My Year in the Middle

by Lila Quintero Weaver

  “Well, I’m sure your father will be interested,” Mamá says with a tired voice. “He’s the sports person around here. Now please get that board off the table before the wood gets scratched.”

  Back in my room, the minute hand on my dresser clock edges toward four thirty, when Spider’s supposed to play my song. Next thing I know, the news announcer finishes up his bulletin and here comes Spider.

  “Take a listen to this number, y’all. It’s for a little sis who needs to know that everything’s going to be cool, dig?” I smile, because when it comes to Spider, I can’t help it. But the song he picked for me is “I Want You Back” by the Jackson 5 — a great song, a fun song, just not one of “mine.” Plus, you can’t have something back if you never really had it. And for your information, Spider, I don’t get the feeling Sam even wants me back.

  It’s Saturday morning, and Marina and I are up with the chickens. The Sampredos are coming over to eat dinner with us tonight, and Papá’s asked us to help with the preparations since Mamá’s been working so hard. It was Marina’s idea for us to jump on the housecleaning chores right away, before Mamá could even finish her shower. The birds are still singing their morning songs when Marina takes a dust mop to the cobwebs and I tackle the kitchen counters with scouring powder.

  It’s pretty fun to surprise Mamá. The minute she comes out in her bathrobe and sees what we’re up to, her mouth goes into an O, and then her eyes crinkle with one of those smiles that make me believe everything’s going to be all right.

  Papá grins and says, “Ay, chicas, you outdid yourselves!” I think Mamá may not need her medicine today.

  Around two o’clock, Belinda and I meet for our run. She’s a drill sergeant, and I’m her one and only soldier. “Left, left, left, right, left,” she calls out in a singsong. The rhymes she makes up on these Saturday runs are getting fancier by the minute. There’s one about fleas, knees, and bumblebees, but I’ve forgotten how it goes. One I do remember says, “Candy cane, soda pop, be-bop-a-loo. Hop, drop, stop, shop, shoo-shoo-shoo.”

  Today, she comes up with her best one so far: “I say lightning, you say thunder. We’re the girls that make ’em wonder.” I like it so much that I tell her we should make it our team cheer, if we ever get a team. Mrs. Underwood says we should know by the last week of school.

  Today, we run the route at a good clip, cruising down the street under the oak trees and bouncing squirrels, and up our doozy of a heart-attack hill. Then we do it all over again. Before long, we’ve run up the hill so many times that it’s starting to feel like we own it. Even when my legs beg me to quit, I force them to keep going. Heck, Field Day is in two and a half weeks. Tina Briggs is in two and a half weeks. This is no time to cut excuses.

  When we finish, Belinda says, “Whew, I’m too wiped out for monkey bars.”

  “Me too.”

  “Want to go by Handy’s?”

  “Sure.” We roll our bikes out of the bushes and coast along the street, turning into the alley and going through ruts and puddles before we pop out on Cornelius. At Handy’s, we each get a box of Cracker Jacks. After running, I can’t resist a snack, even though Mamá would kill me dead if she knew I was eating junk food, especially since she’s slaving over the stove this very minute to make everything delicious for the Sampredos.

  I get a bright idea. “Why don’t you come to my house for dinner? My mom is a really good cook.”

  “Oh, yeah?” Belinda breaks into a big smile. “Sounds good to me, but I’d have to go home and get a shower first, because, you know …” She holds her nose.

  “Yep, me too! And then could your mom or dad drive you to my house?”

  “Probably so,” she says.

  We scrounge around in our pockets for dimes to call our mothers from a pay phone. The answer from both of them is yes. Yes! It’s starting to feel like Belinda Gresham is really and truly my best friend.

  We sit cross-legged on my bedroom floor, flipping through my stack of Groovy Gal magazines. Just like Abigail, Belinda’s a lot keener on fashion stuff than I am. “Ooh, I love those shoes!” she says. “I need some of those for school next fall.”

  “And pantsuits?”

  “And pantsuits.”

  She turns another page. “I love this beret! And look, it matches the skirt!” she says.

  “Hey, you can take these magazines home if you want to,” I tell her.

  “You don’t read them?”

  “Not much.”

  “Abigail might be upset if you give them away.”

