Maizon at Blue Hill

by Jacqueline Woodson

  “Well,” Pauli said, pulling her pile of books closer to her chest. “You don’t really stick with anybody.”

  I shrugged. We were walking slowly now. Gusts of cold air cut across my thighs. “I’m trying to decide just where I fit in around here. I feel like I should hang by myself until I get to that point.”

  Pauli grinned. She had the straightest teeth I had ever seen. “In other words, Charli and them gave you ultimatums and instead of them icing you, you iced them first.”

  I thought for a moment, then nodded.

  “Look, Maizon.” Pauli stopped in the center of the field and turned to me. “I don’t know what they told you about me being an ‘oreo’ or whatever they call me. But when I first came here, I wanted to be on the math team really bad, even if it meant that I’d be the only black girl on it. And they gave me ultimatums too. I mean, I respect each of them for their own little thing: Marie is a straight-A student, Sheila is an incredible speaker, and Charli—well, aside from being a great athlete, Charli is just great being Charli. But I had to find my own way here. Everyone on the math team was white and they were all really nice to me. So they were the first girls I became friends with. After that, I made other friends. Let’s face it,” she said, throwing a hand in the air, “this is a very white school. I wasn’t about to hang with only three people.”

  I nodded, because I did get her point ... almost. “What about the holidays, though, Pauli? What about black history month and Kwanza and all those celebrations?”

  Pauli rolled her eyes, growing annoyed. “Yeah, well ... that’s kind of hard to explain. I mean, my mom is black and my dad is white. When I was seven they got divorced, and my three brothers and I went to live with my father. We only saw my mother during the summer. Now she’s moved to Paris and I only see her for two weeks out of the year. My father didn’t make it his business to celebrate any of the holidays with us and what I learned of my black history, I learned in school—an all-white school where my brothers and I were the only ones with black blood running through our veins. We were the ‘caramel’ kids there, the ’light-bright-near-whites,‘ the mixed bloods, and every other awful name they could think to call us. First I denied the black part of myself to try to fit, then I denied the white part of me. Then I just accepted both. I mean, I am black and white ... I can’t choose between the two.”

  Pauli was silent for a moment. She looked discouraged all of a sudden, like she had told this story to a hundred different people over the course of her life and not one of them understood.

  “I’m ignorant, Maizon. I’ll be the first to admit it. In a way I’m like some of the white girls here who want to know all about black people but are afraid to approach them. Charli and them scared me. I didn’t want to be told I wasn’t ‘black enough.”’

  “Who decides that?” I demanded.

  “I feel like some people think they have a right to. I felt like Charli and them felt that way when I wanted to venture out.”

  “Well, I don’t know if I’ll stick around here ...” I said, when we reached the dorm and rushed inside to the warm lobby. “But if I do, I’m going to make my own way too. It would be cool if all of us could be friends—me, you, Charli, Marie, Sheila....”

  Pauli nodded, but something in her face told me it could never happen. I never thought about the choices we had to make before. Probably because I never had to make them.

  “It’s like I’m stuck between two worlds,” Pauli said, almost to herself. “And sometimes, neither world is very inviting.”

  “You think you’ll stay at Blue Hill, Pauli?” I asked.

  Pauli shrugged. “Where else would I go? Every place is pretty much the same for me.”

  “What college do you think you’ll go to?” It seemed like a long time ago I was sitting in their room listening to Marie and Sheila go back and forth about colleges. Now I wanted to know what Pauli thought.

  “Vassar,” Pauli said firmly. “They have all kinds of girls there. I think I’d be happy in a place like that.” She looked at her watch. “I better go. It was nice talking to you, Maizon.”

  “Nice to talk to you, Pauli.”

  Pauli climbed halfway up the stairs and leaned over the banister. “I guess I’ll see you around, huh?”

  I smiled. “Maybe,” I said calmly.

  20

  The turkey ran away. Before Thanksgiving day,“ Sandy sang, slamming her books down on her desk. ”They’d said they’d make a meal out of him if he should stay! I can’t wait!“

  “Sandy,” I reminded her, “Thanksgiving break is two weeks away!”

