Once You Know This

by Emily Blejwas

  “I will. Thanks, Fuzzy. I’ll call you again soon. I promise.”

  • • •

  Sundays are the worst because my homework’s always done and the library’s closed. And today’s worse than most Sundays because I don’t know what to do next in my Plan B. I just stare out the window and see whatever comes by, which isn’t much. Granny’s next to me with her head leaned back against the couch, sleeping quiet as a mouse. I hold her hand because she doesn’t let me when she’s awake. She wiggles away if you try to hold on to her at all.

  I’m wondering if I could make it to the lowest branch of the tree across the street from Odessa’s and what I’d do when I got there, when a long white car pulls up and parks underneath it. After a minute, Tiny gets out. He opens the back door and leans in and he’s so huge he fills up the whole space.

  When he comes back out he’s holding a baby in a puffy pink snowsuit and a pink diaper bag over his shoulder. He leans back into the car and finds her hat and puts it on her head. He’s smiling and talking silly to her like we do to Tommy. I can’t hear him but I can just tell. He sees me in the window and I smile. He waves and I wave back.

  “Who are you waving to?” Mom is suddenly next to me holding Tommy and her voice came out so sharp Granny’s eyes pop awake and move back and forth between us like she’s trying to decide if we’re her family or not.

  “Tiny,” I tell Mom.

  “How do you know him?”

  “He’s Odessa’s nephew.”

  “But how do you know him?” She’s jiggling Tommy even though he’s not fussing.

  “He brought you Gatorade when you were sick.”

  “Did he?” Mom’s still looking out the window even though Tiny’s already inside.

  “Yeah. Did you know he was a preemie and he could fit in his daddy’s hand and no one thought he would make it?” Mom just looks at me. Probably the way I looked at Odessa when she told me. It is hard to believe.

  Mom sighs and I say, “What?”

  “You’re just…”

  “What?” I ask in a half-mad voice because I didn’t do anything wrong and neither did Tiny and why doesn’t she appreciate the Gatorade?

  “Getting older.”

  This makes no sense. If this was dialogue in a story, Mr. McInnis would say it has no flow. I think about telling Mom this but instead I say, “I’m gonna draw for a while,” and go into my room and shut the door. I pull out my Plan B notebook and draw a picture of Tiny that fills up the whole page with his baby as a little pink puffball in his arms and underneath it I write exactly what Odessa told me so I don’t forget. You don’t ever know what a person will grow up to be. You just got to wait and see. People do surprise you.

  Mr. McInnis told Ms. Sanogo he’s given up on getting any more of us to read about Ivan, especially at home where things are complicated. Now we’re doing state reports in class and he let us choose any state we wanted. Eleven kids had to put their name in a baggie for Illinois, which reminded me of Grandma Jane saying the world is so big, but no one in my class seems to know it. Nobody wanted Alabama but me. Nobody wanted Mississippi either until Mr. McInnis realized Leon and Sofía both had New York and assigned Mississippi to Sofía. She wasn’t happy about it and neither was Mr. McInnis.

  We’re on the Madison bus again but this time I’m not looking at the Willis Tower and the way the spikes reach into the white sky like they could reach anything. Today I’m drawing everything Alabama. I finished the yellowhammer and the camellia and the longleaf pine and now I’m bent over the eastern tiger swallowtail butterfly, which is hard to do because its spots are like watercolors that dripped down its back. The light is fading outside and I have to lift my paper closer to the window.

  “Is that about Alabama?” Mom asks.

  “Yeah. It’s for school,” I tell her and it’s nice that it’s not a lie. “We’re doing state reports.”

  “And you got Alabama?”

  “No. I chose it.”

  Mom smiles a wide grin that I forgot she had. “Grandma would be so pleased,” she says.

  “Yeah.”

  She looks down at Tommy, half sleeping and half pulling on her necklace, then out the front of the bus toward the Willis Tower, which is almost buried in winter fog. But she doesn’t see it anyway. Her eyes are swimming in the sea. I wonder if Grandma ever took her up to the top when it was still the Sears and told her the world is so big. If she did, Mom forgot.

