I walked over to Dad as the soldier said, “Now tell me, what part of the missile are you actually involved with? The payload?”
“No. It’s a navigation system that will be accurate to within a few hundred yards.”
“Spare some lives?”
“It will be more efficient.”
“Well, keep up the good work, Colonel Harris. Don’t let the critics stop you.”
I held up the apple. “Dad, can I get this?”
“Sh. Don’t interrupt.”
I mouthed,
Can I get this?
And he nodded.
Phil would never have gotten away with the same thing, and to show he noticed, he turned the cart just enough so I ran into it. But I held tight to the apple, all the way to the checkout. I even requested for it to be put in its own bag, ignoring Phil’s groans.
We left the store, past the salutes, past those who smiled as if congratulating me for being Colonel Harris’s daughter. When we were on the road again, I rolled down the window and let the wind blow my hair. The sun had almost set, and in the towns between the commissary and our house, flyers stapled to trees and telephone polls seemed to glow in the dark: stop busing. save our neighborhoods! I’d seen these signs pinned to the bulletin board at the library and at Robertson’s Five and Ten.
There were no such signs as we turned onto the streets closer to home, just neighbors walking their dogs and polishing their cars with Turtle Wax. It was against the community rules to hang any posters at all. If you wanted to advertise a yard sale or post a notice about your missing pet, you had to use the bulletin board near the nature center. Our neighborhood always looked peaceful, just as we did, stepping out of the car with our bags of groceries—and no one could tell what we returned to when we opened our door.
• • •
There were overturned books and a loaf of bread left open on the couch. A trail of scented powder led across the carpet, stopping at Momma. She stood by the bay window overlooking the swimming pool, filled with rainwater and broken branches, ivy creeping through cracks in the cement.
I put my hand on her back and asked, “Do you want to go outside?”
She shook her head, didn’t even look at me—only closed her bathrobe tighter.
Dad slammed the groceries into the fridge and cupboards, and finally shouted, “Mara, don’t you think you can give us a hand?”
“I’m not feeling well,” she said, still focused outside.
“Okay, so you’re not feeling well again.” He stomped into the room and pointed to the couch, where Sylvia Plath, Anne Sexton, and Virginia Woolf lay upside down with their spines broken. “But you have time to read these books, is that right?”
I stood between them. “
I
can help with the groceries.”
He ignored me. “If you can’t help in the kitchen, maybe you can help Tillie with her homework?”
She bent over as if she’d been punched, but Dad made no effort to comfort her. He simply put his hands in his pockets.
“I don’t really need any help,” I told him, and with that, he sent me to bed.
That night, Momma cried like an animal caught in a trap. In-between sobs, she listed the reasons she hated my father. “You don’t care. You don’t care. You don’t care.”
“Do you want me to make that call?” he said. “Because I’m this close.”
I couldn’t hear my mother, only the sound of pleading and whimpering, and imagined this was like the fight Phil overheard the night they moved in.
“You’re a disgrace. That’s what you are,” Dad said, so sure he was right. “Your being here doesn’t add anything to their lives. In fact, you’re a burden to them.”
Momma said nothing—maybe feeling as I did—frozen and holding the pillow.
“I’m telling you right now,” Dad continued. “I need to see a change, and soon. Get dressed. Take a bath. Do something for the children. Because if you can’t pull it together, I’ve got the number right here.”
And the next time I came downstairs, I saw a number for St. Elizabeth’s taped to the fridge. I knew from my talks with Hope that it was one of the places people went into and never came back out. He was asking too much of her—things I knew she couldn’t do—and I thought of my doll again, how, when a piece had broken, he threw her to the curb.
T
ILLIE.” MR. WOODSON KNELT
beside my desk with his hand on my shoulder. “Don’t you want to put your things away before you take your seat?”
I hadn’t remembered getting to class at all. I sat there, wearing my jacket and book bag and holding a large paper sack with my apple inside of it. I looked up at him, not speaking, and walked, groggy, to the coat closet.
“Tillie, are you ready to find your seat?”
I had been standing by my coat hook, and though I heard him, I just couldn’t move yet. My mind was full and blank all at once.
