She had spent her own money on an expensive haircut two days prior and the style still held its shape, so when the wind picked up at the crosswalk she could not help but scowl at the inevitable blow dry for tomorrow morning.
As she approached her stop, she noticed a crew of black guys, all around her age, early twenties, one of them holding a basketball, all of them in jog-wear and sneakers, some of them smoking cloves. They had conquered the park bench beside the public basketball courts. One of them, skinny, red Puma tee-shirt, tight crimped hair that hung off his neck, had a leather patch over his right eye. Rebecca stared at him.
One of his friends noticed and nudged. He glanced back at her, shook his head, then grabbed a drag off his friend's clove. She looked into her bag to check new messages on her cell phone she knew she did not have.
A bus came. It was not hers. Someone cracked a joke and the crew exploded in laughter. She could not help but turn to the noise. She could not help but stare at him again.
Rebecca walked over. "Excuse me?"
"Yeah?"
"Sorry to bother you. Are you Pumpkin?"
The crew broke into laughs again.
"Who?"
"Pumpkin?"
"I don't know what you're talking about."
His friend made a point to exaggerate the gesture of covering his mouth in a snicker.
Rebecca fondled her cell phone in her bag, feeling their eyes on her.
"Sorry. Just you reminded me of someone."
She retreated to her perch beside the bus pole. Stood there, waited. All these memories flooded in. She wondered what happened to Pumpkin. We were good friends, I think. Maybe he doesn't remember me at all. Maybe he's dead.
Velma worked for Rebecca's family in Manhattan. Velma was the eldest of nineteen children, so she had been a mother all her life. Pumpkin was her fourth grandson from her third daughter. Or was it third grandson from her forth daughter? Regardless, Velma's daughter ran off with some gang banger that gave her crack. Velma took Pumpkin to live with her, which meant, for two years, Pumpkin lived with Rebecca.
They were the same age when they met. Nine. Velma called him 'Punkin' because he was so scrawny. He was shy. And he talked a little funny. Rebecca could not understand all the words he said. She thought it was because he was from the Bronx and they talked differently there, but her mother told her not to tease him about it anymore. Some people have trouble talking and it has nothing to do with where they're from.
He was the only black kid she knew. He didn't like her at first because she was so bossy and he couldn't talk back because his grandma worked for her parents. He couldn't talk much period so she got a lot of words out before he did. Then he got over it and told her to shut her big mouth. Rebecca liked him quite a lot after that.
Rebecca would steal Mother's oatmeal raisin cookies out of the Santa jar in the kitchen and they'd sneak into Velma's closet. Pumpkin and Rebecca had competitions who could eat the cookie the slowest. Whomever nibbled slower, won another cookie. Whomever lost got another one too.
Then Pumpkin's mother showed up. Rebecca's dad told Rebecca to go into her room when she heard the knock on the door. She watched through the key hole, but they were too far down the hall to tell what was going on. Then Pumpkin didn't live with them anymore. She forgot, after a couple months, he ever did.
Around a year later, Velma told Rebecca that Pumpkin was coming for a visit. He had just gotten out of the hospital. She was taking him to the Natural History Museum. Rebecca loved it there. Velma said they would meet Pumpkin outside the subway. When they got there, he had a patch over his eye. Rebecca stared at it. Didn't say anything. Velma scolded her for being rude. So she waved. Pumpkin waved back. But she still didn't say anything. Velma took both their hands, bought the tickets, and drug them inside.
Huge dinosaur bones rose up like cathedral spires to the domed ceiling as people ran around below them. Thelma took a seat at a bench to rest and told us to stay in plain sight. She needed to rest her fight. Under five minutes, she fell asleep. Pumpkin tagged Rebecca. "You're it." They ran into the Cro-Magnon room, then the Saber-Tooth room, then the Dodo bird room and by the time she tagged him back, they were good and lost.
She started to cry. He told her not to be a baby. "We can take c-care of ourselves. I'll look out for you." No one'd ever told her that before.
"You won't leave me here?"
"Why would I?"
"I dunno. Just checking, just in case. People at school think I'm bossy. Sometimes they leave me places when I go to the bathroom or it's my turn to hide."
But Pumpkin didn't leave her.
They wandered into the Hall of Reptiles. When she saw the group of Komodo Dragons, some on their hind legs, she ran out of the room. He laughed at her.
"They're not alive anym-m-more."
"I know that!"
"Sure."
