At-Risk (7 page)

“But Mommy, he's so—”

She made a sucking sound with her teeth to silence me. “Hush. What's done is done. I already invited him and he said yes. I can't take it back now. Besides, it's only for the one day, Dorothy.”

My mother waited silently for me to nod or do anything to show that I agreed, but I remained still. We had never had an argument before. I had never talked back, disobeyed, or sassed her before. Neither of us knew what to do now.

By an unspoken agreement, we didn't yell. Instead, we retreated into separate corners of the kitchen, fighting with brooding silence. In the silence between us, my mother began to make our tea, lashing me with her careful, studied indifference. She had no words for me. My mother's anger hung in the air. In the clang of stainless steel against aluminum as she fitted the opened neck of the kettle to the faucet as if choking it. In the kettle she filled and banged down on the burner. In the three clicks it took before the gas came on. In the hiss of the tiny beads of water at the spout as they evaporated into the heat of the flames.

When the water was ready, I fought back with my own sounds.
The accidental slam of the cabinet door after I'd pulled down my cup. The dull clanging of my silver spoon hitting the ceramic bottom of the cup as I stirred too hard. The spill of sugar into my cup as I made my tea just the way I liked it—too too sweet—and dared her to say something.

The day of the tea, I showered, dressed in street clothes, and wrapped a scarf around my head to keep my hairstyle in place. I took my new dress and put it into a bag, along with my shoes and stockings, and headed out the door.

I passed the Laundromat when I turned the corner. Leon was open early this Saturday. He was bent over in the doorway, sweeping dust from the welcome mat. On either side of him, by the door, there were barrels and barrels waiting to be sold and shipped. I wished, for the moment, that I could climb into one and hide, that someone would seal me up and send me far away, that the ceremony could go on without me.

I walked quickly by before he could see me and caught the three train at Saratoga. I didn't switch to the four at Utica like I should have. I didn't know exactly what I was doing, but I got off at Grand Army Plaza, a stop that wasn't mine. I don't remember doing it on purpose, but I found myself far from where I was supposed to be.

There was a small Caribbean store on the corner by the train station. I went in and ordered a beef patty and a cola champagne and took it to one of the three small tables in the back. It was early still yet and not many people were in the store. No one bothered me as I sat in the back and ate the flaky yellow patty and tried to make myself disappear.

I never showed up for the tea.

Later, I would regret this act of rebellion. On college campuses, I would see sorority women like the ones who tried to mentor me. I would go to their step shows and social programs, watching them
hungrily as they all dressed alike and wore the same colors and melded into each other, distinguished only by their hair styles. I would see them pass each other on campus and call out special greetings, see them cluster together in lines in the cafeteria, see them never being alone. And I would think of how I missed my chance to know their secret ways, how I had closed myself out. I would watch them as if through a window of thick glass and I would want to break through and get in. But for now, I was satisfied to thwart their attempts to mold me into someone else.

I sat in my corner of the shop and I imagined the other girls in their finery being led into the banquet hall on the arms of their tall and strong fathers or grandfathers and thought of how I had no one. I blamed my father, whom I had never met. I didn't blame him for leaving us because he hadn't known about me. I blamed him for loving my mother in the first place, for loving her so much and so hard that she felt compelled to flee him across an ocean. I blamed him for forcing us to be alone, for leaving my mother emotionally paralyzed, scared to meet another man because she might find that same intensity again, the kind that could take her away from herself, and scared to meet another man because she might not. Had it not been for that, I could have had another father. There were plenty of men willing enough. They flocked to my mother wherever we went. They watched her as she carried bags, knowing she would not allow them to help. I watched them eye her when we rode the subways and buses, and whenever we went to visit relatives, there was always a new man, a friend of so-and-so's waiting hopefully to be introduced. But she would not entertain any man's company. And I was left with Leon.

I killed the hours in the back of that tiny shop. The woman at the counter didn't bother me. After I finished my patty I bought a bun and cheese and played with it. I wasn't ready to go home just yet, but eventually I would have to face her. I didn't know if my mother
was still at the rented hall, out somewhere looking for me, or already home and waiting. I had no idea what would happen between us when I finally made it back.

But on any other day, I knew how it would be when I got home. After a day of family duties that it would never occur to her not to perform, my mother would go through the house and head for her bedroom. There she'd undress in front of the mirror, revealing herself slowly.

A tissue from a box of Kleenex would take away her outside smile, leaving her house lips in its place. She'd pick up the brush off her dresser and pull it through her hair, not one hundred times, but just enough to quell the itch in her scalp and to direct the thick, unbending hair into order. My mother would shrink in front of the mirror as her shoes came off. She wouldn't bother to get her slippers. The rest of the afternoon and evening would see her barefoot. Small curling toes with fading paint would guide her to the kitchen, where she'd fill our kettle with water and would light a flame under it. All this would be done without sound. She would have had enough in the street and in the living rooms of all the relatives she had visited. She would leave the kettle to its own devices and settle on the couch in the living room. There she'd sink into the couch as if dissolving, feeling at this moment that she could leave the world and never look back. Then my mother would think of me. First she would wonder what I was up to and hope I was minding myself. She would wonder if I was behaving well. Maybe, for one moment, she'd think of my father and wish she hadn't left him. She'd get up and walk to the kitchen to turn off the kettle. And that's where she'd be when I returned. When she heard me enter, she'd call out and ask me how my day went, and I would tell her fine.

Blue sent letters, begging letters, meant to soften a small space in our mother's heart. The letters were frequent, relentless, more punctual than bills. They slipped in with the gas and electric bills, the phone bill and the rent reminder, long number-ten envelopes mixed in with the short fat ones the credit card people sent. For months, Blue's letters came from a rehab center in upstate New York, all addressed to our mother. Then one came from Brooklyn addressed to my brother, Peter. Blue thought he was being slick, but our mother knew what he was doing.

