Kathryn Magendie (6 page)

Sweetie put down the paper sack she carried her school things in. “You better get on back where you come from. This is your last chance.”

T. J. wiggled his hips. “Yew better git o-wen ba-ick where yew come from. This is yer last chaince.” He put his hands on either side of his cheeks and widened his eyes. “Ohh, I’m sooo scared.”

The Posse hooted at T. J., but hadn’t followed him, so far.

I said, “There’s more of them than us.”

“Just got to take out T. J. here, the others will run off with tails between they legs.”

T. J. took three steps, puffed out his cheeks and made more grunts. Then he jumped to me, grabbed my satchel, pulled, and the satchel flipped and fell onto the ground.
Where the Wild Things Are
, Peter’s book with his name scribbled in it, the one he’d given me when he outgrew it, the one I carried with me most all the time because I missed my big brother, tumbled down into the water. I ran to pick it up before the pages soaked. My rolls rolled as I bent over; I heard the snickering.

Heat built up from the bottoms of my feet and made its way to the roots of my hair as though my head was going to blow right off my shoulders. My breath rushed in and out, fast and hard. I wiped my book on my shirt, and looked up at T. J. as if I could pierce him with my stare. He was in a red haze, the blood behind my eyes made the whole world take on red. The red rushed in front of my eyes back and forth, in and out, with every beat of my beating heart. Sweetie’s breath in me was hot as dragon’s breath.

T. J. laughed and pointed at me, then snorted again.

Through the pounding in my ears, I heard Sweetie say, “Lissa, show him your fire inside.”

I screamed, “
You idiot
!” Spit flew from my mouth and I wiped at it.

“Oh no! Look at the dog slobbering fat ass!” He looked back at his gang. “Be careful, she might sit on us.”

It all happened fast, before I had time to think, even though it seemed as if it was in a dreamy slow motion. The pounding in my ears, Sweetie’s scorching breath, my brother’s book, my fat, my stutters, all the teasing from all the kids everywhere I’d ever been, T. J.’s torments that never stopped, all of it whirled around in a tornado of blazing red fury and heat—I was one of Nonna’s burning barns that people didn’t see but was there, big and bright.

I bull-charged T. J., hit him with all my might. He stumbled back and fell into the creek. The boys laughed, even though it was against the Boy Posse Rules:
Boys Stick Together Always
. His eyes were widened in surprise, his clothes, hair, and face soaking with creek water. He sputtered, cursing and thrashing.

“Hot diggity dog!” Sweetie jumped up and down, clapping her hands. I looked over at her, a grin pulling at my lips, puffed up with my bravery and strength. I was about to say,
That’ll teach him, won’t it, Sweetie
? when she shouted, “Look out, Lissa!”

T. J. blindsided me, hitting me with an open palm and knocking me on the ground. He stood over me. “You fat piece of crap.”

All my brave and strong left me then and I was just a fat girl sprawled on the ground.

Sweetie ran up to him, pushing him away from me. “Leave her be.”

His face purpled, the veins sticking out in his neck. “I’ll beat the fat off your friend,
Sweetie-Pie
, and then I’ll beat your crazy ass into the ground.”

“I am
not
crazy!” Sweetie swung, hit him on the side of his head with a solid
thwunk
.

T. J. turned and punched Sweetie right in the mouth and there were “Oh’s!” that came from the Head Circle Girls or the Posse or maybe me, or all of us. Sweetie didn’t even flinch, only crossed her arms over her chest and laughed. When he hit her again, her head bounced back, she lost her footing a bit, straightened, and when she grinned, her lip split open.

“Sweetie!” I was still sprawled, a slug in the grass. The side of my head throbbed from his open slap—what was Sweetie feeling with his punches? I tried to think what to do. Get up and start swinging, that’s what I would do. I would then grab Sweetie and run to hide us away inside the old three-rock cave, where they’d never find us. I stood, feeling dizzy and scared. I wanted to be like Sweetie, tough and unafraid.

Sweetie said, “That all you got? You big sugar tit.”

T. J. raised his fist to her again, but he didn’t look so sure of himself anymore.

“Don’t hurt my friend!” I heard the sound of my own trembling voice—a baby sound, a fraidy cat sound. It made me mad with shame.

T. J. cut his eyes to me. “Soon as I’m finished with her, it’s your turn, Fat Ass.”

From across the creek, one of the Posse said, “It ain’t right to beat up on girls. Just ’cause your dad does it to your mom, don’t mean you got a call to.”

