All of the Above (9 page)
“What's up with you?” Willy Q asks me.
“Nothing.”
He crosses his arms and gives me the five-minute Willy Q Army stare. “Don't lie to me. Something's wrong,” he says. “I can read your face like a book.”
“Nothing's wrong.”
“Fights? Grades? School? Girl trouble? What's up?”
“Nothing.”
“We'll see about that,” Willy Q says. He walks over to the counter where we keep the cakes and pies. Goes right to the chocolate cake in the middle. Lifts the round plastic cover. Cuts a slab the size of a sidewalk, plops it on a plate, and pushes it in front of me. Sets a fork next to my hand. “Have some cake,” he tells me.
I know better than to eat Willy Q's Chocolate Truth Cake.
Sweet enough to make tongues start talking
—that's what it says on the menu. Willy Q always insists if he coulda made his Chocolate Truth Cake in Vietnam, even the enemy would have talked.
You can see the look in people's faces after they take the first bite. They try the first mouthful of cake kinda fast, and then everything goes into slow motion. Their eyes close. They lick the sweet frosting and cake off one side of their fork. Then, they turn it over and get every last crumb and speck on the other side. “My, that is good. That is REAL good,” they say.
And then they start talking.
They tell us about their family. Where they grew up. Who made the best cake, and who didn't. What's going wrong in their life now. Money problems. Health problems. No job. But how a bite of this good cake has made them feel better. Sugar does wonders, they declare. Me and Willy Q just nod our heads. Chocolate Truth Cake, we say, works wonders every time.
But it ain't gonna work for me. I push the cake to the side. Go back to thinking about what happened at school again. How it felt to see all that work torn apart. How it meant that none of us would have a chance at getting our names in the news. Probably be working at Willy Q's Barbecue the rest of my life. Giving folks my big I-Shoulda-Been-in-Hollywood-But-Instead-I'm-Working-Here smile.
Willy Q pushes the cake back in front of me.
“Talked to my friend Joe at your school today,” he says slowly. “You remember Joe, right? The one who was in Vietnam with me?”
I nod.
Willy Q leans closer, giving me his Army-interrogator look. “Joe told me some vandals broke into your school and ruined a big project some of the seventh grade kids were working on with their math teacher. He said it was a real sad sight. Don't suppose you know anything about that project, do you, Marcel?”
I shake my head no. Not much, I say.
Willy Q points his finger about two inches from my face. “Don't you keep secrets from Sergeant Willy Q. Williams. I know everything that goes on around here, Marcel. I got eyes and ears in places you don't even know about. That was the project you were working on with those kids, wasn't it?”
“Don't matter now, does it?” I answer.
Willy Q goes over to the Chocolate Truth Cake and cuts another sidewalk slab for himself. He slides it onto the counter and sits down next to me.
“Joe told me you were staying after school and working on that project with those other kids,” he says, taking a big bite of cake. “Don't think I didn't know what you were doing. Joe checked it out for me a while ago.…”
Willy Q points at my plate.
“Keep eating cake,” he says. “Then we'll talk.”
W
ILLY
Q'
S
C
HOCOLATE
T
RUTH
C
AKE
1 cup all-purpose flour
1 cup sugar
¼ cup unsweetened cocoa powder
1 teaspoon baking powder
¼ teaspoon baking soda
¼ teaspoon salt
dash of cinnamon
¾ cup milk
¼ cup shortening
1 egg
½ teaspoon vanilla
¼ cup chocolate chips
Preheat oven to 350 degrees. In a bowl, combine flour, sugar, cocoa powder, baking powder, baking soda, salt, and cinnamon. Add milk, shortening, egg, and vanilla. Mix with an electric mixer (medium speed) for about two minutes or until well-mixed. Pour batter into 9" x 1½" round baking pan that has been greased and floured. Sprinkle chocolate chips on top of the batter. Bake at 350 degrees for 30 to 35 minutes, or until toothpick inserted in center comes out clean. Allow to cool for 10 minutes, then remove cake from pan and cool thoroughly on a baking rack. Frost with a thick layer of sweet chocolate frosting and wait for the truth to come out.
