Junebug, page 3
Five
Sure enough, at recess Tuesday morning, Miss Jenkins calls me over as the other kids run for their jackets.
“I know,” I say before she gets a chance to speak. “My paragraph. I’ll do it right now.”
I grab a piece of paper and sit at a desk in the front row.
“Did you have a problem with the assignment?” she asks. “Do you need help with it?”
“No.”
She picks up a stack of papers and her grade book. “Leave it on my desk when you’re done.” She’s going down to the teachers’ room. “Are you sure you’re all set?”
“Yeah.”
But that’s not exactly true. What’s the point of wishing for anything? Stuff that’s never gonna happen. I guess I better write this fast and stop worrying about it. Here goes.
My Wish
I wish I had a sailboat that could fly me over the water to a sandy soft beach where X marks the spot. And when you dig down, you find just what you wanted—diamonds and treasure.
I leave it on her desk. I wrote it but I never once mentioned my birthday.
After school, everybody’s hanging out around the outside of the apartment building. Tasha seems extra-nervous when we cross the open place. One time we heard gunshots there, that must be why. Some big fancy cars sit parked along Auburn Street. Everybody’s playing loud music. I make Tasha hurry past.
“Don’t you ever talk to people in those cars,” I tell her. Since she doesn’t talk much, it probably won’t be a problem, but I have to tell her just in case.
The cars have tinted windows so you can’t see in. A lot of bigger kids are hanging around them. I see Robert and Trevor over by the vacant lot, watching everybody. Then I see Darnell. He’s walking toward a Mercedes. He’s wearing a gold chain I’ve never seen before. The door of the Mercedes opens and a man in a dark suit gets out.
“Hey, Darnell,” I call out, “what are you—” I want to ask him about that jewelry.
He glances at me and gives his head a tiny shake. I know he means for me to shut up. Darnell always told me, “If you’re going to survive in the project, then you have to read people like a book.” So I see his head shake and I shut up quick.
Stop asking questions, you old Junebug, I tell myself. Seems like I’ve been getting on Darnell’s nerves lately. Tasha and I go on inside.
From the lobby, I can hear arguing out back on the tar. Loud voices. Girls yelling insults. Awful things. Inside the lobby, it’s cool and tense, as if everybody hanging around is being extra-casual. As if they’re all listening to the fight out back. I know I am. I don’t recognize most of the voices, except for Georgina’s.
We run up the stairs, and Tasha slams the door right behind us. Bang! This time, I don’t tell her not to.
“Hey!” Aunt Jolita calls out, all sleepy, from the bedroom. She uses our bedroom during the daytime and the sofa at night. “What’s all that noise?”
She sounds grouchy. Aunt Jolita and Mrs. Swanson ought to form a club. The Grouchy Club.
“You kids be quiet!” she calls out.
Tasha looks at me with a stubborn, sad look. It isn’t fair for Aunt Jolita to yell at Tasha, because she hardly ever bothers anyone.
I go into the kitchen and pour the Kool-Aid, red this time. Tasha sits in a chair to drink it. It’s a long time until she can see the bottom of the glass, and I start thinking about last night, about Jolita telling my mother I have to grow up, when it’s none of her business.
Then I think about Trevor and whether he has a gun. Robert says he got one to impress the older guys, to show everybody he’s not scared. If they think he’s brave, they’ll take him into their gang. Because you can’t make it on your own around here. You need protection from your friends. That’s why you have to go with a gang.
I’m thinking about the names I see spray-painted on the walls. Death Posse. The Rex. Darnell told me to stay out of all that stuff. But just now, didn’t I see him with that rich guy in the Mercedes?
“Come on, Junebug. Quit your staring,” Tasha says, going over and tugging at the locks on the door.
I put my glass in the sink. She wants to go back downstairs to the library. I feel funny about going there today, though, with everyone yelling out back. Also because of what Jolita said last night, about me hanging around with a five-year-old. But I go on out the door, anyway. There isn’t anything else to do.
