Girlhearts Page 7

  Then they were all walking me down the hall and into the bathroom, where I threw up what seemed like every meal I’d eaten for a week. They took me to the nurse’s office. Blond hair, thin red lips. Questions. More forms to fill out. I tried to make a joke. “The pain police are on the job.” I ached everywhere. Eyes, ears, throat, even the hairs on my head ached.

  The nurse looked at my tongue and down my throat and in my ears. She took my temperature under my arm. “Someone has to come for you. Who am I to call?”

  “Sarabeth has to lie down right now,” Asa said in her bossiest manner.

  “She will, but I have to call someone for her,” the nurse repeated. “She’s running a temp.”

  “Call Cynthia Ramos,” I said. I gave the number.

  The nurse pointed to a cot in the alcove. “Lie down, Sarabeth. It looks to me like flu. You need rest and lots of liquids. You girls go back to your classes now.”

  They helped me to the cot. Patty tucked a blanket around me. Jennifer took off my shoes.

  “We’re going now. We love you, Sarabeth,” Grant said.

  I love you, too, I said. I wanted to say it, anyway, and that I would be okay as soon as I was home in my own bed with Tobias on my stomach and Mom in the other room listening to her music. Then a lot of people were talking to me, speaking very fast, like cars racing, and I couldn’t understand anything. Then the faces came, changing from one instant to the next, a red face turning into a frowning face turning into a hen’s face into a big nose face into a horse’s face into …

  I woke up and thought, I’m really sick. What do I do now? I saw the word SICK dangling in front of my eyes and, then, a little beyond it, I saw Cynthia talking to someone with red lips—oh, the nurse—and knew that I didn’t have to think about anything anymore.

  “I want to go home,” I rasped. I’d been sick for two days. My head seemed to be clamped between metal hands, my arms were concrete, and my legs were spaghetti, but I kept trying to explain to Cynthia that I would take care of myself. I’d been dreaming about it, and I had it all figured out.

  “You’re talking nonsense. Stop right now.” Sitting on the end of the couch, blue eyes flashing points of light, lips drawn back on her teeth, Cynthia looked demonic to me. I raised my head from the sweaty pillow and tried again to tell her my clever plan to go home and care for myself.

  “Shh, shhh. Silly girl, this is fever talk. Here, drink this now; you need lots of liquids.” She held a glass of OJ with a straw in it to my mouth. “You don’t even know it, but you’re being absurd, absolutely absurd.”

  I sipped the juice, my throat aching with each swallow. Alliteration, I thought, with a great mental effort. Words in a … sequence … each beginning with … the same letter: “absurd, absolutely absurd.” Mrs. Hilbert … would be … proud … My eyes closed, and I was asleep again.

  Darren stood at the side of the couch and patted my face with his strong little hands. Thump! Thump! “Is that a friendly gesture?” I said, noticing that for the first time in nearly a week, I was speaking a coherent sentence.

  Thump! Thump! “Euu Ssabbaa sick,” he said. Which I took to mean, “You are sick, Sarabeth.”

  “Right. And you are healthy, Darren.”

  Thump! Thump! “Euu Ssabbaa sick,” he communicated again.

  “Right. And you’re healthy, Darren.”

  It seemed to me that the two of us were getting along famously, but Cynthia ran in from the kitchen and swooped up Darren. “No, no, baby. Stay away from Sarabeth. Mama doesn’t want you to get sick, my big boy. And you shouldn’t bother Sarabeth.”

  “I don’t mind, Cynthia. I feel much better today.”

  “You still need plenty of rest,” she said, kissing Darren’s neck with loud, juicy kisses that made him giggle. “Want more?” she asked. “Say, ‘More kisses, Mama, please.’”

  “More kish, pleesh, Mama!”

  More kisses came. She dropped him into the swing and gave him a push. “Woooo,” he cried, thrusting his legs forward. “Swinin, Mama!”

  “Cynthia, when’s Billy coming home?” I half sat up. “He hasn’t been home all week.”

  “He should be rolling in here Friday night.”

  “Did he stay away this week because I’m sick?”

