Almost Crimson

by Dasha Kelly

  “Y’know, CeCe,” he said. “I won’t pretend like I know how you feel. A new school. New kids. New rules. A whole new obstacle course to master, right?”

  CeCe pursed her lips, the closest she could offer to a grin.

  “The bad news, kiddo, is that you have to figure it out. You have a great future at this school and I’d hate to see it squished in your very first semester.” Mr. Meadows forced his torso against the small table to face CeCe. His mustache had streaks of gray, like his short, cropped hair.

  “Tell me what I can do to help you turn things around next term,” he said.

  CeCe looked at his big face and kind eyes. She didn’t know what to say. She didn’t know what she could say. She couldn’t narc about Jesse calling her a narc. She couldn’t repeat the lunch meat misunderstanding without embarrassing Laurita again. She couldn’t tell him about how coming to school was as agonizing as going home. CeCe wanted to tell him all of this, but she couldn’t. Instead, she started to cry.

  “Oh, CeCe, don’t start crying on me,” Mr. Meadows said, unwedging himself to stand and get a box of tissues from his credenza. “Then I’ll start crying, and you don’t want to see a big clumsy guy like me crying, not with this huge honker. Trust me, it’s an ugly, snotty sight.”

  CeCe took the tissue and felt a small laugh escape.

  “That’s better,” Mr. Meadows said, smiling back at CeCe. He sat and waited.

  Finally, she said, “I don’t know.”

  “OK, that’s fair,” he said. “If you had a solution, you would’ve done it already, right?”

  CeCe smiled weakly and shrugged one shoulder.

  “Tell you what,” Mr. Meadows said. “How about you think about it over holiday break and we’ll come up with a plan together.”

  “OK,” CeCe said, scooting her chair back, sensing their discussion was over.

  “I have one suggestion to start,” Mr. Meadows said. CeCe turned from the door, her hand on the lever. “There’s a little cubicle in the back of our office. You can eat your lunch there for a while. No one will see you, no one will bug you, and no one will swipe your pudding cup. Sound good?”

  CeCe beamed, nodded.

  “All right then,” Mr. Meadows said, standing and following her through the door. “I’ve got to get upstairs and talk to the seniors about their winter sledding trip. You’d think they were taking a spaceship to the moon, as complicated as they’re making things.”

  Booming laugh.

  “Thank you, Mr. Meadows,” CeCe said.

  “You’re more than welcome, CeCe,” he replied. “No one expects you to figure out this high school stuff all by yourself. Then there’d be no reason for me to show up! You’re not as alone as I know you think you are. We Vikings gotta stick together, right?”

  “Right.”

  CeCe thanked Mr. Meadows again and went to her locker to get ready for her first period class. She could feel the goofy outline of a smile on her face, and it felt good. At lunchtime, she carried her brown bag to Mr. Meadows’ office and the guidance secretary tucked her into a back cubicle, as promised. When CeCe left the office, the secretary gave her a blank sheet of school letterhead. CeCe held the sheet gingerly, looking quizzically at the empty page.

  “Makes it look like you were here for something super official,” the secretary said, giving CeCe a wink. Understanding dawned across CeCe’s face and she gave the woman a bashful grin.

  All at once, CeCe felt small and enormous. She’d spent week after week feeling more and more invisible in these halls. The students didn’t speak to her, the teachers rarely called on her, even the bullies didn’t expend much energy on her anymore. But she wasn’t invisible to Mr. Meadows. Or his secretary. Or Mr. Kingsman. They saw her as a moving shadow, but at least acknowledged her dimensions and made their own efforts to help her begin to feel whole.

  You’re not in this alone.

  The night before their first day back in January, CeCe laid out her clothes and rolled curlers into her hair. She smiled at her reflection in the bathroom mirror, “dressed, pressed, and fresh,” as Coretta liked to say when they were all polished for church. CeCe felt buoyant walking up to the school, like having a second first day of school. Before heading to her locker, she stopped in to show Mr. Meadows her new look and let him know she’d worked on some good ideas to show him over lunch. When she reached the office, the secretary greeted her with a sad frown.

