The Kitty Committee

by Kathryn Berla

  As if my hormones suddenly awakened from a deep sleep by my newly (and still secretly) purchased cosmetics, I finally began to menstruate. Mom had fretted for the past few years because I was already fourteen with no change-of-life in sight, but the doctor did tests and detected no red flags.

  “She’s just a slowpoke,” he said, which I’m sure had the effect of reassuring my mother, but did nothing for my self-esteem.

  Even Alice already had her period, and she wouldn’t start high school until the fall.

  But when it finally did come, I wondered why I’d ever wished for it in the first place. It felt like a hoax perpetrated on all of womankind. Mom’s proclamation that I was “finally a woman” didn’t seem like a fair tradeoff for what I had to endure. I didn’t think I’d ever be one of those girls who flaunted their menstrual cramps in the locker room every month. It seemed so glamorous when I was on the outside looking in. Sophisticated even. The reality, for me, was a disheartening loss of independence.

  Another casualty of our move was my own body dysmorphia. I’d been slightly round as a young girl but never perceived myself to be anything beyond healthy and happy. In fact, I never gave much thought to my appearance, and this absence of self-obsession was only reinforced by my parents, who stressed inner beauty and good deeds. After moving to Indian Springs, everything changed overnight. From my first day of school, I never thought I looked good enough. I spied flaws each time I passed a mirror and began to see my own image as a receptacle for everyone else’s disgust. It would take me years to get back to the place I’d once been.

  During the time I was envisioning a shortcut to supermodel looks through the miracles of makeup, I discovered, quite by accident, my golden ticket, as I came to call it. Alice and I were at the drug store, standing in line to make our daily candy purchase so we wouldn’t be declared personae non gratae at the magazine rack. I was spending an inordinate amount of time thinking up ways to reinvent myself for junior year of high school. Makeup. Check. Longer hair. Check. More acceptable clothes. Check. Slimmer figure. No, that wasn’t happening. I looked at the candy in my hand.

  “I’ll be right back,” I told Alice. “Meet you outside.”

  I replaced my M&Ms on the shelf and looked around for a less fattening alternative. I spotted a bag of sugar-free hard candies that might just satisfy my sweet tooth and had zero calories. I bought it and was on my way.

  By the time I got home, my stomach was cramping slightly, but it wasn’t time for my period—I had just finished. I sat on the toilet, and a stream of diarrhea flowed painlessly from me. Once it was over, I felt fine. A few more days of experimenting with the hard candies allowed me to put two and two together. When I stopped eating them, the diarrhea went away. But when I weighed myself a few days later, the scales showed a decline I hadn’t been able to achieve on my own. Here it was at last. My golden ticket—an easy path to weight loss without giving up food. I would soon be a svelte girl, and Mom would be none the wiser, since I could continue to eat as I always had. Anyway, it wasn’t like I was doing anything illegal. Mom would probably approve of my sugar-free choice since she was always harping on the dangers of too much sugar. Instinctively, I suspected it might be wrong—nothing should be that simple. But what if it was, and I was just the first person to stumble upon it? Still, I didn’t share my secret with Alice, who knew everything else about me. Sharing secrets that reached into the darkness of my bowels was too shameful. Too personal. And so deep I didn’t understand it myself.

  “It’s gonna be great being at the same school,” Alice said one hot, lazy day. We were lying on my bed, a honeysuckle scent ushered through my open window by a powder-soft breeze. “But will you still be my friend since I’ll just be a freshman, and you’ll be a big important junior?”

  I didn’t see why not. I’d always had friends across a spectrum of ages in my past life, and Alice was only a year younger than me. Americans stuck together overseas since we were such a small community of expats. We didn’t divide ourselves according to age because there’d be nobody left to socialize with if we did.

  “Of course, why wouldn’t I be?” I asked naively.

  “Just remember you said so,” Alice said presciently. She was light years ahead of me in so many ways. “Anyway, what should we do today? I’m bored.”