  “Partly. He hates it when anyone’s sick, he’s such a guy about that. But he usually does stay most of the week on the base.”

  “Do you miss him a lot when he’s gone?”

  “Sure, but I have my other boyfriend here, don’t I?”

  She started kissing Darren again on his neck, his fat little arms, his cheeks, his nose. Kisses and love. From the couch, though I could hardly bear to watch, I did. I watched, grinding my teeth, as if my envy was a piece of old dry bread.

  THIRTEEN

  “That’s the way I see it, anyway,” Cynthia said. She pushed the dish of spaghetti across the table to me. “Do you take my meaning, Sarabeth? Eat something. Eat some spaghetti at least. You’ve hardly eaten a thing. I love you to pieces, and I can’t bear to see you so skinny!”

  “Your meaning about what, Cynthia?” I took a forkful and passed the spaghetti dish on to Billy. I’d been officially over the flu for a week, but I still didn’t have much appetite.

  “What do you mean, her meaning about what?” Billy said, looking at me bright-eyed. He’d come home for the weekend and right away changed out of his uniform into denims and a plaid shirt. “Weren’t you listening?” he asked.

  “I guess I wasn’t listening … too well,” I said.

  “I guess you weren’t.” He sounded like what he was, a sergeant in the U.S. Army, except he was a supply sergeant, not the kind who screamed at recruits. “How come you weren’t listening?”

  “I don’t know, Billy.” I poked at the food on my plate. “I guess my mind just wandered.”

  “When we’re all at the table together, I expect you to be here in mind as well as body.”

  “Bil-ly,” Cynthia said with a downward tilt to her voice. “Come on!”

  “No, Cyn, we’re a family now. Am I right or not?”

  “Yes, of course, but—”

  “Am I right, Sarabeth?” He looked at me.

  “Yes.” It was what he wanted to hear. Anyway, even if we weren’t a real family, I thought that we were trying to be one.

  “So tell me what you were thinking about so hard that you couldn’t listen to what Cynthia was saying.”

  “I wasn’t thinking about much, Billy.”

  Was telling him my thoughts part of the deal of living with him and Cynthia? I had been thinking about that Thursday morning when Mom was haranguing the radio, remembering how upset she had been. She had said something amusing, though, about bad news and worse … worse what? Worse voices? Worse weather? I kept trying to remember what it was that she had said. What that word was. One word, and I couldn’t remember it. That was the last morning we were home together. I should remember everything about it.

  I was thinking other things, too. Thinking that Cynthia used to love me a lot, used to say that if she ever had a child, she hoped it would be a girl just like me. But now she had her son, and she was stuck with me, and it was a toss-up if she even liked me much anymore.

  “Let’s get on with it,” she said. “Sarabeth, I was saying that you getting sick was a message, okay? A wake-up call for you to take care of yourself. You’ve been stressed-out. No wonder you got the flu, but now you’re over it, and it’s up to you to keep healthy. You’re way too skinny. You lost weight, and look at you, you’re hardly eating anything.”

  “I’m not that hungry tonight, Cynthia.”

  “This is good food,” Billy said.

  “Yes, it is, it really is.” I tried to sound enthusiastic. “But you know, Cynthia, maybe I was going to get the flu anyway. It was going around. Grant was sick before Mom—”

  I stopped myself. I didn’t want to say it, but every thought now was only half a thought, only half-complete, waiting for its tag end: before Mom
died or since Mom died.

  We ate for a while in silence. The meatballs passed around once more, and Cynthia got up to check the baby in the bedroom. When she sat down again, she said, “I was just thinking about you being so sick and ranting about living alone, Sarabeth.”

  “Oh, that.” I waved my hand, hoping she wouldn’t go into it in front of Billy.

  “You should have heard her, Billy. It was actually sort of funny. There’s Sarabeth, flat out on her back, saying she’s going to live alone and get a job. Right. She’s thirteen, running a hundred and three temp, her eyes are bugging out of her head with fever, and she couldn’t lift a paper bag if she tried. The perfect employee!”