  I shrug. “She won’t know. She hasn’t been to my house in forever.”

  Belinda frowns. “How come?”

  “She’s got a boyfriend.” I explain about Conrad and the WATS phone line that he and Abigail burn up for hours at a time.

  “What about your boyfriend?” She wiggles her eyebrows. “Does he ever call you?”

  I make a face. “If you mean Sam, he’s not even speaking to me.”

  “What? What’s gotten into that little stinker?”

  I know the answer, but I’m not telling. The last thing I need is another friend getting steamed at me for going to that rally, and the more time I spend with Belinda, the sorrier I am for going.

  The fashion spreads show every outfit known to man, and Belinda oohs and aahs over half of them. Then she stops at a page full of back-to-school clothes. One of the models is black and wears her hair in a cute Afro. Belinda puts a hand to her hip. “Well, how do you like that? Here’s a black girl — at last. I was starting to think we were invisible.”

  I flip through the pages of another issue. “I see what you mean.” There are hardly any black girls anywhere, and it dawns on me that all the Groovy Gal magazines are like this.

  “Humph, I guess we don’t get to be fashion models.” She shoots me a look. “Not that I give a fig.”

  “Me neither. Still.”

  “Yeah, still.” She keeps flipping pages. “My mom gets Jet magazine.”

  “What’s that?”

  “It’s for black people, which is why we’re on every single page.”

  “Oh. That’s good.” As far as I know, there’s not a magazine that has people like my family on every single page. If so, there would be plenty of brown-eyed, dark-haired girls in the fashion spreads, and that sure doesn’t happen in Groovy Gal.

  Belinda reaches the cheap ads in the very back, where you can see all sorts of schools that train you for interior design, secretarial, or stewardess jobs.

  “What are you going to be when you grow up?” I ask.

  “My daddy wants me to be a dentist, like him.” She wrinkles her nose.

  “Mine thinks I should be a medical technician and work in a lab at a hospital. He says it pays pretty good money. He tried to get Marina to do it, but she has other ideas.”

  “Tell me about it! I have other ideas, too.”

  “Like what?”

  “Like being a poet, maybe?” She hops up to rummage in her purse. “Almost forgot that I brought you one of my poems.” She pulls out a folded piece of notebook paper. “Do you want to read it?”

  “Of course I do!” The title of the poem is “When Spring Bursts Through.” Her handwriting is awfully nice, much better than mine, and the words are pretty, too, tons better than anything I could ever come up with. It’s all about a yellow crocus in a dressing gown and a storm of angry raindrops.

  “Do you like it?” Belinda asks shyly.

  “Are you kidding me? I love it! Is this mine to keep?”

  She nods, beaming. Right then, I hurry to the corkboard and tack her poem next to Madeline Manning. I step back to admire it. Yep. Belinda’s poem and Madeline Manning’s gold medal make a perfect pair.

  All through supper, Mamá keeps saying, “Save room for dessert,” but most of us stuff ourselves anyway. When she finishes her meal, Marina excuses herself to go work at the Brewer headquarters. For the rest of us, it takes a good hour before we’re ready to dig into the flan, a sweet custar
d with a caramel syrup drizzled all over it.

  We take our bowls to the screened-in front porch, where there’s a breeze and a whole lot of cicadas are buzzing in the air. Everybody congratulates Mamá on the fine cooking, and Papá salutes her for finishing the bride’s veil. “Here’s to good work and fine friends!”

  “Hear, hear!” We all clink our spoons. In this crowd, Spanish and English get all chopped up and mixed together, so every few sentences, I stop to translate for Belinda.

  Across the street at the Mandersons’ house, the outside lights flip on, and Mr. Manderson strolls out to his Chevy. “Evening!” We say hello back, and he drives off.

  “You want to hear something?” Papá says. “Yesterday Manderson gave me a big lecture on why I should vote for Wallace in the runoff.”

  “How strange,” Mr. Sampredo says. “And here you are with a daughter who works with the Brewer campaign!”

  “Yes, and I’m proud of her for doing it,” Papá says. “I told Manderson, with all due respect, that our state needs to go forward, not backward, and Wallace wants to take us backward.”

