Raven (7 page)

My cheeks felt cold. All my tears had turned to ice behind my eyes. I turned over and buried my face in the pillow as I tightened myself into the fetal position and swallowed back my fear and loneliness.
Sunlight fell on my face and woke me up just as Uncle Reuben was coming down the stairs. I flew off the bed and hurried to the bathroom. Even before I could wash my face, he was bellowing about my not being in the kitchen helping Aunt Clara prepare breakfast for everyone. It looked as if things were back to normal.
"Why weren't you up and helping?" Uncle Reuben demanded.
William entered and took his seat at the table. His eyes met mine for a moment before he looked down at his cereal and juice.
Uncle Reuben looked from William to me and slammed his fist down on the table. "I don't ever want to catch you in William's room again, understand?"
"Yes," I said, hoping that that would be the last said about last night.
"And today, again, I got to take time out of my busy schedule to look into your problems. I bet your mother never spent a minute on you. Did she ever go to the school to see how you were doing?"
I sat and began to sip my orange juice.
"When I speak to you, I want you to look at me and respond," he ordered.
"No, she never did," I said.
"I didn't think so," he said, pleased with my answer. He looked at Aunt Clara, who kept busy at the sink.
"Jennifer should come down, Reuben. She'll be late for the bus."
"She's never late," he said.
"You know she has been a few times, and you had to drive her to school," Aunt Clara said softly.
"The bus came too early those days," he insisted. By the time Jennifer appeared, William and I had finished eating. I began to clear the table.
"Leave that," Jennifer ordered when I reached for the sugar bowl. "I haven't had my cereal yet?'
"You should get up earlier, Jennifer." Aunt Clara said. "You don't have much time."
"I would if I could find the clothes I want," Jennifer whined. "Someone put my blouses in the wrong place, and my favorite skirt was shoved so far in the back of the closet I nearly didn't find it." She glared at me.
"You could put your clothes away yourself, and that way you'd know where everything is," I said.
"You're just jealous because I have more clothes than you. If you had as many as I did, you'd have trouble remembering where you put them," she said angrily. "Besides, you probably were hiding this skirt so you could wear it."
"I don't want to wear your things. I have my own clothes and . . ."
"Stop this bickering at the table!" Uncle Reuben shouted. He rose out of his seat like a gusher, his face crimson and steaming. Jennifer sat, and Aunt Clara quickly poured some coffee in a cup for her. "We never had bickering at the table before," he added, glaring at me, "but I bet that was something that happened in your house often."
"It wasn't," I said.
Aunt Clara glanced at me fearfully and shook her head gently. She wanted me to be like her, bury my head in the sand, absorb Uncle Reuben's hateful remarks, and pray that it would all end quickly.
"If I do anything of any value for you, it will be to teach you how to behave properly," he continued. "I know there are years of degenerate living to overcome, but by God, if you're going to live with us, you'll overcome them," he said, wagging his monstrous fist at me. "Why don't you watch Jennifer? Learn from her," he suggested.
I
raised my eyebrows and nearly laughed. Jennifer sat there smugly, chomping down on a few flakes of cereal, sipping some coffee before jumping up.
"We've got to go, Daddy," she declared. "You can teach her how to behave later."
He grunted. William looked at me
sympathetically but said nothing. I went to get my books and left the house a few seconds after Jennifer. She was already down the sidewalk, meeting her friends at the bus stop. The big topic of conversation was the upcoming school dance. The girls were all talking about which boys they hoped would ask them. Jennifer's wish list was the longest.
"She hasn't been here long, but do you think anyone will ask her?" I heard Paula Gordon whisper as she nodded in my direction.
"Who would ask her?" Jennifer said, loud enough for me to hear, and she laughed. "Oh, no, wait a minute. Maybe Clarence Dunsen will ask her."
"Yeah," Paula said. "He'll go, 'Raven, would . . . would . would would would . . would . . . you . . . you . . . like to . . . to . . . gogogo . "
They laughed loudly and then moved away. Their voices grew softer, more secretive. I was relieved to see the bus pull up. I hurried on. They all laughed again when they filed past and looked at me sitting with Clarence.
Funny, I thought, how girls like Jennifer attract other girls just like her. They stick together as comfortably as a pig in its own mess, I thought. It made me laugh. Clarence looked at me with curiosity. For a moment, I wished he would ask me to the dance and we would show them all up. But that was a fantasy, and in my life, fantasies were written on clouds that floated by, impossible to grasp, caught in the wind, gone as fast as they appeared.

I had a crush on a boy when I was in the sixth grade. His name was Ronnie Clark, and he had blue eyes that brightened with so much warmth when he smiled that he made you feel good when you were upset, and yet his eyes could darken with mystery and intensity when he looked at someone intensely or was in deep thought. I caught him gazing at me that way a few times, and it made my heart flutter and sent tiny warm jolts of electricity up and down my spine. Suddenly, I thought about my hair, my clothes, a budding pimple on my chin.