  “I got the bug, Maizon! I got the serious T-H-A-N-K-S-G-I-V-I-N-G bug. I can’t wait to get out of here. Why are you studying?”

  “Because we have midterms this week and next. I have a history test tomorrow and an English midterm on Thursday.”

  “Oh.” Sandy giggled. We had worked our way toward becoming friends, even playing field hockey together. I hated the skirts. They were worse than our uniforms and twice as short. And the field hockey stick must have been made with Pygmies in mind. After the first practice, I didn’t think my back would ever be the same. We had to run up and down a field trying to get this silly ball away from each other. The coach promised me I’d learn the game with practice. But I had absolutely no interest and didn’t understand why everyone at Blue Hill had to play a sport. The only good thing about it was that the coach said there was only a very slim chance of me ever starting.

  We won our first game two weeks ago—seven-four against Concord. We called them Concord Grape Academy and jumped all over each other when the final whistle blew. I couldn’t help noticing that I was the only black person on either team. Nobody else seemed to notice though. The girls on the other team gave us victory high-fives without even blinking. I couldn’t help getting the spirit a little bit after we won. The coach took us out for ice cream afterward, and we all crowded around two huge tables, giggling and recounting plays in the game. That night, Sandy and I stayed up late talking sports, coming to the conclusion that she’d be a jock when she grew up and maybe, if I was lucky, I’d learn how to run up and down a hockey field in cleats one day.

  Sandy was funny and free-spirited. But there was still a cautious distance between us. Sandy was never sure when I’d get in one of my moods and not speak to her and I was always cautious that she’d get with her friends and pretend she didn’t know me. We didn’t eat together at school. I had taken to bringing books with me to meals and reading through any conversation someone tried to have with me. I didn’t want to chance getting close to anyone. It would just make leaving harder.

  “Sandy?” I asked a few minutes later, when she was sitting down at her desk and staring at the cover of her composition book.

  “Huh?”

  “What do you want to be if you grow up?”

  Sandy laughed. “An epidemiologist.”

  “You’re going to medical school?”

  Sandy shrugged. “Maybe a wife first. Medical school is a lot of money.”

  “Wifery’s a lot of years!”

  “Nah.” Sandy giggled. “A lot of marriages don’t last. Then I could collect alimony, which will pay my way through med school. What about you?”

  I leaned on my fist and gazed out the window. “I used to want to be a writer. But my friend Margaret aced that. She won an all-city poetry contest. I don’t think that’s what I want to be anymore. Now I’m leaning toward being a counselor of some kind. Something where I help people fit in—maybe a shrink.”

  “A shrink, wow!” Sandy breathed. “I never even thought of that. My mom has a shrink. I never thought of people aspiring to be shrinks. I guess they do, though. That’s medical school too.”

  “School doesn’t scare me....”

  “Do I know that!”

  “A shrink,” I said again, almost to myself. “I think I’d like that.”

  “You’d be good, Maizon,” Sandy said. “When you’re not crabby, you have a mellow spirit
. It’s kind of relaxing. Like sometimes, when I come in from a hard workout or a hard class and I see you sitting there studying, and the room is warm and quiet, it just makes me feel good.”

  “Thanks,” I said, really meaning it.

  “I’ll miss that about you, Maizon,” Sandy said softly.

  “You haven’t told anyone, have you?” One night, after a hockey game, I had sworn Sandy to secrecy, then confessed that I was thinking of leaving Blue Hill.

  “I haven’t breathed a word. But if I come back from Thanksgiving and see your stuff laid out on the bed, I’ll be happy as a nursing kitten.”

  I smiled and shrugged. “I doubt it. But I’ll write you.”

  “Yeah, sure,” Sandy said, cracking her comp book. “That’s what they all say.”

  “You want to take a study break and walk me to the store?”

  Sandy slammed her comp book closed as quickly as she had opened it. We pulled our field hockey sweatshirts over our heads and signed out with Ms. Bender, who smiled and nodded knowingly when we said we were taking a walk. A walk, to any Chameleon, meant a trip to Dom’s Candy Store.

