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After awhile, they opened the door and let me out.

Mom was there. “Hasn't this child seen a nurse?”

“The nurse is busy with young Tiffany,” the vice-principal said.

“What's the matter with the rest of you? Don't you know how to open a bandage? Get me your first-aid kit.”

No one moved. Tammy banged her way behind the office counter. “Get me a first-aid kit right now,” she said into the vice-principal's face. She used her quiet voice. I knew that voice. It was her don't-even-think-about-messing-with-me voice.

“Get her the first-aid kit,” he said to one of the secretaries. He tried to make it sound like it was all his idea. It was kind of funny.

Tammy grabbed the kit without saying thank you. Then she grabbed me and headed out of the office.

“Wait a minute,” Miss Melon said. “I don't think you understand the seriousness...”

“Clean up first, lecture second,” Mom said, and pulled me through the office door.

I was impressed with the sight of myself in the bathroom mirror. Tiffany had put deep scratches on my head. My face was covered with streams of dried blood. I looked wonderfully gory.

Tammy wet some paper towels and started cleaning me up.

“I've told you and told you and told you that I don't want you fighting.” She bandaged the worst cuts and tidied my hair. “Are you hurt anywhere else?”

I told her about my chest. She felt me all over and said she thought I was in one piece.

“All right, now, quickly, before we go back to the office. What happened?”

I thought about telling her the truth, but if she knew I was fighting because of the boys, she might send them away faster. I looked at a piece of chewed-up pink gum on the bathroom floor and mumbled, “She just annoyed me, that's all.”

“She annoyed you.”

I don't like lying to Tammy. I hardly ever do it. When I have to lie, I make my lies as true as possible. Tiffany had annoyed me, so it was partly true.

Tammy always sticks up for me with the teachers. She'll bawl me out when we're alone, but never in front of anybody. Some parents like to suck up to the teachers by yelling at their kids in front of them. They think the teachers will think they're good parents if they do that. Tammy doesn't care what teachers think of her.

We went back to the principal's office. Everyone was looking very solemn and stern. Tiffany's mother was there. Tiffany was still in the nurse's office, probably having over-acted hysterics.

I sat through a long list of complaints about my behavior.

When they ran out of complaints about my attitude and temper, Miss Melon piped up, “Plus, she was late again this morning, and she fell asleep during the history test.”

“She fell asleep during the history test because she was up all night in the hospital emergency
room with her brothers,” Tammy replied. The other adults looked uncomfortable for a moment and stared down at the floor, embarrassed.

The vice-principal recovered first. “She can be excused for being late and falling asleep, but she cannot be excused for fighting.”

I stopped listening at that point.

While the adults went on and on about my crime, and Tammy reminded them that I was the brightest kid in the school, and it was their job to give me confidence instead of making me feel bad, I pretended I was far away, crossing the Australian Outback, all on my own.

They suspended me for the rest of the week and I'd be on probation when I returned, plus I'd have to apologize to Tiffany. Before we could leave, we had to go back to the classroom and get the school work that I would miss.

“Whatever she gives you, I will double it,” Mom said, bending down close to my ear so that no one else would hear her.

We didn't talk on the way home. Tammy was unhappy with me, especially since she didn't know the real reason I'd been fighting.

I wasn't unhappy with me, though. Anybody insults my brothers, they're going to get it.

“You could at least pretend to be ashamed of yourself,” Tammy said. I did not reply.

Mom had to get back to the boys at the play group, but before she left, she wrote down a list of chores for me to get started on. “I'll give you more work this afternoon. You won't have a moment to breathe until you go back to school.”

Then she put her face close to mine and said in her quiet, don't-mess-with-me voice, “I absolutely forbid you to fight. Do you understand?”

I nodded. There were very few things Tammy forbade me to do, but when she did, there was no discussion. That was Law. I'd never disobeyed her on anything she absolutely forbade me to do.

Mom left. I looked at the long list of chores, and got started.

