Breathing (2 page)

Maybe her bosses would be more understanding if she’d just tell them why she’s not coming to work. But she says she don’t want nobody pitying me, that she’s had enough pity to last her a lifetime and just can’t take no more. Course she won’t ever explain what pity it is she’s speaking of, no matter how many times I ask her.

Since my asthma started the day my daddy left us, Mama always used to say as soon as he’d come back I’d be free of it. She don’t say that no more, though. For a long time, I dreamed about trying to find him. What father could refuse a daughter who can’t breathe without him? But in time, I came to find out that this here’s a mighty big world. And even if I did track him down, he ain’t coming back. He don’t care nothing about me, and he never will. He’s been gone twelve years with nary so much as one single solitary phone call. No matter. I’ll find my own cure. I don’t need him for nothing.

The swells are mighty high today. My heart’s beating real fast ’cause I see my surfer up ahead. He’s new around here and seems to be older than me and my friends. He looks real smart, like he’s always thinking about something important. I heard some kids at the snack shack say he’s kin to the Channings, which explains why he’s always hanging around with them. They live over by the old railroad station. There ain’t no trains anymore, though. That area has been developed to look real clean and pretty, so the rich folk have taken it over.

Shoot, he’s met up with his cousins. They’re a couple years ahead of me in school, super snobby, and mean as one-armed paperhangers with the hives. I guess I best get on to work anyways.

My summer job is at the public library. It ain’t but fifteen hours a week, and they only pay subminimum wage, seeing as I’m a student and all. But at least I get to choose my own hours. My main task is reshelving books. Plus sometimes I have to read stories to the little kids, but that’s only for twenty minutes or so. Then they leave—not like with babysitting, where you’ve got to entertain them for hours on end. I don’t mind story time when the young’uns are real cute and clap their hands like I did an amazing magic trick just by reading to them. But some days those children give me a headache, when they act like they’re sitting on ant hills, screaming and jumping about.

It may sound dorky, but I love books—the feel of the paper, the old, musty smell, and especially the way the words roll over you and take you somewhere altogether different. They’ve been my escape long as I can remember. Whether I need a break from schoolwork or my brother or just life in general, there’s always a book that can take me someplace far away.

“Hey, Miss Patsy,” I say to the librarian, after locking my bike out back.

“Hello there, Savannah. We’ve got quite a few carts waiting on you, and story time starts in forty-five minutes.” Her poofy gray hair is standing up rather taller than usual today. She heads into the back room, her weight causing her to go slowly, the silver bangles she wears on her wrists jangling.

“Yes, ma’am,” I reply. Miss Patsy has been recommending books to me since I first started reading. Sometimes when a new book comes in, she’ll set it aside for me to borrow before it even gets shelved.

It’s dead quiet in here today, so I get busy putting up the books. After finishing the children’s returns, I start shelving in the young adult section. I come across a copy of
Stallion of My Heart
and flip it open to somewhere in the middle. Before long, I’m hunched down in a corner rereading it
.
I only meant to look at a page or two.

“Savannah Brown,” Miss Patsy scolds, “you are not getting paid to read.”

I can usually hear her coming from the clanking of her bracelets as she meanders down the rows. Somehow I managed to miss it today.

“Sorry.” I blush, hating getting caught at anything.

“The children are waiting. Then you have two more carts to do.”

I hadn’t even noticed the hustle and bustle of kids and parents coming in for story time. I scoot into the children’s area and sit in the chair up front. There are about fifteen preschoolers bouncing off the walls. It seems more like fifty, they’re making such a racket. I start reading
The Very Hungry Caterpillar.
Kids usually love that one. Personally, I think they just like to imagine themselves being able to eat all that junk the caterpillar gets. No sooner do I read the title than five little hands go up in the air.

“Do all of y’all have questions?” I ask.

“I got that book at home,” one boy says.

“Me, too,” says another.

“Me-maw read it to me,” says a little girl.

“Okay, lots of you have heard this one. Let’s be quiet now, so everybody else can hear it, too.” That seems to shut them up, at least temporarily.

