What Girls Learn

by Karin Cook

  All the activity left me feeling empty, with a deep longing for when I was little and didn’t have so many things to make sense of. For months, it had seemed Mama was hardly there to guide me, barely even recognizable as herself. I let myself think this and then took it back, feeling as guilty as the time in Atlanta, when I learned that sidewalk warning: step on a crack you break your mother’s back. For weeks I walked over the same stretch of sidewalk in front of our house, counting my steps to avoid that groove, taking back every time I’d stepped on the line. I was six and already felt the crush of responsibility.

  Elizabeth asked me and Samantha to keep an eye out for Keith Rogers, but when finally I saw him, arriving off his boat with a couple of older girls, I hesitated before saying anything. I could tell by Elizabeth’s face that she had seen him too. At first, she didn’t approach him. She sat quietly next to me, her spine stubborn, posture that demonstrated confidence and at the same time revealed that she was entirely prepared to be deceived. I thought of lions with their look of power and self-preservation.

  After Keith had poured himself a beer and let his eye wander over the crowd, Elizabeth sprang up and made her way over to him, disappearing into the fold of his arm. Samantha and I watched them together, the easy molding of their bodies, one against the other.

  “Has she done it?” Samantha asked, saying aloud the thing we’d both been thinking.

  “No,” I answered, “I don’t think so.”

  Samantha dug her feet deep in the sand, burying and lifting, letting the grains slip between her toes. “I …” she started, refusing to look at me. She paused, reached down over her legs and picked up a handful of sand. After a moment, she spoke quietly. “I did it.” She rested her face on her knees. “Only once though.”

  Was she lying? I wondered. I no longer knew her the way I once had. There were things that had happened to her these last months I had missed, important things I hadn’t been there for, even without really being gone. I felt left out, as if I’d moved away again and had come back just for a visit. I wasn’t sure I had a right to ask for more information. If pressed, Samantha’s words might evaporate. Still, I needed to know one thing. Not so much what as who. At the same time, I was afraid to find out. It was crazy, I knew, thinking that it might be Jamie. After all, they barely knew each other. But I needed to be sure. I couldn’t have either of them the way I needed them if they had each other.

  “Who was it?” I asked after a moment.

  She let the silence hang between us as the tall grasses bowed over in the breeze. In the distance, the shore lights blurred and winked.

  “Promise you won’t tell anyone?”

  She waited for my promise and then hinted, blushing and stammering until finally she pushed out the initials L.E.

  “Lance Engler?”

  She nodded. My relief left me room to wonder more about what she’d done. I glanced at her body out of the corner of my eye, checking to see if I could tell the difference.

  “Did it hurt?” I asked.

  “Not really,” she said, “but I probably won’t do it again for a while.” She lifted her feet out of the sand, then brushed them off. “Promise you won’t tell anyone.”

  “Who would I tell?”

  “I don’t know,” she said, “your uncle?”

  “I don’t talk to him like that,” I said. “Not anymore.”

  “That’s good.”

  “Why?”

  “No offense, Tilden,” she said, “but there’s something off about him.”

  Things got quiet between us. Samantha had said the thing I’d often felt, but couldn’t say out loud. If she had asked, if anyone had asked, I might have told them the truth. But no one ever asked. Somehow that secret always circled back around to leave me with the burden of carrying it. I pulled my shirt over my bent legs and waited. It was only a matter of time; Samantha was great at changing the subject.

  “I could show you what it was like,” she said, holding up her bottle of beer in a toasting motion.

  Samantha led me behind a dune and spread out her sweatshirt on the sand. She told me to do exactly as she did, but not to watch too closely. She poured out almost all of her beer, making a hole in the sand beside her. I followed her, wrapping my shirt around the top of a full bottle and releasing the cap. I poured the beer out beyond my feet.

  “Leave a little,” she said, touching my wrist, “it makes it easier.”

