“Wow, thanks,” I said. It was the first gift any boy had ever given me. It might as well have been a moped or a new stereo.
I carefully took it and laid it against my bike. Tim followed me. When I turned around, he gave me my first kiss. It was so quick and soft, I didn’t realize at first that what I’d spent over a year waiting for had just happened.
“Well, I gotta go,” Tim said. “My brother’s waiting for me in his car.” I looked over his shoulder and there was Ricky sitting in his Chevy Camaro. I waved and Ricky waved back.
“Okay, well, thanks again for the stop sign,” I said.
“Let’s meet at the Liberty sometime,” Tim said. “We could see a movie.”
“Okay,” I said, and he left, climbing into the Camaro. We watched them wind their way out of the cemetery.
“He kissed you. I can’t believe it. He really kissed you.” Julie was jumping up and down in the grass. I started laughing and jumping with her.
“He asked me to the movies,” I cheered.
I wondered if Sarah Keeler was watching; her grave was nearby. She would never have a first kiss or a stop sign. Now that I had both, I felt prettier and much older.
That fall JoAnn was leaving for college—“77” had finally come.
Everyone was moving away. Tim’s family was moving to the Ozarks, where his father, a Baptist minister, had been transferred. We never made it to the Liberty, but we did meet at the Elks Club, where we danced to “Don’t Give Up on Us” by David Soul. Wendy Johnson watched us over the shoulder of her date, Mike Harris, and cried. When I went to the restroom, she followed.
“You two are breaking my heart,” she said. “It’s such a love story.”
I liked the idea of having a boyfriend, but Tim’s leaving was more of a fact than a lost romance. Wendy’s eyes were bloodshot and wet.
“I’m sure we’ll see each other again,” I said, offering her my lip gloss.
She waved it away. “Thanks, but I just got a new one from Lazarus.” She held up a shiny gold cylinder, pulled off the lid, and twisted up bright pink lipstick. She bent toward the mirror, pursed her lips, and carefully followed the lines of her mouth. (I still wasn’t allowed to wear lipstick with color.) When she finished, she walked over to the stall, grabbed a small square of toilet paper, and pressed it to her lips just like Mom did.
“That looks great,” I told her.
She turned and grabbed my shoulders. “There’ll be other boys, Monica. It doesn’t feel that way now, but there will be.”
“I know,” I said.
Tim gave me a gold ID bracelet with his name on it, and I never saw him again.
Compared to Tim, JoAnn would be close by, two hours away at Ohio State University in Columbus. I was sure my chances of ever being cool were going with both of them; I now had no boyfriend and no role model.
I sat on the side steps watching JoAnn pack for college. She was stuffing Mom’s Pontiac with Carole King and Seals & Crofts albums, her acoustic guitar, her chrome desk lamp, and a stereo.
The night after she moved out, I walked across the hall and gingerly pushed open her door. I flipped on the light and sat on her bed—seriously trespassing. I looked at all those BJKs painted on her walls and imagined what it would be like to be a huge success. To have everyone know who you were. To do something really important.
I walked over to the window and looked out. To my surprise, I could see right down into the Whitmores’ bathroom. Had JoAnn ever seen them peeing or shaving?
There was a thick white rope hanging outside JoAnn’s window. In the winter she hung a six-pack of Mountain Dew from it so she could keep them cold without going downstairs to the refrigerator. She was the only person I knew who drank Mountain Dew.
I saw her tennis racket lying against the side of her desk. She must have forgotten it, which meant Mom would be driving it up there sometime within the next week. I picked it up and swung it around a couple of times. She would have killed me if she’d known I touched it. It wasn’t fun sneaking into her room without her living there—not that I ever snuck in when she was living at home.
Becky was downstairs playing the piano. I could hear her starting and stopping and then starting again as she practiced Für Elise for the piano lessons we both took on Saturday mornings. I never practiced.
I wandered down the hallway into her room. While JoAnn made me feel challenged and excited, with Becky I always felt comforted. It might have been our closeness in age—the fact that she was just a few steps ahead of me—but Becky felt like an extension of me.
