Part 1: 7 - Acceptance
Fourteen-year-old Barb learns she is a winner in 1984
Things That Can’t Be Broken is a novel presented as a live draft, one chapter every week.
Last week: 6 - Allen Haven Ranch Maeve and Todd build a California dream together, 1981
Part 1 | History is an Angel
7 - Acceptance
Barb Ames
May 31, 1984
La Mesa, California
Barb could feel every pebble through the bottoms of her tattered fake Vans as she walked the last few blocks home, Charlie in tow. The shoes would have to hold up for the next couple of weeks until eighth grade was over. Her stained backpack was heavy with Math and Social Studies books to study one last time before tomorrow’s tests. She would have to check Charlie’s homework too.
He was still getting used to her being in full charge since Mom started her second job working nights at the Super 8. It wasn’t that different, she usually worked past dinner time anyway. They just didn’t see her at all some nights now and she was asleep when they headed out to school the next day.
“Charlie! Keep up!” She shouted back at her little brother. Charlie was a third-grade turd-face, full of spunk and always in trouble. Now he had his face in a thick blue juniper hedge. She stopped and yelled back, “What are you doing?”
“There’s a nest,” he shouted into the hedge while waving her over with one freckled arm, “You gotta see!”
Barb trudged back to take a peek. “You’re right, Charlie.”
There were eggshells crushed into the stick-and-laundry-lint cup along with some grey down. “It looks like the birds are gone,” she said. She reached in carefully and lifted it out for him.
Charlie put out both hands to receive the gift. “Rad!” His green eyes lit up.
Barb smiled to herself while Charlie peered down at the nest, tripping over sidewalk edges like a gangling puppy in his still-too-big shoes. The sun was hot on the top of her head. She pulled her unruly hair back into its scrunchie. Barb didn’t look forward to summer, sitting in the stifling house day after day, avoiding Dad and waiting for school to start up again. Charlie would spend most of his time down the block with his friends, RJ and Blake. He was always good at making friends.
At the beginning of the year, she thought she had made a friend, but that never panned out, not after the new girl found out that Barb was known as “the smelly hag”. The label was given to her by the popular girls after the incident at the girls’ bathroom in fifth grade, back when she was still Barbara. She was friends with a group of popular girls, or so she thought. She had been invited to sleepovers, they shared snacks, played Chinese jacks. . . All that ended abruptly one day after lunch.
“Hey, let me in!” Barbara had yelled into the bathroom door. She charged, pushing her shoulder into the door. Her supposed friends were inside snickering and holding it closed. “It’s me, Barbara. Come on! It’s not funny!”
Whoever was holding the swinging door had suddenly stepped back and Barbara went right to the floor with a whoomp! The tiny square tiles of the bathroom floor, a dead earwig in the corner under the long sink, and the flowers on Michelle’s Keds, pert and perfect below neatly folded white ankle socks, were instantly branded into her brain.A playground monitor blew a whistle and yelled into the bathroom, “What’s going on in here, girls?”
“She fell,” said Stacy, then put her hands over her mouth to hide a grin.
“Are you okay?” The monitor had asked, while giving Barbara a hand to get up.
Barbara felt her face go bright red. Her ears burned. Moments before, she had thought of these girls as friends. Now, they were all trying to staunch laughter.
“No playing around in the bathroom, girls,” said the monitor, as if the joke had been on her and not Barbara, “Come on outside now.”
“Her face is so red!” Stacy laughed.
Barbara had tried to get past her anger. “Why didn’t you guys let me in?”
Michelle looked Barbara in the eye. “We don’t like you anymore.”
Barbara’s jaw dropped, “What? Why? Cara, I gave you my chocolate milk.”
They blurred together, a four-headed mass of pink and ponytails. “You smell funny, and you dress like a boy,” said one head. “We don’t want you around. Go somewhere else,” said another.
Barbara looked hard into all their faces. They just stared, until Stacy turned on her heel. The three other girls followed like well-trained dogs, leaving Barbara standing there in a stupor. Everyone came to know her as “the smelly hag” after that.
