“. . . yeah, that’s usually true,” I say, turning to face her full on, “especially when it’s a frenemy like Orchid Richardson. But not this time, okay?”
She looks up. “How bad is Orchid Richardson?”
“Worse than the worst in every way.”
“My mom taught me this thing, this way to help deal with people . . . who are maybe hard to deal with, how you can study them, to figure out what costume they would wear. But it’s a really good way to help get through time with people you don’t really want to be with.”
I hope she’s not putting me in that category. I wonder if she talked to her mom about me. I remember the expression on her face when Tom was walking Brianna down to the ocean. I wonder if I looked the same way, because I was thinking Dad should be the only father holding Brianna’s hand.
“Your mom?” I’m not sure where to go next. Her face closes up, and she looks away again.
“I mean . . . is there something wrong?” It’s like when I think I’ve found the right puzzle piece, and I keep trying to make it fit because it’s so close. “Are you mad about coming over to our house?” I ask. “Because it wasn’t exactly my idea, you know.” I stop myself. “Not that you’re not welcome, though, I mean . . .” I stop. There is nothing I can say to make this string of words get any better.
She shrugs, and now I realize why Momma hates it when I do that.
Fine.
Great. This is going to be great.
Momma gives us a plate of the chocolate-butterscotch cookies that we made last night. Now I’m not so sure I want to waste them on NAOMI EDITH THE GROUCH, but if I don’t, I won’t get any either. She eats three of them really fast, without speaking. And she gets up from the table without asking to be excused. And Momma doesn’t even say anything, because she’s too busy saying everything to Tom. I’m almost too mad to eat, but luckily, I come to my senses and sneak another cookie as Bri leads her to our bedroom. I follow, slowly.
“What should we play-ay?” sings Bri. She doesn’t give us a chance to answer. “Family! They’re going to the bathroom,” she adds, totally unnecessarily, and runs out of the room.
NAOMI EDITH shrugs, looking around the room at my posters of the Williams sisters and Malala, the Muppets collection that I inherited from Dad, the gold cape Momma made me last Halloween, and the tower of board games. I can’t tell what she thinks.
Bri comes back, carrying an armful of dolls. “They were taking a nap,” she says, which in Briannese means that she was playing with them in the bathroom when Momma said it was time to leave, so she threw them in the laundry basket. Blech. She looks at NAOMI EDITH, who is sitting on my bed (without asking permission). “Did you bring any dolls?”
“Um, no,” she answers. I guess she’s talking now. “I don’t really . . . play with dolls anymore.”
“Neither do I,” I say quickly. I laser-eye Bri as she opens her mouth, then closes it. “But it’s something that I do, you know, as a big sister.” Bri is looking at me like she doesn’t know who I am, so I grab the Rahel doll quickly and start fluffing her hair.
“Well, we only have Brown dolls,” says Bri, looking worried, “so I don’t know if you can play with them.”
Naomi Edith makes a face. “What do you mean? I’m not allowed to play with your dolls because they’re Brown?” Now she looks more than grouchy.
“We only have Brown dolls in this house,” says Bri in her talking-like-Momma voice, “because they are a re-fek-shun of our beauty.” The other Naomi looks at her.
I speak up. “Everybody’s allowed to play,” I say. “Bri means that . . . if you don’t want to play with Brown dolls, you’ll have a problem.” I hug Bri’s shoulders. “And it’s re-FLEC-tion,” I whisper, but in a kind, big sisterly way. I keep hugging Bri close. I’m like Delphine in One Crazy Summer.
“What kind of dolls do you have?” Bri asks.
“Like I said, I don’t play with mine anymore.” Then she goes quiet for a minute, like she’s thinking about something she never thought about before. “But I guess . . . you’ll need to bring yours when you come to my house.” She points to Livia, whose soccer uniform is a little ripped. “Can I have her?”
“Have have or play-with have?” asks Bri, putting her hands on her hips like she thinks she’s me.
“Play-with have, silly,” we both answer. Then we look at each other and roll our eyes. Kids.
