The Perfect Place (14 page)

“We're associates,” I tell Terrance.

“Associates,” he says slowly, rolling the word around in his mouth as if he's trying to get a taste for it. “Okay.” He holds out his hand. “Shake on it?”

We shake on it.

In the distance, someone blows a whistle, signaling the end of lunch. Terrance stands up and shoves his papers in his backpack, including the crumpled definition of
rudimentary.
He slips his pack on. “I think we have Bible study next.”

“Seriously?”

“Yeah. Ms. Eunetta runs it.”

“That's weird.”

“What is?”

“I'm awake and yet I'm still having a nightmare.”

Terrance laughs. This is the first time I've ever seen him do that. He has the kind of laugh that makes you want to join in. It's a stupid thing to notice, but I do.

“He's gone,” I blurt out.

“Who is?”

“My father. He got up and left one day just over two months ago and my mother's going to find him.” Terrance stares at me. “She
is.
Jane said, plus I wished on it back at the lake.” I look away, at Tiffany talking to another little girl her age. She finds friends wherever we go. “And now I'm stuck here. Okay?”

“This place isn't all that bad,” he says, still smiling.

Maybe not.

I
T'S
only the second day of Camp Jesus Saves and already Tiffany is talking about not going. She's like a marble in a tin can, bouncing off every corner of our room, running from me and the hairbrush. The only article of clothing she has agreed to put on is a pair of mismatched socks. And downstairs Great-Aunt Grace is yelling at us to come on down to breakfast before she has to come up.

“You're asking for it, Tiffany.”

Footsteps on the stairs.

“See what you did.”

Great-Aunt Grace stops in the doorway and seems to fill it up. It's not even nine in the morning and she's already got a cigarette and an attitude. Her big hands find her hips. “Why isn't this child dressed?”

Tiffany is over by the window, hiding behind a sheer curtain.

“She said she doesn't want to go to camp.” I wave my hands in front of my face, wafting smoke.

“She ain't got a choice in the matter. Girl, come out and get your narrow behind dressed before I dress it for you.”

Tiffany stamps her mismatched feet. “No,” she says, but with a whole lot less sass.

“All right, then, girl, you brought me to it.”

Great-Aunt Grace comes all the way into our room and goes straight for Tiffany's bed. She takes a drag on her cigarette and grabs Mr. Teddy Daniels. Tiffany bursts out from behind her curtain, arms flailing. Great-Aunt Grace holds the bear high above her head. It might as well be on top of the Empire State Building. Tiffany wilts.

“Get dressed and I'll give your raggedy bear back.” Great-Aunt Grace starts for the door.

“You can't take him!” Tiffany stomps her feet again. “It's not nice!” she shouts, and it's not. Taking a kid's bear hostage is low, but when Great-Aunt Grace leaves, Mr. Teddy D. tucked firmly in the crick of her arm, Tiffany lets me get her dressed and do her hair. Then she takes off, about to go flying downstairs. I grab her by the arm.

“What's wrong with you?”

Tiffany tries to yank her arm free. I hold it tighter. “I hate it here,” she says. “Do you know what happened at camp yesterday? I made two friends, Dominique and Jackie, and Jackie asked me why am I staying with Great-Aunt Grace and they both said she's crazy, and I said I know, and then they asked me where Mommy and Daddy were and I told them that Mommy went to find Daddy and they said, ‘Where's he at?' and I said we don't know, and they said, ‘Is he lost?' and I said I don't know, and Jackie said if he is, what if he wants to stay that way?” Tiffany takes a deep breath. “What if it's true? What if Daddy wants to stay lost?”

“He doesn't.”

Tiffany rubs her eyes. I don't think either of us has had a good night's sleep since we got here. “Where do you think he went, then?”

Dad and I played a game of “What if?” a few weeks before he left. Dad started off small, like he always did: “What if you were bald-headed?”

I replied, “I'd ask Ms. Elliott in 4D if I could borrow one of her wigs.”

“Okay, now, what if you could shed your life and become something new? What would you be?”

I didn't understand the question.

Dad stood up, like he was agitated or excited—I couldn't tell which. “It's like this.” He slipped out of his jacket and let it fall to the floor. “Shed this life like an old coat. What if you could do that? What would you be?”

