“You’re doing it wrong!” she whispered.
“Whaddaya mean?”
“We have to do it like they do in the movies,” she said.
So there they were, under their desks, beside the wall with a bulletin board covered with brown construction paper turkeys they had to make before Thanksgiving, the ones that basically all looked the same but not quite, trying to kiss like in the movies. She still thought he was doing it wrong because it didn’t last long enough.
“I’m not a bird,” she’d whispered. “Quit peckin’ at me.”
After Jimmy-Joe Riley broke up with her because of the small white fuzz in her hair, Jesse set her sights on Tommy Delvane, an interesting boy who sat quietly by himself most of the time. She was fascinated by his solitude and how he didn’t seem to mind it. Sometimes during quiet times in class when everyone was doing their homework or pretending to, Jesse would come over to Tommy’s desk. She’d prop herself up on her elbows, taking over half his desk, and watch intently as he completed his masterpieces. She wouldn’t have noticed him at all had he not been able to do something that no one else could do. At first, she thought he was looking at a magazine with pictures of exotic places—the Eiffel Tower, the Taj Mahal. Then she realized, with his slender fingers wrapped around a fine point pen, that he was the one creating the drawings—intricate, architecturally detailed renditions of places she’d only seen on TV or in National Geographic. She was awestruck. She’d had her eye on him for some time, but today she decided to ask him about his work. Whether it was his silence or his exceptional talent, he seemed so far advanced compared to the other nine-year-olds in their class. He didn’t know it yet, but he was going to be her next boyfriend.
“You drew this?” she asked, already knowing the answer.
His ears flushed red, sharply contrasting with his white-blond hair. He simply nodded and resumed his work.
“This is really, really good,” she said, imagining how she’d tell everyone he was her new boyfriend.
Tommy looked up, his face revealing a shy grin. She could tell he wasn’t used to hearing compliments, at least not such enthusiastic ones.
“You think so?” he asked.
“Oh yeah,” Jesse exclaimed. “People would pay money for this.”
“Really?” Tommy’s face was redder than a beet.
“You okay?” She stared at the beet with blond hair and worried that she might kill him if she said any more nice things.
“Yeah. Thanks.” He paused and smiled warmly at her. For the first time, he seemed proud of himself. “What church do you go to?”
The question blew in from out of nowhere. Jesse eyed him strangely. “First Baptist,” she said.
Tommy’s face sunk. Then he resumed drawing as if she wasn’t there anymore. His nose was practically pressed against the paper on which he drew. He’d either gotten a sudden burst of inspiration or something weird had just happened.
“Where do you go?” Jesse asked.
“Church of Christ,” he answered simply. “My mom and dad said if you don’t go to my church, you’re goin’ to hell.”
“Are you kiddin’ me?” Jesse stood up.
But Tommy wouldn’t say another word. He wouldn’t even look at her.
“Thanks a lot.” Jesse was sarcastic and her feathers more than a little ruffled. She yanked down her T-shirt to straighten it and carried herself with the utmost dignity back to her own desk.
She felt cold and strange. She tapped her pencil distractedly on her desk, still watching Tommy and his drawings. It was sad the way everyone was divided by their religions, how soon they started learning to hate others who didn’t believe what their parents believed. Her father always preached about Jesus welcoming everyone, even the ones that society frowned upon. But out in the real world that Jesse knew, people acted as though Jesus was sitting up on a throne making two lists—those going to hell and those NOT going to hell. In Tommy’s eyes, she was already damned. How weird it all was.
* * *
It was during this time, around age nine, that Jesse came home from school and searched through her bottom dresser drawer for something she hadn’t looked for in quite a while—the address that her old friend had given her. Jesse pulled it out, now wrinkled and barely legible, and decided to pen a letter to Stephanie.
Whether it was a feeling of isolation or just missing the times they’d had together—the good ones she’d chosen to remember, not the times when Stephanie had gotten her into trouble—Jesse had been thinking of her more often lately.
She sat at the kitchen table and wrote a thoughtful letter. It didn’t say much, just stuff like:
How are you? I’m fine. How is your new school? Mine is the same as when you left, only the teachers are meaner. Please tell me how things are with you. – Jesse
When she was done, Carolyn helped her address an envelope and put it in the mail. Jesse didn’t want her to know who the letter was for, so she made sure her hand covered Stephanie’s name. She said, “It’s for a friend who moved away.”
That seemed to satisfy Carolyn, who was impressed that Jesse wanted to write a letter in the first place.
Weeks passed. Jesse never got a response.
Chapter Twelve
In fifth grade…
Jesse was on-again, off-again with Randy Billings. Their budding connection had been cut short in third grade after Jesse’s punishment and transfer to another class; she didn’t see him for a couple of years. She’d actually forgotten about him, but now they were in the same class again. When they had to do oral book reports as their favorite literary characters, Jesse faked a note that said she had a sore throat so that the teacher would accept a written report from her on Beth from Little Women. Randy was Sherlock Holmes, wearing a checkered wool hat and holding a fake pipe. He read from a piece of paper like a robot, never looking up once. But he suddenly looked good to her the way a new Icee flavor at the Stop ’n’ Slurp did. She decided she would make him her boyfriend again.
