Between Madison and Palmetto

by Jacqueline Woodson

  “Well, there should be a school for black girls like that. How come boys get everything?” Maizon said. She couldn’t help thinking about Blue Hill and all the white girls there. There had only been four other black students and she had been so lonely for Madison Street, for the dark faces of her friends and grandmother. She hadn’t felt as sure of herself at Blue Hill as she felt on Madison Street. She looked at Bo. “But I know what you’re saying.”

  “Me too,” Margaret said. “But what does that have to do with the construction?”

  Bo looked as if he were about to say something, then stopped. After a moment, he said, “You’ll see.” He looked around at the crowded party. In the corner of the living room Hattie, her back to the wall, laughed into the face of her current boyfriend. Ms. Dell sat across the room, rocking a sleeping Li‘l Jay on her lap while she talked to a woman in a green Sunday hat. A bluesy song was playing softly now.

  “We’ll all see,” Bo said.

  3

  Years pass,“ Ms. Dell said slowly. It had been a week since the New Year’s party, and still confetti littered the corners of the kitchen and living room. Ms. Dell sat opposite Margaret at the huge kitchen table. Behind her, Hattie was busy at the stove, warming up soup for their lunch. In a few minutes Hattie, looking older than twenty-one in Ms. Dell’s apron, would be setting a steaming bowl of it in front of Margaret, warming up every single part of her against the chill. Outside, snow had laid a thick white cape over every inch of Madison Street. Li‘l Jay napped in the bedroom off of the kitchen—Hattie’s room. ”Here it is more than a year since Maizon went away and came back from that boarding school.“

  Hattie looked over her shoulder at Margaret. “You two are growing up before everybody’s eyes. Where is Maizon, anyway?”

  Margaret shrugged. “I don’t know and I don’t care.” She hadn’t seen much of Maizon since the New Year’s party. Tomorrow would be the first day of school since Christmas break. Maybe she’d see Maizon on the bus. The smell of Hattie’s spicy chicken soup filled the kitchen. Margaret couldn’t believe how hungry she was.

  “Uh-oh,” Hattie said under her breath.

  “She’s probably with Caroline or something.”

  “How come Caroline didn’t come to the party?” Ms. Dell asked.

  “They were away visiting her grandparents in Vermont. I guess she’s back now and Maizon’s being buddy-buddy with her.”

  Hattie smiled. “Sounds like a little bit of jealousy to me.”

  “I don’t care about it. She can hang out with whoever she wants.” Margaret cut her eyes at Hattie. Hunger made her crabby.

  “Sometimes,” Ms. Dell continued, “it seems as though not a moment has moved, but then you look up and you’re already old or you already have a houseful of kids or you look down and see your feet are miles and miles away from the rest of you—and you realize you’ve grown up.”

  Without thinking, Margaret looked down. Already her breasts had begun to build tiny mountains on her chest. Mama had bought her three bras, each one a little bit stretchier than the last. She smoothed her hands over her chest. The bulky sweaters she wore almost hid this growing she had absolutely no control over. But her jeans didn’t hide the extra meat rounding out her behind and thighs. Hattie laughed. Margaret raised her head slowly, knowing already that Hattie would be looking at her and smiling. This wasn’t the first time she had been caught checking out this new unfamiliar body of hers. Margaret felt her face growing hot.

  “You’ll get used to it, Margaret,” Hattie said, setting a bowl of soup down in front of her.

  “I’d rather it just went away.”

  “But it doesn‘t—” Hattie began.

  “I know, Hattie,” Margaret said, cutting her off. “That doesn’t make me stop wishing.” She took a spoonful of soup before continuing. “Every morning I wake up, it seems everything is bigger than it was the day before. I hate all this growing!”

  “So many girls wish they had breasts.” Ms. Dell laughed. “Girls walking around all flat chested, stuffing their bras with tissue, doing exercises and praying. You should count yourself lucky.”

  “How fat am I gonna get?”

  “It’s not fat,” Hattie said softly, touching Margaret’s forehead. “It’s just growing.” She sat down in the chair closest to Margaret, tore a piece of the warm bread Ms. Dell had baked, and dipped it into her soup. “When I was little, I used to be so flat chested, I didn’t even want to go outside. Remember, Mama?”

