Up from the Blue

by Susan Henderson

  MY PILLOW WAS HOT and damp. I turned it over to the cool side, and flipped my body to face the wall. I still couldn’t sleep, so I put on my robe and walked down the stairs, first one flight and then another. I shut my eyes and held the rail so it felt like before, walking into the black, electric with fear and longing, my pulse thumping in my neck.

  I knew what I was doing, that I was only pretending everything was how it used to be. That she’d be there in the blue glow—mine alone—and we’d share sodas and books warmed by her hands.

  I love you the best. I’m always listening for you.

  Eyes still closed, my feet could feel that I was on the landing, where the staircase turned to the right, the door just at the bottom. I patted the wall for the cold metal knob. The door was open, but I could make myself forget that. I closed it behind me, and felt my way through the dark to my side of the couch. It was my first time back to the secret room since our failed escape.

  “I’m here, Momma.”

  Have a look through this box. See if there’s anything you want.

  If I let myself stay sleepy and focused only on the memory, she was there, on her side of the couch, a plastic bag filled with makeup sitting between us.

  I uncapped a lipstick and circled it round and round over my lips as Momma looked on, amused. She reached over with a Kleenex and wiped where I’d missed my mouth. Then she pointed to where I’d misbuttoned my robe and fixed it for me.

  All better.

  I rubbed my fist over my mouth, thinking of the cool, smooth lipstick. I buttoned and rebuttoned my robe, trying not to let myself believe I was alone. Over and over I let her fix my face, my buttons. And when I was ready to sleep again, I told her, “I’ll stay here tonight.”

  I took my robe off and folded it into something that felt like her lap. I lay my head down and combed my fingers through my hair.

  “I’m going to stay here. Is that okay? I’m going to fall asleep right here.”

  SOMETIMES I BORROWED THE hall pass at school just to take a walk. When the halls were empty, I’d zigzag from one wall to the other or try to hop on only the white tiles. If there was no one in the bathroom, I’d take handfuls of paper towels, wet them under the sink, and fling them to the ceiling to see if they’d stick.

  Today I just walked from one end to the other, remembering my confusion when I woke up this morning in the basement, hearing Dad call for me. I rose before I was ready, angry at the cold. My neck hurt from sleeping with my head propped up too high, and I wasn’t sure where I was at first. The secret room had changed so much—no sense of Momma there at all.

  I started to jog because I wasn’t sure how long I’d been gone from class. If you take too long with the hall pass, you lose your privilege. I hurried down one hallway and turned down the other when I found myself walking right behind Phil. I slowed down to avoid his seeing me, and the angry glare that would follow. It was hard to get more than a glimpse of him anymore. You heard him, of course, before school, kicking through the cans, and sometimes you saw the back of him ducking through an old chain-link fence—the new route he took to school. It was twice the distance, and a real trek through tall weeds and poison ivy, but he’d do anything to be left alone.

  It used to be that my brother would walk down the hallway at school with one arm brushing the wall, but now he walked down the center, his shoulders broad from pumping weights. I doubted anyone noticed he had the silver cap removed because he still kept his mouth closed in that same grim expression, but you could tell something about him had grown strong. When a group of kids approached, he didn’t move out of the way. They had to.

  Mr. Woodson waited outside the classroom for me. “Did you get lost?” he asked, taking the hall pass and guiding me back and through the rows of desks.

  Ever since I’d found the note he’d written on the back of my poems I would read it over and over. I even pinned it on the wall near my pillow because it made the days not hurt so much.

  “Mr. Woodson,” I asked, “when are you going to eat that apple?” For a week and a half it had been sitting on his desk in the heat—now bruised and leaning to one side.

  “I’ll have it after school, Tillie, but right now you need to get back to your seat.”

  I followed him to the blackboard, where he began to write our spelling words in a list that sloped to the right.

  “Please sit,” he said.

