Before, After, and Somebody In Between (3 page)

I try to squiggle around her, but she pushes me up against the lockers. She’s a mile wide and about as big as a wild boar, so huge in fact that she could smother me with her chest by moving a single inch closer. The mere idea of dying with Chardonnay’s boobs in my face, cutting off my light, my oxygen, and even my screams, seriously makes me want to pee down my leg.

“Hey! Leave her alone.”

Chardonnay ignores the voice—Braid-Girl’s, maybe?—and shuffles even closer. Our noses almost touch, and she has zits on hers, plus zits on her chin and on her forehead and on her thick, sweaty neck. I stare, morbidly fascinated.

“Hey, Blubber Butt! You deaf? I said let her be.”

Yes, it’s Braid-Girl, and I can see her inching over till she’s right within punching distance. Good! With any luck at all, Chardonnay’ll turn on
her
instead.

Chardonnay sneers. “Who’s gonna make me?”

Sweat spurts from my armpits like a busted hydrant because I’m positive I’m about to die here in this locker room. Then, incredibly, the voice of God booms from the other end of the room: “What’s going on back there?”

No, not God. The PE teacher.

“Ain’t nothin’ going on, Miz Lopez.” Chardonnay keeps her
voice pleasant, but her face twists with rage. She waits one last second before stepping back, and I gasp with relief at the blast of fresh air.

“Then get your butt into the gym. I had enough trouble with you last year.”

Chardonnay sends Braid-Girl one last menacing glare, and Braid-Girl bares her teeth in a taunting smile. With hatred hissing from her pores like some kind of secret biological weapon, Chardonnay flips Lopez the bird and plods out of the locker room.

Lopez ventures over for the first time. In spite of her tough butchy haircut and bulging biceps, even she was smart enough not to get too close to old Blubber Butt. “What’s the problem here?”

I open my mouth to explain, but my legs turn into pudding. I slide down the locker, hitting my butt hard on the floor, and Braid-Girl jumps forward as I let out a squeak of pain. “She’s sick! You want me to take her to the nurse?”

Unconvinced, Lopez asks my name, and Braid-Girl answers for me while I sit there, trying not to cry, totally humiliated.

“And who are you?” Lopez asks irritably as Braid-Girl crowds into her space.

“Her friend.”

“Yes. I see that. What is your
name?”

“… Aiyisha Simms.”

“Okay, Simms. You can take Martha to the nurse, but I want
you
to come back here. Understand?” Braid-Girl lifts her hands and rolls her eyes, and I can see Lopez’s lid is about to blow. “Is—there—a—problem—with—that?”

“No, ma’am,” Braid-Girl says sweetly. “I ain’t got a problem at all.”

Lopez points a finger in her face. “You watch yourself, then. I’m giving you ten minutes.” Braid-Girl hauls me to my feet, and Lopez calls after us, “And take off some of that lipstick, Simms. You’re starting to look like a hooker.”

“What a bitch,” the girl says calmly when we’re out of earshot. “Maybe I wanna look like a hooker, she ever think of that? Dumb-ass heifer.”

“You’re not Aiyisha,” I manage to croak. “Aiyisha’s in our homeroom.”

“Yeah, well, won’t this make her damn day?” She winks.

“So who are you?”

“Shavonne Addams.”

“Well, why’d you lie about your name?”

Shavonne withers me with a look of outrage. “Hey, I had that bitch last year, okay? She don’t know my name by now, that’s her own damn problem.” Ignoring my protests, she shoves me into a restroom, climbs up on the sink, and whips a mangled pack of Marlboros out of a purple lace bra. “Want one?”

Nervous glance at the door. “You nuts? What if we get caught?”

Shavonne lights up and inhales deeply. “Man, you always such a baby?”

“No,” I lie.

“Bull. You about shit your pants back there.”

True. I fan away fumes as she sends a blast of smoke rings spiraling up to the ceiling. “Well, thanks. You saved my life.”

“Just stay away from that psycho. She eighteen years old and ain’t even a junior, and guess what she done last year? Stabbed some girl through the eye with this little Bic pen, and got her fat ass thrown out the rest of the year. That girl got a glass eye now, and ain’t nobody seen her since.”

“Why’d she stab her? Was she white?”

Shavonne eyes me narrowly. “No, she wasn’t white. Chardonnay’s pure evil. Back in eighth grade she tried to kick my ass, too. Ain’t touched me since, though,” she adds with a vicious grin.

