Just Under the Clouds

by Melissa Sarno

  I wonder what New York City would become if I told it in a story, my hands a puppet show. Streets straight, like the cut of a knife. Rivers and oceans swirling around it all.

  “I hope someday you get to see it,” she tells me.

  “Me too.”

  I reach the end of the clumpy braid I’m making. It doesn’t look like Daddy’s neat, smooth twist. Instead, it hangs from Mom’s neck like a crooked tail.

  “What’s that?” Mom asks, and I watch her arm extend to my backpack. To the clear holder. To the bright yellow MetroCard.

  I don’t want to have to say what she already knows. My heart starts pumping inside me and I know I shouldn’t have taken the money. We should have walked our skinny legs to school and back.

  But I don’t have to say anything because Willa answers for me. “A gift.”

  Mom stares at it. “How nice.”

  “I just thought that if they’re going to be here, I’d like to do something. To make it easier,” Willa says.

  Mom rises up, her hair unspooling from the braid like yarn. “Then it’s a good thing that we won’t be here very long.”

  I squeeze into the corner of the couch, wishing I’d never taken the money, wishing we could just stay put for once.

  With Mom working a full day on Saturday, Willa takes us out first thing. “Who says you can’t have cupcakes for breakfast?” she asks with a smile.

  The cupcake shop is pink and tiled and the chairs are what Willa calls old-timey, with seat backs shaped like hearts.

  Adare looks at the blackboard. The chalk writing tells us the names of the cupcakes, like Brooklyn Blackout and the Hummingbird. She sighs and pulls at my arm, then whines like she wants to leave. Her not wanting to be here makes me not want to be here, which makes me angry, because I really want to stay.

  “Let’s get a cupcake,” Willa says sweetly, holding tight to Adare’s wrist, and I decide to ignore her whining, hoping it’ll just stop.

  “I can’t decide,” I tell Willa.

  “Hmm. What are you between?”

  “The Flamingo”—I point at a cupcake with pink frosting clouds—“and this one.” The other is swirled in chocolate.

  “Only one solution.”

  “What?”

  “We’ll have to get them both.”

  Mom would tell me my eyes are bigger than my stomach, but she’s not here and Willa is—and her solution sounds just right.

  “Which would you like?” she asks Adare, who shrugs and tries squirming out of Willa’s grasp.

  “Just get her the same,” I say.

  We have to plop Adare down into a seat and she crosses her arms, kicks her legs against the metal, over and over, like this odd, tinging bell, while I pretend not to notice her fuss. When we get our cupcakes, I eat mine as fast as I can because I always feel like food’s going to run out.

  “Adare, you’ve barely touched yours.”

  Adare looks out the tall windows to the street, her arms still crossed. Her two little cupcakes sit like toadstools on a frilly-skirt plate.

  With Adare lost in the world outside the window and Mom at work, I feel like it’s a good time to start asking Willa all kinds of things without Mom giving me her sideways glare. “What’s your fancy job?”

  She laughs. “Corporate law.”

  “What’s that?”

  “It’s hard to explain. It’s boring. I work a lot. I should be working right now.”

  “How come you’re not?”

  “Because you’re here.” She smiles.

  “Oh. But won’t your boss get mad? Like Mom’s, when she can’t take a shift?”

  “Oh, he will. He’ll just be passive-aggressive about it.”

  I stare blankly.

  “He’ll pretend he’s not mad, even though he is. Then he’ll pat the heads of people who don’t do nearly as much as I do. Right in front of me.”

  “Oh.” I picture a suited old man, patting heads around the room like duck, duck, goose. “Do you have a boyfriend?” I ask.

  Willa swallows her nibble of cupcake and shakes her head. “No boyfriend.”

  “How come?”

  “I work too much. I don’t have time for boyfriends.” Then she glances down at the cupcake between her hands and picks at it, and I think Mom would probably tell me to quit my twenty-questions game.

  I stare at the untouched cupcakes. “Adare, can I have yours?” When I look up, I hate what I see. Adare’s holding on to her breath again.

