Finding My Thunder (22 page)

Finding My Thunder 34

Nothing
good was going to come easy. I knew that now. I somehow knew I’d fought to get
born, really fought, a baby she had by a man she didn’t love. I’d always been
in trouble.

They’d
taken my bag. It was gone. I knew it was them, Tahlila and Lauren. I had two
choices, go after them, try to find them and get it back, or go to the big
plate glass window where others stood waiting to see Danny’s flight take off
and see him go into the sky…alive.

I
went to the window. I felt his arms around me, his body against me, his skin,
his lips, his eyes, his fear, his excitement. his sorrow. his eagerness. I felt
it all and I wasn’t ready to let it go, to let him go, and I stood against the
glass, a tree frog girl with a serious look on her face as she watched, and
waited, and finally saw the jet taxi turn, and go down the runway, and build speed,
and lift, lift, lift, lift, lift…and small, smaller, smallest, all that power
soaring, and soaring until it was gone.

Plastered
on the glass I couldn’t fall. But there was only this invisible thing holding
me, like God would if he was solid.

At
some point Danny would open the letter, maybe now, maybe right away and he’d
see this, a piece of loose leaf and on both sides in big and small letters,
some hollow, some solid all sizes the same thing, both sides same thing, over
and over, “I love you.” And then a picture, school picture Naomi made me buy. Bad
and stupid and serious, just staring there, just me. All I had to offer, but
honest, and if he took that, this plain thing that was me, just there…then he
took the love.

A
ribbon of highways led from the airport. I couldn’t go out there and get on
that. I didn’t know the right way. I needed someone who did, who could take me
out of here in the direction of home.

The
one I picked was carrying a big orange suitcase. She was around Mama’s age,
maybe more. Gray-white hair and a face still younger than that color. She wore
black slacks and a man’s shirt, white and rolled on her arms.

“Ma’am…I
lost my purse and need a ride home or even part-way. I live in Ludicrous.”

She
was struggling with that case and looked at me. “You with those Krishna’s?” she
asked and I don’t know why. They were over there chanting but in a minute
they’d disperse and start trying to sell their books.

“No
ma’am. I’m with…myself. I came up this morning to see my boyfriend off to the
army.”

She
stopped now and set that orange monstrosity down and rubbed over her arms. “What’s
your name?”

“Hillary
Grunier,” I said.

“Where
you live?”

“3139
Willard Street in Ludicrous. I live in back there with my grandma.”

She
nodded, looking me over, up and down. “Army, huh?”

“Yes
ma’am.”

“My
Bobby was in. Korea. You watch this suitcase for me at the door while I get my
truck I’ll give you a ride. But you screw me over and I’m coming to Ludicrous,”
she pointed her finger and it was sharp and painted red and there were blue
veins standing on the backs of her hands but I knew if I were to touch them
they would be rougher than
Jergens
could fix.

“Yes
ma’am…I mean…no ma’am I wouldn’t screw you over.”

And
that’s how I met Allie Jackson.
 

Allie
Jackson could not be construed in Naomi’s big book as a cherubim but she was an
angel. We exchanged information pretty quick and she owned a welding business
and machine shop. I couldn’t believe it. She was on her way home now from a
dairy show.

I
about fell out of the truck I was so surprised. “Are you like a woman’s
libber?” I asked because even the way she lit her cigarette, and boy did I want
to bum one, but the ride was enough. More than.

She
laughed at women libbers, she said. Just shut up and push was her motto. I loved
that motto. I really did. I even think Naomi would love it cause the women I
knew who were really doing something, and I just knew a handful, Naomi
included, they were too busy for a movement. And besides, Allie said, she loved
men. Had loved a particular one for twenty-six years, her husband Bobby, who
had hair like Elvis, just like him she said, and she dug a picture out of her
purse and showed me and he was in a wheel chair, and the hair…well not too much
like Elvis, but some
Jethro
.

I
got a flash of Danny in my mind that first day after I’d cut his hair and him
picking me up on the way to work and that ducktail in the back, his face, mouth
mostly, and I ached with love.

He
had Cerebral palsy, Bobby did. They used to run the business together. It had been
his, but now, him in a chair, she took over.

