Chapter 17: The Outside World

17. The Outside World

At breakfast I was disappointed when I scanned the cafeteria and didn’t see Phyla any where, and then startled when Michele plopped her tray down at my otherwise empty table. Her expression didn’t seem to indicae any improvement in her attitude, but this time she was glaring right at me.

I gave an exaggerated eyebrow raise to ask.

She answered in a soft voice, “People already calling you a brownie lover after all the noise the two ‘a you was making in the laundry room last night. So don’t mind me.”

“Okay, I won’t,” I answered, turning my attention back to my pancakes.

“This don’t mean I’m trying to be your friend or nuttin’.” She stabbed her eggs and ate a big mouthful.

“Okay.” I took an equally big bite of my pancake and chewed it slowly, trying to display my disinterest in the whole conversation. “So why?”

“’Cause you’re white, just like everyone else in this damn place, this prison that tries to masquerade as a school. You don’t think I seen you talking to Erika and her friends? And at least they’re totally up-front about it. I know that they’re full of racist hatred. But then there’s all the rest of the people ‘round here. Even some of the teachers. They look at me and you can see in their eyes - their eyes are sayin’ ‘what the hell are you doing in this place?’ and the truth is I never fucking asked to be here.”

It was the most that she had ever said to me, but it was hardly like it was a welcome speech. In the silence that followed I knew that I had to say something, so I asked, “Which teachers?”

“Mr. Perkins for one. He never says anything, but it’s in the way he looks at me - like maybe he’s never seen a black girl before, like maybe he don’t think I have any business being here. Or maybe I it’s the way he doesn’t look at me - the way his eyes dart right past me, like I’m not even there. And you notice that he never calls on me? I am the one who’s actually read the books, maybe the only one in the class, but he sure as hell never asks me a thing. It’s like I don’t exist.”

I digested all that for a while. I hadn’t really noticed any of those things about Perkins, but then I was always too busy hoping that he wouldn’t call on me and find out that I wasn’t anywhere near where I should have been in my reading. But then I had to ask, “And what about Ms. Dickinson. She’s always teaching us about slavery and all. You think she’s doing that to try to get to you?”

She paused for a moment. “No. Ms. Dickinson, she’s alright. I’m not going say anything against her, or what she’s teaching. But you ever notice how much of it isn’t in our text book?”

I shook my head. I hadn’t really been reading the book. I mean it was just a stupid history book, not like it had a story or anything. But I had a feeling that in this case I would look more stupid if I admitted that I hadn’t been reading the text book. It was one of those situations where a re-direct seemed like the best course of action.

I ate another bite of pancake. “Okay,” I said finally, not so much in agreement, but just as something that you say when you don’t know what to say. We both ate a little bit more in silence before I had to ask, “So why did you sit down here? Just to beat me up about how I was born?”

“No. Phyla wanted me to give you a message, and she don’t want no one to think you do are being weird by getting to be such close friends, after all the laughing in the laundry room last night.” She paused again, as if thinking of something else. “You know, people think that Phyla and me are supposed to be good friends, just ‘cause we’re the two with the brown skin in this shit-hole, but we’re more different from each other than any other two people here.”

“Maybe I’m not people. I know that Phyla likes me, and I know you don’t, so I don’t think you’re nothin’ alike. Anyway, what’s the message?”

She took the time to eat two more whole bites of food, trying to get under my skin a little bit by dragging it out. “She says to meet her in the book room, just for a minute or two, after therapy and before your first class.”

“Okay. Thanks.” I let my tone soften because I really was thankful for the message.

Michele just shrugged, and we finished eating in silence. She finished first and took her tray to the conveyor ahead of me. I watched her from the corner of my eye and noticed Erika, Lindsey and Rebecca together at another table scowling at me. Well, Erika and Lindsey were. Rebecca looked embarrassed about the part she was supposed to be playing.

After therapy I rushed down to the book room, wanting to see Phyla and also knowing that we wouldn’t have but a couple of minutes if I was going to avoid being late for history class. She was waiting for me, around the corner from the door-less doorway.

I moved in to kiss her, but she held a finger to her lips and shook her head. “Listen. I have a plan. We’re going to spend our naptime together. I got it worked out, and I just need you to go straight back to your room after lunch. Leave the door ajar. Okay?”

