Memoirs of a Teenage Amnesiac

by Gabrielle Zevin

  “Why?”

  “I always assumed it was because of the enticing alliteration of her first and last names.” I couldn’t tell if he was serious.

  “What do you call her?”

  “My darling, mostly,” he said with tender notes I’d never heard him use before. “Sometimes my love.”

  I studied my dad. He was like an alien version of himself. I wondered how long he’d been this way.

  When I was back inside, I called Will. He was my only source of reliable information, though I was starting to question how reliable anyone was. Ask two people to tell you anything, you’ll get two versions. Even easy things like directions, let alone important or semi-controversial topics like why a fight started or what a person was generally like. If you don’t know something for yourself, you just can’t be sure.

  “Did you know my dad was getting married?”

  “Of course. In June,” Will answered. “And nice talking to you, too.”

  “Why didn’t you tell me?” I demanded.

  “Well, it’s not exactly your favorite subject. And I assumed your dad would have covered that.”

  “Why don’t I like her?” I asked him.

  “Basically, you think she’s fake and trying to be your mother,” Will said. “Something along those lines. And you said she smelled funny, like an old lady. One time, she bought your dad a gray fedora for his birthday. You thought it made him look, uh, effeminate, and then you donated it to Goodwill without telling him. To this day, I don’t think he knows what happened to it.”

  “I gave away my dad’s hat?” What a weird thing for me to do.

  “Well, you really were not fond of that fedora,” Will answered. “Your dad would probably look better in a bowler.”

  “Do you like her?” I asked him.

  “I’ve only met her once, but she seemed all right. She’s not gonna be my stepmother, though.”

  “But my dad…” It was hard to talk about Dad this way. “He really loves her, doesn’t he?”

  “Yes, Chief, I suspect he does.”

  On Wednesday, Dad suggested we go to Rosa Rivera’s house in Pleasantville for dinner. Since our meeting (reunion?) seemed unavoidable, I agreed. Besides, I was grounded anyway.

  When she answered the door, the first thing I noticed was that she definitely looked older than Dad. She had her black hair in a tight bun and was wearing her work clothes, which consisted of black tights, a black leotard, a black shawl tied around her waist, and high-heeled shoes. Pretty much everything she wore was black except for her lipstick and the rose tucked behind her ear, which were both a dramatic crimson. Dancing had given her really excellent posture. I stood up straighter just looking at her.

  She greeted me before she even greeted Dad. “Naomi,” she said, throwing her arms around me and kissing me on both cheeks. “How are you, my baby?” She didn’t have much of an accent, but all her y’s came out sounding like j’s—How are joo?

  I thought about the question. “Cold,” I said finally.

  “Come inside, and I will try to warm you up.”

  Her place was the opposite of Dad’s house. It was bursting with color, almost as if she had been given a mandate to use every crayon in the Crayola box at least once: turquoise walls, a fuchsia velvet sofa, a golden chandelier with midnight blue crystals, black-and-white-checkered marble floors, and red roses everywhere.

  “Will you live here?” I asked Dad.

  “It hasn’t all been settled yet, but I think she’ll probably move in with us.”

  I wondered what Dad’s beige house would look like after they were married.

  While Rosa was in the kitchen getting me a cup of tea, I examined the many framed photographs that were scattered about the room. One was of my dad and her. A few were of Rosa Rivera at dancing competitions. She also had three or so pictures of herself pregnant, presumably with the subjects of the bulk of the photos: two girls at many different ages doing the usual sorts of childhood activities.

  “Those are her twin daughters, Frida and Georgia,” Dad said. “They’re both in college now.”

  “How old is Rosa Rivera anyway?” I whispered to Dad.

  “Forty-six,” Rosa Rivera answered as she came into the room with a teapot on a tray. “Your father is my younger man. He is six years my junior.” Yunior. “My first husband was thirty years older than me, so it all works itself out, yes?” Jes.

