Breathing (11 page)

Mama stirs. “What’s going on?” she asks, all confused.

“I’m leaving, ma’am. Mama needs me back home.”

She looks over to me, sees I’m a wreck, and sighs. “All right, baby, come on,” she says.

I hug him real hard and let go as tears flush out of my eyes as if pumped from a well. I bite my lip so’s I don’t make no sound.

Jackson hangs his head and walks to the door real slow.

“At least give me your cell phone number so I can call you on it,” I say.

“It was my dad’s. I gotta give it back to my ma soon as I get home.”

He gives me a sad smile, then he’s gone and I just bawl my head off. All that crying gets my lungs worked up. That’s one of the things I hate about this here asthma. Every time I get to feeling something, just wanting to be left alone with my pain, all them dag bronchiolies in my lungs decide to get tight and then Mama makes a federal case of it, calling in the nurses and the doctor, and I can’t even have just a minute to myself to grieve.

B
ack home, I crawl out of bed at ten one morning to stop the dang phone from ringing. “Hello,” I say, all irritated.

“It’s me, grouchy!” Stef laughs.

“Dag, I missed you. Seems like you been gone a lifetime. July is nearly half over!” I say, rubbing the sleep out of my eyes.

“Seriously,” Stef agrees. “I got so much to tell you.”

“Me, too,” I say. “You won’t believe it. I met this guy named Jackson. He’s sweet as can be. He’s kin to the Channings, eighteen years old. And things were going so good between us and then . . .”

“I’ve been with someone, too,” she interrupts. “At camp. His name’s Jimmy. He’s our age, and girl, I think I may be in love. It was killing me that phone calls weren’t allowed there. I was dying to tell you about him.”

“I know what you mean. But things have gotten all messed up with Jackson now. His mama made him move back out to Greenville!”

“How do you think I feel? Jimmy lives all the way down in Georgia! At least y’all are in the same state.”

Somehow this is not making me feel any better. I try again. “He’s a painter, Stef. He showed me some of his paintings, and they’re just amazing. He was planning on earning a living out here painting houses till he can do something with his real art. But his mama got him to take a job fixing cars. Ain’t that just a shame? She don’t think house painting would make him good money. And that ain’t even true, least I don’t think it is.”

“That sure is awful,” Stef says, finally seeming to understand my predicament. “Come meet me at the swimming pool and we can catch up.”

“I’m working at the library in an hour. Meet me over there. We’ll hide from Miss Patsy in the stacks and talk.”

“See you then.”

 

 

While I’m shelving books, Stef charges me with a hug, her blond ponytail wagging behind her. She’s wearing cut-off jean shorts and an oversized camp T-shirt with a picture of a lake and some trees, signed all over in Sharpie by her friends. I sure am happy to lay eyes on her. We sneak deeper into the rows of books where we can talk.

“You’re peeling,” I notice. Stef loves to lay out, but she’s got that fair skin that is forever burning.

“Me and Jimmy liked to go canoeing on the lake.”

Suddenly the green-eyed monster has me by the throat, imagining her and her boyfriend just drifting idly on the water with no grown-up worries about money and jobs and parents needing help.

“He’s the real deal, Vannah. I don’t believe I’ve ever felt like this about any guy before.” That
is
saying something. Stef has had loads of boyfriends. “We went swimming together and laid out during free time. He taught me to do archery, can you believe it? I’m not half bad either. And we went to the dance together on the last night.”

“You’re so lucky,” I say.

“He’s such a sweetheart, too. There was this one time, we were on a hike, and there was this big muddy patch and he threw down his sweatshirt for me to step on, just like in the movies!”

Suddenly, we hear the jangle of bangles and hold our breath. Miss Patsy waddles up to our row and clears her throat noisily, staring us down. Strangely, I find that I’m not at all saddened by the interruption.

“I better get back to shelving books if I’m ever going to get out of here.”

“You didn’t get a chance to tell me about Jonathan,” Stef says.

“It’s Jackson!”

“Sor-ry,” she says.

“I reckon it’ll have to wait. Some of us have to work.” I smile so she doesn’t get offended.

