All of the Above (11 page)
“So you just head on back to school tomorrow and start working, all right?” I say, thumping another slab of pork onto the counter. “Whatever time it takes, that's what it takes. I'll look after the Barbecue until you get here. And in between times, you bring me some of that math project because I'm gonna help with making those triangles, too.”
I see Marcel's doubting eyes glance at my rough working hands.
“I know they ain't things of beauty, but in the Army, they could sew buttons on a shirt faster than anybody. My buddies called me the Button Man.”
Marcel arches his eyebrows. “The Button Man?”
“What? You think all I can do is barbecue?” I give Marcel a smack on the shoulder. “Don't you go doubting the talents of Sergeant Willy Q. Williams.”
My mom says Sharice is someone who has been through a lot. The house on Fifteenth Street wasn't her family's house, it was a foster house. She was being neglected, my mom tells me. I try to imagine what it must feel like to be neglected, how it would feel to live with strangers who didn't care about you.
My mom's anger is fierce when she talks about how Sharice slept on buses and in doorways. “Who would treat a child like that?” she asks. “What kind of world do we live in?”
I wonder why Sharice didn't tell anybody.
My mom says maybe fear, maybe shame, maybe she just didn't know who to tell. “It's not our place to ask questions,” my mom warns, “not when we don't know the whole story, not when we haven't walked in her shoes.”
The social service agency could have taken Sharice somewhere else, to another temporary place, but Sharice is allowed to stay with us while the agency decides what to do with her. I think this was arranged because of somebody my mom knows at the hospital, even though I don't think it's something my mom wanted to do. I hear her complaining to Aunt Asia, “I take care of people all day, and then I come home and take care of more.” With my mom, there are always two sides, the soft side that feels obligated to help everybody and the sharp side that resents always being asked.
Since Sharice is staying with us, I have to loan her some of my clothes, and even a pair of pajamas, because nobody from her old house has cared enough to bring her any clothes. The second night, Aunt Asia drops by with a plastic bag filled with shampoo, conditioner, hair gels, styling creams, toothbrushes, deodorant, combs—things that Sharice doesn't have either.
My mom gives Aunt Asia a disapproving look about some of the things—makeup and nail polish, for instance—but Aunt Asia just laughs at her and says girls will be girls.
Later, I notice how Sharice takes all of Aunt Asia's gifts and arranges them carefully on the little white table next to her bed, as if they are a display in a store. While I'm lying across my bed reading our new book for English, she opens all of the bottles of creams and lotions and oils and tries dabs of each one of them. The whole room starts to smell like grapefruit and oranges and cocoa butter.
“This lipstick tastes just like chocolate chip cookies,” she says, smacking her lips together loudly, after trying one of Aunt Asia's lipsticks. “When I lived with my Gram, I remember she used to make the best chocolate chip cookies.…” Sharice is quiet for a minute, as if she's waiting for me to say something or look up. “You want to hear about my Gram or are you busy, Rhondell?” she asks softly.
I put down the book I'm holding because this is the first time Sharice has mentioned a word about her family in the two days she's been with us. “If you want to talk about her,” I answer carefully. “But you don't have to.”
Sharice smiles with her extra-shiny lips. “My Gram was great.…” And that night is when the story of her life starts coming out. I don't say much. I just listen.
You ever have the experience of sitting in the comfy stylist's chair at the hair salon, closing your eyes, letting your shoulders down, and just forgetting who you are for a minute?
That's what happens to me on the Friday afternoon that Rhondell's aunt tells us to stop by for a free appointment at the Style R
Us
salon, where she works. Me and Rhondell both come by after school, even though Rhondell says she'll read magazines and wait, because she doesn't want anything done to her hair.
“Not even a little something?” I try to convince her, but she just shakes her head and tells me her hair is exactly the way she likes it.
It feels strange to walk into the salon and tell them I have an appointment with Asia Taylor. Only a few of the chairs have any customers and they are all moms and grams, with their hair in foil and big plastic clips. (Like some kind of electrical experiment—that's what they look like, you know.) I can feel all of the eyes glancing in the mirrors when I come in. Who's that? the eyes are saying.
