Hidden Hearts (21 page)

My head shot up and I said, “It can’t be right.”

His eyes narrowed behind his horn-rimmed glasses. “What can’t be right?”

“The story.”

He shook his head and looked like he had indigestion. I could tell he was already sorry he’d called on me. “What are you talking about, Miss Battle?”

I glanced at the students, many of whom had turned in their seats to stare at me curiously. They either didn’t understand what I was trying to say, or they couldn’t believe I was challenging one of the meanest teachers in the school.

“I think it’s ridiculous. How could the Pilgrims get to the New World and teach the Indians how to hunt and farm and fish?”

He closed his eyes like he was praying that I would disappear. “Please explain, Miss Battle.”

“Well, wouldn’t they be dead?”

“What?” he asked in total exasperation.

“The Indians were there first, right?”

“Yes.”

“So if they didn’t know how to hunt or fish or farm, how did they survive? They should’ve been dead. The Mayflower should’ve pulled up and found a bunch of dead Indians lying on the shore.” I heard a cough next to me and his angry eyes immediately shot toward Gloria Meyer. She had her head down, but I thought I saw a smile from underneath the dark hair that fell in her face.

When he mumbled something under his breath and pulled out his packet of office slips, I knew I was in trouble. “Miss Battle, I don’t appreciate your insubordinate attitude.”

“I wasn’t trying to be insubordinate, but I don’t understand how they could be so stupid. Here in Arizona the Hohokam Indians built all kinds of canals and that was thousands of years before the Pilgrims came. I just don’t get it—”

“That is because you are an impertinent girl stupider than any Indian.” He thrust out the pass and waited until I trudged to the front to claim it.

“I’m not stupid,” I muttered under my breath. “It’s your story that’s stupid.”

“What did you say?”

His question hung over me like a raincloud waiting to burst. All I had to say was something simple like, “I didn’t say anything, sir,” but that wasn’t me. I blurted, “The Pilgrim story is the dumbest thing I’ve ever heard next to that stupid story of Jonah being swallowed by the whale.”

He pointed at the door and all his blood seemed to be in his drooping cheeks.
“OUT!”

****

When Mama came to get me, her face was nearly as red as Mr. Corliss’s had been. She disappeared into Principal Landy’s office for a few minutes before she swooped out and grabbed my arm. She dragged me through the hallway, and if I’d had any friends, I imagined I would’ve lost some out of embarrassment.

We drove home in silence, but I knew from the way she twitched in her seat, played with the radio and took deep drags on her cigarette that she was ready to explode like Vesuvius. And when we screeched into the driveway she chased me into the house, smacking my butt as I walked through the door.

“Vivian Lucille Battle, you are the most ungrateful, disrespectful child I’ve ever known,” she hissed as she followed me up the stairs.

“But it didn’t make sense,” I argued. “How could the Pilgrims—”

“I don’t give a fuck!” She grabbed the wooden paddle off the bathroom door handle. “Bend over.”

My jaw dropped. That was the foulest language I’d ever heard her use, and it was so beneath her as a lady. She shook the paddle at me and I took a step back.

“I’m too old for that. You ain’t hitting me! I’m not a little kid.”

“You’re certainly acting like one. Now bend over.”

“No! That’s Pops’ job.”

And it was. She’d never paddled either me or Will but something changed in her when I spoke the truth.

“You lean your ass over right now! Right now!” she screeched.

And when I didn’t do it, she swung the paddle and hit me in the hip bone. I cried out and started running as it slammed into my back and nearly knocked me over. I righted myself, staring at my door that seemed a mile away, wondering if she would bring the paddle down on my head.

I stumbled inside, gasping for air as I swung the door shut, certain she was right behind me. But as it closed, I glimpsed her leaning against the wall, the paddle dangling toward the floor. I fell on my bed and sobbed.

Later that night Kiah snuck up the trellis, and I cried again in her arms. I told her what happened, hoping she could explain it right like she always did.

“Your mama’s not half as mad at you as she is at your pops,” she said, stroking my hair.

“What does he have to do with it?”

“Everything,” she said simply. “At least that’s what my daddy thinks.”

“I don’t get it. And why doesn’t your daddy come over anymore?” I asked, suddenly realizing that I hadn’t seen Mac at our table in a long time.

“He’s busy,” she said, and I knew she was lying.

She stroked my cheek and kissed me. Soon the dark afternoon in the hallway was forgotten in the tenderness of her lips. When she pressed against me I felt like I was sitting in an orange tree and all the little branches were poking at me in a nice way. Neither of us knew what to do but it felt wonderful just to
know
we liked it.

We heard the creak of the screen door that Pops had never fixed, and I looked down as Mama appeared on the porch smoking her cigarette. She didn’t look anything like she had earlier. She’d taken a bath, redone her hair and put on some makeup after our shouting match. It seemed like it had never happened. I didn’t understand how she could forget everything so quickly. I’d heard of amnesia and maybe she suffered from it.

Kiah took me by the shoulders, suddenly very serious. “You can’t tell no one about our kissing, Vivi. Not ever.”

“Why not?”

“It’s wrong, that’s why. Double wrong, really.”

“Why?”

“It’s wrong for girls to kiss like we do, but even worse, I’m black and you’re white and mixin’ is illegal. Do you know what the Klan is doin’ to couples who mix?”

