Breathing (25 page)

Mama sighs real heavy. That old sound effect of disappointment always hits me right in my gut.

S
ince Dog’s healing up pretty good, he’s up and around and even hanging out with Dave again. Mama’s got him on a strict punishment, though. He can’t leave the house without adult supervision. Lucky for him, Gina’s out of work, so she comes by and gets him.

Mama sure laid into him about all the lying. That boy was getting to where he didn’t know the truth from a cow pile. Mama said she catches him lying again, he just may find himself going to school with them boys what beat him up. She’s thinking she might send him to St. Bart’s! I reckon he won’t be lying anytime soon. He begged Mama not to press charges, fearing those boys might come after him. So he knows he best keep his nose clean.

I’m relieved that for the last little bit of summer, everything is just like I want it to be. I mean, sure it’d be nice if Jackson didn’t have to work all day, but we get to spend near about every evening together and his days off. Plus, I like reading and swimming and biking on my own. I’m getting big chunks of my SAT workbook done. Stef comes by and visits me while I’m working at the library most days, and we’ve even laid out at the beach a few times. We saw Joie down there one day in an itty-bitty bikini with the cheerleader girls. They were treating her like the hired help, but she didn’t seem to mind. We tried to wave her over, but she just ignored us. I reckon she’s thrilled them girls are including her in any fashion. She was even practicing cheers with them. I wonder if she’ll go out for the squad.

I roll my butt out of bed and meander into the kitchen to drink some orange juice. I see the postman out the window, so I step outside to bring in the mail.

A shocking feeling of ice in my gut tears right through me as I take the letters out of the box and find a thick packet addressed to me from the dean of the University of North Carolina. My skin prickles. What could they possibly want from me now? I sit down on the front steps, trying to drum up my courage to open the envelope.

Real slow, I tear it open, one little bit at a time.

Welcome!
it says. Welcome? What in the hell?

No. Uh-uh. I’ve got to look away. I can’t read no more. I’m fixing to cry. My breath is turning shallow. The world is crashing down on me. What is going on here? I never sent in that acceptance.

Dropping all the mail on the front steps, I run inside, slamming the screen door on the way. I rush into my room and start throwing stuff around, looking for that letter I never mailed. When I’m sure it ain’t there, I call Mama at work. By now I am full on sobbing. “Did . . . you . . . do . . . this?” I ask her, trying to get air into my lungs between my words and tears.

“Darlin’, what’s wrong? Settle down and use your inhaler. Do you need me to come home?”

“Why . . . did . . . you . . . send . . . in . . .” I’m sniffling and snuffling and generally making a scene.

“Savannah. Listen to me. I can’t understand what you’re talking about. The only thing I know is you have got to simmer down so you can breathe. I want you to hang up the phone. I’m coming straight home. Just breathe, you hear?”

I let the phone fall to the floor and try my best to settle down. But it ain’t working. Why would she do this when I made it clear it wasn’t what I wanted? How dare she decide for me? I can’t leave, I just can’t. She can’t make me, neither. I won’t go. I just won’t. My breath isn’t coming so good. Even my thoughts feel like they’re drowning.

Mama comes racing in, DC a few steps behind her. They tote me off to Mercy. All that crying has sent me over the edge.

Mama scribbles away in her notebook by my bedside. DC must be out in the ER waiting room.

I hold the mask off my face so I can talk. “Why’d you do it?” I ask, hurt but calm.

She shakes her head. “Denny found the letter on the front steps when we came to get you. It wadn’t me, sugar. And it wadn’t him neither. That just leaves one person far as I can see.”

At that very minute, Jackson walks in, his clothes all covered in paint. He takes my hand, strokes my hair. “You okay?” he asks. As he wipes my tears away with his thumb, I see Mama sliding out of the room.

I don’t even care about the fact that I’m sitting there in the raggedy old shorts and T-shirt I always sleep in, my hair likely sticking up with bedhead. I repeat my question to him. “Why’d you do it?”

He looks down at his feet for a moment, then straight into my eyes. “I kept thinking ’bout how you filled out that application for me when you found the yella sign, and then how you took my paintin’ down to the guy at the college. I figured one turn deserves another.”

