by Renée Watson
E.J. gives Maxine a hug. “Well, it’s good to see you. Hope it works out.” He looks at me. “Sorry to interrupt.”
“It’s okay.” Maxine yawns long. “I need to get out of here anyway.” She stands and walks to the door. “It’s nice meeting you, Jade. I’m looking forward to getting to know you.”
“Nice meeting you too. Thanks for the gift. I can’t wait to make something.”
As soon as I close the door, I go to my room and say to E.J., “Tell me about Maxine.”
He gets up and walks back into the living room.
“Didn’t you just meet her? Why you asking me?” He turns the TV back on to his murder mystery.
I grab the control and turn the volume down. “E.J.— ”
“What do you want to know?”
“Everything.”
“I don’t know her like that. I mean, I only know her because she’s on and off with my boy Jon. Sometimes she comes to a show I’m deejaying, or when I go over to Jon’s to make beats, she’s there. But they broke up today, so I doubt I’ll be seeing her anymore.”
“They broke up today?”
“I’m trying to watch TV, Jade.” He takes the control from me and turns the volume back up.
I know the kinds of guys E.J. hangs out with. They’re the kind Dad tells me to avoid. The kind E.J. says, “Just because I hang out with them, doesn’t mean I do what they do.”
I’m regretting saying yes to this mentorship program. So far my mentor has stood me up because of some drama with her boyfriend and shown up in the middle of the night with gifts like that’s supposed to make it all better. All of this has me wondering, what have I gotten myself into? Has me wondering, what is this woman really going to teach me?
11
buenos días
good morning
The radio blares out today’s forecast. Rain. I’m in the kitchen, pouring milk into my bowl of cereal. Mom reaches for the carton and pours a splash into her coffee. “So, I see your mentor came bearing gifts. That was nice of her.”
“She chose the best stuff, Mom. Like, the good stuff.”
“I see that,” Mom says. She looks at the dry-erase board on the fridge and studies the calendar. On Monday I’m staying after school for a National Honor Society meeting. Wednesday and Thursday I tutor Josiah, and Friday night there’s a one-on-one mentoring outing with Maxine. “Busy week, huh?”
“Always,” I say.
“It’ll be worth it,” Mom tells me. She drinks more of her coffee, traces the rim of the mug with her finger. “So, when do I get to meet this mentor of yours? I don’t like you coming and going with some stranger I don’t know.”
“I don’t know. Maybe on Friday when she comes to pick me up.” I finish my last bites, drink my milk, and get up from the table.
“What’s her name again?”
“Maxine.”
“I need her number.”
I pick up the dry-erase marker and write Maxine’s number on the board. Mom always questions me when I meet someone new. In middle school she hardly let me spend the night at any friends’ houses, even if she’d met their parents. She’d say, “I don’t know what those people do in their homes.”
Mom gets up from the table and washes her plate. I go into the fridge and give her the lunch she packed. “Have a good day,” we both say at the same time. When Mom leaves, the door slips out of her hand and slams. E.J. doesn’t budge. He could sleep through an earthquake.
I finish getting ready for school and head out to the bus stop. As I wait for the bus, a woman walks up to me, looking confused. She is holding the hand of a young boy who is almost as tall as she is. When she says, “Excuse me, excuse me,” I recognize an accent. She points to the sign and mimes a question. I don’t understand what she’s trying to say.
“¿Hablas español?” I ask.
“Sí, sí,” she says. She hands me a wrinkled flyer and asks me for directions in Spanish. She’s at the wrong bus stop.
I point toward the corner and tell her which way to go. “Doble a la derecha—turn right.” She thanks me several times.
When I get on the bus, I think about how proud Mr. Flores would be. He’s always telling us that having a real conversation is the best way to learn a foreign language. I think about all the travel words and phrases Mr. Flores has taught us, how ready I am to use them.
¿Qué hora es? What time is it?
¿Dónde está la partida? Where is the departure?
¿Dónde está la salida? Where is the exit?
