Once You Know This

by Emily Blejwas

  “Hey,” Jack says. He stands in the space between the door and the room that’s full of shadows and looks over at Tommy like he’s afraid to come closer. “How’s he doin’?”

  “Better,” Mom says.

  “Oh, thank God. Sorry I ain’t been around before. I just been…you know.”

  Mom stares at him.

  “Hospitals, you know,” Jack says. “I just…you know. Anyway.” If Jack wrote a paper for Mr. McInnis, it would come back covered in red ink. This thought makes me crazy happy and I smile. Jack sees me but looks away. “So, I’m so glad he’s better. I gotta run ’cause I gotta meet this guy, he’s gonna, we got this thing and I’ll see you back at home, okay?” He backs out of the room the way Mom does when she’s done vacuuming and says My mother taught me that. The door clicks shut.

  I look at Mom and raise my eyebrows and she laughs, but by accident. Like when you’re drinking something and it goes down wrong and you start coughing and coughing. That’s how her laugh is. She keeps laughing and laughing like she doesn’t mean to but can’t stop. The doctor comes in and I wait for his cold stare like we shouldn’t be laughing when Tommy’s so sick but he doesn’t give us one. Instead he smiles wide and his eyes are big behind the thick rims of his glasses and he says, “That’s the best sound I’ve heard today.”

  “Me too,” I say.

  • • •

  It’s the middle of the afternoon and Tommy’s restless because he feels better after his milk and cereal and he’s tired of watching Sesame Street and all the other shows on channel 2 and so am I. It’s so many hours till dinner I don’t bother to count. I want to take a walk in the hallway but I don’t think Tommy’s supposed to leave the room and Mom won’t let me go by myself. The doctor said Tommy can go home tomorrow if he keeps eating and drinking. His cheeks are a little pink but his belly’s so scrawny.

  I sit him next to me in the middle of the hospital bed and push the button so the bed goes as high as it can. He crawls around in a little circle then sits back down, like Patches used to on the couch. We get so high I reach up to see if I can touch the ceiling but I can’t. “That’s enough, Brit,” Mom’s voice says from under us. “Come back down.” I push the other button and we come down slow and Tommy bounces up and down like he does when his toys play music. When we hit the bottom Mom is next to us, holding my Plan B notebook. She hands it to me and when I hold it again I realize how much I’ve missed it, even if my Plan B was for nothing. Maybe someday when I’m older and have self-determination I’ll make a Plan C.

  “Thanks,” I tell Mom. “Why are you giving it back?”

  “Just ready to. I called Uncle Fuzzy and asked him your last question, about Lily,” she says and sits back down in the hospital chair that’s so familiar now it seems like we’re in our living room. “He said Granny’s dad named her and all her sisters after Alabama wildflowers. Violet was the oldest, then Laurel, then Uncle Fuzzy, then Daisy, and Lily was the youngest. So Lily was Granny’s little sister.” I stare at Mom. I hear her words but it seems like she’s reading from a script. “She was only a year younger than Granny and Fuzzy said Granny loved her more than anything.”

  I start to cry which is surprising because I thought my tears were used up. I think it’s because I loved Granny more than anything and I never got to tell her. Tommy looks at me like I’m a toy making a new sound and pulls my hair. I might also be crying because I’m so relieved Tommy didn’t die like Granny. Then Mom does a crazy, crazy, crazy thing. She takes Haley’s card out of her purse (I can see the hot pink flower) and picks up her phone.

  We’re as close to the Willis Tower as we’ve ever been. We’re almost to the lake, which is covered in gray ice because the winter’s the coldest it’s ever been. I saw it on the news at the hospital. The lake’s the same color as the sky and the smoke from the buildings and the buildings themselves. It makes Chicago look like the saddest place on earth, which should make it easy to leave but doesn’t because all I can think about is if Odessa can come out of her house with the arthritis and how I can’t bring her hot soup like she got Mom Gatorade. And mostly how I’ll never see her again. Or Mr. McInnis. Or Marisol.

  The bus lurches to a stop like throwing up and Mom’s already in the aisle, holding Tommy over her shoulder and the Scrabble box in her other hand. I’ve spent so much time trying to get to Montgomery and I don’t even know what it’s like. Maybe it’s worse than Chicago. Maybe Jack will find us there or we won’t find Fuzzy or all the kids will think I’m weird. “Maybe we should just go home,” I tell Mom.

