Chapter 19: Tu Es Belle

Jo stayed there throughout the entire night. She kept to herself on the other side of the bed, but she was facing me. A few times I woke up and turned, seeing her still wide awake, looking at me. I was too sleepy to ask why. The early morning light was seeping through the window when she finally left. She slipped out of bed slowly, trying not to wake me, but I was already awake. I wanted to say something, to talk about what had happened that night, but I didn't. I pretended to be asleep and let her slip out the door.

To my surprise, I started seeing Jo more often after that. I expected her to just disappear again, but she didn't. Of course, she was always gone from evening until morning, but she spent her noons at home. She didn't talk to me very much, but she was always around. I would catch her staring at me at the dinner table. I would be watching Judd and Holly swim and notice her standing at the back window watching us. I wondered if she thought wrongly of me now, after I remembered what I had said. Hell, I didn't know if even she remembered what I had said. She was drunk too, and high, apparently. I knew for sure that the powder on her fist had been real.

The little scar on my forehead from when I fell at the club was gone by the next week. Marty and Katie had no idea about anything that had happened. They hadn't even noticed the little cut.

"Jo's hangin' around more," Marty said that morning at the table as he read the newspaper. He flipped it closed so he could look at me across the table. "And I think I know why."

My eyes widened a little as he smiled at me. Katie was sipping her tea but stopped suddenly, raising her dignified stare to me.

"Oh?" was all I said.

"I think she's found a friend in you, after all," he said with a chuckle, his cheeks bright and rosy.

I thought about the deal—we would never be friends, not in a million years, not ever. For some reason I felt the need to apologize to him.

"Or she's just in her mania," Katie added in a lolling tone. "Up and down, hot and cold. Don't worry, Rebecca. She'll disappear again soon enough. She's not fit for being a true friend."

Marty just laughed, thinking it was a joke, but he didn't hear the cutting tone in her voice or the way that she was looking at me in a way that made me feel too small to sit in the chair. "Not fit for being a friend? Jo's got lots of friends. She's with them all the time—my God, I couldn't imagine a friend more loyal than that," he said.

"That's a pack of rats she spends her time with, not friends. Two of them are black, you know?"

My body went hot all over. I thought back to Roger, and how people would laugh at Greg and I for being friends with him. I knew Katie was critical, but I didn't peg her as racist.

Marty just pursed his lips and awkwardly averted his eyes back to the newspaper. "Well, that don't really mean nothing, does it?" he said in a quieter tone. I imagined this had been a conversation before.

"No," Katie said uneasily, "But—they're just not good."

"Black people?" Judd innocently chimed, and the parents seemed to have forgotten the younger kids were there.

"No!" Marty interjected, his face going red. "That's not what she meant."

"All her friends are no good. All of them," Katie said with finality, picking up her tea and lifting herself from the table. "The point is I wouldn't consider yourself a friend of hers...Rebecca." She hesitated on my name, as if she had suddenly forgot it. "You're only here temporarily."

With that, she floated out of the room. Katie hated me, that much I knew, but the burn of her stinging distaste was soothed by Marty's apologetic smile across the table. It was always like that. Anytime something went wrong, Marty was there to make it better. When Judd hurt himself on his bicycle, or Holly got upset over something her dolls apparently said to her, Marty would comfort them without any hesitation. He was the perfect father. I liked to imagine that was what my father would have been like.

Jo was a bit of both, as I learned. While she could sting like Katie, with her tumultuous moods and impulsive cruelties, she could swoop and cradle like Marty. I'd seen her do it with Judd and Holly. I'd seen her do it with me—that night. I remembered how softly she'd looked at me, how affected she was by my tears. It was like she had never seen someone cry before. It was almost scary how much my sadness had painted her in a few drunken moments. Bitter regret settled over my tongue as I remembered what I'd said to her.

Nonetheless, she didn't leave. She cleaned the blood away from my head, wiped my tears, and laid with me all night. After what I had said to her about being kissed by another girl, I thought she would have me sent away. It felt like I was confessing sins to a soft cloud—no opinions or judgments or disgrace, only gentleness.

That morning was spent with French lessons. I had progressed to teaching the children simple sentences: I am tired, You are hungry, I am happy, You are sad. It was combining the pronouns and adjectives I'd taught them over the past few weeks, and they seemed to be getting it pretty easily.

I was in the middle of writing on the chalkboard when Jo walked in. "Bonjour," she said simply, giving me a smile as she waltzed into the room.

"Jo!" Holly shrieked, raising her hands up from her desk. Even Judd lit up, happy to be distracted by anything other than learning.

"Bonjour! That means hello!" Judd spoke up, and I felt a little warm at realizing he was actually learning. It was the first spark of passion I felt teaching.

