All of the Above (8 page)
He looks around the room helplessly. Everything is covered with shreds of colored paper. Even some of the textbooks have been torn apart and trampled. “I don't know why somebody would do this.… I just can't explain why anybody would be so cruel as to come in and wreck a project like this, when all of us were just trying … to do something good.”
James can't handle hearing any more than that. Out of the corner of my eye, I see him suddenly turn while Mr. Collins is talking, pick up one of the desks, and slam it into the others. Another desk tips over and crashes to the floor, making us all jump. Then, without a word, he runs out of the room, punching his fists into the lockers, all the way down the hall.
Mr. Collins tries calling out for him to stop. He goes into the hall and tries to order him to come back, so we can sit down together and talk over our feelings and figure out what to do. Doors all along the hallway open as teachers and kids look out to see what is happening—but nothing stops James. Even the security guard in the hallway doesn't dare to get in the way of James’ out-of-control self.
As James’ punches echo down the hall, Sharice crouches down to the floor and begins to carefully gather up the torn pieces. I watch as she scoops up handfuls of purple and yellow and green pieces and puts them into her backpack. What is she thinking? I wonder.
“Why you doing that, Sharice?” Marcel snaps. “Just forget it. Just throw all those pieces out.” He moves toward the door, kicking at the piles of torn paper. “Just throw the whole thing out.”
Tears are flowing down her cheeks and her nose is running, but Sharice just keeps wiping her nose on her sleeve and scooping up piles of paper and dumping them into her backpack, as if she believes she will be able to put them back together.
I pick up a handful and try to convince her it won't work. Maybe Mr. Collins will start the project over again next year, I tell her, and you and I and Marcel can work on it again. But she just shakes her head and orders me to get away from her. “Leave me alone, Rhondell,” she says. “You don't know anything about what happened.”
Mr. Collins can't get her to listen either.
“I'm gonna rebuild it,” she tells him stubbornly. She just keeps repeating the same four words—I'm gonna rebuild it. She doesn't stop until her whole backpack is full of colored paper. Then she zips it closed and slips it over her shoulder. “I'm going back to my English class now,” she tells Mr. Collins, even though I don't think she does, because we have English class together at the other end of the hall, and I hear her feet go down the steps instead.
After Marcel and Sharice leave, I help Mr. Collins and the custodian sweep up the rest of the room. We fill up four garbage bags of dreams.
Sitting on the back steps of Jolynn's house, leaning against the screen door, I watch the snow fall like torn paper out of the gray sky. The snowflakes land on the legs of my jeans and melt, land and melt, until the tops of my jeans are soaked clear through, and I don't care at all.
Nobody else knows what I did, but I do. I'm the reason our project was torn to pieces. I'm the one who was in the math room when I wasn't supposed to be there, and I'm the one who didn't lock the door. And if you want to go way back again, I'm the reason why my mom died in a car crash and I'm the reason why my Gram went to the hospital and died, too.
Rhondell was right. Nothing's gonna fix those torn pieces, you know. Not all the glue in the world. I pull out a handful from my backpack and look at all the colors jumbled up together. I think about how close we were to finishing. Maybe only two or three weeks or so. I remember how that tetrahedron looked in the darkness. Just like lace and all. A big tower of lace.
Opening my fingers, I let the handful of paper scatter onto the snow. Little flecks of red, blue, green, and purple fall around my feet. I reach down and pick out a crumpled lavender piece that lands near my shoe. Opening it up and smoothing it on my knee, I can still see the triangle shapes we folded over and over.
The purple paper always reminded me of my mom's dress. In my bedroom upstairs in Jolynn's house, I keep a small silver-framed photograph of my mom wearing a purple dress. It's a little out of focus, but you can still see it's a nice summer dress with thin straps over the shoulders. My mom was a pretty woman—stick-thin, but pretty, Gram always said. The picture was taken at the Methodist church picnic, and it's the last one I have of her. She's wearing dark sunglasses and sitting between Gram and one of Gram's old friends, with her chin resting on her hand, like she's looking at something far away. I'm in a baby carrier half in and half out of the picture.
