Anywhere But Here

by Mona Simpson

  Finally, we started running. At the top of a hill, Benny turned and fell and rolled with his arms spread open. I lay down and let go after him, my arms crossed tight over my chest like a prayer and we turned, rolling, trusting it all, trusting the swatches of sky to come back, the sweetness of grass in our mouths, the bumps, rocks hitting off our heads, our feet coming unfurled and, finally, Benny and I were tangled together in the soft muddy ditch at the end.

  We woke up in each other’s arms. We’d played all our lives, but we were conscious now when we unfitted ourselves. We were older. I spit out the grass and my spit was mixed with green. We ran to the top again and this time we skidded, our arms out, our chests falling in front of us, to gravity. We tripped over roots and rocks, the steepness pushing our speed, like a hand on the smalls of our backs. The breath cleaned out of our lungs, we fell, rolling onto our backs, looking up at the sky. We lay in the ditch, holding on, as if our own arms braced the land and air in the hurling speed of the planet’s fall. We dug our hands into the soft grass until our nails were crammed with dirt.

  Benny crawled over to where I was and sat with his knees on my knees. He held my wrists down and wrestled with me and we turned and fought and as we moved, the ground felt hard under us, like another body.

  Then from far away the train whistle started and we all ran back to the tracks. We laid pop bottle tops and nickels in rows and we knelt there with both hands lightly on the rails. There was a humming. The metal was warm, holding in the last sun and giving it back slowly; we lay our cheeks down so whole halves of our faces vibrated with the coming of the train. From our ears to under our chins, it felt like a helmet of air. Benny said we should all close our eyes.

  I didn’t close mine. I knelt there, the field of vibration growing a thicker layer under my cheek, and watched Benny’s face, his eyes shut smooth, his mouth moving as he breathed. It was best to be the last to leave but I wasn’t that brave. I went back when Theresa Griling yelled; we were the first to go running up the hill, pulling our hair, screaming, so glad to be free, and scared, shouting the names of the boys still there, and we could see the train then, the big front light like an eye. The boys peeled off one by one, rolling down by the ditch and tripping up again, running.

  The train came, a moment of pure vision. You couldn’t think, you couldn’t move, you couldn’t see. That moment of suspense; noise of the highway, shudder of the train before we knew—yes, every day we were forgotten again. The wind pushed up and there was a whirl of steel and colors, the last sun drizzling the rails, and we hung on to the weeds by the road with our fists and the rest of us let go. Your face moved without you, your voice just went as if someone was pulling it out in one string, your body shook and you were left in a heap on the dusty road when the train was half a mile up in front of you, a train again, something you could wholly see, something your eye could end.

  We gathered the flattened pop tops in our pockets as if they were money.

  My mother and I made up a secret. It started one evening, a usual evening in our house, when my grandmother and I sat watching “Family Affair” on television. A branch beat against the wall. I walked to the window and saw the same blue light cast from front windows over the yards on our road. In every house the TV was on. There was comfort in that.

  My mother stayed in the bathroom, wearing only a slip, practicing with makeup. She stood for minutes, fully absorbed, looking at her face in the mirror as she pushed up the cartilage on the tip of her nose. In the kitchen, she had Kris Miss Facial Herbs boiling in a pot. She steamed her pores open and then ran to the bathroom, where she had her mirror. During one of her migrations, she stopped in the living room and stood for a few moments watching TV with us.

  “Ann, come here. I want to talk to you for a second.

  “You know, you’re cuter than Buffy,” she whispered, looking down hard, as if she were appraising me. She took my face by the chin and turned it. I stood very still, my arms straight at my sides. She clicked her tongue. “You know, I’ve been thinking. We ought to get you on TV.”

  That moment something started.

  “Come here.” She began to brush makeup on my face, holding my chin with two tight fingers. “Like this.” She puckered her lips. “Close. Now open.” I felt her warm breath on my eyelids. “Let’s see.” She stood up to look from different angles. “You’re going to make it, kid, I’m telling you, you are going to make it.” Then she peered into the mirror and sighed. “And I’m not so bad myself, for a mother.”

