At lunch I find out Jordan Dolan is going to the Halloween Dance with Kristin Gates. I smile and say, “That’s great.”
Friday and the Halloween Dance come and go, and it’s a good thing I didn’t go, because Saturday I have to go to the farm really early with my family and pick tomatoes.
Remember how I said it was hot on the farm? Well, it is, unless it’s cold. Today it’s really cold and wet. Tonight’s actually Halloween and I love Halloween, usually, but this year I don’t really care.
I pick a ton of tomatoes, probably because I don’t daydream at all. I work so hard my dad notices. He smiles at me, which is nice. I don’t go home after lunch. Instead I offer to stay late with him to help ready the back field for winter. We plow under the yellowing cornstalks that have already been picked clean.
The ground is heavy with water, and the plow shears keep kicking up. Every time they do, I have to jump off the tractor, knock the earth off a blade that’s practically bigger than me, and pull it back down until it locks into place. We’re at it for hours.
I ride home alone with my dad. We don’t talk or anything, but it’s nice to sit next to him in the truck. I never really get to just sit with him like right now. It almost makes me feel better about Jordan, except it doesn’t because I don’t think anything ever really will. I’m so tired when I get home I can barely eat or wash up or care that other kids are out trick-or-treating.
I’m too old for that anymore, anyway.
Chapter Seven
Christmastime in my family is sort of a mixed bag.
This year everyone wants me to play Mary in the Nativity play. I don’t know if I want to do it or not, because I like sitting next to my mother when she plays the organ. But when the new priest, Father Joe (he’s super young and in charge of the youth outreach program my brother is a part of, and my brother is always talking about him) asks me to read the lines with him, I can see how excited he is about me being Mary, so I agree.
Just like that, I’m Mary. I have to go to rehearsal and stuff, but it’s right before choir practice, so I can still turn pages for my mom.
Everyone keeps saying how good I am. I don’t know how anyone can tell, with me only having three lines, but after a couple of rehearsals, I realize I like being told I’m good at something. And Father Joe keeps saying how important what I’m doing is. Father Joe has this really hyper way of talking that’s still cool, because he’s way younger than Mrs. Weiss and he uses words like awesome without sounding like he’s trying too hard. He keeps talking like this is my destiny.
And then I think—maybe it is! After all, Carl Sagan was kind of an actor. Well, not really an actor, but he did have a TV show, so maybe I should, too. I haven’t figured out all the details yet, but I’ve got time. There are still months and months of school left.
I’m so caught up in all the churchy stuff I have to do that I totally forget about the exams we have to take right before we go home for the long winter break. I realize my mistake as soon as I stroll into Mrs. Weiss’s class. Everyone is rereading their textbooks, and it hits me. I didn’t remember. Usually I don’t need to remember to study because I don’t need to study, but I can already tell that the tests this year are going to be different than they used to be. These tests are going to be bigger than any test I’ve ever taken before.
I get cold all over and then I get really hot. I wander to my seat up front with Jimmy Collins, wishing like crazy that today isn’t what I think it is. Jimmy looks at me.
“What’s wrong with you?” he asks.
“Are exams today?” I ask.
Jimmy sighs, and I realize I said that a little louder than I should have. I look around. Pretty much the whole classroom is looking back at me.
Okay, there are only eight of us in Mrs. Weiss’s class, but still, Jordan looks at me, and he hasn’t looked at me in months.
Now I’m more sad than I am scared. And I’m not sad because I know that if Jordan and I were still friends, he’d have reminded me to study yesterday, because he knows I always forget stuff like this. I’m sad just because we aren’t friends. He looks away with his face all clammed up, and I sit down at my desk and I’m not even worried anymore, because I’m too busy being upset about Jordan to be upset about not studying.
Mrs. Weiss comes in just as the bell is ringing and tells us, “Put your books away. No more talking.” And she starts placing the mimeographed tests facedown on each of our desks.
“Got a pencil?” I whisper to Jimmy. He sighs again and shakes his head.
