Grace
There was just no getting around it. Curtis Schoenfeld was a giant stinkhead. Grace had known it for a long time, and so she wasn’t quite sure why she’d listened to him, and why she’d let it hurt her feelings, what he’d said.
Why had she even believed him?
She sort of had, though, and that was just the problem.
You know how sometimes the nicest person in the world will yell at you and hurt your feelings because you’re doing something like talking too much when they’re trying to think or worry (or both)? Well, stinkheads are just the opposite of that, Grace supposed, because every now and then they will open their stinky mouths and say something horrible that might even possibly be true.
It was at the Saturday night meeting, the one in the church. Except not the church part of the church, not the religious part. It was the room where they did quilting lessons and had potlucks and stuff, and Sunday school, except this was only Saturday.
Some people even called that meeting the kid meeting, because lots of the people there were new in the program, and babysitters cost money. So people just brought their kids along. And it was a very big, very long room, so that the meeting people could sit on one side and have their meeting, and the kids could sit on the other side and be kids.
The kids had to be quiet. The meeting people didn’t have to be quiet.
That F-word guy was sharing. One of the guys Grace didn’t like. He seemed mad at everything, so that when he met you, he was already mad at you, and he didn’t even know you yet. And every other word that came out of his mouth was that one Grace would not be likely to mention (but it started with an F).
“I mean, really,” she’d said once, complaining about him to her mom. “Every other word. Get a dictionary.”
It’s not like she exactly cared. She knew the word. She’d heard it before. It just seemed rude.
So Grace was on the other side of the room with Curtis Schoenfeld and Anna and River Lee. Anna and River Lee were playing pick-up sticks, but Curtis couldn’t play, because he was in a wheelchair, and he couldn’t reach down that far. He had that spinal thing, that spinal-something. He always said spina-something, but Grace knew he was just being lazy or stupid and leaving off the “l” at the end, because everybody knows it’s spinal, with an “l” at the end. He was older than Grace, maybe even twelve, which is why she thought he should know these things.
So Grace wasn’t playing pick-up sticks, either, because Curtis couldn’t. How nice is that? Which is why Grace thought, after the fact, that it was a particularly bad time for Curtis to go and be a poophead to her.
And she wasn’t shy — also after the fact — about sharing that opinion.
So, anyway, he leaned his big head over to her (he had a big head and a red face, that Curtis) and said, “I heard your mom went out.”
Grace said, “Curtis, you big moron, she did not go out. She’s sitting right there.” And she pointed to the meeting side of the room.
He laughed, but it wasn’t like a real laugh. It was more of a fake laugh, like an idiot laugh. First it just squeaked out of his stinky lips like a balloon when you stretch the end (the end you just blew into, that is) and let air back out. But then later he changed it on purpose, and then it sounded like a donkey making that donkey noise.
Grace usually tried not to talk about Curtis like he was a total poophead, because you’re supposed to be extra nice to someone who’s in a wheelchair, but Curtis Schoenfeld just kept pushing it too far. Sometimes you just have to call a poophead a poophead, she firmly believed, no matter what he’s sitting on.
“Not out of the room,” he said, “out of the program. She’s out. She’s using. I can’t believe you didn’t know.”
Then the room got kind of spinny for just a second, and she could hear all those F-words firing off like little pops from a toy gun, like little firecrackers, and Grace remembered thinking how she had been extra-sleepy lately, her mom. That was in the one second before Grace decided to decide it wasn’t true in any way.
So she gathered herself up big and she said, “Curtis Schoenfeld, you are a total boogerhead!”
The F-words stopped. Everything stopped. It got real quiet in that big room, and Grace thought, Ooooops. I think that might have been just a little tiny bit too loud.
Grace always had trouble with that. Loud came naturally to her, and quiet took a lot of work, and if she let down her guard for even one tiny little second the loud would come marching right back in again.
Grace’s mom got up from the table and came back to the kid part of the room, and all three of the other kids gave Grace that look. You know. That “you’re gonna get it now” look.
She took hold of Grace’s arm and walked her outside.
It was dark out there, and kind of cold. People always think it doesn’t get cold in LA, but it gets plenty cold sometimes. And, also, they were in a neighborhood where it’s not so smart to be outside, but Grace figured her mom must’ve thought they were close enough to the people inside to be OK. Well. She didn’t know what her mom thought, really, she just knew what she thought, which is that she would yell like the devil if anybody came up to them, and run inside for help. And she knew her mom must’ve felt safe enough, because she lit a cigarette and then sat down on the cold street with her back up against the church.