I shake my head. “When?”

“On my day off. ’Member I said I had some business to attend to? The day before that I’d called up the people at the program and told ’em there’d been a problem at home that had prevented you from sending in your letter on time. At first they said it was too late. So I asked ’em if they’d given away your spot yet, and they said no. I offered to fax the letter over to ’em right then. But they insisted on having the original. And they said offers were going out the next day, my day off, to the replacement students. I told ’em they’d have your acceptance by the time their office opened that morning.”

“How?” I ask.

“I drove through the night.”

“To
Asheville
?”

He nods. “I stopped for a catnap about three a.m., made it to their doorstep by seven. Then I just waited for ’em to open at nine. I figured I’d come all that way, I wadn’t gonn’ risk just slipping it through the mail slot. After I handed it in and knew it was all taken care of, I went and slept in the truck for a while, then drove back in time to meet you for dinner.”

“I can’t believe you went to all that trouble.” I turn my head to look out the window, feeling all choked up inside.

He tips my face back to him real gentle. “You hold my dream. I hold yours,” he says.

Now what can you say to that?

“What you scared of ?” he asks.

I start thinking about how bad off my breathing had got the last few days before he moved back down here. “Maybe I can’t breathe without you.”

He takes my hand in his and sits quiet for a minute. Then he says, “You remember you told me about the tornada you were named after?”

I nod.

“Just like it, you got as much strength and wind as you need. Alls you got to do now is to know that you can do without me or your daddy or anybody. You got to know you can breathe all on your own.”

Something inside me sort of crumbles right then. Like I know he’s right, that I got to find out if I can breathe on my own, be my own cure, else someday I’m going to find myself laying on a couch for twelve years waiting for somebody to come and rescue me.

L
uckily, I get released from Mercy. I just got myself overexcited is all. When we get home, Jackson and DC stay outside unloading some bags of mulch from DC’s truck. Mama and I go on in the house.

“Mama,” I tell her, “maybe I might go on and check out the mountains after all.”

“Praise Jesus!” she shouts, clapping her hands together. “Did Jackson talk you into it? I just knew that boy was one of the good ones.”

I think back to her little manifesto of earlier this summer and wonder when exactly it was that she changed her mind. But there are more important matters at hand just now.

“There’s still one thing we haven’t figured on: how we gonn’ afford it?” I ask, not quite looking at her, not wanting to bring up an issue that might embarrass her. “I saved up some money from working at the library, but it ain’t nearly enough.”

“I thought about that quite a bit,” she says. “If only I’d a managed to put money away for y’all’s college, we’d be Johnny on the spot.” She sighs real heavy. “Two thousand is a lot. But I believe if I increase my hours working for Denny and waitress on the side, we can pull it off.”

DC walks in and sits down at the table, sweat dripping off his forehead. “Listen here y’all,” he says. “I ain’t trying to play the hero or nothing. But if Savannah’s gonn’ go, I’ma pay for her program.”

“Are you serious?” I ask, amazed that he would do that for me.

He nods.

But then dead silence creeps into the corners of the room.

“That won’t be necessary,” Mama says, turning red, as she hands him a glass of sweet ice tea. “I appreciate your offer, I do. But we’ll manage just fine.”

“Mama,” I say real soft, “maybe we should think about this. DC is making a real nice offer.”

She turns on me. “Don’t start. If I want to work extra, that don’t concern nobody but me.”

“Course it do,” Denny retorts. “It concerns us all. You think Savannah wants to think of you having to work your butt off for her? You think I want you out at some grease pit every evening? What about Dog? Who’s gonn’ look after him? Look here, doll, I know you been on your own a long time and you used to managing come hell or high water, and I have admired that strength in you since the day we met, but things is different now.”

“Denny,” Mama interrupts. “I can’t take no handouts.”

And I see how much it pains her to feel like she ain’t done well enough by us to make things work.

“This ain’t no handout! Is ’at what you think? That I’m some sort of good Samaritan wanting to help some poor needy souls?” He shakes his head like he’s hurt and confused both. Then he goes, “Ain’t nobody
ever
treated you right? Ever shown you sump’n called
generosity
?”