For as long as I could remember, we had shared things (Barbies, bicycles, sandwiches), but a few years before, when Becky hit junior high, I was still in fifth grade, and I didn’t understand that junior high girls want their own stuff. That was when all hell broke loose between us. She was in the height of puberty, and I was assuming things between us were the same as always. Then we were still sharing the same room, so borrowing from her was easy.
“I’m gonna kill her!” she yelled at Mom.
“Monica Elizabeth!” Mom hollered.
“What’s wrong?” I asked, walking into the kitchen.
“Leave Becky’s clothes alone,” Mom said. “She doesn’t want you wearing her blue sweater.”
“What’s the big deal?” I asked, shrugging.
Becky went crazy, flinging her arms all around. “The big deal is that you have your own clothes, and yet you always wear mine. LEAVE MY STUFF ALONE!” She was in tears now. “Can’t I get any privacy around here?”
“What the hell is wrong with you?” I asked, sending Becky barreling toward me. I raced through the hall, hurried into the bathroom, and locked the door behind me. She pounded on it.
“Quit taking my things,” she screamed.
“Quit taking mine,” I yelled through the door.
“There’s nothing in your crappy closet I want.” I heard her stomp away.
Now that I was thirteen and in junior high myself, I didn’t want privacy. I wanted to hang out with someone. I sat upstairs on Becky’s bed and listened to her practicing the piano.
Mom was gone more and more. She was taking a full class load, and had met other students who were her age, many of them divorced. These women became good friends, giving Mom hope that she could make it out of her marriage.
I was glad Mom was happier, but I was seeing less of her.
Sometimes after my basketball or volleyball practice, I’d be waiting for Mom to pick me up an hour or more after everyone else had left. When she’d finally pull up, she couldn’t understand why I was so mad. She was distracted by Wright State and having trouble adjusting from life as a student to life as a mom.
“I have a crisis,” I told her when she finally arrived after practice one day. Since junior high had begun, I was constantly having a crisis, so she wasn’t alarmed.
“What is it?” she asked.
“There’s something wrong with Miss Mattingly,” I said, throwing my red duffel bag over the backseat and climbing into the front. Miss Mattingly was skinny, tall, and wore pleated khaki skorts. She taught PE.
“Is she sick?” Mom asked.
“She’s perverted,” I told Mom. “So I guess I’d call that sick.”
“JoAnn and Becky love her,” Mom said.
“What? JoAnn doesn’t love her.” I snapped my seat belt into the buckle. “When JoAnn’s grades slipped, Miss Mattingly forced her to sit in front of the whole study hall at a special table where ‘dumb people’ sit, so she could watch her and make sure she was studying. But it was really about humiliating her.” I was getting worked up.
“But your grades are good, aren’t they?”
“It’s not about grades.” I rolled my eyes. “Just let me tell you and quit interrupting.”
I explained to Mom that every day in gym, after we’d changed into one-piece cotton uniforms, Miss Mattingly lined all the girls along the wall and walked back and forth with her clipboard, calling out names for roll
call. If you were on your period, you had to say “M” in a loud, clear voice. This was mortifying. No one wanted to announce they were on their period. I wanted to die on the spot every time this happened to me. If you said “M,” Miss Mattingly marked a big red M by your name and you weren’t expected to shower. But if you didn’t have an M by your name, you had to take a shower. Miss Mattingly was obsessed with the crime of pubescent girls’ not showering.
The perverted part took place in the shower room. Miss Mattingly sat on a low wooden chair near the showers with her clipboard and a stack of white terry cloth towels. After you showered, you had to walk up to her completely naked, say your towel number, and wait while she found your name and put a checkmark by it. Finally, she’d hand you a towel to cover yourself. Until the towel went around you, Miss Mattingly was looking you up and down. All of us were disgusted.
I was embarrassed enough by my body, without Miss Mattingly (who lived with Miss Olson) staring at me naked and keeping a record of my periods. What the hell?
Mom called Mr. Conroy, the junior high principal, who told her it was his first complaint in Miss Mattingly’s tenure. Where was everyone?
