Also Known As Harper

by Ann Haywood Leal

  Home is kind of funny.

  You can walk in your house

  When you’ve been gone awhile

  And it doesn’t seem like it’s yours.

  Your things don’t feel right.

  They don’t feel like they belong to you

  Until you’ve been settled back in for awhile.

  But a new place can feel like yours right away.

  You don’t need any settling-in time

  When you’ve got your mama and your brother

  And your favorite book.

  Chapter Twenty-four

  I FELT MAMA kiss my cheek, but I kept my eyes closed tight. That way it was easier to pretend things were how I wanted them to be. The truth was, I wasn’t even sure what that was anymore.

  Mama rested her hand on the side of my face for a moment and pulled the bedspread up so I could feel the bumpy chenille brushing my chin. Her footsteps were soft across the concrete floor, and I listened to the door opening and closing with a dull thud behind her.

  I tried to make myself go back to sleep, but my poems were edging themselves into my head. It was the last day of school before the poetry contest.

  I sat up and scooted to the edge of my mattress. Everything in me still wanted to get back to my desk and Mrs. Rodriguez.

  I couldn’t wait out another day with Hem. Then I caught sight of my backpack leaning up against the wall, and I realized something plain and clear. The only thing that had really changed since yesterday was where we were sleeping. Lorraine could still watch Hem, and I could still make it to my classroom.

  I got dressed and took everything out of my backpack, repacking it carefully. I even put in an extra peanut-butter sandwich for energy. I’d have to leave real early, so I could go find Lorraine first.

  But it turned out I didn’t have to. Hem had barely changed out of his pajamas when Randall showed up at the door. It was kind of strange the way he found us right away, just like at the motel.

  I looked behind him. “Where’s Lorraine?” I was a little nervous about what she’d think when she saw us living here. It would be hard for her to be turning it back into a drive-in movie theater with our stuff all around.

  Randall walked by me, as if he was used to going inside. “She’s coming.” He carried a plastic grocery bag to the middle of the concrete floor and set it down beside Hem.

  “Connect Four!” Hemingway pulled it out of the beat-up grocery bag and right away started setting it up.

  “You know how to play?” Randall looked suspicious. “I’d better tell you, ’cause your rules might not be the same as mine.”

  I watched him take some of the game pieces back out of where Hemingway had put them. Randall definitely seemed like the type that made up his own rules.

  Hemingway looked over toward the boxes. “Which one has my Chutes and Ladders?”

  “Don’t you be touching those boxes till Mama gets back. She’ll have a fit if you mess things up.” I secretly hoped the Chutes and Ladders had been left in Winnie Rae’s camper. That game could go on forever and ever.

  “When’s she coming back?” He spun around on his bottom on the concrete floor.

  “Not for a while.” I went to the door to look out for Lorraine. “When she finishes up at the Laundromat, she’s going to go try to scare up some more housecleaning jobs.”

  Hem got up and handed me my backpack. “Give him my good ones. He said he’d help, and he’ll know the best places to put them.” He pointed at Randall.

  I shook my head and unzipped my backpack. I had thought Hem and I had settled some things about Daddy back at the light pole. But by bedtime last night, it was as if Hemingway had gone and forgotten every word of that conversation. I took out the maps he had been working on. Maps for Daddy, to show him how to get to the drive-in from the Knotty Pine Deluxe Motor Hotel.

  Randall studied the map. “I know exactly where to put these. But I might need a few extra, in case it rains or something.”

  Hemingway nodded. “You can help me make some more later.”

  I looked out the door again, and I could see Lorraine walking through the rows of speakers. It was taking her a while, because she stopped every so often to right a speaker that had fallen off its post.

  When she got to the door, I saw she was carrying a purple canvas totebag. It was decorated all fancy and glittery with puffy fabric paint, and I could see her sketchpad sticking out of the top.

  She held up her totebag in one hand and picked up my backpack in the other hand. She held them side by side and smiled.

