Up from the Blue

by Susan Henderson

  Out of the corner of my eye, I thought I saw the streetlights come on. And when I pressed myself against the window to be sure, I saw the one-handed lady walk across the lawn, ice tinkling in her brown bar glass.

  “There she is!” I held my other hand out and tucked my fingers under to make a stub. I tried to hold in a giant laugh. I had never seen her at Hope’s before, though I’d seen her around town. She was pretty but not in any memorable way—someone you’d look at a little longer than others, then forget. Until you saw the hand, or rather, until you didn’t see her hand.

  “Eww,” I said. “She just put it on your Dad’s chest.”

  “I know,” she said. “She’s always touching him.”

  I pressed closer to the screen so my nose was squashed against it. I remembered seeing her at 7-Eleven, trying to remove a bill from her wallet. She was clumsy, and the clerk looked away but then couldn’t help turning back to see.

  “What’s it like up close?” I asked.

  “I don’t like to get that close to it,” she said. “But I saw her lick it once. She made a cake and licked the frosting off her stump.”

  “Did you eat the cake?”

  “Yes, and it tasted like fingers!” We laughed so hard our eyes watered. We made our hands into stubs until our wrists hurt. I could have made that joke go on and on, but it was quickly getting dark.

  “I better go,” I said. “I’ll probably get in trouble.”

  We both watched our reflections as we left the pink room. Hope may have noticed her barrettes in my hair, but she didn’t ask me to return them.

  The whole way home I watched my tennis shoes, first in shadow, then glowing under the streetlight, then in shadow again. The cold stung in the place where my mother was always there, always not there. But there was also joy. There were these perfect afternoons that kept coming, just enough, here and there.

  I caught the scent of strawberry shampoo, still on my hand. By the storm drain I found a scrunched bird feather and smoothed its gray wisps before putting it in my pocket. I wondered if people would mistake me for an adult in my makeup. I felt I must certainly look like my mother walking down the street. And could she come home, easy as this, someday? Would she know which house was mine?

  That night the details of Momma’s face that seemed so difficult to remember at Hope’s came back as clear as if I’d just seen her. I remembered a time in the old house when she was still well and getting out of bed during the day. The doorbell had just rung.

  “Hurry, Bear,” she told me, dropping to the carpet, where she would be hidden from view.

  Before I joined her, I peeked from behind the curtain at the lady who sold makeup in our neighborhood. She carried her salmon-colored tote bag and wore a matching silk scarf around her neck.

  We had let her into our house once, and she sat very ladylike on our sofa, laying out samples and talking nonstop. There was not a makeup pale enough for Momma’s skin, so after the woman applied the base, there was a peach colored line where Momma’s jaw met her neck. We tried different shades of eye shadows and lipsticks on our arms. Momma liked the bloodred lipstick, but the woman said that her best color was pink.

  We bought two items that day. One was a necklace for me that had a rabbit dangling from it. The face opened like a locket and had a creamy perfume inside, which I dabbed regularly on my wrists and behind my ears, though I didn’t like the way it smelled. Momma bought a lipstick: bloodred.

  But this time when she rang our bell, Momma was determined not to let her in. “Hurry, Bear,” she whispered. “Get down.” And we lay there with our cheeks squashed against the carpet.

  Hope had asked if my mother’s face was full of wrinkles, the way mine looked with a candle under my chin, and it was not. It was not smooth, either, but slightly bumpy like fancy stationery. She scarred easily. Paper cuts and scrapes all left permanent marks, but the creases on her face were only on one side of her mouth, the side that showed her smile. Even in photos, and there were not many, one half of her face showed no expression.

  “Don’t move, Bear. She’ll go away soon.”

  “Is she bad?”

  Her answer was cryptic. “I’ll protect you,” she said. And seeing that smile now, in my memory, I recognize the mischief in her blue eyes, though, at the time, I truly feared that if the woman with the pink tote bag had seen us we’d have been harmed. It was the reason, later that evening, I secretly threw away the rabbit necklace.

