Pieces of Georgia Read online

and how old was I, and in what grade,

  and was the school an easy one or strict

  and were any of those horses mine.

  I wanted to finish my sketch because it was the third time I’d tried

  to draw those geese and they were finally starting

  to look like geese and not chickens,

  but she was jabbering so much, and I didn’t want to be rude,

  so I told her everything she wanted to know, and especially

  that we were both in sixth grade, even though she was older

  (she got held back after that year in Mexico),

  and that Longwood Middle School was strict in some ways

  and easy in others,

  and then (I watched her real careful when I said this)

  I told her straight out that I lived

  only with my daddy, a construction worker, in the trailer,

  and we rented that space from Mr. Kesey, who owned the farm,

  and that my momma had died

  of a one-week pneumonia when I was seven,

  and most of the horses belonged to people who didn’t live here,

  and I earned money cleaning and walking them,

  and then I told her I needed to be up at the barn at four o’clock

  to groom Ella for Mr. Fitz, and she asked

  if she could come, too.

  She didn’t seem to care that I was almost a whole year younger

  or that I wasn’t rich

  or that I didn’t play sports

  or have a mother

  or nice clothes.

  That was a year ago, and Tiffany and me have been friends

  ever since.

  We ride the same bus, which stops for me at the end of the lane,

  and the rest of the kids who have moved in,

  they all think I live in the big farmhouse,

  and Tiffany has never told them

  different.

  If you think about it,

  it doesn’t make much sense that we are friends:

  She’s athletic—I’m not.

  She has a regular family (a mother, father, little brother)—I just have Daddy.

  She’s real popular in school—I’m not.

  She loves to talk—I don’t.

  She’s Catholic—I don’t go to church.

  Her family has lots of money—we just get by.

  Her father works for some company in that big corporate center near the turnpike and flies all over the country for meetings.

  He drives a new BMW.

  Mine puts up the walls and nails down the floors of the houses that people like Tiffany live in.

  He drives a ten-year-old Ford pickup.

  I guess I’m telling you this because Mrs. Yocum told me

  to write about the things I might ask you

  if you were here. I guess I’d ask you

  how two people who are so different

  can stay friends. I’d ask you about the friends you had

  when you grew up in Savannah.

  Tiffany’s only in one of my classes

  (Mr. Krasinski’s math, and he doesn’t let us talk),

  and her popular jock friends treat me like I’m

  invisible. But Tiffany always says hi to me in the halls, and sometimes

  she sits with me at lunch (but not always),

  and she makes her mother beep the horn

  when they drive by on the way to

  basketball games, lacrosse matches and practices,

  or when she sees me out walking the horses

  or tossing tennis balls for the dog.

  The truth is, sometimes I worry

  about Tiffany. She’s always busy.

  Sometimes she looks as tired as Daddy

  after one of his overtime days. Take

  yesterday, for example: She came up to the barn

  after lacrosse practice

  (at school, it doesn’t start till the second week of March,

  but Tiffany’s real good, so she plays on a club team

  that practices indoors in the winter

  and competes in tournaments all year).

  I was grooming Ella, and the other horses were all

  in their stalls with their blankets on,

  munching sweet feed and corn,

  and the mother cat was nursing her newborn kittens.

  Tiffany brushed the snow off her sneakers, plopped herself

  down on a hay bale, and before we started to talk—

  her back propped straight up against the wall—

  she fell asleep.

  6.

  When my best friend Tina moved to Cleveland

  at the end of fifth grade, it was

  the second-worst thing

  that ever happened.

  You didn’t know Tina (we became

  best friends in third grade, the year after you died),

  but we were the same

  in many ways…. Her real father died when she was five,

  and she lived in a tiny apartment over the 7-Eleven

  with her mother and younger brother.

  Tina loved to draw as much as I do, so we’d spend

  part of every weekend

  lying on her mother’s old sheepskin in the living room,

  our colored pencils scattered everywhere,

  making pictures of our pets

  and the kids we knew from school.

  But then Tina’s mother got remarried. Tina’s stepdad

  worked at a car parts factory in Philadelphia

  that shut down

  and relocated all of its workers

  to Ohio.

  I wrote to her for a while, and she wrote back,

  but then I stopped.

  It hurt too much to hear how she had

  a new house,

  a new school (that she really liked),

  and her own pony (Slim Jim) in the yard.

  After that, I didn’t try to make new friends.

  After that, except for Blake and Ella,

  I stayed pretty much to myself.

