Harry Sue (13 page)

“Well, in any case, Mr. Olatanju will have you this afternoon for detention regarding the little matter of ruining eighteen perfectly good squeeze bottles of finger paint. That will give me time to meditate upon the matter of the highly charged brassiere.”

He put his two hands, with ten perfectly manicured fingernails, on the top of his desk and pushed away, rolling back in his chair.

“Oh, and will anyone be needing this?” he asked as he stood up, the brassiere dangling from one crooked finger.

“Yeah,” I mumbled, reaching out my hand, my gaze on the floor.

I didn't have my backpack with me, so I had to crush the bra as small as possible in my fist. I wasn't halfway to Mr. Olatanju's office when my hand started to sweat. It was all I could do to hold on to
the thing, knowing where it had been and where it would return.

There wasn't much to live on over at Homer's house, but Jeez, couldn't she at least get something new to put there? Not so worn and frayed you had to feel sorry for her boobs on top of everything else?

When I came to the door of the art room, I smelled that smell again, like a tickle in my nose, like outside air after lockdown in Granny's closet, smelling her sour smell for refusing to eat her rotten cooking. Or like rolling down the window after being pinched between Sink and Dip in the car, their cheap foo foo mixing with Granny's cigar smoke while the Lawrence Welk Orchestra blasted from the speakers.

“Harry Sue, you are most welcome.” He reached out again with his big hand but stopped himself halfway. Dropping his arm, Mr. Olatanju made a little bow.

“In Sudan, where I come from, it is a custom to eat before intention,” he said.

“Detention,” I corrected him, stepping back so that my shoulder blades touched the wall.

“Yes, of course.” He nodded seriously. “But first, we welcome our guests with a little drink of fruit juice to refresh them after their long journey.”

I was about to say I only just came down the hall from Mr. Hernandez, but my nose got me distracted. Mr. Olatanju had cleared off one of the art
tables and covered it with fresh butcher paper. At the center of the table was a vase filled with tissue-paper flowers. Next to that sat a fat orange jug with steam curling out of the spout. There was also a big pitcher and a bowl that looked like they were made out of hammered pennies. Behind him, on his desk, sat two mud-colored dishes with lids decorated in swirls of yellow with black-and-white dots, and two plates with what looked like big spongy pancakes on them.

I took the little glass he held out to me. I thought it was lemonade, but it tasted so sour.

“Just a little grapefruit juice,” he said. “Not too sweet to spoil the appetite.”

The smells that curled around me were so strong they made promises. I tried to remember what I'd eaten that day, a handful of dried cereal at breakfast and one chicken strip for lunch since I had to spend most of my time in the bathroom making sure the wires hadn't come loose.

Mr. Olatanju took up the pitcher and said, “Now, let us rinse off the dust of the road before we eat.”

I was supposed to do something, but I didn't know what. I knew I couldn't keep one hand behind my back the whole time, so I came to the table and sat down, dropping Mrs. Dinkins's bra under my seat.

“Yes, just put your hands over the bowl.”

I stuck my hands over the penny bowl and Mr. Olatanju poured water over them. The water was so cold it made my fingers ache, but I felt cleaner, too, like there was a cold river between what had happened in Mr. Hernandez's office and what was happening now. He handed me a towel and I rubbed my hands dry.

“I'm afraid our time is too short to have a proper meal,” he said, going over to his desk and pulling two tiny cups from his drawer. He set them in front of me and poured from the steaming pot.

“Today, we'll drink our chai with the meal. Normally, in Sudan, we drink nothing at the meal, but things cannot stay the same always, can they, Harry Sue?”

Bingo. You got that right.

As he set the dishes down, I wondered if anyone had set a table for me since Mary Bell got sentenced. I didn't think so.

Mr. Olatanju nodded seriously and took his seat, shaking out his napkin with a snap. I realized I was sitting on mine, so I pulled it out from underneath me and smoothed it over my lap.

As he took the cover off one of the dishes, the powerful smell took me far away to someplace exotic where big jungle birds with shiny beaks and wings that looked like rays of the sun were taking flight.

I knew then I was so hungry I would never
make it back to Granny's under my own power, or up Homer's rope, for that matter.