  • • •

  At Walgreens they don’t have Granny’s medicine ready even though the doctor said they would call it in. Mom has to stand at the counter while a lady with earrings that almost touch her shoulders calls the doctor’s office and waits for them to call back and she’s so tired she says yes when I ask if I can go to aisle 9 to look at magazines.

  I sit down on the floor and flip through one of the magazines Marisol likes, full of boys with messy hair and guitars and sunglasses with gold rims. But they seem so far away, like the people in the Thanksgiving parade. I can feel in my bones that none of them ever sat on a bright and dirty Walgreens floor at eight o’clock on a school night waiting for medicine to help their granny think and for some reason it makes me so mad. I shove the magazine back on the rack and don’t care that I wrinkled it.

  I stand up to go back to Mom and the lady with the huge hoops but then I notice the maps. Most of them are for Chicagoland, which is a trick because it makes the city sound like a fairy tale (which it’s not) but there’s an atlas with a map of all fifty states on the first page, covered in blue highways like veins. It’s not the way I want to think about our country. I want to think about it like from the redwood forests to the gulf-stream waters. But I find Chicago anyway, then I find Alabama and run my finger between them through Indiana, Kentucky, and Tennessee.

  It’s a long way to Montgomery.

  • • •

  After school it’s my favorite kind of snow. The quiet kind that falls super slow so you don’t have to worry about not having a shovel for the steps or if the buses will be on time. Mom’s wearing her bright orange and yellow scarf that looks like a sunbeam in winter. Grandma Jane knit it for her when she moved to Chicago but she’d never knit a scarf before and it’s about ten feet long. Mom doesn’t care. She just wraps it around and around. She pulls it down to smile at me. This kind of snow makes everyone happy. That’s the other reason it’s my favorite.

  “How was school?” Mom asks. We start walking in no hurry, like the snow. Tommy’s grabbing at the flakes with his little pink hands.

  “Good. Marco brought his pet turtle and it got loose and Dahlia jumped on her desk screaming because she says once her uncle got salmonella from a turtle and almost died.”

  “Wow.” Mom smiles. “Guess what I got at the store today? That kind of hot chocolate you like, you know, with the little marshmallows?”

  “Yes!” I say because I really do love those little marshmallows. “Why’d you get it?”

  “Just felt like we needed it.”

  We walk along and I think about Granny’s empty house in Montgomery because I can’t stop thinking about it. “Mom?” I ask. “What kind of job would you want if you could have one? I mean, did you like being a waitress?”

  “It was all right,” Mom says. “But if I could have any job, I think I’d like to work in a bank. As a teller. You know, the people at the counter who count out the money?”

  “Yeah. You’re really good with money,” I tell her and it’s true. Every week when we go to the store, the card gets so close to zero but it never goes under. Never. Except when Jack messes with it but that’s not Mom’s fault.

  “I’d be better at it if I had a little more,” Mom says, and her laugh ends halfway through like it decided it probably wasn’t that funny. But I’m smiling because I know there are banks everywhere. I know there are banks in Montgomery.

  • • •

  Kenya’s house looks a lot like mine. I didn’t know she lived so close until Mr. McInnis set a huge s
tack of papers on my desk and said, “Would you mind dropping this off at Kenya’s? She’s still sick and her dad called asking for her homework.” I told him I didn’t know where she lived and he said, “She’s right around the corner from you!” and I blushed because Mr. McInnis knows where I live even though Mr. McInnis knows where everyone lives because of Home Visits. He’s already at F.

  I lift the front of Tommy’s stroller while Mom and I walk up the steps. The porch is clean and empty except for a welcome mat in the shape of a pineapple. I ring the doorbell and Tommy kicks his feet which makes his boots fall off so I’m bent down pushing them back on when the door opens and Kenya’s dad smiles at me. He’s in a wheelchair so we’re face to face and there are little plastic tubes going from his nose around his ears to a big tank on wheels.

  I just stare at him because he’s not who I pictured saying school board and policy and To get to your future you have to look to your past and then I feel terrible for thinking that because why couldn’t he be? Mom nudges me at the same moment Kenya’s dad says, “Hi there,” and his voice booms like a storm in July. The kind Mom and I used to listen to in the tiny apartment on the third floor where we lived before Jack. Mom used to turn off all the lights so we could see the lightning better. Lots of kids are scared of thunder but I’m not.