A princess, a millionaire, a lion tamer. By the time we were done, Dad had shed his life and become a pilot, just so he could get out there and see the world. Now I wonder if that's what he did this time, shed his life with us and stepped into a new one. But then I remember what he said to Mom right before he left.

“He went to find the perfect place for us,” I say now.

“Okay, what's it like?”

I close my eyes and try to call up the image, the one I've had for so long. “It's a whole house to ourselves—not an apartment—and every inch of it is filled with light. It always smells good, like laundry detergent, and—”

“Do I get my own room, so I don't have to listen to you snore?”

My eye snap open. “I don't snore.”

“You do,” Tiffany says. “So loud.”

“Whatever. You'll have your own room.”

“Is it purple?”

“The purplest.”

Together we build this place until it becomes so real, we could almost crawl inside it. Then we go down to the kitchen, where Great-Aunt Grace is standing at the stove, Mr. Teddy Daniels still tucked under her arm. She gives Tiffany a head-to-toe look before handing him over. Tiffany snatches him and glares. Great-Aunt Grace hands her a bowl of grits.

“You too big to be cryin' over that raggedy bear.”

“He's not raggedy; he just needs his changes of clothes,” Tiffany retorts, taking her seat.

“Changin' his clothes ain't gonna change the fact that you too big to be carryin' a bear around, girl,” Great-Aunt Grace says.

Tiffany starts kicking her chair—
thwack, thwack, thwack
—until I place my hand on her leg. She stops. Great-Aunt Grace goes over to the window where Mr. Shuffle is perched and looks out into her backyard.

“Tiffany, come on and feed this cat.”

“You know what else is great about the perfect place?” I whisper to Tiffany, as she rises slowly from her seat.

“What?”

“There's no Gag.”

 

Instead of eating with Dominique and Jackie, Tiffany sits with me at lunch.

“Is it going better today?” I ask.

She nods. “We made fans in arts and crafts, but I drew a picture of the perfect place instead. Wanna see?” Tiffany reaches into her backpack and pulls out a picture of a boxy blue house with a yellow door and five windows. She's drawn the four of us on the front lawn, holding hands.

“We have a dog?” I ask, pointing at the brown, four-legged blob sprawled on the ground in front of us. Tiffany nods. “I'm allergic to dogs.”

“You'll deal. Here comes your boyfriend.”

“Terrance is not my boyfriend.”

“Then why is he always walking us to Great-Aunt Grace's store and sitting with you at lunch? And you're always writing down words for him?”

“Both those things happened
once
and that was yesterday, and it's because we don't know the way from here. Also, for the record, I've only written down two words for him.” Two on the walk home yesterday, that is, in addition to
rudimentary.
I gave Terrance two more words in Bible study yesterday, too, and one in arts and crafts today, but Tiffany doesn't need to know all that.

Terrance jogs over to us, his book bag like a boulder on his back. “Oh, hey, Tiffany.”

“You got ketchup on your shirt,” Tiffany tells him.

Which is truly amazing, considering Terrance hasn't even bitten into his hot dog yet. He sits down across from us and digs in. Within seconds, ketchup is everywhere. I hand him a napkin. “Thanks.” He licks his fingers clean. “Did I tell you I think I've perfected the design for my time machine?”

“You're building a time machine? What for?” Tiffany asks.

“So I can go back in time and warn the black people in Africa about the ships on the horizon. It's the least I can do.”

“They'd need more than a warning,” I say. “They'd need weapons. What good is foresight if you don't have a gun?”

Terrance considers this as he jams the straw into his juice box. “I'm not sure I can take all that stuff back in time with me. I may not even be able to wear clothes.”

“You're going naked?” Tiffany asks. Her eyes bug out of her head. She covers her face with her drawing. “Ew! That's so gross!”

“Thanks, Tiffany,” Terrance says.

“Maybe you should go back in time to whenever Jaguar started calling you Yuck Mouth,” I say. “What's that about anyway?”

“Oh, this one time when I—”

But we never get to find out, because Jaguar tramples Terrance's words with her own. “Yoo-hoo, lover birds!”

She's on us in moments. Jaguar nudges Pamela with her elbow, knocking sunflower seeds from Pamela's cupped hand.

