by Karin Cook
That night, Nick ordered pizza for dinner—half cheese, half mushroom and onion. The mood around the table was light. We threw out ideas for the future, the wants and needs we’d been keeping to ourselves. Nick suggested hiring a neighborhood landscaper to spruce up the yard. Mama talked about getting new curtains in the dining room.
“Maybe we can get a new rug for the TV room too,” she said.
“And cable?” I asked.
“I think we watch enough TV around here,” Nick said.
“Can I get a perm?” Elizabeth asked.
Nick froze above his plate and looked over to check Mama’s face. She put down her pizza and took a long sip of her milk.
“What did I say wrong?” Elizabeth asked.
“Nothing,” Mama said. “It’s just that all those chemicals are bad for your hair.”
I kicked Elizabeth under the table. She glared back at me. “I was just asking,” she said.
After a little while, I asked to have a slumber party.
Mama didn’t say anything at first.
“Kind of like a late birthday party,” I added, “but with no cake or presents.”
“I don’t know,” Mama said. “How many friends would you invite?”
I counted off a handful of girls, naming each of my fingers and held them up. “Six including me,” I said.
“That’s too many,” Mama said, “I don’t have enough energy for such a big party.”
“How about four,” I said, subtracting all but the essential girls. “And we could camp in the tent.” I looked to Nick for approval. He shrugged, waiting for Mama’s response.
“Does that number include your sister?” Mama asked.
I hesitated. “I don’t think five can fit in the tent.”
“You can have it if you invite Elizabeth,” Mama said definitively.
“Forget it.”
“I wouldn’t go anyway,” Elizabeth said and asked to be excused. While she scraped her plate in the kitchen, Mama shook a finger at me.
“I’m surprised at you!” she said. “You better include her. And go apologize—I mean it!”
• • •
The landscaper showed up in jeans and work boots, wearing a shirt with the sleeves cut out, his bare arms dark and tight. When he came inside to use the bathroom, the hall smelled of sweat, cut grass, and earth. His name was Keith Rogers. He was a junior in high school and Mama decided then and there that it was no longer appropriate for Elizabeth and me to run around in our nightgowns or lie out in the yard in our bathing suits. Nick showed him to the storage area under the house where he kept the yard tools and the mower. Elizabeth sat at the picnic table outside and watched him as he worked. It was everything I could do to get her to walk to town with me to get supplies for the party.
Mama gave me twenty dollars to spend on the condition that I share everything with Elizabeth. At the stationery store, we agreed on Pez dispensers, Twizzlers, Bubble Yum, and blue and gold yarn to make pom-poms. But we had different ideas when it came to the items at McNeary’s Pharmacy. I wanted to get an eight-pack of tampons and put one in each sleeping bag. Elizabeth wanted to buy with only herself in mind, to get an eyelash curler, mascara, and blue eyeliner pencil. That, or a special shampoo to keep her hair from turning green in the chlorine.
“There has to be enough for everyone,” I said.
“It’s dumb to buy something you don’t even need,” Elizabeth said.
But she stood next to me in the hygiene aisle anyway and leaned in close when I found the slender regulars. “Liar,” she whispered and grabbed a flowered box called Summer’s Eve.
“What are you doing?”
“Fair’s fair,” she said and started toward the counter.
We were allies in front of the druggist, avoided him by pretending to look at the goods from the stationery store, our hands deep in the other bag to distract attention away from our purchases.
Out on the sidewalk, it was a different story. Elizabeth made me carry both bags.
“How come?” I asked.
“I’m not talking to you anymore,” she announced and marched ahead of me down Main Street and turned onto Elm.
I watched Elizabeth’s ponytail swinging from side to side down her back like a metronome. She was growing faster than I was, and soon she’d be taller than me. Her legs were long and thin, shapely, like the magazines said. Well, she has grace, but no speed, I told myself.
We walked past house after manicured house—wooden shingles, aluminum siding, they were all the same—two-story, two-car houses with azaleas bursting in the yards in spring, and day lilies collapsed over the sidewalks all summer.
