I wished I could be like that: looking for ways to make my father feel better. It seemed like a more mature attitude than the way I felt. The problem, of course, was my particular father, but it was easy to forget all that and be mad at myself for not being a nicer person. I’d long since stopped asking my father musical questions. I didn’t let on that I loved a lot of the same records that he did. I never told him I admired his ability to add up numbers practically as fast as the adding machine could. These small things I did just to be mean— they were my form of what everyone calls “nonviolent resistance.” Nonviolent doesn’t necessarily mean nice.
My father wasn’t as angry now that he was out of the house. Come to think of it, he hadn’t thrown any violent shit fits lately. But he was always saying nasty things to me. Sometimes he called me judgmental, and it was all I could do not to say, Well, duh now, why shouldn’t I judge you for your pathetic lack of self-control? Sometimes he said I was a provocateur, and I would roll my eyes right in front of him, disgusted by how he threw the word around as if he knew French. If he was being a shithead, I was going to let him know it, unlike Hildy. And if he hit me—well, too goddamned bad. I had my own personal Vietnam War to protest.
Not that I could stand my mother. These days I talked to her as little as I could. I didn’t bug her about my shrug. I didn’t tell her Helvetica was pregnant. I hadn’t even told her I’d gotten my first period. When Hildy had started menstruating, my mother had explained that in traditional Jewish families, there was a very sick custom of slapping a girl across the face when she got her first period. I guess my mother was expecting credit for only slapping Hildy across the face for reasons other than menstruation.
Now that I’d started, I couldn’t stand the thought of my mother talking about how natural it was, nothing to be ashamed of, blah blah blah. If it was so goddamned natural, how come she wouldn’t buy Kotex pads for me and Hildy? I guess she thought we were supposed to use toilet paper to catch the flow—as if there were plenty of extra toilet paper lying around. Luckily, all Hildy had to do was tell my father she needed money “to go to Rexall,” and he’d hand her a five from the cash register. Then she’d sneak the Kotex or the toilet paper into the house for both of us.
One day, Stephanie called me before school to tell me Helvetica had been licking her belly a lot that morning, which meant we had to get over to her house right after school. I had a sore throat and felt a cold coming on, but didn’t feel I could miss school because I had a math test, and besides, my mother had figured out that I sometimes skipped wearing cotton undershirts. If I told her I didn’t feel well enough to go to school, she’d start bitching about how my not “layering” was the reason—that is, it was my own goddamned fault I’d gotten sick.
My mother wasn’t in bed all the time anymore. In fact, she’d started cooking again, so now she was always on the warpath about our not being appreciative enough. We tried to explain that we wanted things like spaghetti and meat sauce for dinner, not for breakfast, even though the truth was that morning or night, there was something about my mother’s cooking that always seemed sour or smelly or the wrong temperature or an icky texture, whether I was hungry or not. But my mother insisted that morning was the best time for a big meal, that she’d seen a program about this on KQED. She said she could tell by our attitude that Jules was “fomenting aggression” against her, besides being unreliable about child support. Really, she said, she should just farm us all out and move back to New York.
It was easier to try to gag down the food than to deal with her threats, which weren’t serious anyway.
When Stephanie and I got to her house after school, The White Album was blaring from Brett’s room. I wasn’t crazy about the album, mainly because of “Martha My Dear.” Brett had been excited to introduce me to the song, and it was flattering that he was excited about it. But at school, Logan Starch must have caught me looking happy about the attention I was getting. “It’s about a dog, stupid,” he said, before shrugging a few times with a sneer on his face. I quickly became sick of kids at school calling me “Martha My Dear,” or singing it in front of me as if they were being so goddamn original.
Sylvia told us there were five kittens, born a few hours earlier. “Damn it!” Stephanie said, wishing she’d stayed home so she could’ve seen the births. We ran up the stairs and went straight to Stephanie’s closet, Stephanie first. I crouched in the doorway next to her, trying not to be too obvious about glancing at Brett’s door. “Hi there, little sweeties!” Stephanie exclaimed to the adorable creatures. The kittens’ eyes were all closed, their mews tiny and high-pitched. They moved their heads upward over and over, as if sniffing in the air for the definitive answer to some eternal kitty question.
