Addie on the Inside Page 4

  so he doesn’t qualify as a boyfriend anymore.” “Back in the dark,”

  Grandma says with a click of her tongue. “There is so much work

  yet to be done.” I’m all set to tell her about the GSA, when she

  takes my hands in hers and says, “I am so happy to be here.

  I’ve been lonely.”

  This is how she is. One minute she’s taking on the world

  and the next she’s taking you in her arms. She has been

  in our house less than an hour. Hugging her, I can’t say I

  tower over her—an inch is only an inch—but for the first

  time I don’t feel small. Maybe this is what it means that I’m

  growing up. Maybe this is what it means that Grandma

  is growing old.

  With or Without

  Grandma has been here for over a week now, sleeping

  in the study that doubles as a guest room. She brought her own

  coffeemaker because my parents only drink tea, rescued last

  year’s National Public Radio mug from the garlic, claimed it

  as her own. Each morning she sits on the sofa (Kennedy

  hunched on the arm behind her looking like a gargoyle, but

  fuzzy) with her knees drawn up and her favorite mug, steaming,

  held in her hands the way I imagine a priest might hold

  the sacramental chalice of wine. As far as I know Grandma

  is an agnostic, but she calls the mornings her sacred time.

  Maybe she worships coffee. There are people who do. Maybe

  she worships a god she doesn’t choose to discuss.

  On the second day she was here I asked her how long she’d be

  staying. “As long as it takes,” she said. “You know I’m getting

  the house ready to sell. Didn’t your mother tell you?” My eyes

  welled up with tears. “Oh, Addie, come here,” she said. “It’s too

  much work to keep up that house all by myself, and it holds too

  many memories I’d rather keep in my heart, not face every day in

  the cupboard where his cereal bowl still sits or there by the side

  of his chair in the pile of papers I stupidly refuse to throw out.”

  “But why do you have to move? I love that house,” I said. “I love

  it too. But you have to move on. With or without. It’s not as if

  you have a choice.”

  Today I had my first cup of coffee. I sat down at the other end

  of the sofa, tucking up my knees, cupping the mug the way my

  grandma cups my face. Johnson jumped down from his perch

  behind me, rubbed against my legs, and settled at my feet. I

  didn’t speak, I didn’t want to ruin Grandma’s sacred time. I

  thought about my grandpa, gone two years now and his papers

  still piled by the side of his chair. I looked over at my grandma’s

  face. Her eyes were closed. She was smiling. Maybe she was

  thinking of him. Maybe she was simply glad that I was there.

  Young Man

  After they met, Grandma told me, “I like your young man,”

  sounding older than she usually does and making me laugh

  because, I mean, DuShawn?

  Young man?

  Not so much.

  He did act the part, I guess, asking polite questions

  and saying he was sorry to hear her husband had died.

  Apparently, I forgot to tell him it was two years ago.

  I had this funny moment then, picturing DuShawn and me

  together for the rest of our lives and him growing old and

  dying the way my grandpa did and what would that be like

  and how would I feel.

  Lucky is what I felt. Lucky not to be old or sick or lonely.

  Lucky to have

  a young man

  my grandmother likes.

  Beautiful

  DuShawn is the kind of boy

  who always has a rubber band

  working its way through his fingers,

  who thinks spitballs are an art form,

  who makes everything into a joke,

  including, sometimes,

  himself.

  DuShawn is the master of sly looks

  and cool moves

  and smiles that charm the teachers

  and, sometimes,

  me.

  DuShawn never says anything straight

  when he can detour to a wisecrack.

  But once when it was dark and we were walking and

  I told him I’d heard Becca Wrightsman tell Royal Wilkins

  I was plain as dirt, he did not take a detour. He said,

  “Don’t believe what girls say about other girls.

  You’re beautiful, Addie. They’re just jealous.”

  I didn’t say anything then,

  and neither did he until

  he asked if I wanted a stick of gum.

  I said yes, even though I worried

  it might be the trick kind

  that burns your mouth and

  makes you cry.

  It wasn’t. It didn’t.

  DuShawn, it seems, is more than

  one kind of boy.

  Here We Go Again

  “Listen to this,” I say to DuShawn,

  but when he sees I am holding

  a book of poems by Langston Hughes,

  he says before I can even read him

  what I wanted to, “Here you go

  again.”

  “What is that supposed to mean?”

  I shoot back, knowing that it means

  here we go again, that our voices

  will start rising and our palms

  will start sweating. Let the fighting

  begin.

  “Why you got to read that poet?”

