Speak

  Me: “Do you have any twigs? Little branches? I could use them to make the arms.”

  Ivy opens her mouth to say something, then closes it again. Mr. Freeman studies my homely project. He doesn’t say anything and I’m afraid he’s pissed that I took out the palm tree. Ivy tries again. “It’s scary,” she says. “In a weird way. Not clown scary, um, how do I say this? Like, you don’t want to look at it too long. Good job, Mel.”

  That’s not the reaction I was hoping for, but I guess it was positive. She could have turned her nose up, or ignored me, but she didn’t. Mr. Freeman taps his chin. He looks way too serious to be an art teacher. He’s making me nervous.

  Mr. Freeman: “This has meaning. Pain.”

  The bell rings. I leave before he can say more.

  PEELED AND CORED

  We are studying fruit in biology. Ms. Keen has spent a week teaching us the finer points of stamens and pistils, seedpods and flowers. The earth has frozen, it snows lightly at night, but Ms. Keen is determined to keep Spring alive in her classroom.

  The Back Row sleeps until she points out that apple trees need bees to reproduce. “Reproduce” is a trigger word for the Back Row. They have figured out it is related to sex. The lecture on pistils and stamens turns into a big Ha-ha. Ms. Keen has been teaching since the Middle Ages. It would take more than a row full of overheated hypothalamuses (hypothalamii?) to distract her from the day’s lesson. She calmly proceeds to the hands-on portion of the lab.

  Apples. We each get a Rome or a Cortland or a McIntosh and a plastic knife. We are instructed to dissect. The Back Row holds sword fights. Ms. Keen silently writes their names on the blackboard, along with their current grade. She takes one point off for every minute the sword fight continues. They go from low Bs to very low Cs before they figure out what is going on. They howl.

  Back Row: “That’s not fair! You can’t do that to us! You didn’t give us a chance.”

  She takes off another point. They saw their apples, mutter, mutter, curse, curse, old cow, stupid teacher.

  David Petrakis My Lab Partner cuts his apple into eight equal wedges. He doesn’t say a word. He is in the middle of a Pre-Med Week. David can’t make up his mind between pre-med and pre-law. Ninth grade is a minor inconvenience to him. A zit-cream commercial before the Feature Film of Life.

  Applesmell soaks the air. One time when I was little, my parents took me to an orchard. Daddy set me high in an apple tree. It was like falling up into a storybook, yummy and red and leaf and the branch not shaking a bit. Bees bumbled through the air, so stuffed with apple they couldn’t be bothered to sting me. The sun warmed my hair, and a wind pushed my mother into my father’s arms, and all the apple-picking parents and children smiled for a long, long minute.

  That’s how biology class smells.

  I bite my apple. White teeth red apple hard juice deep bite. David sputters.

  David: “You’re not supposed to do that! She’ll kill you! You’re supposed to cut it! Didn’t you even listen? You’ll lose points!”

  Clearly, David missed the apple-tree-sitting requirement of childhood.

  I cut the rest of my apple into four fat pieces. My apple has twelve seeds. One of the seeds has split its shell and reaches a white hand upward. An apple tree growing from an apple seed growing in an apple. I show the little plantseed to Ms. Keen. She gives me extra credit. David rolls his eyes. Biology is so cool.

  FIRST AMENDMENT, SECOND VERSE

  Rebellion is in the air. We only have a week left before Winter Break. Students are getting away with murder and the staff is too worn out to care. I hear rumors of eggnog in the faculty lounge. This revolutionary spirit is even breaking out in social studies class. David Petrakis is fighting back about the freedom-to-speak thing.

  I get to class on time. I don’t dare use a stolen late pass with Mr. Neck. David takes a seat in the front row and sets a tape recorder on his desk. As Mr. Neck opens his mouth to speak, David presses the Play and Record buttons at the same time, like a pianist hitting an opening chord.

