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  Momma didn't have an iota of dignity when she flopped over that chair. She flailed about like a fish out of water for a few moments and groaned. As I hurried Rodney out, I looked back at her and saw her dazed expression. She didn't know why she was on the floor. It had surprised and frightened her more than it had hurt her.

  The tears were streaming down Rodney's face so fast, I couldn't wipe them off. As soon as the ones on his cheeks were gone, they were followed by more until I held him tightly and promised him things would be all right.

  "I'll go back and help her," I promised. "You just go to school and everything will be all right later. You'll see."

  He stopped trembling and after we walked some more, he calmed down enough to at least go to school. But the memory of all that was too much for me to swallow. It came up and up like bad food and I had this rush of dizziness and the trembles.

  It passed after a few calm moments and I felt my breathing get regular again. I sat up, drank some water and went to the window. The rain had stopped. Sunlight was slicing through the clouds, turning the drops into jewels on the leaves and on the grass. Everything glittered and looked fresh and clean.

  It really wasn't much of a storm, I thought, but it was something, and now look how beautiful the world becomes.

  Why can't that be the same for us?

  Why can't Doctor Marlowe help us spread the dark clouds apart and let in some sunshine?

  I heard them coming back and sucked in my breath, willing to try, willing to hope.

  That was something, at least.

  Wasn't it?

  4

  "H ow are you doing?" Doctor Marlowe asked as soon as they were all back in the office.

  "I'm okay;' I said.

  "We can stop for today," she suggested.

  I saw the looks of concern on the other girls' faces. They looked sincere, worried.

  "I'm all right," I said more firmly. "I'd rather get it all out and finished than have to sleep on it and come back and do it again tomorrow."

  Doctor Marlowe looked at the girls and they all took their seats. I remained standing, my arms folded under my breasts. I felt like one of those lawyers on television talking to a jury. Doctor Marlowe was the judge and the other girls were the jury, but who did I want to make look guilty? Just my parents or the whole world?

  "Doctor Marlowe always says we should try to face our demons head on," I said.

  Jade nodded. Misty's lips relaxed into a small smile and Cat stared intensely, making me think hard about every single word.

  "I hate remembering that day, but I hate being afraid of the memory more. Anyway, after the assistant principal threatened me again, I just started screaming and pounding my own legs. It felt good, like I was unloading all this weight. I guess he'd never seen anything like it and went rushing out for the nurse. She came back with him. By that time, I was pulling on my hair and shaking my head so hard, I could feel my neck twisting to the point of snapping. The nurse put her arm around me and tried to hold me.

  "'Call for the paramedics!' she ordered and the assistant principal ran out again to do it. I did calm down, but I couldn't stop gasping. I had painful hiccups too. The paramedics came in and got me to lay down on the stretcher. They buckled me in and rolled me out of the office and put me in the ambulance.

  "There were lots of kids watching from windows and from the doorway, but I didn't care.

  "At the hospital emergency room, they lifted me onto a table in an examination room and left me there. A nurse looked in on me from time to time and kept telling me the doctor would come soon, but I think I was there for almost an hour before any doctor showed up. I kept dozing off and waking to the sounds in the hallway: people crying, orders being shouted, footsteps and stretchers being rolled.

  "They called Momma but she didn't answer. She had gone out, I guess. That's what she told everyone later anyway. The nurse came in to ask me if I knew where she might be and I told her about OneEyed Bill's.

  "Finally, the doctor saw me. I was asleep when he came and he woke me up and told me I'd be fine and I didn't even need any medicines. I remember thinking he was very young, too young to be a real doctor.

  "'What I believe you experienced was an anxiety attack,' he said. 'You've got some heavy personal problems,' he added.

  "He recommended I see the hospital

  psychologist. When Momma finally showed up, he told her the same thing and wrote out the name of the doctor.

  "She was angry more than worried because it cost her two cab fares, one to come down to get me and then one to get me back home. From what I could tell, she couldn't remember what had happened that morning. She told the young doctor I'd be all right and I didn't need to see a psychologist and besides, there was no money for such things. We didn't have health insurance.

  "So I went home with her and went to bed. She gave Rodney dinner and then I woke up because she was moving Rodney's cot-bed and things into my room. She pretended she was doing it for me, but I would soon learn she was doing it because she wanted to bring Aaron Marks home with her and Aaron didn't want a child in the same room.

  "Momma then went off to work at One-Eyed Bill's as if nothing had happened. Rodney didn't understand why I had been in a hospital, but he was happy to be in my room, staying as close to me as he could. I was so tired from my period and the events, I couldn't keep my eyes open. I remember I helped him go to sleep and then I slept so deeply, I thought I dreamed hearing Momma come home, hearing her laughter and Aaron's voice. It was real late.

  "I woke before Rodney did the next morning and I sat up thinking about my dreams, wondering how much was true and how much was imagined. A little afraid and a little curious, I slipped off the bed and walked barefoot to the door of Momma's bedroom. It was shut tight, but I opened it slowly and quietly and peeked in to find Aaron Marks beside her in the bed, the both of them naked, their arms twisted around each other like pipe cleaners.

