Almost Crimson (4 page)

“CeCe seems to think some of the other children are, um . . . half-monster, and it
'
s turned into quite the firestorm with the other families.”

CeCe's mother turned now, slowly, to face the other mothers. They were out, CeCe thought. Caught moving, like red light, green light.

“Nothing out of context,” CeCe's mother spoke over her shoulder.

The other mothers were no longer pretending not to eavesdrop. CeCe watched them gasping, looking to one another, crossing their arms, moving ever closer. Ms. Lapham continued.

“Yes, well, the children were upset because CeCe was so . . .
convincing
. . . about the whole monster business. Many of them—”

“Let me guess,” Carla interrupted, returning her focus to Ms. Lapham. “Many of them went home crying? Like my daughter has done every day?”

CeCe looked up at Ms. Lapham. She felt her stomach tighten in perverse anticipation, like knowing the jester would leap from the jack-in-the-box at any moment. One more crank of the handle. One more. One more.

The mothers bristled and mumbled. Ms. Lapham's face was a deep red.

“Here we go,” huffed a mother's voice.

CeCe felt her mother's torso turn. CeCe turned with her to see the other black mother, Mrs. Johnson, yank her purse strap to her shoulder and summon for her kids, the twins in CeCe's class.

“Michael? Michelle?” the other mother called. “Let's go.”

CeCe felt a low rumble against the back of her head. She felt her mother's hands leave her shoulders and turned to see her mother crossing her arms and turning to face Mrs. Johnson.

“Please go,” CeCe's mother said. “You're the worst of them all.”

“Excuse me?” Mrs. Johnson said, tugging again at her purse strap as she turned to face CeCe's mother.

“I expected these white folks to be themselves,” CeCe's mother said without flourish, “but it's inexcusable that the
black
woman didn't teach her
black
children to embrace their only
black
classmate.”

Mrs. Johnson leveled a look of contempt in their direction. “I don't have to—”

CeCe's mother slowly turned away. Her full back faced Mrs. Johnson and her hands returned to CeCe's shoulders.

“Is there anything else?” she asked Ms. Lapham in a slow, level tone.

“I suppose not,” Ms. Lapham said with a swallow. CeCe watched her teacher's eyes flit from mother to mother. “I just, um . . . wanted to . . . um, that should be—”

“Don't turn your back when I'm talking to you!” Mrs. Johnson said, her barbed words lobbed from behind their heads and landing in the middle of them all with a thud. CeCe peeked past her mother's hip to see Mrs. Johnson moving toward them. She wasn't a big woman, but to CeCe she looked like she was filled with hard metals and glass. Her facial features and limbs jutted with sharp edges of bone. Even the corners of her eyes and mouth pulled upward into points. CeCe didn't doubt Mrs. Johnson had a monster inside of her.

“Who do you think you are?” Mrs. Johnson continued, stepping around them to assume the space where Ms. Lapham had stood. CeCe watched her teacher scurry into the school building. The circle of other mothers began to drift backwards.

CeCe's mother did not move. She kept her fading eyes on the woman.

“What makes you think—” Mrs. Johnson had raised a finger to continue her rant.

“No,” CeCe's mother said, with a definitive, single shake of her head. “I'm not helping you dance for these people.”

“Now, you listen to me,” Mrs. Johnson began, her body wilting into a familiar curve of hands on hips and neck on a slow rotation. CeCe pressed herself into her mother's legs as Mrs. Johnson continued to raise her voice at her mother.

“I said no!” CeCe's mother shouted. “I'm not about to help you shuck and jive for these white folks!” CeCe snapped her chin upward to look at her mother. She'd never heard her mother yell before. Now she was afraid, not for what could happen next but for the final dregs of energy she knew had escaped her mother at that moment.

“Don't worry,” CeCe's mother continued, reaching for CeCe's hand and leveling her voice again. “You can still be their token darkie.”

The collective gasp inside the portico seemed to suck in all of the wind, weather, and energy circling the elementary school.

“Ladies!” a man's voice approached them. CeCe turned to see Mr. Neumann and Ms. Lapham dashing into their circle.