  She says, “Stand up.”

  I stand. The cold from the open bus door gusts down the aisle and sneaks under my coat. I start to shiver and I can’t stop. Mom hands me the Scrabble box. “Can you carry this?” I nod and Mom bends down so her face is right in front of mine. Her eyes are the color of the lake in summer and I wonder if it’s still that color underneath all the ice and if the fish are cold. “It’s gonna be okay,” she says. We get off the bus.

  It’s seven blocks to the Greyhound station and we walk pressed together like we’ll stay warmer that way. I can feel ice in my eyelashes. “Aren’t you scared?” I ask.

  “Of what?”

  “Of Jack. Finding us.”

  “Jack’s doing his own thing now,” Mom says. “And we’re doing ours.”

  I can’t believe it’s that simple but Mom’s never been wrong about Jack. Like the time she wouldn’t turn the heat up and he did come home and his voice bounced off the walls like a superball and she calmed him down with a bunch of beers popped in a row. I don’t understand any of it but all I can do is walk on the gray sidewalk through the gray city and trust her.

  • • •

  Haley’s waiting for us outside the station wearing her pink hat and matching pink mittens. When she sees us she tucks her phone in her coat pocket like we’re the most important thing. “Hi, guys!” Her voice is chirpy like meeting best friends at the movies. I wonder what she’ll do after this. Just go back to the hospital and have a regular day? “Let’s go get the tickets,” she says.

  I follow Mom and Haley to the ticket window and every turned shoulder looks like Jack’s. It’s so crowded. I squeeze the Scrabble box tight. Haley counts out perfect twenties for the lady behind the glass and pushes the stack through and the lady pushes an envelope back. “Transfer in Nashville,” she says. “Gate six.”

  Haley hands Mom the envelope and says, “I’ll walk you.” So we walk to Gate 6. It’s not far, around a corner and down some stairs. Still no Jack. I’m holding the Scrabble box so tight my thumbs are white. The bus is already there, rumbling low and puffing smoke out the back. “Well, I guess this is goodbye,” Haley says. “Good luck with everything! I know you’ll do great.” She hugs Mom and kisses me on top of the head, then pats Tommy’s back gently so he doesn’t wake up.

  “Thanks,” Mom says. “You are one in a million.”

  We climb the steps of the bus. There are only three people inside and none of them is Jack. We wait and wait. More people get on but not Jack. Finally the driver hops up the steps like onto a stage and stands facing us. He’s thin with perfect dreads tied behind his neck with a plain white string and glasses with blue rims. “Hey, y’all,” he says. “My name’s Marcel and I’m your ride to Nashville. The Music City. Just sit back and enjoy. We’re ready to go.” He sits down and pulls the huge handle and the door sucks shut. The bus starts to move.

  Haley waves with both arms and I force one of my hands to let go of the Scrabble box to wave back. We pull out from under the bridge into the world. Mom’s smiling at all the buildings like wishing them goodbye but they’re still as stones. In a minute we’re on the expressway. Mom closes her eyes and lays her cheek on Tommy’s head but I turn around in my seat to watch until the Willis Tower is out of sight.

  • • •

  Early in the morning, after we make the transfer in Nashville (the Music City) at two-thirty, which is like a strange dream, Mom and Tommy
are still asleep and the sun’s rising over the city of Birmingham. It has some tall buildings but nothing like Chicago which makes it feel friendlier even though I know some bad things happened here once because Mr. McInnis was just starting to teach us about civil rights before Tommy got pneumonia and we met Haley and got on a bus.

  “But don’t let Chicago fool you,” Mr. McInnis told us, because Martin Luther King Jr. himself got hit with a rock in Chicago when he was marching for better houses. We had to memorize part of a speech Dr. King gave in Chicago in 1966 and most of the class had to read their lines but I still know mine by heart: This is freedom. This is a weapon greater than any force you can name. Once you know this, and know it with all your being, you will move and act with a determination and power that the federal government cannot ignore, that the school boards cannot overlook, and that the housing authority cannot dismiss. Mr. McInnis smiled at me when I finished. Probably he liked the school boards part.

