Alice in Charge

by Phyllis Reynolds Naylor

  I was tired from tramping around all afternoon with a bag over my shoulder. But it was a beautiful night, so I went for a walk around campus, careful to stay near people and not wander off in the shadows alone. I called Les on my cell and told him I had a place to crash. Then I got some ice cream, listened to a couple of guys playing guitars, and pretended I was a resident student like everyone else. As Les said, everyone would be strangers at first when I went to a new place. And then, little by little, a face would become a friend.

  I got to bed about eleven thirty, tossed around a bit, and was just drifting off when I heard a door slam—the door to the living area. I heard a guy cough. Mack. Had to be.

  I kept my eyes shut. I heard the knob turn on the door to our bedroom. Then a pause. He was reading Judith’s note.

  The handle turned more slowly. A rectangle of light fell on the floor, then his shadow as he came in and shut the door behind him. The tune to “Mack the Knife” played in my head.

  Footsteps. I didn’t even know these people. I didn’t know whose bed I was staying in. Didn’t know Judith, and I was sure I didn’t know Mack.

  I cleared my throat to let him know I was awake.

  “How ya doin’?” said a male voice.

  “Okay,” I said. “How about you?”

  “Great.”

  He kicked off his shoes. Left the room and went to the bathroom. I turned over to face the wall and pulled the covers up to my cheek. If a guy can find a stranger in his room and say, “How ya doin’?” he couldn’t be so bad.

  Next thing I knew, I woke once during the night. It was past four. Loud, steady breathing from Mack. The smell of his sneakers. When I woke again, it was going on eight. I got up, dressed, put my stuff together, and left a thank-you note for Judith. Les pulled up at our meeting place at a quarter past nine, and we were on our way.

  “So where did you find a place to sleep?” Les asked me.

  I casually leaned my elbow on the armrest. “Well, believe it or not, I lucked out and spent the night with a guy,” I said.

  I think Les lifted his foot off the gas because the car suddenly lost power, but then it picked up again, much more slowly.

  “This … somebody you know?” he asked, and he sounded strange.

  “I never saw him before,” I said, trying to keep a straight face. “And I still don’t know what he looked like. He just came in the room in the dark and …”

  “And?”

  I laughed. “Relax,” I said. “He was my roommate. Separate beds. Somebody loaned me a bed for the night. The girl had gone home for the weekend. I guess you could say it’s coed.”

  I could tell he felt better. “So how did you like the college?”

  “It’s okay. Fine, really. Two down, one to go.”

  It was a two-and-a-half-hour trip to George Mason, and by the time we got to Fairfax, I’d memorized the names of the football teams, the student newspapers, the famous former alumni, and the histories of all three colleges I was inspecting.

  At this point Lester was more interested in getting back for the four o’clock Redskins game than he was in making sure I got a full dose of what George Mason was all about, so he gave me a whirlwind tour of the campus himself by car.

  We did the Patriot Circle, following the map I’d printed out on the Internet. Then Les turned onto George Mason Boulevard and drove slowly around campus, all the little lanes between buildings.

  From what I could tell from my printouts and from posters nailed about, Johnson Center was where all the action was on campus, and it was right in the middle, maybe the largest building next to the Field House. There were posters advertising jazz concerts in the JC Bistro, comedy shows, movies at the JC Cinema….

  But there’s not a lot going on at a college campus at noon on a Sunday. A lone student here or there heading for a coffee shop; a faculty wife, maybe, pushing a stroller; a couple having an intense conversation near the George Mason statue.

  Les waited while I checked out Fenwick Library, the student union, and the performing arts building. Then I got back in the car and said, “Let’s go. Finished. Done!”

  “Sure?” he asked.

  “I’m saturated. I couldn’t soak up another thing,” I told him. “I’ve got a ton of homework waiting for me, and George Mason is close enough that I could drive over here for a second look by myself.”

