Hand Me Down (8 page)

Jaime tilts her head into my chest and sighs. “This isn’t fun,” I say.

“Come live with us, and join the twenty-four/seven party!” he says. “We’d have a blast.”

“
You
would,” I say, but he’s already singing along to the radio. I hold Jaime closer like I can attach her to me if I squeeze hard enough. I press my cheek against her hair and my lungs contract. Tears well and feel heavy in the bottom of my lids, but there is no chance in hell I can make a home with my father. My one wish is that Jaime felt the same way because I’m not sure I can make a home without her.

Before Terrance, Mom and I
were a team. She checked Dad’s breath for booze when he came to pick us up, and I was responsible for keeping him sober until he dropped us off. My job was harder. My threats didn’t pack the same punch as Mom’s, and I couldn’t always keep him from stopping at a gas station and cracking open one of his ice-cold Olde English 800s right there in the parking lot. Then Mom realized that sending us to Dad’s was a good way to make time for Terrance, and started encouraging us to visit. She became too distracted with primping for her dates to sniff the air near Dad’s face before we got in his car.

Dad liked to drive the empty farm roads near Crystal’s trailer park village on the outskirts of South Sac. I imagined if I could drive, I’d like these roads, too. Not because there were fewer cops and less traffic on these dark country byways, but because the lack
of lights meant deeper night skies and brighter stars. On the few nights I won the parking lot negotiations, I loved to gaze out the window at the constellations’ glittering outlines: Orion and his crooked belt, the
W
-shape of Queen Cassiopeia, the Big Dipper.

One Friday night, the sky was nearly black behind churning dark gray clouds. The long stretches of green and brown fields were bathed in weak light from a white sliver moon like a scythe. Dad sang along with the Rolling Stones on the radio, “I can’t get no…” He thumped his hands on the wheel, sometimes letting it go to do imaginary drum fills in the air while his pickup swerved left or right. “… Satisfaction.” He bobbed his round head to the beat ringing from his tiny speakers. “Sing with me, girls.”

“Can we listen to my Mariah Carey tape?” Jaime said, pulling the flowered plastic case out of her backpack.

Dad twisted the volume knob up and pretended not to hear her. “No, no, no,” he sang.

“Shh,” I said. “Let’s just get to Crystal’s alive,” I whispered.

Jaime said, “Stop being so paranoid all the time.”

“You should thank me, you know,” I said.

“For being bossy?”

“For taking care of you.”

“I can take care of myself,” Jaime said. She reached across me from the passenger seat and stuffed the cassette into the tape deck.

Mariah’s soprano didn’t get a chance to escape before Dad pushed eject. “No fruity stuff,” he said. He tossed the tape into the pile of pork rind bags, Styrofoam cups, and empty cans on the floor at our feet.

“Hey,” Jaime said, bending over her seat belt and digging her short arms down into the sea of Dad’s waste.

Her head dipped below the glove compartment. “Just get it later,” I said. “Sit up.”

“I can almost reach it,” she said and unclasped her seat belt. I heard the click of the buckle just as I saw both of Dad’s hands abandon the wheel to grip invisible drumsticks. He closed his eyes and we veered left into the oncoming traffic lane.

“Get up, Jaime,” I said. “Now.” I double-checked my seat belt out of habit. Mom had trained us from the second we left our car seats.

“When I’m driving round this world,” Dad sang, still drumming in empty space.

“At least open your eyes, Ringo,” I said. “Jaime, do you want your legs broken?” I tried to grab the back of her shirt but she smacked my hand away.

“Leave me alone,” she said. “Let me do something without you for once.”

“Getting shit from all of my girls,” Dad sang as the right two tires of the truck crossed the painted yellow divider.

My fingers were millimeters from the steering wheel when Jaime sat up. “I found it,” she said, shifting into a crouch and waving the cassette. She beamed at me, her dimples poking holes in her soft cheeks, and I couldn’t help but smile back. “See?” she said. “You don’t always have to worry.”

“Put your seat belt on,” I said, just as the left front tire hit something—a rock, a hole, a cat—and without hands to anchor the wheel, we swung off the road. We jolted up and then down over the
hill of the shoulder, tires kicking up gravel and mud as we thumped through the grass and mucky soil of these farmers’ fields.

