Promises

by Nicole Janeen Jones

It was so hot that I felt the grass sweat when I walked across it barefoot. I'd sat on the rusted swing set in the backyard but my fourteen-year-old butt was too big for the already cracked plastic seat and my legs too long to pump. I snapped off a foot of willow branch; my fingers, like hungry caterpillars, munched off the leaves and bark at one end until I had a new dirt pencil. Between the exposed roots I wrote my first name, first in print, then cursive.

From behind the willow curtain I saw Mom pace the living room while talking on the phone. She'd warned me to stay out of the sun since she'd heard on the news that old people in Chicago, four hundred miles away from Arcee, had died in the heat. However, when I'd sat down to watch Days of Our Lives, the phone rang and she'd ordered me to "turn that filth off" and go out to "get some fresh air." I rolled my eyes, which thank God she didn't see because she was behind me when I turned the television off. Eye rolling was the latest sin to get grounded for.

When she stopped pacing long enough to look out the window, she saw me behind the tree branches, and turned abruptly away. I knew that if I went in, even for a legitimate reason like to get a Mr. Freezie, she'd shoo me back outside. My death by prolonged ultraviolet ray exposure wasn't on her mind. Although I couldn't prove it, I knew she and Dad were fighting on the phone. I'd heard my best friend Cara's parents fight plenty of times. That was how I learned all the great swear words. Only once had I caught my parents on the verge of what might have become a fight if they hadn't realized that I'd ran back to grab some CDs for a slumber party at Cara's.

"I'm tired of it sitting here. Let's use it to go on vacation, buy a computer. Something," Mom had said, her tone of voice somewhere between, "Jenna, did you forget to close the garage door again?" and "Jenna, how many times do I have to ask you to clean your room?"

"I have plans for it," said Dad, who still sounded like he was asking me to pass him the potatoes.

"You can have multiple plans for it, Richard. Look at it all!"

Dad collected change. The family joke was, if something cost one cent then Dad used a dollar bill to pay so that he could add the change to his collection. He used to keep it in the garage, in emptied water cooler jugs he'd brought home from work. The summer that I turned eight, he wheeled all four of them into the living room and busted them open with his axe so that they bled money onto the beige carpet. We separated the coins, first by year and then by individual coin, into coffee cans and mason jars.

"Look, Dad, a 1988!" He chuckled and pointed to the coffee can labeled with a purple and blue 1988 label that I had designed.

"Some day, I bet all the 1988 coins will pay for you to go to college." I half-heartedly tossed the dime toward the can but it landed outside. He added, "If there's any extra afterward, you can buy whatever you want with it. It's all yours no matter what."

Every night when he came home from work, I sprang from the table to search his pockets for change.

"She was in the middle of math homework," Mom scolded.

"This is math, too. She's sorting, matching, and being exposed to numbers greater than 100. I bet the other fourth graders don't rival my Jenna."

When the last of the mound had melted from the living room floor, exposing a gray stain, Dad announced that I needed to calculate the total of each container. One by one I dumped jars of coins onto the gray spot, divided it into sub-piles that equaled one dollar, and wrote the grand total, along with the year, on my special Barbie sticky note paper, which I buried at the bottom of each container with the money. As House Treasurer I systematically dumped, divided, added, and refilled all the containers that replaced books and knick knacks on all the shelves, the mantle, and window sills.

"If you love that money so much then I'm sure you won't mind scrubbing away that stain on the carpet and dusting around the jars," Mom said as she handed me a can of Stain-All and an old washcloth.

As I reclined against the willow trunk, I wondered why the branches swayed when I'd felt no breeze in the yard. Just as I'd talked myself into believing that it was indeed cooler beneath the branches, Mom emerged from the house; the screen door slammed against the side of the house, just like it used to before I started getting grounded for it.

"Move your bike off the driveway. Cara's brother is coming over to lay the new blacktop. Then, get in here; I have a job for you." When I reached the front door, I saw some of the money jars by the threshold.

"Give these to Mike to add to the blacktop."