  Samantha blew on the neck of the bottle to get the sand off and then rubbed the glass back and forth between her hands. She placed the opening of the bottle near her crotch and pulled her shorts to the side. “Push it in at the same time as me,” she said, “like a tampon.”

  I wiped my bottle on the edge of my shorts and attempted to push the grooves of the top inside me. I didn’t want Samantha to know, but I had never been able to get anything inside. The beer ran down the neck and spilled against my flesh. Between the pinch of pain and the cool, sticky foam, I wondered if this was how it might feel to have my period. I pretended to push the glass in deep, when really I had not gotten further than the lip of the bottle. When I was sure that Samantha wasn’t looking, I stopped trying and let the bottle rest between my legs.

  Samantha lay back, both hands pushing at the base, her face in a tight grimace. “Don’t watch,” she reprimanded, giving it one last push. She sat up, her leg accidentally brushing against mine. I pulled the sleeve of her sweatshirt across my lap and wiped one thigh.

  “That’s what it’s like,” she said, “only warmer … and softer.” She threw her bottle high in the air. It landed in the distance with a thud. I threw mine too. Samantha giggled, her voice sweet and high, reminding me of how it had been before there were boys. “See?” she said. “It’s not that great.”

  I pressed my fist into my crotch and brought my hand up to my nose. I smelled of beer, salt, and wet sand. Unfamiliar. “What time is it?” I asked, suddenly anxious.

  “You have a half hour,” Samantha said. “It’s only midnight. Try to have some fun.”

  She pulled out a film canister filled with pot and wiggled in close to help block the wind. Setting up shop on her lap, she began to roll, slipping a thin square of white paper into a dollar bill and twisting tightly. I got caught up in the watching, not focusing on the specifics, but studying her, the precision of her long fingers, wondering when it was she learned to do all these things. She smoked most of the joint herself, silently, and then handed it to me, the ash flaking on my shin.

  As I raised the moist paper to my mouth, I could feel a ring of warmth. I pinched my lips tight around it and closed my eyes. Sealed off like that, I felt alone. I pulled the warmth through me and imagined myself taken away, out of my body. Then, I began coughing, hacking and wheezing until I could barely breathe. When finally I opened my watering eyes, Jamie Sanders was standing in front of me, a strange look on his face. I had lost track of time. There was nothing left to exhale. Samantha was already shaking out her sweatshirt and feeling around for her shoes.

  Jamie loomed over me, straight as a statue.

  “What happened?” I asked.

  “Get your stuff,” he said, holding one hand out to me, “I have to take you home.”

  COOPERATION

  I didn’t remember getting from the dunes to the boat. I was preoccupied and guilty. On another day, I might have demanded an immediate explanation, but I was not used to being bad and getting caught. It left me feeling hesitant.

  “Where’s Elizabeth?” I asked Jamie once we were on the boat.

  “She should be home by now.”

  “Am I in trouble?”

  “No,” he said. “Not really.”

  “What then?”

  He paused, perhaps weighing his instinct against his orders. “It’s your mom.”

  My shoulders were hunched up in anticipation—my whole body, a question. I looked up at him, my mouth open.

  “It’s okay,” he said. “Nick just wants you home.”

 
; He didn’t say anything more. I could feel his legs at my back as he stood behind me. The night air was damp and cold; it made my body ache.

  Uncle Rand met me at the door. He was pale and frantic looking. He started from the beginning. He had made some orange juice at nine o’clock, like every night, he squeezed it in the juicer and put one glass in the fridge for Mama to have with breakfast. Usually she stirred when he brought it to her. Sometimes they even talked a bit late at night. Mama had always been a light sleeper. “But she didn’t move,” he said. “Even when I tried to wake her, she didn’t move.”

  Uncle Rand was out of control, words gushing out of him. I could scarcely hear what he was saying. I kept waiting for some comment about the island. About being late and smelling like beer. But nothing came. Something more important was happening, something much worse. Usually he hid things, made everything seem better than it was, but now he was pacing and telling me everything with his hands gesturing wildly.