  Ms. Dell nodded, smiling. “How could I forget that little girl standing at the screen door looking sad and me not knowing the reason?”

  “Those girls down south,” Hattie continued, “seemed to be stacked by the time they were ten. They had two years on you, Margaret. But when we moved up here to New York, I seemed to be caught up with everybody. Then it was safe to go outside again.”

  Hattie laughed. “Eat your soup.”

  Margaret smiled, taking a big spoonful. Leave it to Ms. Dell and Hattie to make her feel okay about herself.

  “What time’s your mama home, tonight?” Ms. Dell asked.

  “She said around eight. There’s a meeting today. Some people might want her to do some illustrations for a magazine. If they do, she said they’re going to pay her good money.”

  A few months after her father died, Margaret’s mother started working for an architectural firm while she took drawing classes at City College at night. Now she had a new job, designing everything from company manuals to Christmas-party matchbooks.

  Ms. Dell shook her head proudly and turned to get what must have been the hundredth look at the picture Mrs. Tory had given them New Year’s Eve. “Every one of you Torys has a gift,” she said slowly. “Even your father, God rest his soul.”

  “God rest it,” Margaret and Hattie echoed.

  In the year and a half since he had died, Margaret thought of her father less and less. Before, he had been like his real self hovering over her, making her remember him every single day; now he was just a small shadow that followed her. All of a sudden she would look to the side or behind her and catch a glimpse of him. When this happened, her throat swelled up. She would feel the tears before they came to the surface. But she was crying for him less and less these days. Ms. Dell had said that was a good sign. Margaret disagreed. It was just a sign that there were other things in her life to cry about. There was the empty apartment that greeted her when she ran in from school some days, hoping her mother would be there, having forgotten that Mama would be at work. There was Li‘l Jay, growing tall and talking more and more, Li’l Jay with his gift of clairvoyance like Ms. Dell’s. But most of all, Margaret knew, behind all the other things to cry about, there was Maizon. The old Maizon and the new one. The one that had gone off to Blue Hill and come home different. The Maizon who hardly ever called up to her window anymore, who walked to the pizzeria with Caroline Berg, who sat on the school bus with her only when Caroline was absent or being driven to Pace Academy by her dad.

  It’s not fair, Margaret thought. Maizon hadn’t even liked Caroline in the beginning. It was Margaret who wanted them all to be friends. Maizon had thought Caroline would be like all the white girls at Blue Hill. Margaret closed her eyes and remembered climbing on the Pace Academy bus in front of Maizon for the first time.

  “A school bus and everything,” Margaret said excitedly. “This is going to be great.”

  But Maizon had been solemn and reluctant. She had told Margaret she was sick and tired of going from school to school and just wanted to find a place where she belonged.

  “You’ll belong here,” Margaret promised, pulling Maizon into the seat beside her.

  Caroline was sitting in front of them, alone, staring out of the window. Her hair hung down over the back of the seat and reminded Margaret of strawberries, dark and red. But it wasn’t really red. It was more blond with strips of brown running faintly through it.

  “Hi,” Margaret said.

  Caroline turned and Marg
aret caught the frown racing across Maizon’s face and knew Maizon had recognized Caroline from the window on Palmetto Street.

  “Hey!” Caroline smiled. Her eyes were just a little darker than her hair and her smile seemed to light them up. It’s a nice face, Margaret thought. It’s honest. Margaret remembered the sad-looking girl waving to them from the window. When Caroline smiled, she wasn’t that person anymore.

  “Hey yourself,” Maizon said.

  Those first days at Pace Academy had been great. The teachers seemed to treat every student as though they were the only student. Although Margaret and Maizon only had a few classes together, they had the same lunch period and had spent the early days catching up on everything going on during that time. But as it turned out, Maizon and Caroline had practically every class together and Margaret watched from the sidelines as they grew closer and closer. Soon, all Maizon was talking about at lunch was Caroline. Pace Academy didn’t seem so perfect anymore. It was just another school with a bunch of smart kids. And Margaret felt more alone than she ever had before.

