Hidden Hearts (8 page)

I pointed at her algebra book. “Do you like it?” I said. I figured I could at least be nice since she invited me into her house and served me some of the best lemonade I’d ever tasted.

Her whole face lit up in a way I didn’t understand. Nothing about school excited me except art class. “I like math a lot.”

“I don’t,” I snorted.

“Why not?”

“It’s too hard.
There’s
so many rules to remember, and if you miss one step, you get the whole thing wrong. I don’t think that’s right,” I added, hoping she could appreciate the injustice of mathematics. “It oughtta be at least half right.” She giggled into her glass and I sat up straight. “Hey, are you makin’ fun of me?”

“No,” she said, shaking her head. “I just never heard anybody explain it like that. But I guess that’s true. You can’t make a mistake or it’s all wrong.”

I hung my head thinking that she also thought I was a moron. My cheeks felt hot and I knew if I looked up she’d see my shame. “I need to be going.” I went to the door, my eyes glued to the floor.

“Where you goin’?”

“I need to get home,” I whispered. “Thanks for the lemonade.”

When I heard the door shut behind me I broke into a run, heading into the orchard that we no longer owned. I was trespassing and I didn’t care. I zigzagged haphazardly down the rows of trees that remained, changing direction in a split second and ultimately smashing my forehead into a low-hanging branch. I fell backward onto the ground and stared up at the offending tree. Instantly angry, I laughed, picturing the bulldozer clawing at the screaming branches as they ripped away from the trunk. My laughter died in the back of my throat and turned to sobs.

****

“How in the world did you manage to grow a goose egg on the front of your face?” Mama asked when I charged through the back door.

She was making supper and the sight of her daughter holding her throbbing head in filthy clothes did not deter her from stirring the gravy. When she saw that I was upright and mobile, she returned to her cooking, not particularly interested in my answer.

But she never was. She seemed to live with a perpetual scowl on her face, and I rarely saw her laugh except on her birthday or one of the few times Pops took her out. She was tiny and small-boned, and the stories she told suggested she’d been a spitfire, ready to take on the world. In the old pictures she’d looked happy. But Pops, Will and I had wiped the smile off her face for good. Her dislike of me probably should’ve made me mad but I felt sorry for her instead.

Today she wore a colorful blue apron with birds over her plaid pedal pushers and pink blouse. Even though she looked angry she was always a good dresser. She bent over the oven to check on the casserole, and I pictured Pops playfully swatting her bottom and making a raunchy comment to draw her wrath. She wasn’t as slim as she was in the old pictures and he called her curvy, but he seemed to like it. And I knew that other men thought she was pretty because they always whistled when she walked by.

And she’d make a point of saying to me, “You see, Vivi, they’ll be whistling at you someday if you ever decide to fix your hair, quit jumpin’ off the roof and start behaving like a lady rather than a moron.”

I shuffled across the linoleum, anxious to get upstairs and change my clothes before she put me to work peeling the potatoes. I slipped on some jeans and a T-shirt and started on my homework, but it didn’t take long before the doodles and drawings covered my math paper, leaving little room for the fifty mixed fraction problems I was supposed to complete. I was only on number four and my pencil was already dull from shading the portrait of Kiah that I’d started. I was in awe of her beauty and her dark skin and straightened hair fascinated me. 

I heard a tap on my window and jumped a foot in the air. She was outside waving.

“What are you doing?” I asked, opening the window.

“I was worried about you when you left. You looked like you were mad or sad.”

I shook my head and lied. “No, I just needed to go.”

She leaned closer. “What’d you do to your head?”

I automatically rubbed the goose egg and it started to hurt again. “I just ran into a tree branch.”

“That looks bad. It’s turning purple.”

“It’s okay.”

I glanced at my door, knowing that Mama would appear soon and announce dinner. I couldn’t imagine what she’d do to Kiah if she found her in my room. “You should probably go.”

“I know. I just wanted to check on you.”

“How did you get up here?”

She pointed to the trellis against the house. “It’s easy. You just climb up and walk across the edge of the roof. Seein’ as you’re a holy terror, I’m surprised you’ve never tried it.”

We laughed, and I thought of my math homework. “Could you show me how to do mixed fractions real quick?”

She held up the paper, and I remembered that I’d been drawing pictures of her. I tried to grab it but she turned away. I closed my eyes and prepared for a big sock in the jaw.

“Vivi, this is really good. I think it looks like me,” she said with tears in her eyes.

I smiled sheepishly. Will was the only one who ever liked my drawings. “Thanks.”

She grinned and we stood there staring at each other stupidly. Then she looked down and her brow furrowed as she studied the little bit of math I’d attempted. “I don’t understand what you’re doing. Let me see your book.”

I showed her the original problems and she shook her head.  “Vivi, you’re not doing this right.”

“I know,” I said. “I don’t get it.”

“No, that’s not it. Look, you’re not copying them correctly. You wrote down four problems and in three of them you mixed up the numbers. You’re getting them backward. It’s not supposed to be fifty-two and two-thirds; it’s supposed to be
twenty-five
and two-thirds. That’s why you’re messing up.”

I followed her finger as she showed me the difference. In three problems I’d written numbers backward. “I don’t know why I’m doing that. That’s really stupid,” I muttered.