Just as I caught up to Elizabeth, a Jeep pulled along side of us and a man asked for directions. He wanted to get to the park, said he’d been driving around for blocks. I thought he was gesturing to a map or something in his lap and when I looked down I saw it. Swollen with veins. Elizabeth kept right on talking, didn’t give him a single blink. He was holding his own flesh in his hand, rubbing his thumb on the top. From across the street anyone might have thought he and Elizabeth were talking normally. But I gasped and pulled at her arm. She finished directing him and then marched across the street and up a stranger’s driveway.
“Are you crazy?” she screamed, when we were halfway up the driveway. “Why couldn’t you just leave it alone?”
“Well, now he thinks we live here, Miss Know-it-all.”
“You’re the one who encouraged him,” she said. She bugged her eyes out and stared down at an imaginary crotch, imitating me. She stuck her tongue out and panted.
“You’re the jerk that just stood there,” I said.
“That’s what you’re supposed to do,” she said. “You are supposed to pretend that everything is normal.” Elizabeth seemed angry at me for pointing it out, as if somehow it wasn’t really happening until I said it was. “It’s your fault,” she added.
“What’s that supposed to mean?”
“Puberty,” she announced.
Mama was in a fury, said there was no place safe for women and girls. She served Police Officer Denehey iced tea while he questioned us in the TV room. The couch seemed smaller with him sitting on it, his knees bent high, his belt and shoes shiny and black. Elizabeth could describe the Jeep and the man, his hair and his voice. I realized while she was talking that I couldn’t describe anything but the penis. I began to feel like the pervert.
“What do you remember?” Officer Denehey asked and turned over a new page in his notebook.
“Nothing,” I said, feeling hot in my skin.
“So you have nothing to add?”
“No, I don’t.”
Elizabeth flashed me a look.
“Well, if you remember anything that might help, just have your mother give us a call,” he said.
At first, Mama seemed strangely invigorated by the incident. Outrage improved her complexion, making even her lips burn with color. Her cheeks were flushed in the presence of Officer Denehey and grew pale after he’d departed. We weren’t used to company. “This is turning out to be a long day,” she said and sank down into the couch.
“You don’t have to do another thing,” Nick said, “just rest.”
I followed him out to the yard. He had a plastic tarp under one arm and the tent bag in the other. When we got to the side of the house, Keith Rogers was down on his knees weeding out a new clearing in the yard. It was about six feet long with freshly churned soil. Nick dropped the tent and stormed over to him. Elizabeth and I hung back a bit, stunned.
“I asked you to cut the grass, not gut it,” Nick screamed.
I was shocked—I’d never heard him raise his voice before.
“I know, sir,” Keith started, taking off his hat and brushing the dirt off his knees. “I just thought—”
“You thought what?” Nick’s dark eyes narrowed as he stared at Keith with contempt.
“I just thought that your wife might like a garden.”
Nick
leaned his face in close to Keith’s. A bead of sweat trickled down his neck. “What gave you that idea?”
“My mom,” he lowered his voice and kicked at the soil. “It’s what my mom did when she was sick.”
Nick stood quietly for a moment, shaking his head, then exhaling deeply. He wiped his forehead with his sleeve and reached out to touch Keith on the back. “Okay,” he said quietly, “sorry for the misunderstanding. Nice work.”
I helped Nick spread the tarp on the grass and slide the tent poles out of the nylon sack. He pushed the stakes into the grass with his heel and tied the tent strings in double knots. While we were working, I overheard Elizabeth ask Keith what he had planted. She leaned over the dirt to look as he pointed out marigolds, pansies, and forget-me-nots. He stabbed the empty paper packets of seeds with wooden sticks and stuck them in the ground. Elizabeth was cooing at Keith in such an obvious way, I nearly laughed out loud.
“Why were the police here?” Keith asked.
“No reason,” Elizabeth said, flashing him her straight, white teeth.
• • •
Jill Switt was the first to arrive for the summer slumber. I told her that I had been an eyewitness to the Brooklawn Pervert and she immediately fired questions.
