"Mom?" I said. "Would you pass the peas, please?"
"You can ask your sister for the peas, Isabelle. They're right in front of her."
My mother had about six peas on her plate, and a piece of chicken the size of her thumb. This is how much she eats. Before Daddy, she ate real people's meals. Now she eats doll meals.
Ape Face held up the howl, balancing it on one hand. "Would anyone like some peas? ... Anyone?"
"So, Mom," I said, completely ignoring Ape Face. "How was your day? Any exciting papers to grade?"
My mother is a college professor. She teaches American literature. There are piles of her students' papers all over the house. People say, "Wow, your mother's pretty messy." But they don't know she used to be neat.
"Isabelle," my mother said. "April is offering you the peas.
"I changed my mind," I said. "I'm not in the mood for peas after all."
"Honestly, Isabelle," said my mother.
"Honestly, Isabelle," said Ape Face, frowning and shaking her head.
My mother shot April the look that means Enough.
"Mona, do you hear anything?" I asked. "I don't hear anything.... What's that? ... Is that a fly buzzing in my ear?"
"Isabelle," said my mother quietly, spearing exactly one pea with her fork. "Stop it."
"Fine," I said.
There was a moment of silence. Then Ape Face said, "Mom, guess what? I'm writing a story. `Group of Frogs,' it's called. How's that for a title?"
Mom reached over to ruffle the Ape's hair. "An excellent title. I can't wait to read it. What's the plot?"
This is the way it goes with them. They are their own mother-daughter book club. If you want to join, go right ahead.
I got up to clear my plate. On my way to the sink I did what I always do: try not to look at Daddy's empty chair, but can't help myself This time there was a big, messy pile of papers on top of it. I couldn't believe it. A lot of people put piles of stuff on chairs and pass right by them, not thinking a thing. But looking at this pile, my stomach hurt so much I felt like someone punched me.
In my room, I ran straight to my closet. That's where I keep my stash, under one of Daddy's old flannel shirts that nobody knows I have. For the longest time after he died, I kept the shirt under my bed, wrapped in a paper bag. I would take it out whenever I missed him because it had his smell. Clean and warm, like grass.
This shirt was a legend. My mother was always trying to throw it out because of the missing buttons and the pocket that got ripped off in a football game. But every time Mom tried to get rid of the shirt, Daddy would rescue it just in time. It was their special game. "There you are," he would say, dragging it out of the Goodwill bag and slipping it hack on. And Mom would wag her finger at him, pretending to be angry. "Jacob Lee. You are impossible." This was his cue to chase her all around the house until he caught her and wrapped her up in his arms, in that big soft shirt that smelled like him.
One time last year, right before my birthday, I took the shirt out from under my bed and jammed my face in it, hard, because I missed him so much. That's when I realized it was all smelled out. I breathed in, and ... nothing. It Was just a shirt. Just a ratty old shirt that could have belonged to anyone.
There wasn't much left in my stash, only a few packages of Fig Newtons and a half-eaten bag of Doritos. I didn't bother pushing the bureau against the door this time because I knew Moni and Ape Face wouldn't he up for a while.
I sat on the floor of my closet while I ate, breathing in that mothbally closet smell. One hand on the Fig Newtons, the other on the chips. When I was finished, I put the empty wrappers back in the box and the box back on the top shelf of the closet, under the flannel shirt.
Before going to the bathroom I stood at the top of the stairs and listened. I could hear Mom and Ape Face laughing together. Who knew "Group of Frogs" was a freaking comedy?
In the bathroom I drank a glass of water as fast as I could. I lifted the toilet seat and stuck my fingers down my throat, so far down my middle knuckle was touching that little wiggly piece in the hack. I felt my stomach contract hard and my shoulders hunch up to my ears. Abracadabra, out came the Doritos, the Fig Newtons, the milk, the pasta, the chicken cacciatore.
Just like magic.
Later, my mother knocked on the door. "Isabelle? May I collie m?"
"It's a free country," I said. I was lying in bed with A Separate Peace, this hook we're reading for English.
"A Separate Peace?" Mom said. "That's one of my favorites. Have you gotten to the part where Finny shows Gene the tree?"
