Osei studied the asphalt—scene of many a scraped knee. He wondered why playgrounds weren’t covered with more forgiving grass.
“I didn’t expect much from a bl—” he glanced at Miss Lode. “From you. And I haven’t been surprised today. But if anything else happens and you are anywhere nearby? The principal will expel you, no matter how much a pretty girl defends you. Do you hear me?”
Osei clenched his teeth until he thought they would break, and after a moment nodded.
“All right.” Mr. Brabant raised his voice. “What are you all doing still standing here? Why aren’t you in your lines? I’m counting to ten and you’d better be there or there will be detentions!”
Amid the students scurrying across the playground, the two teachers walked unhurriedly. Osei trudged behind; he couldn’t face the indignity of running ahead of them to get in line, even if he got detention.
“Richard, I…” Miss Lode hesitated.
“What?” Mr. Brabant barked, as if he were talking to a student. “Sorry, Diane. What?”
“Well—I wonder if we’re being a little hard on him.”
“Hard on him? He just knocked a girl over!”
“Yes, but…this can’t be easy for him, being all alone in the school.”
“Life is not easy for anyone. If anything, he has it too easy. He’ll grow up and walk right into a good job, thanks to affirmative action. A good job that someone more qualified should have done.”
“Did that happen to— Never mind.” Miss Lode sighed. “Lord, what is wrong today? First Casper, now this. Did they put something in the lunches?”
“You know why,” Mr. Brabant answered darkly. “This school isn’t ready for a black boy.”
“I guess not.”
“And the day isn’t over yet. You know what they say: trouble always comes in threes.”
All traces of Mimi’s headache had been scoured away, and everything had come back into sharp focus. It was as if she were looking through a pair of binoculars, turning and turning the knobs until they snapped into place and she could see clearly what had been a blur before.
Maybe it was because Ian was leaving her alone. Since Monday morning by the flagpole when she had agreed to be his girlfriend, she had felt his attention pressing on her like a heavy quilt pinning her to the bed. Even out of sight he somehow made his presence felt—either by the persistent attention his friend Rod paid her, keeping tabs on her for Ian, or by the way the playground functioned around him: the kids who followed him or feared him or ignored him running in distinct motions like a machine in which Ian was the center. Briefly Mimi had been pulled into that center with him, and it was so alien a place that she could barely function—as a student, as a girlfriend, as a friend. Buying her freedom from him with the strawberry pencil case had been worth it for the feeling she’d had during kickball that she was now insignificant. Ian’s attention had shifted to others, and Mimi could breathe again, could close her eyes and find her own place far from scrutiny.
But she felt guilty: she knew instinctively that nothing good would come of Ian now being in possession of that case—and Osei’s address and phone number. She regretted not thinking to remove the piece of paper before handing it over. Most of all she felt guilty for betraying Dee by giving away something precious of hers. It was disloyal.
She sighed. At least I can help Dee now—that’s something, she thought as she linked her arm through her friend’s and walked her upstairs to see the nurse.
Miss Montano’s office on the second floor was a small box of a room, with a bathroom attached and the transistor radio permanently tuned to WPGC, the local Top 40 station. They had all been there before to see Miss Montano for cuts and stomachaches and fevers. Mimi was a regular with her headaches. The door was ajar, and over the sound of “Band on the Run” on the radio, Mimi could hear whimpers and the nurse’s admonishment to “stop being a baby.”
She and Dee sat down to wait in a row of chairs set out in the hall. Across from them, posters had been taped to the wall. A reminder to wash your hands after using the bathroom. How to deal with hair lice. The signs for chicken pox, mumps, measles. Posters about having a TB test, an eye test, a shot for smallpox or polio. Just sitting across from all this adult information exhausted her. They were good at making the world into a fearful place. For a second she wished her mother were sitting with them, to take over the burden of worry.
More yelps were heard from the office. A scraped knee, Mimi predicted, which Miss Montano would be cleaning with iodine. Probably a young student, a second or third grader. She had sat here so many times that she had heard it all before.
Dee was leaning back, eyes closed. Mimi wanted to ask how she was doing; in fact, there were many things she wanted to ask, and to say. But she knew from experience with headaches that fussing didn’t help. Instead she tried to be practical. “I’m going to get some water. Do you want some?”
“Yes, please.”
Mimi pulled two Dixie Riddle Cups from a dispenser on the wall and went to the water fountain down the hall to fill them. When she got back, “Reelin’ in the Years” by Steely Dan was playing and Dee was crying. Mimi sat down and handed her the cup. “Drink.”
Dee drank in one gulp, then crushed the paper cup without reading her riddle. Mimi sipped hers, glancing at the joke on the side of the cup. What does a mirror do when you tell it a joke? It cracks up. They were never funny.
“Right,” she said. “I’m going to rebraid your hair. One braid or two?”
“One.”
“French braid?”
“French. No—normal. Make it simple.”
“Turn your back.”
Dee turned away from Mimi, who sat sideways in her seat and pulled her friend’s hair over her shoulders. She began combing the thick blond tresses with her fingers to calm and tame them. She had rarely seen Dee’s hair free from braids. It seemed a shame to confine it again. Still, it clearly bothered the adults.
Mimi divided Dee’s hair into three. “Now, tell me what’s wrong,” she said as she began weaving the strands in and out.
“Oh…” Dee shook her head. “It’s nothing.”
“It’s not nothing. What happened out there?” Mimi had been sitting with her eyes closed, willing herself far from the playground, and had only caught the end of Dee’s fall, the smack of her head against the ground, but she’d seen the ugly fury in Osei’s face and knew Dee could not have tripped as she’d claimed.
“I don’t know why he’s mad at me.” Dee wiped her eyes with a hand. “I don’t know what I’ve done. Everything was so great, and then…suddenly it wasn’t. It’s like a switch has been flipped, like someone said something to him about me. But what would anyone say? I haven’t done anything wrong! Except…”
“What?”
Dee shook her head. “Nothing.”
When it became clear she would not elaborate, Mimi shook her own head. “Boys are strange.”