Taneesha Never Disparaging Page 4

  Those little girls kept looking at me like I was going to say something. But since I couldn’t, I just kept chanting in my mind.

  I don’t know how long we sat like that. Them looking at me. Me looking at them. A minute? Two minutes? I couldn’t tell. But I starting thinking something: “Like it or not, Taneesha Bey-Ross, you’ve got a job to do and there’s no way out.”

  So while those six eyes x-rayed me, I made a decision. Where it came from I couldn’t have said.

  Loser! Loser! Loser!

  But I decided that in spite of Evella’s racket, I was not going to let her ruin everything.

  At least that was my plan.

  “Okay, girls, what should I read first?” I asked, holding up one of the books in my lap. “Kendra’s Not-So-Surprise Party…or—”

  “The party! The party!” squealed a girl, bobbing her chubby body up and down on her mattress. Her two thick braids flapped behind her like floppy wings.

  “The Party! Ow!”

  “What’s wrong, Ebony?!” I stood.

  “The needle pinched here,” she said, pointing to the place where a clear, plastic tube stuck out of her arm.

  “Okay. Okay. I…I…I’ll get my mother.” Panicking, I rushed toward the door.

  “No. I’m all right. The needle always do that when I jump on the bed.” I looked at her, unsure. “For real. I’m okay.”

  “Then don’t jump on the bed, Ebony. All right?” I eased back to my chair. Whew! Girl, you nearly gave me a heart attack.

  “All right. But can you please read about the party?”

  “Okay.” I sat. “I like that one, too.”

  That wasn’t so hard. A little drama, but it’s over.

  Even though I hadn’t wanted to be there at first, I started thinking it would be kind of cool to be able to tell Carli that the little kids at the hospital looked up to me.

  I opened one of the books on my lap and started to read: “Kendra couldn’t wait. She peeked out from under her red blanket—”

  “Nurse Jim read that one yesterday!” A Thumbalina-sized girl sitting on the bed across from Ebony blasted that news. She had short, reddish hair braided in a pattern that looked like the lines on a soccer ball.

  “Oh. I didn’t know that, Loren. Um….” My mind raced.

  See? Told you you’ d flop.

  I twisted one of my locks and chewed my bottom lip. I tried to think of what to do next. My mother had only given me two books.

  Maybe I better go ask her for more.

  You are such a baby! You can’ t even get through the first few minutes without Mama!

  “Well, I wasn’t here yesterday, Loren!” A skinny girl said that. Over a dozen teeny braids were caught in shiny yellow and red baubles that decorated her hair as if it was a gumball garden. “I want to hear about the surprise party, too.”

  I was glad to know that, thanks to Shantay, the problem was over.

  “Okay, girls. I think Shantay’s the tie breaker.”

  “What’s that mean?” asked Loren.

  “The party wins.”

  “Goody!” yelped Ebony.

  “Aw man!” moaned Loren.

  “Sorry, Loren. I’ll read the other book next, okay?”

  Loren’s lip poked out. “Okay.”

  I started to read again:, “Kendra couldn’t wait. She peeked out from under her red blanket—”

  “Hey, girls! Sorry for interrupting, but it’s time to check your glucose levels.”

  I looked up.

  Mama breezed into the room in dark blue pants and a midnight blue smock that had galaxies glowing and swirling all over it. She carried a tray of medical stuff.

  I slumped back in my chair, frustrated. Just when I was getting to work, I had to stop.

  “Dang!” said Ebony. “Nurse Alima, we was just getting our story!”

  Yeah, dang.

  “Hey, Mama,” I muttered, waving a blasé hand when she brushed passed me.

  She headed toward Loren’s bed. “Sorry, girls. I’ll be as quick as I can. Taneesha, how’re things going in here?”

  “Good. Like Ebony said, we were just about to read.”

  I wanted Mama to go away. I was ready to get down to business. With her in the room, I didn’t feel so on top of everything anymore.

  “Okay. I hear you. I’ll be out of your way in a minute. Promise.

