Ghostbread

by Sonja Livingston

  “You’ll be a woman when it comes,” teachers said with patient smiles, as though menstruation were a crowning of sorts. I thought of all the girls I knew and how their lives were just the same after a period, only messier. I thought of my mother and my older sisters. No tiaras there. No roses, no glowing halos.

  Still, they sat us down to scratchy filmstrips and clumsy health class lectures about developing boys and girls coming to terms with the strangeness of bodies that had begun to leak and groan.

  “Looks like Janie’s got it,” said the filmstrip mother to her husband as she emerged from the pink-canopied bedroom where her daughter sat glowing.

  “I guess our little Janie is a woman now.” The filmstrip father smiled, his voice swollen with pride, as though Janie had just swum the length of the Atlantic.

  Everyone laughed and celebrated Janie’s blossoming. The buttercup mother and robot father held hands. Their teeth gleamed as they welcomed Janie to the wonderful world of menstruation. But to a roomful of kids without handholding parents and canopy beds, their words came out high-pitched and squeaky, in sounds that hurt our ears.

  And all those visits from community educators teaching us about STDs, pregnancy, and how to roll the latex onto the shaft just so. All those diagrams and diaphragms and maps of our bodies. None of it really mattered.

  While my own period was a source of mild pride as I told Steph and bragged to my friends and tried to feel like I’d been transformed somehow, it was basically a disappointment. My insides cramped and blood came each month, but nothing was different. My mother still wrapped a kerchief around her head and barked orders, then hibernated for days. Bill collectors still called. People on Lamont Place still fought. A little blood, sure. But nothing like the exciting transformation Janie seemed to have experienced.

  All that time and all that talk, and no one ever talked about the stuff that mattered.

  The most important thing of all.

  Steph and I went together.

  We had to get physicals first. We tacked ourselves to the end of a long line at the free health clinic near Monroe High School, where the nurse would probe our backs and scribble our weights. While waiting for Steph to finish her appointment so we could take a bus downtown, I endured a group of boys putting their lips on my neck and trying to talk me into a dark corner. But finally, it was done, and I had it in hand.

  A work permit.

  It was everything. Practically magic.

  Small enough to fit into my pocket; the little blue card changed my life more than a period ever could.

  I had always been a worker—even in grammar school, I’d sold Olympic greeting cards with Annmarie VanEpps, raked yards, shoveled the walks and drives of strangers. I had despised scrubbing blackboards at Nazareth Academy, but it wasn’t the task itself that had annoyed me. Only the idea of being seen as poor had bothered me.

  But lots of kids had jobs.

  With a job, I might feel like everyone else.

  I discovered that there was always someone willing to ignore the fine print on the back of the card and hire a fourteen-year-old, somebody who’d allow kids to work well into the night.

  Once I started working, I didn’t stop.

  I’d quit a job from time to time, but I’d always find another. I worked at a fast food restaurant, H&L Greens’ five-and-dime store, Varden’s photo studio, Seabreeze Amusement Park. Ringing up burgers and fries, stuffing envelopes with flyers, spinning sugar into cotton candy, selling low-grade underwear to old women on tight budgets—these were things I could do.

  101

  Sex was nothing new.

  I’d heard talk of it, giggled, kept secrets, and gossiped about it since I was a kid.

  Way back before middle school, on the way to day camp at Eastside Community Center, two women with swollen Afros and glossed-up lips had asked me and my sister to roll up our pant legs. We were wearing our day-camp shirts, but still they wanted us to roll up our pants, see if we could show a little leg.

  “Okay girls, let’s see what you got there,” one of them said, her speech heavy with drink.

  “Come on now, don’t be shy, let’s see if you know how to get it going.” Her face looked bruised and she was perspiring in the August sun.

  Scared and obedient, I bent down and attempted to roll up the leg of my jeans, glancing up at them to be sure I understood the request till Steph swatted at me and told me to ignore them. I pushed the rolls of my jeans back down, and turned to leave.

