Donutheart (8 page)

My first thought was to ask why. But did it matter? There were so many possibilities: drinking, fighting, smoking around volatile chemicals.

“That’s not his only job,” I said, finally.

“Oh, c’mon, Franklin. And he fell asleep, by the way. He couldn’t help it.”

I’m sure he couldn’t.

Class was set to begin. Sarah gave me a searching look, as if I might have some ideas for how to restore her father’s job. “Let me think,” I told her. “We’ll talk about it later, after class.” My attention was drawn to the front of the room, where someone was humming the “Happy Birthday” song. I took my seat and observed Mr. Spansky standing at the sink, his back to us, energetically washing his hands.

But later never came. Even after school, as we sat together in the backseat on our way to pick up Sarah’s costume, there was never a good time. Penny was up front. She was anxious to see Sarah’s costume since my mother had convinced her to do Sarah’s makeup for the exhibition.

As we drove, Penny chattered about the girls’—that is, her dogs’—latest exploits while Sarah stared glumly out the window. Though I was hoping to review the articles I’d printed off the Internet during free time in the media center, I found myself instead stealing glances at Sarah.

I had no experience with the situation she was in. My mother’s job seemed quite secure. Cable access was not going away. When it did, she would get trained in the new technology. They needed small, flexible types in her kind of work. She had worked for Cable Country for seven years. Before that it was ComTrast.

Since Penny was in attendance, I was not required to enter the filthy home of Fiona Foster. As soon as my mother, Penny, and Sarah exited the van, I settled in to review the latest findings of the American Council of Cheerleading Coaches and Advisors, or ACCCA. I was shocked to discover that, according to at least one report, more than half the catastrophic injuries to females during the high school and college years involve cheerleading accidents.

Could Glynnis be in danger? The research suggested that the girls highest on the pyramid were the most likely to suffer injury. I thought of Glynnis and her slender frame, her rounded shoulders, her soft elbows. My mind took a very unscientific turn then as I imagined our clean hands clasped together on the school steps, as I had observed certain eighth graders doing that very morning before the bell.

I reached into my backpack for the crumpled kerchief. I sniffed it, wondering if I could distinguish the scent of Glynnis from all the other scents it must have picked up over the last few days. But all I could pick up was the faint smell of smoke. Sigh. Despite my fantasies, Glynnis and I seemed to get further apart by the day. Still, I would have to return this kerchief, and, at least, Glynnis would know what I was capable of in the laundering and ironing department when that happened.

“I’m wondering,” I began as my mother got back in the driver’s side, “if we could have a talk later tonight about, well…” I trailed off. “Just a chat.”

But my mother did not hear me. “I have reservations about this,” she said, tossing a cardboard box onto the backseat for Sarah. “You’re sure it’s okay with Debbi?”

“She said for the exhibition,” Sarah responded, keeping her head down.

I tried again. “As I was saying…”

“Sorry, Franklin. What?”

“I think it opens up interesting possibilities,” Penny interrupted us, climbing into the van. My mother started the engine and used one hand to execute a three-point turn.

“And what might those be?”

“Well, I know it’s not the traditional—”

“I’m not arguing about it, I just said I have reservations.” My mother stopped talking to concentrate on flying around an elderly woman, who—according to a quick mental rate-of-speed calculation—was driving the speed limit. “You know, in all these competitions and exhibitions, have you ever seen a girl in pants?”

“It is different, I’ll give you that. But it does have possibilities. That’s all I’m saying.”

Sarah was not participating in the conversation. She stared straight ahead, concentrating on the back of my mother’s seat.

The natural question was,
Why
is Sarah competing in pants? But my mother and Penny seemed to be well beyond the “why” and into the “how.” I sighed and put my research back into the folder I’d cryptically labeled: WGP, for “Winning Glynnis Powell.”

“Can we just stop back at your house for a couple minutes?” Penny asked my mother. “I’ll have her try it on for me. I might have an idea.”

Glancing in the rearview mirror and seeing how miserable Sarah looked must have made my mother rethink her stand.

She rallied with: “It’s not that big a deal, really. Maybe Sarah will start a new trend.”

At this, Penny laughed heartily, but Sarah didn’t even look up. As the car slowed up in our driveway, she had one foot out the door. I had no idea what to make of this new version of Sarah. I was startled to realize that a part of me longed for the old mess-with-me-and-I’ll-rearrange-your-body-parts version.

