It was Richie, one of the school bullies. He was in Brother’s grade but was shorter than Girl, and he rode a girl’s bike that had a tall pole topped with a triangular flag on the back of the white banana seat.
“Look who I found! Brother Lillibridge and his sister. Nice floods, Brother.” Girl’s hands balled up into round, hard apples at her sides. She had never been in a fight with anyone besides Brother. Her hands might have been ready to brawl, but Girl was too scared to raise her fists to beneficial height, and they hung uselessly at the end of her arms. Girl could no more break her paralysis than she could scream in dreams. Richie was short, dark-haired, and squinty-eyed with a chip on his shoulder the size of Texas. Everyone was afraid of him and his friends. He only hung with the coolest and toughest kids in school, and Girl and Brother were neither cool nor tough.
“Can’t your mother afford to buy you new clothes? Four-eyes.”
Girl’s eyes narrowed—no one could pick on Brother besides her. She hated Richie, and hated that Brother couldn’t stand up to him, even though he was more than a head taller than the bully. She knew it wasn’t in Brother’s nature to fight back. He was afraid of dogs and was too shy to make friends easily. Girl wasn’t very tough either, but she was their only hope.
“You’re riding a girl’s bike,” she sneered.
“It’s my sister’s. Got a problem with that?” Richie spat on the ground. Fear blanked Girl’s mind of any more snappy comebacks. Turns out she wasn’t any better at this than Brother was.
Brother’s moist fingers closed around Girl’s. Run, she could feel him think, his terror fusing with her own as the fear-sweat of their hands acted as a conductor for action. Fight or flight. They flew.
The siblings ran holding hands, Girl’s red book bag bouncing and thumping into her shoulders. Her corsage turned sideways, dangling from the pin that secured it to her birthday dress. Girl’s pink Keds slapped the concrete as she pumped her legs as hard and fast as she could. She wished for the wind to sweep them up into the sky. Brother’s legs were longer, and he didn’t let go—his hand pulled Girl along faster than she could have run on her own. He was the wind that bore them both to safety. Neither of them would ever leave one another behind, not even to save themselves. Never. At home and at school it was Brother and Girl against the world. From that day on, Brother was Girl’s best friend. He stopped pummeling her when he was mad and she dug her fingernails into him no more.
the pool
“The pool is kidney shaped, like a bean,” Mother said, but Girl didn’t know what that meant. Mother had signed up for a family pool membership at the Sheraton Inn by the airport. “And it has skylights,” she added. Girl had never seen a kidney, but she knew what beans in chili looked like, because she carefully ate around them, leaving them in a red pile at the bottom of her bowl. She had only seen round or rectangular pools—a kidney seemed like an inefficient design for swimming laps. When they walked into the pool area Girl fell in love with the graceful curves of the pool, mimicked in four bubble skylights above it. She understood instantly that kidney-shaped pools were the best kind of pools there were.
Mother and Stepmother swam laps, but mostly they sat on beach chairs and read books or sat in the hot tub and talked. Girl and Brother played Marco Polo and if there were other children around they had chicken fights, which they almost always won as long as Brother was the horse and Girl was on his back. Sometimes they would “polar bear,” which meant they sat in the sauna as long as they could stand, then rolled in the snow outside and jumped in the pool. Girl didn’t like breathing the hot sauna air and she was a little afraid she’d get locked in there, even though the door didn’t have a lock. The wooden benches inside smelled good and cedar-y, but if she accidentally sat on a nail head, it burned her leg. Brother liked to sit on the top bench, but it was harder to breathe close to the ceiling. Girl liked best to sit on the floor under the bottom bench if there weren’t any grown-ups in there with them. The snow part of the polar bear was terrible, and Girl never really rolled; instead she ran outside, the snow burning the bottoms of her feet, and rubbed some snow on her legs and arms. She could not willingly lower her body full-length in the snow like Brother. A grown-up was always willing to man the sliding glass door from the courtyard to the indoor pool—for some reason grown-ups always loved to watch the children do the polar bear, even though once a woman said they might have heart attacks from the temperature change. Girl ran as fast as she could, the cold crotch of her too-big bathing suit hanging down just a little and slapping her legs. She leapt into the pool, not bothering to dive or pull herself together into a cannonball. She crashed feet-first into the water, all the stress of the running and the cold leaving her body. Floating underwater, all the parts that the snow had touched were hot now—the children called it floating in marshmallows. Dreamlike, soothing, it felt something like love.
