Waiting for Christopher (13 page)

“You glued to this bed?”

Feena opened her eyes. The face looking down on them was not laughing. “If you don’t shake your sorry booty,” Raylene told her, “a truant officer’s going to be knocking on your mom’s door before you’re in your shoes.” She held out her arms to Christopher, who, yawning, held his out, too, and was lifted out of bed.

“What time is it?” Feena realized she’d forgotten to set the radio’s alarm. “Am I late?”

Raylene and Christy adjourned to the table. Raylene poured cereal into a bowl. “Not if you hustle,” she said, yawning herself. “What you want to do today, Toffee?” she asked the baby, who clearly didn’t want to do anything but eat. “Wait up. There’s no milk on that yet.”

“I don’t have any clothes,” Feena announced, struggling out of the bunk.

Raylene stared at her. “Looks to me like you’re wearing some,” she said, turning back to Christy.

“This is the same stuff I wore yesterday,” Feena complained. She examined her slept-in shirt, then glanced longingly at Raylene’s pink sundress and matching sandals. When her eyes met the other girl’s, she turned away, busied herself with the blanket and sheets.

“What?” Raylene asked, not unpleasantly. “You expecting to switch clothes?” She laughed. “You think that shirt would work for me?”

“Huh?” Feena, fumbling for her socks and sneaks, didn’t even look up.

“Yeah.” Raylene reached across Christopher for the backpack she’d brought, undid the strap. “Just what I need. Some Yankee T-shirt talking Yankee trash.
‘Ski Storrs.’
What is that?”

Feena laughed, looked up. “It’s a town in Connecticut. If it doesn’t snow, they make it with machines.”

Raylene handed Feena a neatly folded skirt and sleeveless shirt. “Here.”

“What’s this?”

“Go on.” She pushed the pile of clothes into Feena’s arms. “I figured you didn’t bring any.”

Thankful, embarrassed, Feena avoided looking at Raylene while she dressed. She managed the zipping and buttoning quickly, anxious to keep her thick waist and pasty flesh under wraps. But Raylene and the baby didn’t even notice; they were too absorbed in crackling and popping. Christopher was already on his second bowl of cereal when Feena picked up her own backpack.

“Better take that lunch ticket I left by the door.” Raylene still hadn’t looked up, was bent over her own bowl. “It’s the last day of the week, so you might as well use it. Toffee and me, we’re going to find us some real food today.”

Feena was astounded and grateful. As usual, Raylene had thought of everything. “That’s so nice,” she said. “You didn’t have to…”

But Raylene put her hand up, looked at her from under thick brows. “You keep talking, you’ll be late.” She wiped off the baby’s milk mustache with a practiced, perfectly timed pass in between spoonfuls. “And if you’re late, you have to stay after. I got to be at work at three-thirty. Hear?”

Feena stopped stammering, chastened. “Okay,” she said. “I’ll come right back.” A bit more stammering. A kiss for Christy, and she was gone, blinking in the sun on deck, then setting off down a tiny footpath Raylene promised would bring her to the parking lot behind the grandstand that lined one side of Washanee’s soccer field.

T
hrough the day that followed, Feena was half in, half out—listening as an eager substitute teacher tried desperately to make English matter to a roomful of nail biters, doodlers, and semiprofessional nappers; wondering, at the same time, where Raylene had taken Christopher. Were they at the library, using the new card Feena had left them? Or had Raylene opted for the playground and sandbox?

At lunch, she was grateful all over again for the lunch ticket Raylene had handed her. She was ravenous and completely unfazed by finding no one to sit next to. She took her egg salad sandwich, potato chips, and orange cupcake to one of the weathered benches in a palm-shaded spot just outside the cafeteria’s back entrance. Beside the bench was a huge bougainvillea bush, threatening to bring down the trellis to which it clung. Under the long, bloody fingers of blooms was a granite stone with a carved plaque.
GRADUATES
’
GARDEN
,
CLASS OF
’95.

A pair of white butterflies, like willful petals, chased each other across Feena’s field of vision. A boy she didn’t know, big-boned, with a face the color of boiled ham, came and sat on a bench across from her. They wrinkled their sandwich papers, popped their soda cans, then chewed in silence.

