Semiprecious

by D. Anne Love

  I got in line behind a couple of girls wearing matching red jumpers and white blouses. One of them turned around. “I haven’t seen you here before,” she said, her eyes wide and judging. “Where are you from?”

  The line moved. The lady behind the steam table said to the girl, “Chicken or beef?” saving me from having to answer. When it was my turn, I asked for chicken, and she filled my tray with a gray substance that might have been either chicken or beef, then added a spoonful of mushy green beans and a blob of peach cobbler. I looked around for a seat.

  It was only the first day, but already I could see which tables were reserved for the people everybody liked and which ones belonged to the kids at the bottom of the popularity chart. At one end of the reject table, two of the Barton sisters hunched over their sausage-and-biscuit sack lunches. A chubby girl in a red sweater too heavy for the weather, and a couple of pimply-faced boys in overalls and work boots, sat across from them. Except for the Bartons, I didn’t know any of their names, but I knew their kind. Every school has kids like them. Kids who wear the same clothes all year, who smell funny, who look scared and lost, or tough and defiant.

  I walked past the table and nobody even looked up. A cloud of gloom hung above them because they knew what was ahead—179 more days just as miserable as the first.

  “There you are!” Faith said, coming up beside me. She jerked her head toward the blond goddess standing beside her. “Garnet, this is Celestial Jones. Our daddies went to preacher school together. We’ve been friends since kindergarten.”

  “Hi,” said the girl in a voice I recognized from the restroom. “Come sit with us today.”

  Go ahead and call me a hypocrite for sitting with them, knowing they really didn’t want me, but I just couldn’t sit with the other losers on the very first day of school. I followed Faith and Celestial to an empty table near the door. They sat beside each other, their shoulders touching in that best-friend kind of way. I took a seat across from them. Pretty soon the table filled with other girls wearing gold circle collar pins and tortoise-shell head bands.

  “Hey, everybody,” Celestial said, waving her fork in my direction. “This is Garnet Hubbard. She’s new.”

  They stared at me like I was a six-legged cow in a freak show. A couple of them smiled, but then they all went back to their own conversations. I pushed my food around on my tray, trying not to remember it was the first day of school in Mirabeau, too.

  The cafeteria doors opened and the ninth graders thundered in. I spotted Opal right away. She rushed through the serving line and took a seat right in the middle of the prettiest girls in ninth grade. She tossed her head and teased the boy who had nearly knocked her down in the office, wrinkled her nose at the cafeteria food, laughed with the boys from the pool hall about Sunday Larson’s chicken truck, making a joke out of the whole experience before they could laugh at her. It was amazing how she was born knowing the secret code of the popular kids, a code I couldn’t crack.

  I ate a couple of bites of cobbler. The milk had gone lukewarm in the carton. Faith and Celestial were ignoring me, talking about some program at church I was not a part of, proving to the rest of the table that I didn’t really belong with them. I got up to empty my tray.

  One of the freshmen crossed his arms and stared at me until my neck prickled.

  “Keep staring like that and you’ll wear your eyes out,” I said.

  He stuck his legs out, blocking my way. “Where do you think you’re going?” He grinned at the boy sitting next to him, and it made me mad.

  “What’s it to you?” I said.

  “What’s it tu yew?” he mocked. “What kind of hillbilly accent is that?”

  His sidekick cracked up. Chocolate milk spurted out his nose and sprayed onto the table. I turned around to go the other way, but another boy slid his chair into the aisle.

  “Are you one of those Louisiana swamp rats come up here to infest Oklahoma?” he asked.

  “Get out of my way.”

  “Git out o’ yore way? Okay, I will. But first I want to hear you talk some more. Say ‘I’m a filthy Louisiana swamp rat’ and I’ll let you pass.”

  I picked up my milk carton and was about to dump the contents onto the cretin’s head, but just then one of the coaches strolled by. “What’s the trouble here, boys?”

  “Nothing.” The cretin moved his chair. I escaped to the garbage can, threw my food away, and ran outside. I turned the corner and there was Miss Mendez sitting on the back steps with a cigarette in her hand.

  She blew out a thin stream of smoke and smiled. “Uh-oh. I’m busted. You won’t tell on me, will you?”

