This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, organizations, places, events, and incidents are either products of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously.
Text copyright © 1978 Deborah Hautzig
All rights reserved.
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ISBN: 978-0-7614-5794-7
Book design by Becky Terhune
For two of my favorite people—my mother and father
Contents
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12
1
It was a mild afternoon in mid-September. It had started off sunny, but the sky had turned steely neutral by the time I got off the cross-town bus and began walking to the strange school building on East End Avenue. I was going to the New Girls’ Tea; the Garfield School for girls invited the new girls from each class the Thursday before school opened. I’d gotten the invitation from someone in my class who explained that two representatives from each class would be at the tea to greet everyone, and she was one of them.
The large double doors were locked, so I rang a bell and waited. The doors were opened by a small woman dressed like a Victorian parlor maid, wearing a small black cap and a black-and-white uniform. I saw a bunch of girls standing in a group talking at the bottom of a huge staircase, and walked toward them. A large one came toward me.
“Hi. I’m Carolyn Smith.”
“I’m Valerie Hoffman. You’re the one that wrote me the letter inviting me,” I said, as she checked off my name on a small blue pad.
“Yup, that was me!” She looked up and smiled, exposing her large, perfect white teeth. She was at least 5′10″, and I felt dumpy. At my old school I’d been one of the tallest girls in my class; I was 5′6″ and always liked being 5′6″; but now, as I looked around at the other girls, they all seemed taller, tanner, and healthy as horses.
“Well, we might as well go up now,” said an older girl with long, stringy hair and buck teeth. “Are they all here?”
“All except one,” said Carolyn, looking at her pad. “Chloe Fox.”
“Chloe Fox?” I said.
The older girl glanced at me briefly and said to Carolyn, “Well, Mrs. O. wanted us up by three-fifteen.”
Mrs. O., I thought. That must be Mrs. Olmsted, the headmistress.
“Mary will tell her where to go.” I assumed Mary was the maid who had let me in, and we all began climbing the four endless flights of marble stairs to the upstairs gym.
“You can’t use the elevator without a note from the nurse,” Carolyn told me, and began chattering to another girl.
There were chairs set up in the gym, and we stood around a table eating cookies and drinking punch for a few minutes before we were told to be seated. One girl whose hair was obviously bleached approached me with a cheerleader smile.
“Hi. Are you a nine?”
“No, I’m a ten,” I said apologetically.
“Oh,” she said abruptly, dropping her smile. She turned and walked toward someone else at the other end of the table.
After a while we all sat down and adults filed in like a line of generals. All the girls stood up promptly as they entered the gym, and I hurried to get up with them, amazed that they were in such awe of authority. We listened to the president of the student body, the vice president of the student body, the presidents of the varsity team, student council, art club, glee club, French club, drama club, and then finally the headmistress and her assistant.
I kept turning around to see if anyone was arriving late; I wanted to see Chloe Fox. Once at my old school I’d heard there was going to be a new girl named Arabelle Kiss, and I couldn’t wait to meet her because I liked the name. As it turned out, I couldn’t stand Arabelle Kiss, but you never know. Nobody, however, arrived late.
Everyone left at around 5:00. I walked back to the bus stop alone, wondering why they were all so well mannered and athletic-looking; they almost looked like a different breed. I got off the bus and went straight home. We lived in a pre-war apartment building on Riverside Drive. It was a neighborhood, and I liked it. I’d never gone to school on the East Side before, but my friend Lori, who lived in my building, told me that all the girls who went to Garfield lived on Fifth or Park and never came to the West Side at all, or if they did it was by taxi or limousine. She went to school off Madison, so she knew.
Dad was in the living room reading music, and my brother Ben was sitting, dazed, in front of the TV in his room. Dad played the cello. When I was little I never thought playing cello for a living was anything special, but every time I told anyone, they said, “Really?” so I began announcing it with a sort of pride.
“So how was it?” he said.
“It was nice.”
“Yeah?”
“Yeah. Everybody seemed nice. Oh, they said no one really checks the length of your skirt.” We had to wear a uniform, something completely foreign to me, and according to regulations your skirt had to hit the floor when you knelt down. Mom, who never doubted for a moment that due punishment would be administered to me if we didn’t follow the rules to the letter, had hemmed my skirt accordingly.
“I guess you didn’t meet any of your teachers yet,” said Dad, taking off his glasses and putting down his music.
“No.”
“But you liked it. The girls seemed nice,” he said, just to make sure.
“Well, I can’t really tell yet. You should see the building. It’s huge.” I went into my room and changed clothes. “When’s Mom coming home?” I yelled.
“Probably around nine-thirty,” Dad yelled back.
“I thought visiting hours were over at eight,” I said, coming back to the living room. My grandmother had been in the hospital for two months.
“They let her stay longer.”
I sat down in the rocking chair. “So what’s wrong with her?”
“They don’t know yet—”
“They’re taking tests,” I finished for him. He nodded. “Bullshit. They’ve been taking tests for two months!” The phone rang and he jumped up to answer it. I knew he’d just give me the runaround, so I went to my brother’s room.
