To the Finish Line

“What’re you in for?” I long to ask the other women, the duo sitting across the aisle from me, in their matching pink robes.  I want to pry, to compare, to console.

But, no, I just smile at them, a polite smile, a close-mouthed grin, and settle into the floral chair, grey with red and blue swirling flowers, the chair directly across from them.  I adjust my robe to be sure that appropriate body parts are concealed.   I wonder who, in this labyrinth of a hospital, has authority over the chairs.  Who has selected the pattern, and when, as part of a long-range plan or something, are they slated for reupholstering?

It’s time.  A solid color would be best.   Keep it simple, people.

I yank the tie on my gown tighter, consider a double knot, feeling my 128-pound body lost in all the fabric of the one-size-fits-all costume that the technician has handed to me.

I long for the television to be muted, for a remote to suddenly appear in my hand, a remote without too many buttons, one that I can actually operate without my eleven-year-old son’s guidance.  I long for the room to be silenced.

Moments earlier, I had discarded my grey shirt and my off-white bra (not my sexiest ensemble, but it had worked at 6:30 this morning), battled the deoderant under my arms with the little wipes in the canister, even using an extra wipe, to erode all powdery remnants of my Secret Clinical Strength for Sensitive Skin.

For these are the rules.  Strip from the waist up.  No deoderant.

I had tossed my wipes into the basket, shoved my bra and t-shirt into the plastic bag with Missouri Baptist etched on its side, pulled on a robe, “remember, the opening goes in front”, and tiptoed into the holding area, bag in hand.

So here we are.  Three women.  Three bras and shirts shoved into bags.  Three pink robes.  And the deep urge to silence the television, and to ask, “What’re you in for?”

But then, “Come on in,” announces some nurse to one of the two pink robes seated across from me.  The other Pink Robe laughs, nervously perhaps, and mentions that the nurse’s beckoning reminds her of Let’s Make a Deal, but “you’re probably too young to remember that,” she says to me.  I’m not too young, but I only pretend to know what she means, certain that she has confused her game shows, trying to understand why the nurse’s three simple words are reminiscent of Let’s Make a Deal.    I even stoop to agree with her, though I see not even a weak connection.

I remember that it’s the one with two doors, or maybe there were three, I don’t know, but Door Number Something always contained some grandiose prize, like a vacation for two to Hawaii, that sent the contestant squealing and jumping around in her high heels.  And, Door Number Whatever, always hid some doozy, like four cans of Alpo with a bag of rawhide thrown in.

So, point to the wrong door, and down you would go.  Some poor housewife who had traveled all the way from Kansas to have her 15 minutes of Let’s Make a Deal fame, would fly home with prizes for her yapping mutt.  Poor soul.  All hope extinguished.

A goddamn crapshoot.

Just like this.

You see, I have failed last week’s mammogram, the only test in life that Ms. Overachiever has failed except some Renaissance Art midterm at The University of Michigan, but, even that, I think was more like a C, not a full-fledged F.

And so, here I am, in this holding area with the hideous floral chairs, with the oversized smock, with absurd visions of Let’s Make a Deal.

In a few minutes, I may find myself with the booby prize, which we all know isn’t really a prize at all.  It’s the terrifying C-word, the word that some will only whisper.

I check my Samsung, ignoring the sign that says, “No Cell Phones.”   One missed call.  From Big Sister.   She remembered.  She always remembers stuff that everyone else forgets.

Another missed call.  Mom has left a voice mail.  “Cawl me,” she says in her still-Brooklyn accent.  Then, I love you.

I pull at my robe, yet again.  I am a puller and a picker, with thirty-year-old acne scars as proof.

It’s my turn.  The technician leads me back, highlights the screen with, whoa, there it is, my left breast.  An X-ray. She points to a cluster of white lines that have infiltrated, crashed the party, if you will, arrived uninvited.  As best as I can tell, with new photographs, we’ve got to figure out if they’re hoodlums, or if they will skedaddle on their own.

