Also Known As Harper

by Ann Haywood Leal

  “I know what you mean, Lorraine.” I pressed my lips together and willed my arms to stay at my sides and my feet to stop getting ready to give Winnie Rae Early a good sharp kick. “The other end of this pool has developed a stink to it.”

  We gathered up our things and made our way back toward the blackberry bushes. Lorraine was good at ignoring people and keeping her temper. She looked right through Winnie Rae, as if she was the missing part of the pool slide.

  Winnie Rae gave Lorraine and me her double snake-eye look, where she lets her meanness settle back and simmer for later. And she took off ahead of us, through the bushes, without another word.

  I turned to Lorraine. “I hope she caught a good handful of extra-prickly stickers on the way out.”

  Lorraine smiled.

  When we got down the path a ways, Lorraine stopped to tie up her sneakers and motioned for me to go on.

  Randall ran to catch up with me. He glanced back at Lorraine and stared me down hard. “She’s not retarded, you know.”

  “I know that, Randall,” I said. “I’d have known that even if you hadn’t told me yourself.”

  He lowered his voice. “She stopped talking right after the fire. It started in her room. In the wires in the wall. She wouldn’t move.” He made his own legs go stiff and straight. “The firefighter had to carry her out the window.”

  “They carry you out, too?” Hemingway looked interested, but not scared.

  Thinking about Lorraine all frozen and still with the fire in her wall like that made the skin on my arms get prickly.

  Randall shook his head. “I wasn’t home. I had a sleepover at my cousin’s.”

  Lorraine’s arms were straight and tight at her sides when she caught up with us, and I knew she’d heard.

  “You want to come over for a while, Hemingway?” Randall rubbed the end of his towel over the top of his head.

  Hem started to say yes, but I could tell by his shoulders he was thinking about what time it was.

  I answered for him. “Maybe later.”

  Hemingway’s feet automatically started to speed up on the path toward the motel, and I had to take a couple of skips to keep up with him. I looked over my shoulder at Lorraine and Randall. “Thanks for the swim!”

  I wondered for a minute where they were going to go. Randall had seemed to find us easily before, but I needed to remember to ask for their room number next time.

  For some reason, Hemingway’s body knew what time it was. I’d heard in school about the biological time clocks of animals. Hem was like that when it came time to do his waiting for Daddy. His timing was a little off today, though. Probably from being in a new place.

  He jogged the rest of the way back to our motel room. He bent his head down and squinted up his eyes when he got to the gravel in front.

  “What are you doing?” I unlocked the room and sat down in the doorway.

  He moved a piece of gravel with his toe. “I think I see tire tracks. Daddy might have come by looking for us when we were gone.”

  I clenched my fists up tight, and I could feel my pulse beating in my palms. Maybe Daddy knew what time it was, just like Hem. Maybe he had come back to spill his whiskey all over my new poems. Just in time for this year’s contest. I took a couple of slow breaths and I made my shoulders drop down. My imagination tended to run every which way when Daddy crept into my mind.

  I went over and took the wet towel from Hem’s shoulders. “He doesn’t know where we are yet, Hem,” I said softly.

  He nodded his head hard. “Yes, he does. I gave Winnie Rae a dollar to tell him where we are.”

  I dug my toes into the gravel when I thought about that mean old Winnie Rae taking Hem’s dollar, but I made myself smile. “We weren’t gone that long. It’s not even quite your usual time. Why don’t you change out of those wet clothes and go sit down in the doorway, where it’s more comfortable to do your waiting?”

  I got him some dry clothes and a graham cracker and he seemed to settle down a bit, so I opened my notebook and sat by the window.

  A poem had been forming in my head all day. I didn’t have a title for it yet, but I couldn’t stop to think one up because my pen was already moving.

  Lately I’ve been wondering what it would be like

  To keep all my words inside.

  I wonder if they’d come out another way.

  Through my pen maybe

  Or through a piece of chalk on the sidewalk.

  It could actually be safer that way.

  The words couldn’t hurt anyone.

  You could take back all the wrong ones.

