Just Under the Clouds

by Melissa Sarno

  “From my old school. College. I thought she might like to meet you and Adare.”

  “What for?” I pull a strand of rubbery cheese.

  Then I hear the toilet flush and the bathroom door opens and a woman walks into the hall, her flowered skirt swishing over flats that look too small for her swollen feet. She wears a big beaded necklace with a giant purple stone that rests on her puffy chest.

  “This is Jade.”

  She reaches her hand out. “Is this Adare?”

  I shake my head. “Cora.”

  She nods and looks over at Adare, who has her nose pressed up against the window.

  “She’s just as tall as me,” I say, like it matters, her knowing that we could be the same if Adare breathed right when she was born.

  “It’s funny, isn’t it, when little sisters catch up?”

  “I guess.”

  “My littlest sister towers over me.”

  “Come here, Adare,” Willa calls out, singsong.

  “What grade are you in?” Jade asks me.

  “Seventh.”

  “Almost there.”

  “Where?” I ask.

  “High school.”

  “Cora’s in advanced classes,” Willa chimes in.

  “Smart girl.”

  I think of the note folded in the pocket of my beet-purple jeans. A secret I can’t let loose.

  “Jade’s a teacher,” Willa tells me.

  “I work with kids. Like Adare.”

  I stop, cheese dangling from my inky palm. It’s then I know what this is all about. We’ve seen a lot of people like Jade. A lot of people who sit Adare at a long table, check boxes, and try to figure her out.

  “Adare,” Willa calls again.

  Adare doesn’t move and I can’t decide whether I want her to stay put so they won’t get a word out of her or to stand before them so we can try, one more time, to understand.

  I know Mom wouldn’t like Jade and her billowing skirt, someone else to tell her that Adare’s wired wrong.

  But Jade doesn’t have a notebook or a pen. She doesn’t coax Adare over and set her down. She walks over to where Adare kisses the glass.

  “Hi,” Adare says real fast.

  “Hi, Adare.” Jade levels her head to the saliva smudge. “What do you see?”

  Adare has this way of pointing, like she’s punishing somebody who didn’t do a thing. Her finger shoots out and plucks the glass. I try to follow the line of her gaze. We all do. But with Brooklyn spread out, the river slipping wide, and the bridge stretching across, it’s impossible to tell what she sees.

  She dips her pointing finger into the peanut butter jar and I jump right in. “Adare, that’s gross.”

  Willa flicks her hand at the air. “It’s fine, it’s fine.”

  I hear keys jiggle at the door. Mom’s back, her shoes dropping to the floor, footsteps in the hall, until she’s standing in the doorframe in her red shirt and khakis.

  “Jade’s here,” I say before introductions can be made.

  “You know Jade,” Willa says to Mom, who nods and looks between them, like she knows Willa is up to something.

  “Your teacher friend,” Mom says.

  Jade turns from the window with a little wave. “Willa’s told me about you. Your family.”

  I wonder what she knows. About Adare being Adare. About us having no place to go.

  Mom makes her way to them, ruffling my sticking-out hair. Then she wraps Adare in her arms and shakes her head. She smiles, but I watch her eyes. She’s got this kind of boxing jab thing going, like she’s giving them both a good scolding. “Then you know that Willa doesn’t know how to leave well enough alone.”

  In the kitchen, Mom’s slamming drawers closed, then wrangling them open so the silverware rattles. Pots smack the stove and I ask if she’s making frijoles charros again or the cookies Willa talked about—what were they?

  “Marranitos,” she says, stern.

  “You’re making them?”

  She whacks the lid on the pot and shakes her head. “Spaghetti.”

  I watch her set the jar of sauce on the counter. She leans into the cabinets, folding her arms. I can see her steaming inside, building up to a wailing teakettle, and I wonder if somehow she knows about Mrs. Belz…my failed test…remedial math.

  Then she flings forward, rounds the counter into the living room, where Willa stands at the window next to Adare, pointing out the buildings, their names. Her finger rises up and traces the antenna of the Freedom Tower.

