by Rosa Jordan
“Hey girl. You missed the bus.”
“I know.”
“You sick?”
“No.”
“What’s wrong then?”
“My pants tore,” Kate said.
“Guess you better pick out something else then,” Ruby said. She started to walk away.
“Like what?” Kate almost screamed, then started to cry.
Ruby stopped. For a minute she stood there, looking down the driveway. Probably laughing at me, Kate thought miserably. Probably thinking how white trashy we are because I don’t have twenty outfits like she probably has.
Ruby turned around. She wasn’t laughing. “You must have something. Or we can fix the rip. Want me to take a look?”
“If you want,” Kate mumbled.
Ruby came up on the porch. Kate stayed where she was, on the bed. She didn’t particularly want Ruby seeing her with nothing on but a T-shirt and underwear. But Ruby walked right in through the front door and came down the hall to Kate’s room. She stood in the doorway for a minute, looking around with a critical expression on her face. Anybody could tell from all the open dresser drawers and the way clothes were strewn about that Kate had been trying to find something to wear.
“How about shorts?”
“I don’t have the right kind.”
“What do you mean, ‘the right kind’?” Ruby asked.
“They can’t be cutoffs, and they’ve got to be down to your fingertips when you’ve got your arms straight down. All mine are shorter than that.”
Ruby gave a short, un-funny laugh. “What about this?” she asked, picking up a skirt.
“I can barely get it buttoned. When I do it’s so tight it hurts my stomach. But if I don’t do the button it wrecks the zippers. Like those jeans.” Kate jerked her head toward two pairs of jeans lying on the floor. Ruby picked them up and saw the broken zippers.
Ruby picked up a shirt missing two buttons and stared at it. “Does this ever take me back.”
Kate glanced up at her. She had no idea what Ruby was talking about.
Ruby gave Kate a crooked smile. “I’ll never forget the year I started popping buttons off everything. Booker teased me about being fat. The boys at school were always making jokes about my body. I’d sooner have gone to jail than to school that year. That’s one of the reasons why I ran away from home.”
Kate’s mouth dropped open. How could anybody have teased somebody as gorgeous as Ruby about the way she looked? And teased her so badly that she had actually run away from home instead of going to school!
Ruby tossed the shirts aside and took the torn jeans from Kate. “Looks like these are beyond repair,” she said, holding them up.
“That was my last pair,” Kate said sadly. “The only ones that still fit right.”
“Yeah, well.” Ruby stuck her hand through the hole in Kate’s pants and wiggled her fingers. She seemed to be thinking about something and couldn’t quite make up her mind. Finally she said, “Why don’t you come up to the house. Maybe I got a pair or two that would fit you.”
“You mean—?” Kate didn’t know what to say.
“I mean get your shorts on and let’s go,” Ruby said, flicking her long braids. “You don’t want your mom to catch you ditching, do you?”
Kate grabbed a pair of cutoffs and was about to slip them on when she caught sight of herself next to Ruby in the mirror. Seeing her own skinny body next to Ruby’s slender woman-curves made Kate feel hopeless. “But nothing’s going to fit, Ruby. You’re so … I’m so …”
“So what? You think it was breathing that ripped those pants? You’re just growing, girl.” Ruby slapped Kate lightly on the hip. “And in all the right places.”
Ruby didn’t say much on the walk to the Wilson house. A couple of times Kate glanced at her and wondered if Ruby was sorry she had gotten involved in what really wasn’t her problem—maybe thinking about how she didn’t want to give away any of her clothes after all. But when they got there Ruby cheered up. Kate cheered up, too. She was thankful that Mr. and Mrs. Wilson weren’t around so she didn’t have to explain to them why she wasn’t in school.
“Come on back here,” Ruby said, and headed down the hall.
“This your bedroom?” Kate asked shyly.
“Has been, ever since I was born,” Ruby said. “Only thing that’s changed is the bed. When I came back with Luther, we took out the double bed and put in twins. When Booker’s not home, which is most of the time, Luther sleeps in his room. But when Booker comes for holidays, Luther sleeps there.” She motioned toward one of the twin beds.
