Taneesha Never Disparaging (2 page)

I would have screamed, too, if it weren't for the fact that I'd have looked crazy.

I had a sick feeling about that puny, pale hand, all dotted with brown freckles. It was my best friend Carli's hand, a hand that was eleven years
old—just like mine. That hand flapped wildly over Carli's wavy, red hair. With each flap, she wriggled in her seat so much that the metal brace on her left leg clunked against the metal of her desk's leg. But she didn't even notice the clunking. She was too busy flapping.

“
Psssst!
” I whispered, “Carli!
Carli!
” as loudly as I could without drawing Mr. Alvarez's attention. I hoped with everything I had that Carli wouldn't do what I thought she would if I didn't stop her in time.

Desperate, I started going:
“
Nam Myoho Renge Kyo! Nam Myoho Renge Kyo! Nam Myoho Renge Kyo!
...”
like a chanting machine.

I bet my parents would have loved knowing I was doing that—even if it was just silently.

Hmmph. As if I'd sit up in class chanting out loud.

But maybe I should have. Because
my
way didn't work.

Next thing I knew, I heard Carli saying, “I nominate Taneesha Bey-Ross for president!” Pudgy, caramel-brown Kendra Adams seconded the nomination. And that was that.

Once the whole class saw me get nominated, I
was too embarrassed to say I wouldn't run.

Don't worry. You won' t win anyway. Losers never do.

For once, I actually hoped Evella was right. She's my evil twin—totally imaginary but a major butt-pain anyway. I nicknamed her Evella a while back. Anyway, I hoped she was right—not about me being a loser, of course, but about me not winning. I didn't want to be class president. It was hard enough just being me.

Trapped in my seat, all I could do was tangle my fingers in the tip of one of my locks. And cook up an escape plan.

CHAPTER 2

A
fter school, in the cloudy daylight, I walked up Bernard Avenue with Carli, who was just a little shorter and meatier than me. We had to walk because we weren't eligible to ride a school bus since our parents had signed us up to go to Hunter even though both of us lived closer to other schools. We were bundled in our puffy winter coats—mine was the silvery-purple one I'd gotten in November when, thanks to global warming, the weather had
just
started getting cooler. Carli's coat was pink. We both had on
scarves, gloves, and boots. I wore earmuffs and an extra pair of socks. I hate Jack Frost nipping at my nose so I don't take chances.

I couldn't wait to make it to Rosebush Road—a street lined on both sides with mini-mansions that this rich guy named John D. Rockefeller built in the 1900s. Walking, I remembered Mama saying our red-brick house—the tiniest one on Rosebush—was just the right size for our family.

Carli and I walked on packed, dirty, days-old snow that hid parts of milk cartons, broken glass bottles, and pieces of crumpled McDonald's french-fry holders. We passed houses—some rickety or boarded up, others in okay shape, some looking good. Covered in snow, even the worst ones looked better than usual. Before we'd get to my house, we'd walk ten blocks and cross Aristotle Avenue—U.S. Route 20, just a few miles south of Lake Erie.

It's uphill from Bernard to Rosebush. But you don't really feel it so much when you're walking, only when you're riding a bike and pedaling against gravity—a bike like the beautiful magenta one I'd gotten over the summer, when it was warm and sunny, and I was just plain old
Taneesha, not anybody's candidate.

While I mentally hammered out the details of my I'm-not-running-for-any-dang-thing plan, I looked at all the traffic crossing Aristotle two blocks ahead of us. Aristotle, a main roadway, was in the middle of a major upgrade that included a wider street and new sidewalks, street signs, and bus shelters. I remembered my father saying Aristotle ran east and west from Massachusetts to Oregon.

“Taneesha,” Carli said, interrupting my thought-flow, “for your campaign, I was thinking I could ask my aunt Bridgid to make some of her candy. It's always a big hit at the bazaars they have at her church. We could pass it out with ‘Taneesha's the Sweetest!' buttons. What do you think?”

Why, I wondered, was Carli asking for my opinion
now
? It was a little late for that, wasn't it? Since she'd already
up and nominated me.

“Candy sounds nice.”

You are such a wimp.