Jeremy called out, “That’s right,
Sugar Tit
,” and the boys whooshed out all their air laughing.

Sweetie said, “You losing all your power, T. J. Even your posse’s laughing at you.”

T. J.’s eyes bulged.

Deidra hollered, “
Get her, T. J.!
She isn’t a lady, so it doesn’t count if you beat her up!” She flipped her hair over her shoulder and glared at the other boys. “If he gets that fudge, I’ll let him kiss me.”

The Posse went, “Ohhhh. It’s loooooove.” They made kissing noises.

Through clenched teeth, T. J. said to Sweetie, “I’m kicking your ass, you goddamned
freak
!”

There was a blur, and Sweetie was on him like a wild cat, clawing and scratching and hitting and hissing. T. J. held up his hands to protect his face, then his stomach, his face again. Sweetie spat out cuss words like dirty pearls on a dirty necklace. T. J. backed up, backed up, and again fell into the creek. He looked as if he didn’t know where he was or who he was or why he’d just been beaten up by some wild creature of the woods.

Sweetie stood at the edge of the creek, her hands in fists, her chest heaving in and out.

Just as Sweetie said, the boys ran off. Jeremy grabbed Beatrice’s hand and pulled her away with him. Deidra stood with her hands over her mouth and her eyes widened. She called, “T. J.? T. J.?” and ran into the creek to him, soaking up her shiny shoes and her neat white socks.

Sweetie walked over to my satchel, picked it up, put my things back inside.

I picked up her sack, keeping an eye on T. J., who pushed away Deidra and stood. Deidra handed him her white hankee and he wiped bloody snot from his nose. It was quiet, and weird, as if the whole world hushed over Sweetie beating the dog spit out of T. J.. He dunked the hankee into the water, washed a scratch on his face. Deidra looked at Sweetie and said, “You’re nothing but a heathen. Look what you’ve done to my boyfriend,” and T. J. told Deidra to shut the hell up. She burst out crying and called him a meanie.

It was a moment sweeter than fudge.

Sweetie handed me my satchel; I handed over her sack. She said, “Let’s go, Warrior of the Creek.”

“I’m coming, Fists of Fire.”

We ran off, holding on to our satchel and sack, the fudge still nestled inside for us to eat with our backs against the poplar tree.

Later, as we slowed to a walk, I touched my face and wondered if I’d have a bruise. I almost wished I would. I wanted a sign of my bravery. I turned to look at Sweetie, at her split and swollen lip, a big red angry bump under her left eye. She sashayed along, her arms swinging, licked the blood off her lips, not a care in the world.

I was beginning to think there was something to that Mountain Spirit magic she was always talking about. I wondered if I could get some of it for myself.

SEVEN

I woke and felt all the good days of summer vacation stretch out far and wide as the earth looked when standing on a mountaintop. Sweetie and I were meeting at Turtlehead Rock at eight. I pointed and flexed my toes, raised my arms to the ceiling and let them float there, rose, made my bed, stretched my arms up, bent to touch my knees, flopped my arms to the right and left, and did two jumping jacks.

From the chest of drawers, I grabbed a pair of orange pedal pushers and a paisley top. Mother picked out all my clothes, and I hated them. She took me to Sears and Penney’s. The fancy stores she liked didn’t have my size, and it wouldn’t have been any better anyway.

She’d sigh and say, “Oh Melissa, think of the cute frocks you could wear if you’d lose some of that weight. Your chubbiness keeps you in bondage.” The sales girls would overhear her comments and snicker with their hands over their mouths. I’d pretend I was on Saturn, my favorite planet.

With my orange pants glowing on my hips, I looked at myself in the mirror, frowned, imagined Mother behind me frowning more. I wanted to wear cut off shorts, but my thighs pulled up the inner seam and the material bunched up between my legs, while the outer seams stayed down as they were supposed to.

After pulling on my white Keds, I tiptoed to the kitchen and looked in the cupboard. I’d sell my favorite charm bracelet for a bowl of Lucky Charms, or better yet, a strawberry Pop Tart. I toasted a piece of Mother’s homemade wheat bread and spread orange marmalade on it. I heard Father already at his typewriter, so I peeked in on him.

“Hello there, Princess, you’re up early.” Whiskers shaded his face, and his voice was husky.

