me in.
Beyond the chain, I can see Hilary chatting with our parents in front of the glass double doors to the parking lot. ‘I think you’d better go now,’ she says, ushering them out.
They’re leaving and I’m locked in this room with crappy chairs and a Formica-topped table.
My calm evaporates. ‘Hey!’ I scream. ‘Hey!!’ So loud it makes my throat hurt. ‘Mom, Dad, what are you doing? What the—What the—What are you doing?!’
The double doors are separating, drawing our parents back out into the February day.
‘Hey!! Don’t leave me here. I didn’t do anything wrong. Please! Don’t go!’
Mom’s crying again. She turns and bends towards me like a tree blown by a gale, her arms outstretched like hopeful limbs. But Dad has her by the waist and is pulling her towards the Volvo. Frantic, I try to force my arm and leg through the chained gap. If I can just squeeze myself through, if I can just get into our mother’s arms, I know I’ll be safe. But it’s too tight, the chain’s too strong. My face is hot and swelling up, too big for the gap.
‘Mom, please. I love you Mommy I love you Mommy I love you I promise to be good I promise to be good.’
Mom wails. ‘Give my baby a glass of water. She’s thirsty, so thirsty, my baby needs her water.’
‘Mommmmmm!’ I scream until my scream has nowhere else to go and so tails off of its own accord. Our mother watches my scream fade away and part of her seems to disappear with it. Her panting slows and we reach out for each other.
Then her arms drop, in a clunky, bent-elbow motion, like a Barbie’s, and her face recomposes itself into something different, something bitter and blameful. She looks at me and doesn’t like what she sees. ‘Why don’t you ever cry, Justine? You never cry.’
I touch my cheek in reply but I don’t need my finger nor our mother to tell me that my face is hot and swollen but still dry.
Dad drags her off as she starts to howl again, more subdued this time, and her howls fade until the only screaming left is mine.
I call after them, even though I can’t see them any more. ‘Please don’t leave me here, please Daddy.’
I’m stuck between the door and the doorjamb, the metal chain slicing into my neck. I go limp and hang there as Hilary stands, her clipboard still in hand, and watches me from the reception area. Mark and Leroy reappear. Mark – or the one I think is Mark – stands to one side of the door to the intake room. He stomps on my foot like an anchor and grabs me by the arm as Leroy unhooks the chain. They slip me out of the room and Leroy takes hold of my other side. Mark reeks of BO and Leroy’s hands are rough like packing boxes. When I struggle against him, my skin chafes. I stop struggling.
‘Your parents have asked to leave you here for a three-day evaluation,’ Hilary informs me. ‘After that, we’ll report back to them with our recommendations. Do you understand?’
No, I don’t understand, I don’t understand at all. This could not possibly be right. ‘I’m not a drug addict, I’m not any kind of addict. I don’t have a problem.’
‘Well, your parents are very worried about you. And frankly, based on your behaviour here this morning, Justine, I think they’re justified.’
‘But I don’t belong here. You can’t keep me.’
She considers that. ‘In fact, we can. Do you understand? We can.’
I shake my head. ‘It’s not right.’
One of the double doors swings open again and our father strides back into the centre. A wave of relief washes over me. It’s OK now. They’ve changed their minds, come to their senses at last.
Dad walks up to me and he’s going to throw his arms round me, he’s going to apologise, kiss my burning cheeks and take me home.
‘Oh Daddy,’ I blubber.
Our father isn’t such a bad man really, he loses perspective sometimes, but he’s got a heart and soul and mind that tells him what’s reasonable and what’s not, what’s right, what’s not.
He approaches then stops abruptly. He hauls something out of his pocket – a handkerchief? One of Mom’s Tic Tacs? The denture fob with the keys to the car that has drying vomit in the back seat but who cares because that’s the car that’s going to take me home and I’ll never be nauseous again?
‘You forgot your retainer, Justine,’ our not-unreasonable father tells me. ‘You know better than that. That’s expensive orthodontic equipment and you need to treat it with some respect.’ He places the retainer in my hand, then makes to leave again.
‘Daddy. Please.’
I can see the lines round his eyes, dragging everything down. ‘Justine,’ he says, ‘you must believe me. It’s for your own good.’ And perhaps he means the retainer or Hilary or this godawful day or all three. Is he being our father or Jeff Ziegler, orthodontist extraordinaire, or someone else entirely? Whoever he is, he spins on his heel and heads for the door. The smear that the garage door bestowed on his suit jacket is the last I see of him. I hope no one tells him about the smear, I hope it sits so long that the grease becomes well and truly ingrained so that even a dry cleaner can’t budge it – that stain will be there for ever and his shirt will be ruined. A reminder of this day.
The double doors squeak on their hinges and swing shut and my stomach does something funny at the sound of it. The ground falls away and, though Mark and Leroy’s hands are still on me, they feel like feathers. My body is numb.
‘Do you understand now?’ Hilary repeats. Simultaneously, Leroy and Mark tighten their grip and still I can hardly feel their fingers. ‘Do you understand, Justine?’
I nod. My eyelids are dry and rough like the boxes Leroy has been packing and they chafe against my eyeballs.
‘Very good, then. Welcome to Come Clean.’
I’m still nodding as my knees buckle and I swoon into blackness and Mark’s stinking embrace.
When I come to, I’m in a room smaller than the intake room and it’s dark. There are no windows and the only light is eking through beneath the door that I don’t even need to touch to know is locked. My tartan skirt has hiked up to expose my legs and the soft skin at the backs of my thighs is sticking to the cracked leatherette cushions of the couch I’ve been laid out on. I can’t breathe. I wonder for a second if my lungs stopped working when I fainted because I’m puffing now like I’ve been under water: like when you used to dunk me at the swimming pool and I’d get chlorine up my nose and I couldn’t breathe, and you’d hold my head under while you chanted Marco Polo Marco Polo, and I couldn’t wait to do the same to you once it was my turn. My other vital organs feel as if they stopped and started again too. I’m hot and cold at the same time and my heart is thwacking inside my chest.
I don’t know how long I’ve been in here, hours probably. I try to read my Swatch, my favourite Christmas present
