The Guidance Counselor

“Are we in trouble?” Butter asked for the third time in about five minutes. 

Biscuit eyed her from the side, halfway tired and halfway nervous. “No, Butter.”

“But every time Ball goes to the guidance counselor, she’s in trouble.” Ball sat almost lifelessly on the other side of Biscuit. Her head was buried so deep in her chest, what little neck she had left wasn’t showing. Her hands rested on her stomach and met each other at her picked fingertips, since she often reached for non-existent dirt. One of the girls in class had called her dirty today, but she didn’t see not one speck of dirt under her fairly long nails. “How do you know we ain’t in trouble?”

“Butter, shut up —” the door of Ms. Lyles’s office opened. 

It didn’t squeak, but all of the laminated posters and stickers on the door caused a funny sound, like velcro on a shoe. All three girls looked at the lady in the doorway as if she were a judge delivering a final verdict. But she was just a brown-skinned lady with honey brown bangs and a couple of beauty moles on her face. She wore black slacks that draped over her navy blue flats like curtains, and her cardigan had been crowned with a public school employee badge. She gave a nice smile to the girls who sat there in the hallway and waited until a couple of students passed to say, “Biscuit? You can come in.”

Biscuit

Biscuit thought the room was too yellow — the dingy fluorescent lights made the cement walls look like the awful inside of a Food Lion vanilla birthday cake, or a piece of cornbread. 

The place was littered with papers and stickers and pictures. Behind the desk, Biscuit noticed several pictures of a toddler with the same dimples as Ms. Lyles. Then she saw something that she was sure she’d only seen in that Bernie Mac movie — a photo of Ms. Lyles enveloped in a white man’s arms. Biscuit wanted to be a guidance counselor when she grew up, and she wanted a baby too. She didn’t anticipate the white man, though.

“You can sit down.”

The room was too crowded, and Ms. Lyles apologized for it, moving papers aside and making space so that nothing was between them but a cedar-colored desk. “How are you today?”

“Good.”

“Great — how are classes?”

“Good.”

“Mhm,” Ms. Lyles reached for the coffee mug with several adorned pens in it. Biscuit really wanted the blue one with the fur ball on the top. “Okay, so, do you know the reason that I’ve called you here today, Biscuit? No, yes?...Well, I’d just like to talk to you a bit about things at home, and how you’re feeling, okay? Is that okay?”

Biscuit squinted at Ms. Lyles with her Belk diamond earrings and clear lip gloss. It took a moment, but she nodded at the lady. The lady who had no idea — and would never have any idea — what was okay.

Ball

“How are you today, Ball?”

“Good,” Ball grunted, looking over at the window. Through the blinds, she could see Butter out there, trying to get Biscuit to talk to her. When they’d been waiting for Biscuit, Butter had tried non-stop to get Ball to talk to her. When Ball didn’t feel like talking, Butter naturally reverted to teasing.

“Are you in trouble?” She’d ask with her head cocked to the side. “Beula said you’re always in trouble. You bad.”

Ball blinked and looked back up at Ms. Lyles who was scribbling something down on her notepad. “That’s good, Ball,” The guidance counselor looked over the desk. “What happened to your fingers, Ball?...you don’t know? You can tell me.”

“...I picked ‘em.” When Ms. Lyles asked why, Ball shrugged again.

“So, Ball, are there any…problems going on at home? Biscuit says that you sometimes don’t get along with your aunt.”

Ball winced at the way Ms. Lyles said aunt — she pronounced it like “ant,” like the white people. “Can you tell me about that?....How about you tell me how school is, first? You just got back from a suspension — how is everything in Ms. Plumma’s class?”

Ball wanted to say, “She don’t like me. No one likes me. And they tell me it everyday, and I hate Ms. Plumma with her fat self.” But instead, Ball just said what she always said. “Good.”

“And you’ve been understanding the lessons?” Ms. Lyles leafed through her paperwork, scanning the several Cs and Ds in Ball’s classwork. “Ball?”

When Ball had been waiting in the hall with Butter, she’d tried to get her story right, but Butter kept interrupting. “Look what I got today,” Butter had loudly proclaimed. She leafed through her Bratz bookbag and pulled out a vocabulary packet with several stickers and a 98 on it. With a smirk, Butter turned to a page and said, “Ball, spell ‘irritate.’ Spell it! Come on…”

Ball glanced over at that little greasy-haired, light-skinned little girl and said, “No.” But Butter kept pushing, and soon, Ball uttered an uncertain, “E…”

Butter gasped like her life depended on it. “It’s eeeeyyyyeeeee. It’s i-r-r-i-t-a-t-e.” She made a point not to look at the paper. “You in the fifth grade, and you don’t know how to spell that?”

