“You didn’t do anything weird like touch her with a branch or something?” Trudy asked.
“What? Is that what Stuart said? Did he tell people that?”
“Forget about it,” Karla said.
“I’m just asking,” Trudy said.
“You’re frightening her and getting her upset on her first day of school,” Karla said sharply.
“She’s not frightening me, but if he said that, it was a lie. Is he back in school?” I glanced around.
“Tomorrow,” Karla said. “But don’t worry. He’s not in the honors classes.”
“Oh.” Despite how hard I tried not to, I sounded relieved.
“He’s another one who wishes he could be Karla’s boyfriend,” Trudy said. “And he’s good friends with Donald Nickels, who Karla likes more.”
“Shut up,” Karla protested. “You don’t know who I like more.”
Trudy leaned toward me to reveal a secret. “I tease Stuart to death sometimes, walking behind him and singing ‘Jessie’s Girl.’ ”
“What’s that?” I asked.
She pulled back as if I had struck at her like a snake. “You never heard ‘Jessie’s Girl’?”
“Don’t start singing it to her,” Karla warned. She looked at me. “I don’t give Stuart any reason to believe he could be my boyfriend. And I didn’t spread any stupid thing he told me about you.”
“A lot of boys wish they could be Karla’s boyfriend,” Missy offered enviously.
That seemed to calm Karla. I thought she and Trudy were friends with Missy because she seemed to idolize both of them.
“That’s true,” Karla said, returning quickly to her more confident self. “But the boys in our class especially are very immature. I have an older brother who’s in his first year of college at NYU. There’s a friend of his I wouldn’t mind dating.” She gave a little smile before adding, “I just might, one of these days.”
Trudy smirked. “Sure you will.”
“He’s bringing him home at the end of the month for a long weekend,” Karla bragged. She looked at me. “If you’re as smart as you seem to be, it won’t take you long to see what I mean about the boys in our class.”
I smiled. Right now, I couldn’t even imagine a boyfriend. How would Mazy react if some boy at school came to see me, especially an older boy? When would I be able to see him? Would she let me go anywhere with him?
“Karla’s not all wrong about that. Just watch out for some of the boys in our classes,” Trudy warned. “They’ll be asking you to help them with their schoolwork.”
“Which means…” Karla began.
“Means what?”
“Then you’ll become their schoolwork,” Trudy said.
“Especially female anatomy,” Karla added.
Missy’s cheeks turned pink again, but she joined them in laughing.
“Anyone makes a pass at you, you check with me,” Karla said.
“Yeah, Karla would know which one to trust,” Trudy said dryly. “The rest of us are boy-stupid.”
“Poor you,” Karla told her. “What was that line Mr. Madeo quoted from the play we’re going to read next month? The Shakespeare play? ‘Beware of jealousy,’ ” Karla said, and paused, not recalling the rest of the quote.
“ ‘It is the green-eyed monster which doth mock the meat it feeds on,’ ” I said.
Their eyes nearly popped.
“Maybe she doesn’t need your help, Karla,” Trudy said.
“Maybe you need hers,” Missy said, laughing.
Karla didn’t change expression, but her eyes looked inflamed. The bell rang.
“Just like it does at home, huh?” she said. “Grandma’s coming. Better move, girls,” Karla said, smiling coolly.
They looked at me for some sort of comeback, but I ignored it.
“Sometimes,” Mazy had told me, “it’s better to let a fire burn out.”
My afternoon classes went as well as the morning ones. Trudy had asked for my phone number and said she’d share it with the other two. As we parted and headed toward the exits, Donald Nickels caught up with me, and I heard him say, “You might have some of the girls fooled, but don’t think you have me fooled. I know what you are.”
I stopped and looked at him. He was with another two boys, all smiling.
“That’s good,” I said. “Maybe you’ll be more careful now.”
I made a circle in the air with my right hand. His smile drifted as mine widened. Then, although I was battling with fear, I walked toward the exit confidently, believing Mazy would be proud of me. There was an explosion of screams and laughter as all the students around me burst out of the building as if they were escaping from a house on fire.
I had all my texts and notes in my new backpack and walked down the sidewalk the way Mazy and I had walked to the school, my face forward, quite satisfied with my first day. I hadn’t merely survived it. I had excelled. I had done well in class and certainly did better than hold my own when it came to chatting with the other girls.
When I reached our street, I slowed my pace as I came to Lucy’s house. There was still a gray shadow around it despite its being a bright day, with puffy clouds looking more like God had dabbed them onto the blue as an afterthought. I once suggested to Mazy that we should think of God that way, think of him as more of an artist. Every day, as if he was bored, he changed something in our world. He was trying to change this horrible moment, perhaps.
“Maybe the Bible is wrong,” I had told Mazy. I was only nine at the time. “Maybe he’s never rested.”
I recalled how she had stared at me for a moment and then had nodded and said, “You’re going to be quite a lot to handle when you’re older.”
I didn’t know exactly what that meant, but I thought it didn’t sound like she was offering me praise. If anything, she was predicting disaster. When I really thought about it, all her warnings and instructions seemed more like what I would need to survive in some great battle, as if there was something about me that would make me a target for hate and evil. Maybe she didn’t mean it, but she did frighten me and make me wish I would grow porcupine quills.