  “I dunno. What do you wanna do? Go to the drugstore?” I was thinking that my golden ticket stash was getting low. Also, I needed more Vaseline, which I’d been using to treat my resulting sore bottom.

  “I’m tired of the drugstore. Do you think Luke could get us into the pool? We could go swimming.”

  “I guess so.”

  I wasn’t really big on swimming, and it showed in my lack of technique and skills. Luke was a natural and always looked for a place to swim wherever we lived, whether it was Lake Atitlan in Guatemala or the Pacific Ocean in Guam. In addition, I now had my appearance to consider. Every morning I’d been taking some of Luke’s hair gel and mixing it with a bit of water to smooth my hair into submission. What resulted was, in my opinion, a classier version of my longer pixie cut. My bangs now swept to one side, curling over my right eye to just behind the corresponding ear. When my face was made-up, I hoped I looked quite fashionable, so I wasn’t anxious to get my hair wet.

  “Let’s do it. Please.”

  “Okay, lemme check with Dad and see if he needs anything. I guess I should make some lunch for him before we go.”

  I rustled through my belongings before coming up with the latest version swimsuit I owned. It wouldn’t win any fashion awards but it was functional, if a little small. The elastic in the legs was loose from age, and when I glanced down at the tops of my thighs, a few pubic hairs poked through. I pulled on a pair of shorts over the swimsuit, and resolved to just sit by the side of the pool and watch if Alice wanted to swim.

  I chatted briefly with Dad and then fixed him some canned soup and a few microwaved hot dogs. That and a can of soda would hold him until Mom or I came home. Dad was so quiet those days, I hardly knew what to say to him. I couldn’t break through the wall of depression I didn’t know existed, and he seemed equally baffled by me. We were a family that dematerialized after stepping into the transporter that beamed us to our new world. But once we rematerialized, it was as though elves had sneaked in and deviously shifted our atoms around until we were almost, but not quite, unrecognizable to each other.

  The last thing I did before leaving the house was apply my makeup and stuff makeup-remover pads in the pocket of my shorts. That had become my routine.

  From Alice’s house, we took the city bus which eventually made its way to every corner of Indian Springs. Since most people got around by car, Alice and I often found ourselves nearly alone when we needed to get somewhere. That day we occupied the bus with two older lilac-haired women sharing a lunch or perhaps a weekly appointment at the hair salon. A Latina mother and her two children crowded together in a bench seat meant for two, the little girl peeking at Alice and me over the seat and then ducking whenever we caught her with a smile. The musical lilt of their Spanish words triggered a longing in my heart for the language which felt like home but was already untangling itself from the hard wires of my brain.

  Our stop was the city park, a massive stretch of land intended to provide at least one recreational option for every citizen. We walked by the playground where tots played on structures the likes of which I had never seen during my childhood. A ground covering of tanbark cushioned children from injury and dissuaded the cats, who had turned out in droves for the sandbox my father made for me in Ecuador when I was five. Further on, two men took turns grunting at each other across the net of a tennis court—one of the few in use since many of the courts were empty at that hot, quiet time of day. Further down were barbecue pits and picnic tables, shaded by Valley Oaks. And just beyond those was the community pool. For girls our age, the pool was the only attraction at the city p
ark. We were too young to go to San Francisco by ourselves but too old to find much of interest in our hometown.

  Wafting chlorine-scented clouds stung my eyes and nose when we walked through the door to the ticket sales office of the pool.

  “Can you tell Luke Templeton his sister needs to see him?” I asked the sunny-haired girl behind the counter. Her nose and cheeks were lightly sprinkled with freckles, and her arms were smooth and tanned. She disappeared to find Luke while her male counterpart in looks stared at me through the glass barrier.

  “You’re Luke’s sister?” he asked as though he could hardly believe it.

  Luke appeared minutes later with the girl at his side. She smiled warmly at me.

  “Hey, you two!” Luke said. “What’s going on? Dad alright?”

  “Can you get us in for free?” I got right to the point.

