Hidden Hearts

by Ann Roberts

  I couldn’t stop myself from looking up. I loved comic books, and I loved to draw. His expression seemed sincere but I was doubtful. Adults lied.

  “Now that got your attention,” he said. “You get outta this tree and I’ll show it to you sometime.”

  He was lying. Adults always said things like that when they wanted kids to do something right away. They’d make a promise for the future and then never keep it. Pops did it all the time. I’d lost count of all the ice creams he’d said he’d buy me, the movies we were supposed to see together or the pony ride that never happened.

  “I think I’ll stay here,” I said, turning the page.

  “Can’t let you do that.”

  I was in his arms before I could protest, and in just two steps we were out of the tree, but not before I heard a loud rip behind me. He stepped away and Mama spun me around.

  “Now look at this,” she barked, grabbing the back of my dress and holding it up so I could see it. “This is what your shenanigans have caused, young lady. Now, you get upstairs and change. We’ll see what your father says when he comes home.”

  She swatted my bottom as I raced past her. I didn’t want to be near the bulldozer when the trees started shrieking again.

  I ran to my room and peered through the window. She was still talking to Mac so I lifted it slowly to eavesdrop.

  “I’m sorry you had to do that, Mac.”

  “Not a problem, Mrs. Battle. The girl loves her trees. I’m gonna call it a day. Sun’s startin’ to bend, and there’s no point in upsettin’ her more.”

  She laughed. “You’re far too nice to her. What she needs is a good whupping.”

  “I’ll leave that up to your husband, ma’am,” he said, tipping his hat and heading to our neighbor’s property where the workers lived.

  We watched him go, walking away like an easy breeze.

  ****

  Coming up the driveway the next day after school I was greeted by the same horrible growling and the pathetic high-pitched cry as a tree fought back in vain. I ran faster determined to stop Mac but I slipped on something and fell, landing on my side in a deep groove from the bulldozer’s tire.

  I was wet, covered in pulpy juice mixed with dirt and surrounded by thousands of crushed oranges. I sat up and assessed his progress. While I’d struggled with fractions during math and played dodgeball at recess, he’d destroyed a few hundred trees and piled them into a disgusting pyramid.

  I started to cry. The perfectly straight rows had been reduced to thousands of twisted roots, broken trunks and tangled branches. The huge bucket clawed at the earth and the machine strained underneath a slim trunk until a popping sound overpowered the drone of the engine as the tree lost its fight to stay planted in the ground. But the claw eventually hefted it up and dropped it onto the pile of bodies.

  I gazed at the thousands of smashed oranges strewn across what was left of our lawn, victims of the bulldozer’s enormous treads. A few had managed to roll out of harm’s way near the back stairs. I picked one up with a plan to enjoy the sweet, delicious fruit, but as the bulldozer backed up and turned sideways, I saw Mac position the claw against another innocent tree.

  “No!”

  I threw the orange with all my might and it hit him in the arm. He jumped and the claw dropped as he let go of the controls. He looked surprised, and I wondered if he might scoop me up as punishment, but instead he leaned against the bulldozer’s steering wheel and shook his head in disbelief.

  That just made me angrier. I grabbed several oranges and tossed them in his direction. And when I couldn’t find any more oranges I hurled pebbles and then dirt, my arms flailing like windmills. As I readied to pelt what felt like a good-sized rock, a force of pink flowers and lace knocked me to the ground.

  “Don’t you be hurtin’ my daddy!” a high-pitched voice screamed. “I’ll break you!”

  “Kiah! Get off her,” Mac ordered.

  We rolled over a few more times until his strong arms demanded she release me. I stood up and faced a beautiful girl with eyes like his and smooth, milk-chocolate skin. He held her in a bear hug while she squirmed to free herself. She was tall and skinny and probably a little older than me. Her short, wiry black hair was smoothed away from her face and cut unevenly at her jawbone.

  “Now, Kiah, you be a good girl.”

  She nodded and he stepped away. I saw my chance. I barreled toward her but he was quick. He grabbed me by the middle and held me like a football.