While she talked, Ruby rummaged through drawers stuffed with clothes. “Here, try these,” she said, tossing Kate two pairs of jeans. “Up in New York, where I didn’t have my mama’s cooking to pig out on, I used to be a lot thinner than I am now, and I favored tight jeans. But I can’t fit into these anymore. Somebody might as well get some use out of them.”
Kate tried on both pairs of jeans, which were identical faded denim and just slightly flared at the bottom. They looked almost like her favorite jeans, the pair that had ripped.
Ruby leaned against the wall and looked at Kate critically. “A little long, but otherwise they fit okay.”
“They look good on me,” Kate said shyly.
“Yeah, well, looks are only half of it, and the little half at that. What really matters is how they feel. Because, honey, if you don’t feel good, you’re not going to look good, no matter what you’re wearing.”
That made sense to Kate; that’s why she’d liked the torn jeans so much. They felt the same shape as her body.
Ruby rummaged in another drawer and tossed Kate a plain white shirt, just like the one Schroder had pinned the note on the back of, except that it was a size bigger. “Now, I just popped a button on this one,” Ruby said. “But you haven’t filled out all that much yet. Here, try it.”
Kate buttoned it up and looked at herself in the mirror again.
“It’ll do,” Ruby decided. “But let me tell you something, Kate. When you look at yourself in the mirror, you want to see a girl looking back at you who’s got her head held high. Her hair’s shining clean—doesn’t matter how it’s fixed as long as it’s clean, brushed till it really shines. And you’re in what—seventh grade?”
Kate nodded.
“So there are girls in your class who smoke, right?” Before Kate could answer, Ruby said, “Just stay away from them when they’re puffing.”
“Why?” Kate actually thought the girls who smoked were kind of cool.
“Because they stink,” Ruby said. “Their hair, their clothes, everything. If you spend five minutes in the bathroom with somebody who’s smoking, you’ll stink same as they do. I’m not saying be rude to them. Just don’t hang around in air they’ve polluted.”
“Okay,” Kate promised. She figured she had enough problems without smelling bad, too.
“And don’t go around slumping down like your breasts are something to hide.” She gave Kate a jab between the shoulder blades that made Kate straighten up and stick out her chest. “There. See? You look okay. Not perfect—nobody’s that—but okay. When somebody starts in on you, you just give them a look like, ‘What are you, crazy? It’s me that decides how good I look. And I say I look okay.’”
Kate took the jeans Ruby gave her home, then walked to school. She went straight to her homeroom teacher, Mrs. Bell, and explained how she’d missed the bus because her pants tore. Kate didn’t lie, but she did tell it so it sounded like it happened at the last minute. Mrs. Bell wasn’t the world’s best teacher, because she was terrible at keeping order, but she was helpful if you had problems. Kate asked if she could do makeup work so as to not get marked absent for the two classes she’d missed, which would get her in trouble at home. Mrs. Bell said she’d speak to the other teachers, and Kate knew it was as good as done.
That very day Kate started using “the look,” and it helped. Later, when she had time to practice it in front of
her mirror, she got better at it. She still got hassled some, especially about her shoes, but on the whole there wasn’t as much teasing as before.
But mostly what made it easier was that even though she still didn’t have any friends at school, at least she had Ruby. Kate could never figure out whether Ruby took the time to talk to her only because she was bored or if she was really starting to like her. All Kate knew was that Ruby was nicer than she used to be.
Kate never told Mom about the jeans. Mom wasn’t at home when Kate and her brothers left for school in the morning, and by the time the bus dropped them off in the afternoon, she was getting ready for work and usually in a rush. Kate either hung around outside until she was gone, or if Mom was outside, Kate waved and went straight to her room and took off the jeans Ruby had given her.
Only once did Mom seem to notice anything different. She frowned and said, “Katie, have you lost weight?”
