We Run the Tides

by Vendela Vida

  Today Ms. Mc. is passing around contraceptives. First a condom, which everyone decides smells terrible, then spermicide with an applicator, which is fun to slide up and down like a Push-Up ice cream treat, then a diaphragm that looks like a pink trampoline for a rodent. Next are the birth control pills. The orderliness of the packet—all the pills lined up perfectly in four rows of seven—reminds me of what Jane said about us all being identical. I punch out three of the pills and slip them into the pocket of my shorts. We all wear shorts under our blue skirts for P.E. class, when we drop our uniforms on the sidelines of the field or on the bleachers of the gym.

  I spend recess in the library, and lunch alone in the cafeteria with the book I’ve checked out. I’ve read the book before but today I need the reassurance of a familiar plot. I wait for someone to sit next to me at the rectangular table, or for someone to talk to me as they pass by, but no one does. Across the cafeteria I see Maria Fabiola laughing. Even though she’s far away I know what her bracelets sound like as they spiral up and down her tan arm.

  A lunch without friends is a lunch that’s too long. I glance at my Swatch watch frequently, and at one point am convinced it’s stopped though it’s still ticking as loudly as a guilty heartbeat. Through the pleated fabric of my skirt, I pat the pocket of my shorts, searching for the pills—I’m not sure what their purpose is. They’re like tiny Easter eggs I’ve collected. What does anyone do with Easter eggs except show off how many have been found, and then let them rot?

  Toward the end of the lunch period, I’m scheduled to meet with Mr. London, the English teacher, to discuss the extra-credit reading he’s recommended for me. Mr. London came to Spragg soon after graduating college and he’s probably too young to be teaching eighth graders—there’s not enough of an age gap. At the start of the school year Mr. London assigned Jack London’s work, and someone asked if he was related to Jack London. He became theatrically vague about whether he might be related to the great writer, which didn’t fool me. Other students at the school like to make connections between things that have no roots in reality.

  We meet in the Male Teacher’s Lounge, which is basically his private office because there are no other male teachers except for the P.E. teacher, Mr. Robinson, who uses the Sports Staff office as his lair. He even put an Australian flag on the door to mark his territory. The Female Teacher’s Lounge is crowded and smells like the shallow vase water of dying flowers. The Male Teacher’s Lounge always smells of burnt coffee—the scent of testosterone, I assume.

  Today Mr. London and I are meeting to discuss Franny and Zooey. He sits back in his desk chair and strokes his clean-shaven chin. Behind him, on three shelves, are books by Hemingway (The Sun Also Rises, A Moveable Feast), Fitzgerald (Tender Is the Night), and Robert Louis Stevenson (Kidnapped). There’s also an entire shelf devoted to the work of Jack London, which I personally believe he’s included in his “library” to subliminally propel the myth that he’s related to Jack London without having to prove it.

  “So, what did you think of the book?” Mr. London says.

  “What?” I say, still staring at the volumes on his shelves.

  “Franny and Zooey?”

  “Right,” I say. “I didn’t like it.”

  “What do you mean you didn’t like it?” Mr. London asks.

  “I mean that I liked Catcher in the Rye, but Franny and Zooey . . . well, it was okay.”

  “It was okay?” he says. “Salinger is okay?”

  “Yes,” I tell him. “I’d give the book a B minus.”

  “Then I’m afraid I’m going to have to give you a B minus,” Mr. London says.

  “For extra credit?”

  “Don’t you know that Salinger is an icon? That he’s a genius?” he says.

  “It doesn’t mean I have to think this book is good,” I say.

  “Yes, it does,” Mr. London says, clenching his youthful jaw.

  “Why?” I ask.

  “It’s a masterpiece,” Mr. London says, standing up.

  “I thought it was boring,” I say. “I think I’m the ideal audience and I didn’t care for it. I wouldn’t recommend it to anyone.”