There’s no family history.  People get called back for repeat mammograms all the time.  I’m sure there’s nothing to worry about.  Yes.  Yes.  Yes.  But…

Don’t fail me now, Left Breast.  Remember how I begged you (and your friend, Ms. Right Breast) when I was thirteen to grow, grow, grow because that seemed to be the key to getting Howie Adler to notice me? You stayed puny and, even though I’d read Are You There God, It’s Me Margaret and knew Margaret’s “We-Must, We-Must, We-Must Increase our Bust” Miracle Grow exercises, no, you didn’t comply.   Small you stayed.

The machine clamps my breast in a way that could not be more unnatural, I hold my breath, as instructed, hold still, click, click, release.   Another position.  Hold your breath.  Click.  Click.  Release.   Another.   Another.

She examines the new left breast montage.

“Well, I will show these to the radiologist, but I suspect he is going to want to take more pictures, and probably an ultrasound,” she declares.

Apparently, the white lines haven’t fled.

Translation: Debra, you are doomed.

Damn you, Left Breast.  Remember how those militant breastfeeding La Leche Ladies, insisted that I needed to, “Just keep pumping.  Just keep pumping,” singing it to me as if it were a blessed mantra?  You can do it!  You can do it!  Remember how I pumped and pumped and pumped and you squirted out enough milk to feed a newborn gerbil?  Remember how I drank gallons of water and popped those crazy Fenugreek herbal pills “which sometimes enhance milk production” someone had told me, and how Max had still screamed for more, more, more?   Did you work with me then, Left Breast?  No.  Remember how I sobbed because all the other moms at the playground would just whip out their breasts and be in what seemed like breastfeeding nirvana?  But not me.  Nope. I had to whip out the Enfamil canisters, which might as well have been poison, in my you’re-no-good, new mother mind.  Remember, Breasts, how much you disappointed me?  Made me feel less of a mother?  Less of a woman?

You owe me.

“I need to know how much longer I’m gonna be here because I have to be somewhere, umm, to pick up my daughter,” I announce to the technician.  Control.  Control.  Control.

Figure about an hour, she says.   She looks glum, or maybe that’s just my paranoid interpretation.

I sit, yet again, on my floral chair in the holding area.  Pink Robe Lady is still there.

An hour. I will miss Sarah’s Girls on the Run celebration in her school library, for it ends, yes, in an hour.   She will search for me, amid the other moms, and she will be disappointed, but will later say that it was okay, Mommy, that she understands that I can’t be at everything.

And, I will get killer news.  Chemotherapy.  Radiation.  The whole shebang.

Life is gonna change.   And I’m not so not ready for this ride.

I breathe.  And breathe.  And fight tears.   Not here, Debra.  Not now.  Not in this room.  Not with this woman with the pink robe. Just wait.  For once, just wait.   Think about something funny, something downright hilarious.  But, I can’t.

And then, just as I am about to unleash the rainstorm, the door opens and behind the door, there is this….

“Ms. Baker?”

“Yes.”

We’ll see you in a year.  You’re fine.”

Fine?  But I thought…But that other lady said…But I imagined….

“You’re fine.”

Are you sure?  You must have me confused with some other lady in a pink robe.

Door #1.   Wide open.

I won.

I want to hug her and tell her about how my mom and my sister both called, both remembered, both love me so much, and about how my colleague, Erin, said she’d pray for me, even when I admitted that I’m not even sure I believe in prayer, but she didn’t care, she said that she’d pray anyway.  And about how my principal, Mary Ann, had hugged me hard before I left school today.   And I want to tell her about my two beautiful children and how Max has been eating Life cereal every morning since he was three, and how he wants me to start reading The Diary of Anne Frank along with him, and how he never gives up hope, even when the Cardinals are down by 18 runs, and about how Sarah just learned her very first song on the violin, Twinkle, Twinkle, and how she and I have this game where she says, “I love you”, and I say, “I love you more”, and she says, “Not possible” and I say, “Possible” and on and on.  I want to tell this nurse how thankful I am for my little Group Health Plan card that I can just yank out of its slot in my wallet whenever I need it, and for this morning’s four-mile run and for my writing (of vignettes like this) because they clear my cluttered brain and help me make sense of this crazy world.

