When I Ran Away by Ilona Bannister (best books to read now .TXT) 📗

with the people on my street and it’s not even about the fucking giraffe. I don’t know how to tell Johnny that, yes, there’s a difference between right and wrong but sometimes a small rightness doesn’t matter because there’s a much greater wrong happening. I’m not going to fight this boy and this old lady. But I can’t let Johnny be bullied either.

“Johnny”—I turn to him, look him in the eyes—“we’re going now. What this lady and her boy have done is wrong, and they know that, but this isn’t worth it so we’re going to let them keep it. OK? Rocky has lots of toys and he doesn’t even like that one. So we can let them have it.”

“But, Jeej, they took it, that’s wrong. That’s wrong!” He’s so upset. He stamps his little foot; the tears are hot on his face. “It’s a baby toy, he knows that!” And he points an indignant finger at the boy.

“I know, baby, I know, but it’s not that important to us. It’s more important to them, which is why they’re choosing to do the wrong thing.” I try to take his hand to lead him away and to end this awful moment when he thinks I’ve failed him and Grandma thinks I’m just another rich bitch and none of us have won.

As I turn to take us home, thinking that it’s over, Grandma says, “That’s right. Walk away.”

An old anger from long ago rises up. Ma did this to us too, pushed us down instead of lifting us up. I turn to the boy, his young poker face already trained to give nothing away, and I say, “It’s wrong to steal from babies. She should have taught you that. You can be better than her.”

I’m embarrassed as soon as I say it. He’s just a kid. Just like my kid. Just like I was. And I’m standing here putting his grandmother down. What have I really said? I said that I’m ashamed of what I have now, of what they see that I have. Of Johnny’s private-school uniform, emblazoned with the insignia of privilege. I’m upset that they don’t recognize me anymore, that they can’t see that I’m from a street just like this. That guilt and regret follow me everywhere. That the first time I went to the supermarket here and filled the cart with steak and fresh vegetables and chocolate and name-brand detergent I was exhilarated and then ashamed. By the abundance, the excess, the beauty of it, the fact my mother had never filled a cart with anything but white bread and pork-and-beans cans and store-brand dish soap that never got the dishes clean. And I remembered going to the store when it was still just me and Johnny, saying no to everything he pointed at, wiping away his tears and teaching him a hard lesson about the difference between want and need. So I watched other people fill their carts at Waitrose, not even thinking about the prices of things, not counting up the cost of every item as they took it off the shelf, tomatoes on the vine and actual Heinz ketchup and Brie and a pound of shrimp from the fresh fish counter. And I left my full cart at the end of an aisle and walked out of the store without buying anything, silently apologizing to whoever had to put it all back on the shelves.

Grandma says nothing, just stares into the distance like we’re not there, smoking and pretending she didn’t hear. I’ve failed. I was supposed to handle this but I didn’t. I lead Johnny away; he’s hanging his head, still crying, his footsteps heavy with disappointment in me. He’s resigned to the injustice. But which injustice will he remember when he comes back to this memory decades from now? Will it be what the boy did to us? Or what we did to the boy? The only difference between him and the boy—my marriage to a rich guy.

And what’s hurting me the most and making my cheeks burn? The fact that Grandma thinks I’m just another one of them, or the fact that I am?

I hear the giraffe squeak behind us as the boy throws it to the ground and it bounces off the plastic grass. Already forgotten and cast aside.

9 dettol, diazepam A Wednesday in August 2016, 5:30 p.m. London, Grand Euro Star Lodge Hotel, Room 506

I stand at the door until my back aches. I let go of the doorknob and slide down to the floor. I sit, surveying the room from this angle. Red and white is the color scheme of the Grand Euro Star Lodge Hotel. Red carpeting, white linens with a red blanket and bedspread. The walls are painted red from the floor to the middle, then white to the ceiling. The wall above the bed is smeared with a dingy, gray accumulation of years of hair grease and styling products. There’s a stain of unknown composition on the carpet.

It’s filthy. An inch of dust on the baseboards. That bathroom—I can’t even get into what’s going on in there with the grout. Our house was never nice but it was always clean. Ma never said she loved me but she made sure my clothes were always ironed and spotless. Never new but clean. I crawl over to the card table and lean on the metal folding chair and push off of it to get to standing. Where they cut you for a C-section, it makes your legs work different. They don’t have the same power. I kick off my flip-flops and pour some wine into a complimentary plastic cup that I’m pretty certain was used by the last guests of this room and not replaced.

I listen to the Housewives in the background. It’s part one of the reunion episodes when they talk with Andy Cohen, their executive producer, about the events of the past season. They all wear glittering evening gowns. They’re