She
knew how to weld, but she didn’t do that no more. She was management. That
meant everyone and his brother were her boss, she said. But the real money, she
said was in sales. That’s what she’d discovered. She spent many years drumming
up customers going against men giving kick-backs, fending off the advances of
male buyers and others selling and the guys in the oily shops who’d never
witnessed a woman stepping her high-heels in those places and she’d been built
some like me then.

But
now…she had a good name and a reputation for fair pricing and fast delivery. So
she wasn’t traveling so much but she was always looking to expand. “You get out
of school, give me a call, girl like you, guts enough to go the city without a
car…you might just be crazy enough to give me a try.”

We
laughed some and I told her about my situation and she was so mad. “I know
Lonnie Grunier!” she realized. “He’s that gypsy outfit,” she said. “He’s
underbid me before then he didn’t finish and I had to go in anyway and
straighten out his mess! He can’t get the jobs that count. He’ll be fixing
someone’s wagon or something like that maybe. What a bastard you got stuck
with. Girl like you?”

Well
I didn’t tell her the half, but when she dropped me home I had her card and she
told me to come see her anytime and she meant what she said I got out of
school.

Really?
There was nothing those girls could do to me. Sukey either. Daddy either. Nothing…nothing
at all. I was rich, like Naomi. I was rich.

Next
day school started.

Finding My Thunder 35

Naomi
was already gone when I got up the next morning, first day of my junior year of
high school. But she’d left me a note with a five dollar bill, and two pieces
of cinnamon toast under an embroidered cloth napkin. Also a glass of orange
juice she had squeezed herself and a One-a-Day vitamin beside it. Very touching
but I was too queasy to eat it.

I
had beaten her here yesterday. So there had been no questions. She got home
after I was in bed…or pretended to be. I had the road on me, a hum in my ear,
the roar of planes, the moving ribbon of asphalt, radio stations I wouldn’t
have chosen and good people who had let me into their cars and lives rolling
through my head and I hadn’t been able to sleep much…but mostly the feel of Danny,
that last kiss, mostly that kept me awake.

I
had a sense of adventure so strong it was as if I’d gone into the army myself,
as if I saw beyond this pinprick called Ludicrous and it was hard to fold
myself into a small enough piece to fit back into its stifling reality.

I
thought of Peter, Paul and Mary’s song, “The Cruel War,” about following your
lover into battle.

I
understood it, how it felt to let Danny go where I couldn’t follow.

Why
did I have to have so many thoughts first thing in the morning? I took one bite
of the toast and a sip of the juice. When I got home from school I would drink
the rest, my reward for surviving the day. I took the five dollars because it
was all I had now.

For
all the angst I felt, I tried to imagine how it was going for Danny. I pictured
some sergeant screaming in his face like I’d seen on
Gomer
Pyle
, but Danny wouldn’t be
Gomer
, he’d excel at
everything…just like always. I knew that and I feared where that would lead,
but that was him. Every mile between us felt like two but I’d better get used
to it. If he wrote me…and he’d have to or I’d be reduced to asking Dickens to
smuggle me his address, but if he wrote it would be one way of pushing through
the distance.

I
fumbled through my clothes, finding what to wear. I had a mini-dress, striped
poor boy top and attached beige denim A-line skirt with a wide belt around my
hips. I’d had this dress since the eighth grade but I hardly ever wore it
except sometimes to Temple. I paired it with my boots that stopped a few inches
below my knees. I liked these, but at school I wasn’t comfortable with the
clunky noise they made when I walked down the hall because a shadow shouldn’t
make too much noise…but now? They were perfect.

My
hair was long, to my waist, parted in the middle. Often I braided it or wore it
tied back, almost afraid to let people see it. I don’t know why. It might have
been the best thing about me…or not so great. I didn’t know anything for sure. I
thought I changed over the summer…looked older. Maybe it was that…or maybe it
was the love…it changed people…songs said so…and I’d seen it in other
girls…but…I didn’t know. But the dress looked different, more pokey in some
places or fuller but I wasn’t going to keep apologizing to the world. I was a
girl. There were a lot of us and I was one. And that was settled because I
loved Danny.

I
had myself pretty pumped-up. It was a good walk to school and I’d made it
before a hundred plus times so I scrounged enough contents for another purse, one
not so big and I set off.

On
the way to school I got offered a ride by some boys I’d known…they said,
“Hey…get in here so we can check you out,” and I ignored them and crossed the
street and they laid rubber. And an older man honked and another, but I didn’t
look. It made me mad but there wasn’t anything I could do about it.

