Me: “Then just as they were about to say something to that rude motherfoe in back, they watched them turn to ash just before they did themselves.”
Teacher Man: “Essentially.”
“No, picture this,” I say to George and Alma. “Your most embarrassing moment. The time you told yourself you wouldn’t do X again, but there you are when nobody’s looking, doing it again and—”
George: “Poof!”
Me: “Yup. Faster than a fart, all is turned to ash. A long-ass time later—”
Me to Teacher Man: “When did Pompeii erupt again?”
Teacher Man: “AD 79.”
Me to Alma and George: “So a long-ass time later scientists dug around and found Pompeii.”
Teacher Man to class: “You know what they found in Pompeii? They found buildings. They found houses and churches and schools and government buildings and theaters. They found art and pots and even an egg completely intact.”
Me: “I’m the egg. You too, George!” I fist-bump George. Alma is—doodling? Another first. WTF?
The class is paying attention. The teacher has them and that makes him SUPER excited.
I ask Alma, “What would they find if a volcano hit the Super S?”
Alma stops doodling. “Fake mustaches.”
Me: “Yeah. A hundred for a dime! This makes you feel rich buying dozens and dozens of mustaches. You wear them once, you throw them out. There are mice running around somewhere wearing fake mustaches. The fun goes on and on.”
Normally Alma gets mad at me at this point for running my mouth when she’s trying to concentrate. But she don’t. “You can buy earrings, ten for a dollar,” she says.
Me: “For real! I mean, don’t wear them in the shower. You know what gang-green is? You could buy a foot-long Star Wars pen—”
George breathing like Darth Vader: “Luke, I am your father.”
Some joker: “At least that’s what your mother told me!”
George coughs. And coughs. And coughs.
Teacher Man saving the joker from my wrath: “Take George to the nurse.”
Joker hops on George’s pretend motorcycle. George revs the throttle, coughs and drives to the nurse.
I ask Alma: “What would you want to be doing in your final moments?”
Alma shrugs, chews on her hair. “I don’t know.”
I don’t know—again?
“Maybe I’d be a model. Maybe a famous artist would be painting me.”
Me: “A model?”
Alma: “Yes. So? Models make money. In my final moments, I’d like to have some.”
Me: “Okay. That’s new. I don’t know what to say.”
Alma rolls her eyes. “That’s new too. We’re even. Anyway, what does it matter? One way or another we’re all ash in the end.”
I get a lightbulb. It matters. A lot. And it should matter to everybody’s stupit ass.
Me to class: “Yo! Imagine a volcano erupted here. For homework I want you wack-ass cray-crays to write about what you’d want people to find when they dig you up. What you’d be caught doing in your final moments.”
Teacher Man tells me, “Sit down.”
Mistake number one. “Excuse you?” I say to Teacher Man.
The teacher presses the button. As my ass is being hauled away, Teacher Man says to the class, “You will write about what it would be like to have such an incident occur today. You will bring in an object of significance that you hope someone would find.”
Super.
Signs
Noun. Synonym: symptoms—which is too many Ys (whys) in a row.
We’re standing outside the gym waiting for the bell to ring and Coach to open the doors. “Whatever you coming down with, girl, you look contagious.”
Alma pounds her chest to hold back a cough. “I’m fine.”
She coughs again, but this time she goes in for a closed-fist chest punch. I block it before she inverts her boobs and has to wear a bra on her back. I guess her ears are feeling funny, because she starts itching like a ant colony crawled in there and then boxes her own ears until I grab her hands and stick them in her pockets.
“Alma,” I say, smacking her in the forehead. “You have a fever. People get them.”
“I’m not sick. I’m—achoo!—just a tad under the weather. I do not—achoo!—have a fever. I’m just—achoo!—overheated.”
“Alma!” I snatch a box of Sudafed out of her hands before she takes another pill. “You’re supposed to space out your doses. Have you been clocking when you took what?”
Alma is feeling her head. Tapping her foot and looking at the clock.
“Hello?”
Alma is not listening.
