21 Proms (14 page)

“Paul, would you like to sit?”

Before Paul even had a chance to move, Andrea grabbed his arm. “No, no, Daddy, we're late already, we don't have much time, we have to go. Come on, Paul, we have to
go.
” Paul looked alarmed, and his body went limp, causing Andrea to drag him for a second, like a cop hauling away a protestor who has turned himself into dead weight. And then he came to and remembered something.

“Wait, my mother asked me to get pictures,” he said. “She can't believe I'm going to prom, and she wants to have some physical documentation.” Paul was squinting and his eyes were watering, like he usually wore glasses but had received some poor advice to forgo them tonight. “I even brought my camera.”

From the man bag, he whipped out an enormous, unnecessarily complicated camera with more dials on the back than the cockpit of an airplane. He handed it to Joe and turned to Andrea.

“So, where?” Andrea frowned, and for a brief moment, Joe thought,
She's going to leave. She's going to tell him right now to go home, and she's going to leave all of us.

“Oh, over here,” she said, directing him in front of the fireplace where she had burned her hand a few years earlier on some smoldering kindling. She hadn't cried; she just turned to her father and said, “I think I have to go to the hospital. I burned my hand a bit.”

“Stand up straight,” she commanded now, and Paul complied, stiffening himself up the best he could. Joe looked at the camera and tried to find the largest button. That had to be the “Take Picture” button.

He looked through the viewfinder.

Somehow, his daughter's and his eyes locked.

Look, Daddy. I'm going to prom. I'm completely normal. We're completely normal. This is what you wanted, right?

I just wanted you to be happy.

I am happy enough. Look. It's a date. I'm going to prom.

Paul seems gay to me.

He is. Obviously.

Are you happy, An?

I am happy enough. We have done well. We are completely normal.

Joe shook his head sharply, realizing it was probably impossible to lock eyes with your daughter through a viewfinder.

“Say cheese,” he said, and
clicked.

Geechee Girls Dancin', 1955

by Jacqueline Woodson

Geechee girl. Gullah land. The way the sunlight beats down and down and down on a body. Sea sounds always but the sun so hot how do you move? The women fan. Sit on their porches. Fan and fan.
Child
, they say.
It too hot today
. And it is. So they sit.

 

Just gotta set
, they say. Just set and set and set. And if you not from here, how you gonna speak a word to them dem will understand. No way. Oy. No way. Ay.

 

Night fall down. Moon go high. Waves come in. Go out. Whistle come. Drum too. Soft. Quiet the land. Soothe the heat.

 

Rice and okra, shark meat, dem eat. The ocean brought them here — many years ago. Slaves then. Proud. From so many West African countries nobody speak the other man's language. So they work. Bump backs. Carry cotton. Plow fields. Bring Master and Mistress water. Brown breast in white baby mouth. She suckles. Grow strong. Say Mama to the black woman. Her own mama cry. Her own mama slap the black woman. Hard.
You stay away. You come here. You stay away. You come here
.

 

Time moves on. The land grow up. The babies become mama. Some mix but nobody want to say — Him daddy. They all know. Nobody say. Nobody want the white hot of whip against back. Nobody want the slow burn of sores in Gullah heat. Press poultice. Press prayer. Scars heal over. Numb now. Souls heal over. Numb too. Many die. Graveyards spread across the land. People go and press hands against ancestors. Heat come up. Strength too.

 

Gullah land gets passed on.

 

Geechee girl Rue-Jean born on a Sunday — pretty eyes from long, long time ago — some spirit coming back through this child. Old folks look down on the baby. Hit the mama hard. Cry now, they say. Real tears coming later with this one. Rue-Jean looks from blue black granny to blue black granny. Red and yellow grannies too. All bending down. Dem see in she something different. Old. Something inside she already running. Pulling spirits. Pulling people. Them see a Next Place in she. Scare some bad. Other grannies look down at she and know. Remember the Running Spirit got killed in them own selves. She coming now again. Rue-Jean.

 

Girl grows tall. Drum beats. She moves pretty. Boys think: One day Rue-Jean be all mine. Gullah land sun drops down — bright yellow, red, gold against the moss. Trees weep. Water come in high — always singing. Gullah men pull in fishes. Live on land them own now. Masters and Mistresses gone long, long time ago. Graveyards tell the stories. How many generations of Gullah people come before them. Make this land fertile.

 

Teachers say,
Time we celebrated these young ones
. Look over the shining faces, proud. How deep and strong that blood in them go back. Tall, muscled. Cheekbones cut high. Skirts cut tight. Girls laugh. Boys know where to touch them. At night. So many willow branches. Pine and oak. Magnolia. Hands still cut from cotton but healed over — numb. Touch and the touching tells stories people came before them could never tell.

