by Aimee Herman
Saturday, December 18
Dear James,
Shirley and Ted are at the Englishtown flea market, bundled up and probably wrapping themselves up in hot chocolate and each other. Aggie is on her way over to study for a science test. We’re not in the same class, but we have the same boring teacher, Mr. Phlemmens. People call him Mr. Phlem Plegm Phlegm, but obviously not to his face. I wonder if he knows, though. Late last night when everyone was sleeping, it snowed. How cool to wake up and see everything covered in freezing white. Stillness. Quiet. I like that snow doesn’t make noise like rain does. It sneaks up and rewards you with something beautiful. The only annoying thing is it’s much better when it snows on a weekday, because I bet we would have had off from school but whatever. Aggie is coming over and that’s enough for me.
We ate grilled cheese sandwiches—Aggie makes them all buttery and overstuffed with cheese. She left about an hour ago, but I can still feel the greasy sweetness coat my tongue.
Aggie wanted to know if I’d asked T’nea out on a date yet and I confessed that I was still too nervous.
“I’ve been on a few dates,” she confessed.
“You have? Tell me everything.”
“I had a boyfriend in seventh grade. Lenny. We dated for a few months. Nothing too serious, but . . .”
“What?”
“Well, we almost had sex. I’m sure he’d tell the story differently, but I think what stopped us is we weren’t really sure what to do.”
I laughed, almost choking on my sandwich.
“Are you serious?”
“I mean, we knew what was involved . . .” Aggie’s face was now the color of her sweater, two different shades of red. It’s easy to tell when Aggie blushes because her face is the color of skim milk.
“Maybe he was afraid he’d be bad at it or something. But we did everything else,” Aggie winked at me.
“This all feels so new. I mean, this whole year feels like ten. Like a lifetime, actually. Shirley trying to kill herself. James . . . ,” my voice lost track of itself. “ . . . Greta going away, Shirley starting to date!!! Meeting you. Meeting Reigh! Oh my gosh, kissing T’nea. Coming out. It’s too much. I was thinking of Ms. Raimondo the other day and what she said about stories.”
“Which part?”
“Just that there is always some crescendo. A moment of conflict that keeps the reader reading. Involved. I like that Ms. Raimondo says that we are part of everything we read.”
“Yeah, she’s so cool. I love that too,” Aggie said.
“I’m writing to James—”
“I’m still writing to Richard!”
“I guess it’s become part of my routine or whatever. I thought about stopping, but I feel like I’m talking to him. Anyway, in these letters, I wonder what the story is. I mean, like is James the conflict? Is his death the . . . trampoline moment?”
“Trampoline moment?”
“Don’t you remember? Ms. Raimondo said there is a moment in every story that becomes the trampoline moment . . . what propels you toward something else. An answer or a realization of some—”
“Or they’re just letters. And writing to him is about you getting your thoughts out and having someone who will never write back listen somehow. Wasn’t that kinda the point all along?”
“Yeah, yeah, I guess.”
Dear James, are you my trampoline? Your death. Reading your words, which were meant for me all along. Is all that the point? The propeller?
Sunday, December 19
Dear James,
When my grandmother was young, she was really sick and they really didn’t think she was going to make it. When she got better, her parents renamed her. I guess that happens sometimes, or at least that’s how my dad tells it. Something about superstition and bad energy. Anyway, I felt this when Reigh called me Eler for the first time. Like something lifted in me.
I wrote something to you in the back of my notebook, but then I scribbled it out. Ms. Raimondo is right: writing something down gives it breath, gives it bones. I think when I wrote it down and saw its skeleton, it scared me. Anyway, I am pasting it below.
I’ve been staring at crotches. Is that weird? This guy, Sam, in my math class said something about penis envy and I wonder if I have crotch envy. I know I have one. A crotch. But obviously mine is different. More triangular than rectangular and I’m not very good at geometry, but I know that shapes just don’t exchange angles and proportions. They are born with the same dimensions as when they die, right? Or do they start getting looser like Shirley’s skin? Droopy? Anyway, last night, after dinner, Shirley and Flor watched Wheel of Fortune and I went upstairs and took off my shirt. I take my clothes off a lot lately and just stare. I guess it’s kind of like reading the same book twice. You know the way it ends, but always hope for something different because time has passed since the last look. Nope. Same story. Boring and predictable ending. I widened my hands, the skin over my palms stretching as far as they could, and pressed them against my boobs.
