One Bloody Thing After Another Read Free Page A

Jackie shakes her head. No. It isn’t right. She should stop. She should leave Mrs. Hubert alone and just run. This isn’t right.
    She bends down and picks up another big rock.
    You know how mothers play Mozart against their bellies during pregnancy? Jackie’s mother went around swinging a tire iron, bashing headlights in the street all night, belly enormous. Who else could say their mother had been in a riot while pregnant? Kicking in windows while little Jackie grew inside. Throwing bottles against police cars while little Jackie listened and learned. That was the real Patricia. She was the glass-bashing mayhem, even pregnant. Good old Tire Iron Pat. She wouldn’t be caught dead in a hospital gown. Or crying. Well, Jackie is her mother’s daughter. Smash!
    The glass sounds so perfect.
    Anger seems to be solving this quite nicely, actually. Her father never got angry about anything. Sometimes he took his glasses off, and he folded and unfolded them really slowly, but he never got angry. He wrote letters to his local representative, instead.
    â€œThat’s how you get things done, chickadee,” he said. He calls his daughter chickadee now that they live together. He didn’t have a nickname for her before, when her mother was still alive.
    Mrs. Hubert opens the window further. “I’m calling the police!” she yells. Jackie can hear the fear in Mrs. Hubert’s voice, but she yells right back at her anyway.
    â€œIt’s really opening up the back seat, don’t you think?” Jackie says.
    her
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    â€œIt is an ordeal,” Charlie tells his dog. “Walking you is an ordeal.”
    Mitchie isn’t listening. He’s licking the filthy hands of apparently homeless children. Again. Every day with this. His stump of a tail is wagging like crazy.
    â€œDon’t you go to school? Don’t you have mothers?” Charlie says to the children. But they don’t answer him. The blond one with the missing teeth looks like he might have several mothers. Mitchie loves the attention, though, and so Charlie tolerates them a while longer. The things he will go through for that dog.
    When the children are gone, Mitchie looks up at Charlie with cloudy eyes. Cataracts make the little guy half blind, but he doesn’t seem to care. It hasn’t changed him at all. There’s a siren nearby, getting louder. Truant officers, probably.
    I’m
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    Jackie can hear the siren, not too far away. She reaches into the back seat of the car and brushes the glass off the little boy rock. She kicks glass off her sneaker. The cuff of her pants is full of glass.
    All the car’s windows are broken and she doesn’t feel any better. This was a mistake. She could run. She knows these backyards. She grew up here. She could be long gone before the police arrive. But nothing feels right.
    The sirens are getting louder, and she’s having trouble thinking new thoughts. She is supposed to leave before the police arrive, but they’re early. They cut the siren. The police cruiser pulls into the driveway, slow and calm. They’re so quiet now.
    They are getting out of the car, and Jackie’s all covered in glass. Mrs. Hubert comes outside, and she’s crying.
    â€œI didn’t know what to do,” Mrs. Hubert says. “I didn’t want to call, but I was so scared. And then I was worried she would hurt herself.”
    Jackie wants to touch her. Or calm her down somehow. But if she does, she knows that she’ll start crying too. She has to stay strong. She is her mother’s daughter. Jackie looks away from the older woman and grinds the glass under her shoe. Focus. What is Jackie supposed to say?
    She could try to explain about her tree. About all the trees, and about memories. But that’s not all this was. This was some kind of tantrum, too. And it will feel worse to pretend it wasn’t. Better not to explain at all. One of the cops pulls out his