Birthday Dinner
Page 23
Chapter 14
When Becca arrived at the school, Jonah emerged from the crowd of students huddled in the shade of the portico around one of the other teachers overseeing end-of-day pick-up. He strode confidently out into the bright sun and pointed toward the empty parking lot on the far side of the pick-up lanes. Becca stared back at him and raised her hands in question. He gave her an indulgent grin but didn’t say a word despite her proximity and the car’s open windows. He waved for her to follow and, after checking in both directions (there were no other cars in sight), stepped out into the pick-up lanes in front of her car and led the way to the entrance to the lot and over to the nearest marked space, waving for her to follow over his head, then signaling her with hand gestures into the parking space and signing for her to stop just as her front tires hit the curb. He crossed his arms and gave her a nod of approval from his perch on the bank beyond the curb.
Becca shook her head from behind the windshield, then turned off the car and stepped out into the sun. “They training you to be a traffic cop?”
“Teacher say no parking in the lanes. I need to show you where.”
“Now I’m here, what do I do?”
“Follow me.” He took her hand and led her back toward the school, pausing again to check the lanes in both directions before crossing and striding confidently up the long walk and past the other students.
Becca glanced at the monitoring teacher—a bald man with thick glasses and a slight pot belly hanging over his khaki pants and woven belt—and gave him a shrug and a smile as she passed the group and entered the school. Despite her light-hearted gesture, she felt a momentary foreboding at this after-school excursion, recalled detentions and teacher or principal’s conferences as the only reasons one ever stayed after school. “Jonah, where are you taking me?”
Jonah said, “It’s a surprise.”
“A good one, I hope.”
“You see.”
He led her down the hall and up to the door to his classroom. He knocked softly and looked through the slot of glass. The lights were out but the windows let in plenty of natural light, and they both saw movement on the far side of the glass. Mrs. Anders opened the door with a big smile. “Good,” she said. “You convinced her to come.”
Becca shook her head. “No convincing about it—he gave me no choice.”
Mrs. Anders nodded. “That works. I hope you have time to spare.”
“All the time in the world.”
“Come on, Me-bec,” Jonah said, tugging at her wrist.
Mrs. Anders stepped aside and let the pair pass.
Jonah led Becca to his table. There, spread out in neat order, were three drawings. The first two were rough sketches in pencil on large sheets of newsprint—the first of stars in the sky, a crescent moon, planets (including not one but two with rings like Saturn’s), and roaming spaceships; the other was a landscape of water striking the shore backed by mountains and a sky with clouds and the sun. The sketches, though crude and clearly hurried, each showed Jonah’s nascent gift for blending the surreal with the literal. At the far end of the table was a smaller dark print on heavy mauve-colored construction paper. Jonah reached the end of the table ahead of her and turned on a small goose-necked lamp next to the drawing.
It took Becca’s eyes a minute to adjust to the light, then decipher the drawing’s intricate interlocking of geometric shapes all in black ink pulling the eye toward an octagonal center where three simple figures stood: a black woman in a pale-blue dress, a blond woman in tan shorts and a pink shirt, a black boy in white shirt and dark pants between the other two. Though the figures were very small, like miniatures inside a sugar-crystal egg, their facial features and even their hands and fingers were all clearly defined—and recognizable. The combination of geometric detail in austere black and white with the human detail in color at the center was striking and, to Becca at least, completely original.
Jonah, normally so quiet, couldn’t stand the silence. “What you think, Me-bec? You like it?”
Becca reached out and pulled his head into her chest in a quick hug. “It’s amazing, Jonah. Where in the world did you come up with such a unique idea?”
“You say Me-maw’s pen for pretty designs. I decide to try them designs here. But I don’t like just the designs. So I put you and Me-me-maw and me in the middle with some color. I like people more than designs and color more than black and white.”
“But the patterns are beautiful, Jonah. You need to experiment more with that.”
“Maybe later, Me-bec. First I got some big pictures. Miss Anders have me practice draw some ideas. That’s what on the other paper—practice pictures. You like outer space or ocean?”
“I love them both. Which do you like better?”
“I drawn the ocean. Maybe I try space next.”
“The final frontier,” Becca said.
“What’s that?”
Becca laughed and scrubbed his curly head. “A new thing to draw.”
“Plenty more where that come from,” Jonah said.