My Year in the Middle

by Lila Quintero Weaver

  Sam’s dad is Red Grove’s Presbyterian minister. My sister calls him a hero. I don’t remember much because I was only in first grade, but I know that black people in Alabama were marching for their rights, and white people — especially our governor back then, George Wallace — wouldn’t budge an inch for them. But the McCorkles were different. They always took the side of the black folks. Grown-ups didn’t explain squat to us, so all we knew was that Sam was absent from school for weeks and got his lessons from a home tutor. Later, my sister told me why: because the McCorkles were getting telephoned death threats! They had to call the FBI and everything! Those people who made the phone calls must’ve figured on scaring Reverend McCorkle off, but he proved them flat wrong and kept right on being brave. Wowee.

  A vase of pink carnations sits on Miss Garrett’s desk, where she always keeps fresh flowers. “Class, please take out your election notebooks and open them to your last entry.” I sneak a peek at Belinda, one row to my right. She’s fanning herself with a sheet of cardboard, but I don’t see a drop of sweat on her.

  A half-dozen girls straggle in late. At the head of this line are Missy and Phyllis, my once and sometimes friend. My notebook’s already open with yesterday’s headline staring back at me: “Candidates to Address Public Friday on TV.” Every day we show Miss Garrett that we’re keeping up with the governor’s primary election, which is two weeks from tomorrow. Ex-governor George Wallace is trying like a house afire to snatch his old job back from the governor we have now, Albert Brewer.

  While Miss Garrett moves along row by row, checking students’ work, two-thirds of the class chatters away. I see where most of the jibber-jabber’s coming from. In their far-right corner, Missy and Phyllis are having a jolly old time. If she were here, Marina would give me a talking-to because that’s how sisters are. “Why do you care what they do? You don’t belong with them. Get yourself a real friend, one with brains and gumption.”

  What does she think Abigail is, chopped liver? After Phyllis dropped me like a hot potato for Missy back in fourth grade, I had to twiddle my thumbs till Abigail moved up here so I could get myself one good, solid friend. But I still wish Phyllis would be nice to me again. Sure, I’d like to make Marina proud, so I mostly pretend not to give a plug nickel what Phyllis thinks about me, but it seems like my eyes have a mind of their own today.

  A kid nicknamed Spider has his hand up. “Hey, Miss Garrett!” His uncle owns the black radio station in town, and every afternoon he lets Spider man the microphone for an hour, playing hits and taking special requests. You won’t find a kid in the whole county, black or white, who doesn’t recognize his voice. “Miss Garrett, how come you didn’t say anything when you looked at my notebook?” he says. Kids giggle. “You told Charles, ‘very good.’”

  Charles jumps in now. “Because mine’s very good and yours ain’t, pea brain.”

  Everybody hoots, but that’s just Charles cutting up. Spider’s no pea brain; he’s the number-one math whiz in the sixth grade.

  On the white side of the room, the girls in the corner are busy sorting and shuffling papers. Missy whispers in Phyllis’s ear. Phyllis grabs a pen, scribbles, and hands a small stack of papers to Nick Flynn, the boy in front of her. He passes the stack to the next person. These must be the invitations for Phyllis’s birthday party. My stomach does a cartwheel. I’ve been to every party of hers since first grade — surely she won’t leave me out in the cold. But after the way she acted in today’s gym class, who can say?

  All the talking forces Miss Garrett to run for the light switch. She flips the lights off and on, off and on. “Quieeeeeeet!”

  I feel a tap on my shoulder. It’s Sam. His eyes go blink-blink, and he silently hands me an envelope. I see he’s got one, too. I stick mine in my book bag real quick before Miss Garrett can notice. You can’t be too careful. Lots of teachers catch a note and make you stand up and read it aloud.

  As Nick passes invitations to the next kid, a loose piece of paper slides off his desk and skids across the floor, past my desk, to the black side of the room, where Charles snatches it up. “Oo-wee, looky here!” He reads it aloud: “Governor George Wallace Is Coming to Red Grove Friday, May First! Family-Friendly Gathering! Fun and Games for All Ages!” A few kids bust out laughing because Charles is using his fake grown-up voice.

  Then Charles starts up a rhyme: “Georgie Porgy, puddin’ and pies. Kissin’ on babies and telling big lies.” Now nearly everybody laughs.

