EllRay Jakes Rocks the Holidays! (3 page)

“I know, I know,” Mom says, laughing as if she’s just read my mind. “But you have to understand this about your father, EllRay. He can act on impulse
when the spirit moves him. And once he realized how much bigger a house and yard we could afford in Oak Glen, and how good the schools were, he was sold.”

“But what about you?” I ask, sneaking a look at my mom.

“I just wanted our search to be over, at that point,” she says, still laughing. “I liked Oak Glen. And your dad promised he wouldn’t mind the commute. He listens to audio books,” she adds, sounding a little jealous.

“But you guys didn’t know anyone here,” I point out.

“We don’t have family in San Diego anymore, either,” Mom reminds me. “Of course, I missed my old hair salon so much that I finally decided to keep driving down to the city for my appointments. And I knew I’d miss my old Balboa Park writing group, but I have to admit that I’ve gotten a lot more actual work done since we moved. Fewer meetings, more writing.”

“But didn’t it bother Dad that there weren’t that many brown faces walking down the street? I mean brown
legs
,” I say, trying to correct myself.

Mom laughs. “As a matter of fact, we happened to
see
a number of brown faces that first day,” she says. “Maybe that gave us a mistaken impression. We were both exhausted at that point, what with your dad’s teaching and you two little rascals to take care of. He just threw himself into the house hunt, and
ta-da
! But we’ve all made good friends here,” she adds. “And your dad feels that Oak Glen is becoming more diverse every year.”

Not this year’s third grade class at Oak Glen Primary School, I think, frowning.

But that’s okay, because skin color isn’t the reason I choose my friends.

“EllRay?” Mom is saying. “Everything is okay, isn’t it, honey? I mean, you’d tell me if—”

“I’d tell you if,” I say, nodding.

Before I’d tell my dad, I add silently.

“Everything’s okay, Mom,” I tell her as the oven timer dings and my stomach starts growling again. “Honest.”

And it is. But
man
, I hope she doesn’t mention this conversation to Dad.

2

“Pass me that brown crayon over there, okay?” I say to Corey, who is hunched over his white paper plate, dotting in a few of the three hundred freckles that cover his face. He swims every single day except Thanksgiving and Christmas, so he’s outside all the time.

These round paper plates are for our self-portraits. A self-portrait is a picture you make that stars yourself, Ms. Sanchez says. It’s like a selfie that you draw, Emma McGraw explained to Corey and me. She’s a girl in our third grade class.

Corey is frowning, and his tongue is sticking out. He says drawing is hard, and his face shows it. He could swim a mile, easy, but sitting-down stuff knocks him out. “I want the
dark brown
crayon,” I add, to make things easier for him.

It is Tuesday afternoon, and it’s still raining. From big to little, all I can think of right now is Christmas, and next weekend, and my after-school oatmeal cookie snack, and finishing this goofy drawing of myself before the buzzer sounds so I don’t have to work on it at home.

Our drawings are for the P.T.A. meeting. It is being held this Thursday night in the Media Center, which used to be called the library, someone said. Each month, a different class’s artwork decorates the walls—in case the parents get bored, I guess.

This month comes our all-school holiday assembly. After that comes Christmas vacation, which we are supposed to call “Winter Break.”

Today, our teacher, Ms. Sanchez, is standing in the corner of the room, laminating some old drawings and paintings for the Media Center walls, to go with our paper-plate faces. She must think the drawings and paintings look more important that way.

So we kids are basically on our own for a while.

“But you’re not
dark
brown, EllRay,” Fiona McNulty says, looking up from her own self-portrait.
“You should start with raw sienna. Then maybe use some burnt sienna, and a little chestnut for your cheeks, and
then
brown, but only for shading. Pass me the pink sherbet crayon, please, so I can do
my
cheeks.”

Fiona is the best artist in our class. Maybe in any class at Oak Glen.

Or the world, for all I know.

She knows every color by name, like they are her own private pets.

“Ha ha,” Jared Matthews cackles. “Burned sienna, EllRay. You’re
burned
. Like toast, dude.”

And his friend Stanley Washington pushes his glasses up on his nose, and he laughs, too. Most of the time, Stanley is like Jared’s echo.

“Hey,” Emma McGraw objects, and she stops drawing circles for her tangly hair. I can tell by her serious expression that she thinks Jared is making some crack about me having brown skin. She likes to stick up for the underdog, Ms. Sanchez said once, a couple of weeks after school started, and maybe Emma thinks she’s doing that now.

For one crazy second, I thought “underdog”
meant a dog wearing underpants. That’s why I remember it so well.

But having brown skin does not make me an underdog! And Jared’s not talking about color, so Emma can just relax. Like,
forever
. When us guys say “burned,” we mean insulted. And “toast” means that you’re done.

Over.

DESTROYED
.

Emma doesn’t have to go turning it into some big deal.

Anyway, if it
were
a big deal, I could defend myself—even though like I said before, all I want in the whole wide world is to blend in.

