The Blossoming Universe of Violet Diamond

by Brenda Woods

  “So?” she asked as she plopped on my bed.

  “So I’m leaving this coming Saturday to go to Los Angeles to stay at her house for a week.”

  “No way. Are you flying alone?”

  “Not. Mom’s driving me back to Seattle and Roxanne and I are taking the plane together.”

  “Why are you calling her Roxanne? Isn’t she your grandma?”

  “Yep,” I replied, “but I didn’t decide what I should call her yet.”

  “Are you gonna go see the Hollywood sign and the Walk of Fame and go to Malibu and Disneyland and Universal City? Because if you are, you have to take me with you.”

  “I don’t think so—not this time, Athena. I mean, I don’t really know her at all, but I don’t think she’d say yes.”

  Athena poked out her lip and frowned.

  “I promise to take lots of pictures, though.”

  “Okay, and then when we’re old . . . like, eighteen . . . we can go there together, promise?”

  I grinned and nodded.

  We went to the kitchen to raid the fridge, and Daisy and Wyatt were already there. They were speaking French to each other. When they do, both Athena and I wonder what they’re saying, but we figure it’s mushy stuff because of the way their eyes get that dreamy-romantic look. When it happens when I’m alone it’s just plain embarrassing, but when Athena’s there she starts clowning around, making it funny.

  “Bonjour, petites dude-ettes, good to see you,” Wyatt said.

  “Hey, Wyatt,” Athena and I replied at the same time.

  When Wyatt kissed Daisy on the tip of her nose, Athena began making imaginary kisses into the air, and said, “Ooh-la-la, lovebirds!” I tried hard to keep the giggles inside my mouth, but they came out anyway.

  Daisy rolled her eyes at us. “Petits enfants. I forgot there were such little children here,” she said.

  Wyatt put two fingers in his mouth and whistled loudly. “Chillax, females!” We all cracked up.

  Daisy joined Athena in the refrigerator raid and asked, “So how was the art show, V?”

  “Fine,” I told her. Later, when we were alone, I’d tell her the whole story, but not now. “Plus we went to Serious Pie.”

  “Lucky Violet,” Daisy said.

  Right then, Athena, with her big mouth, broke my big news. “And she’s going to Los Angeles on Saturday and Disneyland and Hollywood and maybe even Malibu,” she blabbed.

  “What!” Daisy shrieked.

  “Awesome, little dude-ette!” Wyatt shouted.

  Part of me didn’t want to straighten this out, but I knew I had to. Otherwise, the story was going to get bigger and bigger and bigger. “I never said we were going to Disneyland or Hollywood or Malibu, but I am going to Los Angeles for a whole week.”

  “No way! I wanna go,” D whined like a kid begging for a toy.

  I never got to go to Connecticut with Daisy. Now everyone wants to have a piece of my excitement. It’s my turn.

  “Maybe next time,” I said with a big grin.

  “C’est la vie,” Wyatt said to Daisy.

  And with that, the four of us began to devour the food.

  Day by day, like the food on the table, the boring pieces of my life were being swallowed up.

  20

  SOONER THAN I THOUGHT

  That night, Daisy came into my room and sat in one of her yoga poses on the floor. “So tell me.”

  “Everything? It’s a lot.”

  “Everything.”

  After I’d rattled off the whole story, Daisy shook her head as if she couldn’t believe her ears. “And after all that, you still want to go to her house?”

  “She apologized, D. And she was crying,” I said in Roxanne’s defense. “I thought you’d be happy for me.”

  Daisy got up and sat close beside me on the bed. “I am,” she said. “Really.”

  I can’t say why at that moment I wondered if Daisy knew the truth about the accident, but I suppose that’s why it’s called wondering, because it kind of comes unexpectedly, the same way curiosity does. “Did you know Mom was driving when they had the accident?” I asked.

  “Yeah, I knew.”

