Orphea Proud (3 page)

So that’s
where I was at when I met Lissa. When my parents died, a gray fog hijacked my mind, leaving me to look out at the world through an unwashed window. Then Lissa came along. I was ten and so was she.

The first time I saw her, she was flying a kite. Ruby had sent me to the park. The wind was fierce that day, biting. I stuffed my hands through the holes in my pockets, trying to warm them on my thighs. My lips were chapped.

Lissa had long, thick hair; it, like the kite, was being tossed in every direction. She held on to the ball of string. The kite was so high in the sky; a shadow diving
through the clouds like a lost bird. I thought for sure that the wind would tear it, or that the string would break. But Lissa wrestled it toward home, bracing her back against a tree as tall as a castle, fighting to recapture the taut string, winding until her hands burned, until the kite collapsed into the tree’s branches.

My heart sank. I could see now that the kite was a fish, lost forever, skewered on a bough. But then she began to climb the tree, which was probably fifty feet high, and she got to the spot where the kite was and brought it back down. By then I was standing beneath the tree myself. Her cheeks were tearstained and her nose was running. It was so windy, but I’d forgotten the cold. She held out the kite for me to see and smiled. One of her bottom teeth was missing. I smiled back. Then she reached into her pocket and took out a tissue and tore it and gave me half.

“You climbed really high,” I said, wiping my nose.

“I had to get my kite.”

“Weren’t you afraid to fall?”

“No.”

We stared at each other. I could see myself reflected in her eyes.

“What’s your name?” I shuffled my feet.

“Lissa, silly.”

“Mine’s Orphea.”

“I know.”

“You do?”

“You’re on my bus.”

“I am?”

“I sit in back.”

“I didn’t see you.”

“That’s ’cause you sit in front.”

I tried hard to remember. How could the girl who climbed trees so high be on my bus? I stared at her beautiful hair and my memory jogged. The shiny hair bobbing, the last one off, something in her hand … “Do you have a stuffed mole with sunglasses? You take to school?”

“And you have a stuffed dolphin.”

“Yes!”

“Told you you’re on my bus.”

She smiled her crooked smile again. She talked with a really cool lisp. She stuck my hand into one of her pockets. We walked across the park.

“Orphea is an unusual name.”

She used a big word. She was smart.

“Where did it come from?”

“My mom named me after a guy named Orpheus. He was a singer a long, long time ago.”

“In-ter-resting. Do you like to sing?”

“I sing like a frog.”

She giggled.

“My mom liked to sing,” I added, “but not anymore.”

“How come?”

“She died.”

“So that’s why you’re sad?”

“I’m not sad.”

“You’re not?”

“I was. But not anymore.”

And with that, my world brightened. She wore a red coat that day. The torn kite in her hand was turquoise.

She wrinkled her nose. “Do you like dolls?”

“No, I hate them.”

The next day on the bus, I saw her. She had traded up to the middle. By the end of the week, I had traded back and we were sitting side by side.

From then on, Lissa and I were hooked at the pinky. We shared peanut butter and jelly in the lunchroom and parkas on the playground. We did a science project together—a rock collection that we put together at her house. Her parents were white, but race didn’t seem to come into it. As a matter of fact, Lissa’s father, Mr. Evans, had fixed Daddy’s car. Daddy had taken it to Mr. Evans’s garage. So our two families kind of knew each other. Guess that’s why Ruby and Rupert let me stay over for supper at Lissa’s house sometimes. When Mrs. Evans cooked, Lissa and I helped by buttering bread or setting the table or putting the water on to boil potatoes. I helped Lissa surprise her family once by making a cake all by ourselves. By mistake we left out sugar and sweetened it with salt.

Lissa and I listened to the same music, rap and a string of folk singers—she taught me to dance every morning to wake myself up. Not that we did too much sleeping on our sleepovers. We talked until we passed out, sprawled across the same bed with all our clothes
on. Who had time to spread out a sleeping bag or change to pajamas, when there were secrets to share? She was the one I called when I got my first period. The one I told how much I missed Nadine. She was my best friend in the world. She wrapped my soul in golden ribbons.

Then came the year we were sixteen.

It was a perfect snow day. White light fell across my bed, forcing the colors in the quilt to pop like a field of sunflowers. My cheek was still warm from the pillow. Our toes were touching. Our knees rose separately beneath the covers to make four separate mountains. When we were younger, we’d stretch our legs up, too, and make a teepee. I could hear her breathing. On other snow days, we’d pulled on snow pants to get ready for sledding. We’d read ourselves into exhaustion and make ourselves sick with hot chocolate and marshmallows. We’d pummel each other with snowballs and shovel the neighbors’ walks for a quarter.