Yes, I want to hug this woman, this woman with the news, and tell her how amazing it is that I didn’t get a load of dog food behind my door, but, instead, received this prize, this glorious prize.

And, as I head out the door of Missouri Baptist, I shout Hallelujah to you, my left breast, because, nope, you didn’t fail me.  Not this time.  You were magnificent, the way you tackled that bully and pinned him down and showed him, snap, snap, exactly who is the boss around here.

Amen, Sistah.

I am one lucky woman.

Here I stroll down a gravel path on an afternoon of crisp fall colors, of trees, some naked with waving branches, others, still half-dressed in their reds and their oranges and their greens.  I am here, with a friend who knows to ask questions, or to not, when I tell her about some argument, or about this fear, or that misunderstanding.  It is the afternoon of a women’s retreat, a spiritual retreat, a retreat to which I nearly said, no thank you, nearly balking because of feeling too everything.  Introverted.  Overwhelmed.   Afraid.

But here I am with my friend and we are walking on this gravel path, dodging these giant balls that we think may be walnuts but neither of us, not she, the rabbi, nor I,  the English teacher, really know what the heck they are.   Except big.  And in our way.   Bullying our ankles.

We spot a cemetery.  Cold Water Cemetery, where, the plaque says, veterans from seven wars are buried.

And together we walk, snapping twigs with our tennis shoes, wondering about this person buried here and that person buried there, and she says, oh, look, look there, those stones have little bears or are they sheep, on them, and we giggle, until we realize that these are the stones for the children.

There is Ira R, son of Wm and M.J Patterson, Born March 3, 1856.  When did he die?  That part?  It is cracked off, eroded, poof, gone.

And there is Lucy B Patterson, born on July 2, 1850, dead nineteen days later, and there, right there, next to her, is her sister, Amanda V. Patterson, who lived to be just eight.

I wonder about Amanda and Lucy, and why, and how, they died.   I imagine a mother and a father, stained with grief once, then twice.

Then we see it.  There is a cross, a crudely constructed cross, made from two sticks tied with twine, that has been delicately balanced against this stone for this little girl, for Amanda.  Who still cares for her, still tends to her, still visits her here, in this spot, 161 years away?   Who brings her a cross?  We do not know.

I shift to my own Sarah, back home, nine years old, so very alive with her smile and her squeaky violin, and her stories that go on too long, and how, sometimes, she stands on her head, bursting with silliness, as she waits for her mommy, for me, to tuck her in at night, to sing the words of her special song.  “You are my beautiful Sarah, beautiful Sarah I love…”

And I know that I’m where I should be, on this Saturday afternoon, visiting an ancient graveyard, listening with my friend to the crunching of autumn.

Reminding ourselves to breathe.

Yes, Max won a trophy yesterday.  He swept his opponents, 5-0, at the first Gateway Chess Tournament of the year, and while any mom would have beamed watching her kid race up in his lucky Michigan t-shirt and shake hands with the event organizer, taking home that jewel to add to his growing collection, I keep thinking about something different, about something more.

I keep thinking about Charlie.

I don’t know much about the kid.  Max delivers semi-regular reports of Charlie did this at school today, Charlie did that.   Did you know, Mommy, that Charlie has autism and that he got up and spoke about his life?  Isn’t that brave?  And that Charlie keeps a really cool notebook filled with machines that he draws?  And Charlie cried yesterday because of this and because of that?

He seems to care about this kid.   Just because.

So, here we are at this city-wide chess tournament and Charlie, who is there with his mother, waiting, waiting, waiting, while his younger sister competes, looks up from his Nintendo DS and says, “I wish someone would play chess with me.”

I find my son.

“I know you must be tired from competing all day, but Charlie is hoping to play chess with someone…”

It’s a no-brainer.  Off he goes.

“Should I play easy on him? Let him win? But not make it too obvious? Or should I just play regular?”

I don’t know, Buddy.  I really don’t.

But he knows what to do, my son.  Of course he does.

Engrossed in my book about the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, I don’t watch them play, but I hear, “That’s a good move, Charlie.”  “You’re doing well.”

