“Please let me buy lunch tomorrow,” I try again. “I won’t get any candy. My lunches smell.”
“Did someone tell you that?” asks Mom.
“No, they just do. I can smell my tuna from the next room.”
“Well, what would you buy?” she says, putting her fork down and leaning back in her chair.
“Chicken nuggets,” I say.
“That’s it?”
“And an apple.”
“You need more than that.”
“Pretzels?”
Mom starts eating again and chews slowly on a green pepper from the salad.
“You know it’s okay to eat differently from other people if you like what you’re eating.”
Dad drops his fork onto the plate with an angry clang. We all jump.
“Just let her buy the darn lunch,” he says.
Mom glares at him. He keeps his eyes down, picks up his plate, and brings it to the sink. When he’s gone, Mom looks at both of us. The corners of her lips twitch up into a faint, embarrassed smile.
“What’s wrong with Dad?” Natasha asks.
“He’s just having a bad day,” Mom says, her lips straight, her voice low.
That night I can’t sleep. I creep downstairs long after Mom kisses us both goodnight and stand outside my parents’ bedroom. I don’t hear the TV, but the light is on. I inch closer to the door, trying not to make a sound. The floorboard creaks. I hold my breath and freeze. After a minute I crane my head to look in the bedroom. I see my dad sitting on the far end of the bed, his back toward me, his face in his hands. Mom’s sitting next to him rubbing his back. They’re both quiet. Dad probably just misses his job.
The next morning there’s a note by my bowl of Cheerios with a five-dollar bill.
Enjoy lunch. Love, Mom
chapter ten
Kate and I sit together at lunch a few days in a row. We get each other laughing about random things, like some boy’s funny hat or the way chicken nuggets can actually bounce. Then, on Friday, Jessica, who I’ve noticed everyone calls Jess, starts to ask questions. She announces over a mouthful of M&M’s that her mom said Community is a school for hippies and asks if I’m a hippie, and then says, “What kind of name is Nadha-whatsee anyway?” When I say my name the right way and tell her it’s Indian, some boy at the table in back of us pats his mouth and says, “Ahhh, ahhh, ahhh.” No, I tell him, calling across my table over to his, not an American Indian, which is what I assume he means when he does that. I’m half Indian, I say, Indian from India.
Then one of the other Jessicas pipes up. “Do you, like, worship cows?” she says, and I say, “No, I’m Jewish.” As if that’s not enough, another Jessica who calls herself Jess too says, “How can you be Jewish and Indian at the same time? That’s really weird.” The chicken nuggets I’m chewing start to feel like cardboard and my head gets all floaty like I might rise up off my seat and out of the cafeteria. “You just can,” I say, and wish I had a better answer.
Kate keeps quiet during all this. She doesn’t join in with the other girls, but she doesn’t do anything to help me. She won’t even look at me.
The following Monday before lunch I march right up to Alisha while everyone is rushing to the lockers and ask if I can sit with her in the cafeteria. She smiles her calm smile and nods. The kids at her table don’t ask annoying questions. They don’t ask anything at all. The only person who talks to me is Alisha.
“So you like that Kate girl?” she says as she bites into her bologna sandwich.
“I guess. I don’t really know her that well,” I say, looking down at my little carton of chicken nuggets. I’m starting to miss my old lunches after having chicken nuggets every day the week before.
“Is she nice?” Alisha asks. “Because some of her friends aren’t.”
I shrug. “She’s pretty nice,” I say. Except when all her friends are asking me awful questions, I almost add, but don’t. “But why aren’t her friends nice?”
“I don’t know. They just don’t talk to us. But I guess we don’t talk to them.”
I assume that by “us” she means the black kids, and “them,” the white kids—basically the rest of the school. I want to ask if she considers me an us or a them. The funny thing is that when I’m with Alisha I want to be an us, and when I’m with Kate I want to be a them.
“At my old school our class was so small, like a family. Everyone liked each other most of the time,” I say, and hope I don’t sound like I’m bragging. “It’s strange to me how many, um, groups there are here.”
