Alice in Charge

  “Because it’s happening to you and not some ‘other woman,’” he said gently.

  I heard her sigh. “I guess that’s why I’m so sure that for me, it will be different. The results will be positive and I’ll have to decide between a lumpectomy or chemo and I’ll lose my hair and—”

  “Good grief, you sound like Alice,” said Dad, and there was a touch of impatience this time in his voice. He’d brought home some sales figures from the store, and they were lower than he’d expected for October. “Sylvia, do you have to borrow trouble? Can’t we just deal with the problems we’ve got and not take on any more until we have to?”

  I was silently placing dirty dishes from my room on the kitchen counter, but Sylvia was standing in the doorway between the living and dining rooms, and Dad was computing figures on the dining room table, so it was impossible for me not to hear.

  “Two of my aunts had breast cancer, and one of my grandmothers died of it,” she said. “I’m just plain scared.”

  Dad relented. I heard his chair squeak, then Sylvia’s footsteps as she must have moved toward him.

  “That’s what makes you a good teacher.” Dad’s voice. “You look ahead, plan ahead, take all outcomes into account. I just try to keep my head above water. If it’s cancer, we’ll deal with it. Together. If it’s not, then you’re wasting some glorious autumn days worrying about it.”

  “What would I do without you?” Sylvia murmured, and I figured I needed to get back upstairs as noiselessly as I’d come.

  We’re not a rich family. Not even close. We aren’t poor, either. We have a pretty nice house, now that we’ve remodeled, which Dad will be paying for for a long time. We have two cars, neither of them new. Les would graduate with his master’s degree in December. But my tuition next year would take a huge chunk of our savings, I knew. Dad and Sylvia earned about the same, but they were both doing work they loved. The economy was down, however, and everyone knew it. I didn’t understand the Dow Jones average in the newspaper, but I understood that there were a few more empty storefronts along Georgia Avenue.

  Every time a store closed near the Melody Inn, it meant that those customers wouldn’t be passing our store any longer. That there would be fewer people in our neighborhood. Maybe the owner of the Melody Inn chain would close Dad’s store. Maybe Les would come back home to live. Maybe Sylvia would be too sick to teach and she’d lie in an upstairs bedroom and I’d have to give up dances and new clothes and my cell phone and …

  I whacked myself on the cheek to bring me back to reality. Think like Dad, I told myself. Don’t expect trouble. Except that there were signs of trouble brewing right there at school, and we didn’t know where it was coming from or what would happen next.

  I was on jury duty again that Wednesday. The accused was a girl who had been caught shoplifting—one of our sophomores. It would be her first offense, and the police, finding out that we had a Student Jury in our school, referred her to us to be disciplined.

  She had already confessed and was both repentant and scared.

  Darien asked her how her family had reacted to the news that she had shoplifted. Tearfully, she replied that her dad was furious with her, her mom had cried, and “my little brother doesn’t look up to me anymore.” Her voice trembled as she spoke.

  “I’m really not like this,” she said, seemingly shocked by her own behavior. “It was just … an impulsive thing. It’s really not me.”

  We didn’t have to discuss her case very long. We assigned her thirty hours of community service and sentenced her to write an essay about how the Student Jury experience would help her move toward her goal in life, which, she told us, was to be a wildlife photographer and a respected member of the community, not a criminal.

  It was a beautiful October night with a full moon, and I went out back to sit on our screened porch after dinner. The scent of dry leaves made me think of hayrides and Halloween and the party back in junior high when Patrick French-kissed me in a broom closet.

  I sat on the glider, a lap robe over my bare feet, a sweater around my shoulders, watching the moon rise higher and higher in the dark sky. On impulse I called Patrick on my cell.

  “Heeey!” he said. “How are you? I was just thinking about you.”

  “Were you really?” I asked. “I was thinking about you too. In a broom closet.”

  “What?” There was laughter in his voice. “What’s this about a closet?”

  “Don’t you remember? The French kiss?”

