No One Ever Asked

by Katie Ganshert

  Now that friendship had hurt her son—almost killed her son—and nobody was certain if the transfer students would be able to return to Crystal Ridge in the fall. Camille would fight, only this time, she was going to fight to make sure they could stay. This time, Austin’s best friend was a transfer student, and Taylor’s…well, Camille wasn’t sure what Darius was to Taylor. But whatever he was, he was helping her get through a really rough month. It turned out, her family benefited from something she had diametrically opposed, from something she had absolutely feared.

  Camille bundled up Austin’s bedding and carried it downstairs. She finished making his bed, and she and Neil stepped out into the foyer.

  “Do you have everything you need?” he asked.

  “I think so.”

  He snapped his fingers, one after the other, and clapped his palm over his fist. “I’d be happy to drive Taylor to her appointment with the diabetes educator tomorrow morning. It’s pretty early, isn’t it?”

  “Don’t you have CrossFit?”

  He blushed. “I haven’t gone to CrossFit in a while.”

  “Oh. Well, you still look like you’re in shape.”

  “I’ve been jogging again. Doing some lifting at the apartment.”

  Not home.

  Not even his apartment.

  Just the apartment.

  “Do you think we should throw a party?” Camille asked.

  “A party?”

  “For Austin. It seems like he deserves a party. I’m sure your mom would love to come.”

  “She’s always up for a good excuse to get out of the retirement center.”

  “How’s she doing?”

  “Oh, you know.”

  Another wave hit—that vulnerable, broken wave that shanghaied all her anger and struck her with an acute desire to apologize. For yelling at him when Taylor was five and fell off her Dora bike. For dismissing him so decidedly when he said he wasn’t happy at his job. For all the ways she made him feel insignificant and not needed. “I’m sorry that I wasn’t there for her that day.”

  “What day?”

  “The closing.”

  His cheeks turned red again. He shook his head and looked down at his shoes. “You don’t have to apologize for that. I was going through…I don’t know what I was going through.”

  A midlife crisis, she wanted to say.

  For a while she’d suspected a brain tumor.

  Instead she said, “It’s been a crazy year, hasn’t it?”

  He laughed a soft sort of laugh and rubbed the back of his neck. “Maybe a little.”

  It had been a season of upheaval. Painful. Like breaking a bone. But sometimes bones had to be broken for the purpose of resetting them. Sometimes they had to be broken so they could heal the right way. “It’s going to be a hard summer…with Austin’s physical therapy and Taylor dead-set on training.”

  “Yeah.”

  “I think they’re going to need their dad.”

  “I’m available, Camille. Any time. Just say the word.”

  “I mean they’re going to need their dad here, at the house.”

  He looked at her expectantly, hopefully, as if all this time he’d just been waiting for her invitation.

  There would have to be counseling. Neil would still sleep in the guest room. But maybe this was their chance to start healing. “I need him too.”

  “Really?”

  Camille nodded. “Really.”

  Seventy-Four

  Anaya and Marcus held hands as they strolled up the pathway that cut across an all-too-familiar lawn. They held hands like two people taking their first tentative steps into a relationship—one that was fragile and new but you desperately wanted to work.

  Darius walked ahead of them.

  Yesterday she finished packing up her classroom. The two bulletin boards were bare. The desks were empty and pushed off to the side so José could clean the carpet. She had disassembled the time machine, packed all the books, bins, and knickknacks, and tucked them away into cabinets. Her Funko Pop figures were back on the dresser in her bedroom. To anyone who passed by, it would be like the last year didn’t happen.

  But to Anaya, the walls spoke. They brimmed with memories of Nia and Dante and Zeke and Sarah and Jubilee and Aaishi and Gavin and Paige and all the other bright, shining faces she saw every morning for one-hundred-eighty days—students from two very different worlds, brought together in this fancy district she never wanted to teach in.

  Be the change where you’re at.

  Anaya hoped she had been.

