Remembering Raquel (4 page)

There was a loud
thump.
The car lurched, sort of like I'd hit a pothole or bumped the curb. But I've done that before, and this was different.

Right away I knew I'd hit something. I hadn't seen anything, so I assumed a dog had run out into the street. I thought,
Oh no,
imagining someone's distress at losing their pet. I was already pulling over to the curb, looking into my rearview mirror, afraid of what I would find.

In the mirror, I could see a bunch of people on the right-hand corner I'd just passed. Someone on the curb screamed.

One last moment of blissful ignorance: I thought,
It isn't bad enough that I run over someone's dog—I have to run over someone's dog while he and his friends are watching?

And then I saw it wasn't a dog.

It wasn't my fault.

I never saw the people on the curb. Even so, you can't always be driving like the people on the curb are going to leap out at you.

I never saw the girl.

I
know
I never saw her.

So why—every time I close my eyes—do I see her face looking at me through the windshield?

I'm the acknowledged expert at Quail Run High when it comes to petitions, solicitations for a movement, sponsored walks for a cause, or any other kind of social activism.

Mostly I've participated in events of a national nature—MS Challenge Walk, handing out ribbons for Mothers Against Drunk Driving, collecting baby clothes for Birthright. I even organized a knit-off for Project Linus. I got a yarn store to donate yarn, and talked an office supply place into free photocopying so that I could provide baby blanket patterns in three knitting proficiency categories: beginner, intermediate, and expert. We ended up with thirty-seven blankets to donate to charity. Pretty good for someone who doesn't even knit!

I'm also an expert at letter-writing campaigns. I know when it's appropriate to write to your senators, or to your congressmen, or to the governor.

But now I'm working on a definitely local project: trying to get the speed limit down to thirty on Poscover Road or—at the very least—to have a stop sign put in at the corner of Poscover and Williams. People go tearing down Poscover Road like it's a major highway, without taking into account that sections of it are residential, and without taking into account that little kids live in some of those houses. It was obviously a danger to Raquel Falcone, but it's a danger to a lot of other people, too.

So I've got some petitions—each worded slightly differently—that I've had my volunteers drop off in the vestibules of area churches and hang on the bulletin boards at supermarkets, the athletic club, and nearby restaurants. I figure we'll leave them for one week—then get those babies back before they become clutter and get tossed out.

At the same time, I also had my volunteers write five letters each. (They were supposed to make all five sound different, and they weren't supposed to confer with one another. So hopefully the letters will sound like they're coming from a wide variety of sources. I mean, it's good for
me
to be organized, but we don't want the movement to look like a movement—more like a spontaneous outpouring.) Each volunteer was then sent door-to-door in the Poscover/Williams area—where people would most likely be willing to sign a letter.

I thought it would be a good idea to have Raquel's parents sign letters, too, but it turns out she only has a father, and he was a bit too foggy to sign. "I'll just take it," he said. "I'll read it later and send it in myself."

Okay. Whatever. That means he'll lose out on the opportunity to have us take care of faxing it in for him—because another step in my make-it-simple-for-the-petitioners plan is to hold a raffle to raise money for faxing. A local toy store donated a stuffed unicorn for the raffle prize (which is perfect because somebody told me Raquel loved all that fantasy-type stuff).

I trust it's going well, though I haven't paid as much attention to the follow-through of this campaign as I usually do. I've been reading about the wonderful work done by the Heifer Project, where families in poor countries are given a pair of animals to raise so that they can use the products from the animals (fur from the llamas, eggs from the chickens, etc.). Then, as the animals reproduce, the family can sell them or use them for meat. It's a wonderful program to get people to be self-sufficient, while treating them with trust and dignity. I think it would be just great if we could mobilize the student population here at Quail Run to donate enough money to buy a pair of oxen for some family in Africa. Don't you?

I remember the first time I saw the Falcones.

