Too Soon for Jeff

by Marilyn Reynolds

  Jeremy says, “What’re you doing over there, wrestling a bear?”

  It’s getting lighter. I can see that he’s sitting up in bed, looking in my direction.

  “What do you mean?” I ask.

  “You! You’re tossing and turning like you’re in mortal combat with a tyrannosaurus.”

  “Oh. Sorry. I guess I’ve been wrestling my speeches.”

  “Piece of cake,” Jeremy says, lying back down and turning away from me. “We’ve got all our facts and phrases ready for Policy Debate, and your short story thing always knocks their socks off. Relax.”

  Easy for him to say. It takes two hands to count Jeremy’s scholarship possibilities and one finger to count mine.

  We meet in the school cafeteria at eight in the morning. Everything here is shiny and clean. The walls are painted with huge murals depicting California history—Cabrillo sailing into San Diego Bay, Father Junipero Serra at the San Diego Mission, a Gold Rush scene, the bridges at San Francisco Bay. This place makes the Hamilton High caf­eteria look like Skid Row in comparison.

  Hundreds and hundreds of people are milling around, getting set up. Dashan, Jeremy and Trin take their files of reference materials over to the Extemp room. I don’t know how they do it. I need preparation time, practice time, thinking time. Both of the events I compete in allow for that. Even Policy Debate, where Jeremy and I have been working as partners since our sophomore year, allows for plenty of preparation. We have to be spontaneous and able to respond to our opponent’s arguments, whatever they come up with, but we know practically all there is to know on our subject when we go in there. Jeremy especially knows the facts—I’m good at coming up with the quick argument, though. We’re a good team.

  But in the Extemporaneous events, the debater gets three questions to choose from, like, say, “Can American political campaigns overcome recent practices of mud-slinging?” or “Is the President of the United States a figurehead?” Then they get seven minutes to prepare for their speech, and seven to present it. They’ve got to have supporting facts, and they can’t take any notes in with them. Sometimes I go watch those events, just to see Dashan or Jeremy in that kind of action. Those guys are always watching CNN, or saving articles for their fact files—in a way they’re always preparing.

  Everybody here has points in the National Forensics League. It’s funny, when I first began winning in tourna­ments and I told my dad about my NFL rating, he got all excited. Great, I thought, he’s finally proud of me and he’s going to start paying attention. But it turned out he thought I was talking about football. When he realized the F in NFL stood for Forensics it was just one big yawn to him. But I don’t care. Why should I care?

  “Hey, J.B.!” I hear a voice screeching at me from across the cafeteria and I don’t even have to look up to know who it is.

  “Dawn!” I answer. Dawn and Delia are these two girls from Kennedy High School. They’re partners in Policy Debate and Jeremy and I often compete against them.

  “We’re ready for you and Jeremy!” Dawn says, laughing.

  “What room are you in for Policy?” I ask.

  Neither of us is sure what our first event is, so we fight the crowd to look at the postings taped to the walls.

  “Where’s Jeremy?” she asks.

  “In the Extemp room.”

  “So’s Delia . . . Looks like we won’t kick your butts for another two hours,” she says, pointing to the Policy Debate roster and laughing.

  I hear Rogers’ booming voice, “Hamilton Debaters, over here.” He’s motioning toward a table we’ve got staked out in the corner.

  “Gotta go,” I say, and go back to our table where I know we’re going to get a pep talk which will exaggerate our skills and talents. We make fun of Rogers’ talks some­times, but I guess they work. I hope that’s true today. I want to qualify for nationals more than anything else in the world. Well, almost more than anything else in the world, I think, glancing at Christy who is standing next to Trin. Absolutely more than anything else in the world, I want Christy not to be pregnant. But at least I’ve got a shot at nationals. I guess there’s no way in hell, now, for Christy to not be pregnant. I don’t want to think about it.

  There’s a break around one. Mr. Rogers has sent out for pizza and we’ve got an ice chest full of sodas.

  “You’re doing great!” he says. “Don’t lose your concen­tration. Each round is important, but right now, the way things are going, we’ve got a good chance for several firsts.” We talk about our competition.

