Mom had painted the beadboard ceiling of the porch a pale blue to look like the sky. Lying on the porch swing, I surveyed her world without clouds. Nearby, a few old quilts hung on a rack for cooler evenings and brisk mornings when Mom and Dad did their checking in with one another. That’s what they called it when they had their private chats on the porch. They hadn’t been checking in with each other for some time.
Back and forth, back and forth, the swing swayed. Five more minutes at the candy shop. Maybe I shouldn’t have asked for candy. Did I walk too fast? If I had held his hand, then maybe it would have been me and I wouldn’t be here today.
Or maybe, worst of all, maybe it happened because there were days I wished Joel had never been born. I stopped rocking and sat up, nausea overcoming me.
Guilt is even worse than fear. Guilt gnaws and makes me wonder if I have the flu. But I knew I couldn’t take medicine or hug the toilet and have my mother massage my head with a cool wet rag. I was in this by myself.
If one bad thing can happen, I knew we had to be careful. Dad left every day for a few hours, running somewhere all by himself no matter the weather. Was he safe? I didn’t like the boys Matt was hanging around with. Would he get hurt? And when Mom got in the car, I wanted to go with her in case something happened. I didn’t want to be left alone.
Rita ran up the front steps holding an envelope I immediately recognized to be the annual school letter. I usually counted down the days until school ended each spring and then ironically the days until it began each fall. Then I begged for a new outfit and all new school supplies and couldn’t wait to find out which teacher I had. Not this year.
“I got Mrs. Clevenger!” Rita said, waving the envelope proudly. “Who do you have?”
I shrugged. “I don’t think Mom’s gotten the mail.”
“I’ll get it,” she announced as she ran back down the front walk and opened our mailbox. I knew I had Clevenger or Simpson. More important to me was whether Rita was in my class. “Can I open it?” she called out, waving the envelope like a banner, her excitement so unfamiliar. This was as enthusiastic as Rita got, her smile surrounded by her new haircut, which looked like someone had stuck a bowl on her head and cut around it.
She didn’t even give it to me; she just ripped it open in our front yard. I think that might be illegal. “Clevenger!” she called out. “We’re in the same class!” She ran back up the front walk and sat down beside me on the swing. “See, here’s where it says it. Clevenger,” she said, pointing at the name as if I needed proof.
“Okay.” I smiled slightly. At least she was excited.
“Aren’t you glad?” she asked. “We’re in the same class. Just like in first grade!”
“I’m just not quite ready for school,” I tried to explain.
“I don’t like it when summer ends either,” she sympathized.
Rita folded the letter, put it back in its envelope, and handed it to me. I felt like she wanted to ask a question, but she didn’t know what it was; and I wanted to help her out, but I didn’t know the question and probably not the answer either.
Four days before the dreaded first day, Mom went up and down the grocery aisles of Food Mart and I followed in her shadow. Her hollowed eyes seemed too full to hold more sadness. She mechanically pushed the grocery cart past rows and rows of food, up and down the aisles, her heels clicking on the gray linoleum. I looked for a good time to tell her what was bothering me, but I never found it. When we got in the checkout line, Mom’s grim stare suddenly turned to grief, and I looked around to figure out what had happened or who or what she’d seen.
“I don’t need this stuff,” she whispered to me, biting back the tears, her hands outstretched over the groceries, her fingers holding air and quivering. She looked shocked. “I was just shopping like usual. That’s all. I didn’t think,” she said, as if trying to convince me. Mom was fragile. She was falling apart, and I didn’t know how to help her.
Mom backed out of the line, then pushed her cart behind a rack of bread, hidden, as if unsure where to go next. She grew flustered, blushing as she studied the cart’s contents.
“I’ll have to put these things back,” she said. “I can’t believe I did that.” Mom began yanking out specific items and stacking them in the place where Joel used to sit in the front of the cart: Cap’n Crunch with Crunch Berries, a bag of orange circus peanuts, a new bottle of orange shampoo, the Bugle chips he liked to stick on his fingers. “We don’t need these things,” she whispered. The word anymore hung unspoken as she blinked back her tears.
There was no more talk as we hastily went down and up the aisles, returning the items made unnecessary by Joel’s absence. I kept my head down but looked out the corners of my eyes to see if anyone thought it strange we were undoing our cart. As we left the store, our load was smaller, but it didn’t feel lighter.
The dreaded bad day arrived, my first day of fourth grade.
“Do you think people will ask lots of questions?” I asked, sitting on Matt’s bed in my pajamas.
“I dunno.” He shoved his gym clothes into his backpack. How I used to envy that backpack, wanting so badly to be big enough to have lots of homework to carry around.
“What should I say?”
“I dunno, Abby,” he repeated.
“I don’t want to go,” I said.
