Junebug, page 4
“Are we under the road?” I ask.
“year.”
“Did you make this?”
“Nope. Somebody showed it to me once, like I’m showing you. This is a secret, Junebug. You can’t tell anybody. Not the reading teacher. Not Tasha. Nobody.”
“Yeah, okay.”
I nod my head, but I have a sick feeling in my stomach, the one I get when I think about Trevor and his gun. And I feel some big questions coming on. Why was Darnell standing by the fence yesterday, looking sad? And why does a fine boy like Darnell have to be lying in the dirt in the first place?
“Darnell, why are you showing me this?” My voice is shaking a little.
I think I already know the answer, but I just want to make sure.
“Because I’m going away, that’s why. You’re gonna have to get someone else to help you out when you get trapped in the library.”
He smiles at me. But I can’t smile back. Darnell, going away? I have tears in my throat. Tears everywhere.
“Why are you going?” I ask, my voice sounding croaky.
“I gotta go. You know that. What am I going to do? Stay here?”
Darnell slides his hand into his pocket and pulls out a big bunch of money. I’ve never seen so much money. Looks as if Darnell turned himself into a bank.
“I ain’t coming back, Junebug.”
“Where’d you get that money from, Darnell?”
“Never mind.”
“From a store?” I ask. I don’t want Darnell to be a robber.
He laughs a little. “It’s not from a store.”
“Okay.” I believe him. “But from where, then?” I have to find out.
“I’ve been saving it up. Plus I ran some errands for somebody.”
“What happened to that gold chain you had?”
“I sold it.”
I’m thinking now—about the gold chain Darnell had, about the man in the Mercedes.
“Who’d you do errands for? That man from yesterday?” I ask.
He puts the money back in his pocket. “You gotta know everything, don’t you? Yeah, him,” he says.
Then he pulls out a card. It says State of Connecticut driver’s license across the top. Picture of Darnell on it, too. But not his name.
“This is so I can get a decent job. It says I’m eighteen.”
“But you’re only fifteen!”
“I know, but you have to be eighteen for the good jobs.”
“You mean you’re not going to school anymore?”
“I can’t, Junebug. Not right now. This is like a war, living here. Pretty soon, they’re gonna come after you. And then you have to take sides, for your own protection. Once you sign on, you’re in the war.”
“No way. I’m not going to.”
“Yes, you will. What choice do you have? This is a real live war, but it ain’t on TV. Nobody’s winning it, either. We’re just fighting ourselves.”
I think about this for a minute. “Does Trevor have a gun?” I ask.
“Trevor?” Darnell gives a short laugh. “Yeah.”
I lay my head down on the dirt. It’s cool and grainy on my cheek. Doesn’t feel so bad, after all.
“That money’s my ticket to freedom, Junebug. You have to buy your way out of here. No Harriet Tubman’s gonna come down and lead you by the hand.”
I close my eyes. I see a map. But the map’s all blank. No directions. Nowhere to go. I open my eyes and draw a big X in the dirt.
“Know what I call the project?” I ask.
“What?”
“Never-never land.”
Darnell laughs. Then he says, “You ever get in trouble or someone’s looking for you, you can hide here. Nobody can find this place.”
He shines the flashlight around inside. He’s got a pile of comic books and some cans and a couple of plastic bags to lie on. All of a sudden, I can feel Darnell leaving me. I close my eyes again, all dizzy, it hurts so bad. Darnell’s the closest I’ve got to a father.
“Junebug?” he says.
“Yeah?”
“Don’t tell anybody you saw me today.”
“I won’t.”
Course I won’t. What does he think I am? I frown at him.
“Is this my present?” I ask.
“Yeah.”
“Thanks.”
“Now you get out of here,” he says. “You get on back to your babysitting job.”
I start to squirm sideways out of the hole.
“And, Junebug?”
“Yeah?” I stop and look back at him.
“Your Aunt Jolita, she’s hanging out with a bad crowd. Her friends are into all kinds of stuff. Stealing and drugs. So you be careful.”