  “It will never change, will it?” Mom says.

  Willa looks back at her.

  “Inviting Jade here.” She shakes her head, disappointed. “You’re always stepping in. I don’t need it,” she continues. “I don’t need you to save us.”

  Willa looks from Mom to me, like I shouldn’t be listening, but here I am. Her voice is calm. “You came here. No one forced you.”

  “Believe me. If there was anyone else…”

  “Exactly,” Willa says. “Where is everyone else? All your hippie friends?”

  Mom swings her arms around the room. “Where is everyone for you, Willa? Where is this life that is above everyone else’s? You’re alone. You push everyone away.”

  “At least I know when I have something.” She gestures at me and Adare. “To have what you have—and let it run wild…”

  She’s talking about us again. About me. I look down at my torn purple pants, ripped from climbing, and I want to say how I can’t help it, how I’m just trying to get ahold of something, anything. I want to say I’m sorry for not getting it right, for sorting through numbers and not understanding how they fit into algebra. How I’m closer to being inside Daddy’s tree, a place that existed when we were all together, whole. I want to say that I’m still figuring it out, but Mom says it instead.

  “I’m trying,” she tells Willa. “I’ve made mistakes, of course. But I’m trying.”

  Willa’s quiet. “So am I.”

  The lid on the pot clatters. “The water’s boiling,” Mom announces.

  But no one moves. I look at Willa and Mom and then at Adare, who isn’t listening, or if she is, she doesn’t seem to care. She’s tucked at the foot of the window, her stomach flat against the floor, her head at the glass, peering out.

  I know how it’s possible to love someone you can’t understand.

  Mom goes to the pot and I make my way to Adare. I try to match myself up to the way she’s splayed out. I notice the crows still haven’t left their gifts and I ask what I never ask, the way Jade did. I whisper, “What do you see?”

  She points and I follow her finger, even though I don’t know where it leads. I follow it to two sets of stretching branches, their messy nests reaching out to each other, like maybe they’re dancing or maybe they’re tangled and caught. I say out loud what I see. “Two trees.”

  She breathes in, then nuzzles close to me, so close our cheeks are touching.

  “Two trees,” I say again. “In the dark.”

  The next Monday, I walk down the hall slowly, letting my backpack droop from the hook of my arm. Lockers slam and the echoes have this mashed-up wah-wah sound to them. Like everybody’s talking and no one’s being heard.

  I don’t want to go to remedial math. I don’t want to start new so late in the year. I don’t want to be the one who doesn’t understand.

  My heels turn on the freckled floor and sunlight’s trapped at the end of the hall. I stand next to my new classroom with Meredith Crane coming at me, blowing up her bangs and letting them fall to her eyebrows. She wears sparkling bracelets all up her arm. I feel my wrist for the worn plastic strap of my old watch.

  Her lips slide up in a smirk. “Off to your new math class?”

  “Yeah. So?”

  “Everybody
knows you’re the most dumbest in the whole class.”

  “Most dumb,” I say quietly.

  “So you admit it.”

  “No—it’s not most dumbest.”

  “So you are.”

  “No,” I argue. “It’s not grammatically correct.”

  I listen to her bracelets clang. “Aww.” She mimics a baby voice. “Don’t cry about it.”

  I see kids shuffling into the classroom, my new teacher at the door. I wonder why Meredith won’t just let up. “I’ve got to go,” I say, trying to move forward.

  She cuts in front of me. “What’s it like?” she asks. “To be a born idiot?”

  “Meredith—”

  “What’s it like to be in the retarded class?”

  “You should talk,” I sling back.

  “What are you saying?”

  “I’m saying…” But I hesitate, not sure what I’m saying. She’s got my words all mixed up.

  “Are you calling me retarded?”

  I wonder what it would matter if I said it. “Yeah. You’re acting retarded.”