I’d never even heard of the Ku Klux Klan until Mac and Kiah had explained it to me one night. Why grown men would run around wearing sheets seemed ridiculous and when I’d mentioned them to Mama, she’d called them a bunch of sons of bitches.

“But the Klan’s not around here,” I argued.

“You don’t think so? I hear boys talkin’ about the Klan all the time at my school. How they’ve run blacks out of the drive-ins or pushed us off the sidewalks. Don’t you hear those kinds of stories?”

I nodded. I heard all kinds of foul-mouthed slurs as Mama called them, not just about the Klan. Nigger, spic and kike were sneers regularly spewed by the white kids at the lockers between every class. It was like hatred took a break for fifty minutes at a time, just long enough for us to learn math, science, history and English before it started again. And lunchtime was the worst, which was why I was glad I spent mine with Miss Noyce.

A car rumbled up the driveway and both of us stepped to the window. Mr. Rubenstein emerged and joined Mama on the sun porch. She scurried away, leaving him to sit on the old divan with his hat in his hand. Two minutes later she came out with a piece of sweet potato pie and a cup of coffee.

“Why does he still come by?” I asked.

“He likes your mama. She’s beautiful and funny, and she doesn’t hate Jews.”

“She doesn’t hate anyone except maybe me,” I added. A shiver ran down my back as I pictured her coming at me with the paddle.

“She doesn’t hate you, Vivi. She loves you most of all.”

She wrapped her arms around me and the shivering stopped. “How long are you suspended for?”

“Three days. Mr. Landy says I have to write a letter of apology
to that son of a bitch Corliss. What have I got to apologize for, anyway? I just asked a question. Don’t you think that’s a good question?”

“It’s a great question,” she agreed. “I imagine those Indians were doing just fine without the white folks, just like my people were minding their own business over in Africa before the slave traders came.”

She’d told me fascinating stories about the slave traders who came from America and imprisoned her people. I hadn’t believed her and shown her and Mac my history book, which told us that the blacks
liked
coming to America. Mac had shaken his head sadly and shared some letters from his ancestors. Then I apologized profusely.

He’d grinned and said, “Miss Vivi, I believe that you will help change the world.” Then he’d gone to his room and when he came back, he handed me his copy of the first Wonder Woman comic book.

“Mac, I can’t accept this.”

“Oh, yes you can.” And then he’d kissed me on the cheek.

I’d sighed and hung my head. “I hate being white. It’s so embarrassing.”

And they’d both laughed for a long time. 

Headlights appeared behind Mr. Rubenstein’s Cadillac and my heart jumped at the thought that Pops might be home, but I quickly realized it was another car.

“Who’s that?” Kiah asked.

We peered through the window as a figure emerged in the darkness. It was a woman and there was something familiar about her silhouette, but I didn’t recognize her until the light of the sun porch shone on her face.

“That’s Miss Noyce, my art teacher,” I said. “I wonder why she’s here.”

I suddenly felt sick. She held my sketchbook in her hand, and I imagined she was returning it to me. She’d probably heard about my behavior in history class and now she was kicking me out of art too. Where would I eat lunch?

I started to cry and sniffle.

“Hey, it’s okay,” Kiah said, pulling me close.

She was right. When Mama came out to greet her they were all smiles, and I was surprised when Mama disappeared and returned with another piece of pie and coffee for Miss Noyce. It got later and later but nobody left. From my window I could see Mama’s ruby red lips move each time she added to the conversation. She touched Mr. Rubenstein’s arm periodically and the two of them seemed to be explaining something to Miss Noyce, who nodded politely. Once in a while Mama’s laugh floated up to my window and soothed the pain of the afternoon.

“I gotta go,” Kiah said as she crawled out the window.

“Say hi to Mac for me.”

She gave me a quick kiss and snuck away.

I found a piece of paper from my schoolbag and began to draw a picture of the Pilgrims landing on Plymouth Rock, dead Indians lying on the shore while the white men hovered over them scratching their heads in bewilderment. The hinges creaked as Mama opened my door and I automatically thrust the drawing to the floor. I hadn’t even heard our visitors leave.

She stood in the doorway holding my sketchbook under her arm. She looked like herself and I wasn’t afraid, at least no more than I ever was. She carefully set it on the bed like it was breakable.

“Miss Noyce came by tonight. She wanted you to have this while you’re out of school.” Our eyes met briefly before she looked toward the window. “She showed me your drawings. She says you have talent, Vivi, a gift.”

I thought of some of my sketches—the orchard, Kiah, one of Pops as I remembered him working in the groves, Will sitting on the front stoop thinking and the one of Mama with the expression I wanted her to have.

“She’s right,” she said.

I almost didn’t hear it. She said it so softly that the words almost got sucked through the open window by the passing wind. I almost missed the only compliment she’d ever given me. 

And it was another long while, long enough for the wind to announce its presence again before she said in a weak, flat voice, “Please, Vivi. You’re so strong.”

She headed to her bedroom, the tap of her pumps against the oak floor fading away when the door clicked shut.

Re: Definitely Friends First! – 27 (Central Phoenix)

Date: 2010-06-17 5:07AM MST

Dearest DFF,

The moon is a ghost now. I’ve fluttered beyond the horizon and past the oldest part of time. The golden yellow sun pierces my soul infuriarting and igniting me at the same time. Then I whisper.