by Jamie Sumner
And then she makes everybody stand up and push all their desks five inches to the right, which basically does nothing. It is screechingly loud and I want to disappear. But that’s the one thing you can’t do in a wheelchair.
Next to me, Bert is sharpening an old-fashioned number two pencil and is completely unaware of everything else going on in the room. For one second I wish I could be like him. And then, because Mrs. Tilly was late and homeroom is only ten minutes, the bell rings and I have to leave to do it all over again.
And it happens in every class.
There are exactly twenty desks and every room takes rearranging and all the teachers are nice and none of them look like they have ever had to do this before. My science teacher, Mr. Miller, yells, “Can you hear okay in the back?” like my CP has also made me deaf. My speech teacher, Mrs. Roman, takes five minutes to tell the class about her cousin who also has cerebral palsy and is now working as the manager of a Target in Edmond “in spite of it.”
I don’t drink any liquids all morning so that I don’t have to use the bathroom, but by lunchtime I am dying, and luckily the whole sixth grade eats together, so Coralee comes with me and guards the door. I hear her growl at someone from outside the stall.
It’s only eleven thirty, and all I want to do is go home, but we head into the cafeteria instead.
Mom has packed me a peanut-butter-and-honey sandwich and a squeeze pouch of applesauce. One of my leftover linzers is in there too, but it’s so hard and dry I can’t even bite all the way through. The tables in the lunchroom are in long rows with stools attached (of course), so I have to sit at the end. Coralee sits to my right, and I don’t even mind when Bert takes the other side. Without saying hello, he unwraps a chicken salad sandwich with a Food & Co. sticker on it. I bet everything he eats comes straight from the day-old deli counter.
“So I already have homework in history, math, and Spanish,” Coralee says, and takes a bite of her pizza. She’s the only one that bought hot lunch. “How? I mean, how is that possible?”
“It costs the government eight thousand dollars a year to send one student to school. Of course the teachers are going to give you homework. It would be financially irresponsible for them not to.”
“Bert, we need to work on your filter,” she says.
I want to talk. But I’m just so tired. I unscrew the applesauce.
“You all right over here?” It’s Rachel. She crouches down next to my chair with her hand on my arm. And that’s all it takes—one adult to make all forty kids in the room look my way.
I see someone from homeroom, one of the girls, the blond one that wouldn’t move her backpack. She looks at my squeeze pouch and laughs. I push it under the table.
“She’s fine.” Coralee shoos Rachel away and she leaves, but her perfume hangs around and puts me off my food entirely.
I shove my entire lunch back into the bag. I wish I could crawl in too. How do I explain that those squeeze pouches were the only fruits and vegetables I could eat for a long time? “Easy calories,” Mom says. I can’t help it that I still like them. I must look like such a baby.
Coralee grabs my lunch and starts setting it back out again.
“They’re not laughing at your lunch. It’s just the trailer park thing.”
“What trailer park thing?” Bert asks. It’s the first time he’s looked up since he sat down.
“There’s us”—Coralee points at our table—“and there’s them,” and she waves her arms around the whole room. “The trailer park kids and the townies.”
“That’s not a thing.”
“It is, Robert. You’ve just never noticed because you’re a bit off. No offense.”
“A bit off what? The average?” He looks at us both and folds his sandwich wrapper into a square. “If so, I’ll take it as a compliment.”
“So what’s the trailer park thing?” I say, turning so I won’t have to see the blond girl. I still can’t pick up the squeeze pouch.
“Now listen, you two. I’ve lived a lot of places with my mama, see.” Coralee points her crust at both of us. “And there’s always a line. A railroad track, a street name, a bridge. Doesn’t matter what it is. But there’s always some place that separates the weird from the normal, the poor from the rich, the white trash from the middle class.”
“But my mom’s a teacher and Bert’s dad runs Food & Co.” I don’t say anything about Dane and Susie because I’m not sure what they do, exactly.
