“Rockpunzel had never seen anyone but her mother, the Witch. She had never seen a boy. And such a handsome Rock Boy, too!” I wrote.
Aaron fiddled with the knobs of the game, peering at his invisible design. “Finish up, Aaron,” said Didi. “Time to put it away.” Aaron fiddled some more. “Aaron?” she warned. She threw a “See what I mean?” look at Grandpa Ben.
I ignored them. I couldn’t afford to lose my train of thought. “Rockpunzel and the Prince had a nice chitchat,” I wrote. “They had a nice chitchat the next day, too—and the next. When the Witch found out, she broke Rockpunzel’s braids off and glued them to her own bald head. Poor Rockpunzel.”
“Ta-da! Lights Alive!” Aaron announced. He flipped the switch, turning on the pinpricks of color. The board blinked and glowed like a neon snowflake. Aaron’s face glowed as brightly. I skipped to the end.
“The Prince called out, ‘Rockpunzel, Rockpunzel, let down your hair!’ Blinded by love, he climbed up . . . There was the Witch! And there was Rockpunzel, with no hair at all. No hair, but he still thought she was beautiful.”
Dad thought I was beautiful.
Did Peter? Did Peter think Sarah M. was beautiful? I’d never heard him call anyone or anything beautiful except maybe a big head of lettuce from the Harlem Grown garden where he sometimes volunteered after school. Or a nice broccoli.
“See? I don’t want to know how it’s going to turn out,” Aaron was saying, “until the end.”
“Spoken like a true showman—and a scientist,” said Grandpa Ben with a triumphant smile. “You like the mystery of playing in the dark until the last moment—the moment of discovery.” He shook one of Aaron’s hands and then the other. He put them together and pumped them up and down. “Barnum, meet Einstein,” he said. “Bravo!”
What had Aaron done that was so great? All he had accomplished in the time it had taken me to write a new story was sitting on the floor, playing with a stupid toy. Why was he the Einstein? I slammed my notebook shut, jammed it into my backpack along with my lucky pen, and stood up.
“It’s always wonderful when a grandparent can come, but I’m afraid our time is up,” said Didi. “This is for your daughter.”
She handed Grandpa Ben a letter. It was sealed with a yellow happy face sticker.
“What does it say?” asked Grandpa Ben, holding the envelope between two fingers like a dirty diaper. Didi squared her shoulders. Her dark eyes sparkled.
“In my opinion and in the judgment of the school . . .” she began.
Uh-oh! Here it comes. Judgment of the school. Mom should have come. It wasn’t my fault. I tried to warn her.
“. . . it would benefit Aaron if he were to repeat kindergarten next fall,” Didi finished.
Grandpa Ben rose slowly from his little chair, using Dad’s bat as a cane. He looked so old. “You’re telling me this now, at the very end? No discussion?” he asked.
“We think it’s for the best,” said Didi. “I tried to notify Aaron’s mother by phone.”
Grandpa Ben’s face turned red. “It’s October,” he said. “How do you know what Aaron will need by May? Aren’t you jumping the gun?”
Didi frowned. “Frankly, I recommended Aaron transfer to a special school. It was the headmaster who suggested this compromise.”
“He learned to read before most of the little schnorrers in your class figured it out!” Grandpa Ben exploded.
Didi rose. “Repeating a grade is no reflection on Aaron’s academic performance,” she said. “It’s just a way of giving him time to mature socially.”
“In my day,” said Grandpa Ben, “you didn’t go to school to mature socially! You did that on the street.” His jaw muscles twitched.
Aaron sidled over to me, walking on his toes, and pressed his head against my belly. I wasn’t sure if he understood what Didi had just said. He had been left back.
Grandpa Ben shook his finger at Didi. “Einstein was a very late bloomer,” he told her. “The bean counters of the world never appreciated him either. Congratulations, Aaron! Your second year in kindergarten is a badge of honor.”
On the way out, I gave Grandpa Ben a kiss on the cheek. I wasn’t mad at him anymore. He had promised to come to Aaron’s conference, and he had come. He hadn’t convinced Mom to come, but maybe it was better that way. If Mom had been there, who knows what might have happened? She might have yelled at Didi and gotten Aaron kicked out of the school. Being left back was better than being kicked out.
