And I just stand there until Randy comes to get me. She comes screeching around the corner from the highway into the school parking lot and I’m there in the place she picks me up.
“Hey,” I say and slide in. Randy’s got oldie tune, rock and roll, blaring and she’s bobbing her head to it. As soon as I’m sitting, this music is grating on me, I already got my insides all grated up anyway. I can’t get my rushing out of class out of my head.
“Hey, girl,” Randy says, her head bobbing to the music with her eyes almost closed. Then she sees I’m not moving at all, and says, “What happened to you?”
I point at the radio. “Off?” she asks. Randy knows me too well. “If you don’t want the music on, something really bad must have happened. Tell.”
She’s pulled the car into a spot and I can tell she’s not moving until I talk. She turns off the car. “What.” she says.
“I left class,” I say.
“Well, so did I, otherwise I wouldn’t be sitting here. What do you mean, you left class?” she asks.
“I left, left in that I ran out of the class in the middle of it,” I say.
“Why’d you go and do that?” she asks. We both know that our hopes for ourselves are there, staying inside these classrooms.
“Teacher asked us to write. About family,” I say.
“Hmmm,” she says. Words aren’t exactly Randy’s thing and that’s why she’s going to be a hair stylist. She says it’s inherited, not being good with words. “But Rawling, couldn’t you just have faked it or something. How much did you have to write?”
“It wasn’t the how much that got me, it was the family part,” I say. Now Randy’s got a family story that isn’t exactly perfect but mostly she knows about my momma.
“Rawling, why didn’t you just go back in there and say you had to use the ladies room or something?” Randy always makes a lot of sense, sometimes I wish I could just carrying her along in my purse.
“I didn’t think. I couldn’t think, I just didn’t want to write about momma,” I say.
“Monday, you are just going to go in there and if Miss Sheila asks, you’ll say you had female problems and that you’d suddenly not felt well.”
That seems so easy. I just hope that’s what I’m gonna do.
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A terrific week for Rawling! I picked this one because I love how she describes herself as feeling all grated up inside - and because of the way she says she wishes she could carry Randy along in her purse. That really stayed with me.
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