Occasionally, Feena noticed the boy glance in her direction, his eyes sliding away from hers if she looked up to catch him. As if the whole thing were an accident and he’d only intended to study the brick wall of the cafeteria or the crusty bark of the palm tree next to her.

It was probably the clothes, Feena reasoned, Raylene’s lime and grape skirt, the green shirt that was a little too tight. She shifted on the bench, trying to cover her muddy sneaks with the long, elegant folds of the skirt. How she wished she had the sense, the nerve, to choose colors like that!

She fidgeted and fussed with her sandwich, trying to eat slowly. It was almost a relief when another girl came out of the cafeteria and walked over to the boy. She kissed him on one ham-cheek, sat down beside him, then smiled at Feena.

Feena’s mini fantasy dissolved, and her whole body relaxed. She was no longer on display, and she dug into her sandwich, taking huge, greedy bites, yielding to the hunger it seemed she’d stored up for days.

In defiance of the happy couple across from her, she finished her first lunch and went back for a second, returning to the bench to chomp fast and furiously and to consider what a rich, confusing mess she’d made of her life.

Why was she sitting here, worrying about going to jail instead of what color lip-gloss went with her shoes? And why, in the name of cheerleaders and prom queens everywhere, had she taken it upon herself to right the world’s wrongs? Why was she the only girl at Washanee who was praying for school to be over so she could race off and change diapers?

Well, not the only one, she realized. While Feena was eating for both of them at school, Raylene was probably trying to coax Christy out of the sandbox. Or back to the boat. Babysitting and hiding out couldn’t be Raylene’s top choices for things to do on your day off, but, hard as it was to believe, she was now a bona fide partner in Feena’s crime.

“Here you are. I checked every single table inside.” Nella Beaufort looked nervously at the golden couple on the other bench, then asked Feena, “Where have you been, anyway?”

Feena was relieved when the lovebirds looked up and noticed she had a friend, even if it was only Nella. Nella, who sat next to Feena three times a week for History 1, who avoided all primary colors in favor of gray shorts and black tees, and was, if possible, even more distracted and lonely than Feena herself.

“I’m on my second sandwich and my third bag of chips.” Feena moved over, and Nella slipped onto the bench beside her.

“So?”

“So, I just didn’t feel like binging in public, that’s all.” The solicitous worry on Nella’s face somehow annoyed Feena.

“No,” Nella explained. “I mean, where were you yesterday? Why weren’t you here for the New Deal test?” She peered at Feena from under the layer of thick bangs that nearly hid her eyes. “Were you sick?”

Feena shook her head, popped another chip into her mouth. “Not really,” she said. “I had to help my mom with some stuff, that’s all.” It didn’t matter too much what alibi she used, since, like Feena, Nella didn’t know many people to pass it on to.

“Yeah,” Feena added when Nella continued to look at her expectantly. “She needed a color consultation. She decided to do a punk stripe in her hair.”

“Really?” Nella brightened. “How’s she look?”

Feena shrugged, and Nella grabbed the chance. “Hey, do you think you could come over after school and help me? I’ve had this henna kit for three months, but I’m kind of scared to do it.

Funny, Feena thought, a few weeks ago she would have been glad that someone, even Nella, was still asking her over. Sure, the Pizza Hut meant she’d have to say no. But still…

“You know,” Nella explained when Feena didn’t answer. “A second opinion?”

“I can’t.”

“You never can.” Nella’s tiny features pulled together into a frown. “I guess you like blacks better than your own kind, huh?”

“What?”

“I saw you and that black girl, that Raylene, in the park yesterday.”

“So?”
Had she seen Christy, too? Who else had spotted them? Feena could have sworn they’d left the park before school got out. What had gone wrong?

“Why’re you hanging out with her?” Nella seemed genuinely perplexed. “They just want to be white, you know.”

“‘They?’”

“Negroes,” Nella said, resurrecting a word Feena had only read in books. “Black pride and all that stuff? It’s not about that, not really.” Nella’s tiny pale face had pulled itself into a frown. “What it really is, they all want to be white, like us.”