After we’d entered the house, Penny sent Sarah and the box down the hall before turning to my mother.

“Julia, I’m going to need a measuring tape.”

My mother went over to the kitchen counter and flipped open the lid of her toolbox. She tossed Penny a metal container.

Penny stood there, yanking on the tab. “It’s for a body, not a piece of lumber, girl. Haven’t you got a sewing kit? I need straight pins, too.”

My mother replied by raising one eyebrow and giving Penny an ultimatum: “It’s that or a yardstick. As for pins, I’ve got a couple of safety pins in the junk drawer.” She grabbed two cereal boxes from the cupboard and smacked them onto the table. As I watched her pull milk from the refrigerator, spoons from the drawer, and bowls from the drainer by the sink, I got the sinking feeling this would be dinner. I was about to remind her that I preferred soy milk, but my mother plunked down in her chair as if this was the last move she would make for a while.

Penny was still waiting.

“I have a measuring tape on my bedpost and a travel sewing kit in my top desk drawer,” I said, trying to move things along. I was about to request politely that she remove her shoes before entering my bedroom, but Penny anticipated my comment with: “Don’t worry, I’ll take off the shoes, Franklin.”

Before she left the room, Penny stopped behind my mother’s chair and tried to knead her shoulders.

“It’s just my opinion, but I think you should lighten up, Julia.”

My mother leaned to one side so that she could look Penny in the eye. “You do.”

“She’s just a kid.”

“She should have told me sooner. It might have been serious.”

“But she didn’t. It was a mistake. You’re her hero, Julia. Be a hero and forgive her.”

My mother responded to this by pouring milk into her cereal bowl. She always put the milk in first. It was her invention for keeping the cereal dry. Finally, Penny left and there we were, across the kitchen table from each other and separated by a box of Bran Buds and her glowing neon container of Lucky Charms.

“Is anyone ever going to tell me what’s going on around here?” I asked her. “Or do I have to keep tuning into the mystery that has become my life to find out episode by episode? Since when do they let girls compete in pants?”

Two spoonfuls of cereal went into my mother’s mouth in quick succession.

“I am, after all, part of the team. I go to her practices, I help her with homework, I…I worry about her, too.”

“Seriously?”

“Yes, Mother. Seriously.”

My mother pushed the mass of half-chewed cereal to one side of her mouth so that she could make herself understood.

“She was burned, Franklin. On her leg. And she didn’t want anybody to know about it.”

“Burned? As in…”

“As in she spilled the hot water from boiling hot dogs on her leg. At least, that’s what she tells me.”

I tried to piece it together. “So that’s why she didn’t want to wear a skirt? But wouldn’t her tights have covered it?”

“You should see the scar. It must have hurt like the dickens. She said she couldn’t stand having the tights next to it. And she was afraid someone might see her if she had to change in the locker room.”

“But why would that be a big deal? It’s not like Sarah Kervick’s injuries haven’t been on display before.”

“But an injury like this one…well, people might ask questions, Franklin. They might wonder about her home life. Sarah puts a fair amount of energy into protecting…” My mother’s spoon stopped midway to her mouth. She let it drop back to the table before pushing the bowl away. “…her father. If someone suspected Sarah was abused, they might separate them.”

“Abused? But you don’t think he—”

Big sigh. “Honestly, Franklin, I don’t know what to think. Other than I’m pretty much out of my league here.”

I sat down in my chair, considering. “Have you told Gloria?”

“She knows. We’re working on it. But wait, you wanted to talk to me about something, didn’t you? In the car, you said…”

It hardly seemed fitting to bring up Glynnis at a time like this.

“It’s nothing.”

“No, really. Go ahead.” She leaned forward as if determined to put her all into this one. As if what I was about to say might be a problem she could actually solve.

I decided to give it a try. “All right. Mother, there comes a time in every boy’s life when he is not so much a son as he is, well…look here, Mother. I have pledged my affections to another woman. Glynnis Powell, to be exact.”

“Who is Glynnis Powell?”

“The girl who won the Principal’s Penmanship Award last year. Don’t you remember? I was runner-up.”

“The skinny one? With the bandana on her head?”

My mother reached behind her for the bowl of fruit and began to peel an apple with the same utility knife she used on the job.

“I think it’s called a ‘kerchief.’”

“Okay? The skinny one with the kerchief on her head? Does she know?”

Spearing a slice of apple with the tip of her knife, she held it out, offering.