  I was so mad I couldn’t say anything. Miss Mendez scooted over to make room for me on the steps, and ground her cigarette into the dirt. “You’re Garnet, right? From third period?”

  I nodded.

  “First day here?”

  “Yes, ma’am.”

  “Mine, too. God, what a backwater.” She squinted at the washed-out Oklahoma sky. “My father had a heart attack this spring, and I came here to look after him. What’s your excuse?”

  I didn’t feel like telling her the whole story, so I said that me and Opal were staying with my aunt while our mama looked for a place up in Nashville.

  “Nashville’s not a bad town, if you like your music chicken-fried. I prefer classical guitar. Do you know Segovia?”

  “No, ma’am.”

  “He’s one of the best guitarists in the world. I listened to him constantly when I studied in Spain.”

  We could hear the little kids yelling in their school-yard across the road and the birds singing in the oak trees. She said, “Don’t let them get you down, Garnet. It’s the ignorant among us who are threatened by anyone or anything they don’t understand.”

  “Yes, ma’am.”

  She stood up. “Lunch period’s almost over. We’d better go, before the bell rings and we both get into trouble.”

  I went back inside. The ninth graders were still hovering around Opal. Most of the seventh graders had drifted away, but Celestial and Faith were sitting right where I’d left them, so busy chattering like Heckle and Jeckle, they hadn’t even noticed I’d gone.

  Ida Wink made a beeline for me. “Where have you been? Mr. Conley wants to see you.”

  Faith’s eyes widened. “Gosh, Garnet, what did you do to get sent to the principal’s office on the very first day?”

  “Mind your own business, Miss Underwood,” said Ida. “Come along, Garnet.”

  I followed the secretary down the hall, my blood rushing loudly in my ears.

  “In here,” she said, motioning me into an office. To the man behind the desk, she said, “Mr. Conley? This is Garnet Hubbard.”

  Then she closed the door.

  Mr. Conley waved me into a chair, folded his hands, and stared at me like a scientist studying a bug under a microscope. “So, Garnet, this is your first day with us.”

  “Yes, sir,” I said to the portrait of George Washington on the wall behind his desk.

  “Finding your way around all right?”

  “Yes, sir.”

  “Any idea why I sent for you?”

  “No, sir.”

  He handed me the sheet of math problems from Mr. Stanley’s class. Somebody had drawn an angry red circle around the box where I’d written my answer to the train problem.

  “‘Consult the timetable,’ ” Mr. Conley said. “Does that sound like an appropriate answer to you, Garnet?”

  “I couldn’t figure it out! I’m no good in math. Besides, it’s a stupid question.”

  “Come again?”

  “Say you want to know what time the eight-ten train from Los Angeles gets into Chicago. You look it up in the timetable. You don’t sit there with paper and pen, writing down stuff like x minus y plus ten divided by two equals z.”

  “That’s hardly the point. The point is to teach you to think logically and to solve problems.” Mr. Conley ran his hand over his egg-shaped head. “I
agree that using a timetable is faster than working the answer out mathematically, but Mr. Stanley is highly offended. He feels you were being disrespectful.”

  “I wasn’t!”

  “Well, then. Apologize to him and we’ll forget this ever happened.”

  “But I didn’t do anything wrong!”

  Mr. Conley let the seconds tick by until I thought my head would explode. Finally I said, “Okay! I’ll apologize.”

  “Good.” He handed me a hall pass and I escaped to history class, where I spent the whole period working on my apology to Mr. Stanley. But no matter how I said it, the words didn’t seem right. I knew it was because I felt wronged, and in my heart I wasn’t truly sincere. I finally wrote, Dear Mr. Stanley, I’m sorry. Garnet Hubbard, and put it in his mailbox in the office after fifth period.

  Health class was as boring in Oklahoma as it was back home. The teacher, Mr. Riley, was also our gym teacher and the coach for the ninth-grade basketball team. As proof of his important position, he carried a bunch of gym keys that rattled when he walked, and a stack of play diagrams, with x’s and dotted lines to show where the ball should go.

  He took roll, then made us sign up to do a report on some aspect of “Your Changing Body.” We had our choice of the body’s various systems. I picked the circulatory system, because the red and blue lines representing veins and arteries reminded me of the lines on Mama’s road map. Maybe I hoped drawing a map of my heart would somehow help me find a way back into hers.