Seeing
school, a new wave of jacked-up cars in the lot, the field beyond its own kind
of cemetery. I stood there a minute remembering my time with Danny that sad
day…that field was his and now…ours. I was here…holding my place…with him.

Students
smoked next to the stairs, the designated smoking area meant to shame us, but
it didn’t. But I wouldn’t be using it this year. So I went up those broad
cement steps and through the double doors and just that smell of Ludicrous
High, just that made me groan.
 

I
went down the hall, heard
Tahlila’s
group, always the
loudest, taking the most space, the best seats, the center, the elevated
places, the lights, the prize. They squealed as they saw each other, as they packed
together in school colors.

I
went into the office. I had missed registration. A line, the bell, a chair,
talk and talk, pencil held against forms and pointing and arguing and reasoning
and sighs, and finally it was my turn. Mrs. Callahan faced me.

The
lecture was unspoken but it hung there. She had repeated it all morning. I
wasn’t a special case. There had been a place, a time to do this. And now I was
here.

I
had a doable schedule, with fine arts and typing and shorthand and French
again. She piled books on the counter. I gave her two dollars for my gym
uniform. Four dollars for my art fee. “Oh, a size small, please,” I said as she
slapped that folded uniform on the desk that I noticed was a large. She clicked
her tongue, then whipped it away to exchange it.

I
didn’t need a parking pass, I didn’t need a bus pass, I wasn’t playing sports. And
so it went, and finally my locker number. “You’re going to have to have a
locker with the seniors,” she said. “There are no more available for the
juniors. We had a couple of transfers…you’re our biggest class this year.”

“Is
there a locker anywhere else?” I said. “With the freshmen…or something?”

She
gave me a look then ignored the question. She gave me the locker with the
seniors and I told myself…I didn’t have to use it.

Time
I got out of there, first period was half over. Even still I needed to scope
out the locker. It was on the end, not in the middle, a full sized one because
seniors got the best ones, but this would put me in their den…and I didn’t know
who was around me. But I had so many books now, and I lifted the silver handle,
that metallic sound, I hated it, what it meant, school in session, locked in. I
put some of the books in for my afternoon classes and closed it softly. I hadn’t
gotten my combination lock and that meant another trip to the office but I’d
have to do it during lunch.

I
ran to what was left of homeroom and stopped outside the door and tried to walk
in calm but they were quiet and staring and one of the boys whistled and I knew
my cheeks flushed, and the teacher said the cliché thing, “Nice of you to come,
Miss Grunier,” and I smiled and a couple of boys in the back of the room said,
“Sit here,” but I just stopped at the first empty desk and sat there and felt
pretty stupid.

I
thought of Miss Allie going into those places to sell fittings and machinery
and what it must have been like for her, under that crude male sizing up, the
kind of thing made you feel powerless.

Naomi
said Queen
Vashti
wouldn’t have it. When King Xerxes
sent for her to parade her naked in front of his drunk friends, she refused. That
paved the way for Esther to become queen and Esther went on to save the whole
Jewish nation. She said, when women did the right thing, the brave thing,
everyone got lifted.
 

Miss
Allie wouldn’t let it stop her when she went in those shops and took it for
being female. So that’s what I thought of and it calmed me some, that and
picking on the binding of one of my books.

“Hey
Grunier,” one of the boys, a football player, called. We were supposed to be
filling out surveys for a variety of clubs. I turned around because ignoring
him wasn’t going to make him go away. “You still got your cherry?” he said.

And
the teacher, the habitually frustrated and seemingly worn out even on the first
day of school Mr. Boxer said, “Okay Davis, do you want to go to the office on
the first day cause I’ll drag you down there, no problem.”

“No
sir, I’d rather go tomorrow,” he said and his buddy laughed like a horse and
Boxer came down the aisle in his brown polyester pants and yellow short-sleeved
button down and that brown clip on tie and grabbed Davis by the back of his
neck, but Davis was bigger but not stronger, so a scuffle broke out and kids
were diving out of their desks, including me. Some books flew onto the floor,
and Davis, realizing Boxer was too pissed off to let this go surrendered then. Boxer
took over big time, head so red it looked ready to pop and he had Davis by the
neck and dragged him out.

There
was a second of silence as the students looked at one another. One girl was
rubbing her arm where they’d plowed into her, another boy thought there was a
scrape on his leg and was trying to get his pant leg high enough to look. I
swallowed and picked up my stuff and righted my desk like everyone else.