Alisha takes this in and nods. She seems to get it.
“Tell me more,” she says. “I like to think about it.”
I tell her about the day I went grave rubbing and fell in love with Connor O’Reilly. I know I can tell her any story about Community and she’ll just listen and like it.
“That’s so romantic,” she says. Then she asks if she can use it for her book.
“I guess. What’s your book about?”
She says it’s a romance that takes place in Paris long ago. An innocent man, mistakenly in prison, escapes and hides on a cruise ship from New York to Paris. On the boat he meets a Frenchwoman and falls in love, and they live happily in Paris even though they always have to make sure he’s never caught by the police.
I’m so amazed that she could think up such a grown-up idea and write a whole book about it. It must be nice to be able to make up your own world and make people exactly how you want them to be. A journalist doesn’t do that. A journalist, Dad says, tries to find out the truth and writes about how things really are. That used to seem like an easy thing to do.
“What about your old school?” I ask.
Alisha scratches a sticker off her notebook. “Nothing much to talk about there.”
“How come? Was it bad?”
She stops scratching. “No, I was on basketball and softball, which I miss. I don’t even think they have a girls’ basketball team here. But the classes were really loud and nobody seemed to care much about anything—not the teachers, not the students. I did have one really good teacher and she helped me get here.”
“So is Maplewood better?”
She smiles and looks up at me. “It’s supposed to be.”
chapter eleven
Dad seems to be in a much better mood at dinner that night. He’s not in his bathrobe. He makes us steaks on the grill with mashed potatoes and garlic broccoli, probably my most favorite dinner in the universe. He jokes around about his old boss and laughs a lot. He doesn’t even get mad when Natasha spills her water, twice. I wonder what cheered him up so much.
After dinner I’m trying to get through my math homework without falling asleep from boredom, when Mom comes upstairs with the cordless phone.
“It’s for you,” she says, handing me the phone. “Kate.”
A nervous warmth spreads over me. “Hey,” I say into the phone, trying to sound casual.
“I’m sorry Jess was so mean to you last week,” she says.
An “it’s okay” slips out of my mouth.
“So I was wondering if you want to try out for cheerleading.”
I’m silent; couldn’t even speak if I wanted to.
“Sonia?” she asks.
“I’ve never cheered for anything before.”
“Don’t worry, most of the girls trying out haven’t. It’s the first year they’ve decided to have a sixth-grade team. It usually starts in seventh.”
“Have you done it before?”
“I went to cheering camp last summer.”
“Oh,” I say.
“So I could teach you!” Kate says.
Cheerleading makes me think of bouncy blond high school girls. The kind of girl Kate will probably be when she’s older and the kind of girl I don’t seem to be at all. But there’s something about Kate, besides her blond hair and her mean Jessica friends, that I like. The way we laughed that day together, the way she keeps grabbing my arm in the hallways and whisperin
g secrets in my ears.
“Come on, it’ll be fun,” she says. “I promise.”
“Okay, I’ll try out.”
“Great! I’m having people over Saturday to practice. Tryouts are in two weeks.” Before I know it, I’m taking down her address and phone number.
* * *
“Cheerleading?” Mom says to me when I ask her to drive me there on Saturday. She says it like she’s never heard of it before. “For girls your age?”
She’s at her desk. The area between her bathroom and bedroom has been her office as long as I can remember, piled so high with paper and books on every surface I’m afraid to sneeze, since the whole thing might come tumbling down. It’s her little cave, and lately I can always find her there like a hibernating bear. Come to think of it, Dad’s been spending a lot of time in his office too. Maybe that’s why my parents always seem tired and grumpy. Maybe they’re just working too hard.
“Why not for girls my age?” I say.
“I’m just surprised, that’s all. I thought you might like to do something else you’re already interested in, like drama. You always loved the plays at Community.”
“I’m not at Community anymore.”
Mom turns away from me and straightens a stack of papers on her desk. She looks back. “No,” she says. “I guess not.”
“So will you drive me?”
