Skylark (7 page)

“It wasn't right,” Dad argued.

“
You
could have taken me to the hospital,” Mom said. “
You
could have gotten angry with her. I was down for the count.” Her voice was quieter as she added, “And I didn't want to cause trouble.”

“Me neither,” Dad confessed. “Neither of us is really the fighting kind. We're too gentle, Rebecca. One of us has to start making some trouble.”

Mom laughed at that.

“I mean it, Rebecca,” Dad said. But he put on a funny face and repeated, all Humphrey Bogart, “One of us has to start making some trouble.”

The two of them laughed. Mom reached out and squeezed Dad's hand. As she did, my heart hurt like it had never hurt before, like it was being clenched by the whole cold universe. Both my parents had tears in their eyes.

A few weeks ago, as Mom laid the cutting board across the console for the night to join the front seats into a kind of bed, her necklace got caught in her hair. “Sweetheart,” she said. It was all she had to say. When you live in a car, three of you in a space the size of a closet, you don't have to say much to get each other's attention. I leaned over and untangled the necklace as gently as I could. Mom was wearing a new blouse, something from the Single Parent Resource Center clothing exchange, something too big, too loose. I could see down her collar. That was the first time I saw the scars on her back—two thick, red scars. I'm sure they're from her fall that day when the ladder rung broke. What I imagine is that the broken ends of the rung dragged against her as she went down.

I keep thinking I'll ask Mom about the scars, but I don't. The scars are Mom's secret. There are other secrets she doesn't tell. I know this because she is often quiet and because she greets us with a smile every morning and every afternoon after school and when she reaches over the driver's seat to lay her hand on our foreheads and say goodnight. She never talks about painful things, like about her father dying when she was ten. Or about not finishing school. Or about making so many mistakes on the till at Sandwich Shack that they replaced the words on the buttons—
tomatoes, olives
—with little pictures of the different vegetables. Or about her husband leaving her to find rough work in an unknown place. Or about sleeping in the front seat of an old car each night, her hip supported by a thrift-store cutting board.

Semifinals

Clem has had it. He won't come to the slam tonight, and Mom says she can't make him.

“He's gone with you lots of times, Angie. He's done his duty.”

“He likes it,” I say.

“No, I don't.”

“You like the free food.”

“Shut up.”

“
Clem,
” Mom scolds. “What free food?”

“The food he—”

“Shut up!” Clem repeats.

“What food?” Mom asks again.

Clem gives me a sharp look. “Just because you want me there,” he hisses. “It isn't all about you.”

I relent. “They put out snacks once in a while.”

“Oh,” Mom says. “Well, Clem needs an evening to rest. He has time trials coming up.”

“I know,” I say. “But I've got semifinals this week.”

“You'll do fine,” Mom says. “I know you will.”

So Clem gets dropped off at the park to practice, and Mom leaves me outside the Spiral with two dollars and fifty cents. Surfer and Mercy Girl are sitting at a table near the front, but they don't invite me to sit with them. In fact, I'd swear that Surfer sticks his foot out for a split second as if to trip me. Every table is taken, so I stand at the back. I try to go through my poem in my head, but I can't concentrate. I feel nervous and exposed without Clem.

Mercy Girl gets called up to the stage. She approaches the mic with a sheet of paper in her hands. Her poem is about a girl who thinks her boyfriend has cheated on her. After a few lines, Mercy Girl tears the paper in half. “Why would you trample my innocence like that, why would you be so guilty?” To find out if her boyfriend is sneaking around, the girl reads her boyfriend's diary.

Mercy Girl continues to tear the paper in half and half again as she continues the story. After reading her boyfriend's diary, the girl says she feels “torn” for having been so sneaky and untrusting. She's also “torn up” by the words on the page, which—this is a funny bit—“are not all about another girl who's more fun than me. They're not about how quiet I get sometimes, or how worried, or that pimple I had last week. What you write in your diary, oh sweetheart, is the score of every game your basketball team played this season. That is all.”