“Ball?” Ms. Lyles called again. “Can you tell me about what it's like living with your ant and your two sisters?”

“Butter’s not my sister,” Ball growled. Ms. Lyles blinked, nodding and writing something down. Ball went back to looking at the floor. Butter is the worst.

Butter

“Have a seat, Butter.” Butter had never been in the guidance counselor’s office before. It smelled better than the hallway. It was a bit warmer, too. “Oh wow,” Ms. Lyles said half-enthusiastically and half-unenthusiastically, like she was trying not to sound too bored. “Look at all those stickers, haha.”

Butter blushed, slightly wrinkling her vocabulary test in her hands. It was true — it was adorned with a purple “good job!” and a heart and even a flower that said “#1” — she had once again impressed Mrs. Sanders. And she loved Mrs. Sanders — she always rubbed Butter on the back and called her “honey” in the whitest yet country-est accent known to man. “Hhuunnhee,” she’d sing, drinking her coffee from her metallic cup and twirling her teacher’s badge like a set of keys.

“Would you mind putting that up for me?” Ms. Lyles softly asked and Butter nodded before stuffing it back into her bag. “Okay, Butter…now, I want to talk to you about your ant and your…cousins? Your cousins. How are things at home?”

“Fine.”

“Are there ever any fights…between you or your cousins or your ant?”

Butter looked down at her small fingers, her pink jeans, and her March for Madness wristband. Her mind thought about all the things she could say. Beula once told her, “‘Gon’ ‘head and lie on me — see where that get you,” with a cloud of smoke surrounding her vaseline-colored face and her dark red hair. Butter thought back to all the movies she’d seen — Beyond Scared Straight and Daddy’s Little Girls. Would she have to wear a uniform and live with a bunch of other kids?

Ms. Lyles sighed and shifted her paperwork in her lap. She was hungry, and she wanted this to be over so that she could eat her shredded cheese-salad. “Butter, you can talk to me. You don’t have to be scared.”

Butter remembered what her mother had said. Sitting in a dark room with only a dim hallway light to keep her company, staring at her mother from across the room as she shook her head and muttered to herself. “I can’t never get a break,” Batch would grumble. “Can’t never get a break.” And Butter would just sit there, trying to think of what to say, trying to think of what to do.

“Butter?” Ms. Lyles whispered, clicking her pen. “Butter…hey…”

Butter remembered Biscuit’s face. As pretty as she was, when she cried, Biscuit’s face morphed into something like that Scream villain. Her eyes shut tightly, her mouth wide open, trying to cry or yell but nothing coming out as she shielded Ball from the belt. Butter remembered Biscuit’s long legs jumping up every time the belt hit her as Ball cowered on the toilet behind her. Biscuit’s arm would grab her sister’s arm and Ball’s face would curl into a similarly terrifying structure — her already squinted eyes shut and her mouth drooping on the corners like one of those theater masks Butter had once seen in a poster. Butter had just stood there, gazing at the two as Beula’s body lunged forward, rhythmically lifting the belt up to whip it back down. Butter just looked at them from behind Beula, like she was watching a movie.

Ms. Lyles scribbled something in her book then sat up even straighter, clearing her throat. “Let’s start with another question —”

“What’s gonna happen to us?” Butter whispered. Ms. Lyles’s mouth hung open as if she’d forgotten Butter had a mouth, too. She asked the girl to repeat what she said, and Butter lifted her big, brown eyes to look into Ms. Lyles’s big, black ones. “What’s gonna happen to us?”

“Well…if anything is going on, we’ll help you all through it…Is there…anything going on?”

Butter felt her nose tingle and her eyes begin to well. It seemed like moments passed as Ms. Lyles stared at the little girl’s braided hair, complete with white and clear beads. Returning her gaze to her wristband, Butter finally gasped up air and let it go in a heavy sob. “Yeah.”

Ms. Lyles quickly pushed a box of Kleenex from her side of the desk to the other edge and clicked her pen. “Yes?”

“......Yeah.”