Out of Nowhere (13 page)

At first he looked out for me. That’s because he was bigger for a long time, one of those early growers who shoots up fast, then stops, and ends up short or only average height. But back when we were five, he was bigger and bolder, egging me on to take my training wheels off, or climb the tree, or swim in the deep end.
I was actually sort of shy, a little timid, and Don, with his preschool swagger, would pull me along. No one dared mess with me, because otherwise Donnie Plourde, the biggest kid on the playground, would mess with them.

Things started to change in third grade because that’s when school changed. You were expected to know how to read. Fill out worksheets quietly. The kids who couldn’t sit still weren’t so cute and “kinetic” anymore. They were disruptive. Undisciplined. Dumb. All of a sudden, Timid Tommy was in the driver’s seat, while Donnie was sitting in the corner, the nuns’ favorite place to put him. I would finish my work fast, then volunteer to help him with his. In the cafeteria, I was our table’s monitor and always overlooked Donnie’s “violations,” like getting up and walking around, or leaving trash behind. I would pick up his trash. Wipe up his spilled milk.

Maybe that didn’t really help him in the long run. Especially because by senior year in high school, most of us were pretty tired of wiping up his spilled milk. Even me, and I knew him better than anyone. Sometimes it felt like the things that happened to him happened to me. I’d wince when he scraped a knee, cry when he got cut from teams, feel the same rage when his deadbeat dad, who was supposed to show up with Red Sox tickets for his birthday, failed to show at all. On the rare occasions when Don’s dad did show, he was usually drunk. Or with a new girlfriend.

Still, there was a limit. And Donnie leaving me to face Alex and Co. by myself at the rock was
so
not cool.

After we finished up at Maquoit, I gave Saeed and Ismail rides home. I was headed to the K Street Center and they both lived nearby. I doubted there would be much homework help needed on
a sunny Saturday afternoon, but with ninety-nine hours of service ahead of me, I figured I could find something to do there. Maybe Myla would let me count hours spent playing soccer with Abdi as service.…

That section of town used to be one of those old Franco neighborhoods. Walking distance from the river and the old mills. As we drove down Saeed’s street, I saw all these French names on the little convenience stores and businesses tucked between the apartment buildings: Thibeault’s Market, Morin’s Grocery, Coulombe’s Auto Repair. Now they faced Somali grocery stores advertising specials on goat meat and international phone cards.

One word caught my attention.

“What’s
halal
?” I asked Saeed, pointing to one storefront. The word was scrawled in black marker on a piece of paper taped to the window.

“Is good,” he replied. “Is … okay. For the Muslim peoples.”

“Is in Koran,” Ismail added. “What is
halal
. What is
haram
.”

That word again.

“Like, dogs are
haram
,” I said.

“Dogs is not clean,” Saeed corrected. “Pig meat is
haram
.” I sighed.

“Okay, so what’s
halal
?” I asked them.

“Goat,” they replied at once.

“If is made
halal
,” Ismail added.

“Wait. So goat is not automatically
halal
? You gotta do something to it?” He nodded encouragingly. Like the stupid Amreekan was finally getting it.

“Yes, is
way
you kill it make it
halal
.”

“But pork always
haram
,” Saeed added.

“Sounds kosher,” I said, grinning. They looked at me blankly. “Never mind,” I said. So much for humor.

When I pulled up to the curb in front of his building and started to get out, Saeed looked surprise.

“I’m going to the K Street Center,” I explained. He said something in Somali to Ismail, they clasped hands for a moment, then Ismail disappeared up one of the dim staircases that ascended like a maze between the apartment buildings. Saeed fell into step with me.

“Why you go to Center?” he asked.

“I have to help out. Volunteer. Because of what I did at the rock,” I told him. He laughed.

“That is good. Lot of peoples need help there. Samira work there. You know?”

“Yeah, actually, I did know that.” It occurred to me that this was as good a time as any to ask him about his sister.

“You know, Saeed, I get the impression she doesn’t much like me. Samira.” He frowned.

“Samira like all peoples,” he said.