  You’d just crumple up the paper or

  Wait for the rain.

  Chapter Twelve

  THE RED NUMBERS on the clock read 8:25 when I finally heard Mama’s key in the lock. She was so dog-tired she could barely sit herself down at the little table by the window. I had to uncurl her fingers and take the motel key from her hand.

  “It’s past dinnertime, Mama,” I said, “and I’m thinking you probably don’t even have any lunch in you.”

  She smiled and opened her arms for Hem and me. “All I need is my kids.”

  I wished I could take all the tired out of Mama. I wanted her to sit down with Hem and me and tell us one of her stories. The kind where she changes up all the voices.

  Hem wiped the back of his hand across his face and caught the tail end of his supper. He had a streak of peanut butter that reached from the middle of his cheek to his ear.

  Mama pulled a tissue out of the sleeve of her sweater and dabbed at his face with her quick, housecleaning fingers. They were always soft, thanks to the gloves she wore at work. She hugged Hem. “Did any of it even make it into your belly?”

  “You need something in your belly, Mama.” I nudged my journal to the side and got to work making her up a thick peanut-butter sandwich. I cut it twice so it came out in four little squares. That way she could get it down faster.

  She patted my arm and took a big bite.

  I put out an apple for dessert. “They had these in a bowl at the front desk.”

  “They were out for the taking,” Hem said, carefully. He wanted to make sure Mama knew we came by it honestly. He’d had a problem, a couple of years back, of coming home with extra things from the supermarket. Bunches of grapes and kitchen sponges and such. For some reason he’d loved those bright yellow kitchen sponges, and they always managed to make their way under his shirt. Mama finally caught wind of it when he had about fifteen or twenty of them laid out side by side as a squishy road for his little cars.

  Mama had been fit to be tied when she’d seen his stolen yellow road. But Daddy just smiled and shook his head. Ease up a little, Georgia, he’d said to Mama. He’s not a criminal, for heaven’s sake. He’s just a little kid. And Daddy had taken Hem’s hands in his and leaned in close to him. From now on, you keep your hands tight in your pockets when you go into the store with your mother, Hem.

  I had known without a doubt, if it had been me doing the taking, Daddy would’ve marched me right down to the police station.

  I wondered if Mama was doing some remembering of her own.

  She smiled a sad sort of smile, the kind where you start one up and don’t quite finish it, and leaned back in her chair. “I don’t know what I’d do without you two.” She pulled off a piece of bread crust and chewed it slowly, as if it was the fancy, expensive kind from the bakery downtown. That was the thing about Mama. She acted like I’d spent all day on dinner.

  But then she reached for her white notepad, and she started back up with her worrying. As soon as she got her pencil out and began adding and subtracting, her chewing got short and fast and her shoulders hunched up around her ears.

  When I saw her eyebrow make a crooked line across her forehead, I knew I wasn’t going to school tomorrow, either. I had thought only Daddy could ruin the contest for me this year, but I guessed I was wrong.

  I blew short, quick breaths out of my mouth, up toward my eye
s, the kind that help the tears stay back, and I went into the bathroom and pulled the door shut behind me. I sat down on the toilet and closed my eyes and tried to pretend I was back in my old bedroom. Before it ended up on our front lawn.

  MAMA DIDN’T EVEN bother waking me up to tell me. The first thing I saw in the morning was the chocolates on the little table by the window. Mama sometimes got them from one of her housecleaning jobs. Miss Oakley left them for her when she worked extra. The square gold box was scooted toward the edge of the table, and a piece of paper from Mama’s notepad was tucked underneath at one corner. She had drawn a heart in the middle of the paper with my name in it.

  Usually, I was quick to hide those chocolates before Hem got his hands on them. But today I didn’t even care. I just wanted to get to school.

  When Hem woke up, he didn’t reach for his handwriting book first thing, like he usually did. He pulled his pants on and went right over to the front window. “They come by yet?” He grabbed the shirt Mama had laid out from the back of the chair and pulled it over his head.