Even though the jeans Ruby had given her were the same shape and faded blue as her own, they weren’t as tight. “No ma’am,” she said, and scooted into her bedroom.
Kate wasn’t sure why she didn’t want Mom to know that Ruby had given her clothes. Partly it was because she didn’t want Mom to get upset all over again about not having the money to buy them new school clothes this year. And partly it was because she didn’t know how to explain Ruby to Mom. How could she tell her that Ruby wasn’t a real friend, just almost a friend? And Kate was pretty sure that Mom wouldn’t like her taking clothes from neighbors she didn’t know all that well. So she just kept quiet about it.
6
Hurricane
By the end of October Kate was having fewer problems at school, but it seemed like Justin was having more. Nobody understood exactly what was going on with him. The principal sent Mom a letter that called Justin “sullen” and “uncooperative.” After Mom read the letter aloud, she asked Justin what was going on. He shrugged and sat there looking sullen and uncooperative till Mom gave up trying to talk to him.
One day Justin even got detention from Mr. Jackson.
“I thought you liked Mr. Jackson,” Kate said to her brother the next morning. “You said he was the best math teacher you ever had.”
“What difference does that make?” Justin asked, and walked away leaving Kate to wonder, like everybody else, what was bugging him.
Luckily Justin wasn’t Kate’s problem. She was only responsible for Chip, and looking after Chip was a lot easier now. Every afternoon he walked home with Luther as soon as they got off the bus, and they did their homework together. That gave Kate some quiet time after school to get her own homework done.
But Kate hadn’t allowed Chip to go home with Luther this particular afternoon, and he was being a real pain. Every five minutes he whined, “I want to go over to Luther’s.”
“No, Chip!” Kate said for the fourth time. “It’s raining too hard.”
“Luther might be scared,” Chip fretted. “He’s never been in a hurricane.”
Hoping for some support, Kate looked over at Justin. He was at Mom’s desk supposedly doing his homework, but so far as Kate could tell he was just staring out the window. “It’s not going to hit the mainland,” he said. “All we’re getting is rain and a little more wind than usual.”
Kate looked out the window and then at the clock. Only four-thirty. “Look how dark it’s getting. We better get the chores done.”
“Yeah,” Justin agreed. He got up from the desk and was just reaching for the radio to turn it off when a news announcer broke in, talking fast in an excited voice. “Hurricane Lila, which was headed out to sea, has changed course and is moving toward the mainland at a speed of ten to fifteen miles an hour. It is expected to hit the Florida coast in the vicinity of Palm Beach in approximately three hours, with winds in excess of eighty miles per hour.”
“Did you hear that?” Chip looked really worried. “He said eighty miles an hour. That’s really bad, isn’t it?”
“It’ll be fine, Chip,” Kate said. “Come on and help us get everything ready.”
They’d been through hurricanes before, but in the past Mom had always been there to take care of things. In fact, she had gotten the storm shutters out yesterday and put up the ones along the back of the house where the windows were highest. But when the radio said the hurricane was going to pass them by and Southern Florida would only get heavy rain, she’d decided not to bother with the rest. Kate didn’t think there was a radio in the dairy barn, which meant Mom probably didn’t know the hurricane had changed course and was headed toward them. But it was a big, well-built barn. As long as she was there, she’d be okay. But in the meantime, they were on their own. They’d have to get everything done before the hurricane hit.
They hurried out to the back porch and put on their yellow rain ponchos. When Justin opened the door, the wind blew it back so hard it nearly knocked him down. They ducked their heads and ran down the steps into a dark gray world of wind and stinging rain.
Normally it only took two people to put up a storm shutter, one to climb the ladder and one on the ground to pass the shutter up so the person on the ladder could fasten it in place. Kate passed the first shutter up to Justin, but he could barely hold on to it. Then a gust of wind blew the shutter, the ladder, and Justin down in a pile, with Justin on the bottom.
