Addie on the Inside (4 page)

and I want to talk more

with Joe as we head home together. But Joe's walking with Zachary today

and they're talking video games

and Skeezie says, “I'd like to see
you
be silent for a whole day, Addie!” And

this is the way the Forum works.

is the way I make it real,
the way I find my way
into what it is I feel.

The words on paper or
computer screen
tell me more than
what I knew before
I wrote them,

help me remember
what I'm afraid
I'll forget,

let me keep
what I don't want
to lose,

say to me:
You
were
here.

thinking about Joe and how it used to be
before Zachary moved to the neighborhood.
I like Zachary, don't get me wrong, but
I miss Joe when I'm walking home alone.
I think of that poem from the book I read
when I was little, the one that said, “I
loved my friend. He went away from me.”

Oh, I know Joe is still my friend and I'm
just being silly, but I miss how we'd talk
and how he'd blurt out “Ministry of Silly
Walks!” and start slicing his legs through
the air like a pair of psychotic scissors,
unhinged and devil-may-care, shouting,
“Keep up, Addie, it's Monty Python Time!”

I could never keep up with Joe, and yet
somehow we'd always end up with our arms
wrapped around each other's waists, kicking
like the Rockettes, or swaying like a couple
of drunks before we even knew what that
meant. Now I walk home thinking the kinds
of serious thoughts Joe helped me to forget.

When I get home from school,
there in the front yard my dad
is swinging the three-year-old
from two houses down around
and around. She has one arm
and one leg splayed, reaching
for the sky, her eyes squeezed
tight, her mouth open wide,
crying, “Look at me, I'm flying!”

“Hey, Addie,” my dad says as I
say nothing back but run inside
to throw myself on the sofa
and cry. It's ridiculous, I know,
how my body aches to be lifted
and flown. But I will never fly
again. I'm grounded. I'm grown.

Cats have radar
for girls who are thirteen
and in tears.
They come out from hiding
or wake from their naps
to rub up against you
or jump in your lap.
And even though they themselves don't cry,
they understand distress.
They never ask why
or what's going on,
they just present themselves
as if to say,
We're here now, you'll be okay.
Kennedy and Johnson
(those are my cats)
are older than me
and wiser, too.
They don't cry
over what's lost
and never again will be.
They don't cry
that they never had a dad
who made them fly

like me.

I've known Kennedy
my whole life. “And who are you?”
his eyes sometimes ask.

He bathes his privates,
then sweetly comes to kiss me.
“In your dreams,” I say.

The pillow was his.
The sofa he would share, but
the pillow was his.

Kennedy looked at
the new cat. He hissed. He spat.
And then: That was that.

Kennedy's pillow
Kennedy soon discovered
was perfect for two.

Now they curl in sleep,
deep in contentment and dreams,
their heads tucked under.

They demand their food
in the same high voices, then
reject our choices.

Like bookends they sit
on each arm of the sofa,
and we are the books.

Johnson loves to lick.
Kennedy loves to be licked.
Two cats in heaven.

What must it be like
to move through your days always
in step with a friend?

The girl in the mirror holds her lifted hand
at the back of her neck, fingering the unseen
clasp to the necklace she has worn every day
since Christmas. She considers her plain face
framed by a drape of straight falling hair: no
drama there, more a face that might be found
on the cover of a novel set on the prairie
than on a poster for a movie about, say,
vampire lust.

Why must she have her mother's face? Her
mother's mother, neither plain nor a beauty,
was always pretty and still is, in an old-
people sort of way. The girl in the mirror
furrows her forehead thinking about her grand-
mother's arrival the next day. She loves her
grandmother but always feels a little smaller
in her presence. Does her mother feel
that way, too? Does her mother see herself
as ordinary, plain?

My fingers unclasp the necklace. It falls away
into my hand. The girl in the mirror smiles
as we remember the boy who first clicked the
clasp, stepped back to check it out, and said,
“You look nice.”

My dad tells me I'm pretty,
then laughs and says,
“I guess all dads think
their daughters are pretty.”

Thanks, Dad.

What does Becca Wrightsman want?
Should I let her give me a makeover?
Why would I do that?
Why am I even thinking about it?
Why did Becca have to move back here?
Why did she have to change?
Does everyone have to change?
Does DuShawn like Tonni more than me?
What does he see in me, anyway?
If he breaks up with me,
will I have to give back the necklace?
Why does Ms. Wyman hate me?
Why do I stare at Ms. Watkins' hair?
Why do I notice what she wears?
Will Joe always be my friend?
Does my dad wish I was little again?
Why do I act like I know everything
when inside all I really know are
questions?

even though we had snow only last week. “Honey,” she says,
“shoes are foot prisons, trust me. Feet are meant to be free.
Now, let me look at you.” She's shorter than me by an inch,
which is news to both of us. It's only been since the summer
that we saw each other and I was looking up at her and she
was looking down. The kitchen fixture reflects in her eyes,
twin specks of light shining with the intensity of miners' lamps
as she turns the beams of her determination this way and
that, digging for something, until “Eureka!” she cries. “I hit
gold. I see it in your eyes, Addie.” “What, Grandma?” “Love,
girl!” My face goes red hot as if it were a piece of dry wood
her focused rays have ignited. “DuShawn, is that his name?
Oh, Lyddie,” she says, turning to my mother, who is crushing
garlic with the bottom of last year's National Public Radio mug,
“how much do you love that our Addie went and got herself
a black boyfriend?” “Grandma!” I cry. “I didn't ‘go and get'
anybody, and it doesn't matter that he's black!” “Exactly my
point,” she replies, and where have I heard that before. “This
is what we fought for, marched for, Lydia, that it wouldn't matter
what color anybody's boyfriend is. What about Joe? What's his
boyfriend like?” I am tempted to say he's green with orange
polka dots, but I tell the truth. “His boyfriend is in the closet,
so he doesn't qualify as a boyfriend anymore.” “Back in the dark,”
Grandma says with a click of her tongue. “There is so much work
yet to be done.” I'm all set to tell her about the GSA, when she
takes my hands in hers and says, “I am so happy to be here.
I've been lonely.”

