Shem Creek (6 page)

“Okay, here’s the deal. I’ll stay with Aunt Mimi on one condition.”

“Which is?” Mimi said.

“That if I tell you
my
side and you
agree
with me that I get to go back to New Jersey in August.”

Maybe Gracie
did
have her own point of view. Maybe I
was
making the wrong decision for her life. One thing was for sure. I wouldn’t miss her for the next week. No. I wouldn’t miss her one damn bit.

“Nope,” I said, “quit campaigning because
here’s
the deal. There’s no bargaining. Period. I made the decision to move us here, for very good reasons and that’s it. I am sick to death of your fresh mouth and the million and one stupid things I have seen you do over the last two years. Your behavior is going to change!”

Gracie pounded her fist on the table and my anger exploded. At this point my heart was pounding in my ears.

“
No!
You don’t tell me when to stop and you listen to me, Gracie. I mean it. Do you think that I enjoyed pulling you out of the police station? Do you think I have enjoyed all the phone calls from the faculty at Montclair High regarding your behavior in class? Your endless wisecracks? Your foul language? Your grades? No, no. Things are changed as of
right now, this minute!
Unless you want to spend your life making French fries or delivering pizza, you are going to do your homework, get good grades and behave yourself! You don’t have to come to New Jersey with us because then I would just be worried about what you’re doing anyway. No. You stay here with my sister and give me a few days of peace with Lindsey. And, let me warn you now, if I hear one word about you picking up thugs at Taco Bell or any other place and you coming home like you did today, I will ground you for a thousand years! Am I understood?”

There was silence at the table, followed by more silence. I was breathing rapidly and everyone knew I was within seconds of slapping Gracie to the floor if she made one objection. At that moment, she realized she had no support, and to my surprise she said nothing. In New Jersey, we would have been at a level of mother-daughter anger that would have frightened the neighbors. Lindsey would have been screaming over us to stop yelling and she might have been holding me back from hitting Gracie. Maybe it was because of Mimi’s presence and because we were in Mimi’s house that Gracie opted not to throw a full-scale fit of temper. Or, maybe Gracie
wanted
to be stopped. Now, there was a possibility worth exploration. And, hellfire, she had to grow up at some point, didn’t she?

MOMMA and Lindsey left early this morning. Personally, I thought Lindsey was crazy as hell to make the trip without a fight, but that’s how she always was—the good DooBee of the family. And, I guess I was feeling a little guilty about yesterday, so I got up first and made pancakes for everyone. Aunt Mimi was right on my heels, resetting the table, moving the forks to the left and the knives to the right. She was like a little obsessed with the table looking like a magazine layout. I mean, who was gonna see it? I said zero about it. I hoped I hadn’t been left behind to get trapped for a giant lecture on alcohol and hickeys.

The morning speeches came from Mom, who rushed in the kitchen all nervous and clucking around.

“Now, Gracie? No nonsense from you while I’m gone. Is that understood?”

“Yeah, I understand,” I said.

“I’ll call from Richmond and check on you,” Mom said. “Do we have gas? Oh, yes, I filled up last night. Anyway, Gracie, you behave yourself or else!”

“I already said I would, didn’t I?”

I was standing by the stove, filling plates with food. When Lindsey snickered, I gave her the finger behind everyone’s back. She shot one back to me and we giggled.

“What’s so funny?” Aunt Mimi said.

“My daughters are making obscene gestures to each other,” Mom said.

Mom had eyes in the back
and
the sides of her head.

“Oh, Lordy! I have my work cut out for me!” Aunt Mimi said, with a sigh.

I knew what
that
meant—that Aunt Mimi was going to make this gargantuan effort to
Carolina-ize
me. I could deal. It was still better than a million hours in the car, driving up and down I-95.

Anyway, by the time they took off, I was exhausted and considering going back to bed. No such luck. Aunt Mimi, the general, was waiting for me.

“Come on, Gracie, let’s get these dishes.”

I said, “At home whoever cooks doesn’t have to wash.”

“Well, this ain’t Kansas,” she said. “Here’s a sponge.”

Normally, I would have flat-out refused, but it was too early to bicker, even for me. Besides, she said it smiling and it’s harder to bite someone who is smiling at you.

“So, Miss Gracie? Tell me what’s going on. Why don’t you want to be down here with your Aunt Mimi? What’s the problem with South Carolina?”

“It’s not you, Aunt Mimi. It’s just that it’s
weird,
you know?”

“Honey, you’re gonna have to spell it out for me. I gave up mind reading a long time ago.”

The hot water was running, filling the sink area with steam. She rinsed and placed the plates in the dishwasher. I scooped crumbs from the counter and put the milk, butter and syrup back in the refrigerator. How was I going to explain this to her without insulting her?

“Look, I’ve been living in New Jersey all my life! All my friends are there! And my friends are
very
different from what I see around here. They’re black, Hispanic, Asian, everything! I mean, there are two thousand kids in my high school in Montclair!”

“There are over two thousand kids at Wando here.”

“There are?”

She nodded her head, thinking she had me, but it cut no ice.

“Yeah, two thousand
bubbas!
Look, I have kids in my bio lab with gunshot wounds and they didn’t come from deer hunting, okay?”

“Gracious! Honey . . .”

“I know thugs with four-point-three GPAs that pack heat in their lockers!”

“Heat?”

“Handguns.”

“What’s the matter with these children? And, more importantly, why would you
want
to know them? Aren’t you afraid you’ll get tangled up with them and get hurt?”

