Virginia Hamilton (17 page)

I didn’t mean it!—hands over his face, whimpering into his hands. He still couldn’t open his jaws. Yes, I did mean it. I thought I could be smart and get around the conditions. You can’t get around them, right? You do what’s expected or you stutter, or you don’t talk. Well, each time I’m just going to have to decide. There, now that’s the truth. You can’t expect me to be perfect every time. I’m working on it! But she isn’t perfect either. Don’t I have some rights, too? They say I never started stuttering until she was born. You figure it out. I don’t know who said that, I don’t remember.

“But it’s a fact,” he said out loud. He could talk. And he wasn’t stuttering.

He smiled. “I wish I knew who I’m talking to or if I’m … talking to … anyone.”

He could look at the room again and not be afraid. It was full of moonlight. Chairs, the couch, end tables, all swimming in moonglow.

“I’m … not talking to anyone. There’s … no one here,” he said, slow and easy.

“I think the spaceship must have … done it,” he said. “When I asked if I could go ... in space, it knew … why. Colossus is responsible. So what should I say?”

He knew what was expected of him, but that didn’t make it any easier to say it. Maybe it was one of the conditions, having to say it.

“Thanks. You don’t … know how grateful … I am for this. To be able to … talk. Well, it’s a new experience. I haven’t told anyone. It’s too good. I wanted ... to make sure in case ... in case it vanished. When Levi tried to talk to me … yesterday, I’d think he was a jerk and that made me stutter. So he wouldn’t find out. And Mom and Dad, too. I thought mean and so I stuttered at them. And I stayed out of her way for fear … but if I think about
her,
it opens a whole can of worms. So I leave it alone.”

Silently Thomas got up and went back to his room. Levi was deep asleep. Thomas got back into bed. No one had seen or heard him moving around. He listened, but all was quiet. He let his mind loose to roam over things.

Deep in the night, Justice woke up violently. She wasn’t only a little startled. She had been lying on her back and she lurched forward, almost hitting her forehead on her knees. The waking up hit her like an explosion and she was gasping for air. In her arms she had three new paperback books her parents had given her. How did they get there? she wondered as they slid to the floor.

Justice fell back on the bed and pressed her hand to her chest. She saw the moonlight. It shone on the new birthday clothes hanging in her closet. It took time for her to get hold of herself. And she lay very still, until her breath was even. That had been a bad one. She remembered no dream, but she knew it must have been a bad one. Probably the whole business of getting back to the present and being scared and everything had caused it.

Funny how you dream bad when all the badness has passed. But it’s good to get it out of your system, she thought.

So she went back to sleep. An hour later she awoke just as violently. Only this time she was standing in the moonlight, facing the closet. She had on the new jacket her mom had got her for school. As she awoke, she staggered and was terrified and for a moment thought she was back in the Crossover. She began to cry, making no sound. She took off the jacket and hung it up, crying. She was afraid to turn around, the moonlight was so bright. She didn’t know what the moonlight had to do with anything, but she was afraid of it. She stepped into the closet and put her arms around her clothes. And cried. When the crying stopped, she just stood there. And when she was able to turn around, she kept her sights on her pillow, like it was a safe harbor in a storm. She scooted into bed and lay on her stomach, holding on to the sides of the bed. She was exhausted; that was why she fell asleep again.

She awoke violently the third time, still holding on to the mattress. Something. She didn’t dare look around. But when she dared to look fifteen minutes later, there was nothing. Just moonlight. Why must it be so bright? She put the pillow over her head and made certain no part of her was sticking out of the covers. She breathed from a stream of air which followed a passage to her under the pillow. She was soon very hot, but she didn’t dare take the covers off. This was how she fell asleep. When she awoke the last time, no less violently, she was on the floor. She had a dull headache over one eye and jumping nerves made her shake all over.

She didn’t breathe hard or have any discomfort except for the dull aching. She lay there, getting hold of herself.

Oh, man. Oh, my God, she thought.

