A, My Name Is Ami, page 2
Mom looked at Dad. “Martin! Don’t just sit there! Help me out!”
“It’s not my idea,” Dad said.
“You agreed!”
“Well, Pat, when you get right down to it, I didn’t see that there was anything else I could do.”
“Oh!” My mother’s face got red. Then she went into this long thing about how she and Dad had problems, but Fred and I didn’t have to think about those things, that it was between her and Dad, and they both loved us and that was what counted.
“And, remember, it’s just a trial,” Dad said, “something we’re trying out.”
“Anyway, first I have to get a job,” Mom said. “I can’t move out until I get a job. And, in any case, Ami, you and Fred will stay right here, so that’ll be the least disruption for you.”
“Why can’t you get a job and stay home?” I said. “You could even separate and stay home. I heard about some people who did that. They separated, but they stayed in the same house, because neither one wanted to leave their kids.”
“Ami! I don’t want to leave you. But I can’t stay here, either.”
Just a few weeks before they told us, Mom had graduated with an MSW—that’s a master’s degree in social work. All the time my mother had been in school, Mia’s mother would say how great it was that my mom had all that determination, to go back for a degree after twenty years away, and wasn’t I proud of her? Yes! I thought we all were. We went to her graduation, and we cheered when the dean handed her the diploma.
Afterward, to celebrate, we ate out in a fancy restaurant that, Dad said, was going to set him back about a month’s salary. “I’ll pay you back,” Mom said. “With interest.” I thought it was a joke then.
Right after they told us about the trial separation, Mom started sleeping on the living room couch at night, and typing up résumés and sending them out during the day. She must have sent out a thousand résumés, but she didn’t get a job. “Not even a nibble,” she said. “Nobody has money to hire. They’re laying off people, not hiring.”
I was glad. I thought if she didn’t get a job, she would change her mind and stay home. And I was glad when Dad said he wanted to “discuss” things with her, and they would go into the kitchen and shut the door, so they could talk in private. But, instead of changing her mind, Mom went right on telling me I had to be more responsible about things like my laundry, because who would do it for me when she was gone? And a lot of times she wouldn’t make supper, she wouldn’t even be around when we were eating. It was as if she were reallly trying hard to get us all to practice for when she was gone. I’d come home from school sometimes, and the house would be quiet, empty. I’d say to myself, See, Ami, this is how it will feel. It’s not so terrible. You can live.
Then the real thing happened. Mom got her job in New Castle and left. And it was terrible. It wasn’t like practicing at all. That’s why I knew what Ms. Linsley meant about the real thing. Ms. Linsley and I were both sort of in the same boat. She was new at teaching and I was new at living without Mom. One time, when I was in Ms. Linsley’s room, she said it was good to have somebody to talk to, and she was glad we were friends.
The thing is, you can’t actually be friends with a teacher, not friends like Mia and me. Grownups, no matter what they say about being equal, will always remind you who’s in charge if they think you’re stepping out of line. One afternoon, just a few days before Mia came back to school, I started laughing about something—I forget now what it was—and I couldn’t stop. Sometimes laughing is like rain or snow or some other force of nature—it keeps coming and coming, and you can’t do anything about it.
That was the way I was laughing. Whooops! Whooops! Whooops! Fred says I sound like a whooping crane when I laugh. At first Ms. Linsley laughed with me, then after a few minutes of whoops! whoops! whoops! from Ami, she began shaking her head, like, Oh what is this!
Which only made me laugh more. She put her chin in her hand and just looked at me. Whoops! Whooops! Whooops! Finally, she said, “Okay, Ami, that’s enough of preteen hysteria.” She didn’t say it in a mean way, but I still didn’t like it.
Chapter 3
Dad threw something into the shopping cart. “What is it?” I said. It looked like an overgrown tennis ball that had been left out in the rain.
“Celeriac. Didn’t we ever have it before?”
“No.” I poked it. “Is it alive or dead?”
