Rand McNally gave every mother in the fifties and sixties a sure thing, the Map of the Simplified World, color coded, complete. There were few contours: Antarctica had blue cliffs, Nepal gray peaks. One or two cities in each country were spelled out, like Minneapolis, like Guangzhou. Countries came in yellow, pink, purple, orange, tan, and blue, and red ran around them all.
My mother gave me a Map of the Simplified World. But in 1983, that map was wrong.
The right map had only three places: where you’re from, where I am, where we were.
The Geography classroom smelled this morning of socks crammed in the corners. After a few weeks of teaching, I should have known which map roll was which, but I still had to reach above the blackboard for the metal handles of all the real Rand McNally maps to find St. Tim’s copy of the Simplified World.
Yesterday I was in Colorado. But you weren’t.
I looked for you in your sister’s face, and she looked for you in mine. When she picked me up at the airport, she had to wipe the inside of her glasses, spotted with tears. Maybe I was a little taller than you. Maybe my glasses were tortoise shell and yours metal. Your sister thought you were walking toward her.
Your sister’s blond hair doesn’t match your hair, but her eyebrows are your eyebrows. Her eyelashes do that thing yours do, make stars when she smiles. She has your cheekbones. Maybe she is shorter than you. Definitely she doesn’t row. Her hips curve, and her shoulders are round and soft, but she has your laugh, the hands that comb her hair back from her forehead. I thought you were walking toward me.
The footsteps behind me in the classroom were fast, and then two hands came over my face, pushed up my glasses, and covered my eyes. My sight went pink. The fingers were long and cold and thin.
“Hey,” I said, “cut it out.”
“Guess who,” a girl said. Her breath came behind my ear. I twisted, but she pressed my eyes hard, and yellow and red circles filled my eyes.
“Carla, if this is you, you’re in big trouble.” I turned toward her, but she stepped in the opposite direction. As I moved, she moved.
“Oh, Miss Alta,” Carla said. “You’re doing that cute thing again.”
“Carla, stop it.” I stood still. “Take your hands off me.”
“Not until you say you missed me.” She leaned into my back, her breasts brushing. Everything about her was yellow.
“Now.”
“Hey, Taylor,” Alex said from the doorway, “sorry to interrupt. How was your trip?” Carla dropped her hands from my eyes. The room spun. When I got my balance, I saw Alex in the doorway. His hands were on either side of the doorframe, and he leaned his body in the door.
“Alex, hi.”
“So, you okay?” Whatever he thought of what he saw, his face was all concern, his eyes on me, not Carla.
Alex and Carla in front of me, the smell of the classroom where no air moves, a map with more than the places we’ve been, I couldn’t keep the air in me. There was a leak.
“The memorial?” I said. “It was hysterical.” Carla sat down at a desk. Alex took his hands off the doorframe. At St. Timothy’s everything is “fine, thank you.” I was supposed to say, “The trip was fine. Thank you.”
“No, really, think about it. There’s a coffin. There’s friends and family and teachers and Sunday school classmates, and there’s no body. There was nothing in that coffin.” The laughing shook me. Carla’s eyes were the peaks of Nepal, and Alex’s eyes were the white Mojave. I was an ice flow separating. I was blue Antarctica.
Carla and Alex said nothing. The map of bright colors was behind my back, and I wanted to tell them that the world now had only a triangle of places you would never be. I wanted to tell them about the ice separating in me. I wanted them to tell me you were alive.
“Okay, really?” I said. “A good part was I got to ski.” Both of them dropped their shoulders a little.
“Sounds great,” Alex said. “Just thought I’d check in.” He shifted away from the doorframe. Two Second Formers appeared, ready to squeeze by him on either side. His arms raised up, and the students passed underneath with plenty of room.
“Thanks, Alex, I appreciate it,” I said.
Alex’s profile was angles, his nose, sharp cheekbones, spiked hair. With those looks, he could model. He turned and entered the flow of students getting to class.
