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“That’s not fair! I wouldn’t have to fight if Carrie would ever fight back herself!”
“She’s not a—”
“I know what she is! A wimp!” Sophie flounces off to her room. But then she says it, over her shoulder: “Just like all the rest of them!”
“The rest of who?” I call, but she’s already gone.
• • • •
The volcano blew up on February 20 and it just kept blowing up for days. The scientists knew ahead of time that something was going to happen there, but not such a big something. It was the second-biggest blow-up since before Christ was born. Huge walls of flame rose up—I seen pictures. The explosion was heard a thousand miles away. Everything got dark for a couple hundred miles, from all the ash and rocks thrown up in the atmosphere, some as high as twenty-five miles up. Aircraft had to go way around the whole area, after a few of them got caught and fell out of the sky. Whole villages disappeared in lava and hot ash.
I felt sorry for all the people who died, of course, but I had my own troubles. Money troubles, morning-sickness troubles, man troubles. The truth is, the volcano was way over on the other side of the world, and I didn’t really care that much.
Then.
• • • •
I remember the name of the other kid who got pantsed on the playground: Tommy Winfield. I dig out an old phone book—we don’t got internet anymore, not since Sophie had to have all that dental work done—and find the Winfields’ address. After supper I leave Carrie with Sophie, which I do only for quick trips, and drive over there.
It’s a toney part of town, near the Bay. Big house, trees sending down bright leaves onto the lawn. The woman who opens the door is toney and bright-colored, too, a yellow sweater tossed over her shoulders like she’s some ageing model for Lands’ End.
“Yes?”
“I’m Carrie Drucker’s mother. She’s in your kid Tommy’s class at school.”
Her shoulders kind of hunch and her face changes. I say, “Carrie and Tommy was both pantsed by some older girls on the playground.”
“Yes, well, they—please do come in.”
I do. The hall is bigger than my kitchen, with a table holding a big bouquet of fresh flowers and a floor of real stone. Well, so what? I say what I come here to say.
“I want to ask you something about Tommy. He didn’t fight back, no more than my Carrie did. Is he always like that?” The word that Ms. Steffens used comes back to me. “Passive?”
“He’s an introvert, and very gentle, yes. May I ask why you’re asking?”
I can’t really say why, not yet. But I plunge on. “Are his friends like that? The other kids in his class?”
“Why, I—well, I suppose some are passive and some aren’t. Naturally. Children differ so much, don’t they?”
Now I feel like a fool. The only friends of Carrie’s I ever see are the twins next door, who are a lot like Carrie. I say, “Did Tommy’s teacher say he should get some therapy?”
Mrs. Winfield’s face changes again. “I really can’t discuss that with you, Ms. Drucker. But I do want to say that I—we, my husband and I—appreciate your older daughter’s attempt to protect Tommy and Carrie, if not the form of it.”
All at once I want to defend Sophie for fighting, which don’t make sense because I’m punishing her for fighting. This woman irritates me, even though I can see she don’t intend to. It’s confusing. I mumble, “Thanks, then, bye,” and stumble out.
Anyway, I’m wrong again.
Some are passive and some aren’t
. What makes me think I’m smart enough to think this out, when nobody else has?
I go home and start the laundry.
• • • •
It was the summer after the volcano blew up that the weather got strange here—all the ways away from Indonesia in upstate New York. The spring and summer had a weird reddish fog in the air, from volcanic ash high up in the atmosphere. Sunlight didn’t come through right. The winter had been bad, but even the summer was cold, really cold. We had snow in June. Mornings in July, the lake had ice on it. Some crops got killed, others didn’t grow, and food got expensive.
Scientists started publishing reports about all the ash and stuff thrown out of the volcano. They said that some of it was normal for volcanoes but some wasn’t. Also, that the un-normal stuff was causing strange chemical reactions high up. I still wasn’t paying much attention. Carrie was born in August, and managing her and Sophie, who was five, was really hard.
Ash can stay in the upper atmosphere a long time, because it don’t rain much up there.
Most of the ash ended up in Africa and Europe. I don’t know why. Winds.
• • • •
Saturday, the twins from next door come over to play with Carrie. DeShaun and Kezia Brown, a boy and a girl. They don’t look much alike. The twins don’t go to school yet because they don’t turn five until November. Mary Brown don’t work, but she’s got a husband with a decent job so they’re all right. They got a two-year-old car and internet.
“Do you want to play horsies again?” Carrie says.
“Do you?” DeShaun says. He’s bigger than the girls, really big for his age, but he never bullies Carrie or Kezia. He’s really sweet. Sam Brown calls him “my future linebacker” but I don’t think so.
Kezia says to Carrie, “Do
you
want to play horsies? Or something else?”
They go back and forth for a while with the do-you-no-do-you’s until they finally settle on horsies. As they head outside, I say, “Stay in the yard where I can see you!” It’s not really a yard, just an empty lot between our Section Eight building and the Browns’ little house, but Sam keeps it mowed and Mary and I do regular pick-ups of all the trash people throw out of their car windows.
I finish my coffee and mop the kitchen floor. Sophie gets up and we have an argument about her room, which is supposed to also be Carrie’s room, but Sophie’s junk is piled on both bunks so that Carrie slept last night on a pile of clothes on the floor. The argument goes on and on, and by the time Sophie stomps off to clean Carrie’s bunk, the kids are gone from the yard.
I tear outside. “Carrie! Carrie, where are you! Kezia! DeShaun!”
I find them behind our building, where there’s a sort of cement alcove beside the steps that comes down from a back door. A boy has them backed up against the dumpster. Kezia holds a drippy ice cream cone. The boy has the other two cones, which Mary must of given the kids. He licks one of them and then shoves the other one in DeShaun’s face.
None of them see me. I stop and wait.
DeShaun is bigger than the other boy. He could take the little turd even if Carrie and Kezia didn’t help. But all three of them just stand there, DeShaun with chocolate ice cream sliding off his nose onto the front of his hoodie. None of the three of them do anything. They look upset, not really scared. But they just stand there.
“Hey!” I yell.
The boy turns, and now
he
looks scared. He’s not more than six. I don’t recognize him. He drops the ice cream cone and runs.
“DeShaun, why didn’t you hit him?”
DeShaun looks down at his sneakers, then up at me. I can’t read his expression. Finally he says, polite—he’s always polite—“It’s not right to hit people.”
“Well, no, not usually, but when they’re attacking you—” I stop. He’s looking down at his feet again.
I finally say, “Come on, let’s get you cleaned up.”
At lunch, Sophie spills our last carton of milk and I yell at her. “I didn’t mean it!” she yells back, which is true. She goes into her room and slams the door. When I calm down, I apologize. I was only yelling at her from frustration. It’s not her fault. None of it is her fault—the ice cream thing or that I forgot to bring home milk last night or my crappy job or anything.