Naomis Too

by Olugbemisola Rhuday Perkovich

  I think back to Emma’s smug smile and Waverly’s frowning face. Lisa Trotter’s mom and Jen’s . . . everything.

  Maybe.

  CHAPTER TWENTY-EIGHT

  Naomi E.

  I packed myself the best lunch—peanut butter and banana (and I snuck in Marshmallow Fluff when Valerie wasn’t looking). And a bag of pretzels, which Edie is eyeing. “Are those sharing pretzels?” she asks.

  I nod. “There’s another Drama Club meeting after school today. Please come!”

  Edie wrinkles up her nose. “I can’t. Orthodontist.”

  “Oh my goodness,” I say. “What IS that?” Edie unwraps a sandwich that is so big—so tall!—there’s no way she can fit it into her mouth. But she does, kind of, and takes a huge bite.

  “Eeseanmato,” she answers.

  Her sandwich is only a tiny bit shorter than her face. I start laughing and so does she, but it’s hard, with a mouth full of eeseanmato (whatever that is). She puts up her index finger in a let-me-chew way.

  “I’m sorry,” I say, still laughing. “What is it?”

  Before she can answer, Gruber is standing next to me in his bright-yellow Peer Mediation shirt. “You gotta do peer mediation,” he says.

  I shake my head. “I checked the website. It is not my turn, and I’m not the alternate.”

  “Sawyer was supposed to be my partner today but he’s absent.”

  “Like I said, I’m not the alternate.” I always check the calendar and pack my shirt when I’m the alternate, just in case.

  “Yeah, I know,” he says. “Lauren’s the alternate, but she went home with pink eye.”

  “Ew,” Edie says. Her sandwich has fallen apart. (I’m thinking it’s cheese and tomato.)

  My eyes start itching, thinking about pink eye.

  “I was patrolling by myself, but Harris saw and said I need a partner, and when I told him they were absent he said to get you.”

  Universe, you have got to be kidding. I was only supposed to be teamed with Gruber once. One time. This is the third.

  I grab my stuff and say good-bye to Edie.

  “There are two kids who need a mediation, but it’s with girls and I just can’t deal,” he says.

  Gruber, I don’t even have words.

  I thought we were going outside, but he brings me to a corner of the cafeteria. Two girls sit across from each other not looking at each other.

  “Do you want to try mediation?” I ask. Maybe they’ll say no and I can go back to Edie.

  One girl’s arms are folded over her chest, hands below her shoulders, like she’s hugging herself. For courage, maybe. It seems like she can’t look up at the other girl. Looking directly at the table, she says, “Every day, Birdie says my lunch is weird or that it smells or who could even eat that. She says it really loud so everyone hears. And I wish she could mind her own business because . . .” She stops talking.

  Gruber’s looking around, then loudly asks some random kid, “Are you gonna eat that?” pointing at a doughnut. My partner, ladies and gentlemen!

  “Okay,” I say, since I’m going to have to do this myself. “Before we started, I should have said you’ll each have a turn to talk, no interrupting, no name-calling; we’ll try to come up with a compromise together.” I really hope we can do better than rock/paper/scissors.

  Birdie sits up straight and looks at the other girl. “I don’t say it every day, Prisha, but your lunch does smell, and she keeps sitting right behind me, so it’s not like I can just not smell it. And once I smell it, I’m sorry, but I lose my appetite.”

  I have learned that I’m sorry, but is not the most sincere kind of apology.

  “Do you both feel like you’ve shared your side of the story?”

  Birdie shrugs one shoulder. Prisha doesn’t respond.

  I repeat back to them: “Prisha feels hurt that Birdie talks about how her lunch smells. Birdie . . .” I can’t think of how to say it without making Birdie sound awful. (Because Birdie is awful.)

  “And Birdie,” Gruber says, “was nasty.”

  “NO NAME-CALLING, GRUBER! And Birdie doesn’t think she did anything wrong.”

  “Prisha?” I ask. “Is there anything else you want to say? Like how that makes you feel?”

  “Sad,” Prisha says. “She’s not nice to me. I can’t name everything. But the lunch, that’s where she’s meanest in front of the most people.”