I wonder if Miss Robinson will come today. Might be better if she didn’t, with everybody keyed up in the warm spring air. I worry about her parking out front, then walking past all those teenagers pushing and shoving and bragging out at the curb. The only white person around.
When we get to the library, there she is, already at the table. Mrs. Swanson’s there, and a couple of fifth-graders come in, too. Miss Robinson’s brought a special reading book for Tasha and a game. Candy Land.
“Are you gonna play this, too?” I ask. I’m worrying about whether this is a baby game. I wish I’d never heard what Jolita said about me. Now it’s as if I’m seeing myself from the outside, not the inside.
“Of course.”
I nod and open up the game board. If the teacher’s playing, I’m playing. The older girls come over. They want to play, too. They stack the cards up and we set up the plastic gingerbread men. Tasha sets hers on the lollipop forest instead of the starting place. Not a bad idea. I put my man on the ice-cream ocean.
Suddenly we hear terrible crying. A teenage girl named Evie rushes in, sobbing and grabbing her stomach.
“Hide me!” she cries. “Hide me!”
Mrs. Swanson jumps up, all angry. “You get out of here! Go upstairs right now and take your troubles with you.”
“I can’t. I can’t,” Evie says. She looks wildly around the room. There’s no place to hide in here.
Evie runs to the door and slams it shut and locks it. “Don’t tell anyone I’m here,” she says. “You’ve got to help me.”
She grabs the reading teacher around the neck, crying and holding on as if she’s drowning. Miss Robinson holds her and rubs her back, trying to quiet her down and find out what happened. Already I hear angry voices outside. Evie hears them, too, and starts sobbing harder, all doubled up.
Miss Robinson takes her by the shoulders and looks in her face. “What happened? Can you tell me?”
Evie looks at me. “You know that friend of your aunt’s? You know Georgina? We were downstairs earlier and Georgina said I called her a name. She said I made fun of her, but I didn’t. She was yelling and yelling at me in front of my friends.”
“Yeah,” I say. That was the yelling I’d heard earlier.
“So later on me and my girlfriend, we knocked on Georgina’s door. And when she answered it, we yelled out a name. Just fooling. And then we were going to run away. But Georgina pulled me inside. There were some other people in there, too. They were going to beat me up. They punched me.”
Evie’s crying again. “And Georgina, she bit me.”
Miss Robinson opens the tear in Evie’s blouse. There’s a big bite place on her stomach. Miss Robinson takes a whole bunch of Kleenexes and puts it over the cut like a pad and presses on it, explaining to Evie that she has to hold it there.
Mrs. Swanson looks furious. She snatches up her purse. “I’m leaving,” she says.
The kids all look at each other. She’s gonna leave us in here alone? She heads over to the door. We can hear loud banging and yelling outside.
“Don’t open the door,” Evie begs. “They’ll come in.”
“Really, Mrs. Swanson. It’s too dangerous right now,” says Miss Robinson. “You’ve got to wait.”
Mrs. Swanson sits on the edge of her chair and keeps her purse in her lap, as if she’s waiting for a bus that’s about to pull up.
All the time, the voices are getting louder. Shouting for Evie to come out and telling what they’re going to do to her when she does. Tasha is crying. Miss Robinson is looking around the room, probably trying to think what to do.
“There’s a phone in here,” she says. “I’ll call the police,” she tells Tasha. “They’ll come and help Evie.”
I just look at her. It must be because she’s white, she thinks the police are going to come. We’ve got two kinds of police—Housing Authority police and the regular kind. Neither one of them comes when we really need help.
Miss Robinson dials the emergency number.
“You’ve got to come,” she’s saying into the phone. “There are nearly a hundred people after this young girl. We’re locked in a storage closet, five or six children and two adults.”
She’s begging and pleading with the police. Finally, she hangs up. Outside, men are pounding on the door, kicking it. All us kids stare at the door. Evie sits hunched over her hurt stomach, sobbing softly.
What if they break that door down? And what if they see a white person in here with us? They know Miss Robinson comes here all the time and plays with us. I feel bad doing it, but I move to a chair a little farther away from her, just in case.