“Did you even go to bed, Father?”

“Oh, no. I couldn’t. The thoughts are coming out too fast. I must capture them before they head off to
Manitoba
and are lost forever.” He scrubbed his face and his palm scratched against the stubble. Looking at me with a half-smile, he said, “Hey, call me Pop when it’s just us.”

“Okay, Pop.”

“I was just writing a scene about a man who locked himself in his basement just to get away from his demanding wife. I’m still working out the details. But, eventually, she becomes ill, and he has to leave his basement to help care for the child.” He fumbled through the pages. “Let’s see. There was something else here I wanted to remember. Some detail. I had a note. Wait, hold on.”

“I got to go. See you later. Bye.” I backed out of the room before he found his notes and began telling me the whole plot of his story, and then I’d never meet Sweetie on time, even though she was usually late.

After I brushed my teeth, I did my chores. Mother had taped to the refrigerator my chore list: 1) dust the living room; 2) sweep the porch. Every day my chores were different, and I always did them without fuss. But since Sweetie, I’d been rushing through them with a swipe-flop of cloths or broom and mop, and galloping out the door before Mother could tell me to do something else.

After dusting, while I was sweeping, the cat lady waved to me, shouting across the street, “I’ve made cookies. Come get some when you’re done.”

After I put up the broom and grabbed my satchel, I crossed to her house. She went inside, and soon returned holding out a paper bag. “There’s chocolate chip and sugar.”

I opened the bag and smelled goodness. The cookies were wrapped in paper napkins and looked to be as big as one of her cat’s heads. I closed the bag. “Thank you very much.”

“Why, it’s nothing at all. Run along and have fun.” She smiled at me, four cats swirling around her legs meowing and groveling.

At Turtlehead, I sat and ate one of the sugar cookies. At
eight thirty
, and still no Sweetie, I ate one of the chocolate chips and made up stories in my head about how I would suddenly go into a mysterious coma, and since I couldn’t eat, I’d lose weight. When I woke up from my long deep sleep, everyone would say, “Look at Melissa. Where has she been? What has she done? She’s changed so much we wouldn’t recognize her.” For not only had I lost weight while in my coma, but my hair grew long and shiny to my waist, and I didn’t need my glasses even at school since some miracle of the coma had left me with perfect vision. I smiled at the image of a beautiful mysterious me.

“You look like a cat what’s lapped up a whole bowl of sweet milk to go with them cookies.”

I jumped up—more like a start with a slide and a flop and a heave-ho up. “You scared the ever-loving snot out of me, Sweetie!”

Sweetie haw-haw’d.

“You’re late.” I had my lip poked out just a little bit.

“Nuh uh.”

I shoved the Timex in front of her face.

She didn’t even look at it. “I got busy.”

“If you wore a watch, you’d be on time. I have an extra one in my jewelry box you can have.”

“I am not wearing no watch. Gets in my way.” She rose up on her toes and swung her arms in a circle. “If I got to get somewhere on time, I’ll do it.”

“But you’re hardly ever on time.”

“Huh. Well, you want to come with me or you want to stand round fussing?” She began walking and I followed. Sweetie knew many secrets on the mountain. Like the giant tree that was hollowed out in the middle. Sweetie said we disappeared when we were inside it so that no one could see us even if they were looking right at us. It was far off into the woods, so we didn’t go there often, besides Sweetie said she didn’t want anyone following us and finding that tree. Once she’d climbed in it and she did disappear; I swore by it and wouldn’t have believed it. When I went in, she said she saw me disappear, too. Father would laugh, but I saw what I saw.

There were the three rocks that made a small cave that I could barely squeeze into with Sweetie. Sweetie said it was a magical creature’s home, so we could only stay a little while in the case it came back and kicked us out by blowing its breath hot and sour at us. There were nooks and crannies and secret clearings with mossed ground. There were trees that were older than the oldest tree I’d ever seen, and they let us sit on their branches—I always had to sit on the lowest branch as long as it was heavy and thick. There were weird bugs I’d never seen with orange bodies and thousands of legs.

My head tingled. “Where’re we going?”

“If I tell you things ahead, it stops being mysterical.”

I danced around Sweetie. “Give me a hint.”

“You drunk silly juice this morning.”

I pirouetted, sort of. “One little hint.”

“Silly Brains.”

“I’ll keep bugging you until you do.” I poked at her arm.