“They’re so cute!” I couldn’t wait to have a closer look.
Stephanie scooped two of the kittens up to move them closer to Helvetica’s nipples. She stroked Helvetica’s head over and over and told her what a good girl she was.
“Can I hold one?” I reached over.
“Sure. Just, not by the scruff of the neck. And not too much handling, my dad says. I mean, it’s a balance. If you don’t handle them at all, they won’t connect with humans later.”
“Oh.” But what was too much and what was too little? I wiped my nose on my sleeve so I wouldn’t get snot on my fingers.
“I gotta get my dad over here!” Stephanie climbed over me and went into the hallway. “Mom?” she shouted down the stairs. “Can I talk to you?” Thanks to the loud music, Sylvia couldn’t hear, so Stephanie tromped down the stairs, leaving me alone with the kittens.
“C’m’ere, sweetie,” I said to one of them. It was stripey grey like Helvetica, the tiniest one of all of them, and had detached from Helvetica’s nipple. The pink nose and paws reminded me of a little pig, or maybe a guinea pig, and it looked lost. I was guiding the kitten back to the nipple just as I heard the faint scrape of Brett’s bedroom door against the carpet.
“Cute, huh?” he said, from Stephanie’s doorway.
Shrug. “They’re so tiny!” I gushed.
“So Martha, what key are they mewing in?”
“Um—” I listened.
“I’m just kidding, man!” Brett said. “You take everything so seriously!”
“Oh.” I sniffled.
“You allergic?”
“I don’t think so.” Helvetica had never bothered me before. “Just maybe getting a cold, I guess.”
“Well, you better not touch them, then,” Brett said. “You might be contagious.”
“Oh! But Stephanie said—” I jumped up and tried to keep my face from burning. Shrug.
“She doesn’t know everything, ov-viously.”
I looked down at the floor. What if I’d hurt that one kitten?
Stephanie came stomping back up the stairs. “Damn it!” she complained, turning to Brett. “Mom won’t let me invite Dad over to see the kittens.”
“That’s not cool, man,” Brett sympathized. “Want me to work on her?”
Stephanie nodded. Brett might have a better chance with Sylvia than Stephanie did.
12
the note
When I got home from Stephanie’s, my mother was making a salad: a big bowl of butter lettuce (by the way, could someone explain to me the point of lettuce that isn’t crunchy?), with Kraft Parmesan cheese, alfalfa sprouts, and raw sunflower seeds on top for the protein. That, with Wishbone Italian salad dressing, was dinner. I didn’t care that it was a crappy dinner, because by now my throat was really sore, and I was sniffling and sneezing, so I couldn’t hide my cold from my mother. I rolled my eyes at Drew while she bitched at me about my having gotten myself sick.
I wished Hildy were around, but she had a Student Council meeting. She was doing everything she could to avoid spending time at home. If she didn’t have an after-school activity, she’d go to Smoke and Records and see what my father needed: a run to the bank for rolls of dimes or quarters; help re-stocking things; straighten
ing out the candy bars, which were always getting messy. My father would give Hildy money for a bite on Telegraph, or at one of the food stands that had started appearing just east of Holy Hubert’s steps across the street.
“That goes for you, too, Drew,” my mother was saying. “You dress poorly, your body is more susceptible to germs. Layering is the answer.”
Hildy was at the front door. “I’m home!” she announced, something she never did. It turned out Greg Gold was with her. He was a good-looking boy who was also on the Student Council and who had liked Hildy for years. They’d sat right next to each other in homeroom since seventh grade.
Lately, Hildy told me, she kind of liked him back, even though he sometimes monopolized the conversation in Student Council and said stuff like, “Come on, people!” to his fellow council members when they took too long to decide on something that seemed obvious to him. Greg Gold had also made a poster saying “Fuck the UC Regents!” to take to a rally about People’s Park, which Hildy hadn’t known about when she went with him to the rally, and was kind of embarrassed by. I guessed Hildy felt the word “fuck” should be reserved for my father’s use only.