  Everything in Meredith goes still and I watch some kind of knowing pass in her eyes. She stands on her tiptoes and twirls around to my new classroom.

  “Ms. Viti-eeellooo!” she calls, shrieky and high, like a song out of tune. “She called me a bad name!”

  Ms. Vitiello peers from the door, with big, wide bangs and square glasses. She’s dressed in tight jet-black, looking more like a lady in a comic than a teacher. “What’s this about?” She has an accent like the voices on the Beatles songs Mom listens to.

  My face gets hot and the word sits, splattered, at my feet. I try and find something to say, but my voice is gone.

  “She called me…” Then she whispers it, like a secret. “…retarded. She said it, clear as day.”

  “She started it,” I say.

  Ms. Vitiello looks at each of us and then settles on me. My face blazes red-hot candy. “We don’t use language like that here.”

  “She should get marked up,” Meredith chimes in.

  “She should get to class.” Then she juts her chin out at Meredith. “As a matter of fact, you both should.”

  Meredith smirks at me and runs off. I stand rooted.

  “Are you coming or going?” Ms. Vitiello asks me.

  I don’t move. How can I walk in there now?

  “You need to get to your next class.”

  I realize she doesn’t know I’m meant to be here with her.

  “Consider this a warning.”

  I nod and run toward the stairwell, pushing the metal-barred door.

  I sit on the stairs, tucked in a corner. Sun from a small crack of window lights the stairwell an old blue. Strands of dust curl around like mice tails. I clutch my Tree Book and listen for anyone prowling around, thinking up excuses. I’m coming from the nurse’s office….I was late this morning….They called me down to the principal’s office. I fold a piece of paper and keep it caught between my fingers, like I’m holding a hall pass.

  My body goes cold, thinking about what I said, how it could just be a word. Special like species. Retarded like slow. But I know it’s not just a word. It’s a way of labeling somebody different. It’s a way of labeling somebody wrong.

  I’m all confused, thinking how sometimes Adare is different. Sometimes Adare is wrong, holding her pencil up over her homework page and not writing a thing down.

  But I can’t get at the right answers, either. Not in math, not up in the tree, not from Mom, not from anybody.

  I open my palm and let my fake hall pass fall. I take my pen and draw the mess of me. A knot. Like the busted-up rope along the canal.

  Footsteps start knocking and I shoot up from sitting, smearing my pen-inked palm. I glance upstairs and downstairs, wondering which way is best and what I’ll say when I get to where I’m going and where I’ll go next before the bell rings again and I can get back to where I belong.

  The feet come closer, slide past me, and then stop. I see Sabina’s braids flip as she turns to face me. She’s got a proper hall pass. A wooden block with a string. “I was wondering where you were.”

  “What are you doing here?” I ask before she can ask more about me.

  “Bathroom.”

  “Can’t you use the third-floor bathroom?”

  “Sure. But this way takes longer. Why aren’t you in Mrs. Belz’s class?”

  I realize she doesn’t know where I’m supposed to be, so I shrug. “Just didn’t go.”

  “You cut?”

  Cut. “I didn’t mean to,” I say quietly. “It just happened.”

  I expect her to laugh, to move on, to accept things the way they are, like when I told her we didn’t really have a place to live and she didn’t even care. But she’s looking like she can’t believe anyone would do something like that, waiting for some kind of explanation I don’t know how to give. She shakes her head. “Cora.”

  And that’s all she says. Just my name. It’s like a scolding, hearing it like that. Hearing who I am. The kind of kid who fails tests and cuts classes. Who doesn’t belong at Sabina’s kitchen table doing homework.

  “You wouldn’t understand,” I say. “You’ve got a reading hour and a homework timer and everything….” My voice trails away and I don’t know how else to explain.

  We stay like this, all silent, and I feel the weight of my name, the way she said it, all disappointed.

  I know that one small thing can become one big thing. Like not knowing a, and soon you’ve landed in remedial math. Like not listening to your little sister in a cupcake shop, and then you’re watching her hold her breath. Like a heart growing just a little too big, and then a person’s gone.

