by Shirley Marr
And like that, you go from being a girl and a boy fighting yourselves and each other to a pair of friends fighting the world. You both sigh and let go of each other and fall to the earth on your backs. You stare at the stars and you tell Kevin the story of the weaver girl and the lonely cowherd, banished to opposite ends of the galaxy, but how the stars became the Milky Way between them.
Kevin says he is glad to have met you. It is good to have a friend.
CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO Frogs
Your mother is wild with worry when you go back inside Big Scary. She tells you that the school called and she feared the worst. Because she couldn’t understand the man on the other end, she had to wait till they called back with an interpreter. This took a long time, and during that time she was still fearing the worst. Then the interpreter called and her worst fears were finally realized, but the lead-up to it was somewhat worse.
You listen with a mixture of shame and confusion. You are genuinely upset with yourself for not thinking that your absence from school would be noticed; that they would contact your pregnant mother who thought you had been taken by a bad person or come to harm. But then you wonder why she sat inside all this time with this information. Why she didn’t go outside and start looking for you. Why, now that you are back, she is standing such a great distance away from you.
Big Scary’s walls seem to be moving in. But Ma Ma feels miles away.
“You have to go straight to the principal’s office first thing tomorrow. You can’t get into trouble; you just can’t, Meixing,” she pleads. “Think of your poor mother.”
You know that. Tears pinch at your eyes and bitterness squeezes the corners of your mouth.
There is a sudden knock on the door. Both of you freeze.
Ma Ma puts a finger to her lips. She moves to the window and you follow behind. She peers through the drawn curtain. You kneel down and peek timidly through the same gap of the heavy brocade fabric. There is a lady standing there, dressed in a neat suit and holding a briefcase.
You are certain that this is the person Ms. Jardine said is her friend. You should let her in. She’s here to help. She will tell you why the two of you aren’t the same as you used to be. Why Ma Ma doesn’t want to leave the house at all.
Ma Ma, though, puts her finger back on her lips and a firm hand on your shoulder.
You watch as the lady knocks on the door again. You stare straight at her, hoping that she might turn and see both your faces in the gap of the curtain. She looks behind her. Look at me, you beg. Finally, she scribbles something on a little card and tucks it into the screen door, turns, and makes the journey down those thirty steps. You really want to call out to her, but your voice catches in your throat.
Ma Ma seems relieved. She goes back to her bedroom and lies down on the bed.
Numb, you go into the kitchen and open the fridge. The brown-and-orange eyes stare questioningly up from the tiles in the kitchen and close when you tread on them with your bare feet. You study the two remaining eggs in the carton. You take one out and scramble it, put it on a plate with toast and load it onto the serving tray with another hot chocolate and biscuits. Ma Ma eats her dinner in bed, a bolster pillow tucked under her knees. She doesn’t ask you why you are not eating.
You have the most terrible feeling of dread in your body. But you hold yourself together because you still have to take the wet clothes out of the washer, put them into the spinner, and then hang them outside. You don’t know how long you can hold the two of you together by yourself.
You sit on your bed that night and look out the window while the pink cocoon remains silent in the corner. The rag doll you had tried to discard is rediscovered and you stroke her face gently. Big Scary fills the room with a pink light and you feel safe and sound, even though you will have to face the principal tomorrow. You look down at what you’re holding in your hand—the card that Ms. Jardine’s friend left in the door.
There is no improvement in Ma Ma’s condition the following day. She is lucid and awake and seems happy enough to see your face at her bedroom door, but this is not the Ma Ma who once belonged to you. The one who lived on the island home with you another lifetime ago. Who loved to be at the ocean and who drove Ba Ba’s beat-up dune buggy without a license like a woman possessed. You feed her the last egg for breakfast.
You think of Ba Ba with a type of clarity you weren’t capable of even a week ago. You remember how he came home one day with a ridiculous rainbow-striped waistcoat that his boss on the island had given him. Ma Ma groaned and you laughed, but Ba Ba wore it all the time until he just stopped one day. That was when you realized how much you would miss the ugly thing and how you shouldn’t have made bad jokes about it. You miss him so much. But you smile.
You wash the dishes. You sweep the floor. You have run out of things to make for lunch.
When you throw open the front door, you are shocked to see what awaits you at the bottom of the staircase. It is Kevin.
“What are you doing?”
“Seeing if you want to walk to school together—what does it look like?” he says, his usual gruff self. He stomps on the bottom step of Big Scary with displaced energy.
“Ow!” A gumnut has dropped out of the sky and onto his head—the problem being that there are no gum trees where he is standing. Big Scary is laughing.
“I would like to do that,” you answer.
Kevin scratches the back of his head nervously. You think he is wearing gel in his hair. Both of you walk very slowly toward school. When you turn your heads to greet the Lollipop Man, now a friend almost, you sneak a look at Kevin’s bruise. It looks better.
“Ready to fight for our rights?” he asks as you arrive at the punishment wall.
You nod. You and him. Against the world.
The principal’s door opens and a voice calls your names.