  The Scrabble box is on my lap. I look over at Mom but her hair’s bouncing over her face with the highway bumps and her breaths are slow so I know she’s deep asleep. I open the box. It’s full of old pictures and cards and drawings I made in school. Our birth certificates are in there and Tommy’s hospital bracelet from when he was born and his pink and blue striped baby hat and a little ziplock bag labeled BRITTANY’S TOOTH. I hold it up and sure enough there’s a tiny tooth inside with a dot of blood on top.

  Some of the pictures are old. Grandma Jane holding Mom when she was little in front of a Ferris wheel. Granny way before she died, sitting in a lawn chair and looking sideways and laughing. There are a few pictures of Tommy, propped up next to his Easter basket and in the swing at the purple slide playground and in his high chair with broccoli in his hair. But most of the pictures are of me.

  • • •

  Fuzzy’s waiting at the bus station outside a beat-up blue pick-up truck. He has on jeans and a short-sleeve plaid shirt and a bow tie like he’s meeting someone important but still being himself. Mom didn’t tell me which one he was but I knew anyway. Just one of those things. He was wearing a baseball cap but as soon as the bus pulled up he took it off and curled up the brim so it would fit in his back pocket and smoothed what’s left of his hair across the top of his head. A few gray wisps like they draw the wind in kids’ books. Then he just looked up at the bus and grinned.

  He’s still smiling when we come down the steps, taking turns holding the driver’s hand, into the bright sun bright sky of Montgomery. It’s nine in the morning and it’s weird to be starting a new day when we didn’t really finish the old one. “Hey, Maureen!” Fuzzy calls and he hugs Mom and pats her back. “I’d know that pretty smile anywhere, just like your mama. Hey, little man.” He makes a clicking noise at Tommy and holds out his hands but Tommy frowns at him and Fuzzy laughs deeper than I expected from a man so skinny and old. “Don’t wanna come to no goofball, hey? I don’t blame you.”

  Then Fuzzy bends down to me and his eyes are the same blue as Mom’s but cloudy like different weather’s coming. “And you must be Brittany.”

  I say, “Yes, sir,” because Mom told me to say that in Alabama.

  “I’m so glad y’all came. Are ya hungry?”

  “Not too much,” I say. “Sir.”

  Fuzzy finds the huge suitcase the nurse at the hospital gave us and somehow swings it up into the back of the truck like a superhero with invisible muscles. Then we all squish in, me right next to Fuzzy who smells like aftershave and something like cigarettes but not quite. “I’ll swing ya through downtown,” he says. “So you can see your new city.”

  Our new city’s white and shimmery in the sunlight. Fuzzy drives with his window down and waves to everyone he sees and they all wave back. The air feels fuller and kinder than in Chicago and pink flowers are blooming on bushes all around the capitol even though it’s January, but something at the very center of my body misses the slushy brown streets in Chicago which makes no sense but reminds me of what Mr. McInnis said a long time ago about leaving a place before you can be proud of it. He feels very far away. I lay my head on Mom’s shoulder. “Tired?” she asks and I say yes (which you’re supposed to say instead of yeah in Alabama) because it’s the easiest thing.

  • • •

  I wake up under a quilt with frayed edges and colorful stars on Fuzzy’s couch, which is old but not scratchy and doesn’t smell like medicine like I thought. I fell asleep after Fuzzy made a breakfast bigger than I’ve ever had, with eggs and bacon and grits, which didn’t taste like much by themselves but Fuzzy told me to mix everything together ’cause that’s how God intended breakfast, so I did, and then they tasted good and I started to feel better about things but also exhausted.

  The sun is slanting through the front window in strong stripes. I should get up but my arms and legs are rocks and my mouth is dry from sleeping at the wrong time like a mixed-up owl. I can see Fuzzy on the front porch whistling and sweeping and I listen for a while. Every few sweeps Fuzzy spits into the front yard. Tommy coughs and Mom murmurs from somewhere in the back of the little house. A black and white clock in the shape of a cat is ticking on the wall and I wonder if it’s the same time in Chicago and if it is, what Marisol is doing at 1:21 p.m. in Ms. Sanogo’s class. Probably math. “She doesn’t even know I’m gone,” I say to no one. But it’s Marisol, so she might.

