Burn Down the Ground Read online

  Michele was a thin girl with flawless, deeply tanned skin and a short bob of tight, kinky curls. Two rows of thick metal braces made her mouth too small to fit her bucked teeth. Despite her awkward looks, she was full of confidence.

  Michele didn’t want to know the why or how of I came to live on Grove Street. She was my friend without being concerned about my history. She was also boy crazy and wanted to educate me on the eligible bachelors in our neighborhood, which was fine by me. There were plenty and she knew each and every one.

  The first day at my new school was approaching and there was no way I was blowing my first impression by wearing the wrong outfit. New clothes were essential, which meant I needed money and a job. I walked up and down Bedford Euless Road and Grapevine Highway looking for work. My fifteenth birthday was a few months away, but I wrote sixteen as my age on each application and Mom’s name as my yacht club supervisor. She had worked with me there and at the fireworks stand, so she really was my best reference. I was turned away everywhere, except Showbiz Pizza Place, a restaurant chain also known as Chuck E. Cheese featuring video games and an animatronics band.

  I still had my uniform from the Walden Yacht Club, so I was ready to start work the day after I was hired. My white shirts had yellow stains in the pits and my pants were too short, but I let the hems out for an extra inch. Showbiz issued me a polyester red and black apron and a black plastic top hat. Nobody even called Mom.

  My first day of work, I was introduced to the other employees, mostly juniors and seniors in high school. The boys had acne and the girls wore hair-sprayed bangs and plenty of makeup. I sounded like Tom Sawyer recounting my adventures in Montgomery, from the run-ins with snakes to swimming in the creek to riding Charlie Brown. I didn’t mention that I had just moved out of a shed.

  At Showbiz Pizza, I was in charge of children’s birthday parties, presetting the tables with party hats and balloons. I served pizzas and soda to the kids and Bartles & Jaymes wine coolers and pitchers of beer to the parents. When the animatronics band, the Rock-afire Explosion, started playing “Birthday” by the Beatles, it was my cue to bring out an ice cream cake covered in lit candles. After everyone had finished, I cleaned off the tables and set another round of decorations for the next party.

  Every two hours, Chuck E. Cheese, the human-sized mouse who was the restaurant’s mascot, would make an appearance. One of us would have to dress up in the gray, furry costume for the short performance. The girls didn’t like wearing the smelly, hot, heavy outfit, with a headpiece that was certain to mess up their hair. But I loved being the center of attention and took the job seriously, making sure each time I stepped out on the floor I was performing. “After all, the E in Chuck E. Cheese stands for ‘entertainment’!”

  The job was harder than the one at the yacht club, but I didn’t have to share my tips. I pocketed anything from five to twenty dollars per table. After a particularly raucous party, the birthday kid’s father took me aside and slipped money in my hand, saying, “You did a mighty fine job. Thank you, young lady.”

  He walked away and I unfolded the cash and saw I was holding a one-hundred-dollar bill. I had never seen one before and was sure it wasn’t meant for me. I chased after him, “Sir! Sir, I think you made a mistake.”

  “No, honey, you keep that for yourself. Get yourself sumpthin’ nice,” he said with a wink. My eyes grew wide and I gushed, “Thank you! Thank you so much!”

  I walked across the highway and headed straight to North East Mall, still wearing my pit-stained shirt and too-short pants and clutching my plastic top hat with my polyester apron stuffed inside it. I soon discovered that stores like Express and Contempo Casuals were a lot more expensive than Weiner’s and Wal-Mart. I shopped for new school clothes and bought my first pair of brand-name jeans, Gloria Vanderbilt’s. The Gloria Vanderbilt label wasn’t that popular anymore and the only ones on the rack I could afford were dressy, baby blue, and pleated in the front, not the dark blue denim with gold thread that I wanted. But there was no hiding the embroidered swan on the right pocket where everyone could see it. Wearing clothes with an authentic, recognizable logo instead of the usual discount duds branded me a freshman fashion icon.