Barb never spoke to any of those girls again. She didn’t have much use for friends, anyway. Why bother? There were more important things. She had Charlie to look after. And, she closed her eyes, crossed her fingers, and bit her lip—she might win a place in the Allen Horsemanship Program.
As they climbed over the hump of the block, she could see their yard with its tall dried weeds popping up just past the neighbor’s cute little lawn edged with purple pansies. A little girl burst from the door and toppled down the front steps, spilling a pink bucket full of toys. A chubby old lady, had to be her grandma, scooped the girl up immediately and dusted the fresh cut grass off her knees. After a quick hug from the grandma, the girl scrambled to pick up her toys.
What was it like in that perfect little world? The dad never yelled that she had heard, and her bedroom window was only a few yards from their kitchen. The little girl was tiny and pretty like a doll with shiny black hair. They were all pretty like that. They could be a family on TV.
Charlie, still looking down at his nest, walked right into Barb and startled her. “We’re home, you nut,” she said to her brother. He followed her between the weeds through the path to their front porch.
At least Dad’s truck wasn’t parked at the curb today. Life was much more peaceful when Dad wasn’t home, and he hadn’t been home for several nights. It wasn’t unusual for him to not show up, but it had been longer this time. Maybe he wouldn’t come back at all. Where did he go? She didn’t even care as long as she didn’t have to listen to him always complaining, or yelling, usually about something to do with money. Mom told her she should be respectful, that Dad still lived there and he paid more than half the rent. Whatever. It was always better when he wasn’t there.
Barb opened the screen and unlocked the door to let Charlie in while she peeked into the mailbox. Her heart fluttered. Underneath the grocery store flyer was a big fat manila envelope. She pulled it out and flipped it over. It was hand-addressed to “Parents of: Barbara Jane Ames.” Her mouth fell open and a rush of air filled her lungs.
Charlie was already in the pantry pulling out the last of the Hydrox cookies, which he knew he was not supposed to have until after dinner. She hardly noticed. Her focus was glued to that envelope. Slowly sliding the sheets of white paper out of the envelope, she scrunched her shoulders to her ears. With teeth clenched and eyes half-squinted, she read, “Barbara Jane Ames has been accepted to enter the Allen Horsemanship Program . . .”
She hopped up and down like a little kid, and ran to the kitchen to hug Charlie, spilling his milk across the table and causing him to drop a cookie on the yellow linoleum. “Stop it!” He yelled, squirming away.
She pulled a crumpled slip of torn paper from her backpack and dialed the number for the Super 8 front desk. “Mom, Mom, I got in!”
“Barbara, honey. Remember, you can’t call me at work unless it’s an emergency. Is everything okay?”
“Yes! I won the essay contest! I’m in the horsemanship program!”
“Oh, that’s great! I’m so proud of you.”
Barb was so excited she struggled to remember why she called, “There’s a paper for you to sign.”
“Oh? . . . Honey, what is this going to cost?”
The concern in Mom’s voice made Barb falter for a moment. A memory flashed of Dad flinging all her Breyer horses from the shelf, watching their legs break against the wall. That was the day he found out Mom bought her one as a reward every time she came home with straight As on her report card. “Nothing.”
“Nothing?”
“Really. Mom, I told you, remember? It’s totally free. All I have to do is show up every day and keep up my grades.” Barb’s heart was pounding between her ears. She would run away if they didn’t let her go. She would take Charlie with her. They would . . .
“Oh, okay, I’ll take a look,” said Mom.
“Thanks, Mom! I’ll leave it on the kitchen counter.”
Barb heard the ding of a door opening over the phone, and then her mother telling a customer, “I’ll be right with you.” Into the phone she said, “I’ve got to go, hon. Is Charlie there? Make sure he eats something besides cookies.”
“I’ll make him a bologna sandwich.”
Mom said, “See you after school tomorrow afternoon,” and she hung up.
Barb found it hard to focus on her homework. The rest of the afternoon and evening were a blur. She managed to get Charlie to bathe and tucked him into bed, but it took her hours to settle herself. It was like she was five again, waiting for Santa to climb down the nonexistent chimney, never sure if he actually would.