  But Nick, whose dad is the head honcho of the local Wallace campaign, isn’t having it. “Better shut your fat mouth, if you know what’s good for you.”

  “You shut your fat mouth,” Charles says, and shoves the flyer across the middle row, back in Nick’s direction.

  “Boys, settle back down,” Miss Garrett says. She tells us to turn in our books to chapter twelve, page one hundred and thirty-five.

  When the last bell of the day rings, Sam taps me on the shoulder again. “Hey, are you going to Phyllis’s party?”

  Is my jaw unhinged? Silent Sam is speaking to me for the first time in all his born days! I doubt he’s ever spoken much to any girl. And since talking to boys is nothing I ever do on purpose, I just blurt, “Guess so,” and then I’ve got to haul it to the boarding zone to catch my bus.

  The bus is crowded, and three of us end up sharing a two-seater, right behind Ricky Hughes. He’s a big seventh-grader whose favorite things in life are yanking girls’ ponytails and giving wedgies to smaller boys. My seatmates are eighth-grade girls who run their mouths constantly. Ricky keeps turning around to smart off at them, and they smart off right back.

  It’s stuffy, and I slide the window open to the halfway point. Below us, a passel of kids mill around, waiting to board their buses. I think Belinda rides a bus, too. My eyes rove back and forth, hoping to spy a bright-pink hickey-ma-doodle attached to a sideways ponytail. A clump of high-school guys wearing dashikis stand around, most of them with picks that jut straight out of their Afro haircuts. Mr. Abrams won’t stand for that. “Stick that thing in your pocket before I haul you to the office!”

  I feel a jab in my left side. “Hey, didn’t I see you running in fifth period?” the girl next to me says. Her name is Denise.

  “You were watching?”

  “Sure, me and the whole typing class was at the window cheering!” I near about choke. A class full of eighth-graders cheered for me?

  Ricky whirls around to face me with a smirk. “Ever heard of Tina Briggs?”

  “Nope.”

  The girl by the aisle says, “Ricky Hughes, why don’t you mind your own beeswax?”

  “This is my own beeswax. Tina Briggs is my cousin. She goes to County, and she just came in third in the state track meet. Third.” He points a stubby finger inches from my nose. “You ought to write her name down because she’s gonna whip the tar out of you at Field Day.”

  Denise snorts. “You lie like a dog! Your cousin is a nobody.”

  “She is not!”

  “She is too!”

  I shrink back in my seat. As soon as the words state track meet rolled off his tongue, my pulse meter went tickety-tick-tick-tack. Tina Briggs? Even her name sounds fast.

  The bus swings out of the boarding zone and onto the school driveway. Pop. Somebody shoots a rubber band across the aisle. I’ve never paid this driveway a lick of attention, but now every detail jumps out. Over there’s the big pothole I dodged. There’s the patch of crabgrass next to the lunchroom. Right there’s where I passed Connie. And here’s the teachers’ parking lot, where Miss Garrett’s blue Monte Carlo shines brightest of all.

  Thinking about Miss Garrett reminds me of Phyllis’s party invitation. I fumble around in my book bag until my hand lands on a corner of the envelope. I tear it open and pull out the card inside — but it’s blank. It’s just a plain white index card. Huh? I turn the card over, and there’s nothing more to see. No balloons, no party hats, no “You’re Invited.” I flip it back again, wondering what in tarn
ation I missed. Where’s the invitation?

  “Oh, Lordy,” Denise says. “Please tell me you’re not about to be sick. You’re looking mighty green.”

  “No, I just …” I peek in the envelope again, in case I’ve lost my marbles. “There’s supposed to be an invitation in here.”

  “Let me see.” She takes hold of the index card and peers at the front and back, just like I did. “This isn’t no invitation, not in my book. Hand me that envelope.” She looks at the front of the envelope and lets out a long whistle. “Somebody doesn’t like you.”

  I look at the envelope, too, and that’s when I almost faint dead away. There, in Phyllis’s handwriting, it says “Loser Olivera.” Loser? Phyllis knows good and well how to spell Luisa, my given name. She’s just being mean.

  No, this is Missy’s doing. She made Phyllis write that.

