Pieces of Georgia

by Jen Bryant

an official member, I would consider taking her

  if she thought she could dress appropriately

  and pay for her entry.

  I was kidding, of course, about the clothes

  (you can wear anything you like) and the money

  (only five dollars for a student, which I know she can afford),

  but seeing as how Tiffany probably won’t have a free afternoon anytime soon,

  none of that really matters.

  part 3

  “It’s the hardest work in the world to try not to work!”

  —N. C. Wyeth

  29.

  Marianne Ferlinghetti invited me

  to her thirteenth-birthday party

  at the Bowling Palace.

  This morning on the bus, she gave me

  an invitation she’d made herself

  that had a drawing of a cake

  sitting on a table, with yellow frosting

  and blue roses, and gifts of all

  shapes and sizes floating over it.

  Tiffany didn’t say anything, but I

  know what she was thinking.

  She and her friends call Marianne’s

  group of friends “the potheads”—

  and for the most part, they are right.

  Which is why—even though Marianne and I

  have known each other since kindergarten

  and her mother brought food

  to Daddy and me after you died—

  I am careful not to spend too much

  time with Marianne’s friends. They still ask me

  to hang out after school at the old shed

  behind the Longwood Baptist Church.

  Some days, there’s a part of me

  that wants to say yes. Maybe I am too

  picky. Maybe they would let me hang out with them

  and not smoke (but I doubt it).

  I don’t seem to fit in to a group—

  the Jocks, the Brains, the Preps, the Goths—

  like most of the other seventh graders,

  but I’m not uptight about it.

  Mrs. Yocum thinks I should make more

  of an effort—last year, she gave me this book

  called Fitting In: Social Skills for Shy Kids

  that had cartoons of students who looked

  like aliens and sidebars with hints about

  “establishing trust” and “knowing your boundaries.”

  I looked through it one night and then

  threw it in the trash. My boundaries

  are pretty well set, and if I decide

  to move them, I’ll be sure to tell Mrs. Yocum.

  In the meantime, Blake and Ella and Tiffany

  are just about all I can handle.

  30.

  “Georgia, you have to come over

  right now. It’s awful, just awful. All of them

  at once—oh, God….”

  That was Tiffany on the phone this afternoon. She was half-crying

  (and Tiffany almost never cries)

  and her voice sounded funny—almost shy and kind of whimpery

  (Tiffany is not shy or whimpery).

  I ran.

  And the whole way over, I’m thinking

  how weird she’s been lately—too tired one day,

  too jittery the next—

  and I’m guessing what the “all of them” might be….

  Maybe she’d had enough and she just

  up and quit all her sports at once,

  or maybe her big shelf of trophies

  (and there are a lot of them)

  came crashing down on her head,

  or maybe she knocked out all her teeth

  with a lacrosse stick.

  By the time I arrived, my stomach was in knots

  and I was out of breath.

  I found Tiffany in her room, standing over her fish tank,

  her tears plunk-plunking into the water.

  About a month ago, Tiffany decided she needed

  a pet, but since she’s hardly ever home,

  she doesn’t have time for a dog or even a cat,

  and she doesn’t like hamsters or gerbils or snakes.

  I suggested fish.

  “They’re easy to take care of,” I said.

  “And they’re really good for stress.”

  And being Tiffany, she didn’t buy just one or two, she bought

  twelve—just like a girl’s lacrosse team. She even got one

  with an exotic tail and named it Goalie.

  But something went wrong with the water or with the filter,

  ’cause they were all belly-up in the tank,

  some on the bottom, and some drifting slowly

  on the current, like lost souls.

  It was a sad sight. It was a lot less sad, though,

  than the other things I’d been imagining,

  so I sat on the edge of Tiffany’s bed,

  put my head between my knees,

  and caught my breath.

  When I looked up, Tiffany’s tears had stopped, and those

  twelve upside-down, slow-drifting fish looked so pathetic—

  I couldn’t help it—I started laughing.

  I thought Tiffany would be mad, but then she laughed, too,

  and soon we were both

  rolling around on the floor,

  clutching our sides.

  Then Tiffany’s brother, Teddy, came in (he’s in fifth grade).

  He said: “Hey, let me flush them for you,”

  but Tiffany insisted on a proper burial for her “team.”

  Teddy helped us net them

  and put them in a cookie tin. We took it outside and dug

  a small hole under one of the scraggly twigs they call “trees”

  in Tiffany’s neighborhood.