  Mr. Riley collected our sign-up sheets and explained that during the year we’d study “Things That Are Bad for You,” such as sneaking beer and smoking cigarettes, followed by “Good Health Habits” like washing your hands, covering your mouth when you sneeze, and looking both ways before you cross the street. Then he fired up his film projector, dimmed the lights, and worked on his basketball stuff while we watched a jerky film about traffic safety, even though none of us was old enough to drive.

  Cooley and a couple of other boys sitting in the back row cracked jokes and laughed so loudly during the film that Mr. Riley had to yell at them twice to be quiet and listen.

  It was a huge waste of time. What I really needed to know was whether I would ever grow breasts like Opal’s, what to do to make people like me, and how to convince Mama to come home. Maybe if Mr. Riley showed films about stuff like that, people would pay attention.

  When the film ended, Mr. Riley marched us all outside and made us run laps around the building until we were red-faced and winded. Then we did a few stretching exercises to cool down and went back inside just as the final bell rang. I dumped everything into my locker and went out to catch the bus. Opal was standing on the steps with a couple dozen of her new best friends. She looked up and waved, but she didn’t invite me over, so I left her alone. Soon the bus lumbered up the road and stopped in the driveway. I got on and took the seat behind Sunday. Opal sashayed down the aisle and sat across from a dark-haired girl who looked like she’d stepped out of a fashion magazine. The two Judd brothers from the pool hall got on. One sat with the fashion model, the other one sat with Opal.

  We were halfway home when Opal let out a whoop so loud Sunday jammed on the brakes and yelled, “What’s going on back there?”

  I turned around. One of the Judds had his arms wrapped around Opal and was trying to kiss her. Opal was laughing and slapping his hands away, but not like she really meant for him to stop. The girl sitting across from Opal was kissing the other Judd, and half the bus was cheering them on.

  “Hey, cut that out before I toss you all off this bus,” Sunday hollered. “Opal, you and Travis break it up. Now!”

  Travis let Opal go. She smoothed her hair and looked at him, and they both burst out laughing again. I was mortified.

  It was a big relief when Sunday stopped at our house to let us off. She gave Opal a look that would stop a bullet, but my sister just waved and said, “See you tomorrow!”

  “Who was that girl?” I asked as we crossed the road. “She looks like a model.”

  “Cheryl Winslow. She’s a sophomore, but she’s in my study hall.”

  Aunt Julia waved from the porch and started down the lane to meet us.

  “Don’t tell her about Travis, okay?” Opal shifted her armload of books and we headed for the mailbox. “We were just fooling around.”

  “If you keep acting like that with old Octopus Boy, Sunday will tell,” I said. “I think it’s disgusting.”

  Opal grinned. “You won’t when you get older.”

  I opened the mailbox and took out the electric bill, the church newsletter, and a Sears flyer. Nothing from Mama.

  Aunt Julia reached the mailbox. “How was your first day? Are your teachers nice? Did you make friends?”

  “It was horrible.” My anger at Aunt Julia was coming back, hot as road tar in August. “Everybody hates me, even the teachers.” I pushed the mail into her hands and took off running.

  “Wait!” Aunt Julia called, but I ran into the house and pounded up the stairs. I curled up on my bed and cried. Mozart waded through the covers and settled down next to me. The door opened and Aunt Julia came in. “Garnet, I want to talk to you.”

  I scratched Mozart’s head and studied the wall like it was the most interesting thing I’d ever seen.

  She perched on the edge of my bed. “I know this is hard for you,” she began. “None of us asked for this situation, but now that it’s here, we’ve got to try to make the best of it. I’m doing everything I can to make it work, but you have to try too.”

  “You lied to me! You knew from the start that Mama wasn’t coming back before school started, and you didn’t say one word.”

  Aunt Julia sighed. “I thought it best to let you get used to living here before I broke the news. Then your daddy got hurt and you were so upset I didn’t have the heart to tell you. But I am sorry you feel betrayed.”

  “They all hate me.” I told her about the boys in the cafeteria who called me a swamp rat even though I had never set foot in the state of Louisiana, and that I’d had to apologize to Mr. Stanley even though I hadn’t done anything wrong.

