The Year of My Miraculous Reappearance Read online

  For my “tag team sponsors,”

  Jane and Barbara

  CHAPTER 1

  The Revolving Door of

  My Mom's Love Life

  One night Mom got bad drunk because she'd had a fight with Harvey. Her latest boyfriend. I didn't know what he'd done to her, but I knew it must've been bad. I hated all her boyfriends, but Harvey was worse. I think he was rotten to her. I'm not exactly sure of the details. I mean, I'm not sure rotten exactly how. But I still think he was.

  I was lying awake, which was not so very unusual in itself, and I smelled smoke. When I got out to the living room she'd set the couch on fire with her cigarette. I got there just as the first little flame shot up. I ran some water in a pot and threw it on the fire. It splashed all over her face and she came around, and boy, was she pissed.

  So I said, “Hey, what was I supposed to do? You set the goddamn couch on fire.”

  She slapped me. She used all kinds of cuss words, and normally she didn't care if I did, too, but I had to leave God out of it.

  She looked kind of pathetic, slumping there all wet with that damp cigarette butt in her hand. She had a new perm, and I think she thought it looked great, but it always ended up flat in some strange ways where she'd been lying on it. She'd gained a lot of weight and she was wearing one of those mint green polyester things that made her look like a pale avocado.

  She must have caught that in my eyes but she didn't seem to want to fight back against it. Lately she seemed to get into being pathetic, like it had some value she was ready to cash in. It's like she was practicing, trying to get really good at it.

  She started to cry again, and Bill started to cry, we could hear him back in my room. She looked in that direction, almost like she'd get up and go to him, but the drunk sag took over and she slumped down further.

  “Maybe he'd be better off,” she said. Real quiet.

  “Maybe he'd be better off if what?” When Mom was drunk she had a bad habit of picking up in the middle of a conversation she'd forgotten to start.

  “See if you can get him back to sleep, would you, Cynnie? It's so hard.”

  “What is?” “You know. To take care of him.”

  “You don't take care of him. I do.” And I went back to my room, or I should say Bill's and my room. He was standing up in his crib, holding the rail, saying my name. Well, sort of. Cynnie, that's what everybody called me. Bill called me Thynnie, because his tongue was thick, from the Down's Syndrome, and that was the best he could do. And it sounded okay to me, the way he said it.

  A lot of people thought Bill wasn't very cute. Maybe because his face was kind of puffy and he never closed his mouth. I think they didn't look at him right. He had the biggest, sweetest brown eyes, and right that minute he had the biggest tears rolling down his face.

  “Thynnie,” he said again, and bounced up and down a little in the crib, which was his way of telling me that what he couldn't say was very important. Bill was three years old but he still had to be in a crib because he was still a baby in his head. I'm not sure why everybody thought that was such a tragedy. I mean, people like babies, right? I know I do.

  I whistled a little tune for him. I whistled the French national anthem, because the teacher made us sing it in French class so much I still had it stuck in my head.

  When I'd finished a line he sang it back to me. Not with words, but the way people do when they forgot the words. And he bounced a little on every note. It was not my imagination that Bill could do that. Just because he wouldn't do it in front of anybody else didn't mean I was making it up.

  I picked him up when he reached his arms out, and he buried his face in my neck and kept saying something. I couldn't make it out, but I knew for sure it was “Thynnie” because that's the only word Bill knew how to say.

  He knew I was upset. I could never fool Bill.

  He pointed to the living room. He always liked to watch TV with me. It seemed to soothe him. I carried him down the hall—no easy task, he was pretty darn big—and snuck a look around the corner. Mom wasn't around. She must have gone to bed. Good.

  I turned on Jay Leno, because it didn't matter to Bill what we watched.

  We sat on the couch together, way at the end to avoid the wet burned spot, and I put my arms around him, and he put his head on my shoulder. Every time I looked down, he was looking up at me.

  I kept saying, “It's okay, Bill. Everything is going to be okay.”

