JEWEL (40 page)

I made it! and have it be the truth. For that, I figured as I looked back at them already lined up Candy and Marcella and Dennis and Brenda Kay and Randy and Jimmy, him shivering again there at the end of the line maybe all those red coils of clay were worth it. Dirt well spent.

“Everybody holding hands? ” I called out, and turned to the building.

“Ohhhn! ” Marcella gave out, and I turned to her, her eyes wide open with the ponytail. Her head was tilted to one side, her mouth open, jaw jutted out. “Ohhn! ” she said. “Dennis! Dennis! ” she said, and she held up the hand she was supposed to be holding with Dennis, just put it up in the air, empty.

Then Randy gave his yelp, put his hand up the same as Marcella’d done.

His hand, too, was empty, that hand supposed to be holding on to Brenda Kay’s.

I looked at Dennis, at Brenda Kay. They were holding hands, both of them with their heads down, staring at the pavement, mouths closed.

Dennis’ glasses had slipped down his nose, just barely hanging on at his ears.

I looked at their hands, saw how they were holding on, their fingers were laced together, as soft and gentle as could be, the two of them holding hands like they were courting.

I said, “Now stop that, ” and a feeling I’d known would come but which I’d refused for so long finally broke in me. It rose in my throat black and hard, and I took two steps to them, reached my hands to theirs, and pulled them apart. I said, “You, Dennis, ” and took hold of his elbow, pulled him away out of line, “you just stand yourself right on down here next to Randy. You just stand right there, ” I said, and directed him to the back of the line.

He moved slowly, lifted his free hand and pushed his glasses up. They were heavy horn-rimmed glasses, black, and made his face turn owlish.

They made him somehow look intelligent, the thickness of the glass distorting the shape of his eyes so they didn’t look so Mongoloid, so tapered at the outside edges. When he was at the end of the line, I looked into those eyes, looked into them maybe a moment too long, but a moment I figured needed to be spent this way.

I said, “Now you know we don’t hold hands that way. You know that, Dennis, ” and I tried to hold my eyes firm on him, tried to make JEWER zos myself authoritative, a word Mr. White’d stressed for so long, since the first day I’d ever met him.

But he smiled at me, then looked at his hands, stared at them with that smile on his face. He moved his right hand down to Randy’s, his eyes on his hand the whole time, and took hold of Randy’s hand, held it tight.

He moved his eyes back to the other hand, slowly moved it toward me, and took hold of my hand. Carefully he laced his fingers in mine, held my hand the same as he’d held Brenda Kay’s.

He looked up at me. His glasses’d slipped again, my hand in his, he reached up, with his middle finger pushed them back into place. He was still smiling, and looked at me.

“Okay lunch okay? ” he said, and nodded.

I paused, looked at him in that authoritative way I thought I had, eyes boring in on him even through the thick glasses he had on. I hoped he might hear what I was saying, really, Don’t touch my daughter the way you might want to some day. Then I pulled our hands apart, took hold of his the way I wanted him to, palm to palm, fingers together and holding on.

Still he smiled, and I saw it was lost on him, what I was doing lost on them all, they only started to fidgeting there in line against the station wagon.

I looked away from him and his smile, looked up the line to Brenda Kay.

She leaned toward Marcella, said something, a single word. Marcella’s eyes were open wide, staring off. Then she got the smallest glint of a smile, her eyes changed somehow, the corners of her mouth just turning up.

Brenda Kay turned, looked at me, said, “Lunch now, Momma! ” “All right, ” I said, Dennis’ hand in mine. I thought to grip it hard, but decided against it. We’d be inside in a minute, and now I didn’t know if I’d even have to report this incident to Mr. White, this little holding of hands that might not have been just holding of hands.

“All right, ” I said again, like I might’ve been trying to convince myself eating lunch was the only thing needed doing in these children’s lives. “Let’s go to lunch, ” I said, and I started toward the building.

CHAPTER 28.

