Taneesha Never Disparaging (10 page)

Then I'd looked down, and, unbelievably, saw my mother crying right in front of me. It wasn't like a real theater, where the audience is in the dark; in that screaming-bright cafeteria, I couldn't miss her.

She sat next to Daddy, with tears streaming down her face, dabbing her eyes with this raggedy ball of Kleenex that she'd dug up from the bottom of her junky purse. I
saw
her dig it up.

She wasn't crying out loud, or anything, only silently. But
still
. Talk about embarrassing. I'd thought I'd die right up there on stage.

Later that night, while my parents and I biked
back to our dormitory, I'd looked ahead at the place where the tops of palm trees touched the night sky and seen zillions of stars twinkling up there. More than I ever saw in North Cleveland. And my parents had said they were proud of how I'd read that poem. They said Daisaku Ikeda would have been proud of me, too.

“Sensei had the FWBC built for us,” Daddy had said, pedaling next to me. “And he's had schools built in different countries, too. From kindergartens to colleges. Even a university in California.”

“I know, Daddy. You told me that before.”

“It's not just for Buddhists either. It's for everybody.”

“I know, Daddy. You told me.”

Mama, who was riding on the other side of me, had started humming a little song. I'd figured it was a signal for Daddy to change the subject. He must have picked up on it because he went mute.

I've had the feeling for a while that when it's time for college, my parents want me to go to that university Daddy was talking about. The one Daisaku Ikeda built. Do I want to go? I don't know.

Sitting in the living room at that very moment, I was just trying to figure out how to live through fifth grade.

I sighed, closed the book, and sat it on the chair next to me.

I felt myself smiling—it almost felt strange for my face to get into that position.

I sighed again. “Good old Florida.”

I had to admit, it was kind of all right meeting so many kids that chant. Only a few kids at Hunter do it. And none of their parents go to meetings as much as mine, or hold meetings at their houses a few times a month like us. But at the FWBC, I was just like everybody else.

“Okay, Taneesha,” I whispered, “sitting here strolling down memory lane and everything is nice but you've got to get back to reality.”

My life was on the line after all.

I knew sometimes my parents could chant for over an hour. Even as long as two hours. Or
more
. To me, chanting that long seemed like it
had
to be torture. But if it could keep me from getting my teeth knocked out tomorrow, I figured, why not give it a try?

I stood, walked over to the light switch on the
wall, and flipped it. A warm spotlight from the ceiling flickered on and lit the center of the oval altar cabinet, the Butsudan.

I opened the Butsudan's doors, sat in the middle chair in front of the altar, and scooted forward. I pulled open the large altar table's slender drawer and took out my string of prayer beads. I struck the bell with the mallet. Its bong echoed through the room.

Wait.

Without looking around, I felt Mama standing next to me. The arm of her fuzzy, pink sweater came into view. I whiffed up the aroma of the bowl of oranges she placed on the altar table.

She leaned into my face and smiled.

I didn't smile back.

I wanted her to leave me alone so I wouldn't have to listen to a load of instructions.

Her footsteps padded across the carpet. I heard her messing with the logs in the fireplace, moving them around with the long, black iron tongs.

I waited.

No way was I chanting with her in the room.

In a few minutes, I smelled burning wood and
heard it crackling. The fire's orange glow reflected off the altar and I began to feel warm.

Her footsteps left the room.

Good.

I placed my string of lavender plastic prayer beads over my middle fingers and pressed them between my palms for prayer. Five shorter sections of beads extended from the long, main loop like a stretched out neck and pairs of arms and legs. Each one of the five sections of beads had a fuzzy, white cloth ball attached to its end. The fuzzy balls were like a head, hands, and feet. The “feet” (two balls) dangled from the back of my left hand and the “head” and “hands” (three balls) dangled from my right.

I felt the smooth roundness of the little plastic beads between my palms. And I remembered Gail saying that the string of beads looked like a person when you held it up by its “head.” She said holding prayer beads reminded us that we hold our own lives in our hands.

With my hands pressed together in front of my chest, I kept my back straight, and looked upward. My eyes focused on what hung on a little wooden hook inside the Butsudan—a scroll,
more than a foot long, made of silky, olive-green cloth and cream-colored paper. The green cloth framed the paper. The paper had bold, black, Chinese letters written on it; it was my family's Gohonzon.

At the altar, my eyes took in the Chinese letters that flow, like a dancing, black river, down the middle of the Gohonzon. I can't read the letters but I know they spell “Namu Myoho Renge Kyo,
”
and I know that means, “I devote my life to the Wonderful Law of the Lotus Flower Teaching of the Buddha.”

Don't ask me how I know that mouthful; I just do.

For a moment, I just sat there, with my palms pressed together, staring at the writing on the Gohonzon
,
thinking. I thought about how Mama says, “Nam Myoho Renge Kyo is your life itself, Taneesha.” And that if I chant to the Gohonzon, I can see that I'm a Buddha—that life, my life, never goes away, that I'm everything and everyone and everywhere, all the time. “The Gohonzon is a mirror,” Mama says, “a mirror for seeing you.”

“Well, then,” I whispered, “let's see what I can see.”

I did Sansho
,
chanted three times slowly; then sped up. I tried to chant like a galloping horse the way I remembered somebody saying you should do, maybe Gail. I tried to feel that—the freedom of a horse galloping toward a sunny horizon.

But it was no use.

I didn't feel one bit free or sunny. I was a slave, chained to the runaway thoughts in my head.

