by Jen Bryant
I would not have you do this if I didn’t think your work
was at least as good as theirs.
Of course, I’m not one of the judges,
so there’s no guarantee….
But how will you know what you can do
unless you try?”
I started to argue, and for once the words felt like
they would actually come out, but she said:
“Trust me—you just hand in your five best pieces
and let the judges decide.”
I promised her I’d finish my portfolio.
I promised her I’d try.
But I didn’t tell her I’d lost her rabbit’s foot—the one
I was counting on
to get me in.
35.
I saw Tiffany talking to Ronnie Kline
in the hall, before first period.
Tiffany has hardly even looked at Ronnie Kline before,
and now she is talking to him???!!! Hmmmmmm…
Ronnie I-always-smell-like-cigarettes Kline,
whose older brother got arrested last year
for selling drugs at the high school,
is not the kind of guy who has casual conversations
with well-dressed popular athletes
like Tiffany O’Neill.
So today after math, I asked Tiffany why
she was talking to Ronnie Kline.
“He just wanted to know who won the game yesterday.”
Then she looked away quick.
Momma, I know you never met Tiffany,
but I know Tiffany better than
just about anyone else—
sometimes even herself—
and I can tell you, Tiffany O’Neill may be a lot of things—
like reckless,
like pouty,
like funny,
like even snobby sometimes….
But until today, Tiffany has not been
a liar.
36.
It takes a lot of people to make a house. I never knew
how many until Daddy took me
to work. I can’t say why he did, exactly,
except I guess he felt guilty leaving me alone
on my two days off (our teachers have an “in-service”—
Miss Benedetto says that’s when they take
classes to help them teach better, but since the lectures
are mostly for teachers of English or math,
she draws caricatures of the speakers).
Or maybe Daddy knows I’m not
staying home all the time when he’s at work
and he wants to keep me away from
the kids who spend their free time
smoking or drinking or stealing, the kids who
really belong on that “At Risk” list.
Anyway, today I ended up in his truck, bleary-eyed
at 5:30 in the morning, heading west
to Lancaster County, where I spent the day
watching him and about ten other men
slap up drywall and frame out windows and doors,
fit crossbeams, and nail down the floor. A few others
came and went, pouring cement and fitting gutters
on the roof (you couldn’t pay me enough to do that—
they have to walk back and forth across the house
about fifty feet up,
sure-footed as mountain goats but loaded down
with tools and nails
and no telling when there’ll be a breeze).
After lunch, Daddy took out his football, and the masons played
the carpenters in two-hand touch.
But one of the carpenters had a bad knee, so Daddy yelled over
to where I was sitting under the one scraggly tree:
“Hey, Georgia, c’mon!”
Well, Momma, these guys are all about six feet tall,
and they pound nails and lift boards eight hours a day.
Then there’s me—five-foot-one, and while I’m strong for my size
from handling horses and doing chores,
I am no linebacker, either.
I gave Daddy a sideways look that told him
I didn’t think this was one of his better ideas.
But he just clapped his hands together and said:
“You can be the QB, and we’ll do all the runnin’.”
So there I was, Momma—me and the carpenters and masons
playing touch football in the middle of some former cornfield
way out in Lancaster County.
The window guys sat in their trucks and cheered
while I threw a dozen pretty good passes—
only one bad one, short and out-of-bounds—
and Benny caught three for touchdowns
and Daddy caught one,
and the rest got us enough good yardage
to win 35 to 10.
Benny and Sal carried me
on their shoulders to the truck, where we
shared iced tea and a package of Oreos.
They lit cigarettes, strapped on their tools,
and went back to work.
But Daddy didn’t.
He stood next to me for the longest time,
not saying anything. I figured he was thinking about you,
about the past, but this time,
he didn’t look sad.
“You throw real good,” he finally said. “Your momma’d
be proud.” Then he pointed to the house. “You ever wish
we lived in one like this?”
I shrugged. “Sometimes. Once in a while…it’d be nice,
I guess, to have an oven you could put a whole pizza in,
and a closet with a door and light. Other than that,
it’d be way too big for you and me,
and it’d be a real pain to clean.”
