Also Known As Harper (16 page)

But when Mama's face looked back at me from the picture, I knew what was more important. As much as it hurt not to be in that contest, it would hurt a million times worse for our family to go crumbling every which way.

I leaned in close to Lorraine and lowered my voice. “I don't need you to watch Hem anymore.”

She didn't act one bit surprised by what I said. She just nodded in that thinking way she had.

The Whaley County Poetry Contest permission slip peeked out of my notebook like a waving flag. Just glancing at that light blue paper made last night's peanut butter lump up in my stomach. The kids at school were most likely waiting their turn in the school auditorium. They always made everyone get up and practice reading in front of people the day before.

I made myself look at the picture again, because I was supposed to be up at that microphone.

My poems tumbled around inside my head, like they were begging for me to say the words.

I tried real hard to erase the picture in my mind of Winnie Rae Early spouting off her half-thought-out nonsense words at the microphone. She always tried to make hers rhyme. Anyone who knows anything knows it doesn't have to rhyme to be a poem.

Lorraine followed my eyes and tucked the paper back in between the pages of my notebook.

“It's okay,” I said. “Really.” But I knew before my words were even out, they weren't convincing anybody. Especially not Lorraine.

She put one finger up, and a slow smile crept onto her face. She rooted around in her totebag and took her sketchbook back from me. Then she bent down over a blank page and didn't look up until she was all the way finished.

When she finally held it up for me to see, I knew she had her mama's art talent, same as I had Mama's talent for words.

The words and sentences in my head slowed down a little and let me take in a nice long breath of air.

Lorraine's lettering was better than Mrs. Rodriguez's, and the swirl-and-dot design she had thought up for the border made your eyes not want to
ever look away. The purples and reds traveled across the page in bursts of color, like on the batik cloth in Lorraine's tent.

“It's perfect,” I said.

I glanced back at the picture of Mama, and this time my heart let me look at it straight-on.

Lorraine and I both knew it wasn't the same as being up on that stage reading for the whole school, but my poems wouldn't be sitting by themselves in my backpack, either. People would be listening.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

I WAS GLAD
Mama had thought to take the toilet paper from the roll at the Knotty Pine Deluxe Motor Hotel. Lorraine and I were so busy making posters, I didn't have time to be thinking about toilet tissue when I went out back by the trees.

Hem loved going to the bathroom outside. It was going to be hard to break him of that habit once we got an inside bathroom again.

I tried to hide the roll under my arm as I walked past Randall to go outside. But he zeroed in on it right away.

“Why don't you just use the bathroom in here?” He pointed to the door in the back corner.

I shook my head. “No water.” He was one of those kids that asked a lot of questions. No wonder
Lorraine didn't talk. She'd probably used up all her words explaining things to him.

Hem had tried to use the inside bathroom last night, but Mama had put a stop to it straightaway. She said the plumbing probably hadn't been up and going in those pipes for years. Spear Teeth's mother had kept both toilet stalls and the sink squeaky clean, though, even though they weren't usable.

Lorraine was waiting at the door with her totebag when I got back. She took out a hand towel and a big plastic water bottle. It was the kind of bottle that you might attach to your bicycle. You could squirt water in your mouth without stopping to unscrew the top.

She put one hand out in front of her and flipped it palm-up to palm-down. Then she pointed at my hands and held the water bottle over them. She gave them a good squirt on both sides and handed me her hand towel.

“You're used to going in an outside bathroom, aren't you?” I dried my hands and gave her back the towel.

She smiled and reached for one of my hands. She brought my fingernails up in front of her face and shook her head.

“I know.” I put my hand behind my back. “I never let them get that dirty.”

Lorraine put one finger up and leaned her head in the door. She held her water bottle up and pretended to be writing on a piece of paper with the other hand.

“I just took a shower yesterday!” Randall came out with a handful of maps.

She pointed at me.

“Oh, okay.” He poked his head in the door. “Hemingway! Get yourself a towel.”

Lorraine tugged on his shirt.

Randall nodded. “And some fresh clothes!”

She looked at me and nodded toward the door.

“We can't go swimming now,” I said. “We've still got to hang up the posters.”

Randall pushed past me and took a drink from Lorraine's water bottle. “We're not going to the pool. Lorraine's signing you up for the shower.”

I was thinking maybe their mother had rigged up some sort of bathtub in their tent, until we got back to the Knotty Pine Deluxe Motor Hotel and we were standing outside the door of Room 12. The end unit that I used to think was theirs.

Dorothy came across the parking lot, pushing her
wheelchair. She studied her clipboard for a minute and looked up at me. “You're in luck today, because I've had a ‘no-show.'” She put down her clipboard and let it hang from the string at the back of her wheelchair. “The rules are, you can take no longer than eight minutes per person. There should be soap inside, but you have to bring your own shampoo.”

I nodded.

“Best thing is to sign up for next time before you leave today,” she said. “That way, I get you on the schedule.” She handed me her clipboard and a pen.

I looked down at the blocks of times on the paper and put Mama's name in for tomorrow morning. “What if the room gets rented on the day that I'm signed up?”

“It won't.” She jerked her thumb toward the door. “Lock's been broken for a good two years now.”

She pointed at Lorraine and Randall. “You two stick close to me while you're waiting. I'm keeping my eyes peeled for that dark gray station wagon.” She turned to Hem and me. “And you two had best be staying out of the way of that social worker, too. I could've sworn I saw him looking at you two from across the parking lot.”