I look around the room for someone else to ask. Kristin shrugs at me. I can see she only has one on her desk in front of her. Jordan has about five, all presharpened and lined up evenly in front of him, and his eraser is holding them up on the slanted desk. I always think of Jordan when I smell eraser crumbs. Probably because when we do our projects together, he usually takes down all the ideas that I come up with because he knows how I’m dyslexic and can’t write all that fast.
Jordan sees me looking at his pencils, and I know all I have to do is ask him and he’ll give me one. But then I think maybe he won’t. And if he doesn’t, I’ll probably start crying, because I’m almost crying right now as it is. I look away from him and raise my hand.
“Mrs. Weiss? May I borrow a pencil?” I ask her.
Mrs. Weiss gives me the cross look she saves for troublemakers who make fart noises during school assembly.
“I told everyone to bring pencils today, Antoinette. That includes you,” she tells me.
Jordan is looking out the windows, and his leg is bouncing up and down. He only does that when he’s really annoyed.
“I know. I forgot,” I say. My face just keeps getting hotter and hotter. It’s like a dream I had once where I showed up to school naked. Actually, I think this is worse. “May I borrow one? So I can take the test?”
She crosses her arms and shakes her head. “You have to start being more responsible, Antoinette. You have an incredible imagination, but you need to start thinking about the present moment more than your daydreams. I’m afraid I can’t lend you a pencil.”
“Okay,” I say. My voice sounds all broken and strange. I wonder if she’s going to flunk me and kick me out of ACT. I probably never should have been in this class anyways.
But it still isn’t fair, and I’m just realizing that this second.
Looking around, I notice how everyone else in this class has backpacks and pencil cases and lunch boxes. All their stuff is neat and tidy, and I know for a fact that Kristin’s mom packs her backpack for her in the morning and reminds her to do her homework the night before, and my mom has never once done that for me. And I’ve never even owned a backpack or a pencil case or a Trapper Keeper. My mom didn’t even buy me new shoes this year before school, why the hell (five Hail Marys) would she buy me a pencil case and make sure I’ve got it with me when I walk out the door?
Half the time, I have no idea where my parents are when I leave for school in the morning. I can go weeks without even seeing my dad, for crying out loud, because he goes to work before I wake up and he doesn’t come home from his three jobs until after midnight. But I’ll bet stupid Jimmy’s dad gives him a big fat kiss before he walks him to the school bus line in the morning and says something corny, like, “Have a good day, son!” I’d die to have one of my parents say something corny to me like in a movie, but if I ever admitted that to Fay or Bridget or even Nora, they’d laugh in my face and tell me I was an idiot for wanting the impossible.
Seriously, if I’m going to get yelled at by Mrs. Weiss for not being responsible, she should yell at everyone else in this room who have moms who do everything for them, because they probably wouldn’t remember any better than I would. It’s not fair. But of course I can’t say any of this out loud. I think it might be better if I just run out of the room before I cry.
Jordan suddenly stands up from his desk, walks to me, and puts a pencil on my desk without looking at me. He goes back and sits down witho
ut a word. Mrs. Weiss looks like she’s going to scold Jordan for helping me, but he just stares at her like he did with my sister Fay after church that Sunday. I try to catch his eye to thank him, but he doesn’t look my way. Mrs. Weiss finally turns around and tells us to begin.
The thing about being dyslexic is that the more pressure there is on you to read quickly, the faster the letters run around, too. It’s exhausting. My eyes feel like they’re climbing a mountain. Once I make the words sit still, I’m fine. I know all the answers, but it takes me forever. I’ve never taken a test this long before. Usually there are only about ten questions, and I always seem to make it through them, or at least eight or nine, so my grades stay up. But this test has over thirty questions on it. It’ll take me all day.
I hear Mrs. Weiss say, “If you’ve finished and checked your answers, you may bring your tests to me. Then return to your desks and sit quietly until the bell rings.”
I look over my shoulder and see that everyone else is done.
