The Center of Everything

“I don’t like mint chocolate chip,” I say.

  My mother nods. “Yes. I know.”

  “It’s the only kind I don’t like.”

  She closes her eyes. “Yes, Evelyn, I know.”

  She says she will eat the ice cream if I won’t, and that when Mr. Mitchell comes, we can ask him to take us someplace to eat, as long as his wife isn’t with him. If his wife is with him, she says, we won’t say anything at all.

  “Why not?”

  “Because I said so.” She points up at the sky. “Look, see that up there? That’s the Big Dipper.”

  She’s telling me this like she’s teaching me something new, but of course I know the Big Dipper. It’s the easiest one. I also know the Little Dipper, Cassiopeia, and Orion’s Belt. Ms. Fairchild said the stars in the constellations are not really close together; it only looks that way because they are so far away from us. They only make shapes if you are looking at them from Earth. If you were looking at the Big Dipper from another solar system, she said, it would look like something else, or maybe like nothing at all.

  I can hear cicadas from the field across the road, the sound a plastic straw makes when you bend it, back and forth, back and forth. Moths circle the porch light over our heads, and I watch them, my head resting in my mother’s lap. They are like the birds, fluttering and flapping on top of one another, trying to get inside. The bottom of the bulb is dark with the silhouettes of moths already dead, their wings still against the glass.

  I wake to headlights shining on my face, the sound of Mr. Mitchell’s truck. He kills the engine and steps out, squinting to see us on the porch.

  “Oh Merle,” my mother says. “Thank you so much. I’m sorry we had to call you out here. Come on, Evelyn. It’s time to go.”

  “Don’t be sorry!” he yells. Even when Mr. Mitchell yells, it’s in a nice way, the way Santa Claus yells “Ho Ho Ho” outside of Wal-Mart at Christmas. “What the hell are you-all doing sitting outside is what I’d like to know. Didn’t they let you wait inside?”

  My mother puts a finger to her lips. “Shh. It’s just an older woman. She was scared, I think.”

  He picks me up and carries me down the steps of the porch, my mother walking behind us. “Come on, squirrel,” he says. “We’ll get you home.”

  I squint into the headlights and see the outline of someone sitting in the passenger seat. It’s a woman, Mr. Mitchell’s wife. She gets out of the truck to let us in, and I see she is short, halfway between my mother and me, with broad shoulders. Her hair is cut close around her head, like a little hat, and she looks at us with small, staring eyes.

  “Hello,” my mother says. “Thank you so much for coming all the way out here. This is my daughter, Evelyn.”

  Mrs. Mitchell smiles quickly at me, but her small eyes stay on my mother, even as she leans down to pop the front seat of the truck forward for us. I get in behind the driver’s seat next to a bag of dog food. My mother sits behind Mrs. Mitchell, her legs folded, her chin resting on her knees.

  Mr. Mitchell jogs around the front of the truck and slides in, whistling. “So, Tina, what do you think happened?” He looks over his shoulder while he backs out of the driveway, and when he catches my eye, he winks.

  “The clutch gave out. I can’t get it into first. I knew it was going to happen, but I thought I could make it to Wichita and back.”

  “Why didn’t you tell me you needed a car? I would have loaned you the truck.”

  Mrs. Mitchell makes a quick, hissing sound with her tongue, like water sprinkled on a hot pan. We drive on in silence, until the back of the Volkswagen appears in the headlights.

  “Do you want me to take a look at it?” Mr. Mitchell asks, pulling up behind it. “I could try to fiddle with the clutch a bit.”

  Mrs. Mitchell turns on the overhead light and holds her watch up underneath it.

  “Oh, that’s okay, Merle,” my mother says. “I feel bad enough, dragging you both out here.”

  Mr. Mitchell says, “Don’t be ridiculous,” but Mrs. Mitchell says nothing. From where I sit, I can see only one side of her face, gray and unmoving. She is looking straight ahead, squinting at the white Volkswagen bug.

  “That’s our car,” she says, like no one else knows this. She looks at Mr. Mitchell with her small eyes. “You gave them our car?” Mr. Mitchell gets out of the truck, letting the door slam behind him. We watch him pop open the back of the Volkswagen and stand there, looking at it and shaking his head. I’m scared to talk. Mrs. Mitchell is not saying anything, but something about her, something invisible coming out of the back of her head like ultraviolet rays, makes me scared to move, even my head, even my mouth. My mother isn’t moving either.