  But I didn’t want to sit. I wanted to stand near him while he read my poems and ate my apple and asked how I’d found one that was so red. I wanted him to tell me again how Ed and Edna escaped from the dungeon. I wanted him to know my favorite shows, my favorite color, and what I wanted to be when I was old enough to marry him.

  “Tillie. I mean it.”

  He continued to write words on the blackboard, while something as red as the apple burned in my chest. And rather than returning to my seat, I slumped under his desk, where—throughout the entire lesson and up until the class got in line for recess—he ignored me. Only then, my back hurting by that time, did he poke his head under the desk and say I could join everyone, or I could stay under there all day long. It was my choice.

  I chose a third option. When he left me and Shirl behind to escort the class to the playground, I snuck the apple off his desk. I took it to the bathroom and (thanks to Shirl, who stood guard at the door) I peed on it, letting it soak into the smile on the bottom. After I dried the apple with a paper towel, I put it back on his desk, and Shirl returned to her seat, giggling. I stared straight ahead, dead serious.

  I stomped all the way home, past my mother, asleep on the couch with the same books open to the same pages, and continued upstairs to my room. There, I unpinned Mr. Woodson’s note from the wall—not letting myself read it or smell the painted paper or touch the thick red dots to my lips.

  Everything ached. It was the feeling I had at my last birthday party, dressed in Momma’s high heels with napkins shoved into the toes to make them fit, and listening to the phone ring with one cancellation after another. Everyone had a good excuse, but I knew the reason they weren’t coming was because I might bite.

  Before I could change my mind, I dropped the note with the painted ladybugs behind my bookshelf, where I couldn’t reach it or look at it. I couldn’t be comforted by it, and I couldn’t tear it up to bits.

  And after that, I brought my spelling book downstairs and turned on the TV to see if Momma would wake up. The kinds of shows on TV in the afternoon were the awful, slow kind, where the conversation that was happening two days ago was somehow still happening. The characters on TV droned on, and I turned the pages of my book, but nothing went in. Momma, however, had opened her eyes.

  “A friend invited me to her house,” I told her. “Momma? I’ll need a note to ride on her bus after school.”

  “Okay.” She rubbed her forehead, like my voice had given her a headache. She searched within arm’s reach for something to write on. “What does it need to say?”

  “That I can ride Bus 14. Her name is Shirl.”

  Momma wrote on the back of an envelope, tore off the portion she’d written on, and handed it to me.

  “I think you need to sign it,” I said.

  Hardly concentrating, she took the note back.

  While she signed it, I thought about Mr. Woodson behind his desk. He said he’d eat the apple after school, and maybe he was holding it right then, cupping it gently in his hands, even though it was not as good an apple as he’d believed. Nothing perfect about it at all.

  28

  Riding Bus 14

  THE DAY SHIRL AND I stood in line for Bus 14, I could feel the stares, not just from the brown children waiting to board, but from the kids who lived in my neighborhood crowding the sidewalk. Knee-deep in exhaust, I locked my eyes on the glass door, suddenly feeling aware of the expression on my face. Was this how my face normally looked when I stood in a line? And did I normally whistle, or just now? The door opened and the line pushed toward the steps until I was stan
ding in front of the brown bus driver.

  “Young lady, are you sure you’re on the right bus?”

  As laughter crackled through the line, I handed him my note, and he wrote my name on a clipboard.

  “Go ahead, then,” he said, and I moved through the aisle behind Shirl.

  I’d never ridden a school bus before, and once in my seat, I sat at the edge and stared at the words “bus ride to hell” carved into the vinyl with a paper clip. The paper clip was still attached to the seat, and I wondered if we were heading away from hell, or toward it.

  The kids all faced me, like I was an animal at the zoo, and as we rumbled there, stuck behind the other buses, I thought of making a run for home. I could spend another afternoon with the side of the couch digging into the backs of my legs. Momma would stare at the TV whether it was on or not, with books sitting between us, always turned to the same pages. The driver revved the engine, and I sunk back in my seat.