But that was all. She got up and washed and dressed without waking a soul. It was seven forty-five and Sunday, and the house was still sleeping. She went into the kitchen, took what was left of the birthday cake out of the refrigerator. There was enough left for four nice pieces. She wrapped all of it in Glad-Wrap and a few white napkins to make it look more festive. She wouldn’t be able to go over to Mrs. Jefferson’s house until after eight-thirty, but she had to get out of the house now. She found a large paper bag from Kroger’s and she put the cake on a paper plate and placed the whole thing at the bottom of the sack.

There, she thought, I can ride and not spill it. She’d have to ride with one hand, for she had no basket on her bike.

She got out of the house with no trouble. She got on the sweet bike and headed out. Nice being on her own so early in the day. Sundays in summer were as quiet as Saturday in the dead of winter when folks couldn’t bring themselves out in the snow. On summer Sundays it seemed the whole town slept late or stayed in, getting ready for church. Not a soul. But she would go over to Mrs. Jefferson’s about nine. Mr. Jefferson would be outside, washing his car. Always was on Sunday, getting the car ready for whatever they might decide to do.

She went straight south to the edge of town, then east to that edge where she hit Morrey Street going south to the railroad tracks. She paused at the top of the Quinella Road.

Do I want to go down there and have to ride all the way back up? I haven’t even eaten anything. I could eat the cake. She stood undecided on the side of the road with her bike balanced between her legs. She opened the sack, but decided she wouldn’t touch the cake and mess up the wrapping. She would go hungry. And she wouldn’t ride down the Quinella and have to sweat herself all the way back up.

She set the sack on the road a moment and rested her head on the handlebars.

I’m blue, she thought. My head hurts me.

She was sad and tight as a drum inside. All the little nervous jumps were causing a bad taste of fear in her mouth, making her almost sick.

I got to go.

She picked up the sack and turned back, north along Morrey. By the time she got downtown and could read the clock on the bank, it was near enough to nine for her to make her way. She backtracked south up Xenia Avenue, then west on South College Street to Enon Road. There she rode around the High School grounds a while and the Middle School grounds. This year she would be in Seventh Grade at the Middle School.

Seventh is nothing, she thought. Wish I was in Eighth or back in Sixth. Seventh is a hard nothing.

Justice didn’t feel right. She felt downhearted and numb and sick and sad. But numb was most of it, and it got her upset.

She glided over to Dayton Street and came on from the westward end. That way she didn’t have to go near the corner of Union, which was almost where she lived.

She tooled up the walk and made a left turn into the Jefferson yard. A hedge as tall as she was closed her off from the street. The Jefferson car was parked in the driveway on the right of the small lawn. Mr. Buford Jefferson and his only son, Dorian, were washing the car. White suds slid down the car windows and hood and fenders. She’d never known people to take care of a car so much. Care like a baby.

They looked up as she let her bike down to lie on the ground, the back wheel spinning.

“Hi, Justice,” Dorian said. He gave a quick glance at his dad.

“Hi, Dorian. Hello, Mr. Jefferson.”

Jefferson nodded, went back to his work. He wasn’t the friendliest father in the neighborhood. Suddenly Justice wondered how in the world Mrs. Jefferson had covered for Dorian the times they’d gone to the future.

You know how she did it, Justice thought. And it must be awful having to muddle folks’ heads all the time.

“Is your mother at home?” she asked Dorian. “I brought her and you all some of my birthday cake.” She spoke as sweetly as she knew how for Mr. Jefferson’s benefit. But if she hoped to gain points by being a generous neighbor, she was wasting her time.

“I don’t eat cake,” said Jefferson.

Well, blip and bleep on you, too, old dude! she thought. She knocked and heard Mrs. Jefferson call come in. She turned the knob of the screen door and went in. She didn’t bother noticing the picture window, which had always impressed her. It was like an oversized fish tank, like the kind they had in aquariums—glass set right in the boards of the house.

There was another world where the Jeffersons lived. Mrs. Jefferson was the owner of it. A short-handled broom leaned against the wall just inside the door. Justice looked at it and knew she had once swept the Jefferson walk with it. She couldn’t remember right now why she had, or whether she’d got paid for it. What did it matter, anyway?

There wasn’t a hallway inside the door. She stepped right in and was in the evergreen-carpeted living room, looking at walls painted cabbage green. There were no pictures. A floor-to-ceiling mirror gave back her reflection. There were pots and pots of green growing things. The plants held heat and made the place feel uncomfortably damp. Justice brushed by them.

