Up From the Blue (12 page)
T
HE SKY WAS SO
thick with rain clouds on our first day of school, it looked like nighttime. Children carrying umbrellas and lunch boxes shouted to each other, acorns popped under tires, school buses rumbled, and cars hissed through the wet streets.
“You’re sure this is what you want to wear?” Dad asked.
I’d chosen a yellow t-shirt with an iron-on tiger and flare pants with Dick Tracy comic panels all over them. The pants were too small, showing my ankles, but I wanted badly to wear something Momma had bought for me.
“Tillie, are you listening?”
“Yes. Yes, I want to wear this outfit.”
“But I’ve been talking to you about the lunch money you’ll need to bring to school each day. I’ll keep it here by the …”
This time last year, Momma walked me to school on the first day. It was before things really changed, when she was still leaving the house and going to PTA meetings and bringing cupcakes
to my class. On this day, a year ago, dressed more like a teenager than an officer’s wife, she whispered in my ear, “Don’t worry. I’ll stay right beside you. I’m as scared as you are.”
The brakes of another school bus screeched past our street, and I gripped my book bag, looking once again at Dad, impatient and checking his watch.
“Sit on the couch now,” he said. “Let’s get your rain boots on.”
“I can do it myself.”
“Yes, but we’re in a hurry and you’re not focused.”
Phil had been standing quietly by the door, already carrying his book bag and wearing his jacket with the name of our old air force base printed on the back. When I stood up, Dad slipped my raincoat over my shoulders and pointed me out the door.
The grass was wet, and the cuttings from the last mowing stuck to my boots. Phil and I walked down the hill together, while Dad drove slowly alongside us.
Most of the cars that passed us were filled with boys and girls, wearing white button-up shirts and blue sweaters. Their cars drove in the opposite direction of our school, spraying water at our ankles if they went by too fast. And soon, Dad beeped twice, turned down a different road, and we were on our own.
“You forgot to bring your sneakers,” Phil said. “Don’t you remember Dad put them in a plastic bag so you could change into them at school?”
“He didn’t tell me.”
“Sure, he did. You just didn’t listen.”
“I wish he’d stop telling me things when I’m not listening.” I stomped in a puddle then stayed ankle-deep to watch parents on a nearby porch photographing a girl in pigtails. “We forgot to take pictures.”
“You would have to comb your hair,” he said. “That might take weeks.”
I kicked water at him and he pushed me down. Hard.
“Help me pick up my stuff or I’ll tell,” I said, feeling it soak into my pants.
He picked up my book bag but waited for me to stand up on my own.
As we approached the only major road we had to cross to get to school, we were stopped by a student crossing guard wearing a fluorescent orange belt diagonally across her chest. “I know when to cross the street,” Phil told her. “I could have gone just then.”
She ignored him, looked both ways, and waved us across. I’d never heard Phil speak in that tone to a stranger, or really, to anyone other than me, but he wasn’t used to being treated like he couldn’t do things himself. I liked having a crossing guard. It meant I didn’t have to pay attention.
Down the hill, a sea of students under colorful umbrellas waited at the entrance of the school. We tried to get spots near the awning, where we’d be protected from the rain, but didn’t get that far. We were jabbed by the edges of umbrellas until the doors opened, and then flowed into the building with the current, whether we were ready or not.
Phil headed down the sixth grade hallway, and I went to the “pod,” where third graders had carpeted, three-walled classrooms. I found a seat, read my teacher’s name on the blackboard, and couldn’t help but think that the knot in my stomach wouldn’t be there if Momma had walked me to school.
One of the boys had turned to the wall because he was blubbering, his lips puffy and trembling, and I was suddenly glad I could keep my feelings to myself. I got up and walked to the teacher’s desk.
Mr. Woodson was bent over a green ledger and a stack of files; his Afro was seven or eight inches around and cast a shadow over his work. My mother used to make felt ornaments—angels, clowns, lions—and she gave all of them Afros larger than their bodies by separating individual pieces of yarn and spraying them with hairspray so they stood straight out.
“Mr. Woodson?” I asked.
He lifted his head. I’d never seen this kind of hair up close. It was not like yarn at all, but tight little curls that I longed to press, the way I would a patch of moss, to see if it would bounce back up.
“You’re Matilda, is that right?”
I shook my head.
“I’m wrong? I apologize. Help me find your folder and I’ll remember your name forever.”
I flipped through the manila folders on his desk, found the one labeled MATILDA HARRIS, took his pen, and wrote TILLIE across the top of it. I smiled at him, then opened the folder and corrected my name on each paper. What I noticed as I did this—besides Mr. Woodson’s mouth changing from amused to uneasy—was that my mother was not listed anywhere, on any form. My dad had simply left all sections regarding mothers and spouses blank. And in the section for emergency numbers he’d listed Anne.
“Tillie. Believe me, I will not forget your name again,” Mr. Woodson said, placing his hand over the stack of folders. “Now, did you come to see me about anything in particular?”
“I’d like to be excused, please.”
It was that easy. He handed me the hall pass, which was attached to the bathroom key, though that’s not where I wanted to go. I wanted to find Hope. I hopscotched down the empty
hallway, and each time I passed a classroom door, I jumped up and down, trying to peer through the small window. And in jumping I discovered that if I twisted the toes of my boots as I walked, it sounded like there were many more of me, and this was a feeling I liked.
Doing a full circle of the school in search of Hope, I noticed I was back at the entrance of the building. “They’re here,” one woman called to the other staff members. Several adults walked right past me and toward the main doors as one last school bus pulled into the driveway with brown faces pressed against each window.
