Lost Goat Lane

by Rosa Jordan

  Miss Lynn’s feet stopped in front of Kate’s toilet stall.

  “Kate?” Miss Lynn called softly. “Are you okay?”

  For a second Kate couldn’t figure out how Miss Lynn knew who was in the toilet stall. Then she realized that Miss Lynn must have seen her shoes under the stall door, too. She had recognized Miss Lynn by her pretty slippers. Miss Lynn had recognized her by her ragged tennis shoes. Kate felt her face flush hot with embarrassment.

  “I’ve got a stomachache,” Kate muttered.

  “Do you want me to call your mother to come get you?”

  “She’s at work,” Kate lied. In fact, Mom came home at noon and didn’t go back to work until four, so she was almost certainly at home right now. But the last thing Kate wanted to do was to tell Mom what had happened. If she had any money to buy them new shoes, she would have done it already. If she didn’t have the money, telling her about the mean teasing would just make her feel bad.

  “Is there a phone where she works?” Miss Lynn asked.

  “Not in the dairy barn,” Kate said. She wished Miss Lynn would go away and mind her own business.

  But Miss Lynn kept standing there, close to the stall door, where Kate could see her shoes. Today she was wearing fringed leather slippers with tiny beads sewn in a design on the toes.

  “You can’t spend the afternoon in here,” Miss Lynn said firmly.

  Kate didn’t answer.

  “What class do you have this period?”

  “Study hall,” Kate mumbled.

  For a minute Miss Lynn just stood there, tapping one moccasined foot on the tile floor. Finally she said, “I don’t have a class this period. If you just need some quiet time, you can come into the library.”

  Kate came out of the toilet stall. She didn’t look at Miss Lynn, but walked beside her down to the library.

  “I like your shoes,” Kate said. It was her way of thanking Miss Lynn, because she knew Miss Lynn liked it when people admired her shoes.

  “This is my favorite pair,” Miss Lynn said. “They were made by Navajo Indians in Arizona.”

  When they got to the library, Miss Lynn gave Kate a book that showed how the Navajo people made designs on clothes with tiny beads. Kate flipped through the book for a few minutes just to please Miss Lynn, not actually reading it but looking at the pictures, which weren’t that interesting. She put her head down on the table and wished it was time to go home.

  Miss Lynn noticed that she had stopped reading the Indian beading book and brought her another one called West with the Night.

  “What’s it about?” Kate asked. She usually didn’t like the books grown-ups picked for her.

  “It’s a true story,” Miss Lynn said, “about an English girl who grew up in Africa. She used to go hunting with the natives and once got attacked by a lion. When she was a teenager she became a racehorse trainer, and then she learned to fly planes. She was the first woman to fly alone across the Atlantic Ocean.”

  Miss Lynn went back to her desk, but kept glancing at Kate. Kate figured that if she didn’t want to get sent to study hall, she’d better at least pretend to be reading. She skimmed the first chapter, which was about flying a plane somewhere to rescue a dying man. As she expected, it was not very interesting. But it got better in the next part, where the little girl sneaks away from school and goes with the Africans who live on her father’s farm to hunt wild pigs with spears. Kate had just gotten to the paragraph where a wild pig gored the girl’s dog when the bell rang. Since it was a true story, she figured the dog would die. She left without asking to check out the book.

  But when the mean teasing started at lunch the next day, she went to the library and asked Miss Lynn if she could come there in the afternoon and read instead of going to P.E. and study hall. Miss Lynn said she would have to talk to Kate’s teachers. When Kate came back the next day, Miss Lynn said Kate would have to go to P.E., but she could spend study hall period in the library—as long as she was reading or doing schoolwork.

  Kate suspected that Miss Lynn or the gym teacher must’ve had a talk with the girls in her P.E. class, because nobody said anything mean to her. They just treated her like she was invisible. Which was okay, she told herself, because at the end of the period she would disappear, into the library. After a few days, a couple of girls asked why she didn’t come to study hall anymore, but she just shrugged and didn’t answer. She liked it that they didn’t know.