  “With diabetes we have to make sure glucose levels aren’t too high or too low.” Mama stood over Loren. “Glucose is sugar, Taneesha. If you’ve got too much or too little in your blood—”

  “You can faint or die,” Shantay blurted out, matter-of-factly.

  Her words shocked me. The girls seemed fine. I’d almost forgotten they were patients in a hospital. It was hard to imagine that any one of them was really sick.

  “Now Shantay,” Mama said, fluffing Loren’s pillow, “none of you need to worry about that. You’re in good hands here. As long as you do what your doctors and parents say, you’ll be fine. You just had a few complications—some problems we need to look into—but we’re taking good care of you.”

  I felt better hearing Mama say that. But I also worried about those girls.

  I watched Mama hold the end of a thing that looked like a fat white pen without a point to Loren’s fingertip. A speck of blood appeared on Loren’s finger.

  Ouch!

  I was surprised that little girl didn’t shout herself.

  “Taneesha, this is a glucose meter. It reads bloodsugar levels.”

  The new thing Mama held looked like a cell phone without a key pad.

  “Oh.”

  “Okay, Ms. Loren, you just need to take your insulin and you’re good to go. Taneesha, insulin helps keep the right amount of glucose in your blood. It also helps your body use sugar correctly.”

  “Where’s it come from?”

  “Insulin? Your body makes it. But with Type One diabetes—the kind these girls have—your body doesn’t make it. So you have to get it from a shot.

  “It’s also important to eat plenty of fruits and vegetables and move your body every day. But we should do that whether we have diabetes or not, right?”

  I rolled my eyes.

  Here we go.

  “Yes, Officer HP,” I groaned, after calling Mama the short version of “Officer Health Police”—the nickname I gave her because sometimes she just went too far about health stuff.

  Mama laughed a little at the HP thing—and then she stuck a needle in Loren’s thigh!

  Double ouch!

  How come that girl’s not screaming?

  I paid close attention while Mama went through the same routine with Ebony and Shantay.

  “Okay, ladies, you’re all set. Breakfast trays’ll be coming around in a little while. Enjoy your story. Bye!”

  “Bye, Nurse Alima!” said the girls.

  “Bye, Mama.”

  Finally.

  I wanted to ask the girls the burning question that I couldn’t ask them with my mother in the room.

  “Taneesha—” Mama said, turning back just before she went through the doorway, “later I’ll take you on a tour of the hospital. Then you can help me tidy the nurse’s station.”

  “Even here I got chores?” I asked, slumping my back against my chair.

  “’Fraid so, sweetie.” She had the nerve to smile. “Oh, and I’ll be bringing by more books in a minute. I meant to give them to you this morning, but things got kind of backed up. Thanks, honey.”

  “You’re welcome,” I mumbled.

  Like I need extra chores.

  My mother passed through the doorway and walked out of sight.

  I leaned forward in my chair to ask the girls my scorching question: “Doesn’t it hurt to get those shots?”

  “A little,” shrugged Ebony. “But I’m used to it.”

  “Yeah, me too. I get ’em three times everyday,” said Shantay.

  “Only two times for me,” said Loren.

  Now that frightened me. As far as I
was concerned, even one shot a year was too many.

  “Wow. You girls are brave. I hate shots, but you act like it’s nothing.”

  The girls didn’t seem so babyish anymore.

  Now everything seemed real important. I wanted to make the day extra special for them. I straightened my back and sat taller in my chair.

  “Okay, where were we?”

  “The party! The party!” squealed Ebony, bobbing up and down on her mattress.

  “Watch it, Ebony. Remember?”

  “Okay,” she said, in mid-bounce. “I’ll stop.”

  “Right. Okay. Here goes.”

  I opened one of the books on my lap and read: “Kendra couldn’t wait. She peeked out from under her red blanket. What surprise would she see?”

  I made sure I enunciated the way Mr. Alvarez always told us to do. I said the t’s in couldn’t, wait, and blanket jusT righT.

  Too bad I couldn’t have frozen that moment—a moment when everything was okay, not terrible—and thawed it out when I needed it.