  DuShawn asks. “Why you always

  Maya Angelou’in’ me and askin’ me

  did I hear that new song by Bee-

  Yon-Say? Why you out-blackin’ the

  black guy?”

  “And why are you talking like ‘you

  from the hood,’ when the only hood

  you’ve ever been in is the one

  on top of your hoodie? Talking

  ghetto doesn’t make you any

  blacker.”

  “I talk the way I talk, girl,” to which

  I say, “I am not your girl. I’ve got a

  name.” “Yeah?” says DuShawn.

  “I got a name for you too, want to hear

  it?” I want to throw the book in his

  face,

  but I like Langston Hughes too much

  for that. “I am going in,” I tell DuShawn,

  and he says, “I’m already gone.” He

  takes off down the street, leaving me

  sitting on my front porch steps alone with

  Langston.

  I never get to read him the poem.

  It isn’t about being black.

  It’s about loving a friend who

  went away. DuShawn’s friend

  Kevin isn’t speaking to him

  anymore.

  I thought he would like the poem.

  I thought it might make him feel

  better. Well, he probably would have

  just snorted and said, “Me and Kevin

  didn’t love each other, girl. That is

  so gay.”

  Here we go again, throwing words at

  each other the way people once threw

  garbage out of kitchen windows, never

  minding who they might hit in the street

  below, the empty, stinking bucket still

  theirs.

  I Hate Love

  Skeezie bops his head to some song

  only he hears (there hasn’t been a

  jukebox in years), says, “I’m with you

  on this one, Addison. L
ove sucks.”

  Bobby licks hot fudge from his lower

  lip, says you have to work on a

  relationship, makes me think he’s

  been watching too much TV.

  Joe reaches for my hand across

  the table, says, “It’s not like you two

  are what you’d call stable. You’ve

  broken up, like, what? Six times?”

  “Only five,” I mutter, thinking about

  our latest fight and how I have no

  appetite. I tap the table with my spoon.

  My ice cream melts. I don’t care.

  Hiss and Spit

  I’m waiting for Grandma to finish scrubbing the lasagna pan,

  my towel at the ready, when one of the cats—Kennedy, I suspect—

  hisses loudly in the living room. This is followed by an even

  louder hiss, a howl that threatens to become an aria, and

  a four-letter word from my dad that he saves for occasions

  like this. Grandma laughs and hands me the pan. “Sounds

  like your grandpa and me in the early years.” “You fought?”

  “Oh, honey, he could hiss and I could spit to put those cats

  in there to shame. But over time we changed, mellowed

  as most people do. Do you and your young man fight?”

  “To put those cats in there to shame,” I answer. Grandma

  laughs again. “Well, I’m not saying it’s right, but I’m guessing

  it’s only wrong if you bring out the claws. That is something

  your grandpa and I never did.” Later, when the cats are curled

  into each other on their pillow and Johnson is licking the top

  of Kennedy’s head, I see Grandma look up from her book

  and nod. “That’s right,” she murmurs. “That’s right.”

  What We Don’t Know

  KABUL, Afghanistan – Forced marriages involving girls have been part of the social compacts between tribes and families for centuries. Beating, torture, and trafficking of women remain common and are broadly accepted.

  —The New York Times

  Grandma and I sit reading the New York Times,

  dusting the pages with powdered sugar from the

  jelly doughnuts we have smuggled into the House of

  Healthful Eating. We exchange conspiratorial

  winks as Grandma says, “What they don’t know

  won’t hurt them.”

  My mother is out. My father is, in his words,

  puttering. I lick powder from my fingers, turn

  a page, reach for my mug of coffee, extra light

  with lots of sugar. And then I see the photo

  of Nadia with her staring eyes and her bandaged

  nose. I tell myself not to read the story, but

  of course I do.

  In Afghanistan there is a girl named Nadia—

  only seventeen, not that much older than me—

  who had her nose and an ear cut off while she slept.

  Her husband was settling a dispute.

  Girls as young as six are forced into marriages,

  sold for a few hundred dollars to pay off the debts

  of their drug-addicted fathers. And their mothers

  have no power to change how it goes. They too

  have been beaten and raped, sold and traded like

  disposable goods, owned by men, while the only thing

  they own is their misery, which some trade for

  a bottle of rat poison.

  The girls at my school talk about makeup and manicures,

  clear skin and straight hair, diets and the perfect

  nose. Nadia has had six operations and needs more,

  just to have a nose through which she can breathe.

  And what do I talk about if not clear skin and straight hair?

  I talk about Nadia and about Mariam, married at eleven

  to a man thirty years older than she, and beaten

  for being unable to bear him a child.

  I talk about the poems of Naomi Shihab Nye.

