Shooting Stars 01 Cinnamon (8 page)

The stillness in the house greeted me like a slap in the face. Grandmother Beverly's car was here, which meant she was home, but I didn't hear the television droning or any sounds coming from the kitchen. Was she already asleep? Good, I thought. I didn't want to face her at the moment. I started up the stairs, my head down, and lifted it only when
I
turned the knob on my bedroom door and was shocked to discover it wouldn't open.

It wouldn't open because a lock and a hasp had been installed and the lock was closed.
Both amazed and confused. I stepped back and cried. "What?" I had to touch it to believe it was really there. A lock on my own door?
"Grandmother!" I screamed. I spun around, but she didn't appear. I marched to her bedroom door and threw it open. She wasn't in her room, so I charged back to the stairway and pounded my way down, spinning at the bottom and rushing to the living room door.
There she was, seated comfortably like some queen mother, waiting for me.
"Why is there a lock on my door?"
She glared at me, her eves small but so full of anger they looked capable of shooting out small flames in my direction.
"Where have you been today-- and don't make up any ridiculous story about going to the hospital to be with your mother," she quickly warned. "I'm talking about the whole day from the moment you rushed out of this house without breakfast until now. Well?" she demanded, holding her body stiffly forward.
"Why are you asking me that and how dare you put a lock on my bedroom door?" I flared back at her, flashing my eyes with temper as hot and red as hers.
She sat back, a cold twisted smirk on her face.
"First. I'm asking because the school called here looking for you. Apparently, someone there was concerned about you and wanted to know how you were and why you weren't at school," she revealed.
Miss Hamilton. I thought to myself.
"Can you even begin to imagine how embarrassed I was when I had to reveal you weren't home and I didn't have any idea where you were?
"I called your father." she added, nodding. "I had to, of course."
"Really?" I replied, folding my arms under my breasts and placing my weight on my right foot. "and what did he have to say?"
"Fortunately for you. I was unable to reach him at the time."
"Is that so? Why? What did they tell you? Was he with a client, at a meeting, what?"
"That has nothing to do with our situation," she said.
"Where were you?"
"Why is there a lock on my door?"
I
asked instead of answering.
"I put that lock on your door so you couldn't do what you always do when I question you or try to guide you... run off to your room and lock yourself inside. I'll unlock it when you tell me the truth. Now, where were you?"
"How dare you do this. Grandmother? That's my room!" I shouted at her, tears burning my eyelids.
"Until your mother returns. I have to be the one in charge of you, responsible for you. You are still a minor and your father is a very busy man with a great deal on his mind these days."
"Oh, yes," I said shaking my head. "my father is a very, very busy man. He's too busy to visit my mother. He's too busy to know she's fallen into a coma. That's a very busy man." I said.
"Mothers and daughters have to realize that their husbands and fathers can't be at their beck and call every minute. They're out there in the hard, cold world trying to make a living, trying to earn enough to provide and keep you comfortable. Who do you think pays the mortgage on this ridiculous relic of a house, and who pays for the food you eat and the gas you waste driving around in that car of yours, and who gave you that car and who--"
"And who cares?" I shouted, covering my ears with my hands. "Take it all back, everything!"
I turned and fled from her. When I reached my bedroom door again, I tried to pull the lock off. but I couldn't do it. Who could have ever imagined her doing something like this? Did meanness make people more inventive?
Instead of continuing my confrontation with her. I went up to the attic and threw myself on the small settee where I curled up in a fetal position and closed my eyes. My pounding heart calmed. The emotional tension had drained my body of all of its energy. I pulled the old afghan over myself, closed my eyes and almost immediately fell asleep.
The sound of my name hours and hours later woke me, but not abruptly. For a few moments it was as if the sound was inside me, m some dream. echoing. I groaned. my eyelids fluttered and then I felt someone touch my shoulder and I opened my eyes to see Daddy.
"Cinnamon. What are you doing?" he asked. "What in the world is going on here?"
I stared at him. Was this a dream? He had been in this attic so rarely that the sight of him here was more like a phantom of my imagination.
When I was a little girl. I could look at him and think my daddy was the perfect daddy, so handsome and warm, so loving and full of magic. There was magic in those hazel eyes. They could twinkle and make sickness go away, aches and pains flee, colds disappear and most of all, sad moments pop like bubbles. I remember his laughter. It was more like a song and whenever he said my name, it sounded like poetry. But that all seemed so long ago, truly like a dream, a fantasy. The memories were challenged now, cross-examined and scrutinized through my older, far more critical and discerning eyes.
His smiles were not as warm and held as long as I had thought. His words were not as soft and as comforting as I had wished. His promises were often forgotten, words written in the snow, melted and erased by the first touch of probing sunlight. He was merely a man.
I sat up, grinding my eyes to pull back the veil of sleepiness. "Grandmother put a lock on my bedroom door." I said.
He stood up.
"I know. She told me about your not attending school today. Where were you? What did you do?"
"She put a lock on my bedroom door." I repeated, annoyed by the quivering in my voice.
"It's off," he said, "I unlocked it and took it off. Now, tell me where you were. What's going on with you?"
I looked up at him. The words were there, waiting to be born, launched at him like tiny knives. But I couldn't do it. I couldn't do it because saying them, sending them at him would cut me to pieces as well. I could only tremble at the thought of what it would all be like afterward with all of the ugly truth spilled before us.
"Don't you feel well?" he asked.
"No," I said.
"Well, why didn't you just tell Grandmother that?"
"She put a lock on my door," I muttered.
"I told you. I took it off," he said. "Where did you go?"
"Mammy's in a coma. Do you know that?" I snapped back at him. He closed his eyes and nodded.
"I know, That's where I've been since I left work. The doctor assures me she will recuperate. He thinks it's just a temporary thing. She could be very much better tomorrow,"
"Could she?"
"Yes. Now what did you do today. Cinnamon?"
"I had to be by myself today," I lied.
"We're all going through a very difficult time. Cinnamon. We've got to be strong, strong for Mommy," he said.
I couldn't look at him. I kept my eves fixed on the floor. I thought I could hear my spirits, the Demerest women, all laughing at him. I guess it made me smile.
"
^-
Why are you laughing at what I'm saying?" he demanded. "Cinnamon, if you persist in this behavior, have to have you examined by a doctor, too." he threatened.
That really made me laugh and made him furious.
"Go to your room." he ordered. "and you had better be in school tomorrow and behave or I'll take the car away from you. I mean it."
"Who pays for the mortgage and for the food and for the as I waste..."
"What? You're not making any sense. Cinnamon. Go to bed," he ordered and turned away quickly.
I think he was actually afraid of me.
I sat there for a while, listening to the soft murmuring of the voices in the walls, the comforting rhythm of their words. A hundred years ago they came up here to escape from sadness too. I thought.
How little really has changed.

