“What does your father do?” Susan asked, too casually.
“He’s a lawyer.” I was up to eight now, and because she had made me lie, I was sure I didn’t like her. I wasn’t about to tell Susan the real story of my father..
“Corporate or public interest?” Susan asked.
“Public interest,” I said quickly, trying not to stutter.
“Criminal?”
“Huh?”
“Is he a criminal lawyer?”
“Uh-huh.” I nodded.
“That’s too bad. My dad’s a prosecutor. He tries to get as many criminals off the street as he can. He thinks criminal lawyers should be behind bars too.”
“Not everybody’s guilty.”
“Yeah, yeah ... that’s what they all say.”
“Sometimes cops make mistakes.”
“Rarely.”
I clinched my fist over a pair of lavender socks. What right did this girl have coming into my room and making me lie about my life, anyway?
“I don’t want to talk about it,” I said, lowering my voice.
“It’s a losing argument.” Susan stood up and came over to the dresser. “Who’s this?” she asked, pointing to the picture Hattie took last summer. In it, me and Margaret were standing with our arms across each other’s shoulders.
“That’s my best friend, Margaret.”
“She’s pretty. I think some black people are real pretty, you know. Like, they have real clear skin and nice teeth. Where are her parents boarding her?”
“Huh?”
“What school is she at?”
“P.S. 102 ... in Brooklyn.”
“Public school?”
I nodded. I had learned to fight when I was seven and Michael Acosta tried to bully me and Margaret into giving him our snack money. After I beat him up, I wasn’t scared of anyone anymore. Michael had been a whole head taller than me. It wouldn’t take much at all to pound Susan into the ground. I started counting again. Everyone deserved a second chance.
“That’s frightening. Don’t they kill people every day in those schools?”
“You must be reading the National Enquirer or something,” I said, letting a little of my annoyance seep into my . voice.
“No, my father told me that. He said New York schools are dangerous.”
“Give me a break. Next time you talk to your father, ask him when was the last time he was in one.”
“Don’t get snotty,” Susan said. “I was just repeating what I heard.”
I shrugged. “Well, think before you say it. People will think you’re a parrot. Anyway, I’m ready for my tour,” I said, holding the door open.
Susan looked in the mirror and finger-combed some hair out of her eyes before heading for the door.
Susan was a pain, but she gave a thorough tour. By the time we were finished, I felt like I knew Blue Hill inside and out.
“I’ve been giving freshman tours since my second year here,” Susan said, when she dropped me off at my dorm. “You could probably pass a test on the history of Blue Hill now.”
I thanked her bluntly—wanting her to understand that while I appreciated the tour, I still didn’t like her. She got the point, I think, because she looked confused for a moment, then turned on her heel and headed back across the field.
“Hi, Maizon.”
Ms. Bender was sitting in the first-floor lounge. In the corner, a huge fireplace sat unlit with logs beside it. The chair she sat in was one of those comfortable overstuffed ones with flowered upholstery. Lace doilies were thrown across the arms and back. “Figured I could catch up on some reading. How was the tour?”
I took a seat in the chair across from her. “It was okay. This is a pretty place.”
Ms. Bender nodded. “People say that. I’m glad you think so too.” She lay the magazine across her lap and leaned forward. “How’s Susan?”
I grimaced.
Ms. Bender chuckled. “I know what you mean,” she said, but didn’t volunteer any other information. “I told you, we have all kinds of girls here. But isn’t diversity important?”
“I guess.”
“We learn from each other that way.”
I was silent for a moment. I guess Susan and I did learn some things from each other today. I learned she wasn’t the brightest girl that ever walked the earth and she learned that she had better not mess with me.
A tall boy blasted through the door and ran up to Ms. Bender’s chair, then stumbled to a stop. He was the color of caramel, with light brown eyes and short curly hair. My heart skipped as I realized I hadn’t seen a boy in days. I hadn’t even missed them!
“Mama,” he said, out of breath, “I don’t think I’m staying the weekend after all.”
Ms. Bender nodded knowingly. “This is my younger son, Davis,” she said to me. “Davis, this is Maizon.”