“You know-nothing bitch,” growled Mrs. Johnson, glaring at CeCe's mother before turning toward the school building.

“I'm sure that's what your little friends call you behind your back,” CeCe's mother said at full volume, “when they're not calling you ‘nigger,' of course.”

CeCe's eyes opened wide when Mrs. Johnson whirled around and shoved her mother's shoulders. CeCe's mother toppled backward to the ground.

“Mrs. Johnson!” Mr. Neumann shouted. CeCe watched as everyone around her covered their mouths.

Ms. Lapham rushed to CeCe while Mr. Neumann stepped in front of Mrs. Johnson. CeCe's mother raised herself onto her elbows, pausing to catch her breath. Before reaching for Mr. Neumann's outstretched hand, CeCe's mother looked up piteously at Mrs. Johnson and shook her head.

“But you want these people to believe
my
daughter is ‘ghetto.'”

All heads, tsk-tsk-ing, turned to Mrs. Johnson and then looked away. Mr. Neumann helped CeCe's mother to her feet. She met CeCe's tearful gaze and nodded.

I'm OK
, she mouthed to CeCe. CeCe allowed herself to breathe.

 

“Your mama is mean,” the twin boy, Michael, said to CeCe as the three children waited inside the classroom. Their mothers, their teacher, and the principal were all in the office sorting things out. That's what Ms. Lapham had called it when she deposited CeCe and the twins in her classroom and spread out crayons, papers, and the big bin of blocks.

“No, she's not!” CeCe said. “
Your
mama is mean!”

CeCe and Michael sat on the floor in front of the storybooks with their short legs splayed in front of them. The other twin, Michelle, sat at a table on one of the tiny yellow chairs and cradled her sad face in her chunky little hands.

“Both our mamas are gonna get in trouble,” Michelle said.

“Maybe,” CeCe offered after a moment. “Maybe you only got a little monster in you.”

Michael, whose skin was dark as espresso, turned toward CeCe. His mouth was tight with disapproval.

“I ain't got
no
monster in me,” he said, stuffing his arms into an angry twist across his slight body. When splitting cells, he had assumed the thinness genes while his twin had staked claim on all the beauty.

“Yeah, we ain't no monsters,” Michelle said, her tone still softer than her brother's. “We didn't know you was gonna get mad about living in the ghetto.”

“But I don't live in the ghetto,” CeCe said.

“How come none of us ever seen you before, huh?” Michael demanded. “You don't play at the park, you don't go to the church, you don't come to any of the birthday parties. My mama said you don't live around here. She said you were bussed from the ghetto.”

“Your mama don't know what she's talking about,” CeCe said. “I live at
6723
East Fountain Drive.” CeCe announced her address proudly. She'd practiced memorizing it for more than a week.

The Johnson twins looked at each other, with surprise.

“That sounds nice,” Michelle said, her face brightening a bit.

“Yeah, I guess so,” Michael conceded, uncrossing his arms. He swallowed. “I'm sorry for calling you a ghetto kid.”

“Me, too,” said Michelle, moving to sit with CeCe and her brother on the floor.

CeCe beamed, and apologized for ever calling them monsters.

“I'll bring my jacks again tomorrow, if you want,” CeCe said.

“Yeah!” said Michelle. “We keep losing the ball for our jacks.”

“
You
keep losing the ball,” Michael corrected.

“Shut up!” Michelle said.

CeCe laughed at them both.

By the time their mothers appeared in the classroom, the children were sprawled across the colorful carpet with sheets of paper scattered all about them like oversized squares of confetti. Each had a fistful of colored pencils, and they were pointing and swapping and challenging and laughing as five-year-olds should.

“Children,” Ms. Lapham said, walking past the mothers. “Let's pick up our papers and put away the pencils, OK? It's time to go now.”

The children obeyed their teacher and began cleaning up while they chattered and skipped throughout the room.

The afternoon classes had been combined and released onto the playground for an early recess, in light of the fracas that had consumed their teachers and rooms. These new faces were assembled into impressively straight lines under the portico. CeCe could see them through the glass door.

“Are those your afternoon kids, Miss Lapham?” Michelle asked.