¿Cuánto cuesta? How much does it cost?
¿Tiene un mapa que indique las paradas? Do you have a map showing the stops?
I know Mr. Flores thinks he’s preparing us for surviving travel abroad, but these are questions my purpose is asking. I am finding a way to know these answers right here, right now.
12
amiga
female friend
The day drags on and on. Once the dismissal bell rings, Sam and I do our usual stop at Mrs. Parker’s office for our candy fix before we head home. Today I’m going over Sam’s house. Mom was so happy that I actually wanted to hang out with someone from St. Francis, she barely asked any questions.
As soon as we get off the bus, Sam starts giving me disclaimers and warnings. “Okay, so my house is small and kind of cluttered because my grandparents refuse to throw anything away,” she says.
She lives with her grandparents? I don’t ask why. There’s never a good reason for a mother not to live with her daughter.
“Oh, and I didn’t clean my room last night. Don’t judge me.” We walk past Peninsula Park. In the summer, the rose gardens are in full bloom and the fountain runs, so people stop and make penny wishes. But now, since it’s fall, the park is barren and looks lonely. Sam is walking so fast, I can barely keep up. “And if my grandma doesn’t talk to you, don’t take it personal. My grandpa says she has Alzheimer’s and that it makes her moody and —forgetful, but sometimes I think she’s just mean and old and chooses what to remember and who to be nice to.”
We wait at the corner for the cars to pass.
“My grandparents have lots of health problems, so the food in our house is pretty bland,” Sam tells me. “Do you want to stop at the store? There won’t be much to snack on. Only nasty diabetic candy and salt-free, butterless popcorn.”
“I’m fine,” I say. I was hoping to eat something at Sam’s because I doubt there will be much to eat for dinner when I get home.
“You sure?”
I nod.
We make a left at the next corner and keep walking. Now that we’re two blocks from the main street, the houses are getting smaller and the yards aren’t as groomed.
“Well, this is it,” Sam tells me. She walks up the steps of a tan house and unlocks the door. Before stepping in, she yells, “Grandma, it’s me, Sam. I’m home. I have a friend with me.”
“Huh?”
“It’s me, Sam. I’m home. I have a friend with me.” Sam steps in and motions for me to follow her. She whispers, “We have to announce ourselves so she doesn’t think someone is breaking in. She gets freaked out easily.”
I walk behind Sam.
“You can call her Grandma or Mrs. Franklin,” Sam whispers.
“Hello, Mrs. Franklin,” I say.
She is sitting in a worn dark-brown recliner, watching the news. She doesn’t look away from the TV.
“Grandma, my friend said hello. Her name is Jade.”
“Huh?”
“Hello, Mrs. Franklin,” I say again. Louder this time.
Nothing.
Sam shakes her head and calls out, “Grandpa, are you here?”
“In the kitchen!”
“Come on,” Sam says.
I follow her into the kitchen.
Mr. Franklin is standing at the stove, breaking spaghetti over a pot and dumping the noodles into boiling water. He has an apron on. I’ve never seen someone actually wear an apron when they cook. “You must be Jade,”
he says to me. He wipes his hands on his apron and holds his right hand out to shake mine. “Sam told me you’d be coming over,” he says.
Sam says, “Next time I’ll go to her house.”
Mr. Franklin asks, “Where do you live, Jade?”
“North Portland.”
“Oh, so not too far from here,” he says. “I haven’t been out that way in a while. Used to have a friend who lived over there by the St. John’s Bridge, near Cathedral Park.”
Mrs. Franklin blurts out, “Nothing but hillbillies, blacks, and Mexicans over there!”
“Grandma!” Sam looks at me and mouths, I’m so sorry.
“Shootouts all the time. That’s okay; let them all kill each other off.”
“Grandma, you can’t say things like that, God!” Sam yells. “And how is it that you can hear us now, but a minute ago—”
“Sam.” Mr. Franklin turns away from the stove and puts his hand on Sam’s shoulder. He looks at me. “We’ve lived here for, oh, about forty years, I think. Yes, forty,” he tells me. “And our neighbors, the ones to our right, they’ve been here for, oh, maybe twenty years.”
