Number 8

by Anna Fienberg

  “Anyone want a cup of tea?” calls Valerie from the kitchen.

  Lilly and I do, and when Valerie brings them in, perching on the arm of Jackson’s chair with her mug, I ask her if we can hear some of her soul music. “Aretha Franklin or Wilson Pickett or that Otis guy, whoever,” I say.

  Lilly looks at me strangely.

  “What about Bo Diddley, ever heard of him?” Valerie asks me. “He played his guitar like it was drums. Had a back beat he called sanctified. It was, I guess—he got it from the black churches of America. You know, gospel music. There were drums, saxes, singing—in church people went into trances, got happy the way you see people do on the dance floor or at a concert—”

  Jackson rolls his eyes. “We don’t need a lecture, Mom. Why don’t you go back and lie down. You look really tired.” He’s squirming there on the sofa.

  Valerie grins at him. “I seem to have woken up.”

  “And that black gospel music really started in Africa, didn’t it?” I put in, ignoring Jackson. I just wanted to dive back into music again—talk it, hear it.

  “Yes,” nods Valerie. “Way back, Africans were brought to America to work as slaves—they had no rights, no possessions, but boy, did they bring their music! No one could take that away from them. And drumming in Africa has a whole other dimension, you know—it’s a way of communicating and helping people get close to their gods. There are these sacred drums, called bat’a—”

  “Oh, Mom not the bat’a thing again, no one wants to know—”

  “I do,” I snap.

  “Well, in Africa these bat’a drums act like signals to the gods to come on down and get with the people. The drummers can shift their rhythms to guide a dancer into a particular trance. It’s amazing. And you know that hypnotic beat in rock music? Same kind of thing. Back in the sixties a lot of white people in America were scared of it. Said rock music was voodoo—you know, African magic, and it was hypnotizing their children on the dance floor. Ha! They wouldn’t let black music be played on radio stations, said it was dangerous—”

  “Did you know we sang ‘Oops! … I Did It Again’ for the concert tryouts?” Lilly says to Valerie. “We really hope we get in, they haven’t told us yet. I think it’s tomorrow we hear. Do you know the song? It’s by Britney Spears?”

  Valerie just opens her eyes very wide.

  Lilly lets out a squeal. “Oh, Ez, why don’t we show Mrs. Ford! We could do the song right here!”

  And show off for the boys, is what she means. I couldn’t think of anything I’d rather do less.

  “We don’t have the backup song here,” I say.

  “Oh, I could probably pick out the notes for you,” says Valerie. “Hum it and we’ll see.”

  Lilly stares at me. Go on, her eyes say.

  I press my lips together hard. There’s an agonizing silence.

  Then Lilly starts to hum, faint as the fly buzzing behind the sliding glass door. She’s turning red, her mouth quivering. I can’t bear it any longer. I pick it up and we hum the first few phrases.

  “Okay,” says Valerie. “Got it.” She plays it through on the keyboard, adding rhythmic chords and flourishes. She could make the Lord’s Prayer rock.

  “Stand up,” Lilly whispers to me. She prances into a spot in front of the boys. I drag my feet after her.

  “One two three four!” Valerie counts, and we start to sing.

  Out of the corner of my eye I see Lilly starting up all the dance routine hand-waving garbage as well. I keep my fists bunched tight in my pockets.

  When we finish, the boys clap politely.

  “Very sweet,” smiles Valerie. “Have you ever tried harmonizing?”

  “No,” says Lilly, annoyed. She wanted straight praise. Her mouth pulls down at the corners.

  But Valerie doesn’t seem to notice. “Listening to other performers can really help grow your singing,” she says earnestly. She starts sorting through the CDs near the stereo. “Have you listened to any a capella groups—you know, voices singing in harmony? Each voice acts like a different instrument, or the chords of a guitar. If you have more people, you can even sing percussion.”

  Mitch laughs, nudging me. “Remember that song ‘Kookaburra Sits in an Old Gum Tree’? We had to sing it in rounds in third grade. Badman kept messing it up. But even without Badman, it was really hard. I put my fingers in my ears to shut out the others but then I lost track of where everyone else was up to—”

  “And Mrs. Hatfield threw the chalk at you,” I add.