  Dashan says, “There’s a girl, Ellie, I think her name is—does an amazing D.I. from To Kill a Mockingbird.”

  “Everybody does something from To Kill a Mocking­bird,” Hung says. “That’s old stuff.”

  “Not the way she does it, it isn’t. She scares me.”

  “Yeah, Ellie,” Mr. Rogers says, taking a bite of pizza. “She’s from up north, Susanville High School or some­thing. She’s good . . . Also, Kendall, from Palm Springs. But none of them are any better than you guys, at your best. Be your best, that’s all.”

  About seven that evening, rosters are posted for the semi-finals. Jeremy, Trin and I have made it in two events, Dashan, Christy and Hung each made it in one. After checking the various rosters we gather back around our table, hugging each other and laughing.

  “You guys are great!” Mr. Rogers says. If you can ever say someone’s face is lit up with a smile, his is.

  Somehow Jeremy and I got lucky and got a room with cable TV. All the other rooms just have plain old TV, so after dinner everyone piles on the bed and the floor in our room and we watch a movie, Grand Canyon. There’s this scene where a yuppie-type woman is running through an expensive residential area and she hears a baby cry. She follows the sound and finds a baby lying on a blanket, on the grass behind some bushes.

  “How could anyone leave their baby like that?” Christy says.

  “I don’t know,” Dashan says. “Maybe the mom, or dad, or whoever, wanted it to have a better home than they could give it.”

  God! I want to kiss Dashan for saying that. Well . . . not really kiss him, but I’m glad he said it ’cause Christy listens to him. Maybe if everyone said that kind of thing to her she’d think seriously about adoption.

  It turns out that Grand Canyon is a cool movie—very realistic about life in L.A. but also kind of reassuring about how nature is so big, and the universe is so vast, our problems are miniscule in comparison. The last scene is of the main characters looking out over the Grand Canyon.

  “Awesome,” Jeremy says. “We ought to go there on the way home.”

  “The way home? . . .You’re nuts,” Hung says.

  “No. What would it be? Another two days—just swing by. It’d be inspiring.”

  Jeremy uses his best debate style to try to convince us we should “swing by” the Grand Canyon, but we all know it’s just a fantasy, and slowly people start drifting back to their own rooms.

  “I don’t care about this bunch of non-imaginative dullards,” Jeremy says. “I’m going to see all the natural wonders of the world by the time I’m thirty, and I’m going to start with the Grand Canyon. Soon.”

  By mid-afternoon on Sunday, Jeremy and I are posted for Finals in Policy Debate, Dashan and I are posted for Finals in Dramatic Interpretation, and Trin is in for Oratory and Extemp. Christy and Hung are not posted for Finals.

  “You’ve got plenty of time to get to nationals,” Rogers tells them both. “You’ve done amazingly well as sopho­mores.”

  Hung stays to watch the finals but Christy says she’s tired and goes back to the motel. After she leaves, Trin says, “I think it took guts for her to be here. I know teen pregnancy is supposedly reaching mammoth proportions, but you don’t see a lot of pregnant girls at debate tourna­ments.”

  “One,” Dashan says. “I counted.”

  Nobody looks my way while this conversation is taking place.

  Ellie, from Susanville, is the first to speak in the D
.I. finals. I see what they meant yesterday when Mr. Rogers and Dashan were talking about how good she was. Next is a guy who does a piece about AIDS, from a play called “Angels in America.” He’s going along great, and then he stops, mid-sentence. God. It’s every debater’s fear, that they’ll lose it in the middle.

  Come on, I think, rooting for him, as I’m sure the other competitors are, too. We all want to win, of course, but no one likes to see a guy lose it this way. He stands for what seems a long time, looking at some invisible spot on the back wall, then starts over, and completes his piece. He’s good, but I know that lapse cost him the possibility of placing in this round—which is the round.

  I’m next. I stand in front of the group, take several slow, deep breaths, and focus my concentration. By the second sentence of my introduction I get a feeling something like what I think runners get when their bodies start releasing endorphins. It’s as if everything is smooth—the emphasis is right, the words and gestures are right.

