Virginia Hamilton (2 page)

It had made him turn on her, screeching with laughter. Even Levi had had to go laugh at her. But no one could fake screeching and shaking all over quite the way Thomas could.

“You
are
a pickle,” he had said. It was the stupid nickname he had thought up for her. “Who’d want a dumb three-speed except a sour pickle?” Pounding his drumsticks so close to her ear she could feel the air move.

Now Justice rubbed her nose back and forth along the smooth dining table. She felt unsettled, nervous, inside.

He dislikes me enough to hurt me, Thomas does, she thought. Oh, phooey on him, and Levi, too.

But she felt uneasy all the same.

As soon as she’d found out that Thomas was planning a special event this coming Friday called The Great Snake Race, she had known what she had to do. This was Wednesday.

Gives me either one of two days, she thought, as a ribbon of fear uncurled along her spine.

Mrs. Douglass had cleared the table of soggy napkins and had sat down again with her book and tea. As she studied, she commenced running her fingers gently through Justice’s brown, curly hair. After a moment, she glanced sideways to find Justice staring at her, looking very sour.

“Tice, what is it?” she said. “What’s troubling you?”

“Nothing,” Justice mumbled. Thinking of her brothers and The Great Snake Race had made her glum and out of sorts. She did like the way her mom fluffed her hair, though. Her mom knew how to make it feel pretty and not at all tangly.

“Do you dislike my going to school so much?” asked Mrs. Douglass.

“No,” Justice said. It wasn’t a bother that her mom went to school.

But that she’s gone for hours and hours, Justice thought. And not here to help. To be on my side from Thomas.

“Shall I have a word with your brothers about calling you Pickle?” her mom asked.

Justice looked surprised. “Why do you have to know so much?” she said, not unkindly.

Mrs. Douglass smiled at her.

Justice stared at
Lecturas Escogidas.
“Guess you don’t know everything,” she said. “I could read a book that size in two days. It’s taking you forever.”

Mrs. Douglass laughed. “But it’s a study book, Ticey. You don’t read a textbook like this straight through.”

“Oh, right,” Justice said. “I knew that, but I just forgot a minute. You have to memorize stuff, same as I do.”

“Yeah,” said her mom.

Justice suddenly looked smug. “Here’s what I memorized this week: ‘Breathes there the man with soul so dead, Who never to himself hath said, “This is my own, my native land.”

“The Lay of the Last Minstrel,” her mom said. “Well, I’ll be—are they still teaching that? But you said you just learned …”

Justice cut in on her: “And I know ‘They have tormented me, early and late, Some with their love and some with their hate. The wine I drank, the bread I ate, Some poisoned with love, some poisoned with hate …’”

“Yet she who has grieved me most of all,” Mrs. Douglass broke in on her, looking somewhat astonished at her daughter.

“She neither hated nor loved me at all,” finished Justice.

They were silent a moment as the echo of words seemed to flow about them.

“You didn’t learn that in school,” finally her mom said.

“Nope,” Justice said. “I learned it from Levi. He’s always reading slushy stuff like that. When he’s up in the cottonwood, I climb up. He’s reading out loud and he sees me and says to me, ‘Tice, wanna hear? Then keep quiet and listen.’ So I hang on a limb and listen as long as I want.”

“That’s wonderful,” said her mom.

“I don’t like it much,” Justice said. “But I like Levi sometimes. Do you really like memorizing all the time?” she asked.

“Well, it’s more that I study until I get to know stuff well. And, sure, I like it. You will, too, I bet, when you grow up.”

She felt sleepy from the soft movement of her mom’s hand in her hair. But suddenly she leaped to her feet with slightly more drama than was necessary. “I shoulda been gone!”

“Should have been—Tice? Where are you off to?”

“Mom, I told you once. I have to practice.”

“Practice what?”

“Moth-er, I have to go—can’t you remember where my jacket is at?” She didn’t need the denim jacket. She knew the day would get blistering hot. But the jacket was familiar, like a second skin, tight and safe.

“Practice what?” Mrs. Douglass repeated. “Maybe you’d better tell me what’s going on before you leave the house.”

“You never make Thomas or Levi give you a rundown.”

“Yes, I do, too.”