  They seemed annoyed at our inattention and kept talking until one of them finally tired and started walking away. She turned back to her friend, who had remained planted, just staring at our fully clad legs.

  “C’mon, them’s just kids anyway; they too young.”

  Her voice was as syrupy as her friend’s, but she was right. We were kids, just ten or so. But even as Steph and I walked on, I knew their asking us to expose a part of our bodies and the fatigue on their faces had to do with sex; the pain of it, the commodity of it.

  102

  I’d longed for it.

  I’d eaten chunk after chunk of raw potato for days, then weeks, all based on Michelle Labella’s recommendation, and still my chest was as shapeless as every other part of my body. I stared and turned in the mirror, looked here and there for signs of change. Looked hard for the woman I was supposed to become.

  Nothing.

  I should have known better, should have known that men gathered on street corners would inform me, should have known that they’d give an “mm, mmmm, mmm” and “sure looks fine” as I walked by. I should have understood that men tucked into storefronts would notice the titties springing from the plain of my chest before I’d even have a chance to ask my mother for money to buy a bra.

  Once they noticed, everything changed.

  When I passed them on the street, I lowered my head. I’d look at the ground and keep walking. Past the fish market on Parsells and Webster where men stood around, hungry for something to look at.

  They approached in groups or sometimes alone, hand and voice united in a sweet sell. Their voices were hot and wet, and there was a small part of me that didn’t mind being called baby all the time. But mostly, I hated it. Mostly, I learned to stay with the Girls on trips to the store or church or anywhere else.

  When my mom wanted bread or a gallon of milk and I had to get it, I’d beg the Girls to walk with me. They wouldn’t want to go, but might need me later that day, and so they usually came. Two were safer than one, and three were even better. We’d avoid their eyes, ignore their calls, talk to each other about clothes, shoes, what we’d seen on TV—anything but them.

  103

  Some days it seemed like everyone was falling.

  Girls from Catholic school, girls from public school, girls from high school, girls from middle school. Girls from any school.

  Even my old friend Annmarie let a man with a girlfriend sweet-talk her. She quit school as soon as she discovered she was pregnant, enrolled in the Young Mother’s Program, and began talking of nothing but her new life. Even when she miscarried, she still wanted her new life, and pleaded with Father Shea to marry her.

  “Marriage is an important decision,” he said. “Not something rushed into.”

  Annmarie pleaded with the man who had known her since she was a child.

  “I won’t do it,” he said. “I have no faith that this will be good for you.”

  She straightened her back, pushed fists onto her hips, but the priest would not change his mind.

  After he said no, Annmarie married her man at the town hall in Irondequoit, wore stiff white lace at about the same time the rest of us were taking final exams. Annmarie had her reception at the Ponderosa where she worked, knowing it was tacky even as she did it. But she didn’t have the money to match her dreams. Just a white dress and a boss that provided an employee discount and free drinks.

  104

  We went to dances in the church basement. Other than walking around
the neighborhood in packs when the weather was right and looking at the never-changing world from front porches, church dances were the only way to meet boys from outside the neighborhood. Boys who seemed different.

  I met Sergio at a Halloween dance. I was Cleopatra; he was a zombie. His hair was high, his back was straight, and he smelled like falling leaves and overripe cologne. Even though he couldn’t dance, I liked his small bright eyes and the way he pressed into me as he moved to Chaka Kahn, so I followed him to the park after the dance was over. When he wanted to kiss, I said no, but a touch on my arm turned my no into a yes. He pushed me against the fence and groaned his way into my long white gown. It was nearly November and I didn’t even mind the warm fog of his breath, the pink of his fingers.

  I’d been an Egyptian princess all night, snake coiled on my arm, eyes lined in black, but there I was, pressed against the fence, Sergio’s breath on my neck, with nowhere to go but down. But I was strong. I closed my eyes, pried my body from the fence, and ran all the way home.

