Tallahassee Higgins

  "Don't shout at me like that!" Aunt Thelma slammed a can of paprika down on the counter beside the chicken she was preparing to cook.

  "Then tell me the truth!" I wanted to throw myself at her, hit her, force her to be honest with me.

  "The truth? You want the truth?" Aunt Thelma's face reddened. "I have no idea who your father is! I doubt your own mother knows!"

  For a second everything in the kitchen seemed to freeze. Even Fritzi stopped barking as Aunt Thelma and I stared at each other. When she finally opened her mouth to say something, I ran out of the kitchen and up the steps to my room, clutching Johnny's picture in my hand.

  Chapter 11

  THE NEXT MORNING while Jane and I were walking to school, I told her what Aunt Thelma had said about Johnny dying in Vietnam. "She also said she didn't know who my father was," I added, not mentioning what she'd said about Liz.

  "Oh, Talley, that's so sad." Jane looked close to tears. "He wanted to see the world."

  "Well, I guess he saw some of it," I said, blinking back my own tears, "but not a very good part."

  We were passing Forty-first Avenue, and I paused for a minute and looked at the big, old houses inching up the hill toward the park. "Do you think his family still lives there?" I asked Jane.

  "Mrs. Russell," she said. "Why didn't I think of her? "She must be Johnny's mother!"

  Jane pointed up the street. "See that big house, the one with the tower? She lives right there."

  "Just Mrs. Russell? All by herself?"

  "Mr. Russell died a long time ago," Jane said. "I never knew she had any children, but she has a big dog. You've probably seen her out walking him."

  "She's pretty old, with gray hair and kind of strict looking? And the dog's black and white and about the size of a pony?"

  Jane nodded. "That's her. Never talks to anybody, just walks along with her nose up in the air. She was my mom's English teacher, but she's retired now."

  "But, Jane—" I grabbed her arm so tightly she winced. "If Johnny was my father, she's my grandmother! My grandmother!"

  "My gosh, Mrs. Russell a grandmother." Jane shook her head. "She just doesn't seem the type."

  "You better hurry up, Jane," Matthew yelled from almost a block away. "You're going to be late! You, too, Leopard Girl!"

  "Come on, Talley." Jane started running. "If we're late one more time, Mrs. Duffy is going to give us detention!"

  "Who cares?" I said, but I hurried to catch up with Jane. Any more trouble and Mrs. Duffy would call my aunt and uncle in for a conference. Aunt Thelma hated me enough already. For all I knew, she'd send me off to a foster home the next time I did something she didn't like.

  ***

  That morning, instead of working on my report on Germany, I thought about Mrs. Russell and how I might introduce myself to her. As Jane said, she wasn't exactly a friendly person, certainly not the grandmotherly type. If the wolf had come to her house, I'll bet she would have run him off long before Little Red Riding Hood arrived.

  I finally decided that I would walk up and down in front of Mrs. Russell's house till she noticed me. One good look and she would run down the sidewalk and throw her arms around me, sobbing with joy, delighted to find her long-lost, one and only grandchild.

  Just as I was imagining this wonderful reunion scene, Mrs. Duffy announced that it was time for art, my favorite subject, the only thing I get A's in except P.E.

  We lined up and went down the hall to the art room. Jane and I sat together, as usual. I was painting a picture of a girl surfboarding. The foam on the top of the wave looked perfect, but the girl herself wasn't quite right. Her head was a little too big for her body or something.

  "Is that supposed to be you on your surfboard?"

  I looked up, surprised to see Dawn standing next to me. She and Terri and Karen hadn't spoken to me for weeks. Once I'd seen a note Dawn had passed to Terri; in it, she'd said that I was stuck-up. "She thinks her mother is so great. Well, so what? She's still here, isn't she."

  Dawn stared at the picture. I could feel her breath on my hand she was so close to it.

  "No," I said, even though the girl had red hair and I'd been thinking about being in California while I drew. "She's just made-up."

  "You're pretty good at making things up, aren't you?" Dawn looked me in the eye. We were almost nose to nose.

  I noticed that Terri and Karen were standing behind Dawn. Terri had her hands behind her back, as if she was hiding something.

  "Ask her," Terri prompted Dawn.