  “You weren’t supposed to know it was me! That’s how I got up the nerve. It was dark!”

  “Tell one friend, and you might as well broadcast it,” I said. “Four different people told me it was you. What are you doing this evening?”

  “Looking at the moon,” he answered.

  “You are? Right now?”

  “I was. Coming back from dinner at the Medici. I found the initials you carved on the table.”

  I was delighted. “And the moon’s full there, too?”

  “Of course it’s full here. You never passed second-grade science?”

  I laughed. “Okay, go to the window right now and look at the moon so I’ll know we’re both seeing it at the same time,” I instructed.

  His voice moved in and out, and I knew he was walking around. “Okay,” he said. “I have to move my roommate’s plant first.”

  “What kind of plant is it?”

  “I don’t know. His sister gave it to him to take to college. Looks sort of like a cornstalk, but shorter. Marijuana, maybe.”

  I laughed.

  “I don’t know what it is. He forgets to water it and the leaves are turning brown. Okay, I’m pulling up the blind … Oops. The cord’s got a knot in it. Wait a minute …” Then he said, “It’s gone.”

  “What’s gone?”

  “The moon. It’s on the other side of the building.”

  “Go outside, Patrick! I want us both looking at the moon at the same time.”

  “Hold on.” There was a five-second pause. “I’m going down the hall … I’m passing the room on the left … passing my roommate who’s coming back from a movie. Hey, Jonah, water that freakin’ cornstalk, would ya? … Okay, I’m turning a corner … going out the door … there are a lot of trees in the way. I’ve got to go out to the sidewalk … Ah! There it is! The moon! Now what?”

  “Sit down somewhere and look at it, Patrick. Just think—we’re both looking at the very same moon at the very same time. Like our eyes are almost meeting.”

  “Well, not quite, because you’re seeing the east side of the moon there in Maryland and I’m seeing it from a Midwestern perspective.”

  “What?”

  “If you measured the telescopic distance of the perimeter of the istobulus …”

  “Patrick!”

  “Okay. The moon is beautiful, and if I could see you, you are too. Where are you sitting? What are you wearing?”

  “I’m on the back porch on the glider, wearing jeans and a red tee, with a lap robe over my bare feet.”

  “Then I’m kissing your toes,” Patrick said.

  I giggled.

  “Want me to move up a little? Ankles? Knees?”

  “Uh … I think Dad’s on his way out here. I heard him pouring some coffee, and he usually brings it out here on the porch,” I told him.

  “That’s okay. He can’t see us. I’m kissing your knees now. That tender area just behind the knee—”

  “He really is coming out here, Patrick! What am I going to say?”

  “He can’t see me.”

  “But he’ll hear …” I laughed again as I heard Dad’s footsteps cross the kitchen floor, the family room, and then the creak of the doorstep as he entered the porch.

  “Now, I’m between your thighs … ,” said Patrick.

  “Oh! I didn’t know you were out here,” said Dad, sitting down in the wicker chair in one corner. Then, seeing my cell phone, he said, “Don’t let me interrupt,” and pointed to his iPod and ear
buds. He leaned back with a satisfying sigh and lifted the cup to his lips, listening to the music and smiling up at the moon.

  “Go on,” I whispered to Patrick.

  11

  LETTING OFF STEAM

  We were beginning to get responses to Phil’s editorial. Most had been stuck in the newspaper’s box at the office:

  I think those things you mentioned happening were just jokes. Lighten up. I wouldn’t know a Nazi if I saw one.

  —Mark Hurley, junior

  It’s really disturbing to me that this happened at our school. I want Daniel Bul Dau to know how glad I am to have him here.

  —Gretchen Squire, freshman

  The only thing I can say for Bob White is that he’s honest. God help us.

  —Craig Robinski, senior

  But another letter was slipped under the door of the newsroom three days later:

  What people don’t realize is that this country is becoming a third world ghetto. We have a special club for homos. We make a black feel like a king just because he’s from Africa; and the clerks in half the stores around school speak only Spanish. Pretty soon the whole United States will be a nation of mongrels. Don’t say you weren’t warned.