I nodded.

Glancing out the doorway to check the hall, she lurched in and gave me a quick peck on the lips, which was enough to make me smile. And then she was gone.

In American history we were talking about Abraham Lincoln’s candidacy for president. Of course I found myself rooting for him, as if I had money on him in a horse race or something. Of course, I was outraged about the Kansas-Nebraska act which let slavery expand even though it seemed like everyone should have known by 1854 that it was a really evil thing. I wondered again how evil could thrive when there were so many good people in the world. I thought maybe I would try to read the history book that night to see how much of all of this was in there, or if Dickinson was going all impromptu on all this stuff.

When we got to English class Ms. Slanick was waiting at the front of the classroom. She told us the Mr. Perkins was absent, and since they didn’t really do substitute teachers at Holshue House, for “security reasons,” we were going to do something different. The class, accompanied by Ms. Slanick, Jeremy and the Edgar, the security guard who meandered around the grounds most days, were going outside for fitness exposure.

This was supposed to be roughly equivalent to gym class, without the gym clothes. Slanick herded our whole English class bumping into each other, hrough the common area and out the side door which was being held open by Jeremy. His leer passed over each of us as we squeezed past him and out onto the old mansion’s veranda. Although it was not yet eleven in the morning the day was already stifling with heat and humidity, and there was no shade in the freshly mowed grassy area where the twelve us now stood, blinking against the brightness bright sunlight.

Edgar, in his grey security guard uniform stood watching, his fat gut straining at the bottom buttons of his uniform shirt. He was the only staff member at Holshue House to carry gun, holstered on his belt along with a baton and a pouch that probably held mace. His eyes were bloodshot and there was that odor of alcohol about him that seeped out of every pore, as though he had pickled himself somewhere along the way.

The late-morning sun gave a whiteness to everything, the grass, the sky, the trees that lined the chain-link fence. Somewhere far off was the sound of farm equipment being used and closer the subtle buzz of insects flitting though the stubbly green-brown grass. The smell was white and hot, with a tinge of something having been recently mowed. My nose caught just the faintest trace of something floral, something genuinely floral, not like perfume or deodorant, but there were no flowers in site. It was the colorless outside of a prison lawn, thistles and dandelions fighting for survival stubs of grass, their flowers shredded by the tractor I had seen the day before.

We began with “warm-ups” which started with windmills, where you stand with your legs apart and touch your right hand to left toe and then after standing up do the same with your left hand and your right toe. Those were followed by jumping jacks, which included a lot of flopping boobs, as well as a lot grumbling about the heat. Ms. Slanick called out the instructions, while the two men stood by and watched us, grinning. Judy came out on the porch as an unofficial observer, probably just curious about the unusual sight of bunch of misfit delinquents trying to exercise, as if any of us could have participated in cheerleading or any team sports. Then I remembered that I had played soccer until I was about ten.

From somewhere a big mesh bag of basketballs appeared and we had to stand I a circle, passing them to each other. That was followed by a game of kickball which only lasted about an inning. By this time we had all sweated ourselves to a sticky wet sheen, dark spots in our armpits. The final exercise was a run out around the big sycamore that sat out near the chain-link fence and back. It was out by the fence that I saw the river. It curved into the grounds, the chain link fence spanning its entrance point further up and then again its exit near the sycamore tree. It was the nameless river that I had seen on my arrival at Holshue House, and now I knew that it came onto the grounds, its muddy water trickling between banks of kudzu vine.

At the end of our run, which was probably about a quarter of a mile total, we poured back into the coolness of the Holshue House’s common room to unanimously collapse on our backs on the floor, our chests heaving. Slancik walked among us, her arms folded across her chest, looking enormously pleased with herself for having given us all suitable healthy exercise, or perhaps enjoying our discomfort.

For a little while the ceiling was spinning, but as the coolness of the tile floor seeped up into wet back that settled down. That was when I looked to one side and found myself lying next to Phyla, our first contact since the whole excursion had begun. She seemed barely phased by any of it, and looking as quiet and composed as always, she winked at me and mouthed the words “Still on.” I just smiled and felt my weight relax into the floor, into the heavy breathing of the house. In the floor I could feel the ghosts. And their pain.