As the boy glanced up in surprise, Punky ruffled his curls and said, “Hi, buddy. Clown hair. Like Wonald McDonald.”
I grabbed Punky’s arm and pulled him away, and mumbled, “I’m sorry.” My face was on fire.
The boy was grinning at me, and there was a twinkle in his eyes. “I’ve been called a ragtop and a frizzhead, but I’ve never been mistaken for a clown,” he said.
“Hi, Velveeta,” piped a voice, and I looked down the pew and saw six pairs of eyes fixed on me. Avanelle was gazing curiously, her mother was smiling, but Birdie was jiggling in her seat and waving.
“Velveeta?” said the boy. “And I thought I had a strange name—Trezane. All my friends call me Tree.”
I couldn’t even tell him my name wasn’t Velveeta. My mouth felt crammed with melted cheese, and my brain wouldn’t work.
Punky was straining to get away from me. At last Mom took him to a seat a couple of rows down, and Dad shook hands with as many Shacklefords as he could reach.
I wanted to run out of the church and never come back, but I knew that wouldn’t work. Punky would just come looking for me, and I’d have some explaining to do to my parents. I crept up to sit beside Punky, who clapped his hands happily at being in church.
The opening exercises seemed to last forever, with Punky singing the hymns off-key into his pretend microphone. Every time someone said “Amen,” Punky responded with “Bang!” The regular members had gotten used to it, but I figured the Shacklefords were laughing at Punky behind our backs.
When the little kids were dismissed to go to their class, Brother Hicks asked everyone else to move forward. Tree came up and sat beside me, followed by his mother and Avanelle.
Punky snapped open his lunch box to look at his treasures. The crayon pieces and the clowns rolled around in the box, and Punky punched me and pointed, to show me that his flag was exactly like the one at the front of the church.
I nodded, hoping against hope that the Shacklefords were paying attention to the preacher and not to Punky.
When the service was over, I couldn’t escape because of the people on both sides of me.
Avanelle just smiled shyly, but her mother and Tree wanted to talk.
“I feel at home in your church, Delrita,” said Mrs. Shackleford as she folded her arms across her swollen stomach. “I think we’ll be back next Sunday.”
“Delrita Velveeta.” Tree chuckled and glanced down at me. I studied his emerald eyes, but there was nothing to suggest that he would poke fun at Punky. “You’re the one who gave Birdie the whistle.”
“Delrita’s in Avanelle’s class,” explained his mother. “I’m surprised you didn’t see her at school. ”
“The ninth-grade lockers are at the opposite end of the hall,” replied Tree. “Besides, the guys said Coach gets mad if we don’t show up for football practice within two minutes after the last bell.”
Judging by the size of him, I should have guessed he was a football player. Now that I had gotten over my embarrassment enough to really look at him, I could see he was wearing a new blue and white jersey that said “Tangle Nook Wildcats.” I wondered if he had chosen to wear it because he was proud to be on the team or because it was the best shirt he had. His jeans were worn at the knees, like the ones Avanelle wore to school.
“Are you coming to the game Friday night?” asked Tree.
“Oh, uh, I don’t usually go to the games. I don’t know that much about sports.” Would he think I was an oddball if he knew I’d never even been to a game?
As we moved out of the pew, the little Shacklefords came running up to their mother to show her the Bible pictures they’d colored. One of the kids pulled on her dress, stretching it tight across her middle.
Punky followed me into the aisle and started teasing Birdie, running a hand through her curls and calling her “moptop.”
I expected her to scream and run, but she didn’t. Instead, she stuck her thumb in her mouth and showed her picture to Punky, all the time looking at him with big, round eyes.
Just when I was beginning to like this family, Punky did something to make me remember I was supposed to be invisible. He laughed, patted Mrs. Shackleford on the tummy, and said, “You’re fat.”
The words felt like a slap across my face. I raced down the aisle, out of the church, and lunged for the car. It was suffocating because the sun had come out, and I cranked down the window furiously. How stupid I had been to let my guard down, even for a minute, since I already knew my life could never be normal.