“Was he cute? Did he have on shoes? Was he hairy?”
It wasn’t until Samantha arrived that I got the real questions.
“How big was it?” she asked, making circles with her thumb and pointer. “Scallion, carrot, or cuke?”
“None of the above.”
“Did he ejaculate?”
“How would I know?” I snapped back.
“You were the one watching,” she said.
I hadn’t really wanted to watch. My eyes just got fixed and I couldn’t seem to look away. I wished I had behaved like Elizabeth—cool and calm, her eyes locked above his neck, directing him toward the park.
“How did he do it?” Sam asked, prodding me one last time. I knew what she meant. She wanted details, the kind a policeman would already know. Fast or slow. Hard or soft. Open handed or closed fisted.
“With his thumb,” I said.
For the rest of the evening Samantha wiggled her thumb at me, a stout pink man bending at the waist, whenever she had something private to tell me.
Nick lit some candles, the kind that were melted deep into miniature pails to keep the bugs away, and set them around the picnic table. He said Keith Rogers could stay until dark and patted him on the shoulder once again as an apology for losing his temper. Nick promised not to disturb us as long as we promised not to make too much noise.
“Deal?” he asked.
“Deal,” we answered in unison.
We gathered around the picnic table to practice braiding. Elizabeth brought the yarn out to the table. Pom-poms were the rage. We hung them everywhere: at the ends of our shoe laces, on bookbags and key chains. We’d heard that the older girls were wearing them in their hair.
“Is that true?” Elizabeth asked Keith.
He put one foot on the picnic bench, considering, “Some girls,” he said, “I guess so.”
We waited for more. What kind of girls, we wanted to know, but didn’t ask. Keith sat down on the corner of the table closest to Elizabeth and watched with interest as she demonstrated how to make a pom-pom. She wrapped equal amounts of blue and gold yarn around the doughnut-shaped molds and tightened the single strand around the center, like a belt.
Samantha and Jill had the kind of hair that splayed across their backs and took hours to dry—thick and beautiful. Libbie Gorin’s hair was stringy from sucking on the ends. Her face was always framed by stiff spears. No one wanted to touch her hair. While Libbie and I braided, Samantha and Jill made pom-poms. Jill’s thick hair stayed in strong sections and fell easily into threes. As I braided, I watched over her shoulder. Her pom-poms were unruly, not at all compact or official looking. They seemed homemade. I found myself braiding tighter out of frustration. Altering her carelessness in my head. Every time Samantha moved to show us a finished pom-pom, Libbie would start over, her hands grasping desperately to keep the hair apart. She had trouble with division, running the red comb down Samantha’s scalp over and over and then putting it in her mouth.
Elizabeth groaned, then looked at Keith; the two of them smirked wickedly at one another, making faces at Libbie’s expense. Then, swiftly and without looking at her, Keith brought his hand down on Elizabeth’s bare knee. She looked startled at first and then a smile spread slowly over her face. She lifted up her head and grinned directly at me. I pretended not to notice and braided hand over hand, striving to finish Jill’s entire head before nightfall.
When it finally got dark, Elizabeth walked with Keith to the edge of the yard and then went into the house. The rest of us arranged our sleeping bags inside the tent, two facing two, the tops of the bags touching. I held up the box of tampons.
“Party favors,” Samantha said.
Long after it had gotten dark, when the sound of crickets grew loud, Mama came out to say good night and brought us some dessert. She stuck her head inside the tent flap and handed over a full tin of Rice Krispies marshmallow treats. Jill shined her flashlight directly in Mama’s face. I noticed that there were loose hairs on the shoulders of her sweatshirt, which made it look shaggy, more like an Angora sweater. I panicked thinking that the others might see them too and moved quickly toward the entrance of the tent to block their view of her. Mama pulled back and hit the top of her head against the zipper on her way out.
She brought her hand to her scalp, cursing quietly, then held her palm in front of her face, checking to see if she had been cut. I felt a strange mix of anger at how fragile she was and an insistent desire to protect her.