  —Bob White, senior

  “Oh … my … God!” said one of our junior reporters, one hand over her mouth.

  “He’s baaaaack!” said Phil.

  “Who the heck is he?” said Sam. “It’s driving me nuts!”

  Phil looked over at me. “What do you think we should do with this?”

  “Print it,” I said. “I don’t think too many people took the first one seriously.”

  We looked at Miss Ames. She nodded. “Print it—just like it’s written. But we’re going to add an editorial note that says from now on, every letter has to be signed by a registered student. I’m hoping that sooner or later we’ll smoke him out.”

  “But can you believe this?” said one of our sophomore reporters.

  “I’d love to know this guy’s story,” Tim mused.

  “Or not,” said Sam.

  I hated to have “Bob White’s” comments resting uneasily on everyone’s minds, though. If he found other kids who felt the same way he did—and he undoubtedly could—wouldn’t this just encourage him?

  Fortunately for us, Daniel handed me his feature article on life in Sudan the very next day. It fit in so perfectly with Phil’s editorial of the week before that we redid the layout and cropped a couple photos to get it in:

  Salaam ’alaykum. I am writing Sudanese way of saying hello—“peace be upon you.” Thank you for invitation to tell you about my life as Sudanese national.

  I am from Sudan with my mother and older brother. Geri is student at George Washington’s University, and we are having much gratitude to be in your country and give thanks to university for bringing my brother here to study. Also thanks to church for bringing my mother and myself, for how long, we are not sure. Here our mother helps cook in a restaurant her special Sudanese foods.

  Things are very bad in my country right now. We have many tribes and many conflicts. There used to be music and dancing, but now in the place where we lived, women cannot dance with men even at weddings, and only religious music can be played for us on the radio. Many people have been killed, and when our village was burned, we ran all day and all night to get away.

  Geri studies to be a lawyer so he can go back to Africa and change the government and help the people. I will study hard too, but it will not be easy to leave the United States of America if we are sent back. It is clean here and smells good, but I was a little much afraid before we came.

  “You will get lost there,” my friends said. “Don’t get lost in America.” I am careful not to lose myself. In refugee camp where we lived before we came, there was a school and I learned English. I can read your books and your street signs. In the U.S. of America there are so many streets that they are given letters and numbers. There is a First Street and a Fourteenth Street. There is an M and an R Street. Whoever saw so many streets?

  You will understand that I had never been on an airplane. It crosses the ocean, and then it crosses the Potomac River. I ask my brother if there are crocodiles in the Potomac River. He doesn’t know. The man beside him laughs. “No crocodiles,” he says.

  When I go back to Africa, I will tell my friends about the streets with numbers. About air-conditioning and machines that wash your clothes for you and microwave ovens that cook without fire. They will not believe me. And they will laugh when I tell them that in America, when it is warm, people seem to move about the streets in their underwear.

  I will be glad to see my friends again if we go back to refugee camp. I miss hearing them laugh. I miss our games. But my brother does not think of these things. He loves America. He loves the rule of law, the elections, the jury system, and the hospitals with their clean floors.

  Perhaps I will learn to love the U.S. of America as much as Geri does. Already I am liking the football here and the milk shakes and the chicken tenders that do not look like chickens. And I like that my mother sings.

  —Daniel Bul Dau, senior

  With all the budget cuts that had happened during the year, food banks and area shelters were really hurting. So at Halloween our school, along with the teen center and some of the neighborhood churches, announced that high school students would be trick-or-treating for donations—canned food or monetary donations—in place of candy. We had to register first, of course, and get an official collection can, but we loved any excuse to put on crazy outfits.

