Look Both Ways Page 4

  But she knew Marcus.

  Marcus’s mother owned the salon Pia went to whenever her mom made her get her hair done, which was mainly for holidays when they would have to go to her grandmother’s for dinner. And her mother had learned a long time ago that the only way to get Pia to go to the salon without kicking was to let her take Skitter the skateboard with her. Let her kick that around the parking lot until it was her turn in the chair so that Pia wouldn’t have to sit for hours flipping through old magazines filled with fancy advertisements of stick-figure models with bodies pretzeled up, printed on paper that smelled like the perfume Santi wore. When she was smaller, Pia would sniff the pages, and once—when the salon was really backed up—she sniffed and sniffed until the strange mixture of glue, ink, and flowers made her nauseous. She puked all over the salon floor. That was when her mother had finally given in and allowed her to bring the board with her.

  At first, whenever Pia’d skate back and forth across the parking lot outside the salon, Marcus, who was always pouting while sweeping up the hair inside the salon, would come out with her. One time, he asked if he could ride Skitter. Pia kicked the board over to him. Marcus put one foot on the deck and steadied himself. And as soon as he lifted the other foot, the board flew out from under him. He caught air before slamming to the ground, only to find that his pants had split up the middle and his superhero briefs were on blast.

  But Pia didn’t laugh. Instead, she tried to help him up. But he couldn’t take her hand, cover his butt, and wipe his eyes at the same time. He never came outside with her again except for one day, years later. And on that day, he didn’t speak to her or ask to ride her skateboard. He just sat on the curb and watched but pretended he wasn’t watching as Pia kicked harder than usual, sailing over the asphalt, grinding her board against the curb, scraping it like she hated it, almost violently. Attempting tricks she knew she couldn’t do, rocketing to the ground over and over again. Then getting back up, getting back on, ignoring Marcus’s fake chuckles.

  She could never forget that day. It was the day she was getting her hair done for her sister’s funeral. A jacked-up French roll with what felt like two hundred bobby pins that started itching as soon as she left the chair.

  Pia felt that same itch when she saw Marcus and the boys yesterday. When she saw the knots at their throats and felt a knot in hers. Because she knew Marcus. She knew where his mother’s black eyes were coming from. Where her swollen jaws and forehead lumps were coming from. Because that same day Pia sat under the dryer two years back, after her wash and before the French roll was put in, she heard her mom ask Marcus’s mom when she was going to leave Marcus’s father. With the dryer whirring in Pia’s ears, it sounded like the two women were whispering in a tornado. But Pia could still hear them through the storm.

  “I ain’t trying to get in your business, Lydia. I swear. And if you tell me to mind my own, I will. I mean, with Santi’s death and this one here, I got more than enough to mind. But I can’t sit here and pretend like I don’t see what I see. And I’m definitely not ’bout to act like I don’t care about you, Lydia. You and Marcus. So, I gotta ask you, before this man kills you, when you gon’ leave?”

  * * *

  When Stevie realized, yesterday, that the girl skating down the street was going to be a target, and that target would be the ticket to him being left alone by Marcus and the boys—accepted as one of them—he got nervous. Nauseous.

  “What… what we doing?” He choked on his words.

  “Just playin’ a game,” Marcus said, grabbing Stevie’s shoulder like a baseball to be fastballed at Pia. But Stevie had a curveball in mind. Told Marcus he wouldn’t do anything to her.

  “I don’t want you to do nothing to her,” Marcus scowled. “Just take her skateboard. That’s all.”

  The boys lined up, became a wall on the sidewalk, and Pia thought about hopping the curb to go around them but knew better than to skate into oncoming traffic. She’d cut it close before. Too scary. So Pia reluctantly put a foot down, dragged her sneaker along the concrete to slow down, then stomped the back of the skateboard, flipping it up into her hand.

  “ ’Scuse me,” she said politely to Marcus.

  “Excuse you,” he said back, puffing his chest. Pia never looked down. Looked each boy in the face. Each of them looked back, except for one. The new boy, Stevie, looked everywhere else. To the left, to the right, up and down. Anywhere but at her. “Let me borrow your board?” Marcus said. “Just for a second. My man been working on a trick and he wanted to show us.” Marcus nudged Stevie.