Shit, I think, does she actually believe she is going to get better just like that? I pull her toward me and put my hot head against her hot head. “Go home,” I command. “It is a attendance award, not a Emmy.”
“My mother always tells me to stay home,” Alma answers, pulling a Benadryl box out of thin air.
“Where did that box even come from?” I say, watching her pop another pill like a Cheeto. “Did you rob the Super S?”
“If I sniffle because I have a booger, my mother says stay home,” Alma says. “Once I stayed. I had the cold sweats. I knew the nurse would probably send me home anyway. I fell asleep. I had a dream.” (See I for I Have a Dream.) “Then I felt a cold breeze. I saw a open window. Niko was standing on the windowsill. I ran over to him, caught him by the foot just as he started to fall. I tried to pull him up. All sudden, I felt all these little hands on me. Climbing past me, trying to jump.”
She shuts her eyes. “It wasn’t a nightmare. It was real. While I was asleep my mother piled all the kids around me and left. I was holding Baby Niko by the ankle because he had fallen off the bed. I had grabbed him in my sleep. The rest were just staring at me, watching me breathe.”
Okay, I’m feeling her. At least if she drops dead at school no one would be standing on her corpse asking her to make a peanut butter and jelly sangwich. I leave her in the gym glistening like a pig because she claims the thermostat must be set “a tad bit high” and come back with cool paper towels from the restroom. I wrap them around the back of her neck.
“God, I just need to sleep!” Alma cries. She leans against the wall and hangs her head in her hands.
“God helps those that help themselves,” I say. It’s PE time and we have a substitute. I scope out the gym. I determine that the equipment closet would be a prime place for a cat nap. The one with all the nets would be perfect. The problem, of course, would be attendance. Once the sub counts Alma in he’ll expect her to play or send her to the nurse. The nurse would most definitely send Alma home to slavery.
I go into the ball equipment closet. I hatch a plan. This is where I will wreak havoc.
Time-lapse to five minutes later . . . Thanks to me, the Master of Disaster, the basketball game is bombarded with soccer balls and baseballs and volleyballs and those little cone things you hit with a badminton racket and . . . There is so much commotion going on with kids sailing by on those little floor scooters kindergartners play on that the substitute counts fifty of us for attendance instead of twenty.
I have to give George some of the credit. During attendance he keeps saying things like: “What about Sandra? What about Martin? What about Diamond? What about . . .” All kids, mind you, that disappeared weeks, months, years ago.
I’m even able to check in on Alma and not be missed. Alma’s hanging on a soccer net like a spider. She’s going to wake up with a face like a fishnet stocking. She mumbles thank you in her sleep. Even in her sleep she’s polite.
Closing the door on the equipment closet, I stand guard. I wonder how long a person can go without sleep. Alma looks ready for the NFL with the dark circles under her eyes. I wonder how long it took before Alma’s mom stopped really looking at her.
How long did it take me?
Stop
Verb. As in drop and roll. Everything’s on fire.
We are sitting at the bus stop. Alma inspects my hands. She starts filing my claws. Her hands are smooth and soft. With fake-ass hot-pink nails, all sudden. I flare my nose. “Why? I hate it.”
Alma: “What?” She fans out her fingers. “God, Macy. It’s JUST nails.” She points at my stud. “I didn’t pierce my own nose with a safety pin.”
Me: “This is me. That shit is not you.” I shut up because she stops filing. I lean forward and rest my head on my knees. Alma opens a bottle of peppermint lotion. She massages it onto my reptilian hands, and I shed my stress like a old skin. I try to think of anything that feels better than the way she holds my hands, but I can’t.
GETTO BOYZ GET YRZ is graffitied on the bus stop bench. “To me, the ghetto is what what ghetto does. Just cuz you from the hood don’t mean you’re ghetto.”
I close my eyes. Fall into a trance. We’re transfused. My blood flows into her and hers into me.
“Is that right?” She massages my fingers and they feel like everything they touch could turn gold. “That’s how everybody else sees it.”