I watch the snowflakes fall on the lavender paper, watch it melt into a piece of soft lavender fabric in my hand, just like my mom's summer dress. I curl my bare fingers around that fabric, holding on.
It's snowing heavier now, and everything in Jolynn's backyard is getting covered—the empty doghouse, the crab apple tree, and the rusty refrigerator leaning against the garage. Won't be long before the snow covers me up, too.
Closing my eyes, I lean back against the door of Jolynn's house. I'm not going anywhere—not to the bus station, or the library, or the school. Not anymore.
Rhondell's mom is my sister, but we are about as alike as hot peppers and sweet potatoes, or lemons and honey—if you know what I mean. Don't get me wrong, I love my sister to death, but we are not the same people. She walks around with the weight of the world on her shoulders, and probably the rest of the planets, too. I just take things as they come. Easier that way, you know?
Anyway, I'm just finishing up my last client at the Style R Us salon—old Mrs. Jenkins, who has hair as coarse and dry as a wire brush—when Rhondell calls. Now, since my sister works at the downtown hospital and taking care of sick folks isn't as simple as rescheduling haircuts, I've always been kinda like a second mom to Rhondell. If she needs to be picked up from school or gets locked out of her house—which Rhondell almost never does, of course, being as smart as she is—she's supposed to call me at the salon. “You just give me a ring, honey,” I'm always telling her. “Any time of day. It don't matter. Poor folks’ hair can wait, but my only living niece can't.”
I'm always pestering her to do something with her hair whenever she calls, too. Rhondell's plain-looking, but that doesn't mean something can't be done to plain. Come on in and let me fix up your hair for you, I try and beg her. We could put it up, or press and curl it—whatever you want, hon. Everybody needs a new look.
But like mother, like daughter, I guess. Rhondell's been wearing the same pulled-back, head-hugging hair as long as I've known her. Still, hope springs eternal. I pick up the phone, thinking maybe this time, maybe she's gonna start growing up and caring about her looks.
“What can I help you with today, Miz Rhondell?” I say, balancing the phone on my shoulder and holding up one finger to tell Mrs. Jenkins to wait just one minute.
“Are you busy?” Rhondell asks in a soft, serious voice, just like her mother. “If you're busy, Aunt Asia, I can call back some other time.”
I squint out the salon window at the falling snow. “You stuck at school? Once I'm done with Mrs. Jenkins, I can come on up there and give you a ride home, hon. You don't need to be wandering around catching cold in this kind of weather.”
But Rhondell says no, she doesn't need a ride, she's calling for advice about a friend of hers. I almost drop the phone, to tell you the truth, because in all the years I've known Rhondell, she has never once called me about any friends, at least none that I can recall. Although I've asked her about friends so many times, I finally gave up and decided to save my breath.
I told my sister that Rhondell's shyness was something she should look into, and my sister said she had enough to do, and shyness was better than some things she could name. Like mother, like daughter, again.
“What kinda advice you looking for, hon?” I say, trying not to sound too pleased at being asked, while giving Mrs. Jenkins another glance.
“Something happened at school today, to a project we were working on …, ” Rhondell says. The story comes out slowly, with a lot of hesitations and pauses, and I don't follow a lot of it, but I don't push her for more.
“A girl who works with me left the school right after it happened,” Rhondell continues. “But even before this, there was something wrong with her, I think. I don't know exactly what, but I was wondering, well—, ” her voice hesitates, “maybe what to do now.”
This is more words than Rhondell ever says usually, so I'm jumping for joy inside my head at the same time that I'm trying to decide what to answer.
I tell Rhondell that if it was me, and if the girl was my friend, I would give her a call first. “I had lots of girlfriends in school, Rhondell—and we called each other all the time. About big things, little things. We were always there for each other, you know what I mean?”
But, knowing Rhondell like I do, it doesn't surprise me at all when she says she doesn't even have the girl's phone number.
“Where's she live? Near your street?” I ask. “Maybe you could try stopping by her house. You know, just go on over and ask how she's doing.”
