All of the Above (5 page)
These days, I figure he'd probably just leave me facedown on the cement.
I think that's why I keep spending more and more time with the math club. Because DJ isn't acting like anybody I'd call family—or anybody I'd even call related to me—and I'm tired of getting ordered around by him and all his friends.
Or maybe I just like being Prez and telling everybody else what to do.
Quiescent.
I saved that word from a poem we read in English class, and although it was used to describe caterpillars curled up in their cocoons, I liked it. I sometimes feel like a caterpillar hidden inside a cocoon, even though my Aunt Asia often tells me I need to consider changing how I am around people. Aunt Asia is my mom's younger sister. She works as a stylist at the Style R Us hair salon, and she's the kind of person who doesn't mind talking to anybody and everybody. I think she probably wishes my mom and I were more like her, but I believe that being quiet and hidden means you sometimes notice things that other people don't.
One of the things I've noticed after coming to Mr. Collins’ math club since the end of September is how people are different than they seemed at first. For instance, I've worked with Sharice since the first day, but I've learned that she is somebody who has some very odd beliefs and superstitions about things, which you don't realize until you spend time with her.
“Purple—now that's my good luck color,” she always says when we're working together, folding and gluing the little tetrahedrons. “Hand me all the purple.” The first time she said it, I asked her why purple was her good luck color and she gave me an annoyed look and said, “What's wrong with having a favorite color, Rhondell? Don't you?”
There are other colors she won't touch. I have to fold all of the yellow and blue, for example. “Get that paper away from me, Rhondell,” she'll tell me, pushing a stack across the desk. “Those colors are bad luck for me. Real bad luck. Don't even let me look at them.”
But how could certain colors be good luck or bad luck to somebody? I wonder. And why?
Marcel is different than I expected, too. Even though everybody always thinks he's good-looking and smooth, if you really watch him, you'll notice that he acts like he's nervous deep down. His brown eyes flicker around the room when he's talking to you, and his foot taps up and down, and he never sits anywhere too long—he perches like a jumpy bird on the heater, or on the teacher's desk, or on the edge of a chair.
He and Mr. Collins are usually the ones who take our little pieces as we finish them and join them together to make the larger tetrahedron. It takes steady hands to glue the pieces together point to point. Maybe because his whole body seems like it is always moving and balancing on the edge of something, Marcel is better than anybody at doing this.
But
metamorphosis
is the college word I'd pick for James. For weeks, he showed up after school and wouldn't help with any part of the project. He sat in the corner near the windows, with his big feet propped on the chair in front of him, and drew in his notebook or spun quarters on his desk until they flew across the room and hit the walls or the front of the metal heater, making all of us jump. My mom would have called him trouble with a capital
T.
And then overnight, he turned into somebody else. Once he became president, he started bringing in his sketches of how the tetrahedron should be built and where all the colors would go. His idea was to make the pyramid look like a rainbow. Even though everybody thought he wasn't being serious at first, that he was trying to be rude to Marcel by making him take apart everything that had been done, now I can see what he meant—how the colors are supposed to blend into each other.
But sometimes I wonder if James Harris has really changed, or if underneath his pretending to care about the math club and being president is the same person. He still calls Marcel “Barbecue Face,” and me “Ron Dull,” no matter how many times Mr. Collins warns him about not using those names. And Sharice told me she heard that James’ father is in jail for drugs and he lives with his older brother, who has been in trouble for drugs, too. They're bad news, she says.
Could someone who is bad news really change that much? For a math project? Was it a metamorphosis or something else?
I'm the one who comes up with the idea for the Christmas party.
Sometimes when we're working, this silence will come over the room when all you can hear is the buzzing of the fluorescent lights or the clanking of the old heating pipes, and if it goes on for too long, it kinda makes me crazy, you know?
Maybe it reminds me too much of the Washington Boulevard Library, or of sitting in the hospital room next to my Gram, when she was sick. So I'm the one who always tries to keep the conversation going. When it gets too quiet, I just pull a question out of thin air—whatever pops into my head, whatever I want to know right at that moment. Why do fluorescent lights buzz? Is the new English teacher gay? Why does it get dark so fast in the winter?
“I got a question, Mr. Collins,” I'll say in the silence, making my voice a little louder on purpose, and everybody will crack up, except for Rhondell, who usually just bites her bottom lip to keep from smiling too much and looks the other way.
“Yes, Sharice,” Mr. Collins will answer from somewhere on the other side of the big tetrahedron, where he's working. “What's on your mind?”
“What about a Christmas party?” I ask one afternoon.
The snow's coming down like pillowcase stuffing outside the math room windows and maybe that's what gives me the idea. Or maybe it's the Christmas music I've been listening to every day in the mall, that won't get out of my head now. (“Have a holly jolly Christmas” … you know, what does that really mean anyway???)
“Don't you think having a Christmas party's a good idea, Rhondell?” I kick her chair leg with my foot, trying to get her to agree. Rhondell glances around in her usual way before she says sure in a non-sure voice.
Marcel jumps in. “I can bring all the food,” he tells us. “Whatever you want. Ribs. Wings. Sandwiches. My daddy's got the best barbecue in the whole state of Ohio—”
“Yeah, right,” James snorts, even though everybody pretends not to hear him.
“Sure, okay, why not?” Mr. Collins answers, breaking into a big smile (which you don't see very often from him in class). “Let's have a Christmas party.”
So we start planning who will bring what—the food, the dessert, the decorations, the plastic plates and cups, the drinks, the music. James is the only one who doesn't offer to bring anything, because he says he isn't coming. We try to convince him that the president has to be there, but he says a Prez doesn't have to do anything he doesn't want to do. A Prez has got better ways to spend his time than going to girlie Christmas parties, he says.