Tree came to the door of the building and stood peering toward the parking lot.
I slid to the floor and prayed that he wouldn’t find me. Scrunching down with the floorboards gouging into my knees, I realized that I was being silly—hid—ing out like a criminal. Still, though, I stayed low. When I heard people talking and cars starting, I knew I had to get up. I eased upward and peeked out the window.
A beat-up station wagon was pulling out of the lot, and a moptop girl leaned out the window and blew a farewell toot on a whistle.
Miss Myrtle, who was being helped to a car by Elsie Golden, waved to Birdie. “Nice family,” she said. “It’s too bad the father didn’t come to church with them. The mother looks worn-out.”
“I should think so,” clucked Elsie. “I didn’t think anybody but Catholics had that many kids anymore. And you could tell by looking at them that they’re poor. Their clothes were—”
“Clean, starched, and ironed,” interrupted Miss Myrtle, “not like some of the kids you see nowadays, who look like they’ve been run through the wringer.”
Good for you, Miss Myrtle, I thought, and then wondered why it made any difference to me.
EIGHT
Spirit Week
I forgave Punky for embarrassing me, but I couldn’t forgive myself for running away from Tree. What would I say if I saw him again? “My dinner was burning”? “My beeper beeped and I had to make a call”?
As I walked to school on Monday, I thought how Tree and Avanelle were a whole lot nicer than any other kids I’d run into in Tangle Nook. Maybe they had to be, if they wanted to fit in with the crowd. I wondered what it would be like to be poor, to wear faded clothes that hadn’t been bought that way, and to have your father in jail.
When I got to school and saw all the posters and blue and white streamers in the hall, I remembered it was Spirit Week.
Students were supposed to dress up in a different kind of costume each day to show support for the football team. Today was Hawaiian Day, and nearly everyone was wearing wild flowered shirts, sunglasses, and floppy straw hats.
In English, first hour, when all the kids in Hawaiian clothes stood up to be counted, no one noticed that I wasn’t in costume. How could they? I asked myself. I’m invisible. Anyway, they were all too interested in Cindi Martin, who was wearing a silk flower in her hair and dancing the hula in a grass skirt.
Next I had study hall, which seemed like a terrible waste. Who needed a study hall second hour? Then I remembered promising Avanelle I’d do math in study hall from now on. Today’s assignment was finished, so I’d start tomorrow.
I sat daydreaming about Silver Dollar City. It was one of the few places where I didn’t worry about people making fun of Punky. Maybe it was because they were so busy gawking at the sights they were too busy to gawk at anything else.
I doodled in my notebook, listing things I most wanted to see and do on Saturday, like watch the master woodcarver and ride the roller coaster called Fire-in-the-Hole.
When the bell rang, I went to my locker and exchanged the notebook for a sketch pad. Before I knew it, I was moseying toward the water fountain in the ninth-grade hallway, peeking in every classroom as I passed. What would I do if I spotted Tree or he spotted me? Would he even recognize me, since I’d washed and blow-dried my hair and styled it with a curling iron? When I reached the fountain, I still hadn’t found Tree, so I took a quick drink and hurried back the other way.
I must have
looked like an owl, I thought, the way I was twisting my head from side to side. I smiled at the mental image. An owl looking for a Tree.
I expected to see Avanelle in art class, but I didn’t expect to see her in Hawaiian clothes. She was wearing what looked like a flowered maternity dress, all wadded up around her waist with a belt.
“Hi, Delrita,” she said eagerly. I could tell by her expression that she wished she hadn’t dressed up like that for school.
“Hi,” I said, my voice squeaky because she was the first person who had spoken to me since I’d walked into the building.
The way the other kids ignored her that hour gave me an odd sense of relief. At least I wouldn’t have to worry about her blabbing to anybody about Punky.
At lunchtime, I sat alone in my usual spot and toyed with my Poor Man’s Casserole. How the cooks could take perfectly good beef and vegetables and stir them up into a tasteless mess was beyond me. I wondered if they had special training in how to turn school food into glue.
“Does it taste as bad as it looks?” asked Avanelle, setting her tray down and pulling out a chair across from me.