  “He is dangerous!” Mr. Sampredo says, shaking his head. “I wish Silvia and I were already citizens, so we could cast a vote for Brewer.”

  While they get to talking about the election, Belinda and I run to the kitchen to fetch seconds. We bring back a tray of refilled bowls and pass them around. Papá is saying, “Enough talk of politics. This is Saturday night — we should be relaxing and enjoying a laugh.”

  Mrs. Sampredo says, “¡Debemos bailar!”

  Papá jumps to his feet. “Excellent idea, Silvia. Let’s get these chairs out of the way so we can make a dance floor.”

  “Out here?” Mamá says. “What about the neighbors?”

  “What about them? They can join us, if they like. Girls, please open the doors and turn on the stereo. We need some music.”

  When everything’s ready, Belinda and I park ourselves on the porch swing. The sound of Argentine music pours from the speakers and flows out to the porch, where Mamá, Papá, and the Sampredos prance back and forth across the floor. The ladies stick a leg out now and then, and the men dip their wives backward. It’s supposed to be an elegant tango, but it looks goofy and makes us giggle. Especially when one of Mrs. Sampredo’s spiked heels breaks clean off her shoe. She lets out a yelp, and we all bust a gut laughing.

  By the time Dr. Gresham pulls in front of our house to pick up Belinda, the porch is tidy again, the kitchen is scrubbed clean, and the Sampredos have gone back to their house.

  Papá and Mamá walk out to the car with us to shake hands with Belinda’s dad. While Belinda slides into the passenger seat, Mamá tells Dr. Gresham, “It’s been such a pleasure to have your daughter with us today. She’s a delight.”

  “Music to my ears. And it’s nice to finally meet this little lady,” he says, shooting me a wink. “Belinda tells me you’ve got a pretty fast set of wheels on you.”

  Wheels? I never heard anybody talk about running that way, but I like it. “Thank you.”

  Papá says, “We should all get together for dinner. Would you and your wife enjoy Argentine cooking?”

  Dr. Gresham grins. “I would be crazy to say no to that!”

  While the grown-ups chitchat about getting together, Belinda and I giggle at each other through the car window. “Now even our parents are going to be friends!” she says.

  Oh boy, oh boy, oh boy. That makes me feel good all over.

  Monday, I show Mrs. Underwood the clipping with Tina Briggs’s running time. “Well, I’ll be,” she says, stroking her chin. “Let’s figure this out, Olivera.” I follow her into her office, where she punches numbers on her adding machine. “By my calculations, you’re the best to go head-to-head with Briggs.” She tilts her office chair back with a squeak and clasps her hands behind her head. “Think you can hold good speed for two laps? That’s what we’re looking at to match her time over eight hundred and eighty yards.”

  “Yes, ma’am. But am I the only one running against her? What about Belinda?”

  “Well, now that Connie’s decided not to participate, I need Belinda on the single lap and Angie on the sprints. That suit you?”

  I say yes, but the idea of racing Tina all on my own makes my head feel swimmy.

  She starts shuffling the papers on her desk. “And another thing. I don’t recall getting a permission slip for track camp from you. If I don’t get an answer before exam week, we can’t include you. Do I need to talk to your folks?”

  Gulp. “No, ma’am, I will.”

  “Good. Remember, the board of education is more likely to approve a girls’ team if parents are fired up. So hop to it pronto — it’s make or break time.”

  The moon’s up in the sky, the crickets are out, and like Mrs. Underwood said, it’s make or break time. Alone in the bedroom, I lay my shiny new single of “Stand!” on the portable turntable. The other day, Marina stopped off at the record store and brought it home as a surprise. She knows I like it a lot, and she’s all for that, because she says it inspires gumption. Maybe she’s right, but it hasn’t done the job on me yet, and I’ve listened to it a bunch of times. I mean, a bunch.

  When the needle drops, the first sound you hear is from those drumsticks crashing down — boom — like a lightning strike, followed by a long, thundery drumroll. The singer comes in right after that, hollering for everybody to stand up. I learned the words from the radio, but it took a slew of listenings to get everything scribbled down exactly right. My handwriting’s not too swift, so I borrowed Marina’s typewriter to make the final copy, which I pinned next to Belinda’s poem.

