Smog - Baggage of Enternal Night (6 page)

Chapter 15

I opened the garage door, then went
in. I kept my bike near the middle, near some boxes of Christmas decorations
and Dad’s tool desk, which he never used but kept in perfect order.

I moved the kickstand up,
grabbed the handlebars, started walking the bike to the front of the garage—

CJ stood there. “Going
somewhere?” He was shirtless, dressed in nothing but shorts and flip-flops.

“Maybe,” I said, trying to
sound like a sullen kid sister and not a scared-to-death daughter trying to
save her mom.

“Like where?”

I tried to roll the bike around
him, but he moved to block me. I uttered an exasperated sigh and said, “To the
store, okay?”

“For what?”

I glanced across the street at
Debbie’s house and said the first thing that came into my mind. “A hammer and
nails.”

“Dad’s workbench is right
behind you; he’s got a hammer and plenty of nails.”

“CJ, get out of my way.”

“Make me.” He planted himself
firmly and crossed his arms.

My heart was pounding, my grip
on the handlebars was slick with sweat. There was no way I could get past him,
and I sure couldn’t beat him. Give up and try again later? Hope he didn’t
decide to bring Debbie over to see my mom next?

“What are you doing, CJ?” It
was Sandy, and I’d never been so glad to see a naked woman lounging in her
doorway.

“Nothing,” CJ shouted back over
his shoulder. “I’ll be there in a few minutes.”

“But CJ,” Sandy whined, “I want
to fuck
now
.”

That did it. CJ turned to call
to her, “I’ll be right there, baby.” Then he looked back at me a last time.
“Have a fun ride, dope. Too bad you won’t get very far.” He walked off to join
Sandy; together they went back inside her house.

What did that
mean? Why won’t I get very far?
The street was empty, and CJ was
preoccupied. Nobody was around.

He’s just
being mean
.

I got on the bike, desperately
hoping that was it, trying to ignore how nervous I was, how much I wanted to
turn around and run back into the house…but that didn’t seem any safer at this
point. So I kept pedaling.

I’d gone about four blocks when
I noticed something: the air was cleaner here, the smog lighter. The yellow
tint that hovered perpetually over our street was milder here; the sky almost
had a hint of blue to it. My lungs and eyes weren’t burning as badly.

Then I turned a corner and saw
the roadblock.

Maybe fifty yards down,
sawhorses had been set up to form a barricade completely across the street.
There were trucks parked just behind the sawhorses, big, camouflage-green troop
carriers. Men with rifles patrolled around the trucks.

For a second I thought,
They’ll
help!
Then four rifles lowered and pointed at me.
At me
.

“Halt!” somebody yelled. I
didn’t even see which one.

I coasted to a stop but didn’t
get off the bike. “Can you…” I tried to shout for help, but I felt like I was
about to throw up, and my voice didn’t work. I cleared it and tried again. “Can
you help me?”

“You’ve got ten seconds to turn
back.”

What?
The soldiers
hefted their weapons, and I tried not to imagine any trigger fingers getting
sweating and slipping. “But I…”

“…nine…eight…seven…six…”

“My mom needs help!”

“…five…four…three…two…one…”

One of them fired a warning
shot. The asphalt three feet to the left of me spat up little bits and a plume
of dust.

I turned my bike around and
pedaled harder than I ever had in my life. I fully expected to feel the bullet
hit my back any second—would there be pain, or would I die instantly?

But they didn’t shoot. They let
me go. And I kept pumping the pedals as fast as I could, until I skidded to a
halt in the garage. I just dropped the bike and ran into the kitchen. “Mom!”

I ran up and hugged her, and
she comforted me as best she could. “What happened, baby?”

“I tried, I really tried, but
there were soldiers, over on El Nido, and they
shot
at me, Mom.”

“Oh my God. Are you all right?”
She pushed me back to look me over, her movements frantic.

“I’m okay.”

We stayed there for a few
seconds, then I said, “What are we going to do?”

“I don’t know.”

And at that moment I
realized—maybe for the first time—that my mom was not infallible, that she was
helpless, and that it was entirely up to me.

Chapter 16

CJ came in an hour later. He had a
long chain and a padlock. He undid the handcuff attached to the refrigerator
handle, closed it again, looped the chain through it, and then used the padlock
to secure the chain to the handle. Mom could move around now, maybe ten feet,
but she was still a prisoner.

As he worked, CJ talked. He
said he wanted to have a party at our place tonight. He wanted Mom to cook
something nice.

“We don’t have anything,” she told
him.

He laughed. “I’ll hunt
something up.”

