All of the Above (14 page)
But I remember the first day of math club, too, when he was sitting in the corner of the room with his sweatshirt pulled over his head, spinning quarters on his desktop. I remember how he always called my name Ron Dull, no matter how many times Sharice and Mr. Collins told him to stop it.
In a way, he was like the tetrahedrons we made, I think to myself. He started out being just a plain old flat sheet of paper— angry and mean paper, most of the time. And then, slowly, he began to turn into someone else, with different sides and angles to who he was, and some of those sides were okay. He was a talented artist and mostly a good Prez, but other parts stayed the same —
Marcel smacks his hands together, making all of us jump out of our sad thoughts. “Why you sitting here doing nothing?” he says, trying to copy James’ tough expression and voice. “We got a hundred and fifty pieces to do today. That's the rule. Get up and get busy, girl.” He pretends to tug on Sharice's reluctant arm. “I'm the new Prez now and you better do what I sez.”
That gets all of us laughing. Even Mr. Collins turns away from the window, smiling a little. Although we can't stand looking at the blinding color red all day, we make one hundred and eighty-one red pieces, a new record. The Prez would be proud of us, Marcel says.
As we get closer to finishing, I start having dreams about what's gonna happen when we do. In most of my dreams, there is this big flash of light when we finish the tetrahedron, and our school isn't a crumbling, peeling-paint building anymore. It's rainbow-colored. (I know this sounds kinda weird.) And our giant pyramid sits on top of the school roof shooting out colors all over the neighborhood, like spotlights. Houses turn shades of red and orange and blue. And people stop their cars and roll down their windows, to take pictures of the sight.
Rhondell just shakes her head when I tell her about my dreams. We're walking home from math club, eating chocolate ice-cream cones from the Super Scoop Ice Cream Shop. It must be about 100 degrees.
“I don't think it will be anything like that,” she says.
“How do you know? Nobody's ever finished one before.”
Rhondell rolls her eyes. “Sharice …”
But it was true—when we put the last piece on the top, none of us knew what would happen after that.
Hope nobody wants a Melt the Roof of Your Mouth barbecue sandwich on Monday at noon, because Willy Q's Open-Every-Day-of-the-Year-Except-Christmas Barbecue is closed. Willy Q says he wouldn't miss the tetrahedron celebration for all the customers in the world.
“You kidding?” I ask him when he tells me on Sunday that he's closing the grill.
“You think I'm lying, Marcel?” He gives me one of his Army stares. Then, a smile splits across his face and he drapes his arm across my shoulders.
“You didn't let the name Williams down and I'm real proud of you for that,” he says, squeezing my shoulders hard. “I thought maybe you would, but you didn't, and so we're gonna celebrate the first Williams in the
Guinness Book of World Records.
Who woulda thought it'd be in math?”
“And now”—he snaps his fingers—“do I have a surprise for you. Wait there. Watch the ribs on the top rack.”
While I'm keeping an eye on the ribs, he wipes his hands on his apron and goes into the back room. Comes out holding a new suit and tie. Shiny dark gray suit with a metallic silver tie.
“Man, that is sharp,” I say. “That for me?”
Willy Q nods. “Cost me a mint.”
“It's like being in the Academy Awards or something.”
Willy Q laughs. “Not much different,” he says.
Then he goes in the back room again. Comes out holding a black T-shirt with the words “Willy Q's BBQ, Cleveland, Ohio” on the front in huge white letters. Phone number just below the name. “This is what I'm wearing,” he says. “What do you think?” He squints at the shirt. “Will folks on national TV be able to read our phone number?”
You just gotta admire Willy Q sometimes.
“One more thing I've been working on,” he says, going over to one of the metal warming pans. He picks up a barbecue wing, puts it on a paper plate, and brings it over to me. “Try this new sauce.”
I pick up the wing with the end of my fingers. Try to cool it off by blowing on it.
“Stop being a baby,” Willy Q says. “Just eat it.”
The sauce is sweet and kinda spicy, too. Willy Q points to a pan on the counter. “That's my new sauce. Guess what it's called?”
I give up after about ten guesses.
Willy Q smacks his hands together. “Willy Q's Tangy Tetrahedron Barbecue Sauce. A little brown sugar, a little lemon juice, some ketchup, some green celery—you know, a sauce with some
color
to it—
“And of course,” he adds with a grin, “a few secret ingredients we won't tell nobody. Because in barbecue you always gotta have a secret or two.”
T
ANGY
T
ETRAHEDRON
B
ARBECUE
S
AUCE
2 tablespoons butter or margarine
3 tablespoons chopped onion
½ cup chopped green celery
2 tablespoons brown sugar
1 tablespoon Worcestershire sauce
2 tablespoons malt vinegar
¼ cup lemon juice
1 teaspoon dry mustard
1 cup red ketchup
Melt butter in a small skillet. Sauté onions and celery in butter until tender. Combine remaining ingredients in a saucepan. Add sautéed onions and celery from the skillet, and bring sauce to a boil. Simmer over low heat for about 10 to 15 minutes, stirring to blend the sweet and tangy colors and flavors.
A few last facts you should know:
1. The tetrahedron project was completed at the end of the first week in July.
2. It took about twenty-one weeks, more than three thousand sheets of paper, and hundreds of glue sticks to finish.
3. The final tetrahedron was close to nine feet tall with 16,383 pieces.
4. The students at Washington Middle School beat the California record by 12,287 pieces—or more if you include the first tetrahedron.
5. But one piece was still missing. …
Early on Monday morning (and I mean early), we meet at the school. I think all of us are kinda nervous, you know. Mr. Collins says the media's coming at noon. We stand on the front steps of the school rubbing our goose-bumpy arms, even though it's July and it isn't even cold. As Mr. Collins unlocks the door, Marcel tries to make everybody crack up by saying we're way too early for school in September, but nobody laughs.