  “That’d be great.” I led her over to one of the chenille bedspreads, and we scooted back so we were under the windows, where the light came in. The way I’d figured it, I had a good half hour before I needed to get started walking.

  I settled in and had begun putting myself in the mind of a new poem when Lorraine reached for my notebook and handed me her sketchbook and a couple of thin markers.

  I shook my head and laughed. “I’m not much for drawing.”

  “Can’t even draw one of those stick people,” Hem piped up from the floor.

  But she smiled and pushed the pad at me anyway.

  I put it in my lap and rolled one of the markers between my palms. “I can doodle. You know, nice borders and such.”

  She flipped through my notebook.

  “The blank pages are all the way in the back.” Normally I wouldn’t have let a soul put a pen to the page in my notebook. But Lorraine was different somehow. I didn’t know why, but her putting a few words down didn’t bother me a bit.

  “It’s okay with your mama that you stay here for a while?” I looked at Hem.

  She nodded, but her hands were fluttery, as if her mind was nervous.

  Randall looked up from the game. “It’s a good thing you moved way out here, because Mama said we shouldn’t be spending too much time around the motel today. The man from the state was poking around there yesterday, and Mama will get in trouble like last time if he finds us.”

  “The man from the state?” I didn’t like how that sounded.

  “Mama says he’s from Family Services,” he said, “and she said you should probably watch out for him, too. Dorothy said she thought she saw him looking in your direction when he pulled into the parking lot yesterday.”

  Lorraine nodded, her eyes wide.

  “If he finds out you don’t live in a regular house, he’ll think your mama’s not taking care of her kids right and he’ll make a whole lot of trouble for her.” Randall said it like he knew. And when I saw Lorraine’s nervous fingers, I was sure it was the kind of trouble Mama didn’t need.

  The picture of Mama reading her special book stared at me from the counter, and I knew I couldn’t do that to her. I thought about what Winnie Rae had said about the school nurse calling our house, and I got that same queasy feeling in the pit of my stomach. Yesterday I had promised myself I’d make things easier on Mama. And here I was getting ready to go off and make things worse.

  Yesterday I had practically been able to smell the metal on the microphone up on the stage. But just now I could see it had gone and rusted itself up. I was going to miss that poetry contest for the second year in a row, and my insides hurt all the way from the middle of my heart down to the bones of my writing hand.

  But when Mama’s face looked back at me from the picture, I knew what was more important. As much as it hurt not to be in that contest, it would hurt a million times worse for our family to go crumbling every which way.

  I leaned in close to Lorraine and lowered my voice. “I don’t need you to watch Hem anymore.”

  She didn’t act one bit surprised by what I said. She just nodded in that thinking way she had.

  The Whaley County Poetry Contest permission slip peeked out of my notebook like a waving flag. Just glancing at that light blue paper made last night’s peanut butter lump up in my stomach. The kids at school were most likely waiting their turn in the school auditorium. They always made everyone ge
t up and practice reading in front of people the day before.

  I made myself look at the picture again, because I was supposed to be up at that microphone.

  My poems tumbled around inside my head, like they were begging for me to say the words.

  I tried real hard to erase the picture in my mind of Winnie Rae Early spouting off her half-thought-out nonsense words at the microphone. She always tried to make hers rhyme. Anyone who knows anything knows it doesn’t have to rhyme to be a poem.

  Lorraine followed my eyes and tucked the paper back in between the pages of my notebook.

  “It’s okay,” I said. “Really.” But I knew before my words were even out, they weren’t convincing anybody. Especially not Lorraine.

  She put one finger up, and a slow smile crept onto her face. She rooted around in her totebag and took her sketchbook back from me. Then she bent down over a blank page and didn’t look up until she was all the way finished.

  When she finally held it up for me to see, I knew she had her mama’s art talent, same as I had Mama’s talent for words.

  The words and sentences in my head slowed down a little and let me take in a nice long breath of air.