"Certainly does," Jo said as she walked to Judd and started to scruff his hair until he giggled and pushed her away. She went to Holly and picked her up from her seat, sitting down in it and plopping Holly onto her lap.

"You're disrupting these children's valuable education, you know," I said, putting the piece of chalk down on the edge of the board. "We were just getting to sentences."

"You can keep going," Jo said simply as Holly threw her arms around her older sister, their darker and lighter manes of blonde hair mixing on shoulders. "I wanna learn, too."

"You weren't taught when you were their age?"

"They tried," she answered, "I'm too stubborn."

Judd awed at his sister's words, and I sighed, knowing it wasn't good for Judd to be influenced by Jo's disregard for learning.

"Learning a language is more useful than you think."

Jo scoffed. "I live in California. Why would I need to learn French?"

"Many people in this country speak French, especially where I'm from. What if you go to Paris one day? Wouldn't you want to be able to get around on your own?"

"You have to know French to walk?" she countered.

Judd snorted.

"If you're lost and can't read the maps or ask someone for directions, being able to walk just won't help you one bit, young lady," I replied back to her, and Judd gasped in awe at my banter.

Holly giggled sillily, nearly falling off Jo's lap. Jo only cocked her jaw and ran her tongue over her teeth in reluctant defeat before she turned her head and eyed me. "Well, go ahead. Learn me something new, Teach."

"Teach you something new," I corrected, "And it's going to be difficult if you don't even know English properly."

Judd and Holly both giggled again, but Jo only smiled wider, obviously entertained by my wit.

I turned back to the chalkboard and continued to write the sentences in French, speaking them out loud as I wrote.

I took them through the sentences one by one as Jo watched, and I almost burst out laughing. They all had the same look on their faces—brow sewn, lips parted, head tilted to the right, all blonde. It was a little creepy having them all in the same room staring at me.

I asked Judd and Holly to both say the sentences as I pointed to them, translating each word individually before saying them together as a sentence. Finally, we got to the last one. Tu es belle.

"Judd," I called as I pointed to the first word.

"I."

Ah, of course after the first spark of passion in teaching comes the spark of frustration. I sighed and exhaled slowly. "No."

"You," Jo said suddenly. I thought she hadn't even been really paying attention, as she hadn't said a word since I started.

I looked at her in surprise as Judd glared at her in jealousy. "That's right."

Jo grinned widely as if it was the first thing she ever learned. I smiled back at her before I pointed to the next word.

"Are!" Judd said loudly, his competitive streak shining through. It gave me an idea to create a game involving French, so maybe he would be compelled to learn.

"Good job, Judd!" I said, and he smirked at Jo who wasn't even looking at him—she was staring straight at me.

"Last one," I said, pointing to the last word: belle.

"Hungry!" Holly called out excitedly, nearly falling off Jo's lap again.

"No, Holly, hungry is this one—faim." It crushed me so badly to see her disappointed that I almost decided to change the French language myself just to make it so that she was right.

"Tired?" Judd tried with half-confidence, but he deflated when I shook my head. I looked between them for a few moments more, and I was about to just tell them until Jo spoke up suddenly.

"You are beautiful," she said quietly, carefully, pronouncing every syllable.

I turned to her in shock, my face starting to go red. With the way she had said it to me, with such sincerity, as if she was exclaiming it to me with all her heart, I forgot that it was the sentence I'd written on the board. "What?"

"Tu es belle. You are beautiful," she explained, but there was a smirk on her lips that made me wonder if she had said it that way to me the first time on purpose.

"Oh!" I gathered myself, turning to look at the board so she would no longer see the deep blush I could feel burning on my cheeks. I laughed nervously. "That's right, uh, yes. You are beautiful."

"Why, thank you," she joked, to which I gave her a glare as my blush deepened.

I went on with the rest of the lesson, feeling stiff and nervous under Jo's stare. The kids were more energetic with Jo around, especially Judd who now saw learning as a competition. Jo was right when she said she wasn't good at school—she caught on slower than the kids. I could see that Holly was very bright for her age, and that while Judd had Jo's restlessness and carefree attitude, he had great potential, too. I wondered if Jo could have turned out differently. She wasn't dumb or slow. My first impressions of her made me think she would've been the top of her class. I had a feeling that Katie's impressions might have left her unwilling from a very early age.

When it was lunchtime, which meant lessons were over, the kids ran out of the room, ready to be free for the rest of the day. Jo trickled behind, poking around my French books and teaching notes. "You really like doing this? Like, for the rest of your life?"

I looked around at the makeshift classroom and the sentences on the board. "I think so, yes."

She only nodded, stuffing her hands in her pockets. "Well, since you taught me something today, I'll teach you something tonight in return."