by CeeCee James
The clock above the salon’s mirror made me jump. I was late! I ran out of the salon and jogged through the mall clutching my bags, bottlenecked at one point by a family with kids and a baby stroller. When I reached the entrance Adam was already there sitting on a bench. He stood up, as I ran to him out of breath.
“I’m so sorry. I got lost. I didn’t mean to make you wait.”
He sighed, “Did you get what you need?” I nodded. He pushed the glass doors open, and we walked out to the car.
When we got home I asked Mama if I could show her what I bought. Her lip started curling as I pulled out my new shirt, and I immediately regretted sharing my clothes with her.
“That’s what was so important to you?”
I just shrugged while I stuffed the clothes back in the bag.
The next day, the alarm clock went off before the sun rose. I waited at the bus stop with butterflies in my stomach, holding my new pencil box filled with the shiny goodies of a mini stapler, and compass.
My first day at the new school was amazing. There were a couple of girls in my Home Economics class that I clicked with right away. I stared at the ovens and bags of flour peeking out from the shelves above and couldn’t wait to get to baking. When the teacher introduced herself she pulled out a pair of pajamas from a floral bag on her desk.
“This quarter, we’re going to learn to sew! Pick your pajama pattern everyone!”
My face fell. I sewed enough at home fixing my clothing if anything ripped. Instead of sewing, I listened to my friend’s conversations while poking holes in my instruction paper with the star shaped pattern marker. We whispered down the line of humming sewing machines any gossip we had picked up during the day. But my friends had the advantage over me in class. They could thread needles and cut fabric even while giggling and sharing stories.
The week the project was due I sewed like a freak. That Friday, the teacher clapped her hands, “Class! Time to wear them!”
I tried to pull the finished nightgown over my head; it became stuck. Stupid ears! I didn’t need to hear my friend’s howl of laughter to know that I looked ridiculous. Somehow, I had switched the neck and arm hole in my rush to be done. After thrashing for a few minutes, threads snapping, I finally tugged it over my head and stared pop-eyed at them.
“Shhhhh,” I hissed, not wanting the teacher to notice the terrible job I had done.
She came by a few minutes later while we stood like soldiers at attention in our motley Home Ec uniforms. Shaking her head when she came to me, she marked down a “C” in her syllabus.
My friends giggled harder when I struggled to wriggle back out. I was trapped in a tug-of-war when they tried to help me pull it off. The neck hole was too tight. Amy laughed while she cut me free.
During lunch time we claimed our table in the middle of the room. My friends shared their growing pains about their home life while they traded food. No one wanted my food because Mama made me use the same bags all week long, and they were covered with peanut butter and jelly. After a few minutes they slid over a couple cookies, or half a sandwich with a small comment that they were full.
While we talked I agreed with their family complaints just to have something to say. I learned all about them, but they knew very little about me. When they asked me even the simplest questions about my home life the words stuck in my throat. But even with the little that I shared, they still knew I had trouble with Mama.
One day at lunch, I threw a hard back book onto the table. There was a scramble between the two of them when they dove to be the first to pick it up.
“How did you get this?” Amy asked, holding the newest book in the series by Madeline L’Engle.
“The librarian ordered it special, and held it for me,” I said. They rolled their eyes; they knew the librarian had a soft spot for me.
Our school had an enormous library. The first time I had stepped inside the library, I just had to stand there a minute and breathe, with a smile growing on my face. All the books neat in their rows called to me. I drifted down each of the aisles, tapping my finger along the book spines, first pulling this one, then that one out to read the blurb on the back. I ended up checking out an armload and later piling them in my locker. I spent every study period seated at one of the long wooden tables devouring one after another, like a little kid at a dessert buffet.
The librarian saw how I loved to read and said, “Well, we must be kindred spirits. I love to read, too.” She saw my pink spiral binder full of stories, “What’s this?”
“Oh, stories. Poems. I’ve been writing them for a couple years.”