  But nothing felt okay. And I could never fool Bill.

  Kiki—that's our older sister—she said Bill's “profoundly retarded.” She said that's a tragic thing. She's all grown up and moved away from home, so she's my authority on everything. Except Bill. I had this theory about Bill. I didn't exactly ask what “profoundly retarded” means, but I know when you say something profound you're being very deep and meaningful, so I figured that's why Bill knows so much, like whether I'm sad or scared or upset.

  After a while he fell asleep with his head on my shoulder and I put him back to bed. I couldn't sleep with the smell of smoke to remind me, so I went outside and climbed up into my tree.

  I had a branch that I lay on like a momma lion. I saw one in a film once at school, lying on a big limb, straddling it, all four legs hanging down. I could do that. Only, Momma Lion had a tail that twitched, while the rest of her looked plenty relaxed. If I'd had a tail, I think it would have hung down like the rest of me. I wasn't feeling all that twitchy.

  With my cheek on that cool bare wood I could keep one eye on the house without feeling like I was any part of it. Either no one caught on to where I was, or more likely, they didn't care to look. I mean, the less commotion in that house, the better.

  A few days later I found the pocketknife lying on the coffee table. Right away I knew it was something I wanted, smooth and valuable-looking, with a carved bone handle. It was Harvey's, which is part of why I took it. Payback, which he deserved. In general. I stuck it in my pocket and slipped out the back door and climbed up into my tree and carved a smooth spot for my cheek. I felt good, like I'd won something. Like I had something worth having.

  After a while I could hear Mom and Harvey start to fight, but that was nothing special. I had no reason to think it had anything to do with me.

  A minute later they came spilling out onto the back patio. From that angle I could see the way Harvey combed little strands of hair over his bald spot. He looked up into the tree at me, and he'd never had quite that look on his face. It made me squirm a little inside. I looked at the places on the house where the paint had peeled off to bare wood, just to have someplace to look. Someone should have told him to leave me alone when I'm in my tree. Harvey didn't even know the rules. Everybody should know the rules.

  “Cynthia, Harvey says his pocketknife is gone. Have you seen it?”

  Normally I would have kicked at being called Cynthia, but for the moment I thought I'd play my cards real carefully. “Um. What did it look like?”

  “You know damn well what it looks like,” he called up at me. “Now give it back, you little sneak thief.”

  I just smiled at him.

  Mom punched him on the arm, hard enough to make him grunt. She was wearing that ratty old tan robe that made her hips look lumpy. “Harvey thinks you took it, dear. I told him you never would.”

  “Why would he think that?” Pure stall tactic. I knew why he would think that. It's because I was thirteen. Any loose crime lands on you when you're thirteen. And usually sticks.

  “Because nobody else could have,” he said. “Because your mom was with me the whole time and nobody else in this house is even smart enough to steal.”

  For a split s
econd I thought of Rocky the Flying Squirrel, and I wondered whether I could leap on Harvey, knock the wind out of him, and make him pay for saying something mean about Bill. But the cement patio all around him looked pretty hard, and I didn't feel like Rocky. I felt kind of shaky and small.

  Mom turned on him, pushing these strands of frizzy hair out of her face, but they kept falling back again. “Now, Harvey, I told you the girl didn't take it, she said she didn't, that's the end of it.”

  “I didn't hear her say she didn't.”

  The knife felt bulky in my pocket and pressed into my leg. “I didn't take it.”

  Harvey turned on my mom, and his face looked like a kid who can't get his way. “You always side with her. You never listen to me—you take her side every time.”

  Mom pulled herself up to her full five feet nothing, tugged her robe around herself, and told him to get out. “You heard me, Harv. Pack what you got lying around and git.”

  He stared at her for a second. Then he said something too quiet for me to hear, but I could see it. I could see it hit Mom like a handful of stones, knocking her back a step with the force. Then he disappeared into the house. Mom just stood there, blinking. I'm not sure why she made me think of a turtle on its back.