They finish one game and play another.  “You won that one, Charlie,” he says.

No, Max, you won that one, because winning cannot always mean a bunch of pawns cheering on a mighty king.  Winning cannot always mean a capturing of the weak, of the unprotected, of the fallen.

Sometimes, my son, yes, we win by losing.  Or by caring.  Or by just showing up and being there.

So you carried home two trophies, yesterday, Max.  And though one is invisible and lives not among the others on your bookshelf, but, instead, towering inside the collection in your heart, it still sparkles.  And is beautiful.

Congratulations to my champion.

I am Sarah Baker, but I am so much more than a name. I…

…love reading because I like hearing about adventure and people’s stories that they want to tell.

…love dogs.  It is nice to know that they won’t tell anybody what you tell them.

…volunteer to help with something called Room at the Inn, which is people at a day shelter who come to different places to sleep.  One of the places is at my synagogue.  I help play with the kids and sleep over with them.  I like to help people.

…have been a vegetarian for a year because I don’t like eating animals.  My favorite foods are sesame noodles with tofu and the macaroni and cheese from California Pizza Kitchen with edamame mixed in.

…donated my hair for Locks for Love, and I am growing my hair for it again.  I like knowing that I helped someone.

…am in Girl Scouts because I like all of the activities that we do, like camping and going to the City Museum.

…bring my lunch to school every day because I think that the school lunches are gross.

…am a younger sister.  My older brother’s name is Max.  He is in sixth grade.

…love baking because I like pouring, measuring, and mixing the ingredients.

…like when I go to a nursing home and play solitaire with a lady that I met there.  It is the same nursing home in which my great-grandmother lived.

…have played piano for a couple of years.  I like to listen to Broadway music, like the soundtrack from Annie.

…I was born Jewish.

My name is Sarah Baker, and I am so much more than a name.  That’s who I am.

I want to describe my life in hushed tones
Like a TV nature program.  Dawn in the north.
His nose stalks the air for newborn coffee.
(from Braided Creek:  A Conversation in Poetry by Jim Harrison and Ted Kooser)

Yes, I want to describe my life in hushed tones.   So, we sit here, on this deck, on this Sunday at 2:20 in the afternoon, and we ignore the unwashed blender collapsed in the sink and the beds that are still unmade and the wicker basket of 400 unmatched socks, and I flip through this poetry book, breathing, pretending that the deck has not been neglected, that the wood is not rotting like an old woman.

And the girl, who is nine, with her library book, asks about the meaning of some word, g-a-r-l-a-n-d-s, and, Mommy, also, what does it mean to yodel?  She has two different pink socks on and some dried blood on her left knee from the mosquito bite she has picked. I want to build garlands with her and teach her to yodel, loudly, right here, out on this deck on this Sunday afternoon in June.

Then, Willy Williams, she says.   She sings the name, over and over, a character in the book she is cradling.  Willy Williams.  Willy Williams.  I want to sit on a deck and drink frothy iced coffee and sing silly names, even when others are looking at me with graveyard faces.  I want to describe my life in hushed tones.

“Mama?” she whispers next, her smile revealing the gap between her teeth, the gap she learned to spit through last spring. “You know that guy at the grocery store?  The one who was talking to us over by those brussel sprouts?”

Yes, Baby.   And, I wonder what she will say next.   Will she comment on his accent, Italian or Romanian, or something?  Will she ask me about the no-talking-to-strangers dictum, about why I stood and listened to his rambles about some Chinese grocery with cheap prices on Roma tomatoes?

No.

“Did he have, umm, you know, man boobs?” she asks.

And this girl in the yellow t-shirt with “Hope” scripted in rainbow lettering, she giggles and I giggle too because, yes, he did, Baby, and, yes, I noticed too, and maybe giggling about a nine-year-old’s observations about man boobs is not very mommish, not what all the parenting manuals I’ve never read would recommend.  But, she is so funny, this girl who has warned us all that the collection of ants marching on our front walkway, are having a family reunion, so we must leap over them, not trounce, never trounce.  So, we giggle, and, these are the hushed tones, on this Sunday afternoon, doing nothing in particular, but breathing in and out.