“Not me,” I said. “I think she’s still annoyed about the permission slip thing. Do you remember?” Saeed stopped walking. He looked thoughtful.

“You not know Somali girls,” he finally said. “Somali girls is … different from Amreekan girls.”

“I understand, but some things? Especially in the girl department? Some things are the same.” I laughed, a little. Saeed did not laugh with me.

“Somali girls different.”

Something about his expression wiped the smile right off my
face. He didn’t have the English to bridge the gap between our respective understandings of girls any more than he had the English to explain how one slaughtered a goat according to the Koran. But he did have enough body language to make one thing very clear: the gap between us was deep. Like, Grand Canyon deep.

I changed the subject. We talked soccer for the rest of our walk.

The Center was alive with kids when we arrived, and I was beginning to suspect the place was never quiet. They raced in and out, spilling onto the sidewalks and running across the street to the big municipal park where there were benches, swings, and a basketball court. Somali women sat on the benches, a few holding babies. I felt like they’d been sitting there since my last visit.

When we walked into The Center, we practically crashed into my little pal, Abdi. “Dude!” I said to him. He skidded to a stop. He was about to reply, but then he saw who I was with. His expression took on something like awe. He said something to Saeed in Somali that made Saeed laugh. They went on, back and forth for a few sentences, leaving me completely in the dark, until Abdi turned to me.

“Tom, man, how you know Saeed?”

“We play soccer. How do you know him?” Abdi looked amazed. “Man,
everyone
know Saeed!” He ran outside, zipped across the street without looking, and disappeared into the sea of children milling around the park.

Saeed meanwhile had walked ahead of me. The room was full of kids trying to blow up these cheap balloons that simply wouldn’t blow up, and in the thick of it I saw Myla’s blond cropped head. She caught sight of me.

“Tom Bouchard!” she exclaimed. “Look, guys, just what we need! A pair of strong lungs.” She wove through the kids toward me, holding out a limp blue balloon.

It was stupid, but Donnie’s comments about my supposed thing for Myla popped into my head at that moment. Hot? Not?

Here’s what was really weird: neither. She was just herself. This little person wearing flip-flops and khaki pants that ended halfway down her calves. Her toenails were painted bright red.

I took the balloon. It was a little damp at the opening.

“Hmm. How many kids just put their mouths on this?” I asked her. She flashed one of those oh-give-me-a-break looks and rummaged in the package for a fresh balloon.

“Just me, Mr. Germs,” she said, holding one out. I backed up and raised the first balloon to my lips.

“Oh,
your
germs are good with me,” I replied. She colored, which, I admit, was my intention.
Yes, Ms. Mumford Student, this is how we roll
.

I blew. For a moment the balloon resisted, and I realized I was going to wind up looking like a complete idiot with my cheeks puffed like some chipmunk with his pouches full of nuts, but then it yielded into this long, narrow tube. A few of the kids shrieked, and then they started jumping up and down and holding their balloons toward me.

Myla turned out to be an energetic balloon animal maker, so after I inflated and tied off each one I passed it to her and she transformed it into a mouse … a fish … an alligator. Her creatures didn’t actually look like any of these animals, but the kids didn’t care.

“So I guess I don’t have to tell you that no one around here is doing any homework,” she said at one point.

“Yeah, I figured as much,” I said with a shrug. “But you’ll put me down for a few hours of heavy labor with balloons, right?”

“Dream on, Captain Bouchard,” she said dryly.

“Now,
that’s
what I’m talkin’ about,” I said. “Captain. I’ve been waiting to get a little respect around here.”

She laughed.

“Don’t kid yourself. You’re just my assistant balloon boy. Hey, everyone!” she shouted. “This is the last, and I want you to guess what animal it is!” The kids shouted the names of animals that didn’t look anything like the balloon knot Myla had created, which reminded me of a slug with warts, but she handed it to a girl who called out “cat,” so what did I know? Anyway, once the balloons were gone the kids drifted outside, and it got quiet.

“Wanna help me sort cans?” Myla said, heading for the kitchen without waiting for my answer. I followed her.

