by Monica Drake
Clifford reached for Bella. Arena handed her over like a bag of laundry. Bella quit crying. She snuggled in. The dog bowed his massive head over her tiny one and swayed back and forth in a clumsy big-footed waltz. Bella closed her eyes, wrapped in the plush folds of red poly-fibers.
She knew who was inside that costume: a mom. Somebody unemployed. Maybe someone with a graduate degree, out to network. Maybe it was a writer-mom with a book in process, an agent in New York, a dream big as all Manhattan. It was somebody who knew how to sling a diaper bag, push a stroller, and not miss a beat. A person who could take care of a kid without being sidetracked even by Johnny Depp in the flesh. Inside that big dope of a dog, inside that dancing red costume, was at least one part of the woman, the caretaker, Georgie tried to pretend to be. This, she thought, this dog, is how we dress a mom. Her own head felt like a puppet’s then, big and fuzzy, blinking under fluorescent lights, hiding another brain deep inside.
The school halls were quiet when Nyla signed in at the front desk. Students were in class or out on the fields for PE. She took a butterscotch in a translucent wrapper from a crystal bowl on the counter, and was given a laminated visitor’s pass. The principal’s office was down the hall. She made her way over squeaky linoleum floors so clean she could see up her own skirt.
Despite a queasy feeling, she wanted to dance, to slide on the polished floors, raise her arms, and chant, “We got it, we got it, we got it.”
That morning during their daily phone negotiations, Mrs. Cherryholmes had said there was a way, perhaps, to get Arena back in classes sooner than the initial terms of her expulsion. Yes! Victory! Her hopes were high. Nyla had come down to iron out the details.
The butterscotch settled her stomach and obscured the bitter saliva of pregnancy mouth. The vice principal had the outer office, in front of the principal’s rooms. She was on the phone making a soothing cluck and murmur. Still behind her desk, she nodded hello and waved a hand toward a second door, the door to the principal’s quarters.
Mrs. Cherryholmes’s door was open.
Nyla spit the butterscotch into her palm. She tapped on the narrow rectangle of paper-covered glass that marked the door, then went in. Mrs. Cherryholmes stood, tall and composed. She reached out a hand. Nyla flipped the butterscotch from her right to her left. When they shook, that trace of sugar clung and her hand stuck to the principal’s.
She tugged her ponytail into place and sat down.
The principal smiled, all good news. She said, “We have room in a program for your daughter. We’re willing to reconsider the terms of her expulsion, in light of this opportunity. It’s a transitional class specifically for students who benefit most with an additional level of support.”
Transitional sounded good—Arena would be transitioning back in.
The principal said, “We’ll need you to sign a few forms.” She opened a drawer. The paperwork came out. “This is an award-winning educational model designed to maximize a student’s abilities while recognizing the many levels of needs we address in the school system.”
Nyla tried to read the papers. Each page was marked with a red X, directions where to sign. The teacher would be Barry Gibb. Ha! Barry Gibb? She imagined the Bee Gees playing softly. Then she saw the words “documented disability.” She saw words like medication and therapist and delayed learning. There it was: special needs.
She said, “This is special ed?”
Mrs. Cherryholmes took her time. She spoke carefully. “It’s not what you’d consider special education back when we were in school. This is supplemental education, a holistic program designed to integrate learning styles with behavioral challenges and social dy namics.”
Nyla said, “Arena is not a slow learner.”
“It encompasses all levels of challenge. We have space and funding. It’s an opportunity.” Mrs. Cherryholmes looked happy with the plan.
“Funding?” Nyla sensed a state quota to fill. “She’s a perfectly good student.”
Mrs. Cherryholmes said, “She’s an expelled student. I know we don’t want to see our own children as falling behind, but Arena is a student at risk who may have difficulty reentering. Besides, in this program?” Mrs. Cherryholmes paused briefly to let Nyla catch up with her words. “We have fully funded federal art programs five days a week, along with math, science, and twenty-three minutes of physical education daily.”