  In the library Kate usually got at least a start on her homework, which she had hardly ever managed to do in study hall. It was hard to work in there with the kids whispering and passing notes and throwing spitballs and being yelled at by the teacher, who wasn’t very good at keeping order. She never got her homework finished, though, because after P.E., especially on hot days, the quiet of the library made her sleepy. As long as Kate was working, Miss Lynn didn’t leave her desk. But the minute Kate started staring out the window or put her head down on the table, the librarian would bring her another book. The next book Miss Lynn gave her was called Road Song.

  When Kate asked what it was about, Miss Lynn said, “It’s about a little girl who gets attacked by a team of sled dogs and gets one side of her face eaten off.”

  Kate almost gagged. It didn’t help when Miss Lynn added, “It’s a true story.”

  But with Miss Lynn looking up from her desk every couple of minutes to see if she was reading, Kate didn’t have much choice. Road Song had been written by the girl who got half her face bitten off. It turned out to be a good book, only a little bit gruesome, and not at all depressing. Like most grown-up books, it started off boring, but by the second chapter, she forgot all about Miss Lynn and the library. Even the gruesome parts were better than study hall, with the girls whispering, probably about her, and boys bouncing spitballs off the back of her head.

  5

  Almost a Friend

  Kate would have been perfectly happy to go home in the afternoon and keep reading about interesting people in faraway places. The problem was that they got home from school just as Mom was leaving for work, and Kate’s first chore was to help Chip with his homework. Justin could have done it, but he got too impatient. Sometimes Kate couldn’t explain things either, at least not in a way her little brother could understand. Chip had the most trouble with arithmetic, which wasn’t Kate’s best subject. One day she had an idea. Chip and Luther were in the same class. Mrs. Wilson or Ruby was probably helping Luther. Maybe they could help Chip, too.

  “Come on, Chip,” Kate said. “Let’s go down and see how Luther’s doing with his homework.”

  When they came up onto the Wilsons’ porch they saw Luther through the screen door. He was sitting at the desk under the big U.S. map. Ruby was standing beside him.

  When Kate knocked, Ruby looked up and said sharply, “Luther can’t play. He’s got homework.”

  “So does Chip,” Kate said through the screen. “I explained borrowing about ten times and he’s still getting it wrong. I was wondering if you—”

  “Hey, Chip,” Luther interrupted. “Did you get number three?”

  Chip pushed open the screen door. Kate grabbed at the tail of his T-shirt to stop him from walking right in, but he pulled away from her and went straight over to the desk. He looked at Luther’s paper and said, “Three was easy. It’s number five, with all the zeros.”

  “Oh, I can show you zeros,” Luther said. He slid out of his chair. “Let’s go in on the kitchen table.”

  Luther led Chip out of the room and Kate followed them. Behind her, she heard Ruby sigh.

  “Grandma,” said Luther, “will you help us?”

  “Reckon I can cook and do arithmetic at the same time,” Mrs. Wilson said. All the wrinkles at the corners of her eyes crinkled into a smile. She looked at Kate over the boys’ heads. “I could when Ruby was a little girl.”

  “Thanks, Mrs. Wilson.” Kate gave Mrs. Wilson a grateful smile. “I think I’ll wait in the living room if that’s okay.”

  “Yo
u do that, honey. The boys and me will do just fine.”

  Chip and Luther put their books on the kitchen table. Kate slipped back into the living room and stood there waiting for Ruby to say, “Have a seat.” But Ruby didn’t say anything.

  Kate stood next to the desk, feeling awkward. There was an electric typewriter on the desk. Kate touched it. “Wish I could type,” she said.

  “What for?” asked Ruby. “That’s old technology.”

  “I know. But Miss Lynn said that people who know how to touch type get their work done way faster, even when they’re using the computer,” Kate said. She hesitated and added, “I like knowing how to do things. It makes me feel like I’m smarter than folks think I am.”