I was in deep thought about all this, my first school day, and poor Lucy. As if he had been waiting for me to appear, Stuart stepped out of his house, folded his arms, and stood at the edge of the porch. He just glared at me.
I didn’t look away.
“Lucy should be sitting in the seat you’re in at school,” he said, almost too low to hear.
“I’d gladly give it up for her.”
He came down the steps and paused, his hands on his hips. It was as if he was afraid to get too close to me. “That’s a lie,” he said.
“I don’t know why you’re blaming me and making up silly stories about me. I did nothing to hurt her. I wanted to be her friend. That’s all. She wanted a friend. I bet all her so-called friends stayed away from her when she became very sick.”
“Is that what you want everyone to believe?”
“I want them to believe the truth.”
He looked toward Mazy’s house and then smiled. “My friends already called me and told me what a snob you are, showing off in class and all.”
“That’s a lie.”
“They say you already act like a little old lady and know things you shouldn’t for someone your age. No one’s ever going to trust you.”
“Who told you that? Donald Nickels?”
I shook my head and then stepped toward him, intending to explain how Mazy had been tutoring me and why there was really nothing terribly special about it. Maybe I could get him to be my friend. But he put his hand up and stepped back. The look of fear on his face actually shocked me. I froze.
“Don’t come any closer. You’re not putting any curses on me,” he said.
“What?”
He knelt down and picked up a rock. “Keep walking,” he ordered.
I saw it would do no good to keep talking to him, and I believed he would throw that rock at me
if I took another step toward him, so I turned and continued on.
“You shouldn’t have been let in the school!” he shouted. “No one’s going to be your friend. The girls think you’re weird. You’ll see.”
I kept walking. Despite everything I had done, how well I believed I had handled my first day at school, I felt the tears welling in my eyes. I was hoping to step through the door and blast Mazy with all the good news, how all my teachers had complimented me and how well she had done preparing me for public school. I would even brag about how I had handled the girls in my class and followed her instructions to a T, even though it wasn’t completely true. But the moment I stepped in and she looked at me, she threw the dish towel at the counter and asked the question I had so hoped to never hear from her lips.
“What did they do to you? I want to hear it all, every detail.”
She followed me into the living room. I took off my backpack and began to describe the day from the moment I had left her in the principal’s office. She sat and continued to listen, not interrupting or asking any questions. I even summarized my lunchtime talk with Missy, Trudy, and Karla, before I concluded with the accusations Stuart was making and our confrontation just now on our street.
“He was going to throw a rock at you?”
“I know you’ll tell me all this is a result of my going over there without your permission, but how am I going to make friends at school if he spreads these stories? Everyone’s going to be afraid of me.”
“Maybe that’s good,” she muttered.
“No,” I said sharply. “No, Mazy. It’ll make everything harder for me.”
“It won’t help you if I go to see the principal about it,” she said. “Those boys will be called in and bawled out, but that will just antagonize them more. They’ll double up on their behavior, but just more subtle, perhaps. No. You have to solve this yourself, Saffron.”
“How?”
“You get the ones you like to see the lies others are telling about you. Just, as I told you, be careful of whom you trust, maybe even more so now. After a little time passes, I’ll have a talk with Stuart’s mother. Eventually, I’m sure you’ll become yesterday’s news, especially if you don’t give them any satisfaction. Ignore, ignore, and ignore. Stick to your schoolwork, and feel out the ones you can trust.”
She smiled and stood.
“The main thing is you are fulfilling my scholastic expectations for you. Teachers will respect you, and eventually other students will as well. I’ve prepared one of your favorite dinners tonight, just the way we’ve learned how to make it together, chicken piccata with couscous. And then a chocolate cake. Go wash up and change. Remember what I told you about bringing home germs from school. A good hot shower every day as soon as you’re home. Go on,” she urged. “I’ll look at your homework with you later.”
Maybe she’s right, I thought. I decided I was lucky to have her. Without even having met them, I was sure the parents of the girls I had met couldn’t come up to Mazy’s knees. Her dinner cheered me up. Afterward, I went to our classroom to do my homework. I decided that even though I wasn’t going to use it anymore to learn and study what Mazy taught, it still felt more like being in school to work there. I had no distractions, of course, and no need to look out at the street. I’d be on it tomorrow.
Less than a half hour later, Mazy came knocking on the door, a strange look on her face. There was no anger, just a lot of surprise mixed with some concern.
“Someone is on the telephone for you,” she said. “I was going to tell her you were doing homework but decided you would know not to stay on too long, and I know you want to make friends.”
“Who is it?”
“I didn’t ask. She asked for you, and I said ‘Just a moment.’ You can use the phone in my bedroom. It’s the closest.”
She stepped back, and I rose quickly. I had never had a phone call from anyone. My life was quickly being filled with firsts. This was exciting. Mazy’s phone was on the table at the right side of her bed. I lifted the receiver but remained standing.
“Hello.”
“It’s Trudy. I don’t suppose you heard the news,” she said.