Mother had a swim bag filled with flippers and masks and goggles, but there never seemed to be enough to go around. Stepmother taught Girl to spit inside the goggles and rub it around with her fingers to keep the lenses from fogging. Stepmother swam laps with a mask, snorkel, and flippers. Mother used only a pair of goggles. When Girl didn’t have goggles she opened her eyes underwater anyway, until her eyes turned red and one of her parents sent her to the drinking fountain to rinse them. Girl couldn’t ever bring herself to open her eyes in the cold stream of the drinking fountain, but it felt good on her closed eyelids, and she thought her eyes could somehow absorb the benefits of clean water if she blinked with her eyelids almost touching the stream.
Sometimes there were other children at the pool. Girl looked closely at kids with tubes in their ears, the ones who had to wear red or blue ear plugs to stop them up. The plugs looked like Play-Doh, or chewed-up gum.
“Do they hurt?” she asked every kid she saw who had plugs.
“Not really,” they always answered, but Girl didn’t believe them, because how could sticking tubes into your ears not hurt? It was one of the things she was afraid of when she went to the doctor. Mother never made the children use Q-tips at home, so when they went to the pediatrician he always used a long metal tool that had a tiny spoon at the end to get the wax out, and it hurt a lot.
“Dang, I got a sunburn!” a black boy around Girl’s age said to her once, pushing his fingers into his forearm. In the summer, they went out and played in the grass when they were bored with swimming. “You probably don’t think black people can get sunburned,” he said, and he was right. Girl thought he was joking—she had never gotten a sunburn in her life, and she was a lot lighter than he was. All she knew about black kids was that they wore swim caps at the pool more often than white kids, but they mostly didn’t mind playing with her. Not like at day camp, where the kids segregated themselves by race and she was stuck with the few white kids in the urban program. At the pool there weren’t enough kids to be choosy. “Look,” he said as he held out his arm, and pressed his fingertips above his wrist. Girl did the same to her own arm. “See? You can tell by your fingerprints on your arm if you have a sunburn.” Girl looked at his arm, and back at her own, but didn’t see what he was talking about.
Mother always took a long time getting into the pool. She’d walk in slowly, making cold “Ah! Ah!” noises, and splash her body with water for a few minutes, then go “ooooo!” and slide up to her neck all at once. Girl loved to pick Mother up in her arms like a baby and carry her around the shallow end, but Mother only tolerated that for a little while. Sometimes Girl would hold the back of her mother’s bathing suit straps and go for a dolphin ride when she swam laps.
“This is how your grandmother taught me to swim,” Mother said. “I held onto her straps when she swam until I could do it on my own.” Mother’s back was broad and soft, with only one tiny flat mole on her lower right side, so small Girl could only see it when she hung on her back. Mother’s skin was darker than her daughter’s, prettier, Girl thought, and faster to tan. When Girl held onto her mother’s
straps they pulled back a little, and she could see the permanent red indentations on her mother’s shoulders from wearing a bra. Girl hoped she never got shoulder indentations, but she did hope she got big boobs, like Mother.
Mother looked different in the pool. It was the only time she didn’t wear glasses, and her mouth was softer, like her lips always wanted to smile. At home, her brows always pulled slightly toward each other, and her lips made a straight line. If you asked her to smile for a picture, she wouldn’t show her teeth. In the water, she smiled with her mouth open and Girl could see all of her teeth.
