Dandelion Summer

by Lisa Wingate

  DeRon snorted. “C’mon, girl, stop messin’ wit’ me and take that thang off.” He pointed at my shirt. He’d lost a shoe somewhere, and he had his long ol’ legs all crunched up in front of him. It would’ve been funny if I wasn’t so scared.

  Think, I told myself. Think of something. And then I heard J. Norm in my head, saying, You’re a clever girl. . . .

  There was more space between the car and the wall on the driver’s side.

  “You first,” I said, and DeRon went for his pants. While he was busy, I scooted over into the driver’s seat and hit the window switch. The radio was so loud, and DeRon was so busy, he didn’t even notice until I was squatting in the seat and grabbing the keys. He looked up when the radio went off, but by then, I already had my feet on the window frame and I was shinnying between the side of the dock and the car.

  “Hey, what’re you doin’?” he yelled, and made a lunge for my foot. I ducked out of the way and took a chunk of skin off my arm, rolling onto the dock.

  “I’m leaving, you jerk! Your keys are out here.” I threw his keys where it’d take him a while to get to them, and then I turned and ran. I didn’t look back to see how DeRon got out of the car, or whether he tried to follow me. I just kept running—through the streets of small houses around the school, past the new condos that were changing the neighborhood, all the way to J. Norm’s street.

  By then, I couldn’t run anymore. My lungs were burning, and my legs felt like rubber. I stopped by someone’s yard fence, wiped my face, looked at my arm where it was bleeding, and tried to decide if there was some way I could tie my tank top back together.

  I heard DeRon’s car roaring up the street behind me, so I just started walking, holding up my tank top with one hand. Only eight more houses before J. Norm’s, and I figured I was as safe on the sidewalk as anyplace. This was the kind of neighborhood where, if you screamed, someone’d probably do something about it.

  DeRon pulled up beside me, the front tire bumping over the curb. Rolling down the passenger window, he leaned across the console. “Man, Epie, what’re you doin’?”

  “I’m going to work.” I didn’t look at him, just kept walking. If I’d had a baseball bat in my hand, I probably would’ve knocked out his window with it. All of a sudden, I remembered that my stuff was still in his car, too. “Give me my backpack.”

  “Come ’n’ get it.” DeRon smiled, then swerved around a parked car. When he pulled back to the curb, he was holding my backpack just inside the window. “You want your stuff?” His eyes curved upward, like he thought it was funny. My books from school were in there. If I lost the books, somebody would have to pay for them, and all the money I’d been saving up would be gone.

  I stopped walking and moved toward the car, then reached for the backpack. DeRon laughed and pulled it away.

  “Give me my stuff!” I yelled. My hands were shaking, so I squeezed them into fists.

  DeRon jerked his chin back like he couldn’t believe I wasn’t playing along. He caught sight of my arm. “Girl, you bleedin’.”

  “Yeah, nice, huh?” I tried to look like it didn’t bother me, what’d happened in his car, or that I was stuck on the sidewalk now, holding my shirt together.

  He popped the door open. “Girl, get in this car.”

  “No.” I started walking again, a creepy feeling sliding over my shoulders now that the car door was open. J. Norm’s place was only three doors down. I’d just have to worry about the backpack later.

  DeRon followed me, revving the engine, then hitting the brakes again and again, so that the car bounced up and down. Now that I thought about it, I wondered how he got a car like that, anyway. His mama didn’t have any money, and you didn’t get paid for playing high school basketball, no matter how good you were. Maybe Big Ray was so friendly with him for a reason.

  A shiver went through me, and I wanted to kick myself. I was so stupid. Of course DeRon and Big Ray were so tight for a reason. Just because DeRon didn’t use that stuff didn’t mean he didn’t deal in it. Shoot, kids at school would probably buy from DeRon just to get in good with him.

  I looked ahead, hoping J. Norm’s next-door neighbor, Teddy, or the guy in the garage apartment, Terrence, would be out trimming the bushes or something, but there was nobody. J. Norm wouldn’t be outside. He never was.

  DeRon bumped up onto the curb far enough that I jumped sideways into somebody’s lawn. “C’mon, Epie. Knock it off. I’ll give you a ride home.”

