The Places We Sleep
Page 1
Text copyright © 2020 by Caroline Brooks DuBois
Epigraph copyright © 2020 by Georgia O’Keefe Museum/Artists Rights Society (ARS), New York
All Rights Reserved
HOLIDAY HOUSE is registered in the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office.
www.holidayhouse.com
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Names: DuBois, Caroline Brooks, author.
Title: The places we sleep / by Caroline Brooks DuBois.
Description: First edition. | New York City : Holiday House, [2020] | Audience: Ages 8-12 | Audience: Grades 4-6 | Summary: Twelve-year-old Abbey’s world is turned upside-down by both personal and national events of September 11, 2001, as well as their aftermath, but finds greater strength through art, friendship, and family.
Identifiers: LCCN 2019022768 | ISBN 9780823444212 (hardcover)
Subjects: LCSH: September 11 Terrorist Attacks, 2001–Juvenile fiction. | CYAC: Novels in verse. | September 11 Terrorist Attacks, 2001–Fiction. | Friendship–Fiction. | Families of military personnel–Fiction. | Middle schools–Fiction. | Schools–Fiction. | Family life–Tennessee–Fiction. | Tennessee–Fiction.
Classification: LCC PZ7.5.D83 Pl 2020 | DDC [Fic]–dc23
LC record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2019022768
Ebook ISBN 9780823448203
a_prh_5.5.0_c0_r1
For my parents, Jim and Rebecca Brooks,
and my 3 Rs, Richard, Rosabelle,
and Rowan, with love
Contents
Cover
Title Page
Copyright
Dedication
Epigraph
September
October
November
December
January
February
March
April
May
And the Months Beyond
Author’s Note
Acknowledgments
Nobody sees a flower really; it is so small.
We haven’t time, and to see takes time—like to have a friend takes time.
~ Georgia O’Keeffe
SEPTEMBER
1.
It arrives like a punch to the gut
like a shove in the girls’ room
like a name I won’t repeat.
It arrives like nobody’s business, staring and glaring me down,
singling me out
in the un-singular mob
that ebbs and flows and swells and grows
in the freshly painted, de-roached hallways of Henley Middle.
It arrives like a spotlight,
like an intruder in my bedroom,
like a meteor to my center of gravity.
It arrives.
And my body—
in cahoots—allows it.
Just.
Like.
That.
It arrives
and textbooks, full of themselves, weigh me down.
This backpack holds the tools for my success,
yet I’m unprepared for IT:
No change of clothes,
no “girl supplies,”
no friend to ask
because Camille is nowhere nearby,
no know-how,
no nothing.
(Did I mention, it arrives like a double negative?)
What was Mom thinking
by not thinking
to prepare me
for IT?
2.
The bully-of-a-bell taunts me,
rings its second warning
to those of us clogging the halls:
Follow the arrows, Dummy, on the walls!
Remember your locker’s secret code: 22 06 07
Right,
Left,
and then Right again,
as if that cold metal box
holds all I need to survive
yet another school.
If I could just locate Camille—
the only person I can talk to,
the one friend I’ve made
since we moved to town in June—
she might know what to do.
But no sight of Camille’s flame-red hair,
and I’m pushed through the rush
of arms and legs and sideways scowls.
My insides turning black and blue;
my sense of direction confused,
just as the other new student—Jiman—breezes by,
head up and confident.
I stop to stare at her
before stumbling in
to Ms. Dequire’s room.
Late again! And her mouth forms its red-stained frown:
“Tardy, Abbey!”
I find my seat, resist the urge to draw, instead
head my paper:
Abbey Wood
Math
September 11, 2001
3.
I sit through that morning hour,
a dull ache in my abdomen
blossoming like a gigantic thorned flower,
jotting down mathematical formulas
I’m told are the key to my future.
Even with a math teacher for a mother,
my focus wavers in and out…until
another teacher bursts in and whispers
in the ear of our teacher,
who stops teaching to wring her hands.
“Something’s happening—in New York and in D.C.,”
she informs us.
The tension is tangible.
“Some planes have crashed!”
But we don’t know
the half of it yet.
And to my shock,
we are soon released
from school.
Whatever’s happening must be terrible.
But I can’t curb my relief:
Early dismissal!
Set free!
Free to trod off,
free to go our separate ways
like it was any
other
September day.
4.
The buses pull up like salvation on wheels,
like rays of sunshine to my gloom.
And Camille, my single friend in Tennessee,
is AWOL, so I sit up front on the bus and sketch.
Up front, with the kids from the elementary school next door.
Up front, with my back to kids my own age,
who are talking
and shouting
and pushing and shoving
and vibrating with questions about what’s happening.
Up front,
where the driver is crying!
Crying!
…about what’s happening in New York?
New York is where Mom’s sister,
my Aunt Rose lives
and Uncle Todd,
and my cousins Jackson and Kate!
If anyone has cause to cry, it’s me—
but I’m sure they’re okay. New York is huge.
It’s not just that—my secret is now announcing itself,
and I have nothing to tie around my waist
and I’m wishing I hadn’t worn white.
Maybe a few others have reasons too,
like the kid halfway back so short nobody sees
him,
or the sixth-grader who sits near the football boys
and tries like mad to make them laugh.
Or Jiman, new like me,
who also sits alone
but doesn’t usually seem to care.
How will I walk away
from this bus, my back
to all these nosy faces,
eyes staring from windows,
arms dangling,
mouths jeering?
But I do.
And Mom’s car is in the drive! The high school
must have been dismissed, too.
5.
It’s the way she clutches the phone
and that unspeakable expression on her face—
her voice attempting to comfort
someone who is NOT me.
She glances, half-smiles out of habit
as I walk into our latest house.