  We stayed there on the floor, long after the woman had left, talking quietly about things I’ve forgotten. And eventually I asked if we were allowed to get off the floor. If we could eat dinner.

  “Dinner? Have we had lunch yet? Oh, never mind, let’s go eat something.”

  And we stood, laughing again, because our clothes were covered in everything that had been on the carpet: lint, bits of thread, and long orange hairs.

  11

  School Steps

  TIME CONTINUED ON RELENTLESSLY despite my fear that every day forward put me further from the last time I’d seen my mother. The leaves were turning to red and yellow. My hair was turning from dirty blonde to brown. I was still far shorter and skinnier than my classmates, but I had outgrown most of the clothes I remembered buying with Momma. If she saw me today—my two front teeth grown in big and crooked, like a rabbit’s—she would hardly recognize me. I used to welcome the new seasons, count down to the next holiday, but now these changes came too fast.

  Despite the passing months, I had not made friends at school. Dad said I wasn’t trying. Maybe so, but neither were the kids in my class. If there was an empty seat beside one of them, someone would quickly throw a jacket over it and say, “It’s saved,” and then break into giggles.

  In the cafeteria, with tables that unfolded out of the walls, I sat with the other outsiders. Shirley Chisholm Brooks was there. We were the only two students who had entered the school as third graders that year, though when we stood side by side she looked like my babysitter. There were others from our pod who sat there, as well—the kids with leg braces, weight problems, lisps. We peeled the foil off our school lunches, eating limp broccoli and Jell-O molds with our heads down.

  I tried to appear so interested in my lunch and, afterward, in my book that I didn’t have time for others. Being alone would look like my choice. I did the same at recess, keeping to the edge of the blacktop, where I drew pictures of Snoopy and Mr. Peanut in chalk. But today we had recess inside because there were reports of a streaker in the woods behind the school. I sat alone at my desk, holding the Encyclopedia D in front of my face.

  Mr. Woodson put his hand on my shoulder.

  “Am I in trouble?” I asked.

  He shook his head and smiled. “Here, follow me,” he said, and led me through a row of desks. We stopped in front of Shirley Chisholm Brooks, who was busy scratching a paper clip on the cover of her textbook. Without a word, he took the paper clip from her, and pulled up a chair for me on the other side of her desk.

  I hesitated before sitting down. I knew very little about her, other than that introduction on the first day, and of course, the bells. What we all knew about her was that she stayed inside for recess every day, but no one was sure what she’d done to get in trouble.

  Mr. Woodson set three pennies between us and showed us how we could use them to play a game of soccer. Not once did this plump and moody girl say a word to me or did I say a word to her. But there was an ease when we were together, the ease of two outsiders. And that day, as we tapped on pennies and occasionally flicked them through the goal posts, we did not feel pressure to have a conversation. We just moved the pennies back and forth from her fingers to mine.

  The next day during recess, even though the streaker had been arrested, Mr. Woodson invited me to stay inside with her again. He folded a piece of paper into a thick triangle and showed us how to flick it forward. That triangle became our football, and our fingers the goal posts. We made goals, overshot them, and had the paper triangle st
ick to our fingers—all without expression, without words. Finally she stopped the game, keeping the paper football clenched in her fist.

  “There’s a school near my house where all my friends go. I don’t know why you think this one’s so special.”

  “I didn’t say it was special.”

  “Good, ’cause it’s not,” she said. “And my name is Shirl. Don’t call me anything but Shirl.”

  I looked her in the eye and shrugged.

  “Are you girls getting along?” Mr. Woodson asked when he came in to check on us. I wasn’t sure, and neither of us answered.

  Phil had discovered a path behind the school that led into the woods and along a creek, and you could follow it all the way down to the Potomac. On days he didn’t have a lot of homework, he’d head down to the river where he stood up to his shins in the water and skipped stones. He kept a homemade fishing pole along the way. It was the long stick he’d carved, attached to an old reel and strung with fishing line. He’d fish and climb on the mossy rocks, turning them over to see what was underneath. He’d come home with his jeans and sneakers soaked. I didn’t tell on him when he stored a dead copperhead in the bathroom sink or a jar of worms in the towel closet. I could have, except the things he’d get in trouble for were the things I liked best about him.

