Isaiah Dunn Is My Hero

by Kelly J. Baptist

“She keeps calling me Isaiah Dumb!” I tell Mrs. Fisher. No way should I get in trouble and not Angel.

  “Angel, is that true?” asks Mrs. Fisher.

  “No,” says Angel, with a smirk on her face. “I’m saying his last name, Dunn. Maybe he can’t hear good.”

  “Isaiah, go speak with Mr. Tobin. You know we do not speak that way in this classroom.”

  Angel smiles and waves at me on my way out, and I clench my fists to keep from throwing something right at her head. I imagine using a superpower to send her to the principal’s office instead of me. Even better, maybe I’d just send her to a different country, a different continent. Somewhere in Antarctica, with penguins who smack her in the face when she talks. I think about this the whole time I’m walking down the hall to Mr. Tobin’s office, and I feel a tiny bit better when I get there.

  “Hello, Isaiah, what brings you down to the office?” asks Ms. Kenney, the secretary.

  “I cussed in class,” I tell Ms. Kenney.

  “Oh no, that’s not good at all,” Ms. Kenney says, some of the niceness leaving her face. “Why don’t you have a seat and wait for Mr. Tobin. He’s finishing up with someone right now.”

  I sit down and wonder how Ms. Kenney knows Mr. Tobin is finishing up. His door is closed. He’s probably in there talking to some kid about respect and kindness, just like he told me when I got in trouble for telling Mrs. Fisher that her breath stank.

  I listen to Ms. Kenney type and wonder what kind of story Daddy would write about her. Maybe she’s an undercover spy who taps a Morse code message to the superhero Isaiah Dunn. Click, click, pause, click, click, click. Maybe that means “get out now, danger ahead!”

  I stare at the rocket clock in the office, and the second hand has stars on it that go around and around. Our school mascot is a rocket, and right about now I’m wishing I could shoot off into space instead of waiting for Mr. Tobin. I also wish I had Daddy’s notebook to pass the time.

  After forever, Mr. Tobin’s door opens, and two kids come out looking mad. Mr. Tobin tells Ms. Kenney to call their parents, and I know that means they’re suspended. Gulp.

  “Isaiah, why are you in my office again?” Mr. Tobin’s voice booms, and I jump a little.

  “I said a cuss word in class,” I say, staring at my shoes.

  Mr. Tobin’s tone doesn’t change. “Come on in.”

  This is only my third time in Mr. Tobin’s office, and I bet he doesn’t even remember the first time. That was two years ago, in third grade, when me and Sneaky snuck into the cafeteria to get extra chocolate milk cartons.

  “Why were you cursing in class, Isaiah?” asks Mr. Tobin once we sit down.

  “I don’t know.”

  Mr. Tobin smiles. “I think what you do know is that I need real answers when you’re in here, not ‘I don’t know.’ ”

  I can tell Mr. Tobin wants me to say something, but I don’t.

  “So, I’ll ask again. Why were you cursing in class?”

  “I only said one word.”

  “And why did you say that word?”

  I shrug, and Mr. Tobin shakes his head.

  “Because somebody called me dumb.”

  “Who called you dumb?” asks Mr. Tobin.

  “Somebody in my class.”

  Mr. Tobin sighs. “So someone called you a name, and you called them one back.”

  I shrug again.

  “Is someone bullying you, Isaiah?” asks Mr. Tobin.

  “No,” I say. Angel’s annoying and mean, but it’s not like she’s beating me up or stealing my stuff. That’s what Curtis Wilson did to kids last year, and he got kicked out of school.

  “If you were upset that someone called you a name, why didn’t you tell your teacher?”

  “Miz Fisher ain’t gonna do nothing,” I say.

  “Why do you think that?” Mr. Tobin asks.

  “Cuz she never does. I’m the only one who gets in trouble.”

  Mr. Tobin thinks about that for a second.

  “I understand it might feel that way sometimes, but in the future, we really need for you to say something if a classmate is bothering you. Don’t try to handle it all yourself, okay?”

  I nod, but I already know Mr. Tobin’s way doesn’t work.

  “Also, I’d like for you to spend an hour in the Reflection Room with Ms. Marlee before returning to class,” Mr. Tobin says.