Davis looked over at me and smiled. A thin line of silver ran across his already straight teeth. “Hey, Maizon.”
I swallowed, trying to figure out where my tongue had run off to. “Hi . . . Davis,” I stuttered. Charlie had been right. He was fine.
“Davis is a college man now.” Ms. Bender sighed. “No more time for Mama.”
Davis looked embarrassed for a moment. “Ma, they’re putting some guys on line tonight. I have to get back.”
“A fraternity man,” Ms. Bender continued, then turned to Davis. “Well, get on back and pledge those poor boys. But don’t forget you were once on line.”
Davis left as quickly as he had come. Ms. Bender fanned herself with the magazine. “‘On line’ is what they do in those fraternities and sororities. Once you’re on line, you’re on your way to whatever it means to be a frat brother or sorority sister. Doesn’t make a whole lot of sense to me. But... whatever.”
I smiled, still starry-eyed.
Ms. Bender took one look at me and laughed. “Join the crowd of Blue Hill girls in love with him, Maizon,” she said. “He knows he has a fan club here. But forget it! He’s twenty years old. And his brother, who is just as beautiful, is twenty-seven.”
I shrugged. “I don’t think about boys that much,” I confided. “I hadn’t even missed them until Davis walked in.”
“Well, you’re a lone soldier here then. But you have time. I give you about a year and a half. Then they’ll fill every inch of your conversation.”
I doubted it. But I didn’t tell Ms. Bender that. I liked reading and double-dutch and good gossip. I liked learning new stuff about life and twirling the info around in my head for days and days. Davis was cute. But he wouldn’t stay on my mind long. I wanted to know about Ms. Bender and the husband that left her. I was way into learning about people leaving.
“Where’s your other son?”
“Moved to Seattle. He’s an activist. You name the problem, he’ll fight to change it.” She smiled to herself. “Just like his father . . .” she mumbled, shaking her head.
“Are you divorced?” I asked, even though I already knew the answer.
Ms. Bender nodded, but didn’t say anything. I wondered how Charli had gotten the information out of her.
After a few minutes had passed in silence, I smiled and got up. “I guess I’ll call my grandma and write some letters.”
“Big day tomorrow,” Ms. Bender warned. “Ready, set, go.”
I walked around her and bounded up the stairs, liking the way the cool marble banister felt against my palm.
“Easy on those stairs, Maizon,” Ms. Bender called. “Don’t stomp. You’ll go right through to the basement.”
I giggled, because my grandma always said the same thing.
11
Dear Margaret,
I met a girl named Susan the other day. She’s a junior here. She’s never really known any black people. She thinks we’re too different from whites and maybe shouldn’t mingle so much. I guess some of the girls here feel that way. Sometimes it makes me angry thinking about it, but most of the time I just feel real, real sorry for them.
&
nbsp; You’ve written me two letters already. I know you want to know what it’s like here, but there are some things you can’t even explain to a best friend. I know you wouldn’t understand this Blue Hill thing. I’m not saying you’re not smart or anything. But it’s just like how it is about Mama. Nobody, not even Grandma, understands that I knew her. Remember how Grandma would laugh when I said I knew Mama? Remember how she would say, “You couldn’t have known her, Maizon. You were a baby then. You had not been in this world an hour when your mama died.” But somewhere, way down deep inside of me, Margaret, I remember that hour. I remember bright lights and voices and dark faces over me. I remember lots of white and green. And nobody knows this, nobody would ever in a million years believe this, but I do remember my mama. I remember her looking just the way she looks in all the pictures Grandma has of her over the fireplace and in the bedroom. Mama had long, long hair and those high cheekbones like Grandma’s. And even when you look at the pictures, Margaret, you say I have my mama’s mouth—just like in the pictures. And I have Mama’s nose too. I used to didn’t like my nose. Remember way back when you and I were real little, how we used to sit under the tree and talk about what we’d change about ourselves if we won a million dollars? You said you’d give all the money to your mother and father if they promised to let you cut your hair. I said I’d change my nose. I’d ask the doctor to get rid of the wide nostrils and fix the tip so that it didn’t stick out like it does. But then, later on, I looked at a picture of Mama and realized we had the same nose. Now I know I wouldn’t let a doctor come near it, ever. I miss you a lot, Margaret. I know you understand that. Kiss Li‘l Jay and Ms. Dell for me. (Not Hattie!)
