All the Colors of Time (20 page)

Constantine’s nose wrinkled in consternation. “You mean we
have to put all our stuff away?”

“That would be best.”

“But if we don’t have toys or anything our friends will
think we’re fanatics. You know what the Book says about fanaticism.”

Troy Jones spent a solid five seconds looking completely
confounded. He knew very well what the Book said about fanaticism and was
trying to work out how he could not have it apply to this situation.

“It’s okay, Dad,” Tam interjected. “Stasi and I will go
through their stuff and pick out what’s okay for public consumption.”

Troy smiled. “Thanks. Now, you can’t all bring friends home
at once, so we’ll have to set up a system.”

“How about first ask, first come?” asked Tahireh.

Her father considered that. “Sounds reasonable.”

She immediately raised her hand, waving it energetically in
the air over the casserole. “Me! Me! I’m first! Can I bring my new friend Frog
home for dinner tomorrow?”

“Frog?” echoed Tam. “Is that a friend or a pet?”

“His eyes are kind of buggy,” Tahireh explained, “so the
other kids call him ‘Frog.’ Can he come?”

Helen glanced at her husband. “How about Friday? We’ll need
some time to police the household.”

Tahireh nodded. “Friday’s good.”

Dinner was a little more companionable after that, but Stasi
couldn’t help wondering if they’d just opened themselves up to a whole new
order of agony.

oOo

“It’s just going to make things worse,” said Tam stonily.
He kicked at a puffball toadstool and was satisfied when it burst, scattering
its powder of spores everywhere.

“Must you abuse the local flora?” asked Tahireh, then
charged away from him down the path into town.

“I know,” said Stasi.

She admired the way the grass along the path lay over in the
wind like soft, green seaweed in a lazy current. She leaned over and ran her
fingers across the undulating tendrils.

Tam stopped beside her on the trail and watched her. “You’re
going to make friends with that Elaine, aren’t you?”

Stasi straightened. “I suppose so.”

“Why? You know what’ll happen. It’s just going to hurt.”

“I know. But I can’t shut everybody out the way you can.”

“You could learn. I did.” He turned and walked on down the
path, leaving her alone under the maples.

She felt suddenly morose, and followed him lethargically to
school where everybody she saw stared at her. Really stared, as if she were
still wearing her pajamas. It was even worse than the day before. She glanced
down at herself. Her jeans were zipped, her shoes were tied. She tilted a
glance over her shoulder and down her back. There were no rips, no stains, no
signs that said, “Kick me!”

It must be my
earrings,
she thought, and settled at a desk next to Elaine in the second
row.

Everything seemed normal after that until Miss Tindall asked
a question and Stasi rose to answer it. She’d barely gotten two words out of
her mouth before she became aware of a sudden shift in the level of tension in
the room. She heard a gasp, a murmured “uh-oh,” and glanced down at Elaine, who
was staring at her incredulously.

Miss Tindall, hearing the sudden silence behind her, turned
from the blackboard. “Now, Anastasia, I know—”

The class was never to hear what she knew. Miss Tindall’s
eyes widened. Her next utterance was, “Anastasia—!”

Anastasia blinked and stared back into her teacher’s face.
Had the world chosen this morning to go completely mad? She suddenly felt like
Alice facing a pack of gawping playing cards and the Red Queen.

Miss Tindall set her chalk in the tray and dusted her
fingers on the neat piece of gingham flannel she kept on a hook by the board.

“Anastasia,” she said, “please go out into the hall and wait
for me.”

“Why? What’s wrong?” She heard “What’s wrong?” echoed
derisively by several muffled voices.

“In the hall, please. Class, you may start your reading
assignment on page five in the history text while I’m gone.”

Stasi let the door fall shut and waited, miserably, in the
silent hallway. What was wrong with her? Had she suddenly sprouted a moustache
and glasses? She explored her face gingerly. Did she have spots? She was
supposed to be inoculated against just about every known disease. Had one of
her siblings played a joke on her?

The classroom door swung open and Miss Tindall appeared,
looking very serious.

“Anastasia, can you explain yourself?”

No, Miss Tindall, I
can’t,
she thought. Aloud, she said, “Explain what? What’ve I done? Why is
everyone staring at me?”

“Are you serious? Young lady, what do you expect, when you
come to school dressed in such completely inappropriate attire?”