  Birdie does not wait to be asked. She says, “We’re not friends. I can’t be everyone’s friend. But I’m not mean.” She turns to Gruber. “And you said that we just had to talk about what happened when you said we should do medation, or whatever you call it.”

  “Mediation,” I say automatically.

  No matter what we do here, Birdie’s not suddenly going to be kind to Prisha. It makes me feel a little hopeless. Like peer mediation might be a waste of time.

  “Do either of you have any ideas for how to resolve this conflict?” I ask.

  Neither one says anything.

  Finally, Prisha says quietly, “Well, I’d like her to apologi—”

  “I’m not saying I’m sorry for saying your food smells. Your food does smell! Ask anyone!”

  “Hang on,” I say. “Do either of you have any other ideas about how to avoid this in the future? Birdie?”

  “She could sit someplace else so I don’t have to smell it.”

  I’m supposed to have a nonjudg-y face, but Birdie is not making this easy. “Someone could change her table, sure. Or maybe you could try to keep comments that aren’t nice to yourself,” I say. I’m not sure this is exactly how Harris would want me handling this, but I’m just being realistic.

  “And I’d like her to not be mean to me,” Prisha says. She’s looking directly at Birdie now. “Stop being mean to me,” she says. Well, that’s something. She’s speaking up for herself. Which is hard.

  “What do you think, Birdie?”

  Birdie shrugs again (it makes me want to never shrug) and says, “Yeah, I’ll be nice.” It is perfectly clear: she doesn’t mean it.

  “Can you shake hands?” I ask. It’s the symbol of a successful mediation. Not that this feels all that successful.

  They do, and then Birdie asks, “Can I go now?”

  I nod. “You can go too, Prisha.”

  Gruber and I head outside to patrol the schoolyard, but before we’re halfway to the fence, this little girl comes over and says, “Excuse me? Are you the ones who help when there’s a problem?”

  I smile at her because that’s the kind of superhero description I was thinking of when I signed up for this. “What’s happening?”

  She has good instincts—she ignores Gruber completely—and takes my hand to lead me somewhere. “This girl is accusing me of doing something bad and . . .” Her voice is sad sounding, and she stops walking. In a quiet voice she says, “I did do it, that’s the hard part; but it was an accident, and I feel so bad.”

  I’m not supposed to let her start telling her story until we have both people involved together. But it’s hard not to feel bad for her—she looks so upset. And though I’m supposed to be completely impartial, I find I’m almost always drawn to the side of the person who seeks out the peer mediators. They’re usually the ones who need us more.

  “What’s your name?” I ask.

  “Emma,” she says. “What’s yours?”

  “Naomi E.,” I say.

  Emma points at a girl who looks like she’s trying not to cry. “She’s the one who’s saying I did it on purpose,” she says.

  The girl is standing on a big patch of multicolored chalk mess.

  “I’m Naomi E.,” I say. “A peer mediator. Can you tell me what’s going on?”

  “I was making a chalk mural—do you know the book Tar Beach? I was making a chalk mural of Cassie flying, only instead of over Harlem, she’s flying over Chisholm.”

  “That’s amazing,” I say. “I just read that book for the first time! My little sister has it. A mural is such a great i
dea.”

  “Yeah,” Emma says. “It is a great idea.”

  “If it was a great idea, why did you ruin it, Emma?!” Waverly is screaming. “I worked on it for so long. It took up this whole space,” she says, using her arms to show the patch between the swings and the school. “And she walked right over it, back and forth, like shuffling her feet so she really ruined it!”

  “Whoa,” I say. “Slow down. There are rules for peer mediation. No screaming is one of the big ones. No name-calling. Together we’ll try to come up with a fair solution.”

  Waverly won’t meet my eye. I wish I got to the rules before she started screaming—I feel bad shutting her down like this.

  Emma’s mouth is wide open. “Waverly! Why don’t you believe me? It was an accident! And you don’t have to yell. I feel really bad!”

  I look around for Gruber, but I seem to have lost him. Naomi Marie is leaning against the fence; is she watching us? Kids start lining up at the door—the bell’s going to ring any minute.

  Before Waverly can answer, I say, “Let’s go sit down and talk about it.”