Just what I needed—Evella's expert opinion.

“Watch it, shrimp!”

I looked up. Standing right in the middle of
the sidewalk—not on one side or the other, which would have been the courteous,
human
thing to do—stood an ogre.

Her face was like a broad, brown crayon with eyes. A swarm of poisonous spikes, skinny extension braids, poked from underneath her knitted skullcap. It was blood red, just like her bulging jacket—a jacket that bulked up a body that seemed more than big enough already. Black backpack straps cut into the red of her jacket. Dark blue slacks clung to her thick legs. And, like bulletproof armor, long, wide army boots covered the two tanks that almost passed for feet.

“I'm talking to
you
. And you,
too
, white girl.”

Do you think she needed to say it twice?

Like the Red Sea in that cartoon movie,
The Prince of Egypt,
Carli parted to one side and I swerved to the other.

We went back to walking up Bernard—slower than I wanted to, considering how the Beasty One had just barked at us. But I had to creep along so Carli could keep up since she had that metal brace on her left leg and limped a little.

Neither of us talked about what had just happened. Probably, like me, Carli wanted to be out
of that girl's hearing range.

“Some people,” she whispered when we made it to the corner of Aristotle and Bernard.

“Yeah,” I said, with absolutely no feeling. “Some people.”

I wasn't really thinking about the girl anymore. I'd gone back to tinkering with my I'm-not-running plan. I hadn't been able to really focus on it in school because there were too many distractions—math, science, lunch, all that stuff. But now the plan was taking shape—and yanking my parents' strings was a big part of it.

Had I known better, instead of wasting all my brain cells on the nomination, which was nothing compared to what was coming, I would have been thinking up ways to get the heck out of Dodge before that big brown ogre—Shrek untamed—landed on me.

“She's probably from Legacy,” Carli said.

“Hunh?”

“That girl. She's probably from Legacy Middle School. You know how teenagers always think they're all that.”

“Oh. Yeah. Right.”

“Why so quiet?”

Carli and I had just crossed over to the south side of Aristotle and I couldn't bring myself to tell her what I was really thinking: “Girl, are you
nuts
?! My life is careening down Disaster Street because you nominated me!”

“Oh. No reason. Just thinking.” I wasn't totally lying. I didn't have time for chit-chat. I needed to put the final touches on my plan to reverse the damage Carli had done. “I'm just ready to get home, that's all.”

 

“Nam Myoho Renge Kyo. Nam Myoho Renge Kyo. Nam Myoho Renge Kyo.”

At the start of dinner, Mama, Daddy, and I finished doing Sansho together, chanting three times. We sat at our oak kitchen table with four yellow walls around us.

I had changed into a purple sweatsuit and the smell of stewed tomatoes, onions, garlic, and veggies had me ready to eat. Wiggling my toes, I noticed that the pot of pinto bean soup simmering on the stove warmed every part of our small kitchen including the wooden floor underneath my lavender bunny slippers.

“Taneesha, chant clearly,” Mama said. Dark
brown like Daddy and I, and curvier than either of us, she had a short, salt-n-pepper afro and wore a beige sweater. Her favorite pastime? Nagging me. “You were mumbling, sweetie,” she said. “When you chant,
enunciate
. Each word has a meaning.”

Whatever.

I didn't even say anything to that. Mama mentioning chanting reminded me that I was more than a little irked about the fact that Nam Myoho Renge Kyo failed me big time in school that day. I mean, I'd poured my guts into chanting not to be nominated and where'd that gotten me?

Anyway, even without chanting, I'd thunk up an excellent plan on the way home. I held back before I rolled it out, though.

I started slurping up soup, waiting for the perfect moment. If I worked it just right, I could get my parents to give me what I needed.

I looked from Mama to Daddy and took another slurp. Pinto beans and lots of carrots, zucchini, yellow squash, and chunks of tomatoes and onions. The weather outside made soup perfect for dinner. We had salad too, with romaine lettuce. I'd sliced the cucumbers and tomatoes and radishes for it.

“Marsha laid off two nurses today,” Mama
said. “Beverly and Drew.”