  Sandy and I walked slowly down High Street, hunched into our heavy sweatshirts against the cool air, our hands deep in the pockets. High Street was silent as a stone, the huge houses sitting far back and empty looking, surrounded by the brightly colored trees.

  “So much money,” Sandy said, almost whispering. She was staring at the houses. Mercedeses and BMWs were parked in front of some of the garages. We passed a house with two small boys playing on the front lawn. They stopped playing when they saw us and stared at me with their mouths kind of opened. I made a face at them, pulling my ears away from my head and crossing my eyes. Sandy laughed. One of the boys smiled a little, but the other looked like he was about to cry. We hurried past them, giggling.

  “That’s my house!” I said, pointing to a huge three-story house painted white with lavender trimming.

  Sandy looked around quickly, then ran a little ahead of me and pointed to a brick house with smoke coming from the chimney and a tire swing in the front yard. “That’s mine!” she yelled.

  We skipped up the street. “My car, Sandy,” I said, when a navy-blue BMW drove past us.

  Sandy frowned. “I was going to claim it!”

  “If you’re slow, you blow.”

  “I was slew, so I blew.” Sandy giggled.

  We played my house, my car all the way to Dom‘s, where Sandy bought two packs of M&Ms and some licorice. Dom must have had a hundred glass jars with every kind of candy you could ever imagine. I wanted to buy a handful of the tiny silver balls, but they hurt my teeth. I walked slowly back and forth, touching one jar after another, while Sandy waited, exaggerating impatience. She tapped her foot and looked up at the ceiling like she would end up in a dead faint or something if I didn’t decide soon.

  I finally settled on two Hershey Bars, one with almonds and one without and some chocolate kisses. “You getting your period or something?” Sandy whispered while,I was paying.

  “What?”

  “Whenever my mother is getting her period, she eats like a pound of chocolate.”

  “God! I hope not! I hope I never get it.”

  We headed back down High Street.

  “Maybe someday I’d like to have it,” Sandy said. “You know, just to see what it’s like.”

  “Well, eat your chocolate, Sandy. Maybe then it’ll come!”

  We laughed, munching as we walked, searching High Street again for cars and houses we might have missed on our way. There were a lot of beautiful houses. But they weren’t on Madison Street.

  Sandy started skipping and I followed behind her. She started singing loudly and after she had repeated each verse twice, I picked up the song and started singing along:Way down South, where bananas grow,

  a flea stepped on an elephant’s toe.

  The elephant cried with tears in his eyes,

  “Why don’t you pick on someone your own size?”

  Ain’t it great to be crazy?

  Ain’t it great to be just like us,

  silly and foolish all day long?

  Ain’t it great to be crazy?

  As we skipped along, I realized there was something different about this. The song was different, and so was the place and Sandy. It was “nice” different, even a little fun, even though the emptiness was still there. But this is what Grandma wanted for me, and now I understood. I would keep in touch with Sandy. I wanted to remember her and the few months we shared a room. But I realized I would never tell Margaret about Sandy, even though I’d teach her the song. Sandy would remain a part of me here, of Blue Hill, of sharing with strangers. A part of me that didn’t belong to Madison Street anymore or anyone living there.

  A farmer had a chicky who wouldn’t lay an egg,

  so he poured hot water up and down the chicky’s leg.

  The chicky cried, the chicky begged,

  The chicky laid a hard-boiled egg!

  Ain’t it great to be crazy...?

  21

  Two days before Thanksgiving break, Ms. Bender and Miss Norman stopped by. Sandy was at a cross-country meet in another part of Connecticut. I was sitting at my desk, where I had been staring off into nothing, thinking about home for a lot of the afternoon.

  “Some quarter, Maizon,” Ms. Bender said, sitting at the foot of my bed. Miss Norman sat down on Sandy’s bed. “All As.”

  “Two A-pluses,” I corrected. “History and English.”

  They both nodded and smiled. Ms. Bender eyed my suitcase and trunk. Then she looked over and saw my uniform swaying alone in the empty closet.

