by Anne Schraff
“Yeah, it wasn’t good,” Jaris answered. He felt bad even talking about it. Mrs. Manley was Sereeta’s mother. When all was said and done, she was the mother of the girl Jaris loved. Whatever flaws she had, nothing could change that. It seemed disloyal to go into the details—how Mr. Pippin acted, how Mrs. Manley fell. “Mom,” he signed, “it just makes me so sick I can’t talk about it.”
“I understand, sweetie,” Mom said.
When Sereeta came into American history the next morning, Jaris started talking to her about the announcement the day before. “There never was any money taken from those purses,” he told her. “The girls found their freakin’ money laying around, so that’s settled anyway.”
Before Ms. McDowell arrived, Jaris saw other students whispering and snickering. Marko and Jasmine nudged each other as they looked at Sereeta. But when Ms. McDowell appeared, there was perfect order as usual.
At the break, Jaris and Sereeta went to the vending machine. He bought a big red apple. He smiled at Sereeta and asked, “Do you remember when you told me their official name was Delicious?”
“I remember,” Sereeta responded but wanted to talk about something else. “Mom said you helped her yesterday. She said you were very nice. She’s still calling you Jack, but I knew who she meant.”
“She okay today?” Jaris asked, focusing on his apple.
“Yeah. She has a terrible headache,” Sereeta said. Sereeta peeled her orange. “It was pretty awful, wasn’t it? Yesterday, I mean.”
“No, not awful . . . just . . . you know,” Jaris struggled.
“Awful,” Sereeta affirmed. “I suppose the usual suspects were laughing at her.”
“Well, Ms. McDowell and Mr. Hawthorne showed up pretty fast, and they got everybody back to class,” Jaris reported.
“See, they’d been arguing for days, Mom and Perry,” Sereeta explained. “About my character of all things. Perry was all bent out of shape. He’s in banking and stuff, and he was thinking having a notorious criminal like me for a stepdaughter might damage his image. With all the financial scandals in the news, he thought people would think I was ripping off Tubman High School and he was cheating his clients. So he was ragging on Mom. ‘What kind of a daughter did you raise?’ Mom doesn’t usually defend me. But when she’s up against the wall, she drinks, and the liquor makes her brave enough to do stuff she wouldn’t usually do. So off she marches to Tubman High like a knight on a white horse to rescue my reputation . . . poor Mom. The only noble thing she’s tried to do for me, and it ends up making a mockery of her . . . and of me. What’s that saying? You can’t win for losing.”
“It’ll be okay,” Jaris assured her. “You know something? Ms. McDowell said some really nice things about you. She said she’d like to talk to you sometime.”
“What would we talk about?” Sereeta asked, tossing her orange peel into the trash.
“Oh,” Jaris paused to think of the right words. “She’s had some experiences that she’d like to share with you. Sometimes it helps to hear how other people have dealt with . . . you know, stuff.”
“I’m the sad case now, aren’t I?” Sereeta commented bitterly. “I’m poor Sereeta. Look at her. She’s always crying about stuff going on in her life. Then she’s accused of being a thief. And now her mom comes to school drunk and makes a fool of herself . . . my friends act real cheerful like nothing happened, but you can see it in their eyes. ‘Poor Sereeta . . . shhh, here she comes, poor thing.’ Quick, talk about that new comedy at the movie theater . . .”
“Don’t get paranoid, girl,” Jaris said. “The truth is most of us got so much trash going on in our lives that we don’t know or care about somebody else’s trash. Like Quincy. I was over at his house the other day and it’s a mess. The family is struggling with heaps of bills, and everything at the house is broken.”
“What were you doing over there, Jaris?” Sereeta asked.
“I just wanted to talk to Mrs. Pierce about that car wash money,” Jaris explained. “How two hundred dollars disappeared like that. I guess things were pretty messed up with bills floating around.”
“I suppose they still think I dipped in and took some bills when I helped Mrs. Pierce sort the money out,” Sereeta said.
