“I know that you are,” I commiserated. “Maybe you could try to switch shifts. It’s hard on you to work nights.”
“You’re not understanding. I’m tired of my life and I’m not doing this anymore.” She dropped the duffel bag that she’d carried from the basement and threw up her hands. “I’m not doing this, not any of it.”
“No, I don’t understand,” I answered slowly. “Why do you have that bag?” It looked stuffed, like she hadn’t been able to close the zipper all the way. Clothes poked out through the opening.
“Zoey? Are you still here?” Willow called. “Did you wash my black leggings? The ones with the pocket in the waistband?”
My mom swung her head in the direction of those words, coming from what had been her former bedroom with my dad. “Does that make it clear? She never shuts up!”
“I know that you’re still angry,” I said. “What happened wasn’t her fault.”
“No? It wasn’t mine either, and I’m tired of suffering for it! I’m not an old woman. Not yet,” she told me. “I can’t do it anymore. Here.” She bent and took a moment to rummage through the clothes in her bag. The last time I’d seen that particular duffel had been years before, when we’d taken a family vacation to the beach in Alabama, but we hadn’t done anything like that in a long, long time.
I pointed to the envelope that she pulled free of a lacy bra, one I didn’t recognize from our laundry. “What is that?”
“Money,” she said. When I didn’t reach for it, she threw it onto the table. “I’m leaving.”
“You’re going out?” I asked, but when she failed to answer me, I suddenly understood that she meant something a lot more permanent. “Are you saying that you’re leaving us?”
She still didn’t answer.
“Where are you going? Why?” No, I already knew why. She’d been mad for years but I had managed to hold us together. “Why now?” I specified.
I watched her face soften. She smiled! “I met someone,” she told me. “We’re going to be together.”
“What…”
“You and your sister are both adults and you can take care of yourselves. You were always the smart one, Zoey. Don’t let this ruin your whole life like it almost ruined mine.” She glanced around the kitchen. “This place is a little hell.”
“It’s not that bad!”
“Zoey!” Willow yelled from her room.
“Don’t let it happen,” my mom echoed. “You have to get away, too.”
“I can’t ‘get away’ and neither can you! I’m your daughter, and Willow and I are sisters, and there’s no…where are you going?” My voice was shaking and it was loud. “Mom. Mom! Stop!”
She didn’t. She picked up her bag and she walked out of the house, escaping from our little hell.
I also escaped, but only to go to work. “Is your car fixed?” Anita asked me that afternoon. I was supposed to be making copies for the upcoming social studies lesson and the administrative assistant’s desk was near the machine, the one that wasn’t broken.
“What?” Oh, right, I had told her that lie. “It’s fine,” I answered.
“Good, I’m glad to hear it. And how is everything going in your classroom? No problems with Phil?”
“What have you heard?” I asked her, because things weren’t going so great at the moment. My cooperating teacher seemed to be permanently angry at me and I wondered if she would tell me why he disliked me so much, if it was my bad teaching or if it was something about my personality that was doing it. But she said that she was only checking in, and that she was available if I needed anything. As it happened, I did. “I have a list of questions about the district, all specific and weird stuff. Could you help me answer them?”
She was happy to, and I listened and took notes but I was distracted. I had been for the whole day, so I didn’t notice when Brent drew a picture of a penis on his tablet that overlayed a photo of a grain silo. I only saw when the kids around him exploded in laughter, and then the cooperating teacher stepped in because we’d just had a serious talk about my struggle with behavioral interventions—in other words, I wasn’t doingdiscipline right, and he had more deficiencies to tell me about, too.
I remained distracted when I drove downtown after school, so I missed a good parking spot and had to circle around the block again. Then, after I’d pulled in, I sat in my car for a moment and pressed my thumbs into my brow bone before I stepped out. I realized I’d forgotten to lock it and went back before I walked to the coffee shop on the corner.
Everett Ford was already inside, with a cup of a thick, green liquid in front of him on the table. “I was surprised to hear from you already. You work fast,” he greeted me.
“Anita knows everything.” I took out my phone and noticed that my mom hadn’t responded to any of my messages. Had she blocked me? I opened the page of notes I’d taken as I’d talked to the nice admin at my school. “I could have just sent this to you.”
“I had time. Can I get you something?”
“No, thanks. I don’t like coffee.” I pushed my phone over to him. “Here, you can see what she told me about bullying during gym and parent dissatisfaction with the high school advanced math classes.”