"You can't just throw his money away...."

"It's not only his money. I've put change in there, too, and since I don't know which is mine, I guess all of it will have to go."

"But some of it is mine, too."

"Jenna Marie Sheldon, you do what I tell you to do." The look on her face promised that she was done arguing. I lugged a container in each hand to the driveway.

Mike was sixteen and in the summer he worked in the family construction company. I'd gone with Cara and her parents to see him play hockey once. After the game, Mike skated over to our seats, and when he pulled off his headgear to reveal a cracked lip but a full smile, I felt my stomach gurgle like those stupid teen romance books describe. I turned my head from him, I was so mad at myself.

I rounded the corner of his truck and held out one of the jars. Used to offers of lemonade and iced tea, he accepted my offer without looking first.

"Is this how they're paying me?" He shook the jar but it made no noise since it was filled to the brim.

"My mom said to add it to the blacktop," I shrugged. My feet burned on the scalded gravel.

"I can't take care of all my work and this besides. Just . . . just pour it in there," He lifted one of his tar grimy fingers to a spot I could reach to dump the contents in. The bed of the truck smelled like the playground on the first day of school, which only reminded me that school would start again soon. I closed my eyes as I poured it in, silently practicing exclamations of my innocence for when Dad came home. The sullied Barbie paper from the bottom drifted to the jar mouth as the last dime plinked into the truck. I thumped the thick bottom like I'd seen my aunt do to my cousin when he'd choked on a piece of hot dog. I'd poured over 70 dollars into the truck. I tucked the paper into my pocket.

I lifted the second jar and walked toward the willow tree with it. If just one container holds so much money, imagine how much I would have if I could hide even half of the jars somewhere!

"Unless Mike is keeping some extra blacktop gravel under the willow tree, I think you're going the wrong way," Mom said from the upstairs window, where I knew she could see everything. I nearly dropped the jar on my foot, startled by how she sounded like she was beside me. I didn't lift my eyes to her as I stomped back to the driveway.

"So Cara comes home tomorrow?" I asked Mike.

"I have to go pick her up because Dad has to supervise the demolition of the old Kennedy school and Mom has to pick up the triplets from Camp Stetler. I have better ways to spend my Saturdays," he grumbled. I dumped in a coffee can of 2002 pennies.

"Hurry up; I've got something to do at five o'clock." He took his Brewers baseball cap off his red hair that, sweaty, had turned to the color of fall oak leaves.

"A date?"

He did a double-take, surprised that a fourteen-year-old dared to ask such a question. "None of your business."

Three gallons of sweat later, my aching arms lifted the last quarter bucket into the truck. I collapsed on the lawn, sprawled across the sweaty grass to rest and watch Mike fervently shovel gravel onto the driveway. Every empty glass jar and plastic ice cream bucket that I counted around me reminded of all the years Dad and I had worked together to sort and count. A bucket within kicking distance landed in her rose bushes before I remembered she could see the yard from upstairs. She yelled from her bedroom's open window for me to get in there.

"Move your stuff in here." I stepped into my parents' bedroom. Their room and the guest bedroom always felt like foreign countries to me, since the house rule was bedroom doors stay closed.

"I get your bedroom?" Musical bedrooms muffled my hoorah-I-get-the-biggest-room feeling. I couldn't fathom why Dad deserved to lose his own bedroom on top of his coin collection.

"All I see is Dad's stuff."

"My things are in the guest bedroom."

It didn't take me that long to dump all the money.

I started the move by removing Dad's clothes from his closet. Along with clothes and hangers, some cardboard boxes were on the floor. I couldn't believe Mom hadn't banished them to the garage since they were filled with junk: old baseball caps, a football, an old phone. I dragged the box through the bedroom but stopped before I got it out into the hall. The bed distracted me. It was positioned directly across from the window. Who wants the sun in her eyes every morning, especially on weekends? I struggled to reposition the queen-sized, and when I finally succeeded, I stripped the ugly navy blue bedding from it. Yet another thing caught my attention. The bed had hidden a phone outlet.

