The Long Ride

by Marina Budhos

  I hang my head. “She’s mean. She took my journal.”

  My parents look at each other. “There are always mean teachers. But you can’t disrespect them,” my mother says.

  “I don’t even understand about this fight. How could you even know each other enough?” my father asks.

  “We don’t know each other.”

  “Is Josie involved with this?” my mother asks.

  “No.” Everything goes tight inside me. “I told you, she has other friends.” At least Josie sat with me on the bus. She didn’t ask many questions or give me that weirded-out stare like the other girls.

  “But you’ve got some business with this girl.”

  “She’s been picking on me for weeks!” I cry. “All because of me and John being together.” I can’t help how it slips out of me. I want, and don’t want, them to know. I have someone. A boy, all mine.

  “John who?”

  “The boy I talk on the phone with.” I take a breath. “Then she saw us together.”

  “Where?”

  I swallow. “The other day. I went to John’s house and hung out in his neighborhood. Tanisha got mad when she saw us walking around.”

  They exchange glances. “So you lied to us.”

  My head droops. “Yes.” You made me lie, I want to say.

  The worst part about getting in trouble isn’t what they say. It’s seeing a flinch in my father’s face. And my mother turning from me. I’m disappointed in everyone: all the adults at my stupid school, with their big bright words. They don’t get how hard it is to fit in.

  I go upstairs and sit at my desk, stare numbly out the window. Francesca’s house is dark except for the porch light. Would she understand if I told her? Her school seems so different, with beanbag chairs and no hall passes. Then I slide open my drawer and see the crumpled bag of beans. The paper has damp spots and when I open it up, there’s a musty smell, no more Nana-lavender scent. I take the bag, shove it deep down at the bottom of my garbage.

  The fall goes gray and brown. Leaves dwindle on the trees. Me and John can just catch each other here and there between classes. Most of the time I feel I’m hiding inside. Afraid to go out, afraid to be seen.

  The bus ride feels longer. Maybe it’s because I’m starting to notice that something bigger is going on in the city. Everyone is edgier, angry. You can feel it in the way people squint through the bus windows. The subway cars shuttling past in a smear of graffiti. Triple locks on our doors and no one leaves their bikes out anymore. Meanwhile, kids are expected to glide across neighborhoods and make the world right. It’s supposed to be easy. But what about neighbors sitting on stoops, faces stony at the sight of us? Families who shut their curtains, switch on the TV, and mutter bad names. The ride is longer and rougher than anyone ever let on.

  One evening just before we sit down at the table, the phone rings. Daddy answers. Clearly he doesn’t like what he’s hearing; he frowns, jots down some notes, then shoves the slip of paper into his pocket.

  “Who was that?”

  “Mr. Rowan.” He pauses. “Tomorrow the parents are going to picket the board of ed.”

  “Are you going?” my mother asks.

  “Of course not!” He takes the bowl of rice. “I may have my reservations but—”

  “Reservations!” Karim spits out. “That’s what you call them?”

  “They do have a point,” Daddy says. “There are problems. You saw what happened with Jamila. She’s starting to act tough.”

  I wince.

  “Daddy, it isn’t like your day,” Karim says. “When we could be that one family let in. Or the cute scholarship boy everyone feels good about. This is about the people.”

  “The people.” My father smiles. “What do you know about the people?”

  Furious, Karim bangs down his chair. Daddy and Karim are fighting a lot these days. That’s because Karim wants to drop out of his high-level physics class and take shop. “You are not going to work with your hands!” Daddy told him. “I work all day with men who didn’t have half the chance you have. And here you want to throw it away?”

  After dinner, Karim stalks off and locks himself in his bedroom, turning up his music so loud, I can barely concentrate on my homework. Secretly, I feel a little thrill, the way he stands up to Daddy.

  That night I tell John about what my brother said at dinner. “I could never do that.”

  “Me neither,” John agrees.

  But some part of me wishes I could. That I knew how to stand up for something. For myself.

