Center of Gravity

by Shaunta Grimes

  The nurse puts the baby she’s holding into a little bed with a card that says Baby Girl Marshall. I want to ask what they’re going to name her, but that would be rude, too. And if they ask what my brother is named, I won’t be able to tell them.

  I look for a sign that says: “Baby Boy Hart.” I walk down the row of windows, reading each one off under my breath. Even the girl ones. When I get to the end, the door opens. A nurse is there.

  She’s young and pretty with a name tag that says Olivia.

  Olivia. It seems like bad luck to have a nurse with the name of Oscar’s dead sister taking care of the baby.

  “Can I help you?”

  I almost can’t tell her why I’m there. My jaw threatens to rust again, but I decide it is even worse luck not to see him. “I think my little brother’s in there. Baby Boy Hart.”

  “What’s your name?” she asks.

  “Theresa Marie Hart.” My cheeks burn immediately. Why did I give her my entire name?

  Olivia smiles. “You’ll have to come in to see him.”

  She goes into the nursery, but before I can follow her she comes back with a pair of blue paper booties for me to put over my shoes, like she has over hers. While I do that, she unfolds a matching robe.

  She holds it open, and I slide my arms into it. After she ties it up in back, she says, “Almost done.”

  She covers my nose and mouth with a mask that hooks behind my ears and stretches a shower-cap-looking thing over my hair.

  “Ready?” she asks.

  I nod. If I need all this just to see him, I’m afraid my brother won’t look like a prune. He’ll look worse than that. What if I get scared? What if I do something awful that I can’t take back, like run away or scream? Even if he never knows, I will.

  Olivia leads me past the row of babies in their little plastic beds. There wasn’t any sound in the hall, but in here you can hear a baby cry and others making snuffling noises.

  I close my eyes when she leads me to another plastic bed. This one has a cover. Like the baby inside is in a bubble.

  “Here we are,” she says.

  I force my eyes to open, and when I do, the relief makes my knees weak. He is beautiful. Just perfect. Even with a fine fuzz of blond hair covering not just his head, but his arms and legs and face, too.

  He seems half the size of the baby girl Olivia held up for her dad and grandparents to see, but still perfect.

  He’s sleeping. I see his chest rise and fall as he breathes. He’s wearing only a tiny diaper. There are things attached to him, to his head and his arm.

  “Is he okay?” I ask.

  “He’s very small,” Olivia said. “He’ll have to stay here for a while. But he’s breathing well. You should have heard him scream when we put the IV in.”

  I change my mind. She’s not bad luck. Not at all. “I wish I could hold him.”

  “You’ll be able to before you know it.”

  “Are his eyes brown or blue?”

  “His are brown. Just like yours.”

  * * *

  After a few minutes, we go back to the door of the nursery and Olivia takes my slippers and gown and mask. “Do you have other brothers and sisters?”

  “I’m an only child. I mean, I was an only child.”

  She looks at me, like she’s really analyzing me from top to bottom. Then, like she’s learned something important, she nods and says, “You’re going to be an excellent big sister, Theresa Marie Hart.”

  “Tessa,” I say. “Everyone calls me Tessa.”

  “You are going to be an excellent big sister, Tessa.”

  FIFTEEN

  Instead of dropping the ball for the next game, Denny bounces it off the field so it plonks me in the center of my forehead. Megan’s across from me, her hands on the offense controls.

  “Great,” she says. “Now you have a third eye.”

  * * *

  “Tessa.”

  I sit up and rub the spot in the center of my forehead, expecting to find a lump, but the pain from my dream is gone.

  I look up, then down again when I notice a balled-up piece of paper in my lap. I pick up the paper and look at the door again. “Jay Jay? What are you doing here?”

  “Like you don’t know.”

  He’s angry. I don’t know him well, but I don’t need a third eye to see that he’s truly pissed off. “What’s wrong?”

  He shakes his head, his lips pressing tight together.

  I remember, suddenly, where I am. I look at Lila, asleep in her bed, then back at Jay Jay. “Is Marvel okay?”