  Valerie nods. “It is hard, but worth it. You have to learn how to keep your own melody, while listening to the others. It’s a bit like life, really.” She sifts through the CDs. “Listen to this now, The Supremes—their harmonies are divine, gives you goosebumps.”

  Jackson groans as the first bars of “My Guy” begin. He’s caught Lilly’s raised eyebrow and he’s wriggling again on his chair. “I don’t think everyone is into the time warp, Mom.”

  But Valerie has her eyes closed, listening.

  When the song is over, she says to Lilly, “Do you see what I mean? But you’d do that with your song, of course. One of you could take the melody and the other do the harmony—you know the other part of the chord. So for example Ez may be singing in A, you in C. It’s like a weaving, two strands dancing with each other.”

  Lilly stands up and stretches. She gives a loud yawn right in Valerie’s face and goes over to the sliding glass doors leading out to the garden. “Do you have someone to mow your lawn, Mrs. Ford? The grass is very long, isn’t it? My mother has this boy Richard come every two weeks. He’s pretty cheap. We could give you his number if you want.”

  I stare down at the carpet. There’s a stain the shape of Tasmania near my feet. Red wine, it looks like.

  Lilly steps out into the garden and wanders over to the mango tree. Mitch gets up, too, pretending to stretch his legs, and follows her.

  Jackson snorts into the silence. “There’s harmony for you—drives people away. You might not have any trouble keeping your own tune, Mom, but do you know how to listen to others?”

  Valerie gives a shame-faced grin. “Can’t help myself. Sorry.”

  “Well, I’m not,” I say. “I wouldn’t mind trying that, if you feel like it.”

  Valerie goes over to the keyboard and we’re just beginning on a new song, “A Natural Woman,” when Lilly and Mitch drift back in.

  “We’d better be going now,” says Lilly loudly over the keyboard.

  Valerie stops midnote and turns around. “Okay,” she smiles, “it was lovely to meet you.”

  “Thanks for having us,” says Mitch, and shakes Valerie’s hand. “And thanks for the music—I enjoyed it.”

  I always liked Mitch. We stand smiling at each other for a moment.

  Then into the silence the phone rings like a siren. We all jump.

  Jackson rushes into the kitchen to get it.

  “Don’t!” calls Valerie, but we hear him pick it up.

  “Hello,” he says.

  We stand around, listening. The clock on the wall ticks like a heartbeat. Valerie’s strange reaction—fear, it looked like, her face tightening at the first ring—makes us hold our breath to hear.

  “Hello?” Jackson repeats. “Hello hello, hello…”

  Another pause, then the firm click of the phone back on the wall.

  “No one there,” Jackson announces as he walks into the room. He looks at Valerie. “Just that slow breathing again.”

  Valerie nods and looks down at her hands on the keyboard. When she looks up her face is exhausted, the light switched off.

  “It’s happened before?” asks Mitch, frowning.

  “Yeah,” says Jackson. “About five times a day—not a good number. Just this breathing, in, out, in, out, as if the person’s waiting for something, but they never say what. It’s freaky, especially when it happens late at night.”

  “Why don’t you call the police?” says Mitch. “They could trace the call maybe.
”

  “No, no, we don’t want police involved,” Valerie says quickly. “It’s probably just kids, they’ll get sick of it soon, I’m sure.”

  “Kids, you think?” says Mitch thoughtfully. “I know exactly who it might be.”

  We all look at each other. I’m guessing we’re all thinking the same thing. Everyone remembers Badman and Mr. Wall.

  “No!” I say. “He wouldn’t do anything that bad, would he? That’s harassment; you can be charged for that.”

  “He’s done worse,” says Mitch.

  “Yeah, so I hear,” grunts Jackson. I notice his jaw clenching tight.

  Suddenly the phone rings again, tearing open the quiet. In the split second it takes to register it, Mitch has dashed to pick it up. Valerie’s hand, flung out to catch him, drops to her side.

  “Listen, you idiot,” Mitch yells into the phone, “we’ve called the police. We know who you are. You do it again, you’re dead meat!”

  “Oh, don’t say that!” shouts Valerie, running into the kitchen. She grabs the phone from Mitch and crashes it back onto the receiver on the wall.