CHAPTER NINE

Mom was, as always, true to her word. When I wasn't cleaning, I was running errands, and when she ran out of chores for me to do at our place, she sent me over to Juba's to clean stuff there. When I wasn't cleaning, I was doing school work.

Tammy didn't just double my homework, she tripled it. For every page of math the teacher gave me, Mom gave me two more. She gave me long columns of numbers to add up, my least favorite kind of arithmetic. She made me read ahead in history and do pages and pages of grammar.

For someone like me, who hates work, it was a bleak week.

“Don't even think about complaining,” Tammy warned me when she handed me the first list of chores I was to complete.

I hadn't thought of complaining. I'd learned from painful experience that complaining about a
punishment only brought on more punishment. Besides, Tammy says that one way a person's character can be measured is by how well she takes her punishment, if it's deserved. It's funny but no matter how mad I get at Tammy, I still want her to think I'm a person of good character.

Mom always told me there's no shame in being punished for something you did wrong, but there is shame in whining about it. It helped this time that I knew I did the right thing, clobbering Tiffany. Fighting is wrong, but I was still glad I did it.

When I wasn't busy with housework or school work, I had to take the twins out, one at a time, one hour each brother, morning and afternoon.

“You're confined to the playground behind the building,” Tammy said. “You can go there, and nowhere else.”

I hated taking the twins to that playground. It was small, with just a jungle-gym in a sand pit. There was no fence around it, and it was right next to a parking lot, so I was always afraid they would get hit by a car. I love my brothers, but spending four hours a day with them in that tiny playground got a little boring.

The week dragged on. “No radio, no books except school books,” Tammy decreed.

“What about Monkees records?” I asked.

She didn't think that was funny.

I even had to turn over my atlases to her.

Then, finally, it was over. Friday night appeared.

Just before going to bed, I went into the kitchen, where Juba and Mom were having a cup of tea. Since they've known each other, Juba and Mom must have drunk an ocean of tea at that table. Sometimes they go to Juba's, but with the boys, it's easier when Juba comes to our place. Besides, Juba's apartment is really tiny. She likes to get out of it as much as she can, she says, so the walls don't close in on her.

Juba used to babysit me when I was too young and stupid to look after myself. She was a thousand years old then, and must be almost two thousand years old now, but she has a soft lap, one that's almost as good as Tammy's. When I was little and had a fight with Tammy, I'd go crying to Juba. She'd take me onto her lap, rock me, let me cry it out, then dry my tears and say, “It's time for you to bring a little sunshine into the world.” It sounds crazy, but by the time she said that, I wouldn't be mad at Mom anymore.

All my friends are dependable. Juba is always kind, Valerie is always rude, and X is always frightened.

I put my stack of homework down in front of Tammy. “All done. Spelling checked, math checked, everything checked.”

Mom thumbed through the pages of school work. “This looks nice and neat.”

As if I'd waste my time bringing her schoolwork that wasn't tidy.

“Let's hear the poem.”

For extra English homework, Tammy gave me a poem to learn out of a big book of poetry she found at the Goodwill years ago. Memorizing stuff is easy. You just say it over and over until it becomes as much a part of you as your name.

I've learned a lot of poetry over the years. Lewis Carroll is my overall favorite. Tammy would find a new poem for me to learn whenever I got in her hair. She said she'd do anything that would keep me quiet for more than two minutes at a time.

I talk a lot because I have a lot to say. People who don't talk a lot also might have a lot to say. They just don't know how to get to it.

What I hate most are people who talk a lot and have nothing to say. They think they have a lot to say, so they keep talking and talking, but when you listen to them, they really aren't saying anything.

The poem Tammy gave me to learn during my punishment week was called “The Buried Life” by Matthew Arnold. That's what I was living that week — a buried life, buried in work.

The poem is a long one, with twenty verses. It's about how we live on the surface of ourselves, and
rarely get a chance to know what we're really made of. The day-to-day junk of work or school and chores and doing what you're supposed to do to be a good citizen doesn't leave much time to find out how to be a good human being.

