by Vendela Vida
“Jesus, Mom,” Julia says as she enters the room. “Gentle will go even more crazy if you sell that stuff.”
“Don’t call your sister crazy,” Kate says.
“Hi Julia,” my mom says. “I like your hair.”
Julia’s normally light brown hair has turned orange. I know this is the result of the Sun In she sprays on her head. She goes crazy with the Sun In.
“Thanks,” Julia says. “I was sitting outside with lemon in my hair.”
She’s a terrible liar. It’s winter and it’s been overcast.
“Well, it worked!” my mom says.
The two mothers stare at each other for a moment—it’s time for my mom to go. “I’ll make sure Eulabee’s back before dinnertime,” Kate says. “And thanks again for the cheesecake.” I know she won’t eat it because she’s constantly worried about having a bubble butt. She says all ice-skaters get them.
After my mom leaves, Kate shows Julia and me the valentine-making station she’s set up for us in the dining room. This is what she calls it—a station. Construction paper, scissors, sequins, beads, stickers, and glue have been set out for us as though we’re nine. There’s even a packet of Scooby-Doo valentines from some other decade.
“You know what all those boxes are about?” Julia says when we’re alone.
I shake my head, and try not to show my relief. I’m so glad we’re going to talk about the electronics boxes and not about Maria Fabiola’s party.
“When Gentle’s mom took off she went to this ashram.”
“I thought she went to India,” I say.
“Yeah, the ashram’s in India.”
I don’t ask what an ashram is.
“She started this love affair with the head guy and now she’s basically considered the queen of the ashram.”
I make a sound to show I’m impressed.
“I know, right?” Julia says. “Anyway, since she’s the queen, guess who’s the princess?”
“Gentle,” I say, with authority.
“Exactly. So the members of this ashram treat her like a princess and they give up all their money and buy her all these presents. All these . . . things.”
“They just send them here?”
“Yeah, boxes just arrive all the time. Gentle hates it. She thinks it’s horrendous. She calls it ‘eighties commercialism.’ Anyway, I’m tired of everything being about Gentle all the time.”
We both stare at the valentines on the table. I can feel Julia retreating from me again, like a wave.
“I have an idea,” I say. “Wouldn’t it be funny if we sent all the teachers valentines from other teachers saying how much they loved each other?”
“What do you mean?” Julia says, leaning a little bit forward.
I suggest we make one from Mr. Makepeace, to Ms. Mc., the science teacher.
“I wanna talk dirty to you—in my stupid British accent,” Julia says.
I laugh. She writes it down. This is good, I think. She likes me again.
“We need one from Mr. London to Ms. Catanese,” she says.
“I love you—literally,” I say.
Julia laughs, then pauses, as if realizing she didn’t get the joke. I lunge ahead to erase the awkward moment. “Ms. Ross should get one from that therapist who filled in for her that semester. Mr. Gunji.”
“She was having personal issues,” Julia notes. “Faith says she got a breast reduction.”
“I miss your boobs,” I say. “Love, The Gunj.”
We snicker for a good two minutes.
“Ms. Patel needs one from Mr. Makepeace,” I say. “Actually, everyone should get one from Mr. Makepeace.”
“Even the men?”
“Especially the men.”
We decide Mr. Makepeace’s should all be Scooby-Doo. On each one we write “R-roh! I love you!”
Then we add, “Love, your Boss.”
From Mr. Robinson, the gym teacher, to the sewing teacher: “I want to run away with you. But not too fast, because I’ll be wearing my long pants designed for the Outback and they make it hard to run.”
From Ms. Mc. to Mr. Robinson: “When I watch instructional videos about the reproductive process, I think of you.”
From Mr. London to Ms. Catanese: “How about a threesome? Franny, Zooey, and you? Oh, and also me. So it’ll be a foursome.”
From Ms. Peterson, the math teacher, to Ms. Trujillo, the Spanish teacher: “Me + you = Amor.” We look up the Spanish word for “sex” in a pocket dictionary, and we paste Sexo over Amor.
