Annamae had two main friends: Carla and Renu.
Carla had started as a problem. In first grade, the first time Annamae had gone to the bathroom all by herself, she’d been sitting on the toilet inside a stall when someone came into the bathroom and a girl started saying, “Who’s in here? Who’s in here?” and pushing the doors open one by one. When she got to Annamae’s stall, Annamae had been relieved that the door stayed closed. But a moment later, the girl stuck her head under the door and there she was, lying on her stomach and looking up at Annamae, saying, “What’s your name? Why you don’t answer me?”
Annamae, whose feet didn’t reach the ground, was swinging her legs back and forth a little bit, and her shoe touched the girl’s nose.
“You kicked me!” said the girl.
“Sorry,” whispered Annamae. Her heart was beating fast. Her underpants were striped white and mint green.
Then the door to the bathroom opened and a teacher’s voice said, “Carla Watkins, what are you doing? Carla, get up off the ground,” and the face withdrew and pretty soon the bathroom was empty and quiet, except for a fly that was buzzing against the window.
Carla was in a different class, but at recess Annamae saw her again, standing on the rubber jiggly bridge of the climbing structure. She was shaking it and shouting to some other kids, “Try to cross! Come on, try to get across!” Annamae went over to her and said in a good strong voice, “My name is Annamae.”
Carla turned. “Annamae!” She repeated her name like it was astounding. “Can I touch your hair?”
Annamae’s mother had given her braids that morning.
Carla’s touch was unexpectedly gentle. As if Annamae’s head was a baby rabbit.
Renu had started as a responsibility. A month into second grade, the teacher stood at the front of the room with a new girl in a babyish blue dress with a white collar and said, “Who would like to be Renu’s new-school buddy?” Annamae was one of several girls who shot up their arms. She was happy when the teacher picked her, and then a moment later, realizing this meant she would have to really do it, she felt a muddle of confused regret.
It turned out only Renu’s dress was babyish, not her way of looking you in the eye when she spoke or listened to you speak, and not her handwriting, which was so beautiful, it gave Annamae a pang. She had moved from Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, which, she explained, was nicknamed “Steel City,” and she gave Annamae a souvenir piece of steel in a little red box. So Annamae gave Renu her best pencil, which was blue at one end and red at the other, and then she was sorry, because she loved that pencil. But the next day, Renu came wearing jeans and a velvet headband, and at lunch they traded: Renu’s Nice Time biscuits for Annamae’s Fig Newtons. Annamae confided that she liked Renu’s handwriting, and Renu confided, “I’m mature for my age.”
In third grade, the three of them got put into the same class. They knew they had become a real trio when Ms. Zmijewski wouldn’t let them have desks near one another. Sometimes after school they all got picked up by Carla’s babysitter, sometimes by Renu’s grandparents, sometimes by Nobomi or Annamae’s mother. On Thursdays after school, all three of them got signed up for Art Explorers, where they made potato prints, flip-books, cardboard tube skylines, and papier-mâché mythical beasts. On Valentine’s Day Annamae gave Carla and Renu stained-glass cookies she’d made with Nana by shaping dough into the outline of a heart and baking them with crushed hard candies melted in the middle. “You hang them in the window.” She showed them the loop of yarn she and Nana had tied through a hole in each cookie after it had cooled.
“You can’t eat it?” Carla touched her tongue to a piece of candy glass.
“Well, you can …”
Carla bit in.
Renu, curling her fingers in a loose fist near her mouth, giggled. “Oh Carla!”
Doing her best Cookie Monster and spraying bits of crumb, Carla rumbled, “Me like!”