American Heart Read online

  I haven’t gotten spanked, but I heard it happen to Jeremiah, who sits on my right. He’s got allergies or something, and I always hear him sniffing on the other side of the divider. When he got spanked, they took him into the office, but the walls are thin, pretty much plywood. They made him pray first. Pastor Rasmussen said, “Foolishness is bound up in the heart of a child; the rod of discipline will remove it far from him,” and then Mrs. Harrison said, “Amen,” and then Pastor Rasmussen told Jeremiah he needed to say amen too. He said, “Amen,” and then I could hear it, each whack of the paddle loud enough to make me flinch. Jeremiah cried out on the third one, and then there was another.

  Jeremiah told me later that he was supposed to get just three, but if you cry out, you get extra. He said you have to lean over and put your hands around your ankles, which sounds really embarrassing—I mean, Jeremiah’s older than I am. But really, Pastor Rasmussen and Mrs. Harrison are the ones who should be embarrassed, hitting kids with wooden paddles. I said that to Jeremiah, and he just looked at me.

  We do get to turn around and talk to each other at lunchtime, and twice a day we go outside for recess. But there’s no monkey bars for the little kids or anything. They’ve just got a cordoned-off section of the parking lot with a basketball hoop on one end and a bucket of sidewalk chalk on the other. But being out there is fun compared to the rest of the day, when you’re back in your cube, and if you turn around for even a second, that’s a demerit. You’re not allowed to raise your hand—you have to use the flag system. So here’s what that is: everybody gets two miniature flags—the American flag, and the Christian flag. At the top of each desk divider, they’ve drilled these little holes for the flagpoles, which are about the size of a drinking straw. If you need to go to the bathroom, you put the American flag up on your divider, and you wait for Mrs. Harrison to come by and touch your shoulder; that’s how you have permission to go. If you need help with a workbook, you put up the Christian flag, which is white with a blue square and a little red cross in the corner.

  But like I said, Mrs. Harrison isn’t really a teacher. I once asked her if I should write “between you and me” or “between you and I,” and all she did was tug on her braid with this panicky look on her face, staring hard at the sentence, and then at me, until she wrinkled her nose and said, “It don’t matter none. Just keep going.” Another time, I could hear Jeremiah on the other side of my divider asking her about how electricity works, and Mrs. Harrison got all excited and whispered to him that electricity was a mystery, and that our relationship to it was a little like our relationship with God: we can know what electricity does, but we can’t comprehend what it is.

  I knew that wasn’t right. I’m not Ms. Science or anything, but I remembered Mr. Petch at Hannibal High showing us a Bohr model of an atom and talking about valence electrons, the ones on the outside hopping from one atom to another because similar charges don’t like each other, and how all that hopping can turn into a current with a charge. So without taking the time to consider the pros and cons of my actions, I leaned around the divider and said to Jeremiah, “I thought it had something to do with valence electrons.”

  Mrs. Harrison told me to hush and gave me a demerit. Three demerits in one week means a spanking, so I didn’t say anything else.

  Another crazy thing about Berean Baptist is the dress code. The boys, even the little ones, have to wear ties and belts and keep their hair short. Girls have to wear dresses that go below the knee, and when it’s cold out, we have to wear knee socks, not tights. Berean Baptist shares Aunt Jenny’s suspicion of bare shoulders, but they’re also weird about the backs of girls’ necks. True story. You’re not allowed to wear your hair in a high ponytail. If you wear a ponytail, you have to pull it low. I could not for the life of me figure this one out, so I asked Mrs. Harrison, who told me in a whisper, like it was just a secret between us girls, that the back of the female neck was a “known erogenous zone,” and they didn’t want the boys to get distracted. Well, that threw me. I mean, I’m okay-looking. Let’s just say guys have shown interest, both at Hannibal High and back in Joplin. But if just the sight of the back of my neck has ever made one of them have an instant erection or fall out of his chair in a convulsion of lust, I guess I missed it.

