Don't Let Me Go Read online

  Then Grace launched into an encore of stamps and stomps, proving she knew the difference between the two, and could alternate smoothly.

  “Her mom came by,” Billy said. “I didn’t let her know Grace was here. I wasn’t sure if she was supposed to know.”

  Rayleen pulled a couple of deep, audible breaths.

  “Yes,” she said. As if deciding and speaking at the same time. “She can know. It’s OK for her to know. I just decided. Grace is thriving here, and I dare anybody to challenge that. Anybody who has a problem with that can come take it up with me.”

  “Thank God,” Billy said. “Because I really hate it when people come take things up with me.”

  Grace

  It was about seven in the evening, two days later, when Grace and Rayleen heard Grace’s mother calling her from the basement stairs.

  “Where are you, Grace?” her mom shouted, like she was already madder than hell not to be able to find Grace, even though she’d only just barely started looking.

  “You better go tell her where you are,” Rayleen said.

  “But my eggrolls will get cold.”

  “Tell her where you are, and then come back and finish your eggrolls.”

  “It’ll be kind of hard to walk.”

  “Just don’t smoosh the cotton down too much. And keep your toes spread. Whatever you do. That way you won’t smear the polish.”

  “I thought the cotton was supposed to keep my toes spread.”

  “Keep them spread even more than that.”

  “OK, I’ll try.”

  Grace slid down from the hard wood chair and waddled to the door, one eggroll in each hand. Then she had to shove one of the eggrolls in her mouth so she could open the door. But she still had a little eggroll grease on her hand, and so couldn’t get the door open until she got smart and used her shirttail.

  During all this, Grace’s mom called a second time, sounding even madder.

  By the time she waddled out into the hall, to a spot where her mother could see her, she’d launched into the process of chewing the eggroll she’d been holding in her mouth, which made it hard to have a conversation.

  “There you are,” her mom said. “Come home now.”

  Her mom’s hair looked rumpled up, the way Grace’s had until just recently. She had dark circles under her eyes. She looked bad. But, of course, Grace didn’t say so. Wouldn’t have, even if she could’ve talked properly.

  Some things you just don’t say.

  “Can’t,” she said, but it just came out as a big noise, too rounded at the edges of the sounds.

  “What did you say?”

  Grace pointed at her mouth with the other eggroll, asking in pantomime for her mom to wait while she chewed.

  “What are you eating?” her mom asked, not quite taking the pantomime hint, or maybe just pretending she didn’t.

  Grace pointed and chewed a while longer, then said, “Eggroll. Which is not junk food.”

  “Come home now.”

  “Can’t. I’m eating eggrolls. And getting a footicure.”

  “Pedicure. Who’s giving you eggrolls and a pedicure?”

  “Rayleen. You know. My babysitter.”

  “Right. Rayleen. She knows I’m not actually paying her to be your babysitter, right?”

  “I don’t know. I think so. I’ll ask. But I gotta go now.”

  “But I want you home. I had no idea where you were.”

  Grace placed both hands firmly on her hips. Even the hand with the eggroll.

  “Mom. You haven’t known where I am for days and days. It’s really more like you didn’t even wonder till just now. I don’t see why I have to give up my eggrolls and my foot manicure just because you finally woke up and figured out about how you don’t know where I am.”

  “I was asking where you were just yesterday.”

  “Yeah, but then you were asleep about a minute later, before I could even come tell you.”

  These were all brave things to say, and Grace knew it. They came from some mad place, some leftover bad stuff. They were bundles of words wrapped around criticism, and a few hurt feelings.

  She waited to see what her mom would do. In the old days, her mom would’ve gotten mad. That’s all Grace knew for sure.

  “OK, fine,” Grace’s mom said, “but when you’re done eating and…well, when you’re done, come right home.”

  “K,” Grace said, and stuck the other eggroll in her mouth.

  Then she waddled inside and slid back up on to the chair so Rayleen could work on her toenails some more. (Even though the only part left was checking the polish for dryness and taking the cotton out from between Grace’s toes.)