Secretly I had no idea why everyone was so angry about People’s Park in the first place. It was Cal’s land, wasn’t it? It didn’t make sense to me that they should be forced to give it up just so people would be able to gather for free speech somewhere besides the campus. Getting another place besides Sproul Plaza—that wasn’t a real crisis like the Vietnam War, or racism, was it? But everyone acted as if it were completely obvious that the university was mean for keeping the land. I didn’t want anyone to know I had no idea what the moral outrage was about.
I expected my mother to dislike Greg Gold on principle—he liked Hildy. But when he extended his hand and flashed a nervous, toothy smile, my mother’s face lit up. “Hello!” she said.
“Nice to meet you, Mrs.—do you go by Goldenthal?” I winced, sure my mother was going to tear his head off for mentioning “Goldenthal.”
“Oh, please, call me Willa!” she said breezily. “We don’t stand on ceremony around here.”
“Nice to meet you, Willa!” Greg Gold said, with a little too much enthusiasm. “Wow, Hildy looks just like you!”
Hildy made me some hot chamomile tea, which I hated but which was the only tea in the house, and put a bunch of honey in it while my mother wasn’t watching because she was too busy grilling Greg. Oh, your father teaches in the Political Science Department? Oh, your mother is writing her second children’s book? Oh, your family goes to Congregation Beth Emmet? Oh, you’re planning to go to college on the East Coast?
My mother even offered Greg Gold some salted cashews that we didn’t know were in the house. They were in a can, and my mother got them out of a drawer in the dining room. The can went pfft! as she opened the vacuum seal. I stuffed as many cashews into me as I could before my mother said, “That’s enough, Martha. You’ll ruin your appetite,” as if there were an actual meal waiting. I finished my tea, sipping up the thick sweet liquid gathered at the bottom of the cup.
After Greg left, I went upstairs to bed without so-called dinner, not even waiting to talk with Hildy about Greg. I knew she hadn’t made up her mind about him anyway. There was another boy on Student Council, Matt Baskit, who Hildy thought was really cute. When Hildy had found out Matt was in Math Club, which met before school on Friday mornings, she’d signed up for that, too.
I missed the next two days of school because of my cold, but I talked to Stephanie both days to get homework assignments and ask about the kittens. She was happy; Sylvia had relented and let Morris come over to meet them. Stephanie had already named them all: Portico, Trivia, Gumby, Orbit, and Salmonella.
By Friday morning, I felt better. Hildy had already gone to Math Club. When I came downstairs, dressed and ready, my mother was washing the frying pan that she’d used the previous night to brown some meat before putting it into her new gadget, something called a crock pot, to cook overnight. “I presume you’re wearing an undershirt, young lady?” she asked.
I pulled the thick white strap toward my neck from underneath my blouse and sat down to a lukewarm bowl of congealed, bland, beef-barley stew from the crock pot. I flared my nostrils at Drew, and when I thought my mother wasn’t looking, I reached for the salt shaker.
“It doesn’t need salt, Martha. I already salted it.”
I took a bite, trying not to gag. Drew wasn’t having much luck with his, either. “Mom, could you write me a note for school? I’ve got binder paper.”
She didn’t answer.
“I need a note, Mom,” I repeated. “I’ve been out for two days.”
“Write your own note, Miss Rules-and-Regulations.”
“And then you’ll sign it?”
“You got yourself sick, Martha. Now you deal with it.”
“Okay,” I sighed, and Drew and I glanced at each other. In my binder for school, I had a plastic pouch with a few things in it: pen, protractor, pencil, eraser, emergency dime. It’d be easier than trying to find a working pen in the house, let alone blank paper. “I need you to sign it, though.”
My mother was putting the pan in the dish drain.
“Mom?”
“Martha, I’m not signing anything.” She looked straight at me. Maybe she wanted to see how I’d react.
“But Mom—an unexcused absence will go on my record!” Shrug. “And stop that uptightness of yours.”
“What?” I wasn’t sure whether she meant the note for school, or the shrug.
