Girl, Hero

by Carrie Jones

  “No way.”

  Scene over.

  No matter how wimpy she is, I wish she were here trying out with me, because then I could laugh at all the nasty things she’d say about everyone. Sasha is not nasty. Sasha is supportive, which just makes me more nervous because that makes it all seem life-or-death important.

  We sit in the back of the auditorium, which is sea green and smells like basement, wet and moldy. On the other side of Sasha, Stuart Silsby jitters his leg. He’s tiny, maybe only four feet eleven inches tall. He’s probably the only boy I know who hasn’t grown yet. Back in second grade when we had our class pictures taken, he was the boy mothers always pointed to and asked who he was and commented on. He wore a tie and a button-down shirt for the picture and smiled like a flashbulb. He’s still like that, all showy and confident and full of cornball jokes, but no one thinks he’s hot stuff anymore because he’s so short.

  We’re in ninth grade now, Mr. Wayne, and I do feel like a baby, all nervous and anxious with my palms sweating despite the kisses Sasha plants on the top of my head. She’ll be a good mother

  I try to think about how you would be here, just confident, ambling into the theater, standing tall. But Sasha keeps kissing the top of my head for good luck, distracting me.

  “This is what my mother does,” she says in a big drama-important voice.

  I nod my head. “Uh-huh.”

  “No, seriously. She does it for luck. It calms you down. There’s this super-important chakra there.”

  “You don’t need luck.”

  “Of course I do!’

  “You get every lead.”

  “That was in middle school. We’re in the big leagues now.”

  “Then I should be stage manager and not try out.”

  “Liliana Faltin!”

  “What?”

  “You are not stage manager material anymore. Plus, you’ve never tried out.” She shakes her head at me. “Do you remember when I taught you how to cheat at poker in the greenroom?”

  I nod.

  “Distract the boys with your eyes, blink at them, put your hand on their arm,” she’d say. “They can’t handle that. Then you slip an ace into your lap or you take a couple extra.”

  Man, she was good. She’d be one of those women in the saloons, drinking with the boys and taking them for all they’re worth, you know. They’d write in the movie trailer: And Sasha Sandeman plays Belle Monday, the scarlet woman with a heart of gold. And a purse full of gold, too …

  What would I be?

  Woman # 4 in crowd, cringing.

  We watch people audition. First we do the monologues, then we all come back one at a time at night and sing. Sasha comments on people while we wait our turn, and her criticisms seem nice almost.

  “Oh, no presence. How sad, but nice articulation,” she whispers behind her hands.

  Or about Alyssa Cutler, of all people: “Good diction. No volume.”

  I’m antsy and going crazy and feel like I’m all holed up in jail, guarding some prisoner, and I know that at any second the outlaws are going to come, rifles blazing, and try to break their buddy out. There’s nothing I can do but wait for the action to happen, and my nerves are shot to hell, like I need a stiff shot of tequila or something.

  Then it happens. They call my name, and with me they call Stuart Silsby.

  Sasha stands up with me, grabs my hands in hers and whispers, “I had a baby brother who got his head stuck in the crib and died. My mom heard him crying and everything and couldn’t get his head out of the bars in time.”

  I stare at her. Her big brown eyes are almost crying. There’s so much pain in there.

  She nods real slow and kisses me on my chakra, then pushes me away.

  “He died,” she says. “Go.”

  I trot up the steps and my shaking hand takes a script from Mrs. Gallagher, the director. I stand across from Stuart and I feel almost dead inside, just numb and full of ache. I say all my lines and I say them loud enough, but I forget to act. All I can think about is Sasha’s baby brother’s head stuck between the bars of his crib and his mother trying to save him. I read the lines, but my lips tremble because I’m thinking of Mrs. Sandeman’s face when she knows there’s no hope. I say the lines and I am Nellie, the nurse in South Pacific, and I’m telling Emile—Stuart—that I can’t stay with him. We can’t get married. I have to go. I think of babies. I think of my sister’s bruised face. It’s all too sad. I cry, long streams of tears escape my eyes and slip down my cheeks. Stuart stares at me like I’m the biggest loser in the world. I can’t believe Sasha’s baby brother died.