  It was a long way from the school to the other end of Montgomery County. I faced the window, studying every detail and landmark on the way to Shirl’s neighborhood. And all the while, she named toys we could play with. “There’s Hula-Hoops, Twister, Creepy Crawlers, Monopoly.”

  Hers was the last stop. I held the back of each seat as I moved through the aisle and off the bus. Once on the sidewalk, she stopped to remove the bells from her shoelaces, wrapped them in a cloth so they wouldn’t jingle, and put them in her book bag. This made perfect sense to me. Who you want to be out in the world is hardly ever the same as who you need to be at home.

  “Maybe you’ll meet my momma,” Shirl said, as we walked down the uneven sidewalk. “But she usually works late at the bank. Sometimes she brings home lollipops.”

  I recognized her street from the day Dad drove her home. We walked up the hot, unshaded steps and into a blast of air-conditioning. Her house smelled of floor cleaner, and we dropped our book bags in the tiled entryway and walked up the white-carpeted stairs past a white-carpeted living room. Other than a wraparound couch, the living room was all electronics—a large TV and a stereo with loads of knobs.

  “Hello?” An older woman’s voice came from the kitchen. “You girls ready for your snack?” The short and wrinkled brown woman greeted us from the stairs, wearing a housedress and slippers.

  Shirl answered, “Yes, ma’am.”

  We sat on stools at a spotless counter as the old woman moved from the refrigerator to the sink to one cupboard or another, always taking her pocketbook with her. I wondered if she thought I’d steal it if she left it unattended.

  “I just finished doing the dishes, so you’re going to use paper plates,” she said, and set before us two cans of Dr. Pepper and plates of rolled-up bologna stuck with toothpicks.

  We said, “Thank you,” each of us calling her ma’am.

  Every appliance in the room was on. Steam came from the dishwasher, coffee dripped into a pot, The Guiding Light played on a small television, and the tap was on in the sink where she washed her hands.

  “So you know each other from school?”

  “Yes,” I said. “Yes, ma’am.”

  “And we’re in the play together,” Shirl said.

  “I see. And tell me, what does your father do?”

  “I’m not really sure what he does,” I said. “Something to do with missiles. He’s tried to explain, but I don’t get it.”

  “Her daddy’s a general,” Shirl said.

  “A colonel,” I corrected. Dad would be upset if I allowed someone to call him a higher rank than he really was, but the old woman raised her eyebrows as if I’d been bragging.

  “I’ve seen him at the school,” Shirl cut in. “You should see all the pins on his uniform.”

  “And your mother?” the old woman asked, as if to quiet Shirl.

  “She stays home.”

  “You’re lucky,” Shirl said. “My momma would love to be a homemaker but she needs to make money.”

  The old woman slapped her hand on the counter in front of Shirl’s plate. “Shirley Chisholm, shut your mouth. You are lucky to have a mother who works so hard for you.”

  I kept my eye on the bologna after that, thrilled with the idea that my home life was so desirable. When we finished our snack, we dashed off to Shirl’s room, where we emptied her closet of every toy and game, trying each for only a minute or two before claiming we were bored, hopelessly bored.

  “Are you girls having fun?” the old woman asked, peeking into the room.

  We shook our heads and told her there was nothing to do.

  Her lips puckered, and lines like stitches formed all around her mouth in a show of pure disapproval that Shirl had chosen me as a friend.

  “Follow me,” she said, leading us to the bathroom, where she handed Shirl a toilet scrub brush and pointed to the bowl. “There’s always something to do. I wish I could be so bored.”

  “Your maid’s a little cranky,” I said when we were safe in Shirl’s room again.

  “My grandmother.”

  “That’s what I meant.”

  “When was she cranky?”

  Shirl pulled a suitcase from the closet and we dug through the miniature clothes inside it until we found the Barbies. Each tanned and skinny doll walked on her toes and had glossy hair that went past her butt.

  Shirl explained how she had named all the dolls after colors you get by mixing various amounts of cream into coffee. “This is Cappuccino. This is Espresso. And this one’s Mocha. That’s what color my grandmother is.”