“I work! I’m babysitting for the Parker twins this afternoon. Then I’ll be twenty dollars closer to my goal for the car I’m gonna buy when I turn sixteen. But if you want to come with me, I’ll go halfsies with you on the babysitting money like usual.”

“That’s okay,” I say, not a lick interested in spending all afternoon with a couple of hyperactive seven-year-olds.

“Joie gets back from Florida tomorrow. Maybe we can all go to the fair the next day,” she says.

“I don’t think I’ll be able to go,” I reply.

“Why not?” she blurts.

I shrug. I just ain’t in the mood this year.

Stef sighs, gives me a hug, and traipses off. “Call me!”

I hate to say it, but that girl was riding on my nerves.

 

 

Mama and I are spending our evening in front of the TV. I’m hoping Jackson will call. She’s drowning her depression in a quart of rocky road. She always gets like this when she loses her job. I damn near begged her to explain about my asthma. But she wasn’t hearing it. She sure can be stubborn. Now I can’t tell whether it’s the unemployment she’s upset about or back to my daddy leaving or everything together.

She’s sitting over there on the couch in a hideous flowery house-coat, fluffy pink slippers on her feet like it’s the dead of winter, flipping through her magazine, sighing.

She talks about how my daddy left her high and dry and tries to act all chummy with me, like we’re in the same boat. But I tell you, this boat here is a yacht compared to her dinghy. We ain’t the same at all. Jackson loves me, and he
is
coming back. Sometimes I wish Dog was home more in the evenings instead of being out with his friends. At least when he’s here we just focus on the TV without all the chitchat.

“Stef ’s mom called today. Said Stef and Joie are planning to go to the county fair tomorra,” Mama says. And I know she must know that I declined their invitation, so I don’t say nothing. “Sure sounds like fun.”

I try to act like I’m focusing real hard on the TV, though I haven’t a clue what this show is about. It’s one of them summer pilots of a new series, but I haven’t paid a lick of attention all night.

“All them rides, corn dogs, cotton candy . . . Savannah!” She sits up. “I’m talking to you.”

“I ain’t interested in the fair,” I say to settle her down, but I keep my eyes on the screen.

“Since when?” she shoots back at me.

It’s true. Generally speaking, I’m a pure T sucker for the fair. But this year I just don’t feel like it. I shrug. “Prob’ly won’t be good for my asthma. All them critters and whatnot.”

“That one’s gonn’ come back to bite you on your butt,” she warns.

“You best hope Jackson don’t invite you out to a farm or a rodeo, ’cause you sure ain’t going.”

We sit quiet for a minute, her staring at me, me staring at the TV. “Come on, Vannah,” she says. “It’ll do you good.”

“Why don’t you go?” I snap. “Maybe it’ll do
you
good!”

“Now that’s enough,” she says.

“How long
you
been sitting on this couch?”

I can see I done crossed a line by the pulsing of the vein in her temple. She’s going to blow. We square off. I try to look tough and contrite at the same time, which is near about impossible. I reckon I hit a raw nerve.

“Don’t you disrespect me,” she says, looking like I might have chosen the wrong moment to do so. “Maybe you’d like to be on punishment, Miss Sassy. I suggest you go to your room and you can forget about going to the fair or anywhere else
or
talking to Jackson for the next two days. How’s that?”

Her voice sounds sort of shrill. If there’s one thing I know, it’s when to cut bait. I head to my room, not caring about any of it, except not talking to Jackson. But lately our phone conversations seem awful dry anyhow. Maybe it’ll be good for us to miss each other for a little while.

I take out my journal and doodle images of Jackson. It’s his eyes I fix on, the eyes that draw me in. Can’t hardly find the way to show that special look in them, that look I first saw out at the beach when he smiled at me.

Dog comes busting into the room, just back from his evening out. “Mama’s taking me and Dave to the fair. Too bad for you. I hear you’re on punishment.”

Jackass. I stick my tongue out at him. Very mature, I know, but it seems to suit the moment.

“Mama!” he cries like a two-year-old, “Vannah stuck her tongue out at me.” Then he smiles, all evil.

“Good Lord!” Mama calls.

I put on my headphones, crank up my music, and pull out my current romance,
Bedazzled by the Butler
. For now, that’s the only escape I got.