Now, how am I going to talk Mom into letting me buy a phone? I sat cross legged on the carpet playing out several arguments to use with her before I remembered the box with the phone in it. The trick now will be keeping this a secret. Startled by hearing the front door open, I dropped the receiver. Dad was home. I ran from the room, eager to explain my part in the day's events.

"Leslie, what the hell is going on with the driveway?" I paused by the hall window and saw Mike jump into his truck. I wondered if he was finished with the job or was leaving because Dad was mad. Mike looked up at me and waved.

"Sshh!" She hadn't forgotten that I was upstairs. "Why don't you call me on the cell phone like you did at noon? Jenna, go to your room!" I returned to my bedroom, to the window overlooking the driveway. Hardly any of the usual black showed, there were so many coins. It looked like how the history books described the immigrants thinking the streets of America looked, paved with gold and promises.

I heard scratching, like static from my radio when I had bad reception. I looked around the unfamiliar room and realized it was the phone. I hadn't hung it up properly after hearing the shouts downstairs.

"I haven't been planning this."

"Yes, yes you have. That's why you had Jenna add up how much was in the jars. You made her help you all these years."

"And you forced her to throw it all in the blacktop this afternoon! All I'd asked for was that money. You could have had everything else."

"When you say I can have 'everything else,' do you mean Jenna, too?"

"I'm not abandoning her. But I don't know what I'm going to be doing for awhile, where I'll be, especially now that the money is gone," he sighed.

"You're still leaving?"

"Leslie, yes." I slowly lowered the handset to the base, like Cara had instructed when we eavesdropped on Mike talking to his girlfriend.

I didn't even try to sneak through the hall to the front door; I didn't need to. Mom yelled and cried too loudly to hear me or care. I found a pair of sandals and went to the money. Taped to the garage door was a note that Mike had left: "Don't drive on for a few days. The sealant takes longer to set in this humidity." I bent down and ripped a heads up penny from the edge of the driveway. It didn't fall through to the bottom of my pocket because the tail's side tar stuck to one of the tally sheets. I worked my way around the perimeter of the driveway, prying as many coins as I could from the top level. I groped out as far as I could to free as many coins as possible, so many that some of them stood on their sides, half immersed. Without thought, I crawled onto the hot ooze. My hands and knees were so thick and sticky when I finished that I could barely bend them. I scurried my treasure back to count behind the willow tree branches. I rolled my hands and the coins in the dirt so that I could handle them more easily as I counted. I found my dirt pencil from earlier and calculated the amount of my treasure. The total was $168.57. I leaned back against the tree trunk, exhausted, pondering what I could do with it. I'd dozed off when I heard the screen door slam for the third time that day.

Dad carried the bag that he always used for carry-on luggage to the street and tossed it into his car. When he'd slammed that door, too, I emerged from behind the willow tree, this time onto the street. I knocked on his car window. He rolled it down and attempted a cover-up smile. "She didn't get it all." His eyebrows scrunched together with confusion.

"I know, but how do..." Before he finished I showed him two dirty fistfuls of money.

"See? I think I can get more out, too. And maybe Mike Baker has some kind of solvent we can use to get it all out. If I get enough can I leave with you?" He gently pushed my hands from the edge of the window.

"I can't take the money like this. Go into the garage and find something to put all this in. I think there are some more jars on the bottom shelf, way in the back, behind my toolbox." Halfway to the garage I heard him start the car and as I turned, he drove away. I ran back but didn't bother to yell or chase him, or even run back into the house. Instead, I ran to Cara's house.

Mike opened the door before I remembered that Cara wasn't home.

"Uh... sorry," I said as I turned to walk away.

"Wait, what do you want?"

"Nothing. I just forgot Cara wasn't here. I wanted to talk to her is all. Sorry to interrupt your date."

"Date? I don't have a date tonight."

"But you said..."

"I know what I said. Now, obviously something is wrong. What's up with your hands and knees? Looks like you used them to dig your own grave."

"They were sticky from the tar so I covered them in dirt."

