The Center of Everything (29 page)

Travis leaves for work early, seven-thirty, wearing a khaki jumpsuit with
TRAVIS
stitched in red letters on a white patch, carrying coffee in a blue mug that he brings home with him at night to be rinsed out and refilled with coffee again the next morning. His mother bought him a blue Datsun so he could get to work in the morning. It needs a new muffler, and the engine is so loud that the crows fly up from the corn across the highway when he starts it in the morning. My mother asked Mrs. Rowley when she thinks Travis will fix this, and Mrs. Rowley said Travis had enough things to fix right now, and maybe everyone should just leave him alone.

He gets home a little after six, the khaki jumpsuit stained with splotches of oil, walking quickly from the car. He does not look up at my window. Deena goes over around seven, knocking on his window, never the door. He comes out, and the two of them go for long walks together, up and down the highway. They don’t talk, or maybe they wait until no one can see them before they begin. But they walk side by side, sometimes holding hands, sometimes not. She’s cut her hair off, all the way up to her ears. Her neck looks even longer and thinner, like the stem of a flower. Sometimes she looks up at my window quickly, but I don’t know if she sees me or not.

Travis says good-bye to her every night in the parking lot. Sometimes they kiss, and sometimes he just leans forward, bending his knees so that his forehead touches hers.

When Eileen hears about Deena, she says she thinks it’s sad the way young people are going downhill today. She says if this country really wanted to put a stop to teen pregnancy, drug use, AIDS, and rap music, they’d put prayer back in schools and then wonder why we ever took it out.

“Case in point,” she tells my mother, pointing at me. “Two girls, living right next door to each other. They’re the same age. They’re friends. One goes to church, at least when her grandmother can get her there, and the other one doesn’t. One doesn’t get pregnant at fifteen, and the other one does.”

I watch Eileen talk, her crooked mouth forming the words. I would like to believe what she is saying now, that I am not pregnant because I am good. But I know that some of the reason I am not pregnant and Deena is is that she was born with large, dark eyes and a neck like the stem of a flower, and I wasn’t.

“At least they’re getting married,” she says, unwinding her yellow measuring tape. She’s knitting Samuel a sweater, a blue one, she says, to match his eyes. He reaches up for the tape, making his shrieking sound.

“Oh come on,” my mother says. She is sitting on the counter, eating a grape Popsicle, wearing a denim skirt she has had since I was little. “They’re both so young.”

“Come on nothing, Tina. They created a child together. Now they can raise one. Or they can go through the nine months and give it up for adoption. Anyway, they’re not so young. I was seventeen when I married your father. My own grandmother was sixteen on her wedding day, and she and my grandfather went on to have thirteen children.”

Eileen looks proud about this, but my mother makes a face, reeling back in her chair.
“Thirteen?”
She looks at me. “Your grandmother had thirteen children? That’s insane.”

It’s true, I think. My mother is right—thirteen is too many. Even their own parents would forget their names sometimes.

Eileen shrugs. “They were Catholic.”

My mother rolls her eyes, chewing the end of her Popsicle stick. “Someone needs to give the pope thirteen babies. Just for a week or so. See how he likes no birth control then.”

“People who have self-control don’t need birth control, Tina.”

“Well, apparently your grandmother did.” She laughs, but Eileen doesn’t.

“People need to learn to reap what they sow.”

Reap what you sow. Eileen likes this phrase, this quote. She thinks people with AIDS are reaping what they sow too, getting what they deserve. She has said this to me before. She says, “Do you really think it’s just a coincidence that homosexuals and drug users are getting it? Don’t you see the lesson there?”

But I’m starting to think maybe this isn’t true. In health class, Miss Yant showed us a videotape of people dying of AIDS in hospitals, too sick to eat, shaking under their blankets. Little babies have it now too, and they haven’t even lived long enough to sow anything. So maybe Eileen is wrong. Maybe nobody is getting AIDS for a lesson. Maybe people are just getting it, and it’s sad.

It won’t really be like a wedding, Travis told me. It’ll be more like an appointment, fifteen minutes from start to finish, four o’clock to four-fifteen. Just at the courthouse, not at a church. But I think Mrs. Rowley got a new dress for it—blue with white flowers, with a sash in the back that she has left untied. She uses her hand to fan herself as she walks down the stairs to the parking lot.

Deena gets out of the car and waves up at Travis, turning in a little half circle to show him her dress. It’s the dress she got for the prom. I remember when she bought it last year, on sale, seventy-two dollars with the shoes. She just happened to get a white one. Or maybe she knew, even then. Her stomach is still flat under the satin bodice. Spaghetti straps, tight against her tan shoulders, hold it up.

