Furious, I whirled around. “A door without a lock isn’t going to keep creeps out of our bedroom.”
My mother had been beautiful once, before drugs became her sole focus in life. But now her skin was waxen and her body gaunt. Only her eyes remained the same, a pretty light blue shade like my sister’s, but her pupils were merely pinpoints from all the cocaine she’d snorted today.
“My friends aren’t creeps.” My mother crossed her too-thin arms over her chest.
“Your dealer is.” I propped my fisted hands on my hips. When high like she was right now, my mother didn’t care about anything. “He offered Rach cash to blow him.”
My mother’s gaze widened, which told me she didn’t know. I’d wondered if she did.
“No partying tonight, Lorraine,” I said firmly, wanting her agreement. My mother was a lot of things, most not good anymore since drugs became her priority. But if she agreed to something, she usually held up her end of the bargain.
“I think you forget who the parent is.” She came closer, grabbing the iron balustrade to keep from falling over. It wasn’t even five o’clock, and she was already so messed up she could barely stand.
Interacting with her nowadays just made me sad. Every time I looked in the mirror, I told myself I would never be like her.
“I think you forget that you have daughters.” I glanced at the coffee table where an empty vial lay beside a rolled-up dollar bill, and a bottle of vodka that she’d almost finished.
“How can I forget?” Leaning heavily into the railing, my mother gestured to the furnished but unkept interior of our government-subsidized apartment. “I’m the one responsible for all the bills since your piece-of-shit father split.”
“You don’t pay all the bills.” I shook my head, and strands of my long blond hair slapped my cheeks. “We wouldn’t have any food if not for me working at Dick’s Drive-In.”
Mom’s receptionist job at the Land Rover dealership downtown paid well, but her habit ate up everything that wasn’t set on automatic payment. She might be a grownup, but she wasn’t responsible. She was out of control.
“I’m the mother, Adelaide Lucy Footit. You are the child.” She moved in front of me and poked me in the chest with her bony finger.
I hated when she called me by my full name. I hated that all I was to her now was an adversary. She never spoke softly to me anymore, or treated me with consideration like she had before my father abandoned us. Having experienced her gentleness, then having it ripped away because she preferred drugs, wrecked something vital inside me and my younger sister.
“Addy,” I said firmly, correcting her, wrinkling my nose as her body stench and sour breath hit me.
“That’s not the name on your birth certificate.”
“It’s the name I go by, Lorraine.”
This was an argument we’d had before. We were never going to agree, never going back to a time when we shared a love for music and she gave a damn about me. I should have learned to accept it by now.
“I’ve gotta go.” I swiped my apartment key from the decorative green glass bowl my sister had placed by the door, and grabbed my black wool cap from a hook above it.
The tall table the dish rested on, the dish itself, and the hook weren’t my doing or my mother’s. They was Rachel’s.
On eviction day each month, my sister scoured the dumpsters, finding and making treasures from other people’s trash. With her artistic spirit, she did her best to brighten our sad little apartment and make it a home.
Without any talent like that, I didn’t bother. Instead, I worked, I planned, and I saved what I could.
I used to believe in fanciful things like Rachel still did, but those youthful notions died when our father took off. Now I had concrete goals—protect my sister from harm, graduate from high school, and get the hell out of this apartment and Southside Seattle.
When I stepped outside, a blast of wind hit me, feeling as though it sliced through my slender frame. I paused on the stoop to tug on my cap, and the watchful gaze of the afternoon sentry passed over me. At five foot nine, I was impossible to miss.
The sentry’s job was to keep an eye on all the apartments arranged around the rectangle of packed earth where his feet were planted. He worked for Raymond, my mother’s drug dealer. Ray made a lot of money dealing dope, and lived in a unit a few doors down from us with his wife and kids. He was a complete creep, propositioning my sixteen-year-old sister.
Pocketing my key, I pulled the hood of my jacket over my head. The sentry’s gaze slid away. I was beneath his interest. I didn’t dress up or wear makeup like Rachel did.
If I put in the effort, I might turn heads like she did, and like my mom once had, back when my father had been with her. But I didn’t want to turn heads, so I didn’t waste money on makeup and clothes. I focused on what needed to be done.
I jogged down the concrete steps, avoiding discarded needles and broken glass as I made my way quickly along the sidewalk around the rectangle of packed earth. The grass that was supposed to be rolled over the earth had never arrived. Budget cutbacks, we’d been told. A nice thing promised that was never delivered. Disappointments like that were a fact of life in Southside.
Hurrying, I made it to the corner bus stop just in time. My gaze downcast, I boarded and moved to an empty seat close to the driver.
Outside the window, the graffiti-covered buildings and trash-strewn sidewalks that slipped past were familiar and inescapable, so I retreated into my mind. With no radio or portable music player—those were too new and expensive for someone like me—I cranked up the volume inside my head and listened to Brutal Strength’s “Burning Off and On.”
My knee bouncing to the beat, I allowed myself to believe the hope the lyrics spoke of were real. I imagined I was dancing under pulsing lights, like I’d danced in front of the Z28 while Barry had watched me.
Music was a companion that never abandoned me. Music helped me not to feel so alone, even if it was music only I heard.
At the next stop, a guy with tattered clothes that stank and hard eyes that made me nervous got on the bus. He gave me a long look before he found an empty seat several rows behind me.
I could feel his stare. The fine hairs at my nape stood on end, but I kept my gaze straight ahead and didn’t let on that he spooked me. Fear equated to weakness.
In Southside Seattle, weakness could get you killed. I knew how things worked. I’d lived in Southside all my life. You put one foot in front of the other. You settled for what you got. You did what you needed to survive. Then you did it all over again the next day.
At the next stop, I quickly exited the bus. I breathed easier on the sidewalk, relieved that the guy with the hard stare remained on the bus. Another plus, the buildings lining this section of the Avenue were nicer. Nicer in Southside meant less graffiti and not as much trash.
As another blast of autumn wind cut through me, I got my ass in gear. I needed to hurry, or I’d be late for work. The worn soles of the boots that my father had bought me before he’d taken off and never been heard from again slapped the pavement in time to the beat of a different song. This one wasn’t a radio tune. It was one I’d heard the new dishwasher sing.
My shoulders hunched against the cold and warding off any interested stares, I moved along, passing a couple of homeless guys taking shelter in boarded-up doorways. Wearing multiple layers of clothing, they looked bigger than they really were.