  Mitch looks at her in surprise.

  She tries to smile but her lips finish in a straight line. “I don’t want to scare them too much…” she shrugs apologetically, “they’re only kids.”

  “Well, I bet they won’t do it again now.”

  Valerie nods slightly. “Thanks, Mitch.”

  We stand around awkwardly on the cork floor, until Valerie gives us a funny half-wave and trudges up the hall. I watch her slow progress and imagine something huge and monstrous has just climbed on her shoulders, bending her back beneath its weight.

  After Mitch and Lilly take off, Jackson goes really quiet. He’s staring at the floor, picking at a loose thread. His shoulders are slumped, his body folded up. The way he’s sitting, he looks burdened, a bit like Valerie. He couldn’t still be mad about my comment at the beach? Or is he thinking about Badman and the phone calls? Or maybe he’s just deciding what a crap afternoon this turned out to be…

  “I better be going, too,” I say finally.

  He just nods.

  He walks me to the door, out to the garden. I hear him sigh a couple of times. At the gate, I have to say something or I’ll explode. “Are you okay?”

  “Yeah,” he frowns. “It’s just—oh you know, Mom goes on and on, doesn’t she.”

  “I thought she looked really exhausted, actually.”

  “Mm. She hasn’t been herself these last few days.”

  “I guess she must get tired standing up all day, serving.”

  “Maybe.” Jackson kicks at the weeds springing out from the cracks in the path. Then he kicks his foot another three times.

  “That makes four,” he whispers to the grass.

  “You could make dinner tonight,” I say.

  Jackson breaks into a grin. “Yeah, I’ve already thought about that. I do a mean pasta with chilli. Enough to blow your head off. We’ve actually got chilli growing in a pot on the porch. Did you see it? Red-hot pasta with garlic is Mom’s favorite dish.”

  We smile at each other and I think of my mother telling Daniel that the fried egg messes he makes on Sunday mornings are her favorite meal.

  “Hey, thanks for today, Ez,” Jackson says, and takes my hand. His eyes are electric again. We both look at my hand lying in his, and my heart starts to beat too fast. I don’t know what to do. How long should I keep my hand there?

  Suddenly he leans forward and his lips bump against my nose.

  I laugh out loud. I can’t help it. I’m so nervous I just want to run.

  He grins back at me, opening the gate. He’s about to say something more but he stops. I follow his gaze, out onto our street.

  There’s Badman, doing a wheelie on his bike in the middle of the road. “Hey, Ez,” he waves.

  “Hi,” I mumble, looking away.

  “You should see my new fireworks! I got a new Golden Eagle and a Dragon Slayer, and tons of Black Cats. When are you gonna see them?”

  I shrug, wishing the road would open up and swallow him.

  “When are we going to see the back of you?” yells Jackson. He puts his arm tight around my shoulder, staking his claim like that explorer we studied last term.

  Badman does a wild Freddie Krueger laugh, then takes off, pedaling like a maniac up the hill. At the top he does a wide circle and flies back down, his feet in the air. As he nears us he looks straight at Jackson and gives him the middle finger, shouting something about a fire burning in the sky.

  5. Jackson

  I don’t like Mondays.

  Monday is a mean day, almost as mean as an odd number.

  “Forget the weekend now,” teachers say, “you’re here to work until your brain blurs and you can’t remember who Homer Simpson is.” Well, not really, but that’s how it feels. Have you ever been to a school where they do sports on a Monday?

  Mom thinks Dad hated Mondays, too, says that’s why he became a fisherman. “No Mondays at sea, just dawn and dusk.” Mom has a special pile of songs for Monday-itis. “Drives out the evil spirits,” she says, “makes you dance instead of moan!”

  Well, I don’t dance, but sometimes I hum a little to “I Don’t Like Mondays” by the Boomtown Rats. Mom’s favorite is a sixties song, “Friday on My Mind” by Stevie Wright, which I have to say isn’t bad, but after Mom showed me a recent photo of poor Stevie in the Good Weekend, I decided I couldn’t listen to it again. There he is at fifty, all worn out and medicated because of a golden staph infection he got in the hospital, and he’s just sitting staring out from this threadbare old armchair, his hands all empty in his lap, his feet in grandpa slippers. I felt so sorry for him with his empty hands. He looked as if his whole life was now one long Monday.

