time to when she was a kid and being her friend and protector. I think I know what she was like when she was little and I think other kids wouldn’t have been nice to her. When I too was little this used to upset me, the idea of this. I wanted to go back in time to be there whenever any little boy was too rough with her in sports, whenever any little girl whispered a mean word behind her back. I wanted to be there to guide her into acceptance and popularity which are gifts I have been given without knowing why or from where.
I still haven’t read her note. In the hopes that she will come back.
Come back.
• • •
Thursday morning is Thanksgiving. When I wake up I start to plan what I will get for my mother to eat before I even open my eyes and then I remember. There is a bathroom between my room and Trevor’s room and I can hear him in the shower. He sings when he’s happy which he is on game days.
I’m nervous. Playing Yonkers always makes me nervous but today especially. Seeing Dee Marshall will make me remember lots of things about my younger life. About my mother.
I hear a creaking noise outside the window at the head of my bed and I flop onto my stomach and look into the backyard. Maxine is out there. It’s seven in the morning and Maxine is out there turning a huge turkey on a spit. She’s wearing jeans and a sweater instead of her uniform. I imagine the Cohens have encouraged her to do this as a way of making her feel casual and included. She’s listening to her iPod and yawning.
Trevor and I have to get ready for the game. He pounds on the door between the bathroom and my room and says GET UP!
Up, I say.
While I’m getting ready Mrs. Cohen knocks on our doors and tells us we should eat breakfast before we leave. When I open my bedroom door I can’t believe the smells that come drifting upstairs. I’ve slept at their house a lot of other times but this is amazing. It smells the way a beautiful magazine looks. Trevor’s little sister April is sitting at the island in their kitchen when I come in and she swallows her juice very quickly and does not say hi to me. I don’t think she has said one word to me since I’ve been here which I think is nerves rather than ill will.
Hey April, I say.
She waves at me without turning. She’s nothing like Trevor. She’s very smart and has long hair all the way down to her butt and she wears glasses every day and reads all the time and is even reading now at the island. She’s very fat which I think Trevor and his entire family are embarrassed of. She’s more than plump. Her body swallows the stool she’s sitting on. Mrs. Cohen looks at her daughter from head to foot sometimes, I’ve noticed it, as if she is wishing to be able to do something about her, about her fatness. To do something about it the way you would do something about a leaky faucet. It is something I don’t like about Mrs. Cohen.
Oh Maxine, she says suddenly, looking out one of the huge windows that face the backyard. She has to turn that more slowly or it’ll never brown.
She heads outside, apparently to coach Maxine on turkey turning.
April and I are the only ones in the kitchen and I want to say something, anything.
Who do you have this year? I ask.
For what? asks April, peering at me over the top of her glasses.
Um. I don’t know, English, I say.
Ms. Langley, she says.
Oh, I say.
Fortunately Trevor comes in then all dressed and ready and he pounds his fist into his hand and says G-I-A! N-T-S!
Giants, I say.
•
Every year we play our Thanksgiving game at the same field that is neither in Yonkers nor Pells. When my mother was better and working at PLHS she used to go to them every year and bring me with her from the time I was a kid. It was the only time she ever rooted against Pells for anything: secretly we would cheer when Yonkers won; secretly we would huddle under a blanket on cold days and chant Yonkers, Yonkers, Yonkers under our breath and she would buy me a cider from the stands which I would