Ruby on the Outside (5 page)

Chapter Ten

It's pouring rain. Yvette and
Beatrice can't believe we showed up this morning for camp—me and Margalit. So far no one else has, which at this point just means Elise.

It's dark inside the clubhouse, which is our rain-day location, but I don't think anyone thought we'd really use it because it's pretty dingy. What it is, is a big empty room they use to store pool stuff over the winter, so it is filled with extra folding chairs, tables, hoses, rakes, and umbrellas stacked against the walls, and there is a steady drip of water in three places, plunking down onto the concrete floor.

“Okay, guys,” Beatrice is saying. We have fitted ourselves all onto one big beach blanket with another towel on top of that, so even in this damp weather it's actually warm and cozy. “This is what we're going to do.”

That must be her cue, because Yvette dumps out a big white plastic bag from Target; notebooks, colored pencils, markers, pens, little-kid scissors, and glue sticks all spill out. Seeing it all, I can feel my skin tingle and my heart thumbing a little bit faster. It's exciting, all those brand-new art supplies and before I can stop myself I blurt out with unbridled enthusiasm, “Oh, I love colored pencils!” and I instantly feel my face heat up with regret.

I've done this before—just this past school year, in fact, in fifth grade. It was early in the school year. It was our first year moving from classroom to classroom, but just one switch. Math and science with Mr. Williams and then right across the hall for social studies and language arts with Ms. Genovese. My embarrassing display of eagerness happened to occur in Mr. Williams's class.

We had just learned about the seven characteristics of a living thing. First, Mr. Williams asked everyone, or anyone, to guess. I think making kids guess always spells trouble and I don't know why teachers haven't figured this out. It's not like it makes everyone think or figure things out for themselves, it just creates chaos.

But anyway, after a few really ridiculous answers and a lot of toilet jokes from the boys, Mr. Williams wrote all seven characteristics of life on the board one by one explaining about each one: organization, reproduction, energy, response, growth, and adaptation. And without meaning to, I started thinking about my mother because there was something missing from that list, but I didn't want to share it out loud.

Eating is swell. Growing up, maybe. Adapting and being able to figure things out on your own is pretty crucial too, I suppose.

But love
, I was thinking.
Living things need to be loved.

Well, maybe not all living things, like maybe not amoebas or earthworms, but human beings do. Human beings need to be mothers who love their children, and children need their mothers to love. I'd read about babies in orphanages who actually don't grow because no one picks them up and loves them.

So my mind was wandering and I wasn't really listening and then all of sudden I noticed that the class is talking about manatees and baby seals and I didn't want to be thinking about my mother and how I can't be with her, so I just blurted something out.

“Oh, I love manatees!”

And the whole class got quiet and it wasn't because I'd just said something really stupid. It was because I seemed so happy about it, too eager to share, like a little kid, and that made everyone uncomfortable and they all started laughing.

They started laughing
at me
.

And I slouched down in my seat and vowed never to look overly excited about anything again.

But now I feel the same embarrassment heating up my face, only this time, instead of laughing at me, Margalit says, “Oh, me too. Don't you just love a brand-new perfectly sharpened pencil?”

She takes one of the colored pencils out of the box and holds it up.

“Good for both of you, then,” Yvette is saying. I think she is being sarcastic, but I don't even care.

“This long, long day should go just swimmingly then,” she adds.

Beatrice laughs like that is really funny and they both get up, head over to take down a couple of folding chairs, and start their high school–type conversation.

They leave us alone. The rain is steadily hitting the roof of the clubhouse, like hundreds of tiny drummers. The wind picks up. The rain shifts direction and smacks against the Plexiglas windows.

“Let's write a story together,” Margalit says. “And draw pictures to go with it.”

“Okay.” I like that idea. I've never written a story with someone else before, but it sounds like fun. I pull out one of the spiral notebooks. Margalit does the same.

“I'll start drawing first and you start writing and then we'll switch,” she says.

I look down at the blank pages, tiny blue lines inviting me to touch my perfectly sharpened pencil right down between them and see what story is left behind.

“What do I write about?”

“Anything you want,” Margalit tells me. “So what should I draw? Let me think about it.”

I'm sure it's raining in Bedford Hills, too, and that thought comes into my head but I know if my mother is in her cell, she can't see it. I wonder if she can hear it. I wonder if there are other ways to know if it's raining. Can she hear it? Do the COs come into work and talk about the weather? What is it like not to see the sky when you wake up in the morning?

The bright, beautiful sun or the dark, stormy clouds. The soft humid breeze on an early July morning. The misty cool breeze of a summer storm.

It's just so sad, so I blurt out, “Manatees?”

Jeez, that was stupid, but I need something to fill my head.