My freshman year in high school, I joined the speech team as another way to work on my acting. Mr. Selman was a new teacher and speech coach, but I didn’t know him very well. In October he came over to Julie’s house for dinner. He was a bachelor and had just moved to town. Dave and Joan were always welcoming new members of the community.
Mr. Selman was heavyset and flat-footed with wiry black hair and thick chapped lips. When he laughed, it sounded like a foghorn going off, which made everybody laugh.
I sat down at the Kilners’ kitchen table across from Mr. Selman. Dave and Mr. Selman were laughing and joking like old friends.
Selman looked over at Julie and said, “I think I saw you sitting on the Do Not Enter sign after school last week.”
Julie threw a strawberry at him and his right eyeball fell into his lap. He looked down, picked up the glass eye, casually cleaned it with his napkin, and stuck it back in. I must have been gaping in horror.
“Monica, I know this looks tragic, but really, must you stare?” he said.
“I’m sorry, Mr. Selman,” I said, picking up my fork.
He did the foghorn laugh. “It’s okay. Seeing someone’s eyeball fall out is a good reason to stare. Joan, could you please pass me the green beans?”
Julie kicked me under the table and I kicked her back. I had never met anyone like Selman, and not just because of his glass eye. He was really fun, but he looked at me in an intense way, like he couldn’t wait to hear what I had to say. No adult had ever looked at me like that.
Freshman year, I had my first car date. It was with Keith Phillips, whom I met at a speech competition. I was fourteen and he was seventeen. We became inseparable from October through the spring and I was in love for the first time.
Keith and I went to high school ball games and to see The Goodbye Girl. We kissed and ate hamburgers at Bob’s Burgers.
He invited me to his senior prom, picking me up in his mom’s blue Oldsmobile, wearing a light blue tux with a ruffled blue shirt. He liked blue.
I wore a long clinging pink gown, a half bra stuffed with a combination of rolled-up white kneesocks and bunched-up Kleenex, and Mom’s uncomfortable white heels that made me taller than Keith. My bra kept slipping down until my kneesock-Kleenex boobs were jutting out of my stomach. I had to keep tugging it back into place as we danced to “Your Smiling Face” by James Taylor and “Three Times a Lady” by The Commodores. I sat right next to him in his mom’s blue car as we drove home.
When we walked into the house, Mom and Dad were already asleep. Keith suggested we go up to my room. I wasn’t allowed to have boys upstairs, but I didn’t want to be a naïve freshman, so I said yes.
I was worried about the socks and Kleenex in my bra as we climbed the stairs. What if he tried to get to second base?
When we got to my room, Keith sat down on my bed and, instead of kissing me, told me his parents were divorcing. I wasn’t surprised. I’d never even seen his dad speak to his mom. Instead he sat in his chair and grunted whenever she asked him a question.
“There’s more,” Keith told me. But then he began stuttering and looking at the floor.
He patted the space next to him on my bed. I kicked off Mom’s uncomfortable shoes and sat down.
I was positive he was going to say he loved me, but instead he mumbled something like, “Mmm’s a homosexual.”
I couldn’t understand him. “What?” I asked.
“Mom’s a homosexual,” he said quietly.
I couldn’t believe it. Shirley? She had just cooked us steaks before the prom. I tried not to judge, since Keith was already upset. But that was probably causing the divorce.
“Keith, I’m sorry,” I said. “I wish there was something I could do.”
“You’re taking this well,” he said.
“I’m not going to judge it,” I said, and he hugged me tight.
“I haven’t seen men since we started dating,” he said. “I would never have done that.”
I shoved him away from me. “What?”
“I haven’t seen men since we started dating,” he repeated.
“You’re a homosexual?” I asked.
“I told you I’m homosexual.”
“I thought you said ‘Mom’s a homosexual.’” We were both confused. “Why were we talking about your parents divorcing?” I asked.
“Because I don’t want that to happen to us,” he said.
