Jumping the Scratch

by Sarah Weeks

  Sarah Weeks

  Jumping the Scratch

  To my amazing Austin friends, Amy, David, Hannah,

  and Beth Roberts

  Contents

  1

  I HAVE A PRETTY GOOD MEMORY, BUT IT’S GOT A…

  2

  “HEY, REAR-END!” LARRY BAYWOOD CALLED OUT when I got to…

  3

  “WHO’S THAT?” MY AUNT SAPPHY CALLED FROM THE back of…

  4

  IN SPITE OF WHAT HAD HAPPENED TO SAPPHY, RIGHT after…

  5

  “WELL?” SAID MARGE IMPATIENTLY.

  6

  “WHAT DAY IS IT?” SAPPHY ASKED WHEN SHE SAW me…

  7

  MY MOTHER, DRESSED IN HER WORK CLOTHES, HER hair dry…

  8

  “WHO ARE YOU CALLING?” SAPPHY ASKED.

  9

  I’M NOT SURE EXACTLY HOW AUDREY MANAGED TO convince me…

  10

  AFTER THE LAUGHTER AND JOKING DIED DOWN, WE were told…

  11

  I BRACED MYSELF, FIGURING HE WAS GOING TO MAKE me…

  12

  WE SPENT THAT WHOLE MORNING WORKING WITH Arthur. After doing…

  13

  MOST OF THE KIDS ATE LUNCH IN THE CAFETERIA AT…

  14

  AUDREY KROUCH WAS STANDING AT THE BOTTOM OF the driveway,…

  15

  AUDREY PICKED UP THE LITTLE BLUE BOTTLE AND unscrewed the…

  16

  THAT NIGHT I SKIPPED DINNER. I TOLD MY MOTHER I…

  17

  IT WASN’T OLD BLUE EYES WHO FINALLY GOT Sapphy’s memory…

  Acknowledgments

  About the Author

  Credits

  Copyright

  About the Publisher

  1

  I HAVE A PRETTY GOOD MEMORY, BUT IT’S GOT A MIND of its own. It has never been very interested in holding on to anything having to do with numbers or spelling or ways of knowing when it’s appropriate to use a semicolon. It’s impossible to predict what it will decide is important. Sometimes whole years of my life have whizzed by and very little of what’s happened has stuck. But there is one year I remember in such vivid detail, I sometimes feel as though I’m still in the middle of it even though it all happened a long time ago.

  I was eleven years old and in the fifth grade at Pine Tree Elementary when Arthur came to visit. I didn’t see what the big fuss was about. Just because some guy named Arthur was coming to our class, we were supposed to wear our best clothes and be on our best behavior and not shout out and a lot of other things I didn’t bother to listen to when Miss Miller told us about his coming. I didn’t listen to much of anything she said that year. I wasn’t interested, and I didn’t care. Looking back on it now, I guess that might have had something to do with why she was always yelling at me.

  “Are you listening, James? Best behavior,” Miss Miller said, giving me the big fisheye.

  My name is not James; it’s Jamie. It says so right on my birth certificate, but I never bothered to tell Miss Miller that. Somehow it seemed right for her to call me by the wrong name. She didn’t have any idea who I was.

  That day, while she talked on and on about Arthur’s visit, I did what I always did: reached back with my thumbs and plugged my earholes closed. But Miss Miller’s voice found its way inside my head somehow anyway, like smoke curling under a locked door. Arthur this. Arthur that. I pressed my thumbs down harder, then let go. Open, closed, open, closed, faster and faster until it chopped up the words like cabbage for slaw and made it sound like she was speaking Chinese. I just kept doing that until she was done talking and it was finally time for us to go home.

  I hated everything about that year in Miss Miller’s class. We’d moved to Traverse City in November, two months after the school year had begun, and by the time spring rolled around, I still hadn’t made a single friend. It was my own fault. It’s hard for people to like you when you can’t stand yourself.

