Addie on the Inside

by James Howe

  For now.

  Quack Quack Quack

  Ah, the hilarity of the sixth-grade boy who thinks he deserves

  his own show on Comedy Central just because he goes quack

  when he spots the duct tape across my lips. Duck tape! Get it?

  Call my agent!

  The yuck-it-uppers surrounding him slap their thighs and bobble

  their heads and go quack quack quack as I roll my eyes and let it

  pass.

  But of course it doesn’t pass. Between every class after that

  I must endure the contagion of the quacking started by that

  sixth-grade boy who is undoubtedly basking in his brilliance

  and planning his career. I bet it

  never occurs to him that he really isn’t funny. If he had any idea

  how annoying I find this endless quacking, would he even care?

  No. He wouldn’t even sweat it.

  Cacophony

  1. harsh discordance of sound; dissonance: a cacophony

  of hoots, cackles, and wails

  2. a discordant and meaningless mixture of sounds:

  the cacophony produced by city traffic at midday

  —from the Greek: kakos, meaning “bad, evil” + phone,

  meaning “voice”

  It cannot be a coincidence that Mr. Daly chose cacophony

  as the vocabulary word of the day. That jangle, that mangle

  of language and sound that is the soundtrack of every day

  in middle school is even louder to my ears today. It bounces off

  my silence like hundreds of thousands of millions of tiny stones

  hitting a windowpane behind which I can only watch and pray

  the glass will not be broken. I never heard so much until

  I spoke so little.

  Bad voice, evil voice, multiplied, multiplying, each feeding

  on each, reaching my ears with such hateful words, such lies,

  such meaningless cackles and quacks, cracks about my sealed lips,

  the clothes I’m wearing, the new shoes that are apparently just like

  my favorite teacher’s. I can do nothing right, it seems.

  This babble, this chatter, I tell myself that none of it matters,

  that the important thing is to hold my head high and remember

  why I am choosing to be silent. I am not a lezzie loser know-it-all

  big mouth brown-nosing teacher’s pet showing off just to get

  attention. No, whatever their intention, I will let my silence

  speak louder than their cacophony.

  The Silent Ones

  There are others who are silent.

  I’ve never noticed them before.

  They don’t wear tape over their mouths

  or look defiant. They look down, or

  if their eyes happen to catch yours,

  they look away. How many are there

  who walk these halls unnoticed each day

  while I talk and talk and the loud ones

  shout and shove? What do they think of

  when they study the floor or glance sideways,

  taking a chance that they will not be seen?

  What is it they, unseen, are seeing?

  That Look

  What is that look Ms. Wyman is giving me as we pass

  in the hall, the one she wears with such showy

  satisfaction? I’ve seen it before. It’s the I’ve-just-

  come-from-talking-to-the-principal-and-you’re-

  in-trouble look. Why so cheery about it, Ms. Wyman?

  Why devote so much facial real estate to a gloat?

  You hold the power

  but maybe that wasn’t always so.

  Maybe when you were my age you felt powerless too.

  Were you made fun of then as you are now? Maybe

  that explains why you try so hard to look so wise.

  Maybe that explains the sadness in the corners

  of your eyes.

  The Other Side

  Mr. Kiley sits on the other side of his desk

  playing the part of the principal. Blah blah,

  he is saying, his mouth turned down in self-

  importance, or maybe to keep from laughing

  at how ridiculous this is. I mean, he’s looking

  into a face with duct tape where a mouth

  ought to be. I hear him ask if I am listening

  and I nod and try to look grateful that he’s

  letting me keep the tape on until lunchtime,

  even if after that IT MUST COME OFF!

  I notice a photo on the wall behind him.

  I don’t recognize him at first in that floppy hat

  and the T-shirt with a guitar on it and his arms

  around two boys on either side of him,

  all three of them beaming like they just won

  some big prize. The younger boy is missing

  two front teeth and the older one holds a fish

  on the end of a line.

  I’ll bet Mr. Kiley is a good granddad.

  I’ll bet he swivels his chair a lot so he can look

  at that photo and see those smiles. I’ll bet

  he hates having to wear a tie all day and act

  like it matters that some girl in his school

  is wearing duct tape over her mouth.

  I nod when he asks, “Agreed?” and shake

  his hand when he extends it and leave

  his office thinking I’ll never look at Mr. Kiley

  in the same way again, now that I’ve seen

  that photo behind his desk and have imagined

  him swiveling his chair all day long

  just to take another look.