  “You wouldn’t recommend it to anyone,” he says. He starts pacing the narrow room. I know what’s about to happen. Any minute now he’s going to jump through a window. Mr. London has a well-documented temper problem. Well-documented by me at least. Every time he’s had a meltdown in the classroom I’ve reported it to Ms. Catanese, the upper school headmistress. She’s an uptight onetime beauty with long legs and short skirts and high-collared blouses, who was extremely interested in the information I shared with her. I don’t think Mr. London knows it was me who reported him. Others, I’ve been told, have complained about his temper as well. But it was Ms. Catanese who told me this so when she says others have complained about his temper, she could just be referring to herself. Rumor has it she was in love with him at one time and he, ultimately, was not in love with her.

  Eventually Mr. London does exactly what I know he’ll do: he walks out the door. He does this in the classroom when he gets upset and doesn’t want people to see him upset. He knows he has an anger management problem and his way of controlling it is to leave. When he exits the classroom we all sit still and count to 120 aloud in unison because we know that he is counting two minutes before he comes back in. Two minutes must be the amount of time he was taught was both advisable and permissible to leave and calm down before reentering a room.

  Now that Mr. London has left the teacher’s lounge, I know I have two minutes alone. I hadn’t planned on doing what I do. From my shorts pocket, I remove the three birth control pills I smuggled from sex ed class and crumble them in the palm of my left hand. Then I stand and approach the coffeepot and release the powder. I take a dirty spoon from the sink and stir the coffee. There’s no trace of the pills. I sit back down and think that already it smells a little less like testosterone. I imagine it smells more like the gym where my mother does aerobics with all her new friends. Mr. London returns to the lounge in exactly 120 seconds. I’m sitting where he left me.

  “I have decided that you are entitled to your opinion about Franny and Zooey,” he says, and takes a sip of his coffee.

  “Thank you,” I say, and stand.

  7

  Friday is a half day at school, thank god. I’m still getting the silent treatment from all my classmates. That afternoon my parents have to go to a cocktail reception and auction at my father’s art gallery. They’ve asked Petra, the daughter of my mom’s longtime supervisor at the hospital, to babysit. I don’t need a babysitter but given the events of the week and the fact that they will be out late at a post-auction dinner, they ask her to come keep me and Svea company. Petra is twenty and has wild pitch-black hair that she usually positions on top of her head with chopsticks. I once complimented her hairstyle and now she gives me chopsticks every year for my birthday. I have a pile of chopsticks on a shelf of my closet, next to the small safe where I keep money I’ve earned from babysitting.

  My father has been getting ready for the auction all week. He’s going to be the auctioneer and he goes through a series of tongue twisters to prepare. It’s been a few months since the last auction and he says his tongue is “rusty.” He sits alone in the study with a gavel and rattles through numbers and then says, “going once, going twice.” Regardless of where I am in the house, I can hear the gavel hitting the table and my father’s voice yelling “Sold!”

  Friday is officially hot—San Francisco’s summer has finally arrived in the fall. My mother gets off early from work and bikes home and washes and styles her hair and paints her nails. She dresses in all white and I have to admit she looks glamorous, and my father says so, too. “Wow,” he says when she comes downstairs. He stands at a distance, appraising her like art.

  Petra arrives at the back door at 2:30 with pink chopsticks in her hair. She’s wearing shorts and a T-shirt that says “You Wish.” I’m glad Petra is seeing my mother dres
sed up. She usually sees her in her nurse’s scrubs or her exercise attire. My parents give her instructions on what to feed us (pasta) and when they’ll be home (after eleven) and then they are gone—off to the art gallery to make sure everything is in order for the evening ahead. My father comes back into the house because he’s forgotten his gavel. “Can’t leave without this,” he says, and Petra smiles at him in return. There’s something about the way Petra smiles at him that always makes my chest tighten like I’m in an elevator that’s gotten stuck.

  “Didn’t my mom look sexy?” I say.

  “Hmm,” Petra says, and I immediately regret asking. Five seconds pass, then fifteen. “She looked very pretty, but I wouldn’t call her sexy.”