  I slouch in my chair and groan. Ms. Marlee is one of the school counselors, and the Reflection Room is where you go to think about what you did. They made me see Ms. Marlee after Daddy died. She’s okay and all, but I don’t feel like talking right now.

  “Is there a problem?” Mr. Tobin asks. He has a stern look on his face, so I shake my head no.

  “Good. I really hope this is the last time I see you in here, Isaiah,” Mr. Tobin says, writing my pass to the Reflection Room. “At least, for anything negative. School should be safe and fun, and it’s up to you to let us know when something is wrong.”

  “Okay,” I tell him. He said the exact same thing last time, so I do, too. But I know that even if I did tell Mrs. Fisher and Mr. Tobin, nothing is gonna stop Angel from being how she is.

  April 4

  TODAY, MAMA PICKS me up early from the library and we drive to Sudz-O-Rama to wash clothes. I love the way Sudz-O-Rama smells, clean and bubbly. Our clothes always start out that way, too, but once we take them back to 109, the smoke smell grabs them and holds on tight.

  “Mama, how long we gotta be at the Smoky Inn?” I ask.

  “What?” Mama raises an eyebrow.

  “The motel,” I say. I didn’t mean to say what I call the place. “How much longer do we have to be there?”

  Mama’s folding up all the white clothes, and Charlie’s hypnotized watching the color clothes go round and round in the washer. Can’t blame her, I guess. It’s kinda cool to watch the blues and pinks and yellows swirl around and get soapy.

  “I don’t know, Isaiah,” Mama answers. “But we won’t be there forever.” Her saying that makes me feel better, even though I wish she’d say we’re moving back to our place tomorrow. We’ll be out of Smoky Inn in no time if Daddy’s story wins the contest. Waiting is so hard!

  “I’m getting some things together,” Mama continues, putting my T-shirts and socks in my green basket. “And we’re gonna have a really nice place this time.”

  “With a playroom, Mama?” Charlie asks, still watching the clothes.

  “Yeah, with a playroom,” Mama tells her. Then she laughs, “Shoot, maybe two playrooms! Isaiah, what do you want our new place to have?”

  “Two bathrooms,” I say. “No, three.”

  Mama laughs some more, and she’s probably thinking the same thing I am. Our old apartment only had one bathroom, and once I had to go #2 really, really bad, but Daddy was doing the same thing. So Mama told me to use Charlie’s princess potty. I said no way, but the longer Daddy took, the more I had to go. So I used it. They called me Princess Poopy for a long time after that.

  “Two bathrooms for sure,” Mama says, “and a room for my plants.”

  “When are we moving?” Charlie asks.

  “Soon.”

  Soon can mean a lot of things, and just when I’m about to ask Mama how soon, she hands me two dollars and tells me to get something from the vending machine for me and Charlie.

  “C’mon,” I tell Charlie, grabbing her arm. She pulls her arm away, and I hate when she does that.

  At the machine, she puts her face super close to the glass.

  “I want Cheetos, Isaiah,” she says, pointing. “It says B One Two.”

  “Those gonna make your hands all nasty,” I tell her.

  “So?”

  “So you should get the animal crackers or something.”

  “I don’t want animal crack
ers,” Charlie says. “I want Cheetos!”

  “Okay, whatever.” I put in the dollar and get her the Cheetos. Of course, the first thing she does is ask me to open them for her. I open the bag and swipe two Cheetos before handing it to her.

  “He-ey!” Charlie yells, and the lady loading her clothes into a dryer near us looks over with a frown.

  “Charlie, shhh!” I say. Charlie scrunches up her eyebrows and crosses her arms super hard, and she almost spills her Cheetos.

  “Stop all that,” I tell her. “It ain’t cute.”

  I turn back to the vending machine and decide on the strawberry frosted Pop-Tarts, mostly cuz there’s two in the pack. I walk back over to Mama and Charlie, who glares at me and then crunches on a Cheeto.

  “Mama, want a Pop-Tart?”

  “No, thank you, baby.”

  I sit by Charlie and hand her a piece of my Pop-Tart before she can even beg me, and she shoves it into her mouth. She tells me “thank you,” and I don’t even yell at her when she puts her sticky Cheeto hand on my jeans. That’s cuz I hear Mama say something real softly.