  Then along came Tiffany, like a small hurricane,

  and somehow we clicked.

  We are not the same kind of friends

  as me and Tina were—

  Tina was more like my twin—

  she liked almost everything I liked,

  and her family was poor,

  and her home was small and plain,

  and, for a while, she had only one parent….

  Me and Tiffany are not like that—

  we come from really different families, and we don’t

  have a lot in common,

  but for some strange reason that I can’t explain,

  we get along just fine.

  7.

  Daddy drove right past the Brandywine River Museum

  on the way to Delaware. We go just over the state line

  every other Saturday to buy food and household supplies

  at the grocery. It’s a lot cheaper

  than anywhere in Pennsylvania, and you don’t

  have to pay tax. Daddy likes that.

  My stomach got all fluttery when we stopped at the red light

  on Route 1, right near the entrance and the neat

  gray and tan sign that sits out near the side of the road.

  I wanted so bad to ask him if we could stop and go in

  after we’d done all our errands,

  but it felt just like it does when I’m with Mrs. Yocum,

  or when Mr. Hendershot asks me a history question

  I know the answer to

  but I can’t make the picture in my head

  into the words he wants to hear

  and before you know it he’s asked someone else

  and then my picture disappears.

  I still haven’t told Daddy about

  my getting that anonymous membership. I’m afraid he’ll say

  I can’t go. You know, he still keeps a photo of you
/>
  inside your old sketchbook in his truck,

  but he turns away whenever I

  pick up my own drawing pad and pencil.

  I suppose I might be starting

  to look more like you did that summer

  when he met you at the Savannah College of Art and Design,

  when you would sit and draw under those big old magnolias

  and he was working construction on one of the dorms

  and you asked him to pose for a sketch

  because you liked his smile

  and he said he would

  if you would come with him to dinner. I never

  saw that sketch. I’m afraid to ask Daddy

  if he still has it.

  I was in first grade when you

  told me that, remember? I drew a Crayola picture

  of a man and a woman standing under a big tree, holding hands

  and smiling, and you taped it to our refrigerator.

  I imagine you went to art museums in Savannah,

  and maybe you even went to some here in Pennsylvania, and maybe

  you even went to the Brandywine River Museum.

  And if you did, that would be

  another reason Daddy wouldn’t like me going there,

  wouldn’t want one more thing to remind him

  that right up until the week you died,

  what you liked to do best

  was dance your pencil across a blank page

  and make something come alive.

  8.

  We got our report cards. There was a

  note attached to mine:

  Georgia,

  I hope you’re making time to write in that diary. You can make an appointment during school or afterward, any day but Friday, if you want to talk about anything at all.

  Mrs. Yocum

  That was nice, I guess. I still have no idea what she expected

  me to say about myself when

  we had our little visits. I know my life

  is not perfect. I know everyone thinks I’m quiet because

  you died. Maybe they’re a little bit right.

  Maybe I’m naturally shy, like Daddy.

  But that doesn’t mean I need to be on some “At Risk” list

  like it’s a sure thing I’m going to start hanging out behind

  the Acme to sniff glue with Danita and Sam,

  or go smoking with Marianne and her friends,

  or steal stuff from the mall with Ronnie.

  I mean, what exactly

  have I done to get my name on that list? Absolutely

  nothing, as far as I can tell.

  Truth is, I don’t know why I’m not more bad than I am,

  or why I’m not hanging out with them.

  Lord knows I have plenty of time after school,

  without Daddy here,

  to go anywhere I want and find

  some trouble. It’s just that I don’t mind spending my free time

  hot-walking horses or playing with Blake

  or just sitting down by the pond,

  watching the geese and frogs, being still

  and thinking. When I’m bored, my hands always seem to find

  a pencil or a piece of charcoal

  (Miss Benedetto gives me the old ones

  ’cause the school orders new boxes every three months

  whether she needs them or not), and before I know it,

  it’s an hour or two later and I have to

  set the table, make dinner, and start my homework.

  In case you want to know,

  I’m not the smartest in seventh grade,

  but I do all right. I do what I have to do

  to get by.

  This time I got three C’s, two B’s, and one A (in art, of course).

  But I’m smart enough to know I don’t want to live

  in this trailer forever, and since I don’t seem to have

  a lot of family looking out after me, I’ll have to make my own way

  in this world someday.

  I figure I’ll need to graduate high school and maybe go to

  community college at least.