  After a moment of silence, I played “We Are the Champions”

  on Teddy’s portable CD player. Tiffany asked me

  what she should say for the eulogy,

  and when I said: “I don’t know, I’ve never been to a funeral,”

  she looked shocked.

  “I guess you should say something nice about each one,

  but since there were a dozen,

  and they were small, maybe one thing about them all

  would be enough.”

  We bowed our heads and Tiffany said

  how they put up a good fight, how they all

  stuck together in their tank and none of them

  were selfish. Except she said “shellfish” and that made us

  start laughing all over again. I said a final “Amen”

  and we went inside to find something to eat. That’s when

  Tiffany asked me: “How come you didn’t go

  to your mother’s funeral?”

  So I told her: “The night Momma died, I cried and cried

  and couldn’t stop,

  and I went into shock

  and had to stay in the hospital.

  Daddy had to go back and forth

  between the funeral home and me, and while he was visiting,

  Momma’s folks took over.”

  I told her how, behind Daddy’s back, they had you cremated

  and took your ashes to Savannah,

  so that’s how come I never went to your funeral

  or saw your grave, or, as Mrs. Yocum would say,

  “had closure.”

  Tiffany’s eyes opened real wide,

  like they always do when I tell her something

  she can hardly believe.

  She asked her mother if she could skip practice

  “just for tonight,” and Mrs. O’Neill said:

  “All right, but don’t make it a habit.”

  We made a huge bowl of popcorn and watched a few

  game shows on TV. Teddy needed help

  with his science project

  (he’s growing seeds in gravel and tea leaves)

  and then all three of us played one-handed W
ar,

  which we’d decided we liked more

  than the two-handed version.

  They both walked me home. On the hill,

  we picked a bunch of early violets and wild daffodils.

  Tiffany chattered constantly

  about nothing in particular, the way only Tiffany can do,

  and I realized this must be the first time—in a long time—

  that she didn’t have to be on a field or in a gym,

  or in front of the Sisters, reciting scripture.

  At the pasture, Mr. Fitz was turning Ella loose

  after training her. The three of us leaned on the gate

  and watched Ella race across the field, bucking and whinnying,

  so relieved to be free.

  31.

  It was seventy-nine degrees today—

  warmer than usual for April—

  and a perfect day to sketch. But that’s not

  what I did. Instead, I spent the better part of the afternoon

  trying to find Miss Benedetto’s lucky rabbit’s foot.

  I lost it when I ran over to Tiffany’s, so it’s definitely

  somewhere out there

  in those five acres of fields

  between our trailer and her neighborhood.

  As I was looking, I couldn’t help thinking

  that this was one of those times, if I had a grandmother—

  the kind that bundles you up in the cold

  and makes you chocolate chip cookies

  and lets you watch anything you want on TV—

  this would be exactly the kind of time

  a grandmother like that

  would help me. She’d put on her flat-soled

  shoes and her grandmother sweater,

  and she’d walk the fields with me, searching.

  Or she might offer to drive me somewhere

  to buy a new rabbit’s foot

  to replace the one I lost (even though I didn’t mean to).

  But I don’t know my grandmother. I have

  no one like that to call.

  Instead, I need some other kind of good luck charm

  to help me find the one I lost…. But mostly

  I need the guts to tell Miss Benedetto

  that I have been careless

  with her gift.

  32.

  Every night for the past week,

  I’ve been trying to sketch Daddy. After dinner, he stretches out

  on the couch to watch TV, and he’s usually

  fast asleep by 8:30. That’s when I

  grab my sketch pad and sit at his feet, but every drawing

  I’ve made so far—for some reason—

  just isn’t working.

  Then yesterday at the museum,

  I found Andrew Wyeth’s Trodden Weed.

  The sign said “Tempera,” and that Andrew had

  mixed powdered pigment with egg yolk

  and had painted slowly and in layers,

  to get in all the details. The painting is a man,

  but you can only see him from the knees down. He wears

  a loose black coat and leather boots, and he’s stepping

  on a big weed.

  The sign also said it was

  Andrew’s self-portrait, which he painted

  after he’d been really sick. I guess the weed he’s trampling

  is Death, and he’s showing how he beat it.

  Right after that, I walked back to look at

  Jamie Wyeth’s portrait of his wife—

  the one with the plant, the chair, and the hat—

  and that made me think about things…

  how they can tell you a lot

  about a person, how each object

  is a story.