Aunt Asia (she says to call her that) keeps stopping and introducing me at each chair as if I am a famous guest. “This is my niece's best friend from school, Sharice Walker.” Even though everybody is friendly to me—smiling and shaking my hand, saying how are you, dear—I can see that they can hardly wait to ask a million questions about me later on.
I'd like to be able to tell them it's none of their business that the Sanctuary Baptist Church T-shirt and too-short jeans I'm wearing aren't mine (on loan from Rhondell), or that my appointment is a free gift because I'm poor, or that I'm a foster kid who's had five different non-homes since my Gram died (soon to be six, probably).
But I just smile and act like my friendly old self and hope Rhondell's aunt won't tell the real story about my whole life after I leave, with all the details that make people pity me. Or if she does, maybe they won't believe a word of it after seeing how happy and confident I looked. (No way that could be true about her, they'll whisper and shake their heads. She looked just like your normal, average girl.)
Once we reach Miss Asia's chair, it feels good to sink into the black leather seat and have the beauty salon cape float down over my head and hide the clothes that aren't mine.
I don't even remember which non-parent took me to the salon, but I think I've only been to one once or twice before. Gram always did my hair herself. She liked to put my hair in braids with those big round beads on the end that look like white gum balls.
Aunt Asia smiles at me in the mirror, and her hand reaches up to smooth one part of her caramel-colored hair, which is arranged in tight little curls all over her head. If Rhondell's mom is plain and simple-looking, Rhondell's aunt is like a fancy frosted cake. Her rows of silver and gold bracelets clank and jangle next to my ear. “Now, I know you are ready to be beautiful, Miss Sharice,” she says, starting to snip the rubber bands out of my hair. “Am I right?”
I nod, thinking how this is probably the only time I'll ever have a chance like this. (Girl, you better savor every minute.) After Aunt Asia finishes conditioning my hair at the sink and brings me back to her chair, I close my eyes and listen to all the voices talking around me. I try to remember the smoky smells drifting from the curling irons and oils and hot combs, and how it feels to sit in the chair like a queen.
While Aunt Asia works on combing out my hair, my mind kinda drifts back a little, and I remember Gram's old hands tugging at my hair when I was little, and how I would sit sideways on one of the chairs in her kitchen, howling and squirming.
You hush now, child, she'd keep on saying. You're gonna wake the dead.
And that always made me wonder, if I screamed loud enough, if my mom would jump up from the grave and come running for me.
I remember doing that once, you know—standing in the middle of Gram's backyard and screaming at the top of my lungs. My poor Gram came flying out the door thinking that I had split open my head, but when she found out why I was screaming, I remember her pulling me against her big chest and saying, Oh honey, the dead are a long, long way away.
And while Rhondell's aunt is tugging at my hair, I start thinking about Gram and my mom and everybody being a long, long way away (and getting farther away), and how Rhondell's aunt is nearby. How she's standing right behind my chair, with her jangling bracelets and her caramel hair, trying to make me look beautiful. How she bought me a shampoo that smelled like sweet grapefruit, and Pink Sunrise nail polish, like my mom or my Gram would have.
And I think I just forget who I am for a minute because I suddenly hear my voice blurting out, “Do you ever think about having somebody stay with you?”
(WHY CAN'T I EVER LEARN TO KEEP MY MOUTH SHUT?)
About a week after our math club project ends, I see James in the hallway. He's standing by a locker and he turns around quickly when he sees me. “Rhondell,” he calls out. “Hey, wait up, I gotta talk to you.”
I hug my books tighter and glance around to see who else is in the hallway. I try to pretend I haven't heard anybody call my name. I walk faster, but not so fast that it looks like I am. James catches up. I hear his shoes coming behind me.
“Hey,” he says, giving me a hard push. “Hold up.”
When I stop walking and look back at him, I'm surprised by what he asks.