This is how she is. One minute she's taking on the world
and the next she's taking you in her arms. She has been
in our house less than an hour. Hugging her, I can't say I
tower over her—an inch is only an inch—but for the first
time I don't feel small. Maybe this is what it means that I'm
growing up. Maybe this is what it means that Grandma
is growing old.

Grandma has been here for over a week now, sleeping
in the study that doubles as a guest room. She brought her own
coffeemaker because my parents only drink tea, rescued last
year's National Public Radio mug from the garlic, claimed it
as her own. Each morning she sits on the sofa (Kennedy
hunched on the arm behind her looking like a gargoyle, but
fuzzy) with her knees drawn up and her favorite mug, steaming,
held in her hands the way I imagine a priest might hold
the sacramental chalice of wine. As far as I know Grandma
is an agnostic, but she calls the mornings her sacred time.
Maybe she worships coffee. There are people who do. Maybe
she worships a god she doesn't choose to discuss.

On the second day she was here I asked her how long she'd be
staying. “As long as it takes,” she said. “You know I'm getting
the house ready to sell. Didn't your mother tell you?” My eyes
welled up with tears. “Oh, Addie, come here,” she said. “It's too
much work to keep up that house all by myself, and it holds too
many memories I'd rather keep in my heart, not face every day in
the cupboard where his cereal bowl still sits or there by the side
of his chair in the pile of papers I stupidly refuse to throw out.”
“But why do you have to move? I love that house,” I said. “I love
it too. But you have to move on. With or without. It's not as if
you have a choice.”

Today I had my first cup of coffee. I sat down at the other end
of the sofa, tucking up my knees, cupping the mug the way my
grandma cups my face. Johnson jumped down from his perch
behind me, rubbed against my legs, and settled at my feet. I
didn't speak, I didn't want to ruin Grandma's sacred time. I
thought about my grandpa, gone two years now and his papers
still piled by the side of his chair. I looked over at my grandma's
face. Her eyes were closed. She was smiling. Maybe she was
thinking of him. Maybe she was simply glad that I was there.

After they met, Grandma told me, “I like your young man,”
sounding older than she usually does and making me laugh
because, I mean, DuShawn?

Young man?

Not so much.

He did act the part, I guess, asking polite questions
and saying he was sorry to hear her husband had died.
Apparently, I forgot to tell him it was two years ago.
I had this funny moment then, picturing DuShawn and me
together for the rest of our lives and him growing old and
dying the way my grandpa did and what would that be like
and how would I feel.

Lucky is what I felt. Lucky not to be old or sick or lonely.
Lucky to have

a young man

my grandmother likes.

DuShawn is the kind of boy
who always has a rubber band
working its way through his fingers,
who thinks spitballs are an art form,
who makes everything into a joke,
including, sometimes,
himself.

DuShawn is the master of sly looks
and cool moves
and smiles that charm the teachers
and, sometimes,
me.

DuShawn never says anything straight
when he can detour to a wisecrack.

But once when it was dark and we were walking and
I told him I'd heard Becca Wrightsman tell Royal Wilkins
I was plain as dirt, he did not take a detour. He said,
“Don't believe what girls say about other girls.
You're beautiful, Addie. They're just jealous.”

I didn't say anything then,
and neither did he until
he asked if I wanted a stick of gum.

I said yes, even though I worried
it might be the trick kind
that burns your mouth and
makes you cry.

It wasn't. It didn't.

DuShawn, it seems, is more than
one kind of boy.

“Listen to this,” I say to DuShawn,
but when he sees I am holding
a book of poems by Langston Hughes,
he says before I can even read him
what I wanted to, “Here you go
again.”

“What is that supposed to mean?”
I shoot back, knowing that it means
here
we
go again, that our voices
will start rising and our palms
will start sweating. Let the fighting
begin.

“Why you got to read
that
poet?”
DuShawn asks. “Why you always
Maya Angelou'in' me and askin' me
did I hear that new song by Bee-
Yon-Say? Why you out-blackin' the
black guy?”

“And why are
you
talking like ‘you
from the hood,' when the only hood
you've ever been in is the one
on top of your hoodie? Talking
ghetto doesn't make you any
blacker.”

“I talk the way I talk, girl,” to which
I say, “I am not your girl. I've got a
name.” “Yeah?” says DuShawn.
“I got a name for you too, want to hear
it?” I want to throw the book in his
face,

but I like Langston Hughes too much
for that. “I am going in,” I tell DuShawn,
and he says, “I'm already gone.” He
takes off down the street, leaving me
sitting on my front porch steps alone with
Langston.

I never get to read him the poem.
It isn't about being black.
It's about loving a friend who
went away. DuShawn's friend
Kevin isn't speaking to him
anymore.

I thought he would like the poem.
I thought it might make him feel
better. Well, he probably would have
just snorted and said, “Me and Kevin
didn't love each other, girl. That is
so gay.”

Here we go again, throwing words at
each other the way people once threw
garbage out of kitchen windows, never
minding who they might hit in the street
below, the empty, stinking bucket still
theirs.

Skeezie bops his head to some song
only he hears (there hasn't been a
jukebox in years), says, “I'm with you
on this one, Addison. Love sucks.”