“It doesn’t matter. It doesn’t matter if we brick down the sides and plant little gardens, or what kind of cars we ride around in. A trailer’s still a trailer, even without the wheels.”
I let that sit a minute.
“So everybody’s staring at me not because I’m in a wheelchair. It’s because I’m from the park?”
“You got it, sister. You’re from Trailerland now.”
The only redeemable part of the entire day is gym, and that just proves how bad it was overall.
For a brief and terrifying moment, Rachel tries to help me change in the locker room. But Coralee chases her away again, and after a hurried emergency meeting between Principal Rutherford and Mr. Hutchinson, they decide to let me stay in my jeans. I just have to change into the yellow shirt with the lion on it.
Unlike in every other class, Mr. Hutchinson has a plan for me from the moment I wheel onto the waxed floors. All the girls have gym together, and we are separate from the boys, thank Jesus. So there we are in a circle in the center of the basketball court, and Mr. Hutchinson starts to take everybody through stretches. Before I can even start to get embarrassed, though, he hands me two long, stretchy green bands.
“Triceps first, Cowan,” he says. And this is something I can totally do. I’ve been using these for arm and leg stretches for years. They look like giant rubber bands. I do triceps and biceps, and then when everybody gets up to run laps, he helps me loop the bands around the bottoms of my feet and pull up to stretch my calves. It feels good. I’ve been slack about my exercises since we moved. I’m supposed to stretch every day to keep everything loose. I can feel all the tightness where it’s built up in my ankles.
“Where’d you learn to do this, Mr. Hutchinson?” I ask him while he switches out the green bands for purple ones that are stretchier.
“Call me Hutch. You mean how does a gym teacher like me know how to do real therapy?”
“No, I just mean . . .” I fumble with an answer, because yeah, that’s exactly what I mean, but when you put it like that, it just sounds rude.
He laughs and rubs the back of his head. “Just teasing you, Cowan. I trained as a physical therapist and worked with the athletic department at OU before coming here.”
Before I can ask why in the world he would leave a college position for this, he stands and blows the whistle for break. Half the girls pull out their phones, which they are not supposed to have in class, but Hutch doesn’t notice or just doesn’t care.
“I’m glad you’re here, Cowan. It lets me practice my skills. Now rest up, because this next part you can do with everybody else.”
And then he blows the whistle for everybody to run the lines. They have to run back and forth from wall to wall, and I race along in my chair with everybody else, pumping my arms as hard as I can until I feel like my lungs are on fire. I feel like one of the extras in Murderball, that movie about the Paralympics. I always wished I had a chair as cool as theirs with the huge wheels that tilt in. Coralee jumps on my lap for the last round, and I just about drop her at the free-throw line.
If gym had been the last class of the day, it all might have been fine. I mean, still terrible, but bearable. But then I have Spanish, and then we have dismissal, and dismissal is worse than all the rest put together.
After the final bell everybody, fifth through eighth grade, files out at the same time and waits in the same long line between ropes like at an amusement park. Except instead of a ride, you’re waiting for your bus. Different buses pull up to different spots, but you can’t get
on your bus until it’s your turn in line.
To be clear, this is a terrible organizational idea.
But none of this should have mattered, because me and Coralee and Bert were riding in the van. Except car kids aren’t allowed to cross to their vehicles until all the buses are gone. And Rachel, being Rachel, decides she has to stand with us until my mother or other guardian “is visible.” And so I sit hunched over in the cold while every single student files past me.
If they had stared or even laughed, it would have been better, because then Coralee could have said, “What are you looking at?” and Bert could have cited the temperature at which water becomes gas or something like that, and we’d at least have had something to do. But nobody even looks at us. It’s like we aren’t even there. And I spend the entire time wishing I weren’t, because it feels like I don’t exist. Even Coralee doesn’t look up from her shoes until all the buses have driven off in a cloud of fumes and we all hear Mom calling and waving from, yes, one of the handicapped spots not ten feet away.