I OUR EIGHT YEARS IN CALIFORNIA, Brenda Kay tested in that first year at a four-year-old’s level of intelligence, Leston worked driving truck for Pico Furniture and lifting and carrying more than his boss had ever let on he’d be doing, but it was work, money coming at us, even though Leston was fifty-two years old by then, a man too old for standing and lifting and carrying furniture. Every night I’d had to rub his back down with Ben Gay, his flesh never building up the way it might have were he a younger man, what with all that exercise and work, and I’d had to rub and rub and rub until he fell asleep under my hands, Brenda Kay brought home a pencil holder she’d made out of an old Campbell’s Soup can and a swatch of wallpaper, Wilman graduated Venice High, got on at Pico Furniture, Leston and him working together and moving furniture anywheres from up to the Hollywood Hills on down to Long Beach, Burton married one Sarah Kaminski, a Jewish girl he’d met on a blind date set up by Wilman and his girlfriend of the time, a girl Wilman’d known when he was at Venice High and who, Wilman’d confided in me once she and Burton’d announced their engagement, had had what he called a “nose job” since their days in school, a girl who wore her hair cut way short above her shoulders and who seemed not to like me at all though she wanted me to think she adored me, a Jewish girl, the two of them married by a judge in Santa Monica so’s there’d be no conflicts about any kind of ceremony whether Jewish or Baptist, though we’d lost the practice of attending church or Sunday School since we’d moved here Brenda Kay’s teacher, Mrs. Hamby, asked me to step in for her one afternoon for Arts and Crafts when she had to tend to a dentist’s appointment, and I’d had them all gluing popsicle sticks together into whatever shapes their hearts desired, Annie had a string of boyfriends a mile long through high school all of them pretty boys with handsome, hard jaws and crew cuts and plaid shirts and khaki trousers, and it’d seemed like we saw each one no more than three times apiece. Then she’d run in from that third date all crying, falling apart, and it’d be my role to go into her room, pat her on the back, console her and agree with her about the stupidity of Men, though I hadn’t yet seen a man around the house looking for her. Just pretty boys, Mr. Nathan White hired me on as assistant to the smaller children, and I quit working the Hughes Cafeteria, took to bringing in the clay and papier-mache and colored macaroni, Leston and Wilman both lost their jobs when Pico Furniture closed up and declared bankruptcy, and Leston got a job as a maintenance man over to El Camino College in Gardena for thirty-seven dollars a week. Wilman went down to the unemployment office in the hopes of only collecting money so he could lay out on the beach, instead, they’d made him go over to Watts to the Royal Crown Cola Company and apply for some job called Truck Sales, a job involved driving store to store and selling soda po>Nehi, Royal Crown, ParT-Pak off the truck and filling store shelves with it, a job he promptly got, started at fifty-two dollars a week, him still living at home, Brenda Kay at age twelve tested in at age five, James and Eudine had their third baby, David, company to the other two, Judy and Mark, Billie Jean had first Elaine, then Matthe back in Jackson, Gower transferred up there when the Purvis dealership closed down, Brenda Kay and the rest of her class made handprint ashtrays, hers kept filled by Leston so that I had to empty it each morning before Brenda Kay and I headed up to the Foundation in the second car we had, an old 49 Chevrolet Burton rounded up at Bundy, Wilman met a girl named Barbara Holmes while he and his cronies from high school were out one Saturday night to the ballroom at the end of Santa Monica pier to see Spade Cooley. Wilman and Barbara’d danced, then gone over to The Clock Drive-In where, he told me the next morning, she wouldn’t let him kiss her, this Barbara Holmes a Baptist girl from East Texas and whose daddy was an actor himself and who’d been in a few movies, even with John Wayne one time.

Her momma’d been a singer with Kay Kaiser and his Kollege of Musical Knowledge in the 40s, and Barbara herself was a Job’s Daughter. All of this was reason enough for Leston and me to give approval to them marrying eight months later at a church wedding in Culver City, to which Wilman’d been late because of his route taking too long that day.