  “What happened?” I screamed. “Just tell me. Where is she?”

  “It’s okay, sweetie,” Nick said, stepping into the foyer and pulling me toward him. His shirt was wet with sweat. “She refused to go to the hospital, so the doctor came here. She’s resting now.”

  It was Nick who had thought to call Jamie when it happened. He knew that Jamie could be trusted to go to the meeting place and bring us back. He was at the dock at one o’clock to meet Elizabeth when she stepped off Keith Rogers’ boat. Jamie thought that Elizabeth should wait so that we could both go home together, but she wouldn’t have it. The minute she heard that there was the slightest thing wrong, she panicked. Keith drove Elizabeth straight home and let Jamie take the boat back for me.

  “Do you want to see her?” Nick asked at last.

  I waited outside the bedroom door where I heard him whisper to Elizabeth, asking her to step back a bit from the bed. Through the crack, I caught sight of a pale, almost bald, figure. Mama, diminished. Her skin practically gray. I watched as Nick put her wig in place. It seemed as if I had been gone for months. He signaled for me to come into the room. At the edge of the bed, I leaned my full weight on Elizabeth.

  “Stand up,” she said, shedding me, her face in a determined grimace, blotchy from tears. “Just talk to her. I’ve been letting her suck on a washcloth when she’s thirsty.”

  She couldn’t have gotten there more than a half hour before me. How did she get to be such an expert?

  “I think you girls should get some rest,” Nick said.

  “I want to stay,” Elizabeth countered.

  “Okay, okay,” he said, “for a little while longer.” He looked nervous and seemed unsure of what to do.

  Elizabeth and I each took a side whispering, “Mama, Mama, you’re going to be just fine,” stroking her fingers and her face. She was flushed hot and suddenly cold. After Nick left the room, I asked to know what happened.

  “I think it was pills,” Elizabeth whispered, shrugging slightly, “too many sleeping pills.”

  I swung around to find Uncle Rand. “Shouldn’t she be in the hospital?”

  “She didn’t want to,” he said. “She asked us not to take her there.” He paced in and out of the room, barely slowing down for the conversation.

  “But, why?”

  “There’s nothing they can do, Tilden. Besides, she’s more comfortable at home.”

  I looked at her limp, sleeping body. She seemed small, even under the covers. Not comfortable at all. Bones jutting sharply through her clothes. All clavicle and sinewy tissue. When had she gotten so thin?

  I decided to read to her, the way she had when I was seven and had the chicken pox, her voice drifting over me creating comfort and calm. I raced back to my room and found the Walt Whitman book she’d bought for me when she learned we were moving near his birthplace. Sitting on the radiator at the edge of her bed, I read sections of Leaves of Grass aloud, pausing when I got to the lines that Mama had especially liked. I trained my eye to glance quickly over the page, searching for any mention of death, anything dark, skipping the lines about uncut hair of graves. Elizabeth, with her eyes round and unsure, whispered that perhaps I should read stories instead. Something from a children’s book even. I kept reading to Mama as if she could hear me, when really I wasn’t entirely sure.

  This grass is very dark to be from the white heads of old mothers,

  Darker than the colorless beards of old men,

  Dark to come from under the faint red roofs of mouths.

  By dawn, Mama had come to. I ran to her room, naively expecting to see her rejuvenated. She seemed groggy and confused, whispering to Uncle Rand about not calculating her pills appropriately.

  “Fifty-four in a bottle,” I heard her say. “That should have been enough.”

  She abruptly stopped speaking when she noticed me standing there. But it was too late. I went on a search of her cabinets and trash pails, looking in her drawers and medicine chest. Then I found the note tucked under the phone on Nick’s side of the bed.

  Do not take me to the hospital. I love you my lovelies—always. At the bottom was her signature and the date.

