I thought for a minute. Anything I came up with was likely to get me in trouble.
I wish my mother
hadn’t blown the mortgage money. Dwight is the
furthest thing from a reprobate that I can imagine
. But it wouldn’t have been nice to say those sentences to Mommers. “The mortgage is paid so the bank is happy,” I said. “And …There is a boy in my class at school who is a reprobate.”
Mommers snorted. “For real? There’s a jerk in your class?”
I nodded. “He stepped on his ice cream sandwich in the lunchroom. Then he offered it to me as a welcome to your new school present.”
Mommers leaned closer to her computer screen. “Yep, that’s a reprobate.”
“I thought it was too bad about the ice cream,” I said. “People shouldn’t wreck perfectly good food.”
“Hmm. Hey, do you have homework?”
“First day. There isn’t any.”
“What about flute?”
“Yep,” I said. “I’m going to do that now.”
Funny to stink at something and still love it. If there is one thing worse than rows of letters on a page it has to be rows of musical notes. You can’t steady them with a three by five card when you need all your fingers to key with. Mostly, I played by ear.
What I really wanted was to play the
piccolo.
But you have to learn the flute first. So far, I’d stuck with it. Now that we’d moved, I had a new problem; we had basically
stolen
the flute from my last school. I was assigned a school instrument. I was allowed to keep the flute over the summer so I could practice. But the flute should have gone back to Borden School once we knew we were moving. Now I got a wave of uneasiness every time I looked at the little black case.
I’d already met the music teacher at my new school. Her name was Ms. Rivera. She said she would be trying out all the new students in the next week or two. Then she’d let us know about our placements for school lessons. I was nervous about that because I knew I’d have to explain to her that I didn’t have the Love of Learning.
I
couldn’t decide what to call the thing the train went by on. It was either an overpass or an underpass. Maybe it depended on where you were standing. Even Webster’s couldn’t help me out because Webster’s didn’t have all the details. The overpass part had a purpose; the train was on it. So probably that was the most right word. The underpass part was not used anymore—kind of like the Empty Acre. Soula told me, “That road used to be the main way in to our intersection. Then the city rerouted the traffic. See, the old way skirts a brown field,” she said as she pointed across the road. “That’s a big old polluted spot on the earth, Little Cookie. It happens when an industry leaves and won’t clean up after itself. It stinks.” Soula posted newspaper clippings about that, and other things that had to do with the city—especially the area near our corner—on a board near the entrance to the minimart. I never spent much time reading the postings because newspapers were hard for me to read and I would have felt stupid standing there holding my three by five card underneath every line. But I always looked at the pictures.
Anyway, even though nothing went under it anymore, I thought it was important to remember the underpass part. You can’t ignore history. I called it the Over Underpass.
Dwight came on the first Saturday and he brought Brynna and Katie with him. It was raining pretty hard and he rushed them into the trailer. The Littles wiggled like puppies from me to Mommers and back again. If they’d had tails, they’d have wagged them. We just kept hugging one another, which is a good thing for a trailer full of people to do. Mommers kept pulling Katie onto her lap and tucking her nose into her curls. She said, “Go do your errands, Dwight. You can leave the girls with me.”
“No thanks,” Dwight said.
Mommers sighed—a crying sort of sigh. “They’re
my
girls, Dwight! What am I gonna do? Leave town with ’em? I don’t even have a car!”
“Let’s just stick to the plan,” Dwight said in his quiet way.
“Let the state decide what we do with
our
kids?” Mommers complained. She pushed her coffee cup away and balled up her napkin.
He saw me watching them, listening to them. He pulled in a deep breath and closed his eyes. “That’s enough, Denise. Okay?”
We ate the doughnuts Dwight had brought. I made microwave cocoas even though the day outdoors was hot and steamy. It stopped raining at about eleven and Dwight said he’d take us all outside.
“Oh yeah, great idea,” Mommers said. “The yard here is so nice for children.” She switched on her computer.
Katie and Brynna and I played ghosts in the steam that rose from the broken pavement. I showed them how to pop the tar bubbles with their thumbs. We jumped up and ran from the hot water that squirted out of the rain filled bubbles. Dwight checked a few things that had to do with the trailer—the power hookup, which we got from the Heads and Roses Laundry Stop next door, and the propane tank that fueled our stove. Then he grabbed a coil of rope from his truck. He stood looking at the Over Underpass for a second. “I’ve been thinking …there must be a way to put up a swing here.”