But then, after only two pages, another boy raises his hand and without waiting to be called on says, “I caught me a callapitter. It was fuzzy and it felt funny when I touched it.”

While he’s yakking, a couple of boys start fighting. Their moms don’t even pay attention. So I just continue on with the story. Next thing I know, one of those boys throws his tennis shoe at the other, only it misses and hits me right upside the head!

“Ow!” I yelp.

Then all hell breaks loose. Everybody is taking off their shoes and throwing them at each other and laughing like it’s some kind of party.

Miss Patsy rushes in to save the day. “Children,” she commands, and they all sit right down cross-legged on the rug. She takes the book from my hand and starts reading in this dramatic, dreamy voice, and the darn kids are transfixed.

I slink out to go finish shelving books, my head still stinging from that boy’s shoe.

When I’m fixing to leave for the day, Miss Patsy comes over and says, “It’ll get easier with the children. You just need to know how to hold their attention.”

I nod, feeling embarrassed that things got so out of hand. The kids have been chatty and restless before, but it’s never been this bad.

She hands me a copy of
Stallion of My Heart
. With a sly smile, she says, “I checked it out for you. If you’re going to read it, may as well do it on your own time, though I’d prefer to see you reading something a little more challenging.”

“Yes, ma’am. Thank you,” I say, taking it from her. Then I head out back to get my bike. Not my best day at work.

I spy Surferboy playing basketball on the court behind the library with his cousin Junior. The other cousin, Billy Jo, is sitting up in their red pickup, wearing the Carolina Mudcats baseball cap that never seems to leave his head. He’s blasting hip-hop so loud on the stereo the bass makes me woozy. While Junior is distracted with swiping his long, brown hair away from his eyes, Surferboy knocks the ball out of his hands and it flies my way. Next thing I know, he’s running right straight towards me. I try to look busy unlocking my bike, make it seem like I wasn’t just sitting there watching him.

“Hey,” he says, picking up the ball.

“Hi,” I reply, but then I hop on my bike and act like I’m busy closing up the lock.

He keeps looking at me.

Suddenly, I just can’t handle the pressure. So I take off, riding for home.

“Hey!” he calls.

But now I feel like such a goon, rushing away like that, I just wave and keep on pedaling. This day is falling seriously flat. I’d best head home anyhow, see to it Dog’s got his chores done.

I’ve lived in the same house my whole life—a little yellow square with one bathroom and two bedrooms, which, as you might have guessed, is totally insufficient. Can you imagine a fifteen-year-old girl having to share her bedroom with her twelve-year-old brother? It’s downright embarrassing. I’ve been trying to convince Mama to let Dog move into the living room or down to the storm cellar. But as of yet, I’m having no luck. She’s sure if he was in the living room he’d never cut off the television; and the cellar, well, if I were to be truthful, it ain’t exactly what you’d call habitable. But with a little work . . .

I come in to find my brother kicked back on the couch looking at TV.

“Have you done your chores?” I ask him.

He grunts in response.

“Dog, I asked you a question.”

“She ain’t back yet,” he replies.

“I refuse to take any heat for you on this.” I turn the television off and stand right in front of it.

“What in the hell is up your butt?” he yells.

“I don’t feel like being in trouble—
again
—for not making sure you get your chores done. I just got home from breaking my back shelving books all afternoon, while you were off playing.”

“Calm yourself, woman,” he teases, “I’m on it,” then saunters out of the room.

All I can say is, three more years then I am out of here. I don’t know where I’ll end up, but I do know this: college is my ticket to somewhere else. I’ve worked my butt off my whole life to see to it that I get to go. I’ll be the first one in my family to do so. How we’ll afford it is a question I ain’t ready to tackle just yet. But I’ll tell you, I sure as hell am not sticking around this crappy-ass town. Mama says the ocean will call me back, keep me from straying too far. I think she’s crazy as a cuckoo bird.

She grew up on the northern coast of North Carolina, on the edge of an area called—I kid you not—the Great Dismal Swamp. Can you imagine? When she finished high school, she cut out like a light—went over to Cary, this little town over by Raleigh. She got herself a job waitressing. That’s where she met my daddy. But Mama missed the ocean something fierce and Daddy wanted to be a fisherman. So they moved down south to the beach. Mama likes it better here than where she grew up. I ain’t clear on why. But I’ve never been up there to the Great Dismal Swamp, never even met my own grandma. She and Mama had some kind of falling-out—I expect having something to do with my daddy. That was before I was even born.

