When I’m not there, Aubrey will be so mad, and he’s not going to forgive me.
And I guess I will go back to invisible Jenae. For some reason, that doesn’t sound as appealing as it used to.
But when I get home, I don’t have time to worry about speeches or Aubrey or anything else, because Gee is home. The television is blaring, and he has a blanket over him like it’s the middle of the winter.
Malcolm has a chair pulled up next to Gee, and he’s eating sunflower seeds.
“Gee!” I call out, and rush to his side. He doesn’t answer me, so I pick up his hand and squeeze it. His skin feels paper-thin, and I can’t remember if it felt that way before he went to the hospital.
“How are you feeling?” I ask, setting down his hand and giving a light feather touch to his blanket. It’s one of those throws people like to give for Christmas when they don’t know you very well.
Gee still doesn’t answer me, and I think about what Mama said.
“Hello to you too,” Malcolm teases.
“Hey, Malcolm,” I say, not taking my eyes off Gee. “Is Gee . . . ?” I lean away from Gee, closer to my brother, so I can whisper. “Is he still not talking?”
Malcolm gives Gee’s shoulder a small push. “Whatcha think, Gee? You got something to say?”
Gee turns his head, slow, slow, slow, and considers Malcolm before turning back to his movie.
“Cool with me, old man,” Malcolm says. “I don’t even blame you. People talk too much.” Malcolm points to a notepad next to Gee that I hadn’t noticed. “Mama put that out. Said Gee could write down anything he wants to say, but he doesn’t seem interested.” He relaxes back into his chair and tosses more seeds into his mouth. A pile of shells is on a paper towel next to him. I like sunflower seeds, but I don’t like the mess of shells they leave behind.
“Where is Mama?” I ask.
“She had to go back to work after she brought Gee home. Some big project or something.”
“But . . .” I want to say that somebody should be here taking care of Gee. Somebody who isn’t broken too.
“Aw, look, Gee! The dude is hiding in the canyon,” Malcolm says, like Westerns are suddenly his favorite thing too, and it doesn’t seem like there’s space for me.
I head to the kitchen to make myself a snack. Before I go through the swinging door, I look back at Gee and Malcolm.
Out of all the people in the world I could’ve hurt, I hurt the only two people who think I’m fine just the way I am. I push the door hard and rush past before it can whack me.
Suddenly, a snack doesn’t sound so good. I want to scream and shout. I want to tell everybody that the worst girl in the world lives right here in this house. Instead, I pour Malcolm and Gee each a glass of iced tea and even put a sprig of mint in their glasses.
I head back into the living room and hand Malcolm his, but when I try to hand Gee his glass, Malcolm waves it away. “He’s good for now.” I set the glass next to Gee in case he wants it later, then settle on the couch. I should probably start on homework, but for now I just want to sit behind Malcolm and Gee, concentrating on them both as hard as I can.
Malcolm keeps talking to Gee, even though Gee isn’t saying a word.
“Oh, man, Gee, didn’t I tell you the dude was going to get caught on purpose? Bet you didn’t see that coming.”
Mama told me once that when Malcolm was little, he’d sit on Gee’s lap and the two of them would watch Westerns together. Watching the two of them now I can completely see it. Small Malcolm, not even aware there was something called basketball yet, cuddled up in Gee’s lap, feeling a steady beating heart and strong arms.
If I let the couch swallow me whole and disappear entirely, I’m certain both Gee and Malcolm wouldn’t notice.
I clear my throat. “Do you like this one, Gee? Is John Wayne in it?”
“Me and Gee are done with John Wayne,” Malcolm says, tipping his glass at Gee. “Plenty of Westerns that don’t have his racist butt starring in them.”
I don’t think Gee has decided any such thing; I’m sure Malcolm has made this decision for both of them, and that doesn’t seem fair.
“If he was so racist, why do some people want the school to stay named after him?”
Malcolm cracks a mouthful of seeds before answering me. “That’s a good question. Why would they?”
“Because they don’t think he was racist?”
Malcolm shakes his head.
