Mama looked at her watch and told us to finish eating and get our coats. She got up from the table and went over to the bookshelf for our Bibles. Anna chewed her bacon slowly. She put her finger to her lips.
“Hush,” Anna said. “Just hush.”
I half-smiled, not sure what she was trying to say. But her eyes were serious.
Anna leaned across the table. “Make believe none of it ever happened,” she said. “Hush. Make believe we never were. You and me, li’l sis, back to the dust.”
Daddy looked over at us, lifting his bowl toward us like an offering. Anna sucked her teeth, got up and took Daddy’s bowl to the kitchen.
Outside, I looked up at Daddy’s window and waved. His hand lifted into the air absently.
I bent my head down against the cold and walked a little bit behind Mama and Anna. Our Bibles are green with HOLY SCRIPTURES written on them in gold lettering. When I held it away from me and squinted, it became a mountain in Denver.
Anna turned and saw me. “God, you’re such a freak!”
I stared at her but didn’t say anything. Does it matter what I am, I wanted to scream, if I’m not anyone?!
As Mama led us through the neighborhood, I watched people watching us and wondered who they saw.
Curl your toes into the soft pine of your floor-boards. And do remember me.
PART THREE
17
THE COACH IS TALL AND SKINNY. HE TELLS US we can call him Leigh. When he looks at my permission slip, he nods and asks if I’m related to Anna.
“She’s my sister,” I say, looking away from him. It is Tuesday. Late afternoon. The school hallway is quieter than anything. My mother thinks I am getting tutored in science, because she wouldn’t approve of track. Not now. Not as a Witness. Her new motto is Acade mics and the Bible. So what if your body went to hell? Your soul and brain would be fine. When I asked her about getting tutored, she said Why can’t Anna help you? and Anna rolled her eyes and said Because I’ve already forgotten the stuff she’s just learning.
This is the first big lie I’ve ever told her. It came easily.
“I teach geometry, also,” Leigh says now. “Anna’s one of my best students. Is she not a runner?” He smiles at me. One of his front teeth overlaps the other in a nice way. His running shoes look old but like a long time ago they were decent.
I am wearing my new ones and dark blue running pants with bright green stripes down the side. The white T-shirt I’m wearing used to say DENVER MIDDLE SCHOOL, but the letters are so bleached and faded, Mama had okayed me bringing it to this place. The shirt is soft and still smells faintly of our old house.
“Nah. She’s not really into sports.”
“Well, let’s see if you are.”
I follow him into the gym, where four girls are running in a line, one behind the other, passing a silver baton back and forth. When the one behind calls “Stick!” the one right in front of her throws her hand back. They do this a bunch of times, their motions smooth as water.
Above us, a line of girls are running around a track. The track rail circles the whole gym. I can hear them breathing. Their feet pounding together sound like two huge feet instead of many. My own heart speeds up. Everyone seems to be connected to one another, in unison. I feel myself wanting this so hard, I have to bite my lip to keep from screaming out.
“You ever run track before?” Leigh asks.
I shake my head.
“Well, you’ll need a pair of running shorts, spikes and flats—those are shoes for the track, you can get them at any good sports store. You’ll also need—”
“We . . . I don’t know if my parents can afford to—” Leigh nods and blows the whistle hanging around his neck. The other girls stop running and begin to jog over toward us. He leans into me and says, “I’ll need your clothing and shoe sizes.”
I don’t realize how tense my stomach is until it starts relaxing.
After everyone introduces themselves, Leigh asks the girls from last year to talk about the team. We sit down on the gym floor in a circle. I recognize two girls from my homeroom and a few others from seeing them around school.
“It’s a good team,” one of the girls, who introduced herself as Mira, says. She is about my height, dark like my mother and soft-spoken. She speaks with a little bit of an accent. Like someone from England.
“We win a lot,” a girl named Denise says. The others slap each other five and hoot.
