Joan of Old is a tiny mountain range under a sky-blue blanket—her sunken pink wrinkled face sticking out, her small head resting on a pillow.
“Can I get a few minutes alone with Joan?” I ask Old Man Linder.
My manager says, “Sure. I’ll wait out here for you.”
I walk into the room and close the door behind me.
I pull up a chair next to the bed.
“Joan?” I say.
Joan of Old doesn’t move.
I can hear her struggling to breathe.
Her mouth is open slightly.
I reach under the blanket and hold her hand.
It’s freezing cold.
“Squeeze if you can hear me,” I say.
Nothing.
“I guess you heard all about my mom and my depression. I’ve been in a room for months, pretty much being a bitch to everyone. I’ve been crying a lot too. True. But what you probably don’t realize is that I cried a whole bunch before my mother was killed too. The Amber you saw during our battles—that was all an act. I’m not very strong. I’m not very hopeful. I’m not very much of anything. I’m just a stupid girl who can tell a few good jokes at pivotal moments and knows how to work a crowd. If you only knew how much I internalized all of your insults. Word. You really have me thinking I have a dinosaur face, which freaks me out a lot. True.”
Joan of Old doesn’t squeeze my hand at all.
I can still hear her breathing.
“I’m starting to think that you are right about life, Joan. Maybe it’s all meaningless? I mean—I still dig JC and all. I still pray, and I still believe in certain people. But that guy who killed my mom—he’s not human, and he scares me, because he is human, and yet he did what he did, which will never make sense, no matter how long I think about it. It’s so random. So vile. It makes me get why you are so mean and cranky. I bet you weren’t like that before your husband died, right?”
Suddenly, Joan of Old squeezes my hand and scares the hell out of me.
“Why are you telling me these things?” Joan asks.
“Were you awake that whole time?”
“Yes.”
“You rotten old lady! Why didn’t you say so?”
“Because I’m gathering information for our last battle—when I will finally make you cry.”
“You can’t be that evil,” I say.
Joan of Old smiles up at me from her pillow, and her wrinkly pink eyelids bore through my forehead.
I shiver.
“Why’d you really come in here, Amber?”
“I don’t know. I really don’t. Are you going to die?”
“We all die eventually,” Joan of Old says. “That’s just about the only thing God got right.”
“Okay,” I say, “I think I’m going to leave now.”
“When do we battle next? My doctors say I could die any day now.”
“Sorry, I’m retired,” I say.
“You have to give me one last shot at the title.”
Suddenly, Joan of Old just seems too absurd for me to handle, so I walk out of the room.
“Amber? Amber? Amber?” Joan of Old says as I walk down the hall with Old Man Linder.
“What did the old broad say to you?” he asks me, dragging his oxygen bottle behind him.
“She faked like she was sleeping so I would tell her personal things that she could use against me the next time we battle.”
“I wouldn’t worry too much about that.”
“Because I’m retired?”
“Because she’s going to die any day now. And ding dong the wicked witch will be dead.”
“You know what’s the weirdest thing about that?”
“What?” Old Man Linder asks.
“I’ll miss her.”
“I miss everyone from my past, Amber. I really do. It’s the curse of old age.”
We walk the rest of the way in silence, and just before we reenter the common room, I say, “Will you and Old Man Thompson sing one of your songs at The Bobby Big Boy Variety Show?”
“No one wants to hear two old men sing forgotten songs, Amber. Especially one who needs bottled oxygen to breathe. Singing’s a young person’s game. Who would want to hear me sing?”
“I would.”
Old Man Linder smiles at me all grandfatherly, but his eyes get misty and sad.
When he doesn’t say anything, I give Old Man Linder a kiss on the cheek, and then—in the common room—I make the rounds with BBB, allowing everyone to check out his scar while they give him a pet on the head.
And then B Thrice and I are walking through the depressing hallways with the dusty plants.
“How’d it go in there today?” DWL says.
“Okay. Even though he said he didn’t want to do it, I’m hoping Old Man Linder will change his mind and he’ll sing at The Save Bobby Big Boy Variety Show. That would be pretty cool.”
“Who asked him to sing?”
“I did.”
“Why didn’t you ask me to sing?”
“Do you sing?”
“You kiddin’ me? I’m a pro. I got me a band and everything. They’re called The Hard-Working Brothers. We do weddings mostly, but we play clubs too.”
“What type of music?”
“Mostly R & B. I’m known for my Aretha Franklin impersonation—but I do The Supremes, Ella Fitzgerald, Nina Simone, all the big names.”
I cross myself, and then say, “DWL. You’re a diva?”
“Girl—I bring the roof down whenever I sing. I just work this job for the health insurance.”
Suddenly, I understand that Father Chee’s prayers are being answered—that JC has sent me and the KDFCs a diva. Word.
