave going on right now—it’s really sunny and almost hot. People came to school without their coats—I mean, in January!—and the radio said it was going to be in the high fifties today. Chastity told me Mike Bryant was wearing shorts in her history class, but Mr. Tremont told him it wasn’t June yet, and he had to go put on his sweatpants from gym.
Tish,
This is all right, but your entries seem to be getting shorter. Try to regain your habit of writing so wonderfully extensively here.
January 27
DON’T read this, Mrs. Dunphrey.
Yes, ma’am, I will try to begin writing so “wonderfully extensively” again. I’m so sorry I lost my journal-keeping commitment for a while there. I should have remembered that that was supposed to be the most important thing in my life.
Do you know how dumb this is? What good is this journal, anyway? It’s not like I’m ever going to be a writer or anything. And it’s not like anybody would ever care about my life, that they’d ever read this (or that I’d ever let anyone read this.) If any adult really cared about me, my life would be totally different, let me tell you. That’s why I’m trying so hard to make things better for Matt. Not that I’m doing too great a job at it.
But about school—it’s just silly, the stupid little assignments all you teachers make up. And then Mrs. Rachethead takes five points off anything if we forget to tear off the scraggly edges of our paper where it comes out of wire notebooks. And Mr. Tremont won’t accept our homework unless we’ve got our name, the date, the class, and the page numbers, in that order, in the upper right-hand corner of every page. Do you all make up these rules just to amuse yourselves? Just to jerk our chains?
The thing is, I ki
nd of like you, Mrs. Dunphrey. You were probably a brain or something when you were in high school—how else did you end up being a teacher?—but I could kind of see how if we were the same age, we might be friends. You do have cool clothes, even if you don’t have very big bangs. And you pretty much treat us kids like human beings, not like mutants or something. I mean, maybe you’re just real good at acting, but when you talk to students, you really do seem to listen. I heard how, when Carrie Roderick and Jason Bly broke up, and Carrie was in tears all day, you took her out in the hall and talked to her. She told everyone you couldn’t have been nicer.
But with all that, why can’t you see how stupid all this school stuff is? I may not be working at Burger Boy the rest of my life (God, I hope not) but it won’t be at a job much better. When is it ever going to matter if I know anything else?
January 27
Don’t read this, Mrs. Dunphrey.
Guess I got a little carried away on Wednesday. It’s just hard to get concerned about school when Mom is acting so totally freaked out.
Honestly, she was acting so weird last night I almost asked her if she was taking some kind of drugs. Her eyes were all glassy, and she wouldn’t say anything to Matt or me. I asked her all sorts of questions—did she want me to get her something to eat? Was the heat high enough for her? Did she want me to get her a pan of water to soak her feet in? (They hurt all the time from standing at the cash register.) But she didn’t answer anything. Finally her friend Brenda from work called, and when I handed her the phone, she did say an “uh-huh” or “huh-uh” or two.
Then after she said good-bye, she kept holding the phone, cuddling it almost.
“Mom, you want me to hang that up for you?” I asked her. The phone company’s computer voice was coming on every few seconds, saying, “Your phone is off the hook.”
I don’t think she even heard it, or me. But she did say something to me, for practically the first time since Christmas.
“He does love me, I know he does.”
I wanted to say, “Yeah, that’s why he uses you as his own personal punching bag.” But I didn’t. I can’t help feeling a little guilty about making Dad leave, if Mom wanted him around so bad. So I said, “Yeah, Mom, I know. He loves you a lot. He just has a lot of problems.”
I tried saying that like I meant it, to try and cheer Mom up. But you know, when I got to thinking about it, maybe it was true. I’ve seen Dad look at Mom like he thinks she’s hot stuff. But if you want to talk about being messed up, it’s like my parents are competing. I don’t know how many jobs Dad has had and lost—and to hear him talk, it’s never his fault. Maybe, sometimes, it isn’t. I mean, lots of other kids’ parents are out of work, too. They keep telling us at school that you can’t get a good job without a lot of education, because so many of the factories around here have closed down—even the place Granpa used to work, that made aerosol cans. That shut down a long, long time ago. And it’s not like Dad even has his high school diploma. He and Mom both dropped out when she got pregnant with me.
Great. We’re back to everything being my fault.
Anyhow, it didn’t do any good for me to try and be nice to Mom. After I said that, she didn’t say anything at all, just sat there staring. Finally I tugged the phone out of her hand, because I wanted to call Sandy. Mom didn’t move, even then. She kept her fingers curled like she still had something to hold onto.
Maybe I should talk to Brenda, ask her if Mom acts normal at work. But I don’t know if I can trust Brenda. I think she’s the one who kept telling Mom to go to the Alibi Inn all the time to find out about Dad—and to find Dad, when he was actually there. I think Brenda is dating one of Dad’s friends or something, and she’s been telling Mom where Dad is now.
Really, Brenda seems as bad as Sandy or Rochelle or Chastity about guys. Just once I’d like to know a grown-up who really acts grown up.