The world around you changes when you realize someone as handsome as Ronnie Clark is gazing at you with interest. Every time I moved or turned, when I rose to walk out of the classroom, even when I picked up my pen to write in my notebook, I was very conscious of how I looked. I couldn't wait to get to a mirror to check my face and my hair. I hated my clothes and regretted not watching my mother do her makeup when she did it well.

I tried not to be obvious when I looked at Ronnie, and if he caught me looking, I always shifted my eyes quickly and pretended I didn't have the slightest interest in him. Sometimes he smiled, and sometimes he looked disappointed. He was as shy as I was, and I thought it would take a bulldozer to push us dramatically into each other's path. He didn't seem to have the nerve to sit next to me in the cafeteria or come up to me in the hallway, and after a while, I was afraid that I might be making more of his gazes than there was. Nothing could be more embarrassing than thinking a boy liked you when he didn't.

One afternoon, when I was in gym class, I looked at the doorway to the gymnasium and saw him standing there looking my way. We were playing volleyball, and we were all in our gym outfits. The ball bounced close to the doorway, and I chased it and seized it, looking up at him at the same time.

Butterflies panicked in my chest, but I gave him the best smile I could muster. Mrs. Wilson blew her whistle and shouted for me to get back into the game. Ronnie walked away quickly before she chastised him for being there, but at lunch, he came up to me in the line and told me I was pretty good at volleyball.