Dad weighed some tomatoes. “It’s just a root veggie, Ami. Ugly, but good.” He put his hand on my shoulder. I ducked away. I don’t know why. Just recently, it seems I don’t want my father always hugging me or putting his arm around me.
I followed him as he strolled through the aisles, looking at different kinds of crackers, tasting the cheese samples, and comparing prices. It takes him forever to do the shopping. We’d already bought everything on our list, but we were still wandering around the market.
“Da-ad.” I gave him a significant look and tapped my wristwatch. “School tomorrow.” That can usually get him going. He’s not the sort of person who lives in the fast lane. Mostly, he ambles along, very relaxed. Which can be helpful or unhelpful, depending on the situation. In my opinion, he had been too relaxed about my mother.
I take it back. That’s really unfair. Once my mother made up her mind, I guess there was no way anybody was going to stop her. And Dad tried, he really did. Three or four or five times a week, she and Dad would have what Mom called “the same old arguments, again, Martin,” and what Dad called “our ongoing discussion.” I would hear their voices, Mom’s racing, rising and falling, Dad’s slow, deep, and deliberate. After a while, she would stop talking, but he wouldn’t. Fred says when Dad wants something, he’ll wear you down with reasonable “discussions.” But he couldn’t wear Mom down.
Dad and I walked over to the fish department, and he started sniffing—it was really cute—just like our cat does when the wind is blowing. Our cat’s name is Alcott, after Louisa May. Did I say my father is an English teacher? That’s why half the things we have are named after dead writers. Our car is Steinbeck (for John Steinbeck) and, if you can believe it, my father’s desk is Willie. No, not for William Shakespeare, but some other ancient writer named Maugham, who lived to be about 200 years old. Well, 98 anyway. Or 89, something like that. “Wonderful writer,” my father says.
My father looks a lot like Fred. Or should I say Fred looks a lot like Dad? Both of them are sort of medium height and on the skinny side. Fred’s better-looking, but my father has a better personality, very gentle and patient. Really, he hardly ever loses his temper. Sometimes kids will come up to me in school and say, “Is Mr. Pelter your father? He’s neat!”
At the fish counter, the fish were laid out in ice, their dead eyes staring up at us.
“Fresh cohoe salmon today,” the pink man behind the counter said. The fish were gutted open. They were pink, too, outside and inside.
“Let’s have that little beauty.” Dad pointed to one of the fish.
I couldn’t believe it. My father’s worst fault is how cheap he is. He’s always pointing out to us how much things cost and how little English teachers make. “Dad, it’s eight dollars a pound!”
“Fresh cohoe salmon, Ami, you don’t see that too often. Think of it as a new experience.”
“Maybe I don’t want a new experience. What’s wrong with tuna fish?”
“We’ve had it three times a week for the last three months. Tuna fish casserole. Tuna fish sandwiches. Tuna fish loaf. I want something else once in a while, something I like.”
He sounded sort of sad and yet definite, as if he really didn’t want me to argue with him. “I just thought, since it’s so expensive—”
He took off his glasses and rubbed his eyes. Then a really strange thing happened. Right there in the supermarket, leaning on the fish counter, he started talking to me about Mom. “You know, your mother wanted to get into the world. She never lived on her own, she said she had to find out what it was like.”
“I know, Dad.” I kicked at the wheels of the cart.
“We were always different. Your mother’s much more go go go than I am.”
Why did we have to talk about it here?
The man behind the fish counter handed Dad the salmon wrapped in plastic. I thought Dad would take the hint and we’d leave, but he went on talking. “I asked her to go to a marriage counselor; I thought we should all go. You and Fred, too, because I saw it as a family problem. But your mother had other ideas. She said it was no good, it wasn’t like patching up a dish that was cracked.”
“Don’t you think we should get going?” I said. I tugged at the cart. “Do you want some ice cream? Or a frozen pie? Last week you said that frozen strawberry pie was delicious.” I was afraid he was going to get himself into a really depressed mood talking about Mom. The first few weeks after she left last summer were terrible. Dad hardly talked. We’d sit down to eat supper and he’d pick up his fork and then just sit there. Usually, after a while, Fred or I would say, “You okay, Dad?” And Dad would look up and give this sad, sad smile. It was awful! It made me so mad at my mother. For a long time, I was really furious with her.
