Attendance Sheet
In all of her years, my Grandma Oda — the mother of my father — had never told a soul who she voted for. For an old Appalachian woman, she was relatively good at keeping those kinds of things to herself. But as we all sat in the living room watching CNN that night she said, “I sure do think that there George Bush is a good President.” She was in town from Left Hand and my Mom had plans to take her to a doctor’s appointment the next morning, but they ended up having to reschedule that on account of some planes getting stuck inside the World Trade Center. I didn’t know what the big deal was. When I asked my Dad what it all meant he said that he wasn’t too sure either.
School had been going really well that day. Mrs. Burlow went into labor over the past weekend so we had a substitute teacher. When he asked who wanted to run the attendance sheet down to the office I volunteered and he said I had better hurry back or I would miss the start of Stuart Little. In short bursts, I sprinted down the hallway, stopping in front of each classroom window so as not to get caught by the other teachers. We weren’t supposed to walk any faster than the beat of The Itsy Bitsy Spider.
When I strolled into the office I was out of breath and I saw the two secretaries — Ms. Debbie and Mrs. Walcott — and Principal Springer all looking at the television that was mounted up in the corner of the room. I was surprised to find them so focused because I had always thought the morning announcements were boring. In my mind, there wasn’t any reason to read the lunch menu over the school station when everyone got a cafeteria calendar at the start of each month. But they weren’t watching the announcements and when Ms. Debbie turned around to greet me I saw that she was crying. It caught me off guard so I tried to look anywhere but at her cheeks, running makeup and flushed, and it was just my luck that I wound up looking over her shoulder at the television just like the rest of them. There was a big old building with a hole smack in the center of it and I asked, “Is that in Charleston?” Mrs. Walcott shook her head ‘no’ and said that it was in New York and that the Twin Towers were on fire.
My Mom told me that the people who made Ms. Debbie cry were certainly going to be crying themselves. She said Uncle Sam was fixing to make things right, but I had never met any Uncle Sam in my whole life. As President Bush was getting on about needing our prayers, I asked her, “Where does Uncle Sam live?” but before she could answer Dad told us all to hush up and that he couldn’t hear a damn thing.
“But I don’t know where he lives, Dad.”
“Boy,” he asked, “did I not just tell you to hush?”
We quieted down some and, looking over at me from the love seat, mom put her hand up to her heart and shook her head from side to side. That was her way of saying, “I’m not too sure either, baby.”
I dropped the pink attendance slip into the little wire mesh tray and turned to leave the office when Principal Springer stopped me. He sat me down in one of the metal orange chairs, the chairs that kids who were in trouble sat in while they waited to talk to him, and told me that I wasn’t allowed to go back to class. I started to tear up a bit. He grabbed my shoulders and said I hadn’t done anything wrong, but that he wasn’t sure about the protocol. Whatever that meant. He walked back into his office and shut the door, leaving me stranded with two frantic ladies. I shook off the fright and thought about the little white mouse in the movie. I had seen it with my sisters a few months ago, but it was still fairly upsetting that out of all the days of second grade, I should find myself locked up with a bunch of fussy adults on the one where we get to watch a movie and eat peppermints.
It had started to calm down a bit in the office. I was up to calculating that I had only missed about ten minutes of the movie when Mrs. Wolcott called out to Jesus. He didn’t answer so she hollered for Principal Springer, who was already up and out of his office and back to watching the television again. The phones started ringing like some dinner bells and Ms. Debbie was trying to answer all those calls, only she couldn’t seem to make any words come out of her mouth. By then a couple of the fifth-grade teachers had walked in the room and all the adults were huddled up, asking each other questions, talking about that protocol. There were too many people blocking the screen for me to notice that there was now another hole in another building. When they finally shuffled out and away from my line of sight, there was too much smoke to distinguish one tower from the other.
Two months down the road from all of that, I still refused to leave the house. I was worried that Al Qaeda, the mean old son of a bitch, was plotting to drop a bomb right on my Mom’s head soon as he saw me get on the school bus. Mrs. Burlow, newborn in tow, came out to visit the house and tell me that everything was alright and it was safe to come back to class. I wasn’t buying it, though. I knew if Dad was at work and Shirley and Josie were at the middle school, that left Mom open for some sort of attack. December came and I still hadn’t been back. Mom took me to talk with some older folks that asked all about what I saw on the television that morning, but I knew that they already knew. Dad said I was grounded for skipping so much. He even started to take my toys away, stashing my bicycle and Gameboy down in the crawlspace saying, “That’s what you get if you don’t want to go learn like you ought to. If I catch you fishing those things out, there’ll be hell to pay.” But there was already a good cold West Virginian dusting on the ground so I didn’t feel much like riding my bike, and I was bored with video games.