  “Best clothes,” Miss Miller had said. That was a joke. I had two kinds of clothes at home: clean and dirty. I didn’t plan on telling my mother what Miss Miller had said. I knew she would just say, “Make do, Jamie.” She said that all the time after we moved in with my aunt Sapphy, at the Wondrous Acres trailer park on the south side of town.

  Wondrous Acres was anything but wondrous. Ours was the fifth trailer in a line of fifteen singlewides that sat on a flat strip of asphalt baking in the sun or rattling in the wind depending on the season. Some of the trailers had names over their doors instead of numbers, Tin Heaven and Dolly’s Spot. Ours was just plain old number five, but if it had been mine to name, I would have called it Make Do.

  We had a real house back when we lived in Battle Creek. I had a room of my own and, best of all, a cat named Mister. Mister was just a stray, somebody else’s cat that had run away, but after I fed him tuna fish and milk, he didn’t run away from me, so my mom said she guessed he was mine. Mister was the first friend I had who liked me best. He didn’t like anybody else to pick him up or even touch him. He slept on my pillow at night. I’d lie in the dark, rubbing him behind his soft black ears, telling him everything, while he lay there purring until I was all talked out. I can close my eyes and, to this day, still recall the way Mister smelled behind his ears.

  One night Mister didn’t come home. I called and called for him, but he didn’t come.

  “Probably out looking for some female companionship,” my dad told me. “Can’t blame a fella for wanting a little of that now, can you?” Then he winked at me and laughed until his breath ran out and he had to cough. My mother shot him one of her looks, but she didn’t say anything.

  With some people you can tell when they’re mad, because they yell at you and say things they try to take back later on, but my mother is the opposite. The madder she gets, the less she says. I don’t remember her saying much of anything that whole last year in Battle Creek.

  The next morning when Mister still hadn’t come back, I went out to try to find him. It didn’t take long. He was lying on his side out in the ditch beside the road in front of my house. At first I thought he was sleeping, but when I picked him up, I knew right away that he was dead. I sat there by the road for a while, holding him and telling him how sorry I was that I hadn’t been there to protect him. Then I took him inside, wrapped him up in a blue and white checkered dish towel, and put him in a shoe box along with a couple of cans of tuna. I got a shovel out of the garage, dug a hole, and buried him out in the backyard. Then I cried so hard, my eyes swelled shut and it looked like somebody had punched me in the face.

  My dad must have heard me crying, because he came out to see what was the matter. I told him about Mister, and he said something about how he was just an old stray anyway, and there were plenty more where that one had come from. I guess he was trying to make me feel better, but instead I got mad and told him to go away, just go away.

  It was about a week later that my dad took off with a cashier from the MicroMart, leaving my mother and me to fend for ourselves. There’s a saying about bad things coming in threes. When the call came a couple of months later that my aunt Sapphy had been seriously injured in a freak accident at the cherry factory where she worked, my mom told me we were moving to Traverse City to live with her until she got better. I figured that was the third and final bad thing in the series. As it turned out, though, either the saying was off by one, or that particular misfortune wasn’t meant to count as one of my three, because there was one more bad thing still in store for me.

  We had a big yard sale and sold off most of the furniture and kitchen stuff, and a week before Thanksgiving my mom and I packed what was left into a U-Haul and left the house in Battle Creek for good. I thought about digging M
ister up so I could bring him along and rebury him in my new backyard. It didn’t seem right to leave him behind. But then I remembered how he had felt in my hands when I’d lifted him out of the ditch. How light he had been. Like the most important part of him wasn’t there anymore. And I realized there was no point in digging up that shoe box, because I was the one who was about to be left behind.

  2

  “HEY, REAR-END!” LARRY BAYWOOD CALLED OUT when I got to the bus stop after school that day. “How’s your crack?”

  There were hoots of laughter from the crowd of kids standing around on the curb. They’d heard this routine before, and they loved it.