My head snapped left, my tongue crunched between my teeth. My chest smashed against the fabric of my seat belt at each bump while my hips tested the strap across my waist. I shot out my right arm to brace Jaime, but she wasn’t there.
Oh God, she’s on the floor.
My knee slammed into the stick shift and I tried to force my head to the right so I could see my little sister, but my neck bounced at the mercy of the truck’s worn tires over an uneven surface, and all I could make out was her shape collapsed in the darkness at my feet.

We skidded to a stop two feet away from a white wooden fence illuminated in the skewed headlights. Cows beyond lay in the damp grass, their legs under them, tags hanging from their ears like reflectors.

“Fuck,” Dad said as he shook his head. “See what you did.”

I took a deep breath.
I should have grabbed the wheel sooner.
I swallowed the blood in my mouth.
Why isn’t Jaime moving?

Dad opened his door and said, “I have to pee.” He stumbled out and tottered away toward a bush. “Be right back.”

I fumbled with my seat belt latch, my fingers shaking and clumsy. I coughed and found my voice through a swollen tongue. “Jaime?” Her body was curled on top of the garbage. White light reflected from the fence in front of our bumper glared in my eyes, but it didn’t show me Jaime in the cave beneath the dashboard.

“Hey, dork face,” I said, struggling under the seat belt. The ding from Dad’s open door was like an alarm, shrill and persistent, pulsating at my temples. “Jaime?” She lay on her side, her knees bent near
her chin, one arm limp across her legs. Her blond hair covered her face and she didn’t move. I couldn’t tell if she was breathing. “Jaime!” I clawed at the seat belt buckle until it unlatched.

On the floor at Jaime’s side, I swept her hair off her chilly forehead, pressed two fingers to her damp neck, and found a pulse. I placed my hand on her chest and put my ear to her nose. Air moved through her nostrils and her lungs rose up and down under my sweaty palm. I patted her down for crooked limbs and open wounds, and aside from a bloody cut on her forehead, she seemed to be unhurt. “Jaime, wake up.” I yanked on her eyelashes and she didn’t flinch. “Okay, drama queen,” I said, and shook her shoulders. “Enough already.” Her head flopped to the side on a neck made of taffy.

The pulse at my temples increased to a vibration, a buzzing warning in my brain building like a swarm of bees. I tugged at her arm and pulled her face out of the trash. I cradled her head and lifted her upper body into my lap, my knee screaming at the pressure. I smoothed her clammy skin with my hand and wrapped my arms around her torso. “Hey, little sister,” I said. “I’m here.” I rocked us gently back and forth like I did at night when Jaime’s nightmares scared her into consciousness, like I’d done when Mom’s and Dad’s screams burrowed through the walls.

I kissed her limp hand. “This isn’t funny, Jaime,” I said. I poked each of her fingertips with my nails. “Open your eyes.” It looked like she was sleeping, but she was so pale. Tears streamed down my face and for the first time in years, I didn’t know what to do. There was no pay phone nearby, no house with a friendly porch light. How long had it been since we’d stopped? A minute? Five?

“Jaime,” I said softly. “Where’d you go?”

Raindrop pings sounded on the roof. A cow mooed. I rocked with my back against the door handle and Jaime’s wilted frame against my bruised chest, swaying faster as I tried to force more air through my tightening lungs. Water splattered us from Dad’s still dinging open door, and I tilted my head toward the moon but its light was shadowed in charcoal clouds. I whispered in Jaime’s ear, my wet cheek pressed against her hair, “Don’t leave me here alone.”

I clutched my sister like she was a life raft and cried into her blond strands that were thicker, darker versions of mine, squeezed her so tight it was like we had one set of lungs, one heart pounding in my head. I hugged Jaime and closed my eyes while the rain beat a million tiny drums around us.
I don’t know how to live without you
, I thought at her.
Come back
.

She murmured and opened her eyes. Her head lolled and she squinted at me. “Nerd,” she said and smiled. “Why are we on the floor?” I laughed, silent tears flooding my face, and helped us up onto the wet bench seat.

“We should take you to the hospital,” I said, examining the cut on her forehead.

“I hate hospitals,” Dad said, sliding back into the cab and shutting his door. The shrill dinging stopped and I heard my hammering heart and Jaime’s labored breathing.

“Jaime hit her head and passed out,” I said. “You know, when you crashed.”

Dad said, “We didn’t crash,” and leaned over to look into Jaime’s eyes. He held up three fingers and asked her to count them. She said she didn’t feel woozy, she knew her name, and her vision wasn’t blurry. “She’s fine,” Dad said and turned the key in the ignition.