  Kate could have explained to Ruby that when you’re pretty or have cute clothes it doesn’t matter if you’re smart because people notice you no matter what. But when you’re just an ordinary-looking person you have to be smart or else they treat you like you’re invisible, and only notice you if they’re feeling mean and need somebody to pick on. But Kate didn’t try to explain this because she figured it wasn’t the sort of thing Ruby would understand. She just stood there with her fingers on the typewriter keys, wishing she could do something that would make Ruby notice her.

  Ruby flopped down on the couch and started flipping through a magazine. Suddenly she lowered the magazine and looked at Kate’s hands. “I never saw such filthy fingernails! What have you been doing?”

  Kate had never paid much attention to her own fingernails. She looked down at them now and pulled them away from the typewriter keys. “Uh, I don’t know,” she said, curling them into the palms of her hands.

  Ruby got up and went down the hall. A minute later she came back with a manicure set. “Sit,” she said, pointing to a chair.

  Kate perched on the chair. Ruby sat on the couch across from her. She took one of Kate’s hands into her lap and started cleaning the dirt out from under the fingernails. Kate felt uneasy having Ruby work on her nails. She could tell Ruby was only doing it because she was bored, or maybe because she thought Kate wasn’t well-groomed enough to be hanging around their house. Kate couldn’t stop thinking about Ruby’s remark about “white trash.” She tried to think of something to say that would interest Ruby and get her mind on something besides all the dirt under her fingernails.

  “Can I ask you a question?” Kate asked.

  “Ask away,” Ruby said.

  “What I wonder,” Kate said, “is why, at school, white kids and black kids and Latinos and Asians hang out mostly with other kids like them. Not all the time, of course, but most of the time, like in the lunchroom, or after school.” Kate waited a moment, then asked the rest of her question. “You think it’s because everybody’s prejudiced against everybody else?”

  Ruby kept working on Kate’s fingernails. Instead of answering, she asked, “Who do you hang out with, Kate?”

  Kate felt her face turning red. “Nobody, really. I had a good friend in fifth grade, but she moved away.”

  Ruby started filing the rough edges off Kate’s nails. “But if you had a choice, who would it be? Somebody just like you, right?”

  Kate heard the suspicious tone in Ruby’s voice and understood what she was getting at. She answered carefully. “I don’t think people have to be the exact same to like each other. Do you?”

  Ruby shrugged. “Well, it’s a fact that people go a lot on looks. They figure that people who look like them are going to be the same, and people who look different are going to be different. From there it’s pretty easy to jump to the conclusion that their difference isn’t as good as your difference.”

  “Would you think that?” Kate asked, remembering perfectly well how Ruby had made up her mind right off that they were “white trash” just because they came that first day dressed in old clothes and not washed up or anything.

  Ruby pushed Kate’s left hand aside and reached for the right one. For a while she worked on the nails without saying anything. Just when Kate had given up on getting an answer, Ruby said, “When I first moved to New York, there was this Jewish girl who lived in the next apartment. I thought she was real strange. Like, she never went out on Friday nights. Her parents always came over. One hot Friday night I walked past and her apartment door was open. They were having supper together and doing this kind of ritual with candles and prayers and stuff. After that, when I passed her in the hall, it seemed like she was looking at me funny out of the corners of her eyes. I felt like telling her, ‘Honey, you may think I’m weird, but I think you’re pretty weird, too!’

  “About a month later, we happened to ride up on the same elevator. She was looking at me out of the corners of her eyes again, and I was just about to blurt out something rude when she said, ‘You know, you’ve got the most beautiful hair. I’d just love to learn how to do mine like that.’”

  Ruby finished filing the nails on Kate’s right hand and started buffing them. “I don’t know that I thought I was better than her. But I did figure that because she never went out on Friday nights, and because the prayers at her supper table weren’t like the ones Papa says at ours, we couldn’t possibly have anything in common. But when I got to know her, turned out we read the same books and liked the same music and always wanted to see the same movies. We even had the same problems with our parents, who hadn’t wanted us to move out on our own. So yeah, maybe I was a little prejudiced at first. At least, I prejudged her, which is more or less the same thing.”