  But the worst part about Berean Baptist is that I don’t have any friends there. There are only two other girls even close to my age, Michelle and Shawna, and—surprise, surprise—they’re both pretty uptight. Once, we were outside waiting in line to play foursquare, and I pointed out that Mrs. Harrison’s breath usually smelled like cigarettes when she came out of the bathroom, which is 100 percent true, and Shawna looked at Michelle as if she was completely grossed out, like I’d farted or something, and said, “You shall not bear a false report. Do not join your hand with a wicked man to be a malicious witness,” and then turned back to me and said, “Exodus twenty-three,” as if that settled the matter.

  Which it didn’t.

  Even before Berean Baptist, I had a pretty dim view of religion. Aunt Jenny’s church isn’t as bad as Berean Baptist—you can show your knees and the back of your neck. Still, when we go to the marathon services every Sunday, it all just sounds like made-up stories to me, nothing you should take so seriously that you have to be rude to people. Just because the Bible was written a long time ago doesn’t mean it’s true or even particularly smart, and some of it makes zero sense and is even pretty creepy. That thing about Abraham being all ready to kill his own son because God tells him to? He only stops because God tells him to stop, and if not, he would have gone ahead with it? That’s not a good story. That’s messed up. See, that’s why I’m glad I have my own rules. I wouldn’t kill my own son, or even an innocent ram that happened to wander by, because I thought God told me to. I mean, what’s the difference between that and a crazy person today hearing voices and then killing somebody? Not much.

  So all those hours when we’re at church, I mostly sit and think my own thoughts, like how pretty the sunlight looks coming in through the stained glass, or how much time I have left before I can leave. Caleb, on the other hand, loves church. But he still goes to Sunday school, and he said his teacher, this big-hipped woman who wears a ton of blush, is a wonderful person, with the softest, sweetest voice he ever heard, and everything she says to him makes him feel better. He told me that for him, Sunday school at Aunt Jenny’s church has been the best thing about coming to Hannibal. He says sometimes he feels like he can’t breathe and his heart starts pounding too hard because he gets so worried about our mom not coming back, and then he thinks about Jesus looking after him, and looking after her, and me, and even Aunt Jenny, and then he feels okay. He told me once that it was nice to have somebody like Jesus to think about, somebody he could admire and try to be like.

  As soon as he said this, I could see he felt bad, like he worried I would take it as he didn’t want to be like me. But I knew what he meant. I know Caleb loves me. He likes me, too. He started listening to Sketchy as soon as I did, and he’s always wanting to come in my room and hang out. But we both know he’s a lot nicer than I am. He’s pretty much the nicest person I know. So if he wants to look up to somebody in that area, I guess it better be Jesus.

  Still, I don’t think it’s true, what Aunt Jenny said about me needing Jesus, or any religion for that matter, for me to turn out okay. A person can think for herself about what being good is, and then just try to do it because it’s the right thing to do, whether there’s a God watching or not. And I know that Aunt Jenny would heartily disagree that I’m on the right path, and now, given what I’ve been up to, so would a lot of other people. But I’ve been thinking for myself, more and more, and that’s still pretty much my plan.

  This is how pathetic my life in Hannibal is: the most freedom I have, the best parts of my week, are the hours I’m working at Dairy Queen. I got a job there last summer because it’s the only place in town that will hire you before you’re sixteen. They didn’t give me a lot of hours at first, but I was fast and neat and friendly to all the customers, and I didn’t whine when it was my turn to clean the bathrooms. By the end of the summer, I was almost full-time. I had to go back down to part-time when school started, but I’d already made enough to pay for my phone every month, with quite a bit left over.

  Plus everybody at work is pretty nice, and there’s an old laptop in the break room. When I’m down there by myself, I can watch anything I want. Tess comes by to see me sometimes, and she’ll hang around and do her homework in one of the booths until I’m on break. When my break comes, we go sit out at one of the picnic tables, or if it’s cold out, my manager is nice about letting her come down to the break room with me. It’s not like it’s a super fun place to hang out, though, and it’s not like Tess doesn’t have other friends who could actually go and do fun things with her. Sometimes I worry she just feels guilty about getting me to go to the Arch and in so much trouble, and that’s why she still comes around.

  Other people I knew from public school have come by when I’m working, allegedly to see me, but they were mostly just looking for free food, which, sorry, I cannot give. Tess never even asks. She gets out money for whatever she orders. That’s not as big a deal for her, of course, as she gets more from her allowance than I do from my paychecks, and all she has to do is stay in school and keep her truck filled with gas.