  I kept walking, and DeRon drove a half-moon on the sidewalk, then bounced back onto the street. Something scraped under the car, and he cussed a blue streak and yelled out a half dozen names for me. He sounded like Russ during a fight. Russ could call Mama stuff that would make your ears burn.

  DeRon squealed ahead to J. Norm’s house, pulled the car up and parked it, and got out. “Yeah, I know which house it is.” He stood on the sidewalk, looking like he wasn’t even worried that in this neighborhood somebody might call the police on you just for driving a car like DeRon’s and wearing a do-rag. “I seen you walkin’ down here after school, like you his little ol’ housemaid. Now ain’t that sweet?”

  I turned off to cut across the yard, but he got in front of me. He grabbed my arm and twisted it until he could see the place where the skin was scraped. Tears popped into my eyes because it hurt, and I remembered what it felt like to have somebody yank you around. That guy Mama dated before we moved to Mrs. Lora’s wasn’t near as mellow as Russ.

  DeRon’s eyes were hard as glass when he looked at the blood on my arm. “Don’t you go tellin’ people I did that to you. I didn’t do nothin’.”

  I tried to pull my arm away, but he was strong. He lifted a hand and wrapped it around my throat, then smiled and dragged his fingers across my chest. “Come on, baby. We got a good thing. You know you want it.”

  Let go! I opened my mouth to say it, but the words wouldn’t come out. I pulled against his grip, but he twisted harder. My eyes filled up, and I felt like that little girl hiding behind the sofa while Mama got into it with some guy. DeRon disappeared behind a blur.

  “I got it.” He leaned close, and I felt his lips against my ear, his breath hot on my skin. “You gonna make me work for it, huh?” He kissed my neck, moved his hand up my arm until he was holding on to the raw place. “C’mon, Epie. Stop jerkin’ me around.”

  He squeezed harder, and I squirmed. I heard a door open somewhere nearby. “Something wrong down there?” The voice came from overhead, and I figured it was Terrence in the garage apartment.

  “Ain’t nothin’ wrong,” DeRon answered, letting go of my arm and backing off a step. He looked toward the apartment. I could hear Terrence coming out. There were other people with him, more than one coming down the steps.

  I wiped my eyes and tried to get hold of myself. The last thing I needed was someone making a federal case out of this and thinking they should tell Mama.

  “We just talkin’,” DeRon said.

  “That true, Epie?” Terrence was just a few feet behind me now. Someone else had stopped on the steps. I could hear the bottom one creaking. I looked over my shoulder and saw Terrence’s girlfriend, M.J. She ran the Book Basket store across from the church and knew every kid in the neighborhood. She was probably the one who called the police the night we got in trouble in the memory garden.

  “That true, DeRon?” she asked, and tossed a long, dark ponytail of braids over her shoulder, like she was ready to whoop up on somebody if she needed to.

  “Yez, ma’am,” DeRon said, backing off another step, smiling at her. “I just brung Epie in for work.”

  “Epie?” Terrence’s voice was low and serious. I wanted to turn around and let him see the ripped shirt and the bloody arm.

  I swallowed hard. “Yeah, it’s fine. I gotta get up to the house. I’m late, and J. Norm’s probably wondering where I am.” I circled around toward DeRon, so Terrence and M.J. wouldn’t see the broken strap, and I headed across the yard. My legs went soft and my fee
t felt like they were sinking in quicksand. Every step seemed like a mile.

  “I’ll hang on to yo’ stuff for you, Epie,” DeRon called after me, and I knew this wasn’t over. After I was done with work, I’d have to head home tonight, for one thing.

  I didn’t turn around and look back at him. I just ran up onto the porch and pounded on the door until finally the lock clicked. The door opened, and I felt my body melting. I pushed a hand over my mouth, but it didn’t help. My lips shook, and a sob came out, and when I saw J. Norm on the other side, I started to cry.

  “What in heaven’s name?” His raspy voice was a whisper against the rush of blood in my ears. His hand slid under my elbow, and he pulled me through the door. “Good heavens, what’s happened to you?”

