Darnay Road (37 page)

“Do you think I should try to talk to
the principal or something?” Easy says. He is holding my hand very firmly atop
his leg.

“No,” Granma says. “Georgia you can
handle yourself, right? You would go to a teacher if anyone got out of line?”

“Yes,” I say. Granma can’t imagine how
cruel the kids at school can be. Aunt May is more correct but what she’s saying
can’t help me in the pit of Bloody Heart. It may be true about Christianity, I
haven’t thought it out like she has, but it is still, what it is. And I have to
go there on Thursday and face it.

“I’m sorry Georgia,” Easy says to me,
not caring who else hears.

Ricky snorts but I don’t look at him.

“Don’t go,” Cap says. “If it’s a bad
scene just go to public.”

I
laugh and so does Abigail. Cap can’t know how it feels to have gone to the same
place since kindergarten, that leaving it could not be casual, or even a choice
as my Granma thinks me going to Bloody Heart secures my place in heaven and
Aunt May, for all her disgust with Christians, thinks Bloody Heart is a better
education than public. Least she used to think that.

“Maybe if I pick her up from school
every day in my uniform,” Easy says like that uniform makes him superman or
something.

“No Easy,” Granma says firmly. “I was
going to talk to you about that. You are not to go on school grounds.”

“Did the school say that?”

“I said it. Georgia Christine is to come
home on the bus just like always. You are not to show up at her school,” Granma
says. “I have to think of her. And it protects you too.”

They are having a bit of a stare-off.
His grip is almost too tight.

“Are you listening?” she says.

“Yes Ma’am,” he says.

Granma’s shoulders drop a little. “Good
then.”

“But I can’t just let Georgia suffer.
It’s my fault. This whole thing.”

“Shouldn’t have run away from me.
Again.” Ricky says talking with his mouth full.

“Sometimes we put things in motion, and
people get hurt. We have to learn to look at consequences not only for
ourselves but for others before we act,” May says like she’s quoting another
book.

“Like the war,” Cap adds and I’m really
impressed he could make that leap. He just keeps surprising me. And apparently
Aunt May cause she does a double take looking at him.

But Granma keeps going, “Georgia has a
mind. She made her own decision and it got her here. Sacred Heart is her world
just like the army is yours, Easy. She can’t fix yours and you can’t fix hers.”

“Right here, Granma,” I say weakly cause
she’s talking like I’m not around.

“I’m talking to Easy,” she says without
her usual care. Is she mad at me or something?

“Sacred Heart is my world too,” Ricky
says. “So I got it, G. I. Joe.”

I put my fork down and pinch the back of
Ricky’s arm.

“Ow,” he says too loudly. “What’d you do
that for?”

“You’re in my world,” I say and Abigail
May is laughing.

Ricky looks at me. He licks his lips and
takes his napkin and rubs his hands and face. He pitches that in his plate.
“I’m ready for cake,” he says, his face flushed red.

“Georgia is,” Easy clears his throat,
“important to me.”

“And to me,” Granma says.

Easy looks at her. “Yes Ma’am. I…know
that.”

“I ah…okay?” I say weakly and even
Abigail isn’t laughing. What Easy just said…in front of everyone has quieted us
down.

“You haven’t seen her for four years,”
Granma says.

“Yes Ma’am. But it doesn’t change how I
feel about her. I’m going away again but it won’t change it.” He is so certain,
so clear. I want to believe him and I’d say the same thing, if I had the nerve
but it would be hard to just…declare it in front of…everyone.

May’s chair scrapes back as she stands
up. “Abigail May you help me serve the cake.”

Abigail
gets up, and with May’s back turned and Granma’s attention on her plate now,
Abigail pinches Cap’s cheek as she passes him and he grabs at her and she
quietly dances out of his reach toward Aunt May.

“That’s my sister,” Ricky says to him.

Cap flashes Ricky the peace sign.

Granma is blinking like Satan just stuck
a pitch fork in her eye.

“Young people,” Granma says like it’s a
disease maybe.

“We can’t help it we’re young, Granma,”
I say.