I duck below my window when she looks.

Travis is wearing a navy blue jacket, a gray shirt, a white tie, and dark gray pants that look like they have maybe been hemmed with safety pins. Deena’s grandmother stays in the car, the engine running, but Mrs. Rowley has a small camera, and she motions for Travis and Deena to stand together. Travis puts his arm around Deena, and she leans her head on his shoulder.

I know that this moment, what I am seeing before me, will become a picture in a photo album. Their child, the one on its way, will look at this picture years from now, showing friends, and say,
This is a picture of my parents the day they got married,
touching Travis’s and Deena’s stilled faces with his or her fingers, seeing only how beautiful they both look, Deena’s dress lifting in the breeze. They will think the picture is more important than it really is; they will think he or she exists because of the picture, instead of the other way around.

eighteen

W
HEN SUMMER COMES
, T
RAVIS AND
Deena get approved for a Section 8, a two bedroom in Kerrville, just across the street from the garage where Travis works. It shouldn’t be any different when they finally move—Deena and I don’t talk, and Travis just works all the time anyway. But when they are actually gone, when I can no longer see them going on their long walks in the evening, I feel it. It’s just me now.

But at least I’m finally old enough to work this summer, and that takes up some of the time. I turned in my application to the McDonald’s in early June, but the manager, Franklin DuPaul, wouldn’t even interview me at first. I had to bug him about it, by phone and in person, every day for a week before he dug my application up and waved me over behind the counter.

DuPaul is in his early fifties, tall and lean, the only black man I’ve ever seen in Kerrville, with a close-cropped beard that he rubs when he is thinking something over. When he interviewed me, he looked down at my application and not at my face while I explained that I needed to start saving money for college, and that I was a hard worker. He would not be sorry, I promised. Not sorry at all.

“Okay,” he said, rubbing his beard. “We’ll start you out, see how it goes.”

He put me on fries, so this is what I do now, over and over for four-hour stretches at a time: I open a bag of frozen fries, pour them into the wire basket, lower the basket into the grease, and set the timer. While the fries are cooking, I sweep the floor, or I spray and wipe the stainless-steel counter behind me. When the timer for the fries rings, I lift the basket up out of the oil and dump the fries onto the warmer, add salt, and then shuffle them into different containers: small, medium, and large.

It is usually just boring, being at work, but sometimes it’s hard. There are decisions to make. The fries go bad after about fifteen minutes, turning limp and soggy in the warmer, so I am not supposed to cook more than we need. But sometimes when I don’t put enough in, buses pull in off the highway, and then forty-five people are waiting in the lobby, standing in five different lines in front of the counter.

“Fries,” DuPaul will say, snapping his fingers. “Come on, Evelyn. Let’s go. Let’s go.”

People have to wait too long when I don’t make enough. Sometimes they say they are in a hurry and will just have an apple pie instead, but they look disappointed, or even mad, shrugging as they walk away from the counter, their heads hanging down.

But when I make a lot of fries, the lobby stays empty, and I have to throw them away. DuPaul can sense it when I have to throw fries away, no matter how far away he is. I try to bury them in the garbage, underneath hamburger wrappers and napkins. But he knows.

“Ms. Bucknow,” he says, frowning, kicking the trash can a little so we can both see all the fries underneath the wrappers. “May I remind you that when we throw away our product without selling it, we lose money. It’s a terrible waste.”

“I know,” I say, pushing my visor up so I can see him. “I know.”

He tells me I have to learn to watch, to check for buses in the parking lot, to keep my eyes open. “Rhythm,” he says, closing his eyes. “You’ve got to develop a rhythm.”

Trish is no longer the dining-room attendant. She’s the assistant manager now, and she gets to wear a special blue-and-white-striped shirt with a red tie. When I make mistakes, she isn’t as nice as DuPaul.

“Are you stupid or something?” she asks. She pushes me out of the way and takes the fries out of the oil. They’re burned, all of them, like little brown worms. “How could you forget to put on the timer?” Her eyebrows are still frozen high on her head.

“I don’t know,” I say. “I just forgot. I’m sorry.” When Trish yells at me like this, in front of everyone, I have to work hard to think about something else so I won’t cry.

“You’re sorry.” She dumps the burned fries in the garbage and puts another batch in. Her hands move quickly, and I can see raised scars on them, places she has burned herself. “You kids think you’re so smart out in that lobby. But when it comes down to it, you don’t know how to push a goddamn button.”