  The song says that the things I want are real, but I have to stand up for them or they’ll never happen. I know there are lots bigger things to stand up for, but right this minute, it seems like Sly and the Family Stone can read my mind about running and how bad I want it. I put on my shoes, push myself off the floor, and go out on the porch to find Mamá and Papá.

  Mamá is sitting in the rocking chair while Papá stands behind her, giving her a shoulder rub. “I need to talk with you,” I tell them.

  Papá’s hands stop moving. “Very well. We’re listening.”

  I clear my throat. “You know Mrs. Underwood, my gym teacher? She’s trying to start a girls’ track team for next year.”

  “Interesting,” Papá says.

  “Yes, sir, and …” I push the next words out. “She wants me to run on it.”

  Mamá frowns. “Why you?”

  “She thinks I’m good.”

  Papá laughs. “I doubt somebody like Mrs. Underwood is an expert in such things.”

  “But, Papá, I’ve been winning nearly all the races in gym class!”

  “No kidding?” He pauses and folds his arms across his chest, like this is something that takes a second to sink in. “Is this what Belinda’s father meant by ‘wheels’ the other night?” A little grin comes on his face, and I feel a burst of hope, until I see that Mamá is nowhere close to cracking a smile.

  “Oh, Lu,” Mamá says, letting out a long sigh. “Doing well in gym class is certainly commendable, but it’s a far cry from being on a team.”

  Papá nods. His grin from before is nowhere to be seen. “Your mother is right about that. It is a big commitment to be on a team. There would still be homework to finish, no matter how tired you were from running. We’d never stand for you falling behind in your studies.”

  “I wouldn’t, Papá! I always get my schoolwork done.”

  “But what good does running do you?” Mamá says. “You can’t make a future out of it. This is what no one seems to understand!” No one? Does this mean that even Mrs. Sampredo can’t convince Mamá?

  I’m getting a sinking feeling, but I can’t give up — not yet. “What about the Olympics? Remember Madeline Manning, Papá?”

  “Hija, only a very few people make it to the Olympics,” he says. “And even when someone wins a gold medal, they still have to work a real
job — on top of running.”

  “But people can do both, can’t they?” I say.

  Papá laughs, but the way Mamá shakes her head from side to side, I know for sure she doesn’t see anything funny. “Lu,” she says with a firm voice, “this is a distraction you don’t need.”

  I’m dying to say, Mamá, you don’t even like running, or any kind of sports, so how could you know … ? But Papá’s face tells me to keep a lid on all that.

  He lays a hand on my shoulder. “We don’t want to discourage your dreams, Lu, but like your mother says, it’s a big commitment, and we’re just now hearing about it. Let’s talk to Mrs. Underwood and then we can think it over during the summer.”

  “But …” My legs are trembling. “I can’t be on the team next year unless I go to track camp this summer. And I have to sign up before exams.”

  Mamá says, “Goodness, Lu! Why in heaven’s sake didn’t you tell us sooner?”

  “Because I …” I drop my eyes to the floor. “I was scared to.” My throat’s getting tighter and tighter as I talk. “I’m really good at running! It’s what I love more than anything!” Right then, on the word anything, my voice goes ragged, like I’m about to bust loose crying, which I’m trying so hard not to do. “And I was scared you’d say no.”

  “Hija, come here,” Mamá says, and wraps me in a hug. She’s quiet for a long spell while I take deep breaths, trying to keep the tears inside. Then, in a softer voice, she says, “We’ll think about it, all right?”

  I want to say, Please think fast, but I don’t dare push it.

  Papá says, “We’ll at least talk to Mrs. Underwood to see what’s involved.” This is not what I want to hear, because who knows how long that’ll take?

  In my bedroom, I switch on the radio. Won’t somebody please sing me a good song? One that says everything’s going to be all right? I pace back and forth, but for five minutes, there’s just one commercial after another, with loud announcers and dumb jingles. It’s like the station forgot that some people are dying to hear music.

  Lately, Marina’s been at campaign headquarters pretty much nonstop. She’s up to her eyeballs in voter lists — it’s all hands on deck, since there’s less than a week to go before the runoff. Today, my job is to deliver cookies for the volunteers. Mamá and I baked them together, and they smell like heaven.