hoping to hear Mom’s voice,
but Jackson answers instead.
“She’s out for groceries, I think.
You want to speak to my dad…or Kate
or—” then his voice dies out,
and I realize he was going to say “my mom,”
so quickly I tell him,
“I’d love to speak to Kate.”
“Sure.”
And then…
after a lengthy pause,
“Hi, Abbey,” says a tiny voice on the other end.
We speak for a bit
but after a while,
I can’t think of anything
much to say,
and the silence
slinks in.
“Tell my mom I called, okay?”
And the words “my mom”
feel terribly wrong,
like I’ve said or done
something hurtful.
39.
Dad sits down at the bottom of my bed.
It sags with his weight.
He wants to talk.
Please don’t be about my period.
Or the pads he bought.
Anything but that!
“There’s a chance…” he begins,
“…that I may get mobilized.” He holds
Mr. Poodle, my purple stuffed dog, in his hands
and turns him around and around.
“If you mean move again,
I won’t!”
“Nope. Just me this time around.”
Then, I’m all smiles.
A huge, dumb grin in fact—
so relieved it won’t be me or Mom,
happy not to be leaving Camille…not yet at least.
“I just want to prepare you,” he says,
trying again, seeming confused
by my happiness.
Then he just sits there
turning that poodle around
in his big,
strong
hands.
40.
“Artists have a story to tell,”
Mr. Lydon informs the class.
“They keep telling it
until they get it right.
They must take risks.
Trust themselves!”
Jiman, across the room,
listens intently to Mr. Lydon
and dares to paint over her first attempt,
trusting herself, her instincts. New paints,
clean brush—and she’s in her element.
I watch,
how one painting hides another
layered just beneath it
and even another
beneath that. The way a face
can hide a person’s entire life,
a story no one knows, a history untold,
until someone seeks
to share it.
I get up and cross behind Jiman, drawn
to her painting. She pauses brush midair.
Heads turn, ears tune in
and a hush falls over the room—
but I scurry on,
the moment gone, the status quo resumed,
my courage dried up like ancient paint.
41.
For P.E.,
we all stumble and push into the locker room
to claim any private spot to change
into our gym clothes. The walls seem to sweat
with our arrival. Some girls seize
the mirrors, brushing and pulling
at their hair. Angela and Sheila assume
center stage and strip off their shirts and pants,
not bothering to cover or hide themselves.
Sheila’s bra is lavender, Angela’s is pink.
Sheila has breasts already and flaunts them.
“Ohmygod, I’m a cow,” some girl whines.
“Moo!” another laughs.
Some of us wait in line for a stall, like Camille,
who stopped changing in front of others
on the day Lana remarked:
“I don’t know why you need a bra.”
Everyone is edgy and impatient;
you’d think we were waiting to be fed
the way we eye one another. But we wait
like good girls, not cutting in line.
Lana stands too close behind me,
rolling her eyes and trying to grab
Sheila and Angela’s attention.
When a door swings open
and Jiman steps out,
Lana shoves me toward her,
says, “Geez! Go in already!”
then wrinkles her nose at Jiman,
who looks the other way
and doesn’t let Lana
get to her.
I lock the door and yank off my jeans—
exposed,
in my plain underwear.
I follow my new feminine ritual
of protecting my gym clothes from myself,
but take too long,
my movements jumpy and jittery.
Through the door, a slice of yellow
is all I can spy of Lana’s shirt.
Then her shoe begins to tap,
tap,
tap
and her voice begins scoffing, megaphone-loud,
“Hurry up! WHAT
are you doing
in there?”
42.
Later that week,
Ms. Johnson gives us each a yellow ribbon
since we’re studying symbolism,
and we’re sent outside to find a suitable tree
somewhere on the school’s property
around which to tie our hope.
I notice Jiman is absent,
hear rumors that someone spray-painted words
on her parents’ restaurant,
and I wonder what they wrote
and why they would do it.
Sheila and Angela tie their ribbons
around the same tree,
and when Sheila commands:
“Tomorrow, Ange,
let’s wear red, white, and blue,”
Angela responds, “Sure, Shee-Shee.”
For a second, I wonder
if I should wear those colors too.
Then I look for Camille, who waves at me
as she heads off on her own,
her ribbon fluttering
wild and free.
Beside the ball field,
I find a solitary tree with drooping leaves
and lots of low branches.
Last summer, I would’ve called it
the perfect climbing tree
—but I’m no longer Abbey
who climbs trees.
The Trio would say,
That’s for babies!
I extend
my arms around its width,
and the bark is rough and scratches me
as I tie a lopsided bow
and whisper,
“This is for you, Aunt Rose.”
43.
My period ends—finally!
Over. Period.
The end!
In the first grade,
Mrs. Bennet taught me:
“End a sentence with a full stop
so the next one can begin.”
And after seven long days
that felt like years,
I am me again
I guess, but
I feel like
one huge
question
mark.
&nb
sp; 44.
After a few days,
Jiman is back at school.
On the bus,
she settles
directly
in front of me.
I say her name
in my head
the way I’ve heard
her say it.
It’s lovely
and suits
her.
Up close,
she looks smaller.
I stare at the back
of her head. Her hair
waves in mahogany layers
and smells of lemons.
She holds her chin high again
and doesn’t hide.
I am the new kid who
cowers, emotes, reacts—
and the boys at the back
can sense that.
Camille
is a “car rider” today,
so I’m extra afraid
to shift or make a sound.
I try NOT
to breathe
too loudly.
Jiman sketches
and seems content,
even dares
to open a window
and let the wind
rearrange her hair.
