This time when Grandpa hobbles his side-to-side walk into the office Harold is with him, which means Grandpa is going to shake his head and I’m going to get a practice dad talk. And I wish Harold would just save it for his own kid because I didn’t do anything wrong.
Grandpa’s mad. He grabs my arm hard and squeezes until I can feel my heart beat in his hand. “What were you thinking?”
I’m not used to seeing Grandpa mad, and it looks all wrong on him.
“Let go,” I say and yank my arm away. I’ve never been mad at Grandpa before either, and that feels all wrong too, but he was squeezing my arm and glaring at me like I was in big trouble and he never even asked me what happened.
“You have some explaining to do,” he says.
“Whatever,” I mumble.
That makes him glare harder, so I pull the brim of my hat down and he says, “Not whatever.”
Harold is shaking hands with Ms. Gloria and Mr. Danny and if they didn’t already know better, everyone would think he’s my dad because my family’s so messed up and I don’t look like anyone or act like anyone I know and everyone just shakes their heads and wishes I belonged to someone else.
Principal Wheeler opens her office door. “Please come in,” she says. “We only have a few minutes before the teachers need to get back to their classrooms.”
Then everyone’s walking past me and into her office. Ms. Gloria, Ms. Meg, Mr. Danny, Grandpa, and Harold. They’ll all say how frustrated they are with me and come up with some plan as brilliant as a baseball diamond drawn out on a piece of paper. This time I scoot to the chair closest to Principal Wheeler’s door so I can press my ear up and try to hear what crap they’re saying about me, and if Grandpa’s finishing his sentences, because it’s afternoon and I’m making him stressed and his memory might get tired. And I can’t have anyone looking at him long and wondering if he’s unfit to raise a girl like me. Because he’s not.
“Robinson,” Ms. Burg huffs and motions for me to move away from the door, but I stare at her like no way am I moving just because she told me to, and she looks the other way and shakes her head too.
It’s hard to catch everything, but I can hear Grandpa saying he’s sorry over and over. And I don’t know if it’s because he’s really that sorry or if he forgets he already said it. And it’s not even him who should be sorry. Alex Carter should be in there saying sorry over and over for being so mean to kids half his size. And calling me Robin and motherless, then acting all innocent.
I can hear Mr. Danny’s tone through the door, which is mad and annoyed, probably because both times I fought Alex Carter have been when he was in charge of the yard, so it makes him look pretty bad. But no one could’ve stopped me, so he shouldn’t even really feel that bad either.
And I hear Ms. Gloria saying, “We need to hold on to her. I’m worried. It has to be a group effort.”
And I hear Ms. Meg saying, “A suspension site would be horrible for Robinson right now.” And all this other stuff about hearings and legal representation. And it’s starting to seem pretty serious. I want to be suspended, but suspended to Grandpa’s garage to figure out what’s wrong with all the cars, and suspended to our backyard to help Grandpa split wood and boil sap. I don’t know what a suspension site is, but it sounds bad.
I slide my Dodgers hat back around over my face and press my ear closer to the door.
Harold is asking, “If Charlie signs this, what exactly is he agreeing to?” And Ms. Gloria’s talking about how she pulls me out on Wednesdays for counseling already and something else I can’t hear. And something about anger, and my goals, and talking.
And then it’s kind of quiet and I picture them all shaking their heads. Grandpa says he’s sorry again and Harold says thank you to everyone. And I quickly move back to the other chair so it doesn’t seem like I was spying.
“Robinson, please come in here.” It’s Principal Wheeler’s voice. When I walk in, Grandpa can hardly look at me, which is fine because I still have my hat pulled down far.
“Turn that hat around.” Ms. Gloria means business. She’ll wait me out, so I just do, but I make a big huff about it because I like my hat the way I like it.
“We are all really worried about you, Robbie,” she says. I hate that crap. No one needs to worry about me but myself. “Your behavior is unacceptable. It’s troubling, we don’t like it, and it can’t happen anymore.” Ms. Gloria is using her no-nonsense voice. “We’re going to be watching you like a hawk and trying to get to the bottom of this. Ms. Meg’s going to be watching, Mr. Danny is, your grandpa will be too, and you know I’ll be watching you.”
“Me too, Robbie.” Harold pats my shoulder. “I’ve got my eye on you too.”
He’s trying to be all practice dad. And I want to tell everyone that the only one who needs to be watching me is Grandpa because I’m his and no one else’s.
“So I’m not going to be suspended?”
“No,” Principal Wheeler answers.
They’re just going to make my life here crappier by being up in my business.
“The first thing you’ll do is figure out a way to apologize to Alex. Consider it your weekend homework,” Ms. Gloria tells me.
“You can’t be serious—”
“Very serious, Robbie. Your actions were very serious and now we are all very serious.”
“Are you going to make him apologize to Derek?”
Then Grandpa reaches across the table and grabs my arm again, but not hard. Like he’s just holding me still for a minute. “You’ll apologize.” He takes a deep breath. “And you’ll do what . . .” And I can see Grandpa’s searching for his words and I hate the look on his face when that happens, like he’s wandered off and gotten lost and can’t find his way back to what he was saying.
“. . . what Ms. Gloria says,” I finish. “I’ll do what Ms. Gloria says.” And it kills me to say that because I don’t want to do what Ms. Gloria says, but it kills me more to leave Grandpa hanging in the middle of his sentence with everyone watching.
Ms. Gloria starts explaining about how I’m still going to be seeing her but with a small group of other kids, and I want to yell that there’s no way I’m doing that but Grandpa’s hand is there holding me still so I remember some stats until Ms. Gloria is done talking and Harold is shaking everyone’s hand again.
