Before, After, and Somebody In Between (6 page)

Nope, it’s true. The gun is gone.

…

I lurch into homeroom ten minutes late, and Chardonnay greets me with: “ ’Bout time you hauled your honky ass in here.”

“Shove it, bitch.” This from Shavonne, of course.

“Who you callin’ a bitch, bitch?” Chardonnay snarls back.

“Ladies! Enough already!” Miss Fuchs glares at me like this is somehow my fault. “Take your seat, Martha. I’m marking you tardy.”

The whole class goes,
Ooooooh!
which sends Miss Fuchs into another book-banging hissy as I slide into my seat and slump my
chin in my hand—and then
wham!
Chardonnay’s gargantuan arm knocks into my elbow, and my jaw almost hits the desk.

My shout startles even me. “Get your freaking hands off of me!”

“Then quit looking at me, bitch.”

“I’m
not
looking at you!”

Turning back around, Chardonnay says to the room in general, “One thing I can’t stand? Some damn honky-dyke-polack bitch mad-doggin’ me all the time.”

Honky-dyke-polack bitch. Wow.

Ignoring the fact that doing what I’m about to do means I have a death wish, I poke her three times in the back: “Kiss.”
Poke.
“My.”
Poke.
“Ass.”
Poke!

The class goes ballistic. Chardonnay tries to leap out of her chair, but the tiny desk gets stuck around her enormous hips. She shakes it loose like a bucking bull. “Whadja say to me? Whadja say to me?”

Shavonne’s between us in a flash. “Hey, what’s wrong with you? You deaf, too? Or just fat, ugly, and stupid?”

Even slack-jawed Jamal’s wide awake for this one. Miss Fuchs snatches up the wall phone, hollering for help while Chardonnay and Shavonne circle like a couple of bulldogs. Even the homeboys in the back are superglued to their seats.

“You best start mindin’ your own damn business,” Chardonnay snarls. “Or I’m gonna mess you up so bad, your own momma ain’t gonna know you.”

Shavonne shoots back, “Yeah, so what? You still gonna be uglier.”

The door bursts open, two guards rush in, and Miss Fuchs starts to point with a trembling finger: “Her. And her. And that
one, too.” That last one being me, the innocent bystander—well, except for that one little old slip of the tongue.

They separate the three of us like POWs and I get marched over to my counselor for the official interrogation. Mrs. Bigelow, way past retirement age, frowns at me from the other side of a desk so obsessively tidy, it’s obvious they pay her to do squat around here. “I’m very disappointed to see somebody like you down here, Martha.”

Somebody like me? I watch her flip through my record, silently moving her frosty pink lips, wondering what would possess a woman this old to dye her hair that particular shade of red, no magenta, no …fuchsia? And a plunging neckline might look great on Shavonne, but Mrs. Bigelow’s saggy, freckled cleavage makes me want to gag.

“Straight A’s, no disciplinary actions…” She snaps the folder shut and surveys me sternly. She pencils in her eyebrows, I notice, but apparently missed one today. “However, you seem to have started off on the wrong foot. You left school yesterday without permission …”

“I was sick,” I butt in.

“…and now I hear you’re picking fights with your classmates and using profanity.”

What—ass? “I used one bad word, and she started it anyway.”

“How did she start it?”

“She called me a name.” Four of them, actually.

“That’s no excuse. This isn’t kindergarten, and I’m sure you’re mature enough to figure out how to ignore certain people.”

“But this isn’t my fault! She’s been out to get me from day one.”

Her turkey neck quivers, and her one eyebrow flies up. “Martha. Now I know you might feel as if you, uh, don’t quite fit in here, but …”

Blah, blah, blah, and bla-a-ah! She gives me everything except the old sticks-and-stones routine.

“… so consider this a warning. Next time it’ll be a detention. And—!” She raises a pointy fingernail as I raise my butt up off the seat. “If you leave school again without permission, Martha, you may very well be suspended.”

Well, fine with me. I deserve a vacation!

10

Wayne’s waiting in the kitchen when I get up in the morning. He went out last night, without Momma, came home late, and slept on the couch. Shoot me if I’m wrong, but I swear I can smell rancid whisky leaking out of his pores.

“What?” he barks when he sees me sniffing.

“Nothing.”

He looks like crap, and it serves him right. He had no business drinking! So much for rehab, right? No wonder Momma’s still in bed again. Now she has a
reason
to be depressed.