  Mrs. Mitchell reaches up to the rearview mirror, tilting it so she can see my mother’s face. “So, uh…Tina,” she says. The way she says this makes it sound like just my mother’s name is something bad, something you don’t want to be called. “You don’t have any family or anyone who could have come and picked you up?”

  My mother waits so long to answer that at first I think she won’t, but then she clears her throat and says, “Well, if I had, I suppose I would have called them.”

  “I suppose. How long have you been working for Merle?”

  “About four years.”

  Out of the corner of my eye, I can see my mother is actually biting her tongue, the pink tip of it sticking out from between her teeth. She reaches over the front seat and opens Mr. Mitchell’s door.

  “Let me out, Evelyn.”

  I get out quickly, shutting the door behind us.

  “No,” she says. “You get back in. I need to talk to Mr. Mitchell.”

  “With her? No way.”

  “Get in now.”

  I get back in the truck. Mrs. Mitchell and I watch my mother walk over to Mr. Mitchell, her body making a shadow like the number eight in the headlights. I’m hungry, and I’m sick of this day. If I were at home, I would be in bed by now, asleep or reading Nancy Drew, my teeth brushed, my hair wet from the shower. They shouldn’t have left me in the truck alone with Mrs. Mitchell. The keys are still in the ignition. She could drive away, take me with her.

  “So, Evelyn…It’s Evelyn, isn’t it?” she asks, turning around, smiling with only her mouth. “Why did you-all go to Wichita?”

  “To see Eileen.”

  “Who’s Eileen?”

  “My grandmother.”

  My mother and Mr. Mitchell are both peering into the engine of the car, winged insects swirling around their heads. My mother says something, and he laughs.

  “So, where’s your daddy?”

  “Huh?”

  “Your father. Where is he?”

  I shrug my shoulders. I don’t want to talk to her anymore.

  She clicks her tongue, frowns. “Do you know who your daddy is, honey?”

  I stare at her. She stares back, the muscles in her face tight and still. She reaches over the seat and tries to pat me on the hand. She has a diamond ring, a white flicker in the darkness. “You poor thing,” she says. “It’s not your fault.”

  Mr. Mitchell and my mother walk slowly back to the truck, Mr. Mitchell with his hands in his pockets, looking down at his feet. When Mrs. Mitchell gets out of the truck to let my mother in, she doesn’t look at my mother, and my mother doesn’t look at her.

  “If that car was a horse, I’d have shot it long ago,” Mr. Mitchell says, starting up the truck’s loud engine. “Even if you get the clutch figured out, the transmission’s bound to go next.”

  “Well,” my mother says. “At least it got me to work.”

  “Yeah. I’ll give you a ride until we can find something else for you.”

  My mother says thank you, but it is difficult to hear her because Mrs. Mitchell makes another hissing sound. Mr. Mitchell turns toward her, braking the truck so quickly that we all slide forward and then jerk back. He and Mrs. Mitchell look at each other, unblinking, for maybe three seconds.

  But it seems longer, sitting in the ba
ckseat.

  And now I know my mother shouldn’t have called Mr. Mitchell for a ride, even if it meant we had to hitchhike, or call the police. Now Mr. and Mrs. Mitchell are in a fight, staring at each other right in front of us like they hate each other even though they’re married. I’ve seen my mother and Eileen look at each other like this, eyes flat, mouths unmoving, a long stare that looks like hate but could be something else, and nothing you want to get in between.

  four

  MR. MITCHELL IS GOING TO pick my mother up for work early, fifteen minutes before my bus comes. She has to give me a key to wear around my neck so I can lock the door behind me, and she tells me not to answer the door, not for anyone. She thinks I will die the moment she leaves, that I’ll let people in from off the highway, turn on the iron to start a fire. I remind her that it will be summer soon, and then I’ll be home by myself all the time.

  “Don’t even talk about that,” she says, her hand over her eyes. “I can’t think about that now.”