Bri’s version of family is basically Bri telling these really long stories and saying stuff like, “Okay, now you put her HERE, and then YOU put HER here,” so as long as you move the dolls around the way she wants, it’s pretty easy to have a totally different conversation at the same time.
“Those cookies were good,” says Naomi Edith after a while. “Did you get them from that bakery you like?”
“We made them last night,” I answer. “But Shelly Ann taught me how.” I look up and add, “Thanks.” I’m pretty sure that was an apology for being grouchy, because I do the same thing sometimes.
“Do you . . . like to cook?” I ask. Momma was all “Get to know her! You might have more things in common!” so I’m trying, but I bet it’s more of the you-play-chess-she-plays-checkers-look-you’re-BFFs! kind of thing.
“Kind of. My dad and I aren’t so great about meals,” she says. “My mom makes the best French toast! She used to—” She stops. Bri decides that all the dolls are now going to live in a longhouse, mostly because she wants to touch my Lenape diorama. I tell her she can, but that if she’s not careful, I get to keep Rahel forever.
“Um, so about your mom . . .” I’m not sure I should bring this up again, but I’m not sure I shouldn’t either. “I mean, like, do you talk to her a lot?”
“Yeah, on Skype,” she answers. “I’m going to visit her soon.”
“Oh, that’s good,” I say, even though I know that “soon” doesn’t mean she can just walk down the street and hang out at her mom’s house any time she wants. And I can tell she knows that too—really, really well. She’s looking around the room again.
“So do you have any posters of . . . Edith Head?” I ask.
She smiles. “Even better. I have these sketches she made of dresses she designed for Audrey Hepburn. Well, they’re really my mom’s, but they’re still in our house.”
I’ve heard of Audrey Hepburn. My nana said she was almost as glamorous as Lena Horne.
“But even people who weren’t, like, obvious movie stars—Edith Head could create the perfect costume, and they’d be all glamorous just from putting on a dress.”
“She kind of took her name and made it cool,” I say.
“Are you saying Edith isn’t a cool name?” she asks, and even though I can tell she’s half joking, I don’t want to get on the other half’s side.
“My friend Xiomara wanted to come over.” I change the subject.
“Is she nice?”
“Um, well, she’s my friend, so she would have to be. . . .” I raise my eyebrows. “Unless you think I’m not nice.”
She kind of shrugs again, but this time I can tell it’s totally joking, and we both laugh.
“We can do a World Explorer Challenge,” she says, and it takes me a minute to remember that she’s talking about our game. “With cats.”
“Or dogs,” I answer. “Poodles who like fashion.” I start giggling. “Poodle is such a funny name!”
“How about wombats?”
“Aardvarks!”
We spend a few minutes throwing out weird animal names until Bri yells at us for not paying attention to the fact that now the dolls are Arctic explorers. My Venus and Serena dolls are sharing a pair of baby doll socks.
“Maybe one Saturday we can go to Morningstar and my friend Annie can meet us there,” Naomi Edith says. “And Xiomara too.”
“Maybe,” I say as Bri comes over carrying Clue, which she is terrible at playing.
“And Orchid Richardson,” she adds.
“That’s not even funny,” I say, until I realize s
he’s joking. “Very funny.”
She grins and shrugs, this time like Who, me?
“One game,” I say to Bri, “and then let’s play something different. Something that none of us has ever played before.”
By the time Momma calls us back into the living room, we’ve played three rounds of Be Friends, which is a game that Auntie Helen gave me last Christmas but I never played because it’s one of those cooperative games that my neighbor Feather plays at Urban Wholechild School, and those are always boring. The Other Naomi and I made it into a trivia challenge game, and Bri was happy as long as she got to ring the little bell that was in the box.
Momma and Tom are all smiley at the door, and I feel a little shy all of a sudden; but I smile when I say bye, and I don’t stop Bri from giving the Other Naomi a hug.
“Ciao for now, Brianna and Naomi Marie!” Tom says, and he waves.
Excuse you?
“That was nice, wasn’t it?” says Momma, in a telling-not-really-asking voice. “Let’s relax for a little while, huh? Just the three of us.”