“Mrs. Jefferson?” she called, going toward the back of the house. She found the Sensitive seated at the table in the kitchen, drinking coffee and reading the Sunday paper. Justice could smell pancakes. She looked at the oven. Leona Jefferson stood up and got the pancakes out of the oven. She put three nice-sized ones on a plate and sprinkled powdered sugar on them and then some butter, and poured syrup atop it all. She set the plate in front of Justice, along with a napkin and a knife and fork. Justice sat down.

“Milk or coffee?” the Sensitive asked.

Softly Justice said, “Milk.” She gazed at Mrs. Jefferson’s face. She loved that face. Knew it like she knew her own insides.

Justice ate and drank like she wouldn’t stop. She ate everything and after, ran a finger across the plate just to get the last of the syrup. Mrs. Jefferson sat next to her. She wasn’t reading the paper. She was waiting.

Justice pushed the empty plate out of the way. “Oh, wait,” she said. “Forgot what I brought you.” The sack of cake was on the floor at her feet. “Here.” She handed over the sack. Mrs. Jefferson did not look at it. She nodded thanks and set the sack on the chair next to her.

“So,” Mrs. Jefferson said.

“So,” Justice said. “It’s not over. Is it?”

The Sensitive kept quiet, waiting.

“I thought it was all gone,” Justice said. “I didn’t try to trace or telepath or anything because I was so certain that with the Watcher gone … But last night! I kept waking up so scared. Something was right there, within me.”

“Who have you told?” asked the Sensitive.

“Nobody,” Justice said. “No one but you.”

“Good. And no, it’s not over,” the Sensitive said. “I knew that the moment I saw your eyes when you came back. Listen, you must understand that you are gifted and the given don’t disappear.”

“But ... but the Watcher.”

“It’s gone, yes. But you still got the makeup, haven’t you—what you were born with?”

“You mean, my genes.”

“Yes. And so, think of an eye and crying and a great tear filling and filling until it fall from the eye and roll down, it so full.”

“What?”

“Justice, that’s what it is. A filling up, slowly and ever so slowly until it fills up its place. And it becomes so full up, it has to fall or roll or
rise.
”

“You mean, I’m to have the Watcher again?”

“Maybe not the same thing. Who knows how it will form? But it will be power. You will have to be prepared for it. And I will help you just the way I did help you the first time.”

Justice shook her head. Her headache was gone, she realized, probably because she had eaten. A hungry headache, her mom called it. There was no point in her saying she didn’t want power.

Mrs. Jefferson put her hand on Justice’s shoulder, patted it. “Nothing for you to fear,” she said. “It will take a long, long time, long as the Watcher taken. And by then you’ll be older. So will Dorian and a better healer, too. And maybe I will know more and find the best way for you to learn the control of it.”

“But what will I do with it this time?” Justice asked. “I can’t go back to the future, can I?”

“I believe you will do like you did the first time,” said the Sensitive. “It will transmit the need and you will accept the transmission. You will do whatever you find you must do. So let it alone. You don’t need to worry about it.”

“I won’t, then,” Justice said.

She sat at the table a while longer. Mrs. Jefferson got a phone call. It was Justice’s mom.

“She’s here,” Mrs. Jefferson said. “Brought me some real nice cake. Sure was good, too. You make it, honey? I’ll send her on home in a fast minute.”

Justice smiled. “You haven’t even seen the cake.”

“Just a little fib. Don’t have to see it. I know Dorian’s going to be real happy to have an extra piece of it.”

Justice got up. “Thanks for the breakfast. Those pancakes were
real
good!”

“Glad you liked them. You want this sack back?” She took out the cake, unwrapped it and stuck her little finger in the frosting. Licked her finger. “Uuum! That’ll be nice for after my supper tonight.”

Justice left by the back door because she felt like it. Mrs. Jefferson saw her out.

“Tell Dorian I left my bike and he can bring it over later, if he wants.”

“Sure,” Mrs. Jefferson said. “Justice, I told your mother you were coming home.”

“Well, I am,” Justice said.

She left and went into the field and strolled and dawdled inside the hedgerow, taking her sweet time.