"I'm only on chapter one," I said.
"Oh. Well, I didn't ruin anything for you by telling you that. But the tree does become an important symbol in the novel. Let me know when you get there, and we can discuss it."
"Uh-huh." I picked the book back up and pretended to he very busy reading.
"Isabelle." My mother sat down on the edge of the bed and took the hook right out of my hand.
"I'm reading!"
"Well, I'm talking."
I looked at the ceiling with my eyeballs. My mother could talk all night and still not say a thing.
She reached out to grab a loose thread hanging from my pajama sleeve. She twisted the thread around her finger, yanked. "So. How was it today?"
"How was what?"
"Group therapy."
"It's called Group, Mom."
"Okay. How was Group?"
"Fine."
"Did you find it helpful?"
"Not particularly."
"Well, give it some time."
I didn't say anything. I just kept looking at the ceiling, thinking about my stash in the closet, how it was getting low.
I felt my mother shifting on the bed. I knew she wanted me to tell her I was fine. In her head she was probably saying, How did I get one normal daughter and one screwup.'
Well, guess what your screwup was doing while you were downstairs planning Ape Face's fabulous writing career?
"I need a blank hook," I said. "You know, a journal. For next Wednesday."
"Oh?" said my mother. I could hear a little smile in her voice. "You'll he writing in Group? Great! We'll pick one up this weekend."
Yippee.
I felt her look at me, then away, then at me again.
"What?" I said.
"Nothing."
"What!"
"Nothing, Isabelle," she said. "It's just ... well, lots of
girls your age begin worrying about their weight. When in fact it's natural that their bodies start carrying extra fat."
"Whatever," I said. It gave me the creeps the way she said that. Carrying extra fat. Like I had a backpack full of butter instead of books.
"Anyway," Mom continued, "if you're worried about it, how about trying to eat more fruits and veggies? Less junk? We could probably all do to cut hack on our calories around here, eat some healthier meals." She patted her stomach and smiled. "Your mother included."
I looked at her, raised an eyebrow.
"There are much less dangerous ways to lose weight than making yourself throw up, Isabelle. How does that sound? We could do it together. Okay?"
I knew she wanted me to say okay more than anything. It didn't even matter if the okay was a lie.
I didn't say anything.
"Isabelle? Please. I want to help."
"Um ... ," I said, like I was thinking it over. "Sure."
"Great! I'll do the grocery shopping tomorrow. I'll go to Whole Foods, even."
"Great," I said, feeling terrible.
When she leaned over to kiss me goodnight I held my breath. Even though I'd brushed my teeth twice and rinsed with mouthwash, I didn't want her to smell what I'd done.
In the middle of the night, I woke up and couldn't go back to sleep. This happens a lot but it's worst when I can hear Moni. Most of the time I just put my pillow over my head and hum for a while to drown her out. This time I went and stood in the hallway outside her bedroom. The light from the crack
under the door made a long, skinny rectangle on the wood floor, covering the tips of my toes.
She was crying. Not loud, but loud enough. And she was saying his name, over and over again, the way she always does when she thinks we can't hear her. Jay. Oh, Jacob. Oh, Jay.
I waited outside the door for her to stop crying. But she didn't.
"Mom?" I whispered. "Mommy? ... Are you okay?"
She didn't answer, but I know she heard me. I know because the light went out right away, and everything was silent.
"Mum'"
I waited a while longer. I waited even though I knew she wouldn't answer, no matter how long I stood there.
Finally I left. I didn't even try to be quiet. I didn't tiptoe, I walked like a normal person down the hall, down the stairs, across the living room to the kitchen, and across the kitchen to the refrigerator.
Bread and butter, pasta salad, string cheese, strawberry yogurt, applesauce, more bread and butter, cold leftover pizza, olives, peanut butter straight out of the jar. I ate until my cheeks hurt, until the skin of my belly was stretched tight like a drum. Then I opened a brand-new carton of orange juice and drank the entire thing, standing up. Orange juice ran down my chin and onto the front of my nightgown. It dripped onto my bare feet. Every swallow hurt, but I didn't care. After a while, it almost feels good, the hurting.
