Fighting Words

by Kimberly Brubaker Bradley

  Teena and her mom went to the free clothes closet every couple months—there’s a limit to how often you can go—and they usually took me and Suki with them. The clothes closet is this big warehouse that smells like old socks, no windows, full of beat-up clothes like you’d expect, run by church people who say things like “Have a blessed day” while giving you pity looks. The church people dress nice. They don’t never shop at the free clothes closet themselves.

  Anyway, we told the emergency nasty foster woman where it was. She took us there, and I found an old pair of tennis shoes that completely creeped me out ’cause I hate wearing other people’s shoes. Those were the shoes I hid as soon as I got my high-tops. Then I went along to the school, not my old school and not the one I go to now, some other school because it was supposed to keep me from feeling bad, somehow, about running away from Clifton, or who knows, maybe that woman just couldn’t be bothered to drive me across town.

  A whole new school for just three days and you can imagine how well that went. I was standing up front in yesterday’s clothes and used shoes, and the teacher was looking like she couldn’t believe she got stuck with a new kid half an hour before lunchtime on a Friday, and she said, “Here’s our new girl—Delicious!” before I could get a word in. I said, “Call me Della,” but nobody could hear me because they were laughing so hard. That’s when the kid tried to lick me and I kicked him and the day kind of went downhill.

  Francine is a big improvement, if you want the truth.

  7

  We ran from Clifton on a Thursday night. That means when I got to my new school, the Francine school, on Wednesday morning, it still hadn’t been a week. Not even a full week with three schools, half a dozen policemen, two lawyers, two caseworkers, the emergency witch, and Francine.

  The second day of school, Francine didn’t drive me. I followed the kids off my bus into the thick August air, then into the cafeteria for breakfast. I was hungry, but I couldn’t eat. The breakfast was chicken biscuits, cereal, fruit, and juice. A whole pile of food. I stared at my tray. My stomach rumbled. My mouth felt too tight to swallow.

  “Hey,” some kid next to me said, pointing to my biscuit. “You gonna eat that?”

  I shook my head.

  “Can I have it?”

  I’d been thinking of wrapping it up in a napkin in case I felt better later. “Sure,” I whispered.

  “Thanks!” He ate it fast, three bites. I thought about asking his name, or telling him mine, but before I could say anything, he’d jumped off the bench and was gone.

  * * *

  ■ ■ ■

  Trevor got three strikes by ten a.m. It was an improvement over yesterday, but Ms. Davonte didn’t seem to see it that way.

  Trevor said, “It was the new girl’s fault.”

  I said, “Nobody made you tie my shoelaces to your chair.” Which he’d done. And I’d seen him do it, though he hadn’t realized I had, so that the moment he started to get up from his chair, I yanked my foot sideways and the chair skidded out from under him and startled him so much he fell over. I yelled, “Who tied my shoes to your chair?” and that was strike three. No recess for Trevor.

  Nevaeh, the girl sitting next to me, looked at me with her soft brown eyes. She whispered, “You could have just untied your shoes.”

  I said, “I don’t take snow from anybody.”

  She nodded. I wish I knew what she was thinking. Sure couldn’t tell.

  At recess I talked to nobody. Again.

  * * *

  ■ ■ ■

  I took the bus home from school, and there was Suki dancing on the sidewalk, a smile on her face as wide as the sky. I got off the bus and she grabbed me and swung me around. “Food City called!” she said. “I got a job!”

  “Great,” Francine said, when she got home and heard the news. She popped us into her car and took us right back to Old Navy, because Suki had to have a pair of plain boring brown pants as part of her work uniform. They cost $21.94, counting tax. She was going to have to buy a Food City shirt too—$20. “No problem,” Francine said, getting out her wallet.

  Suki said, “I’ll pay you back.”

  She was starting right away. They wanted her to go in for training on the long shift, Friday night, the very next day. Six p.m. until midnight. “They’re short of help Friday nights,” she said. “Most high school kids don’t want to work then. I wrote on my application I always could.”