He wants to know if I would work on the math project again. “Same group,” he says. “You, me, Sharice, Marcel, Collins, and whoever else shows up. What do you think?” I glance up at his smooth face to see if it's a joke, to see if he's just trying to convince me to answer yes so he can start laughing.
I tell him that I can't work on it. I have other things I have to do at home now.
“What things?” he replies, glaring at me, and I start to wonder if maybe he really means what he's asking, because of how serious he looks.
Just things, I tell him.
What I don't tell him is the real reason I'm saying no. The real reason is that when you have a dream and you see it broken right in front of your eyes, it makes you think that maybe you never should have dreamed it in the first place. It makes you feel like not taking any risks or dreaming any dreams that are too big for yourself again, because you can't tell which ones to trust or what to believe in. And how could anybody say for certain that the people who ruined our first project wouldn't ruin the next one, and the next?
That's what I would like to say to James. Instead I tell him I'm going to be late for class and I can't talk any longer.
But later on, something happens that changes my mind.
In the afternoon, Sharice and I are using the library computer at school. Although we're supposed to be online researching the Romans for history class, Sharice types in the word
tetrahedron
—just to see what appears, she insists.
What comes up is a page about a math professor who studied tetrahedrons years ago. There's a small black-and-white picture of him, wearing thick glasses and a suit and tie, and below the picture, it says his name is Waclaw Sierpinski.
“What kinda name is Waclaw?” Sharice grins, leaning closer to the computer screen. “And how would you say that last name?” She taps her pen on the monitor. “You try saying it first, Rhondell, because you're smarter than me.”
But when I try pronouncing it, the name comes out sounding like something a knight in medieval times would be called, Sir Pinski, and Sharice starts getting overcome with laughter, so that even the librarian who is usually nice gives us a sharp look.
Trying not to get us into any more trouble, I duck my head down behind the monitor to read a little more, and that's where I see the part of the story that changes my mind about working on the tetrahedron again.
Epiphany
would be the college word I'd use for what I find on the page.
Below the picture, the article starts talking about “Sir Pinski” and how he was a math professor from Poland who was known for writing a lot of important math papers and theories. But during World War II, Sir Pinski lost his house and his entire library of mathematical books and research when the Nazis burned them to the ground.
My breath catches in my chest and my eyes blink after I get to those words: “burned to the ground.”
All those words and numbers—years and years of work—turned to nothing but ashes? I remember my own college words, only a handful of words, not books and books filled with them. How would it feel to see your own library, a whole lifetime of words and work, lost just like that? In one day?
For the rest of the afternoon, I can't keep my mind from thinking about the mathematician with the name of a knight who saw his library burned to the ground and refused to give up. In a way, the story makes me feel ashamed. We only worked about four months on a simple paper pyramid, just folding paper into triangles, and when the project was ruined, we went our own separate ways and gave up. What if it had been a lifetime of work? A library of words? What then?
That afternoon, I stop by the math classroom and ask Mr. Collins about the possibility of beginning the project again. I tell him I've had a sudden change of mind. An
epiphany.
“You, raising a kid?”
My sister, Thea, shakes her head.
“You're crazy, Asia. You're just about the least likely foster mom I could imagine,” she says. “Think about it. You have to be R-E-S-P-O-N-S-I-B-L-E.” (She spells it out.) “You've never been responsible in your entire life, not from day one. I grew up with you, and I know what you're like.”
My sister arches her responsible eyebrows and points to herself. “I'm the responsible one,” she says. “Working two jobs, raising Rhondell, sending money to half my relatives to keep them on their feet, leading the church choir every Sunday—
that's
responsible.”
Both of us reach for another glazed doughnut from the box in the middle of the table. It's Saturday morning, and Sharice and Rhondell are at the video store getting a movie. The two of us are sitting in the kitchen, drinking coffee and eating doughnuts.
“And what do you know about raising kids, Asia?” my sister continues, taking a bite out of her doughnut. “Rhondell and Sharice are almost high schoolers, and then you've got a whole laundry list of things to worry about,” she says. “You gotta watch teenagers, especially girls, like a hawk, you know. You ready to do that?”