Just as she started to drift into sleep, she became aware of a rumble outside her window at the street, and then the clatter of an old diesel pick-up shutting down. “Shit shit shit!” she whispered to herself as she came back to wakefulness. The papers.
She swung out through her bedroom door heading for the kitchen counter where she had left the permission page open with a pen for Mom to sign. She stopped cold.
Dad was already standing there in his rumpled blue work shirt, the paper glowing bright white in his hand. As the dread grew, her eyes drifted down to the ankles of his baggy grey pants held off the floor by steel-toed boots, the steel poking through the torn leather. Maybe tonight would be a good night and he would just put it back down and go to bed. When she looked back up to the frown on his face, she knew it was not going to be a good night.
“What the fuck is this?!” He said, waving the paper at her.
She cringed for a split second then lunged for the paper to grab it from him. He pulled his arm away.
“Oh no, you’re not doing any of this shit, Barbara Jane. Who the hell do you think you are? You think you are going to go prancing around like some hoity-toity on a fucking horse? Do you think we can afford that?”
Barb summoned her courage, “Dad, it’s not . . . You don’t have to pay anything.”
“You’re right!” He opened the lid of the kitchen trashcan, tore the paper once, twice, and shoved it inside with a fist, slamming the lid.
“Where’s your mother?”
Tears started forming. Barb pinched her arm to hold them off. “She’s working.”
“Bullshit.”
“She took another job. She’s working night shift at the Super 8.”
He sneered, “Of course she is.”
Barb couldn’t hold back. Her foot hit the floor hard in a stamp that sent sparks of anger up her calf, “She works the front desk!”
It stopped him for a split second. Then his hands balled into fists and he growled, “You’re an ungrateful little bitch just like your mother. You think you’re some kinda prize and some rich boy is gonna show up to take care of you and buy his little princess a horse? News for ya. You ain’t never gonna be nobody’s prize. You’re too damned ugly for one! Are you even a girl? Pig eyes. Tomato face. That hair. . . And you don’t even know when to shut your mouth!”
Barb’s face felt numb. A black seed hardened in the pit of her stomach.
He slammed a fat white envelope of cash onto the counter and shoved past her. The rush of air was thick with booze as her shoulder hit the wall. A calendar swung on its pin before it slid to the floor. “Tell your mom to pay the fucking rent so they stop calling me at work!”
She glanced at the hallway where Charlie was blinking and rubbing his eyes. She went to him, turning him gently away, and holding his shoulders to her chest. The lump under her ribs grew.
Dad glanced at them as he clomped back through the house and out the front door. “Lock it!” was all he said.
Moments later, the truck’s door slammed outside, and it rumbled away.
“It’s okay, Charlie,” Barb whispered gently ruffling her brother’s hair, “Go back to bed.”
Barb waited two hours, staring at the ceiling and back at the clock every ten minutes. The cold lump melted to simmering anxiety. The papers in the trash pulled at her. Was he coming back? At 1 AM, she summoned the courage to tiptoe back into the kitchen, aware of every squeak of the floorboards. She thought twice and peeked into her parents’ room. It was empty, the bed still neatly made. Back in the kitchen, she opened the trash can lid and pulled out the crumpled and torn papers, flattening them against the countertop to assess the damage.
There was a smudge of milk and chocolate cookie on one edge, but it was not over the words. She dabbed at it with a McDonalds’ napkin from the drawer. She tried to match up the torn edges before she scotch-taped the backs of the papers, careful that the words still lined up on the front. This time she put the whole envelope under the bedspread on Mom’s pillow.
She lay awake a long time waiting for Mom to come home but sleep finally took her. When her alarm went off, she found the envelope leaning against her backpack. A ray of morning sun gleamed onto it from behind the edge of the curtain. Santa had arrived after all. She pulled out the paper, just to be sure. It was signed at the bottom. A torn slip of notepaper sat on top where a heart was drawn below the words in Mom’s handwriting, “We’ll make this work.”
Next
Part 1 | History is an Angel
8 - Spooked
Someone is out there, 1985
1- I hope that her dad dies a painful death. My own heart hurt to read this.
2- I’m so happy for her!