  I stand up. “Hi. Um, my name’s Brittany. I’m in Mr. McInnis’s class with Kenya? I brought her homework.” I hold out the stack and he takes it and sets it on his lap.

  “Thank you, Brittany. And—?” He looks at Mom and she smiles.

  “Maureen,” she says and shakes his hand because she always knows what to do in these kinds of situations.

  “Maureen! I haven’t heard that name in a long time. How beautiful.”

  “Thank you,” Mom says.

  “I surely appreciate this. Kenya was starting to worry about falling behind.”

  “She doesn’t need to worry,” I tell him. “She’s one of the smartest kids in our class.”

  “Is that so?”

  I nod.

  “She says you’re pretty smart yourself. Says you’ve got a plan.” I can feel Mom looking at me but I don’t look back. “I’d invite you in but you don’t want that child’s cough.” He shakes his head and I notice how old he looks, more like a grandpa than a dad. “I guess I’d better let you go before you freeze to death.” He pushes his wheels and his chair rolls back a little. “Thanks again!”

  “No problem at all,” Mom says. “I hope she feels better.” The door shuts and we carry Tommy’s stroller back down the steps and out the gate. “What’d he mean by that?” Mom asks.

  “By what?”

  “That you’ve got a plan.”

  “I don’t know. He probably says that to everyone.”

  Mom holds on to my arm before I can walk ahead of her and bends down and kisses me right on the forehead.

  • • •

  Mom made chicken and dumplings for dinner, Granny’s favorite, but Granny won’t eat a bite. It might be because it’s mostly dumplings and not so much chicken but I don’t say anything because Mom’s arm is stiff like a robot when she lifts the spoon to Granny, talking to her in the same voice she used to get Tommy to eat his baby food before he started shoveling Cheerios in his mouth. Maybe if Mom tried flying the spoon like an airplane. I laugh out loud, I don’t mean to, and Mom gives me spiky-leaf eyes. “Sorry,” I say. “I was laughing at Tommy.”

  Tommy squeezes a dumpling in his fist and smears it on his tray. “Bee bee bee,” he tells us, then rubs his hand in his hair. Mom doesn’t even smile. She sets Granny’s spoon down and goes to the kitchen sink and just stares out the window into the winter black. I pull Granny’s bowl closer and lift the spoon toward her but she hardly seems real. Her skin’s almost white and her eyes are tipped up. “Here, Granny,” I say and hold the spoon closer but she doesn’t move. It’s like trying to feed a ghost. Tommy leans way over in his chair and sticks out his tongue but this time I don’t laugh.

  • • •

  At school we each have to pick one of the seven principles of Kwanzaa and write about what it means in our lives. Most of the kids are squinting at the list of African words and trying to remember what Mr. McInnis said about them but I know exactly which one I’m doing. Kujichagulia. Self-determination. To define ourselves, name ourselves, create for ourselves, and speak for ourselves. I pick the sharpest pencil out of my desk.

  Kujichagulia. Self-determination. To me this means doing what you want and not what anyone else wants you to do. But this is hard when you’re a kid because you don’t get to make the big decisions that determine things. Like I can decide who my best friend is (Marisol) or what my favorite color is (yellow) but I can’t decide to never see Jack again or live in a different part of the city or keep Patches. I didn’t name myself and I can’t really speak for myself unless I want to get in trouble. I guess I define myself (kind of) and create for myself but it doesn’t seem to do any good.

  If I could speak for myself, I would tell Jack I hate him. I would tell Mom that she is pretty and strong like pansies in the snow. I would tell Tommy that I will always take care of him (and he would understand me). I would tell Granny that I will find her home and take her there someday (and she would understand me). I would tell Marisol she’s smart enough to have a real job and I would tell my class the world is so big. And I would tell myself

  The bell rings, which is good, because I can’t think of one thing to tell myself.