I read the letter over again before I wrote “Love, Maizon,” dotting my i with a big circle the way I had done last summer when me and Margaret dug our names into the street the day of Margaret’s dad’s funeral. That day had been so hard to get through. I folded the letter and put it in an envelope. I was sitting at my desk. Sandy’s desk was across the room. I turned and stared at it. Why did I have such a bad feeling all of a sudden? Turning back to my desk again, I took the letter out of its envelope. “P.S.” I wrote. “You ever feel scared, Margaret—like something’s going to happen to you that’s going to change you forever?”
I folded the letter again. But as I licked the envelope and pressed it closed, something inside me froze. What if this letter didn’t make any sense to Margaret? What if she thought I was losing my mind here or something? My stomach tightened. Was I the only one who’d ever understand this Blue Hill thing? What it’s like to be like this—out of my element is how somebody had descibed it once—away from everything and everybody that had always been familiar. I held the letter, staring at Margaret’s address. Then I added it to the others already piling up in my desk drawer. Maybe one day, I’d show them all to Margaret, and we could sit and read them together. But I wanted to be there with her when she opened each one—I wanted to show her I was okay, that I had survived. That even with all those crazy words on the paper, nothing had changed between us.
Later that night, long after dinner and a quick collect call to Grandma to let her know I was okay, I watched the moon dip behind the main building. In the darkness, the gables glowed blue against the near-black sky. In Brooklyn, I knew, the streetlights would be flickering on now, Ms. Dell would be holding Li‘l Jay on her lap, and Hattie and Margaret would be talking quietly on their stoop about everything—and nothing at all.
12
It’s cool tonight,“ Sandy whispered into the darkness. I lay in my bed across from her, feeling strange. I had never shared a room with anyone but Margaret. ”Yeah,“ I said. ”It is.“
Sandy was shorter than I was, but already she had started growing in places my body didn’t even know existed. I had tried not to watch her getting dressed for bed, but couldn’t help looking over when she was pulling her T-shirt on. She wasn’t flat-chested like me. Her skin was so white I could see the blue veins running along her arms. There was hair under her arms.
“But the air coming in feels nice,” I said.
“It does.”
We lay silently across from each other for a while and I wondered if Sandy was as aware of my breathing as I was of hers. She breathed in and out slowly. Every now and then, she sighed.
I closed my eyes and tried to imagine Margaret lying across from me. But it didn’t work. If it had been Margaret in the room, we would have climbed into the same bed hours ago and now we’d be gossiping and giggling and tickling each other until we cried.
I didn’t like sharing with strangers.
“You have brothers and sisters, Maizon?” Sandy asked.
“Nope,” I said, annoyed that she had broken through my thoughts. “Just me.”
“Sometimes I wish I was an only child. I have two older sisters and two younger brothers,” she confided.
“Middle child.”
“I guess.”
“Are they all in boarding school?”
In the darkness, I could see the shadow of Sandy raising up on her elbow. “Nope, just me. Blue Hill gave me a track scholarship disguised as an academic one.”
“I didn’t know you were on scholarship. I thought I was the only one.”
“Are you kidding? Last year Blue Hill gave out fifty-four academic scholarships. Diana Cortez has one. She’s a junior. So do my friends Sonia Chan and Gayle Childs—and Sara Carmona is on scholarship. But they’re on different ones than me. Mine isn’t for grades. I did lousy in grade school. But I made All-State in the quarter mile and I led my softball team to the championships. The paper wrote articles about me. You play sports?”
“Not really.”
“You look like you’d be good in basketball. You’re so tall and thin.”
I felt a flicker of warmth toward Sandy. I had only been called “skinny,” never “thin.”
“I’m not coordinated. I mean, sometimes I am, but not a lot. Plus, I don’t think I’d be good at team sports. I’m sort of an individual.”