  “But I still sort of wish I could,” I said, forking up some green peas.

  “You don’t like living with us?” Billy said.

  “Oh, I do,” I said quickly. “It’s just, you know, I miss our place, and—”

  “Don’t even think it. The Social Services wouldn’t let you do it, even if we would,” Cynthia said.

  “With the Social Services agency in the picture, you don’t belong to yourself anymore,” Billy said. “I know all about that. They got their hands on me when I was a kid.”

  “No, Billy, this is different,” Cynthia said. “You were in trouble—you were raising hell. That’s not Sarabeth. The county’s in loco parentis for you now, Sarabeth, which means—”

  I knew what it meant.

  “—standing in place of parents, which, in turn, means—”

  I knew what that meant, too.

  “—they get to okay just about everything about you,” Billy picked up, “except maybe how many breaths you take in a minute, and they might monitor that, too.”

  “Billy, it’s not that awful,” Cynthia said. “They’re human beings, and they’re overworked, but their intentions are good. Look at how they’re letting Sarabeth live with us.”

  My head went up. “What do you mean, letting me?”

  “Well, for you to live with us, we should really have a separate room for you, but the folks there bent the rules. They understand that it’s more important for you to live with people you know than with strangers.”

  “Live with strangers?” My heart suddenly took two loud, shaking beats.

  “Actually, yes, they could place you in a foster home. But they didn’t—we’re your official family.”

  “Okay,” I said.

  “That’s all?” Billy said. “‘Okay’? That’s all you’re going to say?

  “Uh … what?”

  “‘Uh what?’ What kind of talk is that? Is that what they teach you in school?”

  “Sorry, but … I don’t know what you want me to say.”

  My eyes still hurt—achy achy eyes, that was a song Mom had loved. No, I had it wrong; it was achy achy heart. Wrong again, achy breaky … heart. That was it. “Achy Breaky Heart.” Mom had a record by an old country singer, and whenever she was sad, she played that record, singing along in a quivery, achy breaky voice.

  “Sarabeth,” Cynthia said. She snapped her fingers. “Are you there? I think Billy wants you to thank me.”

  “All right,” I said, “but for what?” That was a mistake. I should have just said it. Shouted it out. THANK YOU! THANK YOU, CYNTHIA!

  “For what? How about thinking a little?” Billy said. “Maybe it’ll come to you in a big flash of inspiration.”

  I looked down at my plate. I didn’t know what he was talking about, and I didn’t know why he was being so sarcastic to me. Get to work, I ordered my achy breaky brain. Give me the answer. I’m supposed to thank Cynthia for, for … Brain came through. For giving you a home. Oh, right. Because I was an orphan now.

  As long as I could remember, I’d been fatherless. Now, I was motherless, too. And I didn’t have a home anymore, either. No place that was mine, where I could walk right in and stay and not have to thank people for letting me be there, for letting me sleep on their couch and sit at their table and eat their spaghetti.

  Yes, that was it. Now I got it. Thank you, achy breaky brain.

  “Thank you, Cynthia,” I said.

  FOURTEEN

  The boy looked up at me. “Hey,” he said. His breath puffed out into the cold air. He shaded his eyes from the weak early-morning December sun. “I know you, don’t I?”

  I nodded.

  “Where do I know you from?”

  I made a face, hoping it was like Holly Hunter’s in that movie where she’s a waitress, that little mouth scrunch that says, You don’t know? You should!

  I was sitting in the top row of the bleachers in the playing field in back of school, huddled inside my coat.

  I’d been working on an essay for Mrs. Hilbert when the boy showed up. The moment I saw him, I stopped writing and watched him instead. He walked and then he ran around the snow-packed track, a snail’s-pace run, his arms flapping. Not a big-deal runner, but I never took my eyes off him.

  It was James.

  James, from the school bus I used to ride. James, from algebra class. James, the beautiful brown boy. Dark eyes, big wide mouth, and mass of tight curly hair. And long, long arms and legs. And funny feet. Long and narrow, one going straight, the other turning out at a right angle.

  James!