It’s been five minutes since she called, but it seems like a year. Miss Robinson picks up the phone to try the police again. I figure I have to tell her.
“They don’t come by here much,” I say. “Not when there’s trouble like this.”
She nods her head, understanding me. “But we have to call somebody. Who can help us? Everybody think.”
Evie rocks in her chair, not saying a word. Then suddenly I remember that Aunt Jolita is upstairs in our apartment today, sleeping.
“I can call my aunt,” I say to Miss Robinson.
Evie’s head shoots up. “No!” she yells. “She’s friends with Georgina. You know that.”
I stand there, holding the phone. Maybe Evie’s right. Maybe Jolita would help Georgina instead of me and Tasha. But then I remember the four little bottles she brought me, and I start to dial.
“Hello?” Jolita’s voice still sounds sleepy.
I explain what’s going on.
“What do you expect me to do?” she asks. “I can’t stop an angry crowd like that.”
“Just talk to Georgina. Get her to calm down.”
“I can’t do that,” she says.
“Please!” I beg. “You’ve got to.”
She doesn’t say anything for a minute. Then she whispers, “Junebug, I can’t.”
“Then get Darnell for me. Get Darnell and his brother, Gabe.”
“Yeah. Okay.”
I hang up the phone, feeling as tired as if I just ran a mile.
“She’s coming,” I tell Miss Robinson, “with my friend Darnell.”
Miss Robinson gives me a quick hug and a little smile.
I think of Jolita whispering on the phone as if she’s scared. And she thinks we aren’t?
People are shoving and arguing. I hear a body get slammed against the door. Then I hear a voice, loud but calm, asking questions. It’s Darnell’s voice, going on and on. And then the deeper voice of Gabe, talking, doing some agreeing. And then some laughing. Finally, I hear Jolita.
She knocks on the door.
“Junebug? Tasha? Excuse me? Are my niece and nephew locked in there, Georgina?”
I guess she isn’t brave enough to tell Georgina that we called her on the phone. She’s gonna pretend that she just now found out by accident.
I stand real still, thinking this. A hot, funny feeling runs through my arms and legs up into my face, and I realize I feel ashamed. For the first time, I feel ashamed of my own family.
I stand there frozen, but hot. I can’t move. Until, finally, I kick that Candy Land boxtop across the room for no good reason except that it got in my way.
Outside, it’s getting quiet, and when we finally open the door and peek into the lobby, there’s nobody there. Not a soul. The way after a storm the clouds blow away real quick. It’s hard to remember it happened at all.
Mrs. Swanson pushes past me. Evie runs upstairs to call her mother.
“That’s it,” Mrs. Swanson says to Miss Robinson. “As of today, the library is closed. I refuse to stay here anymore. I’ll tell the church. The reading program is over.”
And out she goes. Doesn’t say goodbye to us or anything. As if it were our fault. And we never once were rude to her.
“Well,” says Miss Robinson, looking around with her arms at her sides. Her arms probably got tired from holding Evie all that time. “Well, I guess I’d better leave, too.”
The lobby is quiet as a graveyard. I’m thinking about how we don’t have a library anymore.
“Lucky Tasha can read already,” I say. “She learned just in time.”
Miss Robinson bursts out laughing and bends down to look at me. “I’ll miss you, Junebug,” she says.
“What day are you at the school?”
“Thursdays,” she says.
She’s putting Candy Land back in the box. So much for the gingerbread men and the ice-cream floats. I don’t help her because that way it takes her longer. Tasha and the other kids don’t help, either.
She picks up her canvas bag, but her face is nervous now. She looks quickly out the door. I bet she’s afraid of being a white person walking through that lobby today. But she goes to the door and smiles at us, anyway.
I jerk my head away to hide my sudden tears. Every time, it seems, every single time you think you’ve got something going for yourself around here, it slips away from you fast. That’s what this project does. All at once, for no reason, things change. You can’t count on anything. Nothing stays.
She hugs both of us goodbye and walks out to her car. She can drive away, but we have to linger behind.