"What happened to your eye?"
"Got knocked out."
"You only have one eye?"
"Yeah. My dad took me to these yards with some older friends of his where they sit around and p-people come by and talk through this fence and then they go around the c-c-corner together. Some guys my dad knows came by the yards and started throwing rocks through the fence. One of the rocks hit me in the eye."
"Why'd they through the rocks?"
"I don't know. Playing around, I guess. No one t-took me anywhere afterwards. My dad said it wasn't so bad. Then my grandma checked up on me at my mom's house. Doctor said I waited to long, it was sick, they had to take it out. So they d-d-did."
"I'm sorry, Pumpkin."
"I'm not too s-s-sad about it. That's the way it is. Only thing, Grandma won't let me hang around my pops no more."
Velma gave Rebecca money from the train ride so they bought ice cream sandwiches. Pumpkin knew how to go right up to the counter and order it. He still talked funny when he stumbled over words, but he didn't seem to mind so no one else minded. He knew how to order the ice cream and get the change back and everything. Rebecca had never done anything like that in her life. Velma or her mother bought things for her. But Pumpkin, he could take care of himself.
Suddenly, the big woman in a red jacket told them they had to stay in the cafeteria to eat. They could not bring food back into the exhibit halls. Ah! A challenge!
The second she turned her back, they snuck through the crowd and ate the ice creams beneath a pterodactyl. Then they went to the big room with the T-Rex and ran around until they almost fell down.
Pumpkin and Rebecca laid on the benches, head to head.
"What's your school like?" Pumkin said.
"Hard. What's yours like?"
"Hard t-t-too. But I don't have to go everyday."
Rebecca turned over. "Why not? I have to go everyday. That's not fair!"
He grinned. "I'm lucky. My mom doesn't make me go. Only grandma makes me go and she's not th-there all the time."
"Wish you still lived with her?"
"Sometimes. But grandma's old and she makes me eat funny food and I couldn't hang out with my friends if I was with her."
"You could hang out with me."
"Yeah, I c-c-could. But you're white. And a girl. That would bet boring."
She sit him in the shoulder. "Take that back. I'm not boring. I was better at tag than you were."
He laughed. She pinched him in the arm. "Take it back."
"Ouch! Uncle, uncle. I take it b-back. Damn!"
Velma nearly had a heart attack looking for them when she woke up. She smacked both of them across the bottom when she tracked them down. But she never smacked very hard.
"B-But Granma, you fell asleep!"
"It was a cat-nap, Punkin. That's no excuse!"
Rebecca remembered that Pumpkin held her hand as they walked out of the Room of Bones out to the cacophony of the street. When she felt his warm skin squeeze hers, his fingers slip through hers, time slowed. The room got quiet and people moved languidly. She smiled. He looked at her, with the patch over the eye he lost when his dad's friend threw a rock at the fence, and he smiled too.
She never saw Pumpkin again. But he was her friend. I think I was his, she told herself, leaning against the bus pole. When we got lost in the Natural History Museum and had the entire universe to ourselves, wandering the millenniums of dinosaurs and prehistoric cats and ancient forests like intrepid explorers and little thieves. And he held my hand.
Her bus hissed to a stop. People went this way and that with their plastic bags and headphones. Rebecca glanced at the crew of boys with their basketball, glanced at him in his red Puma tee-shirt and the patch over his eye. I wonder if he remembers that day at all.
They came from opposite worlds on the map, but they made up their own world, for a few hours, and traveled through it together, like no one else existed, like everyone else was another pair of ancient bones and they were the only two people alive on earth.
Someone bumped her. Rebecca found a token at the bottom of her purse and handed it to the driver.
At the park bench, the guys droned on about the white girl dipping into the chocolate sauce. "You're silky fudge, baby. You see her walk right up to you and try to get some thug love?"
He threw the basketball at his friend's gut. "Shut the fuck up, man."
"Easy, Pumpkin. I'm just playing."
They kept riding him, but he ignored the comments. Their voices evaporated behind the sound of the bus doors closing on themselves.
He watched her, through the glass, step through the crowded bus to find a spot near the back. She squeezed beside an old man. Looked out. He caught her eye. They stayed there, looking at one another, until the bus pulled her away. Down the street.
He knew. It was her.
© 2002 Carolyn Anderson Miller, all rights reserved
appears here by permission
Image Knowing created by and © K.L.Storer, all rights reserved
appears here by permission
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