  The yellow school bus pulled up, the folding doors banged open, and I got on, taking my usual seat in the back. I pulled a dog-eared copy of The Hobbit out of my backpack and opened it to a random page in the middle. I’m not a big fantasy buff—I prefer books about real people and real life—but it didn’t matter because I wasn’t reading The Hobbit. I never read for real on the bus, I only pretended to; it wasn’t safe to read.

  I’m sure there were plenty of perfectly nice kids on that bus (I know for a fact there was at least one), but it’s Larry Baywood’s shadow that falls across most of my memories of those long bus rides to and from school that year. Larry was ugly inside and out, with one of those pushed-in kinds of faces that look like a crushed pop can. His front teeth were chipped, and he had a lazy eye that sometimes rolled off to the side like a pool ball gliding toward a side pocket. Even so, nobody ever called him by anything other than his given name.

  When he found out my last name was Reardon and he started calling me Rear-end, I came up with an insulting nickname for him too. Padiddle—on account of his lazy eye. Padiddle was what my dad used to say when we passed a car with only one headlight working. But kids like me weren’t allowed to call kids like Larry Baywood names. Nobody had to tell me that; it was one of those things you just know.

  In Battle Creek I never got picked on. I didn’t stick out. I could throw and catch a ball; I wasn’t too big or too small; I didn’t talk funny or have a donkey laugh. We had an expression back home, because of the Kellogg factory’s being there in town, “normal as cornflakes,” and that was me. But when we moved to Traverse City, suddenly I was different.

  * * *

  At first it was just because I was new, but it wasn’t long before there was something else that set me apart.

  I didn’t tell a soul when it happened, not even my mother. I pushed it down, deep inside, and tried as hard as I could to forget it. I kept my mouth shut, and I was careful not to look people in the eye. What I really wanted was to be invisible, and there were plenty of people who were perfectly happy to treat me as if I were. Unfortunately, Larry Baywood wasn’t one of them.

  My father used to take me fishing for bluegills at a pond near our house. One time I remember it was hot and the fish weren’t biting, so he told me I could swim in my underwear instead if I wanted to. I was laughing and splashing up a storm when my father pointed and told me to look up. Five big turkey buzzards were slowly circling overhead.

  “Where’d they come from?” I asked.

  “Heard you splashing and figured on some easy pickings,” he told me.

  Old or lame animals, he explained, sometimes come to the water to drink or roll in the mud. Their splashing attracts the buzzards, which come and circle, hoping the animal will die and provide an easy meal. I didn’t feel much like swimming after that.

  Larry Baywood reminded me of those turkey buzzards. He sensed easy pickings and was always circling overhead.

  “I asked you a question, Rear-end,” Larry said once the bus had started moving. “How’s your crack?”

  I didn’t look at him. Just pretended to read my book. Out of the corner of my eye I noticed the edge of a foil gum wrapper sticking out from between the cushions of the seat next to me, and slowly I slid my hand over and covered it with my thumb.

  “What’s the matter with you?” Larry asked. “Did you eat glue or something?”

  He got out of his seat and started lurching down the aisle toward me, using the seat backs to help him keep his balance. I felt the back of my neck prickle, but I sat there silently, holding my book and trying not to choke on the sickeningly sweet butterscotch taste that had begun to fill my mouth.

  “You can get a dog to open his mouth up by squeezing his cheeks together, did you know that, Rear-end? Do you want me to come squeeze your cheeks so you can open up and answer my question?” Larry asked.

  * * *

  About the last thing I wanted was for Larry Baywood to come squeeze my cheeks, but still I just sat there pretending to read. Everybody was howling and egging him on as Larry looked around, grinning proudly, happy to take credit for providing the entertainment for that afternoon’s ride. I swallowed butterscotch and waited for it to be over.

  Butterscotch always came first. And after that the sensation of the button pressing its smooth round reminder into my cheek. I didn’t get past butterscotch that day, though. Some commotion in the front of the bus distracted Larry Baywood from his purpose, and he clomped back up the aisle to be with his friends. As soon as he was gone, I lifted my thumb and carefully pulled the gum wrapper out from between the seat cushions. After smoothing it on my knee first, I stuck it between the pages of my book for safekeeping. Then I rode the rest of the way home pretending to read and wondering if I would ever feel normal again.