  “Now, quit wiggling, Miss Vivi.”

  I paid him no mind and squirmed and kicked. When I heard him grunt, I knew I’d done damage.

  “You stop it, you hear?” he said roughly. “Or I’ll tell your mama to give you another whuppin’.”

  At the mention of a spanking my body went limp, still sore from the last night’s paddling.

  He set me down and I looked up. All I saw was kindness.

  “Well, Miss Vivi, your mama’s right. You are a holy terror.”

  “I am not!” When he laughed I asked, “How do you know Mama calls me that?”

  He squatted down and faced me. “Honey, everybody knows it. And your mama told me.”

  I made some sort of disagreeable sound which only made him laugh harder. It was contagious and I cracked a smile.

  “This here’s my daughter, Kiah.”

  She stood by the bulldozer, her hands on her hips. Unlike me, she clearly followed her daddy’s directions.

  “Say hello, Kiah.” When she shook her head, he added, “Young lady, please be courteous.”

  “Hello,” she said in a very unfriendly tone.

  “I think the two of you oughtta be friends seein’ as you’re both the only girls around here.”

  We exchanged glares and he shook his head. “I have to get back to work.” He studied the remaining trees before meeting my gaze. “You love ’em, don’t ya?”

  “Yes.”

  He tipped his hat to me. “Then I’m sorry my work is painful to you.”

  No one had ever apologized to me. I nodded dumbly.

  “Now, it’s good to have more friends, Kiah,” he said seriously.

  They gazed at each other as if they were talking without speaking. I was surprised because I couldn’t talk to Pops even when I used words. We’d certainly never be able to read minds like them. Eventually she grudgingly stepped toward me.

  “I’m sorry for beating you up.”

  “You didn’t beat me up,” I argued. “I’d a had you if your daddy hadn’t stepped in.”

  She gave a lopsided grin. “Maybe you would have.”

  Obviously he thought we weren’t going to kill each other, so he climbed back into the bulldozer. Before he started the engine, he said, “We live across the way in the quarters. Kiah, why don’t you offer Vivi some lemonade?” he said.

  And then the horrible motor rumbled to life and he went about his business of ravaging the orange grove. I took a step forward, but she put a gentle hand on my shoulder. I looked into her eyes and saw Mac’s kindness. She nodded and I knew there was nothing I could do. We watched for several minutes as he effortlessly lifted up the trees and added them to the pile. All the while she kept her hand on my shoulder.

  She turned to me and asked, “How old are you?”

  “Twelve. How old are you?”

  “Fourteen. I’m going to high school already.”

  I knew that meant she went to Carver downtown, the only high school for black kids. She trudged through the smashed fruit and retrieved a stack of books sitting on the driveway. The back of her dress was covered in a huge dirt streak from her neckline to her hem, and I wondered what names her mother would call her.

  I glanced at the huge brown smudge on the front of my shirt. It looked as if I’d been making mud pies. I groaned. Mama would certainly offer her standard comment when she saw me. “Vivi, I should just let you run around naked seeing how you treat your clothes. A bath don’t hardly cost nothing and your skin comes mostly clean excep
t for those awful knees of yours. I’ve seen potatoes come out of the patch cleaner than your knees.”

  But for now I was lucky. It was Tuesday and that meant she was at her sewing group with the ladies from our church.

  “Are you comin’?” Kiah called.

  I followed as she slid between the rows of trees to an irrigation ditch on the east end of the property. She leaped over it and disappeared into an adjoining grove.

  “We live over here,” she explained. “Mr. Rubenstein bought up all this land too.”

  “Does your daddy work for him?” I asked.

  “Uh-huh, he’s one of the head guys,” she said with pride.

  Then suddenly the trees were gone and we were standing in a flat field, the earth newly turned. In the distance huge yellow machines rumbled over the soft dirt where rows of little houses would sit. They would all look the same: red brick or painted masonry block with a pop-out front window and a single-car garage.

