Open Mind: Chapter Nine

Word had gotten around before I even arrived at dinner that I would have a tutor. It wasn’t even the fact that I was getting a tutor -- that was already uncommon for the residents of Dogwood. Most residents weren’t considered worth the effort, or were considered too much of a physical risk to the potential tutors. This Annie girl had developed quite the reputation around the facility with the girls who had been there longer. I found out all about her from Adrianna at dinner that night.

“You’re going to absolutely hate her,” Adrianna guffawed. “And I, for one, am glad that your memory is back so I can see you lose your mind on her.”

“How can she possibly be that bad? Is she like, super hateful or bitchy or something?” I shoveled a mound of mashed potatoes in my mouth. The medication made me unnaturally hungry, and I was willing to overcome the terrible milky blandness of mush in order to quell the hunger pangs.

“No, the complete opposite. An absolute bore.”

“A whore?” I asked, mouth full of potatoes.

“Bore, Skylar. Bore. Snoozefest. Nothing going on.”

“Big deal. I’d rather she be boring than annoying.”

“But that’s just it,” Adrianna argued, using her plastic spork to gesture towards me. “it’s annoying because she is so boring. Too clean and detached and perfect. It really gets under the skin of the girls here.”

I just shrugged. Adrianna was probably right; she did not sound like the kind of person that I would get along with outside of Dogwood. I was instantly reminded of all the Heathers I’d ever met in my life and how their perfect smiles and perfect lives seemed infuriatingly impossible to maintain. Nothing real ever seemed to affect them; their boyfriends were all alive and unproblematic, their parents were annoying but endlessly supportive, and their grades never dropped below an A minus. The pieces of Annie started to fall into place and the alarm bells blared.

“What should I do,” I asked in a sardonic panic. “I mean, I can’t really get away from her. And I guarantee you that making nice with this girl is going to be a part of my ticket out of here.”

“Oh, no doubt.”

“I’ll just keep my head down and listen to what she says and not talk at all if I can avoid it. Just do my work and let her get her credit hours, or whatever.”

“You? Keep you mouth shut? Hah!” Adrianna cackled and rocked back in her seat. “You been here how long now and you haven’t once kept your mouth shut.”

“That’s not my fault. It’s the medication.”

“Yeah, yeah. That’s what we all say,” Adrianna laughed as she got up from the hard, metal table. I noticed when she stood up that the table was bolted to the ground and didn’t give at all when she pushed against it with her belly. She tossed her plastic tray on the rolling cart beside the table.

I sat alone with my thoughts for the first time since I’d left the doctor’s office a few hours before. So much had happened so quickly for me, but at the same time, it had been such a long time. How much had I missed? What was being said about me at school? What was my mom doing now that I was gone? Was she still seeing Frank? Was Frank my new dad now?

I shook my head to dislodge the thought from my mind. I refocused my attention to the unidentifiable lump of brown meat smothered in brown gravy on my brown tray and considered my position. I felt helplessly trapped. I could feel the walls closing in around me and my eyes stung with tears as I held them back. My body shook and I couldn’t catch the air in my lungs. The reality had finally cut through the fog of chemicals in my brain. She left me here to rot. My mother made the choice to dump me here instead of work on herself.

I jumped to my feet and stomped out of the kitchen. I rounded the corner and made my way to the front desk. Donna sat behind the computer screen, her eyes glazed over and lost in thought. I startled her back to reality when I slammed one of my fists on the counter.

“I demand my one phone call!”

“This isn’t prison, Skylar,” Donna scoffed.

“But you do only get one phone call a day,” squeaked the voice of a younger boy in the chairs behind me. “Mister Greg said so.”

“Boy, if you don’t mind your own daggone business,” Donna snapped.

“Okay, then. Give me my one phone call a day or whatever,” I said.

“Is that how you speak to adults?”

“When I need something from one, yes.”

“Well that is not how we communicate to one another around here,” Donna said. Her eyes returned to her computer screen. “So you might wanna take five and come back to me when you’ve calmed down and can ask me with a little more respect in your voice.”

“I don’t have five minutes and I don’t need them. What I need is to use the phone.”

“That was worse,” the boy laughed. “Miss Donna is gonna be pissed.”

“Jared, what did I tell you about cussin’? You better knock that off before I call your momma. And I know how she feels about you cussin’.”