  “You’re beautiful,” I said, meaning it.

  “Do you really think so?” Her face was poised, waiting.

  I nodded my head hard, up and down.

  “Close your eyes,” my mother said, smearing shadow on me with her fingers, so I saw colored lights inside.

  We decided we would go to California, but it was our secret. I knew I’d have to be different from other children. I’d have to be better than the other kids to be picked and make all that money. My mother started to read to me from magazines at night. We knew all about the children on television. We knew how much money they made, we knew about the Jackie Coogan law, we knew that the camera adds ten pounds.

  “Maybe your dad can even help,” she whispered.

  The next year at school, Theresa Griling walked behind me in the lunch line and every day she stepped on my heel, crushing my saddle shoe down. We ate at two long tables, watched by a novice who stood at the door.

  My mother fixed me lunches that were always too big. I got a sandwich so thick the pieces fell apart when I tried to eat it, two eggs that weren’t hard-boiled enough, bakery cookies, a bag of sliced carrots, celery and radishes, a banana, an apple and an orange. On both sides of me at the table, girls had standard lunches: a thin sandwich which pressed down even thinner while they ate, and a Hostess Twinkie. Theresa Griling had just one thing every day: a battered apple or a candy bar, sometimes a chicken leg or one slice of bologna. I longed for the other lunches. I was full after half my sandwich. Even my bag sitting open in front of me was bigger than the other bags. It looked sloppy and wrinkled, like an old elephant’s thick leg. I threw most of my lunch out, tossing the whole bag into the garbage bin we passed on our way to the playground. It didn’t look like the other lunches and some girls stared at me.

  One recess, an older girl tapped my arm while I turned a jump rope. She said the Mother Superior would like to see me in her office. I glanced up from the playground; the sky was bordered and fenced with power lines, planted with three-story buildings and the steeple. The girl led me up two flights of stairs and opened a wooden door.

  The Mother Superior stood by a window of honeycomb glass. I knew I was probably in trouble, but I thought it was possible I’d be told I’d done something good enough to change my life. Only, I couldn’t think of anything I’d done yet. Maybe a Hollywood agent had come to our lunchroom and seen me eat with good table manners. Then I noticed something familiar on the edge of the Mother Superior’s desk: a large, brown, wilted lunch bag, like my own.

  The Mother Superior nodded, letting her eyes close. The older girl began, pulling back three fingers.

  “First thing. Do you like apples?”

  “Yes,” I said, not knowing what this meant.

  “Do you like … oranges?”

  “Yes.”

  Then the bell rang. The older girl held on to her index finger, waiting until the noise stopped. All through the building there was an echo of steps, my classmates marching single file down halls, upstairs and into classrooms.

  “Last thing,” the girl said. “Do you like bananas?”

  Bananas. Bananas. I thought hard, deliberating. The room was still. I was sure the question meant something else and that the answer would determine the rest of my life. If I would be a child star or just me. The older girl and I were breathing together, our ribs moving out in unison, like fish hanging in an aquarium.

  “Yes,” I said.

  The older girl picked up the wri
nkled brown bag. “Then, how come, in your lunch today, did you throw out a banana and an apple and an orange?”

  The Mother Superior’s hands, folded on the desk top, looked smooth as those of a statue. I understood now; I’d been caught. I pictured the garbage bin and all the lunch bags. They must have fished out mine.

  The older girl led me down the stairs, past closed classroom doors, to the lunch table. A novice stood there, waiting. They set my bag at the place I ate my lunch every day. I started peeling the orange. I took out all the little packets in my lunch and set them up, like a village.

  “Everyone else gets a sandwich and a Twinkie. And that’s all. Nobody else gets a fruit.”

  “Honey, other mothers don’t put in the time I do. That’s why. I can see now you don’t appreciate it. You’d rather have a piece of cheap lunch meat slapped between packaged bread. I stay up late, after working all day, and how many mothers do you think work?”

  “Hush now. I’ll fix her lunch,” my grandmother said. “You two just go to bed.”