  Phil didn’t want me tagging along on these trips, so on days he went fishing I stayed late at school, sitting on the step near the entrance with my face buried in my encyclopedia, which was fatter now, with wrinkled pages that were easier to turn. I’d wait there until Mr. Woodson left the school because I knew he’d sit a while—not long, he always had his car keys ready—but long enough to listen to a story.

  “Well, who could it be behind this big book?” Mr. Woodson asked, squatting beside me, and spinning his keys on his finger. “How about a quick story before I head home?”

  I considered telling him about dogs with blue coats, and dolmen tombs that looked like they would fall at any moment, but I knew what he liked best were stories about the people I met when I went to work with Dad—the national security adviser, men from the DoD and DARPA. In truth, they were forgettable men with good posture and firm handshakes, but I liked how he listened with such interest.

  “Once,” I told him, “my dad introduced me to the secretary of defense and, right away, he signed his autograph on a piece of paper for me, even though I didn’t ask for one. So I said, ‘Do you have another piece of paper? I’ll write my name down for you.’”

  “And you gave him your autograph?”

  “I did.”

  We both laughed, and I did not tell him the end of the story, how when I started to sign my name Dad took the pen from me and shook his head.

  When Mr. Woodson had to go, I walked with him to the parking lot. He must have been seven feet tall if you counted his Afro, and so slim in his flare slacks, he was like a man on stilts from the circus. He put his hand on the top of my head before folding himself into his tiny MG sports car and zipping away. I didn’t want to move from the spot where he’d touched me. Dots of sunlight moved up and down my arm, like he’d put them there.

  12

  The Ways You’re Wrong

  MY FATHER’S FIRST VISIT to my school was the evening of my parent-teacher conference. I sat at a table in the center of the pod while he and Mr. Woodson, both in suits, talked in my classroom with my school papers and the green ledger between them. The room was still decorated for Halloween, though the holiday had come and gone. Phil and I had dressed as ghosts that year, a last-minute decision to celebrate. We wore white sheets that would later go back on our beds with holes where we’d cut out eyes. It was a somber holiday, the first one without Momma that had mattered to us. We collected very little, calling it quits after a couple of blocks. And when we came home, rather than categorizing our candy and having fierce trade wars over Peppermint Patties and Red Hots, we both went straight to our rooms. I unwrapped one candy after another, in no order at all, just eating to get full.

  When the conference finished, Dad handed me the jack-o’-lantern made of faded construction paper that I was now allowed to take home. We didn’t speak at all as we walked through the school and then the parking lot, where he opened the door to the backseat of his car and reminded me to buckle. He did not begin the lecture until we pulled onto the road. Then the calm disappeared.

  “Your teacher says your behavior in the classroom is erratic,” he said. “Some days you stare into the fluorescent lights and he can’t get your attention, and other days you’re shouting out answers without raising your hand.” He passed our street because his lecture still had a ways to go. “Listen carefully, Tillie. You need to choose the right thing to do and then do it consistently.”

  School had been one of the few places I was free from Dad’s rules. It was hard enough to stand in the PE line knowing I’d be picked last for sports, just after Shirl, or sitting alone in the cafeteria with my encyclopedia. Now I had to pretend my dad was in school with me, telling me what to do.

  “You score just fine on your tests, but your teacher can’t predict what kind of work you’ll turn in. If he asks you to write two paragraphs, don’t turn in ten or fifteen pages. That’s ridiculous and burdensome.”

  Sometimes Dad’s talking became like the sound at the end of a record, before you removed the needle. Fuff fuff fuff. Everyone likes to tell you the ways you’re wrong and ways you can improve yourself and what you should and shouldn’t do. Sometimes you have to tune it out or there’s nothing left of you that’s right.

  I pressed my nose and lips against the window, and the world slid by sideways—clouds, guardrails, bumper stickers, and the faces of other children in the backseats of their own cars. I wondered if they had also come from these conferences and were hearing similar lectures. I waved to them, one prisoner to another.

