Read Online The Life We Bury by Allen Eskens - Free Book Online Page B

back,” I muttered under my breath. I walked out of court, pausing on the sidewalk to ponder which way to turn, left to the jail and my mother or right to my car. The judge said she could leave; I heard him. All she had to do was not drink. A bad feeling crept through my veins, like poison from a snake bite. I wrestled with my decision, eventually turning left, overruling my urge to run.
    Entering the jail, I gave my driver's license to a lady behind bulletproof glass who directed me to a small room where another glass window separated me from the cubicle where they would bring my mother. A couple minutes later they brought my mother to the cubicle, now free of her handcuffs and shackles. She sat in a chair on the other side of the glass, picking up a black phone on the wall. I did the same thing, grimacing as I drew the phone up to my face, imagining the multitudes of unfortunates who had breathed into that receiver before me. It felt sticky.
    â€œDid you pay the bail?”
    â€œYou don't need me to pay bail; you can get out on your own. The judge said so.”
    â€œHe said I could get out if I did that monitor thing. I'm not doing no damn monitor.”
    â€œBut you can get out for free; you just can't drink.”
    â€œI ain't doin’ no damn monitor!” she said. “You have enough money. You can help me out for once in your life. I can't take another minute in here.”
    â€œMom, I barely have enough to make it through the semester. I can't—”
    â€œI'll pay you back for Christ sake.”
    Now we were getting into our own litany. When I turned sixteen, I got my first job changing oil at a garage in town. When I spent my first paycheck on clothes and a skateboard, Mom threw a fit so fierce that the upstairs neighbors called the landlord and the cops. After she settled down, she forced me to open a savings account; and, because a sixteen-year-old can't open an account without a parent, they put her name on it as well. For the next two years she borrowed money from that account whenever she ran light on the rent or her car needed fixing—always with the empty promise that she'd pay me back but never doing so.
    The day I turned eighteen, I opened my own account in my name alone. Without direct access to my money, she had to switch her tactic, moving from theft to blackmail because, after all, living in her house and eating her food entitled her to bleed my account of hundreds of dollars. So I started skimming a little off the top each week, hiding the money in a can under the insulation in the attic—my coffee-can college fund. Mom always suspected that I hid money, but she could never prove it, and she never found it. In her mind the few grand that I secreted away had grown to ten times what actually lay beneath the insulation. Add to that my student loans and the pittance I got in grant money, and in my mother's mind my cache had grown to a small fortune.
    â€œCan't we get a bail bondsman?” I asked. “Then you don't have to pay the full three thousand.”
    â€œDon't you think I thought of that? You think I'm stupid? I got no collateral. They won't talk to me without collateral.”
    Her words cut with an edge I knew well, her mean streak showingthrough as clear as the dark roots that lined the part in her hair. I decided to come back hard myself. “I can't bail you out, Mom. I can't. If I give you three thousand, I can't afford to go to college next semester. There's just no way to do it.”
    â€œWell then…” She leaned back in the plastic chair. “…you'll have to take care of Jeremy while I'm in here, cuz I'm not goin’ on no damned monitor.”
    And there it was: the final card in her hand, proving that she had the royal flush; she had beaten me. I could try bluffing and say that I would leave Jeremy in Austin, but that bluff was naked and my mother knew it. She stared at me with the conviction of a falling boulder, her eyes