“My mother is,” I said. “I’m not.”
“Then why don’t you pledge to the flag?”
“Because my mother doesn’t allow us to.”
“Mama’s girl,” Tamara said.
“Joho head,” another girl said.
“So why’d you move here, then,” Tamara asked, “if San Francisco’s so pretty?”
We had been taught to say we moved here because we wanted a change. But standing there, that reason sounded stupider than anything. What kind of change? A gray, cold place where people thought we were weird?
“Just because,” I said. “Why did your family move here?”
“I was born here,” Tamara said. “And my mother and her mother and my father and his father.” She circle-snapped her finger in front of my face, making the others laugh.
“My father read somewhere that this was a better place to live,” I said. Across the yard, I could see Anna talking to a boy and laughing.
“It’s the only place to live,” Toswiah said.
“Oh,” Tamara teased. “Like you’ve been everyplace else.”
“I don’t have to be everyplace else to know what’s good.”
If you’d ever been to Denver, I wanted to say, you’d know there were better places. But I stood there silently, trying to think of something else. Even thinking the word—Denver—brought tears to my eyes.
“Hey! There’s Eric!” another girl said. Then Toswiah and the others were walking fast toward a group of boys.
I watched them walk away. A terrible loneliness came over me, making me shiver. When I looked up, the sky was almost silver. A beautiful, sad silver. All around me, kids were screaming and laughing and running. “Denver,” I said to the this-place sky. “It’s pretty there. We have the Rocky Mountains.”
The cold here is different. It slips into you gently, then makes its way deep inside. And settles. I pulled the zipper on my coat up to my neck, feeling the cold air all the way to my bones. Toswiah. I am Toswiah. Everyone around me had first names they’d been born with and would probably carry to their grave.
The laughter and screaming grew further and further away from me.
I stared up at the sky and started spinning slowly, not caring who was watching. I lifted my arms out beside me and threw my head back. The sky twirled dark gray, then silver, then silver-white. I spun until I collapsed from spinning. Collapsed right onto the cold, wet this-place ground. No one came over to lift me up by my arms.
How could they when I wasn’t even there?
13
IN FIFTH GRADE I SAT BEHIND A GIRL NAMED Carla. One morning, as I stared at the back of Carla’s head, I saw a bug crawl down behind her ear and disappear into her thick brown hair. A few minutes later, another bug crawled across her neck. Carla reached up and scratched her head hard. When I saw the third bug, I screamed and pointed to it, yelling that Carla had head-bugs. Everyone in the class ran over and the teacher tapped her ruler on the desk for order. Carla put her head down on her desk and cried. That afternoon, our teacher sent notes home to everyone’s parents telling them how they had to check our heads for lice. As my mother went through my hair with a hard plastic comb that night, I though about Carla. I knew by the next morning she would be the cootie-girl, and even as I kept hearing the awful, gulping sound Carla made as she cried, I couldn’t help feeling relieved that it was her and not me.
Now I stood in the middle of the school yard, staring up at the sun. It was Monday, a month before my fourteenth birthday. The sky was bright blue. So bright, I had to squint to look at it. I was the cootie-girl here. No one ever said it. They didn’t have to. People kept far away from me and laughed when I passed them in the hall. Once, I thought I saw Toswiah lifting her hand to wave at me. But as I lifted mine to wave back, her hand moved on up and smoothed her hair away from her eyes. I stopped waving then and put my hand in my pocket.
I took a notice out of my pocket and stared at it. In gym we’d been given permission letters to take home for different sports. I went down the list and stopped at TRACK & FIELD. In Denver, I could outrun most of the boys in my class but couldn’t join the track team because it conflicted with hockey and basketball. But here—it felt like I’d been running forever, so why stop? I circled TRACK & FIELD, wondering if I wanted to do any other stuff. There was soccer, gymnastics, and tennis. No basketball. No hockey. I had always hated gymnastics, the way the girls had to move like butterflies all over everything. I wanted the sports that let me land hard and breathe loud. I scanned the school yard for Anna, wondering if she was somewhere looking at the list and cursing the fact that there was neither a cheerleading squad nor a basketball team. I didn’t see her anywhere. I started to sign my father’s name—Jonathan Green—then caught myself and signed his new name where it said PARENT’S SIGNATURE. I folded the paper and stuffed it into my knapsack.