Nyla asked, “You don’t have that in regular schedules?”
Mrs. Cherryholmes laced her fingers together. She shook her head slowly, and let a frosted lipsticked smile spread. “In this program, all funding is federally protected. They can’t take it away.”
She said it as though, as an educator, she was letting Arena in on a special bargain.
When Nyla hesitated, her pen hovering over the page, Mrs. Cherryholmes added, “Behavioral problems are learning problems. You’re both welcome to meet with our guidance counselor if you’d like to discuss it.”
Nyla touched the tip of the pen to the signature line.
This classroom, designed for special needs, would be a starting place. It didn’t sound awful. At least Arena would be inside the same school as her peers and on track to graduate. She’d only be in a different room. She’d have a specialized teacher. It was better than picking up trash on the side of the road, or staying home, or wandering down to the Temple Everlasting.
Nyla signed the forms, one page after another.
It was dark out by the time Arena swung open their big entryway door. Nyla was in the kitchen and heard Arena drop her backpack then kick off her shoes.
Let the girl settle in, she thought. It was hard not to rush her in the hall and blurt out the news. It’d been hard to wait patiently all day.
Arena padded down the hallway in her socks. She said, “You’re baking?” The house was full of chocolate-infused air. Two layers of cake rested, each on its own cooling rack. Nyla baked when she was stressed and when she was thrilled, and now she contained both emotions at once, practically vibrating with new hope. “We’re celebrating. You’re back in school. I worked it out.”
Arena walked up to the kitchen counter, found a cake crumb, and ate it. She said, “Really?”
“Yep. And guess what? Your new teacher is Barry Gibb. How’s that for a laugh?” Nyla was tickled to have it sorted out.
Arena shook her hair out of her eyes or maybe back into her eyes. She looked at her mother. “Barry Gibb?”
Nyla said, “Well, probably not the Barry Gibb …”
Arena knew exactly who this teacher was. He held a place in her school. She said, “No way, Mom. I am not going to special ed. I’m not. I’m not in that class.”
Nyla tried. She said, “It’s not exactly special ed.…”
But it was. “It is, exactly. So, what, now they think I’m retarded?”
It’d sounded so much better when Mrs. Cherryholmes said it. “I don’t think they use that term anymore. And it’s a good program—”
“Sure, a great program, for kids who need it.”
“Kids who need extra support—”
“Mom, I sold drink mix. That doesn’t mean I’m a lame student.”
Nyla heard her own voice sound false and broken when she said, “It’s where the funding is. They have room for you.” Portland’s schools all struggled for funding. She said, “It’s mostly art classes. You love art.”
Arena said, “I’m not going.”
“You are going. It’s already decided.”
“I’ll drop out.”
“You are not going to drop out of high school.” Nyla kept her voice low and steady. “They can arrest you for that. You’re still underage. It’s only for a few hours of the day.”
Arena’s voice broke when she answered, “It’s eight hours of the day. And they can arrest me for anything. They already did. It was totally unfair. But when they say ‘do restitution,’ or whatever, I’m out there doing it. They put me to work, I go along with it, and now I have the problem?”
>
“You can’t just hang out at the Temple Everlasting. It’s morbid.” She put a hand to her stomach, as though to reach for the unborn child, to hold that one close.
Arena turned and walked back down the hall the way she’d come in. Nyla followed. Arena slid her feet back in her shoes and reached for her coat where it lay on the couch.
“Where you going?”
Arena said, “Wherever. I’ll meet up with a friend from the work crew.”
She had friends? “Who?”
Arena’s tennis shoe was stuck on her foot like a clog. She bent and untied it, straightened it out. “You don’t know him.”
Still Nyla wanted information. She said, “What’s his name?”
“AKA.” Arena slid her cell phone in the front pocket of her jeans.