“Hey, Ben.” I sat down on the bed. “Hey! Boob! Ding-ding!”
He turned, surprised. “Oh! Val! You’re home!”
“No kidding,” I said sarcastically.
“Wanna watch TV with me?”
“Is that all you ever do? Why don’t you ever read a book?”
“Oh, shut up,” he said, turning back to watch a commercial. I felt better and leaned back to watch it with him.
I arrived at school early on Monday morning. Mom had gotten up to have breakfast with me, but I was a nervous wreck and couldn’t even embark on the Carnation Instant Breakfast she kept telling me I needed. It made me sick just to look at it, so I left the house on an empty stomach. Mom kept telling me I’d faint if I didn’t eat something and wishing me luck on my first day and asking me to call her at the hospital when I got home to tell her how it was.
I found my homeroom in a state of chaos. People were hugging each other, laughing and talking about their exotic vacations. I found a desk with my name on it and stood rather uncertainly. Several girls came up to me and introduc
ed themselves; they asked where I’d gone to school before and a few other things, and then rushed off to talk to someone else. One girl, Patty, looked at the desk next to mine.
“Oh—your deskmate’s Ginny.”
I looked over at the label to confirm it. “Is she nice?”
“Yeah, she’s nice. Her sister got her hand bitten off by a crocodile on a safari in Africa,” she said grimly, securing her thin, mousy hair behind her ears.
“You’re kidding!”
“No. But she doesn’t want anyone to know. Now she has a fake hand.”
“Does she go to Garfield?” I said incredulously.
“She graduated two years ago. Ginny has seven sisters.”
“Wow,” I said, duly impressed.
“Well, see you later.”
“Yeah, see you,” I answered, and she zipped over to the door to say hello to someone who’d just come in. I wanted to find Chloe Fox’s desk so I’d be able to spot her, but suddenly one of the seniors was at the door yelling, “Line up for prayers!”
“Prayers?” I said to nobody in particular. Prayers! I thought.
“Come on!” a tall Greek-looking girl said, brushing past me. I followed her. The entire upper school filed into an enormous auditorium. I looked down at my hiking boots and my green socks, green skirt, and green blouse. Mom was right, I thought. I look like a tree.
It was a strange school. I went through my first week going to my classes, being utterly terrified by the gym teacher—I hated gym with a vengeance—and rushing home the second the bell rang at 3:15. I didn’t sign up for any clubs. Everyone was nice, but no one really talked to me except Patty, which made me suspicious. I couldn’t tell who stood where, who hung around with whom. Patty might be unpopular for some reason no one had made me wise to; why would she bother with me otherwise? So I just dashed home every day. Mom stayed late at the hospital every night. Half the time we ate what Mom had prepared cold, because Dad was never sure of how the oven actually worked—and a girl at school named Dora was without eyelashes from a recent oven accident, so I didn’t try too hard either.
On Friday evening, I told Dad I wanted to go to the hospital. It was past 9:30 and Mom was still there. He said, “Val, maybe you shouldn’t go. Grandma doesn’t look like she used to.”
“I just saw her last week,” I said, a little annoyed. What did he think I was?
“She doesn’t even look like she did last week.”
I felt suddenly desperate.
“But suppose I never see her again?” I said, my voice rising. So I went.
My grandfather, mother, and I were there when she died. Her teeth were out and a mask was over her face. A memory flashed through me of an afternoon when I was visiting Grandpa; he had gone to the bathroom to brush his teeth. I was very young then, and I called him for something, and he came out without his teeth in his mouth. I had screamed, “You’re not my grandpa! He went out on the fire escape! You’re not my grandpa!” I lifted my grandmother’s hand and let go. It dropped. Suddenly I heard crying. Someone shepherded me out of the room; bright white lights had been flipped on over her bed. Mom and Grandpa came out and we stared at each other for a moment before we fell apart together in a tangle of arms and faces and lights and what sounded like sobs. It was us. “Forty-two years!” he kept crying.
The funeral was on Sunday. Death permeated the house. I don’t know how they told Ben. I didn’t want to know. I was sick of comforting people. Everyone kept telling me how terrific and supportive I was. As if I didn’t need any support myself.
“You knew, Mom.”
“Yes, I knew.” We were sitting in the kitchen.
“You knew she was going to die!”
“We weren’t sure—”
“You knew.” She was going to cry again. “Why didn’t you tell me?”
“I didn’t want you to worry,” she replied.
Then I began to cry. “Do you think wondering is easier?”
The house wasn’t comfortable. Coming home was coming home to a house filled with people, people bringing food, bringing solace—some people I’d never seen before. And they all looked at me and kissed me and told me how much I’d grown and who I looked like, and tears welled in their eyes. I escaped to my room whenever I could, and sat like a zombie in my brown chair with the broken spring that I didn’t want to have fixed, and did absolutely nothing. Sometimes I shook.