  Daddy and I have not really

  talked about it, but we’ll have to soon ’cause he has to sign off

  on my course forms for eighth grade

  (that’s when Mrs. Yocum says

  I should start to take certain science and math classes

  if I plan on going to college).

  The last time we sat down to talk about school,

  I needed his permission to see the seventh-grade health film

  When You Become a Woman. I watched him

  read over the letter that was printed on pink

  paper and sign the bottom with his

  big tan left hand, which the pen almost disappeared in, and then

  I watched him try to say something about it to me,

  but it was for him—I’m pretty sure—like it was for me

  in Mrs. Yocum’s office

  when I had that rabbit kicking around my insides

  and the words got stuck in my throat.

  Daddy had to go outside and have a cigarette, and when he

  came back in, he said: “If you have

  any questions after that movie, you can ask me,”

  but even though that’s what his words said, his face said:

  “I sure hope you don’t have any questions, Georgia.”

  And do you know what? Just two days after we watched

  that stupid film in the gym (Tiffany had already shown me

  a book she took from her parents’ room,

  so I had a pretty good idea where all the parts were

  and what they were for), I was in the nurse’s office

  asking her for sanitary pads.

  But lucky for me, Mrs. Reed is just about the best person

  in all of Longwood Middle School. She knows

  I get those awful stomachaches and keeps

  a big bottle of Rolaids, fruit-flavored, just for me.

  She asks only what she has to ask

  to fill out the forms that get sent to Guidance,

  and mostly she just lets me relax on her couch

  whenever I’m feeling bad.

  You know, I don’t even think it’s the Rolaids

  that make me better. I think it’s just a few minutes of lying

  down and being quiet, staring at the fishbowl on her desk

  and knowing

  she’s not going to send me back to class

  until I’m ready.

  Anyway, Mrs. Reed gave me these coupons I can use

  to buy my own supplies at the store

  and asked me if I had any questions,

  just like Daddy did. But her face and her words

  matched up, so I asked her

  three or four things I wasn’t sure about,

  and she answered me, patiently, like she wasn’t the school nurse,

  but almost like I know you would

  if you were here.

  9.

  “My science teacher says people don’t

  die of pneumonia anymore.”

  That’s what Tiffany said when she

  came up to me in the hall right after biology.

  She said it casual, like you might say “It was cloudy today,”

  like it was something no one could argue.

  I stood there while she hauled up her black hair

  into the usual ponytail.

  She was wearing three-inch heels,

  which made her taller than most of the teachers

  and way taller than me.

  “True,” I said, tilting my neck back

  more than I usually did.

  “Most people don’t. But my momma was born

  with a weakness in her lungs,

  and she had to take this special medicine her whole life,

  and she basically hated doctors

  on account of having to be a
round them so much as a kid.”

  I kicked my locker closed and started walking to lunch.

  “When Momma got sick, she and Daddy were

  saving up for a house,” I told Tiffany, offering to split

  my bag of Cheese Nips.

  “A doctor’s appointment would cost,

  and Momma kept telling Daddy it was just

  a bad flu, like a lot of folks got that winter.”

  Tiffany took the Cheese Nips and gave me

  her bite-size Milky Way. She looked sorry

  for bringing up the subject.

  But it was okay—

  it felt good, in a strange sort of way,

  to talk about it.

  10.

  Early dismissal today. I was home at 1:05,

  an hour and a half earlier than usual. Mr. Fitz’s horse, Ella,

  followed me up the lane, and as I passed

  the last gate at the top of the pasture,

  she whinnied at me so pathetically, I dropped

  my backpack and went inside.

  We have this game where I hide a treat in one of my pockets

  and she has to do a few tricks for me

  before I let her find it. I’ve taught her to nod yes,

  count to six (sometimes she paws the ground, sometimes

  she stomps, but I give her credit for either),

  and shake all over

  like she’s a dog just come out of a river. She can also laugh

  (she lifts her upper lip and waves it around),

  but we’re still working on that one.

  You know, I think it’s a good thing that Ella has me

  to see that she’s more than just

  an animal with good bloodlines,

  more than a ribbon-winning jumper, something to show off

  to the crowd on Sundays. Today, when I watched her

  race around the pasture in the powdery snow

  just for the fun of it,

  or in the summer when she

  rolls in the mud after a hard rain,

  or splashes her hoof in the trough ’cause she likes the sound,

  I know that’s when she’s happiest.

  Of all the horses that have boarded here,

  Ella is the smartest and the sweetest, and Mr. Fitz