  “What’s the difference?” I say.

  “Well, her beauty is not a sexual one,” Petra says, and by the way she says it I can tell that Petra thinks of herself as a sexual beauty.

  I head into the front room to escape. Every room in our house has a name—front room, library, foyer, lower level. (Never call it the basement.) From the front windows of our house I can see the traffic snaking to the beach. It’s not even 3, but it appears everyone’s left work early to enjoy the rare heat. “We should go!” Petra says. She’s come up behind me. She tells me some classmates from UC Berkeley—she calls it “Cal”—will be at the beach and asks if we want to invite any friends. Svea wants to invite her dour friend.

  “Isn’t there anyone you want to invite?” Petra asks.

  “No,” I say casually. “I’m tired of my friends.”

  She stares at me with her petrifying eyes.

  She knows. My parents must have told her about my week, about the fact that no one’s talking to me at school. The teachers must have called them.

  The mom of the dour friend drops her off in her convertible in a matter of minutes. Her mother is single and always happy, and it occurs to me, is made even happier by the prospect of dropping off her unsmiling daughter. Maybe it means she can go on a date. “Goodbye,” she calls to us from the foot of the stairs. She waves a big theatrical wave, as though she’s on a cruise ship leaving shore.

  I put on shorts and an Esprit T-shirt—not normal beach attire. Normal beach attire where we live is a parka. “Don’t you want to put on a swimsuit?” Petra asks me, Svea, and the dour friend. No, we tell her, we don’t want to put on swimsuits. “Well, I’ve got mine on underneath,” Petra says. I’m slightly relieved by this fact because it means that she’ll likely take off her “You Wish” T-shirt once we get to the beach. I can only imagine the comments it’s going to inspire.

  But when we arrive at the beach and Petra takes off her T-shirt and shorts, I wish she’d put her shorts back on. Her pubic hair is black and bushy and extends beyond the elastic of her bikini bottom and onto her thighs for at least two inches.

  Petra spots her friends from college and she hugs them and then they start playing Frisbee. She’s up and running along the beach, in front of the sunbathers, her pubes on full display and shining in the sunlight. I can’t look. I turn away and that’s when I spot Maria Fabiola. She’s on the cliffs, climbing—I know her climbing style. It’s swift and nimble. There’s another figure lumbering behind her and I can’t make out who it is at first. Then I see that it’s Lotta, the new girl from Holland. Lotta invited me to her house tomorrow night for a birthday sleepover party, but she handed me the invitation last week before everything else happened so all bets are off. She’s five foot seven and is wearing bright red shorts and an orange T-shirt. She started at Spragg this year and so far I’ve only seen her in a uniform. In her beach clothes she looks much more Dutch. She’s trailing behind Maria Fabiola by about twenty feet. She’s from a flat country and is no match for this terrain, and I can imagine Maria Fabiola’s exasperation with her. Maybe Maria Fabiola will miss me, I think.

  There are over a hundred people on the beach today, when usually there are three. On a typical day there’s a couple writing their names in the sand and surrounding their writing with a heart. And a lone man or woman staring at the sea, contemplating the future or past. But on this late afternoon everyone’s eyes are on other people’s bodies. Men in tight swimsuits and girls in white bikinis with the dark of their nipples showing through. Weaving among them all is Petra, theatrically catching a Frisbee and hiding it behind her back. She wants someone to tackle her for it. Specifically, she wants one of her male friends with long hair and a stocky torso to fall on top of her.

  On the towel beside me, Svea and her dour friend are playing a game of cards. They’re both wearing sweat suits, which I choose to view as a rebuke to Petra, and silently applaud them for their choice in attire. I close my eyes and sink into the sand. A cloud moves and the sun takes aim at my skin.

  I sleep a light sleep for ten minutes, maybe fifteen. When I open my eyes I feel a body near me. It’s Keith, from Sea View Terrace. Even though he’s sitting, he’s still tall, burying his feet in the sand.