“Well, you saw it coming, didn't you?” Daddy, the lanky man that everybody says I get my skinniness from, had a micro 'fro, not nearly as grey as Mama's, and was still in a white business shirt. He'd lost his tie, though. “You said last week somebody was up next,” he said.

“Yeah. But I guess I hoped I was wrong. Two people, though. I didn't see
that
coming.”

They kept talking like I wasn't there. That was okay; I needed time to practice my lines in my head.

“But if you're down two nurses, that's going to put a lot of pressure on you.”

“Who're you telling?”

Daddy looked at Mama. “Things will pick up, honey.” He reached across the table and put his hand on top of hers. “Thanks for hanging with me, Alima. Business has just been slow but it won't stay this way. I promise. Then you won't have to work all these hours.”

Mama smiled at him. Her eyes looked into his and her face got deep red. “More chanting, baby,” she said.

“Always.”

That was good. They were getting all loveydovey.
In a good mood—the perfect mood to say “Yes” to anything the one and only daughter they'd prayed for years and years to have asked them to do.

“Oh, Taneesha—” Mama said, without taking her eyes off Daddy, “before I forget, we're going to church this Sunday.”

“Okay,” I said, even though I knew she was so all into Daddy's eyes that she probably didn't hear me.

I slurped more soup and thought about Granddaddy's church, the church Mama and I went to, where people called Granddaddy “Elder” Ross instead of “Mr.” Daddy hardly ever came with us on those Sundays because he went to Buddhist men's meetings instead.

At church, my head always wound up knocking against Mama's arm because I'd nod off to sleep. No matter how hard I tried, I couldn't stay awake the whole time.

I jabbed my fork into my salad, speared lettuce, tomato, and cucumber on it, and shoved it all into my mouth. I love ranch dressing.

Chewing, I thought about how Mama took me to Granddaddy's church so I could “learn my roots”
and I remembered how the whole thing got started.

I was maybe six or seven at the time. Wearing a blue jean jumpsuit, I'd had been laying stomachdown on the living room carpet at Big Mama and Granddaddy's house watching
That's So Raven
on cable. (We don't have cable at home so it's a perk of going to my grandparents'.) Anyway, Granddaddy and my mother were sitting on the other side of the living room from me. Big Mama was in the kitchen, cooking.

Deep brown and slim with yellowish-grey, fuzzy hair, Granddaddy sat in his easy chair wearing his usual: silver-wire-rimmed glasses, light brown slacks, a whitish shirt, brown suspenders, and black slippers. His same humungous Bible with gold letters stamped on its black leather cover lay open on his lap.

Mama sat across from him, barefoot, on the plastic-wrapped, white couch. She had on an orange and yellow tie-dyed African dress with no sleeves.

“Alima,” Granddaddy had said, real even, “I don't care what you do or don't believe. Taneesha needs to know how we do.”

When I heard my name, I kept still, tuned up
my ears, glued my eyes to the TV—and pretended I wasn't eavesdropping.

“I'm not going to be around forever. It's just like the sun. It's high in the sky at noon, but come around four o'clock, it starts to set. There isn't anything we can do about that.”

At that, I couldn't help it, I turned and looked at my mother. She seemed ready to speak. But then, it was like she changed her mind.

“That child needs to learn her roots,” Granddaddy said.

Mama stayed quiet, like she was thinking hard.

I went back to staring at the TV but I couldn't even really see it. I couldn't hear it either. I wished I hadn't heard what Granddaddy had just said about the sun setting and everything. I wished he hadn't said it, but I knew he had.

Ever since that day, Mama and I've been going to church. But only once a month, not every Sunday the way some people do.

I speared another forkful of salad and thought about one time when I was moaning about going to church and Mama said, “Taneesha, it's good for you to learn what other people believe. It takes all kinds of people to make world peace. Not everybody's
going to be Buddhist.”

I laughed a little, real dry, just thinking about that one.

Mama and Daddy looked at me for a second, then went back to their ogling.

Not everybody's going to be Buddhist? Who had Mama been kidding? Mostly
nobody's
Buddhist. How could I not know that little fact when everybody else's religion is advertised all over the place—even on money?