Jesse understood from an early age how the world worked. Only a man and a woman could become a couple, she knew. She never consciously thought about this; it was simply the norm, like the married couples in church. It was what she saw all around her, what she knew, what she saw on Happy Days and The Love Boat, her favorite TV shows, and in Grease, her favorite movie. At times she was a little sad at the thought of someday getting married and having kids, because she wasn’t sure she really wanted that. But as a girl, her path had been clearly chosen for her, so she figured that someday she’d do it anyway, exactly what the women did on TV.
In grade school, though, “going together” meant you were a major couple and suddenly more popular than everyone else. For Randy and Jesse, it meant never speaking to each other but telling their friends they were going together.
On Picture Day Jesse caught Jimmy-Joe staring at her, the false alarm on Lice Check Day evidently long forgotten. Picture Day was the day when her mother always made her dress up “more feminine,” as she called it. In the cafeteria one of Jimmy-Joe’s friends told one of Jesse’s friends that he wanted to go with her again. But she had one of her friends tell him that she was already going with Randy Billings. Having two boys who were fighting over the right to say they were going with her made her more popular than ever. The choice was easy, because she thought Randy was the better looking of the two.
One day at recess Jesse caused an uproar by jumping into a game with boys who were shooting hoops on the small court behind the school. Some girls her age, like the younger ones, watched on the sidelines and whispered. But Jesse didn’t care. Now that she knew how to play she wasn’t going to pretend that she couldn’t compete with the boys. Out of nowhere came Randy, and he tried to steal the ball from her. She thought it was kind of nice to see his face up close; after all, they had been going together for nearly a year. But not only would she not let him have the ball, she made a difficult shot even with him guarding her.
After she scored, h
er feet landed upon the concrete and she felt exhilarated, that is, until she saw Randy’s frown. He slumped off the court without looking at or speaking to her, walking back to the playground area. Girls were staring at her and talking among themselves. Ivy had warned her about how boys didn’t like you to do better than they did, especially in sports. But Jesse wasn’t going to just give him the ball, as he probably expected. She was sure boys never pretended to be bad at anything. Why should she?
That night at dinner, Danny let out the beginnings of a laugh, clearly intent on stirring up trouble.
“What’s so funny, mister?” their mother demanded.
“I heard that Jesse is going with a boy,” he said. Then a glance at his sister. “The whole school’s talking about you two, sayin’ how cute you are, how you’ll probably get married.” He made teasing kissing sounds.
“Forget it,” Jesse snapped. “It’s over anyway.”
“Did I miss something?” Her father seemed bewildered.
“He’s not my boyfriend anymore because I played basketball better than him,” she explained to her family. “I don’t want no boy who can’t handle a little competition.” She rolled some pasta on her fork, sounding like she was forty-two years old.
Her mother smiled proudly at her. “Any boy who can’t handle competition, Jesse. But otherwise, good for you.” She patted her daughter’s shoulder. “If his ego is that fragile…”
“Wait a minute.” Her dad wadded up his napkin and set it on the table. “Isn’t fifth grade a little young to be talkin’ about boyfriends?”
“Oh, Dan,” her mother replied. “It’s harmless. They don’t even go on dates.”
“They hold hands,” Danny added. “Someone saw you.”
“Will you quit?” Jesse barked. “We did that once, and it’s over. So shut up.” It was the briefest moment, she remembered. A while ago while the class was waiting in yet another straight line to go to the cafeteria, Randy reached down and touched her hand, not completely holding it, but almost. She responded by touching her fingertips to his, that is, until the teacher came by to make sure everyone was accounted for.
“I heard it was more than once.” Danny was obviously trying to get her in trouble. He was one second away from having to go to his room.
“If you want to keep a boyfriend,” Ivy said, “you have to quit actin’ like such a boy.”
Jesse’s mouth fell open. “Who are you callin’ a boy?”
“Now, girls,” their mother intervened. She looked uneasy, her eyes shifting back and forth between her daughters. Dinnertime was increasingly becoming an indigestion fest.
Later that night Jesse remembered holding Stephanie’s hand. She thought about how good it felt, how free she was back then. Was it merely a memory, one of those things that becomes distorted with time? She thought about how Randy nearly held her hand before their unspoken but certain breakup. It was a sweet moment. But it didn’t compare to holding Stephanie’s hand; that was the best feeling of all and probably always would be.
She’d given up hope of getting a letter back from her. To a young girl, a week might as well have been forever. When she didn’t hear anything for more than a year, she figured it was a lost cause. It was a fleeting thought, like a flicker on the wall from a shadow outside her window.
Chapter Thirteen
Seventh grade…
Jesse, who preferred to be called Jess now, was getting ready to move into a new building, a three-story, red brick building with white columns that seemed downright scary to a twelve-year-old. This was the building where junior high and high school kids went. It was the only school of its kind for miles around, so the classes were large, with kids from neighboring towns in the county taking up every seat. The words “Greens Fork High” were etched in marble at the front of the building near the roof, and the shadow it cast on the front lawn in the mornings was bright and dramatic, not to mention intimidating to Jess.