The nightmare we waken from,
Grateful, is somebody else’s life.
(from Braided Creek:  A Conversation in Poetry by Jim Harrison and Ted Kooser)

I didn’t even know Erik Rogers, but he climbed onto a ladder to trim some tree in his yard in Kansas City, and then fell.   And, no, I didn’t read about it in a newspaper, but in a friend’s Facebook update, my friend, Ron Rogers, retired mathematics teacher, philosopher, father.  And, this is his nightmare, not mine, this brain injury of his one son, the son who responded only when pinched, a “primal” reaction, the doctors called it, but wouldn’t blink his brown eyes or smile or talk and who will never play his ska music again.  And the miracle never arrived, so now he’s cremated, organs shipped here and there, memorial service planned.   Up a ladder.  Down a ladder.   Gone.

And I look over at my daughter, here on this deck, with her tangled red hair shining and she is still on that old chair, not climbing some ladder to nowhere, and I waken from this nightmare, the one that is not mine.   I rub her cheek with my knuckles.  These are hushed tones.

Sometimes all it takes
To be happy
Is a dime on a sidewalk.
(from Braided Creek:  A Conversation in Poetry by Jim Harrison and Ted Kooser)

And I think about how we cleaned out the old minivan this morning, and we found:  One watergun.  Sixteen pens.  A crossword puzzle book.  Two hairbrushes.  A bottle of detangler.  $3.86 in change, which two feeling-rich children deposited into their crayon-shaped piggy banks.  Sometimes, all it takes to be happy is a dime on a sidewalk.

And a girl in a chair.  Next to you.  With a book of poetry and an iced coffee in your hands.  A gentle breeze.  And no ladder to tumble off.  Only you and this girl, giggling about man boobs, daydreaming about yodeling, ignoring piles and piles of mismatched socks.

(The assignment was to write an essay, about anything, of no more than 550 words.   Mine is 550 words, exactly.  Ahhh, perfectionism.)

So, even though the brown-eyed guy behind the butcher counter becomes pork flirty with me, listing miles of seasonings in his overpriced kebabs and then offering me a sample, I smile and stroll past the meat case.

I don’t do pig, and certainly not pricey pig.

And, even though I wink at a bottle of honey-flavored Jack Daniels, which my nieces’ ex-babysitter raved about this morning on Facebook, thinking, hey, it would be sweet to come home, kick my feet up on the coffee table and pour me a little of you, it is $25 for a wimpy bottle, and I figure I can find that baby sale-priced one day when I shlep out to Costco.

I keep walking.

And, even though it is Friday and that means challah night for Jews like me, it is a stinkin’ $9.44 for the braided bread. The checkout woman gives me a conspiratorial, yeah-sistah-seems-crazy-to-me-too grin, when I say, “never mind,” and she tosses the challah into the reject pile.

And that leaves me with nothing in my cart.  Nothing.   And, I could keep walking, keep searching, keep pretending, but I hate you, Straub’s Fine Grocer.  I am a used Nissan Quest with a busted AC.    You are a sparkling limousine.  I am a gobbler of peanut butter and jelly sandwiches.  You are a ladywholunches, you know, with her teacup and her raised pinky.

And, I don’t know how I got in this snobby store, pushing this empty shopping cart, pretending I’m going to buy something for dinner, having an existential crisis over a loaf of bread.

But, then I see him.

He is stacking Vitamin Water bottles on a shelf and he looks up and smiles about the biggest smile I’ve seen all year.

You were my teacher, he announces.

And I search and search and search for a name, but I come up with nothing and he says, I’m JB McKinney and then we play the little, howoldareyounow game and he’s 31, which means that I was his teacher about six epochs ago.

And he’s looking at me with that big smile and I wish that I could remember something about him, some comment he made in class, some paper he wrote, some anything because, you know how in Thailand, they bow to teachers?  JB looks like he just might.

And then, he tells me that he hopes to see me again, and I say, you know what, JB?  That means a lot to me.  I hope so too.   And I mean it.