  “He don’t look like he skate,” Pia said, sizing Stevie up.

  “I bet he skate better than you.” Marcus stepped toward her, yanking Stevie with him.

  Stevie looked like he was two seconds from vomiting the bones out of his body, leaving him as nothing but a skin suit lying on the sidewalk.

  Pia could smell Stevie. A punchy musk, stronger than the perfume in the magazines. He was sweating through his blazer. And before he could answer, Marcus reached for Skitter, grabbed the board, and yanked it. But Pia wouldn’t release it. After a back-and-forth—Pia gripping the board with both hands—Marcus tried a different approach. He let go, and Pia stumbled back but didn’t fall. Balance. But Marcus was right there to do gravity’s work. Shoved her to the ground. The skateboard flew from her hands and skidded into the street, where a car, horn blaring, rolled over it.

  “Ohhhh!” The boys howled as the wooden plank split, their stupid excitement splintering Pia’s skin.

  Her voice cracked, broken in half.

  She got up and ran. Mind racing. Thinking. About Santi.

  Stevie chased behind her.

  Pia ran faster. Thinking about Santi. How she was pushed off her board by a boy.

  Stevie stopped running.

  Pia ran home. Thinking about Santi. How the boy was just mad Santi was a better skater than he was.

  Pushed her into the street. Thinking about himself.

  Oncoming traffic.

  Had Stevie known that’s what it would take to be one of Marcus’s boys, he wouldn’t have come yesterday. Or maybe he would have, but he would’ve said something. Would’ve stopped Marcus. Why didn’t he say anything? Why didn’t he stop it? That’s what he asked himself as he walked back down the sidewalk. That’s what he asked himself when he tipped into the street, his hand up timidly as traffic slowed for him, and picked up the cracked halves of the skateboard. He held them like he was holding a broken heart, looked around only to find that Marcus and the boys had left him. Like the suckers they were. Like the sucker he was.

  And maybe if Pia had known Stevie had picked up the pieces of her board, maybe if she’d known that he took them home with him, maybe if she’d known that he finally told his mother about Marcus, told her where all the bleach was going, why he had to wash his clothes every day to try to remove the stains and marks and words inked into his uniform, showed her the tie he’d cut off his neck and hid in the bottom of his bag—the one he’d said he’d lost—explained why he hadn’t had an appetite, why his grades were slipping, maybe if Pia had known that he told his mother what he’d just done, what he didn’t do, what he’d just seen, maybe if Pia had known that his mother struggled to hold back a scream, helped him tape the deck back together, punished him, sent him to bed, woke him up early this morning for extra chores, maybe if Pia had known that his mother, after meeting with the principal, pulled Stevie out of school early, drove him to what they guessed was Pia’s school—the only public middle school in the area—sat stuck in traffic lecturing him, paying no attention to the news on the radio (a school bus had fallen from the sky!), made him stand outside the entrance and wait for Pia awkwardly, maybe if Pia had known that Stevie was coming to apologize for his silence, maybe, maybe, maybe, just maybe Pia wouldn’t have left through the back door.

  Today.

  With Fawn. To walk to the cemetery to visit Santi’s grave and ask her questions, hard questions, about boy
s.

  HOW TO LOOK (BOTH) BOTH WAYS

  FATIMA MOSS talks to only one person on her way home from school. And before she talks to that person she keeps a checklist of all the things on her journey that have changed. And all the things that have stayed the same. That one person and their sameness or differentness included.

  This is that checklist.

  Bell rings for five seconds.

  Twenty-eight students (twenty-nine, including me) dash from Ms. Broome’s English class. Difference: Today, Trista Smith and Britton Burns ran faster than everyone. Almost knocked Sam Mosby over.

  3. I take off.

  The whole school crowds into the hallway.

  It’s so noisy I can’t hear myself think.

  I stop at my locker to get this notebook, which I keep there where it’s safe. So I can hear myself think.

  The combination to my lock is the same.

  I get it wrong.