  * * *

  * * *

  “You.”

  My stomach quivers. I’m standing at my locker and it is Mrs. Johnson in her three-inch heels. Why does she wear shoes like that when she is already so tall?

  “Me?”

  “Yes, you, come with me.”

  We walk briskly down the hall, me trailing behind her. What have I done? I’ve tried to be good, keep my mouth shut. With Mrs. Markowitz, I take lots of deep breaths and lower my eyes. I definitely steer clear of Tanisha and her crew.

  “I’ve been thinking,” Mrs. Johnson says, after we settle into her office. “You actually have some good energy. It just goes in all the wrong ways. Do you think that’s true?”

  I hang my head. “Probably.”

  “I’ve got an idea. Are you organized?”

  “I think so.”

  “I bet you are. You’re going to come work with me during your lunch break. Help out with office matters.”

  My heart sinks; that’s the only time I get to see John.

  “What’s the matter? You don’t want to do it?”

  I squeeze the spine of my loose-leaf binder. “No, it’s okay. Sure.”

  “Sure? Is that the proper way to address me?”

  “No, ma’am.”

  She gives a broad smile. Today she’s got on a fire engine–red suit and crimson heels. Mrs. Johnson once told me that she has so many shoes she took over all the closets in the other bedrooms in her house. “My husband always says, ‘Who lives here—me or the shoes?’!” she said with a laugh.

  “Excellent. I think you’re a good girl, Jamila. Many of the teachers say you can be quite thoughtful. Miss Fine says she enjoyed what you shared in your Objective-Subjective notebook.”

  I’m about to spit out, Then why can’t I get my journal back? when there’s a loud rap on the door. Mrs. Johnson’s head lifts up. Darren slumps into the room, stands uncertainly. Today his jeans hang stiff from his hips.

  “What now, Darren?”

  He mumbles something about a fight.

  “Can you speak clearly? And stand up straight when you talk?” She nods to me. “Jamila, you can go now. Tell the secretary to give you a slip.”

  Our eyes flicker to each other as I’m leaving the room. His almost pleading, mine embarrassed.

  * * *

  * * *

  I start to look forward to my time in Mrs. Johnson’s office. Mostly, she wants me to stock the supply closet where they keep all the paper and clips and extra textbooks. Or I run the mimeograph machine, turning the crank until my wrist aches, then tucking flyers with their smudged purple print into the teacher cubbies. The work makes me feel chosen in a way I can’t be in those teeming corridors. I can swish around the front desk and hand piles to the secretaries, who greet me with a “Hey, sweetie” or “Thanks, doll.” The secretaries are always overwhelmed: phones ringing, some problem down on the second floor, security with their fizzing walkie-talkies rushing to break up a fight. Seems like every time I go in there, a couple of sullen and abashed kids are lined up on the bench, waiting. Or Mr. Stotter, who also looks overwhelmed, is in meetings with someone who’s complaining. Twice I’ve seen Mrs. Rowan stepping into his office.

  Once, I’m putting together some packets for th
e school elections when a boy shuffles out. I know him from art class—a small kid named Fred with a friendly smile. Today, though, he’s glum. His mother follows, scowling, and then she raps his head, twice. I can see the back of his neck blush.

  When I edge into the office, Mrs. Johnson is standing by her desk, leaning ever so lightly on her fingertips. She seems to be swaying, like a great oak after a large wind has just passed through. She looks old—older than she’s ever seemed before. For the first time, I notice a photograph of her with a man I figure is her husband. They’re in bright summer clothes and sipping drinks with umbrellas. Seems so far away from here.

  “I finished the packets,” I whisper.

  She doesn’t move, but stays very still.

  “The ones for the school elections. The rules and stuff?”

  She nods, still without saying a word, a shiny welling-up in her eyes. “All my life I’ve fought against the names people call us.” She still has her chin tucked, rubbing her lids. “And then I have a boy do this. Throw a chair across a room.” She shakes her head. “Are we just living up to how they see us?”

