Raven, Page 3

  "He was like an Atlas out there on the highway. With his shirt off and his muscles gleaming in the sunlight. He was a lot trimmer then," she recalled fondly. She laughed. "One day, he pretended to have road work right in front of my parents' house just so he could visit with me. We got married about four months later. My mother hoped I would at least go to a secretarial school, but you're impulsive when you're young," she remarked, and looked very thoughtful for a few moments. Then she shook her head and patted my hand. "Don't you go jumping into the arms of the first man you see, honey. Stand back, listen to your head instead of your heart, and take your time."

  It seemed to me that every woman I ever met gave me the same advice. I was beginning to believe that love was a trap men set for unsuspecting women. They told us what we wanted to hear. They wrote promises in gold. They filled our heads with dreams and made it all seem easy, and then they satisfied themselves and went off to trap another innocent young woman. Even Aunt Clara, who had married her young sweetheart, discovered she had gotten caught in a trap. Uncle Reuben ruled his house like an ogre, turning her into a glorified maid instead of putting her up on a pedestal as I was sure he had promised. She just shook her head and threaded herself through her days like a rat caught in a maze.

  After lunch, she drove me over to the school. It was smaller and seemed quieter than mine. The principal, Mr. Moore, a stout, thick-necked man of about forty, invited us into his office. He listened to Aunt Clara and then called his secretary and dictated orders quickly.

  "I want you to contact her previous school, get the guidance counselor, get her records sent here ASAP, Martha," he said. I was impressed with his take-charge demeanor. "I suppose you know that we'll have to get some sort of instructions from Child Welfare as to her status. You and your husband are going to be her legal guardians, of course?'

  "Yes, of course," Aunt Clara said.

  "She'll do fine," he concluded, gazing at me. "I know this isn't easy for you, but you should consider what it will be like for your new teachers. They have the added burden of bringing you up to par in their classes. The subjects might be the same, but everyone has his or her way of doing things, and there are bound to be differences. Some teachers move through the curriculum faster than others?'

  "I know," I said.

  He nodded, staring at me a moment with his eyes dark and concerned. Then he smiled.

  "On the other hand, you have a cousin attending classes here. She should be of great help. Your daughter is a year older than Raven?" he asked Aunt Clara.

  "Yes."

  "Not a big difference. You'll have similar interests, I'm sure. She can help fill you in on our rules and regulations, too. Keep your nose clean, and we'll all get along, okay?"

  I nodded.

  Mr. Moore suggested I attend classes immediately. "No sense wasting any more time. She can still sit in on math and social studies. She'll get her books in those classes, at least," he said.

  "What a good idea," Aunt Clara agreed.

  A student office assistant brought me to math class and introduced me to Mr. Finnerman, who gave me a textbook and assigned me the last seat in the first row. Everyone looked at me, watching my every move. I recalled how interested I used to be when a new student arrived. / was sure they were all just as curious.

  One girl, a black girl who introduced herself as Terri Johnson, showed me the way to social studies and introduced me to some other students along the way. She called me "the new girl." As we approached the social studies room, I saw Jennifer coming down the hall with two girlfriends at her side. The moment her eyes set on me, she stopped and moaned.

  "That's her," I heard her tell them as she passed by without saying hello.

  It was worse when social studies class ended and I had to find the right schoolbus home. Jennifer didn't wait for me, and when I found the bus, she was already seated in the rear with her friends, pretending she didn't know me. I sat up front and talked to a thin, dark-haired boy named Clarence Dunsen, who had a bad stutter. It made him shy but also very suspicious. When he did speak to me, he waited to see if I was going to ridicule him I looked back at Jennifer, whose laugh resounded through the bus louder than anyone else's.

  Please, Mama, I thought, be good, make promises, crawl on the floor if you have to, but get out and take me home, take me anywhere, just get me away from here.

  "I got news," Aunt Clara said as soon as we entered the house.

  "What?" I gasped, holding my new textbooks tightly against me.

  "Your mother's not going to jail."

