"What do you mean, baby?"
"You have to take care of Christina's house and our house too," Ruth said.
Her mama smiled. "Well, now," she replied. "One I do for work. The other I do for love."
Just then Rachel walked into the kitchen and snorted. "It's still double the dishes," she said.
Mama gave her a sharp glance. "Then maybe you should start doing your share of chores?"
It was at that moment Ruth remembered the maple leaf candy. "I have something to show you," she announced. "They were on top of Maia's birthday cupcakes."
She dug her hand into her sweatshirt pocket and unwrapped the paper toweling. The leaf, however, had broken into pieces, some so fine they'd turned themselves back into granulated sugar.
"What's that?" Rachel asked.
"A leaf made of candy," Ruth answered.
"Okay." Rachel laughed. "If you say so."
--
After dinner, Mama told Rachel to take Ruth with her to play outside so she could sit down with Granny in the living room and put her feet up for a hot second. Ruth sat on the curb while Rachel and two of her friends giggled over the older boys shooting hoops in the lot across the street. "You see Joziah?" Denyce said. "He all that."
Nia popped a bubble with her gum. "I heard he's strapped."
"What?" Rachel said. "That's wack."
Sometimes it seemed to Ruth that Rachel and her friends spoke a different language.
"He ain't got no gun," Denyce said. "He just like to tell people he do."
A gun? Ruth didn't realize she'd spoken out loud until the girls all stared at her. "Oh, look," Nia said. "We shocked your baby sister."
If Mama knew Rachel was anywhere close to the boys in this neighborhood who got into trouble, she would whup her and keep her locked inside.
"Leave me alone, Nia," Ruth said. "I'm not bothering you."
Nia smirked. "So what you sayin'?"
"Hey, Ruth," Denyce asked. "How's your fancy school?" She got up from the stoop and sat down next to Ruth. Nia followed suit, sandwiching her on the other side.
"Look at that," Nia said, grabbing Ruth's wrist. "I think your skin's getting lighter."
"You practically a ghost," Denyce said, and both girls broke up laughing.
"Aight, you fools," Rachel interrupted. "Leave her be. It ain't her fault she smarter than both your brains put together."
"I'm going inside," Ruth announced, but she was pretty sure no one cared.
Her mama and Granny were on the couch, watching Wheel of Fortune. "What's the matter, baby?" Mama asked.
"Nothing," Ruth said. "I just wanted to take a bath."
She went into the bathroom the four of them shared. The tub had a crack in it that was the shape of a lightning bolt, and Ruth used to think that the water would run right through Mrs. Nattuck's ceiling, but since she'd never complained and they bathed every night, that probably wasn't the case. She ran the water and put on a shower cap to cover her hair and sank down to her shoulders. Then she lathered up soap on her washcloth. Her palms were pink, as pink as Christina's. She flipped her hand over, to the light brown of her wrist and forearm. Her skin had always been lighter than Rachel's; her sister had been dark as a berry her whole life. Was that why Ruth was the one who was going to Dalton?
Ruth picked up the washcloth and scrubbed at her left shoulder. She scrubbed so hard she could see the pink bloom of irritation under the brown of her skin.
It hurt.
It was beautiful.
--
On Monday, Ruth woke up before her alarm. She had brushed her teeth and dressed and packed up her schoolwork before her mama even came out of her bedroom. "Isn't someone in a hurry!" Mama said, but she smiled.
Ruth couldn't wait to get back to Dalton. Today they would be playing a math game and the winning team would get Halloween candy. She had practiced her times tables all weekend. She would win, and then she would share the candy with Maia and the other girls, and this time they would not just tolerate her, they'd welcome her.
When they reached Ms. Mina's brownstone and went in the service entrance, Ruth raced up the stairs. She sat on a kitchen stool, kicking her legs, and printed out multiplication equations on a napkin. Ms. Mina came into the kitchen for a cup of coffee. "It's just finished brewing," Mama said. "I would have brought it up to you."