  When she’d finished chewing, Grace said, “Do you think I was too snotty to my mom?”

  And Rayleen said, “No. Frankly, I don’t. I think you were perfect. Just exactly snotty enough.”

  • • •

  Grace padded, barefoot, shoes in her hand, down the basement stairs, looking forward to the idea of spending some time with her mom. For a change. She tried the door to her own apartment, but it was locked.

  She knocked loudly, and called through the door, “It’s me, Mom. Let me in, OK?”

  The door swung wide, and Grace’s mom stood in the open doorway, her mouth gaping open, jaw hanging.

  “Oh, my God!” her mom whispered on an exhale of breath. “Grace Eileen Ferguson, what have you done to your hair? Did you cut it all off with scissors?”

  Grace tried to answer, but never got that far. Her mom took Grace’s chin in her hand and pushed her head sideways, first one direction and then another, looking at the haircut from all different angles.

  “No. You didn’t. You couldn’t have. This is a professional haircut. This looks like a real haircut. An expensive one. Who cut your hair?”

  “Bella,” she said, yanking her chin back.

  “And who’s Bella?”

  “A friend of Rayleen’s, at the salon where she works. Why? Don’t you like it? Everybody else likes it.”

  Grace’s mom never answered. Instead she took Grace by the hand and marched upstairs and down the hall with her.

  While they were marching, Grace said, “You saw me already. Just before. You saw me standing out in the hall eating eggrolls with cotton between my toes. Why didn’t you say about my hair then?”

  “I didn’t see it.”

  “I was standing right in front of you!”

  “You were way down the hall. I thought you just had it pulled back in a ponytail or something.”

  “Don’t you like it? Everybody else likes it.”

  They stopped marching in front of Rayleen’s door. Grace’s mom banged hard on the door, so hard it sounded like somebody trying to beat down the door with a battering ram, like the police did on TV.

  Out of the corner of her eye, Grace saw Billy’s door open an inch or two, and she could see one of his eyes through the crack. She waved at him, but he put a finger to his lips, and Grace knew what he meant by that, so she started pretending she didn’t see him there at all.

  Rayleen opened the door, and, when she saw who was knocking, stood with her hands on her hips, like she was getting ready to fight with everything except her fists.

  “Isn’t this going a little too far?” Grace’s mom said. She sounded pissed.

  “I have no idea what you’re referring to.”

  “Don’t you? Look, I appreciate the fact that you’re letting Grace hang around. I do. Especially since I’m not paying you. You do know I’m not paying you, right?”

  Rayleen didn’t answer. Just stood there looking stony, and Grace could tell that anything Rayleen said from this point on was going to be something she’d thought out very carefully first.

  “But this is a little weird. This is too much. Because, she’s still my daughter. Not yours. You get that, right? I mean, I take a nap, and when I get up, you’ve decided to redesign her.”

  A long silence. Stony. Grace was learning that, when Rayl
een was mad, the madder she got, the quieter she got.

  “Grace got her hair cut three days ago,” Rayleen said. “That’s one long-ass nap.”

  A silence that made the little hairs stand up on the nape of Grace’s neck.

  “OK. Look. I’m grateful. I’m grateful for…most of this. I am. Really. But for you to decide suddenly Grace should have short hair instead of long hair, like that’s yours to decide—”

  Rayleen stopped her there. Cut her off.

  “Is that how you think it was? Grace. Tell your mom how it was.”

  “Oh. OK,” Grace said. “It was like this, Mom. The hairbrush was up on the dresser and I couldn’t reach it, and I sure wasn’t climbing up there after what happened the last time. You remember that, right? So my hair got so knotted and tangled up that Rayleen had to take me to the hair salon and ask her friend Bella to try to unknot it, but Bella said it was so bad that it would hurt like the devil to brush it out, and I’d lose a bunch of it, too. So then they said it was up to me, and they asked what did I want to do? And you know how much I hate it when I have knots and it pulls, only this was like a hundred times worse, so I said to cut it. Don’t you like it? Everybody else likes it.”