“That neurotic affectation! Just stop that shrugging. It’s as if you’re claiming you don’t know. But you goddamned well do know. You know perfectly well.”
“Mom, that’s mean,” Drew said in a small voice.
I tried to sound calm. “Mom, if I don’t have a note, it’ll make my grades go down. I mean, it’s one thing if I skipped school to go to a peace rally or something. Then I could understand—”
“You made your bed, Martha,” my mother snarled, “now you’re going to lie in it.”
Before I knew it, I was standing up, jiggling the chair just as my father did when he was angry. “Jesus Christ! I comfort you whenever you cry, which is, like, practically every minute!” I shouted. “About how much better your life would have been if you’d never met Dad! Which is completely—a very ugly thing to say to your own child!”
“Oh yes,” my mother said, “how the truth hurts.”
Drew said, “Mom, that’s not fair to Martha.” He had gotten up from the table, his skinny body next to the kitchen wall, his white socks showing under his too-short jeans.
My mother kept looking at me with contempt. I paused a moment, just to make absolutely sure this wasn’t a mistake. A misunderstanding. Then I started shrieking. “Well, if you’re going to be like this, you can just go fuck!”
The next instant, I saw the frying pan coming toward me.
There was infinite time to think: she’s not throwing the frying pan; she’s just getting ready to hit me with it. This isn’t like a scene with Dad. Dad would have thrown the pan while it was hot, with hot food in it. He would’ve meant it for Mom, but the hot food would’ve gotten on me and Hildy and Drew if we happened to be in the way. Mom isn’t doing what Dad would do. This pan is still wet, but it’s clean, and it’s not hot. She’s holding on to it, getting ready to hit my head. This isn’t like Dad. . . .
I jumped out of the kitchen and grabbed my books, binder and Concert Chorale music, then made a leap toward the front door. I squeezed the front door latch, opened the door and slammed it behind me. The brass knocker echoed my slam as I pounded down the wooden steps.
I didn’t have a sweater, and I’d left without money for the bus, and the handle of Stephanie’s old gingham-lined basket had long since broken, so I was carrying my books in my arms. But I started to run down the path behind the Bakers’ across the street, past the Bernards’ house where a camellia bush was growing up out of a huge wooden planter wit
h a metal band running around it. The metal band had gotten so old that it matched the Bernards’ leaded glass windows. My sandals flapped loudly on the sidewalk, then quietly against my socks, over and over. I ran clear down to Spruce and saw that a bus had just left—not that I had money for it anyway. Even if I found a dime on the sidewalk now, I’d be late for English. I thought about running all the way to West Campus, but it was a couple of miles away. I felt like crying. Shrug. Shrug.
I started to get a cramp in my side and slowed down, trying to calm myself. I thought of Drew, at home alone with my mother. I hoped he’d gotten out of the kitchen and was putting on his high-top PF Flyers by now, getting ready to walk to school, and that my mother was so mad at me that she didn’t notice Drew leaving his barley stew uneaten.
Suddenly I remembered the emergency-phone-call dime I’d seen only a few minutes earlier in the plastic three-ring pouch in my binder. Bus money! At the beginning of the school year, I’d put it in there from the loose change I had in my desk drawer, knowing that if I asked my mother for it, I’d get a lecture about not spending it on something sweet after school and ruining my appetite for dinner. I took the dime out now and held it in my palm, thinking of the children’s book Half Magic and its magic nickel. Life is not all about magic nickels, young lady....
I perched myself on a fire hydrant to wait for the next bus. I got off downtown, transferred to the 51, got to campus, and went straight to the principal’s. The hallway was dark, but the door was open, and it was bright inside the office.
13
hobgoblin
A boy named Dedan with shoulder-length fine blond hair had just met with the principal and stopped in front of Mrs. Worth, the plump, frosted-haired secretary with fake eyelashes, who evidently needed to type something up before Declan could leave. The principal’s name was Mr. Scranton, but the boys all called him Mr. Scrotum. He was on the phone and kept talking as he walked over and closed the door to his office. The curly black telephone cord stretched as he moved.
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