Stasi did a quick mental inventory of her person. The simple
white shirt, canvas shoes. Her hand flew to the huge black and white zebra
earrings that dangled from her ears.

“I’m sorry. Is there some rule about earrings?”

“Earrings? Young lady, you are stretching both my credulity
and my patience. What ever possessed you to think you could get away with
wearing pants to school? Blue
jeans
,
no less!”

Completely taken aback, Stasi answered honestly. “They made
fun of my good clothes. Mom told me to wear these until we could go shopping
for something that would . . . fit in better.”

“Your mother told you to wear Levis? I find that difficult
to believe. Anastasia, are you sure you’re telling me the truth? I don’t know
of a single school in this country that will tolerate girls wearing pants to
class.”

“Oh. I’m sure Mom didn’t realize that. The last place we
lived, you could wear just about anything you wanted.”

Miss Tindall looked entirely skeptical. “Oh? And where was
this—Mars?”

Stasi blinked and licked her lips, feeling a giggle forming
in her throat.

“Paris,” she said. “Paris, France.”

Miss Tindall sighed. “I see. Well, I’m sorry, Stasi, but I
really have no choice but to send you home for the rest of the day. When you
come in tomorrow, make sure you’re wearing a dress. I’ll send your assignments
home with your brother. And I’m afraid I’m going to have to have a word with
your mother about this. It’s school policy.”

“Good,” Stasi murmured.

“What?”

“I said, ‘Good,’” she repeated, her eyes feeling tight with
tears. “Maybe then they’ll see that we don’t belong here.”

She darted away, then, down the corridor, out the back door
of the Secondary wing, and home.

oOo

Helen Jones heard the slam of the front door and the rapid
pounding of feet up the stairs to the second floor. She left her husband, who
was oblivious to both the pounding and his wife’s departure from their shared
laboratory/office, and went upstairs to find her daughter flung across her bed
glaring at the ceiling.

“Well, young lady, can you tell me what you’re doing home at
0900 hours?”

“I was inappropriately attired. And if one more person calls
me ‘young lady’ in that tone of voice, I’ll scream bloody murder.”

Frowning, Helen moved to sit on the edge of the bed. “You
were what?”

Stasi sat up and looked her mother in the eye, a mutinous
expression on her face. “Girls are not allowed to wear pants to school here,
Mom. They think it’s immoral or something.”

Helen blinked. “Oh. Oh, dear. Honey, I’m sorry. I didn’t
check. It didn’t even occur to me that—”

“I know, I know . . . . She wants to talk to
you and Dad.”

“Who?”

Stasi grimaced. “Miss Tindall. My teacher.”

“I’ll go in tomorrow morning and talk to her,” Helen
decided.

“And say what, Mom? What can you tell her that will make her
understand why I don’t fit in?”

“Don’t worry about it, honey. I’ll make her understand.”

She patted her daughter’s knee and left.

Already writing the
speech,
Stasi thought, and flopped back onto the bed with a groan.

They went clothes shopping after lunch, and Stasi spent the
remainder of the afternoon wrinkling her nose at her new skirts and dresses as
she hung them up and shortening the hemlines of a few of her old ones. That
task also required a modicum of facial contortions.

Tam brought her homework in as soon as he got home. She was
reading, and he dropped the schoolbooks on the foot of her bed.

“What happened?”

Stasi put down her book. “Girls don’t wear blue jeans to
school in nineteen-fifties America.”

Tam whistled. “And Mom and Dad didn’t know that? Jeez, they
must be slipping. They used to have all that stuff iced.”

“Why should they care? They’re too busy researching books
and digging up artifacts to care about what’s acceptable fashion in some little
pie-dink town in Nebraska.”

“Podunk,” he corrected. “If we were home—”

“Home? What’s that?”

Tam stared at the book Reader lying between them, ran his
fingers over the smooth plastic shell. That was from Home.

“Do you remember Danice Patten?”

Stasi shot him a dark glance. “Of course, I remember Danice.
She was my best friend.”

“Do you wish we could go back?”

“Stupid question, Tam. What good does it do to wish? What
was it you said—if wishes were wheels—”

“What if we did more than wish?”