  “Gary.”

  It’s Daddy’s name. When I look closer, I see what made Mama say it. She’s holding one of Daddy’s socks, a long one with the word Hanes where his toes go. She’s holding the sock and crying softly, right in the middle of the Laundromat, and I have no idea what to do. It’s probably the match to the sock I use to store my cash. My throat gets tight, and I can barely swallow the Pop-Tart.

  “I’m thirsty.”

  Charlie tugging on my sleeve unfreezes my brain.

  “C’mon,” I tell her, and we walk back over to the vending machine, even though I know we don’t have enough for anything.

  “How ’bout that one, ’Saiah?” Charlie asks, pointing to the orange Crush. I touch the quarter in my pocket.

  “We don’t have enough.”

  “Okay, that one!” Charlie points to the 7UP, and it’s the exact same price.

  “It costs the same, Charlie,” I say. “Let’s just find a water fountain.”

  Charlie digs in her pocket and pulls out two quarters.

  “Is this enough, ’Saiah?”

  “Where’d you get that?”

  “I found it,” Charlie says, bouncing up and down. Before I can stop her, she puts the quarters in.

  “We still don’t have enough, Charlie!” I say, going to push the button to get our money back. “We need one more quarter.”

  “Here y’all go.”

  I turn around and see the lady who was loading her dryer earlier. She holds out a quarter.

  “You say you just need a quarter? I got an extra one.”

  “Thank you!” Charlie squeals, plucking the quarter from the lady’s hand and putting it into the slot. I have no choice but to take the quarter from my pocket and feed it to the machine. I push A13 for the Crush.

  “Thanks,” I say to the lady, who smiles and nods.

  I peek over at Mama, and she seems okay now. I feel like I would be okay, too, if I could just take the words swirling around in my head and smoosh them into a poem in my notebook. Stuck. Alone. Scared. Little. Daddy, what do I do?

  “Isaiah, help me carry these baskets,” Mama says. I push the words away and do what she says.

  I look around, but I don’t see Daddy’s sock anywhere. It’s just like him.

  Gone.

  April 7

  “DO YOU LIKE it here, ’Saiah?” asks Charlie. We’re both on my sofa bed in 109, watching TV and waiting for Mama to get home.

  “No,” I tell Charlie. “I hate it.”

  “Does Mama like it?”

  I shrug. I don’t know if Mama likes anything as much as her bottles, which I’m starting to see more and more, but I don’t tell Charlie that.

  “Mama should get us a new house,” Charlie says, moving a little closer to me. Normally, I would push her away, but tonight I just let her stay close.

  “She will,” I say. “Soon.”

  Charlie sighs, like “yeah, yeah, I heard that before.”

  “Charlie”—I turn the TV down and look at my little sister—“I’m gonna help Mama, you know. I’m saving my money, and we’re gonna have the best house ever.”

  “For real?” Charlie’s eyes get big and excited, and I know she believes me.

  “Yeah.”

  “Can you turn it up now?” Charlie points at the TV.

  “Yeah.”

  Me and Charlie watch TV till we’re both starving. I open the mini-fridge, and there’s not much inside. I warm up bowls of beans and rice, which we already had two days in a row. I tell Charlie that in Daddy’s stories, the beans and rice have magical powers, and she eats it without whining.

  “Can you read it to me, Isaiah?” she asks, scraping up her last bite. I’m nowhere near done, cuz I’m super sick of beans and rice. Maybe I can find a recipe for something else and surprise Mama. I’m thinking about what I’ll make when Charlie bangs her spoon against the bowl to get my attention. Annoying.

  “Isaiah, I said, can you read it to me?”

  “Read what? Daddy’s stories?”

  Charlie nods.

  “I guess,” I say. We leave our bowls on the table and climb onto the sofa bed. I don’t even make Charlie brush her teeth or put on her pajamas first.

  I grab the gold notebook and read her the story of Isaiah Dunn having to stop a train from ramming into a building. Charlie’s so close, I can smell her bean breath, but I don’t clown her for it.

  “Daddy writed a good story,” Charlie says through a yawn.

  “Wrote a good story,” I say, correcting her.

  “Yeah,” she says. “Isaiah Dunn is my hero.”