And Momma, Daddy laughed. He laughed.
37.
Went to Lancaster again. I asked Daddy
if he thought it’d be all right to sketch a few of the workers.
I told him I had a project to do for art class
(which isn’t a real lie; my portfolio is a project and it is for art).
He said: “Better ask them first.”
When we got there, Benny and Sal
were unloading a flatbed full of wood and they both said:
“Sure, you can sketch me as long as I can keep my clothes on.”
(Wise guys, both of them.) I found two cement blocks to sit on,
propped them in a corner, and watched them get to work.
It’s funny how, when you look at someone for a long time,
you start to notice certain things.
For example, without his baseball cap,
Benny’s hair puffs up wilder than Einstein’s
(Mrs. Bigelow has a poster of him in the science room),
and he has long, flexible fingers like a pianist.
He leans over a piece of wood like it’s a baby,
and lifts it like it’s a baby,
and turns it this way and that, like it’s gonna
speak to him at any moment.
Sal, on the other hand, is built like a bull and moves
around the house like it’s his house and the wood had better
do exactly what he wants.
He has short, stubby fingers, and big shoulders and legs,
and his Marlboro sticks out of his mouth,
wiggling like a snake.
I sketched them both—three times—and they were
real cool about it. I think they even liked it.
Then I made another quick sketch of the window framer,
and one of the stonemason, who has
the loneliest eyes.
The framer called me “honey” and ruffled my hair like I was
a six-year-old, but the other guys were pretty nice and didn’t
make me feel like I shouldn’t be there, like I wa
s
too young or too much
in the way.
No football today. It rained a little at lunch,
so the guys drove
to the 7-Eleven or stayed inside.
Before we left, Benny gave me an apron that said
“Figaro Bros. Carpenters and Woodworkers—since 1967.”
He asked me if I was coming back, and I told him I go to
public school and we didn’t have another break until May.
Then he asked if he could see
my sketchbook. I let him have it awhile, and he took his time.
He looked at each sketch, and on some of them
he took longer and made clucking noises with his tongue.
“You are so much like your mother,” he said
when he handed it back to me.
The whole ride home I wondered
how many others knew you
better than I ever will.
38.
When we pulled in to school this morning,
Tiffany jumped up, grabbed her stuff, said “Bye,”
and got off the bus in a hurry.
I waited until the eighth graders passed,
then walked to my locker. Down the hall,
I saw Ronnie Kline hand something to Tiffany,
and she handed him
something back.
39.
Two nights ago, Daddy opened the shoe box
he keeps on the shelf above his bed
and took out the little black address book
that I forgot he had.
We don’t have much use for address lists. Since Daddy
grew up in the boys’ home in Georgia
and has no family at all, we don’t
even send Christmas cards.
On the front of that little book in big gold letters, it said:
“Tamara and David McCoy.”
I wonder if Daddy gets that same fluttery feeling
inside—like I do—whenever he reads
your name.
Anyhow, Daddy needed the address of the auto parts supplier
so he could send for a filter
to replace the old one in his truck. But seeing that little black book
got me to thinking how easy it’d be
to look up your parents’ address
and maybe even write them a letter.
The birthday cards from Great-Uncle Doug are nice,
but I think I’d really like to be in touch
more often
with your relatives. Even if we never meet,
I’d like to write to someone
with the same blood in their veins,
who maybe even has a nose like mine,
someone who has memories of you just like I do,
but who would actually talk about them…
someone who knew you when you were my age and could tell me
what you were like.
I couldn’t sleep for thinking about it.
All night and most of the next day, I kept
imagining and planning everything I’d say—
I might write your parents a short letter first,
mail it in Delaware when we go shopping
(I’m sure I could slip it in the mailbox
outside the grocery store when Daddy wasn’t looking).
I wouldn’t tell Daddy, of course.
But I’d write to your folks and tell them
that I was alive and doing okay, and that I had
brown hair and blue eyes, just like you did,
and a habit of sketching and drawing, just like you,
and that you were a good mother,
and I missed you,
and maybe I’d even promise to come and visit them
in Savannah when I’m grown.
Since Mrs. Yocum started me
writing to you in this diary,
it’s got me believing
it’d be fun to write to someone and actually have them
write back (no offense, Momma).