  “No, he’s not okay.” Jay Jay looks behind him and moves away from the door to make room for his grandmother, who walks in and directly to Lila’s bed.

  “Lila?” I say. I go to her bed and shake her foot. “Lila!”

  She opens her eyes, tries to sit up, then stops with a moan.

  “Don’t hurt yourself,” Mrs. Sampson says. She reaches for the little panel on the edge of the bed and pushes the button that raises the head. “There we go.”

  Lila isn’t looking at Mrs. Sampson, though. She’s looking at me, standing at the foot of her bed. “I’m sorry, Tessa.”

  “You told.”

  She takes a breath. “I did what I hope someone would do if they found out you were in trouble.”

  “You told.” I look up at Mrs. Sampson, whose expression doesn’t change, then I head for the door, staying as far from the old woman as I can. I have to push past Jay Jay, though.

  He lets me go, but instead of staying in the room, he follows me. His long legs don’t have any trouble keeping up.

  “Where are you going?” he asks.

  “To check on Marvel.”

  “Yeah,” he says. “Maybe there’s still time.”

  I stop then. Jay Jay watches me with his one blue eye and one green eye. “Time before what?”

  He runs his tongue over his teeth and puts his weight on one foot and then the other. Finally, he must make some kind of decision, because he takes off again. “Come on.”

  I look back at Lila’s door. Mrs. Sampson doesn’t come after us. I don’t think Lila could if she wanted to. I don’t know what else to do, so I follow Jay Jay. He pushes the button for the elevator.

  “What time is it?” I ask.

  “Almost two in the morning.” Jay Jay waits for the door to close once we’re inside and says, “I heard Grandma taking Lila’s call. While she was getting dressed, I called Oscar and he called Petey.”

  I wait for more, but he doesn’t say anything else. “What did you mean? Time for what?”

  He still doesn’t say anything. He doesn’t trust me anymore, and I don’t blame him.

  “They’re running away,” I say. “Aren’t they?”

  Still nothing, but I see it in his eyes.

  “I don’t understand. What about the tournament? They can’t leave without the money.”

  And then I remember Marvel’s backpack, sitting on the chair in his room. And I remember him putting the lunch box full of money into it. “The lemonade money. Marvel has it in his backpack.”

  “Are you going to go tell?” he asks.

  “Oh my God.” As soon as what he’s saying sinks in, though, it doesn’t make sense. “But why aren’t the police here? The police show up for missing kids.”

  “I’m sure they’ll be here.”

  The elevator door opens, and we walk out of it. We start toward Marvel’s room, but the nurse at the station stops us. “Can I help you kids?”

  My heart falls into my stomach. Before I can even try to say anything, though, Jay Jay says, “We’re just visiting a friend.”

  The nurse looks at his watch, then back at us. “What’s your friend’s name?”

  We look at each other, then back to him. Jay Jay finally says, “Marvel Lewis.”

  The nurse picks up the phone but doesn’t take his eyes off us. “Stay right there.”

  I’m going to be sick. I look back at the elevator, wondering if I can
call it again and get downstairs before the nurse can stop me.

  The nurse speaks softly into the phone. My heart is pounding too hard for me to hear him, but he holds a finger up to us and it roots me in my spot.

  Jay Jay pushes the elevator button.

  “Young man!” The nurse stands up, but he still has the phone to his ear.

  The elevator opens immediately. It’s still there from when Jay Jay and I rode it up. We look at each other, then get into it. Jay Jay hits the third floor and then bounces his finger on the Close Doors button until it works.

  “Holy crap,” he says. “Oh my God.”

  “What was that?”

  “They must know that Marvel is gone.”

  It takes everything in me to walk calmly back to Lila’s room when the elevator gets to the third floor, instead of sprinting. Her door is open, and I stop so suddenly when I come to it that Jay Jay bangs into my back and makes me stumble forward.

  A police officer stands at Lila’s bed, next to Mrs. Sampson. He turns to look at us, and Lila says, “Tessa, there you are.”