  Dad wasn’t working, so he was in charge of enrolling me in my new school. After our tour of campuses, we had chosen Birdville Independent School District, home of the Richland Rebels. The Confederate flag waved proudly from the flagpole, was stuck on every bumper in the parking lot, and was pinned on the jackets of all the kids. I was disappointed to learn that “high school” didn’t begin until the tenth grade. I was insulted. I had almost completed my freshman year of high school in Montgomery and had served as class secretary. I was bigger than junior high, but I couldn’t change the rules.

  As the first day of school drew near, I realized that one thousand students was a large class. I decided that Smithfield Junior High, one of the district’s middle schools, might be more manageable. For the first time, I was going to a school where David and his bad grades and troublemaking weren’t going to precede me. This was my first real chance to debut the new and improved Kambri Crews.

  Dad strutted through the hallways of my new school like it was named after him. We entered the principal’s office and approached a woman with a desk plate that read “Ms. Butler.”

  “Hi, my name is Kambri Crews and I’m supposed to start school here,” I said, instinctively taking charge.

  She looked at my father, who smiled. “Yes, we’ve been expecting you.” She handed me a clipboard with a stack of papers and instructed my father, “I just need you need to fill out these papers.”

  I interpreted her directions and judging by her stunned expression, Ms. Butler had never seen a deaf person. She stared with her mouth agape, gawking at Dad like he was a sideshow freak. I wanted to scold her for her rude reaction. Instead I snipped, “He’s deaf.”

  “I see that,” she nodded, then got back to work.

  Dad filled out the emergency contact information and handed me the document pointing to a blank signature line. “Sign your mama’s name.” The sentence above read that this signature would be kept on file and used as a comparison for correspondence with parents, such as report cards and excuses for absences.

  “I can’t sign this,” I signed back. “You need to sign.”

  “I know what it’s for.” Dad raised his brows quickly up and down with a mischievous smile. “You sign for your mama. That way you can write your own letters.” I shot a quick look at Ms. Butler. She was none the wiser, answering phones and taking messages.

  My eyes grew wide. I was a fast thinker, and immediately calculated that this would give me full authority to cut school without my parents ever knowing. I searched Dad’s face trying to figure out his motive for letting me “authorize” my own signature. Maybe he didn’t fully understand what it meant.

  Seeing my astonished expression, Dad put his index finger to his lips. “Shhhh.”

  He had such disdain for authority that he didn’t even want it for me. At school, I strictly played by the rules, so Dad had to mentor me in how to be a delinquent. I wrote “Christy Crews” in cursive letters, and marveled at my skillful forgery.

  Dad glanced at my writing and signed, “Not bad. Looks the same.” All of those years playing bank teller with Mom’s old checks had paid off. He gave me a conspiratorial wink and I handed the clipboard back to Ms. Butler.

  “All right, young lady, let’s take you to your homeroom.”

  Dad waved goodbye and added, “Good luck.”

  Ms. Butler gave me a quick tour of the school, assigned me a locker, and escorted me to my first class. Students whispered and pointed as I walked past. For my debut at school, I had chosen to wear my new Gloria Vanderbilt jeans and a long-sleeved light pink tunic top with black polka dots cinched at the waist with a wide, black belt. As Ms. Butler introduced me to the class, I grew self-conscious and worried that my outfit might be too flashy. Rather than show my insecurities, I held my he
ad high with my shoulders back, the way Mom always stood. When lunch break came, I was petrified that I might have to sit by myself and considered skipping the cafeteria altogether.

  I heard a familiar voice call my name. “Hey, Kambri!” I turned to see Michele walking toward me, flanked by two girls. “She’s the girl I was tellin’ you about.” She introduced me to her friends and showed me how the lunch line worked. “Go get your tray and then come sit with us.” I breathed a heavy sigh of relief and relaxed for the first time since I had entered the building.

  Across the cafeteria, I noticed a few cute boys huddled together staring at me. One of them smiled and coolly cocked his chin.

  “That’s Terry,” Michele told me as I climbed over the bench. “He told me he thinks you’re cute.”

  Had I heard her right? Terry thought, I, Kambri Crews was cute? Nobody every thought this about me except my relatives. Everyone in Montgomery, who had known me since I was seven years old, knew I wasn’t cute. I was Kambri, the girl who stood too close to a mud flap, could cut glass with her shoulder blades, and threw a football like Roger Staubach. Now in Fort Worth, I was worthy of the attention of boys my age. Gloria Vanderbilt was already working her magic.