That night, Aaron ran into my room, shrieking at the top of his lungs.
“I’m turned to stone. I’m a Rock Face boy,” he wailed. He tore at his pajama top.
“Was it Medusa?” I asked. “Did she turn you to stone?”
He crawled into my bed and pressed against me, shivering. His feet were cold. I pushed him away a little so I could see his face. He scrunched his eyes shut, streaming tears.
“It was me,” he sobbed. “I was scared.”
“So you couldn’t run and she got you?” I asked, still not understanding.
“No, no, she wasn’t there,” he said, crying. “There was no Medusa. No Eyeball Sisters. No monsters. It was me. Just me. I was scared. I turned myself to stone!”
I held him close. He made himself small in my arms, holding tight.
“I know,” I said. “I’m scared, too.”
“You’re scared?”
“Yes.”
He shuddered. “Does Mom know?” he asked.
“Know what?”
“About me,” he said. “That I’m left back?”
“Yes,” I said. “Grandpa Ben told her.”
“Does Mom love me?” he asked.
“Yes.”
I rocked him back and forth, back and forth, as if he were a little baby. He whimpered. “Do you?” he asked after a while.
“Yes.”
“Even when I’m Stonestiltskin?”
I hesitated. Aaron waited, breathing softly. I placed Aaron’s hand over my Dad heart. It was beating hard. Aaron gazed at me like a dog, waiting for a treat.
Find him, said my Dad heart.
“I love you . . .” I told Aaron. “. . . no matter what.”
HEART MATH
Propping her head up with one hand, Daisy labored over the tiny details in Rockpunzel’s hair. She had already drawn the Witch with a long, bumpy nose and a wart that looked like a bird’s nest. It was Wednesday after school, and we had changed our minds about going to my house because Daisy said she could draw better at hers. Mom had made me promise to bring Daisy over the next time.
“I’ll bake cookies,” she said.
“I’m not a little kid,” I said. I almost added that Daisy’s dad trusted us to hang out at Daisy’s house on our own, but I stopped myself just in time.
“What’s wrong with cookies?” asked Mom.
“Remember Pinocchio when he told a lie to the Blue Fairy?” asked Daisy now.
“His nose grew and sprouted leaves,” I said.
“And then all of a sudden there was a bird’s nest with eggs in it!” said Daisy. “That’s what I’m going for here.”
“It’s so cool how you don’t see the nest one minute and then the next, you look at it again, and you see it. And once you see it, you don’t believe you ever didn’t see it,” I said.
Find her, said my Dad heart.
I didn’t want my Dad heart to talk to me here, now, at Daisy’s house. “It’s all those squiggly lines you put in,” I said.
“Yeah, thanks,” said Daisy, blushing.
Daisy drew with her eyes half closed as if she were in some kind of trance. A butterfly appeared in one of the shaded twists of Rockpunzel’s thick left braid. A caterpillar took shape right below it.
I laughed. “I love her hair,” I said.
“You should see my mother’s hair,” said Daisy. “In the portrait I made? I put everything in: flowers, bees, ferns, snails, frogs . . .”
Find them, said my Dad heart . . .
I’m sitting with Dad on the edge of a marshy pond. Before Aaron. Dad has a blue bandanna around his head under his cap. It’s still early morning, but I feel like it must be about a hundred degrees. Our rented bikes lie on their sides where we dumped them in the reeds. I don’t like my bicycle. It’s not sleek and powerful like Dad’s. It’s just a little better than a baby bike. The seat is too low and chafes the insides of my thighs. The tires are fat. I’m not looking forward to the ride back. I glance over to where Dad is pointing. I see nothing but cattails and giant lily pads and dragonflies swarming. The mud is clotted with reddish-brown algae. It smells of dead things.
What? I whisper.
Biggest bullfrog I ever saw, says Dad. I squint against the sun.
Where?
Right there!
I see a pair of bulging eyes, a head just above the glinting water. The creature is floating on its belly, its arms and legs spread-eagled. The instant I spot the humongous frog, I see another frog in the grasses, and then another, and another . . . We’re surrounded. How could I have missed them? They’re everywhere. They were there all along . . .
