Bluish (3 page)

She’s way tired all the time. I sit next to her when we do writing. She can write okay. But mostly she does her Game Boy. Lario. And some other kind of little man—Poke’red something. Willie plays a Game Boy sometimes. But Bluish can punch it up really fast. Then she’ll drop it all of a sudden. Not even look at me.

I can’t help watching her. She’s so pale blue.

And she scared me. She said, “You wanna play?”

I said—I almost stuttered— “Sh-h-hure!”

I was going to take up the Game Boy when she said, “You can come over. My mom’ll come get us.”

I liked to died. I thought she was asking me to play with the Game Boy. But she meant playing at her house?

What if I catch something from her? I couldn’t move, didn’t look at her.

She made this funny sound. Then: “Stupid dork-head.” She said it under her breath. But I heard her. Talking about me.

I didn’t know what to do. I felt bad. Afraid of her. I felt stupid. What is wrong with me? It dawns on me maybe I really am dumb!

And she wanted me to come home with her.

She could’ve been my friend.

D
REENIE DIDN’T WANT TO
hurry. She just wanted to take her time telling her mom about it. She didn’t want to tell it all at once.

Natalie. Cool Bluish.

“Dreenie, if you have something to tell me, then tell me, don’t fool around.”

“Make Willie stop calling me Drain! She does it all the time!”

“Is that it? Arguing with your little sister?”

“No.”

“If you have something to tell me …” her mom said again.

“Guess you’re tired,” Dreenie said. “S’why you’re short with me.”

Bluish. I hate her,
Dreenie thought.
Scary sickness, and I was afraid it’d rub off on me. Maybe she can still be my friend, but I don’t know how. All the moonglow.

Her mom paused to give her a look. Made Dreenie laugh nervously.

“Dreen-boat, I’m not being short with you. But, changing the subject,” her mom said, “you can set the table before your dad gets home. Dinner will be ready after that.”

So Dreenie just started in. Bluish. Her little puppy.

Dreenie spoke carefully to her mom while her mom made dinner. Just the two of them in the small, neat kitchen.

“She’s the only one in school with a wheelchair,” Dreenie told her mom.

And she described how this girl stood out, or sat out. Outside, after school, in her wheelchair. Bluish sat there in the gray while it snowed big flakes, beautiful, like Christmas. Snow on her ski jacket. Bluish had on pink mittens. Wore a pink fuzzy hat.

“And so?” her mom asked.

Dreenie felt funny inside. She almost couldn’t get the words out. She calmed herself. Then she took a deep breath and let it out. “Mom? It was like a cloudy day, and seeing her? Moonglow is what … what she reminds me of. And … and … scary-looking? And in a pink hat and pink mittens? Her jacket was fuchsia color. And she is so pale!”

“Well, for heaven’s sake, Dreenie.” Her mom’s expression showed she could see the Bluish child, and was caring about her.

“Mommy! And she’s got no eyebrows, either. Her veins show through her face, all skinny trails. Picture this, Mommy. She’s got no hair. Kids say she’s way bald! So she wears these funny caps or hats down over her head.”

Her mom looked thoughtfully at her. “Well, then, she’s sick, Dreenie. I mean, bald, her hair is falling out, or already fell out.”

Bluish?

“Maybe a childhood leukemia. You know? It happens,” her mom said. “She’s in school, so she must be better,” her mom said. “She lost her hair from the strong chemotherapy, I suspect. Likely, her hair will grow back.”

Dreenie sat for a long time, looking at her mom. “What if it won’t grow back?” she finally thought to say. “Wow, wouldn’t that be so gross.” And thought,
Bluish wanted me to go home with her!

“It probably will grow back,” her mom assured her.

“I don’t want to talk about her anymore,” Dreenie said. A kid with—cancer!

“Being really sick is no fun for any child, Dreen-boat. And you mustn’t be afraid of her because she looks different. You could be nice to her—what’s her name? I mean, treat her like you would treat any other school friend.”

Smirking, Dreenie said, “I saw this little third-grade kid, just like Willie? Going down the hall. And he ups and bites another kid. No kidding! Mr. Darcy saw what happened. The bitten kid was screaming and crying. Man, did that biter kid get it!”

“Okay,” her mom said. “You don’t want to talk about the girl anymore.”

“I don’t care anything about her. Why should I?”

