“Uncle Buster and I have been thinking about you,” she said.
I kept my eyes down. I had found a comfortable, warm, and dark place inside myself, and for the time being, I didn’t want to leave it.
“We decided we would give you another chance here, Phoebe. I had a long talk with Dean Cassidy and the school authorities. Your teacher thinks he can help you, too, and really make progress with your reading. It’s going to be up to you entirely. If you behave, if you listen to people and you do your work, you can still save yourself.
“I don’t hold up much hope of your mother ever straightening herself out, but who knows the will of the Lord? Maybe someday, she, too, will wake up and realize she can be a decent person, and the two of you can help each other.”
I raised my eyes toward her. What enabled her to live in such a world of fantasy? I wondered. Her faith? Or was it just her ignorance of how hard it could be?
“All I ask of you is that you try, Phoebe, you really try. You going to do that for yourself? Well?”
I looked down again.
“I hope so, Phoebe. I really pray for it. You should go back to school tomorrow. It’s not healthy for you to hang around here doing nothing but stare at four walls.”
“What about my father’s home?” I asked.
“All that’s being handled by Uncle Buster. He’s trying to get all he can to keep in trust for you so you’ll have something out of all this misery, but I got to tell you, right now it doesn’t look like there’s much. That old furniture in that rented apartment isn’t worth trucking out, and from what we can see so far, your daddy didn’t keep up his payments on his term life insurance. I’m sure he needed every cent he could earn just to keep up ordinary expenses. And your mother, your mother is in the hands of welfare.”
So I have nothing but Aunt Mae Louise’s and Uncle Buster’s charity, I thought, nothing but the few rags that hang in this closet.
“I’m sorry, child,” she said. “But this is why you have to try harder to be good.”
With that she left me.
Try harder to be good? She might as well have said try harder to fly like a bird.
What did being good mean? Doing everything they wanted me to do and never doing anything I wanted to do. That was the way I saw it. That was the way I always saw it.
And that was the way I always will, I thought.
Maybe I would go on the roof, wave my arms hard, and jump.
5
An Invitation to a Party
During the funeral and after, I saw that my cousins Barbara Ann and Jake looked at me with fear and expectation in their eyes. I felt they were waiting for me to go crazy, scream, and be wild, or maybe just explode as if a bomb of misery and sorrow had finally been ignited inside me. I understood they were expecting me to be as destroyed and distraught as they would be should something as horrible happen to Uncle Buster. I was at least smart enough to realize that for children their age, parents were their whole world, even if it had never been true for me. Parents brought sunshine and happiness, laid out their daily lives, and moved them about with godlike power. Nothing made you see that you could get sick or have an accident, whatever, and die too as much as the death of your daddy or mama. You look down into your own inevitable grave when you look down into theirs, and that puts the ice into your veins.
I suppose my lack of a real relationship with my daddy and with Mama helped me face a world without them. Maybe that was a good thing after all. I wasn’t thinking all that much about them after I had been brought here, except in anger. In other words, we didn’t miss each other the way parents and children should miss each other. They were almost completely gone when we lived together. This numb feeling that kept me from crying at the cemetery wasn’t something I could explain or wanted to explain to Barbara Ann and Jake. They would eventually understand it themselves by just watching me go on, plodding through my day instead of crawling under my bed.
Barbara Ann didn’t talk to me at all in the morning. Jake avoided my eyes. When it came time to go on the school bus, Barbara Ann hurried away to sit with her friends. Since my trouble at school and the death of my daddy and his funeral, it was easier for her to pretend she didn’t know me. I didn’t blame her for that. Actually, I thought, if I was her I would probably have acted the same.
Ashley was sitting with another boy when I got on behind Barbara Ann. He looked at me quickly, and then he and the other boy whispered something and laughed. I was disappointed, but not all that surprised. By now I was sure he’d had enough time to characterize me any way he wanted to and make himself look like some sort of victim. His parents were surely happier about that, and, from the way his friends gathered around him on the bus and in the halls, I could see he was something of a hero.
That’s funny when you think about it, or just plain unfair. When a boy gets into trouble with a girl, his friends pat him on the back and he struts through the school corridors like some heroic war veteran. When a girl gets into trouble because of being with a boy, she’s supposed to keep her eyes down in disgrace and be ashamed. Well, I wasn’t going to keep my eyes down. I’d eyeball anyone who dared to look at me with disgust, not that I looked forward to it.
In fact, I didn’t think I would be happy about being stuck in one classroom all day, but for now I was grateful. I didn’t have to face the students here as much and see those crooked smiles on their faces and watch them whispering about me. The others in my class seemed unaware that anything had happened at all. Mr. Cody certainly treated me the same as he had when I first entered his classroom. He didn’t mention anything except to tell me how sorry he was to have heard about my father’s tragic death.
“You’re lucky to have an aunt and uncle like the Howards,” he added to make me feel better, I’m sure.
I didn’t say thank you or anything. Suddenly silence had become a good and close friend. The quick comeback, smart remarks, sticking it to people I didn’t like, none of that mattered. I was still moving in a very narrow, dark hallway of my own, and I had no interest in stepping back into the light of day. I buried myself in the work Mr. Cody gave me. I ate my lunch alone. I continued my work, and then I sat in the rear of the bus going home, my eyes looking blankly on the world outside, my ears shut to the gossip and laughter around me. I knew in my heart that, like a time bomb, sooner or later I would explode.
At least for a while at home, Aunt Mae Louise eased up on what she had described as my chores. She didn’t call me out to set the table for dinner or help with any of the food preparations. I wanted to believe it was out of some kindness, some compassion, but it occurred to me that she wasn’t all that eager to have more to do with me than necessary. At least for now, it was more comfortable for her to keep some distance and not have me at her side in the kitchen.
Death had brushed its hand over my face and left its dark shadow under my eyes. My mama was spinning about in her own lunacy, and I was an immigrant from that mad world. Like some unwanted foreigner who had to be tolerated, I was pushed off, driven by indifference into my own place. My room had become another ghetto. In fact, Aunt Mae Louise didn’t even look in to check on how I was keeping it anymore.
I also noticed that at the dinner table, the conversation rarely, if ever, involved or included me. As if I was no longer there, they talked only about themselves. Aunt Mae Louise asked Barbara Ann and Jake about their school work, but never asked me anything. Uncle Buster talked about his job, a trip he planned for the family soon, and they both talked about things they wanted to do for the house.