Carla angled out from the table.
“So sorry to spoil your special moment with Mr. Jeffers,” she said. “Better get going.” Carla used one hand to pull back the curls from her forehead. They fell again.
“Make way, make way,” a Second Former said. He was a ball in a pinball machine, the doorframe a bumper. He crashed into Carla.
“Kyle,” she said, “watch where you’re going, punk.” With both arms she exaggerated shoving him away from her. The shove she gave was soft, tender in the placement of her hands. I hadn’t seen them together in the halls, but from this moment, Carla was playing tough kid and its flipside, protector.
Kyle exaggerated bouncing from bookcase to desk to person to wall to person to desk. The pocket he landed in was his usual desk in the back row. His stained backpack dropped to his feet, and he spread his arms out on the desktop. His head, with this greasy hair sticking up, landed on his arms. He pretended to pass out.
Carla turned to me at the front of the room. “Kids today,” she said with a smile. Kyle had a champion. She walked out the door.
The doorway your parents wanted me to walk though led from the apse behind the sanctuary and altar to the packed congregation. Mark was behind me. The family was behind him. I was to lead the procession to the front row. The door opened to every church pew packed, and everyone turned to the door opening. I took one step, and there was your dark, shiny coffin, with you not in it.
Lilies and roses and tulips were all over the coffin and the altar and the aisles, and I stopped, stepped back. Mark bumped into me. Mark, who got to put his arms around you when you were dating, now put his rower arms around me. Then he bent down to my ear, said, “Êtes-vous prêt?” the formal commands to start a race, “Partez.” The two Ps brushed my ear with his breath. That rest in his arms was enough. I walked into the sanctuary, past the altar, took my place in the family pew, the memorial service started with you not there.
“Miss Alta,” David said, “why do you have that old map out?” His lenses were so big that the map became a globe, two globes on his face. Each student was a globe. Each globe had stopped spinning.
Tommy Underwood said, “We’re leaving South Africa. Good riddance.” He jabbed Peter Frankel on his right.
“Not yet,” David said, “Zippo the Clown hasn’t done his project.” He twisted in his desk to look at the back row. Kyle’s head was still turned and resting on the desk. “Looks like Zippy is dead,” David said. “Good riddance.” David leaned over to get a high-five from Tommy.
“Speaking of which,” I said, “Kyle, how is your South Africa project?” I walked toward the back row. Kyle didn’t chirp or bark or make any sound.
“Kyle?” His mouth was open, and his face was so relaxed that his cheek sunk in.
“Hey, Kyle, Zippy, Zippo,” Jimmy said. “Wake up!” And he threw a crumpled paper ball. From all four rows of seats, white paper balls flew at Kyle. Even Maggie Anderson threw one.
“Enough,” I said. “Everyone stop.” I turned toward the class, raised my hands to my hips.
“Sounds like Zippo is teacher’s pet,” Tommy said.
“Am not,” Kyle said. He sat up in his chair. His hair straight up. Kyle turned like a machine in one direction, “I am re-search-ing ur-a-ni-um de-pos-its in South A-fri-ca.” Then he moved continuously back to start again. “Zip. Ping! Will re-port to-mor-row.” Kyle dropped his head on the desk.
“That’ll work,” I said. “Can anyone tell me what divestiture means?”
Maggie raised her hand straight into the air. Tommy and David sat low in their desks.
“Maggie?”
“It means when you make water go a different way.” Maggie said things louder than other students.
“That’s diverting.” Tommy shook his head.
“That’s close,” I said, “really.” Maggie sat back in her desk. “Stopping where money flows. We already know that in South Africa, the white people do the owning and the black people do the working. And you need tons of money to do that. Where does it come from?”
“The gold mines, the diamond mines, the petroleum,” Kyle said. His head back on the desk, his mouth was half flattened on the desk.
“The dead have spoken,” David said.