  "Thank God," I cried. I was going to add, "And good riddance to you, Jennifer Spoiled Head," but Aunt Clara wasn't smiling. She shook her head. "What else, Aunt Clara?"

  "She has to be in drug rehabilitation. She could be there for some time, Raven. They won't even let her call you until her therapist says so."

  "Oh," I said, sinking into a chair.

  "It's better than it could have been," Aunt Clara said.

  "Great. I have an aunt in drug rehabilitation," Jennifer whined. She turned her eyes on me like two little spotlights of hate. "You better do what I said and tell everyone your mother is dead," Jennifer warned.

  I just looked at her.

  "Don't talk like that, Jennifer," Aunt Clara said. "And you should know your cousin helped me clean your room. See if you can keep it that way."

  "So what? She should clean our house. You heard what Daddy said. She's living off us, isn't she?" Jennifer fired back.

  "Jennifer!" Aunt Clara cried. "Where's your charity and your love?"

  "Love? I don't love her. It was hard enough to explain who she was. Everyone wanted to know why she's so dark. I had to tell them what her father was," she complained.

  "Jennifer."

  "You're not better than me because your skin's whiter," I charged.

  "Of course, she isn't," Aunt Clara said. "Jennifer, I never taught you such terrible things."

  "It's not fair, Mama. My friends are all wondering about our family now. It's not fair!" she moaned.

  "Stop that talk, or I'll tell your father," Aunt Clara said.

  "Tell him," she challenged, smirked, and walked up the stairs.

  "I don't know where she gets that streak of meanness," Aunt Clara muttered.

  I gazed up at her. Was she that blind or deliberately hiding her head in the sand? It was easy to see that Jennifer had inherited the meanness from Uncle Reuben.

  "I'm sorry," Aunt Clara said.

  "Don't worry about it, Aunt Clara. I'll be fine with or without Jennifer's friendship."

  The door opened and closed, and William came sauntering in. He looked up at me with shy eyes.

  "How was your day in school, William?" Aunt Clara asked.

  He dug into his notebook and produced a spelling test on which he had received a ninety.

  "That's wonderful! Look, Raven," she said, showing me.

  "Very good, William. I'll have to come to you for help with my spelling homework."

  He looked appreciative but took the test back quickly and shoved it into his notebook.

  "Do you want some milk and cookies, William?" Aunt Clara asked him.

  He shook his head, glanced at me with as close to a smile as he could manage, and then hurried up to his room.

  "He's so shy. I never realized how shy. Doesn't he have any friends to play with after school?" I asked, watching him leave.

  Aunt Clara shook her head sadly.

  "He stays to himself too much, I know. The counselor at school called me in to discuss him. His teachers think he's too withdrawn. They all say he never raises his hand in class. He hardly speaks to the other students. You see him. He looks like a turtle about to crawl back in his shell. I don't know why," she added, her eyes filling with tears. I felt like putting my arm around her.

  "He'll grow out of it," I said, but she didn't smile

  She shook her head. "Something's not right, but I don't know why. I took him to a doctor. He's healthy, hardly even g
ets a cold, but something . . ." Her voice trailed off. Then she turned to me with teary eyes and asked, "What makes a young boy behave like that?"

  I didn't know then.

  But I would soon learn why.

  Only I wouldn't be able to find the words to tell her.

  3 Fly Away Home

  "Drug rehabilitation," Uncle Reuben muttered as he chewed his forkful of sirloin steak Whenever Mama and I had steak, it was usually warmed-up leftovers she had brought back from Charlie's. "That's a waste of government money," he continued, chewing as he talked. He seemed to grind his teeth over the bitter words as well as his meat.

  "It's not a waste of money if it helps her," Aunt Clara said softly.

  He stopped chewing and glared at her.

  "Helps her? Nothing can help her. She's a lost cause. Best thing they could do would be to lock her up and drop the key into the sewer."

  Jennifer laughed. I looked up from my plate and fixed my eyes on her.

  "Stop staring at me," she complained. "It isn't polite to stare, is it, Daddy?"