  Kate frowned. “There’s Jewish kids in our school. And kids from Latin America and the Caribbean, and way more Yankees than there used to be.”

  Ruby must have seen the frown, because she narrowed her eyes and asked, “Does that bother you?”

  “Doesn’t bother me that they’re there,” Kate said, flinching a little as Ruby dug under a fingernail again to get out a piece of dirt she’d missed. “It’s how everybody gangs up against everybody else.”

  “You mean whites against blacks?” Ruby asked.

  “Not only that,” Kate told her. “The Latino kids from Puerto Rico fight with the Latinos from Cuba, and the American black kids make fun of black kids from Haiti, and white kids whose parents have regular jobs say terrible things about white kids on welfare. One day all the Baptist girls, black and white ones both, beat up a black girl who just moved here from Harlem when she said she was a Muslim and didn’t believe in Jesus.”

  Ruby sighed. “That’s exactly how I remember junior high. All cliques and us-against-them, even in this small town. And my parents couldn’t understand why I hated school.”

  “I hate school, too,” said Kate. Then she added, “But I like that story about you and your friend in New York. I think it’s fun getting to know different kinds of people.”

  What Kate wanted to say, but didn’t, was that the trouble wasn’t her liking other people, it was getting other people to like her.

  At school the next day, when Kate looked at her manicured nails so smooth and clean and round, they made her feel good. The good feeling lasted all day long, right up till she climbed on the bus to go home. As she put her foot up on the first high step, she heard the sound of her too-tight jeans ripping. She reached back and felt the hole, and through it, her underpants.

  She managed to get on the bus and into a seat without anybody noticing, and whispered to Chip to walk close behind her when she got off. As far as she could tell, nobody saw her underwear through the torn place. At least no one teased her about it.

  Kate looked at the jeans when she got home to see if she could patch them, but the fabric was so worn she didn’t think it would hold a patch. Not that she wanted a patch in the dead center of one cheek of a pair of too-tight jeans! Maybe Mom could think of something. Or else—Kate didn’t know what. She could barely get her other jeans zipped anymore.

  But Mom didn’t come home at supper time. Instead, she called.

  “Go ahead and eat without me,” she told them. “We’ve got a cow down. Looks like a br
eech birth—you know, the calf’s bottom is coming out first instead of its head. George has gone to town to see if he can find a vet. I’ve got to stay with the cow. It might be late when I get home.”

  Kate fell asleep with her book in her hand around midnight. It must have been really late when Mom got in. When Kate woke up the next morning, Mom was gone again, as usual, to do the morning milking. Kate rummaged through her clothes again, but couldn’t find one thing to wear to school. Not church dresses; nobody ever wore dresses to school. Neither of her skirts would do either, nor any of the jeans. Two had broken zippers and two she couldn’t zip at all.

  Justin looked into Kate’s room and saw her sitting there in her underwear, the torn jeans in her lap. “Hey! You’re going to miss the bus.”

  “Leave me alone,” Kate said, fighting to hold back tears.

  Chip peeked in at her. “Come on, Kate,” he said.

  Justin gave Chip a push. “You come on, brat. No need for you to miss the bus just because Kate wants to.”

  Kate watched them walking up the driveway to Lost Goat Lane, and at the same time saw Luther and Ruby walking up the lane toward the bus stop out on the highway. Chip and Luther ran to meet each other. Ruby said something to Justin. He pointed to the house.

  The bus stopped and the boys got on. Ruby started back down the lane, walking slowly. Then, instead of continuing toward her own house, she turned down the Martin driveway, picking her way carefully around mud puddles left from rain in the night. She didn’t come up on the porch, but walked over to the side of the house and spoke to Kate through the window.