“We're not lovers,” I say flatly.

“Of course you are. Why else are you together all the time?”

“All the time is a gross exaggeration,” Terrance says, balling up his napkins and tossing them on his Styrofoam plate.

Tiffany squints up at Jaguar, taking her in. “You're a bad person,” she says, and looks her up and down, from the top of Jaguar's ponytailed head to her neon orange toes. “The worst person in the whole wide world.” I reach over and squeeze Tiffany's hand in mine. Tiffany scowls at me and tries to pull away.

Jaguar snatches Tiffany's drawing off the table and holds it up between two fingers. “What's this?”

“The perfect place for us,” Tiffany says. “And
just
us.”

“Who's ‘us'?” Jaguar asks.

“Me, Mommy, Daddy, and Jeanie.”

“And where exactly are your mommy and daddy?” Jaguar asks sweetly. “Did they die?”

Pamela sucks in her breath. I squeeze Tiffany's hand again, harder this time. She yanks it free and stands up to take Jaguar head on. She's barely up to Jaguar's waist. “They're not dead,
you bad person.
Our father went away and our mother is looking for him. When she finds him, we're gonna move into the perfect place.” Tiffany snatches her picture back.

Jaguar sticks out her bottom lip in mock sympathy. “Isn't that the saddest thing you've ever heard, Pam?”

Pamela shrugs. “Whatever. Let's just go,” she mutters.

Since Jaguar won't take Pamela's advice, I do. I get up and start gathering my things. Then I take Tiffany's hand and turn to take my trash to the garbage can, barely a foot away, when Jaguar says, “There's no such thing as a perfect place, and you're stupid for believing there is.” The words are like a hand on my shoulder, whirling me around so I'm right back where I started, only stunned.

“Tell her she's wrong, Jeanie,” Tiffany says, her voice quivering.

“Yeah, tell me I'm wrong and that you didn't make it up.” Jaguar squints at me. “Why are you breathing like that?”

My inhaler is in the small pocket of my backpack, but I won't reach for it in front of Jaguar. I want to walk—no, run, sprout wings so I can take flight, but I can't move. The whistle blows, signaling the end of lunch. Kids go careening across the lawn on their way to who knows where, and still I'm standing here even as Jaguar loses interest and starts telling Pamela how excited she is to be spending August in Florida with her aunt.

I find my voice. “If you want heat, you may as well just go to—”

“Let's go, Jeanie,” Terrance cuts in. “We have Bible study.”

“Wait,” Jaguar growls. “Was she going to tell me to go to hell?”

“Yes,” I tell her. “It would be less humid.”

“It would,” Terrance agrees. “Dry heat. Probably a lot like Phoenix.”

“You think you're so much smarter than everyone else,” Jaguar says. “But you're just a nappy-headed loser whose parents don't even want her.”

My heart starts to sprint.

“Ow, Jeanie!” Tiffany yelps. I had her hand in a death grip and didn't even notice. She pulls away, I put my lunch tray down, and now I've got two free hands, both clenched into fists.

“Oh, yeah? Well, you're just a fake, phony pain in the butt who's so pathetic she has to bully her way into a candy store and make a mess.” With each word, I jab the air with my index finger right in front of Jaguar's chest. She takes a step closer to me, and my finger bounces off of her flesh.

Jaguar lets loose a cry like a cat caught under a rocking chair and lunges at me. I go flying backward, right into the nearest garbage can. It goes down with me, and soon Jaguar and I are rolling around in apple cores, balled-up napkins, and half sandwiches. I grab a handful of her hair and yank it as hard as I can. She repays me with a thump to the forehead that makes little white lights dance before my eyes. She goes for my neck; I go for her face. All the while I'm vaguely aware of a chant beginning, low at first and then loud as rushing water.

“Fight! Fight! Fight!”

I freeze, aware now of a crowd gathering. Jaguar takes this opportunity to mush me in my forehead, pushing me toward the ground and smearing my hair in the trash. I pick up a handful of garbage and shove it in her face.

Suddenly everything goes quiet.

“Stop it! Stop it at once!”

Faster than Eunetta can get to us, Jaguar flings herself away from me and slumps over. She begins to whimper.