My mouth said “Nam Myoho Renge Kyo” all right. But my mind spun out of control and Evella did her best to take over:

 

My face won't get smashed in. I won't get a broken nose—or arm. I will
not
wish I had signed up for Kung Fu instead of the clown at the FWBC.

 

But you
should
have. Because Bigfoot' s going to
pulverize
you!

 

Why'd she have to pick on Carli anyway? Why does she want to beat me up? I didn't do anything
to
her…

 

Except you called her mean and stupid
—that
was smart!

But she
was
mean and stupid! And big… Shoot! I'm scared. Really, really scared.

 

You
should
be. You're going to get
smacked down
!

 

I bonged the bell and did Sansho to finish.

“So much for that.”

I felt worse than I did before I sat down.

CHAPTER 13

V
ote for me and I'll set you free! R-O—DOUBLE-N—I-E!”

On Tuesday afternoon, I slowly munched on a chocolate-chip cookie and watched in horror. I couldn't believe it. Ronnie Lawson twirled on his back, making dizzying circles on the floor for the big finish of his campaign rap. Hiphop drumbeats blasted from a humungous old-school boombox—a contraption Ronnie had lugged into the classroom that morning. Kids, including Carli—who claimed to be
my
“biggest fan,” not Ronnie's—were on their feet, dancing, clapping their hands, and snapping
their fingers. And Mr. Alvarez didn't even mind.

I was the only one in my seat, fiddling with a neon orange glow-in-the-dark
pencil. It sat on my desk next to a paper cup of some of the best juice I'd ever tasted. It wasn't regular old orange or apple juice either. It was guava-mango. Ronnie said his aunt from Jamaica made it. The cookies and pencil came from him, too. Cookies. Pencils. Juice. Bribes Ronnie Lawson passed out to the whole class.

I watched him bow and strut a cool victory dance. Kids shouted “Whooooop! Whooooop! Ronnie! Ronnnie!” and gave him an endless standing ovation.

Still sitting, I twisted the end of one my locks.

“Well, Ronnie!” beamed Mr. Alvarez after the hoots and hollers died down. “I see you really put a lot of effort into your campaign. Nice job.”

“Thank you, Mr. Alvarez. I take serving my fellow students seriously, you know. A leader got to do that.”

“Yes. Yes. That's true. Very true.”

A smilier-than-ever Mr. Alvarez turned to everyone, and said, “Okay, Room 509, calm down, now. Please take your seats. We've seen all
the candidates but one.”

I hoped against hope he wouldn't say—

“Taneesha, your speech, please.”

I sighed, feeling the entire universe on my shoulders. I reached under my desk, and pulled out my rolled up poster.

Don't do this, Taneesha. Why don' t you say you're sick? Didn't you see Ronnie's speech? He had
guava-mango
juice for goodness sake!
AND A SHOW!
You're just going to look dumb!

I rubbed my sweaty palms on my blue slacks and started rolling the rubber bands off the poster.

One. By. One.

“Come on, Taneesha,” said Mr. Alvarez, back to his unsmiley self. “We have other things to do this afternoon than watch you turtle along.”

Rayshaun snickered.

Some other kids said, “Ooooooooh.”

And I felt lower than a turtle's belly—I could thank Mr. Alvarez for sticking that image to my brain.

With bent shoulders, I walked the plank from my desk to the front of the room.

“Who pooted?” someone whispered.

More snickering.

At the chalkboard, I faced the class and held the smelly, monster-size poster in front of me. It covered my whole body except for my forehead and below my knees. I couldn't see anything but the back of that thing. The bottom line of the last fat, red L in COLOSSAL bumped against my nose.

“Vote for me, please.”

“Taneesha, speak up. I'm sure no one heard you.”

I took a deep breath. The poster's funk almost made me sneeze but I stopped myself.

“I said, ‘Vote for me, please.'”

“That's better. I guess.”

So.

I didn't want to be president anyway.

I waited. No one said anything. I waited some more. I began to creep back to my seat.

“Taneesha? Is that it?”

“Yes.”

“Oh…
kay-eee.
Class…It seems we should give Taneesha a hand.”

Soggy claps hit my ears like wet, drippy socks. Or rotten tomatoes.

I officially wanted to turn invisible forever.

 

“Your speech wasn't so bad,” Carli said later, as
we walked up Bernard after school under an overcast sky—the perfect kind for a lousy day.

“Get real, Carli.”

You were whooping it up to Ronnie's rap just like everybody else.

“I know my speech stank.”

Everybody
knew it stank. I planned to stuff my reeking poster in the garbage as soon as I got home.

“Well… so…it doesn't have to.”

“What do you mean?”

“The election's not until Thursday. You can bring in something tomorrow. You can make a better speech. I bet Mr. Alvarez will let you try again.”

Carli had a point. So I really didn't want to be class president. That didn't mean I had to run a wimpy race.

“Will you help me?”

“Do you have to ask?”

We giggled.

“What's so funny?”

My heart stopped cold.

I would have recognized that voice anywhere. A hard poke on my shoulder from behind pushed
me forward. I caught my balance to keep from falling and turned around.

“I
said
, what's so funny? What's the joke?”

The older girl glared down at me.

“I… I… I wasn't laughing.”

What was my mouth doing?

Why don't I just drop dead right here?

“Yes you was laughing. I heard you. What's the joke? You
better
tell me.”

“I don't remember.”