The industrial-style kitchen in the back of The Center had big ovens and long metal counters. You could cook enough food in there to feed an army, but it looked like they were only using it for storage. Namely, dozens of cardboard boxes and paper grocery bags stuffed with canned and packaged goods.

“A local high school did a Stuff the Bus project and gave us some of the food they collected,” Myla explained. “I’m sorting through it, pitching the crap, and trying to put together boxes we can give out to new refugee families. You know, staples to get them started?” Myla peered into a box, rummaged, and pulled out a can of peas and a crushed bag of something labeled Splenda.

“For example,
this
is crap,” she said, holding up the Splenda
and unceremoniously dumping it in the metal trash can next to the counter. She held up the peas. “
This
is food you can use.” She shook her head in disgust.

“Some people think cleaning out their cabinets once a year and donating their garbage counts as charity,” she said. She shoved a box toward me and I began emptying the contents onto the counter.

“Once,” she continued, “we got a load of donated used toys. Books. Some plastic stuff which was still okay once you gave it a good scrub in the tub. But there was this doll? One of those super-expensive American Girl dolls? With a busted face. It looked like someone had taken an ice pick to her eye. I couldn’t believe somebody thought that sad, scary doll would be a decent toy for a child. But I guess some people think if you’re poor, you’ll be happy with anything. That you
should
be happy with just anything.” Myla pulled cans from a paper bag on the floor. She was fast, and sorted as she went, into corn, beans, tomatoes …

“Dolls creep me out,” I commented. “I don’t get why girls play with them.”

“I know, right?” she laughed. “And a broken doll? Totally creepy.” She shuddered. We sorted in silence for a few minutes: boxes of mac and cheese, instant cake mix, SpaghettiOs …

“So how’d you find out I’m a captain?” I couldn’t resist asking her. She shrugged, not looking at me.

“Samira. We had a conversation about you after you left the other day.”

I put down the cans I was holding and forced a smile.

“Hmm. Why do I get the feeling that didn’t go so well for me?”

She laughed.

“Yeah. Samira’s definitely not your biggest fan.”

I felt my smile fade.

“Okay. Enlighten me.
What
did I ever do to piss her off?”

Myla stopped sorting as well.

“Let’s just say she doesn’t think much of your taste in women.” Wow. Completely unexpected response.

“Huh?”

“She knows your girlfriend,” Myla explained. “So I guess it’s a case of guilt by association.”

“What did Cherisse do to her?” I asked. Then I was instantly sorry. I hadn’t planned on telling Myla that I had a girlfriend. Saying her name confirmed it.

“Nothing directly. I don’t think she even knows Samira. But apparently your girlfriend is part of a group of white girls who told a teacher that Somali girls were gossiping about them and mocking them to their faces in the classroom, in Somali. They made a real stink about it, so now your school has an English-only policy in the classroom. If immigrant kids so much as say ‘Can I borrow your calculator?’ in their own language, they get detention.”

This was news to me. I didn’t have any Somali kids in my classes. But Cherisse, who was about as far from the honors track as you could get, had a bunch of kids in her classes who had just moved up from the annex. That was the basement floor, where they put everyone who couldn’t speak or write English. The day care was down there, too, for girls at our school who had had babies but still wanted to earn their diplomas. They’d drop their kids off in the morning, then head upstairs to homeroom.

“I never heard anything about this,” I said.

“Welcome to Girl World,” she said, and laughed. “It’s right next door to hell.”

“Yeah. Sucks for you, I guess,” I said.

She slammed the can she was holding down hard on the metal counter. Put her hand on one hip, and cocked her head. I couldn’t really tell if she was insulted or pretending to be insulted.

“Excuse me: I’m no girl. I’m a college
woman
.”

Okay. Pretending. Phew.

“Oh. Oh, pardon me.
Ms
. Myla.”

“Much better,
Captain
Bouchard. I see you’re getting the hang of things around here.”

We sorted in silence for a few minutes after that. But something was bothering me.

“Can I ask you something? What’s wrong with making the classroom an English-only zone?”

She put her can down again. Now she looked serious.

“Do you not get how this shuts them down? Especially when they barely speak our language? For them, not knowing English is like being gagged and blindfolded at the same time.”