  On our first trip through the city, as we had driven through west Phoenix, Mama had asked Pops what he thought of the tiny houses and he’d remarked, “Don’t think much of ’em except the money we can make.”

  She led me past a row of cabins, and we went inside the one on the end. I could see the whole place from the living room since the bedroom and bathroom doors were open. Neither of the beds was made and I was jealous. Mama never tolerated an unmade bed or one full of wrinkles and poor corners.

  Kiah threw her books on the small dining room table and went to the kitchen. I was surprised to see a sink, which meant they had running water. Dirty dishes were scattered on the counter and only two clean glasses remained on an empty shelf in the cupboard.

  “Where’s your mama?”

  “She’s dead,” she said flatly. “It’s just me and Daddy. She died when she was having me, but Daddy said it wasn’t my fault. You want some lemonade?” she asked, removing a pitcher from the refrigerator.

  “Sure.”

  She poured us each a glass and we sat down at the table. I didn’t know what to say to this odd girl quietly sipping lemonade, who had thrown me to the ground just minutes before. I looked at her stack of schoolbooks, the one on top titled Algebra I. I’d been warned about algebra and told that I’d learn it next year as a freshman, if I got promoted. I wasn’t a very good student, and sometimes I believed Mama when she called me a moron, especially after she got my report card or visited with my teachers.

  “Vivi, a whole family of squirrels could take up residence in that empty area between your ears. Might as well seein’ as you don’t have any need for it. You better hope you’re good at makin’ babies.”

  I couldn’t imagine what it would be like to squeeze a baby out of the tiny hole between my legs, and the thought made me study harder but nothing stuck. I’d be in the middle of writing an essay and suddenly I was doodling in the margins, drawing faces or scenery, the thought of the paragraph dropped like a used hankie. I knew it didn’t matter anyway. I always got a D. Teachers gave me just enough to pass, but I thought it was because they liked my drawings.

  “Why were you up in that tree?” she asked.

  “I don’t want your daddy to tear ’em down. They’re my trees, at least they used to be.”

  She frowned but she didn’t get mad. She just poured more lemonade in my glass.

  “I think it’s important to stand up for things you believe in,” she said slowly. “I’m going to go to law school to fight for civil rights someday. You might find me sittin’ in a tree somewhere, too,” she added with a grin. If she was going to law school, I knew she was smart.

  I pointed at her algebra book. “Do you like it?” I said. I figured I could at least be nice since she invited me into her house and served me some of the best lemonade I’d ever tasted.

  Her whole face lit up in a way I didn’t understand. Nothing about school excited me except art class. “I like math a lot.”

  “I don’t,” I snorted.

  “Why not?”

  “It’s too hard. There’s so many rules to remember, and if you miss one step, you get the whole thing wrong. I don’t think that’s right,” I added, hoping she could appreciate the injustice of mathematics. “It oughtta be at least half right.” She giggled into her glass and I sat up straight. “Hey, are you makin’ fun of me?”

  “No,” she said, shaking her head. “I just never heard anybody explain it like that. But I guess that’s true. You can’t make a mistake or it’s all wrong.”

  I hung my head thinking that she also thought I was a moron. My cheeks felt hot and I knew if I looked up she’d see my shame. “I need to be going.” I went to the door, my eyes glued to the floor.

  “Where you goin’?”

  “I need to get home,” I whispered. “Thanks for the lemonade.”

  When I heard the door shut behind me I broke into a run, heading into the orchard that we no longer owned. I was trespassing and I didn’t care. I zigzagged haphazardly down the rows of trees that remained, changing direction in a split second and ultimately smashing my forehead into a low-hanging branch. I fell backward onto the ground and stared up at the offending tree. Instantly angry, I laughed, picturing the bulldozer clawing at the screaming branches as they ripped away from the trunk. My laughter died in the back of my throat and turned to sobs.

  ****

  “How in the world did you manage to grow a goose egg on the front of your face?” Mama asked when I charged through the back door.