“I’d love to read them,” she said.
I felt instantly shy. No one read my stories. No one.
She smiled at me like she knew my thoughts. “No pressure,” she said. “I know it’s hard to share those private things.”
I clicked open the binder and pulled out the first story. “It’s ok, I don’t mind. Here.”
“I’ll keep this in a special place until I’m through reading it,” she said, patting the papers.
I swapped one story a week with her from then on. She always thanked me for sharing them and encouraged me to keep writing. She never thought my stories about death, or lost children were weird; instead, she said I had talent. She was my hero.
Not everything was wonderful during that school year. There was a boy in my History class named Billy, who made my school days miserable. We had to sit next to each other at the same long desk. Every day he made fun of me and called me names. He was one of the kids that hung around the popular kids, trying to impress them with coarse jokes, but never quite made it to the center of the clique.
One day he showed up with a new mechanical pencil. He made a big show of refilling his pencil with new lead. He glanced sidewise and saw me watching. He smirked as he centered the clear lead tube at the top of his desk. He clicked up the lead and then with a flash of his hand, jabbed me in the leg. I gasped and clutched my leg. I looked at him in shock.
The teacher raised his head and glared at me from his desk at the front of the room. He was a red faced burly man, with bushy eyebrows, bloodshot eyes, and a reputation for being mean. His voice boomed from his desk, “Are you having a problem, CeeCee? Do you need to leave?”
All the students looked up from their books, their heads swiveling my way. I swallowed and answered, “No, sir,” before burying my face back in my book again.
Billy grinned again. He adjusted his glasses with his thumb and then clicked his pencil lead up, watching for my reaction. With a twisted smile, he thrust it into the top of my thigh. I flinched and bit off a yelp. Click! Click! Poke! Click! Click! Poke!
I moved my chair with a scraping noise to the far end of the desk. He followed until he was sitting right up next to me while I pressed against the table legs. A lump in my throat choked me, and my eyes began to burn. Don’t you cry, don’t you dare.
Over the tears, a thick red haze began to grow, strange and empowering. I felt its heat as I breathed out. “Stop it now!”
Billy continued his soft clicks on the pencil under the desk.
“Whatcha going to do about it?” He taunted and turned a page in his work book.
I copied his pretense of reading, “If you don’t stop, I’m going to poke you back!”
With that threat, I raised my wooden yellow pencil. His lips curled in a sneer. I looked over and saw the lead was broken, hanging sidewise off the tip of the pencil like a tongue. He flicked the lead off with his finger. My hands were shaking when I grabbed the plastic pencil sharpener that sat on the desk and twisted in the pencil. I blew off the imaginary shavings and looked square into his eyes.
“I mean it,” I warned.
Staring back, he clicked his pencil one more time as a challenge. I thought I was bluffing, but when he made a sudden move towards my leg, I stabbed his arm. In horror, I jerked the pencil away. Billy squealed when he saw a piece of lead still in his arm.
The history teacher
threw back his chair and stormed over to my desk. He loomed over me, the veins in his forehead bulging. He looked from Billy to my still upraised pencil in my frozen hand. Spit sprayed from his mouth. “What..? Get out of my class! Don’t ever let me see you again!”
I waited outside the principal’s office hunched in a chair. When she called me in her face was firm, so I started talking before I even sat down in the plastic chair.
“I was defending myself,” I said. Her glasses reflected the overhead light, and I couldn’t see her eyes to know if she believed me.
When I finished she indicated her finger to tell me to come near. “Let me see those poke marks.”
I blushed to my hair line as I tugged down my pants, and stood in my underwear while she leaned forward to examine my leg. She sat back in her swivel chair and cleared her throat.
“Hmmmm. Go on and wait in the hallway until the bell rings for your next class. I’ll address this with you later.” With a dismissive wave, she sent me from her office.
My stomach knotted on top of itself during the rest of my classes. Several kids came up to let me know that Billy had left for the doctors. “Your mom is going to have to pay his bills!”