Old Mrs. Steinmiller next door had fallen down once too often, and her kids moved her to a nursing home. You can just shoot me—thank you very much—before you send me to one of those places. Two daughters and a son, and not a one of them could find room in their fancy-schmancy houses out in the suburbs for the woman who had brought them into the world and done without to give them the best, even after her husband had died while they were still in school?

But anyway, old Mrs. Steinmiller was finally gone. The next thing I know, there's one of those U-Hauls parked out in front of the house, and about fifteen different people toting furniture and boxes in. They had so many helpers, they got in one another's way more than they helped.

Oh lordy,
I remember thinking,
I wonder how many of this crew is actually moving in?

It's not that I don't like Greeks or Italians—both represented by that family—but these Mediterranean types tend to have big, noisy families. Sometimes there'll be several generations in one house, with the grandmother from the old country not speaking a word of English but always chattering at you in a disapproving tone, and more kids than you can shake a stick at. So I was wondering.

Eventually, I learned that there were only the three of them moving in: Al (representing the Italians) and Cleo (part of the Greek contingent), and their daughter, Raquel, who was about five at the time. While the rest of them went in and out of the house, they put her in the fenced-in backyard. I thought she was too young to be left unattended.
One of those so-called helpers should stay with her,
I thought. If they were counting on me to keep an eye on her, I was too busy.

But every time I glanced out the window, she was doing fine all by herself—she didn't try to get out of the yard, and she didn't climb on the fence, and she didn't yank the leaves off my crab apple tree where it hangs close to the fence, the way Mrs. Steinmiller's grandchildren always did.

Raquel seemed perfectly capable of amusing herself. She had a little tambourine, and she was dancing and spinning around—not loud and look-at-me, just totally self-sufficient. Which isn't something you can say about many kids these days.

Now that,
I told myself,
is a girl who will never be bored or lonely.

I met Raquel the summer between elementary school and middle school. There's this annual festival on the grounds of Maplewood Middle. A lot of the teachers, parents, and students run the various games and activities, and it's considered this big community-building thing. But besides the duck pond and the clown dunk (which is actually a principal dunk, an idea I think more schools should embrace) and the various games of chance to win baked goods and stuffed animals and assorted junk you probably wouldn't buy at the dollar store, besides all that, somebody knows somebody, so there are also a few actual carnival rides.

My mom had been part of the bake sale committee since I was seven because she believes in networking and wanted to make sure everyone knew and respected the McCall family long before my brother or I would be attending Maplewood. It was a way for her to keep her finger on the pulse of the school that was "the heart of the neighborhood"—those would be her words, not mine. My words would be: She wanted to know which were the teachers whose kids got the highest scores on the standardized tests. That way she could pull strings to make sure we ended up in those classes, so that we would be well prepared for the best area high school, so that we would be well prepared for the best colleges, so that we would get high-paying jobs that would be prestigious enough for her to tell people about and wouldn't leave us still living at home when we were thirty like our cousin Walter.

But here it was, after all those years of prep time, the summer festival of what was now my middle school.

Mom was making sure the apple crumb cakes and berry pies and other assorted goodies the volunteers had made were all coming in and being properly stored or displayed to their best advantage. She had bought all-day tickets so Seth and I could go on the rides as often as we wanted. Not that we were hanging out together. He's three years younger than I am and was roving the festival grounds with his pack of friends. Any time our paths crossed, I tried my best to pretend we weren't related.

I was with my best friends Stacy and Zoe. We had gone to Neil Armstrong Elementary together, and we would be going to Maplewood Middle together in another three weeks.

But for now, Zoe was having a problem with her bra and wanted us to all go to the ladies' room while she pulled herself back together. We had just been to the ladies' room—where there had apparently been a problem of another nature shortly before.

"It's stinky in there," I complained. "Can't you adjust your bra out here?"

"Shh," Zoe hissed, waving her arm and attracting more attention than my lowered voice had. When we were eleven, the word
bra
caused us all to go a bit frantic.