“Yes, and I think they're ready to come inside now,” Ms. Lapham said. “Why don't you kids do me a favor and hold the door open for them.”

The twins raced the short distance to the school doors and wrestled them open. CeCe stayed behind to take her mother's hand.

“I wanted to let you know how sorry I am about this whole incident,” Ms. Lapham said. “I feel horrible that I didn't recognize what was happening before it turned this . . . um . . . ugly.”

The two mothers were standing several paces from one other in the hallway, forcing Ms. Lapham to pivot and speak to them.

“Ms. Weathers—”

“Carla.”

The teacher smiled. “Carla, I'll be more attentive from this point forward about any, um . . . racial issues between the children. The only explanation I can offer is that, well, we haven't really experienced this kind of thing before.”

Ms. Lapham spun to face Mrs. Johnson. “I mean, the children have been exposed to other, um . . . cultures before. It's just that most of these kids have known each other their whole lives. I can only presume those, um . . . issues were smoothed out elsewhere.”

“Ms. Lapham—” CeCe's mother began.

“Heather.”

“
Heather
,” CeCe's mother gave a weary smile to Ms. Lapham. “I doubt the issue was ever smoothed out, but we'll get there.”

“I promise to do my part,” Ms. Lapham said, extending a handshake to both mothers. CeCe's mother clasped her palm with both hands while Mrs. Johnson only offered a stiff pinch with the pads of her fingers.

As the Johnsons walked away, the twins turned to wave at CeCe while their mother moved like a rain cloud.

“Bye, Michael! Bye, Michelle!” she called.

CeCe felt her mother squeeze her hand and they left the school building and stepped into the warm autumn sun.

In the days and weeks following that first week of school, CeCe's mother retreated into the Sad. She didn't ride with CeCe to school, but walked her to the bus stop. By the time Christmas came, CeCe was walking to the bus stop alone. The newspaperman, Mr. Curtis, let her sit next to him while she waited. He let her read the funny pages, but she had to give them back when the bus came. CeCe liked Mr. Curtis. He didn't have lots of stories and questions, like Mrs. Castellanos, but his quiet was just as fun. CeCe would even visit Mr. Curtis' stand during the summers, too. By the time she was a second-grader, Mr. Curtis was letting CeCe keep the funny pages, and the word search. Mr. Curtis even told CeCe about the city bus.

“You can get all the books you want at the library,” he said. “Just a five-minute ride. Straight down Kennedy.”

When CeCe took the twenties from the nightstand for her grocery trips, she started to keep the change for her bus fare in a separate jar. Her mother would have said it was all right, but CeCe had stopped asking her mother things. Sometimes, CeCe would read her library books aloud to her mother's silhouette. Mostly, she read to herself while her mother let the hours and days and sunshine and music and holidays evaporate above their heads.

SEVEN

DEWEY

 

 

ON THE SECOND DAY OF third grade, a sixth-grader came into CeCe's new classroom with a note. Before the teacher called her name, CeCe knew to gather her notebook and pencil box. The sixth-grade emissaries had started coming for her at the end of first grade.

The note usually directed CeCe to the vice principal's office, where she questioned CeCe about wearing summer dresses in cold weather, bringing a can of sardines for lunch, her father's place of work, and how often her mother read to her at night. In second grade, Armstrong Elementary welcomed a new person called a guidance counselor. During that year, CeCe's summons included this counselor and someone from outside the school, called a caseworker.

CeCe didn't mind the guidance counselor, Ms. Patterson, because she talked to CeCe about books and old movies and baking.

“I love to make the fancy cakes,” Ms. Patterson said one day, “but the best ones to eat are the simple ones. Pound cake is my favorite.”

CeCe didn't care as much for the caseworkers. They never had stories for her, only sly questions. CeCe didn't like how they asked questions, as if trying to be her friend, and then wrote down everything she said. Her other friends didn't scribble her words into folders. Mr. Curtis. Ms. Patterson. Mrs. Castellanos. They listened to her. Talked to her. Hugged her. Taught her things. These caseworkers weren't like that at all.

Worse, CeCe had a feeling they didn't like her, either. She asked Ms. Patterson one day why they came to pick on her, and did they talk to all the students.