My favorite verse goes like this:

But often, in the world's most crowded streets,

But often, in the din of strife,

There rises an unspeakable desire

After the knowledge of our buried life.

I think it means that in the middle of being busy doing stuff, you can suddenly wonder, “Who am I? What am I doing here?” I'm glad somebody put that into a poem, because it's happened to me. I guess everybody loses track of where they are sometimes.

I recited the poem, and I recited it correctly, and when I was done, Tammy said, “Once more, with feeling,” which is an old joke of ours, so I knew I was out of the dog house.

“Can I have my atlases back?”

“Well, I should make you wait until I've had time to make sure your school work is correct.”

I held my breath. Juba and Tammy laughed at the expression on my face. Tammy went into her room to get my atlases.

Mom's room is different from the rest of the apartment. “I must have one haven of femininity in this apartment filled with boys and explorers!” she says. The room is all pink and yellow, with lots of dainty things she's picked up at the Goodwill and yard sales over the years. It's a pretty room, although I wouldn't like to have one like it.

In her closet, she keeps some of her costumes from when she was a dancer. I used to play dress-up with them when I was a little kid. Now that I'm too old to dress up myself, I sometimes dress up the boys. Tammy's old costumes are great dress-up clothes — feather boas, capes, sparkly things. It's hard to imagine Tammy even wearing that stuff. These days, she wears only jeans and sweaters. She dresses like me, only tidier.

I don't go into Tammy's room without her permission (unless I need her during the night) and she doesn't go into my alcove. I don't mess with her stuff unless she says it's okay, and she doesn't mess with mine. One of the main reasons I won't do drugs is that Tammy says any hint of me smoking dope means she gets to “plow through my stuff like there's no tomorrow.” I like my privacy.

Tammy handed me my atlases, and I crawled into bed with them. I have three atlases now — a Canadian atlas, a little kid's atlas that I keep because it has photographs in it of faraway places,
and a thick world atlas. They're a little out of date — we bought them at the Goodwill — but I still love them.

I plotted a journey across Egypt, following the Nile River from the Mediterranean Sea to Lake Nasser, until it was time to go to sleep.

Tammy came in to kiss me goodnight.

“I'm proud of you,” she said. “It was a long, hard week for you, and you came through it really well.”

“Can we do something tomorrow? All of us? Could we go to Riverdale Farm?” Riverdale Farm is a real farm, with pigs and horses and chickens, a few blocks from our place. Tammy lets me go there alone, but it's more fun to go with my whole family.

Tammy hesitated. Then she said, “As a matter of fact, we can do something. We can go see the boys' new home tomorrow.”

I sat up on my elbows. “What?”

“The social worker will be by in the morning to drive us there. We'll be spending the night there, to help get the boys used to it. I was going to leave you with Juba, but I'd much rather you came with us.”

“You're still doing that? I said I didn't want you to.” I sat all the way up. My head bumped the ceiling. If I grew any more, we'd have to get a taller apartment.

“Lower your voice, young lady. If you wake up your brothers, you'll be the one sitting up with them all night.”

“You're still giving them away?”

Tammy turned off my light. “Go to sleep, Khyber. I'd love to have you come with us tomorrow, but if you don't want to, you can go to Juba's after your job. We won't be back until late Sunday evening.”

“I won't go to Juba's!”

“Yes, you will. You're a pain in the neck sometimes, but you're basically a good kid. You won't give me anything extra to worry about. Now, goodnight.”

She tried to kiss me, but I pulled away from her. She went back to the kitchen.

I turned my light on again. “I'll show her,” I grumbled. I half hoped Tammy would hear me and come back so that we could have a fight, but if she heard me, she stayed away.

Picking up my world atlas, I plotted a course across Russia — a rough, difficult, dangerous trip that I would send Tammy on. One way.