“So how was everybody’s first day?” Mom asks when we finally pull out into traffic. But nobody says a thing—all of us silent and staring out three different windows.
“Well, that’s not so bad,” Mema says. I give Mema one of my best Mom eyebrows. “I mean, that Rachel’s a pill, and two thirds of your teachers sound like space cadets, but none of this is unfixable.”
The hot chocolate’s long gone and my fingers are frozen. Mema hugs me tight. We’re sitting in the glow of yellow from the kitchen window now that night has set in.
“I can’t do it all over again.”
I didn’t cry all day, but now I do a little. Just the idea of going to sleep only to get up and have to go back there makes me so worn out, I can’t even move to get myself back in my chair.
“But you don’t have to, honey.”
She takes my face in her hands, and somehow they’re still warm.
“You will never ever have to have a first day again. You’ve already done lived that. Firsts are the worst, that’s what I say. First dates, first kisses, first days, first jobs. Now it’s on to day two, and who knows what’s waiting for you?”
She means it to sound exciting, but it just sounds scary. Who knows what’s waiting? I didn’t tell her about all the stuff Coralee said about the trailer park. I don’t want her to think I’m ashamed of where we live. I love this place. I always have. It’s okra and blackberries in the summer and fishing at No. 9 landing and shelling beans on the porch. I wouldn’t trade it for anything.
“Okay.” I start unwrapping us from the blanket. “But Rachel has got to go.” I say it loud and sassy, because Mema wants me to be brave, and maybe if I pretend to be, it’ll turn true.
“Oh yes, honey, that girl might be worse than her aunt, and that’s saying something.”
“Mom will never go for it—me not having an aide.”
“You let me handle your mother, sweetheart. What’s the good of being old as dirt if you can’t pull rank?”
8
Challah and Basketball
Dear Deb Perelman at smittenkitchen.com,
I have been thinking about God lately and what it means to “live a life according to your convictions,” as my grandma’s pastor would say.
I’ve never been good at the prayer thing. I mean, I pray sometimes, but only when something really, really bad is happening or I think might be about to happen. I don’t think that’s the same thing as just praying because you’d like to tell God about your day or you’re just so happy or whatever.
The thing is, I’ve been pretty worried lately and so has my whole family, and so I’ve been trying to get back to talking to God about all that stuff because maybe it might help somehow.
And now I know you’re wondering why I would write to you about all this when you are a famous cook and this is about a Jewish recipe and my grandparents are Methodist and I’m not even sure what my mom and I are.
But I have a reason. It’s this: I came across your challah bread on your blog, and you say even the smell of it could “make a religious person out of you,” and I like that. I like the idea that baking can be another way of talking to God. So maybe when I bake, it counts as praying and God understands where I’m coming from.
Anyway, all that to say . . . thank you for this wonderful challah recipe, which my grandpa insists on calling “cha-la” instead of “hol-la.” Everybody loved it, and it made our little kitchen smell as good and sweet as you promised. And you are right—it was even better the next day as French toast.
A grateful fan,
Ellie Cowan
I’m making more challah on Sunday afternoon after church and a lunch of salmon patties and green beans. The kitchen is covered in flour and so am I, but it’s warm in here and the windows are all fogged up and it’s nice, like I’m snuggled in a sleeping bag. I need something to take my mind off school, and punching dough and braiding it like hair is exactly the thing to do it.
I wish I could make bread instead of pie for the contest in May. Bread is trickier—like the final exam of baking. It would kick a lot of people out of the running.
Wheeling myself all over school, plus doing the laps in gym, has made my arms feel like jelly, but I’m not telling Mom because, miracle of miracles, she actually gave in and is letting me go without an aide. Rachel still waves from the office and tries to come over, but I shoot off before her perfume gets me.
At lunch on Friday, Coralee tried to explain the sixth-grade groups to me, but she called them “tribes,” and at first I thought she meant Native American tribes. We are in Oklahoma, after all. But when I said, totally innocent, “Like Cherokee and Sioux?” she spit her Coke out onto the table and laughed until Bert told her that you could rupture your spleen that way.