  When we’re done, Mrs. Gallagher goes, “Good. Good.”

  She claps her hands together like we’re dogs and she’s trying to get us to come. I put my face in my hands. I cannot believe I cried. Some cowboy. I look up, determined to get the hell off the stage. At the back of the auditorium, Sasha bounces up and down like a cheerleader. This is something she would never be. She says it’s too degrading. I agree, I think, but I’d like to be able to do all those splits and back handsprings. Sasha gives me the thumbs-up sign and starts winking like crazy. She looks so happy. Why is she so happy? Her little brother is dead. I run down the aisle back to her.

  “You did it!” she whisper-screams into my ear. “You were awesome. I knew it! I knew it!”

  She elbows Stuart Silsby in the gut as he gives her this look like she’s cream gravy, trying to get him to agree, but he’s completely clueless.

  “I know I was,” he says, tilting his chin up in the air and sticking it out like some sort of nerdy version of Superman. He puts his hands on his hips, just like the Man of Steel and everything.

  Sasha pouts and shakes her head before she starts smiling all over again. “Not you, silly. Lily. She was so good. She cried. Did you see her cry?”

  I gape at Sasha and say real slow, “You thought I done good?”

  The way I say it sounds like you, but Sasha doesn’t notice.

  “I’m just so happy!” she bubbles and tries to elbow Stuart again, but he’s moved away.

  Mrs. Gallagher is clapping her hands for quiet, because she’s done taking notes on Stuart and me and is ready to call up two more to the stage, so I lower my voice and lean into Sasha asking, “Sasha. How can you be so happy when your baby brother … when he … when he’s … you know … dead?”

  “Of course he’s not dead, you silly goof.” She gives me a huge smile and a giant hug. “It was a trick. My way of helping you get into the scene. Don’t you see?”

  Before I get to ask her what the hell she’s talking about, she hops up to the stage because her name has been called. She gets a happy, comic scene to try out. Mrs. Gallagher alternates happy scenes with sad. Stuart and I watch her and forget to blink, she’s so good. We laugh at her. So does everyone else. Sasha Sandeman.

  “One day she’s going to be a star,” Stuart whispers to me as we watch her lanky body do an impromptu one-handed back handspring as she holds a script in one hand and says her lines.

  “I know,” I say, because it has to be true. And it takes me a minute to realize that I’m talking to Stuart Silsby again; the boy I’m supposed to still be hating from seventh grade. I guess it’s all because of Sasha and all her visualize world peace/love each other stuff. What good am I at trying to end wars in Africa or freeing Tibet if I, myself, can’t even stop hating Stuart Silsby?

  “You were good up there,” I whisper to him, still watching Sasha.

  “Thank you,” he says, lifting up the collar of his shirt. “I know.”

  I look at him with my eyebrows up kissing my hairline, a look that’s meant to say, you’re an obnoxious jerk.

  He smiles, a car salesman smile, and says, “You were good too.”

  Everyone else goes home. I pretend like I hav
e a ride and hide out by the soccer field under the bleachers. I whisper-sing my song over and over again for hours. I practice it and practice it. My dad used to sing this song all the time when I was little, way back before my parents even got divorced. It’s about being corny like Kansas in August and loving this wonderful guy. I can still remember him twirling me around the living room, giggling.

  That was a long time ago.

  I’m the first one up. Nobody else is even in the hallway waiting yet, because we signed up for time slots.

  “Go ahead,” says the woman who’s in charge of music. “Come in and let me hear you. Liliana, right?”

  “Right.”

  “Good job earlier. Let’s hear if you can sing.”

  I pull myself up onto the stage, ignoring the stairs. I open my mouth and the notes come out, playing into the darkness, loud and true as gunshots. They drill their way into everything.

