I remember something in time to try again. Mr. Garcia’s daughter, Josie, went to my school. “What if I were your daughter, Mr. Garcia? Trying my best to just keep my family together—”
I know I’ve said the wrong thing the instant I say daughter. Mr. Garcia’s mouth slams shut, his eyes burn bright with anger. He shakes his head, then his fist right in my face. I step back.
“My daughter died,” he spits through clenched jaws. “She was a little chubby her whole life. I said, ‘Don’t you worry about it, Josita,’ but she did. And she died! So, no, you can’t have none of those things in there, I don’t care who it was! Now it’s an it, and you get it out of my apartment by the end of the day!”
I know when to stop. There’s nothing to say to him after this. I nod and step through my doorway. He’s still shaking.
“She died!” He shouts and raises both fists. “Right there in the street! Right in front of me!”
Any hope of gaining his sympathy is gone. Instead, I feel sympathetic for him. “I’m sorry.”
“Your sorry don’t mean nothing,” he says, more quietly, in a voice raw with pain. “They should all be put down. They’re not who they were anymore. I would rather she be dead than what she had become.”
“I’m sorry,” I say again, then add, “but I’m glad I found my mom. I don’t want her to be dead.”
He only looks at me with blank eyes worse than any Connie’s. “By tonight. Or else I get the police to throw you out.”
I’m not sure he can do that, but I don’t want to find out. And this place, it’s a dump, anyway. I hate living here. I don’t like anything about it, so this is a chance to move on to something better, right? Except I have no idea of where I’m going to go or what we’re going to do. As Mr. Garcia stomps away down the stairs, the Wentlings’ curtain twitches again. I see Jerry looking out. He’s smirking.
I flip him a rude gesture. He makes an exaggerated frowny face, then puts both his fists to his cheeks and twists them like he’s wiping tears. Jerk. I can’t forgive him for this, even if he did save my life.
I close the door behind me and turn, jumping when I see Opal standing there. “You scared me!”
“What’s wrong with Mr. Garcia? Why was he shouting?”
Cotton candy–colored explanations want to come out of my mouth, but once again I figure it’s best to be honest. “He wants us to move out.”
“Oh.” She ponders this. “Because of Mama?”
“Yeah.” I sigh, scrubbing at my sleepy-eyed face. “Yeah, because of Mama.”
“He’s a jerk.”
“Yeah, but unfortunately, because he owns this building, we have to do what he says.” Suddenly, I have to sit at the table. My legs won’t hold me. My sore butt thuds hard in the chair, which creaks. I almost hope it breaks, since it’s not ours and we can leave behind a broken chair.
“What… where are we going to go? Hey, does this mean I don’t have to go to school today?” Opal rustles in the fridge for something, pulling out a carton of orange juice she drinks from without a glass. “Gross! Use a cup!”
She shrugs and tosses the empty into the garbage. “There wasn’t enough left, anyway. So, school?”
“You have to go to school.” Before she can protest, I hold up my hand. “I need to figure all this stuff out, Opal. Where we’re going to go. All of that.”
“But I can help you—”
“Not this time. And if you miss another day in school, you could get into trouble. Or worse, I could. You remember what I told you back when we were first moving here, right?”
I’d had to petition for guardianship of her, even though I met the new lowered age for stuff like that. Everything was a mess, social workers didn’t know what was going on, getting help meant standing in line for hours or being sent to group homes until things could be figured out. Kids are used to grown-ups telling them what to do. Most of us, if we were told we had to go to a group home, went. The only reason I’d fought against it was because of Hope, our neighbor across the street. She’s the one who told me about the new laws and how to apply for whatever we needed. She and Garry were moving away, too, to someplace closer to her kids, she said. Someplace in the Midwest, which hadn’t been hit as hard as Lebanon had.
“You said that you were going to be able to take care of me,” Opal says.
“Yeah, and what else?”
“You said we had to work extra hard to make sure we proved we could do this on our own, because…”
“Because why?” I prompt. I know she knows the answer. She’s just being stubborn, and really, I can’t blame her.
“Because we can’t give them any reason to take me away from you, or to treat us like kids who don’t have anyone. So they won’t make me go into a group home or something.”
“Right.” Because of the new laws, I’m considered an adult, no group home for me. But they could take Opal away, place her with a new family, even have her adopted. “If we want to stick together, we have to do stuff right. Not get into trouble at school.”
She sighs and scuffs at the floor. “I know. I just hate school! I hate it!”
“I’m sorry, school sucks. I know.” I’m sympathetic, but there’s nothing I can do. “But you have to go today.”
From Mom’s bedroom, I hear a low noise and leave off the conversation with Opal to go check. Mom’s fine, sitting up with one arm held awkwardly behind her because of the restraints. She’s tugging a little.
“Hold on, Mom, I’m sorry.” I unloose her. She gets up before I can stop her. She pushes me, not hard, but hard enough. She lurches past me and is through the doorway before I can do anything.
But it’s okay. My heart’s thudding, but she’s just going to the bathroom. Using the toilet, thank goodness. She breathes a sigh that sounds a lot like relief. I can’t say I blame her.
“She went to the bathroom all by herself!” Opal sounds proud.
“Yeah. Let’s give her some privacy.” I keep the bathroom door cracked open, though, in case she needs us.
“Velvet, why can’t we just go home?”
My mind’s whirling with everything that’s going on, but I fix on this. “To our house?”
“Yeah. It’s still our house, isn’t it?”
“I think so.” The freeze on accounts means the bank can’t repossess a mortgage until everyone whose names are on it have been legally determined to be dead or Contaminated. I don’t know enough about that sort of thing to understand it, just that some people are saying it’s good because it means they’re not losing their houses, and others are blaming the bad economy on the fact the banks aren’t being paid.
“It’s still there, isn’t it?” Opal looks hopeful.
“It should be.”
From the bathroom, we hear the toilet flush. Then the sink running. She’s washing her hands, and I peek in to check. Mom’s standing there with the water running, not doing much of anything, so I put the bar of soap in her hands and she finishes.
We haven’t been back to our house since the soldiers came to round us up. Not just us, everyone in the neighborhood, because of the high numbers of Connies in the woods. The military was supposed to come in and clean it up. They said they wanted us all out for our own safety, but I’m not so sure they didn’t have other reasons. Like not wanting witnesses.
“Just take the essentials,” the soldier had said. “Pack a bag for yourself and your sister. We’re taking you someplace safe.”
My mom had been gone for a few days by that time, but I knew she was out there. She’d been standing at the sink peeling a potato with a knife when she started twitching. The knife had clattered into the sink, like in slow motion—that’s how my mind had seen it. That’s how I remembered it. I remembered the way she’d gripped the edge of the sink with both hands, so tight, her knuckles turned white.