I hug myself. The gym is big and chilly. My new running shoes feel stiff and wrong. All the others are wearing shoes like Leigh’s—Adidas with thick soles and fluorescent stripes. The ones Mama has gotten me are a dark blue, no name brand that I have ever seen on anybody’s feet before. I sit cross-legged and try to cover my feet with my hands.
“Okay, let’s get to running,” Leigh says. Everyone jumps up as though they’ve been stuck with pins.
When I am the last one to rise, Leigh says, “Fast, Evie. We do everything fast around here.”
“So you’re a runner,” Mira asks me as we jog around the track. The track is an eighth mile around and banked at the curves. Leigh said we had to run a half mile at our own pace, but everyone takes off like it’s a race, and by the second time around, I am struggling to keep breathing.
“I don’t think so,” I say, my voice coming hoarser than I’ve ever heard it.
“Your legs are long,” Mira says. She smiles and pulls up to the front of the group. I take a deep breath, feeling warm. My legs are long, I keep thinking. Yes. Yes. My legs are long. It is the friendliest thing anyone has said to me in a long time.
“WHY ARE YOU SO SMELLY?” ANNA ASKS WHEN I get home. She is sitting at the kitchen table, studying, and I race by her to get a glass of water. I gulp it down without saying anything to her, then go over to the window and kiss my father. Mama is at Kingdom Hall. Tuesday night is her Bible study.
The last time Mama asked me and Anna if we wanted to go, Anna said Are we gonna be tested on it?
Mama lifted both hands and said I give up. I’ll miss you all in the New World.
When you get there, pet a friendly lion for me, Anna mumbled. But not loud enough for Mama to hear.
I touch my face now. It feels warm and flushed. I’d run all the way home. In the cold air, it felt like I was breaking every speed limit. Like I could run all the way back to Denver.
“Why are you standing there touching yourself?” Anna asks, her voice rising with disgust.
I take my hand off my face and glare at her.
“Man,” she says. “Take me to that study group!” Then she turns the page in her textbook and puts her head down on her arm to read.
“Was it helpful?” my father asks, his voice so soft, I can barely hear him.
“Very! It meets three times a week. I’m gonna keep going.”
“Three times a week!” Anna says. “What are you trying to do—get the freaking Nobel Prize?!”
I sit down across from her. “Maybe.”
“You have lost your mind.”
I lift my arm and fan the sweat in her direction.
Anna throws a pen at me. But she’s smiling.
18
LATER, LONG AFTER EVERYONE HAS GONE TO bed, I tiptoe into the living room and sit cross-legged on the floor. The moon, coming in through Daddy’s window, is bright and halfway pretty. I try to remember Denver, how I used to spend hours staring out my window wanting to drink every ounce of its beauty in. Maybe I knew, someplace deep, that the day would come when it wouldn’t be mine anymore. I swallow, remembering the morning I told Lulu. A part of me thought our tears were just for drama, that we’d wake up the next morning and everything would be back to normal. But as we lay across my bed, staring up at the ceiling and crying silently, the realness of how everything you ever loved could be taken away from you just like that settled over me, eerie and dangerous as quicksand.
Every month, a letter comes from Grandma. It comes in a white business envelope with a Texas post-mark. We read the
letters hungrily, over and over again. Sometimes, I come in to find Mama fingering the letter lovingly, a faraway look in her eyes. That’s it. That’s all we have left of the past. Letters with no names on them, just paragraphs and paragraphs of chatty news. No real questions about our lives, no news of what happened after we left, who asks about us, who calls her up to cry. When we write back, we’re not allowed to use our new names. Our letters to her are guarded and shallow. Mama talks about Jehovah’s will, me and Anna talk about the movies we saw, the classes we have. We can’t describe our school, we can’t talk about this new place. Our letters go to Texas and eventually get to her. What do we get—all of us? The knowledge that we’re all alive. That somewhere beneath all the stupid shallow stuff, we’re surviving. That we still love and are loved. That underneath this new Evie skin, there is still Toswiah Green. Somewhere.
Always.