  “Mom, why should you have to, just because she—”

  “Let Gramma. I want Gramma to make my lunch.”

  “Okay, fine. Go ahead. I can see no one needs me around here.”

  We looked at the door my mother slammed. My grandmother pulled out the cutting board and began to make me a sandwich. My mother was banging drawers shut in the bedroom.

  It is always the people like my mother, who start the noise and bang things, who make you feel the worst; they are the ones who get your love. When I opened the door, the lights were off and my mother was already under the covers. I climbed up and crawled over her and as I moved, I hit her knee. It made a creaking sound, like wood.

  “Watch it, why don’t you?”

  I slid under the covers, facing the wall. “I’m sorry, Mom.”

  She didn’t say anything. It was as bad as I’d thought. When it seemed she was asleep for sure, I turned around, put my hands on her shoulders and curled against her spine, but she shuddered, shrugging me off, I couldn’t get comfortable. My eyes hurt behind my eyes. My arms didn’t seem joined to my shoulders right. I turned and turned. I couldn’t seem to do anything to get warm.

  Finally, I crept to the bottom of the bed, slipped down and walked out of the room. With each creak of the steps as I climbed, I felt safer and more sleepy. The upstairs was like another house. The air seemed colder and clean. While I was pulling the heavy quilts back to crawl into the small bed, my grandmothers sheets rustled.

  “Sleep tight,” she said, but maybe I only imagined it.

  My mother added coffeecake squares to my lunches, squares she bought specially from Krim’s, as if all she remembered about our fight was that my lunches should be better, which to her meant bigger. One morning that fall, on the school bus, Theresa Griling sat next to me and pressed up close against my ribs. “I heard you got in trouble with the Mother Superior.” She shifted in the seat, moving her legs. “I got a bag, you can give me half and I’ll trade you for my apple.” She held a small, very creased paper bag in her lap. Out of her pocket, she pulled a bruised crab apple, from one of the trees in old Brozek’s yard. I had my enormous lunch propped up on my schoolbooks. It stood as high as my head. Then as if she’d been holding out, she produced a Milky Way, the brown wrapper twisted, making white lines, and set it on the bag next to the apple.

  “You want my stuff?” I said.

  “Sure.” She studied the ribbed rubber floor of the bus, she waited after she said it. It was the first time I’d ever seen her like that. She used to stare at me behind my bag on the bus in the morning. There were others who’d looked at me in the lunchroom at school. I’d always thought they were making fun, because my lunch was different and silly. Now I saw: they were hungry.

  I nudged Theresa’s side and we dug our arms in the bag. From that day on we had a deal.

  In the spring, a boy from on television was coming to town for a cerebral palsy benefit. After the rains, posters of his face peeled off telephone poles, next to larger posters of Leonard Nimoy. My mother drove the twenty miles to the telethon through a storm. Inside the Civic Auditorium, on a stage, tables of women answered ringing telephones, taking pledges. The boy from on television walked with the cerebral palsy children, who looked complicated and stiff and fragile, as if you wouldn’t know where to touch them.

  Leonard Nimoy, in Spock ears, sat in the orchestra pit, next to a huge bin. People lined up around the auditorium to shake his hand and throw in their coins and dollars. My mother nudged me into line. “See that little girl? You’re cuter than her. Sit on his lap like that and just ask him how he got into show business. Say you were wondering because you’d like to act, too.”

  “I don know.”

  “Go on. You have to get discovered somewhere. Who knows? Maybe it’ll be here.”

  Onstage, the boy from on television stood at the microphone singing. He belted out “Every Little Boy Can Be President,” opening his arms toward the cerebral palsy children, who were lined up behind him in a row of plastic chairs. On television, he played Buffy’s brother. His real name was Timmy Kennedy.

  My mother stuck a dollar into my hand. In front of me two boys in matching shirts pushed each other’s chests, fighting for the first place in line. I stood straight, thinking about looking right and talking right. When it was my turn I walked up, but I was afraid to sit on Leonard Nimoy’s lap. I stood close enough to smell the foreign, chemical smell of his shaved cheek, a man’s smell, like the electricity around Jimmy Measey’s towel, and I whispered into his ear. “How did you get started as an actor?”