I offered, "Nobody'll see if you face this wall and we stand around you."

Zoe rolled her eyes and said, "
Everyone
will guess
exactly
what's going on."

"I'll go with you," Stacy volunteered.

I knew I was supposed to say I would, too, but I couldn't bring myself to. "I'll save a place in line for us at the Roundup," I said.

So they went off in one direction, and I went to the Roundup, where, miraculously, they were just loading up for the next ride and there was no line.

Well, it makes no sense for me to wait at the head of a nonexistent line,
I told myself, so I climbed on.

I must have sampled a few too many of the baked goods because as soon as we started to spin, I got woozy.
Don't throw up,
I told myself, because on the Roundup the centrifugal force keeps you from moving, even from lifting your hand. If I threw up, I could imagine that chunk of barf hanging suspended in front of my face until the ride ended, at which point it would probably go
fwap!
right back onto me.

Of course I needed to get
that
image out of my head because it was making me even more inclined to lose my lunch—what you would call a self-fulfilling prophecy.

But somehow or other I managed to keep my eyes closed, my teeth clenched, and the contents of my stomach in my stomach.

Why is it that when you're enjoying the ride it's over almost as soon as it's started? But if you're hating it, the ride operator seems to get in a generous mood and gives you at least a dozen extra rounds?

Eventually the Roundup slowed, then finally stopped.

I still couldn't move. Even with my eyes squeezed shut, I could feel the world revolving around my head.

The ride operator called out to me that if I wanted another ride, I had to get off and go through the line again.

As if.

"You all right?" someone asked. An adult's voice—a woman's.

"I'm going to die," I was able to mumble.

It was a mistake. I should never have opened my mouth. My stomach contents made a break for it.

I leaned over and heaved, spewing hot dog and brownies and cookies and Sno-Kone and funnel cake all over several nearby sneakers. Two pairs of feet hastily backed up. The adult pair stayed by me. In fact, the voice that went with it assured me, "It's okay, don't worry, everything is fine," and I felt a comforting arm around my shoulders.

I also heard the ride operator go "Oh man!" but the woman hugged me and said again, "It's okay, it's fine."

"I just threw up," I wailed.

The woman said, "And I bet you're feeling better for it."

I considered.

She was right.

The world had stopped spinning, my head no longer felt about to explode, and my stomach was calming down even as we spoke.

I was finally able to focus on her. Her hair was red, though obviously—by her coloring—not naturally. My mother would have pointed out that she was too plump for her own good. At the moment, though, her squishiness was comforting, like being hugged by a teddy bear. There were two girls with her—one wearing glasses, the other looking like a miniature, darker-haired version of the woman. Three weeks later I would meet Raquel again in middle school, but at the time I didn't know her. Friend or relative, the other girl, the one with the glasses, must have gone to a different middle school, because I never saw her again.

Anyway, Raquel's mother gently led me off the Roundup and had me sit on the grass. She pulled a container of wipes out of her purse and handed me a couple to clean off my chin. She also gave me a piece of gum to rid my mouth of the taste of being sick. Miraculously, I hadn't gotten any vomit on my clothes, though Raquel needed a wipe for her leg where I'd gotten a bit on her, and her friend was rubbing the side of her sneaker on the grass to clean it off. Neither girl was making a fuss about what I'd just done—what I'd just done on them.

"I'm so sorry," I told them.

Raquel said, "Everyone's puked some time or other."

Glasses-girl said, "Of course, some more spectacularly than others."

Raquel's mom asked me, "Is your mother around?"

"Yes," I admitted. But I didn't want them walking me inside the gym. I didn't want the baked-foods committee looking at me like I was a war casualty that needed explaining. So I didn't tell her where my mom was. "I'm fine now." I stood and saw Stacy and Zoe come walking around the Roundup together, looking for the end of the entrance line. "And there are my friends."