In your imagination the principal has taken on the proportions of a monster, with canes on the ends of each of his fingers that he is not allowed to use. What type of lair would he be inhabiting in there? Maybe he lives in an all-concrete cell; sitting on a nest made of confiscated children’s hair, with bits of eraser and broken pencils he has collected and woven in like a macabre keepsake.
Kevin holds the door open for you, and you take a deep breath and enter.
Mr. Jones surprises you, firstly by being human. The slight, grey-haired man with a smile on his face disarms you. Like Ms. Jardine, he wears a pin on the left-hand side of his collar, a rainbow. His office is also grey, but neat, with a framed photo of a dog in one corner.
“Hello, Kevin. Nice to see you again. As for you, Meixing, nice to finally meet you.”
He holds out his hand over the desk and you take it. He gives you a firm shake.
“Now, I have been seeing a lot of you lately, young man. In fact, due to the severity of your behavior—assaulting another student—I have no choice but to follow school policy and suspend you.”
Kevin hangs his head. “I think you should.”
“A few days at home to think about your actions will do you good.”
“Yes, sir.”
“But, I have some positive news.”
Kevin looks back up, but he does not look hopeful.
“I have been speaking with Ms. Jardine, and she reports that you, and Meixing too, have been progressing very positively. So I am arranging for there to be more class contact hours between all of you. Starting today, this morning.”
Your eyes widen and you try to catch Kevin’s attention, but he is looking back at his feet again. So you quietly rejoice on the inside instead.
“Now, Meixing. The reason why I brought you in with Kevin is that this story appears to be interconnected. Can you explain it to me? In your words, please.”
If someone had asked you that two weeks or even one week ago, you would have probably burst into tears like you had done once before. But you are stronger now, and slowly and steadily, you compose your words so that they are just right.
&nbs
p; “The girl in the class stole my ring. Kevin took it back off her to return to me. He tried to do the honorable thing. I understand he hurt her, but if not for me, he wouldn’t be here.”
You press your lips together and clasp your fingers in your lap.
“I believe you, Meixing.” Mr. Jones opens his top drawer and takes something out. He holds his closed hand out across his desk and nods to you. You reach your palm over. In it he drops Ah Ma’s gold ring.
Your mouth opens, and you hold the ring so tight in your fist that nobody will be able to pry it from you ever again. You feel a tiny piece of strength, like a piece of armor, attach itself to your soul. It’s as if you are staring straight into your future and can imagine that, one day, you’ll grow into a strong woman with a whole suit of armor. Not like Kevin’s to keep people out, but like a shield to go with the glittering magic sword you will hold high up in the air.
“Which brings me to say, I’m going to have to call young Paige to my office to explain why she had your ring. We don’t tolerate theft at this school.”
If you had the ability at that point to say “thank you,” you would, but you are so overwhelmed that you can only mouth the words. You think of how you’ve met some not-so-very-nice people since coming to the New Land, but you’ve also met wonderful, just, and kind people, because there will always be good people everywhere.
“I think Paige’s parents might be interested to hear all about this story. And I think she might learn some good old-fashioned values like honesty by picking up rubbish during lunchtimes, what do you think? I’m not cruel, I do hand out stickers afterward.”
You try to hide a smile.
“You can go back to class now, Meixing.”
“I’m sorry,” you whisper into Kevin’s ear.
“It’s okay. When I get angry and I see red, I try to think of that field of purple,” he says softly back.
“As for you, Kevin,” says the principal, “you can stay in my office until your parents come and fetch you. But I promise I will explain everything very fairly to them.”
Kevin lets out a loud sigh. You are still worried, but he seems calm and is not looking as though he is about to punch any walls.
“Do you like gummy frogs?” Mr. Jones asks Kevin, opening his top drawer again.
“Only the red ones.”
“Well, you’re in luck. They are the ones I like too,” you hear Mr. Jones reply as you quietly leave the office and click shut the door.
* * *
Ms. Jardine looks worried and not her smiling self today. Her face is as gloomy as the black pupil of the eyeball brooch on her woolly cardigan.
“I asked my friend to go over to your house yesterday after you went missing,” she says to you. “But nobody was home. Is everything okay?”
You don’t want to worry Ms. Jardine because you want to see her smile and her sunshine come back. But you don’t know what name to put on the invisible monster that seems to be wrapping itself around Ma Ma and making her shoulders, body, and entire being sag; sitting so heavy on top of her in bed and keeping her there.
“I will try to get my friend to visit again another time, okay?”
You nod.
“She only wants to talk to you and your mother. She won’t do anything scary, I promise.”
You nod again.
“Can I trust that you will open the door for her, Meixing?”
You don’t know.
You want Ms. Jardine to help you. You want to tell her everything. You want to tell her your story, right from the start. But you keep it all inside and don’t say a thing because it has nothing to do with the reason you’re in this class; nothing to do with spelling, grammar, or language.
Ms. Jardine tries to smile for you. She touches the bottom of your chin gently and then flicks back into teacher mode, going over the answers that you got right and wrong on your last exercise. She explains everything so carefully and kindly, you wish you could promise her that you’ll let her friend in.