  “Years pass,” Ms. Dell said again, looking over at Margaret.

  Margaret took another sip of chicken soup.

  “Years pass,” Li‘l Jay echoed, walking sleepily into the kitchen. “I want soup.”

  4

  Maizon made her way slowly up Palmetto Street, past the empty plots where cranes and cement mixers sat silently waiting for Monday when they’d start up again. Cranes and cement mixers working five days a week to change this neighborhood into something it hadn’t been before.

  “Life,” Ms. Dell had said to Maizon and Margaret the summer before Maizon left for Blue Hill, “moves us through all the time changes. All kinds of changes. And we’re made so that we roll and move with it. Sometimes somebody gets stuck in the present and the rolling stops—but the changing doesn’t.”

  It seemed now everyone was rolling nervously, waiting for the next change to shiver, like a late winter wind, through the neighborhood. Everyone, Ms. Dell and Hattie and Mrs. Tory, waited anxiously. They were afraid of these changes. If the fixing continued and the neighborhood improved, richer people would begin to move in, the way Caroline’s family and other families had moved onto Palmetto Street. Ms. Dell and Mrs. Tory rented their apartments. They were afraid the rents would increase because people moving in had more money to pay. If the rent increased, they’d have to move. Maizon had heard Ms. Dell talking to Grandma about it. Grandma owned the house she and Maizon lived in. People had tried to buy it, offering her lots of money, even showing her the cash. But Grandma had held fast. In the end, she had forced the men from her house, daring them to ever come back again.

  “They think black people go crazy for money,” Grandma had said sadly, shaking her head. “This house is ours, Maizon. That’s the way it will always be.”

  But now, as she turned the corner, heading to Caroline‘s, bending her head against the cold rush of wind, Maizon wasn’t so sure about “always.” It contradicted Ms. Dell’s statement about change. Everything contradicted everything. Even her friendship with Caroline was a contradiction. Bo flashed across her mind. You get me on a dark street with your Caroline or your Caroline’s mom, and if they don’t run like Pete to cross the street, my name’s not Bo Douglas. Maybe he was right too.

  At the corner, Maizon stopped. Woodbine Street. She looked up at the black-and-white street sign. Woodbine used to be between Madison and Palmetto. A long time ago there had been a whole block of houses where there was nothing now. A whole block just disappearing, Maizon thought to herself. A whole neighborhood. Years ago, Ms. Dell had told them, Woodbine had fallen victim to fire after fire. Soon there were only a few houses, scattered up and down the block. Now even those were gone and the big, empty lot that once had been the homes of families, escaped the notice of a lot of people. Maizon couldn’t remember the last time she had thought about the block that used to be between Madison and Palmetto. Where there once was, there isn’t now. The line was from a poem someone had written at Blue Hill. Maizon couldn’t remember the girl’s name. They hadn’t been friends. The title of the poem was “Disappearance.” The class had taken the poem apart line by line while the author sat silently, occasionally nodding but not offering up any of her own reasons for writing it. Only now, standing on the corner, could Maizon add this to her ideas of what the girl had been trying to say.

  Into the trailing daybreak air,

  I ride aloft a memory there

  Against the winding cry of this plow

  Where there once was, there isn’t now.

  Maybe Bo had been right when he’d said, “We’ll all see.” Maybe everyone in the neighborhood was on the edge of riding aloft a memory of the old Madison. In the years to come, Maizon wondered, would Madison Street drop off the face of the earth the way Woodbine had?

  She rang Caroline’s buzzer and waited. The high-rise apartment building always smelled so new and clean. No smell of chicken frying in an apartment on the first floor. No peas and onions bubbling in a pot on the second. There was something almost too sterile about this new building. As she made her way up the marble staircase to Caroline’s third-floor apartment, Maizon wondered if this building would always smell so new.

  On the day of Margaret’s father’s funeral, she and Margaret had gone outside, away from the Torys’ crowded apartment.

  “Ms. Dell says rich people are going to move into those new buildings,” Maizon had said. They had worn identical black dresses that day. In the July heat the dresses clung to their skin.

