A Mango-Shaped Space

by Wendy Mass

  The tears flow easily from both of us, and I know we’re both crying for a lot of reasons.

  I refuse to take the bracelet off in gym class, and the teacher tells me not to come crying to her if it breaks. As if I hadn’t already cried enough for two lifetimes. In my weakened state I can barely climb the rope. The teacher tells me I can sit on the bleachers for the rest of the period. Roger gestures for me to join him on the top row. He can’t climb the rope because of his ankle, but I see he had no problem climbing up the bleachers.

  “So why weren’t you at Jenna’s party?” he asks as soon as I sit down. “I thought you guys were best friends.”

  “My cat died,” I say bluntly, my eyes stinging at my own words. My voice sounds far away, as if it belongs to somebody else. I remember it felt that way in third grade, up at the board.

  He puts his hand on my arm and leaves it there. “I’m really sorry, Mia. I didn’t know.”

  It takes a minute for my head to stop flashing with images of the helicopter and of Mango in the ground. When I snap back to the gym, the first thing I feel is Roger’s hand on my arm. I look down at it, and he quickly pulls it away.

  “This might not matter much,” he says quietly, “but I know how you must feel.”

  I open my mouth to correct him, but then I realize that he, more than anybody, does know how I feel. “Did it take you a long time to get over losing your dog?”

  He nods. It’s the first time we’ve acknowledged that we were both in that vet’s office when his dog was put to sleep. “We had Oscar since before I was born. He was like a brother to me. I know that sounds stupid.”

  “No, it doesn’t,” I quickly assure him.

  “Keeping his stuff around the house almost makes it seem like he’s just in the next room, you know? Throwing it away would be like denying that he was ever there.” As he’s talking, Roger is forcefully twisting a loose string off his gym shorts. If he doesn’t stop, his shorts might completely unravel.

  I wish my father hadn’t been so quick to get rid of Mango’s bowls. Even Tweety’s gone now. All that’s really left are photographs and stray pieces of fur on my bed.

  “I think we’re almost ready to put the stuff away now,” Roger says, giving the loose string one last firm tug. “It gets easier, Mia — missing them and feeling guilty and helpless that you couldn’t save them. Oscar kind of settled into my memory, and I take him with me. Does that make sense?”

  I tell him that yes, it does make sense. He smiles and reminds me for a second of Adam. But Roger’s definitely cuter. I wonder why I didn’t notice it before? I’m suddenly embarrassed about how badly I behaved during our history project. I can’t apologize to Mango anymore, but at least I can apologize to Roger. Before I get the chance, one of the guys in our class comes bounding up the bleachers.

  “Hey, Mia, can you tell me what color my name is?”

  “I don’t know,” I answer haltingly. “What’s your name again?”

  “It’s Doug,” he says, puffing out his chest. “As in Doug, captain of the soccer team?”

  Roger rolls his eyes, and I stifle a laugh.

  I concentrate for a minute. I know from memory the colors of the individual letters in his name, but I can’t visualize them together to know what the word would really look like. My heart sinks. I tell him his name is hot pinkish-purple, since that’s the color of the d.

  “But that’s so girly,” he says, clearly disappointed.

  “Sorry,” I tell him. “It doesn’t mean anything.”

  Doug shakes his head sadly and then leaps back down the bleachers, two rows at a time.

  I turn back to Roger. “You know, I think you’re the only person left in the school who hasn’t asked me the color of their name.”

  He doesn’t seem surprised. “Whatever color it is wouldn’t matter anyway.”

  “What do you mean?”

  “I’m color-blind,” he declares.

  It suddenly all makes sense, and I start laughing.

  “You think it’s funny that I’m color-blind?”

  “No, no. It’s just that — is that why your socks never used to match?”

  He starts laughing too. “Yeah. I was too stubborn to let my mom pick them out for me. I got over it, though. Now she ties them together.”

  “We’re some pair,” I tell him. “You don’t see enough colors, and I see too many! Well, I used to anyway. Now they’re gone.”

  His eyes widen in surprise. “Will they come back?”

