Between Madison and Palmetto (8 page)

“Okay,” Margaret said. “Mama was right. Running helps. My body feels different. It's starting to feel okay. Like it belongs to me. I look at Mama's body and it's nice. If that's what I'm going to look like, then I'm okay.”

“For real ‘okay' or for fake 'okay‘?”

Margaret rolled her eyes. “For real okay. I'm really not puking anymore. Sometimes I want to and I start thinking about how crappy it makes me feel. It can kill you, doing that. I don't want to die.” She shrugged. “I don't want to be like those girls who make themselves sick to be skinny. You know what?”

“What?” Maizon asked.

“I don't even want to be skinny. For me, skinny's stupid. Healthy's nice. I chant that every day, like a mantra. I'm really starting to believe it.”

“Yes!!!” Maizon yelled. She hugged Margaret. “Yes!!!”

Margaret laughed. “You're still crazy, Maizon. Some things don't change.”

“Guess what?” Maizon said. “I'm not really so flat chested anymore.”

Margaret laughed. “For real not flat chested or for fake?”

Maizon held up her hand. “Scout's honor it's not tissue.”

“You were never a Scout, Maizon.”

“Well, I'm being as honest as one.”

At the corner they passed a group of boys. “Are you two in love or what?” a skinny boy yelled.

Maizon held up their clasped hands and smirked. “Maybe. It's a free country,” she yelled.

“It's a free country,” the boys mocked.

“It's a—it's a—it's a free country,” Maizon yelled over and over at the top of her lungs.

When she stopped yelling, out of breath, Margaret was laughing so hard, her eyes were blurred with tears. “It's a—it's a—it's a free country!” Margaret screamed, not caring that the boys were staring at them like they were crazy. Not caring that people were pushing their windows open to look down at them. This country was a whole lot of things, but it sure wasn't free, Margaret thought, and knew Maizon was thinking the same thing, how ridiculous a statement “It's a free country” really was, how a long, long time ago they had both believed it and would say, “It's a free country,” to anyone who dared say, “Get out of my yard” and “Don't say that” or “Don't stand there.”

Suddenly Maizon stopped laughing and placed her right hand over her heart. “I pledge allegiance,” she began solemnly.

Margaret jumped into a standing position and did the same thing. “I pledge allegiance,” she said.

“To my friend,” Maizon continued, looking up at the leaves. The first time she and Margaret had chanted this, they were in the fourth grade and had just realized what the Pledge of Allegiance meant. “Let's pledge allegiance to us,” Maizon had suggested.

Margaret raised her head. Streams of sun poured past the branches.

“To my friend,” Margaret said.

“And to the United States of Me!” they finished in unison, then looked at each other and smiled.

“Grandma said I should invite you over for waffles tomorrow.”

Margaret raised an eyebrow. “With bananas?”

“Blueberries and bananas.”

“I think it would be in my best interest to spend the night so that I can be on time,” Margaret said, trying to keep a straight face. “First you have to run with me in the morning, though.”

Maizon scowled. “I hate running.”

“I'll go slow.”

“I'll ride my bike.”

Margaret thought for a moment, then smiled. “Deal.”

Maizon took her hand again, leading her toward Palmetto. “Feel like we've walked this strip a trillion times.”

“Trillion and one easily,” Margaret said.

Maizon took a deep breath. The air was cool against the back of her throat. “You still kissing all over Bo?”

“Not all over, just on the lips, sometimes.”

“Yuck!” Maizon said, making a face. “Spit swapper.”

“He actually kisses all right.”

Maizon rolled her eyes. “As if you have something to compare it to.”

Margaret giggled. “You know something, Maiz?”

“You're going to say this is the happiest you've felt in a long time.”

Margaret stopped, raising her eyebrows. “How'd you know that?”

“‘Cause it's the happiest I've felt in a long time.”

“Honest?”

“Honest!”

“This is what Ms. Dell knew, and probably Li‘l Jay,” Margaret began wonderingly. “That we would be all right after all. That all this stuff would happen to us, but in the end we'd be okay.”

Maizon nodded. “None of them—Ms. Dell, your mom, my grandma, Li‘l Jay, even Cooper and Hattie—none of them would ever let anything happen to us, Margaret.”

“We're their favorite girls.” Margaret laughed.

“We are. I came back from Blue Hill and it was like they were all waiting for me, ready to take me in like a prodigal daughter.”

“But you didn't feel like you belonged here then.”

Maizon was thoughtful. “I still don't. I mean, I still feel like a part of me is somewhere else—like I live between two worlds.”

“You think that feeling's ever going to go away?”

Maizon shook her head. “I doubt it. But it's okay. I feel so good today. And Cooper coming back is like a new beginning to returning to Madison Street. You get what I'm saying?” She looked at Margaret, searching her eyes. Margaret nodded.

“Even you and me walking today,” Maizon said. “Us together with nobody else, they way it used to be—this is a new beginning of us the old way.”

Maizon smiled in a way that Margaret recognized from a long time ago, before Blue Hill, before her father died, before everything started changing.

“Margaret and Maizon!!” Maizon yelled, waving a fist into the air. “Friends forever!!”

“Yeah,” Margaret said, feeling happiness warm her all over. “We're going to be two old ladies together,” she said. “Sitting in rocking chairs on my stoop.” She linked her fingers into Maizon's.

“Talking about what used to be,” Maizon said. “Clicking our false teeth, drinking tea, pulling our shawls up over our shoulders ...”

“Remembering,” Margaret said, squeezing Maizon's hand. “And these two little girls will come up and sit on the stoop and we'll tell them how much they remind us of ourselves at their age.”

“And those girls will probably laugh and yell about how they're going to be friends forever.”

“They will be,” Margaret said, knowing it would happen like this to other girls. Believing it would happen a million and one times more ... somewhere ... between Madison and Palmetto.

JACQUELINE WOODSON
is the recipient of the 2006 Margaret A. Edwards Award honoring her outstanding lifetime contribution to writing for teens, and has received numerous awards for her middle-grade and young adult books, which include the National Book Award Finalist
Hush
and
Miracle's Boys,
winner of the Coretta Scott King Award and the
Los Angeles Times
Book Prize. She is also the author of a number of picture books, including
The Other Side
and the Caldecott Honor Book
Coming on Home Soon,
both illustrated by E. B. Lewis, and the Newbery Honor book
Show Way,
illustrated by Hudson Talbott. Ms. Woodson has one daughter and lives with her partner in Brooklyn, New York. Visit her Web site at
www.jacquelinewoodson.com
.