Sometimes you dream, Anna said when I asked her how we’d ever keep doing this. And sometimes you just cry. But when you stop crying and stop dreaming, it’s all still here.
We had been sitting in the bedroom. We could hear Mama and Daddy arguing outside our door. Their arguments had become familiar over the months. In Denver, when they used to kiss, I’d make a face and tell them how gross they were. Now, I would give anything to see my father pull my mother to him and hold her.
So you just think about the far, far future and do everything you can to make it feel like it’s coming quick. You taught me that. Way back when I thought I could never get through this.
I did?
Yeah, Anna said. How could you not remember that? I feel like it saved my life.
Anna turned back to her science book then. She was studying hard and getting A’s on all her tests. She was making friends at school. Not as many as she had in Denver, but people liked her. It was different here, though. She never brought her friends home or went to their houses. And nobody called. When she wasn’t watching TV or doing her nails, she was studying. There was a college in Massachusetts—Simon’s Rock—that you could go to at sixteen.
That’s the prize I have my eyes on, Anna said. A full ride there would mean no roadblocks. Nobody saying “We can’t afford it” or “God says blah, blah, blah, blah . . .”
When she starts talking about Simon’s Rock, I want to say What about me?! And even though I never say it, Anna must see something in my eyes, because she always ends by saying You’ll get somewhere, too, T. You might be a pain, but you’ve got a fire.
The end-of-lunch bell rang and I headed slowly back into the building. Girls moved around me in groups and pairs, their arms around each other’s waists and shoulders. Two guys in front of me slapped hands, promising to catch each other later, then headed off in separate directions down the hall. I had carried my knapsack out with me to study during lunch. Now I lifted it higher up on my back and thought about Lulu. Some days I could feel her—right there at my side, bumping shoulders with me. The two of us laughing. Lulu. I pulled my knapsack tighter to me and swallowed. Once she had said that my moving away was gonna leave a big hole in her life. Now I wondered if she had found someone else to be close to, if that hole had filled up and closed over. Even though I believed we’d meet again in college, sometimes the missing made me feel unsure. Now I was almost as tall as my mother. I wondered if Lulu had grown, too. Her mother would say Look at Miss Toswiah—getting all tall on us. And Lulu would laugh her laugh while I stood there in embarrassment. I would give anything for that moment. Absolutely positively anything.
14
IT’S SATURDAY. OUTSIDE IT’S CLOUDY AND cold. The sky’s still that weird silver-gray, the way it never got in Denver. I am fourteen today. When we left Denver I was almost completely flat. That’s not the case anymore. My clothes from last year are too tight. The pants are all too short. The T-shirts curve over my chest in a way that makes the guys at school look twice. When the corner guys hanging out say Hey Neckbone to me, their voices have something else to them. Sometimes they even whisper C’mon o
ver here in a way that makes me walk faster past them.
The coconut cake is store-bought with nothing written on it. Fed money cake, Anna said when she opened the refrigerator and saw the cake there. Once Mama had been a great cook. Now she cooked like she couldn’t care less about the taste of anything. Fed money everything. The Feds send us a check every month—enough to pay rent and buy food and clothes until Daddy finds work. The money from our house is in the bank. Mama says when the time is right, we’ll start looking for a place to buy.
Jehovah willing, she adds.
At night I ask her god to will us to a better place.
This morning, Mama is leaving, Bible in hand. She’s going to spread the good news of Jehovah’s coming kingdom. Mama’s religion forbids celebrating birthdays. No candles on the cake this year. No singing “Happy Birthday.” That’s all behind us now. Lulu and I always found some way to be together on our birthday. Me, her and all of our friends. I want to call her now, say Happy birthday, girlie. Hear her say Right back at you. Same day, a few minutes apart. Less than five pounds. You think we were together in another life? she asked me once, her head on my shoulder.
