Once You Know This

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Once You Know This Page 4

by Emily Blejwas


  “Brittany!” Mom says.

  “What!”

  “You’re burning up. We need to get you home.”

  The checkout girl says, “Have a nice day and thank you for shopping at Dollar Tree.”

  • • •

  Mom had to go to the other side of the city so a new doctor could document Granny’s memory erosion so I go home with Marisol after school. We’re in her bedroom eating chips that taste like jalapeños and my mouth’s on fire but I’m pretending it’s not. Marisol’s cousin had to go to court so we’re babysitting her daughter Isabella who is four. She’s spinning around in circles because Marisol dared her to. Finally she falls down and lies on her back.

  “The sky’s wiggly,” she says.

  Marisol laughs. “Just hang on and it’ll stop.” She’s scrolling through a pink iPad Tonio gave her. He didn’t say where he got it and she didn’t ask.

  “The ground’s wiggly too. It might spill me off.”

  “No,” Marisol says. “It won’t.”

  She finds the song and hands me one of her earbuds. “Here,” she says. “Listen to this one. It’s so good it makes me want to cry.” All around us posters of singers cover every inch of space like wallpaper until they run into Marisol’s little sister’s side of the room, which is covered in horses. Marisol’s smart enough to be something real like a nurse but I don’t say it because at least she has an idea. When I see my future I see the sky on a boring Saturday. White. Blank.

  Isabella finally sits up. “Let me listen.” I hand her my earbud. Marisol’s singing along with her eyes closed. Isabella tips her head for a minute like a bird hearing something far off, then gives the earbud back and lies down to stare at the ceiling.

  I think she might be worried about her mom so I say, “What are you thinking about?”

  “Nothing.”

  “Isabella.”

  “What?”

  “Do you want to be a singer when you grow up? Like Marisol?” Marisol’s eyes are still closed but she’s added hand motions now.

  “No.”

  I smile down at her. She’s rubbing snot from her nose and her pigtails are crooked. I imagine her future the way Mr. McInnis wants us to, as a firefighter, a lawyer, an Olympic swimmer. She’s only four. She could still be anything. She could be the one to get out of this place. “What do you want to be?” I ask.

  “A dancer,” she says. “Like my mom.”

  Getting new notebooks is usually my favorite thing. When Mom takes me shopping for school supplies I love it more than Christmas or my Easter basket or fireworks on the Fourth of July. All those new, perfect pencils and crayons and more paper than I could ever use. But my Plan B notebook is different. I’ve been staring at the first page forever and I can’t think of one thing to write. I will never think of a Plan B.

  Odessa’s sweeping her steps so I go out and hold on to the top of the chain-link fence between us. Jack’ll be mad if he comes home and finds me talking to her but he’s always mad. “Hi,” I say.

  “Well, hey, baby girl. What you up to?”

  “Nothing.”

  Odessa laughs that truck starting up laugh of hers. “Better than mischief, I guess.”

  I smile because I’ve never heard anyone say mischief in real life. I’ve only seen it in old books and cartoons. “Odessa?”

  “Mmm.”

  “Have you always lived here?”

  “Woo! Seem like it but no. Back when I was a sprout like you I lived on the South Side. Oooh, girl, that was nice.” She stands up straight like saluting the memory of it.

  “Really? Jack says the South Side’s dangerous.”

  “Everywhere’s dangerous now. But back then we had a neighborhood! You know what I’m sayin’?” I nod very seriously, even though I don’t. “On Saturday nights we used to dress up. Not the way they do now with everything hanging out but for real! Ooh, there ain’t nothin’ like a woman in a nice dress with a line just so.” She sets down the broom and moves her hand straight across like the horizons Mr. McInnis is teaching us to draw. He says to put them toward the top or bottom but never in the middle. “And it sway when you walk,” Odessa says and waves her hand a little. “And some high heels. Back then we looked just fine. The mens too.”

  “How’d you get here?”

  “Oh, I followed a man, same as anybody. His mama lived on the West Side.”

  “Odessa? Have you ever made a plan?”

  “Sure, baby. Lots of ’em. But you know what they say about plans, though.”

  “What?”