  She set the tray on an enormous lime-green hassock and joined me at the fireplace, where she put her arm around my shoulders. It was just the way she was—always kissing and touching you. My instinct was to move away, but for some reason I didn’t.

  With her other hand, she pointed to one of the dance competition photos. “This was my husband. He was also my dance partner for fifteen years.”

  “What happened to him?”

  “He died,” she said, blowing a kiss to the photograph.

  “You really like pictures of yourself pregnant,” I commented.

  “It is true. Some people do not like it, but I loved being pregnant. I would not have minded being pregnant even more than I was, but my job made this difficult.” Yob.

  I thought of my mother and how she had never been pregnant with me.

  “You are shivering,” Rosa Rivera said to me. She put her hands around mine. “They are like ice!” she said, more to Dad than me.

  “She’s been that way since she got out of the hospital,” Dad told her.

  Rosa Rivera left the room and came back with a rainbow-striped silk scarf. It must have been twelve feet long. She was able to drape it loosely around my neck five times. It smelled like her.

  “Better?” she asked.

  “Warmer, at least.”

  “It suits you,” she said.

  I didn’t think so, but whatever.

  “You will take it when you leave.”

  “I couldn’t,” I said. It must have been really expensive. I didn’t want her damn scarf anyway.

  Rosa Rivera shrugged her super-straight shoulders. “I give everything away. I believe, Naomi, that your possessions possess you, do you know?”

  I wasn’t sure.

  Dad went into the kitchen to make the salad, leaving Rosa Rivera and me alone.

  I looked at her and wondered what I hadn’t liked about her before. I decided to ask. “My dad says we don’t get along,” I said.

  Rosa Rivera smiled at me conspiratorially. “Possibly. But I am an optimist, and I always believed you would come round.”

  She was wrong. I hadn’t yet, and I didn’t like her telling me that I had. I didn’t want optimism; I wanted honesty. I unlooped the scarf from around my neck.

  “Naomi,” Rosa said, “I know this all must be very frightening for you.” She put her hand on my arm, but I shook her off.

  “What the hell would you know about it?” I asked.

  I didn’t wait for her reply. I just left her standing in her Technicolor living room, still reaching out her hands to me.

  In the car on the way back, Dad was unusually quiet, and I suspected that Rosa had probably told him about my walking out on her before dinner.

  He didn’t say anything until we were back on our street. “Why didn’t you let Rosa Rivera give you that scarf?” he asked.

  I told him how it wasn’t my style.

  “Thought it looked nice on you, kid.”

  “Honestly, Dad,” I said, “it’s hard enough figuring out anything about myself without other people dictating my taste to me.”

  “I’m sure it is. But in any case, that wasn’t what I was saying. I think I was talking courtesy, if you know what I mean?” All this was said casually.

  He turned into our driveway. “Because sometimes, when someone wants to give you a gift, the best thing to do is accept it. Just an infinitesimal something I’ve learned that I thought I’d pass on to you.”

  I remembered how Dad, when he was still married to Mom, was always returning the presents she’d get him. Even if it was small,
like a sweater. I used to think, just keep the stupid sweater, Dad. She obviously wanted you to have it. But my dad had been raised without much money, so he could be kind of strange around presents. Obviously, Mom knew his history, but even as a little kid, I could tell all his returning hurt her feelings.

  I wondered if Rosa had felt that way when I tore that scarf off.

  The worst of it was, what did I really know about my taste anyway? It had been a nice scarf and I had been cold, and if I was honest, maybe I had only been using that taste excuse as a way to hurt her feelings.

  “Rosa wanted me to apologize to you,” Dad said before we got out of the car.

  “For what?”

  “Something about your amnesia. Something about her saying she knew how you felt.”

  I nodded.

  “But Sonny, her husband who died? He had Alzheimer’s disease. Do you know what that is?”

  I nodded again.

  “So Rosa Rivera has had some experiences with memory loss. I think that’s all she was trying to say. It probably came out wrong. It’s sometimes hard to talk to—It’s sometimes hard to talk. She didn’t ask me to tell you any of this. I just thought you should know.”

