The Dust of 100 Dogs - A. S. King [9]
That night, when Junior came in, my father used so many obscenities that I thought my mother would secretly pray for weeks to get him forgiven. After a half hour of screaming and a search, they found two more bags of pot, a small vial of something white, and a tiny Ziploc bag of speed. My father dragged Junior to the bathroom and made him watch as he flushed it all down the toilet.
The next morning, Junior didn’t bug me at the bathroom door like he usually did, and he didn’t tell me I looked as skinny as a concentration camp victim like he usually did, and he didn’t even look at me over breakfast. My father slept late and my mother said nothing all morning. Before I closed the door behind me on my way to the bus stop, she tapped me on the arm and handed me an ivory envelope. I shoved it into my backpack and forgot about it.
Once I got to my locker and was organizing my books for the day, I finally opened and read it. It was short, and in my brother’s handwriting.
There was the name and address of a local psychologist scrawled at the bottom. No wonder Junior had left me alone all morning. He was gloating. She’d had him write it to shame me, probably. A drug-addict loser having to write his smart little sister a letter about how she should get her shit together was exactly how my mother communicated.
I closed my locker door and spent the rest of the day nervous about the appointment. I had lived a lifetime of half lies and dodgy explanations, but I doubted I could fool a professional no matter how hard I tried.
What struck me that day, as I sat through preoccupied class after preoccupied class, was the pure irony of it all. There I was, the rightful owner of what would amount to millions of dollars, and my parents were mentally withering away because of money worries. They wanted me to pursue a life as a doctor so much that they took a loan out to send me to a shrink, when, in fact, I could already help them if they would only let me.
Sitting just off the riverbank, bundled in every piece of clothing she owned, Emer Morrisey counted her money. She had two French coins, both nearly worthless—she could never afford a voyage back to Ireland. Although unsure what might await her there, she was certain it had to be better than begging the wintry streets of Paris. Ireland was home, no matter who ruled it now.
For eight years, before she was sent to Paris, Emer lived in the dismal rocky hills of Connacht—one hundred miles from her village—and never once thought there could be a worse place. But living rough in Paris had turned what she once felt was hell onto its back, wanting its belly scratched.
“Anything is better than being the bought wife of an old man,” she often told herself, but she often doubted herself too. It was 1659, and Emer was fifteen. After a long, cold year in France, she was unsure of nearly everything.
Her mother was the only one who made sure she didn’t jump into the river and drown herself. On so many occasions since she had arrived in Paris, her mother had talked sense into her half-frozen ears, keeping her alive.
You can’t depend on men, Emer, your whole life. Sometimes you have to depend on yourself.
Of course, her mother was dead now. Everyone was dead now. Ireland was dead, the king of England was dead, the dragon was dead, and as far as Emer was concerned she was dead, too, even though her mother wouldn’t let her jump from the riverbank to make it official.
“Damn it anyway,” she mumbled as she looked at her two worthless coins and buried them in a hidden pocket beneath her skirt. She got up, and began the walk to the small grotto that she’d lived in since running from the docks her first day in Paris.
“There’s got to be something better than this,” she said to herself, shivering.
Emer was considering another way out. Earlier that day, she’d heard from another Irish-speaking woman, a nun who fed beggars and nursed invalids, that a boat would soon leave for the islands. She