  “But did you know that Mom made a—”

  Daisy finished the question for me. “A U-turn?”

  “Yeah, a U-turn.”

  Daisy nodded.

  “How come you never told me?”

  Daisy shrugged. “Seemed like it might weird you out.” She paused, then asked, “Did it?”

  I picked nervously at my fingernails. “Yeah, it did.” And that was when I cried.

  Daisy hugged my shoulder and nuzzled me. “Try not to think about that stuff, V. Try to think about having a good time in LA, promise . . . promets?”

  I leaned into my sister’s shoulder. “Okay, promise.”

  • • •

  Once Daisy was gone, I pulled out my notebook of Places Violet Diamond Will Travel to Someday.

  After Los Angeles, California, which I’d written in months ago, I added: And sooner than I thought. Then I numbered 1–7 for seven days.

  Places I’d like to go to while I’m in Los Angeles, California, with Roxanne Diamond, also known as RC, also known as Grandma, or maybe even Kamaria.

  Disneyland, of course

  Universal Studios, possibly

  Santa Monica Beach, I think

  Hollywood, definitely

  Malibu

  ?

  ?

  Because I figured there were places other than the ones I’d thought up where she’d want to take me, I left two days with question marks. I closed my notebook and climbed into bed. I was really tired, and lucky for me, I nodded off fast.

  21

  COUNTDOWN

  It was my day to golf with Poppy, but he had a dental appointment. And as far as I knew, Athena was still getting daily cooking lessons and I wasn’t in the mood to spend all day in anyone’s kitchen, but I didn’t want to stay home, either, so I asked Gam to drop me off at the rink.

  There are days when Gam gets quiet. She calls those her moody days, and I thought maybe this was one of them, because she was hardly talking as we drove. But I wondered if it had something to do with Roxanne and what happened in Seattle. Everyone seemed a little different since Mom and I got back.

  “What’s the matter?” I asked.

  “Nothing. Everything is fine. Just a lot on my mind.”

  “With your online business?”

  Gam nodded.

  I knew Mom had told her about my trip to Los Angeles, but I decided to talk about it anyway. “I’m leaving on Saturday for Los Angeles with Roxanne.”

  “Your mother told me. I expect you’ll have a wonderful time.”

  “I hope so. You’re not mad about that, are you?”

  She gave me a side glance. “Of course not. I’ll just miss you.”

  “Oh, Gam, it’s only a week. I’ll be back before you know it.”

  “She’s a very interesting person, isn’t she?”

  “Yep, unconventional.”

  Gam chuckled. “Not like boring old me.”

  So that was it. “You’re not that boring,” I told her. “Plus you’re extremely nice.”

  That made her smile. “Not that boring, huh?”

  “Most grown-ups are boring, Gam, not just you. Mom is boring, especially when she talks doctor talk. Even Poppy’s boring. I bet even Daisy’ll be boring and Wyatt will be double boring. I mean, he’s already boring.”

  “But you probably won’t be boring, right?” Gam asked.

  “Probably not,” I replied.

  That made her giggle.

  When we reached the rink, Gam took my hand in hers and said, “I suppose when you don’t know about the other part of your family, it feels like there�
��s something missing. Like all of the pieces of the puzzle aren’t there.”

  Gam had put my feelings into words.

  “Exactly,” I told her.

  She squeezed my hand tightly. “I really hope you find those pieces, V. And I especially want you to have a good time.”

  “I’m not gone yet,” I reminded her.

  “I know, but I just needed to say that. Pick you up at three. Wait inside, promise?”

  “Yep,” I said. I kissed her on the cheek, grabbed my skates, and climbed out of the car.

  22

  FINALLY

  As expected, Yaz was on the ice, practicing jumps and spins. Watching her glide, I hoped she would actually make it to the Olympics someday or at least go to Nationals. Yaz Kilroy really is amazing. As soon as she saw me, she waved and zoomed toward me.