  “Wait,” I said, sitting up tall in my seat as we crossed the Cabin John Bridge. “Isn’t that Phil? There. Down by the water?”

  Dad swerved a little, trying to see. “That couldn’t be him,” he said. “Phil’s at home.”

  It’s not like you could miss Phil. His hair had gone curly at the start of the school year—something he felt was as cruel and unfair as the silver tooth—and every morning, after his shower, he put a knit ski cap on his head while his hair was still wet. The idea was to press the curls fat, though they still puffed out at the bottom.

  “You don’t think that’s his jacket?” I asked. I’d never seen anyone but Phil wearing the logo of our old air force base.

  Dad tried to look again, then quickly turned off the road and backtracked under the bridge. It only took a minute to be sure it was Phil, ankle-deep and pitching rocks. We parked as close as we could, but we wouldn’t be able to get within talking distance unless we got out of the car and stepped across the wet stones.

  “He’s making a mess of his sneakers,” Dad said as he leaned on the horn. “Roll down the window, Tillie.”

  Soon we were both yelling to him. “Get in the car! What do you think you’re doing?”

  Phil had gathered everything in such a hurry—the fishing pole, a mayonnaise jar full of worms, and the lid for it—that he had trouble walking without something slipping out of his hands.

  “Is that my rod?” Dad said.

  “No.”

  “Leave it, then.”

  “Dad, the pole’s mine.”

  “I said, ‘Leave it,’” and he bolted out of the car so fast, Phil dropped everything he’d been carrying.

  Dad had won another battle. He could make Phil leave the pole and the worms, and he could demand that Phil wash the mud out of the car when we got back. He might even make me keep my eyes on Mr. Woodson instead of the lights on the ceiling, though I doubted either of us could control the way my mind wandered.

  13

  Christmas Lights

  I HAD NOT SEEN MY mother through summer or fall, and when winter came, filling our swimming pool with snow and dead branches, it seemed unbea
rable that we’d spend Christmas without her. Christmas had been Momma’s specialty—a time when she decorated every room of the house with a snow globe or a tiny Christmas tree or a tea towel with Santa Claus on it. All of our ornaments were handmade. She cut the patterns from felt, then sewed detailed faces with shiny embroidery thread.

  As the holiday approached, Mr. Woodson carefully suggested that we could make cards and gifts for any of the “important adults” in our lives. This was so everyone would feel included. Even someone living in the custody of their grandparents. Or, say, a father who would not tell his children where their mother was.

  I spent most of my time on a card for Momma. I drew a picture of my ruby cup and my old bedroom. I drew seventy-two small holes in each ceiling tile, and other details I knew from days I spent by myself, such as the 346 red pieces of yarn that made up the fringe around my bedspread until you got to the clump where I had once spilled some of my drink.

  “Tillie, do you think you want to move on?” Mr. Woodson pointed to the red fringe in my drawing. “Maybe it’s time to write some words on your card.”

  I wrote the words with my hands cupped over the paper the whole time. When we were told to put our projects away I quickly cut out a snowflake for Dad.

  The next day at school, we were meant to make gifts. There was a basket of crafts on the table filled with yarn, buttons, glitter, pipe cleaners. I removed one of my socks, stuffed it with paper and set about making a sock doll. I glued fabric and glitter to my sock, remembering how Momma could always make something beautiful out of scraps. At the end of the week, when it had finally dried enough to handle, the doll was so hideous, I could not even bear to wrap it.

  “It’s good enough, Tillie,” Mr. Woodson said. “Your father will see it comes from your heart.”

  There was a Christmas party that day in the empty wing of the school. So much of the building was not in use because most of the children in the neighborhood had enrolled in private school, just as Hope had said. Our classes were small, with the students from Bus 14 carefully distributed, no more than one to a room. The party felt the same as walking into the cafeteria at lunchtime and not having anyone to sit with, so I stayed beside a table decorated in colorful paper, eating cookies.