Mercy Girl tears up the last bits of paper. “
I'm
the guilty one. I have torn us apart. Now we are nothing but pieces. Pieces of the past.”

Aaron is up next. His piece asks, what if there was Facebook during the French Revolution? It's funny. “
Like
if you think we should storm the Bastille.
Comment
if you think we should continue with the beheadings.”

Surfer tells a magical story about a whale who cannot sing. Then it's my turn. My piece is about Skylark's glove compartment, about how small it is but how I like to imagine it's a portal to somewhere enormous. “Every time I pinch the latch, I think this time, it will let me in, let me through, to a ballroom, or outer space, glittering and expanding.”

But I stumble over my words. I forget my lines. People snap their fingers, but I eventually have to reach into my pocket and, for the first time, read my piece. The paper shakes in my trembling hands. The tears in my eyes don't help either.

“Hey,” Mercy Girl says when I'm finally off the stage. “Everyone has a tough night. Why don't you sit with us?”

“Thanks,” I say.

Surfer doesn't move his backpack from the other chair. I slide a chair over from the next table. Surfer stares at me, smiling tightly. Gloating.

“That was terrible,” I say.

“You just—lost your confidence,” Mercy Girl says. “Don't be so hard on yourself. This game has its highs and lows. And a bit of fear isn't a bad thing. Better than always thinking you're God's gift, you know?” Mercy Girl shoots a glance at Surfer and winks at me.

“Yeah,” I say. “I think I do.”

We smile at each other like old friends. Surfer misses it completely. He just sits there with his nose in the air.

“Your piece was good tonight,” I tell him.

“Uh. Yeah.”

He doesn't look at me. He never does, except when he nails a good line onstage. I realize that except for the first night, I've placed ahead of him every time. Is that why he's so put out?

“What did you think of Angie's piece?” Mercy Girl asks Surfer.

“Interesting,” he answers. “Another poem about a car. That's three now.”

“So?” Mercy Girl asks.

“So I know something about Angie that she probably wouldn't like people to know.”

My body stiffens. I try to smile. “Oh, yeah?” I say, trying to sound light and breezy.

“I saw you last night, Angie. On Marifield Avenue. I saw your—your house.”

“You did?” I can hardly talk.

Surfer's voice turns bitter. “Your house is close to the road, isn't it? Like, super close, squished right up to the curb?”

If Clem was here, he would rescue me. He'd get Surfer talking about something else, like surfing at Jordan River. Luckily, Twig is at the mic to announce tonight's winners. Even though I froze onstage, I come in third. Aaron comes in second—it's the first time he's ever competed and not won first place. Mercy Girl wins. Her prize is a fondue set. Aaron wins a pair of fuzzy dice—lucky him—and I win a deck of cards and a cribbage board, which are actually things we could use. Our deck is missing two cards, and we keep score with paper and pen.

Twig reminds us that summer is around the corner and Slam Night will soon be winding down for the year. She's tallied our standings for the season. Aaron, Mercy Girl, Surfer and I and three others are to compete next week in the year's finals.

I'll have to work hard, but Clem needs help with a time-trials event on the weekend. He has borrowed a camera from the school's camera club and wants me to shoot him and also be a one-person pit crew, ready to change a tire if needed. And he wants me to bike the course and give him my take—where to take things easy, where to go for broke.

“Everyone's asking for you at the bike park,” he told me. “They're calling me The Kid now. There's no more The Kids. When was the last time you got on your bike?”

I can't remember.

It's a warm spring evening, still light. I don't need my flashlight to reach the car, which is parked in our new favorite place, a quiet road close to a bicycle trail. Mom is in the front seat, knitting, and Clem's in the back, bent over a textbook. I whistle as I approach the car to warn them.

Mom and Clem look up, smiling. Smiling big. They've been waiting for me. They have news.

“Our name reached the top of the list,” Mom says.