That’s when Kate thought of using the big wooden crate. Fortunately all the windows in front were low, because their house didn’t have an upstairs. By putting the crate under a window and standing on it, the three of them together could just barely hold the shutter in place long enough to get it fastened. Justin hooked it at the top while Kate and Chip held it, then Kate fastened the middle hooks and Chip did the bottom ones. They moved the crate from one window to the next until all the windows were covered with the strong wooden shutters Dad had built years ago.
They had just gotten the last window covered and stepped down from the crate when they heard a screech of metal. The wind tore a sheet of tin off the duck coop and smashed it against the storm shutter they had just put up. For a few seconds the tin was pinned against the side of the house by the wind. Then it fell to the ground, barely missing them.
Suddenly Kate realized how dangerous the hurricane really was. If they had been standing on the crate when the sharp sheet of metal came sailing through the air, it could have cut all three of them right in half.
Justin pointed to the roof and made a lifting motion. Kate understood. He meant that they’d gotten the shutter in place just in time. If the tin had smashed the window, it would have let the wind into the house. When a hurricane-force wind gets inside a house, it can rip the whole roof right off.
They were about to make a dash for the back door when Kate saw that one side of the duck coop had blown off. The big white ducks were huddled together against the back wall. Rain pounded them and the wind was blowing their feathers every which way. She motioned to Justin to pick up the other end of the crate. They carried it over to what was left of the duck coop and started putting ducks into the crate. The ducks quacked nervously, but when Chip patted them they squatted down in the crate and stayed there, where at least they had a little protection from the wind.
Justin and Kate lugged the crate full of ducks toward the house. As they passed Sugar’s shed Kate realized that the storm might blow it down. She shouted to Chip, “Bring Sugar, too!”
“Get the back door open!” Justin yelled.
Chip grabbed Sugar by the collar and ran to open the back door, holding one hand over his eyes to keep out the stinging rain. Kate pushed Sugar ahead of them into the kitchen. She and Justin staggered in with the crate of ducks and set it down on the floor next to the stove.
Chip tried to close the door behind them, but the wind was too strong. When Kate and Justin went back to help, they saw the calves. The wind had forced them against the fence. The panicked animals were pushing against the wire so hard it was about to break. Any second the wire would snap and all three calves would be runn
ing wild on the highway.
“Got to bring them in!” Justin yelled.
They managed to pull the door shut, then plunged back out into the wind and rain. They got a rope around the neck of the first calf, but it wasn’t used to being led. When Justin pulled on the rope, it braced its feet and wouldn’t budge. Kate and Chip got behind and pushed. Little by little they worked it across the yard and up the back steps into the kitchen.
Kate lined up the dinette chairs to keep the calf barricaded on one side of the kitchen. Justin ran out to the goat shed and returned with an armful of hay. He threw the hay in the corner and helped Kate turn the table on its side to make a better pen. Then they ran back to the corral for another calf.
The drainage ditch on the far side of the corral was overflowing. The second calf ran wildly from one side of the soggy pasture to the other, with the children sloshing along behind it. When Kate and Chip tried to block its way so Justin could get the rope on it, the calf ran right into them. Chip got knocked down and trampled in the mud. At last Justin caught the calf and dragged it toward the house with Kate and Chip pushing from behind.
Actually Chip wasn’t any help at all. He had a cut on his forehead and was crying. “They’re stomping all over me,” he wailed as Kate pushed the calf through the back door into the kitchen and pulled it shut again.
“Then stay here,” Kate said. “Or get some more hay.” She and Justin ran back to the corral to get the last calf.
The air was filled with banging and screeching noises as more sheets of tin ripped loose from the sheds and sailed past, their deadly sharp edges slashing through the air like monster knives. The last calf ran in terror from one end of the pen to another as if Justin wasn’t the same boy who fed it every day, but some devil blown in by the storm. When Justin finally got a rope on the calf, it dashed in a crazed circle, tangling Justin’s feet in the rope and knocking Kate backwards. Black water from the overflowing ditch closed over her head.