“When you’re ready,” he said.
The flawless apple was still cold from the refrigerator. I scratched a smile into it with my fingernail, on the bottom, where Mr. Woodson wouldn’t see. And when I passed his desk, I gave it to him. He held the apple like it was easily hurt, and
set it down gently beside his pencil holder as he called for us to sit on the rug.
We sat in a half circle. He sat in a kid’s chair, his long legs bent like a grasshopper’s, and told us the continuing adventures of Ed and Edna, two children who had gotten lost. That day they were stuck in a dungeon and we listened to find out if they’d escape. I could see the apple over his shoulder as if it levitated there.
I sat closest to him, and sometimes I touched my finger to his brown shoes, wishing he could know how much it mattered to me those times he tried to help. All through the day, I checked Mr. Woodson’s desk to see if he’d eaten the apple. I imagined the smile I’d carved floating inside of him, all safe.
At play rehearsal, I moved my lips to the songs as the janitor in his blue jumpsuit pushed his mop down the length of the cafeteria. When Mrs. Newkirk called for a break, I realized I did not even know what scenes we’d run through. Everyone took seats at the tables throughout the room, and kids unwrapped their snacks—pretzel sticks, Little Debbie cakes, sunflower seeds. I’d forgotten to bring one, so I sat at the emptiest table and opened the
Encyclopedia D
.
Out the window, my father’s car pulled up to the front of the school. Who’d ever believe the man coming to take Phil to a dental appointment was also the kind of villain who’d lock our mother in the basement and scare us into silence? I knew he expected Momma to get better, and quick, but it seemed like we were waiting for something horrible to happen.
Phil left the building with his hood pulled over the top of his head and got into the backseat, though he was allowed to ride
in front. When I heard the sound of bells, I turned to see Shirl coming toward me with a lollipop in her mouth. She dropped a note and another sucker on the table in front of me before heading back to her seat.
I unfolded the lined paper, and over my shoulder, some classmates read it out loud:
You can come to my house. I asked. You can ride the bus home with me if your mom writes a note. SCB
.
The students who’d read the note started to laugh. “You’ll never be found alive again!”
“Better not cross the tracks.”
“My dad says they shoot white people over there.”
I kept my eyes straight ahead and unwrapped the lollipop.
“Ooh, you’re going to eat that?”
“You know why their skin is brown? It’s from
you-know-what
.” The student pressed her lips on the insides of her hands and blew. Everyone was cracking up.
I folded the note again and tucked it in my front pocket, thinking of Momma hugging the sofa pillow and Phil kicking his feet through the beer cans on his floor. Maybe it would be nice to spend an afternoon at Shirl’s house.
“Okay, listen up, cast,” Mrs. Newkirk announced. “I need to work on that last scene, but just with the leads. If you’d like to go home early, you can. And if you need to wait for your ride, you’re welcome to play a game quietly in the back of the room. Everyone clear?”
The leads groaned, “Unfair.” But it was only to draw attention to themselves as stars.
I started to leave when Shirl caught up with me. “Did you read the note?”
I nodded and said, “I’ll have to ask.”
She walked to the door with me, though she’d have to
stay for the whole rehearsal if she wanted to catch the late bus home.
“I wonder what our costumes will be,” I said.
“I don’t want to talk about it.”
“Yeah, we got sucky parts. I thought you’d get cast as Dorothy.”
Shirl was naturally dramatic, always standing with her hand on her hip and speaking in a voice so loud she didn’t need a microphone. She even had the braids.
“Mrs. Newkirk isn’t going to make someone like
me
Dorothy,” she said, rolling her eyes. “She’s kind of a—” I could tell she wanted to say a cuss word, but she got nervous, had probably never said the word out loud before.
“I don’t know,” I said. “Sometimes she’ll look over her glasses, like this”—I made an exaggerated sour face—“but even that day she walked me to the principal’s office, she wasn’t mean about it.”
“Well, I
know
she’s going to be nice to
you
,” she said. “All the teachers favor you because …”
I crossed my arms and waited for her to say it was because my skin was pink, and lump me together with all of the other kids in the auditorium. “Go ahead. Say it.”
