Momma used to love tea. Green tea. I catch the scent of Ms. Flores’s tea and in an instant, it reminds me of Momma, of the way she swore her green tea fought cancer and heart disease and old age.
Too bad it didn’t do anything to stop Bluebirds from tumbling down the road.
“Yes, ma’am,” I reply, trying hard to ignore the way Ms. Flores’s gray eyes call me a liar. “It was the first time I’d been anywhere, at least,” I say, “other than the backyard,” and even that was rare.
“Didn’t you think it was a bad idea?” asks Ms. Flores.
My minds drifts back to the day that Matthew and I left the Omaha home. I tell Ms. Flores that the air was cold. It was fall. The clouds in the sky were thick and heavy.
I can picture it still, that first day Matthew took me outside.
“Yes, ma’am.”
“Did you tell Matthew that? Did you tell him it was a bad idea?”
“No, ma’am.”
She yanks that tea bag from the cup and sets it on a paper napkin. “Well, why not, Claire? If you knew it was a bad idea, then why didn’t you say that to Matthew?” she asks, and I feel my shoulders rise up and shrug.
I remember that I walked close to Matthew, terrified to be outside. Terrified of the way the trees shook in the wind. Terrified of the cars that zoomed past, cars which I’d only ever seen from my bedroom window. I hadn’t been in a car since that day six years ago when Joseph and Miriam drove me to their home. For me, cars were bad. Cars were how Momma and Daddy died. Cars were how I ended up there, at Joseph and Miriam’s home.
I remember that Matthew tugged on my sleeve and we crossed the street. I peered back to see the house from outside, a house that was pretty almost, almost quaint. It wasn’t the newest house on the block, but it was charming nonetheless, with its crisp white paint, and the black shutters, and the gray stone that wrapped around the home. The front door was red.
I’d never seen the home from that angle before, from outside, from the front yard.
And then, for some reason, I got scared.
And I started running.
“Hold on, hold on,” Matthew said, tugging on my shirt to stop me from running. The gym shoes felt big and clunky, like ten pound weighs on the bottom of my feet. I wasn’t used to wearing shoes. Around the house, all I did was walk barefoot. “What’s the hurry?” Matthew asked, and when I turned to him, he could see the panic in my eyes, the fear. He could see that I was shaking. “What is it, Claire? What’s wrong?”
And I told him how I was scared of the cars, the clouds, the naked trees that shivered in the cold November air. Of the kids who peered from behind curtains of their own homes, the kids with the bikes and the chalk, and their mean names: dickhead, retard.
And that’s when Matthew clasped me by the hand, something he’d never done before. No one had held my hand for a real long time, not since Momma did when I was a girl. It felt good, Matthew’s hand somehow warm though mine was made up of ice cubes.
Matthew and I kept walking, down the block and around a corner, where he dragged me to a funny blue sign. “This is our stop,” he said. I didn’t know what that meant: our stop. But I followed him over to the sign where we stood and waited for a real long time. There were others there, too, other people hovering around the sign. Just waiting.
Matthew let go of my hand to feel around in his pants pocket for a handful of coins, and when he did, the cold November air whooshed up and snatched my hair. A car lurched by, with music that was loud and mad. I felt suddenly as if it was hard to breathe, as though I was choking on that raw air, like everyone was looking at me. What you can’t see, can’t hurt you, I reminded myself, and I pressed in close to Matthew, trying to forget the cold air, the loud music, the brassy eyes.
A big bus—white and blue with tinted black windows—came to a stop right before us. Matthew said, “This is our bus,” and we climbed up the huge steps with the other people, and feeling me hesitate, Matthew said, “It’s okay. No one’s gonna hurt you,” before dropping a handful of quarters in a machine and leading me down the dirty aisle to a hard blue seat. The bus lurched forward, and I felt as though I was gonna fall from my seat, onto the dirty floor. I stared at that floor, the one with an oozing soda can and an old candy wrapper and the gook from someone else’s shoes.