The words roll and twist in waves. It’s like I’m staring at boiling alphabet soup. The bell rings and Mrs. Weiss says, “Pencils down.”
I put my pencil down, but I didn’t finish. Why am I so slow? I’ve had my eyes checked a couple of times, but the truth is I have perfect vision. It’s my brain that scrambles everything up. Glasses can’t fix someone who’s wrong in the head.
Everyone gets up from their seats. I hurry to catch up with Jordan to give him back his pencil.
He shakes his head when I offer it. “Keep it. We’ve got exams all day,” he says, but he still won’t look at me.
And all day it’s the same. Everyone else in ACT is done long before the bell, but I never finish in time. I can feel them all staring at me, watching me try to read the questions. By the end of the day my head feels like a piece of meat.
The last class is the worst. It’s history, and the questions are so long. I sort of give up about halfway through. I just can’t stare at the swirling letters anymore. The bell rings and I put my pencil down. Everyone leaves, but I stay in my seat, rubbing my eyes and my temples.
When I get up, I see Jordan’s still sitting in his seat, too. He’s already turned his test in, so I don’t know why he’s still here. His leg is bouncing like crazy. He suddenly jumps up and comes to me. He snatches my test off my desk before I can stop him and backs away from me. He starts reading aloud so our history teacher, Mr. Bennet, can hear.
“Annie,” Jordan says, “when did the Pilgrims land on Plymouth Rock?” he asks.
“Wh-what?” I stammer, but Jordan snaps at me.
“Just answer the question.”
“William Bradford and the Mayflower Pilgrims landed in 1620,” I say.
Jordan flips the pages on the mimeographed sheets to the back of the test, where I didn’t even make it. “Name the original thirteen colonies,” he says.
“Delaware, Pennsylvania, Georgia, New Jersey, Connecticut, Maryland, South Carolina, North Carolina, New Hampshire, Virginia, New York, Providence Plantations, and Massachusetts Bay Colony, of course,” I say, ticking each one off on my fingers even though I don’t need to. I can count to thirteen, for crying out loud.
Jordan looks at Mr. Bennet. “I missed Pennsylvania,” he admits. “Annie knows every single answer in every class. You’re testing her all wrong.”
He puts my exam papers down on Mr. Bennet’s desk and walks out of the room.
Mr. Bennet and I look at each other like neither of us knows what the hell (ten Hail Marys) just happened. Then Mr. Bennet picks up my test and asks me another one of the questions I didn’t get to yet.
“What bird did Benjamin Franklin want for our national symbol?” he asks.
I bust out laughing. “The turkey!” I say. “That would have been hilarious.” Mr. Bennet laughs, too.
“Correct. But do you know why?” he asks, getting serious.
“Because turkeys are native to North America, and eating them kept the colonists alive when they first got here,” I answer. “Ben Franklin was right. The turkey should be on our money, even if it is goofy-looking.”
Mr. Bennet smiles and pushes up his glasses. He puts my test away. “I’m going to add those correct answers to your final score,” he tells me.
I feel about a hundred pounds lighter. “Thanks, Mr. Bennet. Have a good Christmas,” I say.
“You too, Annie,” he says, giving me another nice smile.
I hurry out to the bus line, but I don’t see Jordan anywhere. He would’ve waited for me if he wanted to be friends again. I shiver and I realize I left my coat in my locker. It’s too late anyways. I barely jump on the bus in time as it is.
It’s my fault I left my coat behind. I know that, and I knew my mom was going to get angry about it, but I didn’t know it at the moment I was running to try to catch up with Jordan. I just wanted to see him, and maybe even get him to smile.
When I get home, I know right away that everything is off. It’s not a smell or a taste. You can’t see it or hear it, but it’s everywhere. When my mother’s on her last straw and she’s going to lose it, there is never any warning, but you learn to sniff and listen and see and feel something that isn’t really ever in your nose, your ears, your eyes, or your hands.
When you’re the youngest of nine kids and your mom is stretched so thin you can practically walk through her, you know when to be afraid.