  Uncle Reuben glanced at me and then nodded. "No, it ain't, but how would she know?"

  Jennifer laughed again and smiled at me. My meat tasted like chunks of cardboard and stuck in my throat. I stopped eating and sat back. "I'd like to be excused," I said,

  "Like hell you will, until you finish that," Uncle Reuben said, nodding at my plate. "We don't waste food here."

  Jennifer cut into her steak and chomped down with a wide smile on her chubby face, pretending to savor every morsel. "It's delicious," she said.

  "It's not polite to talk with food in your mouth," I said quickly.

  William looked up with a gleeful smile in his eyes. Jennifer stopped chewing and swung her eyes at Uncle Reuben. He continued to scoop up his potatoes, shoveling the food into his mouth as if he had to finish in record time.

  "I have a homemade pecan pie, Reuben. Your favorite," Aunt Clara said.

  He nodded as if he expected no less. They're all spoiled, I thought.

  "I got an eighty on my English test today," Jennifer told him.

  "No kidding? Eighty. That's good," Uncle Reuben said.

  "I have a chance to make the honor roll if Mr. Finnerman gives me a decent grade in math this quarter," she bragged.

  "Wow. Hear that, Clara? That's my little girl making her daddy proud."

  "Yes. That's very good," Aunt Clara said. "William came home with a ninety in spelling," she added.

  William looked at Uncle Reuben, but he just continued chewing with only the slightest nod. "I guess I gotta go get the paperwork done on her," he said finally. "Everything go all right with the school?"

  "Yes," Aunt Clara said. "She's enrolled."

  "What kind of grades you been getting?" he asked me.

  "I pass everything," I said, looking away quickly. "I bet," he said. "Your mother ever ask you how you were doing in school?"

  "Yes, she has," I said with indignation. He curled his lips. "She had to sign my report card, so she saw my grades all the time."

  "You never forged her signature?" Jennifer asked with a smile that could freeze lava.

  "Why? Is that what you do?" I fired back.

  "Hardly. I don't have to do that. I pass for real," she said "Daddy signs my report cards, don't you, Daddy?"

  "Every time," he agreed. He pushed back from the table and stood. "If she's going to waste food, Clara, you see you don't give her as much to start. I work hard for my money to pay for everything," he added, directing himself to me.

  Even though my stomach was protesting, I forced myself to swallow the last piece of meat and another forkful of green beans.

  "I want to catch the news. Call me when coffee and pie is ready," he added, and left the kitchen to go watch television.

  My eyes followed him out, and then I looked at William, who was staring at me sympathetically. I smiled at him, and his face brightened.

  "I gotta go do my homework, Ma. I don't have to do anything with the dinner dishes anyway, right? You got her," Jennifer said, nodding at me.

  "You should still help out, Jennifer?'

  "I can't. You heard Daddy. He wants me to make the honor roll. Don't you want me to finish my homework?" she whined.

  "Of course?'

  "Okay, then," she said, jumping up. "I'll come down later for a piece of pie."

  She left the kitchen. Aunt Clara shook her head sadly.

  "I'll help," William said. He started to clear the table with me.

  "You want to see the birdhouse I built?" he asked me when we were finished.

  Aunt Clara smiled at me, happy William was emerging a little from his shell.

  "Sure," I said.

  "It's up in my room. I made it myself," he said. I followed him up to his room, and he took it off the shelf. It was a triangular-shaped house with dried corncobs attached to the outside.

  "I glued all those on," he said, showing me how secure the cobs were.

  I handled it gently. "This is wonderful, William It must have been hard to build this from scratch. How long did it take?"

  "A couple of days," he said proudly, "As soon as I save up enough, I'm going to buy some binoculars so I can see the birds that come to my house up close. Do you know anything about birds?"

  I shook my head, and he went to his desk to get an encyclopedia of birds. It contained brightly colored photos of birds, their habitats, and the type of food they ate. He then showed me another book that had instructions on building birdhouses.

  "That's the next one I want to build." He pointed to a double-decker birdhouse.

  "That's beautiful. You can build that?"