  Francine nodded. “We can make it work,” she said. “Usually on Fridays I go out with my friends. There’s a good band at O’Maillin’s this week. Bluegrass. But I’ll come pick you up at midnight. That’s too late for you to walk home. Once I get the car insurance sorted, you can drive me instead.”

  Suki said, “What about Della?”

  “What about me?” I asked.

  “She can’t stay by herself,” Suki said.

  “Sure I can,” I said. “I’m ten.”

  “No way,” Suki said.

  “Yes, way. You did before—”

  “And look what happened—”

  “I’ll keep the doors locked,” I said.

  Suki said, “On a Friday night.”

  I hadn’t thought about that. Suki was right. I didn’t want to be alone on a Friday night. Suki and me, we pretty much hated Fridays.

  Francine sighed. “This is why I mostly don’t take ten-year-olds,” she said. “I don’t even know any babysitters.”

  “BABYSITTERS?” Could you imagine, me and some thirteen-year-old being paid to watch me? That’d go well. “I’ll go hang out with Teena,” I said.

  “No,” said Suki.

  There was a funny kind of stillness. Francine said, “They did the right thing.”

  Suki said “Yep” in a way that let me know she didn’t believe that at all. “But anyway, Teena’s got a new boyfriend.”

  “Oh, who?” I asked. Suki rolled her eyes and shook her head.

  “She can come listen to the band with me,” Francine said. “My friends won’t mind.”

  “No way,” I said. “Hang out in some skank bar with a bunch of old ladies?”

  Suki sighed. “I guess she can come with me. Sit in the deli. They’ve got tables there.” She looked at me. “Just behave. The whole night. Don’t you dare get me in trouble.”

  “You’re kidding me. Right?”

  “Your choice,” Suki said. “Come with me or go with Francine.”

  That’s how I ended up at Food City for six hours on a Friday night.

  8

  Suki made me stand out on the sidewalk of Food City and count to a hundred before I followed her in, so no one would know we were together. I took the dollar she’d given me and bought a Coke at the deli, from a black woman behind the counter who gave me the stink eye. I was allowed to sit at a deli table while drinking a Coke I bought and paid for, so there was nothing she could say, but she looked like she wanted to say plenty. Don’t know why. I was wearing my glitter hoodie again and my new blue jeans and purple velvet high-tops. I looked nice. Wasn’t trashing up the place.

  Suki’d given me a pen and one of her school notebooks, to draw in to pass the time. Drawing was Suki’s thing, not mine. Francine had given me an old magazine with a princess on its cover. I didn’t know whether princesses were Francine’s thing. They sure weren’t mine. I took the pen and drew a mustache and devil horns on the princess. I sipped my Coke. I needed it to last a long time.

  The grocery store was loads busier than I thought it would be. Since Clifton almost always came back from long hauls on Friday nights, he saved grocery shopping for Saturdays. But just now at Food City there were people everywhere, all the checkout lanes going at once.

  Then I saw her—the girl who sat next to me at school. Nevaeh. She was walking through the deli with someone who looked like her mom. I waved, and she came right over and slid into the seat ac
ross from me.

  “Hey, Della,” she said. “Whatcha doing?”

  “Hey, Nevaeh,” I said. I showed her the magazine.

  “That’s Princess Kate,” she said.

  “Not anymore,” I said. I added bristly eyebrows and fangs. “My middle name’s Nevaeh,” I added.

  Nevaeh made a face. She took the pen from me and blackened one of the princess’s teeth. “My middle name’s Joy. Like ‘Heaven’s Joy.’”

  I thought about that. “More like ‘Heaven’s Yoj,’” I said. “Or maybe Yoj Heaven.”

  “Your name backwards would be Alled,” she replied.

  I said, “I guess. Alled Heaven? Heaven Alled?” I tried to think how to say Delicious backwards, but it was too complicated and also something Nevaeh didn’t need to know.