“Yeah, okay. Bye, Darnell,” I say in a sad, small voice.
I climb out of the hole and slide down the embankment. I start back along the tracks by myself. Without Darnell around, I feel as if I’ve lost my way already. I knew, before, he was always there to keep me safe. Not anymore. Now I have to keep myself safe.
Tears are sliding all over my face. I think about Trevor and his gun and Jolita’s nasty friends. It’s too much. My nose is running and I wipe it with the back of my hand. I just walk on, my feet leading the way, leading back to Auburn Street, where I don’t want to go.
Maybe Mama should take that job with the old people and we should leave, too. Maybe. And go to a school where I don’t know anybody and Tasha doesn’t either. And what if the job doesn’t work out? Then maybe we’ll be homeless. I know kids who are homeless, living out of cars and motels and stuff.
I stumble on. I’m not looking at the tracks, not seeing anything around me. Instead, I hear the seagulls hollering overhead and the sail snapping in the breeze. My boat rocks up over the waves like a freed horse galloping. The cool salt spray settles on my arms and face. I readjust my hat with the gold braid. Captain McClain is holding that sail tight, riding the waves, heading for the West Indies, wherever they may be.
That night, somebody knocks on the door real loud, about nine o’clock. I’ve just gotten into bed when I hear it.
Aunt Jolita is all dolled up, ready to go out. She opens the door. I peek out of my bedroom.
A man is standing there in a fancy suit, felt hat, holding leather gloves, looking like Eddie Murphy when he wears a tuxedo. The man steps inside without being asked. Two men wait behind him in the doorway.
“Hello,” the man says to Jolita.
Mama rushes out of her bedroom. “Who said you could come in?” she asks.
“Is Junebug here?” the man asks, turning his dark glasses one way, then the other, like he’s radar, scanning for me.
I don’t want Mama to have to lie about me, so I come right on out of my room.
The man sees me. “You know Darnell?” he asks.
“Yeah,” I say in a babyish voice.
“You see Darnell today?”
“Nope.” I shake my head.
“Listen, if you see him, I want you to come tell me right away. I’ve got some money for you. He’s got something of mine and I need it back. You understand?” He lifts up his dark glasses and stares right at me.
“Yeah,” I say. “Okay.”
My heart starts beating faster. Darnell took some of that big pile of money from this guy. But the guy must have owed it to him. Darnell would never take something he shouldn’t.
“You friends with Trevor?” the man asks suddenly.
“Trevor?” I ask, trying to act confused. “Yeah, a little.”
I feel like he’s taking an X-ray of me, of my insides. And he’s gonna take that little X-ray with him to use later on. I hope he doesn’t see my heart beating like a crazy drum inside me.
Then he puts on his dark glasses and flaps his gloves at the other two men, and they all leave.
“You’re not going out with him, are you?” Mama asks Jolita.
“Why don’t you stay out of my business? You’re already running my life for me enough as it is,” Jolita says.
About a minute later, Jolita leaves, too, closing the door hard behind her. Not slamming it, but almost. Mama and I sit on the sofa.
Mama looks real tired. “Why are they looking for Darnell?” she asks.
“I don’t know.”
“Yes, you do,” she says. “Don’t lie to me, Junior.”
“Darnell’s leaving. He’s not coming back.”
“Does his mother know?”
I shrug, holding out my open hands.
Mama nods and then lays her head back against the couch, as if it got too heavy to hold up.
“Don’t you ever take money from that man. You hear me?”
“I won’t.”
She’s told me this a hundred times already. But isn’t money the ticket to freedom? Isn’t that how you book a flight out of never-never land?
“Mama?”
“What?” She rolls her head sideways to see me.
“Are we gonna be moving?”
“You mean, am I going to take that new job?”
“Yeah.”
“I don’t know. Seems like I’m barely managing the job I’ve got,” Mama says, her hands lying limp in her lap.