I’m quiet as Bri lines up my wizard chess pieces for entry to a dollhouse party. Momma stretches out on the couch.
“It’s not everyone who can say she loves bringing her work home,” she says, picking up a book. “You’ll love this one—I’ll let you read it before I take it to school.” She pats the seat next to her. “Want to join me? Did you finish reading The Jumbies already? Was it scary?”
“Momma, Tom called me Naomi Marie,” I say.
“He did?” she says, not looking at me.
“Yes,” I say. “He did.” And the way I say it makes her put the book down.
“Did it bother you?” she asks slowly. “He’s heard me saying it, and I guess it’s also the way we were hoping to, uh, resolve the whole, um, name situation.”
I can feel a pout coming on, which is so babyish, but it’s better than— Never mind. I’m crying.
“Oh, honey!” Momma pulls me into her arms and waits for me to get to the sniffle stage. “Do you really think I call you Naomi Marie only when I’m angry? I’m pretty sure I say it when I’m glad too.”
“Mostly angry,” I say. “Sometimes it’s Naomi Marie Bennett, sometimes Naomi Marie What Were You Thinking too.”
Momma smiles. “I certainly don’t mean for it to feel that way. I love saying Naomi Marie. It makes me think of Marie and all the good memories we shared with her.” Marie was Momma’s best friend from childhood and my godmother who was like a living birthday present and one-woman party up until I was seven. Then she got sick, and sicker, and then she was gone.
“I know! I mean, I’m glad it’s my middle name; but sometimes it seems like you’re not, or something,” I say slowly. “I used to wonder if it made you sad.”
Momma doesn’t say anything, and we sit for a while.
“I wonder too,” she finally says. “I can’t tell you all the things that go through my mind—I don’t even know them all myself—but I know this: You are growing up into your beautiful wonderful self, Naomi Marie”—she puts a finger to my lips—“and I’m so proud of you, and Marie would be so proud of you too. I’m grateful for the time we had on this earth with her, and I would rather have had that, even with the sad parts, than nothing at all. We got to love her, and she loved us, and sometimes loving is hard; but that doesn’t make it bad, right?” There are tears in Momma’s eyes, but she’s smiling at me too. She takes a deep breath. “So from this day forth I declare officially that your name, Naomi Marie, is a celebration of the fullness of love that surrounds you, okay?”
Fullness of love . . . I sit and let those words wrap around me.
Then Momma tickles me.
I giggle as I squirm away. “But it’s also a way to tell me from the Other Naomi.”
Momma nods. “Yep. Because it’s not like we can tell you apart otherwise, right?”
She smiles and so do I, and I almost tell her that the Other . . . that Naomi (Edith) made the same joke, but I don’t. I get The Jumbies and snuggle with Momma until Brianna comes over with Tea Cakes for Tosh, and Momma and I take turns reading it aloud. And then we have some caramel cake from Shelly Ann’s and snuggle some more. I’m glad we still have cake and couch time. And each other.
CHAPTER SIXTEEN
Naomi E.
“What time did you say Annie’s dad was picking her up?” Dad calls from the kitchen, where he’s making a crazy amount of plate-clattery noise.
I glance at Annie to see if she heard. Mom always called me into the kitchen to ask that kind of question. She said it was rude to ask when the person you were talking about could hear. That always seemed a little silly, because Annie doesn’t care at all about politeness, but right now I’m thinking she was right.
But Annie doesn’t even look up. She’s busy glue gunning some weird piece of material my mom left here onto her backpack. “At four,” she says.
“Four,” I yell into the kitchen.
“I may need some help before then,” Dad yells.
“What kind?” I ask.
“Dinner,” he says. That gets Annie’s attention. Because I don’t think my dad has ever before thought about a meal so many hours before the actual meal. She unplugs the glue gun and without a word walks into the kitchen with me.
Whoa. Dad would kill me if I made a mess like this.
There are grocery bags with stuff spilling out of them hanging off drawers. Pots and pan covers and a colander are piled high in the sink and spread out all over the counter. A knocked-over jar of tomato sauce is leaking onto the floor a little. Each drop, drop, drop makes a new red spot on the gray floor.