Fifteen minutes later he was
back. His arms were stained crimson, and he carried a sodden brown paper
grocery bag. “See what you can do with this,” he said, handing the bag over to
Mom.

She reached out and pulled out
a mottled red filet so fresh it was still dripping blood. “What…?”

I cut her off. “
Don’t
,
Mom.”

She looked at me…and she knew.
She knew what the meat was from…or rather
who
. She stared at it, as the
juice ran down her wrists, and then she dropped it. It hit the floor with a wet
splat
. “I…I won’t…”

I leapt forward to cover for
her. “God, Mom, you dropped it.” I picked it up and carried it over to the
sink, talking over my shoulder as I washed it off. “We can let it marinate for
a while in some of that teriyaki sauce we’ve still got, then grill it. I think
we’ve still got some onions…”

CJ bought it, or at least
decided I was no threat. “Good. I’ll tell the gang.”

He left.

Mom dropped. Or at least she
dropped as far as the chain would let her. I made sure CJ was gone, then knelt
by her. “I’m sorry, Joey, I can’t do this…”

“You’ve got to.” I took her
hands and pulled her back up. “Just until I can figure out how to get us out of
here.”

When she looked at me, her eyes
were haunted. “Did CJ kill Marge?”

“No. Debbie did.” That was
almost true. I didn’t mention that CJ was probably the one who’d thought of the
oh-so-clever way to dispose of Marge’s leftovers.

“I don’t understand…what’s
happened here?”

“I don’t know, Mom. We just
need to focus on our own stuff right now. And that means doing what CJ wants
for at least tonight.”

Mom glanced at the bloody pool
the filet had left on the floor. “I can’t, Joey…”

I grasped her hands as hard as
I could and saw her wince. “
You have to
.”

She didn’t nod…but she opened
the refrigerator, reached in, took a gulp from a bottle of vodka, pulled out a
bag of onions, and started chopping.

Chapter 17

Three hours later, CJ had Larry and
two other boys I barely knew seated around our big redwood table in the
backyard. I was playing waitress, bringing the food out to them, keeping them
supplied with drink. They’d shown up with a couple of crates of beer; I didn’t
ask where they’d found them.

They laid into Mom’s cooking
with relish. There’d been half a dozen slabs of meat in the bag, and Mom and I
had turned ourselves to stone and cooked them up.

“God
damn
, CJ, but your
mom can cook,” Larry said around a mouthful of rare steak.

I was just setting down the
last of the cooked meat when CJ fixed an eye on me and said, “There’s only one
thing wrong with this dinner: little sis isn’t joining us.”

The boys all laughed and
agreed.

I nearly puked.

“I ate already,” I said. It was
a bad lie, and CJ saw through it.

“Oh, c’mon, there’s always room
for a little
housewife
!” His audience roared.

CJ held out a half-finished
plate to me. He jabbed a fork in a piece the size of a Ping-Pong ball and put
it up to my mouth. The rest stared, waiting.

Larry leaned forward. A trickle
of saliva ran out of the corner of his mouth. “Hey, CJ, I’ll give ya twenty
bucks for your sister.”

CJ snickered. “She’s
twelve
,
man.”

Larry’s eyes crawled down over
my body. “I know.”

I was going to end up as
Larry’s dessert if I didn’t do something, so I grabbed the fork CJ held up and
bit into the speared portion.

I won’t tell you what it tasted
like or what the texture was, because I made a deal with myself as I chewed
that I would never think about those things. Ever.

Instead I chewed and swallowed
and smiled. “Not bad. A little heavy on the tobacco for my taste.”

They laughed again, and CJ
clapped me on the back as he handed me the plate. “You’re all right, kid. Here,
you can have the rest.”

He turned back to the guys, already
forgetting me. I took the plate and walked back into the house. I forced myself
to walk slowly and steadily, one foot in front of the other, up for the step
that led into the house, right around the corner of the door. I set the plate
down on the kitchen counter by the sink.

I ran into the bathroom.

I waited, but I didn’t vomit. I
even wanted to. I worried that something was wrong with me if I didn’t. My
stomach roiled, but the food stayed down.

An hour later, CJ and his
buddies were all passed out in the backyard, crumpled beer cans in the grass
around them. I deliberately dropped a heavy pan in the kitchen to see if it
would wake them. It didn’t.

Mom watched as I went through
the kitchen cabinets until I found what I wanted: her heavy wooden rolling pin.
It was solid enough that I had a hard time holding it up long. It was what I
needed.

“What are you doing?” Mom
hissed at me.

“I’m going to get the keys to
that lock,” I told her, nodding at the padlock that kept her chained to the
refrigerator.