Mama looks like she’s fixing to cry. I take her hand. “It ain’t pity,” I promise her real quiet.

“Pity?” DC storms, slamming down his glass of ice tea on the table. “Is ’at what you think? Is it, Porsha?”

“DC,” I say, “what are you getting so mad about?” Suddenly he ain’t helping the situation one bit.

“Mad? Here I hoped your mama might one day see me as family, might be starting to believe I’m somebody she can count on, somebody she cares for, and now, come to find out, I’m just as much an outsider as I ever been. Ain’t nothin’ changed for her.” His veins are pulsing in his neck, his face blood red.

“Now, Denny, that just ain’t true,” Mama starts. “You know I care for you. I do consider you, well, you are becoming family. It’s just that this here’s a lot of money, and I don’t want to feel like you got a hold over me.”

“A hold?” he demands.

Mama tries to backpedal. “I want to know we’re together because we care for each other, not because I feel beholden.”

“What if ’n I say this here’s between me and Savannah and it ain’t got a thing to do with you?” he asks, all huffy.

“Ain’t no grown man gonn’ be handing my daughter two thousand dollars,” Mama warns.

“Maybe there’s a scholarship or something through school,” I say, wanting to ease the tension.

DC glares at Mama. “You are dearly hurting my feelings, Porsha.” She goes over and takes his hand. “I ain’t used to nobody giving me something this big for no good reason.”

“No good reason?” he storms. “How about a reason called love? That good enough for you? I love you, Porsha. Let me help. Please.”

Mama just stares at him like he’s some kind of alien from Mars. I’m frozen still in my spot waiting to see what she’s going to do. Then, next thing I know, they’re kissing and crying, and I guess that means I got the money.

Jackson comes in with Dog trailing at his heels. My brother takes one look at Mama and DC and snaps, “Well ain’t that romantical.”

“Dog,” Mama warns.

I’m about to yell at him to give her a break, but Jackson steps in.

“Hey,” he says real neutral, “be glad for your mama. She deserves some happiness, don’t she?”

And right away I can see Dog soften, like he finally saw something from her view instead of his own. Now why it took Jackson to make him see, I don’t know. But there it is.

DC says, “Savannah’s going to the mountains.”

“Yee-haw!” Dog yells.

I catch Jackson’s eye, and he looks real proud. It still hurts something fierce to think about leaving. But like he said, it won’t be for too long.

Mama starts fixing food for everybody, and DC goes, “Savannah, can I ask you sump’n?”

“Sure,” I reply.

“You never did tell me why you call me DC—like I’m some sort of citified Yankee from up by the Mason-Dixon Line. Can’t be from my name, ’cause what would the C stand for? You know my name is Dennis Johnson. And I ain’t never told you my middle name, but it’s Darryl. So what’s the C?”

I blush till my eyeballs go red. “It’s nothing,” I say.

But of course now everybody wants to know, and they won’t let up.

“Fine. The C is for caterpillar, okay? ’Cause of your mustache. It reminds me of a big old hairy caterpillar.”

“Savannah!” Mama chides. “I never! Mind your manners.”

But DC just laughs. “Coulda been worse,” he says.

W
ith little more than a week to go before I take off, I feel like somebody has mashed down the fast-forward button, like there just ain’t enough time left.

I had my appointment with Dr. Tamblin. Everything checked out okay. I’m going to have to keep on taking the daily meds, but he believes I’ll find it easier to breathe up there in the mountains, which doesn’t make a lick of sense to me, ’cause as I’ve been reading up on it, sounds like there’s less air up there. But I reckon he’s the doctor. He ought rightly to know.

I got a letter from my roommate-to-be, Rae Ann something or another. She seems nice enough. She said her bed comforter is blue in case I want to match. I don’t. But I sure am glad she didn’t say it was pink with princesses on it or some such nonsense. She’s from Hendersonville, so she won’t be traveling too far at all. She can even go home on the weekends. I wonder if Jackson might could drive up there to visit me once in a while. Course he’d have to save up enough money to pay for someplace to stay. I don’t reckon they’d allow him up in the dorms. Or maybe I could at least come home for Thanks-giving. Four months sure does sound like a long haul.