  Taylor opened the front door, her smile bright as Darius came forward and wrapped her in a bear hug. The two of them had gotten close. Going through what they had tended to do that to people. Anaya worried it was too close, too fast, and too intense for a couple of seventeen-year-old kids, but Darius had told her to mind her own business, and Mama had invited Taylor over for dinner tomorrow night.

  That ought to be interesting.

  Taylor said hello to Anaya and Marcus and held the door open, inviting them inside the large foyer. “The party’s out back.”

  Anaya took a deep breath.

  They were only going to stay for thirty minutes. Forty-five, tops.

  “It’s not winning,” Taylor said.

  Anaya turned around. “What’s that?”

  “Don’t get me wrong. Winning is fun. But it’s not why I run.” Taylor shrugged, her long blond hair swept over her shoulder. “Thanks for helping me see that.”

  * * *

  Jen experienced a major bout of déjà vu as Jubilee walked in front of her, down the wooden stairs to the patio below. It turned out that when Jen and Nick were frantically searching the crowd for their missing daughter, Camille Gray was kneeling in the grass with her son’s head in her lap while he bled all over. She was the one who had screamed and screamed.

  When Jen found out that the victim was a sibling of Taylor’s, Leah and PJ took Jubilee and their children to Nick and Jen’s house, and Nick and Jen went to the hospital. Now Taylor’s brother was home, and they were all invited to celebrate.

  Camille and a tall, trim man greeted them as they came down the final step.

  “I’m so glad you came,” Camille said.

  The man reached out and shook Jen’s hand. Nick’s too. “You’re Mrs. Covington, right?”

  Jen nodded. “You can call me Jen.”

  “I’m Neil. Thanks for all your help with Taylor. She speaks very highly of you.”

  “Well, she makes my job easy. She’s a great kid.”

  “We think so.” Neil slid his arm around Camille’s waist. It would seem that their separation had ended. They made a handsome couple. In fact, they reminded Jen of Ken and Barbie from Osaka on Jubilee’s Family Day celebration, when Jen had felt dull and a little dead and prayed that God would wake her up.

  When the gun went off and Jubilee went missing, God certainly had. For a few moments, she had been every inch a normal mother, a frantic parent who lost sight of her child and was desperate to find her. It was good to know—a relief to know—that at the end of the day, she wanted Jubilee in her arms.

  “I’m glad Austin is doing so well,” Jen said.

  “We have a lot of physical therapy ahead of us, but the doctors are saying he should make a full and complete recovery.”

  Jen’s eyes got a little glossy. “It could have been so much worse.”

  Jubilee tugged on the hem of Jen’s shirt. “Mama?”

  “Yes, sweetheart?”

  “I wanna jump in da bounce house.”

  “You can go.”

  “I want you to jump with me.”

  It was a request she made before, in a scene eerily similar to this one—with the large, landscaped backyard and tables full of food. Only this time, Nick was with her and the
re weren’t any presents or a bunch of girls running around with American Girl dolls, and it wasn’t just Taylor manning the bounce house but Taylor and Darius Jones, and instead of Paige being the center of attention, it was Austin—a tall, lanky boy sitting in a chair in the shade, playing chess with a shorter, equally lanky boy with skin like Jubilee’s.

  Back then, Jen had been too concerned about how she might look in front of all the fancy mothers to say yes. So she watched through black mesh windows as her daughter jumped.

  In the span of time they waited to bring Jubilee home, Jen and Nick went to an Empowered to Connect conference. They learned all about the fundamentals of attachment and the impact of a child’s history and the role fear played in behavior and the importance of meeting sensory processing needs and establishing healthy neurological pathways. That last one was done largely by something called the do-over.

  Let’s try that again.

  What’s another way to say that?

  How can we do that differently?

  As Jen looked down at Jubilee, she felt like she was being given one now. A giant do-over, as though they could travel back in time and establish a different way. A new route. Where she wasn’t a spectator of her daughter’s joy, but a participant.