  “Oh honey,” the secretary said. “Telling you was going to be the most difficult.”

  CeCe stopped in the doorway.

  This lead-in rang familiar.

  “Mr. Meadows is out for the rest of the year,” the secretary said.

  CeCe’s entire body went numb with this news. Muscle by muscle, thought by thought, she felt a familiar ache of loneliness begin to creep back into her bones.

  “He had a troubling, private incident occur with his daughter and he’s decided to take a sabbatical until next school year.”

  CeCe thanked the secretary and went to her homeroom class. She ripped the wish list into small, even squares and sank into her seat. The teacher handed out their new schedules and she knew the day would prove an end instead of a new beginning.

  By the end of the week, sure enough, CeCe had random people—even upperclassmen—stopping to ask her what she’d said to get Mr. Meadows fired. One by one, her classmates had clearly decided Jesse had been right all along. Week after week, more “evidence” surfaced about CeCe’s alleged whistle blowing: being called from class to Mr. Meadows’ office, that she snooped through lockers, that the secretary created a “private family matter” story for fear that CeCe would get her fired next.

  When they learned Mr. Franklin, the grisly and joyless sophomore counselor, was taking over, CeCe’s position as the freshman class pariah was cemented for eternity. She had stopped protesting, stopped trying to explain, and stopped being angry at the doubting glances. She even stopped being scared about what barb might be hurled her way. Returning to her bleacher seat for one, CeCe found a permanent switch inside herself and slid everything to “stop.”

  THIRTY

  SMIRK

  CECE MUMBLED A TIGHT-LIPPED thank-you from the concrete. The tall woman extended her hand and pulled CeCe back to her feet. The waiting cluster of riders filed around her and onto the bus.

  CeCe limped to the side, pretending to examine her ankle as the bus hydraulics sighed and pulled away from the curb. No scrapes, no strains, no embedded bits of glass, just a bruised ego after falling from a city bus, plowing down a small crowd of commuters, and smearing her white interview blouse with a stranger’s chocolate bar.

  She dashed a glance over each shoulder and pointed herself toward Carpenter Street. The crisp spring breezes coiled around her arms, pulling her along to Rocky’s house. They became friends towards the end of freshmen year, her first semester at Linden. She’d transferred mid-year, unable to endure any more of Jesse’s taunting. She’d been relieved to be free, but missed the rigor of her old school’s curriculum. At Linden, CeCe breezed through her homework, wrote long notes to Pam in place of their regular sleepovers, picked up her mother’s prescriptions, and crowded any remaining mental space with dense books like Iacocca, The Sicilian, and The Color Purple.

  CeCe also waited for the crazy spores to erupt inside her. Rocky waited with her, although less patiently. He responded to her gripes and theories with stark truth and crude affirmations. He was like Cousin Coretta in the form of a cute guy. Rocky was under-tall for a guy, just as CeCe was shorter than average for girls. He had a broad forehead with thick eyebrows and wise, auburn eyes that complemented his shock of russet-colored hair. Rocky, a fixture with their peers since elementary school, was often referenced as “the black kid with freckles,” though he could also have been called “the honors student,” the “track star,” “Camille’s boyfriend,” or the “debate team champ.” CeCe, on the other hand, existed as the “quiet new girl with the big booty.”

&
nbsp; CeCe absorbed Rocky’s friendship like an essential nutrient. She regularly rode the Kennedy bus to hang out at the blue house on Carpenter Street. Most visits, Rocky focused on some necessary task—homework, ironing, or shaping the hairs of his struggling mustache—while she rambled along some stream of consciousness or blurted out random comments about the latest book she was reading. CeCe spoke few words to the rest of the world, but unleashed them all inside the walls of Rocky’s room.

  Only Rocky’s room did not have meticulous designs from Africa and Harlem like the rest of the blue house on Carpenter Street. Instead, faraway ambitions, like Mali, Belize, New Guinea, and Fiji, were held in place with clear thumbtacks. Above his work desk was a framed trinity of Malcolm X, Michael Jordan, and Mahatma Gandhi. “Consciousness, Excellence, and Righteousness,” he had explained to CeCe.

