If a Tree Falls at Lunch Period (14 page)

Walk's deep in his science homework when the phone rings. Gotta be Sylvia. Walk would bet money on it, if he had money, but like a fool he spent it all on Jamal's soap.

Walk grabs the phone. "I'm busy doin' drugs, Momma, what do you think?"

"What?" a little girl's voice asks.

"Who is this?"

"Kippy."

"Kippy?"

"I called to see if you have any pets?"

"Pets? Why do you want to know?"

"It's important," she says.

"I have a Venus flytrap," Walk tells her.

"Really?" She sounds all excited. "Can I see?"

"Sure, yeah. Kirsten on the line?"

"No," Kippy says.

"No? How'd you get my number?"

"I looked it up in the blue Mountain School book. I have another question," Kippy says. "Do you like bunk beds?"

"I guess."

"Do you like the bottom bunk or the top bunk?"

"The top."

"Oh." She sighs. "Well, at least you like them. Kirsten likes them too. My mother won't let us get any, though."

"Glad we got that straightened out. Anything else you want to know? Do I sleep standing up? Do I wear shoes to bed?"

"I'm sorry," she whispers, "but this is new."

"What is new?"

"Having a brother. I never had one before."

"I'm
a
brother, Kippy, not
your
brother."

Kippy doesn't say anything, so Walk fills her in. "Black guys, we call each other brothers. Doesn't mean we really are related."

"African Americans?"

"Yeah, African Americans."

"Oh," she says. "Well, Kirsten said you are my half brother, so maybe the American is my half and the African is another girl's half. Do you have another sister?"

"Kirsten said
what?
"

"She said you are my half brother, but it's a secret and I shouldn't tell my mom."

"Kirsten is out of her mind."

"Is not."

"I'm not your half brother."

"Okay, okay," she says in a small voice. "But could I still see your Venus flytrap?"

Kip's a little kid. Little kids get their facts all mixed up. Kirsten said a brother ... Kip thought she said
my
brother ... It's a joke, right?

In Sylvia's bedroom Walk yanks on the file drawer. It's locked. Walk didn't know she kept it locked. The lock is tiny. Where would she keep a tiny key? Now he remembers there is a little key on the chain with the extra house key Sylvia has hidden under the palm tree pot.

At the front door he tilts the big palm forward. Big key, little key. Sylvia can't hide anything from him.

Walk pulls open the heavy broken, sagging drawer. Sylvia's writing is on the files.
AUTO INSURANCE, AUTO LOANS, BIRTH CERTIFICATES
.
Birth Certificates.

There it is.
WALKER WILBURT JONES
with a tiny baby footprint on the back. The front says:
MOTHER: SYLVIA ROODELMAN, FATHER: CLIMPTON JONES
.

Of course it does. Stupid fool. What'd he think?

Walk pokes around to see what else is in here. A climpton file. Empty. He shoves the drawer closed and pulls out the bottom one.
LEASE, MUTUAL FUNDS, NURSING BOOK LISTS, NURSING CLASSES, RECIPES, REPORT CARDS.
Report cards: Walk flips through all of them. Almost all As. A couple of Bs and one C in third grade.

His last report card at City had all As and one A plus. He puts it back and takes it out again. He gets a little buzz looking at it. Gotta have one last peek. That's when he sees the pencil scratching on the inside back of the file:
MWM, Mount Tamalpais Hospital, 1350 South Sycamore Drive, Greenbrae, CA 94904.

That must be where he was born. Only he wasn't born there. He was born at Oakland Children's, where Sylvia works.

MWM?

In the kitchen, Walk looks for the blue book with names and addresses of the kids at Mountain. His fingers sweat on the blue cover.
M
for McKenna.
Kirsten McKenna. Parents: Rachel and Mac W. McKenna.

MWM.

Walk looks up Mount Tamalpais Hospital in the phone book, dials the number. Just hang up now, fool, he tells himself. "May I speak to Dr. Mac McKenna?"

"One moment and I'll connect you."

Walk kills the call with his thumb.

Sylvia used the folder as scratch paper. It doesn't mean anything. Walk erases so hard he burns white streaks in the manila. The name is gone. All gone.

Walk gets his swim gear and heads for the Y. He doesn't care that he already swam today. In the water he knows this is all one big fool mix-up. Every lap he knows it....Thirty laps, thirty more, thirty after that.

The water is heavy, like wet sand. His shoulders are sore, his legs ache, but he keeps going, keeps on going until he sees Sylvia's white nurse shoes at the edge of the pool.

"What the heck you doing, scaring me half to death? You couldn't call and tell me where you're gonna be? Your hand fall off? Your mouth froze shut? You better hope it did, boy. You better pray it did." She's ranting, but he knows from her sound, she's more relieved than mad.

"What's the matter with you?" She tosses Walk a towel.

"Sorry," Walk mutters.

"Don't you sorry me." Sylvia shakes her finger at him.

They walk to the car, parked one wheel over the yellow curb. She grunts. "You look pale. You're coming down with something."

"No."

"You better say yes if you're hoping for dinner tonight or any other night the rest of your life."

"Yes," Walk says.

When they get home, she makes a sick-at-home meal, bagels and chicken soup. They're quiet at dinner. Just the TV noise and the spoons clack-clacking the bowls.

When the dishes are done, Sylvia cracks her big gray nursing manual to prepare her lecture. She glances up at Walk. "No homework tonight?"

Walk shrugs.

"Momma," he says.

"Um-huh."

"My middle name ... where did it come from?" Her body gets still like it's her funeral now. Only her eyes move. "It was just a name I thought of."

"
Wilburt
was a name you thought of?" She grabs the remote control.