I swallowed hard.

The door to the end unit opened, and a man came out towel-drying his hair.

He nodded at both Dorothy and me, and she motioned for me to pass him the clipboard.

“Hi, Mr. Corey.” Randall smiled at him.

“Tell your mother thank you for the cheese she left.” He nodded at Randall and Lorraine and chose his next time on the clipboard. “It'll last me through into next week.”

I knew I recognized him from somewhere, and then I remembered he was the man with the square red tent the next one over from Lorraine and Randall. He was the guy who sat in the brown plaid armchair under the tree and read his newspaper.

Lorraine pulled a poster out of her totebag and held it up for Dorothy and Mr. Corey.

Dorothy took it and tapped her finger on the front. “This is a fine idea. A little literature will do us well around here.”

I reached for another poster and handed it to Mr. Corey. “Will you put this on your tree?”

He nodded. “No problem.” He made a little bow to Hem and me and walked back the way we'd come.

Dorothy put the poster under her arm and took the clipboard back. “You'd better get a move on if you and your brother want to keep your spot.” She looked at me and pointed at the door. “The hot-water heater runs out after a while, and I need to give it some time to heat up again.”

“I'll get the water going for you.” I handed Hem the shampoo. “I'll keep the door cracked, and you yell for me when you're done.”

Randall held up some of Hemingway's maps. “Me and Lorraine will go hang these up while we're waiting.” Each one was folded carefully in the middle, and they'd gotten me to write
Mr. Wayne Morgan
in big letters across the back of each one.

I laid Hem's towel next to the tub and held his arm while he climbed into the shower. “Don't you be moving around a lot in there. I don't need you to be slipping and getting yourself hurt.”

Hem was in the habit of sitting down in a regular old bathtub. He wasn't used to a stand-up shower, so I kept the door to the outside wide open. I made him sing the whole time so I'd know he was okay.

He was singing the jingle from his favorite soap commercial at the top of his lungs when I saw her a
couple of units down. She looked at me straight-on and stared for a good while, so there was no mistaking that she'd seen me.

I stepped back into the end unit and yelled for Hem. “Hold on in there! I'll be right back!” And I ran across the parking lot to warn Dorothy.

 

 

 

 

 

“
YOU
'
RE TALKING ABOUT
Ione Early, aren't you?” Dorothy didn't look to be in any hurry to get out of sight. “She's the one that's never bothered to have the lock repaired. Never put the work order in. She looks the other way when folks go in to use the shower.”

I snuck a quick peek at Mrs. Early out of the corner of my eye.

“Who do you think left this clipboard out to begin with?” Dorothy asked.

It was hard to imagine. It was hard to believe even a thread of kindness had found itself inside anything Early.

“Your turn, Harper Lee!” Hem stood at the door, still wrapped in his towel.

“You turn off the water all by yourself?” I pulled the door shut behind me to keep the cold air out.

But I could hear the water on full blast in the bathroom.

He smiled at me. “I left it on for you.”

I smoothed my hand over his wet hair. “You make sure you listen closely for Randall and Dorothy. I want to get a good head start back to the drive-in if they catch sight of that gray station wagon.”

It felt good to take a shower and put on clean clothes. I made sure to use the inside toilet before I left, too. Who knew how long it would be before I'd get to use one again.

Randall and Lorraine were waiting for us when we came out.

“Dorothy said we could practice on her porch!” Randall held up a sketchbook. It was like Lorraine's, except smaller and more beat-up. “Me and Hem are going to show around our drawings in between your poems, and we might read a couple pages from
We Ride and Play.
”

When we got to Dorothy's, everybody made themselves comfortable on the porch.

“Everyone's got to stand up to practice,” I said. “You've got to pretend like it's the real thing.” I tried not to think about the microphone on the stage in the auditorium. It was nice of Dorothy to let us use her porch and all, but my whole body ached for that school auditorium and to hear my poems sound out all the way to the back row. I had been waiting for that contest for so long, I could practically hear my voice echoing off the auditorium walls.

But the funny thing was, when I closed my eyes to go over my first poem, it was hard to imagine myself there at the school. And when I opened my eyes and looked around the porch at Hem and Lorraine and Randall, I knew this was where I was supposed to be.

“Y'all haven't started without me, have you?” Dorothy dragged over a kitchen chair and sat back against the screen door. “Which one are you going to start with?”

“I think I'm going to let the poem choose itself.” I held up my notebook and let it fall open to a page. “It's more natural that way.”

I looked over the page a moment, took a deep breath, and started to read.

 

Bad things never

Stay bad for long.

They can be taken

Right over by something good.

The thing is,

You've got to be watching out

For those good things.

They tend to sneak up on you

And they can pass you right on by

If you're not on the lookout for them.

 

I read until my voice was raspy. The more I read, and the more they all listened, the happier I felt. I'd never felt better about my poems in all my life. Somehow, up on that porch, I just knew. My words were fine, and there was nothing Daddy or even Winnie Rae Early could do to change that. I wondered if I would've felt that way somewhere else besides Dorothy's porch. Like the school auditorium.

When I saw Lorraine hugging herself and Dorothy closing her eyes with a quiet smile on her face, I knew my words had been waiting around for something more important than the school poetry contest. They had been waiting around for someone
who would really care about them. Someone like Lorraine and Dorothy.