"Oh, I know that, Lou," she answered. "I was up all night with the baby and my body simply couldn't wait another second." She glanced at Ruth, who was now solving her equations. "Well, look at you!" Ms. Mina said. "And I can barely get Christina out of bed!"
But this wasn't true because at that moment Christina came into the kitchen, wearing a rhinestone headband, to pick up her school lunch from Mama.
--
There were two teams. Ms. Thomas randomly divided the students in half, and set up a buzzer on a desk in the middle of the classroom. One member of each team would face off as she recited a multiplication equation. The first person to hit the buzzer and say the correct answer would get to shoot a ball made of masking tape into one of three baskets. The farthest one was worth the most points. At the end of the game, the team with the most points would win.
Ruth faced off against Marcus first, and was given a cream puff of a question: 3 x 4. She rang the buzzer and tossed the tape ball into the trash can that was closest, because she didn't want to risk missing completely and they were better safe than sorry. They rotated through two more times, and each time, Ruth won her heat (6 x 6, and the very tricky 8 x 9). Maia was on the other team, along with Christina. Ruth knew it wasn't charitable, but when Maia screwed up and said 4 x 7 was 24, her stomach flipped with satisfaction.
Finally it was tied, and Ms. Thomas said they had to choose a designated shooter from each team to make a winning basket. It would be sudden death--the person who was picked would throw the tape ball and then the opposing team's pick would do the same, until one of them missed. Ruth leaned back against the wall, waiting for her team to rally around Edward or Lucas, who were the most athletic in the class. But instead, someone suggested her name.
At first, she flushed with pride--was she being chosen because her team recognized her as an MVP? But then she realized that wasn't what was going on here. "Yeah, Ruth," Edward said, nodding. "You know how to play basketball, don't you?"
Ruth nodded. She did know how--she'd watched neighborhood kids for years. But she'd never actually played the game herself.
"Of course she does," said Lucas. "Duh."
Reluctantly, Ruth took the tape ball and sank a basket into the farthest trash bin. Her team shouted and Lucas even gave her a high five.
The designated shooter for the other team was a tall boy named Jack who stuck out his tongue when he was concentrating, which wasn't often. He narrowed his eyes and let the tape ball roll off his fingertips. He, too, made the farthest basket.
Ruth took the ball again. She was not an athlete. She could barely walk and sing simultaneously during the Christmas pageant at church. There was absolutely no way she could be lucky enough to succeed a second time around. Then she remembered how Mama said there was no such thing as luck, just prayers being answered. So even though Ruth was certain God had more important things on His mind, she called on Jesus under her breath, and made a second basket. A third. Her teammates went wild. Water into wine? Ha, Ruth thought. This newfound athletic skill was a true miracle.
Jack took the ball, bounced on the tips of his toes, and stuck out his tongue. He arched one arm up, but the tape got snagged on the cuff of his sweater and fell about six feet short of the closest trash can.
"We have a winner!" Ms. Thomas sang, above a chorus of Do over! and Not fair! Ruth's team was hollering, patting her on the back and the shoulder, shouting her name. The teacher took out a bag of candy--Reese's peanut butter cups and Nestle Crunch bars and Gobstoppers--and everyone on Ruth's team was allowed to stick their hand in and take a fistful.
Ruth made sure she got extra Reese's, then walked
to Christina's desk. Maia was sitting on the top of it, whispering to Christina. "Want some?" Ruth asked, and she held out her cupped hands, letting them choose first.
"Everyone knows why you won," Maia said.
Ruth lifted her chin a notch. "Because I knew my times tables."
"More like because of how you look." Maia tossed her hair. "I don't want your dumb candy," she said, and she walked away.
Ruth stared at her. Christina fished through the candy Ruth held, choosing a Reese's. She unwrapped it and took a bite of the candy, leaving little ridges in the wake of her teeth. "I knew my times tables," Ruth murmured.
"It's not you, Ruth," Christina said. She popped the rest of the candy into her mouth. "She just doesn't like Black people."