  I panic and think someone has switched my lock, which means I may never get my notebook.

  I try the combination again and it works.

  The combination to my lock is the same.

  I grab this notebook, get the books I’ll need for homework, which is usually none because I usually get all my homework done before school is over. Difference: But today I have homework. English. Ms. Broome wants us to imagine ourselves as objects. Any object we want. And write about it.

  Doesn’t require a book though.

  I head from my locker to the school doors. Between seventy-seven and eighty-four steps, depending on if Ms. Wockley is yelling at anyone in the middle of the hallway. Today she was yelling at Simeon Cross for running down the hall with Kenzi Thompson on his back. Again. (Technically not a difference.) Today it took eighty-one.

  Exit the building. The double doors are always open.

  Six school buses out front. Two lines of cars for pickup. Mr. Johnson is directing traffic.

  Between eighty-six and ninety-four steps to the corner where the crossing guard, Ms. Post, stands.

  “Hi, Fatima,” she says. Difference: Today she said, “Hey, Fatima.”

  Ms. Post’s son, Canton, sits at the stop sign on the corner holding a broom. With no broomstick. It’s weird. But not weird because he’s always there.

  I keep walking straight. Don’t have to cross the street.

  I count the signs (already one stop sign), hydrants, and major cracks in the sidewalk. Not all the cracks. That would be too hard. Too many. But the big ones.

  Don’t walk too fast. Have to take note of all the houses too. How they look.

  They all look the same. They all look like they’re made of graham crackers. They all look like the houses I drew when I was like six. Box with a triangle on top. Except bigger. They all have big windows. I think they all have beige carpet inside. And a front room no one sits in.

  I know there are nineteen of these houses from the crossing guard’s corner to my house.

  My house is number twenty.

  My house looks exactly the same as the others. It also has beige carpet inside. And a front room no one sits in.

  Because of that, I don’t really have to pay too much attention to the houses. I can just count the signs.

  SCHOOL CROSSING is the first sign. A picture of an adult and a child. I think. Weird, because kids cross by themselves.

  Look both ways.

  One-way sign. Right at the beginning. Always there. I still look both ways.

  The speed limit is fifteen. There’s a sign that says so.

  There are four stop signs. One at the end of each block.

  There are five houses on each block. I don’t know any of the people who live in any of them. That’s the same.

  I wonder if any of them see me walk past every day with this notebook. If they count me and say, same.

  I wonder if all the houses are empty like mine. People have to work to pay bills. Graham cracker houses cost a lot of money, I think. So does green grass. And bushes. And people who cut that grass and trim those bushes. Difference: There’s a chunk of roses snatched out of House No. 8’s rosebush. Doesn’t look like a mistake either.

  I’ve been counting cracks. I’ve learned to look up and down at the same time. Look both ways.

  By the time I reach House No. 8, I have stepped over only six cracks in the sidewalk. Six big cracks. Big enough that if you don’t know they’re there, you will trip.

  I meet Benni at the same place I meet her every day, the same place I met her months ago, doing what she does every day and was doing months ago. Singing.

  Benni Austin sings old songs like they’re new songs. She also does old dances like they’re new dances. Wears old clothes like they’re new clothes. Fatima met her on her first day as a walker. Fatima’s mother and father had given her strict instructions on what to do and which way to go, easy instructions to follow because Fatima only had to go straight. One way down Portal Avenue. No stopping. No talking. Eyes up, looking both ways. Eyes up, which is why Fatima tripped on one of the six big cracks where the sidewalk split—a lightning bolt of a separation—one part lifted just enough to be annoying. And dangerous. Fatima stubbed her toe, then went flying but only after a few stumbles and bumbles and stumble-bumbles, like her mind was trying to convince her body to stay grounded but her body wouldn’t be held down, wanted to leap, wanted to catch air.

  Her body won.

  She took flight.

  But only for a second.

  Then she took… fall.