  “You know how to make God laugh? Make a plan!” She laughs again, like thunder, maybe like God himself.

  • • •

  “Aren’t you gonna eat?” I ask Marisol, who drank her chocolate milk in one gulp and is twirling a piece of her hair around one finger.

  “No. I’m boycotting Taco Tuesday till they call it something else.”

  I laugh and it sounds strange coming out of my mouth and I wonder if it’s really been so long since I laughed. “But it’s tacos.”

  Marisol shakes her head slow like the middle-school girls do before they jump each other. “No. It’s not.” I’m glad Marisol’s my friend because I’d be scared of her if she wasn’t.

  The table’s packed because the leg broke on the table next to us when a boy from Marisol’s class kicked it to prove he really knows tae kwon do so all the girls are crowded in with us and they’re all talking about Parent Night, which was kind of like Taco Tuesday because there were no parents. “I heard he paid for all the drinks and food and stuff himself and he even had to pay the janitor extra to stay late,” Dahlia says.

  “That’s so sad,” Marisol says.

  “Yeah, but like what was he thinking?” Sofía says. “Who wants to go to school at night? I don’t even want to go during the day.” All the girls laugh and we’re squeezed in so close it feels like a nest but the center of me is cold picturing Mr. McInnis alone in a superclean classroom with our Chagall dream paintings cheerful on the walls and a tray of cookies laid out in perfect rows.

  “And no one came?” a girl from Marisol’s class asks. “Like, no one?”

  We all look around at each other until Kenya says, “We did,” and everyone stares at her. “My dad and I.” Kenya’s so quiet and separate like she’s in a different school in her mind but stuck in this one. She almost floats when she walks.

  “Was it sad?” someone asks. “Was it weird?” but Kenya shakes her head.

  “No. It was nice.”

  • • •

  Jack’s pacing around the kitchen like he’s waiting for someone but I don’t know who because we’re all here. I’m sitting at the table doing homework and Granny’s next to me, squeezing her left thumb with her right hand. Mom’s making spaghetti. She rolls the meatballs slow and careful and for some reason I want to smash them with my fist.

  Tommy’s playing with a plastic ring from a six-pack of Jack’s beer and every time I look at him I think of a turtle trapped and sinking in the lake. Mom and I used to walk along the shore picking up litter so it wouldn’t get into the water and choke the turtles. And on the walk back we always looked for sea glass so we ended up with one bag of trash and one bag of sea glass and Mom said, Just like life. She always let me keep the sea glass.

  “What are you doing?” Jack asks. He’s trying to pick a fight.

  “Homework.”

  “No kidding. What kind?”

  “Art.”

  “Don’t look like art.”

  “I’m reading about Gustav Klimt. He never painted a self-portrait.”

  “Who cares? They should be teaching you welding.”

  I don’t care that he’s trying to pick a fight. I don’t care about anything. I say, “We’re in fifth grade.”

  “What did you say to me?” The kitchen gets quiet but buzzing at the same time like the headaches I used to get when I had ear infections. “What’s your teacher’s name again?” he asks.

  “Mr.
McInnis.”

  “Well, you tell Mr. McInnis for me that your dad thinks he’s a pansy.”

  “You’re not my dad.”

  He shoves the table at my chest, hard, and it hurts. It hurts Granny too but she just squeezes her thumb harder. Mom picks up Tommy ’cause he starts to cry. She opens her mouth and then closes it again. I might hate her.

  • • •

  On the first page of my Plan B notebook I make a list of the things I know:

  1. Jack is mean.

  2. Mom doesn’t have a plan.

  3. Marisol is my best friend.

  4. I hate Jack for putting Patches out.

  5. I miss Patches.

  I’m not getting anywhere, so I start another list.

  1. How can we get away from Jack?

  2. We need money.

  3. Mom needs a job.

  4. Jack won’t let Mom work because he says she flirts with all the customers.

  5. We need to get away from Jack.

  I circle number 5, feeling triumphant. But then I realize number 5 is the same as number 1 and the list just makes a circle and I already knew we needed to get away from Jack and I stole something from Dollar Tree just to figure out something I already knew. I’m suddenly so tired. I hide the Plan B notebook under my mattress and fall asleep with my clothes on.