“How come?”

“ ’Cause now she knows I kick back.”

I eye Shavonne’s long bony frame. “
You
kicked Chardonnay’s butt?”

“Well, I broke her pinky finger. She couldn’t do nothing to me after that.”

Impressed, I pull off my glasses, splash water on my face, then wriggle out of my shoe and peel down my raggedy sock. No blood. Guess I’ll live.

Shavonne wrinkles her nose at the purplish bruise on my foot. “Damn, girl. You lucky that cow didn’t break every last bone.” Flinging back her braids, she takes another puff of her cigarette. “So, you’re new, right?”

“Oh, how can you tell?” I demand, twisting the sock back over my aching foot.

“Where you from?”

“Spencer.”

“Where the hell’s that?”

“Cow country. Anyway, we move, like, twice a year. So far this is the first place that has sidewalks.”

“So how’d you end up here?”

Sigh. “My mom’s shacking up with some dude. We live down on Ninety-third.”

“He black?”

“Who?”

“Your mom’s dude.”

“No, he’s a hillbilly slumlord.” Shavonne giggles, and I ask,
“Where do you live?” because, with any luck, we might be neighbors.

“You know those projects down by the hospital?”

Hey, I thought you had to be on welfare to live in the projects. Shavonne doesn’t look poor. Her clothes are stunning, her hair and nails perfect. Even her skin is flawless, smooth and dark as the bottom of a Hershey bar. I feel drab and juvenile next to her in my fugly glasses and
South Park
T-shirt, my long, frizzy brown hair springing madly out of a scrunchie.

“We have roaches,” I say stupidly for no particular reason.

“Roaches?” Shavonne sticks out her tongue. “That ain’t nothin’. I got junkies in my building and you can’t even call the cops ‘cause if they find out who done it, they come blow your damn brains out. They be pissin’ all over the hallways, too. Girl, I got to jump over puddles when I leave outta there in the morning.”

She smokes in silence, and I begin to get nervous again. “Um, maybe we ought to go see the nurse?”

“What for? All she gonna do is tell you to take a load off. You already done that.”

“Maybe she’ll send me home?”

“Nope. Only way she’ll do that is if you puke on yourself. Or if Aunt Flo shows up and messes up your clothes.”

I haven’t met Aunt Flo yet. I must be physically retarded.

A bell rings and both of us jump. I ease my shoe back on as Shavonne jams the Marlboros into her bra and buttons up her blouse. “I got lunch next. How ‘bout you?”

I consult my schedule again, and almost collapse with relief. “Me too!” And I follow her swinging braids out to the hall, pushing my way semiexpertly through the noisy, jostling mob.

So far today, one enemy and one friend. Now all I have to do is make it to the last bell alive.

5

Jerome and I wade home together through broken glass, litter, and empty beer cans. Halfway there, I remember something. “You pissed me off yesterday, I hope you know.”

“What’d I do?”

“You didn’t do
anything
when your aunt smacked your brother.”

His guilty gaze slides away from me. “She only smacked him one time.”

“He’s a baby, okay? You shouldn’t let her smack him at all.”

“So you want me to fight with her so she can beat my ass, too?”

“Well, why do you let her? I’d never let anybody beat me up.” Aside from Momma’s occasional whack upside my head.

Jerome stops short in the middle of the sidewalk. “You know something? You just running your big mouth and you don’t even know what you’re talkin’ about.” He struts off, leaving me to wander home alone, wishing he weren’t so touchy and my mouth weren’t so big. But if Bubby were my brother, nobody’d lay a finger on him!

Momma greets me in the kitchen, a bit brighter than usual. “Well, how was your first day?”

“Sucked. Big time.”

“I sure wish you wouldn’t use that word, sugar pie.”

“I’m not kidding, it really did suck. Some kid brought a knife to school.”

“Did you tell someone?”

“No-o-o…but then there’s this girl, Chardonnay? And she, like, shoved me into a wall, and then she stepped on my foot, and—”

“Well, I hope you shoved her back.”

“Momma, she’s humongous! She’s about as fat as a—”
Oops!
I clamp my jaw shut. Weight’s a touchy subject where Momma’s concerned.

“You gotta learn to fight back. Can’t go through life letting people knock you around.”

Ha,
easy for her to say. She probably could ram Chardonnay through a brick wall.

“I don’t suppose,” I say, oh so casually, “I could go to a Catholic school or something.”