“Dreen …”

Scary Bluish.

“Just because she’s in a wheelchair—Dreenie, don’t single her out because of it.”

“I didn’t!” Dreenie said. She was already on to something else. “Mommy, Tuli always wants to stay for supper.”

“Well, let her.”

“No! It means that her granmom Gilla won’t get to eat until later. Tuli has to fix food for her granmom! She gets on my nerves sometimes. I get tired of worrying about her.”

“Oh, Dreenie. You sound so old. She just wants to be around a family.”

“But it’s
my
family. And I want it to myself!” She pouted until she had to laugh at herself.

Her mom laughed, too. “Set the table for me, babe,” her mom said.

“Can I go down and wait for Dad?”

Her mom looked at the clock. “It’s dark out.”

“It’s not dark in the lobby. And Mr. Palmer is there.”

“Then stay inside the locked doors with Mr. Palmer. Don’t go out in the street.”

“I won’t. It’s too cold.”

“Set the table, then go down.”

“Where’s she going?” Willie yelled, coming into the kitchen.

“To the moon, baby chile,” Dreenie said. “You can’t come. Set the table.”

“Dreenie,” her mom said.

“I’ll be glad when she grows up,” Willie told her mom.

“I’ll be glad when
you
grow up!” Dreenie said back.

“You two! Not another word, either of you,” her mom warned.

They stayed quiet. Willie took Dreenie’s place when she got up to set the table. Dreenie set it in fast time. And as she left the apartment, finally, she heard her little sister tell about the nerdy stock market class, and how she loved the shapes of things, and how they changed all the time. The things that kid could think up!

Downstairs, Dreenie told Mr. Palmer, “I’m waiting on my dad again. He’s always later when it’s zero-cold and icy. He has to come all the way up from downtown.”

Mr. Palmer nodded, didn’t say anything. He looked sleepy, sitting in his chair by the locked lobby doors.

“I got my key,” she told him. “I’m just going out to the front.”

Mr. Palmer kept quiet. She knew it wasn’t his job to look out for her.

Dreenie peered through the outer doors, up and down the street. But Mr. Palmer was to her back, and that made her feel safe. From what?
From anybody,
she thought.
Anybody with bad plans.

People rushed by in the cold. Huddled in their coats. Newspapers, grocery bags. Getting home faster so the cold couldn’t get them. She peered around and saw the lights of Broadway, all kinds of holiday lights. Made her jump up and down inside. She stepped outside for a fast minute. She looked up and down the street, but saw no one. The street was clearing of people. Winter evenings and empty streets in a city so big.

She turned back, went inside the outer doors, took out her key. Someone came in behind her. She froze. Her mind went dead, and she felt the cold.

“Dreenie.”

“Daddy!”
Oooh, you scared me!

“You’re out here, and you know you shouldn’t be.”

“But I looked up and down, and there was no one.”

“I came across the street through the parked cars. Anybody could do that, and you wouldn’t see them. Remember what I told you? Look three ways when you look out the doors. Left and right and across.”

“I forgot about across,” she said.

“But you need to remember.”

“I’ll remember. I won’t go out and look anymore, I promise.” And she meant it.

“How’s my girl?” he asked her when they went in.

“Fine, Daddy,” she told him.

He spoke to Mr. Palmer a minute. About the weather, about the New York Knicks. Basketball. Then he and Dreenie took the elevator.

Dreenie told her dad about Tuli, and about this girl who had her own chair-on-wheels.

“I like the way you put that,” he said. “It makes her, well, maybe a new kind of individual.”

“Yeah, that’s right!” Dreenie agreed.

It surprised her how easily she could tell things to her dad. But then, she didn’t tell him some things, like how she
felt
about Bluish. “Her name is Natalie,” she said. “Mom says she has leukemia. Or she had it.”

Her dad glanced at her. She was staring at the floor. “I bet she’s better, though,” he said. “She’s in school.”

“Guess so,” she murmured.
She asked me to come home with her
was what Dreenie didn’t tell him.

He put his arm around her. The elevator opened, and they went out.

“Dreen, you all right? You worried about Natalie, huh? She’s your friend?”

“She threw up in class. It was gross, Daddy! I mean, e-ew! Kids just went nuts.”

Scary Bluish!

“That’s too bad. But anybody can get sick. The flu. It doesn’t have to be … anything more than that.”