  • • •

  Marisol and I are on top of the monkey bars at recess. It’s only fifteen minutes long and you have to be quick to get a spot on the monkey bars because all the girls want to sit there. Marisol’s smart. She got the bathroom pass one minute before recess and went straight to the playground to save our spot. We’re watching our feet dangle above a sea of tiny rocks that line the cracks of the bottom of our shoes. I ask her what a pansy is. I know she’ll know because she has an older brother.

  “Who said it?”

  “Jack.”

  “Then it means a gay.”

  “Oh.” We’re quiet for a minute. “But it can mean something else?” I ask. “If someone else says it?”

  “Sí. A pansy’s a flower too. I know because my tía Gabriella’s crazy about flowers and she teaches me them. Pansies she always plants close to wintertime. Like right now. They look real delicate, you know? Like paper-thin. But they can survive even in snow. They are strong, strong.” She looks at me. “Like us.”

  Winter came three days ago with no warning and a bunch of snow but Mom hasn’t noticed all my sweaters are too short. When she walks Tommy to the corner store for some milk I pull a kitchen chair to her closet to look for her smallest sweater, the color of a rusty car with Laila’s cigarette burn on the shoulder. She doesn’t wear it much, she probably won’t even notice it on me, and I’m freezing.

  The shelves are high and I push my hands back as far as they can go and something clinks, like change for the ice cream truck or Odessa’s wind chimes. I feel around and find a small gray plastic bag. The Scrabble tiles. I feel around some more and find the board, still new and glossy and folded in half. Mom’s voice is in the living room and I shove the game back between the sweaters and long socks and winter hats.

  “Brit? What are you doing in here?” Mom asks. Her ears are red along the edges.

  “Nothing. Just looking for a sweater but actually I don’t need one.” I hop down off the chair, away from Scrabble.

  “All of mine will be too big for you, peanut. You need some new ones?”

  “Not really, I’m fine.”

  “I can take you to Goodwill tomorrow.”

  “Okay. Whatever. My old ones are fine. I have to finish my homework.” I slide past her out of the room and down the hall, through the living room, and into my room. I hear Mom sigh and it could be about so many things I don’t bother thinking about it. I pull my Plan B notebook out from under the mattress and write on a new page:

  WHAT IS IN THE SCRABBLE BOX?

  • • •

  We’re in the middle of what’s supposed to be math but Ms. Sanogo can’t get any answers out of us, even from the kids who always have answers, like DeMarcus. Because at the beginning of math, the secretary (who listens to gospel music in her headset when the phone’s not ringing and sometimes when it is) called Mr. McInnis to the principal’s office. Some of the boys oohed at him the way they do to everyone but when Ms. Sanogo came in it felt serious.

  Kenya’s desk is across from mine and I’ve never really talked to her but this seems like an emergency. “Kenya,” I whisper and she looks up. “You think Mr. McInnis is in trouble?”

  She shrugs. “My dad said he went to the school board and asked them to change the field trip policy.”

  I blink at her because I can’t imagine being in a family where they say things like school board and policy and I don’t really know what either one means. “Did they change it?”

  Now Kenya blinks at me. “No.”

  “I heard the principal found out he’s gay.” Dahlia didn’t mean to say it that loud but it was one of those quiet moments that come up by accident. Except now it’s quiet on purpose.

  “All right, all right. Calm down,” Ms. Sanogo says. “For all you know Mr. McInnis has just been elected teacher of the year.” She picks up a copy of James and the Giant Peach that’s cracked and facedown on Mr. McInnis’s desk. Mr. McInnis is an amalgam, which is the Word of the Week. It means a lot of different things put together. Because he tries to teach us probability and how to use semicolons but he still reads to us like we’re in kindergarten. He says no one is too old to be read to. Maybe I should read to Granny.

  And it works. We calm down. I put my elbow on my desk and my face in my hand and start to fall asleep because Ms. Sanogo’s voice is like a lullaby and she’s reading lines about a dream that makes me want to dream instead of worry. My eyes are almost closed when the door opens and Mr. McInnis walks in and smiles at us.