  “Hey,” I say.

  “Hey,” he says, his eyes blue as globes. “You’re awake.”

  I sit up. Petra isn’t in sight and Svea and her dour friend are walking up the concrete stairs—probably going to the restrooms that smell like dirty fish tanks.

  “What are you doing?” I ask. My voice sounds sleepy, seductive. I don’t clear my throat.

  “I just came down here to check it out. See what the beach would look like on an actual beach day.” He’s wearing shorts and a white surf T-shirt that’s been worn and washed enough that it’s thin and, I imagine, soft.

  “Same,” I say.

  I look at his feet, buried in sand to the ankles. I know why he’s done that. I slowly sweep sand from his toes. I look up at him to make sure what I’m doing is okay. His long, oval face looks pained but he nods. I continue running my fingers over the sand, gently, as though I’m excavating, searching for delicate treasure.

  I’ve never seen his webbed feet before. I’ve only heard about them. “Spiderman,” his not-close friends call him. His best friends know he’s too sensitive for that. His feet are wide and not webbed like a duck’s the way I thought they would be. Instead, the toes are attached halfway down, and then each toe is independent right near where his toenails start. I don’t know what possesses me, but I bend over and my lips graze the knuckles of his toes in one slow stretch from second toe to little toe. I get sand in my mouth but don’t spit it out.

  I look up at him and I think I see a tear in the corner of one of his blue eyes.

  “It’s bright out,” he says.

  “Yeah,” I say so he’s not embarrassed. “I forgot to bring my Ray-Bans.”

  “Want to go for a walk?” he says.

  I stand and he turns to the left, but that’s where I last saw Maria Fabiola and Lotta, so I gesture to the right. “Let’s go this way,” I say.

  We run into Petra as we stroll. Or rather, she runs into us. “Hey. I’m Petra,” she says to Keith.

  “Okay,” he says. He must assume she’s an overly friendly stranger.

  “She’s a family friend,” I explain. “She’s babysitting my sister.”

  “Oh,” he says. “I’m Keith.”

  I think I see him glance down at her pubic hair, and I get embarrassed for her. “Where you going?” she says to me.

  “We’ll be back in five minutes,” I say.

  “Okay,” she says and lifts her chin up, as though to say I’m cool. I know better than to say, “Have fun.”

  Keith and I walk to the cliffs. Someone’s spray-painted “ABC” on a large rock. That’s the tag of one of the local gangs of teenagers. “ABC” stands for “American Born Chinese.” The other tag you see around the neighborhood is “CBS,” which stands for “Can’t Be Stopped,” which is a group of skateboarders. To an outsider, it might seem that the news teams are competing. I show Keith how to time the waves. Then I yell “run” and we make our way to the other side of the promontory before a wave crashes against the rock. The enormous splash looks like somet
hing that would be captured in a bad oil painting. We stand on the other side of the promontory not talking, not touching, just breathing loudly in unison. After our exhalations have quieted, I show Keith how to run back.

  When we’re on the main beach again we see Petra in the distance and Keith says he’s going to walk home. “Okay,” I say. “See ya.”

  “See ya,” he says.

  I return to the towel where I was sleeping and see that someone’s written “Slut” in the sand next to it. I look around to see who could have written it. I think about using my hand to erase it, but then don’t. Now I have a tag, too.

  8

  The next day Lotta calls me and disinvites me to her birthday party. “The problem is I’m new and trying to make friends and no one will come if you come.”

  “I get it,” I say. I do.

  I end up going to an engagement party with my parents that night while my sister goes to a sleepover. The party is for the eldest son of our Gold Rush neighbors. There are often work parties at the house that we’re not invited to because they’re for bankers. But tonight’s celebration is personal, neighborly. The eldest son, Wes, is engaged and tonight’s a party for him and his soon-to-be bride. I don’t know Wes that well—he left home for Dartmouth five years ago, and after graduating, he moved to Boston.