Josh taps you on the shoulder and asks what is wrong. You feel as though your heart is beating a million miles per minute and you can’t seem to slow it down. It’s as though you are nervous or scared about something even though you are safe inside Ms. Jardine’s rickety little classroom.
You are powerless to control the feeling, and it threatens to turn you into a sad blue girl again. This is when you close your eyes and concentrate all your energy on bringing that field of asters into your mind. Like Kevin, you fight it with that wave of purple. But some things are much bigger than you. You don’t know what is wrong with Ma Ma. You don’t know what is wrong with you, either.
Josh draws you a picture of a girl sitting inside a glass bowl, with a goldfish looking into it from the outside. You turn the girl’s legs into the bottom half of a mermaid. You draw a party hat and a party horn on the goldfish. You get a laugh out of Josh. He adds a little crown on the girl.
“I miss Kevin,” says Josh.
“I do too,” you reply.
* * *
You sit together at lunchtime, still missing Kevin, but smiling behind the food Josh is sharing with you. You don’t seem to care as much anymore that you are still sitting on the edge of the assembly area. It is not such a bad view.
Your former friend is trailing behind the principal, trying to pretend she is not associated with him. Mr. Jones points to a piece of rubbish on the ground.
“I’m not touching that trash!” She scowls and turns her nose up.
“Keep the country beautiful,” says Mr. Jones, and he points to it again.
“I’m a model,” she says. When he is unmoved, she says more quietly, “It might make me sick… it might give me diarrhea!”
But everyone hears it. She is forced to pick the rubbish up anyway. Her friends suddenly don’t know her. The boys laugh at her. Mr. Jones remains true to his word and offers her a sticker when the bell rings, even though she rejects it.
Ah Ma’s ring is firmly on your finger. You look at Josh, and he smiles back at you with a dimple in his cheek. You wonder what “diarrhea” means.
Your former friend is quiet for the rest of the day, and it comes as a sweet relief.
CHAPTER TWENTY-THREE Groceries
There’s something wrong with Big Scary. She looks dark in the face, as though she’s been punched. The Room on the Roof sits like a bruised eye. You slip your backpack off and hold it tight in front of you. It seems to weigh a ton, like a boulder, like the sinking feeling in your stomach.
All the curtains are closed.
Big Scary looks down at you with her one purple eye.
This has fast become the worst part of any day. Coming home.
You stare back up at her, and she blinks once but keeps looking at you.
Slowly, you trudge up the thirty steps with your eyes on her. She keeps her eye on you. You feel her eye still on you as you open the front door.
You almost knock Ma Ma right over.
“Oh! I am so sorry! Ma Ma, what are you doing?”
She has a paintbrush in her hand and a small half-used tin of paint, the same creamy color as on the walls upstairs. She is in the process of painting over the amber window in the front door. As she applies another blob of paint onto the glass, you see it visibly recoil. You feel Big Scary pull herself in farther. Ma Ma finishes painting over the entire window. You hear the house make a loud creaking noise filled with splinters and cracking wood. You think Big Scary might be crying.
“I don’t want people looking in—it’s none of their business,” says Ma Ma.
She goes to all the windows and pulls the curtains tighter together to hide the gaps in the middle, turning on the lights as she makes the house darker.
Suddenly, the phone rings. Ma Ma drops the tin of paint and it hits the floor. Specks fly onto the wood-paneled walls and onto Big Scary’s fur in the adjacent living room. Paint from the tipped can slowly trickles out; the tiles underneath shift faster. Ma Ma freezes, and you freeze too.
The phone keeps on ringing. Ma Ma seems unable to move, so you pick up the paint tin and stand it back up. The phone stops ringing; there is a click, and the wheels of the tape inside the answering machine start to spin.
“Go and lie down, Ma Ma,” you tell her.
As silent as a ghost, she disappears from the room. You go to the linen cupboard to fetch old towels and to the laundry room to get a mop and bucket, and you clean up the mess as best you can. As you wipe down the walls, Big Scary pulses pink for you and you press your palm against her. You want to wipe the paint off the window in the front door, but you don’t dare.
The egg carton in the fridge is now empty. You close it and then open it up in hope, but magic is unpredictable and moves in mysterious ways and it can’t help you with that. There is no milk left and no more bread.
Kneeling down beside the answering machine, you press the button with the single arrow to see what happens.
You have one new message, the machine announces in its mechanical tone.
Then a familiar voice fills the air.
“Hello? This is Ailing. Ah… I’m just ringing to check that everything has been okay since we left. I hope the two of you are coping in that great big house… I think about both of you all the time.”
Ailing clears her throat as if she felt the last sentence was a rather silly thing to say.
“Anyway, if it’s not too much to ask, I am thinking about coming back soon. I mean, I don’t mind if I have to stay at a hotel… if I might be considered too much of an intruder…”
Her voice trails off sadly.
“I’ll try ringing another time. Bye.”
The line goes dead.
Come back, Ailing! you shout in your head. The machine wants to know if you’d like to listen to the message again, so you listen to it another two times, as if it is a lifeline to the outside world. You wish Ailing would call again. That if you hope hard enough it might just happen and you will pick up the receiver in joy. But the phone stays silent.