  She was making supper and the sight of her daughter holding her throbbing head in filthy clothes did not deter her from stirring the gravy. When she saw that I was upright and mobile, she returned to her cooking, not particularly interested in my answer.

  But she never was. She seemed to live with a perpetual scowl on her face, and I rarely saw her laugh except on her birthday or one of the few times Pops took her out. She was tiny and small-boned, and the stories she told suggested she’d been a spitfire, ready to take on the world. In the old pictures she’d looked happy. But Pops, Will and I had wiped the smile off her face for good. Her dislike of me probably should’ve made me mad but I felt sorry for her instead.

  Today she wore a colorful blue apron with birds over her plaid pedal pushers and pink blouse. Even though she looked angry she was always a good dresser. She bent over the oven to check on the casserole, and I pictured Pops playfully swatting her bottom and making a raunchy comment to draw her wrath. She wasn’t as slim as she was in the old pictures and he called her curvy, but he seemed to like it. And I knew that other men thought she was pretty because they always whistled when she walked by.

  And she’d make a point of saying to me, “You see, Vivi, they’ll be whistling at you someday if you ever decide to fix your hair, quit jumpin’ off the roof and start behaving like a lady rather than a moron.”

  I shuffled across the linoleum, anxious to get upstairs and change my clothes before she put me to work peeling the potatoes. I slipped on some jeans and a T-shirt and started on my homework, but it didn’t take long before the doodles and drawings covered my math paper, leaving little room for the fifty mixed fraction problems I was supposed to complete. I was only on number four and my pencil was already dull from shading the portrait of Kiah that I’d started. I was in awe of her beauty and her dark skin and straightened hair fascinated me.

  I heard a tap on my window and jumped a foot in the air. She was outside waving.

  “What are you doing?” I asked, opening the window.

  “I was worried about you when you left. You looked like you were mad or sad.”

  I shook my head and lied. “No, I just needed to go.”

  She leaned closer. “What’d you do to your head?”

  I automatically rubbed the goose egg and it started to hurt again. “I just ran into a tree branch.”

  “That looks bad. It’s turning purple.”

  “It’s okay.”

  I glanced at my door, knowing that Mama would appear soon and announce dinne
r. I couldn’t imagine what she’d do to Kiah if she found her in my room. “You should probably go.”

  “I know. I just wanted to check on you.”

  “How did you get up here?”

  She pointed to the trellis against the house. “It’s easy. You just climb up and walk across the edge of the roof. Seein’ as you’re a holy terror, I’m surprised you’ve never tried it.”

  We laughed, and I thought of my math homework. “Could you show me how to do mixed fractions real quick?”

  She held up the paper, and I remembered that I’d been drawing pictures of her. I tried to grab it but she turned away. I closed my eyes and prepared for a big sock in the jaw.

  “Vivi, this is really good. I think it looks like me,” she said with tears in her eyes.

  I smiled sheepishly. Will was the only one who ever liked my drawings. “Thanks.”

  She grinned and we stood there staring at each other stupidly. Then she looked down and her brow furrowed as she studied the little bit of math I’d attempted. “I don’t understand what you’re doing. Let me see your book.”

  I showed her the original problems and she shook her head. “Vivi, you’re not doing this right.”

  “I know,” I said. “I don’t get it.”

  “No, that’s not it. Look, you’re not copying them correctly. You wrote down four problems and in three of them you mixed up the numbers. You’re getting them backward. It’s not supposed to be fifty-two and two-thirds; it’s supposed to be twenty-five and two-thirds. That’s why you’re messing up.”

  I followed her finger as she showed me the difference. In three problems I’d written numbers backward. “I don’t know why I’m doing that. That’s really stupid,” I muttered.

  Mama was right. I was a moron. I was twelve years old and I certainly should know the difference between fifty-two and twenty-five. I crumpled up the paper.

  “Don’t!” she cried. She took it and smoothed it out. “I really like the drawing. Let me help you. I’ll write the problems down and then you solve them.”

  She wrote out the first one and we worked it through.

  “See, you know how to do the math, but you get stuff backward. Do you do that with your letters, too?”