Nyla said, “His real name.”
“What do you mean?”
Nyla stepped in Arena’s way, between her daughter and the front door. She said, “AKA? That’s not a name. You didn’t know Mack’s name, down at the Temple Everlasting. And that guy’s not normal.”
“You want me to know their names?” Arena asked. It came out like a challenge.
Nyla said, “I want you to make thoughtful decisions.” She tried to lower the tone of the conversation, to bring sweetness into it. She dropped her voice and put her hands on Arena’s bony shoulders. She said, “This isn’t the life I want for you.” She wanted her daughter to have a life of meaning, with a good education and all good things, like love. Most of all, love. Without the girl’s dad around, she wanted to be Arena’s first source of support, both mother and father, to be everything.
Arena said, “Guess what, Mom? You don’t get to pick a life for me. I do.” She pushed her way past.
Nyla let her go, because really that was exactly the kind of life she valued and offered: one where the girl got to make her own choices. Arena went out the door, down the front steps.
She called out to her fleeing daughter, “Don’t stay out too late.”
Arena was already far down the block.
Nyla yelled, “Darling, you’re still on parole! And you’ve got school in the morning.”
Arena slid her phone out of her pocket. She only had two names in her contacts: her mom, and AKA. She didn’t call her mom now. When AKA answered, his voice was raspy, lower than she’d noticed in person. She asked, “Where are you?”
“Home. You’re welcome to join me.”
She’d never been to his place before. He gave her the address. It was across the river, downtown, a short ride on the city bus.
She found him waiting for her at the bus stop. She smiled at him and he smiled back, and she loved how he didn’t always need to talk. He took her hand, and they walked together to an old brick building with a mini-mart and a Chinese restaurant with a bar downstairs. He pushed buttons to unlock the apartment door. Inside, he led her down a hallway lined with a narrow strip of stained rug. The building smelled like grease, kung pao, and mildew.
She’d never met anyone who actually lived in these old-style downtown apartments. She’d thought the buildings were where alcoholics went to drink and die, and hipsters filmed music videos.
The elevator was rickety with a metal accordion door and yellowed buttons with big numbers on them that looked like they could’ve been made from ivory, or at least fake ivory. It felt like another town, another time.
Arena loved it.
They got out on the third floor. The hallway air was thick with the smell of bacon and cats. AKA had a key to a room at the end of the hall. He pushed the door open. The apartment started out as narrow as a coat closet, and she walked behind him until it opened up into a wider space. There was a man sacked out on a couch, and somebody else in what must’ve been the kitchen off to the side, banging pans. The central room split into halls that led in all directions, like burrows. He pulled her toward one hall, then to a room at the end of it. He closed the door behind them.
The room was big and empty, with a tall row of windows. It was dark outside and the dark turned the windows into mirrors; still, the windows made the claustrophobic web of hallways and the people in the common room not matter so much. AKA had a mattress on the floor. He and Arena dropped down onto it, side by side. There were three pillows, each one thin and flat. He let her have two. He rested on one folded in half, and he rubbed the back of her hand. She said, “Are those your parents, out there?”
He laughed. “Those two? No way.” After a minute, he said, “I answered an ad. I can’t actually figure out how many people live here. I haven’t even seen all the rooms.”
“You’re moved out?” He’d be the first person she met who had moved out of his parents’ place without going to college.
He said, “Something like that.”
Outside a siren sang from far away. AKA wiggled his feet in his high-tops where they rested on top of his blankets. The blankets were thin, like they’d been stolen from a hospital.
Arena looked around the big, empty space of his room. “You know, we could work on my project here. With the mesh?”
He put a hand on her hip. “You mean the one where I’m naked? Bring it on.”
They were so close on the bed.
“I’m not ready for that yet,” she said.
He said, “We’ll take it slow.” His breath moved over her skin. He tugged at her T-shirt.
She said, “I mean, I don’t have a camera.”