  But free ice cream, especially ice cream with toppings, is a pretty big deal for Caleb. Aunt Jenny is anti-sugar, unless you count the molasses cookies she makes, which no one should. My manager lets us take a dessert home after every shift, so I always make something elaborate and bring it home for Caleb. It was harder to sneak things to him in the summer and the fall, but now that it’s cold out, and dark by the time I get home, my window ledge is m
y mini-fridge. When I come back from work, I set the DQ bag outside on my ledge. And then I come in through the back door, tell Aunt Jenny I’m going to do my homework, and head back to my room. Caleb knows he can knock anytime.

  On the last night of winter break, I made him a sundae with extra whipped cream and brownies. When he came to my room, I took it off my window ledge and gave it to him with a little curtsy, saying, “Here you go, monsieur,” before I went to shut my window against the cold. He said thank you, but he didn’t look as thrilled as I thought he would. Usually it’s pretty easy to make him happy.

  “What’s the matter?” I asked. “You sad that school’s starting up again?” I pulled my curtain closed too. Hannibal is tiny, and like my mom said, quaint—but there could still be some creeper out there looking in.

  He sat on my carpet, his back against the wall. He had the plump cheeks he’d had since he was a baby, but he already looked so much older than he had in Joplin, at least two inches taller, and all his light curls cut short. He was wearing the Sketchy shirt I got him for Christmas, and it made his arms look pale and skinny.

  “I watched the news with Aunt Jenny,” he said, setting the sundae beside him on the carpet without eating any of it. He didn’t even take off the lid.

  I sighed and sat on my bed. We’d been over this. Caleb isn’t the kind of person who can watch the news and go on with his day or his evening. He gets upset when he hears about anybody, I mean anybody, suffering. Doesn’t matter to him if the person is right here in Hannibal or in Miami or in China or in Timbuktu. That’s his natural personality. And it’s worse now that he goes to Sunday school, as not only does he get upset about people being poor or hungry or beaten in jail, he thinks he needs to be like Jesus and do something about it. He seriously asks himself WWJD? about the problems of people he’s never met.

  I understand it really is terrible to hear about people, no matter where they live, starving to death, or getting blown up or shot. And don’t even talk to me about what happens to animals in this world. But Aunt Jenny’s got the cable news on in the living room all the time, and if I let myself get caught up in all the sadness being reported, I’d never get through the day.

  “You can’t worry about everybody, Caleb. It’s not your fault bad things happen.”

  He looked up at me, confused, like one of us had missed part of the conversation. “I know,” he said. “But it’s still sad.” He brought his knees up, pressing a palm on each. “They showed a bunch of Muslims getting taken away to Nevada. You know. They were getting on the buses.”

  I picked up his sundae and put it back out on the ledge. I knew this might take a while.

  “What did Aunt Jenny say?” I asked. This was sort of a lame question. I already knew the answer. Aunt Jenny had told me more than once she thought the containment was long overdue. She said she’d known it needed to happen years ago, before I was even born. She’d known since September 11.

  “That if I wanted to be sad it was a free country.” Caleb drummed his fingers on his knees. “But that we couldn’t have them shooting up grocery stores and trying to assassinate people. And that we shouldn’t keep spending tax dollars to protect them so they can buy more bombs to blow us up.”

  Aunt Jenny and I didn’t agree on much, but that sounded right to me. “Well. I know you don’t want that to keep happening.”

  It was true. Every time something bad happened, Caleb acted as if he knew the people who died. He got that upset.

  “And you know,” I said. “A lot of people live in Nevada because they like it. It’s not like it’s a terrible place.”

  He shook his head. “I’m going to show you. Can I use your computer?”

  I almost said no. I didn’t feel like getting all bummed out, and it seemed like I already knew what I needed to know. But I wanted Caleb to know that somebody besides Jesus cared about him and would listen to him when he was upset. There’s something about Caleb’s face, even now that he looks older, that always makes me want to be gentle with him, even when I don’t think he’s making sense. He looks a lot like our dad, the pictures I’ve seen of him.