  She took Jubilee’s hand, and together they walked to the bounce house.

  Taylor smiled at Jen, and Darius slapped Jubilee a five as they slipped off their shoes and climbed inside. It was hot and kind of loud, and Jen stood there a little awkwardly as Jubilee began to jump.

  “Come on, Mama! Like ’dis!”

  Jen watched her daughter—beaming from ear to ear with a crooked-toothed smile—jumping like a pogo stick, and her heart went warm and soft in her chest as she slowly began to bounce.

  “Does it hurt?” asked the Rabbit.

  “Sometimes,” said the Skin Horse, for he was always truthful. “When you are Real you don’t mind being hurt.”

  For some people, attachment came right away. But for Jen, it hadn’t. For Jen, it would come like this. In a journey filled with jumps and bumps, fits and starts. Maybe someday that journey wouldn’t feel so jolting. Maybe someday being Jubilee’s mother would be as natural as breathing.

  “Higher!” Jubilee sang, lifting her arms above her head as her beads clacked together. Lifting her arms above her head like she had in the backyard, when she’d told Jen and Nick about the man who sang to her in the night when the doors went shut. “Higher and higher!”

  Maybe someday.

  But until then, they had this moment, right here.

  Jubilee grabbed Jen’s hands, and they jumped higher and higher, until their smiles turned into giggles, and then Jen slipped and they fell and Jubilee laughed from deep in her belly. And Jen was laughing too.

  Oh, she was laughing.

  So hard and free, tears tumbled past her temples, into her hair.

  She and Jubilee? They were becoming, like the velveteen rabbit, and along the way, her hair would be loved off and her eyes would drop out and she would get loose in the joints and very shabby. But it wouldn’t matter. Not one piece of their journey—not one bump or bruise or struggle—would be ugly. Because all of it made them Real, and when you were Real, you couldn’t be ugly, except to the people who didn’t understand.

  Jubilee rolled over on top of her and stopped suddenly with a soft gasp. “Mama, are you sad?”

  Jen wiped at the tears and pulled Jubilee close—so thankful, so filled-to-the-brim thankful, because in that moment, she wasn’t sad at all. In that moment, she was something else altogether.

  “Not all tears are the sad kind,” she said, and then she whispered into Jubilee’s ear something that was wonderfully true. “I’m so glad I get to be your mama.”

  * * *

  Anaya double knotted the laces on her shoes and peered down the length of the track. It had been two years since her injury. Two years since she laced up these particular shoes.

  There had been a lot of dust.

  She stood and shook out each leg, one at a time. She tested her ankle. It didn’t throb or smart or ache. It felt just fine.

  She spread her feet and stretched to the left.

  This time next year, Darius would be a high school graduate getting ready for college. Hopefully, South Fork Cooperative would have its accreditation. They learned today that until then, her brother would be able to finish his high school career in Crystal Ridge. She also learned today that Kyle Davis would no longer be teaching third grade at Lewis and Clark Elementary. He would now be working at the Crystal Ridge administration building.

  The man had gotten a pay raise.

  Anaya stretched to the right.

  Next year, she would continue to drive Darius to school each morning. She would teach at O’Hare and coach track in the spring. Mama would finish her night classes and hopefully find a supervisory position in food management. They’d pay off more of their debt, and maybe the year after, Anaya could work in the district her daddy had taught in for so many faithful years.

  You run like you got wings on your back, Anaya. You run like you’re free.

  At some point, those wings got clipped.

  Or maybe, like her heart, they had bunched into an angry fist, refusing to unfurl, lest the pain be too severe.

  She shook out her hands, bounced on her toes, found the inside lane, and began to jog around the track. Slow at first. Hesitant, almost—like a person doing something they shouldn’t be doing.

  Marcus had forgiven her.

  Maybe it was time to forgive herself.

  Maybe it was time to forgive them.