I shook my head no. “I think we should be friends at first,” I told her. “I want to invite Glynnis to sit with us at lunch.”

“Sounds like a good plan…but don’t think too hard about it….” Here, she pointed her knife in my direction and continued sternly: “If there’s one thing I’ve learned about love, it’s that you can’t think too hard.”

This, coming from my mother, would be the obvious conclusion.

CHAPTER TEN

Flour Power

I made little progress in my campaign to win Glynnis Powell over the next week. Even though I kept her kerchief, laundered and ironed with spray starch and lavender water, in the top zippered compartment of my backpack, events conspired to keep us apart. Well, that, and acute attacks of shyness that hit just as I was within greeting distance. But I had plenty of time to ponder my mother’s oh-so-wise advice. On the day of Sarah’s exhibition, for example, I found myself sitting
alone
at the end of my table in the low-traffic area of the cafetorium and, for the one hundredth time that day, thinking about not thinking about Glynnis.

I cast a longing glance in the direction of the cheerleaders’ table. There sat Glynnis, her flour baby on her lap. I wondered what she did with the child during cheerleading practice. If she made sure her team practiced all towers and pyramids on the two-inch foam surface recommended by the ACCCA, there might be a corner left for a baby blanket. The intensity of my stare drew her attention. How could it not? She covered her mouth with her napkin and blushed. I hoped my return blush was as bright as hers.

Sighing, I inserted my sandwich back into its biodegradable cellulose bag. Truly, I felt alone in all the world. Bernie was in Gary, Indiana, inspecting ranches and split-levels, though he was due back this afternoon. Sarah Kervick was doing whatever she did wherever she did it. She would catch up with me following the final bell on the sidewalk outside of school, a trick she often employed when we were supposed to walk home together.

My priority at the moment was to make it through a bathroom episode unscathed.

After packing up my things, I clutched my CD of water sounds to my chest and headed to the exit that led to the boys’ bathroom by the gym.

“Hey, Donut-brain. Where’s your girlfriend?” Marvin Howerton shouted just as I was in sight of safety. Half the cafetorium quieted to hear my response.

And how should I respond to this oh-so-clever permutation of my name? With honesty?

Fair, fresh, and sensibly attired, she sits among us.

No. We all knew who Marvin was referring to. I chose not to escalate tensions by remaining silent. As if he’d conjured her up, Sarah Kervick came bustling toward me as soon as I’d reached the hall. Keds was tucked under her arm like a football.

She grabbed me roughly by the elbow and propelled me to our destination.

The bathroom entrance was blocked by the orange cones that signal
CAUTION: WET FLOOR
. Sarah ignored them and pushed me through the door; I narrowly missed a concussion-inducing blow from Mr. Herman’s broomstick.

Just as roughly, she pulled me back into the hall and whispered, “He’s not done yet.”

Indeed, Mr. Herman appeared to be in some kind of a trance, his back to us, moving like a cat across the bathroom floor. The broomstick had been unscrewed from the broom end, and now he jabbed it like a bayonet, swung it in an arc over his head, and brought it low with fierce strokes over the surface of the floor.

“He’s practicing,” Sarah whispered.

“Practicing for what?” I asked her. “Mortal combat?”

“Weapons class. He already has a third-degree black belt. He has to learn weapons for the next one.”

With a flourish, Mr. Herman landed the broom handle into the broom and quickly screwed the two pieces together. He swept a few strokes for a cooldown before looking up and acknowledging our presence. His dark skin glistened with sweat.

“Hey,” Sarah said, “okay if we…” She tossed her head at me, and I understood at once that she had told Mr. Herman everything.

Sarah set Keds—
our baby
—on the counter next to the sink. When Mr. Herman turned and saw what she’d done, he scooped up the bag and put it on the paper-towel dispenser.

“I just washed that counter,” he said. “It’s wet.”

It was on the tip of my tongue to ask if he would perch his own baby on a paper-towel dispenser, but Sarah had moved in close so that she could whisper.

“Really,” she said. “I asked him if it was okay…to help you.”

Despite the pressure I was experiencing, I was able to observe how tired she looked: Her face was pale; she had dark circles under her eyes.

Sarah put her hand on my shoulder. “He comes here every day on his lunch hour to practice.”