  "How's that movie coming along?" Dawn pushed her hair back, showing off the little cloisonné earrings she was wearing.

  "What movie?" I concentrated on the blue sky I was painting.

  "You know. The one with your mother and Richard Gere." She popped her gum, and I could smell artificial grape. "The Island or whatever it's called."

  "It's fine." I looked at her and frowned, stung into saying something. "Liz just called to say she's sending for me soon. They've definitely got a part for me."

  "Really." Dawn looked at Terri and nodded.

  "How about this then?" Terri waved the People magazine she'd hidden behind her back. Richard Gere grinned at me from the cover. "There's a whole article in here about him and this new movie he's making with Sissy Spacek. There's no mention of your mother or any film about an island!"

  "You made it all up, didn't you!" Dawn popped her gum and smirked.

  "Your mother isn't any movie star," Terri added, shoving her face so close to me I could smell her breath.

  "Don't talk to me like that!" I put down my brush and clenched my fists. Boy, did I want to sock them.

  Dawn leaned toward me, bumping the jar of water on the table. Before I could move my painting, muddy gray water ran across it, ruining the whole thing.

  "Look what you did!" Without thinking, I picked up a jar of blue tempera paint and hurled it at Dawn.

  As Dawn opened her mouth to scream at me, Mrs. Duffy appeared. "Tallahassee!" she said, staring at the jar of paint in my hand. "What's going on here?"

  "Look at my blouse!" Dawn cried.

  "She ruined my picture!" I held it up. The beautiful foam was running down the waves, the girl's red hair had spread all over the sky, and everything was streaked with gray.

  "I didn't mean to!" Dawn glared at me. Blue paint dribbled down her nose and dripped onto her chin. It streaked her white blouse and tipped the ends of her hair. If I hadn't been so upset, I would have laughed.

  Before Mrs. Duffy could say anything, Jane intervened. "Dawn and Terri started it! They called Talley a liar, and then Dawn spilled water all over Talley's painting."

  "You shut up and stay out of this," Dawn said to Jane, her face red with anger.

  "We didn't do anything, Mrs. Duffy." Terri looked very prim.

  Dawn nodded. "Tallahassee threw the paint at me for no reason at all."

  "You liar!" I was about to throw another jar of paint when Mrs. Duffy grasped me by the shoulders and sat me down. "Get the table cleaned up, Tallahassee," she said. "And you'll have to see me after school."

  "How about her?" I pointed at Dawn, but seeing the look on Mrs. Duffy's face, I went to the sink and got the sponge.

  "Ooh, ooh, ooh," David Spinks giggled as I passed his desk. "You're in trouble now, Tallahassee Higgins!"

  Jane picked up my picture. "Maybe after it dries, you can fix it," she said.

  Yanking it away from her, I crumpled it up and tossed it into the trash can. "I never want to see it again," I muttered as I wiped the blue paint and water from the table.

  ***

  When the three-thirty bell rang, Jane told me she'd wait outside on the steps, and Dawn tossed me a nasty sneer over her shoulder as she left the classroom. Reluctantly, I sat down in a chair beside Mrs. Duffy's desk and prepared myself for a long lecture.

  "Well, Tallahassee," Mrs. Duffy began, "would you like to tell me why you threw the paint at Dawn?"

  I shrugged and looked down at my ratty run
ning shoes. "She ruined my picture," I mumbled.

  "Surely it was an accident," Mrs. Duffy said quietly.

  "It was the best picture I ever painted."

  "That's no reason to throw a jar of paint in someone's face." She paused, waiting, I suppose, for me to say something. When I just sat there, staring at the hole in my shoe, she straightened a pile of papers on her desk.

  "I think it's time I called your aunt and uncle in for a conference," Mrs. Duffy said.

  I looked at her once, then returned to contemplating my shoes. I would have liked to have told her everything, but how could she understand about Liz? Or what it was like to wonder all your life who your father was and then find out he was dead.

  Mrs. Duffy sighed. "Well, since you don't have anything to tell me, you might as well take out a piece of paper, and we'll review this week's math."

  When I had finished doing twenty math problems, I ran outside and found Jane sitting on the steps waiting for me. We ran across the playground, racing each other to the swings.