“Let me think about it.” She sighs. “We’ll decide in the morning. Go to sleep. It’s late.” She almost seems to be saying it to herself while she rubs her tired eyes.
The next morning Mom’s already gone, teaching an early class. It’s the same all week. Mom’s added two new classes to her schedule and is busier than I can ever remember her. She doesn’t mention cheerleading and neither do I. But I still haven’t told Kate I’d show up her house for sure—and it’s Friday.
“Whatcha making?” I say to Dad when I get home from school. I try to sound cheerful. He’s wearing old sweatpants and a shirt, but he looks like he hasn’t showered in a while.
“Pita pizzas,” he says as he finishes slicing peppers and mushrooms. He starts on the pepperoni next. The good thing about Dad being home is that we don’t have to eat the tofu dishes Mom always made. The bad thing is that I don’t know who’s doing what anymore, or who I’m supposed to talk to.
“Yum,” I say. “Is Mom going to be home soon? I need to ask her something.”
“No, it’s her night class, remember?” Dad pops a piece of green pepper into his mouth. “You can ask me.”
I tell him about Kate and cheering practice. I don’t tell him that I already asked Mom.
“Sure. One of us will drive you,” he says, without looking up from the cutting board.
Mom comes home late that night and both Natasha and I are already in bed. She pokes her head in the doorway.
“I’m still awake,” I say into the darkness.
She stands by the door. “I miss you,” she says. Then she comes in and sits on my bed.
“I miss you too,” I say, and I do. I don’t want to remind her about cheerleading. I just want it to stay all nice and quiet, Mom brushing my hair back from my forehead. “Let’s do something together this weekend, just you and me,” she says. “Whatever you want.” Then she kisses me on the cheek and leaves.
The next morning after breakfast we’re all cleaning up dishes when Dad says to Mom, “So I thought I’d drive Sonia to her friend’s house later and you can take Natasha to the art store. She said she needs more watercolors.” Mom stops scrubbing a pan and looks at me. I pretend a furniture catalog on the counter is the most interesting thing I’ve ever seen.
“Oh, God, I completely forgot about that. Sonia, why didn’t you remind me?”
I clear my throat. I look up. “ ’Cause Dad said I could go,” I say.
“But we hadn’t finished talking about it. Why didn’t you tell me earlier?” Mom asks Dad.
“Sonia didn’t tell me she already asked you,” Dad says, and now they’re both looking at me with arms crossed. I wish I could transport myself into the catalog and hide away in the lime-green bunk bed.
“I just thought you forgot. I had to tell Kate something,” I say.
Mom takes a deep breath. Dad now looks at Mom with arms crossed.
“You could have reminded me,” Mom says.
“Well, I didn’t want to,” I say. My words hang still and strong in the air. “I really want to go and you were going to tell me I couldn’t.”
“Why would you tell her she couldn’t go?” Dad asks as he wipes his hands on a dish towel.
“I’m just not sure cheerleading is appropriate for girls her age,” Mom says to Dad like I’m not there. She’s back to scrubbing the pan really hard.
“Mom, it’s just cheerleading.”
“What’s wrong with cheerleading?” Dad asks.
Mom just gives a funny sarcastic laugh. “Just turn on any football or basketball game. The girls half naked, shaking their butts, are the cheerleaders.”
“Mom, it’s not like that,” I say.
Mom’s face falls and she stops scrubbing again. “You just should have told Dad that you talked to me, that’s all.” Dad nods in agreement.
“Sorry.”
“I didn’t know it was that important to you,” says Mom in a softer voice.
I didn’t know either.
Mom decides to drive me after all, but we don’t talk much. When we arrive at Kate’s house, Kate and four other girls are jumping around on her green square of a front lawn. I wonder if Mom thinks they look silly, if they look like the girls at the football games on TV. Of course Jess is there, along with three other girls I don’t know as well—Christina, a tall skinny girl; Allison, who’s shorter, with red curly hair kind of like Sam’s; and Ann, who’s always smiling and nodding at people.