"Tell me what it's like to be on a school team," I asked him, and he followed me to the table.
We started dating soon after that, but never did much more than hold hands and kiss a few times after school. I met him at the movies one night, but he had to go home right afterward. And then, just as suddenly as it had all started, it ended. He turned away from me as if I had been just another interesting picture in a museum. Soon he was off looking at other girls the way he'd once looked at me. I felt stupid chasing after him, so I stopped looking for him, and that was about when my school attendance began to drop off anyway.
There were many fewer students at the school I now attended and only about a dozen or so boys I would consider as good-looking as Ronnie Clark. I agreed with Jennifer that I could never expect any of them to take any interest in me, but to my surprise that very afternoon after Jennifer and her friends had teased me about Clarence Dunsen, a chubby boy named Gary Carson bumped into me deliberately between classes, and when I turned to complain, he smiled and said, "Jimmy Freer likes you."
He hurried on, leaving me confused. I knew who Jimmy Freer was. He was captain of the junior varsity basketball team, tall for his age, and very, very good-looking. He was right at the top of Jennifer's wish list, and I never even dreamed he would be looking at me, but at lunch he was suddenly right behind me when I went to buy some milk.
"That's the healthy choice," he quipped. I turned and, for a moment, was too surprised to speak. "Most everyone else is buying soda."
"I don't drink much soda," I told him. "Milk's okay." I paid for my milk and headed for the table where Terri and some of the other girls I liked were sitting, but he caught up with me.
"How about sitting with me?" he asked, and nodded toward an empty table on our right.
I gazed at the girls, who were all looking my way with interest, and then I turned and saw Jennifer and her friends staring at me, too. It warmed my heart to see the jealousy in their faces and made me smile.
"Okay," I said. He led the way and set his tray down across from me.
"How do you like the school here?" he asked, dipping his spoon into his bowl of chicken rice soup. "It's okay."
"Is that your favorite word?" he joked.
"No. Sometimes I say it's not okay."
He laughed, and I noticed what a nice smile he had and what a perfectly straight nose. I liked the way a small dimple in his right cheek appeared when he talked. His dark brown hair was cut closely on the sides, but he let a wave sweep back from the front. He had beautiful hazel eyes, bejeweled with flecks of blue, green, and gold on soft brown. No wonder he was everyone's heartthrob, I thought, and tried to look cool and sophisticated under his gaze. I could feel the way everyone was looking at us in the cafeteria. It made me think I was on a big television screen and every little move I made was magnified. I brushed my lips quickly with my napkin, afraid a crumb might be on my mouth or chin.
"So you're living with Jennifer, huh?" he asked.
"Sort of," I said.
"Sort of?"
"I don't call it living," I told him, and he laughed again. Then he smiled, his eyes drinking me in so intently I felt as if I were sitting there naked.
"I had a feeling you were smarter than most of the girls in junior high school here."
"I'm hardly smarter."
"You know what I mean," he said with that impish gleam in his eyes.
"No, I don't."
He laughed and grew serious. "Have you been to any school basketball games yet?"
"There's a big one coming up tomorrow night with Roscoe. We beat them once, and they beat us once this year. Why don't you come?" he asked.
"I don't know if I can."
"Why can't you? Don't you believe in having school spirit?" he asked with that teasing smile returning.
"It's not that. I don't know if my uncle will let me out," I said.
He grew serious-looking and ate as he thought.
"Why?" He leaned toward me to whisper. "Did you have a bad record at the last school you attended or something?"
"Sure. I'm on the post office walls everywhere," I said. He stared a moment and then roared so hard that kids who were sitting nearby stopped talking to look at us.
"You really are something. Come on, come to the game. Afterward, Missy Taylor is having a small house party. We'll have a good time, especially if we beat Roscoe. Can I hear you say okay again?"
"I can't make any promises," I said, but I really wanted to go.
"You're old enough to go out if you want. They shouldn't keep you locked up. Jennifer's certainly not kept locked up," he added. "She'll be at the game, I bet. You can come with her, can't you?"
"I'll try," I said. "She's not happy about taking me along anywhere."
"I'll make sure she does," he said with a wink.
We talked some more. He asked questions about my life before I began living with Uncle Reuben. I didn't want to tell him too much. Jennifer had successfully spread the word that my mother had died, and for the moment, I was afraid to contradict her and create too much of a scandal. It might scare Jimmy away, I thought, and anyway, what difference did it make what the kids at this school knew or didn't know about me?
Jennifer approached me in the hallway the first opportunity she had after lunch. Normally, she wouldn't so much as glance in my direction, but her girlfriends were buzzing around her like bees full of curiosity instead of honey.
"What's going on between you and Jimmy?" she demanded as if she were a police interrogator. She stood in front of me with her hands on her hips.
"Excuse me," I said. "I don't want to be late for class."
"Don't you walk away from me, Raven," she cried, her nostrils flaring. She looked exactly like Uncle Reuben.
"I'm not walking away. Do you want me to be late and get into trouble? Uncle Reuben won't like that, will he?"
"You've got time. Answer me," she demanded.
"Jimmy who?" I said, looking perplexed.
"Jimmy who? Jimmy Freer. You were talking to him in the cafeteria," she said, amazed at my questions. She looked at the other girls, who were just as surprised.
"Oh," I said, "was that his name? He never told me. Um. . . nothing's going on, but when something is, you'll be the first to know," I added, and kept walking. I could almost hear the explosion of anger in her head. -
I didn't realize that because I had been seen with Jimmy Freer, Jennifer was going to pay more attention to me. She was even waiting for me at the bus at the end of the day.
"Do you want to go to the basketball game tomorrow night?" she asked in as close to a pleasant voice as she could speak.
"What?"
"Are you deaf? I asked you if you wanted to go to the game with me, that's all."
"Sure," I said. Now I was the one who was really surprised.
"Just don't get my father angry about anything and spoil it," she warned, and marched onto the bus before I could ask her why she suddenly didn't mind being seen with me. I found out later. One of Jimmy's friends, Brad Dillon, had asked Jennifer to the game and party. The plan was to double-date with me and Jimmy, and since Brad was on Jennifer's wish list, she was eager to get me to go and make it happen for herself. I was more surprised that Brad wanted to be with her. He was even better-looking than Jimmy, in my opinion, but as we would soon discover, the boys had their own special plans.