  “Let go,” I say quietly.

  “What’d you say?” Willa asks.

  I shake my head like it’s nothing, but with Adare it’s always something, and Willa’s too smart. She starts looking at Adare and stands up quick when she realizes what’s going on. “Adare, honey. Stop that.”

  I should tell Willa she’ll only make it worse by fussing over it, but as we watch Adare’s face go pale, I know that even if she takes a breath, she’ll hold it again. Once, at school, she did it thirty times in a half hour.

  “Oh gosh. We should call someone, shouldn’t we?” Willa swings around, like she’s looking for someone to help.

  Adare stares out the window, her face so still and so blank, it’s like she’ll fade away.

  I watch her suck in air, then start over again. I don’t say what I want to say: Stop being who you are, stop ruining everything, just take a breath like the rest of us and move on.

  But she stays still. Every part of her is stuck and caught, like she’s stunned, like she doesn’t want to see anything, and I think about how she didn’t want to be here and I knew it, but I didn’t want to leave.

  Willa pushes Adare’s chair, sets her arms on her shoulders. “Stop that.”

  Another customer starts looking at us. “Is she all right?”

  Willa looks toward me, like I should have the answer. “I don’t know,” I tell her, and she sighs and shakes her head.

  Adare’s face is so pale, I think I’ll see through it to the other side. Her eyes are two gray mirrors of glass, shining beneath the fluorescent lights of the cupcake shop.

  More people are starting to look. I stand frozen, wishing and waiting for whatever it is that makes Adare want to do this to just release itself and let go.

  Then she breathes out and in and her body comes unstuck.

  I take my own breath in.

  I tell Willa what I should have told her when we first came. “We should go. She doesn’t want to be here.”

  Willa sets her hand on Adare’s shoulder. “Oh, honey, oh, sweetie, you scared me.”

  Adare points toward the glass doors and is up, quick, running to them while Willa clutches her chest. “She does this often?” she asks me. “It can’t be helped?”

  I don’t want to tell her the truth. Even if we’ve already showed up on her doorstep with our ratty old things and our skinny dumb cat, making scenes in cupcake shops, proving what she probably already knows—that we don’t belong here with her, that we never will—I don’t want to say what I know in my heart: When it comes to Adare, nothing can be helped.

  I follow Adare into the fresh air, with the sound of cars in the distance, and the trees rustling, and the sidewalks ready for us to follow like a yellow-brick road.

  Adare looks up to the sky, to the wing-flapping black that darts across it.

  Willa steps up behind us, follows both of our gazes up. “What are you looking at?”

  I watch the crows disappear and think how silly it would sound if I told her what I’m thinking. That they’re ours. That they’re off in the world without us and there’s no one to keep their gifts at our old place on Hoyt Street while we’re gone.

  On Monday, Mom insists on taking us to school on the subway, even though I tell her we’re fine to walk. Willa went on and on about Adare’s breath-holdi
ng, and even if Mom pretended it wasn’t a big deal, I know it scared her. She says she misses taking us to school and I let her pretend that’s why she won’t let go of our hands.

  She holds on as we loop through the turnstiles, keeping us close as we squeeze into the crowded subway car.

  With each of us pressed against the silver gleaming pole, I think how quiet it is, how people lean into their papers, close their eyes, hide in their headphones. I catch the eye of one girl, whose hair is crisp black with green tips, as she bites her cracked nails, and I think of what Mom said about Texas. So I say, “Hello.”

  Her smile is crooked, sliding up to just one side. “Hey.”

  Mom holds on to my shoulders, curls around me, dips her hair at my chest. “Someone’s friendly today.”

  I nod. “Yup. Like in Texas.”

  When we come up from underground, the sky is less blue than when we last saw it, and the air is cold, like it’s backing away from spring. We drop Adare off first, so it’s just me and Mom. She holds tight to my hand and I feel a talk coming on.

  “You can’t say hello to strangers,” she tells me.