“Can I see?” I asked Daisy. I looked over at the easel in the middle of her room, the one draped in a red bedspread.
Daisy lifted her pen and her head and blinked. There was a round pink mark on her cheek where the palm of her hand had rested. Her fingers were smudged.
“My mom’s head? It’s not here,” she said. “My dad took it to his studio. He said it was hard to look at in the house because Mom had always been here and he missed her too much, but the studio was his space, not hers, so he liked having her there, watching him work. Like his muse.”
“So what’s that?” I asked, pointing.
She shook her head. “It’s not ready yet,” she said. And then I knew. She was keeping her promise. She was drawing Dad. In his hat.
“That’s okay,” I mumbled, but actually it wasn’t. Daisy was working on Dad’s head. She was reinventing his face, hiding her own little secrets in it to be discovered when you looked close. She might even put a frog in his hair like the bullfrog Dad and I saw that day, and then when I discovered it there, it would be Daisy’s frog, not Dad’s. Not mine. Not Dad’s and mine.
“I wish I could draw,” I mumbled.
“The Prince’ll be hard,” said Daisy, returning to Rockpunzel’s hair. “It’ll be hard to make a Rock Face out of Peter. He’s too good-looking.”
“Who says the Prince is Peter?” I asked.
“Who else?” she said. Now it was my turn to blush.
“Did you ever hear of Heart Math?” I asked.
Daisy giggled. “Nope,” she said.
When Dad died, I put myself on Google alert: the science of the human heart. I thought research might hold the answer to why Dad’s heart had short-circuited. Lately, I had stopped reading the articles. They were stacked in my inbox, but early that morning before I got Aaron up for school, I had clicked on one. Heart Math.
“See, there are these four easy ways to stop worrying,” I said.
“I never worry,” said Daisy, straight-faced.
“Right. So here’s the first step,” I said. “Bring attention to your heart.”
“Suppose you have more than one?” asked Daisy.
I stared at her. Was she a mind reader?
“Just kidding,” she said. “I once read the heart is the easiest thing to print with a 3-D printer. So far, they can do the tubes but not the blood. Amazing, right?”
“How do you know this weird stuff?” I asked.
“I read everything I can find on anatomy,” she said. “So . . . what’s step two?”
“Breathe in and out of the heart space as if you had a mouth there,” I instructed.
Daisy shut her eyes and took deep breaths with her hands over her heart. I put my hands on my belly over my Dad heart.
“Now what?” asked Daisy, her eyes still closed.
“Bring someone you love to mind,” I said.
“Now we’re getting somewhere,” said Daisy. She fell quiet, breathing. Who was she thinking about? Her mom? Her dad? Neil? I shut my eyes and tried to concentrate.
I saw Dad’s face. The scar above his eyebrow where he had bashed into a glass door when he was a kid. The curl of his hair over his ears even though the rest of his hair was straight. His smile.
I saw Peter’s face. His blue eyes. Black eyebrows. Messy home-cut hair. Lumberjack shirt buttoned as if he never looked in the mirror. Big feet in scuffed-up hiking boots laced halfway up. Red turnip cap. Blue eyes . . .
“Okay, I’m in the zone,” said Daisy.
“What zone?” I asked. “If I could get into the zone, I wouldn’t need Heart Math.”
“Just breathe,” said Daisy. “Who do you see?”
“Peter.”
“I knew it! What’s he doing?”
I giggled. “Nothing. He’s wearing his turnip hat.”
“That’s it,” said Daisy, opening her eyes. “The Rock Face Prince will have turnips on his head.”
I laughed and opened my eyes, too.
“Hey, did you ask your mom about Inwood Chatter yet?” said Daisy. She was drawing a turnip.
“Not yet,” I said.
“You have to join now that we’re doing Rock Faces,” she said. “There’s a meeting tomorrow at lunch. Mr. Woodman’s room. You don’t have to ask your mom to go to that, do you? Just come.”
“Okay,” I said.
“Let’s put real fairies in the next Rock Face fairy tale,” said Daisy. “Rock Face fairies. Can’t you just see it?”
“Sure,” I said. “Rock Face fairies. No flying.”
“Of course, no flying,” said Daisy. “They’re rocks. They don’t fly—they roll.”