“You can’t. CJ keeps them in a
pocket.”“I know.”

Mom looked at the rolling pin
and knew what I had in mind. “Joey, he’s your brother…”

“I won’t use it if I don’t have
to. And if I have to…I won’t kill him, Mom. I promise.”

Of course I had no way of
keeping that promise. The pin felt heavy enough to kill a giant with. I
could’ve taken out Odd Job with it. But at that moment, after what CJ had made
me do (and what Larry
wanted
to make me do), I didn’t much care if it
killed him or not.

“Joey…”

I didn’t answer her. I was
already creeping out the back door.

It was a warm night; a glow in
one part of the sky told me the moon was full, or nearly so, but it was hidden
behind the smog. I paused to let my eyes adjust, then picked my way on tiptoe
around the debris.

I passed Larry first;
fortunately he was snoring loudly enough to cover any noise I might have made,
but the idea of having to walk too close to him still made me shiver. The other
two guys were to my right. CJ was to the left.

My brother was sprawled in the
lawn on his back, arms thrown out, head tilted to one side. He wasn’t a snorer,
but his breathing seemed deep and even. I knelt down in the grass beside him
and set the rolling pin down, pondering.

Where to start? I might only
have one shot at this, so I needed to do it right the first time. Of course if
the keys were in a back pocket, I was out of luck. I tried to remember what
he’d done with them after he’d locked Mom up, and I was pretty sure he’d shoved
them into a front pocket. I was on his right side, that pocket just below me,
so it should be easy enough…

He moved beneath me, shifting
position slightly to his left.

I froze, fully
expecting him to wake up, see the rolling pin, guess my plan, and hand me off
to Larry (“
Here, man, I won’t even charge you
”). Or maybe they’d just
eat me. At least they wouldn’t get much meat.

But instead he continued to
sleep, and the pocket was now easier to reach.

I took a deep breath and slid
my hand out. I rested my fingers lightly on the top of the pocket, and CJ didn’t
react. I slid my three middle fingers in up to the first knuckle, and he slept
on. This was it.

I moved my entire hand into the
pocket and gently felt around.

Some papers…two coins…lint…

Keys.

I slid one finger through the
key ring, and started to pull, as slowly as possible. Slowly…the keys were
coming…slowly…the key ring was appearing now…

The keys came free from the
pocket.

They jingled.

I turned to stone.

CJ didn’t wake up.

I moved my other hand to form a
fist around the keys, muffling any further sound. Then I rose and returned to
the house.

As I entered, Mom looked on
anxiously. “Did you get them?”

“Yeah…”

I walked towards her, uncurling
my fingers from around the keys. I’d gripped them so tightly it hurt to move my
fingers.

Shaking slightly, I went
through the keys quickly. House key…another large key…a car key I didn’t know
he had…one padlock key.

I slid it into the lock. It
didn’t fit.

“What’s wrong?” Mom asked.

“I…” I looked at the name of
the manufacturer on the key and the one on the padlock.

They were different. This was a
key to
another
lock. Probably his school locker or maybe his bike.

“It’s not here.” I tossed the
keys up onto the kitchen counter. “They must be in one of his other pockets.”

I walked over to the door.
Behind me, Mom called out, “Joey, stay in.”

But I was mad. I was going to
get those keys no matter what. Even if I had to kill someone.

Even if I had to kill CJ.

I strode across the lawn, less
caring if I made noise or not. I’d left the rolling pin behind, and I dropped
to my knees by CJ, retrieving the heavy wooden tool. If the key was in his left
pocket, there was no way I could reach it without waking him…unless he was
already unconscious.

I raised the rolling pin over
my head. My muscles shook from the effort. I wanted this all to end, and this
was the only answer I could see.

I sat there for seconds,
quivering, panting…until the rolling pin fell from my hands into the grass.

I couldn’t do it. I couldn’t
kill CJ.

I picked up the pin and
staggered back into the house. I locked the door behind me. Mom watched me with
wide eyes.

“I didn’t get the key.”

“CJ…?”

“He’s fine.” I returned the
rolling pin to its place in the cabinets. I was disgusted with myself. I was
weak, a coward, useless.

“Honey…you did the right
thing.”

“No, Mom, I didn’t…because
you’re still locked up.”

Mom nodded at CJ’s keys. “You
got the keys. And look at it this way: at least he can’t get back in without
them, can he?”

I hadn’t thought of that, and
it made me feel better. I ran to the front door to lock it and checked all the
windows and the garage. Mom was right—we’d at least bought ourselves a little
extra safety.

I still slept that night on
some cushions I dragged into the kitchen to be with Mom.