And I keep getting singled out! I
hate
that.

“Burnt sienna is an official crayon color. They just spell ‘burned’ the old-fashioned art way,” Fiona informs us, and like I said, she ought to know. She says she has all one-hundred-twenty official Cray-ola colors at home.

Fiona likes crayons better than markers, by the way. She says you can blend crayon colors together—the way she draws, anyway. Her blending-in skills are real feathery and gentle. Us
boys mostly just lay the crayon colors on thick and fast, like there’s a contest happening.

We like to get it over with.

Jared can’t even use a crayon without making it snap in half!

Fiona says her favorite crayon color of all time is called inch worm, which is a green that our class doesn’t have. We mostly have only the basic colors, and on top of that our crayons are kind of nubbly by now, not pointy the way they were last September.

But I guess nubbly, boring crayons are good enough for our paper-plate faces. Ms. Sanchez chose these plates, by the way, because they look like they have built-in frames where the outside circle part sticks out. I think we’re going to glue red or green holiday glitter on the edges later. Glitter is Ms. Sanchez’s best friend, she sometimes says.

She just means for art projects, though.

But it’s true: glitter makes any goofy thing we make look like we did it on purpose. I’m not sure the Media Center lady will like getting glitter on her floor, though.

“Can I use the burnt sienna after you, EllRay?” Kevin McKinley asks. He is the only other boy in
Ms. Sanchez’s class with brown skin. He’s my other best friend, but not because of that. Well, not
only
because of that.

“You should start with sepia, Kevin,” Fiona advises. “And then use brown, maybe with some salmon for your cheeks. Because your skin is darker than EllRay’s. Only I don’t know if we have sepia,” she worries aloud. And she starts pawing through the crayons on our table for Kevin.

What’s amazing is that Fiona is usually the shyest kid in our class. Art makes her brave, but only while we’re doing it. Which isn’t very often.

“Maybe I don’t
want
salmon on my cheeks,” Kevin mutters, scowling. “Mind your own business, Fiona,” he adds, louder. And I don’t blame him! Who is Fiona McNulty to go around saying what color a person’s skin is?

Except I know she is speaking as an artist, not as a skin-color bossy person.

Still, I’m glad my dad is not here to hear this conversation. There would be a parents’ meeting
for sure
.

“That’s a rude thing to say, Kevin,” Cynthia Harbison
calls from the next table. She is like the girl version of Jared in our class. Lots of opinions, and all loud.

“Yeah,” Heather Patton agrees. She is the girl version of Stanley, meaning that she is her hero Cynthia’s loyal personal assistant. “You’re practically saying Fiona should shut up, Kevin. And ‘shut up’ is against the law around here. It’s a
swear
. Be careful, or we’re telling!”

“Kevin never said ‘shut up,’” Annie Pat Masterson says from the table next to ours, defending Kevin. “That was you,
Heather
.”

Annie Pat is Emma McGraw’s best friend, and she wears her bright-red hair in pigtails that stick out like warning cones. Her skin is so pale that she almost doesn’t need to use any crayons at all when she colors in her face—although she’ll probably use peach, which I heard used to be called “flesh color” in the olden days, until people looked around.

But some kids still say, “Pass the flesh, please,” when they’re coloring. Annie Pat’s cheeks are pinker than usual. This happens when she gets mad.

Sometimes I get worn out from girls getting their feelings hurt.

It’s hard to keep track of who is feeling what.

“I don’t get why we even have to do this,” Jared says, trying to color extra hair over his crayon ears, which he accidentally drew way too big.

Jared doesn’t like being left out of any uproar.

“I guess it makes P.T.A. meetings more fun,” Emma argues, maybe thinking it was a real question. “And parents like looking at art.”

Emma doesn’t like to stir up trouble, but she doesn’t back away from it, either.

Even trouble with Jared.

“Huh. ‘Parents,’” Cynthia says, shrugging. “Your dad’s not even
here
, Emma. He lives in England. Remember? With his new family?”

I can hear Emma gasp, she’s so surprised at Cynthia’s fake-casual stealth attack—which breaks the number one kid rule about not talking about other kids’ families.

Ever.

“Be quiet, Cynthia,” Annie Pat says, defending her friend.

Worn. Out
.

“P.T.A. meetings are dumb,” Jared insists, glaring at Emma as if the whole open house thing was her bright idea. “My dad says so. That’s why he never goes.”

Me, I’m just glad we’re not talking about skin color anymore—exactly the way Corey would be glad if we had been talking about freckles, and we stopped. Or the way Annie Pat would feel if we’d been talking about red hair.

I could go on and on with examples like that.

We’re all basically happy with who we are, but I think no one wants too much attention.

It’s not because there’s anything wrong with brown skin that I’m glad the conversation has moved on. It’s just that there aren’t enough kids here at Oak Glen who
have
it.

That starts to make skin color a big deal, at least at times.

Not very often, though. And
PHEW!
for that.