“Don’t talk to any of the high school kids if you don’t wanna get stuffed in a locker,” Danny told her.
“That’s not nice,” their mother said, driving the car. “Don’t scare her like that.”
“I’m not scared,” Jess said. She was scared. She wasn’t sure that what she’d learned in grade school applied to junior high and high school—standing in a straight line, being quiet all the time and doing every assignment exactly like your classmates did. She kind of hoped they didn’t. These admonitions, these calls to conform, to make her construction paper Santa the same as everyone else’s, only strengthened her urge to swim against the tide, reinforcing the sense that if she was going to have a life worth living she would need to be different. Feeling glimmers of that need was…thrilling. And at the same time frightening.
They were heading to the only shopping plaza in town to get some new clothes for school. Registration Day was Monday, and this was the last weekend of freedom before Jess went to what she had started calling “the big house.”
“It’s not ‘the big house,’” Ivy said. “That’s prison.”
“Yeah,” Jess said. “Same thing.”
“Will you quit?” It was common knowledge that Ivy actually liked school and she looked forward to shopping. Today she wore a light cotton dress and had tied up her milk chocolate hair in a ponytail. “You’re ruining this experience for me!”
“Shut up, Straight A’s,” Danny teased her.
Ivy replied by elbowing him in the ribs.
“That will be enough!” Carolyn yelled. “I’m going to turn this car around if I hear that again, Danny.”
Carolyn was always “going to turn the car around,” especially when Danny was in it. She’d become a pro at executing the warning U-turn. Thankfully, the car had a responsive steering wheel.
“What’d I do?” Over the years he’d perfected his innocent look.
“You don’t make fun of someone for being a good student,” Carolyn said.
“Jess needs to know,” he replied. “Other kids will make fun of you if you get good grades. They will kick your ass. That’s reality.” Danny thought he was hot stuff since he was now in eighth grade. Last year some girls had told him he was good looking and his ego had ballooned. He walked around with a comb in his back pocket and was always feathering his hair on the sides. He thought he was Shaun Cassidy. At the same time, little hairs were sprouting around his sideburn area and chin. He was getting more obnoxious too, as if that was possible. Jess could hardly stand him.
“Only jerks make fun,” Ivy snapped.
“That’s right,” their mom said. “And with their bad grades, they’ll grow up to work at the gas station over there.” She was looking at a tired guy in dusty overalls wiping the sweat off his forehead before filling up someone’s tank. “It’s not so funny when you get out of school, is it?”
Their mother lowered her eyebrows. Jess knew that her parents were secretly worried that Danny was unmotivated. She knew this because her bedroom was next to theirs, and the walls may as well have been made of Kleenex. Ivy, they said, would probably go on to college. No one could imagine what Danny was going to do with his life. Their father talked about a vocational school where he could learn to do something with a saw. Jess didn’t hear much speculation about her future, possibly because she was the youngest and still had plenty of time to worry them.
“Somebody’s gotta work there,” Danny argued.
“At the gas station?” Their mother shook her head.
“Well, yeah,” he said. “Like they say in church, we shouldn’t look down on people.”
“That’s a load of crap,” she said.
“It’s a responsible job and it pays,” Danny said. “You mean you’d be mad at me if I took a job like that?”
“I’d be disappointed,” she said. “Because your father and I know you can do better.”
“What if I can’t?” He folded his arms.
“You’re just scared,” Ivy said.
“Am not,” he snapped.
&n
bsp; Jess made respectable grades, but she often found herself daydreaming in school. It was hard to sit still and listen for hours at a time. It was too much like being in church. On top of that, she heard that in seventh grade they were going to have math problems with letters in them. It was called algebra, and their parents didn’t seem to know about it, so they would be of no help.
“I still don’t understand how you can solve a problem with letters,” Jess said, partly to change the subject and also because she was worried.
“The teacher will explain it,” Ivy assured her.
“What if she explains it and I still don’t get it?” Jess asked.
Ivy thought a minute. “Then you’ll fail.” She wasn’t going to sugarcoat it, especially because Jess had also teased her about her grades. Even though it was a religious household, the sisters still adhered to the “eye-for-an-eye” philosophy.
Jess smacked her lightly on the arm.
“Enough!” Their mother was seconds away from making the warning U-turn.
Everyone got quiet. Carolyn eyed the backseat through the rear-view mirror. When she was satisfied that there would be no more annoying banter, she turned the wheel toward the store.
When they got there, their mother asked, “Girls’ section first?”
“Nah,” Danny laughed. “Jess’ll go with me to the boys’ department.”
“Shut up.” The issue had been brewing for a while with subtle—and not-so-subtle—comments from Jess’s siblings. Now that she was twelve, her clothes were being judged more than ever. She couldn’t understand it. She used to be able to slip on a T-shirt and jeans and everything was fine. Now that wasn’t good enough.
“Give me a break,” he said. “You only wear stuff from the boys’ department.” Danny had become less and less likable. In fact, she sometimes wondered if she hated him. That was something she was going to have to pray about later.
“It’s called ‘unisex,’” she told him.
“Whatever,” he said, distracted by a rack filled with neon yellow BMX shirts.
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