  How the Day Is Full of Surprises

  The way I can see in ways I have never seen before.

  The way I can hear when I’m not busy planning what I have to say.

  The way I’m relieved not to be the smart, outspoken one everyone

  expects me to be.

  The way it feels good to take a break from the me I expect of myself.

  The way none of my friends (except Skeezie) tease me but instead make

  me feel that what I’m doing is real and that it matters.

  The way Becca leaves me alone.

  The way Ms. Wyman doesn’t call on me in math class and allows me not to

  speak.

  The way Ms. Watkins admires what I’m doing and likes my outfit and

  doesn’t point out that we’re wearing the exact same shoes.

  The way when the tape comes off, though I remain silent, the scoffing

  and quacking and calling of names begin to fade away.

  The way not talking begins to make me feel that I, too, am fading away.

  The way a few kids give me a thumbs-up, including some of those who

  are silent most days, who have become visible to me only

  Today.

  One More Surprise

  DuShawn sits at his old table at lunch,

  laughing with his old friends,

  looks sideways when we pass in the hall,

  never reaches for my hand,

  keeps his crooked smile and his dimples

  to himself.

  The first time I speak

  Skeezie says, “Ha! I knew you couldn’t last the whole day!”

  “I was only trying to go to the end of school,” I say, the words

  feeling strange in my mouth, like food whose taste I’d forgotten.

  Shutting my locker, I ask the gang to wait for me before

  we head to the Candy Kitchen.

  I go to wash my hands. They aren’t especially dirty.

  Perhaps it’s the loneliness I want to wash away.

  Taken

  The last stall is taken.

  I recognize the shoes.

  I turn to walk away

  but don’t get very far

  when the stall door opens
>
  and there’s Becca Wrightsman,

  looking like a rabbit

  surprised in the headlights

  of an oncoming car.

  She doesn’t try to hide

  eyes that have been crying.

  She says to me simply,

  “You don’t know everything.”

  And goes to wash her face.

  Not Knowing

  “Has the cat got your tongue?” Bobby asks.

  We are walking and I, uncharacteristically,

  am not talking. “You can speak now,”

  he prods, but all I can give him are uh-huhs

  and nods. My mind is on Becca and why

  she was crying. It’s on DuShawn and why

  he was lying when he told me he couldn’t

  see me later.

  “Wait up!” Joe cries, and he

  and Zachary surprise me with hugs from

  behind. “Our hero!” Joe says. “We love

  your courage, we love your mind!” “We

  want to marry it!” says Zachary, though

  how they’ll marry my mind I really

  don’t know.

  My mind is full of not knowing,

  and if it’s true that not knowing is a kind

  of strength, then at the rate I am going,

  I will soon be the strongest girl

  in the world.

  Busy

  He told me he’d be busy

  when I asked him to come over,

  there was something about something

  that had suddenly come up

  and he can’t see me all weekend

  and I think it’s all baloney

  or a worse word than baloney

  but I don’t know about what

  and I’m tired of not knowing

  but I’ll wait it out till Monday

  for whatever to blow over, then

  I might just

  kick

  his

  butt.

  What Was Here

  Running in the backyard,

  trying to catch a ball and missing it,

  I trip on what turns out to be

  a two-by-four, the end post

  of a swing set long gone.

  “Remember, Joe?” I say,

  “remember when we were little

  and would swing out here

  in the summer evenings,

  counting fireflies, pumping

  higher and higher,

  racing to the moon?”

  “We never did,” says Joe,

  as hopeless at throwing balls

  as I am at catching them.

  What we are doing tossing

  a ball around in my backyard

  is anybody’s guess.

  “Of course we did,” I insist.

  “My mother made us lemonade

  and those little butterscotch cookies.”

  “Nope,” says Joe. “I never had

  butterscotch cookies, and we never

  raced to the moon.”

  Joe can be so stubborn.

  Then I remember:

  That old swing set was taken down

  the summer I was four,

  the summer Joe moved in to

  the house next door.

  It was someone else I raced

  to the moon, a girl who lived

  down the street. It was Becca

  who loved my mother’s

  butterscotch cookies,

  who counted fireflies,

  who pointed her toes to the sky.

  It is Becca who would remember

  what was here.

  Becca

  She lived down the street.

  Each spring the first tulips on the block

  nodded hello from her mother’s garden.

  When my mother told me she’d moved

  to another town, using the word divorce,

  I nodded in my most grown-up way,

  not asking what it meant. I bent

  down in their garden later that day,

  picked a tulip to take home, peeked

  through the window to make sure

  they weren’t playing a trick, hiding inside

  and waiting for me to seek.