"Momma, do you send my report cards to MWM?" Her head swivels so fast she doesn't need to answer.

"Why, Momma?"

Sylvia rests her head on her thumb. "What makes you think I do that?"

"Kippy told me, Momma. Know who Kippy is?"

Sylvia sucks her cheek in; her eyes go tiny in her head. She knows who Kippy is.

What do you mean you called him up?"

She shrugs a tiny shrug like she's going to get in trouble for just moving her shoulders. "I called him up. His number's in the book."

"Kippy!"

"You told me not to tell Mom. You didn't tell me not to tell Walk," she whispers.

"I didn't think you'd call him up."

"You didn't know if he had any pets, Kirsten. He's my brother," she whispers. "I have to know that."

"And you told him we were his sisters?"

She nods.

"Did it sound like he already knew that?"

Kippy shakes her head.

"Are you sure he understood? This is important, Kip. Try to remember exactly what he said."

She sticks her tongue out of her mouth and screws her face up. "He said all guys call each other brother. That doesn't mean they're really brothers."

"Ahhh. So he didn't believe you."

"He said you were crazy. He said if we get bunk beds he wants the top bunk."

"You asked him about bunk beds?"

She scrunches up her face like she knows she's going to tell me the wrong answer. "I was thinking maybe now Mom would let us get one. We could get a triple-decker."

When he opens the door, there's Aunt Shandra on the stoop looking way orangey, like she was tagged orange all over.

"What are you doing here?" Walk asks.

"What are
you
doing here?" Shan answers.

This is Walk's second day home from school and he doesn't plan to go back.

"Okay, so I wanted to have a little talk. What's your excuse?" Shan asks.

Walk shrugs.

"Jamal doesn't give me enough trouble, you start acting up on me." She puts her hands on her hips. "C'mon, let's go."

"I'm not dressed."

"Don't need a tux where we're going."

"These are my pajamas."

She stares at his shorts and T-shirt. "How's a person supposed to know that? Go on then, get yourself dressed."

Walk throws some clothes on, heads outside.

Shan unlocks the car door. "Ice cream? Candy? CDs? Johnny Walker? What you think we need first here, guy?"

"You can buy me a BMW all tricked out, it's not gonna help, Shan."

"Well, that's what's wrong with you, nephew. A BMW would be mighty fine. I'd do a lot for a BMW."

She waits for Walk's answer. When he doesn't say anything, she turns the ignition on. "Run over to Burger King, I guess," she mutters. "Sylvia is right about one thing. You one mad dog..."

Burger King is practically in Walk's backyard, it's that close. But Shan would drive from her bedroom to her living room if she could.

"Look Walk, I want you to hear this from me."

"Little late for that."

"Now you listen to me." She points her long nail at Walk. "Your momma loved Climpton. Sun rose when he came in, set when he left. He was that handsome. And charm, that man had it big time."

"He isn't my father. I don't care."

Shan stamps her foot on the brake and stares at Walk. "Let's get this straight. I'm doin' the talking, you're doin' the listening."

Walk hunkers down in his seat.

"Sylvia fell hard for Climpton, but Climpton wasn't ready to get tied down. He didn't want any part of nothing permanent. And then one day at work she met Mac. Mac was working at Oakland Children's then, too."

Walk cracks the door. "We gettin' out or what?" She drums her nails on the dashboard. "Yeah, all right," she says, opening up. "What are you gonna have?"

"Two cheeseburgers, fries, and a Coke." He might as well get a free meal out of this.

At the table, Sylvia pokes her straw into her cup cover, making shrieky little noises like plastic people are dying in there. She unwraps her burger and starts up again. "And then Sylvia gets pregnant, which she was real happy about."

"Was she still with McKenna when she found out?"

"Nope."

"She's alone, she's pregnant. Oh, I bet she's happy." Walk jams three fries down his throat.

"I said
she was happy,
" she snaps at Walk. "Course, I thought she was out of her fool mind. But she wanted a family and if she couldn't have Climpton and a baby, she wanted the baby. So don't you tell me you weren't wanted because that's a load of crud. You hear me? That woman would give her life for you and you know it."

Walk stuffs his cheeseburger practically whole in his mouth and chokes it down.

"One day she's big as a house, and she stops in at one of them baby stores and there was Mac with Rachel, who had a belly on her, too. You know who that was?"

"Kirsten," Walk snorts.

"Ya-huh. Well, Mac, he called Sylvia and Sylvia told him, 'Um-huh, it's yours.' So he started sending money. She didn't ask for it, he just sent it. I liked him better after that."

"How's she know my dad's McKenna?"

"How's she know?" Shan's voice screeches so high the people in the next booth stop talking. "Look, mister, I am sorry you don't like this. But you say something like that again, I'm going to make it so you never sit down the rest of your life. You getting married, you standin' up, you die standin' up, too, you understand me, boy?"

Walk grinds a french fry into the ketchup.

"McKenna checked in every few months. He's proud about you, about how smart you are, wants to know this and that. When Sylvia decides to pull you out of public school, he says he'll pay for Mountain."

"I got a
scholarship
to Mountain," Walk tells her

She makes a funny blowing noise with her orange-lipstick lips. "Scholarship covered fifteen hundred dollars. So, McKenna, he only had to pay eighteen big ones. Pediatric ICU nurses don't have eighteen thousand dollars sittin' around, Walk."

Walk puts his hands over his ears. She waits until he brings them down again.

"Look." She takes hold of Walk's chin between her fingers, her nails clicking against themselves. "Who your parents are don't make a difference. Nobody has any choice in the matter. You aren't any different than anyone else in that. You are what you make of yourself and don't you ever forget it."