  “Good,” she says when I’m done. “Good. Send the next one in.”

  I open the auditorium door. Sasha gives me five and rushes in.

  “I’m here! I’m here!” she says. The door shuts behind her. I wait for her. She’ll give me a ride home.

  At home, there’s another note on the refrigerator:

  He’s coming tonight. Please vacuum. And dust. And heat up the spaghetti I left in the fridge. Don’t forget to wash the dishes. Please. And throw away this note, too. We’ll be in around nine.

  Love, Mom

  Warmed-up spaghetti. Oh boy, that sounds good. Not. No mention of doing my homework either. She must really be excited. I go to the hall closet and pull out the vacuum. When I plug it in, sparks of electricity fly from the outlet and I get shocked by the bursts of white and blue. I close my eyes and see the red of my lids. All the colors of the flag.

  “Damn it.”

  I look around like there’s someone there who saw the whole thing, but I’m alone. I close my eyes and hear wild horses stampeding towards the house. They’re getting closer, closer … they’ll trample me. I have to think of a diversion. I hold up the vacuum and point it at the picture window. “Back! Back!”

  Sometimes I am so weird I can’t handle myself.

  I thump the vacuum back on the floor, pull the plug back out and look at the rug in the living room. In the family room. Fine. Hall. Fine. Guest room. Fine except for a piece of maroon blanket lint, which I pick up with my fingers and put in the pocket of my pants because I’m too lazy to put it in the trash. My room and my mother’s room are okay too, I guess, but he won’t be going in there so it doesn’t matter, right? Yep. Right. Let’s say that sometimes my mom is a flannel-mouthed liar where men are concerned.

  As I get the dustrag and polish, the phone rings. I jump.

  “Liliana?”

  It’s my sister.

  “You going to be there awhile?” she asks.

  “Uh-huh,” I say.

  “I’m coming over.”

  “Okay.”

  “I’ll be there in ten minutes,” she says and hangs up.

  I hang up too. I put the dustrag and polish down on the kitchen table. I have ten minutes to do my homework before she comes. I can always dust while she’s here and maybe she’ll help. Panic settles in near my heart like I’ve got indigestion, and I don’t know if it’s about my homework or if it’s about my sister and whether or not she’ll have another bruise, or if she knows that I called her husband and threatened him. But I disguised my voice. Nobody could tell, right?

  I haul out my vocabulary sheet and the dictionary and start pumping out definitions. I’ve just finished my geometry when she comes in. There are no new bruises, which is a damn good thing, or one ugly fellow might have lost an appendage, and it isn’t one you write with or walk on, if you catch my meaning.

  “I’m worried about Mom,” Jessica says and she pulls her hand through her hair and some of the strands break off. She used to have beautiful chestnut hair, hippie hair, long and straight and as thick as algae, but she’s cut it off and had Brian’s cousin perm it a few times, so now it’s almost orange like she’s a 1980s woman; it’s kind of the color of rust, and split-ended and so brittle that it cracks when you touch it. She doesn’t have bangs either because Brian hates bangs. And she doesn’t wear makeup because only tramps wear makeup. All that macho stuff.

  “Liliana,” she repeats, turning on the faucet to get herself some water, “I said I was worried about Mom.”

  “Mom’s worried about you,” I say and then bite my lip. Saddle up.

  She drinks the water in gulps and puts the glass on the counter. “I don’t want to talk about that now.”

  “How come?” I pick up the rag and squirt some fizzy polish stuff on the kitchen table. I work the foam around in circles, making it as shiny as a mahogany bar on the set of one of your movies.

  She glares at me, outlaw eyes. “I just don’t. I’m worried about Mom.”

  “How come?” I ask again, same words, different question.

  “Because of that man coming.” Her voice breaks a little, making her seem more damsel-in-distress than outlaw. Her hands are red and flaky. She gets eczema when she’s stressed.

  I look away from her hands and focus on my own, stalling for time. “Mike O’Donnell?”

  “Uh-huh.”