  When I speak the last line, “I was sixteen years old, and waiting for the next thing my father would tell me,” I know I’ve done the best D.I. I’ve ever done. I may not win. Someone else may be better, but I did my best.

  Dashan and I have taken first and second places, back and forth, all year long. When he stands to do his piece from Roots, I think this first place is probably his, if it’s not Ellie’s. Dashan is impressive as he delivers the words of the slave, Kunta Kinte, about being as a giant tree to his manchild, even in the midst of the terrible hardships of slavery. I watch the judges’ faces but they’re unreadable.

  After the round we all wait in the cafeteria for results. Christy comes back around seven and waits with us. Hung and Trin play chess, moving their pieces as fast as nine-year-olds playing checkers. Jeremy and I play gin rummy, then stop mid-game when the judges come in.

  They stand on a platform and we all hover around. Trin takes first place in Oratory and Jeremy takes first place in Extemp. Trin gets a third in Extemp, which in itself is not too shabby.

  When the judge starts reading the D.I. results I hold my breath. I don’t know why. I always do that when I hear results of an event I’ve competed in. The guy who forgot his lines is last, predictably. Then comes Kendall who did something from “The Crucible.” So then it’s down to me, Ellie and Dashan. When the judge calls Ellie’s name for third place, Dashan and I link arms. Then Dashan’s name, then me.

  Trin throws her arms around me first, then we’re all in a big group hug, including Mr. Rogers. In the mass of bodies I realize that I have my arm around Christy’s shoulder. She looks up at me and says, “Congratulations, Jeff. You deserve it.” She smiles, then turns to Dashan and plants a kiss on his cheek. “You’re a winner, too,” she says.

  One of the great things about debate is that we all pull for each other. Dashan means it when he congratulates me and admires my first place trophy. Just like I meant it at the last tournament, where he took first and I took second. Same with Jeremy and Trin—they compete, but they root for each other, too.

  I can hardly believe it when Jeremy and I take first place in Policy Debate. The two big Ds, Dawn and Delia, come running over and throw their arms around us.

  “You won’t have us to kick around next year,” Dawn says, recognizing the fact that we’re all seniors, and we’ll be leaving this part of our lives behind.

  In the van on the way home, Mr. Rogers tells Trin, me, and Jeremy that we’d better be saving our money for the trip to New Orleans because we’ve almost for certain qualified.

  “Start listening to those jazz tapes, my man,” Jeremy says, elbowing me in the ribs.

  “It’s not official until NFL does the numbers, but I’d bet my next paycheck you three are in.”

  Trin falls asleep with her head on my shoulder, while I watch the dark water break into white waves off to my left.

  I wonder if this means I’ll be in Texas in the fall, and what will it be like to be a thousand miles from the Pacific Ocean. And what about Christy and the baby? I close my eyes, lean my head down on top of Trin’s and start counting. If I count, I can’t think about the baby.

  Chapter

  12

  “Jeff! Open this!”

  My mom is standing in the driveway, waving an enve­lope at me as I get out of my car after work.

  “I can’t stand it,” she says. “I wanted to open it myself.”

  I take the envelope from her. Return address: Office of Admissions, Brooker University, Brooker Springs, Texas.

  “Open it! Open it!”

  I hesitate. What if it doesn’t say what I want it to say? Then I rip open the envelope and yank out the letter.

  Dear Mr. Jeffrey Browning: We are pleased to inform you that you are the recipient of . . .

  “I got it! I got it!” I drop my gym bag and grab Mom, lifting and twirling her around.

  She’s screaming, “Oh, my God. Oh, my God.”

  Stacy comes running across the street.

  “What’s wrong? What happened?”

  I put Mom down and hand Stacy the letter.

  “You got a scholarship?”

  ‘Yes . . . Yes, yes, yes!” I am grinning so hard it hurts.

  Mom is laughing and crying all at once. Stacy throws herself at me, nearly knocking me over.

  “I’m happy for you, Jeff. But I’ll miss you. Texas is a long way away,” she says, stating the obvious.

  “I’ll be home for Christmas,” I start singing, in imitation of Bing Crosby.