“When she first brought up this idea of leaving,” Dad went on, “I thought it was just hare-brained, some idea she got from a woman’s magazine about fulfillment. And then I saw she was serious, I saw that no matter how much I talked and tried to change her mind, she had this one idea that she was getting a job and moving out.”
“Dad—”
“She could have held down a job here in Alliance. I wasn’t holding her back about that. You know that, don’t you? And I told her, any time she wants to come back—”
Suddenly, I thought, Mom is coming back! That’s why he’s talking this way. To get me ready for it. “She’s coming back?” I said. I could hardly breathe. “She’s coming back?”
“What?” Dad looked at me blankly for a moment. Then he tossed the package of fish into the cart. “No, honey, no. Oh, no.”
When we got home, Fred was in the kitchen, reading the sports page and eating last night’s leftovers. “Stop right there,” Dad said. “Don’t ruin your appetite, Fred. We have something special for supper tonight. Fresh cohoe salmon.”
“Fish?” Fred said. He didn’t look impressed.
While Dad cooked the salmon, I made french fries and Fred set the table. Alcott hung around, purring and getting between everyone’s legs. He was certainly enthusiastic about the idea of fish for supper.
When we sat down, Dad put big chunks of salmon on our plates and looked at us expectantly. I took a bite. Soft, and not too much taste. “Mmmm,” I said. I didn’t want to hurt Dad’s feelings.
“So. This is the famous cohoe salmon,” Fred said. “Kind of blah, isn’t it, Dad? Maybe you didn’t cook it right.”
“The flavor is subtle, Fred.”
“I guess it’s wasted on me.”
“Could be. Wait until you taste it cold tomorrow, though. That’s really special.”
“I think I’ll pass,” Fred said. “I’d rather have cold almost anything than cold fish.”
“I don’t understand you. This fish is delicious. Where are your taste buds?”
“Well, you have to defend it, Dad. You’re the guy who made the mistake of buying the expensive little sucker.”
My father’s eyebrows shot up.
Silence for a few moments. Then Fred said, “I finally got all the forms filled out for student exchange. Now I wait to hear if I’m in.”
“Student exchange?” I said. “When? Where?”
“Where do you think, Ami? France.”
When Fred was in sixth grade, he got into an AP conversational French course. Ever since then, he’s been a Francophile. Dad’s word. It means someone actually in love with everything French. Fred’s bedroom is covered with maps and posters of France. He listens to French records and French songs, he gets a monthly French language magazine. Of course, he rides a Peugeot bike, and he’s after Dad to buy a Peugeot car. They only cost about twenty thousand dollars!
Fred wants to be a translator, maybe work for the United Nations. I told him that the way he argues with Dad over just about anything, it’s a good thing he doesn’t want to be a diplomat, someone who has to make peace between people.
“I’ll be going in the spring,” Fred said. “March, April, May. If I’m lucky, I’ll get a family right in Paris.”
“You’ll be gone for three months?”
“Right. Back in time for exams. Dad, you won’t have to think about me for three months. Voilà! No arguments for three whole months.”
Dad and Fred started talking about the money part of student exchange. I left the table and began washing the dishes. My least favorite house chore, but I couldn’t just sit there and listen to Fred sounding so happy about going away. No one had asked me how I felt. Three months was a long time. What guarantee was there that Fred would even come home after those three months? What if he loved France so much he stayed there? It could happen. Mom had been gone five months now and I still wasn’t used to it. I didn’t think I ever would be. And I wouldn’t get used to Fred’s being gone for three months next spring, either. When he brought his dishes over to the sink, I said, “Traitor.”
“What’d I do now?”
“You know!”
“What? What?”
“France,” I muttered, splashing dishes into the water.