 

Stories bounce back here then there again — dem know to talk like books talk. Slowly forget their mama's tongue. Hold on, the spirits say. Day heat and love sometimes be pulling their tongues back. Dem. They. She. Her. Words be like braids in dem mouths some days — over and over, this way and that.

 

At night they call
Rue-Jean. Rue-Jean. You gonna be mine, Rue-Jean.

 

And from her window, Rue-Jean looks down. Sees the boys and on beyond.

 

Rue-Jean
, her mama says.
You almost seventeen now. Time you start thinking about settling down. Miz Wright's boy . .
. and Ernesto. Gannar getting good grades. His mama say he'll be going off to college too.

 

Already May and all around town, the stores getting ready. School dance coming and the girls move through town, thick as gumbo. Gullah heat all the way to their bones.

 

Rue-Jean, you need be thinking about telling Miz Wright's boy …

 

Big day come and she walk along the water and the sun setting down. White dress to her ankles — linen and cotton, bare foot. Then running. There, with the sun near gone, Rue-Jean dances. And from the water, it feels like from the water, the girl joins her, a slow dance, salt air thick between them until there is no room for the salt. No room for the air.

 

Dem dancing . .
. !
the spirits call out.
Dem dancing … !

 

And Rue-Jean takes her hand. The old folks knew this was coming. The other a Geechee girl too. Quiet though. Her family not churchgoing but everyone know her mama.

 

I know she mama. Don't think me no tell she mama! This thing so nasty!
Rue-Jean's own mama's voice slipping into the old language.

 

School dance at the old barn. Still smell of horses. Something else too. Young people with dem bodies pressing out hard against their skin. They don't know past this hunger. Deep history of water and whips, this dancing moves it through them and on out to the other side.

 

Rue-Jean come in with the girl some people be knowing from she mama, they say. Way back, she mama's mama clean for the white woman long passed on. She mama's mama in the graveyard with dem own peoples — side by side like this now.

 

Rue-Jean takes the girl's hand. It's like the spirits done rose up and covered the girls over. Schoolteachers look on. Fried okra stop midway to dem mouths. Rue-Jean with the eyes so bright and the questions in class coming dem got have answers for. She off next year to study on the mainland, they say. All the schools out there calling she name.

 

The old people come up by the barn door. Watch the girls move over the floor. Drums. Kora too. Tide breaking deep out. Breeze coming through.

 

Lord
, they say.
Lord, we knew.

 

This child. This child.

 

Soon, the other young people crowd back in. Surround the girls. Hold their honey-sweets tight. Song of the kora moves toward the ocean, back over it. Keeps going. Tell the ones not sold across the water this story. This girl. These girls. Dem dancing. Dem dancing. Dem dancing …

How I Wrote to Toby

by E. Lockhart

19 days before prom

Paul Bader catches me after French (he is bad at French, but manages to make it seem like it would be stupid to be good at French), and the two of us talk about nothing while he walks me to class. Nothing being like, “You didn't go to Steve's party Saturday, did you? I didn't see you there,” and me saying, “No, I was busy,” meaning busy watching DVDs with my parents, because I only got here in March and my social life is still limited to lunch in the cafeteria with Ling and Joelle, two girls I met in homeroom.

I look at Paul's smooth neck, his wide mouth, and his slightly-too-big ears and think:

Paul Bader,

Paul Bader,

Paul Bader is talking to me.

I wonder why, because I'm reasonably pretty but not enormously, and my clothes are wrong for this new school, and Joelle and Ling are nice to me but it's not like I'm popular. Yet here is this soccer captain guy — talking and laughing.

“Are you going to the cafeteria dance tomorrow?” Paul asks.

It's not the prom. It's a food-drive thing. You have to bring a can of food to get in.

“I hadn't thought about it. Are they fun?” I say.

He grins and answers, “Yeah. They can be.”

 

My little brother is in rehab.

My little brother is in rehab.

I feel like those words are written on my arms whenever I push up my sleeves, written on my cheeks whenever they relax out of my fake smile. They want to come out of my mouth, all the time. When I am called upon in class, or when someone says, “Hey, what's up?” — that's what I want to answer. “My little brother is in rehab.” But I never do.

The clinic said he'd be in for a month, but it wasn't a month like they said. It wasn't another month like they said, either.

Now they don't know how long.

Toby is having episodes, like maybe the junk did something to his brain, or maybe his brain was turning on him and so he was self-medicating with the junk. We don't know. My dad got a leave of absence from work, and my mom got permission to work from home, and we moved up here, where the treatment center is.

I've been foggy, generally.

The world doesn't seem real. Like I woke up from a nap and can't really understand everything yet because I'm still halfway asleep. But it's been like that for months now.

My little brother is in rehab.