I get shivery and scared, sitting there, looking at her floppy hands. Hands aren’t supposed to look like that. They look a lot better when they’re busy doing things, instead of lying around like caught fish.
“How come Jolita doesn’t help out more?” I ask.
Mama sighs and gives a tiny shrug, I guess too tired to lift her shoulders up high.
“I guess she doesn’t know how.”
That isn’t much of an answer, but I don’t dare ask again. I hurry back to bed and climb under the covers.
I can’t stop thinking. I hope Mama isn’t giving up. She can’t, or else what’s going to happen to me and Tasha?
I lie there, staring at the dark ceiling. I hear Mama moving around, slowly putting stuff away, straightening up before she goes to bed.
Seven
Next day, we’re out on the playground during recess when I see the reading teacher pull up in her red car and get out with her big canvas bag.
I go running over to the fence. “Hey, Miss Robinson,” I yell.
She gives me a big smile. “How are you?” she asks.
“I’m all right.”
I start to turn around.
“Wait a second,” she says. “I have something I want to give you.”
“For my birthday?”
“When’s your birthday?”
“Next week.”
She reaches into her bag and pulls out the poetry book that we started. She hands it to me. “I know we didn’t get very far, but maybe you can finish it on your own. And you can remember the fun we had.”
She comes through the opening in the fence and starts to walk with me toward the school. The end-of-recess bell rings. I bet I’m gonna be late.
“You like writing poems?” I ask.
“Yes. I like thinking about things and writing down what I think. It makes me feel free. Like when we wrote about the pinecone.”
“Is that what you do all the time, write poems?”
She laughs. “That would be nice.”
“I better hurry up,” I say.
“Me, too,” she says. “Bye, Junebug.”
She runs up the front steps with her canvas bag. The heavy school door closes behind her as she disappears. I sink down on the steps, about to cry. Instead of going back to my classroom, I turn around and walk home. Tears in my eyes make the glass in the gutter sparkle like diamonds.
I wander slowly all the way home, kicking stray pebbles. My stomach is knotted up inside. There’s too much going on. Darnell leaving and Jolita and Mama having an argument and the library closing. And I hate all of it.
It’s the middle of the morning. The project’s quiet this time of day. The kids are at school. Other people are at work. And the party crowd is still sleeping. I wonder if Aunt Jolita is asleep. Probably. I go around back and sit up against the wall, where it’s sunny. I lay the poetry book down on my lap and stretch my legs out.
Why do people keep on giving me empty stuff? Empty hole, empty book. Upstairs I have a pile of empty bottles, each one waiting for a slip of paper and my birthday wish.
I have another wish, too. I wish I had a magic carpet. I’d fly right up and over that wrecked gun factory. Past the broken windows, over the ugly roof. On the other side, I bet there’s … I don’t know.
What did that teacher say? Let your mind go free? Sounds like a song on an album Mama has. Aretha Franklin. She has a voice that goes free, soaring up high like a kite, like the top of a roller-coaster ride.
If I let my thoughts go free, they’re gonna run smack into that ugly wall of the gun factory. Or smack into Aunt Jolita. Or into that metal door where the library used to be. Locked up. That’s what I am. Locked up in never-never land.
And who’s got the key?
I don’t know. So why don’t I make a third wish? Why not? It’s not gonna cost me anything. I open the little poem book and write, “I wish I wasn’t locked up.”
I remember that the worst thing of all yesterday was looking at my mama and thinking maybe she was going to give up.
Giving up is the worst. That’s why Trevor got himself a gun, because he already gave up trying to be himself. All he can do is go with a gang. Going with a gang is giving up. I swear I won’t ever do it. I swear.
I get to my feet.
But what am I going to do instead? I look at my scraggly little writing in the poetry book. I wish I could have shown my bottles to the reading teacher. I was thinking maybe she and Darnell could have come to my party. But I guess now, for sure, I won’t have one.