My nipples (why does that word look so weird when I write it down?) peeked between my two fingers. I pushed hard, trying to flatten them like grilled cheese sandwiches. I always love to watch the cheese burst out from the weight of the spatula against the bread. Maybe my breast innards will seep out and I won’t have to wear a stupid bra anymore. I may have to do this routine nightly to see a change. Then I did something kind of weird, James. Oh gosh, I can’t believe I’m even writing this. I bent down and took my sock off my foot. Then I kind of bunched it up and stuffed it in my underpants. The cotton felt weird against my vagina, but when I looked back in the mirror, my shape changed. No more triangle. I turned to the side. I grabbed it like the boys do when they think no one is looking. I walked around my bedroom like it was heavy, like it meant something. What does this mean, James? What am I?
Monday, December 20
Dear James,
Do you remember when we were in second grade and Allen Danube died? Were you friends with him? It was during recess. Well, he didn’t die during recess, but that is when the incident happened. A bunch of people were playing tag. I wasn’t. I was probably off in the corner by the aluminum tunnel, which I liked to hide in. Anyway, they were running along the length of the playground behind school. Then, Allen fell and hit his head on a large rock that was on the pavement. No one knew where that rock had come from. I remember people saying that. Our rocks are small. How did that one get in?
After he fell, everyone around stopped. They stopped because a river of Allen’s blood immediately started seeping out of his head. And nose. And mouth too, according to some. I didn’t see any of this. We all got ushered back into school, while the ambulance was called. Allen died soon after arriving at the hospital. Brain hemorrhage or something scary like that.
Allen wasn’t exactly my friend, but I did go to his birthday party that year. He pretty much invited everyone in class. I can’t remember if you were there. I only went because a few other friends were going, and I heard Allen had a swimming pool. This was the summer before he died.
I was grabbing a piece of pizza from the long table on his deck. Allen walked up beside me. He had been swimming, so his skin was dripping chlorine, and some fell onto the cheese. He smiled at me.
Then, he said—and I remember this so clearly—“I didn’t want this party, you know. All I wanted was pizza and to swim some. But . . . but I’m glad I had this because . . . you’re here.”
Then, he walked away with his waterlogged pizza and just continued swimming. Would you believe that that was the only thing he ever said to me? Ever?
Allen is in my mind because I feel like there were parts of him that were still forming. Well, of course, I mean we were only ten years old back then. But more than that, there was a sense that he was going to be something. He was obscenely good at math. Perhaps Allen would have gone on to invent something really big and useful. It’s impossible to not feel this way about you, James. What would you have become? What would y
ou have given to the world? To another? To me?
DEAR ELINORE,
I SAW YOU STARE AT AGGIE TODAY THE WAY I TRY TO PRETEND NOT TO STARE AT BRIAN. I KNEW IT. MAYBE IT’S BECAUSE I CAN’T BE WITH BRIAN OR ANYONE REALLY THAT I NOTICE THESE THINGS. WE SEE WHAT WE CAN’T ALLOW IN OURSELVES. I’VE NEVER SEEN MY FOLKS LOOK AT EACH OTHER LIKE THAT. I DON’T THINK I’VE EVER SEEN THEM KISS OR HOLD HANDS. MY MOM HUGS ME, BUT MY DAD NEVER DOES. IT’S LIKE HE’S AFRAID TO KISS ME, DOESN’T WANT TO CATCH WHAT I AM, WHAT HE WON’T ALLOW ME TO BE. I DON’T GET THE FEELING AGGIE IS GAY, BUT AT LEAST SHE SEEMS TO LIKE YOU ENOUGH THAT IT PROBABLY WON’T MATTER. I SEE THE WAY SHE LOOKS AT YOU TOO. NOT LIKE IN LOVE OR ANYTHING, BUT LIKE SHE THINKS YOU’RE SPECIAL. LIKE MAYBE YOU ARE HER BEST FRIEND. I HAD ONE OF THOSE ONCE. BUT NOT ANYMORE.
Tuesday, December 21
Dear James,
Everyone has vacation brain. That’s what Ms. Raimondo calls it. Thursday is our last day of class before winter break and I guess we are all a little restless. I’ve decided to call T’nea after school today and ask her out. I tried calling her last night, but her mom said she wasn’t home. I left a message, but she didn’t call back. Did I wait too long?
In math class, same boring stuff. I’ve gotten used to pretending like Dara and I were never friends. She doesn’t even look at me anymore. It was so upsetting at first, but I guess I have gotten used to it. However, I couldn’t not notice that she looked really upset today. So, I became the bigger person, James, and approached her after class.