  A few other people got off at the same stop as I did every day, including Audrey Krouch. She was in my class, and like me, she lived in Wondrous Acres. I didn’t know her, and I didn’t want to. I didn’t like girls, and besides, she was strange. She smelled funny, like fried onions, and her bangs were cut too short, making her pasty-white forehead look huge. The strangest thing about her, though, was the glasses she wore. They were men’s black plastic frames, way too wide for her face, and they didn’t have any lenses in them. You could have stuck your fingers right through the holes and poked her in the eyes if you’d wanted to. Miss Miller wouldn’t let her wear the glasses during school hours, but in the morning, waiting for the bus to come, she always had them on, and after school she wore them too.

  I always made it a point to be the last one to get off the bus when it stopped. I had learned the hard way that it was safer to be behind someone going down the steps than the other way around. Audrey got off ahead of me and headed up the driveway, but I took my usual route, walking along the ditch beside the road for a while before cutting through the weeds and angling up the hill toward home. Just as I stepped off the road, I heard a rustling sound. I jumped back and had to clap my hand over my mouth to muffle a cry as a long black snake with yellow stripes shot out from under my foot and disappeared into the tall grass.

  “Garter,” I whispered, my heart still thumping hard from the shock. I hate snakes, and that field was full of them, but I didn’t have a choice. It was the only way home.

  3

  “WHO’S THAT?” MY AUNT SAPPHY CALLED FROM THE back of the trailer a few minutes later as I came in, letting the screen door bang closed behind me.

  My grandmother had three daughters, all of whom she named after gems. Emerald is the oldest; my mother, Opal, is the baby; and in between is Sapphire, who everybody calls Sapphy.

  Sapphy is the only sister who never got married. She started working at the cherry factory right out of high school. Aunt Emmy married a truck driver named Perry Chizek, who took her away to live with him in Florida. My mom married my dad, moved to Battle Creek, and then had me. But Sapphy stayed in Traverse City, living at home with her parents in the same room she’d shared with her sisters growing up. She helped take care of my grandpa Will until he died, and she nursed my grandma Jeanne when she got sick too.

  It’s only about a four-hour drive from Traverse City to Battle Creek, so we went up there fairly often to visit, and Sapphy and my grandparents would drive down to see us too. I loved when they came to our house, because Sapphy would sleep i
n my room. I gladly gave up my bed and slept beside her on the floor in a sleeping bag. We’d lie there in the dark, talking quietly long after everyone else in the house had gone to sleep. Sometimes Sapphy would tell me funny things she and my mother had done when they were little, like dressing their dog up in a nightgown, wheeling him around in a baby carriage, and telling the neighbors Grandma Jeanne had just had another baby. Sometimes I told her about the arguments I overheard my parents having or the strange dream I had over and over again that something was chasing me and then just as I was about to be caught, a giant bird would swoop down out of nowhere and rescue me, lifting me high up into the sky and carrying me off to safety. Sapphy would prop herself up with her pillows, and even though it was dark, I could see her bright eyes shining and her head tilted slightly to the side like a crow as she listened. If I could have kept my eyes open, I would have wanted to stay awake all night talking with Sapphy. She was like Mister: She knew how to listen, and I felt I could tell her anything.

  When my grandma Jeanne died, Aunt Sapphy found out she and Grandpa Will hadn’t paid their taxes in years. Between what the government said they owed and what the First National Bank of Traverse City laid claim to, the only thing of value left, once the dust settled, was twelve place settings of my grandmother’s good bone china. Each sister got four place settings, and Sapphy got to keep the gravy boat. I guess that was her reward for having stayed there until the bitter end. The real estate agent who handled selling the house told Sapphy it was going to be hard to find a buyer because of the smell.