  Four of us decided to dress up as food product emblems, which took a lot more time and glue than we’d imagined. Gwen had found a peanut costume at a secondhand store and, with a top hat, became Planters’ Mr. Peanut. Pamela turned herself into the Jolly Green Giant. Liz was either Betty Crocker or Sara Lee, she couldn’t decide which. And I dressed up like the Quaker Oats man—with a broad-brimmed black hat, a ruffled shirt under my chin, and holding a Quaker Oats box with the contribution can inside it.

  “Look at you!” I squealed as Pamela arrived with green tinted skin and a sort of leaf-stitched tunic around her. It was Gwen who was funniest, though—the top half of her encased in a papier-mâché peanut shell, arms sticking out holes in the sides, and her legs in beige-colored tights. We had a great time going house to house, trolling for contributions, bringing whole families to the door to admire us.

  It had been warm during the afternoon but grew colder after the sun went down. We’d got a late start, and though we often collided with groups of little kids at the start of the evening, we’d forgotten that porch lights usually went off around nine, signaling that the owners were shutting down.

  We kept at it for another half hour and were about to head back to my place, where Gwen had parked, when Keeno drove up with a friend from St. John’s.

  “I don’t believe this!” he called when he recognized Liz. “I thought it was a party you were going to. You’re doing all this for candy?”

  Liz and I raised our containers and rattled the money.

  “Oh, man,” said his friend. “Streetwalkers!” We laughed.

  Keeno introduced us to the heavyset guy in the red St. John’s sweatshirt. “Louie Withers,” he said. “Soccer player.”

  We stood under a streetlight talking, and the guys tried to guess our costumes. They got Mr. Peanut, the Quaker Oats guy, and the Jolly Green Giant, but they had a little trouble with Elizabeth’s outfit.

  “Little Miss Muffet?” Keeno guessed.

  “Bo Peep?” asked Louie.

  “You flunk,” said Liz. “No brownies for you.”

  We said we’d tell them if they would drive us to the Italian sandwich shop on University Boulevard, so that’s where we ended up.

  “So who are you?” Louie asked Liz when we got to the shop.

  “Betty Crocker,” she told them as we squeezed into the largest booth and Gwen removed her peanut top, revealing a T-shirt beneath.

  “Huh? Th
e woman who sewed the flag?” asked Louie, and we shrieked.

  “That was Betsy Ross, moron,” said Keeno. “Jeez, turn your sweatshirt inside out, will you? The headmaster would have a heart attack.”

  It turned out that the guys had been supervising a neighborhood Halloween party where Keeno had played his guitar with a funky band. We were all pretty ravenous and ate the freshly-made calzones, washed down with Sprite and Pepsi.

  “I’m sweltering,” I said, removing the black velvet jacket I’d borrowed from Sylvia.

  “I’m freezing,” said Pamela, her green shoulders bare. “Let me wear that.”

  “Not if you get green color on it,” I warned. “It’s Sylvia’s.”

  “I know where you could get cool and Pamela could get warm, and it’s free,” said Keeno.

  “Don’t listen to any of his ideas,” I warned the others. “Remember Tombstone Tag?”

  “Cemetery Tag,” Liz corrected.

  “What the heck is that?” asked Louie.

  “A way to get the cops on you,” said Pamela.

  “No, I’m serious. This’ll be fun,” said Keeno.

  What’s that old adage? Fool me once, shame on you; fool me twice …

  Like lemmings, we got up, paid our bill, and followed Keeno out to his car. It was already after eleven, but we were up for anything.

  “How far is it? Another state?” asked Liz.

  “Nope,” said Keeno. “Couple more blocks, in fact. The only thing you have to remember is that nobody talks or laughs out loud.”

  “Uh-oh,” said Gwen.

  The car slowed. Keeno turned onto a side street and parked next to an alley. “Keeno … ,” I said, giggling.

  “We’re not hurting anything,” he assured us, getting out. “Trust me.”

  “Right,” said Pamela. “Where have we heard that before?”

  Still, we followed him into the alley, sticking close to the high fence that separated the backyard from the garbage cans, our bodies bent at the waist like cops closing in on a suspect.