I won't repeat all of the biblical names that Aunt Asia uses as she jumps out of the car and runs toward the back of the house to help the huddled shape I saw on the steps. She follows me, running through the snow in her stockinged feet, with her arms holding her red wool coat tight around her.
When we reach the backyard, Aunt Asia starts screaming, “Wake up, wake up!” at the shape before we even get there, and I am filled with relief when the huddled shape moves and begins to sit up slowly. A head covered by a striped yarn hat lifts slowly and scatters off its layer of snow, and then I can see for certain that the face belongs to Sharice.
“What in the name of Jesus are you doing out here, sweetie?” Aunt Asia yells, almost nose to nose with Sharice, rubbing her shoulders up and down with her hands. “You gonna freeze to death, don't you know that?” She yanks Sharice up from the steps. “Come on back to our car now. We gotta get you to a hospital or a doctor or something.”
With one arm and half of her red coat tucked around Sharice, Aunt Asia runs back to the car with her. Once we get inside, she huddles us together on the front seat and turns the heater on high. Hot air comes pouring out like an oven at the three of us. Going through another list of biblical names, Aunt Asia rubs her feet and stomps them on the car mats, trying to warm them up.
“Get that girl's shoes off,” she says to me. “We gotta see if she has frostbite.”
But Sharice shakes her head and finally says a word or two. She tells Aunt Asia her feet are fine and she doesn't need to go to any hospital.
“Well, we'll let my sister, Thea—Rhondell's mom—decide that,” Aunt Asia insists. She pushes her foot down hard on the accelerator and barrels the car back down the driveway, with the tires spinning and squealing in the snow. “I'm gonna go to your house first, Rhondell, and see if your mom's home from work yet.”
When we get to the house, the lights are on and my mom opens the door. She doesn't ask any questions at first, even though you can tell by the look she gives Aunt Asia that she isn't too pleased with her. All Aunt Asia says is, “This is Rhondell's friend, Sharice, and she's just about froze to the bone.”
Mom sends me upstairs for a blanket or two while she and Aunt Asia try to pry some answers out of Sharice. Even from upstairs, I can hear them asking questions about where her mom is and what family she has in Cleveland. When I come back down the steps, my mom is settling Sharice into her recliner, with her feet in a pan of warm water and eucalyptus oil, just like she does to her own tired feet after work every day.
“Just keep your feet in there while I make something warm to drink,” my mom is saying. Her eyes move over to me. “You keep her company, all right, Rhondell?”
After that, Mom and Aunt Asia disappear into the kitchen and I can hear them talking softly. I imagine they are trying to decide who to call about Sharice, and I can hear Aunt Asia's heels tapping back and forth on the linoleum, pacing while they talk.
I don't know what's polite to ask Sharice. Sitting with my knees pulled up to my chin, I look down at my shoes and weave the ends of the laces back and forth through each other. Is it polite to ask why she was sitting outside in the snow? Whether she's upset about what happened at school—or something else? Should I ask if she wants to talk? Or perhaps she would rather that nobody bothered her and just left her alone.
The smell of toasting bread comes drifting from the kitchen and Aunt Asia returns balancing a tray in her hands. “My old waitressing days coming back to haunt me,” she says in a loud, extra-cheerful voice. “Brought you girls some bread and jam and hot chocolate, how about that?” She sets the tray on the end table.
Settling down on the sofa, Aunt Asia stretches one of my mom's flannel blankets over her legs and reaches into her purse to pull out a big pink nail file. “Did Rhondell tell you that I'm her aunt?” she chatters to Sharice as if she is talking to one of her clients, and I wonder if she's trying to cover up the sound of my mom in the kitchen talking on the phone to somebody.