“I don’t know. I’ve been afraid to try it.”
“I think I’ll stick with the Jell-O and the bread and butter,” Avanelle said as she unwrapped a straw and stuck it in her milk.
I felt suddenly bashful, as if she’d know somehow that I’d been in the ninth-grade hallway looking for her brother. Concentrating on the casserole, I chased it around on my tray.
Avanelle broke the silence by saying, “How’d you get the name Delrita?”
Nobody had ever asked me that before, so I hadn’t dreamed up a fancy explanation. I decided to tell the truth and hope she wouldn’t laugh like a hyena right here in the cafeteria. “It’s a combination of my grandparents’ names—Delbert and Margarita.”
Avanelle didn’t laugh. She looked thoughtful and said, “That’s neat. When I came to this school, it seemed like all the girls have cutesy names spelled with an i—Cindi, Debbi, Tami, Bobbi—so when Miss Morley said I was supposed to share a math book with Delrita Jensen, I wanted to jump up and holler ‘Hoo-ray!’”
“My middle name’s Jolena, after my other set of grandparents. What’s yours?” I asked, realizing too late that I was encouraging this conversation.
“Thurston.”
“Thurston?”
“My mom’s maiden name.” Avanelle started giggling and said, “There’s not a whole lot we can do with names like ours.”
“You could go by Nelli. Nelli with an i.”
“No, I’ve been that route. In St. Louis, kids called me Nelly-belly. I even tried Nell, and they called me Nell’s Bells.”
I grinned as she rattled on. “My mom goes for the old-fashioned names. Trezane, Avanelle, Randolph, Edward, Gilberta, and Gordon. Even the new baby will be named Chandler or Elmira.” Wrinkling her nose, she added, “Aren’t those awful?”
“There’s a city in New York called Elmira.”
“Don’t tell my mom that,” said Avanelle.
In spite of myself, I laughed. “Elmira New York Shackleford. That would be a mouthful, all right.”
Avanelle laughed, too, but then she looked serious. “Tree’s named after our dad, but I think my mom gave all of us important-sounding names so we’d live up to them. You know—make something of ourselves.”
I thought about the Shacklefords living in that shabby house while they waited for their dad to get out of jail, and instantly I felt sorry for the whole family.
Avanelle poked at her Jell-O with a spoon and said, “You sure made a hit with my sister. She keeps talking about Velveeta giving her a whistle.”
“It wasn’t any big deal.”
“It was to her. It was something brand-new and shiny for a change.” She paused a moment before going on. “Since you’ve seen where we live, you might as well know the rest of the Shackleford saga.”
I glanced sharply at her. Was she going to tell me that her dad was in jail?
“We’re used to getting old clothes from the welfare office and handouts from the government, but it’s not very often that somebody gives us something brand-new just to be nice. Even at Christmastime, we get used toys that have been fixed up and painted.”
I didn’t want to hear any more of this depressing story, but I didn’t know how to stop her. This was private information—the kind you’d tell only to your best friend—and Avanelle and I barely knew each other. Besides that, if she reported all this bad stuff about her own family, what would she report to other people about mine?
Avanelle’s face was so white that her freckles seemed to stand up by themselves, and her fingers were ripping a paper napkin to shreds. Finally she gave me a weak smile and said, “I guess you’re wondering why I’m telling you all this. In St. Louis, I was really backward around other people because of—uh, certain things. When we moved here, I tried hard to be different—more outgoing. Friday afternoon, when you didn’t want to talk, I thought it was because of me. Now I know it was because of that little man who was with you at church. You were trying to hide him, weren’t you?”
“No. Yes. Oh, I don’t know,” I mumbled, staring at the table. “Punky’s my uncle. He lives with us. He—he’s different.”
“He was funny. On the way home, we laughed about him telling Mom she’s fat. He’s right, you know. She has to tape a poker chip over her belly button to keep it from poking through her clothes.”
So they had laughed at Punky after all. I felt strangely disappointed.
Avanelle gave a deep sigh. “All families have secrets. I guess some of us just have worse secrets than others.”