“You can’t tell my momma nothin’ you goddamn hag!” Jared cried out as he lept to his feet. He pulled down his shorts to reveal his blindingly white buttocks before he bolted down the hallway.

“Oh, I’m definitely telling her now.”

I could hear a distant screech of what sounded like a pterodactyl. I turned to face the sound, but Jared was long gone. One of the adults came around the corner from the other end of the hallway and shot Donna a confused glance. He was a squat, balding man and a bushy black beard.

“Don’t look at me like that, Greg,” she said. “That’s your boy.”

“That is NOT my boy,” he laughed. His voice was both deep and soft. “And I thought you had him ‘under control’ up here. Those were your words.”

“Sorry Mister Greg,” Donna called in an irritating sing-song. She looked over to me and laugh-coughed. Greg rolled his eyes and continued down the hallway, calling out to Jared to come down from the top of the door.

“Mister Greg is one of the good ones,” Donna said to me offhandedly.

“I don’t care,” I grunted.

“You’re gonna care. You might not like me, and that’s fine -- most the girls around here don’t. They hate their mommas just like you do, so they hate me. That’s fine by me. Hate me all you want. But you’re gonna be real miserable if you can’t find some staff around here to trust.”

“Fine,” I muttered. “I’m sorry.”

“For what,” Donna asked, clearly taking some joy in watching me submit.

“For being a bitch.”

“You shouldn’t talk about yourself like that, Skylar.”

“Well, it’s true. I’m being a bitch. That’s why I’m here. I’ve seen the error of my bitchy ways. The true answer is to accept love and friendship and to accept the wisdom of my elders.”

Donna raised one eyebrow and grabbed the phone from behind the counter.

“You’re the elder in that situation, by the way.”

“Oh no, I got that part loud and clear.”

“Like, probably the elder-est elder here, right?”

“Be quiet and take this phone before I change my mind,” Donna scoffed as she handed the phone to me. She picked up another phone and started to dial on it.

“What are you doing?”

“I’m dialing the number your mother gave for us to call.”

“I know her phone number. I don’t need you to dial it.”

“It’s procedure. I will be on the other line listening, but I will only interrupt if you or your mother say anything inappropriate.”

“That seems like an invasion of privacy.”

“You’re at Dogwood, Skylar. You get exactly as much privacy as we give you. If you want to have private phone calls, earn your way out of here.”

I shot her the nastiest look I could muster and left the reception desk, phone in hand. I passed the handful of kids in rocking chairs, their empty eyes staring into the bright lights of the television screen. I passed Adrianna, sitting beside a staff worker on the floor and talking in hushed tones. Her eyes met mine briefly, and her tone lowered even further. In another room, a burly woman held open the swinging door. I caught a quick glimpse of Jared, his head in his hands, sobbing as Mister Greg watched over him. As I held the phone receiver to my ear, I could feel the crushing sadness sweep the air from my lungs. I couldn’t tell if it was my own sadness or if I was leeching it from all the kids around me, but it felt like my own in that moment.

A voice on the other line pulled me away from the spiral my mind was following.

“Mom?” I asked feebly.

“It’s me, Sky. How are you holding up, mija?”

I couldn’t believe that she had the nerve to ask me such a stupid question. I opened my mouth to speak, but I could faintly hear the phlegm-laced cough of Donna on the other end. I took a moment to compose myself as best as I could and answer through gritted teeth. “Not great, Mom. I’m not going to lie -- this is not how I planned to spend my Thursday, and pretty much every Thursday till graduation.”

“I know, Sky. I know. And I know that you are not happy with me.”

“No,” I lied. “I actually don’t feel much of anything, thanks to all the medication they have me loaded with.” I threw open the swinging door to my assigned bedroom. It was just as bare as I had left it. “Do you have any idea what they have me taking?”

“The doctor keeps me up-to-date on it, yes.”

“Yeah, but do you know know, you know?” I flopped onto the bed with a back-shattering thud. It knocked the wind out of me and I couldn’t hear Mom’s response over my coughing as I struggled to catch my breath.

“--but they assure me that they are monitoring it closely.”

“Fine. What’s the deal with this tutor that you requested for me?”

“I didn’t request a tutor for you,” Mom said with genuine confusion in her voice. “It’s probably not a bad idea, but it wasn’t my idea.”

“It’s fine, you don’t have to lie about it. The doctor told me that you requested her.”

