Edward Bloor - A Plague Year

I nodded. “Thanks.”

“No, I’m not saying that. Your father is. I’m saying you did a dangerous thing. And an illegal thing. You don’t have a driver’s license.”

Lilly interrupted her. “What is this? You told me that Tom saved Dad’s life!”

“Yes, I did say that,” Mom conceded. “But I didn’t know the circumstances.”

“Circumstances! Who cares? He saved Dad’s life.”

That silenced Mom for a while, which is no small task. We exited the parking lot and headed west. Soon we were on Sunbury Street and passing our own house—a white, two-story duplex set in a row of houses and businesses. The buildings on Sunbury Street tend to reflect our mining-town roots. We have lots of churches and bars and funeral homes.

At the end of the street, Mom remarked casually, “Don’t forget that counseling-group meeting after school, Lilly.”

Mom has always been active in our schools, volunteering for anything and everything. Mom rode with Lilly and me on all of our field trips—east to Philadelphia and the Liberty Bell in fourth grade, west to Pittsburgh and the Fort Pitt Museum in fifth grade, and so on. She keeps in touch with the front office at the high school just in case she can chaperone something, just in case she’s needed. And that’s how she found out about the counseling group.

Lilly snarled, “I’m not going to that thing!”

We reverted to silence, but it was a heavier silence. Mom had approached dark territory. She had nearly spoken about the great unspoken event of the summer, which was this:

About two months ago, on a hot July night, Lilly and a friend from Lewis Street had been sitting on that friend’s porch. A policeman had approached them, claiming that a neighbor had complained about the smell of marijuana.

Lilly got scared and immediately confessed to the crime. The friend took a different approach. She denied any drug use, and claimed that Lilly was crazy and was always telling lies.

Then Lilly, offended by those comments, actually reached under her chair and pulled out the remains of a half-smoked joint. She held it up and protested, “I am not lying!” (She chose honor over self-preservation, I guess.)

The police called Mom to pick Lilly up, and the incident got submitted to the local district attorney’s office. He decided it was a waste of time to prosecute Lilly and her friend for such a small amount of marijuana, and the whole thing, legally, went away.

But that did not get Lilly off the hook. Not even close. Mom took her to our family physician, Dr. Bielski, who prescribed an antidepressant which I don’t think Lilly actually took. She probably could have used it, though, as Mom kept her a homebound prisoner for the rest of the summer, allowing her out only for work. (I was at home, too, but it was by choice. Dad had finally gotten me a Nintendo 64. I had spent the summer mastering Super Mario Brothers 3, Donkey Kong, and Mario Kart.) Then, just to be sure, Mom signed Lilly up for a substance-abuse counseling group after school.

Lilly tried, “I’m never going to smoke pot again. There’s no reason for me to go and sit with a bunch of stoners. That might actually be worse, you know? I’ll learn more about being a stoner. I’ll make stoner friends. I’ll learn how to lie about using drugs!”

Mom was not moved. “You’ll learn no such thing.”

Lilly tried, “You just don’t trust me!”

“That’s not it, Lilly,” Mom assured her. “Your father and I have both told you that we trust you—”

“Right. Then why are you still punishing me?”

“This counseling group isn’t about punishment. It’s about information. You need to understand about addiction.”

“Addiction? I took two puffs on a joint, and now I’m some crack whore standing on a street corner?”

“Don’t overdramatize.”

“I’m not an addict!”

“No. But your father was a drinker, until he quit. And your uncle Robby was a drug addict, and it killed him.”

I said, “I thought Uncle Robby was an alcoholic.”

“It’s all the same. He was addicted to alcohol and drugs. That’s what gets transmitted in your genes, and in your DNA; that’s part of your family inheritance. You could have the same addictive personality.”

Lilly suddenly turned to include me. “Okay. So it’s in Tom’s genes, too?”

I answered, too casually as it turned out, “Yeah. We both have some evil drug zombie inside us, waiting for the chance to bust out.”

Lilly announced, “Then shouldn’t Tom go to the meeting, too?”

Before I could even protest, Mom replied, “Yes. I think that’s a good idea.”

It was my turn to snarl. “I’m not going to that thing!”

Mom continued: “You should go to the first one, Tom. If you don’t think it’s worthwhile, then you can stop. Lilly, though, will keep going.”

“That’s not fair!”

“That’s what your father and I decided. You know that.”

“I have to keep going until when?”

“Until further notice.”

“Because of stupid Uncle Robby?”

Mom warned her, “Don’t speak ill of the dead.” She added, “I bet your cousin Arthur will be there. If he isn’t, he should be.”

Our cousin Arthur, Arthur Stokes, was Uncle Robby’s son. He’s kind of a thug. Mom was right on that count—he should be there. He could probably use some counseling.

But I could not.

I accepted my fate silently, though. I would attend one meeting, and one meeting only. I quickly changed the subject. “Arthur is in my English class.”

Mom made a face in the rearview mirror. “How can he be in your class? Isn’t he with you, Lilly? Isn’t he a senior?”

“He said the office screwed up his credits, and he has to take two English classes this year or he can’t graduate. He says it’s because he flunked Shakespeare.”

Lilly stopped sulking long enough to remark, “So he has to sit there with you ninth graders?”

“Yeah. Can you imagine the shame?”

She smiled unpleasantly. “I can’t.”

Mom asked, “So is Arthur going to graduate or not?”

“I guess so. If he does everything that Mr. Proctor says.”

“Well, that’s a shocker. People in that family rarely make it through high school, never mind college.”

Lilly challenged her. “ That family? It’s your family, you know. His father was your brother.”

Mom backtracked. “I meant that side of the family.”

Lilly pressed her on it. “Oh? I’m sorry. Did someone on our side of the family, someone like you or Dad, just graduate from college? Did I miss that? If so, congratulations.”

Mom continued backtracking. “I meant that we both graduated from high school. Your father and me.”

Lilly corrected her. “It’s ‘Your father and I.’ ”

I decided to defend Mom. “It can be either one. Like ‘Your father and I want to talk to you, Lilly.’ Or ‘Don’t talk back to your father and me, Lilly.’ ”

She told me, “Butt out, Tom. Go read your vocabulary book,” and the morning’s conversation ended for good.

By then we were climbing up into the foothills. As any old person around here would tell you, we were on the road that the coal miners walked on their way to work. Some days, they’d walk up here before the sun rose, work all day in their subterranean world, and walk home after the sun had set.

Such reminiscences were supposed to inspire the kids around here, I guess. But inspire us to what? To be coal miners? They lived in a world without sun, like mole people; like people on the dark side of the moon. Not all that inspiring.

Soon the piles of black slag and rusting machinery gave way to a nicer landscape of farms, creeks, and woods. This was my favorite part of Blackwater (the part that wasn’t, technically, Blackwater).