“Promise you won’t wear them orange britches again and I’ll spill a few beans.”

I laughed at my pants, suddenly they were funny. “Okay, I promise.”

“And do I get any of them cookies before you smash them to kingdom comes.”

I handed the bag to her. “They’re from the cat lady.”

She took out a chocolate chip cookie and bit into it. As she chewed she said, “ummmmmmmm.” Cookie crumbs were sprinkled across her mouth and chocolate was in her teeth as she grinned with one corner of her mouth higher than the other. Her lip was all healed and it made the day with T. J. seem as if it didn’t happen. “I got a fella I want to show you, and he wants to meet you, too.”

My stomach curled. “You have a boyfriend?” If Sweetie had a boyfriend, what did that mean for me? To us? I wanted to feel happy for her, but I felt something else, something darker than happy could ever be.

She curled her lip as if she just ate bug guts. “A
boyfriend
? You sure are full of it. He’s a old man, for frog’s sake.”

My stomach uncurled from itself.

She crammed the rest of the cookie into her mouth, and hurried up the trail. Over her shoulder, with her mouth spewing crumbs, she said, “Let’s go. I do not got all the live-long day.” She turned a corner and disappeared.

I ran to catch up. “Sweetie? Where’d you go?” I parted rhododendrons. I looked up in trees. “
Sweeeeetie
….”

When I passed a thicket, she jumped out from behind it and said, “Hah! Here I am.” After that, she stayed beside me. She grabbed the sugar cookie from the bag, crumpled up the bag and gave it to me to put in my satchel, and ate the sugar cookie in big greedy bites.

“You won’t give me any more hints about the old man?”

“Why you got to know ever littlest thing, Miss Prisspot.”

“I like to know stuff.”

We swung our arms and if we touched, we jerked away, so the other one wouldn’t think we were trying to be gross and hold hands.

“You don’t know the ending to them books of yours, right?”

“This isn’t a book, this is real life. Come on, one more hint and I’ll leave you alone.”

“Uh huh, I bet.” She grabbed a low-hanging limb. “His name’s Zemry.” She swung on the limb, leaped into the air, and landed in front of me with her arms spread out like,
Ta-Da
! “He’s Cherokee blood and white blood mixed.”

“Wow. I never met an Indian before.” I waited for her to tell me more. When she didn’t, I asked, “Well, what else?”

“You said you’d leave it be if I told you some.”

“I can’t help it. I have to let out my questions or my head’ll get too full of them and explode in a million gazillion pieces.”

“That’s the silliest thing I ever heard.” But she smiled.

“I’m serious. If you don’t want to be covered in exploded brains and skull bone then let me ask questions.”

She shook her head back and forth. “Silly is all it is.”

“I’m getting a headache.
Unggh, ugh
.” I squeezed my head. “I think it’s going to blow.”

She laughed, pushed escaped wild hair strands out of her face, thought a minute, then said, “Okay. Zemry’s Cherokee great grandpaw hid in the mountains so’s not to go down that Trail of Tears. That’s how Zemry ended up here instead of Okle-homa.”

“Trails of tears? What’s that?”

She looked at me with her eyebrows raised in surprise. “You don’t know? That’s when they made the Cherokee move away from they’s home here. And it’s
Trail
not trails. They had to walk a long long long long long way, and the Cherokee were so sad and so many died.” She snapped a small twig from a branch and scratched her arm with it. “All those tears on that long long trail.”

“That
is
sad.”

She did a cartwheel, bounced up, pin-wheeled her arms in away that showed me she was being silly and not really going to fall off the edge and down the decline.

“I wish you’d stop scaring me like that.”

She tee hee’d, and walked along like usual.

“What else?”

“Well, since his great grandpaw hid out, Zemry’s grandpaw was borned here, and he married a white woman. Zemry tells all kinds of inneresting stories.”

I tried to grab a low hanging branch to swing on as she had, but I missed and fell on my behind, once again. My backside sure took a lot of beating. Seemed it’d be smaller for all the falling on it I did. Getting up and wiping off my pants, I tried to pretend nothing happened. “Like what kind of stories?”

When she quit laughing at me, she said. “Like how they was named another name, something like anaa-yun-weeja. No, let’s see; was it anee-yan-weeya? I don’t recall just how Zemry said it. But, ever-body called them Cherokee, so they kept it.”

“Like how I’m called Fat Four Eyes and it stuck? But my real name is Melissa?”