Feena stood up. Did Nella mean what she was saying? Did anyone really believe things like this? “Listen,” she said, “I have to go.” She balled up her sandwich wrapper and empty chips bag, threw them on her tray.

“Course, they can’t be.” Nella gathered her own things, stood up, too. “But that don’t stop them trying.”

Feena wasn’t sure whether she wanted to laugh or yell. Mostly, she thought, it wasn’t worth doing either one. All she wanted now was to get away, to go back to the boat.

But Nella closed in on her. “You just got to set them straight, is all.” She sounded reasonable, patient, someone explaining things to a child. “If you’re too nice, they take advantage.”

Feena whirled on her ex-friend now, her lunch tray between them like a shield. She’d made her choice, she realized; she’d decided to yell. “Well, of course,” she told Nella, her voice rising, the couple across from them untwining themselves to stare. “We better make sure everybody knows where they belong, right?”

Nella looked surprised, thrown off by the question.

“Sure.” Feena answered it herself. “Otherwise, someone like Raylene is going to jump at the chance to be like me and you.”

“What?” Nella backed away, but Feena spoke louder still.

“It makes perfect sense, doesn’t it?” She brushed past Nella, heading for the cafeteria. “Somebody with a killer body, the hottest clothes in school, and tons of friends? It figures she’d probably give just about anything to be”—Feena, laughing at last, shook her head—“like us!”

“Hey.” Nella picked up her own tray, followed Feena. “I’m just trying to help, give you the picture, is all.”

And suddenly Feena
had
the picture. Raylene walking with a swing, like Janie Woods, straight through all the small people and their small talk. Raylene hiding out, even before Christopher, tucked away in the shells of abandoned restaurants and boats. Like some sort of exotic bird, hiding its plumage, ashamed of its flash. She elbowed the door and rushed inside. She didn’t look behind her to see if Nella—small-faced, anxious Nella—was still following. She couldn’t have cared less.

Raylene and Christy were bent over a book when Feena got back to the boat. “End the,” Raylene read, without looking up. “Mama kissing and hugging, picking banjo, blowing trombone, playing piano…” She was turning the pages of Christopher’s favorite book from back to front.

Feena stood, her head cocked, only vaguely recognizing what she heard.

“… dancing, singing a have I.” Seeing her now, Christy slammed the book with his hand, beaming. “Weed,” he told her. “Ween weed.”

“You two are definitely perverted.” Feena shook her head, smiling.

Raylene smiled, too. “Look,” she explained, “if you’d read this book as many times as I have today, you’d be reading it backwards, too.” She closed the book, put it on the table. “How was school?”

“Well, Mommy,” Feena told her, “I was a good girl and studied hard.”

“Yeah, yeah, yeah,” Raylene said. “Any hotties put the moves on you?” She was grinning now, conspiratorial.

“Boys?”

Raylene nodded, waiting.

“Well.” Feena, eager to please, remembered the boy outside the cafeteria. “This one guy…”

“Yeah?”

“I think he liked the way I looked.” Feena was uncomfortable now, knew she was making a big deal out of nothing. “I guess it was this skirt.”

Raylene gave her an appraising look. “Good on you,” she said.

“Pretty.” Christy ran to her, buried his head in the folds of the skirt. “Feen pretty.”

Feena was stunned. It was the first time she’d heard the baby use her name. She looked at Raylene.

“We worked on names today.” Raylene picked up a paper plate with the remains of what looked like a Big Mac on it and threw it in a garbage bag by the door. “I figure Toffee’s got to know his family now.”

“Family?” Feena stared. “Family?”

“Sure.” Raylene sat down on the other side of Christy, who had crawled between them. “If he’s going to start over, he needs a new family, doesn’t he?”

“Start over?” Feena was doing it again. Why was she always reduced to repeating what Raylene said?

“Think about it, Feena.” (Another first that Feena registered with only mild surprise. Raylene, too, had never called her by name.) “Why can’t Toffee have a say in what happens? I mean, why can’t he be the first kid with a vote?”