“Ow. My knuckle. Who’s everybody? And why should I care what they think? Being poor ain’t ghetto. Plenty of rich people is ghetto.”
She lets go of my hand. “That’s just how you see it. What you think isn’t reality. Anyway, this girl’s getting out of the ghetto. Or hood. Or whatever we’re calling,” she points at the streets, “all this.”
“There was never a question, Alma.”
The bus isn’t here yet, but Alma stands up. She’s trying to lift her backpack. It’s full of library books. Textbooks. Color-coded notebooks. She hunches down to strap her bag on and stumbles under its weight. The bag rips.
I point at the tear. “Nothing a little duck tape can’t cure.”
Alma don’t say anything.
“Alma. This is where you laugh.” I can’t see her face because of all her hair, but I see her pull out her cell phone, send a text, and shove it in her pocket. She’s pacing back and forth now. She makes a visor with her hands and scans the street like it’s going to make the bus come any faster.
“So,” she says. “I’ve been meaning to talk to you.” She looks down so her face is hidden behind the hair curtain, one hand in her pocket. “I’m not gonna hang out after school anymore.” She brushes her hair aside and looks at me, biting her lip. “My uncle is going to pick me up. From now on. He got me a job.”
“Your uncle? The one who gave you the pills?”
“He was just trying to help me out.”
“Helping you to what? Become a crackhead?”
I look her in the eye, and she looks away. “You know what?” she says. “He’s family.”
Ouch. Like barbed wire ouch. “I’m just saying.” No response. So I ask, “What’s the job? Who’s going to watch the kids?”
“I don’t know. I told my mother I’m coming home late. My uncle said he has something good lined up for me. Something that pays a lot. Better than staying at home and working for free.”
Working for free? That’s cold. I mean no one could blame her, but that’s not Alma’s style. “So what exactly do you need the money for?”
She scrunches up her eyes, all agitated. “What do you mean?”
I admit it was a stupit question. Who don’t need money? “Nothing,” I say.
“My mother’s not working her second job tonight anyway,” Alma says and rolls her eyes. “She’s not feeling well.”
I lay my hand on her shoulder. “When is she due?”
She takes a step away and my hand slides down her back. “January is my estimate,” she answers. “It’s one of the only months when we don’t have a fucking birthday.”
I think this is the first time I’ve ever heard Alma drop the F Bomb.
“Going to save up. Going to get out.” A shiny black car pulls up across the street. Alma says, “I gotta go.”
Is this her uncle? The man driving looks at me but don’t nod or open his window and say something. He just stares.
Alma turns her head toward me but don’t look at me. She breathes in and pushes the air out her chest hard. “God, I’m so sick of birthday cake.” She don’t offer me a ride. She don’t say good-bye.
I watch her cross the street. Her uncle rolls down the window. I don’t like the way he is watching her.
She starts to climb in the back. Her uncle motions for her to sit in front. She walks around. Hops in the passenger side and buckles up.
“Don’t go!” I scream. I run toward the car. “Stop! Please!”
They start to pull onto the street but stop, both of them staring at me.
She motions for her uncle to go and he does.
Maybe I imagine it, but I swear I see the word “disturbed” on Alma’s lips.
Script
Noun. It’s your line, Alma.
In snow, if you make footprints, you can just backtrack, carefully stepping on each of your own footprints, and nobody will know where you’re at. Like you never happened. Like you went back in time. For every step I take toward home, I want to take two steps back in time before Alma stepped into her uncle’s car. Before Alma talked about her family like employers who didn’t give her her check. Before pockets full of baby food, and weeks with no sleep, and folded-up swans.
Nobody is home when I get there. Shit, my mother is probly out clubbing. That could mean she won’t be back until Sunday when she crawls in around noon. And I might have no phone until Sunday?
I imagine every second from the time Alma stepped foot in her uncle’s car, to what could have happened to her by the time it is Sunday. I want to smash a dish but all we have are paper plates. I wanted to smash a lamp, but somebody else already smashed it. There’s nothing but the fucking TV. I turn it on and Ariana Grande is singing. I kick Ariana Grande in the face. I kick and I kick until keys turn in the door.