  Les turned on the radio, and we headed back to the beltway toward Maryland. Les sang along with the music.

  It wasn’t really the way a college visit should go. I knew that. I knew that people like Gwen kept long lists of the pros and cons of various schools—scholarships, clubs, size, cost, dorms—while I had a manila folder and a couple of envelopes stuffed with whatever I got off the Internet, that and a few brochures.

  But I liked William and Mary best, and it tied for first place with Maryland, which I’d visited several times with Les.

  I liked the thought of going to the school that Jefferson had attended, but I also liked the thought of graduating from the same college as my brother and being closer to home. Maybe it was growing up without a mother that made me feel this way—like I needed an umbilical cord to somebody.

  I thanked Les when I got out of the car, pulled my duffel bag from the backseat and would swear I heard a relieved sigh as I closed the door and Les sped away.

  I wondered if Dad and Sylvia had enjoyed having the house to themselves for the three-day weekend. No loud music coming from my bedroom; no bleary-eyed senior to look at over the breakfast table; no jacket on the back of a chair; no saucer left on an end table.

  I walked through the living room and followed the sound of voices beyond the dining room and out to the high-ceilinged family room at the back of the house, where you could see the light yellow of the box elder’s leaves through the windows.

  The conversation seemed to stop in mid-sentence.

  “Oh!” Sylvia said.

  “Didn’t think you’d be back until this evening,” Dad said.

  I realized by Sylvia’s “Oh,” by the redness of her eyes, and by the way they were sitting, Dad’s arm around her, that she’d been crying. I didn’t know what to do.

  “We finished up early so Les could watch the game with his buddies,” I said. “Am I interrupting something?”

  “Not really,” Sylvia said. She’s no better at lying than I am.

  “So how did things go?” Dad asked, extracting his arm from around Sylvia’s shoulder and laying his hand on her knee instead.

  “Okay. I got a good look at all three campuses, talked to some people,” I said, wondering how to make a quick exit.

  “Any of the three appeal?” Dad asked.

  “I liked William and Mary the best,” I said. “Anyway, I’ve got a ton of homework to do and some calls to make….” I turned sideways to let them know I was leaving.

  “There’s some ham in the fridge,” Sylvia said, and her nose sounded a bit clogged. “Some good cantaloupe, too.”

  “Thanks! I’ll manage,” I said.

  I carried my duffel bag up to my room and dumped it on the bed. What was wrong? It hadn’t looked like an argument. Not with Dad’s hand on her knee. Sylvia didn’t sound mad, she sounded sad.

  Could Sylvia’s sister in New Mexico be sick again? Her brother in Seattle? Was the Melody Inn going bankrupt and were we in danger of losing our house? My imagination had kidnapped my brain and was running away with it.

  I spread my notebook and papers out on the bed and had just started my physics assignment when Sylvia tapped on the door and peeped inside.

  “Got a minute?” she said.

  “Sure.” I put down my book and waited as she came in, hugging her bare arms in her short-sleeved sweater. It didn’t seem that cold to me. She gave me an apologetic smile.

  “I’m glad you had a good weekend, because mine was sort of crummy, and I just wanted you to know what Ben and I were talking about when you came in,” she began.

  Here it comes, I told myself
. Get prepared.

  “Remember the doctor’s appointment I had last week?”

  “I think so.”

  “Well, I had a routine mammogram, but I got a recall on it so I had to take it over. They’ve found something they want to check on a little further, and I have a biopsy coming up. I was feeling scared, that’s all. Most biopsies turn out to be negative, but this is my first, so I was having a little cry, that’s all.”

  That’s all? I thought. Sylvia could have breast cancer and be operated on and she could die and Dad would go into this deep depression and wouldn’t be able to work and he’d lose his job and I’d already lost one mother and … By the time Sylvia spoke again, I’d had us moved back to Chicago to live with Aunt Sally.

  “Chances are that it’s nothing, Alice, but I just hate waiting,” she said. “I like to get things over with.”