“She was unconscious,” I said. “Aren’t you worried?”

“I’ve hit my head plenty of times,” Dad said.

“I’m fine,” Jaime said.

“Brain trauma is serious—”

“What are you, a doctor?” Dad said and put the truck into reverse.

I quoted Mom: “It’s better to be safe than sorry.” I pulled Jaime’s seat belt around her and made it as tight as possible.

Jaime said, “I’m okay, Liz, really.”

“That’s my girl,” Dad said, getting back on the empty road. “Reids are too strong for hospitals.”

“You can’t know for sure if her—”

“We can’t know anything for sure,” Dad said, cutting me off. He flipped the radio knob and the voices of the Beatles filled the cab. “Chill out.”

I buckled myself in and wiped at Jaime’s bleeding forehead with a tissue, my muscles more tense than ever. Dad used one hand to tap drum beats on the wheel like nothing had happened, and I understood then that Jaime and I were on our own. I had to stop biding time, waiting for the relief troops to arrive. No one was mounting the rescue I’d been naive enough to hope for, and Jaime had paid for my hesitation.

Back at Crystal’s trailer I cleaned and bandaged Jaime’s forehead cut and called an advice nurse when Dad went to the bathroom. I observed Jaime like she instructed—though she strongly suggested we go to the ER—and Jaime was never out of arm’s reach near Dad again.

All that night I replayed the memory of my little sister lifeless
against me in the damp night air. I relived the guilt over my too-slow reaction, the fear that she wouldn’t wake up. The fiery terror I’d felt in my gut when I thought Jaime may not return to me burned in nauseating waves, and I used the blaze to fuel my defense boot camp, my new twenty-four-hour guard. I was all Jaime had now. I needed to be tougher.

“You could live with me,”
Rachel says when I tell her I’m moving to Salt Lake City.

“Yeah, right,” I say. We’re sitting on the floor of her bedroom, Pearl Jam on the radio,
Cosmo
magazines open to beauty how-tos. Rachel already applied my makeup, eye shadow and lip liner in darker shades than I would have chosen, and now she’s fussing with my hair.

“Why did you do this without my help?” She makes a “grrr” sound as she tries to make my too-short and uneven bangs—the result of a school-less day spent with scissors at Gary’s—look stylish. “Seriously,” Rachel says over the buzz of the hair dryer. “My dad loves you.” She blows my jagged bangs to the side and pins them. “We could share this room,” she says. “I’ll give you half my closet.”

I tear up. It’s like Rachel offering me her kidney. I say, “If it was my choice, I would totally stay here.”

“My dad could talk to your mom,” she says, turning my head and brushing my hair from my scalp to the blondest tips at my shoulder blades. “He thinks you’re a good influence on me. And you do the dishes and stuff.”

“I think my aunt Tammy already bought a plane ticket,” I say. “She’s pretty cool. My mom says I’m a lot like her.”

“Well then she must be cool,” Rachel says. “But wouldn’t it be so much cooler to live with me?” She beams. “We could be like real sisters.”

“We are like real sisters,” I say, leaning to nudge her with my shoulder. “Moving away won’t change that.”

She shoves my arm. “You can’t leave,” she says. “Who will explain things like symbolism to me?” Her hazel eyes fill with tears. “I can’t imagine not seeing you every day.”

“Me, either,” I say, and scoot closer to her. “Who’s going to make me laugh through all this bullshit?” I say and lay my head on her shoulder.

“No more
Cosmo
quizzes during lunch hour,” she says, and half-laughs, half-sniffs.

I smile as my own eyes moisten. “No more bedroom karaoke weekends with your boom box or rainy walks in the park.”

“No more baking peanut butter brownies and lemon bars and stuffing our face while watching
My So Called Life
,” she says and sighs. “Jared Leto is so hot.”

I laugh a little as liquid slides out of the corners of my eyes. “No more walking the halls together singing, ‘Son of a Preacher Man.’”

“But you’ll be back soon, right?” Rachel says. “I mean, this is still your home.”

“I don’t know when I’ll be back,” I whisper. “I think it might be a really long time.”

“What did your mom say?”

“She’s acting like this isn’t a big deal. Like moving to a new city
by themselves is something all teenagers do in the middle of their freshman year.”

Rachel puts her arms around my shoulders and squeezes. “I’m sorry, Liz Wiz,” she says after a few minutes. “Will you at least be able to visit?”