We laugh for an hour, but eventually, when we decide every teacher should get at least one from at least two other teachers, it becomes an oddly workmanlike process. We use all the supplies Julia’s mom has set out: metallic pens and stickers with googly eyes. No one is spared except for Ms. Livesey. She won’t fall for it, we decide without debate.
When we’re done, we place them all in a black garbage bag that we think won’t look suspicious. I stand up and stretch and while feeling very proud of our creativity and work ethic, I smell something foreign. I wonder if Kate’s burning something—she’s a terrible cook.
But it’s Gentle. She’s descended from her bedroom, which is in the attic. The smell, I realize, is her patchouli. Her hair is parted in the middle, but other than that she looks disappointingly unlike a hippie today. She almost looks normal.
“Why are you guys working in the dark?” Gentle asks.
“It’s not dark,” Julia says, glancing up at the chandelier.
“Just open the curtains,” Gentle says, moving toward the window.
“No!” Julia says.
“Who cares if you can’t see the bridge from this house?” Gentle says.
“My mom cares,” Julia says.
“So she’s going to pretend there’s a bridge out there? Toto, we’re not in Kansas anymore.”
“Were you planning on going out?” Julia says, hinting.
“Yeah, I’m going to go donate some of these boxes,” Gentle says.
“The boxes have things in them,” Julia says. Her eyes look intensely blue. They get that way when she’s worked up.
“Yeah, that’s why I’m going to give them away.”
“I think Mom was planning to sell them,” Julia says.
“Well, they’re mine,” Gentle says.
“Did it occur to you that Mom might want to sell them?” Julia says. She doesn’t use the word need in front of me. She’s already embarrassed enough about their relative poverty.
“They’re not hers to sell,” Gentle says. She picks up the biggest box. “Can you get the door, please?” she says to Julia.
“No, I’m busy,” Julia says, holding a small, dark sequin up above the side of her mouth, like it’s a beauty mark.
Gentle puts down the box, opens the door, picks it up again, and leaves.
Strangely, the scent of her patchouli is stronger once she’s gone.
“Let’s go check out her room,” Julia says and jumps up from the table so abruptly that the wooden floors shudder.
To get to Gentle’s room you have to take a ladder to the attic. “It was her choice to live up here,” Julia says, climbing up ahead of me. “Attics are where a lot of nutty people live. They feel at home there with the bats.”
The rungs of the ladder are half circles and hard on my hands and bare feet. As I ascend, the smell of the incense grows stronger. I prepare myself for the mess I expect is waiting for me at the top of the ladder. I picture beads hanging from doorframes, a waterbed, bell-bottoms, and platform shoes tangled on a shag rug—vestiges from wherever last night’s adventures took her.
But Gentle’s room is surprisingly neat. It’s neater than my room. “Do you have a housekeeper?” I ask Julia.
“Not anymore,” she says, slightly out of breath from the climb. She gets out of breath surprisingly fast for an athlete. She’s at the ice rink four afternoons a week.
A Grateful Dead poster is framed. The floral-patterned teacups set out on her desk
look more British than Haight-Ashbury. Poor Gentle, I think. She’s failing even at being a hippie.
“I have to show you something hilarious,” Julia says. She opens Gentle’s top desk drawer carefully and extracts a ledger of graph paper. “She keeps a chart of everything that was better in the seventies than the eighties.”
The line down the middle has been drawn with a ruler. The pencil writing is extremely neat.
1970s
1980s
Pillows on floor
Chairs
Fondue
Churros
No watches
Watches
Free love
No love
Records
Cassettes
Tie dyes
Ties
“Isn’t that hilarious?” Julia says. “I mean, who keeps lists like this?”
“Let’s write her a valentine,” I suggest.
“Who should it be from?”
“The seventies.”
“Ha!” Julia says. We descend the ladder, return to the dining room, and get to work. We use all the beads. “We miss you!” we write, “Love, All the dirty hippies.”