  Mr. Neck teaches the class straight. We are galloping toward the Revolutionary War. He writes “No Taxation Without Representation” on the board. Very cool rhyming slogan. Too bad they didn’t have bumper stickers back then. The colonists wanted a voice in the British Parliament. No one in power would listen to their complaints. The lecture is going to sound great on the tape. Mr. Neck has prepared notes and everything. His voice is as smooth as a new-poured road. No bumps.

  The tape will not be able to pick up the angry gleam in Mr. Neck’s eyes, though. He glares at David the whole time he’s speaking. If a teacher stared murder at me for forty-eight minutes, I’d turn into a puddle of melted Jell-O. David stares back.

  The school office is the best place to go for gossip. I overhear the sound bite about the Petrakises’ lawyer while I wait for another lecture from my guidance counselor about not living up to my potential. How does she know what my potential is? Potential for what? When she talks blah blah, I usually count the dots in her ceiling tiles.

  The guidance counselor is late today, so I sit invisible in the red plastic chair while the secretary brings a PTA volunteer up to warp speed on the Petrakis thing. David’s parents have hired a big, nasty, expensive lawyer. He is threatening to sue the school district and Mr. Neck for everything from incompetence to civil rights violations. David’s tape recorder is allowed in class to document “potential future violations.” The secretary doesn’t sound too upset at the idea that Mr. Neck could get canned. I bet she knows him personally.

  David must have mentioned the hairy-eyeball treatment to his lawyer that afternoon because the next day there is a videocamera set up in the back of class. David Petrakis is my hero.

  WOMBATS RULE!

  I let Heather talk me into going to the Winter Assembly. She hates sitting alone almost as much as I do. The Marthas have not issued an imperial invitation for her to sit with them. She’s bummed, but she tries not to show it. In perfect Martha style, she wears a green sweater with a huge Santa face on it, red leggings, and fluffy boots. Too, too perfect. I refuse to wear anything seasonal.

  Heather gives me my Christmas present early—bell earrings that chime when I turn my head. This means I’ll have to get her something. Maybe I’ll go wholesome and buy a friendship necklace. She’s the friendship-necklace type. The bells are a great choice. I shake my head all through Principal Principal’s speech to drown out his voice. The orchestra plays an unrecognizable tune. Heather says the school board won’t let them perform Christmas carols or Hanukkah songs or Kwanza tunes. Instead of multicultural, we have no-cultural.

  The high point of the assembly is the announcement of our new name and mascot. Principal Principal reads the vote total: Bees—3. Icebergs—17. Hilltoppers—1. Wombats—32. The other 1,547 votes were write-ins or illegible.

  The Merryweather Wombats. Has a nice ring. We are the Wombats, woozy, wicked Wombats! Worried, withdrawn, weepy, weird Wombats. We pass Raven Cheerleader and Amber Cheerleader on the way to my bus. They wrinkle their brows as they struggle to rhyme “wombat.” Democracy is a wonderful institution.

  WINTER BREAK

  School is out and there are two days until Christmas. Mom left a note saying I can put up the tree if I want. I drag the tree out of the basement and stand it in the driveway so I can sweep the dust and cobwebs off it with a broom. We leave the lights on it from year to year. All I have to do is hang the ornaments.

  There is something about Christmas that requires a rug rat. Little kids make Christmas fun. I wonder if we could rent one for the holidays. When I was tiny we would buy a real tree and stay up late drinking hot chocolate and finding just the right place for the special decorations. It seems like my parents gave up the magic when I figured out the Santa lie. Maybe I shouldn’t have told them I knew where the presents really came from. It broke their hearts.

  I bet they’d be divorced by now if I hadn’t been born. I’m sure I was a huge disappointment
. I’m not pretty or smart or athletic. I’m just like them—an ordinary drone dressed in secrets and lies. I can’t believe we have to keep playacting until I graduate. It’s a shame we can’t just admit that we have failed family living, sell the house, split up the money, and get on with our lives.