  The house was empty. The tulips,

  all but the one drooping in my hand,

  nodded goodbye as I turned away.

  Grandma Finds Me

  Grandma appears at the back door.

  “Stay for supper, Joe?”

  “Can’t,” says Joe, “but thanks.”

  And off he goes to his house, running

  and trying to kick his heels together in the air

  and not quite making it and laughing

  at himself for not quite making it,

  as Grandma lets the screen door

  shut softly behind her and comes to me,

  pulling her braid over her shoulder

  and stroking it like a cat. “I like Joe,”

  she says. “I like how comfortable he is

  in his own skin.”

  We stroll around the yard, looking for

  tulips. Grandma carries a pair of shears.

  I love the word: shears. So old-fashioned

  and yet it’s what she calls scissors

  because it’s what her mother called them,

  and it’s a way for her, she says,

  to keep her mother near.

  “What were girls like when you were my age?”

  I ask as she bends and touches a yellow tulip

  the way moments ago she’d touched my arm.

  “Did they mess with your head?” I ask. “Did they

  act like you were their friend and then talk about you

  behind your back? Were there mean girls

  when you were my age?”

  Grandma’s shears go snip, and she straightens

  herself to look me in the eye. “There have always

  been mean girls, Addie. I just don’t know

  that they were ever so well organized. But then

  back in the day we didn’t have as many means

  of organizing.” She leans over and snips. “Cell

  phones and the Internet and what have you.

  Cruelty has gone multimedia so production

  has gone up.” She hands me the tulips

  and we turn back to the house.

  “Rise above it,” she says, her hand

  on my shoulder. The air is turning colder

  as I tell her, “I’ll try.”

  Home

  It isn’t because I was silent today

  and took from the silence lessons to keep.

  I have always loved this quiet time of the week,

  or have for as long as I’ve been allowed

  to stay up this late. Ten o’clock on Friday night.

  Dinner has been eaten, the dishes have been washed

  and dried, the cats are curled around somebody’s feet.

  Kennedy mine, Johnson my mother’s. The PBS

  documentary on sea turtles ended five minutes ago,

  and the TV put to bed. I finger the edge

  of my Garfield and Odie bookmark, flip the tassel aside,

  find my place in The Secret Life of Bees. My father

  in his chair is reading too but I can’t quite see the title,

  and he is already so lost in the words I don’t want

  to interrupt him to ask. My mother, nestled

  in the other corner of the sofa, is knitting another hat

  for another child who needs a hat somewhere in the world.

  Johnson must be worn out from the day’s activities,

  whatever they were for him, because he doesn’t lift

  a paw to bat at the needles flashing and clicking

  above his head or the yarn dangling inches from his

  whiskers. Kennedy stretches and yawns, looks up at me

  with one eye open, one eye closed. I’d tell him he’s got

&
nbsp; sticky-eye (that’s what I call it), but he’d just look at me

  as if to say, Get a life.

  Grandma shakes her head at something she’s just read,

  takes off her drugstore glasses, and gazes into space.

  She’ll be going home soon, sitting alone in the living room

  she once shared with my grandfather, his chair empty

  across from hers, his papers still stacked at its side.

  I remember that chair, Grandpa sitting there, me

  climbing up his leg and onto his knees when I was little

  and he was still strong. How he would bounce me to Boston

  to get a loaf of bread. Trot trot home again . . .

  Grandma sighs, then winks when she sees me looking.

  My mother curses a missed stitch, my father grunts

  and turns a page. I roll my head slowly to relieve the crick

  that has announced itself in my neck and return to my book

  reluctantly, not quite ready to leave Paintbrush Falls, New York,

  for Tiburon, South Carolina, to join Lily in her search for a home

  when I have found what she is looking for right here.

  A Nice Lunch

  “I’ll make us a nice lunch,” Grandma says

  the next morning when I find her packing

  and go into a pout. “Just you and me.

  Your parents will be out. Now, put your

  lip back where it belongs.” She hands me

  a shawl, the one she calls her Carmen

  shawl. “Here,” she says, “this goes perfectly

  with your eyes.”

  “For keeps?” I ask as if I’m five years old.

  “For keeps,” she says with a wink. “And I’m just

  getting myself organized. I don’t leave until next week,

  so who knows what other treasures I may yet

  bestow upon you. In the meanwhile, how about

  I make us a nice lunch?”