  • • •

  Mom slides the girls’ sweaters sizes 10–12 down the rack at Goodwill, checking the tags on some and frowning at all of them while I have an ugly sweater contest with Laila. I found one with leather fringe down the sides and a cowboy riding a bronco and Laila’s wearing a Christmas sweater with a tiny red bulb for Rudolph’s nose (except it’s burned out). She belts out “Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer” (with hand motions) and some of the shoppers look over but most don’t.

  I’m laughing but Miles is not. He sits on a folding chair with no expression like someone wiped off his feelings with a baby wipe. I look behind me to Mom, holding up a green sweater to the light to see if it’s stained, then scowling at it and putting it back. Miles and I could be in one of those movies where the babies are switched at birth. Except he’s a boy and six years younger than me and has brown skin like his dad.

  Laila finishes the song and bows to Miles and me, her curls tipping over and back and Mom is suddenly next to me holding a small pile of scratchy sweaters. “Can you try these on? Hopefully at least one of them will work.”

  I take the pile. “Can I do one more sweater with Laila first?”

  Mom sighs. “Brit, we really gotta go. If we miss the 5:05 we won’t get home until after dark and Granny’s alone and I have to make dinner.”

  “You mean we have to go because Jack might get there first.” Mom squints at me like trying to recognize me and I don’t recognize me either. Probably because we’ve been with Laila all afternoon, which makes me feel tough and careless.

  “No. It’s because Granny will be home in the dark and Tommy’s getting hungry.” Her voice comes out steady but her eyes are tree bark. Tommy kicks his feet happily in the cart and I think about pointing this out but Laila jumps in between us wearing a sweater covered in poodles wearing poodle skirts.

  “Ha!” she yells. “Beatcha!”

  I smile. “You win. I gotta try these on now.” I carry the sweaters to the dressing room and try them on as fast as I can, barely looking. They make a blur of color in the smudged mirror like the impressionists. Except they painted in France and I’m in a dressing room that
smells like mice and Jack’s breath when he comes home late. I pick two sweaters and hand them to Mom. Laila’s still wearing the poodles in poodle skirts. She hugs Mom, then me, then we head to the cash register and the 5:05, where a couple of the men are wearing ties but most aren’t. Either way, everyone’s eyes are long dark day.

  No one gets up for Mom to sit except an old lady with a flowery handkerchief tied under her chin with a huge knot. She smiles at Mom and talks to Tommy in a language I don’t know except that I know it’s Polish. It’s just one of those things. I look at Mom and she knows too and she won’t sit down. The lady’s showing Mom the seat with her hand that’s knuckly and bent from being old but Mom makes her eyes sea mist. The lady gives up and shows the seat to me and I make a big deal about sitting down with a big grin because Mom is being ridiculous. The Polish lady pats my head and for the rest of the ride I pretend she’s my grandma because somewhere I have a Polish grandma anyway.

  We get home just as the sky gets its pink stripes to switch on the lamp for Granny. Tommy’s fussy and I’m tired. In my Plan B notebook, I draw a picture of the Polish lady in her handkerchief with her wide smile and knobby hands and the two sweaters Mom got me blowing out the open bus window. The bus window wasn’t really open but Mr. McInnis says there’s no rules in art. Then I think of Miles sitting frozen on the folding chair and wonder if Laila ever made it to the boys’ sweaters sizes 4–6. I turn the flying sweaters into birds.

  • • •

  “Brittany.” Mr. McInnis is looking right at me and my cheeks turn hot like when Mom used to blow-dry my hair before church. “What did you get for number nine?” he asks.

  “Oh!” My voice comes out too loud and a few kids laugh and it takes me forever to find number nine on my page. “Three hundred and five,” I say, forcing my voice to be quieter this time.

  Mr. McInnis smiles. “Good. Kinda dreamy today.”

  He goes on to number ten and I go back to thinking about my Polish grandma because ever since I realized I have one I can’t stop thinking about her. Does she live in Poland still? Did she move to America to be with my dad? Or did my dad go back to Poland? Does she live in the country or the city? Does Poland have cities? I picture her as the old lady on the bus with the flowery handkerchief because I have no one else to picture but she could look like anyone. She could look like me. Or she could be dead, like Grandma Jane, but somehow I know she’s not.

 

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