  “Pick up a guidebook next time you’re at the library,” Rocky said, interrupting CeCe’s report. He did not look up from the Adidas cradled in his lap.

  CeCe sighed and leaned back against the wall. They’d been debating the subject of college since they met. Rocky’s parents had impressed upon him the question of where he might go, not whether. For CeCe, the prospect of college seemed implausible. Her life assignment—tending to her mother—had been cemented in her after middle school. CeCe had resigned herself from the habit of dreaming.

  “College isn’t part of my plans,” she lied. “I’m not gonna pretend to be hell bent about it now.”

  “Lame,” Rocky said, eyes still on his polishing job.

  CeCe bristled and snapped, “Just because you get a hard-on whenever someone says ‘college’ doesn’t mean everybody else thinks the same way.”

  Rocky gave a labored sigh and said, “Not unless that someone can read a novel a weekend. Solve the Sunday crossword in one afternoon. Make sense of Robert Harris and Robin Williams. Or calculate the recipe for three-quarters of a batch of brownies in her head. That someone should be thinking about college.”

  “Maybe that someone doesn’t want to go to college.”

  “Maybe that someone is full of shit.”

  Rocky returned to his polishing. CeCe sat on his bed, looking at the back of his head.

  “And that someone will regret being so full of shit one day,” he added.

  When CeCe left, she refused Rocky’s offer to drive her home or to the bus stop, or to walk her to the corner. She ignored his smirk as he walked her to the door.

  “This hurts me more than it hurts you,” he said as she exited. CeCe flashed her middle finger before the heavy door closed.

  By the time they reached their senior year, CeCe and Rocky had developed an eerie symbiosis. They weren’t joined at the hip as they had been in the beginning, but they were elemental parts of each other’s lives and everyone knew it. CeCe still wasn't invited into the cool social circles, but she could sense their sniping comments dissolve outside of her earshot. In so many ways, Rocky had become her protective force field.

  It was their first day as seniors and the hallways pulsed with feverish excitement. Their classmates and underclassmen greeted her as they passed in the halls, and CeCe returned awkward head nods and weak smiles. She felt as if someone had yanked off her cloak of invisibility after all these years.

  After third period, CeCe stood washing her hands in the girls’ bathroom mirror when a dark-haired girl she knew to be on the track and field team with Rocky rushed in to fix her hair in the mirror. She was tall and lean, a pole-vaulter and long-distance runner. She pulled a small brush through her long, coal-black hair when she recognized CeCe wringing her hands beneath the faucet.

  “You must be having the best day ever,” the girl said, with a punchline in her eye.

  “The last day will be the best day,” CeCe said, reaching for a paper towel. The girl, she believed, was a junior.

  “Not the senior thing,” the girl said, dismissing CeCe’s reply with a wave of her brush. “I mean, yes, that, and you finally get to have your crush all to yourself. Camille and Rocky broke up.”

  CeCe wouldn’t see Rocky until lunch hour. Throughout their junior year, while he dated Camille, CeCe and Rocky would chat while loading their trays and then separate to their respective tables. This time, Rocky followed CeCe to her seat. She raised her eyebrows dramatically and looked searchingly about the lunchroom.

  “Stop it,” Rocky said, a grin on the corners of his mouth. “I know you heard about me and Camille.”

  “Why’d I have to hear about it?” CeCe said, snapping the small pepper packet in half and shaking small dashes across her mixed vegetables and her pasta.

  “The rumor mill just moved faster than I could think,” Rocky said, peeling the paper from his straw.

  CeCe laughed, in spite of herself. “Nothing moves faster than all that thinking you do.”

  “I’m going to take that as a compliment, if you don’t mind,” Rocky said.

  “Knock yourself out,” she said.

  CeCe quieted while Rocky bowed his head to bless his meal. Watching his lips part and bend around his prayer, CeCe considered how they might look to others in the lunchroom now. They’d had lunch together most days since sophomore year. CeCe loved Rocky but not romantically, at least not the way she thought romantic love should feel. She’d loved him like family, like a promise, like salvation.