Mr. Olatanju was all business. “This is
kisra,
” he said, pointing to the soft round bread on the plate. “We tear a small piece and use it to pinch the food in the pot, like so.”

He was so careful with his big fingers. When I tried to pinch the meat, my bread dropped into the bowl.

“No problem,” he said, smiling as he fished it out with a fork and put it on my plate. “The practice breads are just as tasty.”

Like the dish I'd tasted two days before, there was nothing hard to chew here. The bread, the sauce, the meat melted away to nothing.

Suddenly, my throat was so dry, it started to close. It was a familiar feeling, the one that came just before crying.

Somehow, Mr. Olatanju understood what was happening. He put his big warm hand on my wrist.

“Yes, Harry Sue,” he said. “It is the same with me. You see, Mr. Hernandez gave me your file.”

I thought this was my cue to tell the story, and for one second I wanted him to make me tell it so the smells that whirled around me like a spell would turn sour and give off the odor of rain-rotted leaves and make me lose my appetite.

But instead, Mr. Olatanju pinched a piece of
meat with a small scrap of bread and handed it to me.

“When we eat together like this, Harry Sue, we are reminded of the homes we no longer have. That is why the food tastes so … how do you say it … distinctive. This smell”— he waved his arm to take it all in: the spicy tea, the sour juice, the delicious meat—“is my mother. Sometimes, I cry when I make it.”

There went the look again.

Bingo. You got that right.

A small part of me started giving myself the lecture that began with, “Do your own time, Harry Sue.”

I wrestled it down and pointed to the other dish, the one that was still covered.

“Can I try what's in there?”

While we ate, it began to rain. I didn't notice it in Mr. Olatanju's art room, where it seemed like my stomach was filling with sunshine, but on the way home the sky was as close as the drop ceiling in Granny's basement, and rain pelted my face and shoulders. On days like this, the crumb snatchers had to spend the whole day in the basement, in the small room next to the boiler that Granny called the playroom. By now, though, they should be at their post in the living room, waiting for me to get home.

Though I expected her to be at bingo, Granny's ancient Chevrolet Impala was parked in its place by the door, a red plastic whiffle bat pinned under one wheel.

I scanned the windows for my crew, but the
room was empty, so I started to run, snagging my backpack on Licensed and Loving and yanking so hard to get it free I made the sign groan in protest.

Sink and Dip were clustered in a corner of the kitchen, eating Cheese Nips and pretending to read a soap rag, but the minute I came in, they dropped the magazine.

“Where's Moonie Pie?”

“Still in the tub,” Sink said. “We figured it'd be safer.”

I stood still and sniffed the air, trying to catch the scent of tears. Something was wrong, very wrong, but even so, I would check on Moonie Pie quick before heading down to the basement and doing the count.

“What's on?” I asked them with a look that said,
Give it up, fools. Now!

“Granny says the bingo money's gone out of her purse.” Sink chewed hard on a hangnail.

“She's just mad 'cause she left the lights on in her Impala last night and the battery's dead.” Dip rolled her eyes. “Wolf Man'd never take her money.”

On the inside, you will have a decision to make, Fish. You will meet the hardest hacks and the lousiest cons. And there will come a time when you have to make up your mind about joining them. Some cons and some hacks hit the joint yoked up and talking tough, but Sink and Dip were taking the
slow route. They could stay up in the kitchen, their hands wrist-deep in Cheese Nips, even though they knew Wolf Man didn't do anything wrong. And he was just a little kid. You do that enough times and you'll turn lousy, too, Fish.

I needed just a minute to get hold of myself, to pry open the fist that had grabbed my happy stomach. For an hour that day I had been on the outs, smelling things and tasting things no conette has the right to enjoy. It was time to get back to the joint.

I made the stairs in about three steps to find Moonie Pie had pulled himself up and was busy gnawing the side of the tub with that one tooth he was so fond of. He left off chewing to gaze up at me, his face filled with the kind of happiness that says,
All my dreams have come true.

I put my hands under his armpits and pulled his plump little body toward me. His bottom was cold and wet and his feet were bare again, but he still had that sleepy baby smell in his hair. He patted my hands and face and crooned to me in his baby language. Soon he would be old enough to hoist himself out of the tub, and I felt a brief flutter of panic at the thought of him teetering at the top of the stairs while Sink and Dip, their hair covered in shower caps, gave themselves highlights.