“Yes, Kyle, good answer. But I mean American corporations who do business in South Africa.” If I keep talking, maybe the students will leave Kyle alone.
Tommy said, “Why shouldn’t Americans do business there?” Tommy Underwood’s dad was the CEO of American Express. Tommy told us about limousines he’d ridden in Bombay and the rickshaws in the streets. He told us about Swiss chocolate in Geneva and bikinis in Bali. He knew a little about a lot of countries.
Maggie said, “Because they make money from poor people.”
“Coca-Cola, Texaco, General Electric, IBM,” I said. “Here’s how they work. How many of you get a Coke every day?” Every hand went straight up. Except Kyle and Maggie Anderson’s.
David said to Maggie, “You do too drink a soda.”
“I drink Tab,” Maggie said.
“Same difference.”
“So, everyone drinks a Coke every day. How much do you think it costs to make one can of Coke? Sixty-five cents?”
“No way,” Jimmy said.
“Twenty-five cents,” David said.
“A nickel,” Tommy said.
“So, how much does Coca-Cola make off you guys drinking Coke every day?”
“Tons,” Jimmy said.
“Loads,” David said.
“So what if they go to another country, and it costs two cents to make the Coke?”
“I’m moving there,” David said.
“So they make a profit. That’s what they’re supposed to do,” Tommy said.
“What if the white owners use their profits to run white schools but don’t let black kids go to school or vote?” I said.
“That’s not fair,” Maggie said.
“So, if you don’t drink a Coke today, the company won’t get the profit.”
“Yeah, right,” Jimmy said, “like my Coke will make a difference.” He rolled his eyes and made a big circle with his face.
Terence Franklin said, “Kind of like VW in Germany.” He never spoke. The one African American boy, he looked out the window most of the class. In his pressed shirt and tie, he always sat upright, his books arranged on his desk, his notebook open. He turned away from the windowpanes, the morning light flattening his face. “Like Volkswagen.”
“Exactly,” I said, “but no one divested.” The other Second Formers looked at each other. Then they looked at Terence.
“What do you mean?” Tommy asked. “You mean the car?”
“Yup,” Terence said. He looked down at his notebook.
“Want to explain?”
“Nope.” He folded his hands in his lap. There was something sure in Terence, something broad and winding and a part of something big.
“Okay, then,” I said, “Hitler wanted a car for German people, and he made Jews make the cars, and the sales of the cars helped kill the Jews.”
And the words out of my mouth were light blue, the color of the VW van my mother drove. She packed us in, the side door sliding left, and one of my big sisters hauling it right. It never felt shut.
In 1964 my mother put up Goldwater-for-President posters on the doors of the VW van. She spray-painted big gold letters, “RU4 AuH2O?” She believed in everything he did. But no one in our town liked Goldwater. No one believed in the Red Menace. Everyone in our small town knew my mother.
“Hey, Taylor,” a kid called at me when I waited for my mother at the Grand Union grocery store, “Are you H20?” He pointed at me inside the bus. I sat with my knees drawn up, my feet on the vinyl seat.
It was Charlie Delorenza from Catechism. He was in my sister’s class. He never did his homework.
“Hey, Taylor,” Charlie said, “your mother’s square.” I didn’t know what that meant, but he said it like my brother said “cheater.”
Charlie ran away when his mother came out of the grocery store. My mother and sisters came right after.
My mother loved that van with Goldwater on the side. She loved people flipping her off. They saw her coming down the country roads and veered toward our van. They rolled down the window and stuck a hand out, high in the air, the middle finger up. My mother beeped the bus horn. It sounded like a clown. Then she played chicken, steering toward the car. Just in time, she steered back. She laughed. My sisters ducked under the wraparound windows. I waved since I thought people were waving.
And my mother drew red lines around families she said were Democrats. None of us crossed those lines. And she painted the town in colors like pink and yellow and blue. She was the line around everyone.
There were few contours.