I unlock the door to the apartment, and there she is! Well, what did I expect? It’s big old nasty Aunt Jolita, as usual. Her hair in rollers. Big slippers on her feet. Smelly old coffee cup, all stained, in her hand.
But instead of using her grouchy voice she says kind of soft, “What’s up, Junebug? What are you doing home this early?”
“Nothing. Got a stomachache.” I drop the poetry book on the floor.
“You sick?” Jolita asks.
I’m not really sick, but I’m not my usual Junebug self, not by a long shot. “Nah. Maybe.”
I flop down sideways on the sofa, my stomach hanging over the armrest, head on the cushions, feet on the floor. Jolita goes off to call the school and tell them I don’t feel well. Then she comes over to the sofa.
“Come on. Sit by me.” She pats the sofa next to herself.
I don’t want to sit by her. But I pull myself up, all reluctant, and drop down in the seat next to her anyway.
“What’s this?” She picks up my book and flips through it.
“Supposed to be poems and wishes, but it ain’t.”
She reads the first page. She reads how Tasha wants to be a ballerina, twirling on the stage.
“Tasha wants to be a dancer?” she asks, surprised.
“year.”
“Why didn’t she tell me that?”
I shrug. “How come you never asked her?”
“You know what, Junebug?” Aunt Jolita sits forward, bright-eyed, and looks at me. “I used to want to be a dancer, too, when I was little.”
“Yeah? Maybe that’s how come you go to parties all the time.”
“Maybe,” she says. “I never thought of that. You know, you’re a smart boy.”
“Can’t get smart with the library all locked up,” I say, looking right at her.
She doesn’t answer.
“How come you’re friends with that dumb Georgina, anyway? If she hadn’t started that fight with Evie, they might not have closed the library.”
“Oh, Junebug. Seems like fights around here just happen every so often. It doesn’t much matter who starts them. People just get mad. They’ve had enough of this place. You know that feeling.”
“Yeah, I do,” I say. “But I don’t bite anybody.”
I wonder how come Jolita and I are talking like this. It must be because of the wishes. Maybe they make people brave.
“What else did you wish for?” I ask, feeling more like a junebug again.
“I wanted to be a movie star.”
She drinks some coffee and looks at me over the top of the cup to see if I’m laughing at her.
“Then how come you aren’t one?” I ask.
She shrugs and puts the cup down. “Didn’t know how, I guess.”
Then she stands up. “I have to get dressed now.” She takes her things into the bathroom.
I don’t get it. Doesn’t she care anymore? Doesn’t she care that she’s not a movie star? I go into my bedroom and stand there a minute. My bottles are lined up in a long, winding line like a glass snake. Time for me to write some notes. It’s not much longer before the launching.
I sit down and start to write: “To Whom It May Concern. My name is Reeve McClain, Junior, and for my birthday wish I would like to sail a boat. You can find me at 686 Auburn Terrace, New Haven, Connecticut, U.S.A.” I have to write that fifty times because I’m going to launch fifty bottles. And, sure as heck, somebody has to find one of them.
That night, at supper, Aunt Jolita is acting bossy and superior, the way she usually does. I’m sitting on the sofa with my magazines, watching her rush around. She tries on one set of earrings after another. She puts on some big round plastic white ones.
They look fine. She looks in the bathroom mirror, then yanks them off and storms over to her jewelry box on Mama’s dresser. She grabs some gold hoops and puts those on. They look fine, too. What’s the big deal? Then I start thinking, she sure has a lot of earrings, considering she has no job or anything.
“Tasha, would you mind?” she says. “Why do you have to have your dolls under here?”
Tasha’s got a bunch of her stuffed toys under the dresser, camping out or on a field trip or something. Jolita bends over and takes her shoe and sweeps them all out of there. Tasha doesn’t pick them up. She leaves them in a pile in the middle of the floor and goes to sit in the rocking chair.
Mama got home late and is too tired to make anything special for dinner, so she’s opening a can of baked beans. That’s okay with me. I like baked beans. I put a ton of ketchup on them.
