Notes From Nowhere
an excerpt

Chapter One
Angela - The Departure

Our mother Ceci claims she’s leaving us for a good reason. As she digs through the back of her closet for her old dresses – her island dresses, the dresses that will remind Grandma who Ceci is – her proclamations come flinging out with the clothes.

“You know why I’m doing this? To set an example for you girls. Because one day I’ll be an invalid, too. I just know it. And I hope you girls will remember this moment and decide to come stay with me for a while, the same way I did for my mother.”

“Mercedes isn’t here, Mama.”

She pokes her head out of the closet. A crocheted hat has come to rest on top of her dark curls. “Well, where is she? She could stand to hear this too.”

“She left about twenty minutes ago. Said she had a couple errands to run before work.”

I don’t like saying things like that. Mercedes shouldn’t be allowed to have errands. She’s seventeen. Using the Mercedes-speak gives it undeserved importance, but right now I have no better term for her to-do list than the one she’s given it. I know what she has to do: pick up the pants she dry-cleaned for a party this weekend, stop by Tall Jon’s apartment and grab the latest batch of CDs he’s collected for her, buy a hot ham and cheese sandwich for dinner, sit in the parking lot and call Victoria. Errands.

“I want you to tell her what I’ve been telling you, okay? Especially since she’s going to be head of the house for the next few weeks.”

I nod because she can’t see me, and therefore I don’t have to mean it. Ceci, Mama – I don’t know what to call her these days. At lunch, with Danielle, whose parents are still married but sleep in separate bedrooms that aren’t even on the same floor of their house, I refer to her as “my mother,” and Danielle understands. Danielle has a way of narrowing her eyes when any given situation has, as one of its possible conclusions, the worst of all possible worlds. “Ah. Your mother, your sister,” she might say, regarding me through a veil of blonde eyelashes. “All that will be over soon.”

Some days it seems like she actually has a plan, like she’s going to show up at the Moreno halfway house one night wearing all black and coerce Ceci and Mercedes into her Jeep (it’s new. She just turned sixteen), then take them back to her four-story house and shack them up in the basement. It could happen. She figures out a way to cut school most Tuesdays without anyone ever finding out. Sometimes I think of inquiring about her plan, but I don’t want to be tempted to miss Tuesdays, too. Still, there’s gotta be a way for me to get back at her for leaving me alone at lunch one day out of every week.

“Mercedes always handles the dry cleaning, no? That’s good. She can keep doing that. She can buy the groceries, you can walk Mulligan, and then maybe you can switch off with the cooking duties. Do you think that sounds okay?”

“We can figure it out,” I say.

I am not scared of my sister. I steal her cigarettes and put them in a shoebox under my bed, where they’ll wait until I have a science project worthy of their use. Sometimes I draw faces on the paper cranes she’s been making for one of her mixed-media projects. About once a week, I poke around the locker room after seventh period gym (“Tennis For Beginners”), waiting past the bell, knowing she’s standing by the car, knowing I’m making her worry. When I head outside I have to wait for the buses to pass before I can walk across to the parking lot, but in the gasps of exhaust between the buses I can see her – half-squatting against the bumper of the Bonneville, looking too nonchalant for someone who’s wearing a bright orange jacket.

I’m not scared of her.