  Danny was a good boy. His family attended Corpus Christi and I met him at the next dance. He had big brown eyes and curly hair and I loved him instantly. He looked like Ray Parker Jr., I said to anyone who’d listen, and when he asked me to dance, I’d thought the night was perfect. I sucked in my cheeks, twirled my hair, tried to look mysterious in the church basement light.

  And it worked.

  He loved me, too.

  He called all the time, gave me roses, told me my eyes were better than the stained glass at church, said my skin was like milk. He wanted me to meet his mother, his brothers, his aunt in from New York. He kept at me until I couldn’t take it any longer. I refused to let him touch me, didn’t return his calls, wouldn’t take the rides he offered after school.

  Danny didn’t attend East High, but borrowed his brother’s car and drove across town to sit on the corner and wait for me. But I’d had enough of being adored; it had begun to feel like sandpaper against my skin. So I stood at the bus stop and waited, even in the rain, never once looking his way.

  105

  I was at home skipping school when I heard the scrape of keys in the lock. I flew up the stairs just as two voices came in from the cold. It was Anthony, just home from the Marines. Not recognizing the other voice, I wondered who it was until Tony asked, “So how long you been hookin’?” and then, a moment later, “How much is this gonna cost me anyway?”

  A prostitute!

  I sat at the top of the stairs and listened.

  My breathing slowed.

  I wondered what would happen and how it would sound. But in the end, all Anthony did was talk. He used his time with the hooker as a sort of therapy and shared his concerns about what to do with his life, our family, how hard it was to be home from the Marines.

  “I hate it here,” he said. “My mother’s always on my back. None of them really get me.”

  “What about your sisters?” The hooker seemed to be probing for a bright spot.

  “They’re all pains in the ass, except for maybe Steph.”

  I had to hold myself back.

  All the times I had worried over Anthony before he’d left for the service came flooding to me—times he’d been chased by groups of boys or had walked miles in winter without gloves or had stood up on the altar as Jesus, me biting my lips as he stumbled through the Hebrew in the crucifixion scene. Now, at the top of the stairs, eavesdropping on his confession to a prostitute, I was torn between wanting to kill him and to continue concealing my presence.

  In the end, I simply sat there, waiting.

  And, as if my brother’s disloyalty and preference for Stephanie weren’t enough, I found myself deeply disappointed. I had learned nothing more about sex—certainly less than having a prostitute in one’s living room seemed to have promised.

  106

  Men lied. I knew this.

  The Girls and I sat around swapping stories about what had happened to so-and-so—our sisters, our friends, our mothers. And if the evidence around me weren’t enough, I thought back to the stories I’d read, remembered how often the gods were cruel. I thought of Hades and the trouble he’d caused poor Persephone with his sugared-up pomegranate seeds. I thought of Nancy Drew and that boyfriend of hers. Ned Nickerson was polite and handsome, sure—but in the end, she was always left saving him. Even Wonder Woman could never trust Steve Trevor with who she really was.

  We’d gather on porches and talk about strong women and weak women, swearing we’d never be like everyone else.

  When someone got pregnant and dropped out of high school, she was no longer worth the time of day. When someone gave in and met a man in the back lot, we called her a whore behind her back. A girl who let a boy come between her and her friends was nothing but a bitch.

  We were cold-blooded.

  But our cruelty was a prayer, recited time and again. For protection. Salvation. And hope.

  107

  It wasn’t easy to pass those voices by. Hard, sweet voices. Voices that wanted me more than anyone at home. But I did. I passed and ignored, passed and ignored. Until it seemed I was the very last to do so.

  And as my junior year of school wound down, I looked for signs of what was in store for those who’d listened to the health teacher, the parish priest, the message on TV. What happened to those who played by the rules? What was the reward, I wondered, besides a bit of self-righteousness and a smattering of pride?