  I pumped hard, trying to get as far off the ground as I could, but I slowed down when I noticed that Jane had coasted to a stop. "What's the matter?" I asked her.

  "Talley, is Liz really going to be in that movie?" The wind swirled Jane's hair in front of her eyes, and she tossed it back, frowning.

  I scuffed my feet in the trough a hundred kids' shoes had scooped out under the swing. Without looking at Jane, I said, "What if she isn't? Would you stop being my friend?"

  "I'll always be your friend, Talley, no matter what." Jane's swing creaked as she rocked back and forth. "I was just wondering, that's all."

  "Well, she's not," I said, knowing I sounded grumpy and mad. "She isn't going to be in any movie, I don't think, and she doesn't know Richard Gere or anybody else. All she's doing is working in some restaurant called the Big Carrot." I started swinging really hard again so Jane wouldn't see me crying.

  Jane didn't say anything, but she got her swing going too. Soon the two of us were flying back and forth, Jane up when I was down, me up when she was down. Then we started singing this dumb song we'd learned in music, "Little Red Caboose," until we were laughing too hard to pump our swings.

  On the way home we walked up and down Forty-first Avenue so many times that I got a blister on my heel, but we didn't see Mrs. Russell. Not once did she come to the window to observe her own granddaughter wearing out her shoes in front of her house.

  ***

  That night Aunt Thelma got two phone calls. The first one was from Mrs. Duffy, and Aunt Thelma was very angry when she hung up. She couldn't understand why I was doing so badly in school. "It's not as if you were stupid," she said. "You're lazy, that's what's wrong with you. Just like Liz, you think the world owes you a living."

  Then the phone rang again, right in the middle of the scene we were having. This time it was Dawn's mother.

  "You ruined a twenty-five-dollar blouse," Aunt Thelma said as she hung up, "and Mrs. Harper expects me to pay for it!"

  "She wrecked the picture I was painting!"

  "A picture?" Aunt Thelma stared at me. "You ruined an expensive blouse because of a worthless picture?"

  "It wasn't worthless! It was the best picture I ever painted!" Tears filled my eyes as I remembered the red-haired girl coasting down the perfect wave on her surfboard. "You know I get A's in art," I added, thinking of the value she placed on grades.

  "Art and P.E.," she said scornfully. "The only subjects you're passing, and they're not even important."

  "They are to me!" I glared at her and she glared back.

  "You go to your room," Aunt Thelma said. "I've heard enough from you for one night!"

  As I walked past the living room, Uncle Dan looked up. "What's the matter now?" He'd been so absorbed in the basketball game on TV that he'd missed the whole scene.

  "Nothing," I muttered, "nothing at all, except I hate living here!" My voice rose, triggering another outburst of barking from Fritzi. "Shut up!" I yelled at the dog. "Just shut up!"

  "Oh, Talley." Uncle Dan stood up and started toward me, but I ran upstairs to my room, leaving Fritzi barking at the bottom of the steps.

  Hurling myself down on my bed, I pressed my face against Melanie. "We've got to get out of here," I told her. "Every day it gets worse and worse."

  "You could run away," Melanie said. "Just like Liz."

  "Maybe I will," I muttered. "They think I'm exactly like her, don't they? So maybe I should do just what she did. It would serve Aunt Thelma right."

  Chapter 12

  A COUPLE OF DAYS later Aunt Thelma, Uncle Dan, and I were sitting in my classroom. Mrs. Duffy began our conference by explaining that my math skills were at least two years behind my grade placement.

  "What does that mean?" Aunt Thelma frowned at Mrs. Duffy.

  "Well, it means that Tallahassee is working on a low fourth-grade level. She doesn't know her multiplication tables, she doesn't grasp the fundamentals of long division, and her fractions are very shaky. She should have mastered these skills before entering sixth grade."

  Mrs. Duffy sounded apologetic, as if she herself had something to do with my inadequacies.

  "It may be that the Florida schools have a different curriculum," she added uncertainly, rustling some papers on her desk.

  "It's more likely," said Aunt Thelma, "that Tallahassee was never made to do her homework. You do realize that she has attended at least half a dozen elementary schools before coming here?"