  “Heaven called,” Nevaeh said. “They wanted me to tell you something.”

  Didn’t sound good. “What’s that?”

  She grinned. “They give out free cookies at the deli.” She got up and went over to the counter. I followed. The black woman handed her a chocolate chip cookie without saying a word.

  I said, “I want one too.”

  The woman said, “How old are you?”

  Her name tag read MAYBELLINE. Suki used to have mascara called that.

  “Ten.”

  Maybelline said, “For the free cookie, you have to be under ten.”

  “I’m still nine,” Nevaeh said. She took a bite of her cookie. She didn’t offer to share.

  I wouldn’t, either, but I wished she would.

  Maybelline sighed. She reached into the display counter, pulled out another chocolate chip cookie, and handed it to me. “Here. Where’s your mother at?”

  Nevaeh flicked her eyes toward her own mother, who was over in the produce section putting bananas into her cart.

  “None of your business,” I said.

  Maybelline said, “Better not be.”

  Nevaeh and I went back to our table and finished the cookies. I gave her a swig of my Coke. “I like your hoodie,” she said.

  “Thanks,” I said. “It’s new.”

  She nodded. “It looks new.”

  On the one hand, I wanted to say I am not usually someone who wears fancy things. On the other hand, I didn’t want to say I got this new hoodie with my foster-kid clothing allowance after I had to leave all my old stuff behind. So instead I pulled out the list Francine gave me. “I got shopping to do.”

  Nevaeh’s eyes lit up. “You’re shopping by yourself? That’s cool. You can get whatever you want!”

  “Yes and no,” I say. “Francine is not stupid.” She’d gone online and made a list of exactly what she wanted. She said we had to give her the receipt.

  “Wonder Bread,” Francine had said. “I like Wonder Bread. Don’t buy me that cheap snow, and don’t come home with no whole-grain nonsense neither.”

  Francine ate raisin bran for breakfast and Wonder Bread and bologna sandwiches for lunch, every day, with one of those little bags of Doritos chips. Cool Ranch.

  Nevaeh said, “Who’s Francine?”

  “Lady I live with,” I said. “Me and my sister.”

  Nevaeh nodded. She didn’t ask questions, which I appreciated, so I added, “I like her place better than where we lived before. Want to help me shop?”

  “Hey,” Maybelline said as we walked past the counter, ”little girl. Where’s your mother?”

  Maybe it was because she caught me off guard, or maybe I was just testing things out, now that Clifton was gone. Maybe I wanted to know up front if Nevaeh was going to get run off like Junebug. “Incarcerated,” I said.

  Anyhow, that shut Maybelline up.

  Nevaeh just snorted. I grinned at her, and we took off for the produce section, Francine’s list flapping in my hand.

  9

  The trickiest part of shopping off Francine’s list was figuring out exactly where everything was in the grocery store. The second-trickiest thing was figuring out what Francine actually meant. “Wonder Bread” sounds easy enough until you realize that there’s classic white sandwich, small classic white sandwich, and giant white sandwich. Turns out plain classic white was the correct answer, which I guessed right based on how many sandwiches that sized loaf would make.

  “Oscar Mayer bologna.” Thick cut? Extra-thick cut? Chicken and pork? All beef? (All beef thick cut is the answer. I guessed all beef right, because honestly, who wants to eat chicken bologna? But I went with extra-thick because that was what I would have liked. Francine wasn’t snotty about it, though. She just made notes so I’d get it right next time.)

  “Fat-free vanilla-flavored coffee creamer.” Got any idea how many kinds of coffee creamer there are? More than anybody needs in this world or the next. Full-fat sugar-free, fat-free full-sugar, all kinds of flavors. Nevaeh and I took turns picking up the weird ones—thin mint cookie?—and pretending to drink them. We got to laughing pretty hard.

  “Sorry about your mom,” Nevaeh said, when we finished laughing. “Incarcerated.”

  “Yeah,” I said. “Me too.”