When the final bell rang for the day, I sat frozen in my chair. I didn’t want to go home. Finally, I got my legs moving to the parking lot, but I couldn’t board the bus. Instead, I walked back and forth on the sidewalk past the opened door. The bus driver let off the air brakes as a warning for me to board. My legs were shaking when I climbed up the steps. Grabbing the seat in front of me to stop my shaking, I rested my head on my arms. When Mama found out she was going to hurt me. Would she stop at twenty for something as bad as this? Would she stop at thirty?
I was nauseous when I got off the bus and slowly walked up our dirt road. Quietly, I opened and shut the back door and ran to my room. There was no place to hide in the little room. I curled up in a fetal position on the bedroom floor with my hands clasped together behind my neck. Tears ran down my face, soaking the thin carpet. Horrible images began to flash through my mind of the pain that was about to come. I begged God to save me. I had no words to pray, it came out as, “Please, please, please, Jesus!”
Inside of me a small voice questioned, what’s God going do? He’s invisible. How can he prevent my parents from coming down the stairs? They’d walk right through him. But I couldn’t stop praying.
The sound of the phone ringing carried down the stairs, two rings, three rings. Then the heavy thuds of my stepdad’s footsteps overhead as he made his way to answer it. It was the boy’s parents. A thin whimper escaped my mouth, my heartbeat pounding in my ears.
I heard Adam say, “She did? Oh really,” before his voice broke down into a series of low rumbles. I shook even harder, my teeth rattling in my head, “Please, please, please, please.”
Out of nowhere, a strange heat rolled over me. I’d never felt anything like it before. The heat enveloped me in a heavy peace that destroyed my fear. Instantly, I stopped shuddering and slowly uncurled my body to stretch flat on the floor. I didn’t notice the cold rising from the cement floor. Instead, I felt warm and calm. In the deepest part of me, I knew that I was going to be okay.
It was the first time I ever remembered taking a breath without fear.
My stepdad’s deep voice carried down the stairs, but I couldn’t understand what he was saying. The phone slammed into its receiver and then pounding footsteps across the ceiling as Adam found Mama.
And then, nothing.
I lay there in the peace and waited, and waited, until I lost track of time. After a while I decided, I’m going wait in bed. I feel asleep right after I pulled the covers up.
My parents never came down the stairs that night. I never found out what happened during the phone call to this day.
It was a miracle.
The next day at school, I stood outside of History class and watched all of the other students file in. The teacher had told me not to return, so I didn’t know what to do. I bit my nail ragged, and shrugged my book bag from one shoulder to the other. Finally, just as the bell rang I slid through the door.
The teacher scowled when he saw me and pointed his finger to a new seat across the room. Neither Billy nor the teacher made eye contact with me. I sat at my desk and tried to be unobtrusive, but inside I smiled.
By the end of the semester, I had a perfect grade in History. The teacher had to know that I was not a bad girl.
The day before classes were dismissed for the winter break, the teachers handed out awards of recognition. These awards were handed out in front of the parents and students in the school auditorium. I won one for a story I had written about the death of a young soldier. The Librarian gave a proud smile and tipped her head at me from her seat at the front of the audience. I blushed, my shoes feeling three sizes too big as I tried not to trip on my way up to the podium to accept it from the principal. There were random flashes of light that came from the audience as proud parents took pictures.
Mama gave me a tight smile when I sat back down. “You’re smart just like your father.”
During Christmas break, I flew back to Pennsylvania to visit my biological Dad. It was the first time that I had flown across the country by myself. I was on the verge of giddiness the entire way, my face pressed against the window admiring the silky blanket of golden clouds below us.
Over the intercom, the flight attendant announced that we would soon be arriving. I jumped out of my seat and ran down the aisle to the tiny airplane bathroom. Leaning over the little sink, I studied myself in the mirror. Will Dad recognize me? My heart fluttered in my chest at the reality of seeing Dad for the first time in five years. Will I recognize him? I tried to smile, and my reflection gave a horrific grin back; pale face and chapped lips. I licked my lips and smoothed my hair down with clammy hands, jumping when the pilot announced that everyone should return to their seats for the landing.