  Laila’s waiting for me after school instead of Mom. Tommy’s in a small stroller I’ve never seen before and its wheels are buried in the snow but at least he’s got his snowsuit on. Laila’s holding Miles’s hand and his other hand is wearing a glove so big the fingers are waving friendly in the wind. Which is weird because Miles’s eyes are always black marbles.

  “Where’s Mom?” I ask. My stomach’s flipping around worse than before our times tests in third grade. No matter how hard I tried, I never passed my nines.

  “She’s fine.” Laila bends down to me. “She had to take your granny to the hospital, Britty-Bug. I think she’s really sick. I’m sorry.” I breathe out and realize I was holding my breath. Then I feel bad for being relieved Granny’s sick and not Mom. We start walking.

  “Are we going to see her?”

  Laila tosses a curl out of her face with her bare hand, freckled and white in the cold. The stroller makes a painful squeak through the snow and I can tell Laila’s pushing it as hard as she can. “Your mom said we should just wait at home. She’ll call me when she knows more. You like pigs in a blanket?”

  “Huh?”

  “Little hot dogs in crescent rolls. It’s Miles’s favorite. Right, boo-boo?” Miles stares straight ahead and walks with his hands in fists. I look back and see the big glove dropped in the snow but don’t say anything because turning the stroller around to go back for it would be ridiculous and I know Miles doesn’t want that glove. “They’re really good,” Laila says. “You’ll see.”

  • • •

  Mom doesn’t come home that night or the next or the next and the days are a gray blur like rain that drizzles just enough to keep you wet and cold. School is a long, exhausting dream even though Laila never gets me there until almost lunch. She works nights and the first night she leaves us with Tamara, who never looks up from her phone and puts Miles and Tommy to bed in their clothes. The next night it’s Shonda and she makes Miles and Tommy a soapy bath and gives me two rows from her Hershey bar. She sings songs when she puts us to bed and keeps the TV low while she studies out of a huge book called Fundamentals of Nursing.

  The next night it’s supposed to be Jack but he never comes. I put Tommy to bed and leave Miles sitting on Granny’s bed with his arms crossed and his shoes on because I don’t know what else to do with him. Then I make my face as mean as it can be and sit on the couch staring at the front door, waiting for someone to rob us or kill us. A teeny part of me wants something bad to happen so Mom will get mad enough
to leave Jack. But I ignore that part because I really am scared and don’t want to be robbed or killed.

  • • •

  I wake up lying on the couch even though I don’t remember falling asleep. When I get to school my class is at lunch but I’m not hungry because Laila gave me a peanut butter and butter sandwich on the way here. She called Jack every swear word I know plus some I didn’t and stomped her boots in the slush like she was stomping on him and the sound of those words and the squish of the slush made me want to puke. Or maybe it was the sandwich.

  Mr. McInnis drops his pen when I walk in the room the way I did when Ms. Sanogo told us about the rabbit in the moon. I haven’t brushed my hair and I’m sure my eyes have dark rings like Mom’s but I didn’t look in the mirror. I have to look down to even remember what I’m wearing. “Hi,” I say.

  “Hey.”

  “Can I just sit at my desk? I’m not hungry. I’ll be quiet.”

  Mr. McInnis nods. I don’t think this is what he imagined for my future when he told me it was crazy bright and usually I’d be embarrassed but I’m just so tired. I let my backpack crash on the floor and rest my head on my arms on my desk and the world starts tipping but then Mr. McInnis touches my shoulder and I jerk back awake.

  “Brittany?” He’s sitting in Kenya’s desk which is perfectly smooth and clean just like her skin and hair and shirts and everything. I want to cry thinking about how messy I am next to her. “How can I help?” Mr. McInnis asks.

  I shrug. “My granny’s sick,” I say to the whiteboard. The numbers on it keep slipping down and I have to blink to keep them in line. “And she’s not gonna get better.” It’s the first time I’ve said it out loud even though I’ve known since Shonda said the name of Granny’s disease is Alzheimer’s and when I asked how you fix it she just pushed her lips together and her eyes were “Silent Night” and she told me to get some rest. “And I’m so tired.”

  “I was close to my granny too,” Mr. McInnis says.