And then I hear them.  Devin and Alaina and Destini and Jane.  Jon and David and Shakira and Darryl.   Kate and Marina and Josh.  Glancing down, I see that my shopping cart, it overfloweth.

What the heck are you all doing down there, I scream.  Do you still write poetry?  Play chess?  Do Irish jigs?  Did you apply to Oxford, like you had dreamed about way back in eighth grade?

Fifteen hundred of them crowd in the cart, waving up at their once-upon-a-time teacher.  And I wave back.

They flood me, this gang, with a filthy rich feeling.

I raise my right pinky in the air, mutter a “screw you” to the $9.44 challah, and strut out the door of Straub’s Fine Grocer.

Whitman yearned to shout from the roofs.  His barbaric yawp.  Me too.  For, right now, I am sitting on the grass, my back resting against a fence, wanting to yawp from atop the Gateway Arch. Everyone, Listen.  I know you’re all excited about the Cardinals-Cubs series starting at Busch in a few hours, but run over to Tilles Park and see Bryan because he’s up at bat.  Right now.

Cheer for Bryan and his blue walker.  Bryan and his smile.  Bryan and his volunteer buddy, a teenage boy, who cradles him from behind, by the hips, steadying him, so that he can swing the bat.

““Come on, Pitcher, throw something good,” cries a voice from the sidelines, a mother, perhaps.

There is more playful mockery.

“You gotta swing,” says the pitcher, who has started tossing two balls at a time.  Brian, in his gray jersey with red embroidered Falcons, misses them both.

“I think that counts as two strikes,” the pitcher laughs, for he knows that strikeouts don’t exist in Challenger Baseball.  No outs.  Everyone bats.  Everyone fields.  Buddies help their partners bat and run bases, protect them in the field, hand them balls to throw.  

The pitcher will toss pitch after pitch after pitch, grab different sized balls, stand varying distances from the plate, until each batter connects.

He tosses two again and, this time, Bryan smacks one of them toward second base.  He and his buddy head toward first.

The next Falcon says he can’t hit.  The pitcher tells him, yes, you can.   He does.  And, Bryan and Buddy head to second.

A kid with a Lafayette Lacrosse t-shirt catches the next hit and hands it to the boy next to him, the boy with the red wheelchair with HP banners covering the wheels, the P shaped like a lightning bolt, of course.   The Harry Potter fan throws it to the pitcher.

Soon, Bryan will slide to homeplate, laughing, always laughing, maybe because he’s breaking the Challenger Baseball no-sliding rule, or maybe just because sliding is sliding, and who wants to return to their living room with a still-clean uniform?

Bryan has cerebral palsy; his aunt is my dear friend.  The others?   Some use wheelchairs, others have Down’s Syndrome.    Six-foot tall Dalton runs off the field.  Every game.  Today, he never even batted.  Three Buddies chased him, held the back of his jersey, kept him safe.  I could not even guess his disability.

After the game, I will see he and his mom in their white pick-up truck, and I will wonder about their life.  Max will too.  He will long for assurance that this kid’s disability isn’t as bad as it seems.   But, I don’t know.   To me, it seems bad, real bad.

When Max was two, he would stand around in his diaper and name every Cardinals player, their jersey number, and their position.   The Saint Louis Post-Dispatch featured him in its Our Own Oddities column; the clip, yellowed, still hangs on our refrigerator.

Max remembers the sequence of most Cardinals games. And, at age four, he started to play tee ball.  Then coach pitch, then machine pitch, and now, he’s a first baseman.

So I guess, sometimes, if you love baseball enough, you want to make sure that other kids, even those with some disability you’ll never know the name of, get to hit and throw and laugh and not be stuck outside this world.

And so even if your mom says, hey Max, it’s 90 degrees, and it’s okay if you don’t want to do Challenger today, you know that, actually, no, Mom, it’s not okay.  They need you.

And you want to be there when Joseph rounds second and literally steals the base because it gets stuck in the wheel of his new power wheelchair.  You want to be there when Tyler gets those big hits and you run with him to first, holding out your hand for a high five.

You want to be there when Bryan pushes away his walker and, yet again, breaks that no-sliding rule, laughing from the ground.