DuPaul cuts in sometimes when she’s like this. He tells her to go easy on me, to have a little patience. I’m still young, he says, still learning.

I hardly ever see either of them anymore, except for Sundays, when Deena drives Travis’s no-muffler car to her grandmother’s to do laundry. You can see she’s pregnant now, a little slope sticking out of the middle of her ballerina body. It takes her a full minute just to get up out of the driver’s seat. She carries the laundry basket on her hip, walking with her feet spread wide. The baby is due in November.

My mother is on the floor next to Samuel, helping him through his physical therapy exercises, pulling his legs when he does not want them pulled, and he is screaming. She looks out the window and sees Deena. “Poor thing,” she says. “Honey, why don’t you go help her?”

I shrug. “I’m busy.”

“You’re reading a magazine. When’s the baby due?”

“I don’t know. November.” I glance outside. Deena is bent over, trying to pick up a shirt that has fallen out of the basket. She leans backward, one of her arms stretched out for balance, bending at the knees as if she were trying to get under a limbo stick.

“Evelyn,” my mother says. “I don’t know what this fight between you two is about, but at least go carry the basket.”

“She’s fine.”

My mother leans across Samuel, grabs my magazine. Before I can believe she is really going to do it, she swats me with it on the back of my thigh.

“Ouch!” I stare at her in disbelief, and she does it again. I try to move away, but she leans after me, hits me again. “Knock it off!” I hold out my hands to shield myself, and she hits me there too.

“Go help your friend, Evelyn. You big meanie. Go help your friend.” She stands up and swats me again, herding me toward the door. Samuel waves his arm from his beanbag, screeching. He’s thrilled with this, all this violence.

“Mom, you’re being crazy. Stop it.”

“And you’re being mean. Go help your friend.” She opens the door, pushes me outside.

The door shuts behind me, and Deena turns around. “Hi,” she says, surprised, squinting, her hand flat over her eyes. She is standing oddly, her legs crossed, the basket resting on one of her hips. She has not yet been able to pick up the shirt.

I reach behind me to try the door. Locked. “Hi.”

“Haven’t seen you for a while.” She shifts the laundry basket to the other hip.

“Yeah. I’ve been busy. School and stuff.”

I can see now she is sweating, beads trickling down from her new short hair. She leans heavily on the rail of the stairway, one of her hands resting on her belly. She might just be standing that way because she thinks pregnant women are supposed to.

“You need some help or something?”

She nods. “Actually, yeah. I have to pee. I have to pee right this very second. I don’t think I’ll make it if I have to carry this basket.”

I jog across the parking lot, and she hands me her keys and the basket. She moves past me when I open the door, knocking the laundry basket out of my hands as she goes by.

“Sorry,” she says, but keeps walking.

I kneel down to pick up the clothes, recognizing Deena’s pink pillowcases from her old bed, Travis’s orange T-shirt, his blue jeans. I pick them up, follow her in. Her grandmother’s apartment has not changed. It’s still dark, still crowded with furniture. I set the basket on the same table where we carved pumpkins.

She comes back out, sliding into a chair at the table. “Thanks,” she says, breathing heavily, her eyes already closed. “Sorry about that. That’s all I do these days is pee.”

I’m not sure what to say to this. “Do you need some water or something?”

She nods, her eyes still closed. “It’s a vicious cycle.”

I get her a glass of water. “Where’s your grandmother?”

“The movies. She says she goes to get out of the heat, but I don’t know. I think she just doesn’t want to see me.” She pats her belly. “It bugs her, you know.”

“Oh.”

“At least she lets me come over.” She shrugs. “Okay, I’ve got to put the laundry in.” I watch her try to stand, leaning forward, pressing down on the sides of the chair with her arms. It looks difficult.

“Let me do it.”

“You sure?” She sinks back down into the chair.

I bring her another glass of water. I can do this. It’s just water. It’s just giving water to a pregnant girl.

“Thanks,” she says. “I say I’m coming over here to do laundry, but it’s really for the AC.” She grins at me, her eyes on mine. She’s trying to act normal, but she’s nervous, I can tell. “Feels good, doesn’t it?”

I nod, sitting down. “I like your haircut.”

She pulls her fingers through it quickly and rolls her eyes. “Travis is still mad about it. But if he likes long hair so much, he can grow his own.”