  Fatima crashed onto the sidewalk, the skin on her knees scraping off into stinging red strips. It was the kind of fall that requires a person to lie still for a moment, let the experience wash over them like a wave of boiling water. So Fatima lay there for maybe six seconds, which were five seconds too many because a bus had pulled up and had stopped at the stop sign. And as Fatima heard the clacking sound of the windows on the bus lowering—clack, clack, clack, clack, clack—Fatima knew that fifteen miles an hour would be much slower than she’d thought it would be. That it was more like five miles an hour. No miles an hour.

  “Wowwwww!” a boy from the bus yells. This was followed by a series of other cornball zingers involving eating it, biting it, and dive after five, even though it was just past three in the afternoon.

  “Pay attention, or you’ll lose your life!” one kid yelled. All Fatima remembered about that kid was his lisp, that the “th” he put on “lose” made it sound like looth, and the spit that flew from his mouth, big enough for Fatima to see it. But it was the kid behind him who caught her attention even more. A boy who sat in his seat with the window up, thick ropes of hair sprouting from his head like antennae. He held a notebook up to his face, peeked over it at her, and she could tell that behind that notebook he wasn’t laughing. Not at all.

  By the time the bus passed her, Fatima had started to get up. Her knees were buzzing, bloody, and each move, each step made her draw in short gusts of air.

  And then she heard a long drawling voice, the kind of voice that was deep for no reason. The voice was singing. Singing in a tone that most would consider sanging, but it wasn’t exactly good. Or bad. But enthusiastic and better than the bus, that’s for sure.

  “Get ready!” the voice, attached to a woman, sang-shouted. She was bopping up the street, pumping her arms as if banging on the biggest invisible drum set ever imagined. Offbeat. Not a big woman. Not too small either. Just somewhere in the middle, which was the only way she could’ve (barely) fit the blazer she had on. Green. A school patch sewn on the breast pocket. It was filthy. White shirt, wet with sweat. Soft pink pants with creases so sharp down the front that it looked like she could cut the air with each step. “I’m mad! That’s a fact. Get READY for the big payback.” And then in a higher tone she repeated, “The big payback!” Then… spin move.

  Fatima, unsure of who this lady was or what she was about, jumped up, grabbed her backpack, and limped on. And the lady limped on too, right next to Fatima, and screamed again. “Get ready!
” She noticed Fatima flinch.

  And stopped.

  Stopped singing.

  Stopped dancing.

  Stopped walking.

  Just stopped, dead in her tracks in the middle of the sidewalk, her face becoming loose, sloshy.

  * * *

  That afternoon when Fatima’s parents came home from work, they were ready to ask about her first walk home but noticed her hobbling. Fatima had already cleaned the wounds with alcohol—yikes!—and put Band-Aids on both kneecaps.

  “Why are you walking like that, Fati?” her mother asked as Fatima inched her way into her mother’s hug.

  “I tripped on the way home. Landed hard,” Fatima explained, still a little embarrassed. “And there was a bus full of kids who laughed,” she went on, but she left out the part about the woman in the pink pants because she knew that if she told her mother, her mother would tell her father, and that would be the end of walking. That would be the end of a babysitterless life. Back to cheese-toast snack time and other coughy kids whining about what they want to watch on TV. And she didn’t want that because even though the first walk was rough, anything was worth trying again if it meant she could come home and be alone in her house, where she could microwave nuggets and pretend to be a flight attendant like her father.

  A life jacket is in the pocket under your seat. To put it on, place it over your head. Clip on the waistband and pull it tight. Please do not inflate it while you are still inside the aircraft. An evacuation slide and life raft are at each door. Your crew will direct you to your door. Additional emergency exits are shown on the leaflet.

  In case of emergency, oxygen masks will drop down in front of you. Please pull the mask down toward your face and place the mask over your mouth and nose. If you are traveling with a child, please attend to yourself first, then the child. Breathe normally.

  She’d had that memorized since she was little. She’d heard her father say different versions of it through the years, whether it was, In case of emergency, the bath water is in front of you. Please pull your washcloth down toward your face and scrub over your mouth and nose. Or, Please do not poop while your butt is still in the underwear. An evacuation slide and life raft are at each door. And by that I mean, use the toilet. Then he’d do the two-finger point to the bathroom.