  I think of that note we found—Jess and Becca. This could be the start of things falling apart.

  I stand up fast, not wanting to know. “You’d better go,” I say.

  She nods. “Yeah. Maybe I’ll see you later?” She asks like she’s not sure.

  I don’t know the answer, either. “Maybe?” I ask back.

  “Sure.”

  But it feels a whole lot different from that first time she told me she’d see me on Monday, like it was obvious, of course. She turns around, the squeak of her rubber soles echoing in the stairwell while I wait for the bell to ring, with a mangled knot in my palm.

  After school, I’m quick to pick up Adare so we can get to the tree of heaven. Maybe Willa thinks we’re running wild, but I’m only trying to figure out how things stay put. Adare nudges her fingers through mine again, the opposite of how I like it. It makes it harder to guide her and I feel like we’re all twisted. But I walk fast, wanting to forget the day, the way Sabina looked at me, and the wrong words getting loose. I want to get back to the tree.

  We pass Miss Li’s and walk along the bent fence, below the subway tracks, over the bridge, and back to the narrow path along the canal.

  I kneel down at the fallen tree. Sabina’s collection of notes sits in neat squares and I pick one from the top of a stack. It’s a phone number on frilly, flowered paper. The handwriting is so neat, it looks like a typewritten memo. I wonder if it was lost before or after the call.

  I place it back. The screech owl’s gone, but the charcoal cat’s here, stretched out in a line of sun, his legs all pointing in one direction, on his side, almost like he’s dead, but his tail flips back and forth, so we know he’s not. Adare sits beside him. Before I can stop her, she’s chucking her shoes off. One pink high-top lands on the other, and she’s spreading her clean white socks in the dirt. I wonder how I’ll explain this one.

  I make my way to the wobbling dock. I have to get into the tree. I balance my walk on the dock and snatch at the busted-up rope there, trying to untie its hard, worn knot from the post.

  But I can’t untie it. It’s stu
ck together with the glue of years and rain and the oil sludge of the canal.

  “It won’t budge!” I tell Adare—because who else am I going to tell but Adare?—who is now flat on her back, red hair woven in strands of dirt. She strokes the cat’s belly with her hand.

  “You’re making a mess of yourself.”

  She laughs and arches her back, so she can see farther into the deep, cloudy sky.

  “You’re pretty useless, you know.”

  As soon as I say it, I regret it, but I don’t know what makes me angrier—that I keep words like that in my heart or that Adare stays smiling and doesn’t seem to care.

  I kick at the dirt, hoping to dig up something. Anything. Adare’s sleeping anger. A rope. A ladder.

  But there’s just wet newspaper, a swirl of dirt, colored plastic, and a ratty pair of red sunglasses, muddy and split.

  I stomp over and stand at the tree, looking up at the first notch my foot can get to. It’s just too high. I place my hand on the tree’s rough skin. Then I toe my rubber sneakers at the base. But the trunk’s too wide and there’s nothing to grip.

  Across the canal the houseboats sit in a line, in their paper-lantern string, and I know that Sabina and Jacob are somewhere in there. It’ll be snack time or homework time and they’ll be sitting with their notes and their timer, doing the right thing, while I’m running wild out here, just like Willa said.

  I walk the patches of wild grass to the edge of the red warehouse. Behind it the junkyard sits like forgotten homework.

  I pace back, then sit beside Adare.

  I need to think about getting into the tree a different way. Like Sabina standing on her head. An inversion. I need to think with my head below my heart and my feet at the sky.

  I flip onto my hands, fingernails clutching at the dirt. Blood’s rushing to my head, and my feet waver. My arms start to shake. I try to swallow and it’s like gravity thinks I’m nuts.

  Adare laughs and I scold her. “It’s not funny. There’s no way up.”

  “Yeah,” she says, as if there is a way. She points and I follow her arm, arching my neck, to the old red warehouse.