I stood up, not caring that, once again, my fake boobs were protruding from my stomach. If I’d been wearing a perfectly fitted Christian Dior gown with a pair of my own fabulous breasts perched high on my chest, I’d still have felt ridiculous. Everything was ruined. Couldn’t he be in love with another girl? Couldn’t he just think I was ugly or boring or something? Did he have to be gay? My very first boyfriend?
“I’m relieved I told you.” He tried to smile.
“Well, thanks for taking me to the prom,” I said, heading to the door.
“Are you okay?” he asked.
“Sure,” I said, but I wasn’t. I walked downstairs in my bare feet, and Keith followed.
A ticker tape of the previous six months scrolled through my brain: Keith at his classical organ concert, Keith avoiding anything but kissing, Keith getting accepted to Westchester Choir College. I wondered how many people had already figured it out, which made me feel even more ridiculous.
After he pulled out of the driveway, I sat down on the steps of the front porch in my prom dress and cried, pulling kneesocks and wadded-up Kleenex out of my bra. JoAnn had picked gorgeous, sweet Bill Lawrence, and I’d picked a homosexual.
Something was definitely wrong with me.
I stood up, wiped my nose on the wadded-up Kleenex, and headed back inside.
Chapter Thirteen
One morning the summer before my sophomore year, Mom woke Becky and me.
“Get dressed.”
“What’s going on?” Becky asked.
“We’re taking a trip,” she said.
“Where?” I asked, coming out into the hallway.
“Florida. We’re getting out of here for a few days.”
“It’s dark out,” Becky noticed.
“We’re getting an early start.”
Becky and I sleepily packed the suitcases Mom had left open on the floor of our rooms before she’d headed downstairs.
Mom was already showered with lipstick on, and her suitcase was packed and in the trunk of the Pontiac.
“Are we leaving home?” I asked, panicked. “Is this it?”
“We’re not moving out,” she said. “Your dad hasn’t been home for three nights in a row. I don’t know where he is or who he’s with, so we’re going to have a nice vacation at his expense.” She waved Dad’s MasterCard triumphantly.
“Right now?” I asked.
“Before he gets back
,” she confirmed.
“How’d you get the card?” I asked.
“Never mind.” She slid it back into her purse.
I dragged my suitcase to the car. Dad was going to shit his pants when he got home.
We drove all day not knowing what to think but happy to have Mom’s full attention. Mom was in a great mood. She had a jazz station on the radio, the windows down, and we were talking.
“Do you think you’ll divorce Dad?” I asked from the backseat. It was Becky’s turn to sit up front.
“Probably,” she said.
“When?” I was fourteen years old. I still had a lot of time left at home. I couldn’t imagine what we’d do for money if Dad left.
“When he least expects it,” she said. I looked out my window at the mountains of southern Kentucky and saw a Stuckey’s restaurant whip by.
“Won’t he be mad when he sees we left?” I asked.
“I don’t care. He left and didn’t tell anyone.”
“He’s gonna be furious,” I said, shaking my head.
“Let’s just have a good time,” she said. “We’ll have a real vacation for once.”
When we got to Florida, we stayed at Mammaw and Papaw’s trailer outside of Clearwater.
“How did you get keys to the trailer?” Becky asked.
“I called and asked for them,” she said.
I was glad to be at Mammaw’s. That meant someone knew where we were.
The next morning we went to Walt Disney World and Mom told us to buy whatever we wanted, as she ran up Dad’s credit card. I’d never seen anything more sparkling and happy than the Magic Kingdom. Every cliché and commercial I’d ever seen or heard about it was true. I walked around all day with a dopey grin on my face. After the eleven p.m. fireworks Mom bought me a fluffy pink elephant that was so enormous, I could barely carry it to the car. I slept in Mammaw’s trailer with my arms around that elephant, happy and safe.
Despite the dread of Dad’s inevitable wrath, I was still able to enjoy Mom’s newfound sense of fun. She didn’t make us pick up our clothes or shower every day. A couple of evenings she actually left dirty dishes in the sink and washed them the next morning—not asking us to help. Mom hadn’t worn lipstick or curled her hair since we passed the Georgia state line.
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