  “Who doesn’t?” I said. “When’s the biopsy?”

  “Week after next.”

  “And … when will you know? What it is?”

  “I’m not sure. They have to send it to a lab and everything. I may be hard to live with until then, but it has nothing to do with you, and I just wanted you to know that. Ben’s been wonderful. Other women go through a lot worse than this.”

  “Well, you can bitch all you like and I’ll forgive you,” I said, getting up and giving her a hug. “Thanks for letting me in on it. I hate not knowing what’s going on.”

  “That makes two of us,” she said. “Listen, I’m going to do some stir-fry later. Ben wants to watch the game, so we’ll eat it in front of the TV at the half. With chopsticks!”

  I smiled and she smiled, and I heard her footsteps going back downstairs.

  For a moment or two I sat staring at the door of my room. My homework was there on the bed, the college stuff on my dresser, my duffel bag on the floor.

  I got up and went over to my desk. I opened a drawer and took out my early admission form for the University of Maryland.

  10

  THE FACE OF AMERICA

  I ate dinner with Dad and Sylvia at the half—the Redskins were losing—but went back upstairs to finish the first part of the priority application and to tackle my homework.

  The application didn’t take long, actually. I didn’t have to send in my transcripts, personal essay, and teacher recommendations till later—just a check for fifty-five dollars, the answers to four pages of questions, and Dad’s signature.

  During one of the commercial breaks, in the last quarter of the game when the Redskins had pulled ahead by three, I picked up the page where Dad had to sign, went back downstairs, got the checkbook from his desk, and took it to him.

  “What’s this?” he asked, putting down his coffee mug.

  “I’m getting an early start on college applications,” I said casually. “Just need your signature and a check for fifty-five dollars.”

  “Good for you,” Dad said, taking the pen I handed him. “Which school?”

  “U of Maryland,” I said as the game came on again.

  “Oh.” He adjusted his glasses and took the checkbook, started to ask another question, but paused to watch the next play. “Watch that defense!” he told the screen. Then he opened the checkbook. “I’ll write the amount and sign it,” he said. “You fill in the rest.” He signed the application, too, where it said Parent’s Signature and handed them both back to me. “There’re only two minutes left of the fourth quarter, Al. You may want to watch,” he said.

  “Definitely,” I told him. I took the big chair on the other side of the sofa. Sylvia sat curled up on the opposite chair, legs tucked under her. She wasn’t looking so much at the screen as she was looking through it. Maybe all this was worse than she’d told me.

  I made up my mind. I wasn’t even going to apply to William and Mary. I wasn’t going to apply to the University of North Carolina or George Mason. I would either commute back and forth to the University of Maryland, living at home where it was cheaper and where I could help Dad and Sylvia, however it turned out, or I wasn’t going to college at all. I’d take a year off, work at the Melody Inn, and see them through this.

  I hadn’t told Dad a lie when I said I was starting to send out my college applications. I was starting out. I just wasn’t finishing the rest, that’s all.

  * * *

  We sent out two of our roving reporters to ask this question:

  WHAT, IF ANYTHING, MAKES YOU FEAR FOR YOUR SAFETY HERE AT SCHOOL?

  Mr. Samuels, if I don’t find the keys to the chemistry cabinet.

  —Rod Ferguson, senior

  I feel pretty safe here. Especially with the security guards at the entrance and at games.

  —Steph Bates, sophomore

  Having to park a long way from school when there’s a program at night.

  —Elissa Collins, senior

  Just the guys in the trench coats carrying the AK-47s.

  —Bud Batista, senior

  My gym teacher.

  —Charlie Ingram, freshman

  This was Amy’s second assignment as an Edge reporter, and one of the replies she brought in made us blink:

  Besides the blacks and queers and Latinos who are polluting our schools and neighborhoods, you mean?

  —Bob White, senior

  “Omigod!” I said. “Pay dirt!”

  The others looked up.