“That’s ‘cause you’re an only child. My family is a team sport. I mean, there’re so many of us.” Sandy lay back down.
My mind was spinning a little bit. I hadn’t even thought that Sandy was on scholarship. I knew I hadn’t thought about it because she was white and I just figured that no white people would need help paying for Blue Hill. A long time ago, Ms. Dell had sat me and Margaret down in her kitchen with bowls of her famous Jell-O with cherries in front of us.
“You’re gonna learn about racism and death and pain before you’re teenagers,” she warned. Margaret and I had nodded. By then we knew Ms. Dell had the gift to see into the future. “I’m gonna tell you this,” Ms. Dell continued. “Racism doesn’t know color, death doesn’t know age, and pain doesn’t know might.”
Lying there, I wondered if it was racist of me to think all white people were rich.
Sandy’s breathing slowed. After a while, when I couldn’t hear it at all, I knew she was asleep.
I lay awake for a long time. What was it that made white people strange to me, that made Charli and Sheila and Marie seem threatening and safe at the same time? Why hadn’t I asked myself these questions before?
“Because you never had to,” I heard Ms. Dell murmur somewhere between my waking and sleeping.
13
Bells were ringing somewhere far off. Sandy was already dressed and brushing her hair in the mirror when I rubbed my eyes open. The clock beside my bed said six forty-five.
“Good morning, Maizon.”
I grumbled something that might have passed for “morning,” grabbed my towel and bathrobe, and headed down the hall to the bathroom.
I’ve never been a morning person and wasn’t used to waking up with other people in my room. One thing I liked about being an only child is how much space people give you. Sandy seemed like a nice person, I thought as I let the warm water from the shower run down my neck and back. But to me, nobody’s worth talking to at six forty-five in th
e morning. Other girls hustled in and out of the bathroom. I tried not to watch them through the mirror as I brushed my teeth. They all seemed so comfortable about walking around half-naked in front of other people. Not even Margaret and Grandma had seen me naked since I was small. I wasn’t about to start parading what I didn’t have in front of strangers.
“You got my side of the room this year,” Sandy said, when I came back into the room. “I usually sleep on the side close to the window.”
I shrugged and turned toward my dresser to get clean underwear, feeling Sandy’s eyes on my back. “If you’re slow, you blow,” I said. I hadn’t meant for it to sound as crabby as it did.
“I like that robe, Maizon. It’s pretty.”
I slipped on a pair of the new cotton panties Grandma had bought me for school, then draped my robe around my waist and pulled the T-shirt over my head, all the while keeping my back to Sandy. The robe was white with thin green and red stripes running down it. I wasn’t used to someone watching me get dressed, and didn’t take the robe off until I had pulled on my skirt.
“My grandma bought it for me,” I said, draping the robe across the foot of my bed.
“You better hang it up,” Sandy warned. “Blue Hill is strict about neatness. If Ms. Bender or Mrs. Miller comes in here and sees it on your bed like that, they’re going to say something.”
I wanted Sandy to mind her own business. I had every intention of hanging the robe up. When I didn’t say anything, Sandy turned back toward the mirror and worked on getting the part straight in the center of her head. She had long brown hair that stopped near her waist, and dark green eyes. Her skin was a little darker than milk. She wasn’t pretty. I don’t know what it was—her eyes were pretty enough and her hair was beautiful—but it just didn’t come together in a way that made her pretty. It made me feel a little sorry for her. People who aren’t pretty seem to have a harder time than pretty people. I was lucky. I knew I was pretty. I could tell by the way people’s faces melted when they met me. The way their eyes sort of softened when I spoke—even if I wasn’t saying the nicest things. My grandma always told me how pretty my smile was and how nice my hair looked right after it had been washed, when it was damp and coiling at the nape of my neck and behind my ears. And people were always, always commenting on my eyes, because my lashes are curlier than a lot of people’s and my eyes are dark brown—almost black—and slant upward. A lot of people used to tell me I should be a model, especially if I kept growing. Already I was five foot seven. But I had no interest in being a model. I know good and well I’m too smart to waste my intelligence smiling in front of somebody’s camera.
Maizon at Blue Hill Page 5