  Mrs. Duffy nodded. "I looked at her record." Smiling at me, she added, "Her language skills are excellent. She reads on a twelfth-grade level, and her book reports are a real treat. Very original and entertaining, and usually beautifully illustrated. She has a great deal of artistic talent."

  Uncle Dan smiled. "She gets that from her mother. Liz could draw anything, especially horses."

  "We're not here to talk about her mother," Aunt Thelma said. Turning back to Mrs. Duffy, she went on, "But you indicated there were problems with her language arts, too."

  Mrs. Duffy nodded. "Tallahassee fails to hand in many of her assignments. And the ones she does give me are often incomplete or poorly done. Take her foreign-country report, fifty percent of her social studies grade this quarter."

  I squirmed uncomfortably at the sight of the report she passed to Aunt Thelma. It was only a few paragraphs copied hastily out of an encyclopedia; my pencil had smudged, making my sloppy handwriting even harder to read. My map was half-finished.

  The only good thing about it was the cover. I had drawn a little boy in lederhosen walking his German shepherd. It was definitely one of my best pictures, and I was proud of it. It wasn't enough to save my report, though, and I didn't blame Mrs. Duffy for giving me an F.

  "When Tallahassee first came to Magruder, I thought she was going to be with us for a short time," Mrs. Duffy said to Aunt Thelma. "I didn't push her as hard as I should have. I realize that she misses her mother, but she'll have to work harder if she wants to go on to the seventh grade next year."

  I lowered my head, feeling my cheeks turn red. My stomach knotted up and my mouth got dry. "I can do sixth grade all over again in California," I mumbled.

  "Instead of falling back on that hope, Tallahassee," Aunt Thelma said, "I think we'd better see what you can do to improve."

  "Yes," Uncle Dan agreed. "What can we do to help?"

  Staring at the blocks of linoleum on the floor, I listened to them discuss setting up a contract. It sounded pretty awful—sitting down with either my aunt or uncle every night while they supervised my schoolwork—but to pass, I had to do it.

  When we left the school, Aunt Thelma told me how embarrassing it was to hear so many awful things about me. "I simply do not understand you," she said. "Mrs. Duffy says you're smart, that you could do all the work easily if you'd put your mind to it. As far as I can see, you just don't care about anything!"

  I played with the zipper on my sweatshirt, running it up and down the track. It was a beaut
iful day, and I wished I were in the park with Jane instead of trapped in Aunt Thelma's car.

  "Now, Thelma." Uncle Dan looked at me in the rearview mirror and smiled. "You heard Talley. She signed the contract. She doesn't want to fail any more than we want her to."

  Turning my head, I gazed out the window as the Hyattstown houses drifted sadly past, softened now by a mist of tiny, green buds. It was April. Where was Liz?

  ***

  The next day was Saturday, and Jane and I went to the park. We were sure we'd see Mrs. Russell there with her dog.

  "I'll go right up to her," I told Jane as we walked down Forty-first Avenue past Mrs. Russell's house, "and tell her who I am."

  "Really?" Jane was impressed, I could tell. "Or you could ring her doorbell right now." She stopped, one hand on Mrs. Russell's gate.

  I looked at the brick sidewalk marching straight across the lawn to the big, white house, at the neatly trimmed bushes flanking the front steps, at the door painted dark green, brass knob and knocker gleaming in the morning sunlight. Except for a few birds fluttering around a feeder hanging from a dogwood tree, nothing stirred.

  "I don't think she's home," I said, hoping Jane wouldn't guess that I was scared to set foot beyond the wrought-iron gate.

  "Her car's there." Jane pointed at a shiny Buick in the driveway.

  "Yes, but she's probably at the park." I edged away up the hill, suddenly afraid that Mrs. Russell would notice me loitering in front of her house. Suppose she didn't recognize me?

  The park was crowded with families. It was the first really nice day I had experienced in the state of Maryland, and I guess everybody was anxious to be outside. Jane and I walked around for a while, then we swung and played on the monkey bars.

  While I was hanging upside down, Jane yelled, "There she is, Talley!"

  I was so startled, I almost fell right off on my head, but I managed to twist around like a cat and save myself. "Where?"

  "Right over there with her dog. See?" Jane pointed to the other side of the tot lot. Sure enough, there she was, looking the other way while her dog relieved himself on the grass.