  “Joshua,” Mrs. Sampson says. “Come here.”

  He does, looking at me as he passes. We are in so much trouble. But at that moment, I don’t care. Because standing just to the side of the door, looking confused and out of place, is my gran.

  I don’t even care what she’s doing there or how she got there. I throw myself into her arms, and she pulls me into her.

  “Do you know where Peter and Marvel Lewis are?” Mrs. Sampson asks Jay Jay.

  I turn my head and Jay Jay tries to turn to me, but his grandmother takes his arm and keeps his attention on her. He lets out a breath and says, “No, ma’am.”

  “Are you telling me the truth?” She looks at him like she can see right inside him. Like she would know if he lied.

  Lila reaches a hand out to me as Jay Jay says, “I am telling you the truth.”

  I walk behind his grandmother to Lila’s bed, bringing my own gran with me.

  “What do you know, Tessa?” Lila asks quietly.

  I take a breath and look at Jay Jay. He chews on his bottom lip but finally nods. I look at Gran and say, “We had a lemonade stand yesterday.”

  SIXTEEN

  The baby’s name is Jonathon Trevor Hart. Jack, for short.

  Lila came home after three days, but Jack had to stay at the hospital, in his little bubble bed.

  Gran came to California because my dad called her when he couldn’t get an earlier flight. She came to take care of me. She ended up taking care of Lila, too, which should have been awkward and weird, but wasn’t really.

  Lila’s mother and father are still in Jamaica. They sent flowers.

  After a week Gran went home. No one says anything about Petey and Marvel anymore. I haven’t seen Jay Jay and Oscar. I tried to. Twice. Both times Mrs. Sampson told me to go home. Give them some time.

  I told. First Lila and then Gran and the men in Lila’s room, and then when Dad finally got there, I told him. I told everything. I don’t know what Jay Jay meant when he nodded at me, but based on the fact that he will not even speak to me now, he didn’t mean for me to tell them everything.

  Once I started speaking, I couldn’t stop the words from spewing out of me. I told them about the lemonade stand. I told them about the foosball tournament. I told them about how Petey and Marvel’s mother was mean to Marvel. I told them about the limp and that she broke his arm.

  I will never forget the way Jay Jay looked at me when I finally stopped.

  He looked at me like I was a traitor.

  And now I can’t even apologize, because he won’t speak to me. And if he won’t, then Oscar sure won’t.

  “Hey, Cookie.”

  I’ve been staring at Jay Jay’s Aunt Lucy’s bedroom window, like maybe I can will him to leave me a message in the panes. I finally look away. My dad’s standing in my doorway. “Hi.”

  “We’re going to the hospital. Why don’t you come with us?”

  I shrug. “I kind of just want to watch TV.”

  He comes closer to me and brushes my hair off my forehead. “Your friends are going to be okay.”

  Dad doesn’t lie to me, but we both know that he can’t know whether or not that’s true. There’s a shoebox in my headboard cubby full of kids who are not okay. And maybe, one of these days, I’ll find Petey’s and Marvel’s pictures on the back of a milk carton. “You can’t know that.”

  Dad smiles sadly. “You can believe this, Tessa. You did the right thing.”

  “Telling didn’t help anything. Petey and Marvel are still gone. And now everyone hates me.”

  “No one hates you.”

  He’s wrong. “Can I stay here while you go to the hospital?”

  “I think so.”

  “Thanks, Dad.”

  He leaves me in my room and goes downstairs. Through the vent in my floor, I hear him talk to Lila, but I don’t try to make out what they are saying.

  Their door closes, and I hear their footsteps down the stairs, and then for the first time ever I’m alone in the house.

  I reach for my shoebox and take the top off. I haven’t looked at my missing kids since Jack was born. Not once. I haven’t even noticed a milk carton.

  It’s weird to realize that for a few days, I’ve pretty much forgotten about them.

  “Christine Adams,” I whisper as I look at each card. “Craig Alphonse. Richard Carlson. Elizabeth Dixon.”