She ran a hand through her hair and sighed real big, and Grace could see a sort of embarrassing rip in her jeans.
“Grace, Grace, Grace,” she said. She seemed too calm, and Grace wondered why she wasn’t getting mad. “Can’t you ever just be quiet?”
“I try,” Grace said. “I try to be quiet, really I do.”
Her mom sighed another time, and puffed on her cigarette, and she seemed to be moving kind of slow.
So then Grace gathered up everything she had that was brave, and she said, “Are you on drugs again?”
She braced for her mom to get mad, but nothing happened.
Her mom just blew out a long stream of smoke, and stared at it all the way out, like maybe if she watched closely enough it might sing and dance or something, and Grace remembered thinking she was pretty sure her mom used to do everything faster.
When her mom finally said something, this is what she said: “I’m going to meetings. I’m at a meeting right now. I still call Yolanda every day. I’m working my ass off here, kiddo. I don’t know what more you want from me.”
“Nothing,” Grace said. “I’m sorry, I don’t want anything more from you, that’s fine. I’m sorry I was too loud. I was trying to be quiet, really I was, but then Curtis Schoenfeld was a boogerhead to me. And when I was trying to be extra-nice to him, too. He’s such a liar. I wish I didn’t have to go to meetings with him. Couldn’t we go to different meetings, with no Curtis?”
A really, really long wait while her mom decided to answer.
“Like which ones? They don’t all allow kids, you know.”
“Like that nice AA meeting at the rec center.”
“Right now I need the NA ones more.”
“Oh.”
“Just play with Anna. And…you know…the one with the weird name.”
“River Lee.”
“Right.”
“I wasn’t playing with Curtis. You don’t have to play with Curtis for him to be a boogerhead to you. He just is. There’s no staying away from it.”
Grace’s mom stomped out her cigarette and peered at her watch, extra-close in the dark, as if it had to touch her nose before she could see it.
Then she said, “Deal with it for another twenty-five minutes, ‘K?”
Grace sighed loud enough for her mom to hear. “OK,” she said. But it came out sounding like the F-word guy trying to say “pleased to meet you” and not sounding very pleased.
All three of the kids were staring at her when she went back in.
River Lee said, “Did she yell at you?” in a sort of almost-whisper.
And Grace said, “No. Not at all. Not even a little bit.”
She was being kind of snooty-proud in front of Curtis, and she knew it.
Nobody went back to playing right away, which was weird, because then they pretty much had no choice but to listen to the meeting. This ratty-looking woman, the kind of person you see sleeping on the street, shared how her kids got taken away when she went to jail for helping her boyfriend rob a bank. All behind drugs. They gave up the kids because they wanted more drugs, and that seemed like a good trade at the time.
Really depressing.
Then some other people shared, and they were sort of medium-depressing.
Some meetings weren’t depressing. That nice AA meeting at the rec center was much better, Grace felt, because the people there had more time in the program, and usually it didn’t make you want to kill yourself.
After the meeting Yolanda came up to Grace, and smiled down from way up above her, and Grace smiled back.
“Hey, Grace,” she said. “Do you have my phone number?”
Grace shook her head and said, “No, why would I have your phone number? It’s my mom who’s supposed to call you, not me.”
“I just thought you might want to have it.”
She handed Grace down a piece of paper with the numbers on it, and Grace read them off to herself, though she wasn’t sure why. Maybe because it felt like school, like homework, as if Yolanda were saying, “Look at these numbers and see if you know what they all are.” Grace knew her numbers really well, but did it anyway.
“OK. Um. Why would I want to have it again?”
“Just in case.”
“Just in case what?”
“Just in case you ever needed anything.”
“Then I would ask my mom.”
“Well, just in case she wasn’t around, or you couldn’t ask her for some reason.”
“Like what reason?”
“I don’t know, Grace. Anything. If you were alone or something. Or if you were having trouble getting her to wake up. If you got scared about anything, you could call.”
That was when Grace decided not to ask any more questions. Not even one more.
“OK, thanks,” she said. And she stuck the phone number in her pocket.
“Don’t tell your mom.”
“OK.”
Stop talking, she was thinking, but she didn’t say it.
Then Yolanda gave them a ride home, which was good, because it’s scary riding the bus home in the dark, and Grace was already scared.