  “This is one of those meteorations, Waverly,” Emma says. “Naomi E. is going to help us solve our problem.” She reaches up and takes my hand.

  “It’s mediation, Emma!” Waverly yells. “You can’t even pronounce it!”

  “Actually, we don’t have time for a whole mediation right now, but quickly—Waverly, Emma says it was an accident, that she didn’t mean to ruin your mural. Do you want to accept her apology?”

  The bell rings. Waverly looks at me. “She didn’t apologize!” She looks right at Emma and yells, “I know you ruined my mural on purpose.”

  I want to help. I should be able to help. “We can talk about this some more tomorrow,” I say. “We could meet at the start . . .” Waverly turns and storms back into the school. Emma smiles and follows Waverly into the building.

  CHAPTER TWENTY-NINE

  Naomi Marie

  Today is one of those fun days in Creative Writing when we get to spend half of the double period talking about all the different books we’re reading. It’s like an in-school book club! We ask each other questions like “Who has the power in this story?” and pay attention to the number of white-girl book cover models and the number of silhouettes who are supposed to represent people of color. Since some of the Reading Buddies are in this class, and we’d still be talking book talk, I ask Katherine if we can go to the library to do some planning for our next session. Even though I’m supposed to pay attention to both Waverly’s and Emma’s needs, I want to find something especially for Waverly today. When I saw Waverly walk away from that “mediation” all alone and Emma smile at Naomi E. like she’d won AGAIN . . . I knew what went down. I want Waverly to know that I see her, all of her.

  “I can’t talk about books without food,” says Gruber as we leave the classroom. “We need doughnut holes.”

  “Why are you here again?” asks Gigi.

  Seriously, I think. He’s not even a Reading Buddy; I’ve heard some stories about him from Naomi E. But I know: he annoys everyone, so Katherine wants us to set examples, be leaders, blah blah blah. I guess what she doesn’t want is for us to get anything done. But we’re trying. And I’m trying to find that one nice thing about Gruber that I can focus on.

  “So,” I say, after we settle at a round table, “I need suggestions for something that’s about social justice.” I point to Gigi. “We read The Alphabet Tree with our kids, and they got really into it.” Gigi and AnnMarie give me snaps, but Gruber just looks at me.

  “Isn’t your mom a librarian?” he asks. “Just ask her.”

  “I’m going to ask her, and Daisuke too, but the first rule of school librarianship is utilizing all available resources—including people. Most of you guys are Reading Buddies, so . . .”

  “You’re not a school librarian, though,” he says. “So those are not your rules.”

  Sigh. I just don’t answer.

  “When you say social justice, what do you mean?” asks Daisuke, who is pretending to shelve books nearby. That’s how he monitors our conversations. He thinks we can’t tell, so we just let him believe that. “Can you elaborate, Naomi Marie?”

  “Well . . . ,” I say. “I really want something about kids doing stuff, being leaders and activists. But also good stories. Like in this book Piecing Me Together, the main character is smart and creative and has all these ideas, but because of where she’s from and because she’s Black, even the people who are supposed to be helping her kind of don’t listen to her at first. But she ends up being a leader and feeling stronger because of who she is, no matter what other people see or think.”

  “I want to read that,” says AnnMarie. “I wonder if Daisuke—”

  “Yes,” says Daisuke, and he drops the book on the table in front of her. We all laugh.

  “Can I get it next?” asks Gruber. I raise my eyebrows but don’t say anything.

  “What about writing?” asks Gigi. “We have Suggestion Boxes in Community Builders but nobody’s really using them. Maybe after we read to the kids, they can do a really short Baby Reader Response.”

  “Just don’t call it ‘baby,’” says AnnMarie.

  “I have a fruit leather,” whispers Gigi. “Who wants some?” A couple of kids hold out their hands and she starts tearing off little pieces. It feels very subversive and I like it, even though I feel kind of bad too. Is that how revolutionaries feel?

  “Here you go,” says Daisuke, appearing next to me with a stack of books in his hands. “Just remember, guys, you have special eating privileges because I trust you. No crumbs, no trash.”