  “Do you get to see her?”

  I shook my head. “She had a psychotic break. Plus, she’s in, like, Kansas. Something like that. Far away.” I tried to sound casual. Didn’t need Nevaeh feeling sorry for me. “I don’t really remember her. Just the last day. The last couple hours.”

  “What happened then?” Nevaeh asked.

  I took a deep breath. Probably it was better I tell the whole story up front. I said, “She blew up a motel room.”

  “What?”

  I held up one hand. “Truth.”

  “Where were you?”

  “Sitting on the motel room bed. Watching cartoons with my sister.”

  Nevaeh’s eyes got real big like she didn’t know whether she ought to laugh or cry. I couldn’t tell her. Finally she opened her mouth, and blurted out a very, very, very bad word. Blizzard bad. A whole pile of snow.

  For sure that was the only honest answer I knew.

  “Will your mom care?” I asked.

  “About what?”

  “My mom.”

  Nevaeh said, “Why would she?”

  “Some people do.”

  “Nah.” Nevaeh paused a moment, then said, “But that’s awful. I’m sorry.”

  I swallowed hard. “Thanks.”

  Nevaeh nodded.

  “My sister says addiction is a disease,” I said. “So does my caseworker. They say you can’t fault a person for having a disease, for not knowing how to fight it and for being sick all the time. But you sure can fault them for blowing up a motel room with their two little girls inside.”

  “Shoo,” said Nevaeh. “I’d say so.”

  My heart was beating fast. It slowed down after we messed with the creamers some more. French toast swirl. I am not making that up. I don’t know why anyone would swirl toast. Let alone toast from another country. And how that’s a creamer flavor is beyond me.

  We hadn’t finished Francine’s list when Nevaeh’s mother came and said it was time for them to go. “Bye, Alled,” Nevaeh said. “Have fun drinking up that fat-free sugar-free non-dairy peppermint mocha creamer.”

  “Bye, Yoj,” I said. “I’ll bring you my leftovers Monday, for lunch.”

  “Extra-thick-cut bologna!” she shouted.

  “Classic Wonder Bread!”

  Nevaeh darted back to me. “My uncle’s incarcerated,” she said. “We love him anyhow.”

  I guess that might depend on exactly what he done.

  Or maybe not.

  Not, I suppose.

  I abandoned the list and the grocery cart and found Suki. She was working a checkout line all by herself already. “Go away,” she said, barely looking at me.

  “What time is it?” I guessed maybe nine, ten.

&n
bsp; Suki glanced up at a big clock on the wall I hadn’t noticed. “It’s seven thirty,” she said. “Another four and a half hours to go.”

  “I got most of the groceries,” I said.

  “Well, put ’em back,” she said. “Everything’ll heat up and spoil. You can shop for groceries at eleven.”

  I dug out a corner of a refrigerated section and dumped all our cold food into it, where I could find it again later. The rest, the cereal and bananas and lettuce and stuff, I left in the cart. They weren’t going to go bad. I wheeled the cart back to the deli. Somebody’d swiped my half-finished soda.

  I stuck the cart in the corner and curled up in a booth. I was nearly asleep when someone poked me. I jumped. It was Maybelline.

  “Who’s that checkout girl you were talking to?” she asked.

  “Next time, wake me up before you touch me,” I said. “You’re lucky I didn’t punch you. I wasn’t talking to no checkout girl.”

  “Better not be a next time,” she said. “My deli is not a Holiday Inn. Also, don’t you lie to me. I hate it when small children lie. She your babysitter? Working two jobs at once?”

  “Course not,” I said.

  Maybelline frowned. “Like I said, I hate it when—”

  “Okay!” I said. “She’s my sister. But she’s not babysitting. I just happen to be here. I like grocery stores.”

  Maybelline studied me.

  I said, “Suki needs this job.”

  She said, “You like spending Friday night at a grocery store.”

  “Sure,” I said. “Beats hanging out at O’Maillin’s with Francine.”