“I work at the Style R Us hair salon on Washington Boulevard. Did Rhondell tell you that?” Aunt Asia holds her hand at arm's length, studying her nails, and then goes back to filing. “And I keep telling her”—she points the file at me—“girl, you gotta DO something with that hair.”
Sharice smiles a little and Aunt Asia keeps going. “Now you have beautiful hair, Sharice, honey. I can tell that, just by looking at you. And I can tell you CARE about your hair, unlike that one.” The nail file points again.
Somehow, talking about hair and nail polish makes the difference. Sharice's expression turns from closed up to half-interested. Before long, Aunt Asia is heading upstairs to dig through my mom's old dried-up nail polish collection. She brings back a color called champagne silver, and she and Sharice start painting their nails a silver-white color on my mom's coffee table. I don't say a word about that, even though I know my mom will.
After talking on the phone for a long time, it's my mom who decides that Sharice will stay at our house for the night. She comes into the living room and announces that it's too bitter cold to go outside again, so Sharice will stay over in my bedroom. My room used to be Mom and Aunt Asia's room when they were growing up, so I have their old twin beds. “And Asia,” my mom adds emphatically, in the same sentence about Sharice staying at our house, “that's my good table.”
It feels strange to have somebody from school staying in my room. After we climb into our beds, I can't fall asleep. I stare at the light from the half-open door and listen to Sharice moving and fidgeting. Each time she rolls from one side to the other, the bed creaks as if it's not used to having anybody sleeping in it, which it probably isn't since it's usually covered with my reading books and school papers.
Just when I think Sharice is asleep because she hasn't moved or stirred for a while, she talks to me.
“You ‘wake, Rhondell?” she says softly.
“Yes.”
“I was the one who ruined the tetrahedron,” she says, her voice sounding half-muffled by her pillow. Her voice pauses, as if she's waiting for me to say something, but I don't know what to answer. I'm startled, I guess. And shocked. And bewildered. Those are the college words for what I feel.
“I forgot to lock the door,” she continues. “I was working late in the math room, and I never locked the door. That's how they got in, you know. They didn't break into the room, they just walked right in.”
Now I start to understand—a few things, but not everything. I try to tell Sharice that leaving the door open wasn't what wrecked the project. “The people who came through that door were the ones who wrecked the project,” I explain to her. “Not the door being open.”
“But if the door hadn't been left open, they wouldn't have gotten in.”
“They would have found a way.”
Sharice seems to think about that for a while. “Maybe you're right,” she says finally. “Maybe they would have.” Then there's another long pause and she adds, “Thanks, Rhondell, for coming to get me, too.”
“Sure,” I answer, feeling uncomfortable, even in the darkness.
“How did you know where I lived?” her voice continues.
“I called the school and asked.”
“You are so smart, Rhondell,” she says. “I never would have thought of that.”
“It's not that smart.”
“I think it is.”
And then it's quiet for a long time, so I guess that Sharice has finally fallen asleep. I continue staring at the ceiling and thinking to myself. The light coming from the hallway makes a skinny triangle shape, like one side of a tetrahedron, on the ceiling of my bedroom—and that reminds me again of how much I'm going to miss the math club.
Although I told Sharice it didn't matter about leaving the door unlocked, I have to admit that it does matter—deep down at least, it does. I know she didn't mean to cause any harm. And I know it wasn't Sharice who tore the project down, it was vandals. But I can't keep my mind from considering the same question over and over: would things have been different if she had just remembered that one little thing?
Four questions of mine that still don't have answers:
1. Who destroyed our tetrahedron project?
2. Why did they destroy it?
3. Should the tetrahedron be rebuilt?
4. And who will do that?
I draw eyes all over the back of my notebook—staring sideways at me, staring down at me. Feel like everybody's eyes are on me all the time—Mr. Collins, Marcel, other kids, other teachers, as if they know I've got information I'm not sharing. But I'm not telling nothing. Not even about Markese.