  While Rocky blessed his food, CeCe let herself wonder for the first time how it might feel to adore him. With Camille as a constant all these years, CeCe hadn’t been confronted with the fantasy before now. When Rocky looked up, CeCe’s eyes were fixed on him.

  “Man, chill,” he said, twisting his face into mock irritation. “Can a brotha finish talking to God first?”

  CeCe rolled her eyes. She felt the small idea sink as quickly as it had appeared.

  Rocky talked about his summer with Camille as they ate their lunches. CeCe wrinkled her nose as Rocky noisily shoveled spaghetti into his mouth. For all his refinement, CeCe marveled at what a boy he still was.

  “We agreed things had gotten dumb with all the back-and-forth,” Rocky said, between smacks. “Plus we didn’t want to burn our entire senior year knowing we weren’t gonna last after we graduate and move away. “

  CeCe’s head shot up. Move away? We?

  “I thought you were applying to U of I?” CeCe said.

  “I am,” Rocky said, stuffing a corner of bread into his mouth. “That’s just a backup. Northeastern has always been the goal. Their education school is one of the best and I feel pretty good about getting in. I might even qualify for this fellowship program that gets me experience in the classroom as early as next summer . . . ”

  CeCe heard his words, registered the mounting enthusiasm as he explained the program, the rigorous selection process, the boarding academies that recruited from among the school’s graduates. CeCe knew Rocky hoped to teach at elite private schools. He wanted to expose privileged children to brilliant people of color. As he explained it, he wanted to be their Great Black Hope, the same way young, white teachers expect to rescue their new inner-city classes.

  Aren’t there rich white kids in the state of Illinois who need cultural awakening? CeCe thought.

  “I talked to one of the program administrators a few weeks ago,” Rocky said around another full mouth of spaghetti. “I’m heading out there in October.”

  “Oh,” said CeCe, poking at her food, her appetite now gone. “This is serious business.”

  Rocky nodded, swallowed, gulped at his soda, and went on about his scheduled interview. CeCe’s head bobbed up and down and her stomach flipped over and over.

  “What’s up with your applications?” Rocky asked, forking the last mound of pasta into his mouth.

  CeCe shrugged. “I’m gonna work for a while first.”

  “Don’t be stupid.”

  “Don’t be an ass.”

  “Noted,” Rocky said.

  When CeCe got home from school that afternoon, she still had Rocky’s news itching in her ears. Bost
on. “Moving away” gripped CeCe in the throat much more viciously than “going away.” Going away, at least, felt more closely tied to “coming back.” CeCe was annoyed with herself. Now that she’d let the idea of “them” peek above her surface, she couldn’t keep it submerged.

  Drown, drown, drown.

  THIRTY-ONE

  WISHES

  CECE STOOD WITH HER WRIST draped over the open refrigerator door. She stared at the containers and bowls covered with aluminum foil, measuring the depth of her hunger against her willingness to cook. She decided to finish the rest of the sloppy joe mix, even though there were no more hamburger buns. CeCe had a civics paper to write—well, to start—for the next day. She would read a chapter of her novel instead. From the first day of school, her mood had soured from foul to rancid. Schoolwork was an evil she managed. Humans, on the other hand, persisted in chafing her nerves.

  She heard her mother’s slow shuffle in the hallway as she set the range dial to medium. CeCe picked up her library book from the counter and leaned against the sink to read while dinner warmed. Her mother stopped in the kitchen archway, a weathered elf in sweatpants. Her mother was present most days now, sweeping and rinsing, but CeCe still didn’t hold the lunar strength to draw her mother far enough away from those dark shadows.

  “Here,” her mother said.

  CeCe looked up, puzzled at the sound of her mother’s voice. Her mother floated about the house to “lay eyes” on CeCe, as Auntie Rosie would say. She floated in the hallway while CeCe prepared for school in the morning, in the afternoon when she read or did homework, and, again, at night before most of the windows in their apartment complex went dark. Aunt Rosie urged CeCe to see the love in those efforts. CeCe saw nothing inside of nothing.

  “Here,” her mother said again. Her tan cardigan sagged from daily wear and constant tugging. She clutched it closed with one fist. With the other hand, she held out to CeCe a fifty-dollar bill.