“I like being young,” Cap says and he
turns and does this lazy grin at Abigail and she is looking at him like she was
waiting for it.

“You need some sugar,” Aunt May says
setting the first piece in front of Granma.

“It’s too big May.”

May picks up Granma and Easy’s plates and
moves the dish of cake across the table to Easy.

“Thanks Ma’am,” he says picking up his
fork again. “I just mean I care about Georgia.”

“Well you’re talking way ahead of
yourself,” Granma says.

“He’s not,” I say. “Easy is my friend.”

“It’s…,” Easy starts but I squeeze his
hand. He can’t say it again in front of all of them—how important I am.

“You’re a big talker,” Ricky says, “but
you don’t know the future. People change. She can change her mind,” Ricky says.

“Shut-up Ricky,” I say.

Easy leans forward again. “I mean what I
say.”

I stand and bring our hands into
Granma’s view. I let go quick and Granma doesn’t say anything she just takes a
quick bite of her cake.

I stack the dirty plates and move around
Ricky and Abigail’s vacated seat and round the table and pass Cap on my way to
the sink. Abigail is taking plates of cake and setting them where the dirty
plates were. I put the dishes in the sink and I turn to look at Easy. He
watches me but so does Ricky. I ignore him.

“Get mine,” I say meaning my cake.

Easy stands and has our two plates and I
lead us into the living room. Once in there he says, “This is rude.”

I take the plates and set them on the
coffee table, on top of Granma’s magazines. Then I turn to him and over the
music I say, “Let’s dance,” and I get close to him and his arms come around me
like at the sock hop and mine go around him, too, and the Doors, well Jim
Morrison sings Light My Fire, the best song ever created. And it’s just relief
to feel myself pressed against Easy. I don’t need or want another thing. Just
Easy.

Rude feels so wonderful. So wonderful. I
am leaving them all behind. I am waving to them as they stand on the shore. My
family…and my school. I am choosing Easy. I look in his eyes and what I see
there are his feelings. “I heard you,” I say.

He swallows.

I may not say it in front of them all,
like he has, but they can look in here anytime if they dare, and they’ll see
how it is, how we are. I choose Easy.

Darnay Road 61

“Watch the lamp,” Aunt May says, moving
protectively in front of the end table Ricky jars when he falls to his knees
beside the coffee table. It is only a few minutes after Easy and I have begun
dancing to our second song, “Cherish,” by The Association, that the great
arm-wrestling championship is about to begin here in Granma’s living room.

This
is Ricky’s idea. He’d entered the living room where I was dancing with Easy in
a complete stupor as the song seemed just for us. He’d plopped on the sofa and
Cap and Abigail were with him and mine and Easy’s happy bubble burst. Pop.

The record changed to Stevie Wonder’s “I
Was Made to Love Her,” and those two immediately started to dance. Cap wasn’t
shy about trying anything Abigail May suggested like the jerk or mashed
potatoes. She even got him to do the funky chicken. He’s just not
self-conscious.

Aunt May and Granma squeezed in as soon
as the dishes were done. By that time Abigail May and Cap had pretty well taken
over. Now Abigail is showing Cap how long she can stand on her head. Good thing
she still has her gym suit under the kilt she’d borrowed from my closet.

And here’s how we got to the
arm-wrestling. Ricky had started in with Easy about whether or not he knew
Karate. Easy said they learned some in basic, so Ricky wanted to go out on the
lawn and try some holds on Easy and Easy said no but he ended up agreeing to
arm wrestle.

So now Ricky sits at one side of the
coffee table and Easy across from him in the gap between the couch and table,
but they widen it slightly because Easy has those long legs.

Ricky is bossing how they should do it,
and Cap gets interested in laying out rules, like they have to stay seated and
can’t get up and lean into it.

Granma sits in her rocker half shielding
her face as she watches. Aunt May stands at the end table holding Little Bit,
who has been hiding because we have so much company. Now she is trembling.

“Georgia come dance with me,” Abigail
says hardly paying attention to the wrestling match at all. She is so used to
Ricky and his friends and it is hard to ignore Aretha Franklin asking for
respect.

