April Shadows

  "Okay." I said in a voice smaller than I wanted.

  I returned to my room to gather what was left to put in the car while she showered. Ms. Panda was on the bed staring at me. It was true that when I was little. I did speak to the stuffed animal as if it could hear and understand all that I said. Now I felt as though I had been thrown back through time and was standing in front of it as a five-year-old again.

  "We've got to go. Mr. Panda," I said. "You're going to Eve in a new home and sleep in a new bed. Don't look so sad. You're making me feel worse. This isn't the greatest place of all to live, is it? This isn't some kind of paradise. Why should I care so much? People move all the time. I would have moved away from here someday. anyway. I don't care about this room. It's just a room. Stop looking Eke it's the end of the world!" I shouted without realizing it.

  I heard Brenda behind me. She was in her robe and stared incredulously.

  "I thought someone had come to the house," she said. "What are you doing?"

  "Nothing."

  She stared another moment. "Let's get the hell out of here," she declared, and returned to her room to dress.

  I scooped up Mr. Panda, put on my coat, grabbed my carry-on bag which held my final personal items, and marched out of the house. I threw Mr. Panda into a carton in the trunk and squeezed my carry-on bag between two cartons. Then I got into the car and sat with my arms folded. waiting.

  A very slight drizzle began. The drops were as small as of sand and barely made a sound against the windshield. The sky wasn't all that dark. either. Maybe it was only raining over our house and driveway. I thought. Maybe these were the tears of the dead.

  I turned when I heard Brenda come out. She put down her last bag, locked the door, picked up the bag, and hurried to the car. She put the bag on the rear seat and got in quickly. It started to rain a little harder. She didn't even look at me. She started the engine and backed us out of the driveway. Then she put the car in drive and accelerated.

  "Don't look back." she warned. "Just look ahead." I did what she said.

  And we were on our way.

  Celia had given her good directions, so that in a little less than two hours, we were pulling into the driveway of our new home.

  It was much smaller than I had anticipated from listening to Celia talk about it. To me, it looked no bigger than a bungalow, and it didn't have a garage. It had a carport just big enough for one car. There was a screened-in front porch with a patch of front lawn about one-tenth the size of our lawn. Scattered in front of the porch and around the lawn were a half dozen evergreen English boxwood shrubs. A wooden landing that looked like an afterthought was spread at the front door.

  As soon as we pulled up, the screen door opened immediately, and Celia stepped out. She was in a pair of jeans and a blue work shirt with the sleeves rolled up to her elbows and the shirt tied at her waist. She had a bandana tied around her hair and held a mop like a jousting lance at her side. She placed it against the door.

  "Welcome!" she cried, holding out her arms.

  Brenda got out quickly and headed toward her. I stepped out just as they hugged and kissed. Then they both turned to me.

  "Wait until you see my discovery. April," Celia said, turning to me. "You're going to have your own little place. There's a studio behind the house, and it has a bed in it. There's no shower or bath, but there's a bathroom, and you can just use the house shower and bath, of course. The important thing is it will be your place, your own little place."

  I squinted skeptically. A studio with no bathtub or shower. What was it?

  "I've already fixed the bed for you. I've been busy as a worker bee," she declared. "I bought us all new bedding, towels, linens, everything to start. I even stocked the kitchen! Let me show April the studio."

  "Let's start unpacking first," Brenda said. "No sense wasting a trip."

  It seemed to me she didn't even look at the house. We could have checked into a garage, and it would have been the same thing. Where we were now didn't matter. All that mattered was we were somewhere else.

  "Ave, aye. General," Celia said, saluting and winking at me.

  We returned to the car and began to carry cartons and bags into the house.

  I had to be grateful there was a studio apartment. I thought.

  The living room was a quarter the size of ours, and the kitchen was not much bigger than that as well. There wasn't a separate dining room, just a portion of the living room utilized as such. All of the furniture looked as if it had fallen off a truck on its way to a garbage dump. I could see the springs had popped out under the long dark blue sofa. It looked as if it had been there from the day the house was built and not moved an inch in any direction since. Whoever had set the living room up had designed the furnishing around an old television set. Celia immediately announced that it didn't work and we'd have to replace it.

  The one nice aspect of the small house was its flooring, all a dark oak hardwood that was well crafted and of such good quality that time only made it look richer. There were a few area rugs scattered about. The kitchen sink had large yellow stains around the drain, and the faucet had a leak. There was a fourburner gas stove and a small refrigerator that sounded a minute or two away from heart failure. The Formica counters were a faded yellow, as were the walls in both the living room and the kitchen. An antique toaster was set under one of the two windows in the kitchen, both with drab white curtains hanging listlessly around them.

  The cabinets were open and showed where Celia had installed new shelving paper and neatly arranged what dishware there was with the house. She had also stocked one of the cabinets with staple items.

  What was the main bedroom was the biggest room in the house, nearly the size of my bedroom back home. Whoever had lived here before must have directed all his or her attention to it, because it had newer, better-quality curtains framing the two large windows at the sides of the large headboard. The bed itself was a four-post canopy. There was a vanity table on the right with a good-size oval mirror in a mahogany frame. Besides the two nightstands, the furnishing included a built-in armoire and another dresser that matched the canopy bed frame. There was only one closet.