  I’m excited because today is the day of the science fair, and I finally get to bring my lima bean plants to school. I used empty milk cartons for containers, and I made a label for each one with red Magic Marker on masking tape: DARK, IN SUNLIGHT, DARK WITH MIRACLE-GRO, or IN SUNLIGHT WITH MIRACLE-GRO. I planted the seeds less than a month ago, pushing the seeds into the soil with my finger, and already the two that were in sunlight are actual plants, the leaves like small, waving hands. The one with Miracle-Gro in the soil is a darker green, the stem two inches taller than the other ones. Before she leaves, my mother helps me tape them inside a box so they won’t get smashed on the bus.

  Ms. Fairchild had been very particular that we should have a poster to go with our project, and it had to be a triptych, she said, a poster folded into thirds so it could stand up on its side. I got a piece of yellow poster board at the Kwikshop the same day I bought the lima bean seeds, and I tried just bending it into thirds, but it wouldn’t stay up. So I cut it into thirds and taped it with masking tape on the back. Now it stands up on its side when it’s unfolded, but it’s crooked.

  On the board, Ms. Fairchild had written HYPOTHESIS, OBJECTIVE, METHOD, OBSERVATIONS, and CONCLUSION. I copied these same words onto the yellow poster board, and I like how they look, very official. Under OBSERVATION, I have made a graph charting the growth of each plant in inches per week. So even though my poster is crooked, I’m pleased with the way it looks, and also with the lima bean plants themselves. I am amazed that anything came out of the soil at all, green and healthy, something coming out of nothing. On the bus, I show my poster to a second grader. I explain the graph to her, opening the box so she can see the plants for herself. She says it’s nice, reaching into the box to touch the leaves.

  The student with the best project gets to go to Topeka this summer to be in the state Science Fair, and if you win that, you get to go to Washington, D.C., and meet Ronald Reagan. I would love, more than anything, to meet Ronald Reagan, to see him in person, making his jokes. There is a chance that this could happen. I usually have the highest score on science tests. The only person who ever beats me is Traci Carmichael. She is smart, and she is also popular, and usually you don’t get to be both. But she has always been popular, and this year you can actually see it because of friendship pins. They are just safety pins with beads pushed onto them in different colors, and you are supposed to have your own design and then bring them to school in a plastic bag to give to all your friends. I don’t know who started it, but last year no one had them, and this year everyone does. Or the girls do. Boys don’t.

  When someone gives you a pin, you stick it on your shoelace, so people will know you have friends. I don’t know who started it, but now you have to have at least one friendship pin if you’re a girl or it looks like no one likes you. I have two: one from Patty Pollo, one from Star Sweeny. Traci Carmichael has nineteen. I count them when she stands by my desk, sharpening her pencils.

  She also has four different OP sweatshirts, with matching ribbons for her braids. Other people have one or two of these sweatshirts—Brad Browning has three—but only Traci has four. They are just normal sweatshirts, with hoods and sometimes pockets and palm trees painted on the back, but they say OP on them, and this is what matters. I asked my mother for one for Christmas, but she said no. You could get just as good a sweatshirt without a palm tree on it for half the price, she said, and who needs a goddamn palm tree in the middle of Kansas anyway? She said “OP” stands for Over Priced, in her opinion anyway. But it doesn’t. It stands for Ocean Pacific, and I wish I had one.

  Traci Carmichael’s house is the last stop the bus makes in the morning. She lives in a redbrick house, a porch swing in front, twelve different windows on just the front side. I can’t imagine what it would be like to live there, in all that space. She doesn’t have any brothers or sisters. I picture Traci at one end of the house, having to call to her mother at the other end, her hands cupped around her mouth.

  I know Traci’s mother, and I don’t like her because of registration day. There was a long line to sign up for lunches, and the Carmichaels got there after we did. When Mrs. Carmichael saw the line, she said in a loud voice that she didn’t appreciate the poor management that had led to such a long line on such a hot day, when some people were busy and had things to do. My mother and I were standing behind Robby Hernandez and his mother, and when they got up to the front of the line, Mrs. Carmichael was standing right next to them because of the way the line wound around itself. The Hernandezes had just gotten up to the counter when Mrs. Carmichael leaned forward, jingling her car keys to get the registration lady’s attention, and said, “Excuse me, but don’t you think the people who are actually paying for the lunches should get to go first?”

