Little Cemetery in the City

“You brushed my hair and tucked me in, made me laugh for hours on end. You kissed my boo-boos when I fooled around. Mommy, you never let me down” I stood in front of the mothers of Mrs. Watkinson’s first grade class, listening to my classmates’ stupid poems that sounded to me like stolen greeting cards. I stood there silently and picked at the runs in my tights. I decided on my finest skirt and tee shirt combo that morning in an attempt to be what my Aunt Lora called “presentable”, but in that moment, on display in front of everyone, I missed my ripped jeans that had a crooked yet lovingly hand-stitched cat on them. My tights itched and my feet were cramped. Everything was wrong.

I counted the seconds and held my breath until we were allowed to take our seats. Finally, when Casey stopped fumbling the ending of her awful poem, I rushed back to my desk that sat front and center. I pulled out my dog-eared copy of “Little House on the Prairie” and shoved my nose in the comfort of my book. I sipped my tea and pretended not to notice when one of my classmates stole the extra cookie off my desk.

“Josie, why don’t you go and ask Casey if she would like to color with you?” Mrs. Watkinson snapped me out of my trance and urged me to put down my book. I refused to acknowledge her presence on principle. My mother told me she wished she was Laura Ingalls Wilder when she was my age. After we finished the whole series together, I took it upon myself to read it again except this time I decided I’d read it to her. Unfortunately, my reading was not as expert as hers and I still stumbled over the simplest words. Once a few minutes had passed, Mrs. Watkinson realized there was no tearing me away from my desk; her heels clicked on the linoleum as she backed away. This was a battle she would not win.

“Can I be excused?” I yelled across the room after I had tried my absolute best to calm what my mom called “the ants in my pants.” The class room felt suffocating and besides, I could think of way better things to do than have tea. Before I even received a reply, I grabbed the ball that served as our hall pass and headed out into the long dimly lit hall, paperback in hand. The hall of Nixon Elementary stretched for miles. I crept the best I could down the empty corridor, past the second grade, then the third, then the fourth, and stopped outside the last door of the fifth grade block. I stood on my tiptoes and peered into the classroom through the window. I made eye contact with one of the Fox twins; I could never tell who was who. Either Matt or Jay passed a note to my brother. Izzy adjusted his glasses and tried his best to read the tiny print. He immediately turned towards the door but squinted as if his thick coke bottle glasses did nothing to help him recognize his own sister.

I ducked when his teacher glanced outside of the classroom, following the other student’s stares. Someone’s footsteps smacked on the linoleum. The door clicked as someone turned the knob. I held my breath and sank down to the floor. I knew I was busted again.

“What do you want?” a hushed voice asked, standing above me. Safe! My brother very quickly closed the door behind him and waited for my answer as I grabbed his hand and led him down the hall towards the front doors of the school. We glanced around the corner like spies and then slid into the entrance of the school’s empty gym.

“I want to leave,” I whispered. My brother just scoffed and in as firm of a voice as he could muster replied, “It’s not like we can just walk out the front door.”

“Why not?” I whined and then launched into an explanation of my grand plan. “We can go out the side door by the kindergarten block and then cut through the woods.” Izzy just stared at me. I held my breath in anticipation as I watched him weigh the pros and cons of making our big break. After what felt like eternity, Izzy just shook his head and walked toward the lost and found bin in the corner of the small gym. “What are you doing?”

“It’s cold and we’re going to need jackets. It’s not like we can go back to class and then just pack up and leave, ” he finally answered. He was always the brains to my brawn.

Too shocked to question my brother’s agreement to my rebellion, I grabbed the pink Barbie jacket out of his hand and put it on hurriedly. Very slowly and very carefully we snuck down the never ending hallway. We passed two unaccompanied fourth graders who thankfully ignored us. We made our way into the secluded kindergarten block. We pushed through the doors as quietly as possible and got our first whiff of freedom. We dropped down and crawled below the windows of the kindergarten classroom. The weeks of pretending to be spy kids were paying off. We had to stifle our laughter as the dead grass along the building tickled our bellies. When the windows ended, we rose to our feet and hand in hand, ran the final few yards beyond the building and into the woods that surrounded Nixon Elementary.