“Shhhh!” Justice whispered, although her mother had spoken in the same voice as before. “The boys might hear!” she whispered. Why did her mom have to become more difficult with each new morning?

“Then,
what?”
Mrs. Douglass, said, whispering.

“Mom, trust me, will you?”

“Tice, don’t sound so old,” Mrs. Douglass said in a normal tone. “And you can’t use that on me, either.”

“Mo-om, I just have to practice something on my bike is all,” Justice told her. “It’s something Thomas and Levi think I can’t do—and that’s the utter truth!”

“I only want to know where you go,” Mrs. Douglass persisted. “I’m not saying you
can’t
go.”

“I ride around, over to the playground, and over to the baseball field,” Justice lied. “Not around any cars, don’t worry.”

“Tice, now listen to me,” Mrs. Douglass said.

“Mom …”

“I can usually depend on you not to do anything foolish, so don’t do wheelies and stunts like that.”

“Moth-er!
What do you think I am? Girls are different from what you were like as a kid—you know? And probably smarter, and they can do anything boys can do! I could do wheelies by third grade, for chrissakes!”

“No cussing, if you don’t mind,” said her mom, seemingly unperturbed, although she was impressed by her daughter’s ability to express herself. “And no riding double,” she added, “it’s against the law. Don’t ride with no hands down any streets—one slick spot in the road and you’ve had it.”

Save me from mothers! thought Justice.

“You think my jacket could be in the boys’ room?” she asked her mom.

“Not to change the subject,” Mrs. Douglass said, eyeing her daughter.

Justice thought it best not to answer. Her expression remained as childishly sweet as it could be.

“Dear Ticey, I know all of your tricks by now,” her mom said firmly. “I have no idea what you do every minute of the day and I’m not going to pump the neighborhood to find out. Just remember,” her mom finished.

“Oh, I remember,” Justice said. “How can I forget?” Justice is as Justice does.

She watched as her mom gulped the tea.

“I’m going to be late if I don’t get myself together,” Mrs. Douglass said. “I did see your jacket in the boys’ room, yes,” she told Justice. “Tom-Tom hid it up on the encyclopedia shelf. I meant to take it down. …”

“Brother!” Justice whispered. Him doing things like that all the time! Another reason I have to win The Great Snake Race. Boy! Only, how in the world do you race snakes?

She ran for the boys’ room and stopped dead still at the entrance. How many times had she come into their room in the morning to find something belonging to her, or to wake up Levi? So many she couldn’t count them. But this time she hesitated, not moving a muscle.

Why
did
Thomas have to take her things and hide them like that?

She’d seen it as just his way of being funny. But now she realized she might never have found her jacket.

Like he was being mean in earnest.

Cautiously, she tiptoed into the darkened room, counting on her brothers being dead to the world. In summer, Thomas stayed awake half the night watching science-fiction or horror films on TV, when he could find them. And from them he’d learned his sickening, screeching laugh and a lot of different personalities. These he used on Justice and other decent, normal, unsuspecting persons. He pretended he had himself made up certain dramatic characters. But Justice knew he was simply a copy-cat.

On the other hand, her brother Levi was a light sleeper. He couldn’t drift off with the television going full blast in the parlor. So he would end up wide awake, watching the films, also. He would never tell Thomas to shut the box off. He never complained.

Justice never called her brothers Tom-Tom and Lee, as most of the neighborhood kids did, and as did her mom and dad.

Wonder why I won’t? she thought.

She found her hands were trembling. She was standing right next to Thomas’ bed. She could see part of his face and his dark, curly hair on the pillow. She heard his breath come in a gentle snore. It took all of her nerve to move, to climb onto the desk chair and then onto the desk in front of the bookcase.

What’s wrong with me? There’s nothing to be scared of.

But she was, and she quaked inside.

At the far end of the room she glimpsed the round, shadowy forms of Thomas “instruments of torture,” as she called them.

Yuk, she thought. And then: Better keep your mind on what you’re doing, too.

She reached above her head as high as she could.

“Darn!” she said, before she thought. And held her breath as Levi stirred on the top bunk. He flung himself over in bed. He caught a glimpse of her as he turned to the wall, and let out a groan.

“Great,” he said sleepily. And suddenly he rose up in alarm at seeing her above his head.