  Merry Christmas.

  I call Heather, but she’s shopping. What would Heather do if she were here and the house didn’t feel like Christmas? I will pretend to be Heather. I bundle up in geeky snow clothes, wrap a scarf around my head, and plunge into a snowdrift. The back yard is gorgeous. The trees and bushes are all wrapped in ice, reflecting sunlight into something powerful. I just have to make a snow angel.

  I tromp to an unmarked piece of snow and let myself fall backward. The scarf falls over my mouth as I wave my wings. The wet wool smells like first grade, walking to school on a cold morning with my milk money jangling in the tips of my mittens. We lived in a different house then, a smaller house. Mom worked at the jewelry counter and was home after school. Dad had a nicer boss and talked all the time about buying a boat. I believed in Santa Claus.

  The wind stirs the branches overhead. My heart clangs like a fire bell. The scarf is too tight on my mouth. I pull it off to breathe. The moisture on my skin freezes. I want to make a wish, but I don’t know what to wish for. And I have snow up my back.

  I break off branches from the holly bushes and a few sprigs of pine and carry them inside. I tie them together with red yarn and set them on the fireplace mantel and the dining-room table. It doesn’t look as nice as when the lady on TV did it, but it makes the place smell better. I still wish we could borrow a kid for a few days.

  We sleep in till noon on Christmas. I give Mom a black sweater and Dad a CD with sixties hits. They give me a handful of gift certificates, a TV for my room, ice skates, and a sketch pad with charcoal pencils. They say they have noticed me drawing.

  I almost tell them right then and there. Tears flood my eyes. They noticed I’ve been trying to draw. They noticed. I try to swallow the snowball in my throat. This isn’t going to be easy. I’m sure they suspect I was at the party. Maybe they even heard about me calling the cops. But I want to tell them everything as we sit there by our plastic Christmas tree while the Rudolph, the Red-Nosed Reindeer video plays.

  I wipe my eyes. They wait with unsure smiles. The snowball grows larger. When I snuck home that night, they weren’t in the house. Both cars were gone. I was supposed to have been at Rachel’s all night long—they weren’t expecting me, that’s for sure. I showered until the hot water was gone, then I crawled in bed and did not sleep. Mom pulled in around 2 a.m., Dad just before sunup. They had not been together. What had they been doing? I thought I knew. How can I talk to them about that night? How can I start?

  Rudolph sets out on his ice floe. “I’m independent,” he declares. Dad looks at his watch. Mom stuffs the wrapping paper into a garbage bag. They leave the room. I am still sitting on the floor, holding the paper and charcoals. I didn’t even say “Thank you.”

  HARD LABOR

  I had two days of freedom before my parents decided I wasn’t going to “lounge around the house all vacation.” I have to go to work with them. I’m not legally old enough to work, but they don’t care. I spend the weekend at Mom’s store, dealing with all the merchandise brought back by grumpy people. Did anyone in Syracuse get what they wanted for Christmas? Sure doesn’t seem like it. Since I’m underage, Mom sticks me in the basement stockroom. I’m supposed to refold the shirts, sticking them with eleven pins. The other employees watch me like I’m a rat, like my mother has sent me to the basement to spy on them. I fold a few shirts, then kick back and take out a book. They relax. I am one of them. I don’t want to be there either.

  Mom obviously knows I did squat, but she doesn’t say anything in the car. We don’t leave until way after dark because she has so much work to do. Sales have sucked—she didn’t get anywhere near the goal she set. Layoffs are coming. We stop at a traffic light. Mom closes her eyes. Her skin is a flat gray color, like underwear washed so many times it’s about to fall apart. I feel bad that I didn’t fold more shirts for her.

  The next day they send me to Dad’s. He sells some kind of insurance, but I don’t know how or why. He sets up a card table for me in his office. My job is to put calendars into envelopes, seal them up, and stick on mailing labels. He sits at his desk and talks to buddies on the phone.