Rhondell says she thinks the girl lives on Fifteenth Street, but she doesn't feel right stopping by. “I'll just wait until she comes back to school to talk to her. Thanks, Aunt Asia. I'm sorry for bothering you at work —”
“Hold on now—,” I call out. Old Mrs. Jenkins reaches up and pats the uncombed side of her wet hair, giving me a tight-lipped, impatient look. “After I finish with Miz Jenkins here, I'll drive you over to the girl's house to check on her; how about that?” I say.
“No, that's all right —”
“I'll come around about five. No trouble at all. Drive right past Fifteenth on my way home. Gotta go now, hon, see you soon.”
Sometimes the hot peppers have to tell the slow sweet potatoes what to do, I tell myself as I hang up the phone. If somebody doesn't start pushing Rhondell, she's never gonna have a soul in this world except me and her mom, and what a pair we are, you know what I mean?
Next thing I'm gonna insist on changing is her hair.
Even though it is snowing hard enough to be a blizzard and Aunt Asia is wearing heels and a dress, she still insists on driving me down Fifteenth Street to find Sharice's house. I watch her gold-painted fingernails tighten on the steering wheel as the car wheels slip and slide in the snow.
The college word for Aunt Asia is
determined
.
“We should turn around and go back,” I try to tell her. “I'll just talk to Sharice next week.”
“Don't be silly,” she answers, leaning closer to the windshield. “We're having fun, aren't we?”
The windshield keeps filling up with snow even with the wipers going full speed, so Aunt Asia rolls down her window to try and see the house numbers on Fifteenth. She calls them out as we pass: 345, 347, no number, can't see, 365…
I keep hoping that we don't find the number I told her, the one I got by calling the school, because I haven't even thought about what to say to Sharice if we do find her house. What will she think when she opens the door and sees somebody from math club standing there?
But then Aunt Asia shouts, “There it is!” and our car slides into the driveway with a soft crunch of snow. I'm not sure we'll ever get out of the driveway again, by the way the car sounded. Aunt Asia cuts off the engine and we peer through the windshield at the house. It's a worn-looking two-story brick house with an old front porch in need of painting. All the windows of the house are dark. “Nobody's home,” I say, hopefully.
“You can't ever tell,” Aunt Asia answers. “Maybe their electricity is out. Maybe they don't keep up with their bills. Could be that's one of your friend's problems. Maybe her family's fallen on hard times. Families do, this time of the year. Don't I know it.” She rolls her eyes. “Half the business I usually get—gone, this time of the year.”
Aunt Asia fiddles with the heater. “I'm gonna sit right here keeping warm, and you go up there and check if she's home. Come and get me if you need me, Rhondell.” She smiles at me and pats my arm. “You'll do fine, hon. All you have to be is a good listener.”
I want to sit in the warm car with Aunt Asia and not go anywhere. I stare at the house number on the paper in my hands and try to decide what to say to Sharice, if she answers the door. Just checking to see if you're okay.… Everybody was worried after you left, so I said I'd stop and see about you.… Mr. Collins told me to come by. …
Looking up at that house with no lights and the snow swirling around it, I feel as if the house has a big sign saying GO AWAY. KEEP OUT. CLOSED.
“Don't forget to check the back door, too,” Aunt Asia calls as I slide slowly out of the car. “Some people don't answer their front doors, you know.”
On the front porch, a big pile of rolled-up yellow newspapers and junk mail fills the space between the screen door and the front door. It looks as if nobody has used the door in months, and the only footprints I can see on the porch are cat prints in the thin layer of snow. I reach my hand behind the broken screen door and try knocking on the inside door, but nobody answers.
As I walk around to the back, I can feel the snow drifting into my shoes and soaking my socks. The yellow headlights from Aunt Asia's car shine ahead of me like two flashlights. With the swirling snow and the darkness of the house and yard, I don't know what makes me notice the bits of colored paper on the snow beside the house. Perhaps the headlights from Aunt Asia's car catch a few of them. But when I see the torn pieces scattered across the snow, a jolt goes through me. My heart begins pounding watch out, watch out, watch out, on its own, as if it knows something is wrong with those pieces being in the yard.
I come around the side of the house with my heart pounding watch out, and that's when I see the dark shape of somebody sitting on the back porch steps. The shape is huddled over, curled up, on the steps. I don't even check to see who the somebody is; I just go slipping, running, flying down the driveway to get Aunt Asia.