“Then don’t.” Matt was developing a contradictory nature. At least that’s what Mom called it. Contradictory or antagonistic. New words for a new season.
“You know I don’t have a choice,” I reminded him, slowly dragging up the sheets on his unmade bed.
“Look, I don’t have all the answers, Abby,” he said quietly. I looked away. “You go to school and figure out what you have to do.”
“Will you be home after school?” I asked at last.
“No, I have football.”
“And then you’ll come right home?”
Matt didn’t answer. That meant no.
“Matt, please?”
“Mom’ll be home.”
“Yeah,” I agreed, realizing she wasn’t enough anymore. Just as we weren’t for her.
“You’d better get out of those pajamas,” he scolded. I nodded and went back to my room as he swung his backpack over his shoulder and headed downstairs without me.
Mom didn’t buy me a new lunch box or pencils or pens or a new outfit or even get me new hand-me-downs for the first day of school. And I didn’t ask for them. I dug out a few dresses from last year and hoped they still fit, even though nothing really fit anymore.
By the time Mom called for breakfast, almost everything I owned covered my bed and floor and I was back in my pajamas. I wanted to hide underneath the blankets and sleep all day.
“Abby, the bus’ll be here in ten minutes,” Mom yelled from the bottom of the stairs. “Come and eat!” I traced my fingers along the chenille tracks of my bedspread. Joel used to run his cars along the pattern as if it were a highway.
I shouldn’t leave Mom alone all day. I didn’t need all the first day introductions, rules, and the stacks of papers for Mom to sign. And if I didn’t go the first day, everybody might just forget all about firsts and leave me alone on the second day. But then again, maybe I’d be the only new person on the second day and I’d really stand out. The third day was probably the best day to start.
By now the kids were lining up for the bus, holding new tin lunch boxes, looking down at their new clothes, and talking about who had which teacher. They were excited to be in a new grade. They were glad to be a year older. They’d go to school and come home to a snack instead of to a mom who may or may not have gotten dressed that day or to a dad who seemed like a stranger.
“Abby! Come down now!”
I really thought about pulling on my clothes but crawled back in bed instead. When the bus honked, Mom opened my door and gasped.
“Are you sick?”
“I don’t know. I just don’t feel very good.”
I wasn’t very good at lying, and so I hoped this semi-honest answer would pass. Her hand was cool.
“You don’t feel warm. Is it your tummy?” Mom sat down on the bed and smoothed her hand over my hair. Well, maybe it was my tummy or my head or maybe it was all of me. But somehow I knew she’d never understand what made me sick.
“I could drive you. Dad won’t need the car.”
“Still?” I asked, thinking that if we went back to school, he should go back to work.
“Dad’s taking a sabbatical.”
Sabbatical had something to do with the word Sabbath, the day of rest. How ironic that a man whose calling demanded working on the day of rest, needed a sabbatical to rest.
“Should I bring you a glass of orange juice or something?” She stroked my arm.
I shook my head. Orange juice wasn’t going to fix anything. Suddenly her hand stopped.
“Abby, what’s with all the clothes on the bed?” She stood up and surveyed the room, then looked at me with a frown. “This whole morning thing doesn’t have to do with being embarrassed about what to wear, does it?”
“No. I don’t care what I wear.” Did she think I could be that silly?
“Are you really sick, Abby?” she asked, biting her lip.
“I didn’t say I was,” I answered truthfully.
“But …?” Mom began.
“I said I didn’t feel good and I don’t,” I repeated. “I don’t feel very good.”
Mom gently peeled back the covers. “If you’re not sick, then you need to go to school.”
“You don’t understand.” I pulled the sheets over my head.
“No, I don’t. I don’t understand anybody and I can’t fix anything, but somebody has to keep going, and today that somebody’s going to be you.” And with that, Mom grabbed a jumper and a blouse from the heap and tossed them on top of me, heading to my dresser for socks. “Just be a good girl and go to school.”
“Just be a good girl. Just be a good girl.” If I had been good, would that have changed anything? If I were good enough now, could I make things better? I swung my legs over the side of the bed.
Mom sat down on the bed, socks in hand. “I thought going to school would help you get away from this.” She uncurled the socks. “I thought it’d be good for you to hang out with your friends again and learn something new.” Mom moved behind me to start brushing my hair.
“They’re going to stare and ask questions. Or maybe they won’t talk to me at all because they won’t know what to say!” I said, finding it easier to talk when we weren’t looking at each other.
She yanked one section of hair into a pigtail and started a braid. It was hard to explain my feelings, but I thought my reasons were strong. “Ouch!” I said, tilting my head away.
“Hold still!” She twisted the rubber band around my hair and started on the other pigtail.