Mama was right. I was a moron. I was twelve years old and I certainly should know the difference between fifty-two and twenty-five. I crumpled up the paper.

“Don’t!” she cried. She took it and smoothed it out. “I really like the drawing. Let me help you. I’ll write the problems down and then you solve them.”

She wrote out the first one and we worked it through.

“See, you know how to do the math, but you get stuff backward. Do you do that with your letters, too?”

I nodded. I never admitted it to anyone, but I remember Mama had yelled at me after the last conference. “If you wanted to take the time to spell the words correctly, Vivian, you could. You’re just being lazy.”

“Geez, no wonder you don’t like school,” she said.

Mama shouted up the stairs. Pops was finally home.

“I gotta go.”

“Okay, I’ll just stay up here for a few more minutes and write out the rest before I slip back down the trellis.”

“I…I don’t know—”

“Don’t worry about it. It’s cool.”

I looked at her funny. “Cool? What’s that?”

She laughed. “It’s the new way of saying
it’s
fine. Just go and make sure you take care of this bump.”

She gently rubbed her thumb across my forehead and turned back to my desk. My body froze, and, fortunately, she didn’t see my jaw drop before I ran out of the room to answer Mama’s call.

For the first time in my life a black person had actually touched me.

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

Date: 2010-06-07, 10:19AM MST

Hi. You don’t know me. Well, of course you don’t know me—yet. But I think once we met you’d like me, maybe.
Maybe a little.
If you haven’t guessed I’m new to this whole personal ad stuff and I’ve never answered one and I’ve always thought about it but I couldn’t bring myself to reply but I’d right the reply and then I’d sit there with my finger over the reply button and I couldn’t bring myself to actually hit it you know, and send it off into syeberspace because what if it’s going to a raving loonatic or someone who’ll turn out to be a stalker or worse one of those serial killers who prays on dates. But you sound ok. Reply back, pleeeeasse!

Posted by:  Chattylady1

Reply

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

Date: 2010-06-07, 7:10PM MST

DFF—

I’m gonna be honest. I’m nothing like u. I didn’t finesh high school cuz I couldn’t stand the teachers. But I’m street smart and I been a bartender at the Incog for six years.
had
my share of women and relationships. You didn’t say what kind of woman you liked and I’m cool with that. Sounds like u r open to different types. I’ve got tats, a nose ring and a nip piercing that drives my lovers wild. Down- I’m a big butch and I’d like to meet. What says u?

Posted by: Buck

Reply

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

Date: 2010-06-08, 1:01AM MST

You sound hot. Fuck me.

Posted by: Ladyinblack

Reply

June, 2010

“How can you do this?” Penn hissed. Viv had left the room in search of the requested handwriting sample. “You call yourself a
fan
?” Her voice was trembling above a whisper but the anger and disdain were evident.

“It’s not me. It’s the client,” CC said through clenched teeth. “As an attorney I’d expect you to understand.”

“I don’t,” she shot back. She dropped onto the couch and shook her head. “That note doesn’t make any sense. I don’t know that much about Viv’s past, but I’m telling you there’s either a really good explanation or it’s a forgery. Jacob Rubenstein was a friend.”

Viv returned with a birthday card that Chet Battle had given to her sixty years ago. “I save everything,” she explained. She held up the card and the note and compared them. “Yep, it’s his,” she said glumly. “I just don’t understand.”

“Why are you helping her, Viv?” Penn pleaded.

“What can I do? It’s the truth. Pops always had the oddest ways of making his
e’s
. He did it backward and half the time they looked like
o’s
with a tail.” She showed them the card and pointed to some of the odd letter formations.

“So what?
Make her figure it out herself. Don’t help the enemy,” Penn said sharply, glaring at CC, who quickly placed the note and the card into her briefcase.

Viv patted CC’s knee and offered a little smile, which only made her feel worse. “Don’t you listen to Penn. Anyone who loves Chloe is all right by me.” She looked her in the eye and said, “Please call me Viv. All my friends do. And next time bring your sketchbook.”

“Thank you,” she stammered. “I’m very sorry about all of this.”

Viv nodded but showed no other emotion, which surprised her, given Viv was faced with losing her home. CC had expected tears and perhaps screaming but she seemed calm, almost accepting. She had been surprised by the existence of the note, of this CC was certain, but as the conversation progressed, or rather, as their argument escalated, she noticed Viv had grown quiet, as if she’d reached into a bag of memories and pulled out a very unpleasant one that might explain the situation.

Penn followed CC out, carrying some books under her arm. “Yeah, you can bring by your sketchbook with the eviction notice,” she said acidly.

Tears welled in her eyes. She noticed a banana yellow Smartcar had pulled up next to her Nova.

“You can’t be serious about this case,” she continued. “Are you really going to put a little old lady out of her house?”

She turned and faced her. “There’s nothing I can do.”

“Of course there is.”

“I don’t have a choice,” she said, her heels clicking down the blacktop toward the street. She walked faster hoping Penn would turn back.

“Of course you have a choice. Just tell them no. Tell them you’re unwilling to toss a national treasure out on her ear. You know I’ll fight this,” she said, leaning against the car. “The media will love this story. This won’t happen.”