Now, at sixteen, we stayed in bed … touching. I reached over her chest and turned up the radio. She grabbed my hand. I stroked her hair. She held me oh so tightly. We gazed into each other’s laughing eyes. We kissed and kissed again. From my head to my toes, I was melting. The night we’d spent had been so surprising, for us both … and yet so natural. We had covered every inch of ground together, why not this? My
mind began to spin and when I closed my eyes, I could still see the hanging on my wall from Kenya that had once been Nadine’s. Blood red woven cloth, shot with gold, it stared down as our only witness, along with the white light flooding the window.…

Rupert knocked. I didn’t hear him. Without waiting, he opened the door to my room. I looked up. He stood there, frozen, staring. For an instant we were frozen, too, our arms and legs entangled, in the sheets and quilt, entangled with each other.

Then he lurched across the room and grabbed me by the hair. Lissa crawled over one of my legs, taking the quilt with her, slipping onto the floor with a barely audible scream. Out of the corner of my eye, I caught a glimpse of her, as I went flying. Rupert had found the strength in his scrawny body to pick me up, to yank me up out of the bed. Before throwing me across the room, he shook me. Even though I’m as tall as he is and I’m sure that I’m stronger, because he’s all flab and no muscles, his hatred of me in that moment gave him the strength. And I was too stunned to summon my own forces. Just like the time at Nadine’s funeral, when I’d tried to rescue her from death and someone had picked me up off the coffin and I’d gone limp. It happened again and I couldn’t help Lissa, as she struggled toward the door, grabbing her jeans and jacket and knapsack. I couldn’t help her, because now Rupert was slamming me up against the wall, butting my head against Nadine’s hanging from Kenya. I was crying and could hardly breathe, and the sun that had been so
warm and delicious was a floodlight in my eyes and my brother’s face looked horrific, like a monster’s. Then I heard a real scream and I yanked my head toward the door and Rupert kneed me in the stomach and it wasn’t Lissa standing there. Lissa was gone. It was Ruby, holding her arms out, telling her husband to stop.

“Don’t,” she cried. “Rupert, you’ll kill her!”

Everything got quiet and he dropped me.

“You’re going to Hell for this,” he growled.

If that could have been the end of it, I would have taken two more beatings. I would have offered up an arm or a leg, if only that could have been it. Just Rupert catching us and beating me up and Lissa going home to her parents.

I heard a car revving up outside. I hurried to the window. Lissa was in her van. She was having trouble getting out of the parking space, because of the snow. The tires were spinning and exhaust was filling the air. I opened my window and tried to signal her. At that moment, Rupert came outside.

He went around to the driver’s side. Lissa rolled down her window.

He was saying something to her. She listened for only a moment, then peeled off, skidding at last out of the parking spot. Why had Rupert gone after her? What had he said? Hadn’t he humiliated us enough?

As if he could read my thoughts, my brother stared up at me with a look that, even from down on the street, told me that as far as he was concerned I was an insect. I had been squashed, I was bleeding and tasting
my own blood; my arm was shooting with pain. I found it hard to walk, but when I heard his footsteps on the stairs again, I ran.

I ran across the room and slammed the door, and then I pushed the bed over, and then the dresser and all the other furniture. I barricaded myself in. But I needn’t have bothered, because neither Rupert nor Ruby came back. I leaned on the dresser, waiting, straining to hear what was going on, staring at a face in the mirror that belonged to somebody else it was so banged up and so scared.

That morning was the last time I saw her.

For my
twelfth birthday, Lissa gave me a watercolor. The painting of a leaf, translucent with delicacy, its every vein defined, sharp yet tender at the same time. I hung it on the wall in my room next to the window, so that the light could hit it. When Lissa saw what I had done, she was embarrassed.

“Why are you making such a big deal?”

“I like it.”

“It’s not a real painting, Orphea.”

“What’s a real painting?”

“Something by Picasso. If he had painted that leaf, it would be fractured and crooked. If you had gone
with my mom and me to the museum in Philadelphia, you’d know what I mean.”

“But fractured and crooked sounds ugly.”

“Not ugly, cool. You have a Picasso face.”

“Gee, thanks.”

“Your face is crooked. That’s what makes you so beautiful.”

“You need new contacts, or else go back to wearing glasses.”

“Orphea, you know that you’re pretty.”

“Shut up.”

“You are.” She wrapped her pinky around mine and a little shock went through me.

“Your leaf is pretty, too,” I said. “Better than anything I could see in a museum.”

I was telling the truth. There was something about that leaf. A personal quality, not only because it was for me. That watercolor was something only she could have done. It had her brand on it—know what I mean?