“Perfect,” Margalit says. “Did you know that they think maybe early explorers, like even Columbus, thought that the manatees were mermaids swimming in the ocean?”

“Mermaids?”

“Exactly,” Margalit says.

So I say, “I'll write a mermaid story.”

“And I'll draw a mermaid and I'll throw in some manatees.”

Margalit holds up her notebook. She has already begun decorating the cover. “This will be our illustration book and the one you've got can be our storybook.”

We worked all morning and all afternoon, trading back and forth. I started a story about a mermaid and a manatee. Then I passed it on to Margalit and she wrote a little bit more while I drew a picture to go with the part I had just written. I didn't think too much about it. It is pretty much like playing house or playing dolls, only instead of setting up toys I just wrote down what I imagined everyone in the story was doing and what they were saying. We worked on our story and illustrations all the way through lunch. Eating while we work. And just like that, the time goes by. It's three o'clock and the sun comes bursting out. Yvette pulls open the sliding door and we all stand looking out, the sunlight glistening and sparkling off every wet surface, every leaf and blade of grass—even the plastic lounge chairs that are set up around the pool are shining.

“Oh great,
now
it gets nice out,” Beatrice says. We all emerge from the clubhouse and outside into the fresh air.

“I think I lost half my tan today.” Yvette holds out her arms.

I am blinking in the light. It feels like we've been underground for weeks and that we've just lived a whole other life, the life Margalit and I wrote down in our storybook and illustrated.

“We need a title,” Margalit says. She's rubbing her eyes.

“Yeah, we do.”

Even Yvette and Beatrice get in on the discussion as we all walk back to our houses, but we haven't come up with the perfect title yet.

My sneakers get wet because instead of staying on the paved sidewalk Margalit and I keep running around each other on the grass.

“My toes are squishing in my soaking socks,” Margalit says.

“Mine too.”

And this seems to launch us into a whole other conversation about wrinkly toes and fingers and memories of staying in the bathtub too long. Yvette and Beatrice aren't the least bit interested but Margalit and I seem to be at no loss for things to add to the infinitely engrossing discussion.

“To be continued,” Margalit says when we get to her door. “Hey! Hey, let's never say good-bye to each other. Let's always just say,
To be continued
.”

“To be continued,” I answer.

“Oh, and hey, wouldn't that be a great title for our story?
To Be Continued
, because we can keep writing forever. The never-ending story. We can just go on and on.”

Even Yvette and Beatrice approve.

“To Be Continued,” I repeat.

And I
know
I have a real best friend.

Chapter Eleven

I almost had a best
friend once before. Tevin. I know that's a boys' name because Tevin
was
a boy, but it was a while ago, like last year when we were still little.

Back then you could be friends with a boy—best friends, even. He lived in New York City and we met at Bedford Hills. The whole time in line, I kept noticing this same boy, taller than me, but I could tell he was about my age, ten. I had been coming to visit my mother for years already and I could tell he was a newbie.

When we got to security, they wouldn't let Tevin come through the metal detector with his miniature action figure. You can't bring in anything. Not anything. Sometimes they send you back just because of what you are wearing.

Once I saw a woman drive ten hours just to get turned away because of her shoes.

“There's a Target right down the road, miss,” the corrections officer tried to tell her. But this woman got really angry and that just got her kicked out completely.

Imagine coming all that way to see your mom, or sister, or whoever she was coming to see, and wearing the wrong shoes?

No sandals allowed. No tank tops. No short shorts. No backless shirts or dresses. I saw a woman made to change because the neckline of her blouse was too low. And they don't like T-shirts that say bad things or anything they don't like. It's up to them. No use arguing. Arguing is not allowed either.

But Tevin wasn't arguing. He just didn't understand what was going on. He had a little Batman toy in his pocket, and they wanted him to put it in the locker before they would let him through.

Tevin started crying, right there in line, and that's when I knew for sure this was his first time. On the outside, it would have been pretty bad for a boy to cry in public like that, but in here, we all understand, and no one even looks at you sideways if you're crying.

One time or another, everyone on the inside cries.

And I knew that feeling Tevin was having. You get stuck on one little thing, and all of a sudden it becomes the most important thing you've got, and you don't want anyone to take it away from you.

It's like they'd already taken away the most important in your whole life—your mom—and then they wanted this, too. They wanted this stupid little action figure. Or whatever it happened to be. It didn't make sense, but I knew what he was feeling.

“It's okay,” I walked over and told him. “Everything stays safe while you are visiting your mom, and then you can get it back again when you leave.”

There was a long line behind us and people were getting a little annoyed, but not too much. That's one thing about Bedford Hills—everyone is here for the same reason, and everyone here has some heartache and some secret that no one else but someone in here could ever understand.