“They’re black!” Mrs. Franklin shouts.
I try to imagine what it must feel like to live in one place for so long. I’ve lived in seven places—some houses, some apartments, never a place we owned. Mr. Franklin talks about all the new changes that have happened in Northeast Portland. “I know people say it isn’t what it used to be,” he says. “I’ve been here for it all. I suppose in twenty years, there will be something else coming this way, changing it all again. That’s life,” he says.
I don’t know what to say to Mr. Franklin. I get it, that he’s been here a long time. But I know people who had to move. Mom says it was because the taxes got too high or because they didn’t own their homes in the first place. She says people who don’t own their homes don’t have any real power. I look around Sam’s house. She’s right: it’s small and stuffed and old. But it belongs to them, so that’s something. That’s a whole lot.
“We’re going to be in my room, studying, Grandpa,” Sam says.
We walk through the kitchen to get to the back of the house. “My room is this way.” We turn left at the end of the hall and go into her bedroom. From what I’ve seen, this is the only room in the house that is proof a teenager lives here. The rest of the house looks like a museum of antiques.
Sam has a loft bed with a desk under it. Across from the bed are a small futon and a TV. “Sit wherever you want,” she tells me. “And if you need the bathroom, it’s right there.” She points to a door, and I almost want to go in just to see what it looks like. Her own bathroom? I wish. Sam sits next to me. She takes her shoes off without untying them, and kicks them across the room.
I take my flash cards out of my bag. “Ready?”
“Wow, did you make those? I swear, artists make the simplest things look so good.”
I laugh.
“These actually make me want to study,” Sam says. She reaches for them and flips through them slowly. “Thanks for tutoring me. I need all the help I can get.” Sam gives me back the flash cards.
I hold a card up, showing Sam the English side, and she says the word in Spanish. Then I switch and drill her with the Spanish side. “Now you do me,” I say.
There’s a knock at the door. “Sam, do you have a moment?” Mr. Franklin says.
Sam sighs. “Come in.”
Her grandfather steps into the room, cuffs his cell phone, and says, “It’s your mom.” He steps out of the room but remains in the doorway.
I start going through my flash cards, mostly so I don’t have to sit here and be awkward with Sam’s grandfather, who is definitely listening to every word Sam is saying to her mom.
“School is school,” Sam says. “I’m actually studying right now.”
She is quiet for a while, and then I hear, “No, I haven’t talked to him,” and “Yes, I still have his number,” then, “Well, I have to go. I have company and I’m being rude.” She says good-bye and gives the phone back to her grandfather.
Mr. Franklin frowns. “That’s all you have to say?”
Sam points to my flash cards. “We have a test on Friday. I have to study.”
Mr. Franklin closes the door and walks away. I hear him say, “She’s doing good. Of course she misses you, but she’s a teenager. She doesn’t know how to show it.”
“Sorry about that,” Sam says.
“It’s okay,” I say. “You know, you could have talked as long as you wanted.”
“I didn’t have much to say anyway,” Sam tells me. “She’ll call again, probably next month for my birthday.”
“Next month?” I don’t mean to sound so shocked, but who only talks to their mom once a month?
“Yeah, well, that’s what happens when you tell your child you don’t want to be a mom anymore and drop her off at her grandparents’ house.”
Sam can tell I’m thinking awful things.
She says, “It’s better for me here. My mom really can’t handle being a mother.” She tucks her feet under herself.
Instead of studying, we talk about our fathers: hers lives in Eugene and is married, with a son. We talk about Sam’s older brother, how he’s in the army and how she misses him and prays for him every night. We talk about how I don’t have any siblings but have always wanted one.