  My chest swelled and I looked back at Terry with a devilish grin. Smiling, he slid on a pair of black Ray-Bans.

  “All the boys keep askin’ me who you are, and, boy, Casey doesn’t like you at all.”

  My face flushed. “Who?”

  “Casey. She’s one of the cheerleaders. She’s a snob.”

  “Why doesn’t she like me? I don’t even know who she is.”

  “ ’Cause.” Michele grinned with wicked glee. “She likes Terry, but Terry likes you.”

  By the end of my first week, I realized my education in Montgomery had been better than I thought. I was more than six weeks ahead of the curriculum in every single class. I breezed through homework and aced quizzes with a minimum of attention. This was a blessing because it allowed me to focus on navigating the social scene of junior high.

  Unlike Montgomery, where all the kids were integrated, Smithfield was divided into cliques. There were the Jocks, or athletes and cheerleaders like Casey; the Freaks, the kids who wore concert tees, smoked, and sported long hair; and the Ropers, country-and-western lovers named for the type of cowboy boot they paired with Wranglers. Since I wasn’t used to such a rigid caste system, I drifted from group to group, able to get along with everyone, with the exception of Casey, who always snickered to her posse as I walked by.

  One afternoon in geometry class, my teacher returned our graded quizzes and said, “My teacher’s aide marked these so if y’all see a mistake, let me know.”

  I bristled. I knew Casey was his aide and I didn’t like the idea of her grading my work. Fishing through the pile, I found my test and saw the grade of 100 written in the right-hand corner. My name had been crossed out and replaced with “BAMBI” in big red marker. I was mortified and quickly stuffed the paper into my binder. Casey had done this to belittle me. I was bewildered by her contempt. We had never exchanged a single word.

  My confusion faded and turned into enormous satisfaction when I deduced the reason for her scorn. She was jealous. Casey didn’t know about our repossessed trailer or my trouble with the law. She saw the nice clothes I was wearing, and knew I made perfect grades and that all the other kids liked me. Her vindictive “BAMBI” scrawled on the top of my test was evidence that my makeover had been a success. I was in a good mood returning home from school one Friday afternoon, but when I opened the front door a strange sensation swept over me. “David?” I called, tiptoeing through the house. I passed through the kitchen and noticed glass broken out of a window pane in the back door. I bolted to my room and grabbed my piggy bank from its perch above my bed, tore off the rubber stopper on its bottom, and discovered what I already knew in my gut: It was empty. I had just cashed a Showbiz Pizza paycheck and every penny of it was gone.

  I was gonna buy Ozzy tickets with that money!

  “Damn it!” I screamed. I called the police to report the break-in. Mom and David came home to see a police car in the driveway and officers wandering through the house asking questions.

  “What’s goin’ on?”

  “Somebody broke into the house! You better go check your stuff to see if they took anything.”

  The officer filling out the report asked, “All right, what’s missing?”

  David emerged from his room and said, “They took some of my cassette tapes!”

  Cassettes? But not the TV or the microwave?

  In that instant, I knew who did it. The house was neat and tidy, and, other than my cash, nothing of value was taken. My piggy bank wasn’t even broken. It had been carefully replaced in its original position behind a few dusty dolls. No robber would have cared about some silly ceramic pig, but David knew I had made that bank by hand at a pottery store Mom had taken me to near Webb’s. I had used special paints, then had it glazed and fired in a kiln. It had taken me weeks to make that pig and was one of the few things I salvaged from the shed before Dad set fire to the stuff we didn’t haul to Fort Worth. It was special, and David knew it. I glowered at him, hoping he would realize that I knew he did it and he should feel guilty.

  But I didn’t want David arrested. Besides, I couldn’t prove anything. Like our dogs Duke, Duchess, and Cookie, who remained forever at Boars Head, David was too wild to make the transition from country to city. In Fort Worth, he found trouble, or trouble found him. Either way, he didn’t have a job, didn’t have money, and apparently had helped himself to mine.