Mr. Herman took his time collecting his bucket and mops. Finally, he left us, rolling the cart in front of him. Every fiber of my being told me to toddle over to the bathroom stall and “make water,” as the cowboys say, but the things that were happening to Sarah Kervick lately exerted another sort of pressure in the area of my chest. Was it fear? Sadness? I couldn’t rightly tell.

“Isn’t there anything we can do to help, Sarah? Whatever it is, my mother has a way…”

She turned around and began drawing little patterns on the wet counter with her finger. “It’s just…it never mattered before…when we’d leave.”

“But why would you have to? There are lots of factories. Your dad can get another job.”

Sarah smiled her old smile, the kind where her lips stay pressed together. She adjusted my headphones and pushed me—not hard—into the stall.

“It’s more than that,” she told my back as I disappeared into the stall. “And I might…maybe…need your help. We’ll see, but thanks, Franklin. You’re all right. I used to think you were a bean head when I first met you, but I know different now. You’re all right.”

I stood on the other side of the metal door, fumbling with my zipper and trying to picture a Sarah Kervick problem I could possibly resolve.

“If I, you know…you should tell her if…”

Sarah was talking, but I must admit at the moment I was caught up in the delirious relief of waves crashing to the shore. I emerged from the stall and pulled off the earphones, prepared to ask her to repeat herself. But I didn’t get the chance.

“Look, it’s Donut-hole. I said they’d be here, didn’t I?”

“What kinda twisted…”

Bryce and Marvin had burst through the door and taken us completely by surprise.

“Hey, Bryce,” Marvin said, laughing and scooping up Keds. “They’re makin’ Donut-babies.” He tossed our sack of flour to Bryce, but it was snagged midair like a hard fly that had crested the second baseman’s glove and landed in Sarah’s territory. She shoved Keds into my breadbasket and squared off to take on Bryce and Marvin.

I’m afraid the combination of wet counter and excessive force proved too much for our doomed offspring. What was first a trickle became a gush and, within seconds, the inner cavity of our baby landed on my shoes, covering me in flour from navel to toes.

Rather than make an attempt to salvage our assignment, Sarah took advantage of the fact that Marvin and Bryce were pointing and laughing, and scooped up two handfuls of flour and proceeded to blind our enemies. This set in motion a chain of events that left four sixth-grade bodies completely covered in refined carbohydrates. Marvin Howerton reinjured his instep, Bryce Jordan’s nose spurted blood, and Sarah’s left cheek and eye cracked against The Bowl, resulting in an impressive shiner.

I, too, sustained an injury: a nasty bruise on my elbow where the bathroom-stall door banged into me in my hurried attempt to get back to safety.

Since we all bore the telltale signs of a skirmish, we were sent directly to Principal Kluhaski’s office by Miss Zammit, our art teacher, who was standing conveniently outside the bathroom, her arms full of Chinese good-luck symbols created during lunchtime calligraphy practice.

The story we told could not be considered a passing acquaintance with the truth, and I found that I would have time to repent at leisure in the company of other juvenile-delinquents-in-training in after-school detention.

But I had little time to reflect on these traumatic events, because it was the
very day
of Sarah Kervick’s first public performance, the skating “dress rehearsal” where young competitors were encouraged to perform their routines in full costume in front of a crowd of admiring friends and relatives.

More difficult by far was the preshow appearance with my mother in our kitchen. Under the glare of fluorescent lighting—which I have repeatedly tried to get my mother to change to the warmer, broad-spectrum hues that imitate sunlight—Sarah Kervick’s injury looked pronounced. I think it is safe to say that she appeared to be returning from a tristate tour with the Women’s Wrestling Federation.

My mother took one look at Sarah, sank into a kitchen chair, and laid her head on her folded arms. She then proceeded to have a muted conversation with the table surface that included the phrase “Why me?”

Without lifting her head, she reached for the cell phone latched to her belt and speed-dialed Penny.

“Are you on your way? Good. Maybe you’ll get here before I commit a crime,” she said.

In less than two minutes, Penny burst through the door, took a long look at Sarah’s face, and whistled through her teeth. She handed Sarah her sewing bag and patted her purse.

“Lucky for me, I spent a year at the Chic Institute for Cosmetology before I discovered my gift for court reporting. We did a whole unit on reconstructive surgery. Go on to the rink,” she said, shooing us away. “I’ll get her ready, don’t worry.”

Sarah turned to go down the hall. She cast a longing backward look at my mother.

“Just think about your performance for now, okay?” my mother told her. “We’ll talk about the flour incident…later.”

