When You Reach Me

Salty Things

On the Friday after Thanksgiving there was no school, but Mom still had to go to work. I’d been trying hard not to think about them, but I spent a good chunk of that morning worrying about your notes. I held one in each hand and read them over and over. The part about writing a letter wasn’t too scary. The scary parts were “I’m coming to save your friend’s life” and “Oh, by the way, where do you keep your keys?” and “P.S. Don’t ever tell anyone about any of this.” Seeing my name written out on the second note was also pretty creepy, because I was still trying to pretend the notes weren’t really meant for me. And also where you wrote “I won’t be myself when I reach you.” I didn’t like that part at all.

Come to think of it, there were a lot of scary parts.

After a long time, I put the notes away and turned on the television. I had been watching TV for two hours when I heard Louisa’s regular knock.

“Potato-chip drop,” she said when I opened the door. She was in her uniform, holding up a plastic bag.

Louisa is always bringing Mom food from the nursing home where she works. She doesn’t steal—it’s leftovers from lunch, mostly little bags of potato chips or animal cookies. The health department says that once something has been served on a tray, it has to be thrown away even if no one touched it. So Louisa takes all the little bags home and gives them to Mom, who brings them to the pregnant-jailbird “parenting group” she runs downtown.

Once a month, Mom takes the subway down to this actual jail and talks to criminal pregnant women about what to expect after they have their babies. They all think she’s some kind of saint for bringing them potato chips and animal cookies. Mom says that jail is a hard place, and that it can make people hard, too.

“It changes them,” she told me once. “Jail stops them from becoming who they might grow to be.”

“Isn’t that the whole idea?” I asked. “It’s supposed to stop them from being criminals!”

She shook her head. “That’s not what I mean. A lot of people make bad mistakes. But being in jail can make them feel like a mistake is all they are. Like they aren’t even people anymore.”

Her bringing the chips and cookies is supposed to help somehow. It’s not really the cookies, she says. It’s the fact that someone brings them.

I took the plastic bag from Louisa.

She smiled at me. “You know what? You’re getting tall.”

I leaned against the doorway. “You think?”

She nodded. “I miss you, Miranda.” It was the first time either of us had said anything about the fact that I was never at her apartment anymore.

“Yeah.”

Her saying she missed me made me feel sort of hopeless for some reason. When she left, I lay on the couch with the TV off and my eyes closed, and I listened for Sal’s basketball. Hearing it made me feel better, for once. That sound was like the last thread connecting us.

Mom didn’t talk much at dinner that night. She was still in her work clothes, a denim skirt and a T-shirt with a picture of a coffee cup on it and the words Get Your Own underneath. Richard had brought strawberries over for dessert.

“Darn it.” Mom threw down a strawberry. “SSO’s again.”

“I bet the grapes are delicious.” I gave her a fake smile.

“Don’t start, Miranda. I had a lousy day.”

“You did?” Richard’s eyebrows went up. “I didn’t know that.”

“How would you know?” Mom asked. “You were in court all day. It isn’t much to you if the copier breaks, is it? Did anyone ask you to type three copies of a sixteen-page document?”

Richard shrugged. “But you’re done now. It’s over. Why let it wreck your whole evening?”

“Oh, stuff it, Mr. Perfect!” Mom stomped off to her bedroom without even giving him a chance to tap his right knee.

Richard looked at me. “What did the zero say to the eight?”

I rolled my eyes. “Nice belt.” He’d been telling me that one for at least a year.

Later, Mom stacked the dishes in the sink, turned the faucet on, and went to change her clothes. I stood there and watched as the greasy saucepan overflowed onto the plates underneath. The oily water reflected the light and made the whole thing look like a sparkly fountain. Sometimes I can stare at something like that for a long time.

Mom came back wearing sweatpants and started washing the dishes. I opened my math workbook at the kitchen table. A minute later, Richard came in and said, “Didn’t I leave that extra pair of work shoes here a few months ago? I know they were in the closet, but I can’t find them anywhere.”

Mom’s head snapped up. “I knew it. I just knew it.”

We had been robbed after all.