I'm still holding the car door wide open.

“Hit the top and rang the big fat bell, Angie,” Clem says.

I give him a look.

“It's true, Angie. I swear.”

“Yes, sweetheart,” Mom says. “It's true.”

I've imagined this moment so many times. I've pictured myself whooping and laughing when I hear the news. But now that it's really happening, I burst into tears.

Composing on the Fly

I compose my performance piece for the finals all week. A few times, Clem waves his hand in my face to get my attention.

“You're helping me at the time trials, right?” he asks.

“I don't know,” I say.

“Angie, I need you.”

“I've got to write this poem.”

“Do it while you're at the park.”

I take a deep breath. “Okay.”

Clem smiles. His teeth are the wildest teeth you've ever seen. They poke and dart. Some are thin, some wide, some low, some high. They're like words, each one of them different. I think of Surfer, arrogant and threatening. How different Clem is from him.

“You're awesome,” I blurt.

“Thanks,” Clem says. He looks at me for a moment, then nods and says, “You too.”

It's nice to be on the track again. It feels great to push down with my legs and pedal hard and to feel my stomach lift when I catch air. I offer Clem tips about the track, but he doesn't really need them. He just wants me there. I watch him fly and jump and twist and land hard, solidly, and the whole time, I'm running words through my head, letting them jump and twist and land hard too. That's a cool thing about writing. It takes me all sorts of places, but
I
can take
it
anywhere I go. I can do it anywhere, anytime.

I found this magazine in the library called
the Claremont Review
. It publishes poems and stories by anyone under eighteen. I'm going to send some of my stories to the editors. I've decided that I want to write all my life, no matter what happens. Life changes—it always will change, Mom says. For me, writing just might be the ultimate through-line. Slam Night got me through the last few months. It let me imagine something beyond how uncomfortable we were, how much I missed Dad and how worried I was about Mom. It gave me
a
way
to think about all that stuff—a way in and a way out. A way through.

Clem takes second place, which gets him into next week's finals.

“I always knew I had two champions,” Mom says once we're back in the car.

“You don't—not yet,” Clem tells her.

“You're wrong,” Mom says. “We've have hard circumstances the last few months. But you two have managed to come out ahead. “

Mom starts up the Skylark. “Check the map,” she tells Clem.

Just like that, we're on our way to see our new home.

A woman with a clipboard gives us a tour of the three-story, three-bedroom townhouse. It's a little tight and there's no yard, but it's
our
house! It's got a fridge and a bathtub and
big
windows. Closets! Drawers! A living room, a dining alcove, a hallway long enough to lie down in. There's even a parking spot for the car.

There's more good news on this bright spring day. After our tour of the house, we stop in at the library.

“Did you get a letter from Dad?” Clem asks as we gaze into the computers.

“Looks like it.”

“Did you read it?”

“Not yet.”

“
Read it.
”

Angel,

I'm coming home. Mom and I have
been Talking about it.

i have made a name for myself here.
There was even a news article about my
brick work. I joked once with mom that
one of us needed to make some trouble.
Well Ive been making trouble with my
bricks. The article called it art.

That got me jobs in the rich part of
town. Now I've got work in Victoria.

Mom tells me you've been making
trouble too. Poetry. She says you are
winning prizes. Im not surprised my girl.
I'll be there in a week. I love you. We
will live together in that big house hey?

I love you. I told you that already.
I know.

I love you.

Dad

“Three more days, and we're in the townhouse,” Clem says. “For the first week, all I'm going to do is cook and eat.”

I laugh. And maybe because I know we've got a home to go to, with a fridge and a stove, I'm able to look at Clem straight on, eyes fully open, for the first time in months. The guy is bony. He needs some solid rest and square meals. Come to think of it, I probably do too.

I drag Clem to finals one hour early. I have to be first on the list. I've got to get to the mic before Surfer does. I know he's planning to slur me onstage, announce that I live in a car, make out that I'm pathetic.