I’ve never been anywhere, really. We had a vacation once, when I was a baby—went up to the Blue Ridge Mountains to see the fall foliage. Mama says it was right beautiful. I don’t remember a thing. That was back when she and Daddy were still happy and all. I’ve seen mountains on the TV and in the movies, of course. But I can’t imagine what it’d be like in person, having that big old mound of earth rising up in front of you. I guess some folks can’t imagine what the ocean is like, and I’ve got that right here in my own backyard.

Towards the end of this school year, my English teacher, Mrs. Avery, put my name in for something called the Program for Promising High School Students, which is like a semester-long college experience for tenth-graders. It’s up in the Blue Ridge Mountains. I’m real excited to have been nominated. Each school can only recommend one student. Then only fifty kids get to go, and that’s from both of the Carolinas. They live up there in the dorms just like real undergraduates. I ain’t getting my hopes up too high. Nobody from our school has ever been selected to go. I keep wishing this time it might be me. But even if I was lucky enough for that to happen, we couldn’t never afford it. I filled in my part of the application anyhow and sent it along with Mrs. Avery’s forms. I didn’t bother telling Mama about it. I just stuck the parent-signature page at the bottom of a stack of papers from school she needed to sign on a night when she was particularly tired. She didn’t even look at it. No matter, it ain’t exactly likely that they’ll choose me. I reckon I’ll have to wait until after high school to get out of this town. Then my first stop will be them mountains. I’ll go check out that fall foliage, maybe on my way to college, wherever that may be.

Life here is just too boring. Or, at least . . . it was.

M
ama was off to her job early again this morning. I don’t have to work today, and my two best friends are out of town. Stef is at sleepaway camp, where she spends nearly half the summer, and Joie is with her family in Florida, visiting their people down there. So, I’m going to lay down in my hammock with a big ol’ glass of sweet tea and a romance novel and relax, try to keep my mind from replaying how lame I must have seemed running off from that cute guy behind the library yesterday. I can’t quit ruminating on it.

I finished reading
Stallion of My Heart
late last night. In the summertime I generally like to read trashy books. You know the ones I mean, with the ladies with their big bosoms on the cover and the muscle guys tearing at their clothes. I never read that stuff during the year, but come summer, I can’t help myself. For school I’m always having to get through the likes of
David Copperfield
or
Romeo and Juliet
, books where the English is so thick you’ve got to go over every paragraph six times before you understand what it is they’re aiming to say. By the time summer comes around, my brain needs a rest. So you can see how a steamy romance would hit the spot like a cool summer breeze.

Speaking of which, there ain’t nary a draft in sight, and this humidity is curling up my hair something fierce. The bees are buzzing around my tea, and the mosquitoes are surely biting. So much for my long, lazy afternoon. I believe a storm may be headed this way—the air has that feeling of pressure to it. It’s hotter than a fish in a fry pan. I’m going to go inside, see if I can’t cool down a mite.

Just as I’m opening the screen door, I see a familiar red pickup drive by. It’s them Channing boys. I watch a minute to see if they’ve got my surfer in there with them and wonder again what he must think after I took off like that yesterday. He doesn’t notice me at first, but then he leans his head way out the window to turn and wave like he’s glad to see me. Then I hear them Channings howling with laughter. It is damn near hellish living in the same town since the day you were born, where everybody knows your entire life story and remembers the time you peed your pants in kindergarten. Can’t never get away from your past.

I’ve got the fridge door open to get some cool air, but what I really want is to climb on up inside it. I wonder what his name is—maybe Wade or Walker or Harrison. I bet it ain’t so ordinary and plain as his kinfolk, John William (that’s Junior) or William John (known as Billy Jo). Their truck was headed toward the beach. Maybe I’ll slip on my suit and ride on down there for a swim. Nothing can cool you off when it’s muggy like a dip in the chilly ocean waves.