What I Believe

by Norma Fox Mazer

  “When I’m a famous actress,” she says, “I’m not going to have a clothing budget, like now,” and I say, “Me, neither,” and I’m laughing, because it’s all so stupid, not having money and lying to Sara about why I don’t buy stuff, pretending I’m the sort of person who comes from the sort of family that never wants anything. But I want the silver hoop earrings that I dangle next to Sara’s ears, and the dog-decorated socks, and the green nail polish with sparkles, and the silly cat watch with paws for hands, and the designer jeans, and six different colors of lip gloss. Is there anything I don’t want?

  No, there is not. I want it all.

  I Am Telling Lies to Sara

  as we sit on the school steps,

  bent over our knees and book bags,

  chewing on peppermint gum,

  and she is saying, Go on, go on,

  as if she believes every lie I am making up

  on the spot, out of spit and stone,

  saying so sincerely I start to swallow it

  myself: My father is a great writer.

  He took a night watchman job

  to have time for thinking about his stories,

  which he will write only when they’re clear

  in his head and not a moment sooner.

  I am telling these lies to Sara

  hoping to hold our friendship firm,

  keep it from buckling and breaking,

  and I’m breathing … breathing …

  breathing.

  Nine Questions to the Universe

  1. Why does everyone in this family have a job except me?

  2. Why do I obsess about Dad’s being a night watchman?

  3. Why do I imagine him in the dark, pacing by a wire fence and crying?

  4. Why am I crying while I’m writing this?

  5. Why did I lie to Sara?

  6. Am I ashamed of Dad’s job?

  7. Or did I lie to Sara because I’m jealous of her family?

  8. Or did I lie to Sara because I’m jealous and ashamed?

  9. Will I ever be a better person?

  Mr. Rose and I Go Nine Rounds

  1. Hi, Mr. Rose. Having a nice walk?

  What do you want? When I walk, I don’t talk.

  2. I just came to say hello to you.

  Hello, then! And Mr. Marty says hello, too.

  3. Hey, Mr. Marty, you old dog, how are you today?

  What’s that? Old, you say?

  4. Mr. Rose, he needs a longer walk every day.

  Huh! You think you got a better way?

  5. Uh-huh, sorry, but I do. He could sniff at stuff see more of the world.

  What you got up your sleeve, girl?

  6. He could use the exercise, Mr. Rose. Really, he’s too fat.

  Bold, ain’t you? Talking so free like that.

  7. Excuse me, but more walks would be really healthy for Mr. Marty.

  Healthy? Now you’re talking smart.

  8. I’d be glad to do it. I’d work every day.

  Work? You’re a sly one, asking for pay.

  9. I won’t charge much, Mr. Rose, and I promise I’ll be the best.

  I’ll think on it, girlie. I might say yes.

  If We Were Dogs

  and we lived on Dog World, Mom would be a worried-looking Saint Bernard rescuing everyone, Spencer would be a lean, long-legged greyhound, Thom would be one of those clever no-name black dogs that are always romping around, I’d be a mutt with her nose to the ground and my best friend would be Mr. Marty, and Dad—would he be one of those sad dogs you see sometimes in the dog run, leaning against a fence, not playing like the other dogs?

  Walking with Sara after School, Talking About Race and Rice

  Vicki: Do you mind if I ask you something, Sara? Do you get taken for white a lot?

  Sara: White what?

  Vicki: You know, a, uh, white person.

  Sara: I don’t know. Do you?

  Vicki: Do I what?

  Sara: Get taken for a white person?

  Vicki: Well, um, yes.

  Sara: Why?

  Vicki: Why what?

  Sara: Why are you taken for a white person?

  Vicki: Funny girl! Because, I’m, um, white. Obviously.

  Sara: Obviously? Your skin doesn’t look white to me. I mean, paper is white and narcissus are white, and sometimes sheets are white—

  Vicki: I never thought of it that way. My skin is more of a caramel color.

  Sara: So you should be taken for a caramel.

  Vicki: So then people would be chewing on me.

  Sara: Watch out what you say, I’m sooo hungry. Maybe you’re that caramel color—mmm, caramels, I love them! Turn here, let’s go to Big Burger, okay?—maybe you’re that caramel color because you’re part African American.