“Hey,” I said, tapping her on the shoulder.
“Hi,” she said, looking at me as though we hadn’t shared our deep dark secrets with each other like our weird crushes on Milli Vanilli and Leonardo of the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles. We used to trade Garbage Pail Kids until Shirley threw all mine away because she thought they were gruesome. I know that Dara used to keep her scabs in her dad’s cigar box that he initially gave to her for her hair clips. She knows that I picked my nose up until a few years ago. And ate my findings. It was a hard habit to break for some reason. But here we were after months of not talking. Strangers.
“You . . . you looked upset in class and I . . . I know we’re not talking but . . . are you—”
She looked at me as though I hadn’t showered in weeks. “Why do you even care, Eleanor?”
“I don’t know. Because we used to be best friends? It’s not my fault that we’re not anymore.”
“Actually, it kinda is. And if you must know, Damian and I broke up.”
“What do you mean it’s my fault? And I’m sorry you guys broke up. But he was kind of a dick, you know?”
Dara smiled. “Yeah.”
“Listen, you’re the one who helped me to realize that I’m . . . I mean, I knew before you said, but . . . and since our fight, I’ve told Shirley and Flor and Gret and my dad. It’s not a bad thing. They get that it’s just part of me. Nothing needs to change. I don’t expect you to understand, though I really wish you would. You know, there are people who die before they ever have the chance to really be themselves. I don’t want to wait for that.”
Dara didn’t say anything for a long time and then the bell went off. I had Science class.
That stupid test.
“Yeah, well, we better get to class, Eleanor,” was all she said.
“Oh, okay. Yeah, sure. I’ve got a test anyway. Sorry about your heart.”
Wednesday, December 22
Dear James,
I did it. I asked T’nea on a date and she said yes and we are going out tomorrow night because winter break officially starts after school tomorrow and Shirley said it was okay (though I asked her afterwards and I have no idea what I would have done if she’d have said no). That’s one thing off my winter break list already done!
After enough rings to make me think I’d called the wrong number, I heard a voice.
“Hello?” It was her!
“Hi. T’nea. What’s up? It’s Eler.” Act casual, Eleanor.
“Not much. Just chillin’, you know? How about yourself?”
“Just relaxing on my bed, actually.” Relaxing on my bed?
I felt like I could hear T’nea smile.
“You know, I told my friend about you.”
She’s talking about me to her friend?! Stay cool. “Uh huh?”
“And she told me not to call you. To wait for you to call me and make the next move. But I was definitely starting to feel super impatient.” I could hear her smile.
“Well, actually, I’m calling because I wanted to know if maybe you might want to . . . go on a . . . date . . . with . . . me?” I immediately started to panic. What if we ran out of things to talk about? What if T’nea wanted to do more than just kiss? What comes next? What if I don’t know what to do?
“Yeah. That’d be cool.”
“Cool, cool.” James, I did my best impression of John Travolta in Saturday Night Fever. He was so slick in that. “How about tomorrow night? Want to see a movie?”
“Sure, how about Addams Family Values? That looks good. I think it’s playing by Jamesway.”
We chatted a little more and it got easier the longer we stayed on the phone. I learned that T’nea’s mom is remarried and she thinks her stepdad is even better than her real dad. I learned that she loves to paint and wants to be famous one day like Alice Neel (who I hadn’t heard of) or Georgia O’Keefe. She said she dreams of moving to New Mexico, even though she’s never even been there, because she loves that that is where Georgia painted. I also learned that T’nea is not out, though feels like maybe her mom won’t be too uncool about it. T’nea calls herself bisexual because she has also dated boys and likes them too, but right now she likes me and that’s all I really care about.
After we hung up, I felt a mixture of excitement and extreme nervousness. When I looked out my window, it was like the moon was bigger or someone had changed its light bulbs (an astronaut, maybe?) and it was brighter than it had ever been before. I stared at it for a really long time and tried to pretend I didn’t know what it was called. That this big bright circle, which was completely full, just sat in the sky without a name. So I called it yellow. And I called it light fixture. And I called it a planet. And I called it the real earth and I called it my girlfriend in the sky and I called it beautiful. I said: Hey, look at that beautiful up there. Look at the yellow. Look at the light fixture. I thought about what language might be spoken on the moon. Would it be English? Or maybe Spanish? Or probably just something no one has ever heard before. Would there be a moon president or one universal religion? Or maybe everyone on the moon would be an athest atheist or a Jehovah’s Witness like Michael Jackson. Will we run out of space on this earth and move there one day? I’ll probably be dead by then but maybe my kids or kid’s kids? No, I don’t want any of those. I mean, kids are okay, but I don’t really want one. The thought of having a baby inside me kind of grosses me out. I remember when my cousin Jessica was pregnant, and everything got big on her. Big stomach (OBVIOUSLY!) and big boobs (GROSS . . . I mean, to imagine that on ME). Every time I think about being more into my ‘womanhood’ as Shirley and Flor say, I feel less and less comfortable. Maybe life on the moon would be better than earth. Maybe there would be no words that separate people’s male or female. Just humans. Wait. There’s man in that. Person. No. There’s son in that. HU-PER! Huper. Huper. Huper. If I lived on the moon, I’d call myself a huper. Or maybe I can call myself this now?