“Is that your mom?” a new girl asked as Mother walked toward the pool. Girl sighed. She knew what was coming. Mother was fat, but proportional, like a big, soft peanut, and she didn’t dye the gray in her hair, but that wasn’t the major problem. It was her body hair. Under each arm was a round black bush the size of Girl’s fist, and at the bottom of her swimsuit curly hair escaped down her thighs. Her shins were covered in dark hair.
“Why doesn’t she shave?” the strange girl asked, her long, brown ponytail dripping water.
“She doesn’t believe in it. She’s a feminist,” Girl answered, as she had been taught to. She was never, ever to say they were gay. Girl hated anyone to look at her mom like that, like she was weird, or ugly. Mother was the best person in Girl’s whole world. Stepmother didn’t shave either, but her hair was sparser and lighter in color, and because she was a lumpier kind of fat than Mother was, her hair got lost in the folds of her body. You couldn’t see it across the pool as easily.
“Who’s that with your mom?” the other child asked.
“My aunt,” Girl said, telling the Official Family Lie. “My parents are divorced,” she offered, to justify it. Almost nobody she knew had divorced parents, but Mother promised that by the time she graduated high school half of her friends would have divorced parents. Girl swam away from the questions. She’d rather play by herself anyway. Girl ran back to her mother, her swimsuit dripping down her legs, and asked her mother for a penny. Girl threw the coin into the deep end and dove after it, trying to catch the spinning copper before it hit the bottom. When she got close to the bottom, her ears felt overfull and made a tinny, throbbing sound. If she missed the penny and it floated all the way down to the square grate of the filter nine feet below, she’d try to pick it up with her toes, or convince Brother to get it for her. Girl exhaled on the way up, racing the silver bubbles to the surface. If she twisted quickly enough, sometimes they would get caught in her hair.
Before she took a bath the next night, Girl dug through the drawer in the bathroom cabinet and found an old, orange Bic razor. She pulled the single blade over her wet shins, leaving them red and stinging. She could see why Mother didn’t want to shave, if it hurt so much, but Girl did it anyway. She shaved her thighs and her arms as well. Girl knew that she wasn’t allowed to shave until seventh grade, three years away, but she could not stand the boy-like black hair on her limbs. The next day Girl pulled her socks up to her knees so Stepmother wouldn’t see that she had defied her.
middle school
naked sculptures
Stepmother was a Great Artist. The house was filled with her landscape paintings and clay sculptures of naked women.
Some of the girls at school were no longer allowed to play at Girl’s house once their parents heard about the statues. “The human body is a work of art! You go tell your friends to tell their parents that all great artists study the female nude. No, it is not weird!” Stepmother explained to Girl and Brother. But Girl’s friends only looked at her funny when she said it, obviously unconvinced.
One of the sculptures was of Mother seated in a chair, large breasts splayed on her large stomach, legs slightly spread to reveal the pubic hair Stepmother had carved with a special metal sculpting tool. Stepmother had lengthened Mother’s hair—Girl didn’t know if this was meant to disguise Mother, or if it was wishful thinking. Stepmother often asked Mother to grow her hair long and dye it red. Girl didn’t think it was nice to imply her mother wasn’t good enough as she was.
“Don’t tell your friends that is supposed to be me,” Mother told the children.
“But isn’t it supposed to be a beautiful work of art?” Girl asked, not entirely innocently.
“It is absolutely a beautiful work of art. But it makes me look fatter than I am in real life,” Mother replied.
Girl had seen Mother naked plenty of times and she thought the statue was pretty spot-on, but she knew better than to contradict her. She didn’t want her friends to know what Mother looked like naked anyway, so Girl wouldn’t have told anyone even if she hadn’t been forewarned.
Because Stepmother was a Great Artist and understood the importance of naked statues, she was very understanding when Girl made a sculpture of her own in fourth-grade art class.
