I give her a knowing look. ‘Okay, English class. I promise I’ll show up.’
And then I surprise myself when I reach out and squeeze Diane’s hands with mine. Hers are soft. The kind of hands, my mother would say, that will never have to work. But those hands did something else tonight. They saved my life.
Diane squeezes back just before I slip out, my head still throbbing, but a little less now.
‘Good night, Evie,’ her voice calls out. ‘Thanks for coming over.’
Thanks for coming over. Jeez, it’s like we just spent the evening studying or something. I turn and slip down Coyle Street in the darkness.
It’s after midnight by the time I make it home, but I can spy the living room light through the front windows. Damn. How will I explain these new clothes?
But I finally catch a lucky break. My mother is asleep on the couch, the Post spread over her lap. Grandma must be in bed already. I creep toward my bedroom, but with a creak of the floorboards, my luck runs out.
‘Evelyn?’ my mother asks. ‘Is that you?’
She and my grandmother are the only ones who call me by that name. But I don’t have to answer her, because I’ve already ducked into my bedroom and am slipping out of Diane’s borrowed clothes before she can spot me in them.
‘Yeah, Mama, it’s me. I’ll be out in a minute.’
‘It’s so late, sweetheart.’ Her voice is heavy. Sad. And there’s a sliver of frustration laced through it.
I keep breaking her heart and I know it. If only I knew how to stop doing it.
I come back out into the living room in my nightgown. My mother is sitting up, yawning. She reaches for her glasses and slides them on, then brushes a few wisps of her dark brown hair out of her pale face. Her glasses make her look older than she is, but then again, it’s like everything makes her look older than she is, including her backbreaking job. I sit next to her on the couch.
‘Where were you?’
‘Just at Winkler’s,’ I tell her. I draw my knees up to my chin.
‘With Juanita from next door, I’m guessing?’ she says.
‘Yeah, we walked back together,’ I say, wondering if Juanita is home yet and whether my mother heard her get home earlier without me. I cross my fingers quickly that my lie will hold, but Mama only sighs and pushes her hair back from her face with both hands.
‘I wish you could find some different friends,’ she says. But what she really means is that she wishes I wasn’t the sort of girl the other mothers in the neighborhood don’t like much. What she really means is she wishes I turned out better than I am. Only she can’t bring herself to say it. She doesn’t want that to be true.
I shift a little with impatience as she talks. My mother has delivered this speech so many times. It annoys me as much as it fills me with guilt.
‘Mama, Juanita is my friend. You know that.’ What I don’t tell her is that as soon as she goes to sleep, I plan on sneaking over to Juanita’s, because I need to tell someone what happened tonight. I need to figure out what to do next.
‘Fine, we’ll talk about it later,’ she says, knowing we won’t. ‘Listen, will you go with Grandma to church tomorrow? She’ll want company there, and I have to work.’
The idea of having to play nice at church with Grandma after all that’s happened tonight is too much. My face must fall more than I think, because my mother gives me a hurt look.
Like I said, I’m always breaking her heart. But sometimes I really can’t bear to. The look does me in this time.
‘Fine, I’ll do it,’ I say. I was really hoping to lay low tomorrow, too, like I instructed Diane to do. Maybe it’s not the best idea to leave the house, but I’ll manage that in the morning.
‘Thank you, Evelyn,’ she says with a sigh. ‘You know, there are some nice boys at that church. I’m sure you think they’re the type you aren’t interested in, but they’re good boys. The kind that would make a nice boyfriend.’ I ignore that last part as she heaves herself off the couch. She’s so tired all the time, it seems it takes energy for her to do even the tiniest of things. I imagine her spending all day tomorrow cleaning toilets and hauling dirty sheets for rich people, and my stomach sinks.
I’m such a bad daughter. I know it. Why can’t I be like Ginger Blankenship, the straight-A student down the street who’s aiming to get a scholarship for college, much to the delight of her parents? Or like Nancy Collins, elected Sweetheart of the football team and Queen of the Winter Whirl Dance? At the very least, why can’t I be like my sister, Cheryl, who did the right thing when she had to and got married to a nice boy from the neighborhood, a decent boy who joined the army and who can offer her a safe and secure future?
Because Ginger Blankenship has never spent a starry night on the beach in Galveston for no good reason or sensed the heady rush of too many sips of Four Roses. And because Nancy Collins has never felt the kiss of the wind on her face when she rides in a car going too fast or known the tiny thrill that comes with cutting class and not getting caught.
And because my sister, Cheryl, is now stuck sending me long, sad letters from base housing on Fort Hood in Killeen, complaining about how lonely she is.
There’s got to be something more to life, and being with Juanita and Connie and Sunny seems like the closest way to getting it. Even if I’m not sure exactly what it is.
‘I’m going to bed,’ my mother says, her voice resigned. She doesn’t ask me if I’m going to follow. It’s enough that I’m home and that I’ve promised to go with my grandmother to church in the morning. She doesn’t push it.
Not long after I hear her light snoring down the hall, I pull on some shoes and my bathrobe and sneak across the patch of grass to Juanita’s house. I rap on her bedroom window three times, pause, then rap three more times after that. Our signal.
Just two minutes later I hear Juanita’s front door open, and she comes around to the side of the house.
‘Oh, thank God,’ she says, grabbing me and giving me a quick, tentative hug. Words spill out of her. ‘I was waiting up for you! Where did you go? We were frantic! Do you know what happened tonight?’ She pulls away, holds me out at arm’s length, and stares at me carefully. One eyebrow pops in concern. ‘You don’t look too hot.’
‘Juanita, can we please go sit?’ I say, my voice suddenly the weariest it’s been all evening. We make our way to her back steps.
In whispers, surrounded by the dark of night and the occasional distant car honk and dog bark, I reveal just what happened at Winkler’s and at Diane’s afterward, pausing to let her drop a curse word at every shocking moment.
‘I can’t believe this,’ she says, staring at me, then staring out at the backyard, a ratty piece of grass with a clothesline and some sad toys belonging to Juanita’s little nieces, who Juanita’s mom looks after during the day.
‘It’s all true,’ I say. And finally, at last, I let myself cry.
Juanita and Connie and Sunny and me are careful about when we cry and just who we let see us do it. Partly because we’re tough and partly because if we were being honest about things, we’d cry a lot more if we gave in at every opportunity. Connie could cry forever about her lousy home life and Sunny about her creepy stepdad and Juanita about the kids who make nasty remarks about her and her family. If we were honest about things, we’d drop tears every day of our lives. So we have to make sure we don’t waste them, I guess.