“Because they don’t like change? That makes the most sense to me.” I’ve been thinking about this a lot. Even if Mr. Humphries hadn’t told us that it’s a good idea to look at the other side when figuring out your argument. The people I saw outside the school who want the school to stay John Wayne don’t seem bad or mean. “Lots of people don’t like change.”
Malcolm says, “I think it’s more than that.” He cracks some more seeds in his mouth. “But you’re right about change. I don’t know why people are always on hype about change being good.”
I don’t think he’s thinking about my school; he’s probably thinking about how his life has changed. I try to think of something to say, so even though I’m one of those people who don’t particularly like change, I say, “Well, but sometimes, even when we don’t see it at first”—I pause because I feel like I have to be really careful so I don’t make Malcolm mad—“maybe even a bad change can work out okay in the end?” The last few words come out a little breathless, like I was running a race.
Malcolm frowns at me. Then he points at his knee. “This is going to be good? How? Tell me how, Jenae.” His voice is raised and angry, and a tremor runs through Gee, and I can’t tell if he is shaking his head or just trembling.
When I don’t answer him, Malcolm gets up and starts the long journey upstairs, leaving his mess of seeds behind.
After his door slams shut, I look at the ceiling and imagine Malcolm up in his room, being angry and disappointed. I pull my phone out and stare at Rox’s name. She said she was going to call him. Why hasn’t she?
Malcolm isn’t doing so good.
It’s not an awful message. Not really. It’s just the truth. So why do I feel so bad when I press send?
40
Going Somewhere
I shouldn’t be texting Rox behind Malcolm’s back. It feels sneaky and wrong and the type of thing Gee would tell me to “leave off” doing if he was talking. I get up and start bouncing on my toes. I need to do something or go somewhere.
“Hey, Gee,” I say. “You want to get out of the house for a while? Go out to your chair in the backyard?”
Gee doesn’t answer me, but he grips the arms of his chair, and suddenly it’s as if electricity filled the room.
“Come on,” I say.
I help him up even though he doesn’t seem to need it.
Except for not talking, it’s hard to tell there’s anything wrong with Gee. Mama says he was lucky because sometimes people who have strokes can’t even come home for a while. They have to go stay somewhere trying to get stronger and move how they used to. Gee would’ve hated that.
Gee starts toward the front door, and I basically have no choice except to follow him. “Um, are you sure you want to go out front, Gee?”
Gee keeps moving resolutely to the door until all I can do is reach for the heavy knob and turn it.
Outside, a slight breeze tickles the leaves of the tall birch trees, and the sun finds the part in my hair, warming up that little road of scalp. The green, green grass, which Mama says is embarrassing because it means we’re watering more than we should, glistens.
“It’s nice out here, isn’t it, Gee?” I ask. Maybe Gee’s right. Maybe the best thing to do when you have a problem is to go outside.
Gee hustles down the walkway, me steady gripping his arm. I don’t know what I’ll do if he keeps going when he gets all the way to the sidewalk. I didn’t think this idea through. And just like I was afraid of, when we get to the sidewalk, Gee doesn’t even pause, and I have no
choice but to go along with him. I throw a frightened look over my shoulder. This was a bad idea.
At the house next door, Gee turns up the walkway. This is Mrs. Woodley’s house. She is nice and very old. Most of the people on our street are old.
When we get to Mrs. Woodley’s front door, Gee pats his pockets and looks around. And then he gets an expression of panic on his face, and seeing him look like a scared little boy hurts my heart. It feels like it’s getting squeezed. I need to get him back home.
I start pulling at his arm. “Come on, Gee,” I say. “Come on, let’s go back.”
I’m sweating, and Gee is clearly looking for something, and at first, I worry that he’s looking for that little gun, but when he opens Mrs. Woodley’s shiny white mailbox, I know what he must be looking for. Not the gun, but mail. Like when he worked for the post office. Mama said all the little strokes made Gee’s brain sort of fuzzy, and probably the big one did more damage. I think he’s forgotten he isn’t a mail carrier anymore. That gives me an idea of how to get him back inside. “You left your mail sack at the last house,” I say. I don’t know why I didn’t say our house, except maybe if Gee is imagining he’s delivering mail, it will make more sense in his head if this is all part of his route. “Come on, let’s go back and get it.”