The two of them honeymooned up to Las Vegas just over the weekend, Wilman back at work Monday morning, Barbara back to work at the telephone company, where she was an operator, Mr. Nathan White talked the Health Department down in Redendo Beach into giving up its old storeroom to him, there being now thirty l I l r two children holed up each day in the Foundation’s house on Adams. I was in charge of organizing the carpool down there in the South Bay, each of us mothers trading off driving, though I was there each day one way or the other, Burton and Sarah had Susan, Wilman and Barbara had Brad, and those two traded having children for the next few years, baby girls to Burton, baby boys to Wilman, Jeannie, then Robert, then Jill, then Timmy, Brenda Kay at age fourteen tested in at age six, Leston was made supervisor of the heating and cooling plant at El Camino, and I talked him into selling off the house in Mar Vista for something farther down the coast, our lives now moving south from Los Angeles, what with Leston in Gardena, me and Brenda Kay in Redondo Beach. We made three thousand dollars off the house in Mar Vista, bought a two-bedroom bungalo off Sixth Street and Ingleside in Manhattan Beach, not three blocks from the ocean Mr. Nathan White put me in charge of yet another of his big ideas, the families of all the exceptional children in the Redondo Beach class saving up Blue Chip Stamps in order to buy a station wagon. A year and a half later, in December 1959, we had enough for the station wagon, and I had another aspect of my job, driving that station wagon each morning and picking up the children, driving them home each afternoon, Leston was promoted to Head of Maintenance at El Camino College James gave up being a veterinarian for teaching high school Ag. in Leveland, just outside Lubbock, Wilman was made the first Pre-Salesman for Royal Crown, quit dnving truck and was given a company car, a black 1960 Rambler, and started driving from store to store and selling from sheets of paper instead of off the truck, the truck showing up the next day with whatever the store ordered, Burton quit Bundy, took a job at Royal Crown, and for a few months followed Wilman’s Rambler with his Royal Crown delivery truck, until he, too, started as a Pre-Salesman, Annie graduated Lawndale High School still followed by that string of boys, but ended up getting engaged two years later to a California Highway Patrolman ten years her senior, him having stopped her on the new Harbor Freeway for speeding, then writing her up, then asking her out, Billie Jean wrote and said she’d be out with the babies for the wedding in December, James called and said they’d all be out for the wedding, Brenda Kay at age sixteen tested in at age six Brenda Kay at age seventeen tested in at age six Today she’d held hands with Dennis.

CHAPTER 29.

THE TEMPTATION IS, MR. WHITE STARTED up, AND ROSE FROM HIS SEAT behind the desk, “to make more of certain things than is necessary.” He came round the desk and sat on the corner like always, arms crossed, chin down, eyes on the floor.

For a moment I thought he was talking about Brenda Kay and Dennis, though I hadn’t said a word to him yet, had just come into his office from passing out the lunchboxes to the children, each box masking-taped shut by their mothers, a practice we’d all gotten into what with the number of times they dropped the boxes walking to and from the station wagon, or moving into the classroom. One little girl no longer with us her parents moved to Sacramento last year, freeing up room for Candy even pushed her lunchbox out the station wagon window one morning, all I’d seen of it was a sort of small explosion in the rearview mirror, a sandwich and chips and apple all flying up into the grill of the car behind me. Now the windows were kept rolled up, all except mine.

I’d gotten the lunchboxes passed out, had the tape open for each of them, when Mrs. Walker, one of the secretaries for the Health Center, came into the classroom, told me Mr. White needed to see me right away, that she’d watch over them for me.

I’d turned to the children, saw all of them eating away, Brenda Kay slowly unwrapping her sandwich as if it might’ve been gold. She picked up one half of it with both hands, leaned over the table until her chin almost touched the tabletop, and bit into it. Fried egg sandwich. Her favorite, what I made for her most every day, either that or pimento and cheese.

I’d looked round the classroom, certain I was doing it, surveying it all, just to put off meeting with Mr. White. I knew, too, he wouldn’t come down hard on me for what went on, I just knew I’d have to tell him the truth of the matter, our first day at the high school had been, in fact, a disaster.

Not that anything bad had happened, actually, they were just themselves today. On the batteries of tests the Foundation gave, not one of them had ever placed higher than a ten-year-old’s capabilities, as far as the public school system out here was concerned, these children could make coil ashtrays and miss baskets for the rest of their lives and still get no better at it, still break down into laughter at whatever they thought was funny.

But that wasn’t what I was in this for, the simple ritual of just killing time in these children’s lives. I’d signed on for the long haul, certainly, I’d be with my Brenda Kay until the end of my days, but not just so I could keep treading water. There was a way to fix this thing, I knew, and it had something to do with getting these kids over to West High School even if for only an hour or two a day. Only an hour out in the world, but one they might not otherwise get, some head start at the end point I figured all we mothers and fathers and brothers and sisters of these children were aiming at, solving these lives. I could just picture Mrs. Klausman doing her part to end it all before it’d even started, her marching into the principal’s office and laying in on him how horrid these children’d been, how worth nothing they were. They couldn’t even dribble a ball.