Yeah, I said. And then we traveled together to this one. Another life. Another time. Lulu.
When I get to the University of Wisconsin, me, Lulu and Grandma will make up for all the birthdays we missed.
This morning, my father came into my room at dawn and said Happy birthday, copper penny. And for a moment, somewhere between waking and dreaming, I believed my father was well again and that we were back in Denver.
When I woke up, and saw we were still in this place, that my father was back at his chair by the window, I said Pennies aren’t made out of copper anymore! Don’t you know that?!
Daddy nodded, his eyes spilling over with sadness.
Sorry, I said.
I sat on his lap even though I am way too big for it, and Daddy put his arms around me, saying I know, sweet Toswiah. I know.
He smelled liked dirty clothes. I swallowed. He’d never smelled this way before. His hair was grown out and uncombed and his hands trembled when he hugged me. When he’d first started being this way, the Feds had given Mama the name of a therapist to take him to. But Daddy stopped going or Mama stopped taking him—I don’t know which. I hugged him tighter. He was right there but slipping away from me.
Daddy stared out the window without saying anything. I wanted to tell him he did the right thing, that it was better this way. I lay my head on his shoulder. It felt bonier than I remembered. His legs felt bony, too. Outside, the sky was off-white, like a dirty sheet had been laid across it. The words didn’t come. We just sat there like two empty bags of skin and bone . . . staring at the dirty-sheet sky.
When was the last time you laughed, Daddy? I wanted to ask him. It feels like a hundred years ago.
Sometimes I’m so afraid in this place. Last night, we had Fruity Pebbles for dinner and only a little bit of milk. It feels like every day the world falls a little more apart. Once I had a mother and a father and we were all happy. Some days it felt like me and Anna in the world all by ourselves. And the world we’re in doesn’t make any kind of sense anymore.
“WHAT YOU NEED TO DO IS GET UP OUT OF THAT chair and get looking for a job,” my mother says now.
Outside, it begins to rain softly. The sky drops a bit closer to the ground. Daddy’s eyes move slowly from the rain to Mama and then back again.
“A job,” my father says, his voice breaking. “A job?”
“Yes,” Mama says. “You’ve been sitting at that window like some sick old man for all these months. Play-time is over. You should have thought about all you’re thinking about before now. Made some other choices.”
“Do you regret the choice we made?” he asks softly.
Anna lifts her face from her math textbook and looks at Mama, her eyes wide. “Say it,” she whispers. “Say it!”
I’d give a thousand tomorrows, she said one night. I’d give a whole ten years of my life to be back in Denver the way we used to be.
Mama lifts her Bible to her chest and hugs it. After a long time has passed, she says,“You did the right thing.”
Anna curses under her breath and turns back to her homework. This morning she gave me the autumn-colored sweater, kissed me on the forehead. Her lips felt strange. Good strange.
“I know how to be a cop,” Daddy says. “I know what’s right and what’s wrong.” He looks at each of us and nods. “Right and wrong,” he says again, then turns back to the window.
“And I knew about Denver and teaching there,” Mama says. “But all that’s behind us now. Jehovah has a plan, and we have to—”
“What plan?!” my father shouts. Anna and I jump, but Mama stands there as if this loud voice came out of Daddy every single day. “What damn plan does your god have?! Tell me, because I want to be a part of it!”
Mama presses her Bible closer to her chest and doesn’t say anything. She doesn’t look angry. Just a little bit . . . a little bit broken.
“Don’t take this away from me,” she says. “Not this, too.”
I lay my head down on the kitchen table. The pages of my notebook feel cool against my face. We’re supposed to write a story about a dream we had that changed us. I’ve had three hundred dreams and still wake up in this tiny apartment in this world that doesn’t have anything to do with us.
“I was a cop for fifteen years,” my father says to the window. “Fifteen years! When I walk down these streets and see cops, I see that thing in their eyes that still believes in it. Still believes they can protect the world and change it and make it good. Well, you know what—I used to have those same beliefs, but they died with Raymond Taylor. They died the morning I walked into the D.A.’s office. They died when Randall and Dennis got sent to jail for manslaughter. I did that. I sent two cops to jail. Two cops! And it tore me up inside! Tore me up!”