“Let’s do this right because it will be all over the news if we don’t,” the woman said before turning to me. “Back to class, dear.”
“I’m trying to find my friend,” I said.
“Not now.”
I followed her eyes to the children who walked cautiously down the bus steps and into the building, their rubber soles squeaking against the wet tiles. Teachers smiled and waved, and when no one waved back, they rested their hands on their hips or clasped them behind their backs. Suddenly the building felt stuffy.
A teacher gestured for me to get back to class, but something caught my interest. One of the girls from the school bus—tall and chubby with braids going in every direction—had small bells tied to her shoelaces, and every time she took a step, she jingled. I couldn’t help but follow as she continued down the hallway, and each time she turned to glare at me, I pretended to read one of the welcome posters pinned to the walls. When we both turned in to Mr. Woodson’s classroom, I smiled at her and said, “See. I wasn’t following you.”
“I think we finally have our whole class here,” Mr. Woodson announced, and I took my seat. Then he introduced us to Shirley Chisholm Brooks, the girl with the bells. He told us how far her bus had traveled so she could enjoy this fine education and how we could learn from her, too. Then he told us about the real Shirley Chisholm, the first black congresswoman, who seemed to have nothing at all in common with this sour girl except for her name and her brown skin. We all stared at her, and this time, instead of staring back, she laid her head on the desk and studied the wood grain.
I’d hoped people would feel sorry for me at my new school—much as Dad wanted me to be strong—but this elementary was
full
of children living with only one parent. And now there were kids who traveled nearly an hour across town to be there. My brother and I were nothing special with our glum faces and our own house key.
“They laughed at my tooth,” Phil said as we walked home together.
“Sorry,” I said. “It
is
funny looking.”
He tried to kick the backs of my knees, but I jogged out of his reach. “I didn’t have a great day either,” I said. “There aren’t any kids in my class I want to be friends with.”
“It’s just the first day.”
“And I had to borrow sixty-five cents from my teacher to eat. Dad didn’t even give me lunch money.”
Phil shook his head.
“It would have been better if Momma had taken us to school today. Don’t you remember? She always pointed out girls I should say hi to.”
“You’re too old for that.”
The cost of mentioning Momma’s name was the immediate silence, the space that grew between us as we walked. Phil reached for the house key tied to his belt loop with a twisty tie. All the way home, he concentrated on detaching that key from his pants.
HOPE AND I SPENT
hours over the weekend listening to a tape recording she made of her favorite Top 40 songs, and we copied down lyrics, rewinding the tape again and again to catch what we missed.
After some jump rope and dares, like flicking water at the electrical outlets and trying to ride the skateboard down her steep driveway, Hope suggested we play at my house.
“There’s not really anything to do there.”
“We could play run away from your dad, or else!” She put her claws in the air. And when I didn’t answer, she lowered them, saying, “So let’s play in your backyard.”
“I guess we could.”
When we walked along the side of my house, the ivy was so deep, it buried most of the steps. “Whoa,” she said when she got her first view of the back. “It’s like an old abandoned house.”
She walked right out on to the diving board, overlooking the empty pool with the ever-growing crack through the cement, and said, “Dare me.”
“Don’t. I’d get in trouble.” I sat on the edge, sticky from the heat, and kicked my heels into the side of the pool. “I tried to find your class at school,” I said.
“Well, I don’t go to the
public
school,” she said. “Almost no one around here goes
this
year.”
“Why not?”
“Because of the …” and she whispered the word Momma told me never to say. Then she raised her arms over her head and said, “Dare me to do a flip?”
“Don’t!”
She bent over laughing. “No, don’t, don’t!” I thought she might do a flip after all, just from losing her balance, but the outside door to our basement had caught her interest, and she hopped off the board to inspect it. “Let’s go in here.”
“We’re not allowed.”
“‘Cause why?” she said, turning the knob, pleased to find it unlocked.
“My dad told me it’s not safe,” I said, though I’d already followed her inside.
We were like spies, slipping inside, creeping across the entire dark basement without a word, jiggling the closet doorknob, and searching the corners for rats.
I showed her the door partway up the wall, and she pulled the string to open it. We climbed in, found a pull-chain that turned on a single light bulb, and then we closed the door. It was a pipe room with a dirt floor, filled with random furniture that must have belonged to the previous owner. “This will be our clubhouse,” she said, hopping into a plaid armchair. “I don’t know why your dad thinks it’s so dangerous down here.”
“Rats and rusty nails,” I said.
“Did
you
see any of those things?”
“I guess not.”
She reached into her back pocket and pulled out a mini notebook. “I have some more ideas about your mother,” she said. “I asked around at my school about people who just disappear.”
I had a feeling I was going to have more information than I wanted. Like the nursery rhymes Momma sang to me when
I was little, if you asked what they were about, if you tried to make sense of them, the magic disappeared, and they were no longer something you wanted to hear before sleep.
“I think your father could have put her in
an institution
.” She made a grim face as if I should know what that word meant.
“What is that?”
“I read about it at the library,” she said. “You take a family member who’s causing a problem, and, well, it’s not a prison and it’s not a hospital. It’s where people go and you never see them again.”
“But
I
don’t think she was causing a problem.”
“It’s what your dad thinks that counts.”
I crossed my arms over my chest, increasingly annoyed at the way she talked about my mother as if we were playing a game of Clue.
“I also found this at the library,” she said, and I braced myself for more of her theories, but she had a welcome surprise underneath her jacket—a stolen
Tiger Beat
magazine. We flipped through the pages of teen singers and movie stars, and rated their hair and clothes, one to ten. She ripped a picture of Peter Frampton from the magazine and gave it to me, and said, “But I’m keeping Leif Garrett.”