The first time it happened was the day of Daddy's funeral. Our house was full of strangers, all of them patting my head, talking in whispers. Every so often my mother would come over to me and April and squeeze the breath out of us with her hugs. "Don't cry," she kept saying. "We will none of us cry." Finally some lady I didn't know came up to me with a plate and said, "Here you go, honey. Try to eat a little something." So I did. I ate cold cuts and salads and fancy cookies. I ate a whole pile of brownies. Whatever I wanted I ate. I ate until it hurt to stand up. Finally I went into the bathroom and puked three times.
The first time is hard because you don't know what you're doing. Now, in the middle of the night, it's simple.
I stood over the kitchen sink with my fingers down my throat, watching everything come back up. Afterward I went over to Daddy's old chair. I picked up the big pile of papers sitting there. I walked them into my mother's study and dropped them on top of her desk, where they belonged.
But I didn't cry. Not once.
4
MR. MINX'S CLASS, THURSDAY. Ashley Barnum didn't speak to me.
It's not that I expected she'd sit with me or anything. It's not like I thought we'd he best buds now, just because we talked for two minutes. Still, did she or did she not say "See You in Minx's class third period"?
Minx's class, Friday. Not a peep.
Maybe the word see meant just that. She would see me, but not necessarily speak to me. In which case, fine, she was off the hook.
Minx's class, Monday. Nothing.
Quite possibly, Ashley Barnum was ignoring me on purpose. And could I blame her? Get caught talking to a loser like me, and the popularity rug could be yanked out from under you like that. Poof!
Minx's class is had enough as it is. It is the kind of class where you scrunch down in your seat the whole time, praying you don't get called on. What Mr. Minx loves is books. What he loves even more is the sound of his own voice. Sometimes, when he's reading out loud, he gets so impressed with himself you can actually see tears in his eyes. On Tuesday, he was as gaga as ever.
"Vocabulary dictation," said Minx, holding a stump of yellow chalk to his mouth and tapping his upper lip with it. "Adjectives.... Alienated. Disenchanted. Disillusioned."
Another thing about Minx, he loves using big words. Those three he said, I had no idea what they meant. Minx knew it too. "I'm getting some blank looks, people. If you don't know a word, get out your dictionary. This is Advanced English. Advanced. You are expected to take some initiative here."
Minx squinted across the room, holding the chalk stump in the air like a dart. "Alienated ... Disenchanted ... Disillusioned ..."
He gave us about ten seconds with our dictionaries before he fired a question at us. "When ... under what circumstances ... might one feel alienated? Hmm?"
Minx paced the aisles in his Wal-Mart sneakers, the Velcro kind. He stopped at the end of my row and pivoted, tapping Georgine's desk with his chalk. "I'm not asking this question for my health, people." Taptaptaptap. "I'm actually looking for an intelligent response. Ms. Miner, do you have an intelligent response?"
Georgie sank a little lower in her seat. She shook her head no.
Minx gave her desk one final tap and moved on to the next row. As soon as he was out of earshot Georgie leaned over and poked me with her pen. "Alienated, like alien?" she whispered.
I shrugged back.
Georgie is what you would call a worrier. She worries like crazy when she doesn't know the right answer for something. You can tell she's stressing by these two little lines between her eyes. Every so often she gets one of her "tension headaches," as her mother calls them, and has to stay home from school for two days without any visitors. Georgie's mother is very bugsome, to tell you the truth. If I had to live with her I'd get tension headaches too.
In Minx's class you have to watch him every second. You never know when he's going to pounce. It's best to take certain precautions. Like for instance, you wouldn't want to be reading a comic hook.
"Mr. Fosse," Minx said, leaning over Dan Fosse's desk and snatching Spider-Man right out of his hands. "If you would be so kind as to beam the great light of your knowledge upon us."
Dan Fosse looked up at Minx. "Huh?"
"Huh?" said Minx. "Earth to Mr. Fosse. Come in, Mr. Fosse. We are discussing adjectives, which, as you may recall, are those pesky parts of speech that describe things. Words like Inattentive. Oblivious. Negligent."
"Sorry," Dan muttered.
"As am I," said Minx, not sounding one bit sorry.