“We ain’t Catholic,” she announces, in case I don’t remember.

“So? I’ll convert.”

“Those schools cost money. You’re staying right where you are.”

“For how long?” I whine. “Momma, this house sucks, this neighborhood sucks, that whole school sucks, and everything sucks, sucks,
sucks!
”

“
Stop saying that word!
” she roars, spinning around as fast as somebody her size can possibly spin. “You oughta be grateful Wayne took us in like he did. You wanna be livin’ in a box under a bridge somewhere? You know, the problem with you is, you’re just like your daddy was. Spoiled rotten, always puttin’ on airs,
always actin’ like you’re so much better than anybody else—” And on and on, blah, blah, blah. Everything I’ve heard a thousand times before.

I slam into my room and grope under the windowsill for the key to my trunk. So what if I’m like my dad? My dad was smart. He even went to college for a while down in West Virginia, till he hooked up with Momma who never made it past the ninth grade.

I dig through my cluttered trunk till I find my latest journal. I keep all of my journals in here, plus old report cards and birthday cards, and a few old toys I can’t part with. Lots of photos, too, but none left of Daddy. Momma slashed them all up during one of her drunken frenzies.

Once, when I was little, we were all riding in the car, and I remember passing an old factory. Thick, pure white smoke poured out of the stacks, and I poked Daddy in the back to point it out. “Look at the clouds!”

Daddy said, very seriously, “Yep, that’s a cloud factory, honey. That’s where God makes all the clouds.”

Wow! I stuck my head out the window to get a better look, but then Momma had to ruin it with, “Don’t lie to the kid, Ray. She believes every word you say.” To me, she added, “It’s smoke, sugar pie. Nothing but dirty old smoke.”

But when Daddy winked at me in the rearview mirror, I knew the truth: that Momma was wrong about the clouds, and this would be just our secret.

Times like this, I really do miss my dad. He’s the one who got me hooked on Beethoven. He liked to play classical music in the car just to drive Momma nuts. He played it at home, too, on his violin, till Momma put an end to it.

I stare at the blank page of my journal, but no way can I concentrate. All I’ve done today is fight, fight, fight. I’m utterly sick
of it, and Jerome is right: I’m always running my big mouth, always pissing people off.

I lock my trunk back up, stash the key, take the screen off the window, and scale the rickety fire escape. Jerome’s sprawled on the bed, his nose buried in
Romeo and Juliet,
and I can hear Bubby snoring in the crib. That other kid, Mario, is nowhere around.

I scratch on the screen and whisper, “Hey!”

“What?” he grumbles without looking up from the book.

“I take it back, okay? I had a really sucky day.”

He drops the book into his lap and turns his head to the window. “Yeah. Me, too.”

“Can I come in?”

“You wanna get us killed?”

“I’ll be quiet. I swear.”

With a dramatic sigh, Jerome crawls across his bed to unhook the screen. I jump over the sill, plop down beside him, and point to the book. “I can’t believe you’re reading this already. We’ve got, like, six weeks.”

“I don’t like to wait till the last minute.”

“Duh, I can read it in one night. Are you always such a grind?”

“You always such a stuck-up bitch?”

“Are we always gonna end up fighting like this?”

“Probably,” he admits, but at least now he’s smiling.

6

While Miss Fuchs races through attendance the next day, Shavonne shoots me a note from three rows away:
Come over after school, k?
Knowing that today
has
to be better than yesterday, I send her a thumbs-up. I relax even more when I notice that old Blubber Butt, happily, seems to have lost interest in me. A couple of homeroom homies harass me off and on—
Ma-a-artha, yo, Ma-a-artha, hey boo, gimme some sugar, baby!
—but at least they’re nice enough to keep their hands to themselves.

At lunch, Shavonne and I sit with Kenyatta and Monique. Kenyatta’s dark, tiny, and smart, with straight black hair hanging into her eyes. Monique, on the chubby side, even flashier than Shavonne, acts like an airhead, but still, she’s sweet. I’m just glad I don’t have to eat alone in this freaking cafeteria. Food flies through the air, fights break out every minute, and the music’s so loud you have to scream to be heard.

When they announce over the PA that there’s a music assembly last period for anyone interested in joining the school orchestra, Shavonne slams down a fist. “Alri-i-ight! Let’s bail!”

I blink. “You mean cut?”

They break into hysterics, and Kenyatta whaps me on the back. “Girl, you gonna be hangin’ with us, you better get your shit together fast!”