  I thought maybe they’d make me feel better. Less alone. Less lonely. But I can hardly focus on them. I try to remember Christine Adams’s birthday or where she lived, but I have to look.

  “This is the last time,” I say. And this time it’s true. If I want to, I can put my box away and never look at it again. Instead of being happy about that, though, I feel tears well up.

  Gran has gone home to Denver. I don’t have any friends. And now I don’t have my lost kids, either. I don’t need them. They never needed me. I pick up my box and go out on the balcony, into the beach air. The sun’s low, but not enough that the sky’s turning pink yet. I go down the stairs to the grass, then walk toward the bluff. When I get down the stairs, I sit on an upturned milk crate to think.

  If Jay Jay and Oscar don’t like that I’m in the clubhouse—they can come and tell me so themselves.

  * * *

  “Jeez, Tessa. What are you doing here?”

  I look up from the box in my lap, startled by Jay Jay’s voice. How long have I been sitting here? I have to squint to see him in the almost dark. “I don’t know.”

  “Well, your dad’s been to my house looking for you. He’s going to call the police soon, I think.”

  “I’ll go home.” Only, I don’t move.

  Jay Jay comes all the way into the clubhouse and sits on the milk crate next to mine. I can see him, but not clearly. Just like the first night that I was in California. “What’s wrong?”

  “Really?” I ask. “I have no friends. Petey and Marvel are probably dead in a ditch somewhere, even though I did tell.”

  “No, they’re not.”

  I look up at him again. “What?”

  He lifts one hip and reaches into his back pocket. “I got this today.”

  I take it from him. A postcard. The front says Greetings from Detroit, Michigan. Detroit is in big block letters with pictures of buildings in them. I turn it over and see handwriting that’s more than just messy. It’s lopsided and crooked. Like a kid writing with his wrong hand. “Marvel.”

  “Yeah.”

  Tell everyone we are ok with our uncle.

  M + P

  I turn the card over again, but there isn’t any more message. “That’s it?”

  “That’s it,” Jay Jay says. “No return address or anything.”

  “They’re afraid we’ll tell.”

  “Or that my grandma might get to the mail before me.”

  I hold on to the card another minute, then slowly hand it back. “I’m sorry I told.”

&
nbsp; “I know.”

  “I didn’t mean to. It’s just—once I started, it all came out. I couldn’t stop it.”

  “I know.”

  “But Oscar…”

  “He knows, too.”

  “I’m really sorry,” I say.

  “I’m not. I think … I think we should have told sooner.”

  I look up at him. “You do?”

  He shrugs one shoulder and looks uncomfortable, like his skin is a size too small. “I didn’t think we’d win. I never really thought we’d get the money for them to leave.”

  “I didn’t either,” I say.

  “I didn’t think their mom would hurt Marvel like that. I knew … I knew she was mean to him, but I didn’t know…”

  Part of me wants to leave it there. Him not quite saying that he’s forgiven me. Me not quite understanding what he thought was happening at Petey and Marvel’s house. The chance that we might be friends again sometime feels so good. I’m afraid to ruin it by pushing my luck.

  What if I say let’s go to the community center tomorrow and he says forget it?

  “The baby’s name is Jack,” I finally say. “He’ll be in the hospital awhile, but the doctor thinks he’s going to be okay.”

  “Grandma told me.” Jay Jay scratches his head and then says, “Maybe I can come see him sometime.”

  And just like that, everything’s okay again. Or at least, I know there is a chance that it will be. “Yeah. That would be good.”

  “So, what are you doing out here anyway? Your dad really is worried.”

  “I think I’m done.” I look at the box in my lap. That I can even get those words out of my mouth is important. It means something. “I’m pretty sure I don’t need these anymore.”

  “The milk cartons?” Jay Jay asks quietly.

  “Yeah.”

  “Are you sure?”

  “At the hospital, I almost threw one away without even looking. And then I did throw one away. I didn’t even think about it. I didn’t try, you know. I just threw away a milk carton.”