“I don’t think so,” Jaris answered. “I think when those girls found the money that was supposed to be stolen from their purses, it sort of took the heat outta this whole theft scare. A lot of kids are thinking now maybe something like that happened at the car wash. Somebody just made a big mistake. Or maybe the money just blew away. Who knows? It was a windy day.”
The bell rang and they went to English.
Mr. Pippin seemed to do a double take on Sereeta when she came in. Jaris thought maybe he only imagined the reaction, but was Mr. Pippin wondering how such a nice girl could have a mother like that? Were a lot of the kids thinking the same thing? Jaris felt protective of Sereeta. He wished he could build a wall around her or raise a curtain to protect her from the stares and snickers. Everytime students seemed to be looking in Sereeta’s direction, Jaris figured they were judging her, and he was angry. He didn’t like being so obsessed. He told Sereeta to just ignore everything, and he wanted to do the same himself. But he couldn’t always.
After class, Sereeta and Jaris were walking across the campus when a boy Jaris hardly knew, Kyle Samson, stopped and spoke to Sereeta. “Is your mother like that all the time? I saw her at school yesterday, and she was falling-down drunk, and I wondered if she was drunk all the time?”
Jaris turned to the boy and grabbed a fistful of his shirt. He gave him a hard shake and yelled in his face. “Haven’t you got anything better to do than bother people, jerk?” Jaris couldn’t believe he’d lost it so completely in just a split second. The boy turned and sprinted away, obviously frightened.
“Jaris,” Sereeta cried, “don’t do stuff like that!”
“Where’d he come off asking a stupid, idiotic question like that?” Jaris stormed. “He doesn’t even know you. What a stupid jerk! I should have decked him, that’s what I should have done.”
Jaris looked around him. A lot of students were walking on the campus. Some seemed to be looking in the direction of Sereeta and Jaris—and laughing. Jaris thought most of them were laughing about Sereeta’s mother. But maybe they were laughing about something else. Jaris felt strange, as though he were alone in the world with Sereeta. All around them were enemies, and they were laughing and jeering and trying to hurt her. And their ridicule was almost killing Jaris.
Jaris wanted to grab Sereeta’s hand and run with her to some secret place where nobody knew them, where they could be together in peace. But there was no secret place. There was just Tubman High School and all the laughing faces that eventually morphed before Jaris’s eyes into one big laughing face.
Then, suddenly, there was Derrick Shaw, his wide, almost handsome face twisted in mirth. He was doubled over in laughter, clutching at his stomach as if he couldn’t contain it. “Didja see—” he gasped between spasms of laugher. “Didja see—didja see . . . the big seagull? He was up there, flyin’ up there just minding his own business, and he got a call of nature!” Derrick pointed south over to the football field. “Big seagull come flyin’ over football practice and he . . . he . . .” Derrick was laughing so hard he could hardly speak, but he finally got it out. “He took a dump—right on Marko’s head! Right on his head. Oh man, Marko was so mad! He’s runnin’ with his fist in the air and he’s yelling at the seagull, but the bird don’t care . . . Didja see it, Jaris? Didja see it, Sereeta?”
“You’re kidding!” Jaris exclaimed, starting to laugh himself.
“Wow,” Sereeta giggled. “How’d the seagull know it was Marko? And they say birds are dumb.”
Jaris felt as though a demon had been beating up his soul, and now it had been cast out. Now, he felt, his soul could heal.
Kevin Walker joined them, and he was laughing too. “You don’t see many seagulls around here, but that dude had a job t
o do,” he chuckled.
Derrick kept on laughing and trying to talk at the same time. “Marko, he’s so mad . . . but the old seagull, he’s on his way to the ocean. He been to the little boy’s room!”
CHAPTER EIGHT
In American history the next morning—Thursday—Ms. McDowell made an announcement. “I have something special to talk about this morning before we start class. In three weeks, we’ll be having a birthday celebration for the namesake of our school, Harriet Tubman. Now we know Harriet Tubman was born around 1820, but we don’t know the exact date of her birth because she was a slave. Records of slave births and deaths were not kept in many cases. So we’re just really guessing at her actual birth date. So the event will be in the school auditorium on a Friday night, and there’ll be drama and music from the glee club. I need students who are good orators with a little acting experience, if possible. We’ll need six students—one to play Harriet Tubman and five to take the roles of other slaves, those she led to freedom. If you’d like to be part of the program, let me know at the end of class.”