  “Hey, bright eyes,” Fuzzy says when I walk onto the porch and sit on the swing, still wrapped in stars. “Your mama still sleepin’?”

  I shrug. “I think so.”

  Fuzzy whistles with his teeth, the way he did on the phone when I told him I was eleven. “Must have been quite a trip.” He checks his watch. “How ’bout you and me run down to the curb market quick and pick up some eggs?”

  I blink at him because I don’t understand what a curb market is or how anyone at this house could possibly eat more eggs. Then I say, “Okay.”

  Fuzzy writes a note to Mom and I smile at his handwriting because really it’s what brought us here in the first place. We climb back into the truck and this time I roll my window down too and hang my hand out waving and everyone waves back. “Uncle Fuzzy?” I ask.

  “Yes, ma’am.”

  “What are you gonna do with more eggs?”

  Fuzzy smiles at me with his changing skies eyes. “I’m gonna bake y’all a cake.”

  I’ve never heard of a man baking a cake but it seems like something Tonio would do. “Why?” I ask.

  “ ’Cause that’s what you do when family comes. Like to do a pound cake if I can get some duck eggs. Fella always holds some for me but the market’s fixin’ to close so we’ll see.” I have so many questions I don’t know where to start so I just ride along, bumping over potholes, which for some reason makes me want to laugh out loud.

  • • •

  The curb market turns out to be a building with no walls which answers my question Is there winter in Alabama? because if there was the snow would blow right in and cover everyone’s vegetables and soup jars and cakes with a million layers. There’s a cold breeze but no one’s wearing winter hats so I guess they don’t know any better or maybe they don’t have any. And they’re not shaking out their hands or stomping their feet like we do in Chicago. They’re sitting still as rocks like waiting for it to end.

  I follow Fuzzy down the main aisle looking back and forth trying to see everything because I’m used to collecting information even though I guess I don’t need to now. There’s lots of things I’ve never seen, like jars filled with yellow stuff called chow chow and plates of divinity, which might be made out of marshmallows. But mostly it’s familiar stuff like carrots and onions and broccoli. I think of Faiza saying Fruits and vegetables and mostly vegetables! She would like this place. That’s another person I’ll never see again.

  “Mostly greens this time of year,” Fuzzy says. “Just wait till the peaches come in. Can’t hardly walk through here. ’Less you got a stick.”

  He says Hey! to everyone and War E
agle! to some people and they all smile at me but I feel them wondering who I am and I’m wondering too. We make it to the end of the aisle where a lady sits wrapped in a blanket covered with old-fashioned tigers and that’s another thing I’ll have to learn because all I know is Bears and Bulls and Blackhawks.

  “Hey, Fuzzy,” she says.

  “Hey, doll. Where’s Roland at?”

  “Stayed home today. Too cold for his skinny britches. I told him he needs more meat on his bones like me. I stay nice and toasty.” She laughs. “Who’s this pretty thing?”

  “This here’s Jane’s granddaughter, Brittany.”

  Her eyes brighten like those light switches you can click up. Marisol has one in her living room but it’s usually on the lowest spot. For no reason I think of her dad Ending It All and wonder if they found him on the living room couch. In the bright light or the medium or the dim.

  “Is that the truth!” the lady says. “I’m Moxie! Jane and I were girls together!” She comes out of her booth and gives me a big hug. “I’m so glad to see you, shug! You here with your mama?”

  “Yes, ma’am.”

  “Well, we are so happy to have y’all.”

  I don’t know what to say so I say, “Thanks.”

  Fuzzy pays for his duck eggs (which are enormous) while I stare at rows of hair bows laid out on a white cloth that remind me of Marisol’s hair ribbons and my sea glass and all the art I had to leave behind, still taped to my walls unless Jack ripped it down. Mom said Laila would get it for us but I know she won’t.

  “My daughter makes those,” Moxie says. “Go ahead and pick you one.” I look at Fuzzy and he nods and starts to pull out his wallet but Moxie waves it away. I choose the only yellow one, like my Plan B notebook, like wheat fields waving, but much softer, more like the very early morning sun in Chicago.