  “What'd he say, Mom?”

  She ran inside, crying.

  A few minutes later Harvey stomped out with a bunch of shirts over his shoulder, and a brown bag. His Chevy spewed all kinds of bad-smelling smoke when he revved it up. He always had to run it kind of high, to keep it from stalling, but this might have been more. This might have been to make a point.

  When he disappeared around the corner I called something after him. I said, “Get lost, jerk.” And then, after I'd had a little more time to think, I said, “It's about time you got lost. Loser. What a loser.”

  I scrambled down and went back inside. Just to make sure Bill was okay. I looked at the clock and it was eleven in the morning. Mom was pouring her first drink.

  “What did Harvey say to you, Mom?”

  She slugged down half the glass of gin and poured again. “It doesn't matter.”

  “Matters to me.”

  “Okay, you want to know?” The volume backed me up against the kitchen counter. I hadn't been set to expect it. “Fine, I'll tell you. He said between my thief daughter and my retarded son, it's no wonder I can't hang on to a man.” In the silence that followed I watched the way her mascara puddled up in the wet spots under her eyes. She sniffled and said, “Okay. Now are you happy?”

  I said, “No, I don't think ‘happy’ is quite the word that jumps to mind.”

  In fact, it's a funny thing about the word “happy.” It's just a word I've heard people say. I never really knew what they meant by it at all.

  I had some compadres to hang out in my tree with me. At least I thought they were my compadres. Richie, and Snake, whose real name was Morris. Richie was a year younger than me, Snake was one older.

  We'd carve guns out of dry wood and play bandit games in the little aisles between the neighbors' garages. We knew we were too old for that junk but we did it anyway. They were just worthless bits of yard that nobody used, but it sure pissed people off to see kids in there.

  The girls in the neighborhood were pretty rough on me. Called me Tarzan Girl and said I was uncivilized. But, you know, consider the source. Still, I took off when I saw them coming.

  Richie said, “They suck, anyway.”

  Snake said, “I don't get why they say ‘Tarzan’ like it's not a good thing.”

  So, anyway, I figured they were my friends.

  When we got bored of everything else we built a tree house up there. In my spot. Just the three of us.

  When Zack showed up—Zack, that was Harvey's replacement in the revolving door of my mom's love life—he wanted to help. First thing. He almost climbed right up in the tree with us, because he said we didn't look like we were doing so good. We weren't. But it was a rule—no grown-ups allowed in that tree. Kids only.

  Zack sat on the back stoop and popped a couple of beers and stared up at us. He looked skinny and strange to me, like somebody I'd never met before, even though he'd been hanging around for a few days. Still, they never lasted long, so no point to get attached. It's like naming a cat you don't get to keep.

  It was just a little platform when we were done, and pretty rickety at that. It rocked when you walked over to the right- hand side. It had an egg-shaped hole in the middle that Snake cut with his father's keyhole saw, and stairs made of two-by- fours nailed to the trunk like ladder steps, so you could stick your head right up through the hole as you climbed.

  I called down to Zack. I said, “Any grown-up who sticks his head up through this hole might get it whacked.” I held up a leftover two-by-four to drive the point home.

  He laughed and gave a little salute. Then Mom came out and told me to get down and get in the house, pronto.

  As soon as I did, I got slapped for talking to her boyfriend like that.

  “Boyfriend,” I said. “Ha! Is that what we call them now.”

  I could see by her face that I'd gone way too far.

  She came charging at me like something out of a nature film on National Geographic. I thought I was dead. Before she could get to me, Zack grabbed her around the waist and told me to go to my room while she cooled out. She broke his hold and stomped out of the house. I smelled another shopping spree. Not a pleasant odor.

  I looked at Zack and he looked at me. Probably this was the part where I was supposed to say, “Oh, thank you, oh, aren't you cool,” which pissed me off.