So I thought—maybe if this goes well, maybe if it
feels like a good thing to do—
I might work up the nerve to write to Great-Uncle Doug,
and I would ask him to write back,
even when it’s not my birthday.
After school, I ran up the lane
and took that shoe box down
from Daddy’s shelf.
My hands were shaking like they did
when Miss Benedetto showed me
those grant forms.
I opened it slowly and flipped
through all the pages.
Except for a few A entries for auto parts places,
and a few F’s for Figaro Bros. Carpenters,
and Mr. Kesey in the K’s, of course,
it was nearly empty.
When I flipped back to S, I saw
the space where your parents’ address must have been. Speare.
It was scratched out hard with a black pen.
I held the page up to the window.
I turned it all around—this way and that way—and
I still could not make out
one single, solitary letter.
I put it down, feeling it with my fingertips,
trying to read it like someone who’s blind. But whoever
scratched out that address
left nothing behind.
40.
Something’s different about Tiffany.
She’s keeping a secret. I think she should be
telling me what’s going on—
After all, I have told her my secrets
(including some things about you). Isn’t that
what good friends are supposed to do?
At least I could listen. She knows I wouldn’t tell.
But whatever it is, she’s not saying.
For the first time since we’ve been friends,
Tiffany is avoiding me. We don’t talk like we
used to in the halls. She doesn’t return my calls,
and we don’t always sit together on the bus.
It’s like she’s drawn a curtain between us,
and even though I’m trying to see through it,
we’re still on opposite sides.
41.
Only one week until
my portfolio is due. I am working on my drawings every
afternoon and almost every evening
after Daddy falls asleep.
Miss Benedetto gave me a big cardboard folder
to keep my drawings in,
which just fits inside my closet.
I forgot, though, that Blake likes to lie down in there
(he’s not allowed on my bed),
and one night he plopped right on top of it
and bent the edges of my best pencil sketch.
I rolled it out on my bed, put my schoolbooks
on either end, and slept on the floor with Blake.
By morning, it looked pretty good again—just a little crease—
so I’m planning to hand it in. I told Blake to find another place
to lie down or I’d have to tie him outside
(his new spot is the heat vent—on cool nights, I have to
wear a sweater, but at least my drawings are safe).
Did you know that Andrew Wyeth painted
this lady named Helga—sometimes she’s inside posing nude,
and other times she’s standing outside by a tree,
wearing a big green cape and braids?
For fourteen years he didn’t tell anyone, even his wife.
He hid two hundred pictures of her
in his neighbor’s house, and when they were discovered,
Helga made all of the papers,
and the cover of Time.
Andrew was lucky to have that hiding place.
My closet barely holds my clothes and shoes,
let alone my portfolio (I’m saving eve
ry sketch
until I decide which five are the best),
which gets thicker all the time.
Besides, I am just drawing innocent farm animals,
some construction guys, and a few still lifes.
But if I happen to meet a handsome man wearing a cape
and leaning against a tree,
I believe Andrew Wyeth himself would be disappointed
if I didn’t ask him to pose.
42.
Big puddle on the floor this morning,
but luckily it was
nowhere near my drawings.
When we got back from food shopping,
Daddy took me with him to Lancaster,
where he bought the supplies he needed at a wholesaler
to fix our leaky roof.
He also picked up his overtime check,
which put him in a real good mood. Daddy is still
what you’d call a direct driver, a no-stopping-for-anything
kind of man. But when I asked: “Can we stop, real quick,
at one of those Amish farm stands?”
he said sure.
We bought cheese and jam and homemade muffins
that smelled so good, we each ate two. We got stuck
in traffic on Lancaster Pike,
and that’s when I saw—in one Amish farmer’s field—
the billboard ad for Six Flags park.
It was a close-up photo of people on the
downturn of a roller coaster, with their hair
pinned back by wind and their mouths twisted.
I thought how it must be so weird for that Amish farmer,
with his long beard, his black hat, his suspenders and plain black suit,
to follow his mule team and his plow
under that roller coaster picture
every spring.
Momma, this is exactly the kind of thing