“So,
Grunier…about that cherry,” Davis’s friend laughed and someone else said, “Shut
up asshole,” and I felt better then, I don’t know why.

So
the blow-up in Boxer’s classroom was big news, but it was just the first day. At
the assembly to welcome us back Principal Brown addressed us about school
violence, telling us that they, the principal and teachers, realized on the
nightly news we were seeing Communist sympathizers and misguided young people
protest on college campuses and in cities all over this land but things were
going forward in Ludicrous as they always had and we were God-fearing Americans
and school discipline would be upheld and disregard for school rules would not
be tolerated.

I
rubbed my elbow where I’d hit it on the desk when Mr. Boxer had dived for
Davis.

The
principal went on to say that we needed to dress like young ladies and
gentlemen and he went over the dress code to help us understand what clothing
appropriate for learning looked like. I didn’t hear much after that because I
pictured each of us walking around naked wearing a big foil thinking cap
programmed by Principal Brown from the intercom he loved to drone over.

He
continued about how radical ideas and philosophies were better saved for those
in college. It was evident the kinds of discussion they were having there by
all the ridiculous displays of anti-American behavior we’d been bombarded with.

The
principal finished and we all clapped, I should say over-clapped, as many of
the boys really laid it on and whistled, and that culminated in a loud, “Fuck
you,” from a masculine voice and others laughed and clapped some more and the
principal came off the stage and other teachers fanned out trying to locate the
offender to no avail. However two boys were hauled off and we were dismissed
and warned to leave the gym in an orderly fashion.

That’s
when I got shoved from behind. The force of it made me plow into the people in
front of me and there was shouting. I dropped my purse and the books I was
holding and a group of girls walked over everything. Others protested, so they
didn’t get completely away with it, but really…they did.

This
dragged us to third period. I went in the classroom and there was Tahlila taking
Chemistry with me. She was one of three seniors in there. I tried to pick a
seat as far away as possible. She and Lauren had my purse but in her mind I had
her boyfriend. I had no idea what I was going to do about her, but she was
already working on me.

She
looked at me and smirked, but her eyes…she was mad. I didn’t take pleasure in
it, but there was no way around it. It wasn’t my job to understand her. It was
my right to get my purse back. However…I realized whatever she’d wanted to do
to me she’d already done to my stuff. I pictured her and Lauren going through
everything and strewing the contents all along the highway.

There
hadn’t been anything of value money-wise, but there had been money. Thirty
dollars. And
To Kill a Mockingbird
. I loved to have a great story in my
purse, and great music so I’d also had my transistor radio given to me by my
dead mother when I turned fifteen. Whatever was in there…it was mine, valuable
to me, that was the thing.

As
the teacher droned on I tried not to slice my gaze
Tahlila’s
way. I sat back some and could see the back of her or in profile. Seems I’d
looked at her all through school as she was always up front of us doing
something grand. A girl husk. Husk of human. Nothing inside. Just…empty. Yes, I
was dehumanizing my enemy. Damn.

Danny
had said she would soon take up with someone else. Guys had scrambled to sit
around her and all through class they tried to interact with her husk-self.

In
some ways Danny had used her. He’d been curious about her and she was the one. There
was no use hurting myself more with it. That had happened often enough in the
past—me hurting myself with it.

I
wondered if she and her friends would keep to those same ways even as adults,
that they’d never get tired of it, staying in their circle dating one another,
inner-breeding. It was a world I didn’t want to understand.

Athletic
talent had opened the door to this world for Danny. And he’d used it to keep
Paul happy. Then he’d withdrawn and Paul tried to punish him. Now…I wondered
what it would be like at Danny’s house…for Dickens…for Annie. I’d have to reach
out to them. I’d have to know they were okay even though Sukey would come home.
I wasn’t going to keep living under this fear. By January…Danny would be a
world away. I had to figure it out.

“Miss
Grunier?” Mrs. Spencer said and the class laughed because I’d been sitting
there not answering.

“Oh…I…I’m
sorry.”

Mimicry
from
Tahlila’s
corner. Tahlila smiled at the one
who’d done it. That’s how it would be, I thought. She would be the sad one
controlling her minions but never getting her hands dirty. They’d be only too
glad to do anything she asked for a chance to receive one of her smiles.