  I got home early enough to fix us a hot

  chicken dinner. While we were eating, Daddy asked:

  “You been keepin’ yourself busy around here after school?”

  I nodded and tried not to

  choke on my chicken wing.

  “Yep,” I said. “With the horses and homework and…”

  Daddy chewed and waited for me to finish.

  I should have said “watching TV” or “playing with Blake,”

  but instead all I said was “…and other stuff.”

  Daddy shoveled in his last bite.

  He looked like he wanted to say something, but then

  he closed back up again.

  That was it—that was all we said.

  He helped me clear the table and went off

  to watch sports.

  I was washing the dishes when I noticed

  Daddy’s work boots and his tool belt

  leaning against each other near the door, like two old friends.

  Above them, through the glass, was Mr. Kesey’s willow tree,

  which is as huge and droopy

  as the magnolias I’ve seen in pictures of Savannah,

  like the one you were sitting under

  the day you met Daddy.

  So while Daddy’s eyes were glued to Channel 10,

  I grabbed my drawing pad and my best ink pen

  and started his portrait.

  33.

  Today was Marianne’s birthday party

  at the Bowling Palace. I didn’t go.

  Two weeks ago, Mr. Fitz asked me if I could spend today

  getting Ella bathed, groomed, and braided

  for the Unionville Horse Show.

  I said yes and I guess that was lucky,

  ’cause I didn’t really want to go to that party

  but I didn’t want to lie

  to get out of it.

  I had just finished bathing Ella

  and was walking her along the lane so she’d dry in the sun,

  when Tiffany came flying up the hill.

  She started jabbering away about her uncle Ray

  who’d come to visit from Florida.

  She was in a hyper mood, but she seemed happy enough,

  and I could tell she liked having him around.

  “He tells me stuff about my mother when she was younger,”

  Tiffany told me. Then she asked: “So, G…. If you don’t know

  your grandparents,

  and you have never met your great-uncle Doug,

  then how do you know all that stuff

  about your mother?” So I explained.

  “Just before Momma got sick, it was

  Christmastime. She must have been thinking about

  the past, about Savannah.” (Do you remember that, Momma?)

  “She showed me a photograph of her brother,

  and another one of herself with her mother

  and father. But it was after her brother had died,

  and their smiles looked fake, like they were painted on.

  I remember she looked—already—like a dog chained too tight,

  like she was desperate to escape.”

  The rest of it, I told Tiffany, I got from Daddy

  over the last six years—but only in little bits, now and then,

  here and there. I have learned to watch him, like you might watch

  a slow leak from a faucet. Sometimes it takes forever

  before you see a single drip,

  and if you time it right, you can catch it in your hand,

  but you gotta be quick.

  “Do you still have the photographs—

  of your mother’s brother? And your grandparents?”

  “I’m pretty sure Daddy tore them up,” I said.

  “He might’ve even burned them….”

  Just then, Daddy drove up the lane in his truck.

  He stopped beside us, said he had to

  get some supplies from the lumberyard for Mr. Kesey,

  and could I come along for a few minutes to help?

  That was good—I didn’t have to tell Tiffany about that week

  before we moved our trailer out of the park,

  when I rode wi
th Daddy three times to this place in the woods,

  where he made a big fire

  and dumped boxes full of your stuff

  into the flames.

  I remember standing next to him, wondering if that was what hell looked like

  and praying

  you weren’t there.

  34.

  “Paints, Paper, and Clay—Artwork by the Students

  of Longwood High, Grades 9–12.”

  That’s what the sign said at the bottom of

  the big glass showcase next to the nurse’s office.

  I was on my way there for some of those

  fruit-flavored Rolaids (I didn’t do so hot

  on Mr. Krasinski’s exponents test),

  but once I noticed that exhibit,

  I spent the next class period looking at:

  miniature landscape paintings,

  cut-paper collages,

  metal sculptures,

  watercolors,

  pen-and-ink portraits,

  ceramic vases and plates.

  To me, every piece

  looked perfect—every one of those high schoolers

  knew what they were doing.

  After gym class, I got a pass and found

  Miss Benedetto. I told her I wanted to

  withdraw my application for the grant program,

  the sooner the better.

  “I’ve seen what I’m up against,” I told her,

  “and I don’t stand a chance.”

  Miss B. pulled together two chairs, and we sat there

  in silence for a while. “Georgia,” she said at last,

  “I’ve seen some pretty incredible sketches

  on the covers of your math book, not to mention

  the stuff you’ve done in class.