I smile despite myself,
imagining us as friends—
Jiman, Camille, and me!
That’s when the boys sit up,
take notice of my goofy grin.
Too late to hide it behind my hand
as they start to chant
Ar-my!
Ar-my!
Ar-my!
BRAT! BRAT! BRAT!
Then it hits me
like a putdown on a playground:
I’ve been invisible
at more than one school
but never a target like this.
To all, my biography reads
as whatserface, newcomer, girl
from somewhere else
other than here.
I stand to flee
and see a picture
Jiman was drawing
unfinished in her hand
of a little leafless tree.
She turns to look at me
with maybe care
or concern
on her face.
Tears cloud my vision
and my feet do a tango
with my backpack
and everyone observes it all
with their bulging eyes,
as I stumble up the aisle,
trying like mad
to escape
my never-ending
social
demise.
45.
Mom
remains in New York.
A sub teaches her math classes
at the high school.
Jackson and Kate must need her.
Uncle Todd must too.
I don’t know what’s happened to Aunt Rose.
At night, Dad and I stare at the TV,
eating macaroni and cheese.
A woman reports, “New York is crying,”
and I look at Dad for his take on this.
He keeps watching.
I imagine big tears spilling
from skyscraper windows—
falling and splashing
and washing away
the soot and ash
and cleansing
the streets and people
and Jackson and Kate
and Uncle Todd
and Mom
until everything sparkles—
bright and shiny,
like
new.
46.
A few days later,
Mom comes home to us.
She squeezes me until I can’t breathe
and drops her bags and collapses
into Dad’s arms,
and then onto our couch.
I sit on the floor at her side.
“How’re Jackson and Kate?”
She brushes the hair from my face.
“Todd can’t stop looking,”
she says, mostly to Dad,
who stands and paces,
and leans hard against the wall.
To me, she whispers,
“I love you,”
and kisses my hair.
Gently, she turns my face to hers.
My tears are stuck
somewhere deep inside.
Perhaps I’m Abbey
who no longer cries.
Then, as if waking
from a dream, she asks,
“How have you been?”
The football boys on the bus
spring to mind
and their unwanted attention,
and how my period arrived,
and how I just want to find
a place to belong.
I glance at Dad
still holding the house up
and answer
with the first words that come:
“I’ve survived,” I say, sounding
like a more mature Abbey,
even to me.
Then—
an aching
moment
of SILENCE
f
a
l
l
s
over us
like a heavy blanket of rubble
and my cheeks burn with what I’ve said
and I cannot breathe
with the weight of my stupidity.
Aunt Rose
Dad looks from me to Mom
and then back to me, then tries
to change the subject.
“It’s okay,” Mom whispers,
patting the couch
for me to sit
beside her.
“I’m sorry I wasn’t here.”
I rest slightly against her,
closing my eyes.
If I don’t open them
ever again, I could be that girl—
the one in our home videos,
the one with pigtails,
who skins her knee and cries to be held,
who doesn’t know about terrorists,
whose aunt is still alive,
who holds her mom’s hand.
That version.
That girl.
That one.
47.
Murmurs escape
their bedroom—
details they won’t share
about Aunt Rose. I know
from the sound of their movements
Mom is unpacking, pulling
clothes from her bags,
dumping them onto the bed.
She seems to have misplaced something
or left something in New York.
The few words I catch
are like pieces of a puzzle,
a code to crack: “…right here…”
Panic rising in her voice,
“…must have lost it!”
Then Dad’s voice trying to calm her,
and then hers again: “God! Where is it?”
Now she’s crying, now weeping,
and louder still. She’s gasping
and saying, “…the letter…the last thing she wrote…
Todd gave it—to me.”
I freeze, motionless in the hall, listening…
as if my stillness
will help her find
whatever she’s missing.
And
in that stillness,
I imagine my uncle,
the firemen and rescue workers,
even Jackson and Kate
searching through metal and concrete,
their hands scraped and dirty,
bloody, searching for something,
anything to grab onto,
to pull up and out
of the darkness
and into the light
of breathable
air.
48.
I yank my thoughts back from New York.
Here in Tennessee, I could be “Abbi” or maybe “Abs.”
A talented artist, like Jiman. I could be an athlete
like Camille or Jacob—no trash that!
Just somebody people know.
I’m so over just being new!
From here forward,
one thing’s for certain,
I’ll be Abbey
who gets her period.
And maybe I’m imagining things,
but Sheila, Angela, and Lana
have begun to regard me a little differently,
like there’s a neon sign on my head
that everyone can read: Look at me!
And I know Camille didn’t tell.
Maybe my trip to the nurse
tipped everyone off.
In the halls,
some boys glance at me, glance at my body
…or perhaps
it’s all in my head.
and no one
is thinking
anything
about me
at all.
49.
At least
I’ve found a friend like Camille.
Camille,
who loves basketball
whose limbs are lean and athletic
whose red hair waves out of control
who sings without fear
who talks without self-censorship
who doesn’t seem to care
what she wears
or who likes her
or how she moves between groups
or through the halls
or what anyone thinks,
My friend.
50.
In the cafeteria, locker room, halls,
on the school grounds outside,
everywhere kids are discussing
what will happen next—
which U.S. cities are potential targets,
if the president makes an easy mark,
if they will bomb Oak Ridge,
which is not too far from here.
Maybe it’s all in my mind,
but I think this school’s coming together a bit
in the wake of such a tragic event.
Some cliques are un-cliquing.
Maybe I’m even starting to fit.
The Places We Sleep Page 4