“Because of your dad,” she said.
And now I moved my hands to my pockets because maybe she was right, and maybe I didn’t want her to be.
A number of teachers had taken to calling me “the little academic,” only because I carried an encyclopedia everywhere, and they seemed to expect that I might, at any moment, stop being so much like me and start being more like my father.
“I have to go,” I said.
“Don’t forget the note.”
When I was a good distance from the school, I practiced singing “Follow the Yellow Brick Road” in my thin voice. I hadn’t been cast as a yellow brick for nothing.
When I got home, Momma was seated on the edge of the couch with a plastic bag, a roll of wrapping paper, and some scotch tape beside her. She looked at me with red, puffy eyes, and smiled briefly. “We’re going to have a party,” she said, in almost a whisper.
“What do you mean? For what?” I put down my book bag.
“Your father bought this present,” she said, handing me the plastic bag. “It’s to celebrate Phil’s new tooth.” She started to cry.
“But that’s good, Momma,” I said, sitting beside her and taking the plastic bag from her lap. “Do you want me to wrap this?”
She rubbed her thumb back and forth along the jagged edge of the tape dispenser. “We’re going to have Phil’s favorite dinner and then one of those family nights. Don’t you think this will be fun? It’s like a new beginning.” Her bottom lip trembled, and I took the paper and tape from her.
As I wrapped, Momma, holding a pen and a tiny card, hung her head over her lap. I thought of all those days and nights she was alone in the basement, before I’d discovered her there. She must have seen those TV commercials with families cheering for each other over games of Yahtzee and Electro Shot Shooting Gallery. I couldn’t imagine us ever being like them.
When I finished wrapping, Momma uncapped the pen and wrote very slowly. The ink didn’t show on the parts of the card where her tears had fallen.
“Do you want to get dressed up for the party?” I asked, taking the card and taping it to the package.
Her pajama bottoms were stained with food, and the robe didn’t smell very good. “Here,” I said, answering myself. “I’ll pick out something you can wear.”
I looked through the hallway closet, where Phil had dumped her things into a deep pile, glad to do something that would keep Dad from yelling at her again. The first piece of clothing I found was her kelly green sweater.
“That’s fine,” she said, reaching for it.
“In May? Are you sure?”
“It doesn’t matter.”
I handed her the sweater along with a necklace that had a tangled chain. And while Momma used the TV screen to apply her makeup, swirling the brushes in a kind of a daze, I continued to dig for a skirt or a pair of slacks.
By the time Dad’s car pulled into the driveway, the living room floor was covered in clothes, scissors, tape, and cuttings of wrapping paper. Momma had put liner on one eye but not the other. She joined me in the foyer, her face half done, and wearing the sweater over her pajama bottoms. Even through his mustache, I saw Dad’s disapproval, but I ran to straight to Phil.
“Show me,” I said. “Let’s see the new tooth.”
He headed for the stairs and wouldn’t turn around, so I followed him to his room and stood outside his door as he stared into the mirror.
“Let’s
see
,” I said again.
“It’s just a tooth.” He touched it with his finger.
I stepped over the cans to get closer. The
Dr. Demento Show
played on the radio, turned down so low I heard the laugh track but not the jokes. I stared along with my brother.
“I thought I’d look … you know—”
“Yeah,” I said.
We could both see the problem. It was as if fixing the tooth called attention to the fact that his front teeth were too big, that his nose was still too small and round.
Dad called from the stairs. “Come on down, Phil.”
“Wait!” Phil shouted, and then mumbled, “I just want to be by myself.”
“We’ve kind of been planning something,” I said.
“Dad told me.” He tried looking at his mouth with his lips closed. “I don’t want to have a party for my tooth.”
Downstairs, Dad complained about the mess. “Pick this up. And this. Don’t just set it down on the couch. That’s not picking it up.”
“Just do it for Momma,” I said.
“It was easier when she was gone.”
“Don’t say that. She’s been through so much.”
“You don’t get it,” he said. “You didn’t drive from Albuquerque with her.”
Every time we really talked, he had to say something about that drive out here with the U-Haul and put her down one more time.