  “Where’ve you been? I called your house on Saturday and Daisy told me you were gone for the weekend,” Yaz said as she came off the ice, slid on her plastic blade guards, and joined me on the bleachers. Her smile revealed shiny new braces.

  “You got braces!” I shrieked.

  “Do I look ugly? Tell me the truth,” she demanded.

  Yaz was so extremely cute, she could never look ugly, and that’s what I told her.

  “You’d better not be lying, V,” she warned, then questioned me again. “So where’d you go?” My friend Yaz not only badgers—like a detective, she asks a lot of questions.

  “I went to an art exhibit in Seattle.”

  “Oh, I thought maybe you went somewhere exciting.”

  “It was my grandmother’s art show and I got to meet her for the first time and on Saturday I’m going with her to Los Angeles for a week and to Disneyland, I hope,” I rambled.

  “Your black grandma?”

  “Yep.”

  Yaz scrunched up her face and said, “That’s weird.”

  “What’s weird?” I asked.

  “That you’re eleven years old and you never met her. Where’s she been?”

  Right then, I was happy and I really didn’t feel like talking about the embarrassing Roxanne Diamond story, so I just answered, “Living in another country.”

  Of course that wasn’t enough of an answer for Yaz the interrogator. “Where?”

  I blurted out, “Paris.”

  “Paris isn’t a country, V. There’s even a city called Paris in Texas.”

  I squinted at her out of the corner of my eye. “Paris, France, and Berlin and Africa, too.”

  That seemed to satisfy Yaz, and when they started to play music in the rink, she ordered me to put on my skates and dragged me off the bleachers. Onto the ice we sailed and did some ice dancing to the rhythm.

  Later, when Yaz’s mom, Mrs. Kilroy, showed up, Yaz blabbed to her about my grandma from Paris, France, and something in the way Mrs. Kilroy looked at me made me wonder if she knew the whole story. She and my mom do talk now and then.

  But lucky for me, Mrs. Kilroy didn’t give me away. She just smiled and said, “How nice that you finally got to meet her.” It seemed like the only word I heard was finally.

  23

  SHOPPING

  After dinner that night, Mom showed up at my door and said, “We’re going shopping, V . . . c’mon.”

  “Shopping?” I love shopping. I grabbed my pack and off we went.

  “Does Roxanne live in a house or an apartment?” I asked as we climbed in the car.

  “A house. In an older, very charming, interesting neighborhood,” Mom said as we pulled out of the driveway.

  “Good interesting or bad interesting?” I asked. “Is Roxanne poor or something?”

  “No, it’s a very nice neighborhood, mostly black. It used to be the center of a lot of African American cultural life in Los Angeles. It’s the house your father grew up in. It isn’t modern like ours, but . . . she’s hardly poor.”

  Remembering the price tags I’d seen on her artwork, I said, “I didn’t think so, because her paintings sure cost a lot.”

  “But some artists only sell a few paintings a year,” Mom explained.

  “Then maybe we should buy one of her paintings,” I suggested.

  “Maybe we should.”

  “Just not that labyrinth mind one . . . it was scary.”

  Mom laughed and said, “I always looked forward to seeing his family’s home, but it was never to be. He said he’d practically grown up in an art gallery. I’m glad you’ll get to see it.”

  “Maybe you will, too, someday,” I told her.

  “Maybe,” she replied.

  At the mall, I got to pick out two dresses and a new bathing suit and a purple tank top with matching shorts. I love purple. Then we went to the shoe store and I got new sandals.

  “Are you buying all this stuff for my trip? I’m only going to be gone for a week.”

  Mom took my hand. “I want it to be very special for you, V, that’s all.”

  So do I.

  24

  AIRPORTS AND AIRPLANES

  Though being in charge of a hotel seems like it would be fun, whenever I go to the airport, I begin to think working there would be okay, too, especially if I got to fly to a lot of different places. And when I say fly, I don’t mean being a flight attendant, I mean being a pilot.