“Yeah! Yeah!” we cried, and we followed him out to the mouth of the closed off road where the weeds came up through the cracks in the blacktop. We watched Dwight climb up the crisscrossing metal bars into the belly of the Over Underpass. We blinked to keep the rusty chips from falling down into our eyes. He looked like a spider guy all upside down, appearing and disappearing in the shadows. He grunted and threw the looped rope over a steel girder. “How am I doin’, girls?” His voice echoed and we cheered him on. Finally, he shimmied down the rope, grinning and sweaty, one arm stretched way out in celebration.
At first the swing had problems. The big knot in the bottom wasn’t very comfortable after a few rides, and Katie wasn’t strong enough to grab it with her feet. But the next week, Dwight brought a round of wood—all sanded smooth and with a hole drilled in the center. He threaded the rope and knotted it twice under the new seat.
“There it is, girls! The best rope swing ever!” he boomed.
After that, it was the first thing Brynna and Katie wanted to do when they visited. As I pulled Brynna back and let her fly away and return to me for the next several Saturdays, I thought the best part about the swing was the way Dwight had said, “There it is, girls!” He’d made me feel like I was one of his girls too.
T
he hard part came when Dwight got a renovating job up in Lake George. I knew something was changing when he came in looking so serious. He took Mommers outside to talk. I climbed into my bunk and watched and listened at the little square window.
“You could have given me some warning!” she screamed.
“I tried to get through for hours. You must have been online, Denise. I’m sorry about this, but I gotta take the job. It’s a chance to catch up on a lot of bad bills. I found good day care for the babies—”
My heart took a dive. Of course—Brynna and Katie were going away too.
“They need their mother!” Mommers hollered. “You
want
to take them away from me! You have always wanted this! You and Jack did this together, didn’t you?”
She meant Grandio. Mommers was no longer on speaking terms with him, which was actually an improvement in their relationship. All they’d ever done was argue.
“No, and I don’t
want
this.” Dwight shook his head. “But it’s the only way, for now. I’ll get here every other week. Sundays probably. I’ll figure it out.”
“Oh, at least be honest, Dwight. You’re enjoying this!”
Dwight lost it. “Know what, Denise? I might enjoy it if it weren’t for Addie. I hate splitting the girls up!” Then he swore at Mommers—I’d never heard him do that before.
She flew at him—fists pounding—and Dwight grabbed her wrists and turned her. He held on to her, close and hard, so she couldn’t hit anymore. She thrashed like a giant fish. The back of her head smashed his lip. He sucked back the blood. He held on, not speaking. Finally, Mommers went limp in his arms. Dwight whispered, “I’m sorry, I’m sorry.” They stood there like they were stuck together for a long while. Then Mommers turned and wiped her face on his T-shirt. He handed her his handkerchief and the little black comb from the back pocket of his jeans. She turned her back on him, shook like she was trying to get rid of something, then started pulling the comb through her hair.
Dwight came inside alone. He told me about the move. I didn’t admit that I already knew—that I’d listened from my bunk.
He chewed on his fat lip. “I’ll get here as often as I can, Addie. But this renovation is gonna be a lot of work. It’s an old mansion and the owner wants to turn it into an inn. It’s really cool. I want you to see it someday.” He let his eyes twinkle for a second. Dwight loved old houses. “But there’s a time crunch. I’ve gotta be done by April.”
April!
I tried to count the months but I was slow—kind of like the ABC order problem. I just knew it would be most of a year. “I’m not going to see Brynna and Katie. Or you.” I let it slip.
“I’ll call every week, so we can all talk,” he said. “We’ll come down every chance we get.” He looked as sorry as the time he’d come for Brynna and Katie after the court order.
I tried to cheer up. I didn’t want to make him feel worse. I squeezed my tears away. I took his arm and hugged it close to me. He cupped his other hand on the back of my head. I curled my hands around his forearm and pressed my face into the blond hairs and tanned skin. I always loved Dwight’s arms—I don’t know why, I just did.
“I’ll see you when you can get here,” I said, “and Brynna and Katie too.”