  “If you can’t, I can pay,” Alice offered. She was wide-eyed as she always was in Luke’s presence. Everyone loved him. Even I had no complaints, and I was his sister, which I understood to mean that technically I should at least occasionally hate him.

  “Sure, come on in,” he nodded to the girl who buzzed us in. “What did you do to your face?” he asked me.

  “Just a little makeup.” I hadn’t considered Luke might notice my altered appearance. “Don’t tell Mom, please.” From the corner of my eye, I saw the girl smile crookedly before looking down at the stack of papers in front of her.

  “I think she looks great,” Alice piped in. “It really accentuates her eyes, don’t you think?”

  “You look ridiculous,” Luke said. “Don’t know why you think you need that stuff. You’re pretty enough the way God made you.”

  Luke wasn’t in the habit of interpreting God’s Word for anyone’s benefit so I took it as a compliment. I also knew its value was questionable since, of course, Luke would say that no matter what.

  “So you won’t tell Mom?”

  “Nah, but I still think it’s dumb.”

  We followed him to his lifeguard chair, a throne where his word was the law when it came to reigning over a pool tangled with squirming, slippery bodies.

  “No running!” he bellowed at two boys who shrank under his rebuke. I was proud that my brother had this kind of authority and awed that he could distinguish a drowning kid from a playing one.

  Parents were mostly absent except in the kiddie pool. Children who passed the swimming test and were at least ten years old could be at the pool by themselves. Alice and I were technically old enough to skip the test.

  “Go on and knock yourself out,” he said. “I’m here if you need anything.”

  I dragged Alice as far away as possible from Luke. With our towels rolled under our arms, cocooned in the scent of sunscreen, we made our way over browning bodies to a small patch of grass that, surprisingly, hadn’t yet been claimed.

  Alice threw down her towel. “I’m going in,” she said. “Come on.”

  I thought about my embarrassing bathing suit. Even Alice outdid me in that department with a cute but modest two-piece. I thought about my hair, which would be stiff to the touch if anyone actually touched it. I thought about the makeup which would most likely result in raccoon eyes if I were to take a dip. How had I come so quickly to the place, after arriving in the states, where I voluntarily forfeited fun?

  “No, I’ll watch. You go on ahead.”

  Alice didn’t need persuading. She slipped into the water like a seal and was soon lost in the soup of bathers. I lay back in a pose of relaxation that I hoped made me look like someone accustomed to sunbathing by the side of a pool. The sharp sting of the sun on my face was hard—a dry heat unlike Guatemala or other countries where I’d lived. The multitude of squeals and shrieks and laughter coalesced into a monotonous drone that reached my brain as nonsensical chatter. It was soothing, and I began to feel sleepy. Within minutes, a daydream was well on its way to transforming into a real dream when a shadow fell over me, darkening the inside of my eyelids. I opened my eyes and sat up, temporarily dazed.

  “Carly wants to know how you know Luke,” said a pretty brown-haired girl.

  “Luke?” I squinted into the sun that hovered just behind her.

  “The lifeguard. How do you know him?”

  The drone of noise disassembled itself into individual voices as I raced from sleep to wakefulness.

  “How do you know him?” I asked. I wondered if Luke was in trouble for letting Alice and me into the pool without paying and, if he was, what was the appropriate response to her question.

  “Everyone knows Luke,” she said. “He’s like . . . a god or something.”

  Oh, she’s one of those, I thought. I was used to that.

  “He’s my brother,” I said. “So he’s not God or even a god. He’s just a brother.”

  Having a brother like Luke had its advantages, but it could be tiresome when most of the attention was diverted his way.

  “I didn’t mean a real god. I just meant . . .” She was tallish and angular. The straight-cut ends of her shiny hair grazed shoulders bronzed from the sun.

  “Yeah, I know.” Then I remembered the name of the person who had sent her to ask the question. “Who’s Carly?” The name was still fresh in my mind. There must be a lot of Carlys, but what if this was the Carly?

  “That’s her over there.” The girl pointed across the pool where Carly was sitting on a towel watching us. She lifted a hand and grinned sheepishly.