 

“Paul Bader asked me if I was going to the cafeteria dance,” I say as Joelle and Ling make room for me at a table in the cafeteria.

Ling nods seriously and says, “We wondered who would pounce first.”

What?

Joelle says, “He's pounced.”

Oh.

Ling says, “Don't you know they've been circling you?”

No.

“Well, they've been circling you.”

Joelle shoves a fry into her mouth. “I made out with him last year at some party. What was it, Kerr's party? I think it was Kerr's party. You'll have a good time.”

Ling nods. “I went with him freshman year, four months.”

“Maybe only three and a half,” Joelle says.

“Yeah. I was rounding up. He's all right,” says Ling.

I must look baffled, because Joelle leans forward as if explaining something to a small child. “Look at us,” she says. “We've been in school together since kindergarten. All of us. There are only sixty people in each grade. There's not a lot of choice going on.”

“It's a long and sordid history,” adds Ling. “You probably don't want to hear.”

“Now do you see why they're circling you?”

Who?

“The boys.”

“Listen, Paige,” Ling says, standing up to bus her tray. “By the time you get to the end of junior year, this school is an arid desert of old plants. Everyone is starving and dehydrated, romantically speaking. And you — you're fresh meat.”

“Don't worry,” says Joelle. “We're both so over him.”

“Oh yeah,” says Ling. “Paul Bader is like a dried-up bit of cactus to me now.”

18 days before prom

Ling and Joelle pick me up for the cafeteria dance. I get in the backseat with my can of green beans. “Oh, bleh,” says Ling. “I forgot my can. We have to stop at Cumberland.”

“God,” moans Joelle. “I almost brought a can for you, but then I didn't. I knew you'd forget.”

So we stop at Cumberland. Ling buys a can of precooked spaghetti and I get mints.

Back in the car, Joelle and Ling are talking about prom. Ling has a date with Kerr, and Joelle thinks Rory might ask her. The night seems dark to me after the bright lights inside Cumberland, and the world is suddenly bleak.

My little brother is in rehab.

What am I doing in this car, going to a dance, when people are so sad? When my parents are home, sad? When Toby is locked up, sad? When people need a food drive of canned green beans and precooked spaghetti?

“Wake up, Paige,” says Ling. The car has stopped.

It is hot at the dance. All the lights are off. I hand my green beans to a teacher at the door and in two seconds Ling and Joelle are gone. Disappeared into the dark. I shove my jacket under one of the tables, which is pushed up against the wall.

The music is crazy loud and people are not so much dancing as jumping up and down. In the dark, it's impossible to tell who anyone is, and anyway, I don't know that many people.

I haven't danced since —

But now, Paul Bader is standing in front of me. He yanks my hand and pulls me to the center of the crowd, and we start jump-dancing dance-jumping like everyone else, and he is sweating and we aren't really dancing together so much as jumping while aware of each other. But the point is, I'm doing it.

17 days before prom

Rory, one of Paul's friends who is on the staff of
The Eagle Eye
(school paper), comes up to me in the cafeteria during lunch. “Are you Paige?” he asks.

“She's Paige,” says Ling.

“Paige with an
i
?”

“Paige with an
i.
”

“Just checking my facts,” says Rory. And he goes away.

Joelle leans forward in her chair. “What was that about?”

Ling shakes her head. “Don't ask me.”

“He's
your
prom date,” I say.

“That's my point,” says Joelle, pointing her finger at me. “He already knows your name.”

“Oh.”

“He's gotta be up to something. But what?”

Ling nods. “They all know your name already, Paige.”

16 days before prom

After French, Paul suggests we drive off campus and buy licorice at Cumberland during the free period. He says he's in dire need of licorice because it keeps him awake through calculus.

We get in the car.

“So. Ah,” he says, starting to drive.

“So, yeah,” I say.

“God, French is boring.”

“Uh-huh.”

“What?”

“Sorry, I was thinking about something else,” I say.

My little brother is in rehab.

My little brother is —

“Would you want to go to prom with me?” he asks, still driving, but looking over.

“I thought you were taking Maria Rivington,” I say, because Joelle told me he was.

“Nah, that was just a rumor.”

I'm surprised because Joelle heard it from Maria herself during track practice, but something must have happened.

Yes. I'll go to prom.

When we get to Cumberland, Paul turns off the car and kisses me. I haven't kissed anyone in months and months, and there's too much spit, and his hands are roaming, but instead of pulling back, I decide to go with it — just go, and not be half-living anymore.

I find it's not too hard, actually. We have a pretty good time.

Then we go buy licorice. He says, “Paige with an
i
, let me call you. Give me your number.”

So I do.

14 days before prom

Ling and Joelle take me shopping for a dress.