“Are you for real?” I ask.
DWL laughs and hands me her card. It reads:
Sister Lucy and The Hard-Working Brothers
There is a phone number underneath.
I explain my relationship with The Korean Divas for Christ, our asking JC to send us a true diva front woman, and then, like a frickin’ maniac, I pedal Donna’s bike all the way to Father Chee’s church, telling everyone I pass that I hope they’re having a great day, and when I get there, I bang on the door until FC opens.
“Amber, what brings you here today on a—”
“I found us a true diva!” I say, and then hand him DWL’s card.
Father Chee reads the card and then smiles knowingly. “So Jesus has sent us a diva.”
“Hell yeah,” I say.
“I will take care of everything,” Father Chee says, and then jogs me and BBB in-a-basket back to my neighborhood, only I don’t go home after FC turns around—BBB and I go to Private Jackson’s house.
After so much time with people—I’m tired.
I’m not used to people.
I’ve been alone in a room for two months.
This is all baptism by fire.
I want to go somewhere I can just be—where I can chill and process the miracle of finding a true diva for The KDFCs.
I stash Donna’s bike around the back of PJ’s house and knock on PJ’s door with BBB in my arms.
“Come in, please,” PJ says while scratching Bobby Big Boy’s head. “I’ll put on tea.”
I put B Thrice on the floor inside of the door, and even though he had surgery not so long ago, he tears ass toward the bedroom. I’m a little worried about those stitches, but then I just sit down on the couch figuring Bobby Big Boy knows his own limitations.
A few minutes later, Private Jackson hands me a steaming cup of tea.
We sip in silence for a time.
I put my cup down on the coffee table, stand, pull an origami swan from my pocket, and hand it to PJ.
“It’s beautiful,” PJ says. “It’s perfect.”
“Open it up,” I say.
“No, I want to let it be—just as it—”
“I’ll fold you up another one. There’s a haiku inside.”
PJ nods and then unfolds my origami swan.
He reads my latest haiku for like—an hour, nodding and rubbing his chin.
“Do you like it?” I finally ask.
He looks up at me and says, “It is perfect. Will you do a reading for me?”
“You serious?” I ask.
“I would very much like to hear you read this haiku.”
I take the piece of paper from him, and read.
“We cry together—on the couch for different—reasons, but it helps.”
“I will hang it on the wall now,” PJ says, taking the paper from me.
“But it’s not about a dog.”
PJ smiles, tapes my haiku to the blank spot on the final living room wall, and then says, “I like you, Amber Appleton, just as much as I like dogs. And I like dogs better than people.”
“And I like you, Private Jackson, just as much as I like dogs.”
“We are very lucky then,” he says, and we both sit there smiling and sipping green tea for a half hour.
BBB and Ms. Jenny come out of the bedroom all glassy-eyed and wobbly, but BBB seems to be smiling, so I laugh and say, “You can’t keep a good dog down, eh, BBB?”
I pick B3 up in my arms, kiss the furry spot between his ears, and then tell PJ I gotta go.
“I will wash the teacups,” he says.
Outside, I put BBB in Donna’s bike basket, and he’s asleep before I pedal one block.
CHAPTER 56
For the next two weeks I work on my prom dress, which I am going to wear when I emcee The Save Bobby Big Boy Variety Show, so—in an effort to finish in time—I start going to the Life Skills room before and after school.
Franks and The Five hold auditions for the variety show.
Door Woman Lucy and the Hard-Working Brothers meet with Father Chee and The KDFCs.
Kids I don’t even know sell tickets door-to-door.
Mrs. Baxter collects money.
Mr. Valerie sells advertisements and puts together the program.
And I take BBB to see Ms. Jenny every single day.
I drink tea with Private Jackson—and I fill that blank spot on the last wall of his living room.
Everything is moving toward something—but I’m sorta in a daze.
Sometimes I think I see my mother.
Whenever I see a school bus—my heart leaps.
When I see a bleach-blonde in a crowd.
When I close my eyes at night.
When Donna kisses me, sometimes I pretend, and I get to feeling really badly about my wishing Donna was my mom—back when Mom was actually alive.
I wonder if Mom’s death was God answering that wish.
I wonder.
I feel guilty a lot.
I sweat through the nights.
I shiver through the days.
The only thing I really like doing—believe it or not—is drinking green tea with Private Jackson. Sipping in complete silence, surrounded by my haikus.
CHAPTER 57
On the day of The Save Bobby Big Boy Variety Show—before school—I finish my prom dress. It is a silver sleeveless with an empire waist and a scoop neck that shows off what little cleavage I got. When I try it on, my Life Skills teacher, Mrs. Tyler, says, “It’s the best prom dress ever made in this classroom. A-plus.”
I smile at her and begin to look forward to wearing it later.