“What are you doing?” I ask.
“How can we help?” Annie asks.
“Maybe find the plates that all match each other?” he says, pointing to a cabinet in the dining room that we probably haven’t opened since Mom left.
Why is he thinking about finding plates we never use? When there’s a whole big mess in the kitchen. “What’s going on?” I ask.
“Dinner,” Dad says, impatient. “Grandma and Grandpa and Valerie and the girls.”
“What?! Today? All of them????”
Dad pulls a bag of green stuff out of the refrigerator, stares at it for a few seconds, and then puts it on the counter. He looks confused. But then a little annoyed too. With me. “How many times did I tell you?”
It’s all . . . Oh, right. “You told me about Grandma and Grandpa coming Sunday. And then something about Valerie. But you never said it together. I didn’t know they were all coming at once. Why couldn’t Valerie and Naomi and Brianna come one day and Grandma and Grandpa another? Mom always says about birthday parties that every guest should know at least one other guest. Grandma and Grandpa don’t know Valerie!”
“I thought it was time to change that,” Dad says.
“Your grandmother knows your grandfather,” Annie says. “And he knows her.”
Gee, thanks, Annie.
I go into the dining room and look for the plates. If I’d known the other Naomi was coming over, I’d have thought about our DuoTek project. Shoot. She’s really, really into it. Like it’s superimportant to her that our project be one of the best. No. It has to be the absolute best. Even though it’s only a class at the Y.
Still. I should have thought about it more, since it has to be done soon. I haven’t put anything in the Dump. And I think there’s a message I didn’t answer. It’s just . . . that class. Whenever I think about it, I start getting mad at Dad all over again for the way he signed me up, how it was a sneaky way for me and the other Naomi to be forced together while he spends time with Valerie and Brianna. It’s extra-complicated because he seems so happy when we’re with them, and I hated it when he was sad all the time.
The plates are in the last place I look: the bottom on the right, behind some big bottles. They’re dusty, so I get some paper towels to wipe them off.
It looks like Annie has been doing a full inspection of the ingredien
ts all over the counters and the kitchen table. She knows what Dad can cook, and grilled cheese is by far the most complicated thing he’s ever made. “Are you making lasagna?” she asks. She looks at my dad as though she hasn’t seen him in a while, and he maybe grew a beard and changed his hair color or something. Like she only almost recognizes him.
“Lasagna. Yes. And three-greens salad. And bread.”
“You’re BAKING a BREAD?” Annie asks, because Annie gets it.
Apparently, so does Dad. “No. Morningstar baked the bread. I’ll be serving the bread. But I am making a lasagna.”
“I found the plates,” I say. “But why are we being so . . . We never eat off these plates when Grandma and Grandpa come.”
“Maybe you could set the table. Well, first clear it off.”
He couldn’t have thought of this two weeks ago? It’s covered—stuff from my cycle-of-nature report and some art projects I did in school that I’m going to mail to Mom and all Dad’s newspapers and bills. I find a box in the room that used to be Mom’s office, which is still not even close to being a library/TV/music/relax-and-also-we’ll-be-allowed-to-eat-in-there room, and I throw all the stuff on the table into the box and push it with my foot into the so-called library/TV/etc. room.
When I get back in the kitchen, Annie is explaining to Dad that you need to cook the meat before you put it in the lasagna. I hope she got to all the important parts, because when a horn honks, Annie grabs her stuff and runs out the door.
“What kind of salad are you making?” Salad! I really wanted to ask that the way Mom and I would, saying the opposite of what I mean. “I know you’re a chef-expert at salad making. So how did you decide on this very kind you’ll be serving this evening?” But Dad seems to have even less of a sense of humor right now than he usually does.
“Three-greens salad,” he says, like that explains everything. I picture three different shades of green crayons. Yum.
I wish Mom could see this. Sort of.
“Dad! Did you and Mom talk about when I could visit, because remember she said that maybe I could go out there and she said that you and she would—”
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