  “Why not?”

  “It’s not safe.”

  “It’s friendly,” I argue.

  She shakes her head. “Sometimes friendly is an invitation for someone to do something they shouldn’t.”

  “Like Franklin?” I ask.

  “Like that.”

  I remember the blank hallways of Ennis House, Old Lou on the stairs, like always, and Franklin, who was just a few years older than me, tall and skinny, the kind of kid who walked slow and never really said anything, whose blue eyes always looked so big and lost and scared, being taken away by the police. Yelling echoed through the hallways, with his mom shouting, tears rolling down her cheeks, saying he was just a boy and then choking on her words, so nothing made sense.

  When I asked Mom what had happened, she said, “He did something he shouldn’t.”

  When I asked Fred C., he told it plain. “He’s dealing.”

  I couldn’t imagine Franklin selling drugs. I’d passed him a hundred times on the steps or standing outside, leaning up against the scaffolding, looking out into the street like he was just wishing and waiting for something new.

  Once, I stopped to make a note about a skinny pin oak and he asked me what I was doing, but Mom snatched me away before I could answer.

  If I had answered, if I had told him, I wonder if that would’ve been an invitation.

  “I just need you to be careful, Cora,” she tells me.

  “I am,” I say.

  “I know. I know.” She says it twice, like she’s the one who needs convincing.

  We stop in front of the school’s entrance, but Mom does not let go of my hand. “I know this has been hard on you, Cora. The break-in. Holing up at Willa’s. It’s different for your sister. An advantage of being Adare is she doesn’t get uprooted the way you do.” Her hand clutches mine. “But I promise. We’ll find a place to be.”

  I want to believe her, but I can’t. I’m starting to believe there’s no place we belong. I rip my hand away before she can say another word, then I rush up the steps to school.

  At lunch, I sit in the schoolyard with my Tree Book, the cold concrete against my pink checkered skirt.

  Sabina marches up to me and starts setting up hula hoops. “Let’s play jump the river,” she says, like we do it every day.

  I don’t know the game, but I want to sound like I do. “You start,” I say.

  Sabina rolls a pink hoop and lets it flop to the ground.

  Then she sets the rest of them in a pattern of lily pads and jumps between them. Her focus is so sharp, I can imagine the water rushing around her toes in a swirl.

  “Babies,” a voice calls out.

  Sabina looks up from inside her hoop. Meredith Crane parades past, her friends cascading behind her like a frilly gown draping the floor. I stay seated. I’m not even playing Sabina’s baby game, but Meredith blows her bangs up and juts her chin out at me.

  “So, Cora, I hear you’re getting sent to math class with the retarded kids, like your sister.”

  Everything inside me goes blank. I know the word isn’t right, but I don’t know what to say back. “I don’t…They’re not…,” I start, but I can’t find the words to say it right without it being wrong. I’m not like them. They’re not like them. I’m not like her. Like Adare. Wrong.

  “Cretins!” Sabina shouts.

  I swing my head to Sabina, wondering what in the world she’s doing saying something like that, and Meredith stops in her tracks, her back to us, hands on hips, shoulders in a rise and fall. When she turns, she sticks out her lower lip, blows her bangs up in a parachute puff. “What’d you call me, Griffin?”

  “Look it up, Crane.”

  Meredith marches over, takes her foot—sequined shiny in a pink ballet flat—and slams it at the edge of the hoop. It flips up, nearly smacking Sabina in the chin.

  Sabina stands still. Her eyelashes drop to her cheeks and she closes her eyes, breathes deep, then lets her breath go, air whistling through her teeth like water through a straw.

  I watch Meredith shift her jaw, confused. Then she mutters under her breath, “Freak.”

  “Meredith…,” I say, heat rushing to my cheeks, my head shaking back and forth, waiting for the right words to come. But something about the way Sabina stands, sturdy and sure, makes me feel weak, the kind of girl who doesn’t know how to defend her sister or herself and who pees in her pants in the middle of the night. So my voice is barely a whisper when I say, “Just leave us alone.”