  I looked down at him in awe. Right there in front of me, the same James I’d thought about, fantasized about, and once dreamed about as a green bird. What if I told him that?

  “Been sitting here long?” he asked.

  I made the hand sign, palms up, palms down, and another little mouth scrunch. Yes … and no.

  “It’s early,” he said.

  I bobbed my head up and down.

  “And cold!”

  Another head bob.

  “I thought I was the only one who got out here this early. It’s my thinking time,” he added, as if I’d asked.

  I tried to look wise, as if I’d figured that out.

  “See you, then,” he said.

  What? He was leaving? “Wait,” I said. “Don’t go.”

  He stopped. He stopped because I’d said to! My heart clapped for me. Applause, applause! Or was that shaking of my rib cage, sheer fright and terror?

  “So, you do talk. Got anything else to say?”

  “Yes, I do.”

  He put one foot up on the lowest bleacher. “Okay. Shoot.”

  “I know who you are. You’re James Robertson. I know you from two places. From the school bus and from algebra class.”

  “Aha,” he said. “And eureka. So that’s how I know you.” He climbed toward me, scooping snow into a ball as he moved up the bleachers.

  “I have more,” I said. “I sit two seats behind you in algebra. Did you ever notice me? No. You used to sit two seats behind me in the bus, so how did you get here so early? That bus never comes this early. I rode it for years, so I know. And another thing,” I said, amazing myself with the words pouring out, “that’s a wimpy-looking snowball. And what were you talking to yourself about out on the track? And that’s it!”

  He whistled. “You really do talk. Almost as verbose as me. You say I was talking to myself?” He scooped more snow into the snowball, threw it, and took another step. “Wrong. I wasn’t.”

  “Right. You were.”

  “So you think I’m weird?”

  “No.” I could have said a lot more than that, such as, I think you’re adorable, I know you’re supersmart! You’re someone I really want to know, and I can’t believe you’re talking to me!

  The wind whipped his scarf across his face. He was almost up to me now. “Are you absolutely sure I was talking to myself?”

  “Yes.”

  “Okay, I’ll tell you what it was about.” He sat down next to me. “I was thinking about my sister, and about light, and how I should take her picture in noon light, that perfect shadowless light, so she can’t escape being seen.”

  “I never think about things like that when I take a picture. I guess I should, but—”

  “Just put up
the old camera and click?” he said. “That’s good, too. Sometimes I need to be more spontaneous, not plan so much. There’s a fantastic Japanese photographer, Daido, who runs along the street and snaps pictures as fast as he can, and his photos are actually works of art. Some of them are blurred, too, but it’s not like anyone else’s blurred; it’s as if he planned it. The blurring just adds to the beauty of the picture.”

  “Did your family live in Japan? Is that how you know about Mr. Daido?” James laughed in a way that embarrassed me. “What?” I said. “What did I say?”

  “It’s not Mr. Daido. That’s his first name. Daido Moriyama. My mother read about him—she’s a photographer, and she wanted to see his work. Last fall, our whole family took the train down to the city to see the exhibition at the Japan Society. Mom says you could study his pictures for hours and never get bored, and she’s right.”

  “Oh,” I said. Why did I say that? I should have said nothing. At least if I’d said nothing, he might be fooled into thinking I was going to come out with some intelligent remark. No wonder he had never noticed me before! He was like a creature from another world, a world of things and ideas I’d never known or thought about, things like Japanese photographers, and taking the train to New York City just to see something, and posing people in noon light.

  “Is your sister in our school?” I asked, searching for something to say.

  He sat with his elbows on his knees, fists under his chin. “Natalie Robertson, she’s a year behind us.”

  “Is she in Drama Club? Is she going to be in the Christmas play next week? I think I know who she is. Is she really, really pretty?”

  “Right, right, right, except this year the play is going to be called a Winter Holiday play, remember? So it doesn’t exclude Kwanza and Hanukkah.”

  “I know. That’s cool,” I said. “Why do you want to take your sister’s picture that way, in noon light?”

  “I want light to shine on her, real, natural light. She’s something else, you know, special, talented.”