  There are so many people to feel sorry for in the world, if you stop and think.

  And I’ve got enough to do just getting through Mondays since Norton came up with his new “Cooperative Math.” He’s been moaning how 5/8 of the class were so far behind (expressed as a percentage that’s 62.5) and he thinks he’s going to divide us into groups so that those who’ve got a clue (3/8 or 37.5%) can help the others.

  This would have been okay but he went on to choose leaders in the groups, like me and Asim. In the practice run last week he strolled around the room, slopping praise thick as maple syrup all over the leaders, telling the rest they should listen to us and be grateful for our “advanced comprehension.”

  Somebody should tell him that a better title for his Cooperative Math would be “How to Make Enemies.” Or maybe “How to Make Even Worse Enemies in Case Yours Don’t Hate You Enough.”

  Just because you can do certain kinds of math problems doesn’t mean you know how to explain them. And it doesn’t mean you can do all kinds of math. (Well, maybe Asim is an exception here.) But if you’re Jackson Ford, you can’t cope with any kind of math when someone like Badman is in your group.

  I couldn’t believe it when Norton read out the names. “Jackson Ford, leader of yellow group.” He pointed at a small huddle of glum math-haters. In the middle, towering over them by a head, was Badman. He stood with his legs wide apart and his arms crossed against his chest. He looked like a bull tied at a post. (You couldn’t help wondering what he’d do when someone let him go.) He glared right at me and thrust out his chin. Muttering something to Joe, who seemed to be in yellow group, too, they looked at me and laughed.

  I took a deep breath and held it for four. Yellow all right. I’m as scared as mustard. Cowardy custard. You’re gonna get busted. Bad.

  This morning Mom played the Boomtown Rats and a new song, “Blue Monday.” It has bass heavy riffs to give me courage. I didn’t tell her, but nothing made any difference. I sat on the kitchen stool and listened to the three-note bass pattern like she told me to, and ate my Wheaties.

  She ought to know I don’t like sets of three, anyway, even if they are the most common rhythmic pattern in rock and roll. Mom thinks a dose of
loud rock will fix anything. I just want to get Monday over with. I hope I can do it without my lungs collapsing in a coughing catastrophe.

  As I’m putting my bag down in the corridor outside our classroom, Asim walks up. He starts to say something but the bell screams just then and all I can see is his mouth moving like an actor in a mime show. I make out “math,” or at least I think I do, and see the frown between his eyes. He doesn’t need to say any more.

  I know Asim doesn’t like the new system either. He hates being singled out, negative or positive. He thinks the kids sneer at his ability, as if it’s something peculiar about him, like his accent. He doesn’t want to be different. I tell him it’s just Badman and his sidekick who think like that, but because they’re so loud, it’s as if they’re holding the only microphone in the band.

  “We could see Norton at recess,” I whisper close to him as we walk into class. “You know, tell him we just want to change some people in the groups—”

  “No, no, no,” Asim is shaking his head in this agitated way. I let it drop.

  He doesn’t like making waves. He thinks any change is sure to be for the worse. Or maybe I’m the one who thinks that. In any case, his Temporary Protection Visa is coming up for renewal and he’s still in limbo land. The government could decide not to extend it and send him and his father back to Iraq. In a couple of months, his whole life could change. Even though I know him so much better now, I still can’t understand how he lives with that. What I do know is he thinks any trouble, no matter how small, could go against his character assessment. You try and tell him that some kid protesting about a dumb math class is hardly going to get the government’s attention. No, he just wants to put his head down and melt into the background. Sometimes I think he feels he’s still in a war, and he has to get up and pull on his khaki every morning for camouflage.

  Anyway, I understand how he feels. And he’s my friend. I just wish there was someone to stand with me on this. Norton won’t listen to just one kid.

  As soon as we’re settled at our desks, Norton gives us a lecture on scale. A tickle starts in my throat. I’m not great at scale and measurement and space. I just like numbers. I clear my throat and try to breathe deep. “Don’t cough or you’re a dead man,” I tell myself. Next thing I know everyone’s scraping back their chairs. We’re dividing into the groups and I’ve heard nothing Norton said.