  The registration lady said she didn’t know, and Mrs. Carmichael said it only seemed fair, and then Brad Browning’s mother raised her hand like she was in school and said she had just been thinking the same thing, the same thing exactly. They were both wearing sleeveless shirts and sweaters with the sleeves tied around their shoulders. My mother watched them talking, sweat trickling down her forehead, no sweater. I get free lunches too, and we were next in line.

  The registration lady said she might as well finish up with Mrs. Hernandez, since she was already up at the front of the line, but by then Robby had turned what they were saying into Spanish and Mrs. Hernandez went straight to the back of the line, pulling him behind her, without anyone saying another word about it. So we had to go to the back of the line too. Mrs. Hernandez put on a pair of sunglasses even though we were inside, and I could tell she was crying, or at least trying not to, her mouth closed tight like she would never open it again.

  When Traci and her mother got to the front of the line, my mother was too mad to talk. She stood very still, her arms crossed, her eyes trained on the back of Mrs. Carmichael’s head as if just by looking at it, she could make it explode.

  So when the bus pulls up to Traci’s brick house with the porch swing and she isn’t there, I’m glad, because maybe Traci is sick and won’t be able to be in the science fair. Libby Masterson is Traci’s next-door neighbor, and she isn’t at her stop either, which makes sense, because she does everything Traci tells her to, and if Traci called her and said, “Don’t go to school tomorrow,” Libby probably wouldn’t.

  I know you’re not supposed to be glad when other people get sick, but I have been sick of Traci for a long time. And it’s not like you can make someone sick just by wishing for it. Eileen says you can make sick people better by praying for them. But I don’t know if it works the other way.

  I’m surprised by how much I like Ms. Fairchild, because she is old, and not pretty and her breath always smells like coffee. She has been teaching at Free State Elementary for twenty-nine years, which is longer than even my mother has been alive, and she has one dress for every day of the week, a Monday dress, a Tuesday dress, a Wednesday dress, and so on. She never mixes up the order. Star Sweeny makes fun of her for th
is, but I like it.

  The first time I saw her, though, I thought, Oh no. I wished I would have gotten into Mrs. Blake’s class, the other fourth-grade teacher, young and pretty, with straight blond hair that curves under her chin. She got married just last year, and some of the fourth graders from last year got to sing “Going to the Chapel” in her wedding. She wears high heels and bright sweaters and gold earrings shaped like little suns or little snowflakes, depending on the weather.

  Ms. Fairchild, my teacher, has big eyebrows and short black hair cut like a pilgrim’s. Her hair never moves, even in the breeze, and she does not wear earrings. When I first saw Mrs. Blake and Ms. Fairchild standing next to each other on the playground the first day of school, it was easy to think that Ms. Fairchild was unlucky.

  But it turns out that Mrs. Blake is a screamer. We can hear her from our room, her shrill voice saying Stop that! Stop that this instant! When this happens, Ms. Fairchild walks across the room in her flat, soundless shoes to shut the door. She does not yell, and if we are good, she tells stories at the end of class about people who can turn into trees whenever they want, and pets that talk when their owners aren’t home. Sometimes she reads out of a book, and sometimes she doesn’t have to.

  Today she is wearing a green dress with white buttons, the Friday dress. She looks at me carrying in my triptych poster and my box of plants, and she smiles. She tells me to put them on the shelf by the window. Star is already standing by the window next to a cookie sheet covered with aluminum foil and a mound of something that looks like dried mud.

  “What is it?” I ask.

  “It’s a volcano. I’m going to make it explode.” She doesn’t have a triptych, not even a regular poster. Star is always getting in trouble, getting sent to the office for saying “fuck” like it’s just a regular word you can say. She came to Kerrville from Florida last year because a hurricane blew down her family’s house, and they had to move to Kansas to live with her aunt and uncle. She has long blond hair, and she wears Dr. Scholl’s sandals and earrings that make it look like she has pierced ears even though she doesn’t. They are just tiny magnets, one on each side of her earlobes, strong enough to stick to each other through the skin. She let me wear them once, for an hour.