  “It’s too early, Hem.” This was the time when I usually got out my clothes for school and put my lunch together. I looked at my backpack propped against the wall. My blue notebook was leaning against it, and I thought about Mrs. Rodriguez calling my row to come up to her desk.

  Then I saw her skipping over my empty desk and moving to the next row.

  I grabbed my comb. “Come on, Hem.” I handed it to him. “Go into the bathroom and run this through your hair. And don’t forget to brush your teeth.”

  I made up a quick peanut-butter sandwich and wrapped it in one of the washcloths from the bathroom. Then I grabbed two apples and put everything in the front pocket of my backpack and tied my shoes. “Get your backpack. We’re going out for a bit.” I opened Hem’s plastic pencil box and checked for markers and extra pencils and dropped it into his backpack with his handwriting book and drawing pad.

  Hem put his backpack over both shoulders and fastened the lower strap around his belly. “Can we see if Randall wants to go, too?”

  “Not this time.” I checked the clock. “Let’s get a move on.”

  He marched along beside me up to the main road with his hands holding tightly to the straps of his backpack.

  I reached for his hand. “Hold on to me now, Hem. The traffic’s pretty busy up on the main road.”

  The traffic was more than busy. The cars were going by like on the highway, and I almost turned us both back to the motel. But then I saw the yellow bus slowing down as it came around the corner, and I forgot about being scared. I took a step forward and put my hand up for the driver to stop.

  As soon as the doors folded open, Hem started up the steps.

  “He’s a little young for high school, don’t you think?” The bus driver took a sip of her coffee and smiled at us.

  I climbed to the second step and took hold of a strap on Hem’s backpack. A boy looked to be asleep in the first seat. He rested his head on his coat up against the window, and I could see he was growing himself a mustache.

  The bus driver took another sip of her coffee and wiped her mouth on the back of her hand. “Elementary bus’ll be by in a little while. But you two might want to wait up at the bus shelter. This isn’t a very safe place to stand.” She pointed down the road to a red-and-white wooden shack with a long bench.

  “Thanks.” I tugged at Hem’s backpack and stepped back onto the gravel next to the road. A girl threw a candy wrapper out through the window at me as the bus took off.

  Hem bounced on the balls of his feet. “You didn’t tell me we were going to ride the bus today!”

  “Yeah, well, I just thought of it.” I pulled him toward the red-and-white shack.

  I handed him an apple from my backpack and sat down on the bench. Then I rested my backpack on my lap and put my hand inside to check for my poems. I knew my blue notebook without even looking. The edge corners were soft, like Mama’s cotton housecoat, from turning the pages back and forth so often. As soon as Mrs. Rodriguez checked my poems, I could turn in my permission slip and I’d be home free. I wouldn’t have to worry about getting back to school until the day of the contest, when I’d be reading my poems at the microphone up on the auditorium stage.

  I heard the bus coming and I pulled Hemingway to his feet.

  Chapter Thirteen

  WHEN THE DOORS folded open, Hem didn’t move forward even one step. And I didn’t blame him. The bus driver looked like the cranky cashier from the last lane at the supermarket when Mama was counting out her coupons.

  He leaned sideways in his seat and put his hand on the lever that closed the door. “This isn’t one of my stops.” He reached his hand out. “You got your paperwork?”

  “I got papers.” Hem took off his backpack and rifled around inside. He pulled out his best drawing of the side of our house with the dirt pile for his trucks. I knew him to be plenty proud of that drawing, and I wanted to give that bus driver a good hard kick in his big old bus seat when he didn’t even take a short look at it.

  I put my hand on Hem’s shoulder. “We need a special paper?” My permission-slip paper seemed to be burning a hole right through my backpack and onto my side.

  The bus driver took a loud breath and rolled his eyes to the ceiling of the bus. “Any unscheduled stop has to come with paperwork from the office.” He checked his watch and shooed us away from the bus with the back of his hand.

  Then, before I could even think on what he had said, he snapped those bus doors shut and pulled back onto the road.