Yes, I want to scream from the rooftop.  Come fill the stands. There won’t be a twelfth inning, game-winning shot by Pujols, but the mighty Falcons are facing the Cougars today.

And, guess what?   Everyone will win.

(This piece was posted on the Teaching Tolerance website, tolerance.org)

For a writing course that I’m taking, I had this assignment.  A reporter lands in your house, interviews you, and then writes about you.  500 words.  That this piece veers rather far  from the guidelines makes me wonder about when I do, and do not, allow my own students to create their own path for an assignment.

Q:  Tell me about your kitchen.

A:  Silence.

But then,

She said she didn’t want to talk about the day the refrigerator crisper slipped through her fingers and cracked, or how, cha-ching, she had opted for the orange duct tape solution rather than a replacement drawer.   She didn’t want to explain why they’d never yanked off the vile linoleum, why they had such confusion on the shelves of the pantry.

She wanted a vat of concealer to hide the acne, to create a haze of flawlessness in her sad kitchen, in her flooding basement, in this ranch house that nine years ago, when they moved in, had boasted a vibrant garden, now weeds.   The concealer trick had worked in ninth grade, she remembered, when she would smear tinted cream across her red, pus-filled bumps, forever aggravated by the obsessive pick, pick, picking.

She feared anyone looking too closely.

She wanted me the hell out of her kitchen.  But, I refused.

So, she brewed some Earl Grey and told me a story, one without clutter or blame, without messiness or disappointment.

She told me how a little redhead, nine years old, her daughter, just yesterday had spread stuffed animals across her lap, animals that she had dug from the bin in her bedroom.

You see, some kids don’t have any stuffed animals, she explained to them. None.  And these kids’ parents?   When they do get some money, they have to spend it on needs, not wants.  Do you know what that means? She whispered in their ears.  I will miss you when you go to your new homes, but you will have a good life.  I promise. She kissed them.

She and her mama headed to synagogue that night, where, she knew the routine by now, they would sleep on air mattresses, then awaken at five to prepare breakfast for the homeless women and children with whom they had shared space that night.

She would dole out her stuffed animals, delighted that Camille, Jamal, Jomani and the others would all carry something of her with them, a friend, to the next air mattress, in the next place, and, one day, even to their very own homes.   Maybe one day, she dreamed, Camille and Jamal and Jomani would have their own rooms with bins of stuffed animals and a refrigerator and a yard and a pantry.

*                                    *                                                *                                    *

No, she didn’t want to talk about the kitchen.  But, sit with me, she said, as she wiped her eyes.  Drink some more tea.  And let me shower you with stories of this little girl with a magical power—she unearths beauty for her mama, her mama who sees a land teeming with scars.

She piled with your children into the backseat of the old Nissan Quest one Saturday of spring break, headed for Springfield.  She was in eighth grade. You remember how she separated from you at the Abraham Lincoln museum, and when you traipsed back through the halls, searching for her, there she was, weeping in front of a sculpture of black women, divided from their children, all for sale, like cattle.

She was your student then, two years ago.

And, today, on Mother’s Day, she is nursing her newborn daughter.

Damn.

A thug, or maybe two, murdered her big brother a year ago, shot him down.  You considered going to the wake, you really did, but then, no.   So, you sent her some email message instead, bumbling out how sorry you were and telling her that you were there for her, if she needed you.

And, with a mother who fled long ago, and a diabetic father and now just one brother left, of course, she needed you.   She needed many of you, to remind her of something.  Of love?  Of ambition?  Of hope?

But a year passes, and you don’t hear from her.  You think about going to her house one afternoon and bringing her some lasagna.    You think about sending her another message, inviting her to stop by the middle school, to visit.

She ate dinner in your dining room that night, the night of the Abe Lincoln road trip, only ziti with some jarred sauce tossed on top and maybe a quick thrown-together green salad.  But, for one night, she did not prepare a feast for her father and brothers, she did not scrape dishes, she did not mop or dust or do whatever else topped her list of chores about which she never seemed to complain.