  Anger flashed through me. Why hadn’t Nick done something? Had he and Uncle Rand been a part of this? I tried to get them to talk to me. About Mama. About the pills. Anything. But they acted busy, claiming Mama had made a mistake, that she hadn’t meant to take quite so many.

  “I’m sorry, honey” Mama said in tears, “I don’t want you to see me so sick. I can’t live … like this.”

  Her voice, soft and weak, washed over me. I both knew and didn’t know what she was saying. For the first time ever, I didn’t want the truth.

  The house was already hot, the air all milky and thick. I closed myself in my room. I could hear Elizabeth, at the other end of the hall, a low moan interrupted by gasps. Nick was attempting to comfort her. “Now, now,” he said. “I’m right here.” I turned on my record player and balanced the needle over the Eagles’ album. Part of me wanted to be able to hear Elizabeth, to let her do the crying for both of us. There never seemed to be enough room for both our emotions at once. But, another part of me wanted to disappear. I crawled under my covers and sang “Take It Easy” softly into my pillow.

  Later that same morning, Uncle Rand brought me up some breakfast. The smell of warm bread made me feel sick. I didn’t even lift my head. He left the plate on my desk and ran his hand over my back.

  “Try and eat something, Tilden, okay?”

  When Elizabeth came in, I slid over without saying a word and made room for her in the bed.

  “One of the Mosquitoes is coming to check on Mama today,” she said, her breath moist on my ear.

  “Don’t call them that,” I barked.

  “Why not?” she asked. “That’s what Mama calls them.”

  “Just don’t,” I said. “I hate those stupid doctors.”

  Elizabeth began whimpering, crying softly into my shoulder. I felt bad for being so mean. I slid my hand next to hers under the covers and locked our pinkies together.

  When Dr. Lichner arrived, Nick came to talk to us. He sat down on the bed for a moment and rubbed his eyes hard with the heels of his palms. He had been crying too, the rims of his eyelids were red and swollen. To see him so shaken terrified me. Nothing felt secure.

  “Girls?” he started, “your mama thought it might be better for you to stay up here until after Dr. Lichner leaves. Okay?”

  “Why?” Elizabeth asked.

  “Because she needs to speak with him privately. It should only be for a little while. And then you can come down and see her.” He waited for us to nod in agreement and then stood to leave. “I’ll be back up to check on you both in a bit.”

  I didn’t understand how he got to be the go-between, to make all the decisions. I wondered if Mama even wanted it that way.

  “Yes, sir,” I said under my breath.

  Elizabeth sat up quickly. “He’s just doing what Mama asked.”

  I rolled my eyes.
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  “You should give him a chance.”

  “Why?”

  “He loves Mama as much as we do.”

  “He hasn’t even known her that long.”

  “You shouldn’t talk that way,” Elizabeth said, “he’s practically our father.”

  “He’s not my father.” I turned my back to her and silently raged, trying to picture a time before Mama got sick, when it was just the three of us and every day began and ended in one of Mama’s giant hugs.

  I heard the shuffling of footsteps in the kitchen below and felt nervous that I might be missing something important. Elizabeth and I exchanged a look and without having to say anything out loud we knew what to do. Our shoulders pressed together, we silently made our way down the stairwell to listen from the pantry.

  If I had been allowed to see Dr. Lichner in person, I would have brought my notebook and asked how and why and when—all the “w” questions that I’d been taught would provide the most information. Nobody had ever been able to tell me why Mama had cancer or even how long she had had it. I could hear Uncle Rand’s voice, low and questioning. He had stopped the doctor in the hall and was pressing him for more facts. There were things even he didn’t know.

  “There are four stages in which to place cancer patients receiving chemotherapy,” Dr. Lichner was saying, “Frances is in the fourth … the smallest category of those patients who do not respond.”

  But Mama had responded, I thought—the vomiting, the hair loss—a “mood elevator” she called herself that year.

  “I thought it was over with the surgery,” Elizabeth whispered.

  I shushed her and slid down a few steps closer to the edge of the wall.