“What news?”
“We’re at Karla’s house. She’s been quite hysterical.”
“What news? Why is Karla hysterical?”
“Donald Nickels was in a bad car accident a few hours ago. He wasn’t wearing his seat belt. Mitchel Franklin lost control and went off the road at Jackson’s Bend. Mitchel’s all right. He’s actually out of the hospital. Donald is in critical condition.”
“Oh.” I felt my heart do flip-flops, and for a moment, I couldn’t catch my breath.
“Did you put a curse on him?”
“What?”
“His friends say you did when you were leaving the building today.”
I could hear Karla crying in the background.
“Are you serious? A curse?”
“Did you?”
“I was just teasing him. I can’t put a curse on someone.”
She was quiet.
“I can’t. That’s ridiculous,” I said firmly.
“Stuart said you came at him today on the way home, and he kept you from putting a curse on him by scaring you off with a rock. Everyone’s talking about you.”
“That’s crazy,” I said. “I didn’t do anything.”
“No one knows where you came from; no one knows anything about your parents.”
I was silent.
“Donald might die,” she said. “We just thought you should know.”
She hung up.
“Trudy?”
I stood there holding the receiver.
“What is it? Who is it?” Mazy asked. She had been standing just outside her bedroom listening.
For a moment, I couldn’t speak. She stepped closer. Trudy’s words echoed in my ears: No one knows where you came from; no one knows anything about your parents.
“Saffron?”
I knew I was crying. I trembled and suddenly felt terribly hot.
I felt like I was back at my house when I was little. Daddy had scooped me up.
And the flames were snapping and growing all around me. I reached back, expecting Mama’s hand.
But it wasn’t there.
It never would be.
CHAPTER ELEVEN
Despite my protests, Mazy decided she had to accompany me to school the following day. The wind was a bit snappy and cool. She muttered to herself as we walked, sharply stabbing the end of her umbrella into the road and walkway with each step she took, practically creating sparks. Obviously, something more than Trudy’s phone call was bothering her. The phone had rung twice more before I had gone to sleep. Each time, I had anticipated her calling me to it, but she never did, and when I had asked her about it in the morning, she’d said, “Wrong number.”
Her shifting eyes told me that wasn’t true. Whatever it was, it was still disturbing her. Her cheeks were splattered with patchy red dots, and she walked more bent over. She looked like she was lunging forward, the umbrella suddenly a real cane.
“I’m going to get rid of that phone,” she muttered. She was breathing hard, probably from the rage ravaging her insides. “I’ll get a mobile phone and not give the number out to anyone. In fact, I’ll get it today.”
But Daddy won’t be able to call us if he decides to do so, I thought.
“What if someone wants to call me?”
“We’ll cross that bridge when we come to it,” she said. “First things first. You just do your work. Just do your work,” she chanted. “You ignore any nasty remarks. They’ll peck at you like vicious chickens. Don’t pay attention. Look away. Avoid eye contact. Walk away. After a while, they’ll get bored. They have the attention span of pigeons.”
The way she was warning me told me she knew more.
When the school came into view, we saw groups of students mingling. Some of the girls were crying, and others were trying to comfort them. My heart f
elt like a yo-yo whose string had snapped on the way down. Oh, no formed on my lips. Almost without my being aware of it, Mazy seized my hand and steered us a little more to the left.
“Mazy. Something terrible must have happened. The accident.”
“Just do your work, do your work, and come directly home. No. I think I’ll be out here waiting for you. Just do your work, and don’t get into any arguments,” she said.
We paused at the entrance. I could feel we were being watched, but I kept my head down.
“Maybe we should go home,” she said.
“What? Why?”
She looked at me and then, after a deep breath, said, “Okay. Go on. Go on. Do as I say, and you’ll be fine.”
She let go of my hand, opened the door, and waited for me to step into the school. I thought she was going to follow me right to my homeroom, which would have embarrassed me. Fortunately, she held back and just watched me walking through the lobby. I was clutching my schedule in my hand, hoping no one could see how much I was suddenly trembling. This morning, I was to go directly to homeroom.
I did what she said, walked without looking at anyone. There were four girls talking softly right in the doorway, one wiping away tears. They were blocking my entrance, but when they saw me coming, they stepped aside so quickly that anyone would think I was carrying an infection.
When I entered, I recognized a few from my honors classes, but I didn’t say a word to any of them or anyone in particular in the room. I could feel their eyes practically glued to me. I looked for Karla, Trudy, or Missy, but none of them was here.
Mrs. Garson came around to the front of her desk. She was a tall, very thin woman with thin almond-brown hair that looked like it was the last thing she cared about before she left her house. Some strands were curled, and her bangs were in desperate need of trimming. She wore no makeup, and the freckles splattered unchallenged over her cheeks and forehead. She even had some on her chin.
“Saffron Dazy?” she asked, like someone who was hoping I might say no. I nodded. “Please take the last seat in the row by the window. I take attendance in five minutes. We’ll hear the day’s announcements and leave in an orderly fashion for our first classes. You can’t sit with your backpack on,” she said, as if she had expected I would.
The Umbrella Lady Page 21