“Not all the students,” Ms. Patterson had said. “Just the ones we really care about and want to make extra sure they're OK.”

CeCe had felt special. She answered their questions.

She hadn't expected the caseworker interviews to begin so early in the year. The first week of school wasn't even finished and CeCe was already heading to the front office. She took the hall pass and walked the hallway to Ms. Patterson's office. CeCe took her seat in the orange plastic chair and waited, humming the chorus of “Silent Night.”

There was no secretary, like in the main office, just a row of chairs outside two closed doors. One door led to Ms. Patterson's office and the other was used for conferences, detention, and sitting with caseworkers.

The door to Ms. Patterson's office opened and another student left, clutching a stack of notebooks to her chest. It looked to CeCe like she'd been crying. Ms. Patterson, on the other hand, emerged with a wide-mouthed smile. She was a rectangular woman, with large heavy hands. She didn't wear much makeup, only color on her lips and mascara on her lashes, but she always wore a suit. She seemed tough at first but, to CeCe, had been soft as summer grass.

“CeCe! How's it going, sprite?” Ms. Patterson asked. CeCe said things were good and stood to let Ms. Patterson fold her into a one-arm hug. “Listen, I have an idea for you.”

She told CeCe they'd hired a new librarian and the new librarian had requested a student assistant. The assistant, she explained, would help shelve the books, keep the library neat, help the younger grades find things, and help keep the card catalog straight.

“You were the first person we thought of,” Ms. Patterson said. “Whaddya think?”

CeCe was gape-mouthed. Her mind couldn't hold all of the morsels Ms. Patterson had tossed at her: library, new, assistant, books, chosen. Her head nodded anyway.

“Great,” Ms. Patterson said, clapping her hands together. “Let's go meet Mrs. Anderson. I think you'll like her, CeCe. She's pretty special.”

CeCe stood beneath the mobile with
The Very Hungry Caterpillar
,
Curious George
,
Goodnight Moon
, and
Harry the Dirty Dog
while Ms. Patterson disappeared behind a narrow door. When she emerged, a tall black woman stood beside her with rolled posters tucked beneath her arm. The first thing CeCe noticed was her smile. The woman had long teeth, longer than most grown-ups', and one dimple. It was so deep, CeCe wondered if it pressed against the side of her tongue. CeCe like the woman's smile. It seemed like a real one.

“You must be CeCe,” the woman said, walking to the big desk and dropping the paper tubes. CeCe waved absently, fixated by the woman's movements.

“I'm Mrs. Anderson. I'm very pleased to meet you.”

CeCe stepped closer to accept Mrs. Anderson's extended hand. Ms. Patterson excused herself and Mrs. Anderson leaned back against the desk, returning her attention to CeCe.

“So, you like libraries, huh?”

CeCe nodded.

“What kind of stories do you like?”

“Umm, ones with princesses and wishes and magic and stuff,” CeCe said.

Mrs. Anderson smiled. “I like those, too. Maybe I could show you some of my favorites and you could tell me yours?”

CeCe nodded again.

“It's important for librarians and library assistants to be familiar with the titles in their library,” Mrs. Anderson said. She stood and gestured for CeCe to follow her toward the first shelf of books. CeCe could smell her skin. It wasn't sweet, like the perfume Ms. Patterson would wear, or strong, the way cigarette smoke lingered around Mr. Curtis. It reminded CeCe of summer nights and fireflies. Maybe that was the special thing Ms. Patterson talked about, that Mrs. Anderson's skin smelled like twilight.

Mrs. Anderson smiled her perfect smile and laughed. “You're grinning like you've just remembered something special, CeCe. Can I know what it is, too?”

CeCe reached up to touch her own face with her fingertips. She felt her cheeks warm, but couldn't stop the grinning.

“I figured out your special secret,” CeCe said in a lowered voice.

Mrs. Anderson raised her eyebrows, amused. “You have?”

CeCe nodded. “It's your skin.”

Mrs. Anderson leaned her head to one side, looking at CeCe for a long moment. “My skin?” she asked.