T
he flute shook in my hands. I looked up from the piece of music on the stand in front of me. “I can’t just play it. Not right off,” I said. I waited for Ms. Rivera’s response, glad that we were alone. She looked as if I had completely confused her. “I need to hear it first. I need to
know
it,” I explained.
“Oh. Well, how many times do you usually need to hear the music before you know it?”
I waited. I knew the answer was at least ten, depending on how long the piece was and how many changes. “Maybe five,” I croaked. I cleared my throat. “And I
can
read the music with a note card and hum it to myself. Then I play it back …after a few tries, that is. I mean, I can work on it at home.” I figured I better stop talking and let poor Ms. Rivera think.
She blinked. “Well, play a piece that you’ve already mastered,” she said.
I closed my eyes and brought the flute to my lips. I played “The Witches’ Waltz”—two mini mess ups along the way but I went on. That was important; you should always go on. I set the flute in my lap and opened my eyes.
“Oh! Lovely!” Ms. Rivera made marks on a tryout sheet. “What a bouncy melody, and you key with a good, light touch, Addison.” She thought for a second. “Maybe I can hand you the music ahead of time so you have a chance to assimilate it.” She leaned forward and asked, “Do you think that’ll work?”
“Yes, thanks. I do.”
I let out a big huge sigh on my way back down the hall.
Assimilate
, I thought. I knew what Ms. Rivera had meant because of how she’d used the word but I was going to double check with Webster’s anyway. The tryout was over with. Now all I had to worry about was working hard on the music at home—and the fact that I had a basically stolen flute. I rocked the little instrument case in my hand as I walked.
“Did you go see Rivera?”
I looked into the face of the reprobate boy—the ice cream sandwich smasher—whose name, I had learned, was Robert. He stood in my way, leaning against the wall outside our classroom. “Yes. I saw her,” I said.
“Did you get in?”
“In?”
“Yeah. Stage Orchestra.”
“Stage Orchestra?”
“It’s for the best musicians,” Robert said. “We play at holiday concerts and stuff.”
I suddenly realized that was why it was called a
tryout
. “Uh, I’m just doing lessons, I guess.”
“Figures,” he said. “Well, I’m in. I play the cello.”
I didn’t bother to tell him that all the cellos I’d ever heard in school sounded like yawning cows or bad gas. Or that I wondered how a little squirt like him could even hang on to a cello. I pushed past him into our classroom.
My new friend Marissa, who was about as small as any sixth grade girl can be, turned from the computer station and asked softly, “How did it go?”
“Fine,” I whispered back. “I didn’t know about Stage Orchestra,” I added.
Then my other new friend, Helena, who was about as big as any sixth grade girl can be, looked up from her desk and whispered, “I got in last year for violin. It’s really fun. And Ms. Rivera will let you know by Halloween if you make it.”
“Not a chance.” Robert had put himself right in the middle of our conversation—standing in the way, that is.
“You didn’t hear her play. What do you know?” Helena piped.
“I know that you are an amazon!” He puffed himself up to look as big as he could. “And . . .” he boomed.
I cringed. I knew what was coming next. Word had already gotten out.
“…I know that Nurse Sandi had to give
you
the B.O. talk today. Right after gym class.” He pointed to his armpit and pinched his nose. “Ha-ha- ha!”
Helena hid her reddening face.
“Hey!” I said. “Leave her alone, Robert, you
reprobate
!”
Later, I met Helena outside the school and I told her it didn’t matter about what Robert said. “School nurses have all kinds of talks. Remember the ‘Don’t pick your nose talk’ from kindergarten? And the ‘Did you eat a good breakfast talk’? I used to get that one twice a week at my other school,” I said. “Everybody gets the B.O. talk eventually. Now yours is out of the way. I went through it,” I admitted. “My mother told me I smelled. Now I use Fresh Whisper every day.”
“Oh,” said Helena. “I wish
my
mother had told me. I can’t believe I was stinking like that today.” We started down Nott Street together. We passed the gate to the college campus and walked past a little Tibetan shop and admired some paper lanterns in the window. Helena would turn off at Seneca Street, where the Goose Hill Barber Shop pole twirled on the corner, and I’d continue down to the minimart—always my first stop after school.