  It’s like a needle that’s pierced right through me, threaded with sadness. At this moment, she reminds me of my dad.

  “Anything else you want me to do, Mrs. Johnson?”

  “No, dear.”

  She motions toward the papers I set on her desk. “Thank you for this.”

  I pick up my bag and go to class. This is one of those times when I’m glad an adult told me what she thought.

  The other big change in school is that the Community Circle class is finished. On our last day, Miss Griffith makes us all sit cross-legged in a circle, hold hands, and be our “best-intentioned selves.” Then she hugs each one of us. I can still smell her smoky perfume when I leave.

  Now, instead, I have art. I love everything about this room: the smell of turpentine, the stiff-crusted brushes in paint-splotched jars drying on a sill, the vanilla smell of new paper unfurling off the big roll. The teacher is young: Miss James, serious and calm. “Art isn’t about everyone being an artist,” she explains. “It’s about teaching us to look at things differently. With fresh eyes. That’s why the first thing you’re going to look at is yourselves. We’re going to do self-portraits.”

  Me and Tanisha are put at the same table. We sit across from each other, perched on stools, with sheets of paper in front of us. Each of us has a mirror that we prop up against a wooden block. Tanisha settles down. I watch her stub of charcoal move across the page, expert and sure. My portrait is smudged and murky and the ears look like they’re flapping off the sides of my head. When she’s done, I glance over, amazed. She got everything right: the sharp chin, the slanted cheekbones and tough, flashing eyes. And the pucker in her brow, as if she’s always a little mad or worried.

  “Wow,” I say. “That’s really good.”

  One corner of her mouth lifts, an almost-smile.

  “Tanisha’s an artist,” the girl next to her comments. “She makes pictures of all the women in her mother’s salon.”

  I want to say, I can see that. But I don’t. I nod.

  “I draw all the time,” she says softly.

  When the bell rings, we shuffle off our stools, roll up our self-portraits and tuck them into the cubbies. I say to Tanisha, “I’d like to see your other stuff.”

  She turns, gives me a full-on smile. “Yeah. Maybe.”

  “Do you paint too?”

  She shrugs. “When I can. One time my uncle brought me a whole set he got from his job. I used it a lot until my little brother messed it up.” She adds, “He’s always doing stuff like that.”

  “I wish I had a younger brother. Mine’s big and bossy.”

  “I guess I’m the one who bosses. Especially since I got to take care of him all the time.”

  Just then a pack of girls comes down the hall. “Why you talking to her?” one hollers.

  I see something cross Tanisha’s face. Then fear, like a shadow. “I’m not!” She laughs and joins them in the flow.

  This time I get it. She has to walk away. I know it’s a show for them. Not me.

  * * *

  * * *

  The next week in art, Miss James sets out different-colored square tabs stuffed into old Chock Full o’ Nuts coffee cans. Our self-portraits are gone. We look around, puzzled.

  “Today we’re moving on to color. How we see it.”

  She’s dragged out a big board, and now takes a green tab and sets it against a lime-green square. “Take a good look at this.” Then she sets another tab against a magenta background. “Is it the same color?” she asks, pointing to the two panels.

  “No!” most of the class choruses.

  “You sure?”

  “No way!”

  “Yes,” Tanisha calls. “It’s the same.”

  “Tanisha’s right.”

  “Whoo-hoo,” a boy named Gerald hollers. “You’re always the teacher’s pet!”

  She wiggles a little on her stool, pleased.

  “That can’t be!” another girl exclaims. “It’s completely different.”

  It was true: one tab of green, against the light green backdrop, shimmers dark as an evergreen forest; the other is a pale aquarium wash. Our eyes switch back and forth. It doesn’t make sense—the colors seem to be playing a trick on us.

  “This is color theory, invented by a man named Josef Albers. A color’s quality is always in relation to another color. Color is really about perception. It isn’t stable.”