  The second bedroom of the house was half the size, if that, and now used as some sort of storage area where the owner had put some broken furniture, a hammock frame, and a folding table. There was no bed. Down from it and just before the back door was the bathroom. Instead of tile, it had cracked gray linoleum. The white walls were in desperate need of washing. There was no stall shower, and the tub needed a shower curtain. I wondered how the two of them would arrange their toiletries in such a small cabinet with two short shelves beneath. There was only one window in the bathroom, and it had no curtain, just a shade.

  If this was the house. I wondered what the studio apartment looked like. Celia opened the back door and told me to follow her across the small backyard to the shack behind the house. The door of it stuck, so she had to pull it hard to get it open.

  "We'll fix that," she told me. She reached in to turn on a light and entered.

  I followed, looking back to see if Brenda was coming, but she was already returning to the car to get another carton. The studio apartment was just one room with a pull-out sofa she had fixed with new linens, pillow cases and a blanket, a desk, and a chair. The bathroom wasn't much bigger than the bathroom on a commercial jet. It had a cracked mirror above the small sink.

  "I know it doesn't look like much,' Celia said. "but just think how you can fix it up. You can do anything you like to it." she added, and it was on the tip of my tongue to ask. Does that include setting it on fire?

  Her voice was full of cheerfulness and excitement in an attempt to compensate for the dreary lodging.

  "The important thing is it's your private area. and I know how much that matters to a teenager. It was always important to me when I was your age," she continued. "I know it's not what you're used to, but we'll make this into something. You'll see."

  "It's
all right," I said. If I hadn't, she would have gone on and on about it. I set down my carton of personal things. "We'd better get back to the car and help Brenda."

  "Right. After we get everything into the house, we'll freshen up and go to this great restaurant just a few blocks away, the Memphis Belle. The waiters and waitresses all wear these quaint old-fashioned costumes, and the place is decorated like the dining room of some antebellum plantation house. You'll have so much fun exploring this area of Memphis, and I'm sure it won't be long before you've made new friends."

  "Let's help Brenda," I said in response, and walked out.

  It wasn't necessary to go through the house to get to the front. I went along the south side of the house where the grass was spotty and around to the driveway. Brenda was already back at the car for another load from the U-Haul. I just pitched in behind her. She glanced at me.

  "It's only temporary," she said. "After the school year. we'll find something better."

  I shrugged, which I knew annoyed her. She put the carton down and turned to me.

  "You've got to stop that indifference. April. When something bothers you, declare it, state it, take a position. Start letting people know you exist. Don't be afraid of annoying or angering people. You have a right to your opinion."

  "Okay," I said, my eyes narrowing to squeeze the tears that were pouring into them. "I hate it here. I want to go home. I want Daddy to be alive and the way he was when he loved us. and I want Mama singing in the morning and all of us laughing at the breakfast table."

  Celia came up behind me. I could feel her there. but I didn't turn.

  "I want to start over so I care about myself. I want to have friends, real friends, and I want to dress up and go to parties and meet boys and have so much fun I'm sick of it. I want to be normal!" I screamed,

  I screamed so loudly that some birds perched on a corner of the roof of the house leaped into the air, crying to one another that this was no place to light on for a late. afternoon meditation. Maybe they'd tell the whole bird kingdom, and not a single one would perch on the roof or even nearby.

  I spun on Celia. She had that damn face of understanding. "Normal!" I shouted at her.

  She blinked.

  "Okay," Brenda said. I turned back to her. "Now I know we're really related."

  She didn't bat an eyelash, but the silence that followed was so heavy none of us breathed.

  And then she laughed.

  And Celia laughed.

  And I couldn't help it.

  I laughed, too, right through my tears. I laughed harder than I thought possible ever again.

  The three of us hugged and then returned to unloading the car, now with a spurt of energy Brenda would call a second wind and I would call a miracle.

  13 First Steps

  . Brenda left it up to me to decide when I wanted to enter the new school. but Celia thought I shouldn't wait at all. She lectured about how necessary it was for me to let back into the stream of life and not to loiter about thinking constantly of the tragedy. She continually referred to herself and her own similar experiences.

  "I don't mean to diminish your personal loss, It's terrible, but it's so easy to surrender to sadness and self-pity." she told me. "They're actually comfortable at this point and safe. You're so vulnerable because you've been so emotionally damaged. It takes very little to hurt you and get you crying, even if it's only crying inside. The only way to build your strength is to get involved in something new, dive right in."

  I did start working on my pathetic studio apartment. I picked out some curtains for the windows and some paint to use for window trim. I bought a bright pink, fluffy area rug to put beside the pull-out sofa and then Iwent about washing and polishing whatever I could. I bought some things for the little bathroom. too.