--
Ruth watched her granny's hands twist Rachel's hair, pulling and crisscrossing to magically create the neat cornrows that weaved across her scalp in parallel zigzags. Rachel winced and whined, like always, but the end result was the same: tight, even braids that fell down to her shoulders. "Done," Granny pronounced, holding up the big hand mirror so that Rachel could see the back. "Ruth?"
Every other Sunday night, Granny washed and styled her granddaughters' hair. Granny had run her own place for years before it got to be too much for her to stand on her feet all day. Ruth climbed onto the stool, her hair still damp under the towel.
Granny's hands rooted through Ruth's hair, her fingernails scraping the scalp in a massage. She took her comb and made the first part.
"Wait--can you put the hood thing on and use the hot comb instead?" Ruth blurted out. "Please?"
Granny laughed, her hands on her wide hips. Ruth had always thought her granny looked like the sail of a ship--heavy-masted, wide, implacable. "Lou, you hear this? Queen of Sheba here wants a press."
Mama, who was sewing a button onto one of Ruth's white school shirts, looked up from where she sitting at the kitchen table. "You should be grateful your granny's doing anything to your hair," she said. "We're not running a salon."
Granny was pulling tighter on her hair. "Ain't never had no complaints before from my own grandbaby..."
"It's not you," Ruth said, hearing Christina's words beneath her own. "It's that I want to look more...grown up."
What she wanted was to look like Maia, with her river of shining hair. But that was about as likely as Ruth waking up in a millionaire's penthouse. Granny and Mama exchanged a look, and then Mama shrugged.
"Fine," Granny sighed. "Go get the comb."
Ruth scrambled to the cabinet where they kept the bonnet dryer and hot comb. Granny set the drying cap over her head and then placed the comb on the metal coil of the stove. After the bonnet cut off, she ran the Super Gro through a section of hair. Ruth tried not to think about how she had explained this to the other girls; how they had looked at her like she was an alien.
She held still as Granny ran the comb through her hair; she'd been burned enough to know the consequences of fidgeting. By the time she was finished, Mama had mended two more shirts, let out one of Rachel's skirts ("That girl grows like a weed," she muttered), and darned a sock. Rachel walked into the kitchen to get an apple out of the refrigerator and looked at Ruth. "You goin' somewhere special?" she asked.
"Just school."
"It looks good," Rachel said, as Ruth narrowed her eyes, suspicious. "Like that skater lady. Dorothy Hamill."
"For real?" Ruth asked.
Rachel took a bite. "Nope," she said.
"Rachel!" Mama warned, but her sister was already cruising out of the kitchen on a laugh.
"Don't you listen to her, baby," Granny said. "You beautiful, inside and out."
She held up the mirror so that Ruth could see both the front and the back. Her hair was straight and shiny, curving just slightly at the bottom. "You know what would make this even more perfect?" Ruth said. "A headband."
"So go get a headband," Granny said. "You got that nice red one you wore at Easter."
"Some of the girls in my class have the kind that sparkle," Ruth said, as casually as she could manage. "I wish I had one."
Mama didn't even look up from the sock she was mending. "We're not made of money, Ruth," she said, and she bit off the thread with her teeth.
--
On Columbus Day, Dalton was closed, but Mama still had to work. Rachel was invited to Nia's apartment and Ruth tagged along to the Upper West Side to play with Christina. Since Mr. Sam was out, Christina had Mama set up his movie projector, so that she and Ruth could watch the Wonderful World of Disney films that lined his shelves in their round metal tins. He worked in television, and their house was full of treasures Ruth could appreciate, like that, and others she couldn't--like the framed, signed photographs of movie stars she didn't know: Doris Day, Jack Lemmon, Steve McQueen.
Ruth and Christina ate grilled cheese sandwiches and tomato soup that Mama had made, and watched Cinderella. Christina was the only person Ruth knew who could watch a movie in her house and not have to go to a movie theater. They sat on Mr. Sam's red leather couch and shared an afghan that Ms. Mina had knitted when she was going through a crafty phase.
When the prince kissed Cinderella at the end, Christina said, "You know, it doesn't just work like that."
"Like what?"
"Like you can marry a prince if you're some nobody. You have to have a title."
Ruth thought about this. "Like a book?"