  She demonstrates a few more times, showing bands of color against each other, and squares within squares, and even one color in the middle with four different-shaded corners. Then she tells us to make our own—first by placing the tabs inside large squares, and then playing around with different combinations. The only real instruction is to try to use the same color and experiment in as many ways we can imagine, always changing our view.

  Both Tanisha and I immediately grab for the paper and are swiftly swapping tabs around in front of us. It really is a game. Colors shimmer, slip around. Soon we’re laughing and exclaiming over the groupings. “That can’t be!” Tanisha laughs when I show her two combos I did with navy blue. We’re so busy trying out our little exercises, the bell startles us. Tanisha blinks a few times, then frowns. “Already?”

  “Sorry,” Miss James says. “Let’s put everything away. We’ll be making notebooks out of these next week.”

  We spill out of class, still chatting, our heads buzzing. Darren appears and starts to walk with us. “What are y’all doing for Halloween?”

  “Me and Josie and Francesca are going to walk around the neighborhood.”

  He grins. “Maybe I’ll come with you.”

  I shake my head.

  “I’m serious.”

  Tanisha says, “I’m doing up everyone’s makeup. My little brother’s a tiger. Rhonda’s a crazy dead woman.”

  “Wow,” I say.

  “Wow is right,” she says with a smile, and then saunters around the corner.

  This Halloween is not like the old days. Me and Francesca and Josie used to pull on our costumes and trawl the courtyards of Cedar Gardens, filling up our plastic jack-o’-lanterns until our wrists hurt. Then, gorging ourselves on Tootsie Rolls and candy corn, we’d sit in the doorway of one of our apartments, swilling our hands in the bowls and giving out candy. That’s when the teenagers would show up, in black vampire capes or with blue witch hair sprouting under dented hats. Then they were off, laughing, to some secret place of teenage-coolness. The next morning, there were raw eggs splattered on the pavement, blobs of shaving cream on tree branches.

  This year we’re neither here nor there. We feel too old for trick-or-treating. But we’re not part of the teenage packs. After an hour of half-hearted trick-or-treating, we dump our stash at Fra
ncesca’s.

  “Oh god,” Francesca groans, flopping on her bed. “I am so bored!”

  “Let’s watch TV,” Josie says. Sometimes the three of us will curl up together in Francesca’s parents’ bed to watch The Brady Bunch.

  “You must be kidding.” She swerves up, hands on her hips. “I don’t want to stay home.”

  Her costume this year is basically what she wears all the time: a ribbed turtleneck that’s starting to show the mounds of her breasts, a short suede skirt, and shiny boots. It’s as if she’s aiming to be a version of her mother. The only difference is the sparkle around her lids and her eyeliner, drawn super dramatic, Cleopatra-style.

  Me and Josie are a muddle, as though we can’t decide if we are or aren’t dressed up. I’m in black—leotard, corduroys, and an old cape of Karim’s that sags around my shoulders. Josie wears a peasant blouse tucked into a long print skirt, her hair swept into a matching scarf.

  “Where do you want to go?”

  Francesca shrugs. “I don’t know. Let’s just go walk.”

  So we lock up the house—Mr. and Mrs. George are out—and set out the bowl on the stoop with a sign that reads TAKE ONE. I feel a little shiver run up my arms. We don’t usually trick-or-treat outside our courtyards. But we troop down the unfamiliar blocks, house after house. Now and then, I see clumps of teenagers.

  “Hey,” a voice calls.

  Josie stiffens beside me. Francesca seems to be leaning toward them. “Hey back.”

  Their outlines begin to fill in: a few boys, no costumes. One smokes, the ember on his cigarette glowing red. It’s the boys from Patty’s. The ones who called out to us before.

  Under the streetlamps the boys don’t look so scary. There’s something plain and ordinary about them—they all wear jeans and navy blue sweatshirts, the hoods flipped over the back collar of their denim jackets, and construction boots—as if they’re already tired workingmen. One of the boys has a puffy baby face, a rash of pimples on his cheeks.