  David only attended Richland High a few weeks before he decided it wasn’t for him. He was eighteen years old, practically living with his new, older girlfriend and didn’t have to abide by any rules. The addition of the pool table turned our house on Grove Street into his regular hangout spot.

  We bought the table for a hundred dollars at our neighbor’s garage sale. Our neighbor had been diagnosed with cancer and was selling off nonessentials to raise money for her medical bills. We carried the table across the driveway and put it in the garage. Dad was already an expert billiards player, entering tournaments and sniffing out bars where he could run a hustle. With our own table, he could spend hours honing his skills. David and his slew of new friends, who all had long hair and wore concert tees and ripped jeans, loved the new pastime. They played game after game of pool, getting high and chain-smoking while Metallica’s Kill ’Em All blared in the background.

  One Sunday afternoon, I begged Dad for a chance to play. “David’s always hogging it,” I complained. “I want to be able to play against his friends.”

  Dad agreed and spent the next few hours teaching me the tricks of his trade. The secret, he told me, was simple: Apply the laws of physics and geometry. I was a whiz at math and took advanced level classes all through junior high. In ninth grade at Montgomery High, I was in the same geometry class as David, who was in eleventh. I even helped him cheat by signing answers in ASL, before we got busted and were made to sit apart.

  Dad started with the basics of trajectory and impact, and how the angle at which the cue ball hits the rail is equal to the angle at which it will leave. With my solid conceptual mathematical skills and my father’s dedicated coaching, I quickly moved to combination shots using more than one ball to sink another and applying English, a billiards technique that puts a spin on a ball. Dad even shared his strategy when it came to hustling at a new pool hall. “Don’t let them know you can play. Bet just a little to start with and lose a few games. They’ll think they can beat you. That’s when you raise your bet and clean them out.”

  Using his tips and tricks, I spent hours on my own practicing so that when David’s friends came over I could play. I pretended not to pay attention to the game and flirted and laughed like a ditzy blonde, flipping my hair and giggling at everything. I missed easy shots and lost my first game. As his buddies got stoned and drank Busch beers, I raised the stakes from a measly t
wo-dollar wager to five dollars a game, and ran the table. Dad had taught me well.

  I was also working as often as possible at Showbiz, taking on extra shifts before school to prep the salad bar. I was an enthusiastic and industrious employee, much to everyone else’s annoyance since I made them look like slackers. All my co-workers made me feel like one of the guys, just like on Boars Head. One day as I chopped mushrooms, Kerry, another employee, entered the kitchen practically glowing.

  “What’s up with you?” I asked. “You look like you’re in love.”

  “I got a new car!”

  The boys in the kitchen nearly knocked one another down racing out the back door to scope out Kerry’s new wheels.

  “Oh man that’s rad, dude!”

  “It’s an IROC-Z,” he offered even though the name was spelled out in a decal at the bottom of each door.

  It was shiny black and the coolest car owned by anyone I had ever known, including Cash Price. Even the font of the lettering was sleek. The other guys fawned over it, pushing buttons, opening and shutting every contraption before the manager leaned out the door and yelled at us to get back to work. The IROC-Z was the most important topic of conversation at Showbiz until the day Dwayne smacked a kid in the head with the plastic tail of the Chuck E. Cheese costume and got fired.

  That week, Kerry took turns giving everyone rides. On my turn, he drove me the two blocks to our home on Grove Street. Mom asked, “Who was that?” when she saw him pulling away.

  “Kerry. His parents gave him that car for graduation. Nice, huh?”

  Mom, not wanting to be outdone by a high school kid said, “Well, we’re getting a new car, too.”

  Even though Dad had found work as a cabinetmaker, his salary and Mom’s paycheck were not enough to keep the Toyota from draining our bank account.

  “We just can’t afford it anymore so we’re trading it in for a new Thunderbird.”

  I didn’t know what a Thunderbird was; I just know Mom mimicked the sound of thunder as she rumbled her voice for the word “Thunderbird” like it was ten times cooler than any old IROC-Z. I pictured a hot rod with a shiny new coat of paint and chrome grille.