DEAR ELINORE,
ONCE UPON A TIME OR SOMETHING CHEESY LIKE THAT, THERE WAS A BOY. LET’S CALL HIM CHESTER WILLIAM KURT. HIS WHOLE LIFE WAS VIEWED THROUGH THE SAME WINDOW. HIS BACKYARD WAS BIG ENOUGH TO GET TWO BEE STINGS AND SOME KIND OF SPIDER BITE THAT MADE HIS ANKLE SWELL LONG ENOUGH FOR HIS MOM TO WORRY AND HIS DAD TO ACTUALLY LOOK AT HIM WITH CONCERN. THERE WERE A BUNCH OF TREES AND HE ALWAYS HOPED THERE COULD BE A HOUSE BUILT INTO IT JUST FOR HIM, JUST FOR HIS DREMS DREAMS. HIS BEDROOM WAS HIS BUT NOT REALLY. HE KNEW HIS DAD SNOOPED AND MAYBE HIS MOM TOO, BUT SHE DIDN’T HOL
D THINGS AGAINST KURT LIKE HIS DAD DID. KURT JUST WANTED TO BE IN LOVE. AND FEEL IT BACK. ONE DAY, KURT MET SOMEONE. OH, MAN, THIS SOMEONE WAS FUNNY AND LIKED THE SAME MUSIC. ACTUALLY, THEY WOULD LISTEN TO IT LOUD ENOUGH TO MAKE THE WALLS SHAKE AND EVEN FEEL IT IN THEIR BONES. THIS SOMEONE LIKED ME KURT EVEN THOUGH THEY LOOKED ALIKE. WHEN THEY WERE ALONE, THIS SOMEONE HELD KURT’S HAND. TRACED HIS VEINS LIKE WORDS. THIS SOMEONE KNEW HOW TO READ KURT LIKE HE WAS THE MOST INTERESTING STORY. THIS SOMEONE PROMISED NEVER TO LEAVE. WHEN THIS SOMEONE KISSED KURT, ALL OF THE DARKNESS AND SADNESS AND DEATH DIED. KURT GREW. NOTHING COULD BE BETTER. AND NOTHING ELSE MATTERED. KURT WAS HAPPY FOR THE FIRST TIME BECAUSE HE HAD NEVER BEEN SEEN LIKE THIS BEFORE. KURT WAS FINALLY LOVED. BUT SEE, NOTHING REMAINS LIKE THAT. THE SUN FALLS. THE CLOUDS GROW DARK. THUNDER. BLOOD. STATIC. THIS SOMEONE DECIDED KURT WAS TOO MUCH. SO THIS SOMEONE STOPPED HOLDING KURT’S HAND AND THIS SOMEONE STOPPED KISSING KURT AND THIS SOMEONE STOPPED. KURT WAS ALONE AGAIN. KURT WAS DARK AGAIN. KURT WAS NO LONGER HAPPY. EVERYTHING THAT EVER MATTERED NO LONGER DID. THEN KURT DIED.
Thursday, December 23
Dear James,
I want to write all of this down before I forget. Before I start to question if it even happened. Flor dropped me off in the Jamesway shopping center and I waited in front for T’nea. My nervousness chilled me. I wasn’t wearing a watch, but it felt like I’d been waiting for a while. I was starting to think that maybe I was being stood up. Stood up for my very first date—not a good sign.
And then, just like that, T’nea appeared. She was bundled as well, but so beautiful. Her hair collapsed into various twists like tiny tornadoes. Even though it was dark, her skin glowed.
“Hey, you,” she breathed into the air.
“Where’d you come from? I didn’t even see you get out of a car or anything.”
“I came from my mom’s snatch,” she laughed. “Just kidding. No, my bro dropped me off.”