It’s dinnertime, and I know I should leave. Julia and I are friends again and I feel very tall and brilliant. On my way home from Julia’s I take a small detour and walk past Keith’s house. The lights are off, the car gone: he’s still in Yosemite. After dinner and before bed I sneak out of the house while my mom’s doing dishes and my dad’s in the study. There’s still a Christmas wreath hanging on the door of Keith’s house, and the lights are on, but it’s too late to knock. I circle the house, hoping he’ll see me. I make all the calculations—he’ll see me crouching in the bushes, late at night, and he will love me. He will come out and I’ll tell him all about the wonderfully witty and subversive valentines I made with Julia, my friend again.
23
At Monday morning assembly I hear my classmates’ whispers. Blood. Axel. Party. Slut. Everything happens very fast. I am untouchable. No one can quite believe I’ve shown up for school after bleeding all over a boy at Maria Fabiola’s celebration. The disgust surrounds me like a sulfurous fog. Julia walks right by me without saying hello.
By the end of first period, boarding school seems more necessary than ever. Weeks ago, I submitted my applications and enclosed cash as my admissions fee. I ironed the bills so they would look like adult money. All that’s left for me to do is request teacher recommendations—no small task. Ms. Livesey’s will be good, but two of my top choice schools require letters from an English teacher. At lunch I go to see Mr. London.
His door is propped open even wider today. He takes a deep breath when he sees me—his cheeks deflate as he inhales.
“I wanted to let you know my plans,” I say, sitting down in the chair on the other side of his desk. “I’m applying to boarding schools for next year.”
“Yes, you mentioned that,” he says.
I know I haven’t mentioned this to him, because I haven’t mentioned this to anyone, not even my parents. But now is not the time to correct him.
“Well, these boarding schools require a recommendation from my English teacher, and I was wondering . . .” I pause, hoping he won’t make me finish my sentence, but he doesn’t say anything, so I’m forced to complete it. “I was wondering if you would please do me the honor of writing a recommendation. I respect your time and know it’s a favor, but I would be very grateful.”
He stands and looks out the window, with his hands behind his back. This is the pose actors assume in movies when playing a president making an important decision about the future of their country. It is not an appropriate posture to take on when deliberating about whether to write a teacher rec for an unhappy student.
Finally, he turns back around. “I can do that for you, Eulabee. I can do that, but it will be a challenge for me.”
“I’m sorry to hear that,” I say.
“It will be a challenge because I don’t feel that you and I have respect for the same books. We have different taste in literature.”
“Isn’t that allowed?” I ask.
“Not in my class,” he says.
Now it’s my turn to take a deep breath. I think of Thatcher, a boarding school I’m applying to that gives each student their own horse. Do it for the horse, I tell myself.
“I’m sure we can agree on certain books,” I say.
“Like which ones?”
“You haven’t read the Milan Kundera book yet, have you?”
“No,” he says. “A student has borrowed my copy so I haven’t had a chance to.”
“I’ll bring it back,” I say.
My eyes scan his bookshelf, searching for a book he and I can discuss. I know better than to pick one by Jack London.
There it is, back on the shelf. Kidnapped by Robert Louis Stevenson. “How about Kidnapped?” I say.
“A student just borrowed that without checking with me first,” he says. “It was missing and then returned.”
“It was kidnapped,” I say, hoping he might smile.
He doesn’t smile. “No, it was missing.”
I shrug in a way I hope is endearing.
“Has anyone ever told you that you have an . . . unusual sense of humor?” he asks.
“No,” I lie. “You’re the first.”
“Did you take the book?” Mr. London asks.
“No, I already read it a few months ago.”
“What did you think about it?”
“I think it’s very . . .” I stall, figuring out how to best finish my sentence. “I think it’s very pertinent to today.”
“How so?” Mr. London asks.
“Well, you were at the party Friday night.” I look away. I hope he didn’t see me at the end of the evening.
