by Naima Coster
The principal led Penelope through the hallways back to her office. The school was empty, except for the teachers in the classrooms for professional development. They were squashed into too-small chairs, but they still managed to look official with collared shirts and yellow notepads. Besides the teachers she did not recognize, the school looked nearly the same. It still had an antiseptic smell, as if every surface had been scrubbed with bleach. The walls were covered in cork bulletin boards and grimy subway tile. Enormous barred windows faced the yard.
As they entered the office, Penelope geared up to make her pitch for the position. She was ready to sell the idea of teaching art where she first learned to paint; she would talk about giving back to the neighborhood, finding freedom in creativity. The principal sat behind her desk, and before Penelope could speak, she said, “I’ve solved our little problem.”
Principal Pine explained that she couldn’t offer Penelope the job since she didn’t have the right degree to teach full time in a New York City public school, but she could bring her on as a substitute and never hire anyone else.
“We’ve had so many issues with the budget, I don’t expect anyone will be in a rush to hire a full-time art teacher anytime soon. I can make this fly on my end, at least until the end of the school year—how’s that sound to you?”
Penelope wondered whether to unlatch her portfolio and show Principal Pine that she had, at least, some credentials.
“Una speaks very highly of you,” Principal Pine said. “She was here for forty years, long before I came in. She says you’re up for the job, and that’s really all I need to know.”
Penelope nodded and said the bits she had rehearsed just so that she could feel she had earned the job in some way: grateful, community, creativity, empower. It was easy enough to say, although she was indifferent about teaching children. She could have made her money another way, but she owed it to her father, now that she was back in Brooklyn, to live somewhat more respectably. He had never put her through the kind of speech he would have been justified to give: two parents, art school, city college, a big house, and she had never done anything besides mix drinks, wait tables, and shelve books at the library. Principal Pine was merciful and didn’t ask to see her résumé.
“I’ll give you a rundown of the school these days,” she said, and Penelope pulled out her sketchbook and attempted to take notes. There was a mold problem on the third floor, and they had spent the summer removing asbestos. They had a standing old guard of teachers who preceded Principal Pine in their tenure at the school, and there were the young white teachers who stayed for a few years before going off to grad school or getting married and returning to whatever town it was they came from. Most of the students had lived in the neighborhood their whole lives; the school had lost a few kids whose parents moved farther out in Brooklyn because they could no longer afford their rent. A few had been evicted midway through the year. There was a growing number of white children at school, some whose parents had bought brownstones in the neighborhood, others who belonged to a different zone school but whose parents had petitioned for them to attend PS 23. The school was becoming more popular, in part, because of the jazz band and the new community garden. Principal Pine had started both programs. The students learned to play the trumpet and trombone, the clarinet and saxophone, and someday soon, the tuba. In the garden, they caught water in rain barrels and collected compost; they picked vegetables and sent them over to the food pantry down the block.
“Plant a garden and the white folks come running,” Mrs. Pine said. “I figure if they’re going to live here, they might as well live here, get their hands dirty, and have their children learn right next to our children.”
“But there’s so much loss,” Penelope said, and she wondered how much Mrs. Pine knew about her father’s store, whether she had ever seen Sprout.
Mrs. Pine held her ground. “The research shows integration has good learning outcomes for our kids, and I agree.”
Penelope thought about pointing out that none of the kids who had been forced to move away would benefit from the integration, but she decided she shouldn’t upset the principal, and certainly not before her contract was signed.
She had known only one white child during her years at PS 23. Genevieve was a blond girl with unnaturally large eyes that bulged when she cried, which was often. She was a notorious whiner, and the other kids teased her mostly because it was so easy; the girl would stamp her feet, turn crimson, and sob to the teacher. She had a little troupe of friends, but when they went off to play double Dutch or tag with everyone else, Genevieve would stay behind on a bench to pick her hangnails and pout. More than once, Penelope hadn’t wanted to play either, so she sat with her during recess. Penelope knew what it was like to be the girl with the mother with red hair. A classmate had once called her white, too. She and Genevieve played hand games and shared fruit snacks, but they weren’t friends.
Halfway through fourth grade, after a particularly bad day of crying, Genevieve disappeared from the school. Penelope never saw her around the neighborhood, either. Penelope imagined a class of little Genevieves in the fuzzy sweaters and leggings that were popular when they were girls.
“It’s going to be good for the children to have you in the classroom,” Principal Pine said. “You’re young, you look like them, you were born here. They need visions of success they can relate to. That’s getting rarer and rarer around here. You should tell them your story.”
Penelope wondered what story she could tell.
Principal Pine stood and said she had to get back to professional development for the full-timers. She handed Penelope a stack of paperwork to return as soon as she could.
“You know I’ve never met your father,” Mrs. Pine said. “But I know he was a friend to the community, and a good man who put his family first.” The principal guided Penelope out into the hall, one hand on her shoulder.
“Family is everything.” She jabbered on, imparting what Penelope could see she meant to be wisdom. “The toughest part of our job is knowing we can’t give our kids the families they deserve; we can’t keep them from hurting. You’ll see what I mean when you meet our kids.”