  Isis, Nancy Drew, the goddess Athena. I had looked up to them, had wanted to rise above everything and join them somehow. But as I began to think more seriously, I saw what fiction the whole thing was. None of them were even real, I thought, while looking at life unfolding around me. No matter how hard I looked, I saw no magic. Just swollen bellies and laps filled with babies.

  And though I’d shaken my head from side to side and tsked those girls and their lives for years, I began to notice something other than disgust. Something else was taking hold. Envy. It blossomed in me, surprised and scared me with how swiftly it moved in. And when I was honest, I had to admit that a part of me was jealous of those girls, their babies, their men—the way their lives were laid out like roads we all knew.

  108

  Ruben was older.

  A man, really.

  With green eyes and gold hair and a tongue thick with accent and beer. He drove an orange Pinto with the flag of Cuba stuck to the bumper. He kept the windows down in summer, let the toques and claves of old Havana fall into the night, sent streamers of sound into the street as he passed. There was no room for playing around in the Pinto, but he tried to get up under my shirt anyway, and I let him more than I should have. I’d been careful never to let anyone close before, but I let him under my shirt and anywhere else he wanted to go, because no one thinks straight during a fall.

  And I was falling.

  The first time I saw him, I was hanging on the corner of Lamont Place with the Girls, laughing at guys walking by, pressing their fingers to their lips, making kissing sounds, touching themselves on their bellies and lower, saying, “Hot damn—you look fine.”

  Then he passed by in his little orange car and smiled our way and looked so good—tan skin and full lips—that we shouted back. His windows were down, a cumbia was playing, and he waved.

  We didn’t call out to guys usually, but with Ruben, we hollered back.

  Because we were silly and bored. Because it was a hot summer night. Because he seemed safe: he was driving, and white. A good-looking white man driving through the ghetto listening to Latin music in his stupid little car. He’d be gone by the time our voices ever reached him.

  So we called out. We laughed and turned round and felt high on the night air. And it was all so fun, until he made a U-turn right in the middle of Webster Avenue and came back around, pulled over to the curb, and called me over with a curl of his index finger. The Girls were laughing still, but even their laughter had grown thin.

  “You better go on, white girl,” they said. “He w
ants you.”

  I just stood there, scared. Of their sending me forward. Of his waiting. Of his eyes on my shirt, the one with palm trees, the one that had grown tighter this summer, the one my mother said showed too much of what was just underneath.

  “Mira chica,” he called, “you speak only English, verdad?”

  I nodded, and his voice showed he was not nearly as white as I’d thought. Not nearly so white as me.

  “Come over to here,” he said.

  “Come on chicita, I not going to eat you!” His smile was wicked and luscious, and as I approached I thought of Red Riding Hood’s wolf.

  He talked quickly and seriously. He’d come back in a few days’ time and pick me up. He’d take me to a club. We would talk. And dance.

  “But I’m not old enough,” I started to say, and he cupped my cheek with the inside of a warm strong hand.

  “Okay,” I murmured, and wondered what I was doing.

  When Ruben returned, he picked me up from the same place. I walked away from my friends wearing a skirt that hugged my hips, flaring just beneath the knee. A mermaid skirt, it was called, and as I folded myself into the ocean of his car, I felt more like a fish than a girl.

  He talked to someone and got me into the club where we watched other people dance. We sat with our drinks and Ruben pushed his finger up under my skirt and pressed tiny circles into my thigh while he talked to his brother in Spanish and I made an art of pretending. I pretended not to understand what they were saying, pretended not to notice how thin his brother was from drugs, pretended not to feel Ruben’s hand creeping up my leg, higher and higher.

  I tapped my foot against the floor, hoped I came off as comfortable, and watched as blonde women in tight jeans fell into well-built men who grabbed their asses and planted open-mouthed kisses to the pulsing music. I said no to a joint, but drank whatever was offered, tried not to jump as his finger moved up my leg, and let him lift my shirt when he dropped me at home, let him kiss my breasts.