And even though lots of other grown-ups had told him the exact same thing, Tevin just nodded his head at me and he let me help him.

“The locker thing is kind of cool. Do you have a quarter?”

He shook his head no.

“Here, I've got an extra one.” But I didn't, and Matoo knew that, but she let me give him my quarter anyway. I showed Tevin how to put it in the slot and turn the key.

“Just don't forget your locker number, that's all you have to do. Fifty-two. Got it?”

Tevin nodded again and then he said, real quietly, “But I just bought this and I wanted to show it to my mom.”

I straightened up my shoulders and started to tell him something, something like a teacher or a CO would say:
Well, we can't all get what we want, can we?

But I didn't say that.

“I know,” I said. “It stinks. But it'll be okay. I promise.”

Promise?

Of course, what could I promise?

Nothing.

Tevin and I seemed to show up on the same days and about the same time, and after a few months, I started expecting to see him. Sometimes, when there was a really long wait outside the trailer we would break away from the line, take a little walk along the fence and talk. I didn't ask, of course, but Tevin told me about his mother.

“She shouldn't be here,” he told me. “She didn't do anything.”

I had long since stopped thinking like that. I knew my mother too had been in the wrong place at the wrong time. She made some bad choices and now we were “all paying the price.” But like Matoo liked to say:
It doesn't help to dwell on it. It's in the past,
she would say, ever since that day my mother tried to talk to me. I don't want thoughts like that in my mind.

We need to move on,
Matoo would tell me.
Let it go.

“I know,” I told Tevin.

“No, I mean it,” Tevin insisted. “It was this lady who moved in next door to us. She didn't have a car, but we did. I don't know how she got around or anything. We used to see her walking and sometimes my mom would drive her to the grocery or stuff like that, but this one day, I wasn't home. If I was home it wouldn't have happened. But I wasn't home. That's why it's my fault. I was at the movies with my stepbrother, but I should have stayed home. I didn't even want to go. If I had been home my mom wouldn't have given that lady a ride to her uncle's.”

Tevin was talking really fast and I could tell he was trying not to get too mad. Too upset. Or cry. “That's what she told my mom. She just needed a ride to her uncle's. That lady didn't even have an uncle.”

Tevin's mom had only been in prison for a few months. He'd get used to it, I thought. You have to make it through that whole first year. That's what everyone says. First you have to survive one year, your birthday, their birthday, a Thanksgiving, a Christmas, one of every holiday. Tevin needed more time, a full year.

“It's not your fault,” I told him because that's what grown-ups always say. So I said it.

He'd be okay. He just needed to talk.

“It wasn't her uncle. It was a drug dealer,” Tevin went on. “And the police were there waiting, and then they found out that the lady had a gun. My mother didn't know that. She was just doing that a lady a favor, but no one believes her.”

I didn't know what to say.

“She didn't even know the lady. She got ten years for the drugs and two more for the gun. My mother never did drugs. She didn't have a gun and now I don't have a mother. I didn't have a father to begin with.”

Listening to him, I was just thinking how people here are just like me, and how nobody on the outside is like us at all. And how it's like there are all these voices and no one is listening. So I tried to listen really hard, because there wasn't anything else I could do.

“I'm going to get her out of here,” Tevin was saying. “I'm all she has and I have to.”

I knew she was all Tevin had too.

Then every time I saw Tevin he would give me updates about his mother's chances for a retrial and his whole family's letter-writing campaign. I didn't once think about why we weren't doing that. I just listened. Tevin got better and better at understanding the whole process. He might have been ten years old, but he sounded like a lawyer.

One time he brought me photographs to show me before we got into the security area. He always brought his own quarter now.

And then one day when he got up to the counter to check in they told him his mother wasn't there anymore. Matoo and I were right behind them in line when the corrections officer said, “She's been transferred.”

It was the first time I heard Tevin's grandmother speak. “What?” she asked. “What? Where is my daughter? What do you mean ‘transferred'? When did this happen? Why weren't we told?”

Tevin was quiet. He looked like all the air had been sucked right out of him. But he was still standing up.

The officer at the desk checked his list. “Albion,” he said.

I knew what that was. Albion was the only other state prison for women in New York. It was really, really far away, almost in Canada. Sometimes women went there right before they were going to be let out. So maybe it was a good thing.

But Tevin wouldn't look at me. He didn't say a word. He and his grandmother had to step out of line and me and Matoo were next. I never saw Tevin again and I had no way to find him. I never thought to ask him his last name or his address or his e-mail. It never crossed my mind that he wouldn't just be here, every week, just like me.

But he was gone.

I liked to believe that Tevin's mother had a new trial and they found her innocent and they all went home from Albion together. Like a magical storybook with a happy ending.

I like to believe that.