  I said, “This is all your fault. Everything was fine before you got here.” Which was a total lie.

  “I was only trying to help,” he said.

  Then I felt kind of bad, because he didn't even get snotty with me.

  When I got back to the tree house Richie and Snake had wimped out and gone home. They never came in my house.

  Never. No one in their right mind would. I didn't even blame them. I climbed down and went inside.

  Zack was nowhere around but Kiki was over, standing in the living room, flipping around on the TV channels by remote control. “Where's Mom?” she asked.

  “I'm guessing out on another shopping spree.”

  “God help us all.”

  Kiki could say that, even if Mom had been here, because she was a very serious Christian. She really meant it when she talked about God, with no disrespect.

  “What's wrong with your own TV at your own apartment?”

  “I must've forgot to pay my cable bill. Come on, Cynnie, it's my best soap.”

  “Yeah. Whatever.” I knew it must've been something. Kiki steers a mile around anything to do with this family if she can help it.

  “Did you know Nanny and Grampop were coming?”

  Something about that question got my stomach's attention. It was just one of those things that never happens, that has no call to happen suddenly, just out of nowhere.

  “Why?”

  “I dunno. Why not?”

  “Like, when do Nanny and Grampop drive all the way from Redlands to see us?”

  “Well, like, never, I guess. Mom called them weeks ago and asked them to come. I think it has something to do with Bill.”

  Just then Bill started to cry, because even from his playpen on the patio I swear that kid knows a lot. I carried him into the living room. When Kiki looked at him she said the same thing she always said. “Pray for that boy's soul, Cynnie.”

  I never told Kiki the truth, that I was afraid to pray. I figured, once I got started, then God would know where I was.

  That night I lay in bed in the dark, whistling a little tune to Bill. I think it was “I've Been Working on the Railroad.”

  Listening to Bill sing back to me.

  And I realized then that a momma lion protects her young. She doesn't sit back and let anybody take anything away from her.

  CHAPTER 2

  Zack the Brave and Stupid


  I lit candles on the table, so we could halfway see what we were eating, except it was Mom's hamburger casserole, so maybe the less seen the better.

  Zack came in late with gallon bottles of water, so we'd have something to drink. This was all good news if it meant I didn't have to do the dishes or take a bath.

  I jabbed my hamburger stuff with a fork. Like it would be that easy to kill it. “Why are Nanny and Grampop coming?”

  Usually I could tell a lot by Mom's eyes on a question like that, but only if she'd paid the light bill.

  “To visit, honey, why else? Won't it be nice to see them?”

  “Yeah. Swell.” It was snotty, the way I said it. But she pretended not to notice. I wished she'd call me on it. I wanted a fight.

  I tore off a piece of bread and gave it to Bill to keep him busy until I was done and I could help him eat. Actually, he could eat fine, only not with forks and spoons. I figured that was nature's way of telling us to cut out the middleman. Mom did not agree.

  Zack said, “Hey, tomorrow morning, Rita, I was thinking I'd go down to the utilities and get everything back on. You know, before your parents come.”

  The room got real quiet. Hard to believe you could make that much quiet just by sucking out all the noise.

  “If it was that easy, Zack, don't you think I would have? What did you think you would use for money?”

  Whoa. The glacier age was back.

  “Well,” he said, “I got a little put by.”

  Mom patted her mouth with the edge of her napkin and folded it up before she set it on the table. None of this was a good sign. “I am not a charity case, Zackary, and my feelings for you are not for sale.”

  “Honey, I never meant—”

  “Drop it, Zack. Butt out.”

  “Hey,” I said, half standing with my legs bumping under the table. “Don't you talk that way to Zack!”

  I looked around and everybody was staring at me. Even Bill. I was hoping nobody would ask me why I did that. I was as surprised as anybody. More. I'd gotten caught acting like I liked Zack or something. I didn't like Zack. Did I? Anyway, even if I didn't, he was only trying to help. She could at least have been nice about it.