  "I closed the door and quickly retreated to my bedroom, still feeling too sick to have an appetite or to want to get up and dress.

  "Rodney got himself up and all, but he didn't want to go to school. I had to force him. I wanted him out of the house so he wouldn't see Aaron there. I stayed in my room until I heard Aaron get up and go.

  "The school nurse called and I told her I was fine and resting. Momma still hadn't gotten up. When I went out to the kitchen though, she shouted for me to make her some coffee and bring it to her.

  "'As long as you're home, you might as well be of some use,' she said.

  "I made her the coffee and brought it to her. She groaned and sat up, keeping her eyes closed as if the lids had been turned to lead. After a sip, she fluttered them open. They were so bloodshot, I could barely make out the pupils.

  "'Your brother off to school?' she asked. Why didn't she think of that first? I thought.

  "'Yes. That man was here with you last night,' I said.

  "'So? Get used to it. I ain't becoming a nun just because your no-good-for-nothing of a father deserted me. Truth is, he wasn't much of a lover-man anyway.'

  "I didn't want to hear any more of it so I went back to my room. She spent almost the whole morning sleeping and then she went to work earlier, probably to meet up with Aaron, I thought. As usual, I made Rodney supper and helped him with his schoolwork. By now we were almost by ourselves in the world anyway.

  "When I returned to school the next day, the assistant principal didn't bother me. Most of the other kids had found out about my episode in his office and there was gossip, but after a while, they lost interest in it and for me it was just like a bad dream.

  "This particular episode had all begun with my first period. That was my entrance to womanhood," I added. "For a while after, every time I got my period, I thought about all those events. Maybe remembering made it worse for me each time. Things certainly didn't get any easier around the house and Aaron was there more than I wanted him to be. The more Momma did with him, the less she did for Rodney and me,
not that she ever did all that much.

  "There were times when we didn't have anything to eat and I had to go look for her to get some money. She tried having a charge account at the Spanish grocery on the block, but when she failed to pay the bill on time twice, they stopped letting us charge things. Rodney was eating so much peanut butter, he could have made commercials for the company.

  "He was outgrowing shoes and clothes, but Momma didn't seem to notice or care unless I pointed it out and then there was all the complaining about how much things cost and where was my good-fornothing father who could make a kid but not care for him9 If Momma was drunk, she could rant about this for hours. I'd hear her voice in my dreams. I used to think her shouting and hollering got stuck on the walls like glue and just played itself over and over until I was sleeping with my hands over my ears or my pillow over my head.

  "It's raining pain, I would tell myself. Once, when Momma began one of her frequent tirades, I actually went to the closet, took out the umbrella and opened it, holding it between me and her. She went wild, screaming about all the bad luck I was bringing into the house.

  "'What about all you're bringing in?' I screamed back and she threw a frying pan at me. It would have hit me if I didn't have the umbrella and use it like a shield.

  "Rodney started to cry so I scooped him up and went to my room, shutting the door. She kept yelling for a while and then settled down, but while she did, I held Rodney and petted his hair and kept him from crying. It got harder and harder for me to handle it all until one day, I did something that helped, something that really could stop the rain of pain:'

  "I'd like to hear about that," Jade said. "Nothing really helps me."

  "Me too," Cat added softly, almost under her breath. "What stopped your pain?"

  Misty just had that happy-go-lucky smile on her face as if she knew.

  "I had a blanket when I was little that Daddy once jokingly called my magic carpet. It stuck in my head and when I saw the movie Aladdin and saw the magic carpet, it made a big impression on me."

  "So you went flying off on your blanket?" Jade asked with disappointment darkening her eyes.

  "I suppose I did," I said.

  "What?" Misty said, her smile widening. She looked at Jade, who grimaced, shook her head and raised her eyes toward the ceiling.

  "Go on and laugh, but it worked for me."

  "What worked for you?" Jade demanded. "You're not making any sense."

  "I took my blanket and put it on my bed and lay down on it, folded myself up so my knees almost touched my stomach. It felt better that way."

  "Oh," Jade said as if she thought that was it: a way to ease the menstrual cramps.

  "And then I left," I added.

  "Left?"

  "Yeah, I guess I left in my imagination, but it helped. I saw myself flying off, out the window and out the city. I went to every place I ever dreamed about or saw on television and wished I was.

  "I floated over the ocean, over forests and other cities. I actually saw things as if I was up high, everything looking so small like toys. My imaginary trips took long too because when I returned to my bed, more than an hour passed sometimes and I always felt better.

  "It got so I began to lay on my blanket whenever I was unhappy or Momma made me mad. I'd just wander off to my room, spread the blanket out on the bed and spread myself over it, folding my legs and closing my eyes. Then I was gone and I didn't hear anything, not Momma's stream of complaints or drunken laughter or shouts at Rodney. I was gone.

  "When I came back, I felt refreshed, lighter. Rodney would tell me he had shaken me to tell me something and I didn't open my eyes. He said he shook me hard and finally, he gave up. Once, he did it and just sat on the floor waiting and when I opened my eyes, he said he had been watching my face and I had been smiling so much. He wanted to know why. I didn't want to tell him so I just said I had had a good dream."