When I get home, I know it. And I’m afraid.
It’s her eyes. And then it’s her wedding ring and a pretty flash of every color and then pain—but not in the skin. I mean, yeah, in the skin, but not really.
Pain in the skin is easy to leave behind. Like falling off a bike. Minutes later, and who cares? But when my mother hits me, it hurts the part of me that can’t stop asking why, even though I know the answer. She’s hitting me because I won’t have a warm coat for the entire winter break until school opens again, but I still don’t know why she would do it. I can’t understand why she would want to hurt me, and that hurts more than the hitting. Not right away, but later. It’s like an echo that gets louder the farther away it is because it keeps coming back, and each time it comes back to you it hurts more and more. No matter how hard you push it down, or tell yourself it isn’t happening, it is happening. It’s happening to me right now and I can’t pretend it isn’t anymore. I can’t pretend it doesn’t happen anymore.
It’s about a coat, but it’s not about a coat. It’s never about what it’s about.
And now I’m not just in trouble. I’m in danger. I can tell by her eyes. Mom’s eyes go away and all that’s left are flat bird eyes. She’s not in there anymore, and that’s the part that gives me nightmares. The edges of the world shrink in around me.
“Not Annie,” Fay yells from somewhere far away.
I feel myself getting pulled back. Nora and Bridget have me. Fay stands over me.
“Get her out of here,” Fay says. And for a second she sounds like she did when we were really little. She sounds really little. And then she turns and throws her arms up, using her body to block mine.
Nora and Bridget push me to the door, and then we’re outside in the snow with the fat multicolored Christmas lights glowing on the bushes and St. Francis of Assisi is lit red and green and holding a blue stone dove. I want to count. I want to focus on a string of even numbers to calm myself, but I don’t because I know it’s not going to change anything. And then we’re across the street and into the forest and the snow and the silence, and we can’t even hear Fay screaming anymore.
There’s a beautiful house on the other side of the forest.
It’s all glass and thick beams of exposed, stained wood. Its Christmas lights are small and white. A perfectly decorated tree stands in front of the gigantic pane of glass of the living room window. This tree is all red velvet bows and hand-blown glass bulbs. Our tree is a cheap tinsel bomb that’s been knocked over three times because Geronimo keeps trying to climb it.
We stare at the tree rather than look
at each other. We’ve hidden in the forest many times before, but this time is especially sad because the Christmas lights are telling us we should be happy, and the Christmas lights are especially cheery here on the country club side of town.
“What if we just kept going?” Nora asks. Bridget and I don’t say anything.
After staring at the house and the covered underground pool in the backyard for a while, we go back. We go back because I’m supposed to be Mary in the Nativity play that night. We go back because we’re cold and we didn’t bring jackets and Nora’s only wearing one shoe. But really, we go back because we always go back. We go back because we only have two choices. Stay or run. Both are bad. One is worse, but we don’t know which is the worse one yet, so we do what we know to do. Creep in and see how badly Fay is hurt.
We get ice. We flush the bloody toilet paper away. We tell Fay to rinse out her mouth and we make sure she doesn’t wiggle her loose teeth. They’ll set again if she leaves them alone. We do it all quietly so no one will hear, even though we know no one’s listening. Makes me wonder why we’re always so quiet about it.
The beatings are the one thing Fay never charges us for or holds over our heads. They’re the one thing she never talks about. They’re the one thing none of us ever talk about.
Chapter Eight
We get to church and I have to go to the dressing room to put on my costume.
There’s a pillow with straps on it that I have to tie around my waist so I look pregnant. Clothes are a challenge for me on a normal day. On a day like today, when I’m all thumbs from the tests and, you know, Mom, I can barely figure out how to zip up my own fly, let alone get into this goddamn (like, six rosaries) contraption. I can hear the priests getting antsy outside my changing room.
“Do you need help?” Father Joe asks from the other side of the door.
What’s he going to do? Come in here and dress me? “Almost done,” I say.
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