Also Known As Harper (15 page)

The inside was dim, and you had to wait for your eyes to adjust. But what I saw didn't look half bad. It wasn't as nice as the Knotty Pine Deluxe Motor Hotel, but Alma's family had definitely fixed it up.

“Look there, Mama.” I pointed to the two big mattresses pushed up against the side wall. “It looks plenty comfortable for sleeping.”

I saw her eyes move up and down and around the entire inside. And I could see a bit of a smile in one corner of her mouth when she looked at the concrete floor. It was swept clean.

But I still wasn't sure we'd be staying until I saw her carry in the three-legged stool that her daddy had built. She put that carefully beside one of the mattresses and laid out Flannery's peach sweater across the top of the stool.

I headed toward the doorway to pick up a load from the car before she could change her mind.

She stopped me on my way out and put her hands on my shoulders. “It's just for now, Harper Lee. We need a roof over our heads, and I need a safe place for you and Hem while I look for another job.” She looked out the door at the car, and her voice got shaky. “I know you can't be staying in the car all day, taking care of Hem, while I go to my job at the Laundromat and go out to look for more work.”

I made myself smile. “It'll be fine, Mama.” I pointed inside. “And it sure does seem clean.”

Mama squeezed my shoulders and went out to the car for some boxes.

We emptied the car out fast, and Mama made the mattresses up with our bedspreads from the old house, the white chenille ones that had belonged to her mama.

She had never let us eat in our beds before, but Mama made us thick peanut-butter sandwiches, and
we all sat down smack-dab in the middle of one of the bedspreads to eat them.

I didn't know why, but that peanut butter tasted extra good right then. It tasted so good, I even ate Hem's crusts for him.

Hem must've felt like it was special, too, because he didn't crumb up the chenille bedspread at all.

Then, without any hint of a warning, a memory of the old Daddy popped up in the front of my mind, and that safe, happy feeling disappeared into the concrete beneath me.

Mama and Daddy and Hem and me had all gone to the state fair. Daddy'd let us use up the last of the money he'd brought, so we could ride the Scrambler two more times each. I could still feel how the front of my face tried to make its way over by my ear as the Scrambler whipped us around and around.

Hem was remembering, too, because he took a bite of his sandwich and started whipping his head around. “Remember when Daddy took us to the fair and we used up all our supper money on rides?” He rubbed his belly. “It was way past dinner, and I forgot I was hungry until I got off the ride.”

Mama smiled. But her eyes looked as if she'd lost something important and she couldn't begin to think
on where to look for it. “And your daddy pulled that big bag of peanuts out of nowhere. Heaven knows where he got them.”

Hem chewed his sandwich slowly in a remembering way. “Those were some good peanuts.”

Mama closed her eyes. “He was always saving the day back then.” She shook her head. “You'd think all was lost, and he'd come through with something or another.”

I tried to remember how I'd felt that day on the Scrambler, but it kept getting drowned out in a Kentucky-whiskey puddle.

Hem looked toward the door and nudged me with his elbow. “What if Alma comes back?” He licked a spot of peanut butter off the side of his wrist. “She looks like the kicking type.”

I thought about her pointy elbows and looked around the room. Before we had brought in our stuff, it had been pretty near bare, except for the mattresses. No pillows or even a book or a box of crackers. “They're not coming back,” I said. “When people pack up their car like that, it's for good. They're moving on.” That was something I knew for sure.

Mama pointed toward the door. “From the looks of things outside, especially, whoever owned this
place hasn't been around for five or ten years. Maybe longer.”

I wondered if we could still show ourselves a movie here, if we wanted to. I thought about how exciting it would be to set up the movie and sit out front in lawn chairs. We could still see bits and pieces on the bigger parts of the shredded-up screen. And we'd be able to hear it if we sat ourselves next to one of Lorraine's speakers. We'd invite Lorraine and Randall and Dorothy. I was so enjoying myself, I wouldn't even have minded a couple of old hot dogs from the snack bar.

Mama brushed off her lap and walked across the room to the counter that used to be the snack bar. What looked like a tiny garage door was cut into the wall above the counter. She reached for a rusted-up handle and tried to push the door up. “If I can get a good hold of this, I could push it up a bit and get some more light in.”

I looked back behind the mattresses. The only two windows in the place were small and up high. Even though they let some light in, they were too high to see out of.

Mama finally gave up on the snack-bar window and stepped back. She pointed above her head.
“There are tracks that probably need to be oiled. It's supposed to ride up and over my head when it's all the way open.”

I pictured people lined up outside at the counter. Ordering big boxes of popcorn and those long ropes of licorice.

If Lorraine fixed this up to be a drive-in movie theater again, she'd have to put a new counter on the outside. The inside one was sturdy and whole, but there wasn't much left of the part that had stuck through to the outside. There were whole chunks torn off, and a couple of swears scrawled across what was left.

Mama ran her finger along the inside counter and smiled full-on, because her finger came up clean.

She went to our boxes along the back wall and started opening the tops until she found the right one.

Then she brought out her favorite picture. It was my favorite, too. Daddy had taken it about two years ago, when I was in the third grade. Hem and I were on either side of Mama, and she was reading to us from her special book. She had the front cover open, which meant she was on page one. I had this real excited look around my eyebrows, because I knew what was coming up. I was excited about Ms. Harper Lee's words.

Mama wiped at the front of the picture with the bottom of her shirt and set it carefully on the counter. Right in the middle, where we could all see it from our mattresses.

I scooted backward on the chenille bedspread so my back was against the wall, and I took out my notebook. My pen was moving almost before I could get my paper ready.

 

Home is kind of funny.

You can walk in your house

When you've been gone awhile

And it doesn't seem like it's yours.

Your things don't feel right.

They don't feel like they belong to you

Until you've been settled back in for awhile.