“Not at all. Look, we’ve got the Bloods and the Crips for sure, but we’ve got every kind of nationality you can name. We think and talk about different things than the kids down here. . . .”

“Bloods and Crips? What in the world?”

“Gangs, Aunt Mimi. Like the Bloods and the Crips are totally famous all over the country. There’s this initiation you have to go—”

“I’ve never heard of such a thing in all my life. . . .”

“And that’s the point. Neither has anybody else down here. I mean, my term paper for world history last year was on female genital mutilation!”

“Dear heavenly mother!”

“See? People here are all the same. White kids hang out with only white kids. Black kids hang with blacks. In Montclair, we don’t care about that stuff. I mean, the black kids and the white kids in my school sort of go their own ways after school and even in school but the difference is we don’t look
down
on each other. You know what I mean? We live in the whole world! Not just one tiny pocket like this?”

“Well, sort of, I guess. I mean, everybody thinks that the north, in general, is more tolerant of cultural differences.”

“Aunt Mimi! Listen! It’s not about being
tolerant!
Cultural differences are how the whole world
is!
I think it’s
interesting!
Listen, you should see the black girls in my class—it’s
all
about hair and nails. And, shoes! They got some long nails and hair weaves that you wouldn’t believe! And, they are
hilarious!
They love me because they know I think they are very, very cool. I don’t want to
be
them; I just want to understand their world and how they think. Even the fat girls wear tight clothes and they aren’t all hung up on being skinny, you know what I mean?”

“I think you’d find the same thing here, Gracie.”

“Well, I don’t.”

“You’ll never know until you take a look at it. I mean, we could sign you up for driver’s ed at Wando this summer, even today, and you could see who shows up, right?”

“That’s nice, but here’s the problem. I don’t fit in here and I never will.”

Aunt Mimi turned on the dishwasher and rinsed her hands for the hundredth time. Then she sighed and turned to me. “Baby? I have to tell you something. I think I have spent my entire forty-three years just trying to figure out where I fit in. And, you might be right, but only to a point. You’ve got the old ‘How’re You Gonna Keep ’Em Down on the Farm After They’ve Seen Paree’ Syndrome!”

“
What?
In English, please?”

“Our grandmother had this problem with Granddaddy. He went off to World War Two, but actually spent four years in Paris, going to the Moulin Rouge and the Lido and God knows, French whorehouses, for all she knew.”

We both snickered at that, because who ever thinks about their great grandparents having a sex life?

“Ew!” I said.

“Precisely. Anyway, after the war so many men didn’t want to go back to rural America that they wrote a song about it. My grandmother used to sing it whenever Granddaddy pulled her chain about attending covered-dish dinners at church or bingo or who knows? So, that’s what
you’ve
got! Lindsey was right. You know a whole lot more about how the world ticks than a lot of kids around here. But, not all of them. At least one kid a year pulls a sixteen hundred on their SATs and we do have cable TV, you know. Four hundred stations?”

“The problem is that it’s
dull!
I mean, in Montclair I can see Manhattan from the hill!”

“But how often do you go there?”

“Actually, more than you might think. We have this new train connection that takes you there in less than thirty minutes for under five bucks.”

“No kidding.”

“Yep, no kidding.”

“Well, Gracie, here’s what I think.”

She folded the damp kitchen towel, hung it over the oven door rail and sat next to me at the table, slapping my hand for picking the sweet crust from the sides of her pound cake. I smiled at her then. My aunt Mimi was so smart and she listened really well—for a grown-up, that is.

“Shoot,” I said.

“I think that if I were your mother, I’d be worried about you—even as sophisticated as you are—going off into Manhattan at your age by yourself.”

“I never go alone,” I said, hoping that would make her see I wasn’t completely out of control or something.

“No! I’m sure you don’t. But, here’s the thing. If you lived here, the pace of living—which is
slower,
I’ll admit—that alone would make you take your time about other things. Decisions that are more important. You can only be a kid for two more years and then you’re cooked! You have college, graduate school, career, marriage, kids and that’s it! Boom, boom, boom! One after another. High school is the last level playing field you’ll ever have!”

“What do you mean? You don’t think teachers are mean as hell to students and pigeonhole kids in high school? And, you don’t think kids try to ruin your reputation because of
any
reason they think up?”

“Not at all. That’s the same everywhere. What I mean is everybody has the same textbooks, the same tests, and at least on paper you have the same chance at excellence as everyone else. When you get out in the real world, other factors carry more weight. Your personality, your appearance . . .”

“Aunt Mimi? No offense, but that’s a bullshit argument.” She raised her eyebrows but didn’t give me hell for saying
bullshit
to her. So, I continued. “Look, your personality and appearance make a huge difference to teachers. If they like you, they cut you some slack. If they don’t, it can make a B turn into a C.”

“Okay, that’s probably true. I guess what I’m saying is that you have one cloister left, unless you become a nun, which is highly unlikely. And, high school is that cloister. Being with your mom is that cloister. In two short years, you’ll be gone and on your own. If you were really as smart as I think you are, instead of kicking the fence to break out, you’d see the value in having the time to slow down, be with your mom and with me and learn something more from us. You don’t
have
to be grown-up today. You can grow up
later on
. But you can
never
be a kid again. This is your last chance.”

So, she had me on that. I knew she was right. I had been caught in some pretty bad stuff recently. Mimi knew all about everything that had been happening in my life and maybe that was part of why she and Mom wanted to get me out of Jersey.

“Well, I don’t mind spending the summer here, but there ain’t
no way
I’m moving here forever! Stinking Lindsey has all the luck! Just because she was born two years before me . . .”