Justice smiled brightly. Putting a finger to her lips, she motioned to him to be quiet.

Levi stared at her. He next peered down over the side of his bunk to find that Thomas below him was still deep asleep.

“Oh,” he said softly, pulling the covers up again. “What are you doing up there? What time is it?”

“Shhh!” she whispered. “Early. You can go on and sleep. But first will you get my jacket where Thomas put it on the shelf? I can’t reach it.”

“What?”

“Shhh! My jacket, I can’t—reach—it!”

Groaning, Levi rose up with a sheet wrapped around him. On his knees, he was tall enough to reach the jacket shoved to the back of the highest shelf.

And handed it to her. “Where you going, anyway?” He spoke softly again.

Shaking her head to dismiss the question, she said nothing as she began her climb back down.

Of her identical brothers, she much preferred Levi, who was more likely to be nice to her. Often he could be kind when Thomas wasn’t too close by. Thomas appeared to have a weakening effect on Levi. And since their mom had been in school, Thomas had seemed tense around Justice.

Guess I get in the way of his bad temper, she thought, as she stepped from desk chair to the floor. He and Levi are to look after me this summer, Mom says. To know where I go and to feed me when I’m hungry. I don’t mind—they do let me have my way. And if they get to go somewhere, I get to go or one of them has to stay home with me. So phooey on them! So if there’s to be a gang and a snake race, I get to be in on it all! So there.

“I know where you’re going,” whispered Levi from his bunk.

Justice stopped still.

“You’re scared if you go with us Friday, you might crack up on the Quinella. You going to practice riding down it!”

“Shut up,” Justice whispered back.

“Huh?” It was Thomas. Justice was practically standing in front of him, whispering. “Wh-what is it?” Opening his eyes. He saw Justice and yelled: “G-g-gehht
outta
h-here!”

She raced from the room.

Brother. I despise him, I truly do, she told herself, once she was a safe distance away. And shoved her arms into the denim jacket, straightening the collar. She checked the sleeves to see if her arms had grown any longer, something she felt obliged to do each day. Nope. They hadn’t.

I’ll be a shrimp all my life, for Chrissake. The shortest eleven-year-old in the world.

The thought made her both angry and sad.

She returned to the kitchen and her mom on a wave of injured feeling. At the counter, she drank the glass of tangerine juice waiting for her, and avoided looking at her mom. The juice was good and cold, but it did little to ease the hurt Thomas had caused.

Mrs. Douglass studied her daughter’s sullen face. She had heard yelling and she surmised it had come from Thomas, since Levi seldom raised his voice. She reminded herself to have a word with Thomas about his ongoing treatment of his sister.

“They look so much alike,” Justice said, finally, as she had said so many times before about her brothers, “so why are they so different?”

Mrs. Douglass smiled sympathetically. She knew Justice wasn’t really asking. So she stayed quiet while preparing a lunch to take along to school.

The boys were as identical as two peas in a pod, and it was also true they were as different as night from day. They had the same brown eyes and the same arch to their dark brows. Same black, curly hair, same hands and feet, same walk. Levi liked books and would read anything he could get his hands on. He loved music and poetry. However, Thomas led everybody and told everyone what to do and what not to do. All the kids did whatever he told them. He had a highly developed rhythmic and percussive ability. He also had a terrible stutter.

Justice looked solemn. Something nagged at her, and slowly she found the words to speak about it.

“I look at one and then the other,” she said. “Mom? I get to thinking one of ’em is inside a mirror—do you ever? It’s Levi trapped in there, and he can’t get out! It’s so creepy.”

Concerned, Mrs. Douglass crossed the space between them. She wrapped Justice in her arms as a worried look rippled over her features.

Justice felt like a baby standing there holding on to her mom. But, she had to admit, she enjoyed every minute of it. She knew nothing could hurt her, threaten her, with her mom so close.

“Oh, well, Tice,” her mom said, “it’s easy to imagine all sorts of things. Especially when Tom-Tom and Lee seem so self-contained in their own private realm. Have you ever known two boys to get along so well? But it gets hard keeping things settled down when even adults have to go make up stories.”

She chose her words carefully. She didn’t want to upset her daughter any further, but she did want Justice to understand exactly what her brothers were.