But I can’t take my eyes off of Easy. He
sits on the floor and I am almost next to him on the couch. His arms look
strong, and they felt strong when they were around me a minute ago. Now his
elbow is on the table, fist locked with Ricky’s. He looks even older and it
hits me again he is a trained soldier and that means he knows how to kill
people.

Well…he knew how to survive way before
the army.

So Cap says, “Go,” and Easy and Ricky
push against each other and the muscles in Easy’s arm start to pop.

I lean forward, my hands clasped on my
knees, and almost at once I see the littlest sway Ricky’s way, and Ricky’s face
is red and he grunts and takes a breath and grunts again as Easy slowly moves
their clenched hands and straining arms toward Ricky’s defeat.

Then Ricky’s arm seems to give way,
thunking the last inch to the table and Ricky loses. They let go and Ricky
yells, “We’re doing it again.”

I have my hand on Easy’s shoulder and I
rub over it cause it must be tired but I can feel how strong he is, just a
layer of muscle there. I am so proud and happy. And Granma is watching me, but
I don’t give a care.

Easy looks at me also proud and happy.
But he doesn’t rub it in Ricky’s face. Abigail does.

Ricky says he wasn’t ready when Cap said,
‘Go.’

Abigail
says, “Don’t be sore, Loser.” And she does a cartwheel and Aunt May scolds her
to be careful she has nearly knocked the rabbit ears off Granma’s TV.

They hold a rematch and Easy wins again
and Ricky is mad and Granma says, “No more,” they are going to ruin her table.
Easy is laughing and Abigail May wants to play Password and Ricky wants to see
who can do the most push-ups.

This living room must be holding its
ears there is so much…life.

Returning to school is worse than I
thought. Upperclassmen are interested in me, that’s the biggest surprise. And
it’s all rude and painful. It is all scary. I am content not to be noticed very
much, not for just entering a room for sure. I don’t mind being noticed for
writing an article or because I have spoken up in class and said what I
thought. I don’t mind that, but just because of a lie, gossip about me and Easy
that I had no say about, I mind very, very much being noticed for that.

I am…an inside person. That’s what Easy
said. I live inside of everything. But now…I’m on the outside. I am pulled from
the place I’ve always…nested in. I am held up…investigated…a specimen on the
lens of Bloody Heart’s merciless eye.

I am so, so mad. Here’s what I am pulled
from most…an existence I’m not sure I ever liked.

I don’t like them. I don’t like the way
they work and work to make their circles, their links on the chain, the older
ones and the younger ones, get in line.

They hold to one another, braided arms.
They give one another position. Insiders. No one on the outside matters.

I am my own group, a group of one. Older
boys who didn’t used to know I was alive I don’t think, are looking at me now,
whistling at me, asking me to go on dates. Older girls pretty much hate me.
Like I’m trying to steal the boys from them by being loose and like a whore,
but I’m not at all, of course.

Lunchtime is the worst. Freshmen have
their own tables, their own pressure. There is the long line of tables for
jocks only. To sit there is to eat at the king’s table. Ricky eats there. Abigail
May could too, but for the first few weeks of school she ate with me.

She tried to pull me along with her but
I have always refused. The price to be one of them is too high. I can’t lose my
freedom. I tell that to Abigail and she doesn’t understand, but she knows it’s
useless to argue. “Go sit with them if you want to,” I say. Everything they do
is so calculated. I just want to eat, not kiss ass for some kind of position in
the kingdom.

But Abigail stays with me until I move
somewhere else and she is forced—or free to take her place amongst their ranks.
God save the king.

That
first afternoon when my bus gets to the stop at the end of my street and the
doors open, Easy and Cap are waiting, both of them standing there looking older
and kind of tough, definitely about beautiful and perfect and such a feeling is
in me all of a sudden, like power I guess and I get off and Easy is finishing a
cigarette, he tosses it, and puts his hands in his pockets and he’s next to me
and hits me with his elbow, but he’s looking at the passing faces in the
windows and he’s smiling and saying, “They treat you okay?”

I have no mind for them. First time all
day they can’t touch me. He’s looking at me then, smiling.