Ling is going with Kerr. Joelle is going with Rory. “Cacti, they're nothing but cacti,” says Ling. “But at least we're going.”

They insist that full skirts are back. They talk about tulle and candy colors. Joelle bosses salesladies around. We are all squashed into one dressing room, the floor draped with piles of lace and chiffon and fluff. Ling makes me try on a strapless dress and at first it looks okay, but when I put my arms over my head, my boobs pop out like they're escaping from prison.

We become hysterical in the dressing room.

I am laughing on the carpeted floor, leaning against the mirror with my boobs hanging over the edge of this flouncy dress, and I haven't laughed so hard since long before I came here, and for a second I feel guilty, because how can I laugh when the world is like it is? When Toby is locked up.

But later, I think: It doesn't help Toby for me not to ever laugh.

13 days before prom

Paul Bader calls my house and says he misses me. He wishes we'd made plans for the weekend, and now the weekend is almost over, and he misses me. He just had to call and tell me that.

I say, “Have you been drinking?”

His parents went away for the weekend, and Kerr is over and they only had a bottle of wine, but yes.

I think it's bad that he was drinking. And then I think I'd like to have a drink myself.

We hang up, and he rings me back, ten minutes later. “I missed you again,” he says.

“Get to school early and meet me on the steps. It'll be like a rendezvous,” I say.

“Definitely,” he tells me, and hangs up.

12 days before prom

Paul Bader finds me on the steps and puts his arm around me, and I give him the licorice I bought him. We go driving in the free period, with his hand on my knee. His fingers feel hot, and he strokes the edge of my skirt as he drives. We are listening to the radio, and it's so loud I don't think. About anything.

10 days before prom

Ling finds a new dress and makes me come with her to return the old one. We try on makeup at the counter and buy glitter eye shadow — silver for her, green for me. She tells me she's going to rush sororities in August at the U.

“Don't,” I say. “Won't they make you run across campus naked? Won't they make you drink pig's blood? Because that's what I heard.”

She says, “Pig's blood, my ass. My sister already told me it's cranberry juice.”

“You mean they really make you drink some blood thing?” I bark. “I was making that up!”

“What? Yes, at Kappa Phi whatever, the one she switched out of after freshman year. But not anywhere else, I don't think.”

“I was making that up!” I cry again.

“There's no pig's blood at Kappa Kappa Gamma,” says Ling. “And anyway, it's cranberry.”

“Will you run naked if they make you?”

“Sure,” she says. “It'll be August. Totally warm.”

“Hello? Naked!”

“The body is a natural thing, Paige. Be mature.”

“Do they let you wear running shoes? What if you step on glass?”

“You worry too much,” says Ling.

Yes, I do.

9 days before prom

We go to Joelle's house and watch movies after school. There are four dogs and smells of cooking, people going in and out and yelling about where is my soccer shirt and don't be home later than seven and don't forget I have to bring in two zucchini for school tomorrow morning.

No one is injecting anything behind closed doors. No one is gone when he used to be here.

 

At night I go out with Paul. We sit in the movies holding hands. He strokes the inside of my arm. I look at his profile, lit up by the flicker of the screen and think:

I didn't know I could feel this way, how did it happen?

He is so beautiful. He is touching my arm.

8 days before prom

I write a letter to Toby, which I haven't done before. I do write “hi” and “get well soon!” on my mother's letters, but I've never written him on my own until now.

I see him when we all go visiting. Visiting is why we moved here. I am required to visit almost every weekend. But I never know what to say.

You stupid idiot, how could you do this to us?

Why can't you get hold of yourself?

Did something awful happen, once?

What?

What?

Do you know how messed up we all are, because of you?

Do you know I left everything behind?

Do you ever think of anyone besides yourself? Because it doesn't seem like you do, Toby.

We all revolve around you. Our every thought, every day, revolves around you. All our money goes to making you better, all our weekends go to visiting you, all our meals are ruined by what you've done. And you give us nothing back.

 

So. Since that's what I felt like saying to him, I didn't talk much. And since that's what I felt like writing, I never wrote.

But today I've got something else I feel like writing, and because I suddenly remember how I used to be able to make Toby laugh. I used to make him laugh so hard he'd spit soup across the table or snort milk out his nose.

I write about how I have a red dress with black lace over the skirt, and how Joelle's little brother is doing a three-week study of the zucchini in second grade, and the thing about no pig blood at Kappa Kappa Gamma, and how Paul, my boyfriend (or at least my prom date), likes licorice, and then the plot of the movie I've seen.

Toby used to always want me to tell him the plots of movies my parents wouldn't let him watch.

I put the letter in the mail.

Maybe he'll hate me for telling him about my silly life when he's locked up in a clinic. Maybe he'll think I'm stupid and callous. And maybe I am.