Avanelle ate lunch with me every day that week. Since we had PE fourth hour and lunch right after that, it worked out that we were walking together to the cafeteria anyway.
She didn’t mention Punky again, so I just let her chatter on and nodded in the appropriate places. She talked mostly about the outfits the kids were wearing to school.
Tuesday was Pajama Day, followed by Backward Day, Movie Star Day, and Opposite-Sex Day. Some of the costumes were downright ridiculous, and it was a relief to go home, where everything was normal, where we hid the shampoo and had horn bones behind the TV.
By Friday, it was obvious that no one was learning anything in any classes, and the whole school was wound up tight over the big game. At the afternoon pep rally, I was already penned in on the bleachers when Avanelle came into the gym. Wearing Tree’s football jersey, which was about fourteen sizes too big for her, she looked small and forlorn as she tried to find a seat.
The coach introduced the football players, and they lumbered onto the gym floor in makeup and jewelry and pillow-stuffed gowns. For once, I was one of the crowd, laughing out loud with my classmates, especially at Tree in a feathery tent dress, tottering along on high heels.
When the last bell rang and everyone swarmed out of the building, storm clouds boiled in the sky and thunder rumbled from west to east like low-flying jets. The air, which had hung hot and heavy in the classrooms all afternoon, suddenly turned cold, as if someone had opened a giant refrigerator.
Since I didn’t have a jacket, I hoped I could beat the rain. I was trying to decide whether to detour or wait for the buses to move when someone caught my arm and asked, “Are you coming to the game?”
I looked around and saw Tree. “You mean you’ll play, even if it rains?”
“Sure,” he said. “Coach says it’ll make men out of us.”
That struck me as hilarious, coming from a boy whose eyelids were glistening with silver makeup and whose cheeks were smeared with rouge. I started laughing and couldn’t stop.
Tree laughed, too—a deep, rumbly sound that reminded me of rocks being tossed in a barrel. “Kids have been telling me all day that I look funny, but nobody got hysterical over it,” he said.
I held my sides as the laughter slowly bubbled down into giggles. At last I managed to gasp, “You—you—you really could pass for Ronald
McDonald!”
Tree gave a sheepish grin. “I guess I should be offended, but I’m not.... How about it? Are you coming to the game?”
The laughter left me as quickly as it came. For some strange reason, I did want to watch him play football. I wanted to scream and yell for Trezane Shackleford and the Tangle Nook Wildcats. But I couldn‘t—wouldn’t—go.
Tree was watching me, waiting for an answer. I didn’t know how to tell him no. He wouldn’t understand what it was like to go someplace alone, to sit in a crowd with no one to talk to. I had had enough of that to last a lifetime, and I’d never forget riding a jam-packed bus on a field trip in May and having a whole seat to myself.
At last I thought of an excuse. “I can’t be out that late,” I said. “We’re leaving early in the morning for Silver Dollar City.”
“Oh,” he said. “That’s great. I’ve always wanted to go there.”
“You girls are going to get wet,” teased Avanelle, coming up behind us.
“Give me a break,” moaned her brother.
I could have kicked myself. Why hadn’t I thought to ask Avanelle to go with me to the game?
Fat raindrops plopped onto my cheek and rolled down my notebook. I glanced up as the drops came faster and shards of lightning split the sky, close enough to make me run for cover any other time.
“Come on,” yelled Tree, “before we get soaked.” He hobbled toward the school, as fast as he could go in his high heels. Avanelle and I started after him, but then I heard a car horn and looked back.
My mom had pulled her station wagon into the spot the buses had just left, and she was hollering for us to jump in.
I hesitated for a second because Punky was with her in the front seat and he was crying. What would Tree and Avanelle think of him being scared of the rain?
“Hurry, Delrita,” Mom called. “You other kids, too. I’ll take you home.”
Avanelle and Tree didn’t wait to be asked again. They ran for the car and clambered into the backseat. There was nothing for me to do but crawl in beside Avanelle.
Punky forgot his fears for a moment when he saw Tree dressed like a girl. He turned around and said, “You’re a clown.”