“Let’s go,” Grandpa says. He keeps holding my arm as we walk out of the school like I might run if he lets go. And even though running fast and hard across the yard right now would make me feel better, I’d never run from Grandpa.
Harold is walking a half step ahead of us, and it’s not until then that I realize they must have closed the garage because of me, and now there are going to be so many cars to catch up on. At least I can help with that.
That’s when I hear the clicky heels approaching down the sidewalk. “It’s Alex’s mom,” I whisper to Harold, and I pull my hat back around to cover my face.
“Mrs. Carter?” Harold reaches out for a handshake, but she doesn’t even look at Harold, she looks straight under the brim of my Dodgers hat with those grooves carving deep across her forehead.
“I’m Haro—” he tries, but she cuts him off quick.
“I thought I told you to keep your hands off Alex.”
Grandpa gives my arm a squeeze. “What do you say, Robbie?”
“Sorry,” I mutter. “He was bullying my friend, and I couldn’t let that happen.”
“Don’t put this on him,” she spurts. “He has enough to deal with. Next time you go near him I will be pressing charges.” She clicks off into the school and down the hall toward the nurse’s office, where I’m sure Alex is playing his innocent-pretty-boy routine.
“What’s pressing charges?” I ask.
“Lawyers. Lawyers and big trouble,” Harold explains.
And that shuts me up fast because I don’t need other people’s moms and teachers and definitely not lawyers sticking their noses in our business.
“You’ve really done it this time,” Grandpa mumbles and nudges me down the street.
Harold shakes Grandpa’s hand and tells me that we have a big talk coming. Then he turns toward the garage and Grandpa points the other way down the street toward home.
“We’re not going to the garage?” I ask. But he doesn’t even answer me or tell me one crap thing about Jackie Robinson and how hard it was for him to stay calm when everyone was acting terrible. He just keeps holding my arm and walking as fast as his side-to-side legs can go.
“I can help with all the extra cars from today—”
“That’s enough, Robbie,” Grandpa cuts me off, and keeps on walking.
When we get home and go up the steps Grandpa tries two keys that don’t fit, the one for the garage and the one for the truck. I don’t help him or say a word because I’m so mad we’re not at the garage sealing transmissions or replacing brake pads.
When the right key finally slides in, Grandpa goes straight to his office, where the mail is piled up, brings out a piece of paper and pen, and tells me to sit at the kitchen table.
“Write your apology to that boy.”
“Alex? No way.” I shove the paper away. But Grandpa’s not even listening because he’s mad at me just like I’m mad at him.
The door slams and Grandpa’s gone out in the yard. I can see him through the kitchen window, and I can’t believe he’s collecting sap in the jugs without me. And he’s putting the big pieces of wood on the stump chopping block by himself and swinging the ax up high and down hard to split them through the middle, and he does each piece in one fast swing. The two halves just break apart, easy as that.
I crumple the blank paper and cross my arms over my chest. But I can hear each hard thwack of the ax and each “Ha!” that Grandpa grunts when he makes contact, and every one makes me grit my teeth harder because I want to check how many gallons we got and I want to throw the split pieces on the woodpile.
And before I know it, dark is creeping up outside and I can’t hear him thwacking anymore. I’m looking out the window and I can’t see him at the chopping block or the sap buckets. I stand up and peer around to the woodpile, but he’s not there stacking either. All the split wood is just lying around the stump where it fell.
I’m shoving my feet in my boots and not even zipping my jacket because something feels wrong. Grandpa never gets mad and he never leaves chopped wood scattered, and a bad feeling is sitting hard in my stomach.
I swing open the door and yell, “Grandpa!” I can hear my voice echo off the sky through the woods. I run past the stump chopping block and our gallons of sap packed in the snow, following Grandpa’s side-to-side footprints right past the metal hanging buckets and dripping sap and into the woods. “Grandpa!” My breath is hanging in the dark, cold air. “Grandpa!”
I’m wondering if he decided to go on our favorite hike on the Appalachian Trail that runs behind our yard and up to the hiker shelter, where we stop to eat lunch on summer weekends. But he wouldn’t go without me. And he wouldn’t go at night or in the winter. Without the first aid kit and without a headlamp.
My heart is beating fast because maybe he forgot it was winter. Or maybe he forgot where the trail goes. Or maybe he’s that mad at me, and he’s running away.
I hear a crunch of snow and I trudge after it, following his prints farther into the woods. “Grandpa!”
And then he’s calling back out to me. “Robbie?” With that voice full of gravel. “Here!”
And he’s just standing there, leaning against the trunk of a tree, and his eyes are big like when we catch a deer in the headlights of the truck. Like he’s scared.
“Grandpa?”
“I guess I just got a little turned around,” he says. “I thought we tapped some more maples back here, no?”
“No, Grandpa.” I walk up to him slow like he really is a deer who might scare off easy and forever if I’m not careful. I take the ax from him and hold it head down and with two hands like he taught me. “Follow me,” I say and make him hold on to my shoulder as we tramp back through the woods toward the house until we get to the yard.
I can’t let the chopped wood stay all scattered in the snow. And seeing it like that makes me wish I could take it all back again. Like Grandpa could pull the ax out of those pieces he split, and put them back together, and I could pull back my shove from Alex’s shoulders and run back into the room with Ms. Gloria and just talk about my feelings because if I had then I wouldn’t have weighed down Grandpa’s engine like that, I wouldn’t have made his memory tired, and he wouldn’t have wandered off without me.
Grandpa and I pick up the pieces and stack them with the rest, and I promise myself for real this time, I’ll be more like Jackie Robinson.