  Now I’m glummer than glum. Rubber bands zing past my head, and I barely flinch.

  A knot of worry has me by the throat, and it’s getting bigger by the minute. As we round the last curve before the street, the spot where I passed Belinda reminds me how easy my running felt, kind of like floating on a breeze. There I was, believing I was somebody, but now all kinds of darts are zigzagging back and forth inside my head.

  By the time I get home, I’m itching like fire to talk to Abigail about the invitation. I figure she’ll know what to do because that’s how she is. But does Abigail answer her phone? Nope. I try over and over.

  As usual, Mamá’s in the dining room at her sewing machine. “Lu, why are you making so many calls?” she says.

  “No reason.” One thing’s for sure, you can’t sneak a phone call in this house. The sound of the dial rotating echoes all over.

  I drag the cigar box out from under my bed and find that 1968 newspaper clipping about Madeline Manning. It’s yellow now and kind of ragged around the edges, but in the photo, you can still see her big smile and the Olympic gold medal shining in the sun.

  I thumbtack the article slapdab in the middle of the corkboard that hangs over my dresser. Now the first thing that will greet me every morning will be Madeline Manning’s face.

  I go clean through my homework assignments and read nine pages of Archie comics before Abigail calls. She’s been at a yearbook staff meeting. “Want to ride bikes?”

  “Shoot, yeah. Let me go ask my mom.”

  Mamá sews wedding dresses for people around town, and right now, a big wedding is taking up every waking minute. I’ve figured out something: when Mamá’s sewing is humming along, getting permission from her is a piece of cake. But if she’s having problems, forget it. Today, things are going hunky-dory, so after Mamá gives me her okay, I ask my sister if I can borrow her ten-speed bike, and Marina, who’s been chained to the typewriter writing college papers since she was born, just nods yes without even looking up.

  Abigail and I always meet at the corner of Greene and Early. We usually ride bikes in that neighborhood and end up at the park playground. She’s already at our meeting spot, riding in lazy circles around the empty intersection when I get there. By the time we reach the playground, she’s pink-faced and huffing. We park our bikes by the fence and slip through the unlocked gate. Nobody’s here but us.

  I tell her about the invitation. “Even if we’re not best buddies anymore, why would Phyllis think I’m a loser?”

  Abigail doesn’t act the least bit worried. “Did you call her?”

  “Heck, no. I’d be too embarrassed.”

  “Why? What’s the big deal?”

  “Because of Missy. She told Phyllis to swap out the invitation. I saw them whispering.”

  “Why would she do that?”

  “She hates my guts.”

  “Since when?”

  “Since today at PE.” I pause. “Not that Missy’s ever liked me much, but at least she’s never acted this snotty to me.”

  “Lu, come on! You’re sooo paranoid!” Abigail plunks herself down into a swing and sits there, laughing.

  I claim a swing next to hers. “You should’ve seen how she looked at me after the run. Like she wanted to kill me.”

  “So what? She wants to kill lots of people. She’s like that, and you can’t do a blessed thing about it.”

  “But now I don’t know if I’m invited or not!”

  “You are! Stop worrying!” she says. “I’ll talk to Phyllis for you. I bet she’ll give you a new invitation.”

  “Hope so.”

  I wanted to ask her about Sam, too, and why he wondered if I was going to the party. Abigail understands boys way better than I do, so maybe she can figure out what he was thinking. But before I can bring it up, she starts begging me to go to that Wallace rally with her, the one advertised on Nick’s flyer. “Daddy will drive us. It’s going to be a blast. There’s going to be a cakewalk and prizes and stuff. And everybody will be there. Positively everybody.”

  “A cakewalk? What the heck is that?”

  “It’s a game, kind of like musical chairs,” she says. “Well, not exactly like musical chairs, but still, it’s loads of fun, and the prizes are cakes.”

  That sounds pretty fun to me, but I’m still not sure. “What about Wallace? My sister would kill me dead if she found out I went to his rally. My family’s for Brewer.”

  “So are we! But don’t worry, because my dad said you can spend the night. That way, your folks won’t even know you went.”

  “Well … I guess it’s okay.”

  “Goody!” She digs her toes into the dirt and shoves off backward. Pretty soon I’m up in the air, too, sailing clear above the packed earth of the playground. Our swings go creak whine, creak whine.