  I tell him I don’t know as the teacher blows the whistle for us to go to the locker rooms. Roger and I stand up, and before we head off in different directions, he says, “You’re right about one thing.”

  “What’s that?”

  “We’re some pair.” He turns away before I can see his face and hobbles down the bleachers. I watch him go. For that brief moment my heart lifts and I almost feel happy. But then Mango’s little furry face appears in my head, and it hits me like a punch in the stomach that he won’t be waiting on my bed for me when I get home today.

  After school I ask the secretary in the main office if anyone in the school has the last name Henkle. She says there’s a Hansly and an O’Henry, but no Henkle. I’m not sure anymore why I want to find Billy. Am I hoping I can help him or that he can help me?

  I make it through the week with recurring pangs of pain and loss and guilt, and after dinner on Friday night I put on the pajamas that I plan to stay in for the rest of the weekend. Jenna has invited me to stay over her house, but I’m just not ready to have fun yet. Today was the first morning that Mango’s death didn’t crush me the second I opened my eyes. It actually waited until I had turned off the alarm and pushed down my covers. Dad said that any progress is a good thing, but I still don’t see the purple spirals that I used to see when my alarm went off. I admit it — I miss those purple spirals. And I haven’t been able to go into the backyard since Mango’s funeral.

  The phone rings around seven o’clock, and my dad tells me to pick it up in the living room. It’s Jerry, calling from his lab.

  “You hanging in there?” he asks. It’s good to hear his voice.

  “I guess so,” I tell him, plopping down in my dad’s new reclining chair. It was a birthday present from Mom.

  “You’re a strong, girl, Mia. You’ll get through this.”

  “If I’m so strong, then why are all my colors gone?”

  He doesn’t answer right away. “When did that happen?”

  “Right after Mango … after he … after he died.”

  “How do you feel about it?”

  “Empty,” I tell him honestly. “Flat.”

  “That’s normal,” he assures me. I’m having a hard time getting used to people calling my actions normal. “Your colors will return, Mia. I promise. And you’ll feel three-dimensional again. Try doing something creative to jump-start your brain a little. You told me you like to paint; why don’t you try that?”

  I agree to try, even though I haven’t been able to even look at my paints lately. After we hang up I go back to my room and stare at my easel. There’s a thin layer of dust on it. I’m still torn between wanting my colors back and feeling like it’s an appropriate punishment that they’re gone. I decide to leave it up to fate. If they come back, it won’t be because of anything I actively do. I pick up the wooden easel with one hand, fold up the legs, and bring it over to my closet. I have to push aside a lot of junk to make room for it, and I suddenly find myself staring at the painting I did of Grandpa. I hadn’t given it much thought after the rain ruined it. I reach in, carefully pull it out, and lean it up against my wall.

  Something is different. I kneel down to look closer. I distinctly remember when I finished painting it that Grandpa had a faraway look in his eyes. But now he looks almost content. I definitely don’t remember painting him that way. I feel a stab in my heart when I look on Grandpa’s shoulder and see the gray smudge that was once Mango. Then my heart starts beating faster as I noti
ce paw prints on the painting from where Mango walked across it. The paw prints lead right off the top of the canvas and, I imagine, straight up to heaven. I don’t think I need to offer him there myself anymore; I think Grandpa did it for me. Maybe Mango was Grandpa’s parting gift to me, and now they’re in heaven together with Grams. I really, truly want to believe that.

  I wrestle a frame off another old painting from the back of my closet and put the blurred portrait in it. I hang it in the center of the wall, opposite all my clocks, so it will be the last thing I see when I go to bed and the first thing I see when I wake up.

  The doorbell rings early Saturday morning, and I roll over in bed, certain that it’s not for me. But two minutes later my mother comes in and tells me to get dressed because I have company.

  “Is it Jenna?” I ask, pushing myself up on my elbows.

  “No. Believe it or not, it’s that woman I met at the supermarket at the end of the summer. Remember? You were talking to her little boy. Their last name’s Henkle, I think.”

  I throw off my covers and race across the room to my dresser. My clothes from yesterday are conveniently still crumpled on my chair, and I quickly pull them on.