Fred looked at me, surprised. “Ami, it’s a long way off. Think of it this way. You’ll have Dad all to yourself. Anyway, what kind of red-blooded American kid sister are you? I thought you’d be glad to be rid of me.”
“You’re right! I will be.”
“There you go.”
“I still think you’re a traitor.”
Chapter 4
Something fairly embarrassing happened in school. Mia and I were on our way to gym when Ms. Linsley stopped us in the hall. “Ami, hi!” She gave me a big smile. “How are you doing, Ami?”
“Oh. Fine, thanks.”
“Hello, Mia. I see you two girls are still tight as two bugs in a rug.”
Mia and I laughed politely.
Now here comes the embarrassing part. Ms. Linsley said, “I’ve invited your father for supper next Friday, Ami. A week from this Friday, that is, and I’d like you and Fred to come, too.”
I didn’t know what to say. My face got hot. Why would she invite my father to supper?
“Well, you girls better go along or you’ll be late.”
Mia and I hurried down the hall. “Woo woo,” Mia said.
“Shut up, Mia.”
“Forrest Lake and your dad.”
“Shut up up up, Mia.”
“It’s interesting, Ami!” She took my arm. “Forrest Lake would be pretty neat as a stepmother.”
What a stupid thing to say! We went into the locker room and started changing into our shorts and T-shirts. I slammed my locker door shut.
Mia hung up her skirt. “How come you’re breathing so hard?”
I pulled my hair around and began braiding it. “I’m going to cut my hair, I’m going to cut it really short.”
“When you get mad at me, you always say you’re going to cut your hair.”
“Really?” I gave her a cold look. “I mean it this time.” I ran up the steps to the gym.
“Ami!” Mia caught me at the top of the stairs. “Why are you so mad? Because of what I said about Forrest Lake? I don’t want her to be your stepmother. You know me, old flap mouth, I say everything that comes into my head.”
“How many times do I have to tell you, Mia, my parents aren’t divorced? They are separated. Which means they are living apart. Which means they could start living together any time. It might be next week or next month, or tomorrow morning!” I pulled open the door. And there, right across the gym, sitting in the top bleacher, was Robert Volz.
Mia saw Robert at the same moment I did. “It’s him. Ami, it’s him.”
“I know.” There were other kids there, too. The study halls are always overflowing, so every period the monitor picks five or six kids to take their books into the gym.
“I can’t bear it,” Mia whispered. “He’s so adorable. He looks just like a tweetie bird, the way his hair sticks up in those funny little tufts.”
“Redheaded tweetie bird,” I said.
Mia snickered. “Amikins,” she said and squeezed my hand.
After a moment, I squeezed back and said, “Miaseea.”
That’s the way we almost always make up. I know the names are sort of childish, but we started it way back when we first became friends and we still do it.
“Okay, gals and guys, let’s go!” Mr. Cooper stood in the middle of the gym, his hands on his hips, and led us through warm-ups. Mr. Cooper always wears white shorts, a white shirt, white socks, and a white sweatband. He’s blond and extremely handsome. A lot of the girls have crushes on him. “Why didn’t Ms. Linsley pick on him for supper?” I whispered to Mia.
Robert stayed in the gym the whole period. Once, when I looked at him, he was bent over, his chin in his hand, reading one of his books. Another time he was talking to Alex Takamura. But a couple of times, when I glanced up, I was almost positive he was looking over my way. Well, half positive. It seemed more like he was watching Mia.
After warm-ups, we played basketball. Mr. Cooper divided us into teams and handed out colored armbands. He put Mia and me on opposing teams. He always does. Some teachers are like that; as soon as they know Mia and I are friends, they separate us.
Mr. Cooper always makes us take a team name. “It improves team spirit, people! And you can’t win a game without team spirit. Okay, you boys and girls over there, purple armbands, what’s your team name?” He snapped his fingers and we all started shouting out names. “Just one of you!” Mr. Cooper yelled. “You, Ami, give me a name.”
I bet he chose me because of my voice—I mean that he heard it over the other kids. It was embarrassing. “The Purple People?” I said. Everybody on my team groaned.