Penelope shook the woman’s hand and staggered out of the school, disoriented. What had Miss Beckett said to make her seem well adjusted, calm, exemplary? Or was the principal too hurried to really look at her? Perhaps the legend of Ralph Grand and his store had protected her and made her seem like someone who could handle early mornings, a regular, formal job.
It was still early, and Penelope had more hours to herself than she expected. The interview had been so short. She would run until the interview was far away from her, and she forgot her distaste for Mrs. Pine, her nerve. She had assumed Penelope needed to meet the kids to see how they hurt, as if she hadn’t learned all that when she was a girl.
Penelope finished her run on the sidewalk in front of the house on Greene. The pink cotton of her shirt stuck to her skin, and she felt the ache in her calves, the heaviness of her muscles. Her run had done exactly what she intended it to do: she had lost her self and existed nowhere outside of her body. She was only the throbbing expansion of her chest, the pain in her joints, the sweat coursing down her forehead, the back of her neck, her thighs. Her knees popped as she bounded up the stairs, and she wondered whether she had overdone it, whether she should run a bath with salts, let herself soak in hot water, take an aspirin.
In the attic, Penelope opened a can of soup and sat at the breakfast table with her legs up. The meatballs, noodles, and sallow vegetables bobbed in the salty brown broth. She ate slowly, cooling off in the darkness of the room.
She had a drawing for each day she had been back in Brooklyn—eight—clipped to the back of her easel. Most of the drawings were small, close-ups of objects she could see from her little porthole window: a discarded and deflating basketball, a plant growing in a crushed Café Bustelo can on a nearby stoop, the overstuffed black bags of trash at the curb. She
thought of the grad-school sculptor from that night at the Anchor. More object studies, he would have said, if he could see these drawings. Penelope could see now that he had been patronizing, the sex blurry and barely adequate. She hadn’t slept with anyone since.
Penelope heard rushing up the stairs and then across the fourth floor. She craned her head to listen to the soft footfalls. A little girl shouted out, and she realized it was the landlady’s daughter—the one Samantha had mentioned but Penelope had yet to see. Penelope listened as the girl started up some sort of game, dashing back and forth from one end of the hall to another. The little girl’s voice floated up to Penelope through the floorboards, and she felt as if she were listening to herself. She too had invented games of her own to pass the afternoons she spent alone. She had run up and down the stairs in her chancletas, hid in the pantry, and waited for someone to find her. She had called out into the empty house and was joined by her echo. When she ran out of games, she turned to the things she had learned in school—drawing pictures, finger painting. She took pictures with her hot-pink Polaroid camera.
“Nope, nope, nope! That’s not it!”
The girl threw up the words into the house, and Penelope caught them.
“Try again!”
She wondered what the rules of the game might be, whether she should go downstairs to finally introduce herself. She considered the alternative—another object study, beginning to plan for her new job—and stood to leave. She draped a towel over her shoulder so that a shower could be her excuse for going down to the fourth floor, and if Samantha or her husband showed up, she would duck into the bathroom. She didn’t want to field their adult questions about her life, about Pittsburgh, her father, her art.
The little girl’s voice grew fuller and clearer as Penelope descended from the attic. She neared the landing and saw a slight girl in lavender pajamas diving for the wall. She hit it with both hands, planting her palms flat on the plaster. Then she pushed off and sprinted across the hall, sliding when she got close to the other end, smacking the wall with both hands again.
“You’re fast,” Penelope said in a voice that she hoped was friendly. She didn’t want to materialize in front of the girl unannounced, startle her, and make her fall.
The child spun around on the balls of her feet, her sheets of red hair whipping around her as she turned to face the stairs.
“I’ve been practicing,” the girl said, and then, “You’re all red.”
“I’m cooling down from a run.” Penelope touched her still-warm cheek.
The little girl took a step forward. Her face was round, and she had golden skin and brown eyes, like her mother. Her lavender blouse and flannel pants were each printed with a pattern of white sheep. She squinted, and the suspicious expression made her seem like a smaller, red-haired replica of her mother.
“My daddy runs,” she said. “But not around here.”
“I like to run outside.”
“On the street?”
Penelope nodded, and the little girl pressed her palms together and tilted her head to the side, as if in disbelief. Penelope went on.
“I’ve been running in this neighborhood for fifteen years, and it’s a lot safer now than it used to be.”
“You don’t look that old.”
“I started when I was thirteen.”
“I’m nine.”
“That’s a nice age.”
“It’s okay so far. You’re Penelope, right? My name is Grace.”
They shook hands. Grace’s hand was cool and frail in Penelope’s damp, brown hand. Penelope inspected the girl and wondered whether Grace would be one of her students at PS 23. Penelope sat on the bottom step and asked the girl whether she went to school nearby. Grace said she went somewhere called the Orchard School in the West Village.
“I used to be able to walk there in the mornings, but now I’m too far.” She sat beside Penelope on the bottom step. “But I like this house. If I get another little brother, we’ll have lots of space for the both of us.”