  CHAPTER 7

  NO PARENTS HOME

  Later, after school hours, Carli and I studied together as usual. I had changed out of my scratchy, wool outfit into jeans, a gray sweatshirt, and my lavender bunny slippers.

  My mother had gone back to Ontario after she dropped me off at home so I could start my homework. I’d wanted to get going on it and I couldn’t at the hospital because I needed a program that was on my computer.

  When Mama and I had pulled into our driveway in her dark blue minivan, we’d seen Mr. Flanagan and Carli sitting in his green car, parked in front of our house on Rosebush Road, waiting for us. Like my mother, Carli’s father had to go back to work for a few hours after he’d kept Carli with him most of the day.

  When Carli and I had taken off our coats in my house that afternoon, I’d noticed that, apparently, she’d gotten to dress down at her father’s job instead of itching it up like I did at Ontario. She had on jeans and a beige pullover.

  We both liked to finish our weekend homework on Fridays so we could keep Saturdays and Sundays free for whatever. Now we stretched, bellies down, on my living room floor. My locks hung past my face and Carli’s red hair hung past hers. She had her left leg, the one with the brace, propped on one of our moss- green couch pillows.

  The fireplace and mantle were behind us. In front of us, paper and books sprawled across the softness of the big plum rug, spilled over its edges, and spread over the wooden floor like sugar glaze over a Pop-Tart.

  My stomach growled. I was about ready for a snack.

  “Hey, Taneesha,” Carli said, softly. “Look at the altar.”

  I looked at it—a large, cherry-wood table with four legs, and, underneath it, a legless, long cubby that was raised on a platform. The cubby had a row of books inside. The altar seemed the same as always.

  “So?”

  “No, look. Don’t you see? It’s sparkling. It’s almost like fairies are dancing on it. Little Tinker Bells.”

  And then I saw. That Carli, she was right. Today, like every day lately, had been cloudy. But right then, a beam of sunlight shimmied through one of the living room windows and burst into tiny points, dancing on the altar’s polished wood.

  Light danced on the extras that sat on the altar table, too—on the shiny, red and yellow apples in a terracotta bowl and on the rounded glass of the sea-green water jar. And light danced on the pair of vases that sat on the oval end-tables at each side of the altar—black, glazed vases, shaped like teardrops and holding evergreens that filled the room with their pine smell.

  For a silent moment, Carli and I just sat there on the floor, watching the sparkly show.

  “What’s it all for, Taneesha?” she asked, dreamily.

  “What?”

  “The things on the altar. What are they for?”

  “I’ve told you that before. Plus they talked about it when you came to meetings.”

  “Tell me again.” Her eyes still followed the lights.

  “Everything stands for the five senses plus water is for purity,” I sighed, annoyed at Carli for making me rattle off information that she should have remembered already: “Fruit, taste. Beads, touch. Bell, sound. Incense, smell. Candles, sight.”

  “Your altar doesn’t have any candles. Or incense. How come?”

  “My parents stopped using candles when I was a baby so I wouldn’t start a fire. And my father’s allergic to incense. Plus my mother says burning stuff’s bad for your lungs.”

  “Oh.”

  There was a pause.

  “What about the branches?” She was talking about the evergreens Daddy had cut off the tree in our back yard. “What are they for?”

  “Leaves stand for forever, for no beginning or end, for how long life lasts.”

  As irksome as it was to have to answer Carli’s twenty-questions, I couldn’t help thinking that my parents would have flipped into extreme gush mode if they’d known I was actually telling somebody about Buddhism. Even if it was just her.

  “Forever. Hmm. Cool.”

  We went quiet again.

  “I wonder what happened to him,” she said.

  “Who?”

  “That boy from last week, the one who got beat up. I wonder if he’s okay.”

  “Hope so.”

  “Me too.”

  More quiet.

  “I’m going to chant for him,” I said. It seemed like the right thing to do. “Do you mind?”

  “No. I’ll do it with you.”

  I stood and reached for the most conspicuous part of the altar, the part Carli hadn’t even bothered asking about. Maybe because she remembered what that was, even though she’d apparently forgotten everything else she’d ever learned about Buddhism.