  He turned and looked at me, puzzled. “Just a minute.” A child handed him her autograph book and he signed, with big loopy letters, smiling. The line moved forward but I stayed.

  “Because I’d like to get into show business, too,” I said.

  He looked at me a little regretfully. “Oh, Honey, it’s a long story. Too long for now.” He gave me a sideways hug and then turned back to the line. “Bless you, thank you,” he was saying, as I walked out towards my mother. I was ashamed. Leonard Nimoy hadn’t taken an interest in me. I wondered if he would have if I’d sat on his lap.

  Onstage, the celebrities led the CP children around in a circle. The boy from on television walked bending over, to reach the arms of a much smaller girl. The children sang, in partial, shrill voices, looking at their braced feet as they marched.

  LOOK AT US, WE’RE WALKING

  LOOK AT US, WE’RE TALKING

  WE WHO’VE NEVER WALKED OR TALKED BEFORE

  BUT THE FIGHT HAS JUST BEGUN

  GET BEHIND US EVERYONE

  YOUR DOLLARS MAKE OUR DREAMS COME TRUE

  THANKS TO YOU, THANKS TO YOU

  LOOK AT US, WE’RE WALKING

  LOOK AT US, WE’RE TALKING

  IMAGINE WALKING TO THE CANDY STORE …

  My mother found out what flight the celebrities were taking back to California and we drove to the airport that night. We discovered the celebrities sitting quietly in an upstairs waiting room like other people. Leonard Nimoy had taken his Spock ears off, he was reading a magazine. The boy from on television sat playing checkers. He was wearing a velour shirt with a zipper, just like any other kid. But I knew he wasn’t. I’d seen him on television.

  His father told my mother that he was a gym teacher and that his family was Mormon.

  “Mother used to do all her own canning and of course that’s had to stop. One or the other of us travels with him. He has eight brothers and sisters, and they’ve had to make sacrifices for him to be on the show. So with part of his money, we’ve taken out insurance policies for each of them.”

  The father asked the boy to say hello to me. He looked up politely from his checker game and smiled. He seemed anxious to turn back to the magnetic checkers. No matter what my mother said, I wasn’t pretty enough.

  The boy’s father told us that Buffy snubbed Timmy on the set. In real life, she was years older, almost in
junior high.

  “You wouldn’t happen to know a songwriter out there,” my mother asked. She said my father’s name.

  “I can’t say that I do.” He shrugged.

  We watched the airplane wheels start spinning as it ran down the runway. “They must be tired,” my mother sighed. When we couldn’t see the lights anymore, we walked out to the parking lot. I huddled against the outside of my door. We both felt solemn for a moment, watching the plane in the sky. We both wished we were on it, in one of those small yellow windows.

  My mother clapped. “Well, should we go get some sundaes to celebrate?” She unlocked our doors and rubbed her hands together.

  “Celebrate what?”

  “Well, I think I should give his agent a call, don’t you?”

  “What?”

  “Didn’t you hear me asking him who their agent was? She’s apparently the agent to go to. All the child stars have her. Her name is Ellen Arcade and she’s in Riverside. So I think she’s the one we should get for you.” My mother bent down closer to the heat vent. “A high school gym teacher,” she mused. “What do you know.”

  Benny could be impatient, but sometimes in summer you saw him taking a long time reading to one of the neighbor kids, a story from her cardboard children’s book. He helped littler kids with their math problems, pondering the elaborate boxes of numbers on their papers for hours. He tried to teach everything he didn’t understand. If you asked him how he made a stone skip seven times on the surface of a pond, or where he found the birds’ nests he carried home, perfectly whole, in two hands while running, how he balanced on water skis, he would shrug and grin, I dunno. He couldn’t teach you because he had no idea how he did these things. I once asked him to show me how to dance. We put Hal’s 45s on the console in their living room. Would you like some of my tangerine? Ben moved and shuffled. “How do you do that?” I looked at myself in Carol’s huge, gilt-edged mirror. I was all wrong.