  Charlie asks if she can sleep in my bed, and I say yeah. Soon she starts breathing heavy, and I know she’s knocked out, but I stay up a long time thinking about what she said, about Isaiah Dunn being her hero. I wish she was talking about me, not some made-up kid in a story.

  April 8

  “ISAIAH, CHARLIE, GET your shoes on, we’re going to the store,” Mama tells us. It’s about time, I think, but I don’t say that out loud. I’m just glad she’s up and dressed.

  In the car, Mama hums a little to the radio, which is good. Right after Daddy died, she would cry to almost every song that came on, and I wished she would just keep the radio off. I cross my fingers and hope that no sad songs come on.

  Soon we pull up to a building, but it’s not Walmart. The sign out front says “Seven Baskets,” and it looks more like a church than a store.

  “What is this, Mama?” I ask, scrunching up my face.

  “The store,” she says, taking Charlie’s hand and heading for the entrance. I follow her, but something doesn’t feel right.

  Inside, a lady in a green shirt walks right up to us, all smiling and happy.

  “Welcome to Seven Baskets!” the lady says. “My name is Joy, and I’ll be helping you shop today.” I make a face. Helping us shop? That’s pretty weird. The Joy lady asks Mama if she had an appointment time, and since Mama doesn’t, we have to sit down and wait for a little bit.

  “What kind of store is this, Mama?” I ask, looking around at the aisles. There’s a mom with two daughters pushing a cart around, and a guy and a girl with one, too. Both have helpers with them who are wearing the same green shirts as Joy.

  “It’s a store where we can get groceries,” says Mama.

  “But we usually get stuff at Walmart.”

  “Well, today we’re getting our things here,” Mama tells me.

  I don’t know why, but being here bothers me. Before I can ask Mama any more questions, Joy bounces over to us.

  “Okay, Lisa, we’re all ready for you guys. Go ahead and grab a cart and we’ll get started.”

  We follow Joy to the first aisle of gro
ceries, and she starts explaining how things work.

  “So as we go down each aisle, I’ll tell you what your family can purchase from each food group.” Joy points to the row of cans in front of us. “You guys are a family of three, so you can grab three cans, plus a bag of dry beans.”

  And that’s how it goes. We roll up and down the aisles, and Joy tells us what we can pick.

  “Ewww! Mama, I want Froot Loops!” Charlie makes a face when Mama puts a box of Cheerios into our cart, only they’re not the real Cheerios, they’re Honey Spins, and they have a scary-looking bee on the front. The bee looks like it ate too much of Sneaky’s candy. I don’t say anything about wishing for Frosted Flakes.

  “Hush, Charlie,” Mama says, taking a peek at Joy, who’s still smiling.

  Mama picks up some oatmeal and a big bag of pancake mix.

  “We’re out of syrup,” I tell her.

  Joy overhears me and looks around. “Oh, I’m sorry, buddy, I’m not sure we received any syrup today. But I’ll check with Ralph in the back.”

  In the next aisle, Mama goes for the biggest bag of rice I’ve ever seen, and I imagine her cooking me magic beans and rice, like in Daddy’s stories.

  We put the healthy kind of bread in our cart, plus milk, juice, some frozen pieces of chicken, and a bag of potatoes that have brown spots on them. We go through a checkout line where Joy writes some things down, but I don’t see Mama pay anything.

  What I do see, though, makes me want to disappear into thin air. Right as Joy says, “Thanks for coming; we’ll see you next month,” I lock eyes with Angel Atkins, who’s walking into Seven Baskets with her mom and brothers and sisters. She stares at me and I stare at her; my heart’s probably thumping hard enough to make my shirt move. Just great! Angel’s the last person I want to see in a place like this. I can tell she’s here to shop with her family, too, but the way she smirks and rolls her eyes lets me know that things are gonna be even worse with me and her.

  “Isaiah? You gonna push the cart for me?” Mama asks, forcing me to turn away from Angel. I grab the cart and push so hard, I run into a basket of lotions and soaps. I don’t turn around to look, but I’m sure Angel’s watching, laughing her head off. I keep telling myself she won’t be laughing for long. I’m gonna make so much money, we’ll move to a house in a whole different city, and I’ll go to a new school and never have to see Angel Atkins again.