But only her mouth smiles. Her eyes
are hollow wells of worry. Her eyes
miss the BIG change in me.
I need her
to hang up and follow me
to the bathroom,
to talk to me
through the door,
tell me, “Abbey, I’m here,”
but she doesn’t.
I count to ten.
Breathe deeply.
Count again.
Is she talking to Aunt Rose? Uncle Todd?
Is it about New York?
Her voice quivers and doesn’t sound like her own.
What’s going on there?
6.
I soak my underclothes in soapy warmth
and think of the sink in my art teacher’s class,
with its every-color splatter, and paint brushes
rinsing free of paint.
The TV buzzes loud from our den
with news of a magnitude I can’t comprehend.
Why can’t Mom hear me
crying for her, needing her, screaming in my head—
the kind of screaming
a mother should hear?
7.
She finds me in bed,
sketchbook propped in my lap.
“Something’s happened…” she whispers.
I rise and shadow her
from room
to room,
questions stick in my throat.
“My sister!” she chokes,
tossing random shirts
and pants toward a suitcase
and swiping at her eyes
with a pair of socks.
I pick up clothes where they land,
fold them neatly,
place them gently
into her bag.
“What’s going on—” I begin,
but she’s distracted and tells me,
“I have to request a sub,”
replacing my words with hers.
I rearrange the photos of relatives on her dresser
and stare at a recent one
of my cousins.
Mom pauses packing for a few seconds,
looks directly at me and tries to explain
with plain language, straightforward,
seemingly simple:
Your Aunt Rose is missing.
Still, I stare,
my face a fill-in-the-blank,
my brain shuts down, my words dry up.
Missing?
Missing from her desk, her office in New York,
the towering building in which she worked,
but the building in which she worked,
her office, her desk are also missing,
as in—no longer.
Missing?
How can a building just give up,
be gone? How can people just disappear?
Mom is preparing
to drive to New York—
which is half a map from here—
to be with my cousins,
Jackson and Kate,
who are thirteen and eight,
and with my Uncle Todd,
while Dad and I
will be missing
her.
But not the same kind of missing.
My Aunt Rose is missing from the 86th floor
of a building that’s smoldering and missing
most of itself.
I visited her office once,
with my cousins and Uncle Todd.
See, my Aunt Rose and I,
we see eye to eye. We click.
She gets me. That day, she let me
sit in her chair and pretend to be Boss,
so I bossed everyone: Be nice! Make art!
Aunt Rose agreed, “Let’s decree
naps, music, candy—and raises
for everybody!”
A framed landscape I’d drawn
decorated her office’s white wall,
which I guess
is not there
anymore.
8.
“All?” I ask.
“All planes are grounded,” Mom repeats,
her voice gone monotone.
“As in, not in the air?” I ask again.
She nods, looks out our window
to the empty sky. “Who knows
what’s coming next!”
After planning her route, she hesitates—“Your dad
will be home soon”—and then kisses me,
grabs her final necessities,
and loads her car.
I remind her to wear her seatbelt,
to call when she gets there,
then I wave goodbye,
but she’s already in math-teacher
problem-solving mode.
In comparison, my problem shrinks
to beyond microscopic, so I befriend
the bathroom.
Beneath the sink, Mom’s supplies
loom like a commercial
for a product I can’t decode.
The folded, illustrated instructions,
black-and-white line drawings
of a woman who smiles with knowledge
she won’t share
with a girl like me.
The woman, all curves and experience,
could help me if she wanted,
but she doesn’t. And nothing Mom owns
works for me.
These bathroom walls offer no advice,
the green carpet as useless
as grass in a house.
The bulbs around the mirror glare,
illuminating my ignorance.
I’m the star of this one-character show,
but my freckles look like dirt
and the trash can fills up
like failure
—and Mom is driving out of town this very minute.
She is going,
going,
gone.
9.
I call Camille,
visualize her phone
echoing in her empty home.
If she’s shooting hoops, she won’t hear.
If she’s not home, she won’t know
that I’ve called, since I leave no message.
I’m just a phone ringing,
echoing in somebody’s home.
Unanswered.
Unheard.
Alone.
10.
Later that evening,
from my savings
I pocket seven bucks
and catch a ride with Dad, who’s camouflaged in fatigues.
Since Mom’s left town,
he’s on a mission to buy us food
so he won’t have to feed me MREs—
the military’s version
of instant meals.
On the drive, he doesn’t speculate
on what President Bush should do—
or mention anything about anything really.
I guess we’re both in shock.
His silence fills the car. He steers
us toward the store, as if that’s all
he remembers how to do.
The rest plays out like a nightmare,
a slow-motion blur of shame,
that begins with me slinking the aisles
of mysterious hygiene products,
skipping over a box like Mom’s,
hoping not to see anyone I recognize,
looking no one in the eyes,
and avoiding Dad, who’s lost in his head
and wandering frozen foods.
Then I snatch a box of pads from a shelf
and dump too much money at the first register I find
and turn and run
with the guy calling after:
“Hey there!
You! GIRL!”
Dad,
with his special-op skills
and his empty hands
and an unreadable expression on his face,
regards me with my purchase
so visible,
so obvious.
So!
And his voice turns to whisper
as he finds his words
and shakes his head:
“Today is like nothing
I’ve ever seen.”
I freeze at first,
but of course I know
he’s talking about New York,
Pennsylvania,
and D.C.
Not
me.
11.
Our father-daughter time we spend
glued to the tube, as Dad likes to call
our TV—
the FIRST plane
soaring, angling, drifting
birdlike
in the blue-sky, sunny,
ordinary morning.
The plane is low, banking,
turning,
then plunging
its knife
into the north tower.
Debris and papers
fluttering free,
among the shock and disbelief,
SHOUTS,
confusion, panic.
That’s when a SECOND plane
careens