  "Sure," he said confidently. "I'll let you know when I get the materials, and you could watch if you want." "Thanks," I said.

  He gave me his best smile, one that truly brightened his eyes.

  "I better start on my homework," I told him.

  I left, and as I passed Jennifer's door, which was partly open, I saw her curled on the floor, talking on her phone. I paused, and she looked up at me.

  "What are you doing, spying on me?" she snapped.

  "Hardly," I said. "But I thought you had to do your homework, or are you taking a course in gossip?" I continued down the stairs, my heart pounding. I heard her slam her door closed behind me.

  Since the sewing room was so close to the dining room, I could hear Uncle Reuben's

  conversation with Aunt Clara while he had his coffee and pie.

  "We're not going to go and spend a lot of money on new clothes for her. I want to see if we can get some sort of government help. I think if you take in a kid, they give you some support money."

  "She needs things, Reuben," Aunt Clara said softly. "Shouldn't you go back and see what else she has in the apartment?"

  "What good would that do? We'd only have to have it deloused."

  "You can't just let her wear what she has," Aunt Clara insisted softly.

  "Okay, okay, get her a couple of things. But I don't want you spending a lot of money, Clara. We got Jennifer, who needs new things. You see how fast she's growing:"

  "Maybe Jennifer will share some of her things with Raven," Aunt Clara said.

  He grunted and then added, "If she does, you make sure Raven is clean before she puts anything of Jennifer's on."

  "Oh, she's clean, Reuben. She's really a very nice young lady, despite her life with your sister."

  "We'll see," he said. I heard him rise. "Make sure she cleans all this up before she goes to sleep. I want her to appreciate what she gets here."

  "She does."

  He didn't respond. I heard him go back into the living room and turn up the television. Then I went to help Aunt Clara.

  "You don't have to do this, Raven," she whispered. "There's not much left. Go do your homework."

  "I didn't have that much, Aunt Clara. I have to meet with my teachers for a while after school each day for the next week to catch up. When will we know when Mama can talk to me?" I asked.r />
  She shook her head. "I don't know, honey. Reuben will find out more tomorrow."

  "He should have made more over William's spelling test," I mumbled. "And an eighty isn't such a great grade."

  She looked at me with not so much fear in her eyes as cautious agreement. "I know," she said. "I've been after him to spend more time with William."

  "I'm not so sure that would help," I muttered, mostly to myself. If she heard, she didn't respond. Then she paused and looked as if she saw a ghost. I turned.

  Uncle Reuben was standing in the doorway.

  "She should do that herself, Clara. You need to come in and rest," he ordered, his eyes burning through me.

  "There's nothing left to do, Reuben."

  He continued to stare. Had he heard me?

  "All right, Reuben. I'm coming," she said. She wiped her hands on a dish towel and left the kitchen. He let her pass, glanced at me again, and then followed her.

  From what I had seen already, I realized Uncle Reuben whipped his family around this house with a look, a word, a gesture. He was the puppet master, and they jumped when he tugged at their strings.

  I felt as if he was tying strings around my arms and legs, too, and soon I would be just another puppet.

  After finishing my homework, I made my bed and changed into the one nightgown I owned. Lying there and staring out through my one window at the stars that popped in between passing clouds, I thought that somehow I had been turned into Cinderella without the magic slipper or fairy godmother. There would be no magic in my life.

  Once, I spent my time dreaming about far-off places, beautiful houses, handsome young men, gala dances, beautiful clothes and jewels. I was in my own movie, spinning out the scenes on the walls of my imagination. It took me out of the small apartment.

  I had to laugh.

  Here I was, out, with a family, going to a new school, and what did I dream of?

  Getting back to my small apartment.

  I actually grew to like the new school. Because my classes were much smaller, the teachers took more time with me, and I also began to make some friends. Jennifer continued to avoid me as much as possible, but I began to accept it. From what I saw of the friends she had, girls who were mostly like her, selfish, vain, and sneaky, I more than accepted it. I welcomed it. There were much nicer kids to know.