Daisy drew a fat Rock Face fairy, then cut it out with scissors and made it roll across her desk. She turned it this way and that. “Hey, what makes a rock a Rock Face?” she asked.
“The nose,” I said.
“I think it’s the eyes,” said Daisy. “There’s no face without eyes.” She gave me a big grin. It wasn’t a mocking smile like Reena’s, or a sly smile like Tina’s. She wasn’t trying to win me over to her point of view. She just liked me.
I liked her, too, everything about her: the bursts of freckles on her arms. Her chewed fingernails and inky fingers you might think were dirty if you didn’t know better. The way she loved to draw more than anything. The way her lips puckered and one eyebrow went up when she was concentrating.
I hadn’t been her friend when her mom died. She hadn’t been mine when my dad died. To her, Rock Faces was just something we were doing for Mr. Woodman. For Inwood Chatter. She didn’t know about Aaron’s Rock Face tantrums. She didn’t know how Dad had said, “He’s killing me.” She didn’t know about my Dad heart. We were making it all up right there as we went along. We were new.
IN the WOOD
I looked around Mr. Woodman’s room. Daisy had brought in her Little Rock Riding Hood drawing. It was up on the bulletin board. That morning, Mr. Woodman had officially asked us to submit the story with Daisy’s art to the next issue of Inwood Chatter. I wasn’t sure I wanted the whole school to read it with Tina telling everyone I had a crazy mother, but Daisy said it didn’t matter what Tina said. “Rockpunzel” would be the next story we would show Mr. Woodman. After that, I’d write the one about the fairies. I thought about that one with Daisy’s funny drawings of Rock Fairies and smiled.
“Briana,” Tina called from the front row. “You came!”
Why was she being friendly all of a sudden? Mr. Woodman was off to the side, staring out the window, whistling.
“Daisy asked me to come,” I said stiffly.
“So you’re joining?” asked Tina.
“I’m not sure yet,” I said. I wasn’t going to let Tina know how much I wanted to join. I hadn’t even admitted it to Daisy. There was no point. I was kidding myself. Mom would never let me off the hook with Aaron on Thursdays. I would go this one time and tha
t was it.
Daisy was sitting in the back with Al and Jon. Today her hair fringes were purple. She waved and pointed to the empty seat next to her. I started for it. Tina grabbed my arm and patted the chair next to her. “Sit here,” she said.
Mr. Woodman came out of his reverie. “Briana,” he said. “Welcome.”
Tina tugged hard and pulled me down beside her. “This is so exciting!” she whispered. She crunched my fingers.
“I’m sitting with Daisy,” I said, pulling away.
“Attention,” said Mr. Woodman. “First order of business.” Too late. I glanced over my shoulder at Daisy. She made a face. I sent her a sorry look. I had messed up.
“Inwood Chatter,” said Mr. Woodman. “How many in favor of changing the name?”
About half the group raised their hands. I raised mine. Inwood Chatter was a stupid name.
“Who has something to say on the subject—a reasoned argument, please,” said Mr. Woodman. “In case you’re wondering, ‘the name is stupid’ is not a reasoned argument.”
“Our name is our brand. I say we keep it,” Tina called out.
“Coca-Cola is a brand,” mocked Jon. “Cheerios is a brand. Inwood Chatter?”
“Not a brand,” Al finished for him.
“And let’s just say for the sake of argument that it is,” said Daisy. “Can’t we play with it? Like instead of Inwood Chatter, we could call it . . .” She broke off. “We could call it . . .”
“In the Wood,” I said.
“Aha!” said Mr. Woodman, rubbing a stick of chalk between his fingers like a camper trying to ignite a spark from a twig. He wrote “Inwood Chatter” on the blackboard. Under it, he wrote “In the Wood.” “Any other suggestions?” he asked.
“When are we going to elect the editor in chief?” asked Tina. “Wasn’t that the point of this meeting?”
So that was it. Tina was being nice to me because she wanted my vote.
“Last time no one wanted to run but me,” Tina continued. “So I just want to know if I’m the editor.”
“There are some new folks here today, Tina,” said Mr. Woodman. “We need to give everyone the opportunity to run for editor. Who’d like to throw their hat in the ring?”
The Girl with More Than One Heart Page 8