  “I guess you do remember,” my mother says, picking up the pajamas I left in the middle of the floor.

  “How did they find us?” I ask breathlessly.

  “Her daughter goes to your school. Judging from how Zack’s fawning over her, I think this is the ‘babe’ he was talking about at dinner the other night.”

  I grab a ponytail holder from my night-table drawer and tie back my hair. A minute later I’m standing in the living room. Billy jumps out of the recliner and gives me a big hug while his mother watches from the couch. She looks slightly embarrassed — maybe because the last time we saw each other she was rude to me in the elementary-school gym.

  “I’m sorry to barge in on you like this,” she says, glancing from me to my mother and back to me. “But we were in the neighborhood and … well, Billy seems to have this attachment to you, and I thought maybe you could help us.”

  Just then the “babe” walks out of the kitchen, with Zack trailing right behind her. She’s holding a big glass of orange juice, and Zack looks proud, as if he squeezed it himself. She stops when she sees me, causing Zack to bump right into her. I don’t think he minded.

  “This is my daughter, Amy,” Mrs. Henkle says.

  My first thought is the rhyme from my morbid poster. A is for Amy who fell down the stairs. My second thought is that I know her. She’s the girl who was so obnoxious to me in the cafeteria when people first found out about my colors. She said I’d wind up in a special class. Instead I wound up hiding in a bathroom stall because of her.

  “We’ve met,” I say stiffly. “But wait a second. I checked if anyone at school had Billy’s last name and no one did.”

  “Amy still uses my ex-husband’s name,” Mrs. Henkle explains.

  Amy’s cheeks flush pink as she turns toward me. “I’m, uh, sorry about, well, you know,” she says.

  “It’s okay,” I mutter, without really meaning it.

  Billy wraps his arms around my leg as Mrs. Henkle pushes herself up from the couch. “Amy told me that letters and numbers have color for you,” she says to me. “And I realize you were trying to tell me about it a few weeks ago. Ever since Billy met you, this color thing is all he talks about.”

  Billy nods happily, and I smile at him. Smiling is starting to feel less foreign.

  “So what do you think I should do?” she asks, sounding helpless. “His kindergarten teacher is talking about putting him in a special class next year because of this.”

  I glance at Amy, who looks away. “There’s nothing wrong with Billy,” I tell Mrs. Henkle. “I’ve met other people who have synesthesia — that’s what it’s called — and they’re totally fine.”

  Billy is busy fidgeting with the lever that turns the chair into a recliner. I don’t know how much of this conversation he understands, but I think on some level he’s aware that this is a turning point for him.

  Mrs. Henkle is still not convinced. “But isn’t there anything to treat this … this … disease?”

  Zack steps forward before I can respond. His eyes are blazing. “My sister doesn’t have a disease. She has a gift.”

  I gape at him gratefully as he steps back next to Amy, who has a new look of respect in her eyes. I don’t think many people stand up to her mother.

  “What color is my name, Mia?” Billy asks gleefully, breaking the moment of silence.

  “Your name is light brown like wood, with some sky blue sprinkled in,” I reply, kneeling next to him. “And it’s sort of mushy.”

  “Like oatmeal?” he asks hopefully.

  “Just like oatmeal.”

  “No, it’s not,” he says, laughing and bouncing in his seat. “It’s bright pink and shiny like my granddaddy’s head!”

  “Um, Mia,” my mother says. “Does this mean your colors are back?”

  I stand up with a start. The words in my head are in color again, and I didn’t even notice it. I excuse myself and run upstairs to check out my alphabet poster. Good ol’ sunflower-yellow a. Shimmering green j. Robin’s-egg-blue z. They’re all back. The experience feels so familiar and so foreign at the same time. I think it’s because so much has changed. I have no idea how to be this new person. I head back downstairs.

  “Thank you for your time,” Mrs. Henkle says to my mom and me as she hands Billy his jacket. “You’ve given me a lot to think about. Amy is cheering at a school basketball game, so we have to go now.”

