Read Online Live Through This by Debra Gwartney - Free Book Online

the paper—towels, wadded-up homework, candy and gum wrappers—and made a pile in one of the sinks. The other girl, the owner of the lighter, claimed that Amanda had called to her, "Toss it here," and reached out her hands to catch it. The girl said she had looked on as Amanda lit one edge of the paper mound, then another, until flames shot as high as the mirror.
    A few seconds later, Amanda twisted on the water faucet to douse what was left of the embers, but not before a sixth-grade girl had swung the door open to see what was going on in the locker room, which would soon be jammed with other sixth-graders getting ready for afternoon PE. She shut the door and ran to the office to report: fire.
    "We had to take the appropriate course of action," the vice principal said as if reading a prepared speech, his hands folded on the table. "This is for the police to handle, not the school district."
    The only students questioned were Amanda, the girl who'd been with her, and the sixth-grader who'd reported the fire (and who would be mercilessly dogged by Amanda and Stephanie for the rest of the year). For whatever reason, the secretary had made up the part about a group of suspects—did she think she was making it easier on me? Because it wasn't easier.
    The girl with the lighter was charged with damaging school property, a misdemeanor. My fourteen-year-old was charged with first-degree arson. A felony.
    When the vice principal finished talking, Amanda put her head down on the table and wrapped one arm around the top of her skull, as if to make sure she couldn't rise again. I wanted to scramble into her self-made cave. Or take her hand and pull her under the cheap oak furniture with me and hide until these men with their heavily starched clothes and buzz haircuts went away. I wanted to curl up until I could make some sense out of this fire she'd started and whatever was going to happen next, which I already knew was beyond me.
    Instead I glared at my daughter with a parental scorn I thought the men would approve of. At the moment that's all I could think to do: show that I was in control, that I was disappointed, that punishment would be delivered. It wasn't a lie; I was beyond furious, though not sure at what or whom, and I put on a display of rigid contempt I didn't actually feel. I did this rather than what was best for Amanda—best would have been to turn whatever tender attentiveness I could muster to the frail daughter next to me. I was
racked with remorse about our talk the night before, but I didn't want to admit to any part in her confusion or heartache, especially in front of these authorities across from me or even to Amanda—I couldn't handle admitting weakness in the middle of being weak. These men expected me to show the "tough love" that was the parenting rage in those days, and I did my best to sit straight in my chair and look tough.
    I felt nowhere near tough. How would I tell the other girls what had happened? How was I going to tell Amanda's father without hearing for the thousandth time that I couldn't handle raising our kids on my own after all and without his getting Amanda on the phone to say,
See? Your mother doesn't know what she's doing.
    I wasn't even certain what it meant for a fourteen-year-old to be arrested for a felony. The cops handed me paperwork telling me whom to call, where to appear. Amanda wouldn't be taken into juvenile custody that night but she was suspended from school for two weeks and would be prevented from attending any student activity deemed enjoyable for the rest of the year. We'd meet with a court counselor the following day and schedule a hearing in front of a judge. The judge would decide her sentence.
Her sentence.
The permanence of that rang in my head.
    I took the papers and folded them into my purse, refusing to believe what was going on in this room. This was something that happened to other people. To people with bad kids, not to parents with kids like