But a new place can feel like yours right away.

You don't need any settling-in time

When you've got your mama and your brother

And your favorite book.

 

 

 

 

 

I FELT MAMA
kiss my cheek, but I kept my eyes closed tight. That way it was easier to pretend things were how I wanted them to be. The truth was, I wasn't even sure what that was anymore.

Mama rested her hand on the side of my face for a moment and pulled the bedspread up so I could feel the bumpy chenille brushing my chin. Her footsteps were soft across the concrete floor, and I listened to the door opening and closing with a dull thud behind her.

I tried to make myself go back to sleep, but my poems were edging themselves into my head. It was the last day of school before the poetry contest.

I sat up and scooted to the edge of my mattress. Everything in me still wanted to get back to my desk and Mrs. Rodriguez.

I couldn't wait out another day with Hem. Then I
caught sight of my backpack leaning up against the wall, and I realized something plain and clear. The only thing that had really changed since yesterday was where we were sleeping. Lorraine could still watch Hem, and I could still make it to my classroom.

I got dressed and took everything out of my backpack, repacking it carefully. I even put in an extra peanut-butter sandwich for energy. I'd have to leave real early, so I could go find Lorraine first.

But it turned out I didn't have to. Hem had barely changed out of his pajamas when Randall showed up at the door. It was kind of strange the way he found us right away, just like at the motel.

I looked behind him. “Where's Lorraine?” I was a little nervous about what she'd think when she saw us living here. It would be hard for her to be turning it back into a drive-in movie theater with our stuff all around.

Randall walked by me, as if he was used to going inside. “She's coming.” He carried a plastic grocery bag to the middle of the concrete floor and set it down beside Hem.

“Connect Four!” Hemingway pulled it out of the beat-up grocery bag and right away started setting it up.

“You know how to play?” Randall looked suspicious. “I'd better tell you, 'cause your rules might not be the same as mine.”

I watched him take some of the game pieces back out of where Hemingway had put them. Randall definitely seemed like the type that made up his own rules.

Hemingway looked over toward the boxes. “Which one has my Chutes and Ladders?”

“Don't you be touching those boxes till Mama gets back. She'll have a fit if you mess things up.” I secretly hoped the Chutes and Ladders had been left in Winnie Rae's camper. That game could go on forever and ever.

“When's she coming back?” He spun around on his bottom on the concrete floor.

“Not for a while.” I went to the door to look out for Lorraine. “When she finishes up at the Laundromat, she's going to go try to scare up some more housecleaning jobs.”

Hem got up and handed me my backpack. “Give him my good ones. He said he'd help, and he'll know the best places to put them.” He pointed at Randall.

I shook my head and unzipped my backpack. I had thought Hem and I had settled some things about Daddy back at the light pole. But by bedtime last night, it was as if Hemingway had gone and
forgotten every word of that conversation. I took out the maps he had been working on. Maps for Daddy, to show him how to get to the drive-in from the Knotty Pine Deluxe Motor Hotel.

Randall studied the map. “I know exactly where to put these. But I might need a few extra, in case it rains or something.”

Hemingway nodded. “You can help me make some more later.”

I looked out the door again, and I could see Lorraine walking through the rows of speakers. It was taking her a while, because she stopped every so often to right a speaker that had fallen off its post.

When she got to the door, I saw she was carrying a purple canvas totebag. It was decorated all fancy and glittery with puffy fabric paint, and I could see her sketchpad sticking out of the top.

She held up her totebag in one hand and picked up my backpack in the other hand. She held them side by side and smiled.

“That'd be great.” I led her over to one of the chenille bedspreads, and we scooted back so we were under the windows, where the light came in. The way I'd figured it, I had a good half hour before I needed to get started walking.

I settled in and had begun putting myself in the mind of a new poem when Lorraine reached for my notebook and handed me her sketchbook and a couple of thin markers.

I shook my head and laughed. “I'm not much for drawing.”

“Can't even draw one of those stick people,” Hem piped up from the floor.

But she smiled and pushed the pad at me anyway.

I put it in my lap and rolled one of the markers between my palms. “I can doodle. You know, nice borders and such.”

She flipped through my notebook.

“The blank pages are all the way in the back.” Normally I wouldn't have let a soul put a pen to the page in my notebook. But Lorraine was different somehow. I didn't know why, but her putting a few words down didn't bother me a bit.

“It's okay with your mama that you stay here for a while?” I looked at Hem.

She nodded, but her hands were fluttery, as if her mind was nervous.

Randall looked up from the game. “It's a good thing you moved way out here, because Mama said we shouldn't be spending too much time around the
motel today. The man from the state was poking around there yesterday, and Mama will get in trouble like last time if he finds us.”

“The man from the state?” I didn't like how that sounded.

“Mama says he's from Family Services,” he said, “and she said you should probably watch out for him, too. Dorothy said she thought she saw him looking in your direction when he pulled into the parking lot yesterday.”

Lorraine nodded, her eyes wide.

“If he finds out you don't live in a regular house, he'll think your mama's not taking care of her kids right and he'll make a whole lot of trouble for her.” Randall said it like he knew. And when I saw Lorraine's nervous fingers, I was sure it was the kind of trouble Mama didn't need.

The picture of Mama reading her special book stared at me from the counter, and I knew I couldn't do that to her. I thought about what Winnie Rae had said about the school nurse calling our house, and I got that same queasy feeling in the pit of my stomach. Yesterday I had promised myself I'd make things easier on Mama. And here I was getting ready to go off and make things worse.

Yesterday I had practically been able to smell the metal on the microphone up on the stage. But just now I could see it had gone and rusted itself up. I was going to miss that poetry contest for the second year in a row, and my insides hurt all the way from the middle of my heart down to the bones of my writing hand.