  "That's all it was anyway, right?" Jade asked, looking to Doctor Marlowe, "a dream? She didn't go anywhere."

  Doctor Marlowe hesitated before responding and looked at me as if she was deciding whether or not to bust my bubble.

  "It might have been more than just a dream," she said. "It might be a form of meditation. I meditate myself," she confessed.

  "I really don't know what that is," Misty said. "I thought it was the same as dreaming."

  "No. When you dream you are really still in a conscious state but the mind is being bombarded by different images you don't control. Dreams are more or less random. You can deliberately think of things, but there's no guarantee you'll dream about them after you've fallen asleep. Meditation is a higher form. In meditation, you deliberately set out to put your mind on another plane, another level. What Star was doing was concentrating so hard on her desire to leave her surroundings, she took herself to a higher plane and the result was it relaxed her. People meditate to avoid stress."

  "Can we do that, too?" Jade asked.

  "Yes. After we've all had an opportunity to talk, we'll discuss ways to relieve the tension and stress you're all experiencing and one of those techniques will involve some meditation. I'm not suggesting it's the cure-all, but it can help."

  "I always did feel better," I emphasized. The others looked at me with envy. "Sometimes, I wished I never came back," I said.

  Doctor Marlowe's face grew darker, her eyes more intensely on me.

  "There's always that danger," she said. "We're here to make sure that doesn't happen." She looked at the others. "To any of you."

  Maybe it was the way she said it or the way the others looked after she had said it, but suddenly it occurred to me how serious all this was, how we were all walking along the edge of different cliffs and how we could misstep and fall or deliberately fall into our own private oblivion. The atmosphere in Doctor Marlowe's office suddenly seemed heavier, all of us lost for a moment or two, thinking about our personal danger. I didn't know Jade's story or Cat's yet, but I looked from face to face and saw an identical terror in their eyes. I saw the concern in Doctor Marlowe's too and I remembered what Granny had said when she had dropped me off this morning.

  "You're too young to become someone's lost cause, hear?"

  I hear, Granny, I thought. I hear.

  They were all waiting for me to continue. I took a breath and did so.

  "I was listening closely to you yesterday, Misty, when you started talking about how you felt about your father's girlfriend and about going to his apartment when you knew she was there with him and what it was like for you," I said "But at least you could choose to go or not.

  "I was about fifteen by now. One afternoon when I came home from school with Rodney, we saw suitcases and a couple of boxes in Momma's room. She wasn't there. Rodney looked at me and I thought first, maybe it's Daddy. Maybe he's finally come back.

  "Rodney couldn't remember him, but I could, of course. Lots of times I have come here and talked about how I felt about my daddy, so I guess I should talk a little more about him. I told you how I was always hoping that he would return and how I always hoped the phone was ringing because he was on the other end ready to tell Momma he was on his way.

  "We all talked about hate here, maybe me more than anyone yet. Maybe Jade and Cat are going to say a lot more when their turn comes, but my granny isn't wrong when she says hate is a two-edged sword. Yeah, you stick it in someone, but you're sticking it in yourself at the same time. That's what the minister said in church one Sunday when I went with Granny. She kept shifting her eyes at me as he preached about driving the hate out of your heart before it rots the good in you.

  "Nothing made me hate my daddy more than his leaving us, and nothing made me want him more. When I was little and we had some good times, I remember him carrying me on his shoulders. I remember holding on to his hand, feeling how tight and strong a grip he had, and I remember never being afraid as long as he was with us.

  "After he left and me and Momma and Rodney went anywhere, I couldn't help but feel this empty
place beside us. Sometimes, I'd forget and think Daddy just walked away for a moment. He will be standing right next to me soon. Of course, he wouldn't, but that didn't stop me from glancing to the side and thinking about him.

  "Momma's a tough little woman. I don't think too many people, including men, would want to tangle with her. She could be a wildcat, so it wasn't that I was physically afraid. I just felt . . . like we were less, if that makes any sense;' I said.

  Misty looked like she understood more than the other two. Jade turned her eyes from me and Cat stared at the floor.

  "What I mean is it didn't help me just to have another man come into our house. It didn't make me feel better or safer. If anything, I think it went the other way.

  "But that's what those boxes and suitcases meant: Aaron Marks was moving in to live with Momma. I could smell him in the room already.

  " 'Whose is that?' Rodney wanted to know. 'Are we moving away, Star? Did Momma pack us up?'

  " 'No Rodney. We aren't moving anywhere. We're stuck here.'

  "About two hours later, the door opened. Momma and Aaron came in, both laughing. I was mashing up some potatoes for Rodney to have with his hamburger. Momma was dressed in her Sunday clothes and Aaron was in a suit with the tie loose. He was not quite as tall as my daddy and much wider in the hips with a little paunch. His head was rounder and his hair was thinner, showing a lot more forehead, which I thought made his eyes look larger. He had a nose with a bump in it because it had been broken a few times. He had tried to be a prizefighter when he was younger and ended up being one of those sparring partners that gets his head beat in regularly, which was what I thought accounted for his dull, dumb face and empty eyes.