"I don't know," Christina admitted. "But not everyone has one. Maia said."
Maia said. Of course. "Does she have a title?" Ruth asked.
Christina considered this. "Bossypants?"
A surprised laugh bubbled out of Ruth. Then Christina was laughing, too, and it was the two of them and no one else, like it used to be.
Christina turned to her when the projector started flapping, the film having run its course. "Now what should we do?" she said. "Want to see my new Malibu Barbie?"
We. Was there a better word in the English language?
"Christina?" Ruth said hesitantly. "This is fun, right?"
Christina looked at her sidelong. "Yeah, weirdo," she said, grinning.
"So when we're at school, then...are you mad at me?"
There was a pause. "No," Christina said, but in that hiccup of time, Ruth heard a thousand yeses. "Why would you even think that?"
"Because you act different when it's not just us."
"No I don't!"
"You do," Ruth said, but now she was second-guessing herself. Was she imagining it? Christina had been nothing short of nice all day. Maybe the problem wasn't Christina, but Ruth herself. It wasn't like it was Christina's job to defend Ruth from Maia; Ruth had to do that on her own. So why was she blaming Christina?
Suddenly she realized Christina was crying. "Why are you being so mean to me?" she said, just as Mama walked in to take away their empty plates.
"Christina?" Mama said, alarmed. She crouched down and gave Christina a tissue from her own pocket to dry her face. "What happened?"
"I don't want to play anymore," Christina sobbed, red-faced, not even looking at Ruth.
"Okay, then, you go on up to your room, and I'll bring you some dessert. I baked fresh blondies. That sound good to you?"
Christina sniffled and nodded, and a minute later, she was gone. Mama folded her arms. "What did you say to upset Ms. Christina?"
The truth? Ruth thought. But instead she lowered her eyes. "Christina's only my friend when we're here," she confessed. "The minute we walk through the door of school, everything changes."
She expected Mama to get mad at her for lying. After all, it had been nearly six weeks and Ruth had gone on and on about how great school was, how many friends she had made. But instead Mama sighed and took Ruth's hand. "Baby girl," she said, "nothing changes."
--
Two days later, Ms. Thomas got a student teacher. Miss Van Vleet was in college and would be coming to their classroom only on Tuesday and Thursday mornings. She would help the students who needed extra wor
k with their writing, and she would be teaching some of the lessons. But that first day, her main job was to learn everyone's name, and she was really, really bad at it.
She called Maia Mara, and Lola Lulu. She mixed up Edward and Lucas.
Ms. Thomas tried to help her by giving her a stack of graded papers to hand out after recess. Miss Van Vleet wandered around the classroom, sometimes asking other students for help. Some of the boys tried to confuse her as a prank, and after that, when she had a question, she went straight to Ms. Thomas.
"Which one is Ruth again?" Miss Van Vleet asked.
Ms. Thomas looked up from where she was marking papers. She glanced around the room to see where Ruth was sitting, and Ruth met her gaze. Instead of pointing, she turned to Miss Van Vleet and hesitated for a moment. Then she said, "She's the girl with the red sneakers."
Ruth looked down at her red Keds. There were three other girls in her classroom who had the same shoes.
On the other hand, she was the only Black student.
--
That night, Rachel was being grounded without television privileges because she'd decked a girl for stealing her HoHos at lunch. That punishment wouldn't have bothered Ruth, who would have happily sat in her room reading, but Rachel had never willingly picked up a book, as far as Ruth could remember. So instead, while Ruth tried to memorize words for her spelling test, she had to block out the sound of Rachel galumphing around the room they shared, trying to find some other way to occupy her time.
"You want me to test you?" Rachel offered.
"Why?"
There was probably a catch. With Rachel, there was always a catch. It wasn't that she didn't love her sister; it was just that they saw the world through two different lenses.
"Because I'm being nice. And because I'm bored as all get out." She reached out her hand, and hesitantly Ruth gave her the list of words. Rachel climbed onto her bed and stuffed a pillow behind her head. "Baby words," she muttered, reading them over. "Means."