  Grace waited through a long silence. While she waited, she watched her mom get smaller — not literally, but in a way — like she just kept taking up less and less room in the hall. But really it was the mad part of her that got small. Not the real part, the body part of her.

  “It’s actually a nice cut,” Grace’s mom said.

  Then she started to cry. Grace had only seen her mom cry two or three times before, so that was sort of upsetting.

  “I’m sorry,” Grace’s mom said to Rayleen, through the crying, which by now was getting pretty big.

  Then she took Grace’s hand and led her back down the hall, and Grace waved goodbye to Billy, and he waved back. Then Grace got led down the stairs to her own apartment, and while she was being led, her mom kept saying over and over again how she was sorry.

  Well, at least I still get to spend tonight with my mom, Grace thought, even if she is crying. And sorry.

  But Grace was mostly wrong about that. She didn’t end up spending much time with her mom at all.

  • • •

  Not an hour later, Grace was back at Rayleen’s door, knocking. She knocked lightly, so it wouldn’t sound like somebody who was mad.

  Rayleen answered like she was expecting a tall person on the other side of the door. She had to look down before she saw Grace standing there.

  “Can I come in?” Grace asked.

  “Yeah. Sure you can. You OK?”

  “I guess. Can I stay here tonight?”

  “If it’s OK with your mom. What happened with your mom?”

  “She’s loaded again.”

  “Oh,” Rayleen said. “Sorry. Sure, you can stay here.”

  A little later, when Rayleen was pulling out a blanket to make Grace a bed on the couch, she said, “That’s interesting, how you said your mom was loaded. You used to always say she was asleep.”

  “Yeah. I got tired of that,” Grace said. “She’s loaded.”

  Billy

  “You don’t look very happy,” Billy said to her, the minute she walked through his door.

  To further underscore her mood, she did not make a beeline for his special tap shoes. Just shook out her sad little umbrella and flopped on the couch.

  “Unh,” Grace said.

  “What’s up?”

  “Nothing.”

  “Why, Grace Ferguson. I never pegged you as a liar.”

  “I’m not a liar! What a mean thing to say! Why would you even…Oh. Right. That. Yeah. I guess maybe there’s a little something up.”

  He sat down beside her on the couch.

  “Talk to me,” he said.

  In a small and guilty way, he found himself grateful for the diversion. He’d expected her to come bounding through the door all ready to dance, forcing him to deliver bad news, in which case the only bucket of ice water to hit that childlike enthusiasm would have been him, and his neuroses.

  It was raining. That was the problem. It was raining, and Billy was unwilling to risk letting her dance any place but the front balcony. The uncovered front balcony.

  Maybe he would be lucky and it wouldn’t even come up.

  Grace sighed theatrically. “It’s just this thing Mr. Lafferty said.”

  Billy felt his small daily measure of peace slip away at the mention of that name.

  “What did that horrible man say to you? When did you even see him?”

  “Just now. Out in the hall. I was coming in the front door with Felipe, who was teaching me the Spanish word for door — which is puerta, by the way, just in case you didn’t know that — I didn’t know that, until just now, so I thought maybe you didn’t know that, either. I don’t know how much Spanish you—”

  “Grace,” Billy said. “Focus.”

  “Right. Mr. Lafferty was in the hall. And he looked at me, and he looked at Felipe, and he shook his head, and he said all we were doing with my mom was just enabling her.”

  “Oh,” Billy said. “I’m surprised you know that word well enough to get depressed over it.”

  “Well, I didn’t. Exactly. But he just kept talking. And then it was pretty easy to see what he meant. Like, he kept saying he’s known a lot of people who have problems with alcohol and drugs, and he said they almost never get better, but when they do it’s because they have to. When they’re about to lose something they just can’t stand to lose. He said even their house or their car or their job probably isn’t enough, because some people’ll just go live under a bridge so they don’t have to get better. He said it’s always when they’re about to lose the person they’re married to, or their kids. He said that before, when the county was about to come get me and take me away, she might’ve had a reason to clean up her act. But why should she now? He said that you and Rayleen and Felipe are taking over all her responsibilities for her, so why would she get better? She doesn’t even have any reason to try. So I guess that’s enabling.”