Jaris glanced over at Sereeta. “You could be Harriet Tubman,” he whispered. “You were so good in A Tale of Two Cities as Lucie.”
Sereeta shook her head vigorously. “No,” her lips formed the word.
Jaris was eager to be part of the program. He had a good strong voice, and everybody said he made a great Sydney Carton in the play. Jaris thought he could be an inspiring young slave crying out for freedom.
When the class ended, Jaris went to the desk to sign up for the auditions. He looked back at Sereeta. “Come on,” he pleaded.
“No way,” Sereeta said.
Ms. McDowell said, “You know what, Sereeta? When you started this class, I thought, ‘Wow, this girl is me fifteen years ago. She’s tough. She’s spirited. She’s got it.’ You’d make a wonderful Harriet Tubman. I’d like for you to try out for the part.”
Jasmine spoke up. “I’d like to try out too. I haven’t acted, but I think I could do it.”
“Fine, just sign up,” Ms. McDowell urged her too.
Jaris took Sereeta’s hand. He pulled her to the front of the room where the sign-up sheet was. “Do it for me,” he told her.
Sereeta frowned and signed her name.
Ms. McDowell took down twelve names. “On Friday, after the last bell, we’ll have a little audition right here in the classroom,” she said. “I’ve passed out all the parts to you twelve, so you’ll be ready to do your stuff.”
As they left the classroom, Sereeta told Jaris, “I don’t need this. I am so not up for this.” Sereeta held up her hand in a gesture of protest.
“It’ll make you feel better, Sereeta,” Jaris assured her.
“Well, I’ll do the dumb audition, but my heart’s not in it,” she sighed.
On Friday afternoon, the twelve students reported to Ms. McDowell’s classroom. Only two girls signed up to try out for Harriett Tubman.
Jasmine went first. She read the words of Harriet Tubman when she became free: “I had crossed the line of which I had so long been dreaming. I was free.” Jasmine shouted out the words, in anger and triumph. Her Harriet Tubman was a strident person, like Jasmine.
Then Sereeta got up to do her audition. Jaris looked at the slim girl, fear in her eyes. Sereeta didn’t want to do this. She felt bad inside, still humiliated by what her mother had done at school. And some suspicion about the missing car wash money still hung over her head. But her feelings ran much deeper than those caused by humiliation or suspicion. Sereeta felt lonely and disregarded. She had read a little about Harriet Tubman. Like Tubman, Sereeta was a young black woman, no family to rely on, alone in the world and fighting for her place in it.
Sereeta was raw emotionally. Her voice trembled as she spoke the words. “I had crossed the line of which I had so long been dreaming,” she spoke the words with a tear in her voice. Then she summoned her courage and cried, “I was free!” Sereeta sat down then. The other students then auditioned for the roles of slaves rescued by Harriet Tubman. Jaris read the role of a slave led by Tubman through an icy river.
“We came to the water and there was no bridge,” Jaris read. “We men didn’t want to get into that cold water. Harriet Tubman got right in, with the water to her armpits. And she walked, and we followed, though we didn’t know where we were going. We leaned on her and on our faith in God.”
When everybody had finished reading, Ms. McDowell declared, “Good job everybody. Okay, we’ll have a couple of rehearsals, and we need some of you for costume changes and scenes and other backup jobs. I’ll tell you when. Now for the cast. As slaves led to freedom by Harriett Tubman, we have Kevin Walker, Derrick Shaw, Alonee Lennox, Marko Lane, and Jaris Spain. As Harriet Tubman—Sereeta Prince.”
Sereeta looked at Jaris and rolled her eyes. “See what you got me into!” she hissed.
“It’ll be fun,” Jaris promised.
“Sereeta, have you a few minutes?” Ms. McDowell asked.
Sereeta shrugged. “I guess so.” As Jaris left, Sereeta was pulling up a chair at the teacher’s desk.