My mother screams, “What the fuck?!”
Her guest says, “Man, she really don’t like that song!”
“Stop it, Macy!!”
I don’t stop. Until I hear my mother running a baf and telling her guest to pick me up and throw me in the tub.
I stop. “You touch me and—”
“I don’t want to touch you. But seriously,” Mr. Guest says, grabbing a French fry out of a McDonald’s bag, “you need to chill.” He reaches into his shirt pocket and holds out a lighter and a joint.
“What?” my mother says. “Don’t give her that!” She mouths, “We only have one.”
“For real?” Mr. Guest says. “You don’t want your TV?”
“Fuck yes. Help me move it.”
She and her guest wheel it into the bedroom and slam the door.
Mr. Guest comes out one more time. “I always got a spare.” He lays a joint on the kitchen table and walks out.
I pace around the living room. I have to make a plan. I can sneak into the bedroom and take the phone while they’re—NO. There has to be a better way. The bedroom door opens. My mother comes out to use the bafroom. My whole body tenses up.
Please please please please PLEASE.
The toilet flushes. The bedroom door slams. I step into the dark bafroom and reach out my hand. YES! It’s there!
I dial Alma. The phone rings. If I get more than two rings I hang up and start again. Because if it just rings and rings that means . . . But no matter how many times I dial, she don’t pick up. This is nothing new, I tell myself. Get a grip. I know the script. Alma is just grounded again. Or her uncle picked her up from her new job and took her out for empanadas to celebrate. The more I ring, the more her mom knows it is me. I lean against the wall and lay down my head hard.
Bang bang bang. My mother and her guest . . . Bang bang bang.
My head! I close my ears with my hands. My head throbs. Like a heartbeat.
Bah bum Bah bum Bah bum Bah bum. A LOVE Supreme . . .
Fuck! Fuck! Fuck! Bah Bum BAH BUM.
I can’t make it stop. I grab the phone and step outside onto
the cold porch. I don’t know what to do. “WHAT?!!!” I scream into a wind that just flings the words back into my face. But I have to do something. Could I sell Mr. Guest’s spare joint for a ride to Alma’s house? I pace like a animal. Kick the wall. This is how girls in my hood end up getting chopped up and stuffed into Hefties.
I storm back inside. NO. The difference between them and me is I’m the one who be doing the chopping. I grab my backpack, make sure my machete’s still in it, and throw the phone inside.
That’s when I hear the chirp of a text.
I fish the phone back out.
The text says: I’m so sorry. DON’T
Alma.
Please please please please please.
I text her, but she don’t text back. This means she’s at home in bed, right? This means she is taking care of the babies. DON’T means don’t call and wake the babies. DON’T means don’t get me grounded. DON’T means don’t worry.
Not . . . Oh God. . . .
Stranger
Noun. My best friend.
I think about volcanoes. I always saw myself as the volcano, not Alma. It’s one thing to have a volcano that always erupts, like me. You get used to breathing in smoke—keep your sneakers laced. But it’s another thing to look out your window and see a mountain. Marvel at how easy it holds up the sky. Then one day feel hot ash. Wonder how you missed all the smoke. After it erupts, what’s left?
Split
Verb. I used to tell Zane nothing could split us up. Everyone wants to know why I’m such a bitch. You try walking around with half a heart. I ain’t letting that happen again.
I know it is Monday morning because Monday the school serves breakfast tacos. Alma is always here first Monday mornings, patting her tacos with a napkin before she eats two bites and gives the rest to me. But Alma isn’t here.
I face off with the clock on the cafeteria wall. I want to twist the arms off that clock and hear the crack of bone. Push the hour back to the time when Alma got in that car with her uncle. Take Time hostage. Tie a Hefty around his head. Shove his bony ass in a unmarked car. March Time back to every single moment when It should have stopped, but didn’t. Scream: Down on your knees! and Time would know it better start praying. Make a shadow with my machete over the back of his scrawny neck.
The Disturbed Girl's Dictionary Page 18