“Camera?” His dark eyes opened wider. “We didn’t talk about a camera. What’s the project, porn?” But already he’d relaxed again, like he didn’t object all that much. He traced his finger along the stitching on her jeans.
He had a guitar on a stand in one corner. A few shirts hung in a doorless closet. The chipped floorboards were as textured as the best kind of painting. There was one rickety desk on long, thin legs near a window.
Arena’s cell phone rang in her coat pocket. She let it go. When it rang again, she said, “That’d be my mom.”
AKA rubbed his hand along her thigh.
“She’s freaked out about the Temple Everlasting of Life on Earth.”
AKA said, “Maybe I am, too.” His hand crept up to Arena’s waist, then along her ribs.
She asked, “You think Mack’s trying to brainwash me into a death cult?”
AKA said, “That’s his job.”
Arena pushed away the distraction of AKA’s hand.
He said, “Why do you go there?” Now he sounded exactly like her mom—her mom in a guy suit. The conversation was going off course. Arena needed an ally.
“He’s read a lot,” she said. “I go to talk about heaven, death. The big mysteries.”
“You can talk about heaven right here.” He pulled her closer.
“Seriously. I mean, what’s the point of life, if we’re just going to die?”
“You’re not the first person to wonder.” He inched toward her, and he kissed her. He ran a hand under her shirt.
Arena put her hand over his. She stopped him.
She didn’t know if she wanted that hand under her shirt. There was the scar, near her shoulder. That scar had been there as long as she could remember. It was hers, and it was private.
It was the scar from the car wreck. Her dad, his death, his life, drawn in stitches that had melted into her skin. Sometimes she listened to his records and touched the scar and could almost remember back when she had a dad.
She said, “Mack’s not trying to convert anyone.”
AKA sat up and started unlacing a high-top. His shoelaces made a slapping sound as he pulled each one through the eyelets. He said, “He’s afraid of death.”
“He’s not afraid to think about it.” Arena kicked her worn shoes off easily, one toe against the heel of the other.
AKA tossed one of his shoes toward his closet. He said, “He’s afraid to die alone so he made up a religion.” He unlaced his second shoe.
Arena said, “He didn’t make it up. It’s from the Egyptians, and scientis
ts. It’s a collage of super-respected ideas.”
AKA said, “What I know is, people who’re afraid to die alone? They’re the scariest crew, fueled with apocalyptic fantasies.”
“I don’t think he’s an apocalypse guy,” Arena said.
Her phone rang again. They lay side by side and listened to the short bar of dance music. Arena said, “I can’t wait to move out.”
AKA said, “If you’ve got a free place to live, and decent meals, I wouldn’t ditch it too soon.”
Arena said, “My mom has all these ideas.…”
“Like keeping you safe?” he asked.
“Like keeping me trapped,” she whispered. The phone gave up; the ringing stopped.
He said, “You know, I actually own a house and an acre and a half of woods.” As he said it, he wrapped one broad, long-fingered hand around her thin wrist. The gesture fell somewhere between hand-holding and handcuffs.
“You’re joking.” Sometimes he said things like that. She looked into his eyes, practiced, but this time it didn’t feel like practicing. It felt natural. He was the first person whose eyes didn’t make her gaze skitter.
He said, “It’s in Boring. A farmhouse, with land. In the winter and spring, there’s a pond in back.” Oregon land was dotted with vernal ponds—shallow seasonal ponds that soaked into the ground and dried up in the summer sun.
Boring was a town outside of Portland. The name was a local joke.
She said, “Right. A country estate. And why would you live here?”
He shook his shaggy hair and peeled himself away from her. She felt the draft against her feet where his feet had been. He stood up and shuffled through a clutch of papers. He crossed the room and looked in one warped drawer of his old spindly desk. He closed that one and opened another drawer. He flipped through his stacks until he found a photo, and he handed it to Arena. “Proof.”