The airport terminal entrance was filled with people holding signs, and waving as we exited the plane. I searched the crowd for Dad in the sea of smiling faces. He stood to one side, his face expressionless, and held up one hand to acknowledge that he had seen me. I tried not to bump into anyone as I walked over. His face had new wrinkles, and he looked tired.
Dad grabbed me in a one-armed hug, while I gave him my best smile, my chapped lips splitting. We broke apart quickly, both of us looking in opposite directions as though we were complete strangers.
“H..hi Dad,” I stuttered, feeling tongue tied. What could I say to Dad, when everything in my life was a secret?
“Hey, how are you doing, kiddo?” He answered. He seemed as uncomfortable as I was, as he grabbed my bag and strode out ahead of me to the airport doors.
We drove through the city and out into the country, the two of us sitting silent in his old truck. “Radio doesn’t work,” he said with a nod towards the instrument panel. He turned left by a silver grain tower and passed several green and yellow fields before he bumped down a grassy driveway hidden between the crops.
He lived in a farmhouse with eleven empty bedrooms. The house reminded me of a white chess piece sitting by itself on top of a checkerboard of the corn and wheat fields.
Dad opened the door with a huge rusty key and set my suitcase inside on the peeling kitchen linoleum floor. He cleared his throat and then said, “Here’s home. I haven’t been able to afford light bulbs for all the rooms, so there’s only light in the kitchen, and in the living room.” He handed me a silver flashlight to use to find my way to my bedroom and the bathroom.
I climbed the dark stairs, dragging my suitcase behind me with a scraping bump. Each time the flashlight flickered I froze and then gave the flashlight a ferocious whack. I threatened it, “Don’t you dare go out!”
My bedroom had a lone window under an alcove that gave out a smidgeon of light. I smacked the flickering flash light, and the beam found a little cot with a green sleeping bag and a lumpy pillow. With slow steps, I walked over and picked u
p the pillow, giving it a sniff. It smelled like mildew, and I flung it back down. I moved to the bedroom window and pushed back the muslin curtain, trying to distract myself from the unpleasant smell and the strange room. It was a cloudy gray sky. Below my window I saw an old family grave yard with uncanny tilted weathered crosses. I groaned at the sight of the graveyard, and my room seemed even more cold and depressing.
The dark and the gloom carried over to the next day, which I spent huddled under a blanket on a broken-down brown couch watching T.V. While Dad was at work, I didn’t use the bathroom. I didn’t want to wander the spooky house by myself. I wasn’t sure what I would meet in the shadows of long dark hallway, and the graveyard outside didn’t help my imagination.
Dad and I didn’t connect with each other the entire time I was there. Dinner was the two of us pushing food from one spot to another on the plate with our forks and talking about the weather. At the airport terminal when it was time for me to board, Dad patted me on my head like I was a puppy.
Mama and Adam picked me up at the airport later that night. I went straight to bed when I got home. The next morning there was a box from Adam’s parents sitting on the table for Christmas. They sent Mama and me sweaters as presents. Mine was a pale pink and made from real wool. Mama’s was yellow. She frowned after she opened it and thrust it away from her.
“Ugh, Yellow just makes me look sick.”
I pulled mine over my head, and laughed as the wool made my hair stand up all over with static. She looked at me.
“Pink looks so good on me. I wish I had gotten pink.”
I tugged down the cuffs at my wrists. I loved the soft color so much.
“Do you want to trade?” I asked her.
Her smile was so big that I was happy to pull the sweater off and hand it to her.
“Here take it Mama! You’re right, yellow looks much better on me.”
Actually, yellow didn’t look good on me either because my skin had the same olive tone as hers. She pulled the pink sweater on with a smile and turned away from me.