Plus, even though Lisa can be a fashion disaster, she knows more than I do about coordinating accessories. She has probably twenty pairs of shoes and gives me her old ones. If it weren’t for Lisa, I would have only tennis shoes and one nice pair of shoes for special events that are usually grandparent-related, so they hardly ever get worn and they don’t fit me. Lisa gave me colorful flip-flops so I won’t be a complete dork.
Maybe I’m a bad person because I still want a present today. While Dad is passed out, I steal twenty dollars from his wallet. Why should I have to stay home all day? I take myself for a walk to Walgreens, which is just a block or so and one major stoplight from our house. Let him worry when he wakes up, I say. Let him feel bad enough he’ll let me get my ears pierced. I’m practically the only twelve-year-old I know with unaccessorized ears.
I spend almost two hours at Walgreens, sipping a Coke and reading magazines until a store employee suggests in a not-so-nice way that the store is not a library and to buy something or move on. So I buy a king-size bag of M&M’S and a paperback romance called The Valiant Rake. I want to know how a rake can be valiant. At the checkout counter, the mean clerk eyeballs me when he scans the book.
I also buy a black headband with a line of fake diamonds running through the center. Lisa said this would be the perfect accessory for someone with brown hair brushing the shoulders, which is what I have.
With my phone, I take a picture of myself wearing the headband and send it to Lisa.
She sends one right back of herself, showing off her sparkly blue earrings, and this message:
Fix ur ears.
Well.
I reply to her, did you forget it’s my birthday 2moro?
She replies with a smiley face.
There’s nothing I can do about my ears. My dad thinks pierced ears are for grown women only, but what does he know about fashion? Most days I have to check his socks to see if they even match, or cut off little strings dangling from his pants pockets.
When I get back from Walgreens, nothing has changed in my cul-de-sac. The cicadas are still making their rattlesnake hiss in the trees, and it’s so hot you sweat standing still. At least now my hair is accessorized with some new pizzazz, which is my current favorite word. It might be the only word I know with four z’s.
pizzazz n.: attractive style; dash; flair
The only new thing here is the Sanchez Lawn Service at Mr. Gustafson’s house. Mr. Gustafson is the one neighbor on the block who doesn’t mow his own grass. I suppose it’s because he is so bent he’s starting to take on the shape of a candy cane.
The lawn crew probably doesn’t care for an audience, but I walk over to Mr. Gustafson’s anyway. A Mexican boy with a red cap starts his work. He doesn’t look much older than I am, and I wonder how he already knows how to turn a yard into an even, green carpet with vacuum tracks on it. Why doesn’t he try different patterns, give the yard alien-crop-circle swirls? As sometimes happens with me, my brain is thinking so much it forgets to tell my body to keep moving.
I stand still until the boy makes a coughing sound like I am in the way, which, as it turns out, I am.
“Oh, sorry,” I say, stepping out of his way. “So, do you like this work? Mowing lawns fun?”
“No hablo inglés.”
“What? Oh. I get it.”
It’s not that I haven’t been around non-English-speaking people before. I’m not from Mars, after all. But just now, this boy in front of me and his inability to understand me are a newfound treasure. I could say anything.
“Rainbow chocolate cake winter snow porch.”
He nods as if I’ve made perfect sense, speaking fluent alien babble. His shoes are old and grass-stained, which makes me wonder how many houses he gets to see. It must be fun to have this job. You get to work outside and see something new all the time. In my diary, I will write this down as a possible career opportunity. It would be fun to see so many different neighborhoods. I bet I could pick out the rent-houses fast. They are brown, have the most weeds, and, like our house, usually have a dead tree stump in the front yard. There is a house like this a block from here, and the people put a potted plant on their tree stump like that would dress it up. I want to kidnap that plant because she is probably going to die of embarrassment up there.
The boy with the red cap stands there, waiting to see if I’m going to speak. Just saying secrets out loud can make you feel better, which is what I’ve learned from talking to Plant. She is not a person, but she is a living thing, so I know she hears me.
I begin.
“I’ve never French-kissed a boy,” I say to him as he removes a leaf blower from the truck.
That’s one.
“My dad let me drive the car once.”
Two. Okay, he is still standing in front of me.
And then I wait and take a deep breath. When someone learns we are that family and my mother is that woman and I am that girl, we move. But just now, the want to say it is almost overpowering.
If I told you my name, you could search me on the computer and, along with a tiny mention of my twin, Simon, there I would be, the daughter of that woman. The crazy woman’s daughter.
The boy moves his head to the side and squints like I’ve turned a flashlight on him. He starts up the leaf blower, walking around me to finish his work.
I could tell him that, but I’ve said enough for one day. I stand on the curb, munching my almost-melted M&M’S, and watch him make the sidewalk clean and new. The two other men on the crew load their equipment and open Gatorades and sit on the tailgate of their red truck. One of them says something that makes the other laugh and makes me wish I knew a little español, which I don’t.
“Well, you do nice work,” I say. The boy with the red cap, who is busy adjusting something on the blower, glances at me again. So I point to the grass, give him a thumbs-up, seeing how it must be a universal sign of approval. He nods.