I skipped school on Monday. When I went in on Tuesday, I felt odder than I had the first week. I walked silently through the corridors and looked hard at all the girls that didn’t see me. Nobody knew me. Nobody really knew I’d been absent. They don’t know my grandmother died, I kept thinking. If one of their grandmothers had died it would matter to everyone. They don’t know she won’t be coming over with a shopping bag from Cake Masters with danishes and rye bread and even when I said it would make me fat she said “Fat?” as though the very concept was ludicrous.
I saw Carolyn Smith during recess. She was standing alone eating an oatmeal cookie, so I went up to her and said, “You know what?” in a whisper.
“What?”
“My grandmother died.”
“Uhh!” she exclaimed, looking horrified. She didn’t seem to be able to say anything else, so I pretended I had to go someplace and went upstairs. The hall was empty. I saw my English teacher, Mrs. Corral, coming out of her classroom. She was old and really daffy but she didn’t know it, and had a nose like Cyrano. I liked her and went over.
“Mrs. Corral?”
“Yes, Valerie!” She seemed pleased to see me.
“I’m sorry I couldn’t hand in my paper yesterday. See, my grandmother died, and I had to stay home, you know. . . .”
She looked genuinely stricken. “Oh, Valerie, I’m so sorry.”
“Oh, that’s okay. I just wanted to tell you—I’ll hand it in tomorrow—”
“Don’t worry about it, dear, don’t worry about it—you just give it to me whenever you can.” She put her hand on mine. It was an old hand, strong and covered with blue veins and with skin like egg membrane. “Oh, I’m terribly sorry, Valerie.”
“Well . . . ,” I said, because I couldn’t say it was okay again because it wasn’t okay at all. I believed she was sorry, and I felt dangerously near tears. I walked quickly toward the gym and downstairs to the locker room. It was deserted. I went into the bathroom and stood by the sink. Suddenly the door opened and another girl came in. She was skinny and her green skirt was droopy around the rear. She was wearing a black sweater, which was against the rules, and had long, wild dark hair and blue eyes like mine. She examined me quizzically.
“Hi,” she finally said.
“Hi. Hey, you’re in my gym class,” I said, blinking quickly and trying to compose myself.
“Yeah, that’s right,” she said, smiling.
“Aren’t you a new girl?”
“Uh-huh.”
“Me too. I’m Valerie Hoffman.”
“I’m Chloe Fox.”
“You’re Chloe Fox!” I said a little too loudly. “I wanted to meet you. I like your name.”
“I hate it. But I was almost a Phoebe,” she told me.
“I know a cat named Phoebe,” I said thoughtfully. “I like Chloe better.”
“So do I,” she agreed. “Are you in Marese’s French class?”
“Yeah.” I grinned. “It’s the dodo group. I’m terrible in French.”
“So am I. They’re moving me down.”
“You’ll like her. She’s a sweet old lady. Hey—you’re in my art class, too. She’s such an idiot.” Chloe grimaced in agreement.
“I’m going to be a painter,” she said. I lit up instantly.
“You are? So am I!” The bell rang for the end of recess. “What do you have now?”
“English. I hate it.”
“I love English. I’ve got Math.” We left and walked upstairs silently.
“Where do you live?” I asked.
‘’Riverdale.”
&
nbsp; “Riverdale? You come here every day from Riverdale?”
She laughed. “See ya later.”
“Okay,” I said, continuing up the stairs. I even skipped a few.
2
The rest of that week was pretty depressing. Mom was sitting shivah at our house with Grandpa; it’s a Jewish tradition, after someone dies. The mourners have to sit at home on wooden boxes or crates and people are in and out of the house all week, paying their respects. The idea is to make it easier on the mourners. I guess it’s a good thing really, but it depressed me. Every day Mom would talk to me anxiously, asking if I was happy at school and had made any friends, and apologizing for not giving me enough attention. I told her not to worry, everything was great, and I’d gotten two people’s phone numbers—Patty and Chloe. I didn’t tell her I’d gotten the numbers from the office.
“After things settle down I want you to invite them over, Val,” she said. I didn’t have the heart to tell her to quit bugging me. She had the biggest and saddest eyes I’d ever seen, and she was always worrying. I wished so hard I could be happy just to make her feel better.
When shivah was over, Mom said we had to get back to normal. She looked like she’d been beaten from the inside. There was a big hole in the house; everyone knew it was there but tried not to look at it. Sometimes when the phone rang I’d expect it to be Grandma, but it wasn’t. Or on Broadway, if I saw a woman from far away who walked the way she did, my stomach would do a double flip. But up close they were always strangers, and none of them had Grandma’s dignity. I went with Mom when she had to sort through Grandma’s things, and took a white handkerchief with little roses on it; it smelled just like her. She always wore L’heure Bleu. She had saved everything I’d ever given her, even the plastic rhinoceros I’d gotten at a penny arcade before I started kindergarten.
All that week after shivah, Mom and Dad were urging me to join some clubs. “Get involved in something,” they told me every night at dinner. “There must be something you want to do. Join the art club, or write for the school paper,” they coaxed. I just shrugged and muttered that I didn’t want to, or maybe, which was the same.
Hey, Dollface Page 1