You heard it was some guy in the neighborhood, the father of this baby. You heard she posts daily photographs on Facebook and that maybe there is some aunt who is helping her.  You wonder if she still journeys to dialysis several times a week with her father, if she will repeat sophomore year, if she has had many visitors.

You remember how, on some Friday night in February of eighth grade, clad in her dressiest black slacks, she climbed with your family to the upper rows of Powell Symphony Hall to hear a gospel singer celebrate Black History.   Her fourteen-year-old spirit sparkled that night.

And, how, after eighth grade, her principal and school counselor flew her to a weeklong leadership program somewhere out west.  As the plane ascended, she gleefully announced, “I’m free.”

So, you should call her.  You should go to her doorstep with Goodnight Moon, a cute little photo album, a gift card to buy diapers.  You should go tell her how you know she’ll be a great mother to her little one.   You should remind her to stay in school.

But, what if, behind your eyes, she hears,  Maybe others looked at you and just saw some overweight black girl, living in poverty, struggling to read, destined to fail, to have babies, to continue the bitter cycle.   But, didn’t you hear us?  We believed in you, your teachers, the counselor, your principal.   You were not just one in the blur of thousands of students. We took you in and showed you parts of the world we knew you’d never seen. I’m disappointed and angry, Girl, and, while I’m here, let me tell you a few depressing facts about teenage mothers who go on and have second babies, so…

On this Mother’s Day morning, sitting on your deck, with the sun on your back, you should be planning your week’s lessons, but, instead, you are thinking about how you should’ve gone to the wake, you should’ve brought the tray of lasagna, you should’ve just been there for this girl, this girl who once dreamed of freedom. Yes, you will head to her house this week. You will go to her, and you will hug her.

Max, age 10 (two weeks shy of 11) won first place in the Saint Louis County Library Contest today.   He has promised to share his prize money ($50) with his little sister, Sarah.  Here is his story about wrestling kidnappers away from Albert Pujols, one of his heroes:

Pujols and Me

It was too late!  The library doors were locked, with me inside.  I didn’t know what to do. My mind was racing with quick plans and then I got it. I had to find a phone a quick as possible. Then I found it and it said,  “Please insert a quarter.”

“Oh my gosh! A pay phone,” I said not knowing what to do. I checked all of my pockets but there was no money in them. I realized the only thing I could do was read. Since my passion is baseball I chose to read a book by Dan Gutman called Babe and Me. I picked up the book and started reading. I kept hearing these creaking sounds upstairs but thought it was my imagination. After I got to the part where Joe Stoshack eats with Babe Ruth and he puked, I fell into a deep sleep, dreaming about giant monsters attacking my family.

I woke up to the sound of creaking footsteps upstairs near where the CD’s are kept. I hid myself under the bunny pillows in the play area. I heard the footsteps getting closer. Then suddenly they stopped.  I peeked through the little hole of the pillow and saw Albert Pujols.  I couldn’t believe my luck.  I was seeing the best baseball player in the MLB. After my few seconds of glory, I noticed there were two other men with him and they both had black suits on. Why would Albert Pujols be in the library when it was closed, I thought? That’s when I spotted what was in one of the men’s pockets. I saw a black, shiny pistol. That’s when I saw something I had never seen before. One of the men said, “If you lose to the Yankees on purpose in the World Series I will pay you 100 million dollars so we can win our bets.”

Of course, Pujols said, “NO WAY! ”

Then the man on the right pulled out the gun and said, “Are you sure now? ”

Pujols answered, “Yes.”

The other guy said, “All right, then we will have to shoot you.”

They tied Pujols up to a bookshelf and loaded the gun. I knew I had to do something quick before Pujols got hurt. Both kidnappers said, “We’re ready.”

Right as the kidnappers were going to hit the trigger, I jumped in mid-air from ten feet away. I felt like Mike Powell, the world record leader for long jumps. Then I put my fist in the air like Superman, knocked the gun free and picked it up. Then I told the kidnappers to never come back here ever again and never mess with Albert again. Just after I hugged Albert, the library doors opened. Albert and I ran out as fast as my dad drives on the highway (and that’s a lot). I was as happy as a baby bird just learning to fly.