“I’m gonna go,” Cap says.

“Yeah. No trouble,” Easy calls and Cap
is already in the street with his thumb out. “He’s going to watch Abigail
practice.”

Well no one said Cap couldn’t go to the
school. It’s not really fair that Granma says Easy can’t come.

“She asked him,” I say. She told me
right off and she couldn’t wait until he was in the bleachers watching her
twirl.

“Anyone give you a hard time?” He asks
thumbing my bag off my shoulder and putting it on his like he’d done last
Friday.

“Um…no.”

“You not telling me?” He takes my hand.

“Just…,” I swallow.

“What?”

“Just a couple of jerks. Upper classmen.
They think I do it now.”

“What?” he says without his smile.

“You can’t do anything about it. I said
no and they left me alone.”

“No to what?”

“Going out. Friday.” I shake my head.
They’d asked me to go to a party after. Two of them. Popular, in-crowd, talking
to me like I was some greaser they met at Snowball, the hamburger joint where
even the girls, hair teased to the sky, fight each other every weekend for boys
that fight each other every night of the week.

We only have those two girls at Bloody
Heart that do that, run with kids like that. Not me. I am not one of them. I
told those boys no thanks. They’d confronted me at my locker, caught me
off-guard as it’s a girl’s only section. So I said, no thanks, but I said it in
a way that made the handsome one look offended. I don’t think he’d been turned
down before. Not in this school where he’s a big catch.

His name is Paco. They call him that. I
think his real name is Jim. I know he has a girlfriend. A senior like him.

He asks if I’m coming to the game on
Friday.

“No,” I say trading the books in my arms
for the ones in my locker. I can’t even think.

“You put out?” he says.

“No,” I say loudly.

That’s when Sister comes and asks those
boys what they are doing in the girl’s section. She knows them, of course, and
she starts to scold. The one, Jim’s sidekick Ben starts to move off, but Jim
kind of ignores her. “Hey, I’ll see you Friday. At the game.”

I don’t get a chance to say I have a
boyfriend, not that he’s asking to be my boyfriend, he’s asking if I put out.

I’m so angry I stare after him and
before he rounds the corner he turns and makes a kiss mouth at me. It barely
registers that now Sister is yelling at me I’m so angry.

By
Friday I am so aware of being painfully behind in a couple of my classes. It’s
my responsibility to catch-up so I’ve met with a couple of my teachers after
school to learn about make-up work and I miss my bus. I know Easy is waiting at
my stop.

I’m so mad at this stupid school. At
myself. My choices are to walk to the field and wait for Abigail to finish her
shorter Friday night practice or to try walking home and it’s a long walk for
someone with such a stack of books as me.

I trudge to the cold field because the
boys get the gym to practice lay-ups and whatever else and that leaves the
great wintery outdoors for the girls.

I’ve been sitting on those bleachers
trying to make an outline for a research paper for a half hour when Cap plops
next to me. He has his usual ponytail and a cigarette behind his ear. “Hey,” he
says.

I’m looking around for Easy.

“He’s not here. I hitched,” Cap says.
“He’ll be here soon as he finds Disbro. I’m supposed to find you, set up a safe
perimeter, hold off the enemy until he arrives with the big guns.”

I laugh. It’s amazing to have a friend
after this horrible day. “Aunt May get you registered?” I say. I’m worried that
Easy is coming here when he’s not supposed to. I don’t want another ride with
Disbro either.

“Yeah,” he laughs a little. Aunt May
took it upon herself to get Cap registered at the public school.

“You start on Monday?”

“I guess,” he says taking that cigarette
and cupping his hands to light it. I add my hands too and he gets it lit.
“Thanks,” he says, breaking the no smoking rule but I don’t think he cares. I know
he doesn’t. “There she goes,” he says fondly as Abigail May does a cartwheel.

We both laugh a little. She’s already
spotted him and she waves. Others look and they are already talking.

“I guess I’ll go to the parking lot and
wait for him,” I say packing everything back into my bag.

“You’ll hear that truck. Just stay here
where I can do my job,” he says. Then we laugh again. “He’s worried someone
gave you trouble.”