Biting my tongue, I put on a pot of coffee, go brush my teeth, come back to the kitchen, pour him a cup, and drop it in front of him with a significant
clunk.
He slurps noisily, and lets out a blissful “Ah-h-h!”

I can’t be quiet any longer. “Does Momma know you were out drinking?”

“Yep, and I already heard it from her, so don’t you start in on me, too.”

What I want to do is ask him about that money he promised
me, because Mr. Hopewell wants us to have our instruments by Monday.

“Um…Wayne? Remember that cello we talked about? Well, I kinda need it by Monday.”

It takes him forever to answer, like he’s busy thinking about something else. Then, half in a trance, he whips out his grimy wallet and holds out a pile of green. “Here. This oughta do it.”

Wow! I snatch the money out of his hand before he can change his mind.

Mr. Hopewell told us to get our cellos from a music store downtown at Tower City. It’s cheaper there, but on Saturdays it’s only open from ten till four. I call Shavonne who makes me wait two hours because her mom’s braiding her hair, and then we meet halfway and hop the bus to Public Square.

First thing she says is: “Talked to Kenyatta this morning, and guess what? Guess what fat, ugly, foul-mouthed skeeza got her ass knocked up?”

“Shut
up!”

“Swear to God. Can you even picture it? All that naked, sweaty blubber rolling all over some poor guy…”

“Eew, stop.” Like I don’t see enough of Chardonnay’s blubber rolling around in the locker room.

“I mean, how’d he even know where to stick it?” Shavonne screeches as the horrified lady next to us flees to a safer seat.

They say there’s someone for everyone. I guess it’s really true.

…

Down at the music store, the snippy clerk digs up a cello, and only then does she inform me I need a “responsible adult” to sign the contract. “Just routine, dear. In case anything happens to it.”

I say in my most responsible way, “Well, ma’am, my mom
couldn’t come down here, but I do have the money.” I rustle it in her face. “So, like, can I take the contract home and bring it back next week?” It’s already two fifteen, and they’re not open tomorrow.

“Sorry, dear.”

“But I need it by Monday.”

“Sorry, dear.”

“Sorry, dear,” Shavonne mimics. “Yeah, you sound real sorry.”

The lady shoots us a granite smile. “Excuse me, but if you don’t have any further business in this store, I suggest you leave.”

“Hey, we been thrown outta better places than—”

I wrestle her out to the sidewalk. “Shavonne! You’re gonna make it so that lady never lets me in there again!”

“Yeah, well.” She shouts over my head in the direction of the door, “This ain’t the only music store in town, ya know!”

Sometimes I wish she’d learn to shut her mouth.

“Come on, come on.” I push her along. “Let’s go back and get my mom.”

Because it’s Saturday, we have to wait forever for a bus. I squirm on the curb in front of Tower City, eyeballing a beautiful black coat in the department store window. Oh, I hope Wayne stays in this generous mood for a while. A new winter coat would really be sweet.

I twist Shavonne’s wrist so I can peer at her watch: two fiftyfive. “Oh Go-o-d! We’ll never make it back.”

“Chill already.”

“I don’t want to chill. I want my cello!”

Finally the bus chugs along, but when we get back to my house, Momma and Wayne are nowhere around. I scream my lungs out while Shavonne tries to shush me. “Jeez! No big deal,
just go back there on Monday. Whole damn orchestra ain’t gonna fall apart.”

“Yes, it will!” I kick a chair halfway across the kitchen, then snatch up Wayne’s coffee mug and heave it against the wall. Damn him anyway! How come
he
didn’t know I’d have to sign a stupid contract?

Shavonne jumps aside as Grandma Daisy hobbles into the kitchen. “Lord have mercy! What’s all the racket down here?”

I hug myself, too upset to even speak, as Shavonne blabbers out the problem, and next thing I know, Grandma’s jangling her car keys and ordering us into the car “right quick.”

She has to slam on the brakes when Aunt Gloria rushes out. “Y’all get outta that car, you hear me? Granny, you know what the doctor said, you too blind to be drivin’!”

“It’s an emergency,” Shavonne begins, but Grandma Daisy can hold her own.

“I ain’t that blind,” she snaps. “And girl, I’m gonna run over your foot, you don’t step outta my way.”

Laughter explodes from Shavonne. Aunt Gloria ignores her, and points a finger at me instead. “You hear what I said? She ain’t drivin’ you nowhere—now
get out of that car!”