  Lorraine’s lettering was better than Mrs. Rodriguez’s, and the swirl-and-dot design she had thought up for the border made your eyes not want to ever look away. The purples and reds traveled across the page in bursts of color, like on the batik cloth in Lorraine’s tent.

  “It’s perfect,” I said.

  I glanced back at the picture of Mama, and this time my heart let me look at it straight-on.

  Lorraine and I both knew it wasn’t the same as being up on that stage reading for the whole school, but my poems wouldn’t be sitting by themselves in my backpack, either. People would be listening.

  Chapter Twenty-five

  I WAS GLAD Mama had thought to take the toilet paper from the roll at the Knotty Pine Deluxe Motor Hotel. Lorraine and I were so busy making posters, I didn’t have time to be thinking about toilet tissue when I went out back by the trees.

  Hem loved going to the bathroom outside. It was going to be hard to break him of that habit once we got an inside bathroom again.

  I tried to hide the roll under my arm as I walked past Randall to go outside. But he zeroed in on it right away.

  “Why don’t you just use the bathroom in here?” He pointed to the door in the back corner.

  I shook my head. “No water.” He was one of those kids that asked a lot of questions. No wonder Lorraine didn’t talk. She’d probably used up all her words explaining things to him.

  Hem had tried to use the inside bathroom last night, but Mama had put a stop to it straightaway. She said the plumbing probably hadn’t been up and going in those pipes for years. Spear Teeth’s mother had kept both toilet stalls and the sink squeaky clean, though, even though they weren’t usable.

  Lorraine was waiting at the door with her totebag when I got back. She took out a hand towel and a big plastic water bottle. It was the kind of bottle that you might attach to your bicycle. You could squirt water in your mouth without stopping to unscrew the top.

  She put one hand out in front of her and flipped it palm-up to palm-down. Then she pointed at my hands and held the water bottle over them. She gave them a good squirt on both sides and handed me her hand towel.

  “You’re used to going in an outside bathroom, aren’t you?” I dried my hands and gave her back the towel.

  She smiled and reached for one of my hands. She brought my fingernails up in front of her face and shook her head.

  “I know.” I put my hand behind my back. “I never let them get that dirty.”

  Lorraine put one finger up and leaned her head in the door. She held her water bottle up and pretended to be writing on a piece of paper with the other hand.

  “I just took a shower yesterday!” Randall came out with a handful of maps.

  She pointed at me.

  “Oh, okay.” He poked his head in the door. “Hemingway! Get yourself a towel.”

  Lorraine tugged on his shirt.

  Randall nodded. “And some fresh clothes!”

  She looked at me and nodded toward the door.

  “We can’t go swimming now,” I said. “We’ve still got to hang up the posters.”

  Randall pushed past me and took a drink from Lorraine’s water bottle. “We’re not going to the pool. Lorraine’s signing you up for the shower.”

  I was thinking maybe their mother had rigged up some sort of bathtub in their tent, until we got back to the Knotty Pine Deluxe Motor Hotel and we were standing outside the door of Room 12. The end unit that I used to think was theirs.

  Dorothy came across the parking lot, pushing her wheelchair. She studied her clipboard for a minute and looked up at me. “You’re in luck today, because I’ve had a ‘no-show.’” She put down her clipboard and let it hang from the string at the back of her wheelchair. “The rules are, you can take no longer than eight minutes per person. There should be soap inside, but you have to bring your own shampoo.”

  I nodded.

  “Best thing is to sign up for next time before you leave today,” she said. “That way, I get you on the schedule.” She handed me her clipboard and a pen.

  I looked down at the blocks of times on the paper and put Mama’s name in for tomorrow morning. “What if the room gets rented on the day that I’m signed up?”

  “It won’t.” She jerked her thumb toward the door. “Lock’s been broken for a good two years now.”