  I knew there were female pilots because we’d taken some flights where a woman was the captain, and I’d been on others where black men were the pilots, but I’d never seen an African American female pilot.

  “Are there black women who fly planes?”

  “Of course,” Mom replied. “Remember that book you read about the pilot Elizabeth Coleman?”

  I did. “But that book was about almost a century ago. I mean black women who fly planes now . . . and big planes that carry lots of people, not little airplanes like in that book.”

  “Oh, you mean commercial pilots.”

  “I suppose . . . I was thinking flying airplanes might be cool, and I was just wondering if they would let me become that or not.”

  Mom’s face got the insect-sting look and she abruptly stopped walking, so I stopped with her. “They? Who’s they?” she asked.

  “The people in charge of stuff. I mean, for a long time they didn’t let black people do certain jobs even though they were smart enough. Remember why Martin Luther King and his friends had to march to Washington and stuff? And it’s a whole new century and all Yaz talks about is being the first African American female to win an Olympic ice skating gold medal. Mr. Kilroy says that after all these years she should at least be the second or maybe even the third. He says certain things are different if you’re black.”

  “Certain things are different if you’re black,” she repeated, but it wasn’t a question.

  “Yep, like Yaz’s mom is always telling her she has to work harder at ice skating because of her color. She’s says there’s still prejudice, but most people try to pretend there isn’t. And I think maybe she’s right, because sometimes people look at me and you funny, but mostly older people. So I don’t want to try to be something if I’m going to have to work harder because I’m black.”

  “Violet Diamond, haven’t I taught you that you can be anything you want to be? And I’m certain there are African American female commercial pilots. There have to be. You can research that on your computer when you get back home.”

  At that point, Mom took my hand and we started walking again toward the terminal.

  “Or maybe I can look it up online when I’m with Roxanne. She has to have a computer, right?”

  Again, Mom stopped walking, and this time she kind of yanked my hand. I felt like a dog on a leash. “I think you should call her a grandmother name instead of Roxanne. It doesn’t sound very respectful.”

  “Hmm . . . I think I’ll figure that out with her. I mean, I know I don’t want to call her Gam, and Gra
ndma doesn’t really fit her. I’ll let you know when I get back. Can we go now before I miss the plane?”

  Roxanne Diamond was waiting at the security checkpoint. Unlike the greeting we got at the gallery, Roxanne rushed over, smiling. “I thought maybe you weren’t coming.”

  “My mom wouldn’t do that. When she makes a promise, she always keeps it,” I proudly told her.

  “That’s good to know,” Roxanne replied.

  Before we got in the security line I hugged my mom tightly and I grabbed my carry-on case.

  “I’ll take good care of her,” Roxanne promised my mom, patting her shoulder. They both had tears in their eyes.

  Just as we got to the terminal, a last call to board for Los Angeles came over the loudspeaker. “That’s our flight,” Roxanne said.

  I scurried toward the doors that led to the plane. “C’mon, Roxanne!” I yelled.

  25

  BIBI

  Even though she was my grandmother, because I’d only met her twice before, it was like being with a stranger.

  Sitting in the seat beside me, Roxanne kept staring at me.

  When is this plane going to take off?

  “I’m not trying to be impolite, but you’re sort of making me feel like a zoo animal,” I whispered.

  “I’m sorry,” she whispered back.

  The engine began to roar and the pilot started talking and when the flight attendants gave their safety talk, I memorized the exits.

  “Do you think it’d be fun to fly a plane?” I asked her.

  “It’s lots of fun, Violet,” she replied.

  “No way . . . you flew an airplane?”

  “Yep. I took a few lessons in a two-seater plane a long time ago.”

  I studied her face to see if she was lying and decided she wasn’t. “Wow. Did you get a pilot’s license?”

  “No, my uncle had been a Tuskegee Airman and he used to take me up with him when I’d go to visit him during the summer. So I suppose flying is in my blood.”