Stasi looked at her younger brother doubtfully. “Like what?
Talking to them doesn’t help. They don’t listen. You should have heard Mom this
morning—all hot-fizz to explain to Miss Tindall why her daughter is such a
social misfit. ‘I’ll make her understand, honey,’” she mimicked.

Tam snorted. “That means they’re going to do their Richard
and Mary Leakey routine.”

“Right, and trot out that tired old ‘Helen of Troy’ line.
They love this, Tam. They’re home for each other. They didn’t have that many
friends when we were home. Just books and artifacts and colleagues in the field.”

“And us. C’mon, Sis, let’s not dive off the pier,” he added
when she pulled a sour face.

“Okay. All right. And us. But they never hear us, Tam. Then
we say we’re miserable or lonely or homesick, they just tune it out, or pretend
we’re going through a phase or having a bad day.”

“Then maybe we can do something to make them tune us in. You
know—actions that speak louder than words, et cetera.”

Stasi picked up the Reader again, fingering it almost
reverently—a memento from another life. Home. Suddenly, she was angry at Tam
for even making her think about it.

“What actions, Tam?” she asked, bitter. “What actions could
we possibly take that would show them what they can’t see? You know what we can
do? Nothing. We could all commit suicide tomorrow and they’d think it came out
of nowhere.”

Tam glanced at her sharply. “You wouldn’t—”

“No, of course not. But sometimes I do think about mutiny.
About tying them up and making them take us Home.”

“Anastasia!” Their mother’s voice floated up the stairs. “Stasi?”

Stasi got up and went out onto the landing. “Yeah, Mom?”

“There’s someone down here to see you. Elaine?”

Stasi froze for a moment, suddenly loathe to carry on what
she had started.

“Um, okay,” she said finally. “I’ll be right down.” She
padded downstairs with Tam on her heels and met her Mom and Elaine in the front
hall. “Hi, Elaine. What’s—what’s up?” The last word came out a little too
brightly.

“I just wanted to see if you were okay.”

“Yeah. I’m all right.” She looked at her Mom. “Can Elaine
come up to my room?”

Helen smiled, her eyes anxious. “As long as it’s clean,
dear.”

Stasi remembered the book Reader. “Oh, I—”

“It’s clean,” Tam averred. “Of course, all the embarrassing
stuff is under the pillows.” He favored his sister with a secret glance.

“Thanks,” she told him, and led her new friend upstairs.

oOo

Troy and Helen Jones appeared in the offices of the
Papillion Community School just before classes were to start the morning after
Stasi’s run-in with school regulations.

Miss Tindall was obviously surprised to see them—surprised
and a little nervous. That they were both dressed in the khaki uniform of field
anthropologists might have contributed to that unease. She was determined not
to let it show.

“Hello, Miss Tindall, isn’t it?” Troy Jones shook her hand. “I’m
Troy Jones and this is my wife, Helen.”

Helen smiled. “That’s me—Helen of Troy.”

Miss Tindall smiled in return. “Yes, of course. How amusing.”
She seated them in a conference cubicle and moved to barricade herself behind a
wooden desk. “Frankly, I’m surprised to see you. I didn’t expect Anastasia to
tell you much about our little misunderstanding.”

“Our children tell us everything, Miss Tindall,” Troy
assured her. “We have a very open relationship.”

Miss Tindall looked doubtful. “Did she tell you why I sent
her home?”

“Yes, inappropriate dress, wasn’t it? You know, I really don’t
understand that. With the weather being so nippy these days, I’d think blue
jeans would be just what the meteorologist ordered.”

Miss Tindall blinked. “I . . . There are
rules, Mr. Jones.”

“Doctor Jones.”

“Excuse me. Doctor Jones. There are rules that govern how
our young ladies dress. We expect them to be obeyed.”

“Why? Good God, surely you don’t want your young ladies
freezing to death at their bus stops in the winter?”

“Of course not. They’re free to wear
nice
pants to school as long as they remove them and put them in
their lockers during class.”

Dr. Jones gaped. “They run around in their underwear?”

Helen giggled into her hand.

Miss Tindall did not giggle. She didn’t even smile. She
fixed him with a cool gaze and said, “They wear the pants under their skirts,
Dr. Jones.”

“But that’s redundant.”

“It’s the rule, Doctor. I didn’t make the rule. I only
enforce it. Do you honestly want your daughter parading around dressed like a
boy?”