“Daddy? Do … do kids get sick … and die, I mean, real easily?”

“No, not at all. Kids are tougher than anybody! Dreen, she’s in school with you.” And quickly, before she could tell him how scary it all was, he changed the subject. “You haven’t told me what you want for Christmas.”

You won’t get what I want,
she wanted to say.

“You and your sister, remember? You get one special present each.”

“Anything?”

“Anything within reason.”

“Well, what does that mean?”

Her dad laughed.

He knows what I want. What I’ve always wanted.

D
REENIE GOT TO CLASS
just after Ms. Baker emptied her briefcase and put her lunch in her desk. “Well, good morning to you, Dreanne,” Ms. Baker said, calling Dreenie by her proper name. “We’re both the first ones today. I don’t know what I would do if I didn’t see you or Tulithia near the front of the morning!” She used Tuli’s full name, also.

Grinning, “Yes, ma’am. Morning, Ms. Baker,” Dreenie said.

Then Ms. Baker got busy with her work. And Dreenie went to the fake tree in the corner, on the couch side of the room, just beyond the double windows. She bent low behind the tree and was careful not to knock into any of the decorations. She found the plug and put it in the wall socket. Suddenly, tiny lights blinked: on, off, on, off, on, off, red, green, and white, over and over.

“It’s magic, Ms. Baker!” Dreenie exclaimed. Straightening up, she stood still a moment to admire their tree.

All week students had been bringing in ornaments for it. There was a Santa Claus and her own shiny reindeer that Dreenie liked the best. Ms. Baker had brought a kinara, the candelabra with seven branches, for the Kwanzaa holiday. It was on a bookcase. There was a small menorah for Hanukkah on a corner table. Bluish had brought that in. It had nine candles and nine branches. They had books in the bookcase about each holiday, Christmas, and Ramadan, too. Somebody had been eating the candy canes that Ms. Baker put on the tree. “Oh, I don’t mind,” she said, when Dreenie told her. “It’s the magic of the holiday spirit and a new year coming!” She added a few more candy canes each day.

Dreenie could hear students in the lower, then upper halls. She heard lockers banging open, click-slamming shut. And then the rush and busy murmurings as students found their places. The littlest kids were in the downstairs classes. There was the muffled sound of school buses crunching frozen slush in front of the school building.

Bluish!

Dreenie took up her book bag and leaned in on the side of the couch. She sat there, in her place, as the building rang with sounds, echoing noise. She closed her eyes a moment. She could hear that some first-and second-grade classes downstairs were having a party, first thing. She got a whiff of a warm, sweet, cookie smell, rising on the air to the top floor and this fifth-grade double room.

My new school—not new anymore! And my class.
This, my corner,
Dreenie thought, looking around. Always she thought that, first thing in the morning, claiming one corner of the couch.

She took out her yellow pad about the project they would do. They had to decide about it. She would keep notes. But she wasn’t the one to write it all down. And she waited for the room to fill, warm and cozy with all the kids she knew. She had come to feel a good part of the whole. Even though she was closest to Tuli, she had no special friend yet. But she liked all her classmates. The students went to their lockers, one by one, or two by two, and then they came in. Rid of their coats. Cheeks flushed in a rosy glow.

Two weeks had passed since Dreenie had told her mom about Bluish.

If Bluish came today, she might stay for the whole day because of the project. A few times her mom had come for her when she’d had a doctor’s appointment. One time, on the spur of the moment, Dreenie had asked Ms. Baker to let her and Tuli see that Bluish got to the first floor, and she’d let them.

So yesterday, when Mrs. Winburn came and waited downstairs, Dreenie and Tuli got on the elevator after Bluish. They made sure the door stayed open until her chair wheels were inside. They hung back on each side of her. She had her puppy with her, and they petted its head.

“Lucky, you get to ride, too,” Dreenie had said, smiling. Looking down at the floor. Pretending she and Tuli were on the early shift for lunch. And not there just to watch out for Bluish.

Well, they didn’t need to pretend. Bluish knew from the start. She’d looked up at them, in the half-minute it took to go down. Dreenie couldn’t say what the look was exactly. But she’d come to know the many different ways Bluish had of looking at you. Sad looks, afraid looks, and watchful ones. One of her mean looks could just cut into you.