  They had always dressed alike back then. Now—Maizon sighed—they hardly ever wore the same clothes anymore. And rich people had moved into this building. Caroline’s father was a college professor. Her mother wrote for magazines.

  Maizon had been so deep in thought, she had forgotten why she was coming over until Caroline opened the door and stared at her. “Check this out!” Maizon said, opening her coat and running her hands over her new outfit. The look Caroline gave her reminded her of the time she had gone to Margaret’s house dressed exactly like a fashion model she had seen in a magazine. “Your grandmother’s going to skin you alive when she finds out you left the house looking like that,” Margaret had said when Maizon walked into her house wearing big gold hooped earrings and eyeliner. Margaret had been right, Maizon realized days later. The outfit had been a little bit ridiculous. But this one—now, this one was hot!

  Caroline leaned against the door and smiled, dimples cutting deep into the sides of her face. Seeing her standing there, smiling, Maizon was sorry for how mean she had been the first time she saw Caroline: “Who’s she?” Maizon had asked Margaret, glaring at the pale girl with her face pressed against the window, staring down at them. Maizon had just returned from Blue Hill. “I don’t know,” Margaret had answered. “She just moved in. I can see her staring all the time from my window.” Margaret had waved, and Caroline waved back.

  When they first met, last January, Maizon had not even said hello to Caroline on the school bus.

  “Old Sunshine Face,” she had nicknamed Caroline. “Always so bright and cheery.”

  “I think she’s nice,” Margaret had said.

  But somehow it had been Maizon who became tight with Caroline. Margaret seemed happier spending time with Ms. Dell and Hattie and, more and more, by herself. When Maizon had asked her what she did when she was alone, Margaret had grown defensive. “Things!” she said, angrily. “Mostly I sleep.” Maizon had stopped asking after that. When she called and Margaret said she’d rather be alone, Maizon left her alone. She missed her, though.

  Things turn around and around, Maizon thought as she smiled back at Caroline.

  “Cool, huh?” she said, coming into the living room and peeling off the heavy coat her grandmother had made her wear on top of the new outfit. “I don’t think a thirteen-year-old should dress in black no matter how in-style it is,” Grandma had complained, even as she stitched the Lycra material into an outfit.

&nb
sp; Caroline whistled. “That’s really nice, Maizon. You look like Catwoman.”

  “It’s called a cat suit. My grandma made it ... reluctantly.”

  “She spoils you.” Caroline laughed, hanging Maizon’s coat in the huge closet at the end of the living room.

  “I deserve it,” Maizon said, surprised again by the way the material shimmered, as though it had been sprinkled with gold dust. She pranced back and forth in front of Caroline, stopping to admire herself in the mirrored wall opposite Caroline’s living-room window. But Grandma was right, Maizon realized. The cat suit emphasized the fact that she didn’t have a single curve. Although she was nearly as tall as Hattie now, close to five eight, she didn’t have anything to show for it. And now that her hair had grown out, hanging almost to her shoulders, it looked like a wild bush unbraided. Maizon tugged at it. Grandma had been right ... again. Her hair did look ridiculous just sticking out all over her head.

  “What’re you doing?” Caroline asked, coming to stand beside Maizon at the mirror.

  “I’m braiding this mess up. Look at me. I’m a wreck!”

  Maizon watched Caroline watching her. They looked so different standing next to each other: where Caroline was pale and blond and came only up to Maizon’s shoulder, Maizon was tall, the color of coffee beans, with hair dark and thick as steel wool.

  “I like it loose,” Caroline said, shrugging.

  “Looks dumb,” Maizon said. “I look like a wild child.”

  “Wish I had hair like that,” Caroline said.

  “You’d really look like a wild child, Caroline. Imagine you with my hair.”

  Caroline tilted her head sideways, as though she were really imagining it. Then they both burst out laughing.

  “Is Margaret coming?” Caroline asked.

  Maizon finished French braiding her hair.

  “She’s probably hanging with Ms. Dell and Hattie, the people who live downstairs from her,” Maizon said. She had walked right past Margaret’s building on her way to Caroline’s. Even though things had changed between them, she still felt guilty about it. She looked back at the mirror. “Maybe if I put tissue in my—”