  For a second, I felt like a jerk. Then I exploded at Dad. “I don’t see what any of that has to do with me! Not to mention, you lied to me. Not to mention I obviously didn’t like Rosa Rivera before, so why are you expecting me to like her any better now?”

  “Well, Naomi, you were being ignorant then, so I had rather hoped you’d prefer to be enlightened now.”

  “I’ll stick with ignorant, thanks.” I tried to say this as dryly as possible.

  Dad turned off the ignition, but he didn’t move to get out of the car. “I banged my head. That doesn’t make me a different person. And it doesn’t mean I’m going to like your goddamn fiancée either.”

  Dad shook his head and he looked as sad as I’d ever seen him. “You’re just like me, kid, and it worries the crap out of me right now. Because with the current state of things, it’s not necessarily a good thing to be like us. You’re going to need to let people in.”

  I didn’t say anything.

  Dad got out of the car. “Don’t forget to lock the door when you come in.”

  That night in my bedroom, I took out my sophomore yearbook for the first time since I’d been back to school. I had originally been intending to look through it for inspiration for my photography project proposal, which was due the next day. Instead, I found myself turning to my class picture.

  There she was with her light gray hair and her dark gray lips upturned into an impenetrable grin. I wished that she could talk and tell me everything she had ever felt or thought or seen.

  “What were you like?” I asked her. “Were you happy? Or were you smiling because they told you to?”

  I looked at myself in my closet mirror and tried to arrange my features like the girl in the yearbook. I didn’t quite have the trick of it yet.

  I brushed some strands of hair in front of my face, the way the girl in the yearbook had worn hers. It looked wrong, though I couldn’t say exactly why at first. I studied myself some more before deciding that the pieces of hair in the front had gotten too long.

  I took a pair of scissors from my desk drawer and cut a few pieces on each side of my head. The easy swish of the blades against my hair was satisfying.

  I looked in the mirror to check my work. I hadn’t cut it evenly, so I took a little more off on each side.

  Then, a little more.

  As I cut, it occurred to me that it might be pointless to even try to look like the girl in the yearbook. It might be easier to be somebody completely different instead.

  I cut pieces from the back and the front, until all that survived was a choppy short mane. With each piece, I felt like I was getting rid of someone’s expectations of me: goodbye, Mom, Dad, Will, Ace, those kids at lunch, my teachers, everyone. I felt giddy and light, like I might even start to float away. It was the end of normal.

  The girl in the yearbook would never have had short hair.

  I set the scissors on my desk, gathered up the strewn clippings as best I could, and then I fell quickly, peacefully asleep. I didn’t even take off my clothes or turn off the light.

  When my alarm went off the next morning, I jumped out of bed without even looking in the mirror. I had actually forgotten all about my hair until I was in the shower. Little pieces slipped through my fingers like sand before they washed down the drain.

  When I saw myself in the bathroom mirror, I felt sort of elated. It seems strange to say even now, but I finally recognized the person in the mirror as the person inside my head.

  “Your hair!” Dad said when I came into the kitchen for breakfast. “What happened?”

  I told him that nothing had happened. I had simply decided to cut it. I didn’t ask him what he thought either.

  “If I’d known you wanted to cut it, I could have taken you somewhere to get it done.”

  When I sat down at the table, Dad stood so that he could better appraise my mane from an overhead angle.

  “It’s not bad. It’s cool actually. Kind of punk rock,” Dad said finally, gently tousling my hair. “I barely recognize you, kiddo.”

  That hadn’t been the point, of course. Maybe just an amazing perk. If no one recognized me, they wouldn’t be upset when I didn’t recognize them either.

  I am

  5

  THE REVIEWS WERE MIXED.

  Ace walked right past me in the hallway. I had to call his name, and when he saw me he looked confused and betrayed, like Bambi when his mother bites it in the movie. “I liked it long,” he said finally. Then he kissed me. “It’s going to take some getting used to.” When we stopped kissing, I noticed that Will was staring at us from across the corridor.