  She lengthened her stride and imagined herself releasing the death grip she had on a hook that didn’t belong to her. Camille Gray and Leif Royce and every angry parent at that awful town meeting last July. Jan McCormick. The liquor store owner next to Auntie Trill. Kyle Davis and his roommate.

  Forgiveness isn’t pardon for them. It’s freedom for you.

  And she was more than the sum of one bad decision.

  She ran faster, the wings on her back unfurling, stretching wide behind her, the shackles that had bound them falling away. She rounded the bend, picking up speed. She could see him, right there at the fence. Her daddy, smiling proudly, clapping his large hands in that staccato beat.

  “Anaya, Anaya, Anaya,” he said. “It’s your birthright, baby. I want you to live it.”

  It was his final gift to her, and she would.

  She would live free, even when it felt impossible. She would make the hard choice every single day to keep her heart soft. She would make the hard choice to forgive even when forgiveness wasn’t asked. She would be the change where she was at. She would keep running this race called life, even when it broke.

  Especially when it broke.

  The ground raced past her in a blur.

  She would live it for him, and she would live it for herself, and she would live it for every girl like her. The ones who came before and made the wings on her back possible. The ones who would come after and were counting on her to keep running.

  One day she would fly free. Completely free, just like her name.

  Until then she would run.

  Author’s Note

  In the summer of 2016, when Alton Sterling and Philando Castile became hashtags, I came across an episode on This American Life called “The Problem We All Live With.” It was about segregation in modern American education. In the episode, investigative reporter Nikole Hannah-Jones shared an integration story that happened in the Saint Louis area in 2013.

  Normandy and Riverview Gardens, two school districts composed almost entirely of black and brown students, lost their accreditation. Both districts were severely underresourced and understaffed and had a high concentration of students from poverty. The loss of accreditation triggered a Missouri transfer law that gave any student
at a failing district the option of transferring elsewhere. The failing school was not only responsible for transfer tuition; they had to provide transportation as well. Normandy chose to bus students to Francis Howell, a mostly white, affluent district in a neighboring county.

  The pushback and resistance as told in the episode of This American Life was disturbing.

  I listened to snippets of the town meeting in Francis Howell’s high school gymnasium with my heart in my throat and my stomach churning. Despite everything I’d been learning about racism in America, I still couldn’t believe that the sound bites were from 2013.

  Every time I opened my laptop to work on the novel I was supposed to be writing, my mind would wander to those sound bites. I couldn’t stop imagining what it must’ve been like to be a Normandy parent or a Normandy student sitting in that gymnasium.

  It reminded me of a book assigned by one of my professors when I was an education major at the University of Wisconsin, Madison: Savage Inequalities by Jonathan Kozol. Schools like Normandy and Riverview Gardens and others included in that book don’t happen in a vacuum. They are a product of our past, a history riddled with injustice, and real children attend them. The racial disparity in our country’s education system is alarming, and I couldn’t get any of it out of my head.

  So I went out on a limb and sent an email to my editor, explaining the episode I’d listened to and the idea forming in my mind. Was there any way I might be able to write this story instead? Lo and behold, my editor said yes, and I dove in.

  I read every obscure article written about the Normandy transfer situation. I found a timeline of events. I pulled up radio-show archives. I listened to a recording of the town meeting in its entirety. I looked for ways to incorporate fact into fiction and quickly learned that like most things in life, the situation was complicated with differing opinions on all sides.

  It turned out to be the most challenging novel I’ve ever written.

  I’m aware that I have stepped into a sensitive space. I’m a white girl. I have a black daughter; even so, I’ll never truly understand what it’s like to be black in America. I’m aware that there are a plethora of black authors out there writing stories that absolutely need to be read. But the Lord has pressed a hot iron against my heart. He has shown me an injustice that I can never unsee, and as I wrestle with what to actually do—there has been a common refrain I hear from many in the black community: “If you want to do something to fight racial injustice, talk to your people about it.”