“Yes,” he says. “So?”
“Nothing,” I say. I am careening toward self-sabotage and can’t stop myself. He looks at me and I go over the waterfall. “Don’t you think that what Maria Fabiola said she experienced had strong echoes of the Stevenson book?”
“Let me think about that,” Mr. London says. And then he puts on his thinking face—his eyes go up toward the beige ceiling and he scratches his jaw.
Finally his eyes descend. He’s done thinking. “I’m not so sure I see the parallels,” he says.
“You don’t see the parallels?” Already I’m sure he will not write my recommendation.
“Well, she was kidnapped, but it wasn’t in the Scottish Highlands,” he says. “And the Robert Louis Stevenson book was published a hundred years ago.”
How this man is teaching literature is a miracle, a debacle.
“But the whole bit about the boat and almost dying and the island and escaping from the island?” I say. “And the kidnapper who convinced the others to be nicer to her?”
“Sometimes writers get at very deep, underlying currents that make them timely for generations,” he says. “I’m glad you’re seeing some of the more superficial themes.”
“Can I take a break for a second?” I ask. “Get some fresh air?”
“Sure,” Mr. London says.
I stand and walk outside his office. My forehead is sweating, my earlobes are hot. How is it that Mr. London can’t see that Maria Fabiola stole her story from Robert Louis Stevenson? Mr. London gave us a lecture about plagiarism a month ago. It was surprisingly cogent for him.
I find myself pacing outside the office, counting to 120. The fluttering of gossip is louder now—I hear it coming from down the hallway. Blood. Slut. Booze. Stupid hat.
I reenter Mr. London’s office. I remove the teacher reference forms from my backpack and go to place them in his in-box, to the right of his desk. What the hell, I think. On top of the in-box I see a familiar red envelope waiting to be opened. I didn’t think Julia was going to follow through on delivering the valentines. I want to snatch the red envelope but Mr. London is watching me.
“I know we don’t see eye to eye on everything,” I say. “B
ut I am poor and have only my dreams. Tread softly, for you tread on my dreams.”
“Are you plagiarizing Yeats?” he says.
“I’m quoting Yeats,” I say. “Quoting.”
“You should acknowledge your sources,” he says.
“Everyone should acknowledge their sources,” I say, and walk out.
24
After school I walk past Keith’s house, but he’s not outside on his skateboard. I ring his doorbell. No one answers the door, but this doesn’t mean no one’s home. I hear footsteps inside, running to the back of the house. They’re what I imagine webbed feet sound like on a hardwood floor.
As I walk home I see my mom on her bike, but she doesn’t see me. She’s on her way back from work, and I view her the way a stranger would. That is a determined, beautiful woman, I think. A Swedish farm girl riding a bike on a San Francisco street lined with palm trees.
I arrive home five minutes later. My mother is pulling something out of the freezer. She’s still wearing her support hose, the stockings she wears at work to keep her legs from swelling. She spends most of the day in surgery, standing. The stockings are a few shades darker than her fair skin.
“I’m thinking meatballs for dinner tonight,” she says. “I’m going to hear Angela Davis speak at the public library.”
There’s a book by Angela Davis on the table and I open its pages.
When my dad comes home I find out he’s going to hear Davis speak as well.
I don’t mean to sigh dramatically, but I do.
“What was that sigh about?” he asks.
“Sometimes I feel like I missed out on all the interesting . . .” I am about to say periods but decide on epochs instead. My parents look at me quizzically. I probably didn’t pronounce it right. I move on. “The Velvet Revolution in Czechoslovakia, and even here I missed Angela Davis, the Black Panthers, Patty Hearst . . .” I worry I sound like Gentle.
“Did I ever tell you about the time I saw Patty Hearst?” my dad says. He sits down in the study. This is going to be a story. I sit down across from him.
“I was walking one day on 30th Avenue. You were just a baby. I was going to the grocery store to get something for you. Diapers or a snack or toilet paper . . . What was it?” He looks at the floor.