I stretch my legs out in front of me and bend slowly toward them the way Leigh showed me. I can feel the backs of my legs burning with the stretch. Leigh said this was a good thing, that in no time I’d be able to touch my forehead to my knees. I’m not the fastest girl on the team, but I’m not the slowest. After practice yesterday, a few girls came over to me and slapped my hand, welcoming me.
Daddy longlegs, Mira said when she waved good-bye. Spider woman.
Later, Spider, someone else said.
I lifted my head, then bent down toward my knees again, breathing out slowly.
Spider. I liked that.
19
WHEN I WALK IN ON THURSDAY, MAMA IS grinning and dancing around the room. I pull my knapsack off my shoulder, thinking that she’s joined Daddy in the mind-loss game, but then she dances over to me and in her eyes, I see my old Mama, the one who let Daddy pull her up from her place on a picnic blanket and dance her around the park. When I look over at the table, Anna is sitting there smiling.
“She hasn’t gone crazy,” Anna says, reading my mind. “She just got a job.”
Mama dances the letter into my hands. Dear Mrs. Thomas: Let me be the first to congratulate you on your appointment at Public School 13 here in . . . I feel the room getting smaller, around then bigger again, the air coming fast into my throat. Maybe a part of me had thought it would never happen, that Mama would never walk into a classroom again and begin the day with “Good morning, children.”
“Fifth grade,” Mama says, still grinning. “I thought I’d have to teach high school. Thank you, Jehovah! Thank you for my faith.”
Daddy stares out the window. Silent.
“Dance with her, Daddy,” I say, wanting him to be smiling, too, happy for Mama. In Denver, when Mama told stories about her class, he’d throw his head back and laugh, happy. Proud.
I take Mama’s hand and dance with her for a moment. Her hand is soft. The way I remember it, our feet moving in unison, Mama smiling.
“Like this, Daddy. That silly Hustle dance that you guys used to do.”
Mama shakes her head, looks at the letter again and grins. She holds the letter in one hand and spins me with the other, then our feet come back into step together. After dinner some nights, they would put on music and dance like crazy, Daddy’s feet moving faster than the music, Mama doing steps that looked like they were halfway cool once upon a time. And they’d laugh and pull us into them and we’d all just act the fool while somebody sang about love or zodiac signs or about white boys playing funky music.
But Daddy just keeps staring out the window. And after a moment, the room feels hollow. Mama squeezes my hand once, then lets it go, picks up the Watchtower on her way into their bedroom and closes the door behind her.
20
ON FRIDAY, SOMEBODY CALLED MY NAME. I turned and saw Mira running toward me. She was smiling.
“God, you walk fast, girl. Where you heading?”
I told her where I lived and slowed down a bit.
“You can keep walking fast,” she said. “I can keep up, you know.” She smiled again and took three giant steps out in front of me. “Spider woman. That’s what you are for sure.”
“Am not,” I said, my heart beating fast. “I’m just a girl named Evie from California.”
“California, huh?”
“Yep.”
“Well, in California, can they run as fast as girls from Antigua?”
I lifted my knapsack higher on my shoulder, looked at her sideways and took off.
Mira laughed and ran to catch me. We ran to the corner, me getting there only a half second before her even though I’d had a head start.
Mira leaned over, her hands on her knees. I did the same thing. We were both breathing hard, laughing.
“Nah, man,” Mira said between breaths. “I don’t think the California girls got anything on Antigua!”
On Friday, Mira called my name. Evie! she said. Evie, wait up a minute.
Evie!
And for a minute, or maybe a hundred minutes—it was the most beautiful name in the world.
21
“WHAT’S THE THING YOU EVER WANTED MOST in the world?” Anna asked me.
It was Saturday. Mama had given us money to go see a movie and get lunch somewhere. Even though it was two days into December, it was warm enough for us to unzip our ski jackets and stuff our scarves into our knapsacks. Indian summer, Anna had said, sniffing the air like a dog.