“I’ll pick you up at four,” says Mom.
“Yup,” I say.
She touches my cheek. “I know it’s hard going to a new school, but never forget what a strong, wonderful girl you are. Don’t let anyone make you feel less than you are.”
“I won’t,” I say, and get out of the car without looking back.
Kate sees me and waves me over. The other girls say hi and turn their attention back to Kate. She demonstrates a few moves and after a while I find out that the greatest goal a cheerleader can have is to do a perfect toe-touch, a jump where you do a front split in the air and touch your toes. Luckily, I’m pretty flexible. I’ve done lots of yoga with Mom and can basically bend myself into a pretzel. The girls run through the cheers for tryouts. They all seem to have the word “fight” in them. I’m a little clumsy with the dance moves, but when Kate demonstrates a toe-touch, which she can do well, I know I’ll be able to copy her. I try one and my legs cut into the air as if they weigh nothing at all. I slap my sneakered toes so hard it stings the palms of my hands.
“Whoa, Nelly!” says Christina.
All the girls stare at me, even Jess, though she’s the only one not smiling.
“That’s awesome!” cries Kate and claps really hard. I can’t help but feel like a beauty queen. My cheeks must be as red as tomatoes.
I try not to wonder why Kate is so nice to me, and just enjoy it and ignore Jess, who now sits sulkily on the grass painting her toenails hot pink.
For the rest of the afternoon, I do more toe-touches than I’d ever thought I’d do in my life while the other girls try to match my height. After we’ve all broken a good sweat, Kate suggests a break. Everyone flops on the ground. I lie back for a minute and feel the cold grass tickle my neck.
“Hey, all. Cokes, anyone?” I hear a woman say. I sit up and see Kate’s mom, who looks much younger than my mom. Her straight blond hair streams down her back, and she’s wearing fitted black pants, a sleeveless white turtleneck, and sunglasses even though it’s not that sunny out.
She hands us all cups full of soda. She also has a bag of cheese puffs, which she opens and pokes toward people. After everyone takes a handful
, she puts the stuff down on a picnic table on one side of the lawn.
“Hey, Jackie,” Jess says, looking up from her nails, which she has gone back to painting.
“Hey, Jess. Nice color,” Jackie says. She puts her sunglasses up on her head and thrusts her right hand toward Jess. “What do you think?”
“Ooh, silver. So cool!” Jess squeals.
“Thanks, just got them done,” Jackie says, flipping her hair from one shoulder to the other. She looks my way. “You must be Sonia.”
“Hi,” I say, and immediately want to disappear. All I can think about is my hair, which I don’t have tied back, and my scruffy fingernails, and black leggings, and purple T-shirt that aren’t anything like the pastel hooded sweat suits all the other girls are wearing.
“Pleased to meet you,” she says. “I’ve heard so much about you!”
To my relief her eyes scan the whole group. “So let’s see what you’ve got, girls.” She sits down on one of the picnic table benches. Kate runs over to the middle of the lawn and everyone follows. She leads us through a few cheers and then does a running cartwheel with a toe-touch at the end. Christina and I are the only other girls who attempt it after her.
“Nice one, Sonia,” Jackie calls out. The way she sits, leaning back with her long legs crossed, she looks like a movie star.
“That’s a real compliment,” Kate says. “My mom won a cheering national championship in high school.”
“Wow, thanks,” I manage, and feel the blood rush to my cheeks again.
Maybe, I think, cheerleading isn’t just for other girls. Look at Jess. She’s got pink nails and the right sweat suit, but she can’t do a toe-touch to save her life.
* * *
For the rest of the week I practice cheers. Natasha is my best audience. I even try to teach her some moves, and the way she stomps through the cheers like a little soldier cracks me up. We tumble on the floor in giggling fits, which is the only thing that seems to get Mom to smile. Otherwise she just watches with her arms crossed, nodding here and there. Once she told me not to shake my butt so much on one of the cheers. When I’m not around her I keep shaking it.
The Whole Story of Half a Girl Page 5