Six
Next afternoon, we’re drinking Kool-Aid, red again, and Aunt Jolita’s sitting on the sofa, watching soap operas on TV. She told Mama she’d watch us.
“Why don’t you two go on outside?” she says.
I guess she watched us already. An ad comes on. Aunt Jolita grabs the remote and flicks to another channel.
“Go on, I said. Out.”
She never even looked at us. Isn’t this our apartment? Mine and Tasha’s? It sure ain’t hers. She doesn’t even help out with the rent.
Slowly we go down the stairs and out in front of the building. The sun is bright and warm again. Summer’s coming for sure. And that means my birthday’s coming soon, too. Maybe I could drink some shrinking potion, but who has some?
I see Darnell out front. He looks around, then wanders over to us.
“Junebug,” he says.
“Darnell,” I say back.
“Your Aunt Jolita home for once?”
“Yeah,” I say.
“Send Tasha on up. You have to come with me.”
“Where at?”
“Never mind that. Tasha, you go on upstairs. Go on.
Seems like nobody wants her around today. She looks at me for help, but it seems like I have to go with Darnell.
Tasha drags herself back toward the doors, looking pitiful. She’s good at it, too. I almost go after her.
“Come on,” says Darnell. “She’ll be fine. Nobody’s going to mess with Tasha. You can’t watch her every minute, anyway.”
He starts walking toward the empty lot next to our building. Burned-out cars sit in the lot, with no tires on them. Riding on rims. Weeds poke up all over the place. There’s a shopping cart somebody pushed all the way from downtown. No grocery stores near here, that’s for sure.
“Junebug!” someone yells.
I turn around and see Robert waving at me from the sidewalk. He’s holding up a basketball and pointing at it. That kid’s got one thing on the brain.
“Come on!” he yells. “Get over here!”
“I can’t!” I yell back. “I gotta go.”
I turn around and chase after Darnell. “Where are we going?” I ask, running to keep up.
We climb through a hole in the rusty wire fence. We’re standing on the old railroad tracks. The empty gun factory is rising up on one side of us. The project’s rising up on the other.
“Junebug,” Darnell says, “you ask too many questions.”
He walks on the big railroad ties lying crosswise. He steps over the stones in between.
“I know,” I say. “That’s just my nature.”
Darnell gives a laugh and keeps on walking. “How old are you?” he asks.
“Nine.”
“Yeah. That’s what I thought. Today, you’re getting an early birthday present.”
“That’s okay, Darnell. I don’t need any present. Don’t need a birthday, either.”
“What are you talking about?”
“I ain’t turning ten.”
“Oh yes, you are.”
“Uh-uh. You got it wrong. Just pass me the shrinking medicine.”
“Junebug, you are one crazy kid.”
We walk on down the tracks. On and on. Old beatup factories on both sides. A nasty stray cat stares at us, then ducks down in the weeds. I’ve never been this far before.
“Darnell.” I stop walking. “Where are we going?”
“Not too much farther. I got something to show you.”
“Yeah? Well, you can show me right here.”
“No I can’t. It ain’t in my pocket.”
He’s walking faster now and I have to run to keep up. Darnell’s got long legs. I guess they go with his big feet.
Pretty soon, we come to a bridge where a road crosses over the tracks. Darnell climbs up the bank. “Come on,” he says.
I follow up. The loose dirt crumbles and rattles downhill under my sneaker treads as I scramble up beside him. We sit all huddled up, under the bridge. Nobody can see us.
“So?” I ask. I don’t get it.
“Look at this,” says Darnell.
He lies down flat and wriggles his shoulders and his butt sideways through a narrow hole, like a letter going through a slot. He disappears under there.
“Come on,” he calls out to me.
Here goes nothing, I think, as I wriggle and squirm in, too. Darnell’s got a flashlight on, so I can see, or I would have been some scared. It looks like a cave carved out of dirt. A hideout. But you can’t sit up. The roof’s not high enough. I hope there aren’t rats. I do not like meeting rats.