  I opened the Butsudan, or Buddha’s house, the towering, oval cabinet that sat in the center of the altar table, up against the wall. The cabinet that reached toward the ceiling as if it were trying to climb the sky. Then I sat in the middle chair of the three that made a row in front of the altar. Carli sat to my left.

  The large altar bell—a shiny, black, bowl-like thing—sat on the floor in the space between Carli and me. The bell was on a purple velvet pillow and the pillow was on a golden pedestal (which was really a big, upside-down brass plant pot).

  I took hold of the black wooden handle of the mallet that lay in a wooden cradle on the altar table. With the part of the mallet that was covered in purple velvet, I struck the bell.

  While the bell’s loud bong faded away, I looked up at the object inside the Butsudan, pressed my hands together, and started chanting Nam Myoho Renge Kyo. Carli did, too. It felt kind of good knowing we were chanting for the same thing. For that boy.

  I sent beams of light to him, just like the light that danced on the altar. I imagined him all glowing, not bloody, very safe, and just fine.

  After a few minutes, I struck the bell again and Carli and I did Sansho, we chanted three times slowly.

  “I hope that helped,” she said.

  “Me too.”

  She returned to her spot on the floor and I closed the Butsudan door and followed her. But I didn’t start back on my homework right away.

  My eyes stayed on the Butsudan. I thought about how I wasn’t even tall enough to touch the top of it.

  I remembered Mama saying that the rest of the stuff on the altar didn’t even have to be there, it was optional. She said that what was inside the Butsudan, protected behind closed doors now, was the most important part. I liked to pretend that the tall cabinet was a strong royal guard protecting me, too.

  If I had my way, I would never come home to an empty house. But since I almost always do, I imagine that the altar watches over me until my parents get there.

  That’s a secret, though. I’ve never told anybody I do that, not even Carli. It’s kind of immature.

  But if I had known what was coming, while I was all gung-ho on chanting, for every one time I did it for that boy to be safe and protected, I woul
d have done it a thousand times for me.

  I heard keys jingling.

  I raised my head and glanced over my shoulder through the archway that separated the living room from the kitchen. Mama’s face was in the kitchen-door window. I popped up to run and meet her.

  A gust of chilly wind blew through the house when she opened the door. She stood on the floor mat, stomping snow from her boots.

  “Hey, Mama.” I grabbed her around the middle of her frosted black coat and gave her a big hug.

  “Hey, little lady.” She squeezed me back. “You did a great job today.”

  I thought so, too. But it felt good to hear her say it.

  “Thanks, Mama. You know what? I had a good time. Even the tidying part wasn’t that bad.”

  She laughed a little. “Glad to hear it.

  “Hey, Carli!”

  “Hi, Ms. Ross!” Carli answered from the living room.

  Mama glided through the kitchen, peeling away her black earmuffs, coat, scarf, and midnight blue nurse’s smock with glow-in-the-dark galaxies on it; to me, it was her coolest one. She disappeared into the hallway.

  I heard water running in the downstairs restroom—Officer HP doing the same wash-yourhands-for-as-long-as-it-takes-to-sing-“Happy- Birthday”-twice routine she bugged me about doing fifty-leven times a day.

  Carli and I fixed a snack—popcorn, baby carrots, celery, peanut butter, veggie dip, and hot cocoa. Sitting at the kitchen table with her, I breathed in chocolatey steam. We slurped from mugs, and chomped, crunched, and munched.

  “Can you believe it? Next week’s the big day already,” Carli said, scooping up veggie dip with a carrot.

  “What day?”

  “Election day, silly.”

  “Oh. Yeah. Time flies.”

  The election—the last thing I wanted to think about. Why couldn’t I just enjoy my snack and savor the fact that my mother said I’d nailed Take Your Child To Work Day?

  “So, before my father comes to take me home, how ’bout I help you with your campaign materials? I picked up some construction paper at the pharmacy in case you need it.”

  I grabbed a handful of popcorn. “Um… Thanks, Carli. But, naw. I’m good.”

  “Well... Want me to listen to your speech at least? I can give you feedback.”

  “No, thanks. I haven’t finished editing it yet.”