  After a while, we hear voices. Past the trees, two boys coast along on bikes. When they roll through the gate and inside the playground, I see that it’s Sam and his little brother, Lonnie.

  “Hey!” Abigail calls out, still sailing.

  Lonnie yells hey right back. “What are y’all doing here?” he asks.

  “What’s it look like, goofball?” Abigail says. “We’re just hanging around.”

  “Us too.” Lonnie grabs the third swing and gets to cranking. There’s not a fourth swing to be had, so Sam hops up to catch a rung of the monkey bars. It’s not much of a hop. Over Christmas break, he shot up about a foot, and now he’s a long-legged kid. He dangles from the bar and does a few chin-ups.

  Abigail says, “Watch out, Sam. Lu’s a champion at monkey bars.”

  “I know,” he says. “I remember.” He remembers! Abigail acts like this is no big deal, so I keep my trap shut and swing higher and higher. Creak whine, creak whine. Does he like me?

  Soon, Abigail jumps off her swing and offers it to Sam. She takes a couple of turns going down the slide, and Sam moseys over to the swing. Lonnie’s cranking faster and higher, like me. All the while, Abigail’s going wheee as she zips down the slide and runs around to the ladder for another scramble to the top. So long as they’re making noise, I can just sail into the trees and not worry about talking to Sam, although I am thinking about him. A lot.

  After a while, Sam yells up at Lonnie, “It’s almost time for us to go.”

  “Aw, shoot!” Lonnie is practically in the treetops, and it takes him a while to slow his swing down. I bring my swing in for a landing, too.

  “I bet y’all don’t know where we’re going Saturday,” Abigail says. “To the international club.”

  “What international club?” Sam says, twirling the chain of his swing in a slow circle.

  “Tell him, Lu.”

  “Well, there’s this big dinner a couple of times a year at a college in Birmingham. Scads of people who moved here from other ountries go to it. There’s even a talent show and a kids’ area with games and stuff.”

  “Hey, that sounds really cool!” Sam says. “I wish I could go.”

  Abigail comes off the slide and stands near the swings, hands on hips. “You know what, Lu? You ought to invite Sam to go with us.”

  Sam’s hea
d jerks up. He puts a foot out to stop the twirling motion.

  What is she doing? I throw her some signals, like a slice across the throat. But she pays me no mind. “Lu’s whole family goes — and her neighbors, the Sampredos. This’ll be my first time, and it’s going to be great.”

  Abigail keeps giving me the eye, and I keep giving her the frown. She’s waiting for me to invite him for real, but she must be off her rocker. Forget it. I’d die of embarrassment. Not to mention that Mamá would never let me invite a boy to anything — not till I’m pushing thirty and have a headful of gray hair. Plus, even in the Sampredos’ dinosaur of a Cadillac, there isn’t room for that many people. Grrrr, I’m going to strangle you, Abigail!

  We all leave the playground, with Abigail and me going east, and Sam and his brother heading up an alley that cuts toward their house. When they’re out of earshot, Abigail gets right to it. “Why didn’t you invite him?”

  “Are you crazy? You know my parents! I can’t get permission to take a boy!”

  “Why not? Boys aren’t poison. And anyway, Sam’s dad is a preacher.”

  “Right. Tell that to my mother.”

  “She married a boy, didn’t she?”

  “Jeez, I’m nowhere close to getting married!”

  “But doesn’t your sister go out on dates with boys?” Abigail asks.

  “Barely. Nobody can get near her unless our parents approve. That’s how they do it in Argentina.”

  “Eek! Tell them to get with the program already. This is America, land of the free.”

  “Humph, not in my house!”

  We start pedaling up the street. And right there, in front of God and everybody, she yells, “Poor you! You’re going to be an old maid!” Thanks a lot, Abigail.

  We chug up the hill. Since Abigail’s ready to melt, we get off our bikes and walk them for a bit. “So you’ll call Phyllis?” I say.

  “Yeah.” Huff, huff, huff. “Or talk to her at school.”

  “Not at school! Missy won’t let you!”

  “Good point.” We reach the corner of Greene and Early. “You better not tell your parents that boys are invited to that party or you won’t get to go. Poor you!”