We walk down the empty hallway and up the steps, with our shoes echoing loudly on the tiles. To tell you the truth, we look like we're going to church, the way we're all dressed up. Marcel and Mr. Collins are wearing suits. (Marcel looks kinda good, but you didn't hear that from me.) I've got a red skirt and a new blouse that Aunt Asia just bought for me, and I'm wearing a pair of her nice red shoes with Kleenex stuffed in the toes to make them fit.
Me and Aunt Asia even talked Rhondell into doing a little something with her hair, so it is pulled back with a nice puff of curls. She's wearing one of her church dresses, but her mom said no earrings or lipstick. Her mom is strict.
When we get up to the third floor where the math room is, we see the shadow of something near the math room door at the other end of the dark hall. I don't know about anybody else, but my heart starts to thump in my chest, because I remember what happened before (don't even think about it, girl …).
But as we get closer, I can see that the shadow is a person sitting in a folding chair next to the door. The person is Mr. Joe, the custodian.
He has a plaid blanket across his lap, and beside him is a classroom desk with a clock, a silver thermos, and a little radio on the top. A baseball bat is leaning against the other side of the desk, I notice, too.
“Have you been here all night?” Mr. Collins asks in a surprised voice.
“Yes sir,” Mr. Joe says. He gestures with his thumb at the closed door behind him. “Just makng sure nobody was getting in again. No way.” He points to the baseball bat and grins. “Not if I had anything to say about it.”
Standing up slowly, the custodian starts folding up the blanket and packing up his things. “Wish I could stay for all the news and pub-licity. I hear there's gonna be a lot,” he tells us. “But I'm not much for all that, and I need something to eat, that's what I need. And a bed.” He turns to give us one last look before he shuffles down the steps. “You all sure do look nice, though,” he says, holding on to the railing and looking back up. “Like grown-ups overnight.”
After the custodian leaves, Mr. Collins unlocks the door to the math room and opens it. We don't even turn on the lights at first. We just take in the sight of that huge pyramid shimmering in the dusty morning sunlight coming through the old windows. In the shadowy room, the colors look like they're glowing—purples and blues and greens—as if they aren't paper anymore, but something else. (Not spotlights, but close.)
We walk around the tetrahedron, trying to see it from different angles. The top almost touches the ceiling tiles. With all of the open spaces letting in the light, the triangle pieces look as if they're floating in the air. Glancing through the open spaces, you can see parts of the room and flickers of sunlight and other people's blinking eyes looking back at you.
Nobody says a word for a while because all we want to do is walk around and admire our work, I guess. I get the feeling that everybody is seeing something different, though, as they're walking around. Me, I'm seeing that very first day when I decided to come to the club to get out of sitting in the blue plastic library chairs. (Wasn't my life sure a mess then?) I see James sitting in the corner, and Mr. Collins not having a clue about what he was doing, and Rhondell with her nose in a book not even knowing that she would become my half-cousin, or foster cousin, or whatever it is we are now.
Mr. Collins flips on the overhead lights, making us all squint. “Time to get ready,” he says, “before the guests arrive.”
The math room is filled, wall-to-wall, with people. My mom is there, and Aunt Asia is standing in the front with the beauty-shop ladies on their lunch break, and the pastor of the Sanctuary Baptist Church is somewhere in the crowd. Marcel said his daddy even closed the barbecue, just so he could come.
It is hot, even with the windows wide open and bees buzzing in. As I walk up to the front to stand next to the tetrahedron, my heart is pounding and my legs feel like they are trembling enough for everybody to be able to notice them.
Take a deep breath, Rhondell, I hear my mom whispering inside my head. Pretend you are in church, standing up to sing with the choir.
I'm giving the part of the presentation about the math facts we learned. I hear my voice explaining about tetrahedrons and telling the story of Waclaw Sierpinski and what happened to his library. My voice is shaky at first and I keep looking down at the notes on my paper, but then the college words that I've been saving for years start pouring out.
Epiphany. Metamorphosis. Estimation. Determined …
I see Mr. Collins nodding and nodding, so I know I'm doing all right, and I don't look in the direction of the TV cameras at all. I just keep my eyes on the math club and think about those college doors swinging open to let Rhondell Jeffries inside. When I finish, everybody claps and Mr. Collins says, “You can see why we think this young lady is one of our best and brightest,” and everybody claps again.
One of the reporters asks us if we had any favorite colors when we were working on the project. The three of us—Mr. Collins, Marcel, and I—look in the direction of Sharice. She waves her hand in the air and says, “Okay, okay, I'm the one who kinda liked purple.”
A woman reporter with blond hair and silver glasses asks us why we decided to participate in the project in the first place. We look at each other, trying to decide who will reply first, and I'm surprised when my voice answers before anybody else and tells the reporter that I hope to go to college someday, and that's why I joined the math club.
“What particular college would you like to attend?” the reporter wants to know, and my heart begins pounding in my chest. Everybody stares at me, waiting for an answer, and I realize that I never saw a name printed on those college doors in my mind. They were just fancy wooden doors with iron hinges and ivy plants trailing along the sides.
“She's planning on going to Harvard,” my Aunt Asia calls out in the silence. “Right, Rhondell?” And I can see my mom give her a poke with her elbow to hush up.
“Harvard—or wherever it wouldn't cost too much,” I answer quickly, and everybody laughs.
After that, Mr. Collins and Marcel pull a stepladder over to the tetrahedron to add the final piece at the very top, for the cameras. The room is as silent as a church prayer. With the afternoon sun coming through the windows and Marcel standing on the top of the ladder in his fancy gray suit and silver tie, I have to admit that he looks almost like a movie star.