  She refills her glass and gulps the water down the same way dad does, and her throat is so skinny I can see her Adam’s apple bob up and down when she swallows, like a man.

  “You’ve met him before, haven’t you?” I ask. I try not to look at her old jaw bruise, but it’s there like a neon sign, flashing at me.

  “Yeah, when I was a kid.”

  “You remember him?”

  “No. Not really. He was tall. Weird blue eyes.”

  “So why are you worried?”

  “I just don’t think she knows what she’s getting herself into.”

  “Oh.”

  “I mean he’s staying here with you. He has family. Why isn’t he staying with them?”

  “Maybe some people don’t like staying with their families,” I say, thinking of how awful it was to stay with her and Brian when I was little, with him yelling at everything all the time.

  She grabs another rag from beneath the sink and I pass her the polish. We walk into the living room to do the end tables and coffee table and she says, “I think he wants Mom’s money.”

  “What money?”

  “That’s just it. There is no money, but he probably thinks she has some.”

  “Why?”

  “That’s what these men are like. And she has the house. She could sell it.”

  “Jessica.” I take the polish back and squirt the end table. “You don’t really think that.”

  She nods. “Brian does.”

  I move the lamp from the table and mutter, “Brian doesn’t know everything.”

  This is for sure, because he doesn’t even know how to be a man. No man who hits his wife does. Right?

  Jessica’s face tightens up, and she looks like she’s about to run away like a buffalo who’s just seen a hunting party on the horizon, so I add, “I think he just has a crush on her.”

  “I hope so,” she says and rubs along the sides of the coffee table, sticking the rag in the crack where the leaf drops, moving it slow and hard to get out all the dirt.

  “I tried out for a play today,” I say because this seems safe, like something that won’t make her run. “A musical.”

  “Good. Good.” Wet drops of sweat, tiny but visible, show up at the edges of her hair and she rubs. “I’m pregnant. But don’t tell Mom. I don’t want her to know yet. I’m not far along.”

  “Oh.” My voice comes out weak, like a whisper, because it can’t get louder than my heart, which has started thumping in my chest louder and more serious
than a herd of spooked steers.

  I stare at her stomach. It looks flat. How could there be a baby in there?

  “Don’t you want to congratulate me?”

  I think of Sasha’s little brother and his head stuck in the bars of the crib, even if that wasn’t really true. What if that happens to Jessica’s baby?

  “I’m sorry.” I leave the living room, go into the kitchen and drop the rag into the sink. It splashes me; suds cling to my hands and shirt like tears.

  She comes thundering after me. “What do you mean you’re sorry?”

  “It’s just …”

  How do I tell her, my sister, who has wanted a baby her entire life, that I’m afraid of what will happen? That this baby means she will never leave Brian. That it will become Brian.

  She whips me around by my shoulder and I look up at her face. It’s red. It’s almost crying.

  “What. Do. You. Mean?” she asks again, each word a bullet that makes my courage recoil with the backlash.

  I do not saddle up.

  I reach around and hug my sister. I can feel her spine. “I mean congratulations. I’m sorry I can’t hug you right. My hands are wet.”

  I move away and smile at her. She smiles back. She looks happy with her mouth and worried with her eyes, but the water does not spill onto her cheeks.

  “You’ll make a great mother,” I say.

  “You think so?”

  “Yeah.”

  Because my sister is the type to worry, and it isn’t good for her, I don’t tell her some things.

  My mom says that if my sister keeps fretting about everything like Mike O’Donnell or the way Brian scowls at me, or the eczema problems, she will give herself at the very least an ulcer, or maybe even cancer. My mother says there is a definite link between cancer and stress.

  People who are pregnant aren’t supposed to worry, either. It can hurt the baby.

  So I don’t tell my sister about what I’m worrying about, which isn’t whether or not this Mike guy has a crush on my mother. It’s about whether he’s really a bad hombre who killed a man in a bar. The little stress lines appear between my eyebrows because of those boxes he sent and the headlines.