The rest of the day, I can't keep my mind from thinking about the party. I plan about a hundred different ones in my mind. The last real party I remember being at was one that my Gram had for me when I was six or seven. She brought home a cake from the grocery store. It was a Snoopy cake because I loved Snoopy back then, and she gave me the silver necklace with the little cross that I still have (way too small to wear now), and some of the kids from her church came.
That night, as I'm riding around and around on the city bus waiting for Jolynn to get home, I spend so much time thinking about the party that I almost forget to get off the bus when it passes by our stop for the fifth time at about eight o'clock, and I have to jump up and tell the bus driver to let me off at the next stop. Walking back to Jolynn's house in the slushy snow and the pitch-black winter darkness, I've still got “Holly Jolly Christmas” playing in my head.
I wait until Willy Q's in a good mood to tell him about the Christmas party. The Lots-of-Orders-Making-Us-Lots-of-Money good mood. This time of year, that's Friday and Saturday nights. I wait until after he's counted up our money and he's cleaning up the kitchen.
“My class is having a Christmas party after school next week,” I say real smooth. Don't mention a word about the math club being the reason.
Willy Q doesn't look up. “What's that got to do with me?” he says. Like he knows exactly what I'm gonna ask next.
Maybe I shoulda waited for the Saturday good mood.
“They were wondering if Willy Q's Barbecue could send over something. Just for the party. Something little to try.”
“Ain't a charity,” Willy Q answers, scrubbing the pans harder.
I give Willy Q my best Turn-on-the-Charm-and-Big-Pearly-Whites smile. “They heard we got the best barbecue in the whole city,” I say.
“We does.” Willy Q shrugs. “So what?”
The Slow Burn Sauce starts bubbling inside me again. I think about answering, so what would you do if I told you I ain't working for you anymore? Or what if nobody ordered your tasteless old barbecue—not on Friday night or Saturday night or any other night?
Instead I say, “So maybe we should show them we do.”
Willy Q crosses his arms and turns toward me. “Bet they haven't tried some of our new barbecue wings, now have they? Or some of that good Southern cornbread I've been making?”
I don't tell Willy Q that his cornbread ain't all that good. Cannonball Cornbread, that's what I call it. Too heavy. Shoot it out of a cannon and a chunk of Willy Q's cornbread could wipe out half the city of Cleveland.
Willy Q reaches for one of the order pads. “How much food you need and when?”
Even though I tell Willy Q that the party's only for about five or six people, he says he'll go ahead and send food for ten. When the math club sees all the food Marcel the Magnificent is lugging to the party, they ain't gonna believe their eyes. Cornbread. Wings. Short ribs. Cake—
“Don't want folks to think we're stingy,” Willy Q insists.
Take my advice. Don't try to figure out Willy Q. Just grab what he gives you and run. That's what I do.
W
ILLY
Q'
S
C
ANNONBALL
C
ORNBREAD
1¼ cups flour
3/4 cup yellow cornmeal
2 tablespoons sugar
½ teaspoon salt
1 tablespoon baking powder
½ teaspoon dry mustard
dash of nutmeg
1 cup milk
1 egg, beaten
¼ cup margarine, melted
¼ cup onion, finely chopped
1 cup canned white shoepeg corn, drained
Preheat oven to 425 degrees. Grease 9-inch square pan. In medium-sized bowl, combine flour, cornmeal, sugar, salt, baking powder, dry mustard, and nutmeg. Mix well. Stir in milk, egg, and melted margarine. Lightly mix in onion and corn. Spoon batter into greased pan. Bake at 425 degrees for 20 to 25 minutes or until toothpick inserted in center comes out clean. Serve warm. Cover and refrigerate leftovers. Trust me, there will be a lot.
Maybe I'll come to the party and maybe I won't. I don't make my decision until I'm walking past the classroom at the end of the day, already wearing my coat to leave. I shove my hands in my coat pockets and slow way down to listen to what's happening before I get to the doorway. I ain't staying to sing with any karaoke machine or play any stupid party games, if that's what's going on. That ain't me.
But the only thing I can hear coming out of the room is whining country music. I stick my head in the doorway just to call out, “Who's listening to that sicko country music?” And then Collins comes over wearing a party hat that has a turtle on it. He looks like a complete fool. The hat says HAPPY 10TH BIRTHDAY, even though this is a Christmas party and Collins isn't ten. “Come in and join us, James.” He waves his arm at me.
“Ain't listening to that music,” I answer, shoving my hands deeper in my coat pockets and leaning against the doorway, staying right where I am.
“Well then, find some music you like, James,” Collins answers in the same happy white voice, pointing toward the boom box. “Just come in and have something to eat.” Then he heads back over to the table where the food is set up.
If it was up to me, I'd rather sit on the other side of the room and work on the project. We're only about halfway to the top, and we got a bunch of blue pieces waiting to be glued together. But working on the tetrahedron doesn't seem to matter to nobody but me. Sharice and Rhondell are laughing themselves silly and taping Christmas streamers everywhere—stringing them around Collins’ desk and across the top of the chalkboard. Marcel and Collins are leaning against the heater, stuffing their faces with barbecue. Terrell and Deandra squeeze past me, carrying two heaping plates of food in front of them. “Sorry we can't stay. Gotta go catch the bus.” Terrell waves to Barbecue Face. “Thanks for all the good food, man.”
Still not making up my mind about staying, I walk over and check out what's left to eat. Marcel pushes a plastic plate into my hands as if I'm standing at his daddy's barbecue window or something. “Try some of our wings.” He buzzes around me like a fly that needs swatting.
“And the ribs.” He points. “If you like hot sauce, try the ribs. Tar in the Summertime Hot, that's what me and Willy Q call them—”