  “Right,” Billy said, finding her depression contagious. “That’s enabling.”

  “He’s not right, though, is he?”

  Billy didn’t answer.

  “I mean, he’s a jerk, you said so yourself, right?”

  “Not in so many words,” Billy said.

  “But you don’t like him.”

  “Not even a little bit.”

  “So he’s wrong. Right?”

  Billy looked at the rug and didn’t answer.

  “OK, never mind,” Grace said. “Let’s just get to the dancing lesson. That’ll make me feel better.”

  “Oh. The dancing lesson. OK. Prepare not to feel any better. I’m not really comfortable with letting you dance on my kitchen floor any more.”

  “Why? Because of my mom?”

  “Yes. Because of your mom. Because I don’t take it well when people come to my door and yell at me.”

  “She didn’t exactly yell.”

  “But she will the next time. Because the next time she’ll figure she asked me nicely once already.”

  “But she almost always sleeps through stuff like that,” Grace said, right on the fine razor’s edge of whiney.

  “Right. Almost always. We just have no way of knowing when we’ll hit the exception to the rule. And, frankly, that’s the kind of suspense I’m just not cut out to live with.”

  Grace sighed.

  Billy noted her lack of resistance. He knew what it meant, too. She was getting to know him unfortunately well. Well enough to know there was no point trying to reason with his anxieties.

  They sat, side by side, slumped on the couch, for a long time. Without talking. Maybe ten minutes. Maybe more. Just staring out at the sheeting rain.

  “This day sucks,” Grace said.

  He looked over to see Grace’s hand clamped firmly over her own mouth.

  “It’s not that bad a word,�
�� Billy said. “I mean, as words go.”

  “No, it’s not that. It’s that I complained.”

  “So? Everybody complains.”

  “Rayleen says I never do, and that’s one of the things she likes about me.”

  They fell back into silence, and the watching of the rain, for a moment or two.

  Then Billy said, “Your secret is safe with me.”

  “Thanks. Maybe I’ll just dance on the rug. It’s better than nothing.”

  “OK, go get your shoes on. I mean, go get my shoes on.”

  He didn’t even watch this time, as she plunged into the drawn-out process of trying to make his old tap shoes fit. He had been that completely sucked down into the darkness of the mood.

  What seemed like too short a time later, he looked up to see her do a stomp, followed by a flap step, followed by falling on her butt.

  “Ow,” Grace said.

  “Careful,” Billy said, lifelessly. “It’ll be slippery on the rug.”

  “Great time to tell me,” she said, pulling herself to her feet.

  She flapped another time or two, testingly, still leaving her weight on her planted foot.

  “This sucks,” she said. “Oops. I complained again.”

  “One more time and I’m telling Rayleen.”

  Grace’s face fell pathetically.

  “Really?”

  “No, not really. I was kidding you.”

  “Oh. Don’t kid. I’m not in the mood. This doesn’t work at all. It’s too slippy. And I miss the taps.”

  “Me, too,” Billy said. “Only I’ve been missing them since before you were born.”

  She came back to the couch and sat again, slumped, staring out at the rain.

  “I heard it was gonna rain all week,” she said.

  “There is one thing we could do. But I have no idea how we’d accomplish it.”

  “What?”

  “Well. It’s not hard to make a little dance floor to practice tapping. All we’d need is a big piece of plywood. Five feet square, six feet square. Whatever we could get. And we can put it right here on the living room rug, and the rug would muffle the sound. Keep it from sounding so sharp by the time it went through the floor. So if we had that, we’d be golden. But that’s sort of like saying, all we need to do is route the freeway though my living room. Easy, right? I don’t go out. You can’t walk to a lumber yard by yourself…”