We were walking along a wide avenue. Fancy stores were on both sides of the street. Anna stopped in front of one where, on the other side of the glass, a bright red dress with sequins lay draped across a blue velvet chair. The window was covered with yellow cellophane—the kind we used to line our Easter baskets with. I lifted my knapsack higher on my shoulders, holding the straps so tight, my fingers hurt. Easter. Every holiday we ever celebrated felt like a long time ago.
“The thing I ever wanted most in the world?” I said, turning away from the window. “Not that dress.”
“No, that’s not what I mean, Evie.” Anna caught up to me and linked her arm through mine. She was being friendly. Too friendly. It made me wonder what she wanted. There wasn’t a single thing I could imagine her wanting from me. What I wanted most right then was to break into a run. I wanted to feel the wind fighting me—the way it did when we sprinted outside. I wanted to beat it, push against it like Leigh yelled for us to do, gliding past the relay team and Mira and Denise. I had been going to track practice for three weeks, and in that short time I had gotten faster. Don’t let your hands go past your hipbone, Leigh had said. Bring them right back up to your chest. Hip-chest. Hip-chest. Some nights I dreamed I was lifting off, taking these huge strides past everybody I knew—Mama with her Watchtower, Daddy in his chair, Anna with all of her books, Toswiah and Tamara. Then I’d be back in Denver, and in the distance, Grandma and Lulu would be waving. But as I got closer to them, my stride got longer and I’d move right past them, struggling to stop but not able to. On those nights, I woke up startled, staring around our bedroom, wide-eyed and scared.
“Are you even listening to me?” Anna sounded annoyed. “Right here.” She poked me in the center of my chest.
“Ouch!”
“What do you want right there?”
“Well, right now I want my sternum to stop hurting.”
Anna rolled her eyes.
“You know what I want, Anna. What you want. What Mama wants. What Daddy wants. I want to be back in Denver!”
Anna smiled. Satisfied. “And if you couldn’t have that?”
We passed a group of girls walking arm in arm. Anna and I looked at them without saying anything. People were out doing Christmas shopping. Some of the girls had brightly colored shopping bags hanging from their shoulders.
“You asked me what I wanted more than anything. Not what I wanted if I couldn’t have that.”
“Well, now I’m asking you the other thing.” She was grinning.
“What?!” I asked. “What is it?”
“Answer me!”
She stopped. This morning, she had taken her braid out, and now
the wind whipped her hair in front of her eyes. She brushed it back and kept grinning at me.
“To belong somewhere, then,” I said. “Or something like that. You know. To feel connected.”
“Like the far, far future had come already, right?”
“Right.”
We started walking again. At the corner, Anna stopped in front of a coffee shop. “Let’s go in here,” she said. “We need to talk, and I need something warm to drink.”
I stopped walking. “About what?”
Anna grabbed my arm. “Just about,” she said. “C’mon, girlie.”
The coffee shop was crowded. Anna led us to a table in the back, where we sat down and ordered chamomile tea—the one hot drink we both loved because the honey and chamomile together reminded us of Denver in the springtime.
When the waitress brought our tea, Anna looked at me.
“T,” she said. She only used my old name when she was really happy or wanted to get something out of me.
“No,” I said.
“I’m not asking you for anything. I need to tell you something. The far, far future came two days ago.”
“What are you talking about, Anna?” I felt itchy suddenly. And scared.
Anna took a long white envelope from her knapsack and handed it to me. When I saw SIMON’S ROCK COLLEGE written on it, my hands starting shaking so bad, I could barely pull the letter from it.
“Dear Miss Thomas,” I read slowly. “We are very happy to inform you—”
“I’m in!” Anna yelled, then quickly lowered her voice. “I am in there and. Out. Of. Here!”
“Anna,” I said, feeling the wind go out of me, “what’s going on?”
“I applied. I went ahead and did it, not thinking—I mean, hoping but not thinking it would hap—”
“But I thought you had to be . . . I thought you had to be sixteen!”
Hush Page 7