  She pointed at Lorraine and Randall. “You two stick close to me while you’re waiting. I’m keeping my eyes peeled for that dark gray station wagon.” She turned to Hem and me. “And you two had best be staying out of the way of that social worker, too. I could’ve sworn I saw him looking at you two from across the parking lot.”

  I swallowed hard.

  The door to the end unit opened, and a man came out towel-drying his hair.

  He nodded at both Dorothy and me, and she motioned for me to pass him the clipboard.

  “Hi, Mr. Corey.” Randall smiled at him.

  “Tell your mother thank you for the cheese she left.” He nodded at Randall and Lorraine and chose his next time on the clipboard. “It’ll last me through into next week.”

  I knew I recognized him from somewhere, and then I remembered he was the man with the square red tent the next one over from Lorraine and Randall. He was the guy who sat in the brown plaid armchair under the tree and read his newspaper.

  Lorraine pulled a poster out of her totebag and held it up for Dorothy and Mr. Corey.

  Dorothy took it and tapped her finger on the front. “This is a fine idea. A little literature will do us well around here.”

  I reached for another poster and handed it to Mr. Corey. “Will you put this on your tree?”

  He nodded. “No problem.” He made a little bow to Hem and me and walked back the way we’d come.

  Dorothy put the poster under her arm and took the clipboard back. “You’d better get a move on if you and your brother want to keep your spot.” She looked at me and pointed at the door. “The hot-water heater runs out after a while, and I need to give it some time to heat up again.”

  “I’ll get the water going for you.” I handed Hem the shampoo. “I’ll keep the door cracked, and you yell for me when you’re done.”

  Randall held up some of Hemingway’s maps. “Me and Lorraine will go hang these up while we’re waiting.” Each one was folded carefully in the middle, and they’d gotten me to write Mr. Wayne Morgan in big letters across the back of each one.

  I laid Hem’s towel next to the tub and held his arm while he climbed into the shower. “Don’t you be moving around a lot in there. I don’t need you to be slipping and getting yourself hurt.”

  Hem was in the habit of sitting down in a regular old bathtub. He wasn’t used to a stand-up shower, so I kept the door to the outside wide open. I made him sing the whole time so I’d know he was okay.

&n
bsp; He was singing the jingle from his favorite soap commercial at the top of his lungs when I saw her a couple of units down. She looked at me straight-on and stared for a good while, so there was no mistaking that she’d seen me.

  I stepped back into the end unit and yelled for Hem. “Hold on in there! I’ll be right back!” And I ran across the parking lot to warn Dorothy.

  Chapter Twenty-six

  “YOU’RE TALKING ABOUT Ione Early, aren’t you?” Dorothy didn’t look to be in any hurry to get out of sight. “She’s the one that’s never bothered to have the lock repaired. Never put the work order in. She looks the other way when folks go in to use the shower.”

  I snuck a quick peek at Mrs. Early out of the corner of my eye.

  “Who do you think left this clipboard out to begin with?” Dorothy asked.

  It was hard to imagine. It was hard to believe even a thread of kindness had found itself inside anything Early.

  “Your turn, Harper Lee!” Hem stood at the door, still wrapped in his towel.

  “You turn off the water all by yourself?” I pulled the door shut behind me to keep the cold air out.

  But I could hear the water on full blast in the bathroom.

  He smiled at me. “I left it on for you.”

  I smoothed my hand over his wet hair. “You make sure you listen closely for Randall and Dorothy. I want to get a good head start back to the drive-in if they catch sight of that gray station wagon.”

  It felt good to take a shower and put on clean clothes. I made sure to use the inside toilet before I left, too. Who knew how long it would be before I’d get to use one again.

  Randall and Lorraine were waiting for us when we came out.

  “Dorothy said we could practice on her porch!” Randall held up a sketchbook. It was like Lorraine’s, except smaller and more beat-up. “Me and Hem are going to show around our drawings in between your poems, and we might read a couple pages from We Ride and Play.”

  When we got to Dorothy’s, everybody made themselves comfortable on the porch.