Minx may think he's the coolest thing on the planet, but here's something most people don't know. I saw him outside of school once, on a Saturday night. April and I were walking into Movie Mayhem and he was walking out, wearing the exact same getup he wears to school: white shirt with yellow armpit stains and tan corduroys. He even had one of those fluorescent bands strapped to his calf, to keep his pant cuff out of his bike chain. I reached across the metal divider and waved my hand in front of his face. "Hi, Mr. Minx. It's me, Isabelle Lee." Minx blinked at me a few times, like a mole. "Oh. Hello there, Ms. Lee," he said, and he hightailed it out of there, but not before I saw the movie he'd picked out: The Parent Trap.
The Parent Trap!
Minx scuttled over to Ashley's desk, opened his palms to Heaven. "Ms. Barnum. Please."
Ashley tucked a piece of hair behind her ear and clicked her ballpoint pen a few times. "I think," she said slowly, "that I would feel alienated if ... if l traveled to another country. Like Zimbabwe, for instance? And I didn't know the language, or the customs. And I didn't have the right clothes.... That would also be, urn, a disenchanting experience."
A disenchanting experience' Come on. Sometimes Ashley Barnum sounds like she is trying out for the part of the thesaurus in the school play.
Minx bobbed his head up and down like a puppet. "Yes. Yesss. Excellent, Ms. Barnum. Excellent."
Ashley smiled and clicked her pen a few more times. She is so used to being right.
Brian King was practically falling out of his chair, he was so in love with her right then. He was probably composing another love note in his head that very second. Dear Ashley, My love for you is not alienating, or a disenchanting experience. Oh, no, my darling. It is like ... it is like .. .
Minx walked hack over to Dan Fosse's seat, picked up Dan's dictionary, and whacked it against the edge of the desk. Wham! "You see, people?" Whain! Wham! "It helps to actually look the words up. The dictionary is your friend. "
Apparently Mr. Minx is in the habit of whacking his friends against his desk.
On and on he went. "There arc still a few spots open i
n Standard English. I believe there are also a few in Basic English. Any takers?"
This, coming from a grown man who rents The Parent Trap. I wanted to climb up on my desk and announce to the world that our English teacher-the one who thinks he's the Albert Einstein of hooks-rents eight-year-old girl movies in his spare time.
The problem is I have no guts. I had to wait until I was outside the classroom to open my mouth. "Minx is a total jerk."
It was then that Ashley Barnum, with one hand on the water fountain and the other holding hack a hunch of blonde hair, turned to stare at me. She licked a head of water from her upper lip and said, in this very deep voice, "I believe there are a few spots open in Standard English, Ms. Lee."
I wagged my finger at her. "And several in Basic English, Ms. Barnum."
Ashley tossed her hair over one shoulder. She crossed her eyes and smiled at the same time.
As I was walking down the hall toward my locker, it occurred to me that Ashley Barnum and I had just shared A Moment.
At lunch, I sat with Nola and Georgine as usual. This new girl, Paula Harbinger from Cleveland, sat with us. Given the choice Paula would probably rather sit at a different table. With the cheerleaders, for instance. Or with the soccer team girls. But you can't just sit anywhere you want in the cafeteria. You have to get asked to sit at certain tables.
"Is that all you're eating?" Paula asked when I pulled out my lunch. Two hard-boiled eggs and some carrot sticks.
I shrugged. "I don't really like lunch."
Nola and Georgie laugh-smiled at each other.
"Isabelle is a weird eater," Nola said. "You'll get used to it."
"Yeah," said Georgie. "She hardly eats a thing."
"I noticed," Paula said, in a kind of snotty way, which made me want to chuck an egg at her.
"But we love her anyway," Nola added, which made me want to hug her.
Paula and Georgie were both eating the school lunch-some kind of chicken and rice with gravy, and green beans. For dessert it was cut-up peaches from a can, floating in syrup.
Nola was eating the same exact lunch she eats every day: two peanut butter sandwiches on pumpernickel bread and two chocolate milks. Nola could eat peanut butter and chocolate all day long and not gain an ounce. She has the skinniest, palest little body you ever saw. Whenever she gets cold-which is a lot-her skin turns blue and marhley all over.
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