We are quiet after this. It’s not the same as it was before, her talking about Travis. My eyes drift away from her face, downward. The baby isn’t due until November, but already, she’s so much bigger than I remember my mother being with Sam.

“How does it feel?” I am always asking her this. She laughs. “Like you’re carrying a basketball in between your knees. And it’s always ninety degrees outside with eighty percent humidity and you’re in a bad mood.”

“Well, it really is ninety degrees outside.”

“That’s good to know. I thought it was just me.” She fans herself with her hand. “I’m kidding. It’s not so bad. I mean, physically, it’s a drag. But it’s kind of cool too. People hold doors open for you. Smile at you on the street.”

Also,
I think, watching her,
it makes it more difficult for your boyfriend to break up with you
.

“But I only have a couple more months,” she says. “I keep dreaming I’ve already had the baby, and Travis is holding him. In the dream, I know everything went fine. So maybe that’s a good sign. Anyway,” she says, smiling again. “No going back now. One way or the other, he’s coming out.”

“It’s a boy?”

She nods, her hand resting on top of her belly. I catch sight of the small diamond on her finger. It doesn’t really sparkle. It may not even be real.

We are silent then, listening to the washing machine chug and spin. I don’t know what to talk about. I don’t know if I should talk about school, about McDonald’s, or not. I can’t think of anything to say. I stand up. “Well, I guess I’ll get going.”

She starts to smile, then lets it go, biting her lip. “Are you still mad at me, Evelyn?”

I don’t know what to say. I never know what to say. I did not plan on having to talk to her today, and although I have been thinking about this question all summer, I still do not know the answer. Yes. No. A little. I sit back down. She pushes her lips together, and I can see she is trying not to cry.

“I miss you,” she says. “I want us to be friends again.”

Dead brown leaves rustle on the windowsill. They are already dying, the leaves of this year, dried out from the hot summer, not even bothering to change to red or yellow before they fall. I look at the sugar bowl in the middle of the table.

“It wasn’t right, what you did,” I say.

She rubs her eyes. “Oh God, Evelyn. You can be so mean, you know that? It wasn’t like I had this all planned out. It wasn’t like I did it on purpose. I just…” She stops. “I just didn’t not do it on purpose.” She frowns and shakes her head. “It sounds bad when I put it like that, but that’s how it was.”

This sounds fishy to me, this logic, but I don’t tell her that. I don’t want her to start crying. Not doing something on purpose would be doing something accidentally, accidentally forgetting to take the pills, accidentally throwing them away. I think about her doing this, coming home the night I told her that Travis was going to break up with her, walking through the sleet and slush to all this dark and quiet, her grandmother asleep in the next room.

But even though I have not said anything, she cries. Of course she does. “You’re my only friend, Evelyn,” she says. “Besides Travis, you’re it.”

This is terrible. The more she cries, the more I wonder if there is a possibility that I am actually the mean one. Or maybe we have both been mean. The washing machine buzzes loudly, and she starts to stand up.

I hold up my hand. “Okay. Don’t. I’ll get it.”

“Thanks.” She falls back into her chair, sniffing. I hand her a Kleenex, and she blows her nose. “Um, my pink blouse has to be set out. But everything else can just go in the dryer.”

I open the lid of the washer. Inside, there are new blue-and-white-striped sheets, the pink pillowcases. Everything is tangled together. Deena’s large, colorful maternity shirts are wrapped around Travis’s underwear, her bras knotted up with his socks. Something about the cold wetness of their clothes, the clean smell of the laundry detergent and the way they are all tied together, makes me feel bad about touching them. Later there will be bibs and tiny shirts in the dryer too, all of their clothes spinning together, then folded neatly in the same basket, buttons and snaps fastened by each other’s fingers.

It’s just the way it is now. It’s just the way it is.

“Does it look okay?” she calls out. “Nothing ruined?”

“No.” I take out her pink blouse, lay it out flat on top of the dryer. “It’s fine.”

On the first day of eleventh grade, Libby is back, her long hair cut short and darker than it was. She can walk, but she has to use a cane. Dr. Queen asks me to share a locker with her, since we have both lost our partners. I move my things to her locker, to the shelf that used to be Traci’s.

Because of the cane, Libby can’t always get all the books she needs out of her locker and put others away at the same time, so I help her during passing time, holding her books. She shows me the leg exercises she has to do every night for her physical therapy, twenty-five on each side, a rubber band around her ankles for resistance.

“My little brother’s got a rubber band like that,” I tell her. “He has to do exercises too.”

“They suck,” she says. “Tell him I sympathize.”