"Come in. My dad's got some stuff that'll take it off."

"No, it's okay. I'll just go home."

"Are you happy with the tar? Because I can tell you right now that no soap at your house is going to take it off. Come on." He pulled on my elbow and led me to the garage sink where he dumped a glob of pine scented soap into the palms of both hands and ordered me to scrub. My scrubbing must have been insufficient for the removal of tar because he handed me a stiff bristled brush to continue with. He disappeared back into the house and when he returned declared me clean.

"Drink some lemonade," he ordered again when I returned to the kitchen. I thanked him, although I didn't want the lemonade. I didn't want anything.

"Can I go with you tomorrow to get Cara?"

"I'm taking my truck and after we load all her crap in it, I don't think there'd be room for you. Sorry." That was it. Unable to hold it in anymore, I cried.

"Good lord! You'll see her in the afternoon and can hug and gossip and do whatever you two do all the time all you want then. You don't need to cry about it." He stood up from the kitchen table where we sat and stepped away from me like I might be contagious.

"You won't have to bring me back. Just take me. I'll say my good-byes to Cara there." I would take the money and run. Sure it wouldn't carry me too far, but I could work. I liked babysitting. "I can pay you," I said. Some of the money had fallen from between my fingers and out of my pockets when I ran to Cara's, so I knew I had less to pay Mike with, as well as to get me through until I could find a job. I would have to be more resourceful. Maybe they'll let me sleep at the camp for a while. I was a Girl Scout for a few years.

"Tell me what the hell is going on with you!" Like the time at the hockey game when I couldn't stop my stomach from fluttering, I couldn't stop myself from telling him about the events of the day, what little I knew at least.

"What you need to do, is go back home and talk to your mom. And if she won't tell you today then ask her tomorrow and the next day until you finally get an answer. You can't run away because then you'll never know. Besides, I'd get in a bunch of trouble for dropping you off and leaving. I would keep it secret, but Cara would blab it all over the place." I smiled slightly at his joke.

"So how much money did I lay down in that driveway?"

"I don't know. I haven't tallied it up."

"No time like the present."

I pulled all the papers, now crumpled and slightly torn, from my pocket, ordered them on the table according to year. Mike found a calculator, and when we finished the calculator read, "5,439.66." "Your driveway's worth a lot more than anyone else's I've ever blacktopped," he said, rubbing the screen with his thumb to make sure the total was what we thought it was.

"Which year had the most jars?" he asked as he tossed the calculator onto one of the counters. I looked through the stacks of paper, carefully analyzing the height of each stack.

"Wait a minute.... There's a year missing," I whispered.

"Maybe it dropped out of your pocket, too."

"An entire year gone? Nineteen eighty-eight is gone. That's my year." I scattered paper everywhere as I looked. There was nothing. I remembered the conversation with Dad at the car.

". . . way in the back, behind my toolbox."

"Mike, I have to go," I jumped back and forth, not knowing which direction to go even though I'd been in that house a million times. "Thanks for the soap and the help and for not making fun of me." Once again, before I knew it, I'd thrown my arms around his shoulders, the easiest part to grab while he still sat.

"Tell Cara to come over right away tomorrow," I yelled over my shoulder as I ran out of the house back toward my own.

It was still hot and humid, but the impending darkness helped to make it feel cooler. Only a quarter of my hair remained in the ponytail. The rest flapped in my eyes, my mouth, behind me like wings as I ran to my house. I'd lost my sandals at some point and it was hard to run barefoot on the hot pavement. I ran on the grass gazelle style, leaping across normal driveways. I finally reached the house and threw myself into the garage. I found Dad's toolbox and used my shoulder to plow it out of the way. Other garbage: a tarp, several pairs of old winter scarves, and stocking hats obscured my view. But way back, in the corner, I found my money.

Nicole Janeen Jones is a fiction writer and poet when she isn't building Web sites. She's been published in Echoes Magazine, Ebbing Tide, and Liar Liar Literary Review. Her personal Web site is http://www.nicolejaneenjones.com.