  All the dolls had the same color skin, more like a cashew nut, but perfectly smooth. We dressed their long, thin bodies in ball gowns, and when we grabbed a doll in each fist and ran through the house, we were like ugly trolls kidnapping them.

  “This way!” Shirl said, running out the back door to her mowed back lot, where we taught the dolls how to dance the Bump and the Bus Stop. We cartwheeled and played tag and sat Indian style beside a honeysuckle bush, sucking the one sweet drop from each flower, when a small brown face and then another peered over her fence.

  The first asked, “When’s your mom coming with her lollipops?” And the second, more curiously, asked, “Who’s she?”

  “Quit spying,” Shirl yelled, running toward the house, and I followed behind her, squealing, through the back door and into the kitchen.

  Her grandmother, who cooked spaghetti sauce at the stove while staring at the small television set, turned at once. “No more running in and out with your muddy shoes.”

  “I don’t have mud on my shoes,” Shirl said.

  “You don’t now because it’s already tracked across the floor.”

  “My shoes are clean. I didn’t track anything.”

  “Don’t sass me,” she said and swatted Shirl’s behind. “Must be your little friend has muddy feet.”

  We got out of there fast, slipping into her mother’s room, which smelled of wet towels and laundry detergent. Lingerie hung on doorknobs, and drawers were stuffed so full they didn’t close. Shirl opened the cupboard under the sink in the master bathroom and pulled out a bottle of blood-colored wine. We filled two Dixie cups and snuck back to her room, sitting with our backs against her closed door so her grandmother couldn’t sneak up on us.

  “I wanted to show you something,” Shirl said. She dug through her book bag, pulling out wrinkled homework papers and a collection of animal-shaped erasers she bought at the school store. Finally she found what she was after.

  “Here,” she said. “I found it at my dad’s house. He keeps it in the drawer by his bed.”

  She passed me a photograph of a naked lady.

  “It’s my mother,” she said. “I think they’re getting back together. Why else would he keep it?”

  She’d told me enough about her father’s nagging and the fights her parents had when they dropped her off from one house to another for me to doubt anyone wanted to make up.

  I’d never seen a naked woman’s body except for cartoon drawings on bathroom st
alls. And I was shocked to think that a body could just bulge out like that, or a bottom could get so big, or something that looked like a second bottom could grow right out of those flat, pink nipples on the chest. I wanted to look away but couldn’t make myself.

  “She looks weird,” I said. “Is she drunk?”

  The photo had all her attention. “He still thinks about her,” she said.

  “I guess.”

  Both of her parents seemed so unlikable that I could see why she’d want them back together: Then there would only be one home to avoid.

  She swiveled the wine in her cup for some time before she said, “I wish I had your life.”

  Until then, I’d been debating whether to tell her what it would be like if she came to my house. But as I held the Dixie cup under my chin, I thought about what telling those secrets did to my friendship with Hope. Maybe the best way to keep a friend was to not let them know a lot about you. I took a large sip and tasted something familiar and comforting in the bitterness and the way my head spun when I swallowed.

  “Girls? Girls, are you in there?”

  “It’s my grandma,” Shirl said, taking the cup from me and burying it at the bottom of her trash can.

  “Girls, I’m starting the car right now.”

  I lay my head on the carpet, looking sideways at Shirl, and started to giggle. “Your teeth are purple.”

  “Come on,” she said, pulling on my hands until I stood up and followed her to the garage. The engine was already running.

  “Your teeth match the car,” I laughed, trying to whisper.

  Shirl punched my arm as we filed into the backseat of her grandmother’s Buick. During the ride to my house, her grandmother hummed along to the radio, turned down so low, all you could hear was the tinny drumbeat. Each time she turned a corner, her pocketbook slid left and right across the dashboard. I thought of them eating spaghetti and lollipops after her mother came home and wished they’d invited me to stay longer.

  We winded up the short streets and hills, past the big houses and well-tended front lawns, neighbors looking long into the window of our car.