“I'll be right back,” I said. “Promise.”

As I put him down, he looked up at me and bit
his little lip. His eyes filled with tears, but he didn't cry. Before I left Moonie Pie behind, I snuggled those perfect feet back into his booties and thought to myself,
Now there's a kid knows how to do his own time.
We both flinched as we heard a crash coming from the basement.

Homer says you can feel a tornado. The pressure of the air changes and your skin just knows. I imagine Dorothy must have known when she went after Toto that the twister was about to hit.

Since there was no screaming, I figured Granny was working out some mental terrorism. Wolf Man was like me, couldn't stand to see others hurt. So chances were, she was going after Carly Mae and letting him watch.

Think. Think!

I tore down the steps and pulled the straightened paper clip from beneath the sofa in the living room, the one I used to pick the lock on Granny's curio cabinet. There was China Country laid out in front of me.
Were they happy to be sprung?
I wondered as I reached in and grabbed a handful. Most went straight to my backpack and under the couch, but I held on to that stupid little Dutch girl leaning forward for a kiss.

She was about to get hers.

I dropped her into my shirt pocket and headed for the basement. Just a little watery grayness
filtered through the windows. When my eyes adjusted, I found the crumb snatchers pushed into one corner of the cramped playroom.

The sound I'd heard was Granny beating the liver and lights out of Carly Mae's stuffed bear, Oswald. It lay helpless on the colored-plastic play table while she brought a broom handle down on it again and again. Wolf Man was trying to protect Carly Mae from witnessing the beating. She was pressed behind him, one fist in her mouth, tears streaming down her face, snot running out of her nose.

Granny might just as well have been tuning up Carly Mae.

“You. Still. Don't. Know. Nothing?” Granny asked, dropping all the acts and becoming just exactly what she was. Hadn't Mr. Olatanju said it—a bitter, dried-up shrew?

Wolf Man shook his head, the corners of his mouth low. He didn't know how to lie.

Granny brought the broomstick down one more time. A plastic eye flew off Oswald and Carly Mae choked back a sob. Wolf Man looked like he might die right there, standing up.

Sit up, Fish! This is important. A conette needs to keep her cool. I'm telling you true because this time it was harder for me than ever before. This time I wanted to jump. I wanted to leap off the cliff I was always on with Granny. Just one step and my life of violent crime could begin.

But I didn't do it. Because out of the corner of my eye, I saw Hammer Head standing off to the side with a real, honest-to-goodness hammer in his hand, looking like he was about to commit a capital offense that might net him fifty years and change.

Time for the show.

“Good afternoon, children,” I said in my mock-Granny-mock-welcome-to-the-parents voice.

Granny straightened and turned toward me, cocking the broom like a baseball bat. There were those red-rimmed eyes again, glowing like a light-up witch at Halloween.

“Granny's been so busy giving you quality care she forgot the art project for today. We're gonna make a sand painting,” I continued, pulling the little Dutch girl out of my pocket. “But we need supplies. We need … sand.”

I held up the innocent china girl with just one thing on her mind, a little smooch. As I spoke, I walked slowly toward Hammer Head. “So I figure we crush this porcelain baby up real good … with this!” I grabbed the hammer with my free hand and held it up. Hammer Head held on, too. “And voilà! Colored sand.”

I took my eyes off Granny for one second to whisper, “I see you givin' her the green light, but let's wait until there are no witnesses, okay?”

Hammer Head gave me a smirk and released
his grip. A big sigh escaped me. One less juvenile would be crowding the county courthouse today.

But taking my eyes off Granny had been a mistake. Just as I was near the edge with her, Granny was toeing the same line.

I looked up to see her advancing toward me, swinging her broomstick wildly.

“To scratch with my promise,” she said through her clenched teeth, red blotches firing up her cheeks.

“Tell her to give that back.
Now!”

“You talking to me?” I grabbed Hammer Head by the hand and leapt onto the couch, bouncing from foot to foot to release the pent-up energy. I had a sudden image of J-Cat swinging from the rafters in Homer's tree house and it made me laugh out loud and bounce even higher.