Grandma Oda came and picked me up that morning. Dad was out running appointments somewhere in Ohio, but would end up canceling his two later ones to head home early so he could watch the news with us and make sure we were all okay. Mom went to get Shirley and Josie. I wanted to stay and watch the movie but Principal Springer said that protocol demanded he make sure I wasn’t able to run back to class and tell anyone else what was going on up there in New York. That made me think I was something pretty special. It was nice feeling like I knew something I wasn’t supposed to.
The old white Dodge pulled up where the buses dropped us off each morning and I motioned to Mrs. Wolcott that I was ready to be walked out. She held my hand all the way to the curb and opened the door for me. Grandma Oda thanked her for looking after me like that and Mrs. Wolcott said she was fit to be tied from all these planes causing all that trouble. They told each other to have blessed days and we pulled out of the lot and headed home.
I tried to run away two times that December, which is funny because the reason I was so upset and wanted to leave was that no one would quit giving me grief over wanting to stay home and look out for my Mom. I wouldn’t see the irony in all of that for quite a while. The first time was almost successful. After I was tucked in, I snuck out from my covers and got my book bag out of my bedroom closet. I dumped all of the school supplies out onto the floor and threw some dirty clothes on top so Dad wouldn’t see when he went to wake me up the next morning. Then I filled it with the essentials: my favorite swooshy pants, a couple of t-shirts, my church league basketball hoodie, and a pad of paper in case I got bored out in the real world and found myself wanting to draw. The zipper damn near broke when, remembering I wouldn’t enjoy sleeping on the cold ground, I tried to stuff my pillow in the bag and close it. The plan was to take that bookbag to the bus stop in the morning and, instead of getting on the bus, track around the neighbors house and crawl through the hole in their backyard fence. I didn’t have a clue as to what to do after that so Mom caught me staring up at the sky in the Parker’s yard, wondering which way to go next. She came out on the back porch and yelled, “I’ll slap both eyes into one, what in the goddamn hell are you up to?” On my second attempt, I forgot to pack my hoodie, so I just got on the bus.
Dad changed the channel after the President was done talking. It was only around 8:30 and my bedtime wasn’t until 10:00 but he said, “You need to get on up to bed. Girls, you too.”
“Aw, what ‘fur?” Josie asked.
“Cat’s fur to make kitten britches,” he told her. “Now mind me and go brush your teeth and get in bed.”
I looked over to Mom for some help thinking that she would step in and say that it was awfully early for bed but she was too busy rifling through her pocketbook, looking for her little journal, trying to find the phone number for one of her best good friends who had family living in New York. She was always trying to call people when there was breaking news. It was her way of showing that she was in the know and that she cared about what was happening. I said my goodnights and gave my kisses and headed upstairs to wait in line at the sink behind my sisters.
The clock on my nightstand said it was near midnight when Grandma Oda woke me up. The hallway light was on but she had half-closed my bedroom door behind her when she walked in, so I could only see the left side of her face. Her glasses were still on meaning she had been up reading one of her westerns which she always enjoyed with a Hot Toddy.
“What’s wrong, Grandma?”
“Nothing’s wrong, baby. I just wanted to make sure you’re alright.”
I asked her, “Why wouldn’t I be alright?”
“It’s just been a hell of a day and you know I worry about you.” She was sitting on my bed now, facing the opposite side of the room, talking to my closet door. “I’ve been on this planet for 71 years and I ain’t never seen something like what we saw today. And I don’t know what’s to come of it.”
“Mom said whoever started all this mess has got it coming to them.”
“Oh and she’s quite right. I don’t doubt it a bit. Hell hath no fury like our country, I promise you that.”
She went on to talk to me about all the wars she lived through and how we hadn’t lost a single one of them. There were some other stories thrown in there, something regarding how she lived on the Army base when she was a little girl, how us peoples don’t run from our problems, and how we stick to our God and our family. But I was too busy thinking about missing out on watching Stuart Little, and how I would get to tell all of my classmates that even though I missed the best part of the day, I was the first one to know everything they had to wait to learn on down the road. She sat up off the edge of the bed as I tuned back in to hear the last part of her question, “…don’t you think?” I just told her that I wasn’t too sure.