  I talk about Sold by Patricia McCormick.

  I talk about suffering and how I don’t know

  anything about it.

  I think I suffer when other girls say cruel things

  about me behind my back. I think I suffer when a boy

  I like tells me goodbye. I think I suffer when my father

  gives me one of his silent looks. But my father

  would not sell me for any amount of money. At night

  I sleep in a warm bed. In the morning

  I sit in a warm kitchen reading the paper,

  eating powdered doughnuts.

  Nadia says, “I don’t know anything about happiness.”

  I go find my father, give him a hug. “What’s up?” he asks.

  “Nothing,” I say. “Can’t a girl just give her father a hug?”

  He kisses the top of my head, says, “You smell like sugar,”

  and doesn’t move until I let him.

  The Smell of Clove

  Does it count as breaking up if the words are never said?

  On Monday DuShawn sidles up to me at my locker, goes,

  “What’s up, girl?” His fingers working a rubber band, his

  jaws chewing gum that smells of clove, the word girl full

  of honey.

  Maybe we half broke up. Maybe when you half break up,

  you don’t have to say anything. There are so many things

  I could say, but I like the smell of clove, and there’s his

  hand reaching out for mine. “Not much,” I say, taking it,

  “what’s up with you?”

  I Love

  At lunch DuShawn says to me,

  “You always punctuate my epiphanies

  with pain.”

  “Say what?” says

  half the table. But I laugh, I get it,

  it’s our little joke, a line from

  one of our two favorite comic strips—

  not Get Fuzzy, the other one,

  about the cow and the boy.

  DuShawn gives me his crooked smile,

  his face breaking out in dimples,

  and I know it’s a look that’s meant

  for only me, and I feel my insides

  flip and my brain flop, and I know

  I should know better, but so what,

  so what.

  I heart love.

  Old Friends

  Another Saturday night and it goes like this:

  Bobby’s dad calling out, “Anybody home?”

  My mom calling back, “Door’s open, Mike!”

  Bobby poking me, saying hey. We escape

  to my room while Mike makes one of his

  famous stir-fries and my mom puts her tofu

  key lime pie in the fridge to chill.

  “Chill,” Mike says to my dad, who’s asking

  what he can do to help. Halfway up the stairs

  Bobby and I roll our eyes. Parents

  can be so embarrassing. Grandma puts out

  some cheeses and tells the cats to scat.

  Later we all look at old photos Mike found

  while cleaning out a drawer. There we are,

  Bobby and me, our squishy little faces

  almost as red as they are now as we’re forced

  to look at ourselves as babies. “Always thought

  we’d have more,” Mike says, and my mother

  leaves it unspoken that she and my dad had

  always planned to have only one.

  The grown-ups get to talking, remembering

  this time, remembering that. Slowly the house

  fills with love, like a balloon with helium, only

  it feels like it’s us being filled up, growing light-

  headed and silly.

  “Life is full of surprises,” Mike says, a catch

  in his throat. Grandma nods as the palm o
f her

  hand floats down Kennedy’s back. “Indeed

  it is,” she says. They are looking at a wedding

  picture of Bobby’s parents. Mike asks if he

  could have another cup of tea.

  Bobby and I have known each other our whole

  lives. He’s my oldest friend. One day, if we’re

  lucky, we will be old friends, sitting around

  with our kids after supper, looking at photos,

  remembering ourselves now, saying life

  is full of surprises.

  Framed Photo

  Bobby’s mom was an actress.

  I saw her on television once.

  Twice, if you count the commercial

  for Anthony’s Albany Auto.

  The main time was when she had a part

  on a show I was too young to watch

  but my parents let me stay up to see

  “just this once” because it was special.

  She played a patient in a hospital, dying

  of some Hollywood disease.

  She looked pale. Her voice sounded soft

  and far away. I remember the way she cried

  and said, “How can I leave the children?”

  I was impressed that she could cry like that.

  That night I had a bad dream and crawled into bed

  between my mother and my father.

  In the morning I wished I hadn’t watched,

  even if it was exciting knowing that Bobby’s mom

  was someone almost famous.

  A year later she was a real patient

  in a real hospital where no one knew

  she had once been on TV dying a Hollywood death.

  She joked and said, “Too bad I didn’t have cancer

  before I got that part. I would have been

  so much more believable.”

  Bobby and his dad live in a trailer in Shadow Glen.

  A framed photo of his mom hangs on a wall.

  The photo is glamorous in a way his mother never was,

  but Bobby likes it, and so does his dad,

  and so do I because I think it’s how

  she dreamed herself to sleep at night.