“No, Ellie darlin’.” She gets more Southern when she thinks she understands something you don’t. “I mean gangs. The kids who run together.”
She pointed at the end of our own row of tables, where a group of six boys sat with their heads together over a piece of paper. “Those are the basketball players. They’re probably talking ‘strategy’ for the game tonight,” she said, using our favorite air quotes. I could see their long legs sticking out at all angles from under the table. Yep. Definitely basketball players.
“Who are they?” I asked, and nodded toward the three girls in the row next to us. It was the blond one and her friends from my homeroom who had laughed on that first day. They always wear shirts with words on them like “luv” and “l8r” and short, short skirts with UGG boots. It makes me cold just to look at them.
“Ick. Yes. Those are student government girls.”
“Wait, seriously?” I said, because they did not look like the type to care about hall passes and the price of Cheetos in the vending machine.
“Seriously. They only do it so they can plan the dances.” Coralee leaned over and pointed a french fry in their direction, and it was so obvious that I grabbed her hand and pulled it down. “What? They’re too busy pretending not to watch the basketball guys to notice. That’s Sierra in the middle. She’s on the beauty pageant circuit. She’ll be at the one in Checotah I’m going to in March.”
“Wait. You’re doing a beauty pageant?” I couldn’t make my voice normal, and Coralee noticed, because then she was pointing at me.
“Yes, I am doing a beauty pageant, and don’t judge. How else am I going to get noticed? In case you didn’t know, I’m not lined up to be on The Voice anytime soon. Besides, my talent is singing and you know I will kick every girl’s tail.” She took a bite of her bologna sandwich and talked through it. “I am going to be the next Kacey Musgraves. So you better be nice to me.”
I snorted and stole one of her fries. I thought beauty pageants were for five-year-olds with crazy moms.
“Who are they?” Bert asked, and I was glad because it made Coralee stop giving me the stink eye. I turned to where he was pointing just as obviously as Coralee. These two clearly hadn’
t spent a lifetime trying to blend in. I think that fact, more than the trailer thing, might have been the reason we were the only ones at that table.
The table Bert pointed at was the only one besides ours where guys and girls sat together.
“I’m surprised you don’t know,” Coralee says. “Those are your kind of people, Bertie. Those are the mathletes. They’re the smarties, and they travel together doing math competitions and probably play chess in each other’s townhomes on the weekends.”
“I don’t like math,” Bert said, doing his slow-blinking thing. “I just like facts.”
I’m coming to learn that Bert isn’t creepy weird like I thought. He’s just a mega geek. If he lived back in Nashville, he’d probably have his own tribe of geeks just like him to calculate statistics and memorize all the former presidents of Lithuania. But in Eufaula he’s just about the only one. We had all these cliques back at home too, but our middle school was four hundred people.
Now, in Mema’s kitchen, I think about how easy it was to get lost in the crowd back home as I pull the challah, warm and golden, out of the oven.
Grandpa wanders in first. He taps his knuckles on the countertop. “Mmm-hmm, something is calling my name.”
I slice us both a piece and top it with a little butter and honey. I hand him his wrapped in a paper towel, and he eats it leaning against the counter. He looks a lot younger today in his jeans and cowboy boots. Maybe he’s just more rested. I haven’t heard him up and about in the middle of the night in a while. And the bruise on his nose is mostly gone now.
Mema has told me more than once how they met. He was nineteen and she was fifteen, and he rode up to her on a horse. Like, he literally rode up to her on a black stallion and said, “Would you do me the honor of a date?”
And it worked.
He did rodeos back then, and she says he looked like “God or the devil” when he rode up to her dressed all in black from head to toe with his red hair shining.
He took her to a fine “eye-talian” dinner, as he would say. I bet they split spaghetti like in Lady and the Tramp. They got married when she turned eighteen, and that was that.