  “You seem to be taking a lot for such a short vacation,” Miss Norman said.

  “A whole lot,” Ms. Bender said.

  I stared at the floor. Would they think I had betrayed them?

  “You have something to tell us, Maizon?” Miss Norman asked quietly.

  “I’m leaving,” I said, lifting my head to look at her. “I don’t want to come back here.”

  Miss Norman nodded. “Mrs. Dexter told us you were considering it. We hoped you’d decide not to.”

  I shook my head. “I don’t belong here.”

  “What will you do?” Ms. Bender asked. I thought about what Charli had told me the first day we met. About Ms. Bender waking up to find her husband had left her. Ms. Bender must have understood emptiness—and the hollowness that replaces the solid places in your life. I looked at her now.

  “I’m going to try to find a place where I can fit in being both black and smart. There has to be a place somewhere, right?”

  Miss Norman rose and walked over to me, then crouched down so that we were eye-level. “You’ll find it, Maizon,” she said. She ran her fingers through her hair. “I’m sorry it couldn’t be Blue Hill. I was hoping you’d stay.”

  I shrugged and sniffed. Already my eyes were puffy and red from hours of crying. Not wanting the tears to start up again in front of them, I squeezed my eyes shut for a second until the tears had passed.

  “I’m sure you’ll find a place for yourself, Maizon. I’m not going to encourage you to stay here, because I can see how unhappy you are, and I can’t say I promise you’ll be happy if you stay here, because I don’t know that.”

  “I don’t want to be a failure,” I cried. “Everyone is going to think I’m a failure.”

  “You have too much ... too much of everything,” Miss Norman said, smiling, “to ever be anybody’s failure. Even when you leave here, I know Blue Hill hasn’t heard the last of you.”

  “Have you told your grandmother?” Ms. Bender asked.

  Hattie had answered the phone when I called Ms. Dell’s house. For some reason, I had known that was where I’d find Margaret. There was so much static on the phone and I was so scared that I wanted to hang up right then. It seemed like forever before I heard Margaret’s voice, sounding tiny and far away. I hadn’t realized how much I missed her until I heard her voice through all the st
atic saying “Hello?” Then a whole lot of surprise and relief came into her voice when she said “Maizon?” like she couldn’t believe it was me at the other end of the phone. In that quick second, I knew for sure I was not returning to Blue Hill. The way she said my name was my invitation back to Madison Street. Talking to her, I could picture Hattie and Ms. Dell and Li‘l Jay in the background, waiting, ready to welcome me home where I belonged.

  But still, I lied to Margaret. I told her the girls hated me here, that no one spoke to me. Even with her right there on the phone, I couldn’t tell her the truth. All the static got in the way, and the picture of everybody’s expectant faces. Even though I knew they’d take me back no matter what, I felt like I needed to give them a good explanation, something really big. But when I heard the way Margaret believed my lies, I started crying, hard. I hadn’t wanted to lie to her, but the truth was even harder to tell and I was so afraid she wouldn’t understand that it was me who had isolated myself off from everyone and everything because I didn’t belong to any of it.

  I’d have to tell Margaret the truth one day, I knew that. But there was time. Now that I was going home, there’d be lots and lots of time for everything.

  “I spoke to Grandma last night too,” I said to Ms. Bender and Miss Norman now. “She says to come home and we’ll take it from there. She said she doesn’t want me to be unhappy. She told me she realizes now that it’s too soon for me to be away from her—to be away from home.” I swallowed, staring at my fingernails. “Grandma thought Blue Hill was going to be the best thing for me. I used to think my grandma knew everything about what’s good and not so good for me. But I think I made her see that I know what’s right for me sometimes. Home is. Home’s where I should be for now. I mean, there’s going to be plenty of time for me to go away. There’s college. There’s my whole life.”

  “Then it’s settled,” Ms. Bender said, rising. “I’ll pick you up and get you to the noon train.”

  I looked up then, feeling relief snatch me up and gently set me down again. This hadn’t been so hard after all. It was only the beginning of leaving, but still, I had done it. Almost by myself. And Margaret had been there for me too. Just like she always had.