When Jaris went home, he rehearsed his part in the Harriet Tubman birthday tribute. He thought being on the stage again, and playing a part would be fun. He’d enjoy seeing his family and friends in the audience. The glee club from Tubman would sing many of the old spirituals that the slaves relied on for strength and used as a code in their travels through the night.
The next day, Jaris asked Sereeta if she had a nice talk with Ms. McDowell.
“Yeah,” Sereeta enthused. “She told me I could share what she told me with anybody. Oh Jaris, I was blown away. Her parents both died of a drug overdose. There were five kids in the family, and only three survived to adulthood. It’s like a miracle what she’s made of herself.”
“I knew she overcame a lot,” Jaris replied, “but I didn’t know it was that tough.”
“She was a little kid in the projects,” Sereeta went on to explain, “and both parents were doing crack cocaine. She met this lady, this old lady who was like a do-gooder or something. She reached out to kids with problems, and she helped Ms. McDowell get into college, and it made all the difference. They stayed friends until the lady died. Ms. McDowell said that woman was really her mother.”
Jaris smiled at Sereeta. He could see that the talk with Ms. McDowell had done her some good. But then Sereeta added, “But Jaris, she’s so strong. Ms. McDowell is so strong. I wish I truly was like that. But I fall apart so easily. I always want to give up . . .”
“You’re strong, Sereeta,” Jaris encouraged her. “Wanting to give up is okay. Actually giving up is bad, and you won’t ever do that.”
“Oh Jaris,” Sereeta complained, “I get depressed and I do stupid things. I’ve never told you this before, and please never tell anybody, but do you know what I did once? It was just so bad at home it was like I didn’t exist. So I went out to this field, you know, where the burned house is, and I . . . oh Jaris, you promise you’ll never tell anybody if I tell you something horrible and disgusting?”
“I promise,” Jaris said.
“I cut myself, Jaris,” Sereeta confessed. “I was hurting so bad inside, that I took a sharp knife and I cut my arm three times. My arm hurt so much and it bled, but in a way it stopped the hurting inside me. I guess it hurt so much that I forgot how they didn’t care about me and stuff. I was just so scared I’d bleed to death or something. And then I didn’t even care if I did or not. Don’t ever tell anybody, Jaris. It was so sick and disgusting.”
“I won’t tell, Sereeta,” Jaris assured her, although he knew already. He knew for a long time, and he never told and he never would. “But you don’t do stuff like that anymore. You’re stronger than that now.”
“If only I’d stop wanting her to be a mother,” Sereeta confided. “I mean, why am I such a fool? She’s never really been a mother. I could always tell she wasn’t crazy about me. I mean, like you know some mothers are. Like your mom. She loves you and C
helsea so much. She looks at you guys like the sun and the moon rises on you. And Alonee’s mom, and Sami’s. You know what Alonee’s mom said to her once? She said, ‘Alonee, I love you more than my next breath.’ Why can’t I stop wanting what I’ll never have?”
“She does the best she can, I guess,” Jaris suggested.
“Yeah,” Sereeta agreed. “She’s not happy either. She thought she’d be happy with Perry, but it’s not great. And she tried to be with the baby all the time, but then that went sour too. Now the nanny’s taken over. Poor Jake. I hated him so much before he was born. He was like the dirty little guy who was taking my rightful place as the beloved child in the family. Now I feel sorry for him. He’s not the beloved child either. There is no beloved child.”
On Saturday, when Jaris got home from his job at the Chicken Shack, he saw a strange car in the driveway. He’d seen it before but he couldn’t place it. When he went inside the house, he was startled to see Sereeta’s mother. She smiled at Jaris and said, “Your mother called me and asked me if I’d like to go shopping with her like we did in the old days. Just up and called me. We got to talking and it was like old times, wasn’t it, Monica?”
Jaris’s mother nodded agreement. “Now Olivia and I are going shopping at the mall. Do you know how long it’s been since we did that? You and Sereeta were about seven years old!”
“Yeah, we’re hittin’ the malls, boy,” Mrs. Manley declared. “Going in the dressing rooms and laughing at each other when we try on dresses that are too small . . . why not, huh, Monica?”