Daddy did take the lock off, but the hasp remained as a reminder of my grandmother's fury and power. She muttered around me all throughout breakfast the next day and followed me out of the house with a trail of warnings and threats, trying to make me feel guilty for putting more pressure and turmoil on our family at a difficult time.

Cinnamon. Think of your father having all this on his head and having to have to do a good job at work at the same time. I know it's difficult for young people to be considerate of others these days. They've been spoiled and turned into self-centered little creatures. but I expect more from you."

Before I left, I couldn't resist turning on her and saying, "I'm not the self-centered one here.
Grandmother. You should direct yourself more at Daddy," I fired. She raised her eyebrows and chased after me, out of the house and to the car.

"And what is that supposed to mean, young lady? What are you saving now? How can you say such a thing? Well?"

"Ask him," I said and got into my car. I left her standing there, fuming.
Clarence was waiting for me at the lockers in the hallway when I arrived at school. One glance at his face told me something was very wrong.
"What?" I asked instead of saying hello or goad morning.
"They called my mother at work." he said. "Told her I wasn't at school. She called my father and I'm grounded for a month. I can't go anywhere on the weekends."
"Oh. Sorry," I said. They called my house too. Who knew they cared?' I added and pulled what I needed from my locker.
Clarence smiled.
"Get ready for the wisecracks," he said. 'My sister already warned me they're talking about us."
"Good." I put my arm through his. "Let's give them something to really talk about then."
He looked surprised, but happy.
There wasn't an eye not directed at us as we made our way to homeroom. And that was the way it remained most of the day. We could see them all whispering, giggling, rotating their eves with their fantasies and stories about us. I could tell Clarence was becoming more embarrassed by it than I was, but whenever he was embarrassed, his earlobes would turn red. The rest of him would grow pale and he would keep his eyes down, his lower lip under his upper.
None of the girls in my classes had the nerve to confront me directly. Even the girls who were so much bigger physically shied away from any face-toface confrontation. Everyone was afraid of the evil eye, as my penetrating dark glare was called. The boys, however, were different. Eddie Morris, who liked to tease Clarence anyway, was full of witty remarks like. "Viagra Boy, can you keep up with her?"
Before lunch, Eddie and his buddies surrounded Clarence and tormented him with questions about our relationship. I was a little late because Miss Hamilton approached me in the hallway and practically shoved the script of her new school play into my hands.
"I want you to try out for the lead," she insisted. "Don't say no or anything until you read the play and see the part. Cinnamon. Please," she cajoled and I nodded and took it.
When I reached the cafeteria. Clarence was trying to get by four boys led by Eddie. Eddie kept poking him in the shoulder, baiting him with questions like. "Does she paint her nipples black too?"
Clarence lifted his eyes to see me coming and then, without any warning, swung his closed fist around and caught Eddie Morris on the side of his head. It took him by such surprise, he lost his balance and fell, spilling his books and notebooks over the floor. His friends, shocked, stepped back and Mr. Jacobs, the teacher on lunch duty, came charging forward, inserting himself quickly between Clarence and Eddie who was rising in a fury to retaliate.
He marched them both past me toward the principal's office. When Clarence went by, I caught a gleeful smile in his eyes.
"The spirits made me do it," he muttered and I laughed.
The other boys took one look at me and cleared away quickly. When Clarence returned, he came directly to my table and told me he had gotten a severe warning and two days detention.
"They're sending a letter home to good old Mom and Dad." he added, "but they don't have to. My sister will be blabbing about it at the dinner table tonight. Maybe my father will be at one of his famous dinner meetings. Maybe they both will be."
As it turned out, that was exactly what happened. Clarence called me to tell me so. Then he surprised me by asking when he should come over.
"I thought you were rounded," I said.
"I'll tell them I had to study with you for a math test or something. That usually works. Any excuse usually works," he added.. "Ours is a house built on a foundation of lies everyone accepts."
"Come any time." I said and went to join my grandmother for dinner. It was the first time since Mommy had been taken away by ambulance.
But I was feeling better about Mommy because when I called the hospital, the nurse in ICU told me she had snapped out of the coma and was being moved back to a regular room. She said the doctor wanted to hold off visitors until the next day so she could get a full night's rest, but he was speaking with much more positive notes. It filled my heart with enough hope and warmth to even face my
grandmother and be civil. The end, after all, was in sight. The madness in the house would stop.
What happened with Daddy was something else, something to postpone, but in my secret heart of hearts, I prayed there was some explanation and some end to that betrayal as well. Funny, I thought, how good news could turn you into a child again, permitting you to believe in happy endings.