  I did most of this after we had zone to dinner at the Memphis Belle. We were all quite hungry, and they had a great menu with so much variety. Celia made a pitch for us sharing a dessert called a Mud Pie, which was chocolate and vanilla ice cream in a graham cracker crust. I looked at Brenda. With Mama gone and Brenda my guardian, I would feel her looking over my shoulder even when she wasn't with me. I thought. She glanced at me and then at Celia before reluctantly relenting, and we did share one. We would have had to share it, anyway, because they were too big even for me. Actually. I ate the least. Celia ate the most, and we left a quarter of it because Brenda ate so little, and I wasn't going to be the one to finish it off.

  That night, after we returned from the department store where I picked up the curtains, paint, and rug, all of us were busy unpacking and setting up the new living quarters. Celia had to return to school in the morning. but Brenda was still on family bereavement leave. By midday, however, she had done as much as she thought necessary and decided to attend a late- afternoon class and then go to the special basketball practice for the all-star game. Celia was right about my needing to occupy my time. When we were all together the second night for our first dinner in the new home. I announced that I wanted to register in the morning,

  "I don't have a class until ten," Celia said. "I could take her."

  "No, they won't let you sign things. I'm her legal guardian," Brenda told her.

  Celia agreed, but she looked so disappointed I wondered if I had become a pet project for her, someone on whom she could practice all the psychological theory she had learned.

  I was nervous thinking about attending a new school, confronting new teachers and new classmates. My shattering nerves made me tired. It didn't matter that we hadn't replaced the old television set yet and I hadn't bought any new books to read. I went to sleep early. The walls of my little studio apartment weren't very thick. I could hear street noises, muffled but still easily discernible. In a house nearby, someone was practicing playing the trumpet. How different this was from our home in suburbia. I used to dream about living in a big city, but now that I was here. I wasn't that sure. Finally, all of it drifted away, and I fell asleep. I woke to the sound of Brenda knocking on my door to tell me I had to get up, get dressed, and have some breakfast. She had already confirmed the school's address and made the appointment for me. Actually. I discovered. Celia had done all that even before we had arrived.

  It was cold and cloudy. I bundled up before running across the yard to use the shower in what I would now call the main house. I chose an oversized black sweatshirt with the words "The Ungrateful Living" on the back because it had been my most popular garment at school, and put on a baggy pair of jeans. It all hid my weight well, although I'd have to wear a mask to hide my chubby cheeks. My hair felt like steel wool when I brushed it. and I didn't put on any makeup, not even lipstick. I was never confident about all that. and Brenda was never any help.

  Celia was chatty as ever at breakfast. Brenda was all business, talking about keeping to schedules, setting up responsibilities at the house, and following up what legal work still had to be accomplished after Mama's passing. I didn't eat much. My stomach was gurgling with nervousness.

  "For today,I'll take you. and Celia will pick you up," Brenda told me. "Tomorrow and from now on, you can drive yourself."

  "I don't mind taking you and dropping you off if you're nervous about driving in the city." Celia offered.

  "She'll be fine," Brenda asserted, sounding what I thought was the first discordant note between them.

  "Oh. I'm sure she will, but I just thought that..."

  "We don't want to become her crutches.'" Brenda emphasized. "And don't give me any psychological logic." she added quickly.

  Celia laughed, but it was one of those thin, fragile, china-like laughs that choked up in her throat. She swung her eyes to me and then quickly looked back at her food. I actually felt embarrassed for her.

  "Brenda's right," I offered. "I'll be fine."

  "Of course you will," Brenda said. "We all will."

  When Brenda said it, it sounded like a command. We'll be fine whether we like it or not, I thought,

  The school was lite
rally ten minutes away by car. It was in a building that looked much alder than other schools I had seen in the city, but it was in a convenient location. It had a population of nearly twelve hundred students, grade nine through grade twelve. The principal was an African American woman named Dr. Carol DeBerry. She couldn't have been more than five-foot-one, but she had a nononsense, firm demeanor that left me thinking I had been speaking to a woman six feet tall. One of the most surprising things I learned immediately was that I would have to wear a school uniform. The shirts and blouses had to be white, which was my worst color. It made me look even more overweight than I was. so I always avoided it. The blouses had to have collars and sleeves. Dr. DeBerry thought white blouses with Peter Pan collars were the best. Peter Pan collars, she explained, were flat collars with rounded ends that met in front. She spent so much time talking about the uniform I thought it was more important than grades in her school.

  "Sweaters, sweatshirts, cardigans, and lightweight jackets are now permitted to be worn over the uniform top, but they must be either white, tan, navy blue, or black. Skirts and jumpers must be black, tan, or navy blue. We expect them to be knee- length or longer. I can tell you now that denim jeans and tightfitting or baggy pants are not acceptable." she said, looking disdainfully at mine. "Your shoes should not have heels higher than an inch and a half. You can wear tennis shoes. We do not want to see any manufacturer's logos, names, pictures, or insignias on the clothing," she added, which eliminated my favorite sweatshirt. "We do not permit our students to wear their heavy jackets or rain' coats during the school day.

  "Here is a list of items we do not want you to bring to school. Notice we've included radios of any kind. A sharp instrument of any kind will result in your immediate suspension and perhaps criminal prosecution. There is no point in bringing cigarettes into the building. Smoking is punishable with suspension, and any violation of our behavioral rules, vandalism. violent actions, and use of profanity could result in expulsion. Is all this clear to you?"