  Another sob busted out. I tried to swallow it. It came again. I heard J. Norm close the door and lock it. His hand touched my shoulder, like he wasn’t sure he should put it there, and he moved me to the sofa in the front room. The cushions squished and leaned when he sat down next to me. I felt something soft in my hand and saw his hankie.

  “All right, now. All right.” He patted my shoulder with stiff fingers and cleared his throat, like he didn’t know what else to do or say. “What’s happened? Did you fall down? Get hit by a car? You’ve scratched yourself up a bit.” He touched the raw skin, and I jerked away. I let my head drop forward, so that my hair went over my shoulders, covering the scratches and the ripped shirt.

  “Now, then, no real harm done.” J. Norm’s voice got softer. “It doesn’t look too bad. Just a skin contusion. We’ll put a little peroxide on it. Are you injured anywhere else?”

  I shook my head, wiped my eyes with the hankie, hoped it wasn’t one that’d already been used. I tried to think of what to do next. DeRon had all my stuff. Mama and Russ were gone tonight. As soon as I headed home, I was dead.

  Another sob came out. I pushed the hankie over my eyes.

  “There, now.” J. Norm patted my head like a puppy’s. “It’ll be all right. Tell me what’s happened. You’re safe now.” His voice was soft and kind. I would’ve never thought he had a voice like that in him. It broke me wide-open, and without even meaning to, I started babbling out the whole thing—Mama and Russ fighting, the bus stop, DeRon, his friends, the car, the loading dock in back of the old grocery store, DeRon taking off with my backpack in his car.

  The words came out like a river, rushing and crashing against each other, breaking over the tops of all the walls inside me. I didn’t want to tell J. Norm that stuff. I didn’t want him to see me like this, but I couldn’t help it. I needed somebody to promise me it was gonna be all right. I needed somebody to help me.

  “There, now,” J. Norm said again, when I’d calmed down a little. He went and got a kitchen towel, and when he came back, he took the soaked hankie and put the towel in my hands. “Enough of that, now. Dry those tears. We’ll clean up the scratches, and then we’ll figure out what to do.”

  Chapter 9

  J. Norman Alvord

  We went to Annalee’s closet to find a shirt. It seemed strange to be in there among her things—neither Deborah nor I had yet attempted the handling of Annalee’s personal belongings—but what else was I to do? I could hardly let the girl run around in disarray, and short of my attempting to operate a needle and thread, which had always been Annalee’s domain as well, a loan of clothing seemed the wisest choice. Annalee would have done the same. She was a few inches shorter than this girl’s lanky frame, but I surmised them to be roughly the same size.

  The girl stood in the doorway of the walk-in closet, watching while I held up various shirts I thought might serve. My judgment of women’s clothing being rudimentary, she laughed at some of my choices, still sniffling and choking on leftover tears.

  Her gaze took in the long row of Annalee’s suits and dresses, then the wide rack of shoes at the back of the closet, and finally the stack of hatboxes overhead. In my corporate days, there were always banquets and Christmas parties, awards ceremonies and speeches to attend. Those events were never to my liking, but Annalee was a butterfly, brightly colored and fully alive in all social situations. She rescued me from my own awkwardness, and when the need to maintain polite conversation became too oppressive, she whisked me off to the dance floor, where no conversation was required.

  The girl selected a red plaid shirt that Annalee had used for gardening; then she stood gazing at the section of dancing dresses. “Whoa. Your wife was, like, totally a fashionista.”

  I felt Annalee there beside me, smiling at the comment. She was fashionable. Always. Many of the gowns she’d either sewn or altered herself, merely because she enjoyed clothing. She’d even sewn the bridal gown for Deborah’s late-in-life wedding, two years ago. After waiting all these years for our daughter to fall in love, Annalee wasn’t about to miss the opportunity. It had been a beautiful wedding on Jupiter Beach in Florida—a place Deborah remembered from her childhood. The trip was a stroll down Memory Lane for Annalee and me, a reminder of the glory days of our young family. I’d let melancholy overtake me more than I should have on that trip. Those years at the cape were the glory days, and they were over. Had I known that the trip to Deborah’s wedding would be my last vacation with Annalee, I would have lived more fully in the moment, realized how easily a perfect day can slip by unnoticed. Any day is the glory day, if you choose to see the glory in it.