“Cool, then. See you ’round,” I say.
I walk the full circle of the cul-de-sac and wave at the lawn crew as it drives away, wondering what questions he might have asked me if he understood English, what secrets he might have. As much as I don’t like nosy people, I love to know a juicy secret, too.
Chapter 5
This may be the longest afternoon in the history of afternoons. My dad is still drunk.
I peeked inside the screen door, and, sure enough, he was sprawled on the couch, one hand hanging over the cushion, the other across his forehead like he got bad news and froze.
It’s too far and too hot to walk to the library right now, so I’m stuck here in my own front yard with The Valiant Rake and melted M&M’S and nothing new to add to my knowledge of the world. I could already write a book on what I know of this stupid town. I filled a whole diary chapter about it in case I am famous and need to write my memoirs someday. Ha-ha!
We live in a neighborhood where all the streets are named after famous colleges. You’d think this signals we live in a fancy place, but no, we don’t. It is the opposite of fancy. I doubt most people here even went to college. Lisa’s mama says all people are part of Christ’s body, so some people have to be the armpits. She says Garland is the hardworking armpit of the Lone Star State. It’s a necessary body part, but it’s not pretty and can be smelly, especially if you are downwind from the wastewater treatment plant, which we are. Not counting overgrown trees with middles chopped out so power lines can run through them, there’s not a lot of nature here, if that’s what you like, but the people are nice and they’ll smile at you for no particular reason.
If my dad and I were the kind of family who stood out on our front lawns making friends with the paperboy or waving across the street as we watered our plants, we’d know plenty of interesting people. But we are not waterers. We don’t even get the paper. We know who our neighbors are, but that’s not the same as knowing them.
I have to spy on the neighborhood from my bedroom window or from the tree stump out in the yard. From there,
I can see our neighbors and all their different colors. Our cul-de-sac has families from four different countries: Mexico, India, Iran, and Vietnam. And Dad said Mr. Stanley married a Russian woman last Christmas. I’d love to know how he gets that kind of information, since he doesn’t talk to anyone.
What I’ve noticed from my window is that people in our neighborhood work hard. Every morning I wake up to the coughing sounds of old trucks and vans headed into their worlds. It’s not hard to guess at what they do all day. For example, if you need some kind of service, you don’t need to call 411. Just look outside your window for the company you want and the number will be painted on the side of a truck or van in big block letters.
JENNINGS PLUMBING
NGUYEN’S PAINTERS
BOB’S POOL SERVICE
Once, when I was sick and stayed home from school, I watched the neighborhood from my window. What I saw was that after all the neighbors leave for work, it’s so quiet you could have the whole block to yourself for a few minutes before the school buses appear. Then you will see kids on bikes and on foot head in the same direction. They look like sleepy robots with backpacks.
If the wind picks up, you can hear church-bell chimes swinging from Mrs. Dupree’s oak trees. This sound is how I decide if I need to wear a jacket or not. On Mondays you will hear the trash trucks beepbeepbeep through the alleys. In the afternoon, if you are superquiet, you can pick up the stop-and-go sound of the postman’s truck, which comes to our cul-de-sac around three.
Then in the late afternoon, I noticed that the neighborhood reverses. The school buses come down the streets in the opposite direction, and the schoolkids are the same, maybe with heavier backpacks. The service trucks rumble in from wherever they’ve been and park back on the street in front of their houses, the men stopping to check the mail. And soon you can smell food cooking on the backyard grills or the stoves, exotic scents that make my mouth water just thinking about them.
While the suppers are cooking, the little kids ride bikes or play hopscotch until their moms call them in with the kinds of accents you’ve never heard in your life. When the sun fades, the noise of sprinklers and cicadas takes over.
So I guess there’s still something left to learn in Garland, after all. It’s the fourth Texas town I’ve called home. Dr. Madrigal would be happy to know this is information I have shared with Lisa.
If you want to know, I have a diary for each city. Four different ones, each a different color. I started out in Galveston (blue), then moved to Waco (yellow), then Tyler (red), and now here I am with a light brown diary in the Land of Gar, which is what Lisa calls this town.
For sheer prettiness, I liked living down in Galveston by the ocean the best. There was always sand on our kitchen floor, and the windows could stay open almost all year. After work, Dad and I would go for walks next to the gray-green ocean and collect shells. But too many people knew us there, so we had to move. Dad said it made him uncomfortable to even go to the store, which I completely understand.
Right before we left our last house in Tyler, a woman in a low-cut tank top with giant boobs recognized my dad at the Tom Thumb. (Dad later described her boobs as pendulous, which is a word I’d like to use more often.)
pendulous adj.: hanging down loosely; swinging freely
We’d been searching for ripe peaches, smelling them and finding the best ones, when this woman came up and stared at him like she’d never seen a man. Her eyes traveled all over him, up and down, side to side. There is an ugly way people look when they are judging you. Head turned slightly sideways and nose crinkled like a rotten-food smell just cruised under their nostrils. Giant Boob Lady had that look. If you look in the mirror when you are judging someone, you will never do it again. It is not a pretty sight.