Mr. Bailey taught art to all the grades, traveling from school to school. Back when Girl was in second grade, her class painted pictures of autumn trees. She had red and orange for the leaves, and purple for some violets she was planning to add around the bottom. Mr. Bailey dipped his paintbrush in the purple paint and added some purple leaves to Girl’s tree. She was livid, but didn’t say anything. She just iced him out. For the next few years, anytime Mr. Bailey spoke to Girl, she’d turn her head fast in an obvious, hair-flouncing fuck-you.
Once she knew that she had made her point, Girl graciously began speaking to him again, and he was pathetically grateful for it. He’d smile at her and allow her to ignore his assignments and make whatever she wanted during art class, as long as she was quiet. Girl spent her entire fourth grade year drawing life-sized pictures of girls with braids and roller skates and cool clothing. Art was a pass/fail class anyway. If she liked an assignment she’d try it, like when the class made piñatas. Girl made a brown rat head and was quite pleased with herself—it turned out exactly like the vision in her head. Mr. Bailey felt she should have made ears that stuck out using oaktag as he had instructed, and when he gave her a B on it, he earned another month of glowering stares.
Girl was excited when he announced the unit on clay. She had liked making pinch pots and little animals over the summer at the Art Gallery, and she had been hankering to make a very specific sculpture for quite some time. She had it all worked out in her head. She wanted to make a penis sculpture, and she could picture exactly what it should like: it would sit on the rounded V-shaped testicles, the shaft of the penis pointing up at a right angle. Girl and her best friend, Gretchen, talked a lot about penises and how to make a sculpture of one without getting caught. They needed a statue because they couldn’t agree on what a penis looked like, and their drawing skills were not good enough to resolve the disagreement to either’s satisfaction. Girl decided she could make one in art class and just tell everyone it was a Chinese man. She figured the acorn head of the penis resembled the large circular peasant hats in the pictures of farmers in China she found in her Social Studies book. Girl knew Mr. Bailey would never question her.
“What are you working on, Girl?” Mr. Bailey asked cautiously.
“A Chinese man. This is his peasant hat, and these are his legs,” she explained as she attached the testicle “legs” of the penis sculpture to the shaft that she was pretending was the man’s body, pressing the clay firmly so it wouldn’t fall over.
“Aren’t you going to give him arms?”
“He doesn’t need arms,” Girl scowled.
“What about shoes?” he tried.
“He’s too poor to afford shoes,” she answered, and he had no comeback for that. Girl knew enough about art to know it didn’t have to be realistic. Her “man” had a head, a body, and the suggestion of legs. It was interpretive art, or modern art, or something. Picasso’s people didn’t always look real, either.
Mr. Bailey dared not question her. Unfortunately, she could find no justification for making a pee hole at the top of the “hat,” so she had to omit it.
When the class’s projects returned fr
om the kiln, it was time to glaze their creations. Girl looked through the white plastic bottles for something flesh-colored.
“Do you have any peach?” she asked Mr. Bailey.
“Everything we have is out,” he said, moving on to help someone else. Girl rummaged through the bottles, but there was no peach, or even tan. How could that be? What if Girl had made a deer statue, or a person, or a peach tulip? Had he hidden the flesh tones? She rummaged through the glazes, and finally settled on a greenish-brown with flecks of black. Not her vision, but it would have to do. It was somewhat skin-colored if you let your eyes blur to slightly out of focus.
Mr. Bailey was back again, looking over her shoulder.
“How about you use blue for the pants, red for the shirt, and yellow for the hat? You know you can use several colors of glaze. They won’t bleed into each other. Then it will be more obvious that it is a Chinese man.”
Girl just stared him down. She wanted peach. There was no peach. She suspected there might have been peach, but Mr. Bailey hid it when she was in the art room, so she ignored him entirely as if he had never spoken.
When Girl brought her sculpture home and explained once again that it was a Chinese man, her parents graciously put it on the mantel for a while, until it magically disappeared one day. Naked women were great art, but penises were just embarrassing.
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