“Skylar, I-”

There was an uncomfortable silence that fell over the line. My mother had all of this time -- however much time had actually passed -- to ruminate on our falling out, and there was a part of me that wanted to hear her explain herself. A part of me hoped that maybe she had come to her senses and realized how she had overreacted. That was how she typically operated.

“Skylar, we need to talk about what happened.”

“Then talk,” I said flatly. “Why am I here?”

“That was out of my control, Sky. You had alcohol in your system. That had consequences for both of us. The court ordered you to be placed in Dogwood, and I had to pay a fine and take some bullshit childcare classes at the--”

Donna’s voice cut through and interrupted my mother. “Deborah, be honest with your daughter. And please do not cuss.”

Mom cleared her throat. She did not like to be interrupted, but it was clear that she knew she was not in a position to argue. “That is the truth, ma’am. But the bigger truth is that I think you need to be there, mi quiedro.”

“Don’t be cussing in Spanish either, Deborah.”

“Oh my God, Donna. That is not a cuss word,” I sighed. “But what do you mean by I need to be here? You really think that I’m that messed up?”

“It’s not your fault, Skylar,” Mom said. “You’ve been hurting, and I haven’t given you the help and support that you need. I see that now.”

“So you’re making me someone else’s problem? Wow, that childcare program really is amazing.”

I could hear the sharp inhale of breath from my mother’s end of the line that usually preceded an octave shift and a verbal beat-down, but it did not come. She hesitated for a moment, then released the breath into the receiver with a harsh crackle. “I have always wanted better for you than I had.”

“What’s that mean?”

“When your father and I were first together, I’d run away from home. My parents -- your grandparents -- were not good people. They fled Mexico with nothing but their clothes on their back, settled down in California, and were convinced that their life there would be better. But the devils from their home in Mexico did not stay there, and they could not outrun them. After several years of working the fields and scrapping by, they were able to afford a home for themselves and their two children.”

“I didn’t know I had any aunts or uncles on your side of the family.”

“You don’t,” my mother said with deadly stillness. “Those two children died in a house fire in ‘53, and the rest I’ve outlived. That fire, set by the “rencor,” as my father called it, was the bad blood that had followed my parents to California. Bad blood, and stolen money, it seemed. Whether they blew through the money or lost in on the journey north, I don't know. All I know is that there was never a day in America that they didn't struggle.

With the house fire, once again my parents found themselves penniless and alone, so they moved eastward from state to state, working fields and staying one step ahead of the men who were after them. I was born on that journey, and I came of age here in Missouri.”

“So what happened to them … your parents?”

“I don’t know. Maybe their past caught up with them, or they could have run themselves into the Atlantic Ocean by now. I don’t know because I never looked back.”

“Don’t you worry about them? Don’t you miss them?”

"Do I miss being beat by them? Do I miss being called a whore and a slut by them for seeing your father after school? Do I miss working fields every summer till my hands bled and it never being enough for them? No, I don't. But what’s done is done. It’s behind me now. Whether they are here or they are gone, they are dead to me now. I do not look back, and neither should you. You have so much pain and heartache -- we both do. Leave it back behind you.”

“And what if I reach the ocean? What if I can’t run anymore?”

“I’m sorry to interrupt,” Donna’s voice softly interjected, “but your phone time for tonight is up. You’ve got a minute or so to say goodnight.”

“We can talk more when I come to our first session together,” Mom said gently. “Thank you for letting me tell you all of that.”

“A nice distraction,” I accused of her. “But it still doesn’t tell me why I’m here.”

“Because you’ve reached the ocean, mija. And I can’t bear to see you drown.” Her voice faltered with the last word as she struggled to keep her composure. “Goodnight, Sky.”

“Night, Mom.” I waited to hear the click of the line before I hung up on my end. Donna was already waiting for me outside the door. She knocked and, without waiting for me to respond, entered the room. I handed her the phone and she looked over me with concern.

“That was heavy. Do you need to talk about it?”

“I’d rather not,” I mumbled. “You heard it all. Unless I need your permission to think by myself, I’d like to be alone.”

“Don’t get used to it,” Donna said with a half-hearted smile. “Tomorrow, I’ll be on you. You can’t run and hide from us.”

And with that wonderfully upsetting parting thought, I rolled over and allowed sleep to overtake me. And it was the last night that my dreams were not filled with thoughts of you.