W
alking down the beach, I watch the waves roll in and back out, just like they did the day me and Jackson had our surfing lesson. But today, the waves seem too loud, the warm sand under my feet too hot.

Mama, Dog, and Dave ran into Stef and Joie at the fair yesterday. I reckon I’m an idiot for turning them down in the first place. All this sadness over missing Jackson just makes me grumpy. Don’t nothing seem to catch my interest lately. Mama was so sick of me hanging around the house all gloomy, she said I can go do whatever I please. But I’m still restricted from phone calls until tomorrow. I’m strolling down the beach, searching for some peace.

Usually when I walk out here all by my lonesome, I prefer to head down where the sand turns white and the beach is lined with all them fancy vacation homes. But today I’m going the other direction, where the sand looks like dirt and the beach property like a shantytown. Don’t ask me why—suits my mood, I reckon.

There’s a whole mess of broken glass strewn about. I’ve got to watch my every step. Mama might just shit a brick if she’s got to take me back out to the hospital.

Right after they got back from the fair yesterday, she got herself a new job cashiering over at the Harris Teeter Grocery, just a twenty-minute ride down the coast. Put on her high-necked flowery blouse and a long skirt, looking the part of the good Southern mama, and made her case, promising to be reliable and all that when she knows perfectly well ain’t nothing changed. Still, it ain’t like there’s all that many folks lined up by the “help wanted” signs. I reckon it’s either her or some high-school kid. Seems to me like the fair did her good after all.

It’s quiet out this way without all the tourists—no big ol’ ladies in their too-small bikinis, their brand-new straw hats blowing off their heads, no young’uns with a whole big laundry basket full of sand toys and beach balls, not to mention rafts and kites, Boogie Boards and floaties.

I see Stef and Joie by the water before they see me. The two of them were friends for years before we were all in the same class in fourth grade. Sometimes when I see them together, I still get a twinge of feeling left out, wondering why they didn’t call me. I guess I shouldn’t be surprised, since I wouldn’t even go to the fair with them.

“What are y’all doing out this way?” I say.

They run up and give me hugs. “I was just telling Joie how I was afraid you were gonn’ mope around all summer,” Stef says.

“How was Florida?” I ask Joie. She looks tan and relaxed, her brown curls lightened by the sun.

“Real fun,” she smiles, giving a broad view of her buck teeth.

“Sorry I couldn’t call you. My mom wouldn’t let us make any phone calls from my cousins’ house.”

“I thought y’all were getting a cell phone.”

“We did. But my mom insisted on getting the plan with the least number of minutes and then wouldn’t let us use the dang thing! What is the point of that, I ask you?” She sets her hands on her boney hips.

Stef is the only one of us who has a cell phone. It’s ridiculous. Especially with my asthma, I should at least have one for emergencies.

“I’m having people over to watch a movie at my house this afternoon. Think you can come?” Stef asks.

“I’m supposed to work,” I say, which is a sincere lie, but I just ain’t in the mood for a bunch of immature kids today. Still, I don’t want to hurt nobody’s feelings.

Stef may be on to me, ’cause she says, “I thought you get to choose your own hours.”

“I do, but once I choose them, I’ve got to stick by them.”

“You want to go get a Coke with us?” Joie asks sort of timidly, like she’s expecting me to say no.

“That’s okay. I believe I’m just gonn’ walk awhile. I’ll see y’all later on.”

And I keep going down the beach. I reckon I was rude, and to my two very best friends, too. But I’m just wanting to be by my lonesome today. I haven’t talked to Jackson for days and it is sure making me miserable.

Jellyfish season seems to be upon us. I done passed three in a row—the big, fat kind that look something like a brain sitting there on the sand. They give me the willies. I never understand how kids can go up and poke at them with a stick. Makes me want to toss my cookies.

The birds are calling something fierce; sounds like they’re having an important meeting if you ask me, everybody yelling and getting on each other’s cases.

All this walking is sure making me tired. Least I got the cool ocean breeze to keep me going. I’ve near about had it. But I’ve got this nagging feeling inside, you know how sometimes you just want to finish something. I can see the end of the beach from here. And it doesn’t look too far, although looks can be deceiving. It’s probably another mile or so at least. But I’ve come this far, and I just can’t give up now. I’d go home feeling worse than when I started.