  Meredith squawks out a laugh and sends her bangs flying up again.

  Sabina doesn’t move.

  We stand like this. Sabina, a narrow stalk. Meredith and her twisted jaw. Me, tucked next to a line of hoops with the wind passing through.

  I want to be done with Meredith, with this, with me not knowing how to say what I should.

  And like she knows, like she hears my head whirling, Sabina grabs my arm and we pinwheel across the schoolyard as fast as we can, leaving Meredith gaping behind. When we reach the opposite end of the fence, my chest heaving, I say, “Thanks.”

  A glint of sun crosses Sabina, who shrugs. “What’s wrong with your sister anyway?”

  I look into her big eyes and it doesn’t seem like she’s being mean, only wondering. I don’t know how to answer because I don’t know, either. “Nothing. She’s what people call special,” I say, repeating the word I’ve heard all my life.

  “Special.” It’s like she’s rolling the word around her tongue. “It comes from the word species, you know. Everyone’s special.” But she says it like spee-cial. “We’re human. We have all the same parts. Well, I mean, except, like, boys and stuff.”

  “Oh,” I say. “Then I guess Adare’s parts work differently.”

  She rolls her eyes and laughs. “All of our parts work differently. Right?”

  “Right.”

  She unfurls her fingers and places her palm in front of mine. Inside sits a bottle-cap necklace stamped with a purple star.

  “What’s that?” I ask.

  “I found it,” she says. “You can have it, if you want.”

  “But where’d it come from?”

  “When you’re looking for things, you find things.” She places her hand around mine and drops the necklace in my palm with a smile.

  The bell sings out and Sabina turns quick, then stops herself to look back at me. “Oh, I almost forgot. I found something of yours. Come find me later.” Then she loses herself in the fast squeeze of kids lining up to get inside.

  All afternoon, I think about Sabina and her pinwheeling me across the schoolyard, how she pokes at my Tree Book and collects words. I slap my locker closed after school, wondering what she’s got of mi
ne. I mean, what’s mine to have anyway? Something in me wonders if it’s the broken greenhouse or one of a million things we’ve left behind, moving from place to place all these years.

  I scan the hallway and hear her squeaking toward the exit. She marches a foot taller than everyone else through the halls.

  I run after her, nudge her bony shoulder. “So what is it?”

  She swings around, her winter coat still bunched across her tall-drink, skinny frame. “You wanna see?”

  “Of course.”

  “I gotta take you,” she says, and tucks her books underneath her arm and starts skidding away.

  “Where?” I try to keep up.

  “Over by Miss Li’s. It’s only, like, ten minutes from here.”

  I know I should be studying for tomorrow’s algebra test, but I also want to know what it is. “I’ve got to get my sister,” I tell her. “I can’t just go off.”

  “Okay, then. You lead. But you gotta be quick. I’ve got snack time. Then homework to take care of.”

  She pushes out the doors and the sun is at us, light barreling across the concrete, the air creeping toward spring. I look up at the buds on my schoolyard cherry blossom. I hold on to its green whispers. A picture in my mind. I’ll have to make a note in my Tree Book later.

  We walk the two blocks to Adare’s school, only sort of together, because Sabina stays behind me, boots burping across the sidewalk in their sticky hum. I wonder why she doesn’t get regular shoes instead of these huge moon boots, but I don’t say a thing, just swing my arms, trying to figure out what I’m getting myself into.

  “Can’t you just tell me what it is?” I ask.

  “Nuh-uh. I’ve gotta make sure it’s there.”

  “Can’t you just bring it tomorrow?”

  She sighs, like I’m asking all the wrong questions. “No can do.”

  “Don’t you have to get home?” I ask.

  “Don’t you?”

  “Eventually.”

  Adare sits on the steps, like always, looking up into the sky. It makes me look up at the way the clouds wisp and I hold on to another picture for my Tree Book. I think I’ll make a note of an afternoon sky: a quick line swish to paint the day.