  He gets to work with his feet up. He gets to laugh with his friends on the phone. He gets to call out for lunch. I think he deserves to be in the basement folding shirts and helping my mother. I deserve to be watching cable, or taking a nap, or even going to Heather’s house. By lunchtime, my stomach boils with anger. Dad’s secretary says something nice to me when she drops off my lunch, but I don’t answer her. I glare daggers at the back of my father’s head. Angry angry angry. I have another million envelopes to close. I run my tongue over the gross gummy envelope flap. The sharp edge of the flap cuts my tongue. I taste my blood. IT’s face suddenly pops up in my mind. All the anger whistles out of me like I’m a popped balloon. Dad is really pissed when he sees how many calendars I bled on. He mentions a need for professional help.

  I am actually grateful to go back to school.

  FOUL

  Now that there are two feet of snow on the ground, the fizz-ed teachers let us have class inside. They keep the gym at about forty degrees because “a little cool air never hurt anyone.” Easy for them to say, they wear sweatpants.

  The first inside sport is basketball. Ms. Connors teaches us how to throw foul shots. I step up to the line, bounce the ball twice, and put it through the net. Ms. Connors tells me to do it again. And again. She keeps bouncing balls my way, and I keep putting them up—swish, swish, swish. Forty-two shots later, my arms wobble and I miss one. By that time, the entire class has gathered around and is watching. Nicole is just about bursting. “You have to join the team!” she shouts.

  Ms. Connors: “Meet me back here during activity period. You are Going Places with That Arm.”

  Me:

  It is a sad and downtrodden Ms. Connors who meets me three hours later. She holds my current grades by two fingers: D, C, B–, D, C–, C, A. No basketball team for me, because the A was in art, so my GPA is a whopping 1.7. Ms. Connors did not win a lacrosse scholarship by being demure or hesitant. She times me in wind sprints, then puts me back on the line to shoot.

  Ms. Connors: “Try an outside shot bank it off the board have you thought about a tutor nice shot it’s those Ds that are killing you try a lay-up that needs work I could maybe do something about the social studies grade but your English teacher is impossible she hates sports do you have a hook shot?”

  I just do what I’m told. If I felt like talking, I would explain that she couldn’t pay me enough to play on her basketball team. All that running? Sweating? Getting knocked around by genetic mutants? I don’t think so. Now, if basketball had a designated foul-shot shooter, maybe I’d consider. The other team fouls you, you get to pay them back. Boom. But that’s not the way it works, in basketball or in life.

  Ms. Connors looks so eager. I like the sensation of succeeding brilliantly at something—even if it is just thunking in foul shots one after another. I’ll let her dream a few more minutes. The boys’ varsity team dribbles in. Their record is zero and five. Go Wombats!

  Basketball Pole, aka Brendan Keller, the one who contributed to my mashed-potato-and-gravy humiliation on the first day of school, stands under the basket. The other guys run drills and pass in to him. Brendan reaches up a skinny octopus tentacle and casually drops the ball through the hoop. Our boys are unbeatable as long as they are the only team on the floor.

  The boys’ coach barks something I don’t understand and the team lines up behind Basketball Pole for free-throw practice. He dribbles, bounce, two, three. He shoots. Brick. Bounce, two, three … Brick. Brick. Brick. Can’t sink a shot from the line to save his skinny neck.

  Ms. Connors talks to
the boys’ coach while I watch the rest of the team hit a sorry thirty percent. Then she blows her whistle and waves me over. The boys clear out of the way and I take my place on the line. “Show ’em,” commands Ms. Connors. Trained seal me, bounce, bounce, up, swish; again, and again, and again, until the guys stop bouncing and everyone is watching. Ms. Connors and Basketball Coach talk serious frown talk arms on hips, biceps flexing. The boys stare at me—visitor from the Planet Foul Shot. Who is this girl?