I imagined the horror of walking in with all eyes on me. Would I cry? But if I looked happy, they’d wonder how I could smile after my brother died. They’d say I was like Matt, who had jumped right into football and parties and other things we didn’t even know about. What’s wrong with Joel’s older brother? Joel’s brother hasn’t shed a tear. Joel’s brother is getting involved with the wrong crowd. And if I left Mom alone with Dad, would she cry all day?
Mom finished the second braid and shifted so we both sat side by side on the edge of my bed. She looked at the clock and tapped her fingers on my bed as if playing the keys of the organ. The big first day was now five minutes away, and there was no way I’d be on time.
“Get your clothes on. You have art at nine. You can just slip in and everybody will be busy painting or drawing. Nobody will notice.”
As the students filed into Miss Gettman’s art class, I slipped into line and took the empty seat in the back near Rita. Rita never talked, so no one ever sat by her. We might be invisible together. Miss Gettman handed out big sheets of construction paper and crayons. Miss Gettman was short and serious. We always tried to guess why she was still Miss since she seemed so old and her name begged to “Get-a-man.”
“Every summer has a story to tell,” she began as she moved about the classroom. “A picture is worth a thousand words, so instead of an essay on ‘What I did this summer,’ let’s make a collage of our summer memories.
“Rita, what’s something you remember about this summer?” she asked as she made her way to the back of the class. Miss Gettman might ask me that same question in front of everybody, and everybody was going to be looking at me and trying to figure out what I would say. And if I wasn’t so worried, I might try to figure out what I would say except I had no idea what kind of collage I could make about this summer.
Rita looked over at me and then began talking slowly, deliberately.
“I … liked … some … things …”
Bless her for stalling. If Rita talked any slower, the class would fall asleep.
“About … this … summer,” she finished.
“Well yes, Rita. Why don’t you tell me one or two of them.”
Normally, Rita would have mumbled something and tried to stay out of the limelight. Rita paused and looked around the room. By now Miss Gettman was returning to the front of the classroom. I had eluded her gaze. Tim Neeves threw a crayon from his desk to the new boy sitting next to him and Rita’s monologue was over.
“That’s not what we do with crayons, young man, and that’s certainly not a good way to start out your year.” With that, she moved Tim to the empty desk in the back near me and I began a silent prayer that throwing a crayon would be the worst of his offenses.
“I’d like everybody to think of at least four events from this summer and turn them into a beautiful collage. Collage means a collection of objects that tell a story. It looks like the word college except it has an a in it.” Miss Gettman sat down at her desk and smiled out at us. If only she knew what adding an a to her name could do for her. “You can begin,” she announced as if we were starting a test. For me, it was worse than a test.
Heads turned as if in question. Shoulders shrugged and kids mumbled. At last Miss Gettman pushed back her chair so fast that it squealed on the floor. Kids giggled and she scanned the room as if hunting for the source of the laughter. Finally she resorted to yet another try at describing her assignment.
“Let’s come up with ideas together.” She headed to the blackboard and picked up her chalk. “For example, I went swimming this summer.” She wrote swimming across the blackboard. “I took a car trip to Chicago to see my older sister.” And she sketched a car, this time with someone holding a pennant out the window with a big C on it. “Can anyone add something?” She looked out toward the back, and I grabbed a crayon and began drawing furiously. Maybe if she thought I was on to something, she’d leave me alone.
The crayon I grabbed was brown. Brown is an ugly color and I hate brown. I don’t wear brown, and I don’t like to look at it. But somehow it seemed right for my summer picture. Then I picked up purple and began drawing swirls, then black circles, and I even tried yellow. My picture was a mess, but something felt good. One scribble broke the orange crayon; another scribble ran off the page and onto the desk. I could imagine that I was leaving dents on the desktop. I wasn’t sure which swirl represented the night we watched fireflies on the front porch, or which swirl was the morning Mom cooked blueberry pancakes, or which jagged zigzag was when a car came out of nowhere and took away my little brother. Although my paper was filled with color, it was not bright. When at last my paper was consumed, I looked up to find Miss Gettman eyeing me curiously. As if, how could I be done already? I looked for a blank spot and pretended to put just one more touch on the page. She returned to her paperwork.
“Write your name on the back, because I’ll be displaying these at open house next week.”
I looked down at the mess of scribbles. This was not good enough. Joel could have done a better job with his eyes closed. If I ripped it in half, the noise would draw attention. Even if I folded it up, she might spot me trying to smuggle it out.
I carefully slid the sheet off the top of the desk and inside the open shelf. No one could understand my drawing. Not even me. I did not write my name on the back as she had instructed. No one would miss one picture from an entire class. Abby didn’t have to have her name and art up on the night of open house. Amid a wall full of cottages and sprinklers and lakes and ice cream cones, no one would notice that Abby’s summer was very different from the rest.