Grace folded her hands on her lap, as if she were still in school. She was cautious, far more reserved than Penelope imagined she would be when she overheard her shouting and playing alone. Penelope asked her about the game.
“It’s called Color Race. One person thinks of a color, and then the other person tries to guess what it is. If someone guesses your color, you’re not safe anymore, and you have to run across the hall before they catch you. The wall is base. And if you get caught, it’s your turn to think of a color.”
“How have you been playing by yourself?”
“A part of me picks a color, and the other part guesses.”
Penelope smiled. She had played against herself during many one-girl games of hide-and-seek, Ping-Pong, chess. Grace took her hand and led her to the far wall by the stairs. Penelope would have to guess a color first.
“I should warn you,” she said. “I might be very good at this game.”
Grace tossed her hair over her shoulder and lifted her chin. “I’ve been playing Color Race for years. Assume your position.”
Penelope bent her knees and shouted. “Green!”
Grace giggled and shook her head. Penelope went on guessing until she finally cried, “Lavender!” and the girl went running for the wall at the other end of the landing. Penelope followed her, taking long but slow strides, so that Grace had smacked the wall and was safe before she could reach her. They went on playing rounds of the game, Grace picking unexpected colors, like teal and maroon and cerulean, so that it took Penelope a while to guess. Penelope chased after her at a half jog, her feet hardly leaving the floor. She didn’t have the heart to catch Grace: she was having so much fun slamming into the wall and shrieking that they went on like that, Grace looking over her shoulder each time she reached the other side, the look in her eyes electric.
“Can I play?”
Grace stopped running when she saw her father at the top of the stairs. She skidded across the hall in her socked feet and slid into his arms. He lifted her up and kissed her on the forehead, sweeping back her bangs. They had the same orange-red hair. He tossed Grace up in the air and shook her by the shoulders while she was suspended over his head. She laughed and kicked her feet. He was paler than his daughter. His freckled arms flexed when he caught her. He gave Grace another kiss on the cheek before he set her down. She was out of breath from laughing when she took his hand and led him over to the other set of stairs, where Penelope stood watching.
“Daddy, you have to meet Penelope!” She emphasized the name as if the two girls had known each other for a long time.
“Penelope, it’s a pleasure to finally meet you. Call me Marcus.”
They shook hands.
“My wife has told me all about you. You studied at RISD?”
“I was only there for a year.”
“And are your parents artists, too? Every artist I knew in college was the child of artists.”
“It might be that only artists want their children to become artists.”
Penelope explained that her father had owned a music store.
“Was it Grand Records? Amazing! I’ve read about that place—”
“And my mother cleaned houses.”
“Houses? Terrific . . .” He trailed off and tried to keep his cool. He planted his hands on his hips.
Penelope had said it to test him. White people had never known how to respond to the fact that Mirella had been a maid. At RISD, her classmates had stammered and then affirmed that cleaning houses was good work to do. Her classmates of color had been no better. They would nod vigorously as she explained, which made Penelope believe they had someone in their families who was a housekeeper, too, but eventually she learned their parents were dentists and college professors who had sent them to art camp and drawing classes when they were younger. They weren’t as different from the white kids in their class as Penelope had wanted them to be.
Marcus didn’t say anything; he didn’t say c
leaning houses was important or admirable or even interesting. She could have let him stew in his silence and unease, but she didn’t want to embarrass him in front of Grace. It was beautiful the way his daughter had run into his arms. She decided to rescue him.
“I don’t know what she does now. They’re separated.”
Marcus smiled and muttered something about his vinyl collection; he loved the Doors. His posture seemed to slacken, and Penelope could tell he was relieved. She listened to him talk and observed his hair. He had a lot of it—bright, ginger fistfuls. His hair was long, she thought, for a lawyer. It waved from the crown of his head to the nape of his neck. Beyond the hair, he didn’t look much like Grace at all. He had a broad forehead and thin lips, sharp and sea-green eyes.
Penelope shifted weight from one leg to another and listened to him talk, aware of how close they were standing. They stared at one another, but there was nothing else for them to look at in the empty hallway.
“What do you mean they’re separated? Is that like divorced?” Grace interrupted them, tugging on the hem of her father’s shirt.
Marcus seemed to remember his child. “It means they aren’t together anymore, sweetheart.”
“Litigating?” Grace stared up at her father, her fingers clutching the cloth of his shirt.
“Technically, they’re still married, they just don’t live together,” Penelope said.
“How can they be married and not live together?”
She just left, Penelope thought to say, but she saw the worry in Grace’s face, as if a great myth she had believed about mothers and fathers had been cracked open by the facts of Penelope’s life.
Marcus petted his daughter’s head, but Grace’s expression didn’t change. Her eyebrows stayed pushed together, an auburn line across her forehead.
“Does she live far away?”
“The Dominican Republic,” Penelope said, although she couldn’t be sure. Where else would she be?
“I’ve been trying to convince Samantha we should go visit the DR,” Marcus said, leaving Grace to her thoughts and rejoining Penelope. “I miss the ocean. I grew up surfing, and I swam in college, but there are no beaches here, really, nothing to do outside besides run.”