  We each only get a tiny bit of fruit leather, but it’s kind of a mood boost, and we start talking and looking on the shelves for books. We find some good ones—Last Stop on Market Street, Rad Women Worldwide, Separate Is Never Equal; and Daisuke gives us Hands around the Library, This Is the Rope, and The Amazing Age of John Roy Lynch. Gruber recommends a book about Ida B. Wells (Gruber!!! Reads!!! Ida B.!!!). I wonder if he’s trying to change his image too, but then he burps so loud, Daisuke makes him leave the library.

  At recess, I see Naomi E. and Edie standing by the swings, and I run over to them.

  “E, can I talk to you for a sec?” I ask.

  She frowns and nods, and we move over the slide. “Uh, please stop trying to make ‘E’ happen!”

  “Sorry, sorry . . . anyway, I wanted to tell you—about Gruber—”

  “Voldemort’s little brother? A goblin who will show his true self on Halloween? Everything annoying about boys all rolled into one? Yes, I know.” She laughs a little.

  “I know he can be a pain, but he was just talking about books, and he was almost . . . okay, for a minute. Maybe if you just kind of act nice to him—”

  “Seriously?! You’re serious right now. The same Gruber who makes gagging sounds whenever Katherine says the word period. The Gruber who would literally start a fight just so he would have something to mediate?” She rolls her eyes. “Give me a break.”

  “Okay, that period thing is inexcusable, but—”

  She puts up a hand. “I’ve had to spend way more time with him than you, so just stop.”

  “Speaking of that, I saw you with Waverly and Emma yesterday, and I think—”

  “Okay, you’re not even a mediator yet, and you’re telling me how to do that too? I know you’re the family leader, but I’ve been working hard at this, and I can handle it.” She stomps off, and I stand there, not even sure what just happened.

  “What just happened?” asks Gigi when I slide to the ground along the fence next to her. “Your sister looked kind of mad.”

  “I have no idea,” I say. I guess she really doesn’t like me calling her E.

  A few minutes later, Jen and her minions walk by, and Jen makes a big point of staring at me, then rolling her eyes and looking away. They stand in a big clump nearby and keep whispering and looking over. Then they come right up to me. She look
s me up and down, turns to her friends to laugh, and then walks away slowly.

  “Gross,” says Gigi.

  “My sentiments exactly,” says Gruber, coming over. I don’t know what’s more surprising, the fact that Gruber said something like “my sentiments exactly” or the fact that he has those sentiments at all. Suddenly, Jen, smiling, waves me over. Huh?

  “Me?” I say. And she nods, still smiling. I walk over carefully. “What’s up?”

  She takes out a bag. “So, I’m going to wear this for Wacky Hat/Hair Day and I wanted to let you know in advance so you don’t call me racist again.” She takes out one of those stupid rainbow Afro wigs that some people (annoying people) use for clown costumes. “It’s kind of like your hair, right?” I was so proud of my Afro puff this morning.

  I can’t speak.

  “Yo, what is that thing?” asks Gruber. “Is it alive?”

  “Ask Naomi Marie,” says Jen, smiling and putting it on. Her minions giggle.

  “You’re not funny,” I say. “I don’t have . . . clown hair.”

  “Lighten up,” says Jen. “It’s a joke. And you still haven’t apologized for calling me a racist. That’s bullying, and my parents are going to be getting in touch with Carla about it. And if the wig fits . . .”

  “I’m not a costume,” I say. “And bullying? You are so ignorant.”

  “Ha, for your information, I took the test for Garfield, so I’ll be in a gifted and talented school next year, away from all of you—”

  “All of you what?” asks Gigi.

  “Yeah, what?” asks Gruber.

  “Whatever,” says Jen. She takes an Afro pick out of her back pocket; it has a fist for a handle, just like one that we have at home. She sticks it in the wig and walks away, laughing with her friends.

  I feel embarrassed and furious and ashamed and all sorts of things. I can’t really speak. Gruber very awkwardly punches my arm and mutters, “She’s an idiot,” and wanders away. Gigi, kind of the way a best friend would, talks about Adedayo and Airi and books and board games. I can tell she’s doing it to show that we’re having fun. So I try to, even though I’m angry at Jen, worried about Naomi E., surprised by Gruber, and confused about . . . almost everything else. I don’t even think a list could clear things up right now.