  I waved at him.

  “Jesus, I thought Zuckerman was cheating on you, Chief,” Will called.

  “He’d love that,” Ace muttered under his breath.

  Will walked up to me and tousled my hair. “You look like you just got out of prison.”

  “How’d you know? That’s exactly what I was going for,” I said.

  Will looked at me and nodded. “I like it,” he declared after a moment’s consideration. The first bell rang, so we all scattered to our lockers and classes.

  “I just want you to know that I think your hair is complete genius,” Alice Leeds, the girl who had helped me open my locker, said to me as I was fishing out my precalculus book.

  “Thanks.”

  As her locker was only two to the left of mine, I usually saw her several times a day. After third period, Alice brought up my hair again. “It’s weird, but I can’t stop thinking about your hair. It intrigues me. It’s like you have nothing to hide behind anymore.”

  “Um, okay.”

  At lunch, Alice came up to my table in the cafeteria and handed me a flyer. “I know you’re big into yearbook, but I’m directing this play. Come audition, if you want.”

  I looked at the paper, which announced auditions for the Thomas Purdue Country Day School’s production of Rosencrantz and Guildenstern Are Dead. “Oh, that’s not really my type of thing,” I demurred.

  “Have you ever been in a play before?” she asked.

  “Not since second grade. I played the dual roles of Corn and Plymouth Rock in the school’s Thanksgiving pageant. I was pretty awesome.”

  “Well, if you’ve really never been in a play, how do you know for sure that it’s not your thing?”

  By now, Alice was starting to attract the attention of the other people at Ace’s table.

  “Yeah, Nomi, how do you know?” asked that awful Brianna-girl. Since that first day, she hadn’t spoken to me at all unless it was to say something nasty. She really let loose when Ace wasn’t there, which he hadn’t been that day on account of making up a Spanish test.

  “You’re right. I don’t know. I’ll see you there, Alice.” I wasn’t really going to go. I only said I
would because Brianna was being such a jerk.

  Alice smiled at me and nodded.

  “Nice gloves,” Brianna called to Alice as she walked away. Alice was wearing black lace gloves with the fingers cut off. “You better watch out. I heard she’s a total lezzie,” Brianna whispered.

  “What’s that supposed to mean?”

  “Your hair,” she said, sweet as vomit. “It might give some people the wrong idea.”

  “Your comments might give some people the wrong idea, too,” I said even sweeter. I picked up my tray and left. I decided to tell Ace I wasn’t ever going to eat with those people again.

  Somehow, that day managed to become the best one of school so far. It made me cheerful not to be recognized. I went through my classes in a sort of happy fog and by the time eighth period rolled around, I had completely forgotten about my Advanced Photography Workshop project proposal. Mr. Weir had already given me two other extensions, but for whatever reason, I couldn’t come up with an idea. I was probably going to have to drop the class after all.

  “So what’s it gonna be, Naomi?” Mr. Weir asked.

  “Well, it’s still in progress,” I said, looking around the classroom desperately. Student and professional artwork covered almost every space. In the uppermost corner of the room was a picture from an ultrasound machine. “Maybe something to do with pregnancy?” I suggested.

  “Good, but how is that a personal story?” Mr. Weir asked.

  “Well…” I tried to improvise. “I’m adopted…and my sister isn’t…Is there anything there?”

  Mr. Weir thought about it for a second and then nodded. “Maybe. I’d need to hear a bit more first.”

  I wouldn’t have gone to the audition except that I ran into Alice Leeds at our lockers. “Want to walk down with me?” she asked.

  And I would have probably said no to that, too, except that idiotic Brianna was watching us from across the hallway. “Sure,” I said loudly enough for her to hear. “Let’s go.”

  Alice appraised me over her glasses. “You definitely shouldn’t audition for Rosencrantz or Guildenstern. Not with yearbook. Those roles rehearse every day.”