  “The first day in a new place is always hard,” Aunt Julia said. “Give it some time. You’ll make friends.”

  “I have friends,” I said. “Back home in Mirabeau.”

  “Hey, Garnet!” Opal yelled from the bottom of the stairs. “Are you hungry?”

  “Come on,” Aunt Julia said. “I made a blueberry cobbler.”

  Like that would fix everything.

  CHAPTER NINE

  “All right, people, settle down!” Starch and Vinegar banged her fist on her desk until everybody stopped talking. It was the middle of October, one of those perfect blue and gold days that make you impatient to be outside. Brown leaves swirled past the window and settled into the bed of dying periwinkles out by the flagpole. A gaggle of geese heading south for the winter cut a black V in the sky. I doodled in my notebook, only half listening to Miss Sparrow.

  “The cafeteria ladies have brought to our attention the fact that a great deal of food is being wasted each day,” she said. “Yesterday I personally counted half a dozen unwrapped sandwiches, three whole apples, and five unopened cartons of milk tossed away.” She shook her head like a person trying to understand quantum physics. “That much wasted food would wipe out hunger in Africa.”

  Her talk of sandwiches and fresh fruit made my mouth water. Aunt Julia hadn’t received a penny of my daddy’s disability money, even though Mr. Hancock had promised her the paperwork was done, and we had no money for anything. Our winter coats were still on layaway, Opal had to miss her class trip to the history museum in Tulsa because we couldn’t afford the bus fare, and a hot lunch, or even a bologna sandwich made with store-bought bread, was out of the question. Instead, every day I brought sausage and biscuits that turned the paper sack greasy and made the inside of my locker smell like a diner. I doubted even a hungry kid in Ethiopia would touch it.

  Miss Sparrow finishe
d lecturing us about being wasteful, then collected money for the magic show assembly scheduled for that afternoon. I was the only one who didn’t have the quarter it cost to watch a man in a cheap tuxedo pull colored scarves out of a hat. I really didn’t mind not seeing the show. What I minded was being too poor to see it, and having everybody else know it.

  Since arriving at Aunt Julia’s, my life had become one big conglomeration of things I couldn’t have and things I couldn’t do. Even though I had apologized to Aunt Julia for getting mad at her on the first day of school, she hardly talked to me at all. Opal said Aunt Julia was just preoccupied with getting Daddy’s disability checks started, and I guess that was true, but it didn’t explain why she let Opal do whatever she wanted but wouldn’t let me do anything. When I asked her why, she said it was “because I said so.” Like she would fall over dead if she had to give me a reason.

  The eight thirty bell rang. Miss Sparrow sent Faith Underwood to the office with the magic-show money. Then she announced the annual costume day for Halloween. “No masks will be allowed,” she said.

  Cooley raised his hand. “How about face paint? I want to dress up like Frankenstein’s monster.”

  “You’re already a monster,” said Nathan Brown.

  “Boys.” Miss Sparrow held up her hand for silence. “Face paint will be fine,” she told Cooley. “But I do not want to see a repeat of the dried ketchup on your face from last year. That looked much too realistic. Poor Mrs. Wink was ready to summon the sheriff.”

  She answered a couple of other questions, then took up her copy of To Kill a Mockingbird, a book by Miss Harper Lee. Miss Sparrow was reading it to us one chapter a day, and I thought it was the best book in the world. Maybe it was because the kids in the story, Jem and Scout Finch, didn’t have a mother either, and their daddy, Atticus, with his kind words and quiet ways, reminded me of my own daddy.

  We were in health class when the time came for the magic-show assembly. Everybody else went to the auditorium, and Mr. Riley sent me to the library. Darlene Barton hadn’t shown up for school that day, but her two sisters were there, hunched over their books. A couple of ninth-grade boys were tormenting the girl in the red sweater I’d seen at lunch on day one. I took a seat by the window and waited for Opal to come waltzing in and make everything okay. She’d crack some joke that would make it seem like we were the cool kids for skipping a dumb magic show. But she never arrived. Eventually I opened my book and pretended to read, but inside my head I was yelling at Mama for messing up my life so bad.