“Are you bleeding?” I asked.
Mama shook her head. “I’m fine, really. Have fun,” she said and turned toward the house.
When I climbed back in the tent, I noticed that everyone was staring behind me at the top of the tent flap. There, snagged in the zipper, was a full lock of Mama’s hair. I hesitated before touching it. Then, I pulled the wispy, blond clump out from the teeth of the zipper and set the hair loose into the evening air. Panic raced in my veins, thudding like a quick pulse at my temple.
Samantha broke the silence. “Let’s play ring and run,” she suggested.
We spread out across the neighborhood, ringing doorbells and lifting our nightshirts above our heads as we ran for cover. I was sure that this was dangerous behavior, but didn’t care. I ran fast, the cool slate path biting the bottom of my feet, the wet grass between my toes. I liked the feel of the warm wind under my armpits and just above the elastic band of my panties. I raced recklessly through Mrs. Teuffel’s backyard, stepping on her coiled hose, knocking over the watering can, and leaping over the split-rail fence. We stayed half-naked even after we’d gotten back to the sleeping bags—all out of breath and damp, while Jill led us in a game of Truth or Dare.
In the morning, we tied the pom-poms onto the ends of Jill’s and Samantha’s braids. They looked like parade ponies, the colorful balls bouncing around their shoulders. One by one their mothers came to pick them up. When everyone had left, I went back to the tent. It smelled of yarn and marshmallow, candle wax and damp grass. I felt lonely in that way that stays with you even in the middle of a group. I pressed hard against the lump in my throat to keep from crying. Just outside the tent flap, a few strands of Mama’s hair were scattered across the lawn like a spider web.
RELATIVE
The first time Mama wore her wig was when Uncle Rand came for a visit in August. She was in the third round of chemotherapy and had been covering her head, those hot summer days, with either a bandanna or a floppy-brimmed hat. I hadn’t actually seen her scalp, but there were loose hairs on all her clothes, even some on the furniture.
“It’s better this way,” she explained when she emerged from the bathroom wearing the wig, “I haven’t seen that baby brother of mine since …” she slipped a piece of the
wig behind her ear, “since he moved. I don’t want to shock him too much.”
She stood in front of her mirror, tucking and untucking her shirt, frustrated by the weight she was gaining. She’d explained this to me: hormones. “As if there isn’t enough going on in this body,” she said, snipping the elastic out of her skirt and fastening the waistband with big springy safety pins.
The wig looked fake, like the fur on stuffed animals. It seemed to stand away from her head in stiff layers of orange-blond hair. I tried not to look, but kept catching sight of it no matter where I focused. Surely everyone would know it wasn’t her real hair.
“Oh well,” she said, leaving the shirt untucked, “it’s out of my control.” Her face was puffy and she looked suddenly older, her whole body slouching and frumpy.
I hadn’t seen Uncle Rand in five years, not since the year I was eight and he came to live with us in Atlanta. He was wild then, staying out all night and sleeping all day. He had just returned from a car trip to California where he’d worked in restaurants and Mama encouraged him to go to cooking school. Instead, he took the first job he could find, working at a hotel in food preparation.
Mama was impatient with him, but I always loved him, even looked up to him. He helped us to disobey and laugh off rules, which made us rowdy. He taught us how to play cards and steam open mail. Once he helped us to hang the silverware from the light fixtures on fishing wire. When he talked to his friends, he used words like pecker and cooch. I remember there being something exciting about the way he spit out each word, like a dare. We couldn’t help but listen.
He took it personally when Mama told him he couldn’t stay, that she wasn’t running a hotel and that he needed to find a place of his own. He packed his bags in a hurry and took off without leaving an address or number. I cried for days imagining all the terrible things that might happen to him.
“He can handle the world,” Mama consoled me, “besides, he needs time on his own.”
Nick drove all the way to La Guardia to pick up Uncle Rand and by the time he returned, we were dressed and waiting in the foyer. Elizabeth wore her sundress. Mama encouraged me to wear a skirt.