  “Did I do it wrong?” Amy asked anxiously, hanging around to see if what she’d done was okay.

  “You did well, Amy,” I told her, and looked at the others. “Who’s Bob White?”

  Everyone else looked as blank as I did. I checked Amy’s handwritten notes again. “He’s a senior. Are you sure he said ‘senior’?” I asked her.

  She nodded. “I wrote it down just like he said it.”

  “What did he look like?” Phil wanted to know.

  That’s asking a lot of Amy. Facts she can handle; faces she can’t. “Just a boy,” she said.

  “Was he tall?” someone asked her.

  Amy looked up, then down, as though measuring something on the wall. She hunched her shoulders.

  “Dark hair? Blond? Can you remember that?” Tim asked.

  She swallowed.

  “It’s okay,” I said. “We can look his picture up in the office. You did fine, Amy.” And then, to Miss Ames, “But we can’t print this, can we?”

  Miss Ames turned toward the rest of us. “What do you think? There’s nothing that says we have to print all the replies we get….”

  “I say we print it,” said Phil. “My guess is that some kids are being targeted and aren’t telling. There wouldn’t be a Student Safety Council if there weren’t. There wouldn’t have been that incident in the hallway, or the double eights in Daniel’s locker. If the victims aren’t going to ‘out’ the group, maybe the newspaper can.”

  “I’ll head for the office and look at student photos,” said Sam.

  Fifteen minutes later he was back to report that there was no student picture of Bob White because there was no Bob White registered in the school. We decided to print the reply along with all the others in the “Question of the Week” column, and Phil said he was going to write a special editorial to accompany it.

  “And maybe we should start a letters-to-the-editor feature—like a sounding-off column—for people to express an opinion about it,” I suggested. “That or anything else.”

  “Then let’s call it that: ‘Sound Off,’” said Phil.

  “Except that some people don’t know when to stop. It could take up the whole paper,” said Tim.

  “We’ll reserve the right to edit letters as needed,” Miss Ames said. “Full speed ahead.”

  The next morning Phil showed me a draft of his editorial:

  IS THIS OUR FACE OF AMERICA?

  We are a school of 1,600 in the shadow of the nation’s capital. Our student body is somewhat transient, because many of our parents work for the government, and every two years the population shifts.

  We are African Ameri
can, Caucasian, Latino, Asian, and Native American. We are high school students, supposedly past the juvenile pranks of third and fourth grades and the thoughtless remarks of middle school. Yet in the past few weeks a student from Sudan has found a Nazi symbol in his locker and some armbands from the Gay/Straight Alliance were trashed. Someone using the pseudonym “Bob White” expresses racist views in our “Question of the Week” column. We published it because it was one answer to our question—and because it exposes a possible undercurrent of hate and intolerance on this campus. For a school that prides itself on our football team, our debate team, our band, our drama club and choir, is this our Face of America? Is this the best we can do?

  —Phil Adler, Editor in Chief

  Immediately following Phil’s editorial was the headline SOUND OFF and this paragraph:

  In future issues we will be devoting half a page to your letters to this paper. So that we may print as many letters as possible each issue, we ask that you keep them fairly short, no longer than 100 words. This is your chance to “sound off.” You may write about school, politics, religion, life in general, but we hope your comments will be honest reflections of how you feel. All letters must be signed. You can e-mail submissions to The Edge; you can slip them under the door of room 227; you could put them in our box in the office; you can even put a stamp on them and let the U.S. mail do the delivery. But whatever you have to say, we want to hear it. To start things off, we welcome your comments on Phil’s editorial.

  —Alice McKinley, Features Editor

  A lot of possible replies to “Bob White’s” racist comment were running through my head, but I had a lot to deal with at home. Sylvia was distracted and anxious over her scheduled biopsy … and angry at herself because she was.

  “Every other woman I know has been through this, and it was nothing,” I heard her say to Dad. “Why am I so upset by it?”