  “But it won’t be the same as seeing your beastly face on a daily basis.”

  Mom takes the letter from Stacy.

  “I’m going to call Steve,” she says, running into the house. She’s back outside in a few minutes.

  “Steve wants us to meet him at Barb and Edie’s. He says this is an occasion to mark with a garbageburger.

  “Great. I’m starving,” I say.

  “Me, too,” Stacy says, “or is this only a family affair?

  “You’re family, Stacy,” Mom says. “Come with us.”

  I run in and wash up, then the three of us climb in my car and we drive down into the industrial area of Fifth Street. Steve is parked out front of Barb and Edie’s, waiting in the car for us. He bear-hugs me when we meet at the door.

  “I’m proud of you, Jeff,” he says with a big smile. Then his face darkens with sadness, like it still does now and then. “God, I wish Janie were alive to see this. She thought you were the greatest kid around. Remember?”

  “I remember,” I say, thinking of Janie’s quick smile and easy laugh.

  We sit down at a round table near the back. Barb and Edie’s is not the kind of place where you have to wait for a maitre d’ to seat you. There are paper placemats on the red formica table, and a mural of Bridal Veil Falls on the side wall.

  “What can I get for you?” Edie calls from the counter.

  “Garbageburgers all around,” Steve says, “Two orders of onion rings . . . what to drink?” he asks us, then relays the message, “Three Cokes and a Dr. Pepper.”

  “Regular or diet?”

  “Regular,” Steve says.

  I’ve never seen either Edie or her partner, Barb, use an order pad, no matter how many orders they’re taking at once. The other waitresses do, but never the bosses.

  Steve reads my letter out loud while we’re waiting for our food, then hands it back to me.

  “What a deal!” he says. “Tuition, books, room and board. Boy, this plus the money from Grandma and your mom, should have you sitting pretty. I wonder how you’ll like dorm life?”

  We’re talking about how part of the agreement is that I will work on campus fifteen hours a week, when Barb comes out from the back room and walks over to our table. She’s carrying a little kid.

  “Hey, Shane!” she calls to the guy who’s busing tables. “Go put the stuff away from the delivery that just came in, would you?”

  Shane stops what he’s doing and shuffles toward the back. Barb s
hakes her head.

  “If that guy wasn’t Edie’s nephew, he’d be out of here,” she says, shifting the kid from one side to the other. Stacy tries to hand the kid an onion ring, but she hides her face in Barb’s shoulder.

  “I hear you folks are celebrating?” Barb says.

  “Jeff’s getting a scholarship to a college in Texas,” my mom says, beaming.

  “Hey! The onion rings are on us,” Barb says, laughing her hoarse laugh. “No, that’s great, though!”

  Barb reaches over and ruffles my hair. “Got a brain under there, huh?”

  “I wouldn’t jump to that conclusion,” Stacy says, getting a big laugh from everyone.

  I’m feeling great—surrounded by some of my most favorite people, an exciting, paid for, college life ahead of me, eating my favorite food. Rolling in clover, as my grandma would say. Then Barb says to me, “My daughter, Emmy—remember Emmy? She went to Hamilton High.”

  I nod my head, even though I only sort of remember Emmy. I think she graduated a couple of years ago.

  “Well, Emmy was going away to college, too. But then this little gal changed things. Didn’t you, Rosie?”

  The little girl looks at Barb, smiles, and shakes her head.

  “Yep. Emmy had plans to be the big college girl up north, away from home, living in a dormitory,” Barb says, laugh­ing that hoarse laugh again. “Now Rosie’s her roommate and Emmy’s taking classes at that glorified high school called Hamilton Heights City College,” she says, then walks back to the counter, still carrying the little girl.

  The mood at our table is not so light now. I hardly ever talk about Christy’s pregnancy to anyone. I guess I try to forget about it. There’s nothing I can do. But always, somewhere under the surface of things, I’m aware that she’s carrying a baby that’s a part of me. And everyone at the table is aware of that, too, even if we don’t talk about it. Well, I can’t help it if she’s going to have my baby. It’s not my fault, and it’s not going to ruin my life.