  It was the Carly.

  “She dared me to ask you. Why don’t you come sit with us?” she asked.

  I scanned the surface of the pool but still couldn’t pick out which watery shape among the masses was Alice’s.

  “Bring your towel,” the girl said.

  I shook out my towel and followed her to where Carly was sitting. Later, I realized I should have taken Alice’s towel with me. But at that moment, I wasn’t thinking of Alice.

  “Luke is her brother,” the still unidentified girl said to Carly. “Told ya it was something like that.”

  Carly fixed her practiced irresistible gaze on me. Her eyes aren’t green, after all, I remember thinking. They were brown.

  “She thought you were his girlfriend,” the girl said to me.

  “She could’ve been,” Carly said, and I felt a thrill unprecedented in my life that this girl thought I—just plain Grace—could have attracted a boy with Luke’s obvious qualities. Then Carly giggled, and the thrill receded as I wondered if she was making a joke at my expense.

  “What’s he like as a brother?” Carly asked. “He seems so sweet.”

  “He’s . . . nice. For a brother. I don’t know. To be honest, I don’t spend too much time thinking about him, you know?”

  “Sit down,” Carly said. “Here, we’ll scoot over to make space. Do you want an iced tea? We have extras.” She pushed a can toward me while I spread out my towel next to hers. I could smell the scent of her sunscreen mixed with the sharp tang of sweat. She pulled sunglasses down from the top of her head, but I could still see her eyes through the smoky gray glass.

  “Do you guys come here much?” I asked, absent of anything else to say but not wanting a silent space to betray what I assumed would be my boring personality.

  “Nearly every day,” the brown-haired girl said. “Or at least whenever we can. We’re working on our tans, right Carly? Carly has a pool at her house but—”

  “It’s more fun to come here,” Carly interrupted.

  “And watch your brother,” the girl said. “He’s a senior, right? Did he graduate?”

  “Yeah, he’s leaving for college in the fall.”

  “Ahhh . . . too bad,” Carly poked the girl lightly in the ribs. She turned to me. “Maggie’s heartbroken now.”

  “There’s still the summer,” I said brightly without thinking about what I was doing. I was o
ffering Luke as an incentive. If they were at the pool nearly every day, I could be there too. Dangling the alluring possibility of a Luke encounter could be my ticket to hanging out with them. Acceptance by them.

  “Ha ha,” Carly said. “Yeah, Maggie, there’s still the summer. You never know what might happen.”

  We all laughed, Carly and Maggie and me. At that very moment, the laugh sealed something between us. It was obvious nothing was going to happen between the girl, who I now knew was Maggie, and Luke. Luke was college-bound and wouldn’t be interested in high-school girls anymore. But we already shared a secret, the three of us. Maggie liked Luke, and we were going to make a game of it for the rest of the summer if I had my way.

  I didn’t know at the time how many more secrets we’d be sharing in the years to come.

  I worked hard to maintain my appeal over the next ten minutes. I noticed Luke watching me at one point, and at another point I saw Alice talking to Luke who pointed in my direction. I’d almost forgotten about Alice. As she made her way over, stopping to retrieve her towel on the way, I’m ashamed to say that my only thought was how to explain away her presence.

  “This is my friend, Alice,” I said when she was standing beside us. “I . . . uh. We go to the same church. Our parents are friends.”

  “Hi, Alice. Sit down with us. Maggie, scooch your towel over.”

  Maggie giggled and scooched.

  After that I made no further mention of Alice, nor did I try to include her in our conversation. Carly and Maggie were nice enough. Carly even asked probing questions of Alice in her disarming way—flattering, in the absolute focus she maintained whenever she spoke to you. As if no other person existed for her in that moment. As if her interest in you were something to be coveted, won, perhaps even fought over.

  But Alice didn’t respond the way I did. Perhaps it was her age and immaturity, I reasoned. Perhaps it was jealousy. What I never considered at the time was that perhaps she saw something in Carly I was incapable of seeing.