“I’m still not sure if you should’ve gone to jail,” she said.
That was the end of our shopping trip. We just left our cart in the produce area and walked out. I tell you, I’ve been suspicious of women with pendulous boobs ever since.
Chapter 6
The sun is setting now and Dad is still asleep on the couch. I turn down the TV volume and put the brown throw over him. It is strange to think that I’m the one behaving like a parent. Two weeks ago, he said, “No, you can’t go with Lisa to the R-rated movie. I don’t care that her mother says it’s okay. What is her cell phone number so I can express my concerns?”
And here it is me who puts two Tylenol and a glass of water on the coffee table, where there should be, I don’t know, an early birthday present.
I eat a cold Pop-Tart for dinner, put on my faded pajamas, and take myself to bed. I try to sleep but can’t. My mind is still churning. This day lacked specialness. I was supposed to be playing with my new iPod by now. Dinner was supposed to be at a restaurant. Pop-Tarts are no substitute for cake.
One of Plant’s leaves catches the breeze from the AC vent and waves at me.
“If that boy suddenly finds he understands English and tells someone I’ve never French-kissed a boy, it could be bad,” I tell her. She doesn’t answer, not even a wave.
I roll over and stare at the ceiling. Sometimes you do strange things and wonder about yourself later while the ceiling fan spins above you. What if I do weird things because I am going to turn out crazy like my mother? Maybe I need to call a hospital and find out what a person needs to do if they notice the signs. They could study my brain. Then I could get a doctor’s note that would get me out of the Family Tree Project.
Sarah is excused for mental-health reasons.
For now, I’m going to stay up all night so I can be awake at the exact moment I turn twelve. Happy birthday to me. Please pass the presents.
At least I’ve given myself a new paperback book, which I’m almost done reading. It turns out that rake is a word I can’t add to my vocabulary. Not in the way they use it in The Valiant Rake, anyway.
rake n.: a dissolute man in fashionable society
And of course, as it often happens with me, I had to look up the definition of a word within a definition.
dissolute adj.: indifferent to moral restraints; given to immoral or improper conduct
I’ve racked my brain for anyone I know who fits the description of a rake. I don’t know anyone in fashionable society. But I have seen plenty of older girls who walk around with their underwear peeking out from their jeans. Some of them like to take photographs of this and send them to boys. I will have to investigate if a girl can be a rake. It seems so.
Since tomorrow is my actual birthday, people will be expecting me to use different words. I may be able to throw out dissolute in conversation.
I hope twelve is different from eleven. But I hope that every year, and things are mostly the same. I did notice this morning that the things in my room seemed to belong to a younger girl. Maybe that is the first difference. I will have to rearrange my stuff, add some more black to my wardrobe to match my pretty, new headband. I’m hoping my dad will take me to the mall or a movie. Maybe I can guilt him into letting me get my ears pierced. You know, you were supposed to take me to the mall, but then you got drunk…. Ha! Like I would ever be brave enough to say that out loud.
Sometime after midnight, when I’m officially twelve, I tiptoe through the house as if the floor is made of cotton. Dad is asleep, so there’s no way I can make a Pop-Tart without waking him. Our toaster could wake the neighbors it’s so loud. So I take it plain and cold and run back to my room. Maybe he’ll make pancakes later. Or go get doughnuts, like we do on most Sundays.
Quickly, before he wakes up, I get my real diary out and make a list. I think of my birthday as a fresh start the same way people think of January 1 as a new beginning. My grandmother does this at the beginning of the year. This year, her New Year’s goals included trying out an easier hairdo, joining a book club, and growing tomatoes.
I write goals such as improving my posture and my ability to apply green or blue eye shadow. I’d like to know more about Jehovah’s Witnesses and why t
hey make my dad ignore the doorbell. What have they witnessed, and why wouldn’t you want to know this?
Today, I write my list of new goals in my diary:
- French-kiss a boy.
- Add more variety to my life.
- Get ears pierced.
- Learn a little español.
- Watch for signs of going crazy (ha-ha).
I wish I had my old birthday lists right now. I could go dig them out of my box and read about my old self. I’ve made my lists since my eighth birthday. My eighth birthday sucked. Sucked is a trouble word as huge as Texas, so I don’t say it in front of Dad, who is a general know-it-all when it comes to good grammar, since he is a professor. But sometimes you have to use the word that fits, even if you use it only in your mind.
I won’t even tell you how bad that birthday was. Let’s just say that if I wanted to write an article called “10 Tips for a Horrible Party” I could do it, no problem.
1. Eat cold pizza at Chuck E. Cheese.
2. Come home.
3. Have Dad watch The Good, the Bad and the Ugly for the one-millionth time.
4. Give Dad a drink.
5. Give daughter a dollhouse suitable for a five-year-old.
6. Open card from crazy mother.
7. Quiz Dad about crazy mother.
8. Help clean up Dad’s “accidentally” spilled drink.
9. Eat cake in silence.
10. Read a book until you fall asleep.
Like I said, sometimes using the exact right word is a must, trouble or not. Is there a better adjective than sucked to describe that day? I don’t think so.
Sure Signs of Crazy Page 2