When we finally were a decent distance into the woods we stopped, doubled over trying to catch our breath.

“I could have out ran you if I wasn’t in these stupid clothes,” I spit out between gasps. My asthmatic brother did his best to laugh in response. The rest of our journey was in silence. My brother’s wheezing and the Earth crunching beneath our feet was the soundtrack to our great escape. After a few minutes we reached the edge of the cemetery that we would cut across every day on the way home. We couldn’t do it in the morning because our town’s homeless population often sought refuge in the cemetery for the night and our mother always warned us to not bother them so we took the long way around.

“Let’s just go ‘round. There might still be people.” My brother tried to drag me along the old rusted fence and onto the well-worn path that surrounded the acre of land.

“I need to do something and besides, it’s not like anyone would bother us. If they do, you’ll just punch ‘em. Right?” I threw my leg up onto the fence and started to pull myself over before Izzy had a chance to answer..

“We’re almost home safe! Why are you doing this?” My exasperated brother asked as I made my way to the top of the fence and jumped over with expert ability. I kept on pushing forward, not caring if he followed or not. He got me where I wanted and now I was free. I heard my brother plop over to my side of the fence while my back was turned.

The cemetery that still stands a block away from our family home has never had a name. Or maybe it did, but whatever it was, has been lost to time. No one is sure how old the place actually is, but the Fox twins maintain the fact that they once found a headstone that dated 1903 even though they’ve never been able to find it again. That’s the thing about the old cemetery; it isn’t much of one at all. The only headstones are old, illegible and crumbling under the weight of time and neglect. In Roxbury, those who die with money are buried across town in the newer cemetery that was built in the 70’s. The people that are put in the pathetic square of earth by our house aren’t so much laid to rest as they are pushed into the ground and forgotten. No one with enough money to get a proper headstone would dare be buried here. Everyone knows that only vagrants, as our grandmother called them, were buried there. The only markers of most of those poor souls’ existence are tiny wooden crosses that have their names and birth and death dates either burned or carved into them.

I stepped away from the rotting fence and began my trek across the field of the forgotten. I sunk into the earth just below my ankles. The mud squished between my toes as I struggled to creep through the rows of tiny wooden crosses, stopping to admire the occasional headstone. My brother followed behind me, cursing every time his foot would get stuck in the muck. That’s what he got for not learning to tie his shoes and only wearing velcro. Finally, in the third row I found whom I was looking for. “Jennifer May.” I stopped and admired the tiny wooden cross that had been painted purple.

“I knew it.” My brother whispered as he stopped behind me. “I’m going to wait by the fence. Hurry up though, we need to get home and think of something to tell Dad about why school was let out early.” My brother trudged along the path to the opposite side of the cemetery, my eyes drilling holes into his back while he retreated. When he was finally out of earshot, I began to read the poem copied into my journal. I had stolen it off of a card I saw in Pathmark while I was shopping with Grams.

I stood there long after the last line fell from my lips. I didn’t know what I was waiting for but I stood my ground. Izzy had propped himself up against the fence and just waited patiently for me to move on. After a few minutes, I ripped the page from my journal and shoved it into an envelope that I had tucked into the back cover. I turned “The Little House on the Prairie” to my favorite page and marked it with the envelope. I carefully placed it under the purple cross I had meticulously painted with the nail polish I’d stolen from the store only a few months before. I snuck one last glance and then slowly walked back to my big brother. We stood in silence just staring at our shoes for quite a while. Neither of us was sure how to proceed.

“You know she was a junkie right? You’re lucky she didn’t crash your Mother’s Day tea like she did mine smelling like garbage.” Izzy finally broke the silence, his disgust audible.

“I know, but I loved her anyway”