That brings a smile to Gee’s face, and it feels good knowing I put it there.
Back at our house, before I can open the door, it swings open, and Malcolm steps outside.
“Oh, there you are,” he says. He has both crutches under one arm and his car keys in his other hand.
“Going somewhere?” I ask him.
“I was fixin’ to . . . um, get something to eat,” Malcolm says, sounding like he’s lying. I wonder if he got a call from Rox. I hope so, so I don’t say anything about all the food we have in the fridge. “You got this?” he asks me.
By this, he means Gee. “Yeah, sure,” I say.
“I’ll only be gone for a few. Just let Gee watch television. He likes that. Let’s get him back inside.”
I don’t admit it to him, but I’m happy to have Malcolm’s help with Gee. Once we’re back inside I can relax.
As soon as we’re through the door, Malcolm says, “Don’t give Jenae a hard time, Gee,” and leaves.
After the door closes, Gee looks at me expectantly.
“Let’s get you back in your chair and—”
Gee makes a gurgling sound and grabs my arm. He gives it a hard squeeze.
I stare at him, and he stares right back, and it’s like we’re in one of those movies of his, doing a standoff. And I know who’s going to win. Shoot.
I had thought Gee would forget about the mail once we were back inside, but obviously not. “Ooookay,” I say. Taking Gee back outside isn’t a great idea, but I don’t see what choice I have.
I put both hands on his arms. “Wait right here.” I dash over to the china cabinet. There’s a built-in desk that looks just like another drawer until you pull it out, and then you can fold down the front of the drawer and that makes a flat surface to write on. And inside there are small cubbies for stationery and bills and stuff.
I grab a bunch of greeting cards charities send that Mama saves even though she never uses them. (What if someone turns them over and sees I’m sending them a card I got for free?) She says she keeps them just in case, and right now I’m glad she does. I put a bunch of cards in envelopes and look over my shoulder at Gee. He’s just standing there, watching me and waiting.
I’m not really sure whether he’d notice the envelopes are blank, so I hurriedly write names like Neighbor and Occupant and then our street and city and zip code, just in case Gee is too smart to deliver mail to the wrong person. I throw a look over at him after each card. He hasn’t moved. I make the last envelope out to Mrs. Woodley, just in case Gee wants to go next door again.
The envelopes look legit, except for not having stamps on them.
Mama would probably kill me if I wasted stamps on fake mail, but I’m not sure if Gee will deliver them if there’s no postage. Then I remember my sticker collection that I put in one of the small drawers. The stickers look close enough to stamps, so I start putting them on. I look at Gee again, and now he’s swaying a little. “Hold on, Gee!” I call out.
After the last sticker is attached, I yank a bag out of one of the drawers and shove the envelopes inside. Then I rush back to Gee. He grins at me in a way that makes me think he knows we’re about to get up to something. Or maybe he knows he’s getting the heck out of Dodge.
“Okay, look, we’ve got mail to deliver,” I say, opening the bag and showing him the envelopes and saying a silent prayer he doesn’t look too close. I turn him around, and we go back outside, and I’m thinking that either I’m a genius or really dumb.
Gee and I walk down the street, delivering our mail. When we get to Tía Rosalie’s house, just as Gee is about to slide one of our cards into the mailbox, Tía Rosalie surprises us by opening her door.
“Jenae! Grady!” she says, as if she’s been waiting for us all day. “It’s so nice seeing you.” She’s smiling, but her eyes go back and forth between me and Gee, questioning.
“Buenas tardes,” I say. Tía Rosalie taught me how to say simple stuff in Spanish, and she always is happy when I show her I remember. She smiles and gives me a little nod. “We’re just out delivering some mail,” I explain. I hope she doesn’t make a big deal about the mail not being real.