  Zack looks stricken. “But Amy said she wanted to see my McDonald’s chart. It’ll only take a minute.”

  “I’ll be right back, Mom,” Amy says. Zack beams as if he can’t believe his luck and leads her upstairs. I guess she isn’t all that bad. While they’re upstairs Mom writes out Jerry’s phone number at the university for Mrs. Henkle. Billy hugs me good-bye, and I promise him we’ll keep in touch. Amy comes back down and says, “You and your friends should come to one of the games sometime. They’re fun.”

  “Maybe we will,” I say, closing the door behind her. Jenna might take some convincing, but she’d probably do it. I wonder if Roger likes sports? I offer to help my mother make breakfast, and she eagerly accepts.

  “I’m proud of you, Mia,” my mother says, carefully pouring the pancake batter into a large glass bowl.

  I toss some frozen blueberries into the mix. “Why?”

  “That was a great thing you did, with Billy. You gave him the head start we weren’t able to give you.” She’s stirring the pancake mixture so fast that I’m sure it’s about to fly out of the bowl.

  “Mom, don’t feel bad,” I tell her, steadying the bowl with my hand. “You and Dad didn’t know what was going on.”

  She rests the spoon on a piece of paper towel. “That’s not entirely true.”

  “Huh?” I drop the blueberry I was about to pop in my mouth.

  My mother quickly scoops up the blueberry before it has a chance to stain the wooden countertop. She throws it in the sink and then starts scrubbing the counter without looking me in the eye. “The night you told us about your problems at school, I couldn’t sleep. Something was nagging at me. Finally, last week, it hit me.”

  I wait expectantly for her to continue.

  “You don’t remember Grams too well, do you?” she asks, finally looking straight at me.

  I shake my head, wondering what Grams could have to do with anything. “I remember her dancing in the living room with Grandpa a lot. I remember she was always playing records on Dad’s old stereo.”

  “Yes, she loved music,” my mother says. “Last week I was in the car, and one of her favorite old songs came on the radio. I suddenly remembered her telling me that she loved music so much because she could see the colors in the air all around her.”

  “Are you serious?” I ask in disbelief.

  “I thought she was just being imaginative. I didn
’t know she meant it literally. Then one day I saw you dancing in the living room with her. You couldn’t have been more than two and a half years old, but the two of you were having a grand time. I heard her say, ‘Aren’t the colors beautiful?’ and you said, in your little-girl voice, ‘Yes, Grams, they’re bootiful.’ But I still didn’t think anything of it, Mia. I’m so sorry. I should have taken it more seriously.”

  “I don’t remember that at all,” I say sadly. I wonder how different things would have been if Grams hadn’t died when I was so young. “And Dad never heard her mention anything when he was growing up?”

  Mom shakes her head. “I asked him as soon as I recalled the incident. He said that his mother had always been very quiet. Apparently your grandpa did enough talking for both of them.”

  I smile, remembering how Grandpa’s deep voice could be heard from every corner of the house. I bet my whole life would have been different if Grams had stuck around. As I watch my mother pour the batter onto the frying pan, it hits me that if Grandpa knew about Grams’s colors — which he must have after being married to her for forty years — then maybe he knew about mine too. I can’t believe I threw away his gift. I leave my mother to her pancake flipping, slip on my boots and coat, and head out the front door. I look up at my bedroom window and then position myself underneath it. Grandpa’s moon piece should have landed right around here, but the ground is so wet and muddy that I can’t find it. It must have disintegrated by now and become part of the grass. I finally give up the search, resigned to the fact that the gift is lost forever.

  “Are you all right?” my dad asks as I kick off my boots.

  “I just keep doing stupid things,” I tell him. “Things I wind up regretting.”

  He takes off my coat and hangs it up. “Welcome to being human. It’s part of the package.”

  “Not for me,” Zack announces as he bounds down the stairs in his socks and slides up to us. “I intend to overcome my humanness. I will become a god.”

  “What kind of god will you be?” I ask.

  Trying unsuccessfully to pat down his messy hair, he says, “I’m still working on that part. But I will make the world a better place. Somehow or other.”