“I'm supposed to believe that all of a sudden he wants to see his son? What about all those years before? He must think I'm all kinds of a fool,” our mother said, finally deciding to read the last of the letters. She would have us know that she was not all kinds of a fool. She was no longer a foolish young girl willing to let Blue lead her by the nose. “I was a fool for him once and look what it got me,” she said, looking at Peter.

A few days after opening the first one, our mother softened. We came home one day to find her slowly going through them. They were stacked on the kitchen tables in two piles. She didn't look up when we came in; she didn't even notice us when we turned on the
TV
in the living room and glued ourselves in front of it. She just sat there reading. She burst out laughing in the middle of one letter, put it down, and shook her head at it. Much later, when I turned back to look at her, I saw that she'd gone through a whole pile of Blue's letters. She was working on the second pile, her hand covering her mouth, crying silently.

After some time, she remembered us. “What do you think?” she asked Peter. “Says he's back in Brooklyn now. You want to see him? You're old enough to decide for yourself.”

“I don't care,” Peter said. Blue wasn't the kind of father any boy would want to claim. A high school dropout. A heroine addict, a former one if his letters could be believed. A love from our mother's wilder days, Blue belonged to our distant past. According to Peter, he used to come by regularly. By the time I was old enough to have remembered him, Blue had stopped coming. He'd gone away to nobody knew where.

“Well, he checked himself into that place all on his own. I guess that says something,” our mother said.

She invited him for dinner, saying that it would do him good to spend some time with his son.

“Look at you,” Blue said, when I opened the door to let him in. He showed up in denim work overalls and a lumberjack shirt, carrying a small leather bag. His overalls were covered in grease spots, his hands stained with car oil. “I remember you when you could barely walk. Cute little thing in your walker, running all over the house, tearing stuff up.”

I let him in and followed behind him, hoping he would tell me
more stories about myself. Blue fascinated me with his skin so black it was blue, his hands so dirty his palms were black.

“Where's your mother?” he asked, looking around hopefully.

“In the kitchen,” I said. “Dinner's not ready yet.”

“That's all right. I need to clean up anyway. I came straight from work,” he said. “Mind if I use your bathroom?” he asked.

I pointed down the hallway. Blue took his little bag and disappeared into our bathroom.

Our mother came out of the kitchen, wiping her hands on a dishcloth. “Did I hear the door? Was that Blue?” she asked.

“Yeah.”

Peter came out of his room and joined us.

“Well, where is he?” she asked me.

Peter said, “I bet he's in the
bathroom
.” He said it slowly, enunciating each word. He and our mother shared a look, but all she said was, “Hmm.”

Blue stayed in the bathroom over twenty minutes. Peter timed him. He was relaxed when he finally came out and sat down to eat with us. Both our mother and Peter watched him guardedly, as if waiting for him to vanish.

“So how's school?” he asked Peter.

“Don't get this boy to talking about school. We'll be here all night. That's all he do. Eat, sleep, and breathe school. Read everything he can get his hands on. I can't get him to take his head out of the books sometimes. He scores the highest out of everybody in his grade at that school. They've already skipped him twice.” The way she said it was a complaint. Because he scored the highest on all the standardized tests and finished assignments in five minutes that took the other kids more than an hour, Peter was what teachers called “gifted.” He'd skipped two grades, tested into an enrichment program, and was about to receive a full scholarship to a private school in Manhattan
for the following year. These things did not make her proud, only perplexed. Our mother didn't like a lot of fuss. She'd wanted to raise a normal boy, not a gifted one.

“But that's good,” Blue said, impressed. “It's important he gets a good education.”

“You think it's good. I'd like to see how you feel when you've got to take off work to go up to his school because every time you turn around some teacher's calling you to come and get him!” she said.

“You fighting in school, boy?” Blue asked him.

“I wish,” our mother answered. “That I could understand. This was a while ago, but here's one. His teacher called me up because he disagreed with her. What was it about? Remember?”

“The shortest distance between two points,” Peter said, his head low over his plate.

“How's that?” Blue asked.

“She told the class that the shortest distance between two points was a straight line,” Peter explained, his voice sounding tortured.

“Yeah,” Blue said, as if he'd just thought of it. “It is.”

“No,” Peter said. “
Connecting
two points, but not
between
two points. I could draw a vertical line between two horizontal points that could go on infinitely.”

“Yeah?” Blue asked, as if it was something very special.

“Never mind,” Peter said.

Our mother wouldn't let it go. “And what about that book report you did that almost gave your teacher a heart attack?”

“I don't want to talk about it,” Peter said. He didn't like to talk about being smart, I knew. He had told me before that he had two ways of talking: one for when he was at school and one for when he was at home.

It was just as well he didn't talk about the book report, since my mother and I never understood his explanations. Peter had gone into one of his phases. He'd picked up Ovid's
Metamorphoses
and
gotten hooked on Greek mythology, reading everything he could find on the subject for nearly a month. He'd tried to pull me in with stories of Titans and Olympians, but I wouldn't let him. His favorite was Pan, the god of shepherds and flocks. He'd tried to tell me that Pan's death was a matter of belief, that he died simply because everyone heard and repeated that he had, and that his death signaled the birth of Christianity in the classical world, but Peter succeeded only in scaring me with his facts. I didn't want to know the things my brother knew.

“See?” our mother said. “I've got to deal with this day in and out. They're about to give him an award in three weeks.”

“I still say that's good,” Blue said. “Don't think you got those brains only from your mother's side. Smarts run on my side of the family, too, you know.”