Jennifer Brown: Torn Away

We got on the bus and bumped our way home. In keeping with the rest of the day, everyone seemed sleepy and subdued. The sky continued to darken, and the wind picked up, blowing some of the newly budding flowers almost flat against the ground. Dani and I sat in weary silence, Dani texting some guy from her economics class and me watching the neighborhoods roll by. The windows were open, and the warm breeze felt good against my face.

On Thursday nights, I had exactly one hour between the time I got off the bus and the time Mom got home with Marin. Just enough time to claim a snack and the TV, but not nearly enough to decompress to a level where I could handle Marin’s excessive energy. Something about preschool amped her up—made her loud and squeaky so she practically vibrated around the room. It was my least favorite part of the afternoon, that space between when Mom and Marin bulldozed through the front door and when they left for Marin’s dance class, leaving me to start dinner.

That day, Marin tumbled into the living room, already wearing her orange-and-black leotard with the rhinestone collar, her face sticky from a Popsicle or whatever it was they gave her at school. She hopped over to the couch and immediately began bugging me about the East Coast Swing.

Mom, still in her work skirt and low, scuffed heels, bustled around us, mumbling things about the living room being “a damn cave” as she snapped on lights, making me blink and squint.

“No! I don’t want to! Go away!” I yelled at Marin, and she went into Mom’s room, where I could hear her chattering incessantly and rifling through things while Mom tried to change clothes. I ignored them, finally satisfied that it was quiet and I could watch TV in peace.

“Jersey?” Mom called from her room, and I pretended I didn’t hear her because I didn’t want to get up. A few seconds later, she came into the living room, pulling her earring out, her panty hose draped over one arm, her toes looking red and taxed against the carpet. “Jersey.”

“Huh?”

“Didn’t you hear me calling you?”

“No.”

A look of annoyance flitted over her face as she reached to pull the earring out of her other ear. “Did you put the towels in the wash?”

“No, I forgot,” I said. “I’ll get them in a minute.”

This time the annoyance crossed her face, full force. “They need to get done. I want them in the dryer before I get back.”

“Okay,” I mumbled.

“And start dinner,” she continued, heading back toward her room.

“I will.”

“And take the dishes out of the dishwasher,” she called from her bedroom.

“I will! God!” I called back.

I was ten when Mom married Ronnie, but until then it had always been just Mom and me. My alcoholic dad had walked out on us when I was barely a year old. According to my mom, he was constantly in and out of jail for crimes that usually started with the word “drunk,” he was hardly a parent to begin with, and most of the time she felt like she was raising two kids, not one. Still, she stuck it out because she thought they were in love. But one night he left and never came back. She’d tried to find him, she said, but it was as if he’d disappeared from the face of the earth. Every time I asked about him, she told me that if he was still alive, he didn’t want to be found. At least not by us.

I hadn’t seen him since I was a toddler. I couldn’t remember what he looked like.

And because Mom’s parents were control freaks who wrote her off when she got pregnant with me, I had never seen them, either. I didn’t even know where they lived. I only knew they didn’t live in Elizabeth.

Ten years of being the Mom-and-me duo meant a lot of chores fell on my shoulders. Mom needed help, and I didn’t mind giving it most of the time, because she worked really hard, and though I might not always have had the best stuff or the most expensive vacations, I had the things I needed. And I loved my mom.

But after Mom married Ronnie and had Marin, the chores for two turned into chores for four, and that got old. Sometimes it seemed like Mom was constantly reminding me of the stuff I needed to get done.

Mom and Marin continued rushing around, Marin prancing in and out of the living room, singing, humming, and I pressed the back of my head harder into the throw pillow and wished they would get going already and leave me alone.

Eventually, Mom came into the living room, calling for Marin to go to the bathroom and shoving her feet into the black flats she’d left next to the front door. She’d changed into jeans and a T-shirt and was digging through her purse.

“Okay, we’re going to dance class,” she said absently. “Be back in an hour or so.”

“ ’Kay,” I said. Bored. Uninterested. Ready for them to leave.

Marin raced into the living room, her own purse draped over her arm, looking like a miniature version of Mom. In truth, it was Mom’s old purse, an ugly black thing Mom had given to Marin after she got tired of it. Marin adored it, carried it everywhere, stuffing it with her most prized possessions.

“No, leave that here,” Mom said, pushing open the screen door with her shoulder.

“But I want to take it,” Marin argued.

“No, you’ll forget it, like last time, and I don’t want to have to make another return trip to Miss Janice’s. Leave it here.”

“Nooo!” Marin cried, getting her Meltdown Voice on.

Mom gave her the no-nonsense look I recognized all too well. “You’re going to be late, and then you’ll miss the hello dance,” she warned.

Marin, head down and shoulders droopy, placed the purse on the floor next to the door and followed Mom out onto the porch, her glittery little shoes looking dull and lifeless under the cloudy sky.

“Don’t forget the laundry,” Mom said on her way out.

“I know,” I singsonged back sarcastically, rolling my eyes.

I thought I knew so much—knew there was laundry to be done, knew when Mom and Marin would come home, knew how the rest of the evening was going to go.

But I didn’t know anything.

I had no idea.

After Mom and Marin left, I got up and put the towels in the washing machine. It had gotten so dark I had to turn on the overhead light to see what I was doing. The cloud cover almost made it feel like nighttime.

I poured soap over the towels, thinking once again how it seemed like everything had changed when Mom married Ronnie. I’d gone from being the most important thing in her life to being one of the most important things in her life. Sounds like the same thing, but it isn’t. Sharing the spotlight gets kind of crowded sometimes, especially when you were used to having so much space in it before.

When Mom got pregnant, I was excited. Being an only child could get lonely, and I’d always envied my friends who had siblings. I didn’t think ten years was that much difference, really. I thought Marin would look up to me and I could teach her all kinds of things and be like her hero or something. But what I hadn’t banked on was that there would be a lot of years where she would be a baby. The baby. The center of everything.

And even though I knew I was that once, too, it still sucked when it was her turn. Which made me feel like a jerk. What kind of horrible person resented her little sister for something she couldn’t even control?

After I got the laundry started, I went into the kitchen and pulled out the hamburger meat and a skillet. I crumbled the burger into the skillet and turned on the stove, then wandered back toward the living room to watch some more TV while I waited for the meat to start cooking. On the way, I grabbed my backpack off the kitchen table, dug my reading homework out of it— hint, hint, ladies and gentlemen! —and carried it to the couch with me.