“Why?” I asked.
“Why? Why?” She sniffed, looked up at the ceiling and then at me. “He’s gone, Sasha. That glob of flesh and bones who called himself my husband and your father is gone. I knew he was seeing this woman over in West L.A. My guess is, he’s moved in with her. I’ll find out, and I’ll get the police on his back. You can be sure of that.”
She returned to her bedroom and shut the door. I could barely breathe. Just remembering it took my breath away now. How could Jordan March expect me to relive it?
“No,” I said. “He never told us he was leaving. My mother thought he had moved in with another woman, but when the police checked, both of them were gone. Later, she heard that someone thought he had gone to Hawaii. She tried to find him, but no one really helped us.”
“How terrible for both of you. Your mother had stopped working, right?”
“Yes, but she went back to working at a restaurant the next week, and for a while, everything seemed okay. She was sad, though, and tired and …”
“Began to drink?”
I nodded.
“So she lost her job eventually?”
“Yes, but she got another and …”
“The same thing happened.”
I nodded.
“So your bills began piling up. There are so many people, especially women who’ve been deserted, who are just like that out there. You lost the house, I imagine?”
“We didn’t have a house. We had an apartment, and the police came one day and told us we had to leave right away.”
“Evicted? Yes, of course, that would happen. Where did you go?”
“To a hotel, but Mama wasn’t doing well. She didn’t have a job anymore, so we couldn’t pay the rent too long.”
“And that’s when you went out on the street?”
I nodded.
“You said she sold calligraphy she created?”
“And I sold lanyards.”
“Yes, which you made. That’s sweet, but how terribly difficult it had to be. Where did you sleep, exactly?”
“Sometimes just under the tree, sometimes in a big box Mama made. For a while, we slept in an old deserted car, but then someone came along and took it away.”
“You stopped going to school?”
“It was too far and hard for me to go. I didn’t have my old clothes.”
“Of course, and anyway, where would you do your schoolwork?” she said, nodding. “Didn’t your mother try to get some help?”
How was I to explain what Mama had been like without making her sound terrible? I just shook my head.
“Your mother …” She hesitated and thought for a moment. I could see she was deciding whether or not to tell me something.
“What?”
“Your mother had quite a bit of alcohol in her at the time of the accident,” she said. “I’m not saying that made it her fault or anything,” she quickly added. “She was like that often, though? I mean, every day?”
I didn’t say yes, but I didn’t have to.