  “How was I supposed to know?” I didn’t mean to sound angry at Hem, but my voice came out that way without my even trying. “I’ve always been a walker. I’ve never had to set foot on the school bus.”

  I had seen Sarah Lynn Newhart staring at me, her nose pressed up against the window as the bus roared away. She could’ve said something. She always had her hand up to give an answer at school. Friends were supposed to help each other out, even if they were just school friends. I wanted to throw something at her window, and I stooped down and ran my hand over a smooth gray pebble. But then I just got plain sad. She was probably glad I didn’t get let on the bus. She sat down the row from me, and she knew Mrs. Rodriguez would get to her poems quicker if she skipped over me.

  My stomach growled loudly, and I sat myself back down on the worn red bench and took a bite of my apple.

  Hem hung back a bit. The angry part of my voice always scared him.

  I patted the seat beside me. “I’m not mad at you, Hem. I’m sorry. I need some time to cool the angry feelings off my brain and think about things.”

  Hem was never one to hold a grudge. He plopped himself down next to me and started chewing at his own apple. He turned sideways toward me and hugged his knees up on the bench. “If you’re needing some cooling off, we could maybe go swimming again.”

  Hem’s idea wasn’t half bad. I had been wanting to check out that cut-off slide without Winnie Rae Early stinking up the pool area. A few trips down that slide could possibly sort through the jumble in my brain and set me to thinking straight. I had to come up with a way to get back to school.

  I stood up and swung my backpack over one shoulder. “Okay, then, Hem. Let’s go get our towels.”

  As we made our way back down to our motel room, I tried to ignore thoughts of any poems, old or newly forming in my head. But that’s the thing about poems and stories. Once they start taking shape inside your brain, there’s no stopping or ignoring them. They tend to nag at you until your hand gets around to finding a pen and writing them down.

  “Mama said always lock the door, even when we’re there.” Hem pushed the door open and stepped inside.

  I’d been so worried about getting on the school bus I hadn’t locked the motel room. Which meant that anyone could’ve gotten inside while we were gone. And I was plenty annoyed with what I found on the floor in front of our TV.

  “Hey, Randall.” Hemingway tossed his backpack
on the bed and took another bite of his apple.

  Randall had cartoons on, and he was chewing away on one of our graham crackers. “Lorraine said it wasn’t polite to come in without an invite, but I told her you wouldn’t mind.” He shook some broken pieces of graham cracker into his mouth and crumpled up the waxed-paper wrapper. “I knew you’d be right back or you wouldn’t have left the door unlocked.”

  He was pretty smart for a kid that had had so much school vacation.

  “You mean Lorraine’s found her words?” I couldn’t believe I had missed it.

  Randall shook his head. “Lorraine talks at you with her pen and her hands and sometimes her eyes. You’ll find out once you get to know her better. You catch her with her pad of paper or her arms moving about, and there’s no breaking loose from her.”

  Sure enough, when I looked outside, she was standing off in the corner of the parking lot with Dorothy. Her hand was moving back and forth across her notepad. She must’ve been used to all that quick writing, because she didn’t even stop to shake her hand out.

  “Want to go swimming?” Hem already had his towel around his neck.

  It was a good thing Randall had broken in. I wasn’t so sure I could find the opening in the blackberry bushes again. I would’ve walked right past it that first time, if Randall and Lorraine hadn’t shown us where to turn.

  “In a minute.” Randall reached down to the floor and picked up a thin, square paperback book. On the cover were two kids with bikes. We Ride and Play, it said across the top. “Could you show me how to read this?”

  I took the book from him and opened up the front cover. PROPERTY OF MOUNTAINRIDGE SCHOOL DISTRICT was stamped in dark blue ink across the bottom of the first page.

  He must’ve known what that stamp said, because his eyes got real wide and started jumping all around. “I’m not keeping it forever. I’m going to give it back once I learn how to read it.” He tapped the middle of the page. “We were just getting started on this one in reading group when our vacation started. Mr. Verone said we could take our book home over the weekend and practice with our parents. I didn’t know my vacation was starting after the weekend or I would have left it there.”