Sam’s cat is at the door, begging to come in. She opens the door. “Come in, Misty. Come on.” Sam picks Misty up, running her fingers through her body of black fur. “So, tell me, how do you survive at St. Francis?” Misty fidgets in Sam’s arms, so Sam lets her down. “Everyone is so—I don’t know, not stuck-up. People are actually mostly nice there, but there’s this, this . . . I don’t know. I mean, my other school barely had any electives. St. Francis has a cooking class, a computer game design class, and a club for ballroom dancing. It’s kind of, I don’t know, weird. I’m not used to—”
“Having so many options?” I ask.
“Yeah. I was telling my brother how I could have taken Chinese or German but that I decided to stick with Spanish, and he couldn’t believe it.” Sam plays with her hair, gathering it all to one side and stroking it, then twisting it up in a sloppy bun. It falls out immediately, and she does it again. She tells me how her brother had it so much worse than she did because he had to be the parent. “When I tell him about school—or even how our grandpa and grandma took me in, he sounds—I don’t know. Happy for me but also, sad. Maybe jealous.”
Misty purrs and stretches her body. She looks at me but doesn’t come close, stares for a long time, yawns, and then walks away. Sam keeps talking, yawning, too. “My brother was just so-so in school. I don’t even think my mom knew about St. Francis, but even if she did, he probably wouldn’t have gotten in,” she tells me. “Not that he’s not smart.” Sam can’t stop messing with her hair. “It’s so funny, because sometimes you wouldn’t even think we came from the same family. I don’t know how it is that my life is so different from his.” Sam stops talking, stops playing with her hair. “Sometimes I feel bad, you know?” Sam sighs. “Sorry, I’m rambling. I’m not making any sense.”
“Yes, you are. I get it. I mean, not exactly, but I know what it’s like to feel kind of guilty for being the one to get what others don’t have access to.” I am thinking about Lee Lee when I say this. “When I first started going to St. Francis, my friends would ask me to tell them what St. Francis was like. I told them about all the sports teams we have. They couldn’t believe we have a swim and lacrosse team, golf, volleyball, and soccer teams, track and field. They looked like they were in awe. But sometimes there was sadness in their eyes,” I tell Sam. “There’s also this pride they have, so I kind of feel like I can’t let them down. And sometimes it’s just all too much. So, yeah, I get feeling bad.”
Sam leans forward. “But then again I feel bad for feeling bad, if that makes any sense,” she says. “It’s kind of not fair for us to feel guilty for getting what w
e deserve. We work hard.”
It takes a minute for Sam’s words to sink in.
I have never thought about my deserving the good things that have happened in my life. Maybe because I know so many people who work hard but still don’t get the things they deserve, sometimes not even the things they need.
Sam picks the flash cards up and skims through them. “It’s weird, huh?”
“What?”
“Being stuck in the middle. Like, sometimes I hold back at school, you know? Like I don’t ever join in on those what-are-you-doing-this-weekend? conversations, because I know nothing I will say can compare to the weekend excursions those girls at St. Francis go on,” Sam says. “But I also don’t talk much about what I do at school with my family or with my friends who don’t go to St. Francis.”
Misty goes to the door and scratches it. Sam gets up and opens the door to let her out. “God, Jade. I don’t know how you’ve done this for two years,” she says.
“I don’t either, but now that I have you, maybe these next two years won’t be so bad.”
13
hija
daughter
Woman to Woman has one monthly meeting where we all gather together, and in between those meetings we have one-on-one outings with our mentors. Last Friday, Maxine was supposed to take me out for dinner, but at the last minute she canceled. “Something came up,” she said. And I couldn’t help but wonder if that something was Jon. But today she’s making it up, I guess. We’re going out to celebrate my birthday.
Mom slugs her way into the kitchen, yawning her sleep away. “Morning,” she says.
“Good morning.” I hand Mom her favorite mug, the one Dad gave her a long time ago, one of those Valentine’s Day mugs full of chocolates. No corny hearts on it, but it is red. All this time, she still has it. No one drinks from it but her. “I made coffee,” I say.
“Thanks.” Mom pours her morning wake-me-up. “You’re dressed early for a Sunday,” she says. “I didn’t see anything on the calendar.”