Jennifer really wanted this date. All that evening and the next day, she did everything she could to ensure that Uncle Reuben wouldn't stop us from attending the game. I was suddenly very important to her. She even offered to help with some of the chores and put on a big act of reconciliation, pretending to help me make friends.
Uncle Reuben had made an appointment at the social service agency and announced at dinner that he was undertaking the necessary steps to make himself my formal legal guardian. In the meantime, social services was promising to cover my health and basic needs.
"It still irks me that society has to pay for my sister's mistakes," he declared as he chomped down on a lamb chop. I thought he would consume it, bone and all, like some bulldog.
I looked up sharply. It was as if he had reached across the table and poked me with his fork.
"I'm not a mistake," I said as proudly as I could. I was a tight wire inside, stretched so tautly I thought I might break and cry, but I held my breath and kept a firm lid on my well of tears.
Uncle Reuben paused and glared at me, the meat caught between his thick lips and the grease gleaming on his chin. Jennifer looked up nervously. Aunt Clara held her breath, and William gazed down at his food. I could almost feel the trembling in his little body.
"It's a mistake not to be prepared properly for children," he said firmly.
"My mother made mistakes, but I'm not a mistake. I'm a human being with feelings, too." I tossed my hair back. "Nobody's perfect, anyway?'
"You hear that? You hear the way she talks and thinks? You'd think she would be more respectful and grateful. Here I am trying to make a new home for her, and she talks like that, insolent."
"I'm not being insolent, Uncle Reuben."
"She didn't mean it," Jennifer piped up.
Uncle Reuben raised his eyebrows and gazed at her. Even I had to pause and look at her. She flashed me a quick look of warning.
"It's hard to start in a new school with new people. I'm going to help her make new friends," Jennifer offered.
Aunt Clara beamed. "That's wonderful, dear. You see, Reuben, the girls will get along just fine."
He still had a glint of suspicion in his eyes, but he grunted and continued to eat. Jennifer began talking about the basketball game as if it was the event of the century.
"Even our teachers are going to attend. It's important to show school spirit."
"That's very nice," Aunt Clara said.
Uncle Reuben started to talk about his own school days, and for a moment, I felt as if I was really sitting at a family dinner. Aunt Clara even laughed, recalling some stories he described, but then he suddenly stopped and looked at William.
"You hear how important it is to participate in sports, William. You shouldn't spend so much time in your room. You should stay after school sometimes and join a team," he told him.
William gazed at me with desperately sad eyes. "He's too young. They don't have teams yet," I said.
"Sure they do," Uncle Reuben snapped. "He wouldn't even go out for the Little League when he had the chance. I was going to drag him over to the field, but his mother was too upset."
"Not everyone has to be an athlete. Some people have other talents. William is fantastic at building things," I said.
"What is this? You're not here a month, and you're telling me what my son is capable of doing and not capable of doing?" Uncle Reuben cried. "She's just like my sister, with a mouth bigger than her brain. When I say something to William, I don't want to hear you contradict it, understand?" he said, slamming his fork down on the table.
"She didn't mean anything," Jennifer said quickly. "Raven, if you want, I'll help you with the dishes, and then we'll work on your math. I told you I would help you," she said, turning her back on Uncle Reuben and winking at me.
I shook my head and went back to eating. After dinner, when Uncle Reuben retired to the living room to watch television, Jennifer did help with the dishes. She stood beside me at the sink and whispered.
"Can't you keep your big mouth shut at dinner? Just let Daddy make his speeches like I do, and don't say anything," she advised.
"He bullies this family," I remarked.
"Who cares? You want him to get angry and forbid us to go to the game and the party? Just shut up." She wiped another dish and then turned and left the kitchen.
Where was the love in this house? I wondered. What makes this more of a family than what I had with my mother? Was it just the roof over their heads and the food in the refrigerator? I was beginning to think I would rather settle for the occasional good days with Mama than the constant life of tension and fear that existed in this home, but I didn't even have the choice anymore. Maybe I truly was a mistake. I was someone who could be moved and ordered about like a piece of furniture.
The next day at school, Jimmy paid even more attention to me. He walked with me in the halls between classes and sat with me at lunch. When I asked him if Brad Dillon really wanted to go out with my cousin, he just smiled and said, "I told you I would make sure you got to the game, didn't I? Let's just have a good time. I'll be looking in the bleachers for you," he promised.
Jennifer talked Uncle Reuben into driving us to the school gymnasium. It wasn't until we were almost there that she revealed we were invited to a party after the game. He almost stopped and turned around to take us home.
"What do you mean? What party?" He bellowed so loudly I thought the windows would shatter.
I sat quietly in the backseat and listened to Jennifer rattle off her lies.
"Everyone's going. It's a chaperoned party at Missy Taylor's house. We won't be late. It's a celebration," she explained.
"How come you didn't say anything about it before?" he demanded.
"We just got invited, right, Raven? Missy called us."
I didn't say anything. He wasn't going to blame me later. I was determined about that. I saw his eyes go to the rearview mirror.
"Who's this Missy Taylor?"
"Melissa Taylor. You know her father. He owns Taylor's Steak House."
"That's no more than a bar," Uncle Reuben said. "They have a nice house," Jennifer continued.
He grunted. "I don't want you home late. Be home before twelve. How are you getting home, anyway?" he asked.
"Oh, we have a ride. Don't worry, Daddy."
He looked at her again and then at me through the mirror. "I'm not happy about this. Who's the chaperone?"
"Her mother's there. Stop worrying so much, Daddy. You went to parties when you were our age."
"No, I didn't. I didn't even go out on a real date until I was a senior."
This time, I grunted, unable to imagine anyone going out on a date with him. He looked at me through the mirror again and drove on.
It was a very exciting game Jimmy was spectacular, stealing the ball, making long shots, holding the team together, and keeping them within four points the whole time. He did what he promised, too: he looked into the bleachers and found me. When he smiled, Jennifer glanced at me with eyes so green with hot envy I thought she would burst into flames.
In the last minute of the game, Jimmy intercepted a pass and scored. Then one of their players was fouled but missed his shot. The ball was tossed to Jimmy, who made a long jump shot from the corner. It put the game into two-minute overtime. The crowd was excited, and the roar was deafening. When they stomped their feet, I thought the bleachers would come tumbling down and crush us all.