  So the video was pretty much what I thought it would be: a bunch of Arabic-looking people, some of them dressed normal, but a lot of the women with scarves covering their hair, getting on buses with their roller suitcases and backpacks and car seats and crying babies. The police were there, wearing helmets, holding back the crowd that was trying to get at the Muslims. Somebody had a sign that said MUSLIMS OUT NOW, which was a little redundant, because yeah, that’s what was happening. The camera zeroed in on this one Muslim guy with a cello case who was yelling at the reporter that he didn’t want to go to Nevada, that he wanted to keep playing in the orchestra in Michigan, and that his mother was too sick to travel and had to leave the cat she’d had for years, not to mention the house that his father had worked his whole life to pay for. This man was still yelling when all at once he sounded like he was going to cry, his voice going high and shaky. Caleb’s eyes, steady on the screen, turned shiny, like if this man he didn’t even know was crying, well then, he better cry too.

  “Aw, Caleb,” I said, but in a nice way, because I actually love that my little brother is so sweet, always thinking everybody’s good like he is. I sat back on my bed. “For all we know, there’s a bomb or a machine gun in that cello case. It’s sad about the cat, but they gotta go.” I squinted. “And he might be lying. I don’t even know that Muslims can have cats. I’m serious. Not indoor ones, at least.”

  I wasn’t a hundred percent sure if that was true or not. I’d never known any Muslims myself. There was the one guy who worked at the Pick-A-Dilly on Market Street who looked and talked like he might have been from somewhere Middle Eastern, but I don’t know for sure. Anyway, he’s not there anymore.

  Caleb sat in my desk chair, staring at the freeze-frame of the man. “I think he really just had a cello.”

  “It’s for their own protection, Caleb.” I got up and walked over to him, patting his shoulder. Even when he was sitting in a chair, his head reached my elbow now. “And ours.”

  But he just kept looking at the freeze-frame of the man.

  That’s when I heard the first tap against my window. And then two taps. Then two more. Now I’ve seen enough horror movies, and enough of my own imaginings, to know that when you hear something tapping against your window at night, you don’t just get up and go peek out so whatever’s out there can bust through the glass and grab you or at least make you scream.

  But Caleb heard it too, and of course he just turned around all calm, like the first-killed in a zombie movie, and pulled back the curtain. And there’s Tess, standing out there in the cold, her bug eyes staring back at us, her face lit up by her phone, wearing her hat with the cat ears, so she really didn’t look fully human. Caleb gave a startled cry.

  “Shh!” I said. “It’s just Tess.”

  “What’s happening back there?” Aunt Jenny was still watching the news in the living room.

  I held up a finger to Tess and turned around to crack open my bedroom door. “Caleb stubbed his toe.” I could see down the hall to where the back of Aunt Jenny’s head just cleared the edge of her recliner. “He’s okay now.”

  I closed my door. There wasn’t a lock. Of course there wasn’t. But Aunt Jenny’s recliner was hard to get out of, even for me. It would take more than a stubbed toe to get her vertical.

  Tess is tall, with long, skinny legs, so it was no problem for her to climb into my room without knocking Caleb’s sundae off the ledge. She knew enough to be quiet, but I was still nervous, whispering for her to sit on the floor of my closet. I was thinking if I heard Aunt Jenny coming, I could just turn my head and act like I’d been to talking to Caleb, who was still sitting at my desk, smiling now. He likes Tess. Back when I was still allowed to go over to her house, I sometimes brought him with me, and Tess would make him a plate of cheese and crackers and let him play video games while we talked or did her nails. Or sometimes she’d play with him. She’s really good at this one game where your guy or girl jumps out of an airplane, and you have to shoot all the people on the ground who are shooting up at you while remembering to open your parachute on time. At first, Caleb was a little freaked out by all the shooting and the blood coming out of people’s heads, and the ways they’d go “Ugh” and “Ahh!” when they got shot. But Tess told him it was all just play, just imagination, and there was no harm in them playing because they were both the kind of people who would never shoot anybody in real life. He was okay after that. I could tell Tess was letting him win sometimes, because she’s really good. She plays with her dad almost every day when he comes home from work.