Grandma Daisy winks at us, then guns the motor and slams the car into reverse. Aunt Gloria has to leap into her own petunias to avoid certain death, and in less than fifteen minutes we’re back at Tower City. Ignoring the No Parking signs, Grandma Daisy crunches the front tire against the curb and then limps through the revolving doors, jabbing her cane, poker-faced and dignified.

“I am this child’s grandmother,” she informs the gawking saleslady. “Now where’s that contract at?”

The lady looks at me, then back at Grandma Daisy who
stares right back, eyes fierce and hugely magnified behind her bifocals. “May I see some identification?” She squints at Grandma’s driver’s license. “Ma’am, this expired four years ago.”

Grandma Daisy thumps a bony fist on the counter. “You see that picture? That look like my face? Good, that’s all you need, ‘cause I ain’t here for no driving test. Now you hand over that paper and give this little girl her cello, or things’re gonna get ugly around here fast.”

The saleslady believes her, and Grandma Daisy signs her name to the three-month contract. At the very last second, I spy a blond girl with a cello on the cover of a CD, bow frozen in midair, so I snatch it up and pay for it out of what’s left of Wayne’s money. Then I wrap my arms happily around the big plastic cello case—
a coffin with a handle
is Shavonne’s opinion—and lug it to the car.

“Thank you, thank you!” is all I can say, but Grandma Daisy waves me off, wrenches the steering wheel, and aims the car into a snarl of horn-blowing traffic. Shavonne shrieks as we barely miss the front end of a Hummer, but I hardly notice. I’m too busy hugging my cello case, and thinking about Monday.

11

Momma and Wayne have been gone all night long. To keep myself from totally freaking out, I spend Sunday on the couch listening to my new CD. The blond girl is somebody named Jacqueline du Pré and wow, the music almost has me gasping for breath. Edward Elgar’s
Cello Concerto in E Minor.
So beautiful, and so sad, it actually hurts me to listen—but is it the music itself or just the amazing way she plays? Is this something you can learn to do, or do you have to be born with it?

Born with it, I bet. But how do you know if you are?

By the next morning, still no sign of Momma or Wayne. To Jerome’s immature amusement, I lug my new cello the whole thirty blocks to school and store it in the music room where Mr. Hopewell swears it’ll be safe. Well, it better be safe or Grandma Daisy’ll skin me alive.

Instead of a last period study hall, I now have music class. This is just for strings, and there’s only like ten of us in the room. So what happened to the other thousand who signed up for the violin? Guess that twenty-five bucks a month weeded most of them out.

Mr. Hopewell, the Bill Cosby clone, goes over each instrument piece by piece. Then he walks around, and, one by one, twists our limbs into the correct positions for our instruments. Mine goes between my legs, so lucky thing I’m wearing jeans.

“Relax,” Mr. Hopewell says with a chuckle, but when I lean into the chair, he pokes me in the back. “And sit up straight. No slouching.” So which is it, relax or sit up straight?

We try a few notes, and the first ones sound
awful,
like a garbage truck, maybe, rolling over a raccoon. But the stuff my dad taught me dribbles back into my memory, and—wow—I’m playing this thing! Actually churning out real notes. Well, sort of.

Mr. Hopewell notices. “Not bad, Martha,” is his only comment, but it’s the way he says it that thrills me to the bone. “Okay, people, listen up. I want you all here every Monday, Wednesday, and Friday one hour before the first bell. This is not negotiable.” He gives me a thumbs-up, probably because I’m the only one not groaning.

Back home the house is still deserted, and I’m having visions of an orphanage right out of
Oliver Twist
with cold gruel, vicious bedbugs, and nightly beatings. Jittery and distracted, I try to concentrate on my cello, holding it with perfect posture, applying the exact amount of pressure to the heavy strings. But now the bow feels clunky and awkward, and my notes screech eerily in the silent house.

I heave the bow onto my bed. “Goddammit. Where
are
you guys?”

My mind spits out the worst-case scenarios: Car accident? Kidnapping? Murder, or even worse, one of those murder-suicide things? I check Wayne’s gun cabinet to see if anything’s missing, as the black hole in my stomach grows bigger and deeper.

What’ll I do if they never come back? Last time she dumped
me, I ended up in that group home with all those freaky, pathetic kids. Oh, please, no way do I want to go
there
again!