“Gracias,” she says, taking the envelope from Gee’s hand. “I always love getting cards.” She slides out the card. “Oh, how did you know?” She turns the card around so I can see it was one of the Congratulations! ones. “I just heard my daughter got a promotion. I’m so happy for her. And now I have something to brag about when Mathilde gets going about her kids.”
I grin at her for playing along with us. Gee and Tía Rosalie used to share seeds and cuttings from their yards. I’m not sure if they still do, but her eyes are so warm and friendly when she looks at him. If Gee were talking, the two of them would start chatting away in Spanish. He learned Spanish in school and never forgot it. He says it’s easy in Los Angeles because lots of people speak Spanish here. Maybe one day I’ll learn more than a couple of words.
“I heard you were in the hospital,” Tía Rosalie tells Gee. “Hard to believe. You look fine to me. Better than fine, no? Muy bien. How are you feeling?”
One side of Gee’s mouth smiles at her.
“He’s fine, Tía Rosalie,” I answer for him.
She nods at that. “My cousin Reuben? Three months he stayed at a rehabilitation center after his stroke. Couldn’t move much at all at first. But look at you—you’ll be back running the streets in no time,” she tells Gee. “Maybe you can come up to the school with me next time I go, eh?” Then she invites us in for hot cocoa, and before I can tell her, No, thank you, Gee takes a step forward.
I’ve never been inside Tía Rosalie’s house before, but it’s almost exactly like our house. The walls are painted a different color, but I’m sure behind the door in her dining room is the kitchen, and right off the kitchen there is most likely a breakfast nook and a big service porch.
Even though I’ve known Tía Rosalie all my life, it feels strange to be inside her house. But Gee follows her to the kitchen like it’s the most normal thing, so I follow right behind him.
I expect Tía Rosalie to whip out packs of instant hot cocoa, but instead she pours milk into a pot on the stove and turns on the flame. Then she breaks chunks of hard chocolate from a package and drops the chunks into the milk. She plops some cinnamon sticks in too. Gee settles comfortably in a chair at her kitchen table like he’s been there a hundred times.
“Have you ever had Mexican hot chocolate before?” Tía Rosalie asks over her shoulder, and I shake my head. “Ah, then you’re in for a treat.”
She turns down the flame under the pot and keeps stirring.
“Tía Rosalie, why are people protesting at our school?” I ask. “I mean
I know it’s about the name, but is that really going to change people’s minds?”
“My cousin Hector said more people need to show up. Make sure people know how we feel.”
“Will it . . . um, make a difference, though?” I don’t see how people standing in front of the school is going to make the school board decide on a name.
Tía Rosalie leans over the pot and fans the steam toward her face. “Ah, almost ready,” she says. She looks over her shoulder at me. “To tell you the truth, I don’t know if it will. But it felt good to be out there. Do you know I met a woman today from Guatemala?”
“She traveled all the way from Guatemala?” I ask.
Tia Rosalie’s laughter fills the kitchen. “No! Her people, you know, are from Guatemala. She lives in Northridge but drove all the way here to support the school name change. It feels nice, all of us coming together. We all know this name change is important and that staying silent won’t help. The board meeting is coming soon. And the people on the board get elected. They must do what the people want.”
“But it seems like a lot of people are against changing the name.”
She looks at Gee. “We know all about this problem, eh, Grady?” she asks, and I want to tell her that he’s not talking, but she must know, because she doesn’t wait for an answer. “Some people think only their history is worthy of honor.”
“But why?” I ask.
“This is a good question, but I don’t have an answer for you. Why do people fight so hard to keep calling sports teams by hurtful names? As if tradition is more important than what’s right?” She goes back to stirring.
“Some people feel like something is being taken from them, but seems to me that it is giving people something important. To know you’ve stood for what’s right and honored someone truly important. What a gift. It’s time for change, right, Grady?” She glances over at Gee. He doesn’t answer, but that doesn’t stop her for a second. “Right!” she says, and smiles at him just as if he agreed with her. “It may take many strong voices at the school board meeting to make sure they do the right thing.”
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