My mother consulted her watch. “Oh man, I’m late. I was supposed to be there by now.”

Why my mother had to be at the rink at all hours was a mystery worth pondering when my blood pressure returned to the normal range.

“Well, go then. We’ll meet you,” Penny said.

I sent a nonverbal distress signal to my mother. She was so entangled in other people’s lives these days, I wasn’t sure she’d still be capable of picking one up. I
did not
approve of Penny’s driving. She applied lipstick at busy intersections, and was forever inserting her nail file into her tape player to jiggle loose one of her Grateful Dead recordings. This caused her to lose eye contact with the roadway for seconds at a time.

My mother looked at me, looked at her watch again, and sighed. “All right,” she said. “But hurry up and change. I am not showing up there with the Pillsbury Doughboy.”

Up in my room, I stripped my clothes, applied stain stick to a mysterious blob on the sleeve of my shirt before laying it carefully in my laundry basket, and quickly donned long underwear and a muffler in anticipation of the freezing temperatures at the ice rink.

As I cast a longing backward glance at my sanctuary, I realized—to my horror—I’d forgotten to remove my shoes. Floury footprints revealed my movements, and my neglected tape measure swayed slightly on my bedpost as a result of my recent activity.

“All right,” my mother announced in the car. “We’re going to come clean. No more secrets—” She fell silent, diverted by something in the rearview mirror. I craned around to see a boy riding his bike without a helmet. As we approached the corner, I realized it was Bernie, pedaling furiously to catch up with us. My mother stomped on the brake.

“Sorry, guy, I forgot we were giving you a ride,” she said, leaping out of the van and grabbing Bernie’s bike. “Let’s toss it in the back.”

Once we were under way again, I disregarded my vital signs and plunged in: “Does coming clean mean that you tell us exactly what occupies your time at the skating rink? Either you have secret meetings with Paul behind the Zamboni, or you’re in training for a tour with the Women’s Wrestling Federation.”

“I thought we were going to start with you telling me what really happened this afternoon.”

“I think we should unravel our mysteries in chronological order.”

My mother eyed Bernie in the rearview mirror. “Are you sure you want to know?”

“Yes!”

“I have to clean the bathrooms.”

“Excuse me?”

“That’s how they afford the ice time,” Bernie chimed in.

“And the coaching.”

My mother nodded. “Even with Gloria’s help, it’s awful expensive.”

“Tell me, does the rest of the neighborhood know my mother is a janitress, or are our casual acquaintances as in the dark as I am?”

“I knew you’d make a big deal out of it,” my mother said, making a rolling right turn at a red light and proceeding without regard for the speed of the oncoming vehicles. “It just came up. Paul knew that the woman who usually cleans at night was going to be off for a hip replacement, so I asked Win Davies, the rink manager, if he thought I could do the work in exchange for Sarah’s ice time….”

I began making a mental list of the germs my mother had been coming in contact with over the last several months. In public bathrooms, strains of bacteria can meet and mingle, forming new, mutant strains that confound our limited arsenal of antibiotic defense.

“Do you realize, Mother—”

“Spare me, Franklin.”

Bernie patted my shoulder. “I wish my mother was like yours, Franklin. It’s not like my mother helps anybody achieve their dreams. All my mother does is sell Amway products.”

“Merilee gave us a great deal on bathroom cleanser, and Win knocked the difference off Sarah’s coaching bill. It was Bernie’s idea.”

“But why didn’t you tell me?”

“Because I didn’t want to worry you, Franklin. Honestly, if I told you the details of my work life, you’d probably never sleep again. And it’s
not
because my jobs are dangerous.”

Once again, I found myself in the perplexing situation of making my mother upset for pointing out that the lifestyle she had chosen was not optimally designed to avoid risk. What was so wrong with trying to avoid bad things?

And yet, in the case of the bathroom cleaning, the hygiene hypothesis could also be argued. Here my mother was warring with germs on a daily basis and winning.
She
did not suffer from allergies, asthma, or lactose intolerance.

As we pulled up to the arena entrance, my mother handed me her cell phone. Bernie extracted his camcorder from his backpack. We got out of the van and watched her speed to the back of the lot to park near Paul’s truck before we turned to enter the rink under the menacing sign,
SKATE AT YOUR OWN RISK
. I made a mental substitution, replacing
skate
with
live.
It was beginning to feel like my anthem.