  “We had many occasions to go out socially over the years,” I said. “There were parties related to my work, technology conferences, and charities in which Annalee involved herself.” The past came back as unexpectedly as the gush of a breeze when a door is opened. It smelled fresh and pleasant. “In my days at Cape Canaveral, the social events were a way to appease the wives, to make penance for the fact that our work occupied so much of our time. We were desperate to get ahead of the Russians, of course. Kennedy wanted to be the first to put a man on the moon. We devoted our lives to it, and when our wives grew frustrated and cross, we took them out for fine food and dancing. Annalee loved to dance.”

  The girl’s face brightened, and I was glad to see that the tears had been forgotten. “Whoa, J. Norm, you’re a dancer?” She looked me over, as if it were hard to see Fred Astaire inside the rumpled blue dress shirt and navy pants that hung two sizes too large on what was left of my body.

  The memories surrounded me, sweet and fragrant like the gardenias at the cape. Bright, beautiful, pungent to my mind. “I’ve been known to take a turn.”

  She responded with a wide, precocious grin that left dimples in her milky brown cheeks. “Like, a dancer dancer? Like ballroom stuff, like they do on that TV show? Fox-trots and the Vietnamese waltz, and that stuff?”

  “Viennese waltz,” I corrected. “I knew them all. My mother saw to that with several years of charm school.”

  “Charm school!” She sniffled and then choked on laughter. “J. Norm, you been to charm school?” Oddly enough, Annalee had offered much the same reaction when, at her college sorority’s spring cotillion, I proved to be reasonably competent in the finer arts. Norman, she’d said, after I gallantly dipped her at the end of a dance, I didn’t know you had that in you! I was quite pleased with myself at that moment and thankful for my mother. A boy from the lacrosse team had been eyeing my date that evening—a young man known for being good with the ladies. I was afraid to leave Annalee alone even long enough for a trip to the punch bowl.

  “I feel certain there’s a graduation certificate somewhere in the attic,” I told the girl. “Mrs. Hardin’s School of the Social Arts.”

  “You graduated from charm school?” Epiphany coughed in exaggerated disbelief, smirking at me. “I think you oughta go ask for a refund.”

  “I’ll have you know, young lady, that I was a model pupil.” I pretended to be offended by the insinuation that I was less than charming to be around. She wasn’t fooled. She laughed at my answer, and I felt a tremble in my stomach, an urge to laugh along with her.

  Slipping on the shi
rt, she moved a few steps into the closet, touching one of the dresses. “Man,” she whispered, trailing her finger along smooth sky-blue satin. “These are, like, red-carpet stuff. What’s up there in the boxes?”

  “Hats,” I told her, and she regarded me with such curiosity that I felt compelled to take down a container for her. Inside were two pillbox hats and some gloves, things Annalee might have worn to church on a Sunday, back when such was the fashion. “And gloves, it would seem.”

  She peered over the side of the box, moved her fingers toward the hat, then stopped. “Can I touch it?”

  “I don’t see that it would hurt.”

  Taking out a pale green hat with a feathered clip and gloves that had undoubtedly been perfectly matched at one time, she clicked her tongue against her teeth, then whispered, “Whoa. These are cool.” She stepped back into the room and stood in front of the mirror to put them on. Her face lit as she braced her hands on her hips, admiring herself from side to side, the bruised shoulder and torn shirt seemingly forgotten. “Whew-eee! Look at me. I look like Jackie O. Kennedy. I read about her and Camelot and stuff in those magazines you gave me.”

  My mind fell into a memory—one of Deborah as a child, dressed in one of her mother’s gowns, her tiny feet hidden in the toes of Annalee’s heeled shoes. I’d passed by the doorway as she was gazing at herself in the mirror. Look at me, Daddy! Look at me! Am I a pretty girl?

  It matters more for a girl to be smart, I’d said. Beauty is subject to the beholder, but intelligence is undeniable. Shouldn’t you be attending to your studies? It’s after seven thirty. . . . I’d continued on about my business without looking back. The moment had seemed insignificant then. Now I wished I could stand in the doorway again and watch my daughter pretend in her mother’s shoes. I wished I had told her how beautiful she was.