Me and Anna sit straight up, our eyes wide. They went to jail, I think, feeling a smile coming on. The first few times we asked him, he wouldn’t tell us, and then we were too scared to ask anymore. And now, here it was, in this tiny apartment all these miles away from Denver. They went to jail. When I look over at Anna, she’s half-smiling, too. I hug myself hard, scared of my father’s voice, so loud in the room, but loving the words coming out of his mouth. They went to jail!
He turns slowly and glares at my mother. “Do you know what that felt like? It felt like sending myself to jail. It didn’t feel like the right thing no matter how many times you tell me it was. It felt as wrong as Raymond Taylor’s dying felt! And so now what do I have? Tell me, Mrs. Thomas. Tell me what your god’s next plan is, because I’m as tired of myself at this window as you are!”
Mama bites her bottom lip and stares at Daddy. The room is silent. It is the most he’s said in a long time, and the words hit us all hard. Anna stares down at her hands. The smile is gone now, but she’s not frowning, either. I put my braid in my mouth and chew the end of it for a minute. The apartment is dead silent. When my father sighs, I get up and put my arms around his shoulders. He reaches up and pats my hand absently. He is crying.
“I’m sorry,” Mama says after a long time has passed. “I’m sorry it had to happen like this . . . to you . . . and to us.” She sniffs and lets her breath out real slowly. “It’s hard for all of us here, but we don’t have to live this way.”
Anna looks over at me and mouths jail. I nod. Even in this airless room, there is that tiny bubble of all rightness. A tiny kernel of justice coming at us across all these miles.
Mama’s voice softens. “In another month, I’ll be certified to teach here and can start putting in applications at all the schools I can get to.”
My grandmother taught. Mama says she never thought of doing anything else. Teaching’s in my blood, she said. No, she said. Teaching is my blood. It’s all of me. The one thing the Feds screwed up on was my mother’s teaching certificate. First they botched her name, then they forgot to send a ne
w one. My mother believes it’s because they didn’t want her to teach for a while. For whatever reason, it was finally on its way.
At night, my mother studies the Bible the way she once pored over her daily lessons, marking passages, researching the origins of them and reaching further to understand and explain it all. Who was Judas, Job, Hotham the Aroerite, Salome, Apostle John? Where was Gomorrah, Canaan, the Black Sea, Babylon, Eph esus, Patmos? Ask Mrs. Thomas. She knows.
That night back in Denver when the raspy voice called, my mother screamed and the bite of jelly sandwich I had just swallowed lodged in my throat. When I see her sitting in the bedroom bent over the Bible, I can still feel it.
Mama’s wearing one of her teacher dresses—the blue one with white piping along the bottom. She has lost weight over the months, and the dress sags at her waist and shoulders. Her hair is pulled back into a braid, pinned up at her neck. She is thirty-nine. Before all of this happened, she was making plans for her fortieth birthday party. Her invite list was two pages long. Her friends are gone now, too. Behind her. No contact. Mama looks down at her Bible. The Kingdom Hall is filled with new friends who call themselves her sisters and brothers. Mama goes every other night. On Sundays, me and Anna have to go with her. Her new sisters and brothers smile at us, don’t ask questions about our before life. When they did, Mama said It’s nothing anyone needs to know about. Nothing even worth mentioning. The sisters and brothers nodded as though they had lived their whole lives this way—full of things not worth mentioning. No one nosed too hard. The future’s what matters, the Witnesses said. Jehovah’s plan. It made me think that they were all hiding some part of themselves somewhere. Jehovah’s Witnesses don’t pledge to the flag. They don’t celebrate holidays. They don’t celebrate birthdays. We’re in the world but not of the world, Mama says. And anyway, a birthday is just another year.
“A job,” Daddy says again. He looks over at me, his eyes flickering recognition. “T,” he says. “Anna?” Then his eyes flick off, away from me.
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