I guess that’s why I miss Granma so much. She was a lot older than Brenda or Mom, of course, but it was like she’d really learned something in all her years. She wasn’t out chasing guys like some fifteen-year-old. She’d say things like, “If you don’t respect yourself, how do you expect anyone else to?” I think Dad really hated her, but there wasn’t anything he could do, because we were staying at her house. One time, I remember, she told him she was going to call the police on him if he didn’t leave Mom and us kids alone. And he did. That time. After that, I think he figured out she really wouldn’t call the police, because she didn’t want anyone to know how bad things were at her house.
She told me once that her failing was pride. I didn’t know what she meant then, but maybe that’s what she was talking about.
Except, she’d also send me off to school saying, “Make me proud today, Tish!” like pride was something good.
You know, I did do really well in school before Granma died.
February 1
Don’t read this, Mrs. Dunphrey.
It’s kind of a nothing day today. Mom’s still being weird, school still stinks, the Burger Boy is still boring. I’m sorry, Mrs. Dunphrey, I just can’t write tons when nothing is happening. Sometimes I think maybe I’ll wake up one morning and life will be totally different—everything will be good … My parents will be normal, Matt won’t be so whiny, I’ll have plenty of money without working at the Burger Boy, I’ll have great clothes, I won’t have to go to school, I’ll have a boyfriend who’s really nice to me (hey, this is just a dream) … And let’s see, since this is just a dream—Granma will still be alive. Wouldn’t it be great?
But I keep waking up every morning to the same old life.
Bummer.
February 4
Don’t read this, Mrs. Dunphrey.
I have a new way of dealing with Mom: I just ignore her. I figure, she’s the adult here, not me, so why should I try to baby her? For a while there, I was acting like she was Matt—like it was my responsibility to take care of her. But if she wants to act like Zombie Queen of the Universe, that’s her problem, not mine.
Now it’s kind of like Matt and I have our lives, and then there’s this other presence in the house that’s just barely there. I try not to even notice if she’s sitting in the living room watching TV, or not, when I come home from school or the Burger Boy. I still walk Matt home from school, I still try to make sure he has enough to eat, I still clean up the kitchen once or twice a week. I talk to him all the time, but I don’t even try with Mom. Last night Matt was playing with his Matchbox cars on the living-room floor and I decided I wanted to watch “Rescue 911” instead of “Wheel of Fortune,” which was on. I asked Matt if he minded if I turned the channel, but I didn’t even think about Mom until Matt asked her if she cared. And she was sitting right there.
She just grunted, anyhow. Nothing matters to her except Dad.
The weird thing is, life doesn’t really seem that different than it was before I was ignoring Mom. It’s not like she’s really said anything to me since Christmas except, “He does love me. I know he does,” that one day, and, “How could you? Yelling at your own father …” a couple of other times. Maybe if she’d yelled at me, it would have made sense. But she just whined and backed off when I defended myself.
How can my mother be such a wimp?
I bet Granma was really ashamed of her. She just must not have let it show around Matt and me.
Tish,
Looks fine. You really have written a lot this time.
February 12
DON’T YOU DARE READ THIS, Mrs. Dunphrey.
It’s four in the morning, and I’m writing here because I can’t sleep at all. I lie on my front, then my side, then my back, then my front again … And all the time my brain’s racing around thinking of new things to worry about.
I’m scared. I’m scared like I’ve never been before. Mom’s gone.
I got home from working at the Burger Boy tonight about nine o’clock, and I was kind of surprised because the whole house was dark. I knew Matt had to be home, and I was pre
tty sure Mom wasn’t supposed to go in to work until midnight.
Then the first thing I heard when I unlocked the front door was Matt sniffling. I swear, he was back in his room, hiding under his bed, but he was crying so loud you could hear him all through the house. I yelled out, “Matt, what’s wrong?”—I mean, I was thinking maybe someone had broken in and beaten him and robbed us. Or something like that, not that there’d be anything to steal in our house. I even called out, “Mom?” forgetting I was ignoring her. But Matt didn’t answer, and Mom sure didn’t.
I turned on the light in the living room, and there weren’t any signs that anyone had broken in. And that’s when I saw the note on the coffee table.
I’ve got it memorized now:
TISH
I’VE GONE TO FIND YOUR FATHER. I KNOW YOU’LL TAKE CARE OF MATT WHILE I’M AWAY.
MOM
The weird thing is, at first, I couldn’t make myself understand it. It’s like I could read, but I didn’t know what the words meant. Then I was like, “Oh, Mom’s gone to find Dad. Well, maybe that’s better than having her sitting around here bawling all the time.”
Then I read the note again. And again. She didn’t say anything about coming back. Did she mean she wasn’t? I read the note one more time, but there’s not a whole lot to figure out from those two sentences. I have to admit, I felt a little lightheaded. It’s not like Mom was ever Mother-of-the-Year material, but no one wants their mother to run away.
And then I thought, did I drive her away because I was ignoring her? Or—is it my fault anyhow, because it’s my fault Dad left?