“Uh-huh. Ms. Patterson said you were ‘something special,' but I thought you were gonna be regular,” CeCe said, leaning toward her new friend. “Then I smelled your skin. It's like nighttime in summer. I never met nobody with skin that smells special like that.”

Mrs. Anderson raised her hand to her mouth, unable to contain the giggle that escaped. CeCe could still see her teeth and her dimple. She returned the giggle and smile.

“CeCe, that's the sweetest thing I've heard in a long time. Thank you,” Mrs. Anderson said.

CeCe beamed.

Mrs. Anderson glanced up at the wall clock. “You should probably head back to class now,” Mrs. Anderson said. “Your position as the new librarian's assistant can start during tomorrow's recess. OK?”

“OK!” CeCe said, shaking Mrs. Anderson's hand again.

The next day, CeCe went to the library and Mrs. Anderson read to her
The Snowy Day
.

“What'd you think?” Mrs. Anderson asked.

“I like that story,” CeCe said, flipping through the pages again.

“I thought about what you said when I got home last night,” Mrs. Anderson said. CeCe looked up, unsure. “About being special?”

CeCe remembered, and nodded.

“We're both special, did you know that?”

CeCe nodded.

Mrs. Anderson smiled. “Of course you did,” she said. “Well, we special people have to look out for each other, because there are a lot of
un
special people who just won't understand us sometimes. It might make us sad. If that happens to one of us, we have to promise to come get a hug from the other one, OK?”

CeCe nodded and Mrs. Anderson flashed her dimple again.

They visited that way every day for the next week, and then CeCe went to the library only two or three times a week, wanting to play with the twins sometimes. CeCe redeemed at least a dozen of those hugs from Mrs. Anderson by the end of the school year.

By the time CeCe had advanced to the fourth grade, she was reading seventh-grade chapter books recommended by Mrs. Anderson and cashing in on a hug every day. CeCe's mother couldn't listen to CeCe's recounting of the books she read. Her eyes weren't seeing things close up anymore, and she hardly remembered anything CeCe told her about the light bill or the new pack of underwear or school field trips.

For the first time, CeCe was afraid. The newest caseworker asked different questions from the others, questions about living in other houses, with other families, other mothers. Mrs. Anderson assured CeCe that, as long as her mother did what was asked of her, CeCe wouldn't have to worry about living anywhere else.

“What was the word we learned?” Mrs. Anderson had asked.

“Compliance.”

“Right,” Mrs. Anderson said, not showing her dimple now.

Over the past two years, CeCe had shared things with Mrs. Anderson she'd never told anyone else, especially the caseworkers. CeCe told Mrs. Anderson the truth about their empty refrigerator at home, about her imagined birthday gifts, about their laundry in the tub, about her mother's wrenching sobs at night.

Mrs. Anderson explained that everyone was just trying to make sure CeCe was safe, and her mother, too.

“Sometimes mamas need a little help,” she said.

“Did you need help?” CeCe asked. Mrs. Anderson spoke to CeCe often about her teenagers.

“I sure did,” Mrs. Anderson said, reaching out her hand for CeCe to place a book from the cart. CeCe had been relieved to be exempt from recess and become Mrs. Anderson's aide. The other children played with her, sometimes, but Mrs. Anderson talked to her kindly all the time. CeCe enjoyed her job, too. She'd been fascinated when Mrs. Anderson taught her the Dewey decimal system and thought it was honor when she'd been given the job of re-stocking the mislaid books.

CeCe handed her another book from the stack of
900
s, history. From the looks of the titles, CeCe guessed one of the upper classes must have assignments about U.S. presidents.

“We had our first daughter right out of college,” Mrs. Anderson said. “Being a mother is a lot of work, and I needed help figuring everything out. My own mother passed away when I was a young girl, so I relied on my aunties and a few ladies from church. It was really hard, but we finally got the hang of things.”

CeCe was quiet, handing over the next book.

“Did you miss your mother?” CeCe asked.

“All the time,” Mrs. Anderson said. “I was only thirteen when she died.”

“I miss my mother a lot, too,” CeCe said.

“I know, sweetheart,” Mrs. Anderson said. “I know.”