like I’ve said or done
something hurtful.
39.
Dad sits down at the bottom of my bed.
It sags with his weight.
He wants to talk.
Please don’t be about my period.
Or the pads he bought.
Anything but that!
“There’s a chance…” he begins,
“…that I may get mobilized.” He holds
Mr. Poodle, my purple stuffed dog, in his hands
and turns him around and around.
“If you mean move again,
I won’t!”
“Nope. Just me this time around.”
Then, I’m all smiles.
A huge, dumb grin in fact—
so relieved it won’t be me or Mom,
happy not to be leaving Camille…not yet at least.
“I just want to prepare you,” he says,
trying again, seeming confused
by my happiness.
Then he just sits there
turning that poodle around
in his big,
strong
hands.
40.
“Artists have a story to tell,”
Mr. Lydon informs the class.
“They keep telling it
until they get it right.
They must take risks.
Trust themselves!”
Jiman, across the room,
listens intently to Mr. Lydon
and dares to paint over her first attempt,
trusting herself, her instincts. New paints,
clean brush—and she’s in her element.
I watch,
how one painting hides another
layered just beneath it
and even another
beneath that. The way a face
can hide a person’s entire life,
a story no one knows, a history untold,
until someone seeks
to share it.
I get up and cross behind Jiman, drawn
to her painting. She pauses brush midair.
Heads turn, ears tune in
and a hush falls over the room—
but I scurry on,
the moment gone, the status quo resumed,
my courage dried up like ancient paint.
41.
For P.E.,
we all stumble and push into the locker room
to claim any private spot to change
into our gym clothes. The walls seem to sweat
with our arrival. Some girls seize
the mirrors, brushing and pulling
at their hair. Angela and Sheila assume
center stage and strip off their shirts and pants,
not bothering to cover or hide themselves.
Sheila’s bra is lavender, Angela’s is pink.
Sheila has breasts already and flaunts them.
“Ohmygod, I’m a cow,” some girl whines.
“Moo!” another laughs.
Some of us wait in line for a stall, like Camille,
who stopped changing in front of others
on the day Lana remarked:
“I don’t know why you need a bra.”
Everyone is edgy and impatient;
you’d think we were waiting to be fed
the way we eye one another. But we wait
like good girls, not cutting in line.
Lana stands too close behind me,
rolling her eyes and trying to grab
Sheila and Angela’s attention.
When a door swings open
and Jiman steps out,
Lana shoves me toward her,
says, “Geez! Go in already!”
then wrinkles her nose at Jiman,
who looks the other way
and doesn’t let Lana
get to her.
I lock the door and yank off my jeans—
exposed,
in my plain underwear.
I follow my new feminine ritual
of protecting my gym clothes from myself,
but take too long,
my movements jumpy and jittery.
Through the door, a slice of yellow
is all I can spy of Lana’s shirt.
Then her shoe begins to tap,
tap,
tap
and her voice begins scoffing, megaphone-loud,
“Hurry up! WHAT
are you doing
in there?”
42.
Later that week,
Ms. Johnson gives us each a yellow ribbon
since we’re studying symbolism,
and we’re sent outside to find a suitable tree
somewhere on the school’s property
around which to tie our hope.
I notice Jiman is absent,
hear rumors that someone spray-painted words
on her parents’ restaurant,
and I wonder what they wrote
and why they would do it.
Sheila and Angela tie their ribbons
around the same tree,
and when Sheila commands:
“Tomorrow, Ange,
let’s wear red, white, and blue,”
Angela responds, “Sure, Shee-Shee.”
For a second, I wonder
if I should wear those colors too.
Then I look for Camille, who waves at me
as she heads off on her own,
her ribbon fluttering
wild and free.
Beside the ball field,
I find a solitary tree with drooping leaves
and lots of low branches.
Last summer, I would’ve called it
the perfect climbing tree
—but I’m no longer Abbey