  Vicki: Hello? I don’t think so.

  Sara: You could be biracial, like me.

  Vicki: I don’t think so.

  Sara: My dad says anyone whose family has been in this country for more than a century has a good chance of being a brother or a sister, whether they know it or not.

  Vicki: Why does he say that?

  Sara: My dad says a lot of things. He says human beings always want to shove other human beings into categories, boxes, pigeonholes. He says practically everyone’s all mixed up, though, and I don’t mean in the head. He says every group, whoever it is, thinks it’s the normal one, it has the normal color, the right religion, the best country, the best way of doing things, the best language, the best food. Oh, shoot. I shouldn’t have used the F word! Food, food, food. I’m famished! Oh, that Spanish rice at lunch was so good.

  Vicki: I don’t like rice.

  Sara: Why not?

  Vicki: What do you mean, why not? Because I don’t.

  Sara: What kind of reason is that?

  Vicki: It’s my reason. What, do you think your food tastes are the right tastes?

  Sara: When it comes to rice, I do. I could not live without rice. When I’m famous, I’m going to have a cook, but not just any cook. I will have a cook who knows all the rice recipes in the world. For instance, there are so many ways to make rice pudding. I have to stop this. I’m making myself too hungry! And there’s Big Burger.

  Small Strawberry Shake and Large Fries for Me

  Sara says, as you both stand in line in Big Burger, and she asks what you want, and you say you’re not a bit hungry, adding another little lie to your life, not saying that you haven’t got even the doggy bit of money needed for an order of small small fries, and all the time hoping your stomach doesn’t growl like a dog and give you away. And at that moment, as if in a dream, your father appears in the window behind the counter. You see his profile. You see that he’s wearing the green and white striped uniform. You see that he’s flipping fries, and you panic and grab Sara’s arm. “Let’s get out of here,” you say, and you can hardly breathe. “This line is way too long!” But you can’t move Sara. She tells you to calm down, and she puts her arm around your waist and asks you why you’re so skitty today.

  “Skitty?” you say. “Kitty? You mean kittish or skittish?” You hardly know what you’re saying. Your eyes are twitching, they’re switching around, side to side, like divining rods seeking water in that underground lake that Mr. Franklin told your class about. He said it was beneath this city, and who knows, it could be right here, under this floor, and you wish it was, because your father is still there, in that window, flipping fries, and you know it’s not a dream, and you want to sink to the floor, sink through it into that underground lake, plummet straight down, down deep into it’s watery heart. And you think how Lenny Blakely shouted, Gotta be a fake, that lake story, when Mr. Franklin amazed everyone with it. You’re putting us on, man! How can something be there that nobody can see? But what you want to know is how can someone be there that nobody should be seeing?

  You have to get away from here, away from your father in that window flipping fries. Your father wearing that green and white striped Big Burger cap, like just
another kid employee, and you rush toward the door and outside. You stumble to a table and sink down, your head on folded arms. “He’s working at Big Burger.” You breathe out the words, almost whisper them into the cool air. And you start laughing.

  Isn’t it funny?

  Isn’t it ridiculous?

  Isn’t it hilarious?

  Then Sara is there, munching fries from a paper cone, and she sits down across from you and asks if you’re okay, and you say you’re fine, you just have to go home now. And she says maybe you’re getting your period, and you say, “Yeah. That’s it,” and you hold your stomach. “That must be why I feel so … you know—”

  “Oh, I know!” Sara says. “I never want to eat on my first day, either. No wonder you didn’t want anything.”

  “Yeah,” you say. “No wonder.”

  Mom in My Room at 8:30 P.M.

  She knocks, opens the door.

  Vicki, you didn’t say a word at supper.

  I’m reading, sitting on the floor.

  I slide my finger into my book, look up.

  Is anything wrong? Why so gloomy?

  Still not speaking? Still not even one word?

  What one word could I give her? Dad?

  Then I’d have to add four more:

  —green and white stripes—

  and more

  and more

  and more.

  Fourteen Words from Dad on Saturday Morning

  In the kitchen, your dad’s sitting straight and still at the table, still wearing his bathrobe. He looks gone, as if he’s waiting for something that’s never going to come. “Dad, want me to make you breakfast?” you ask. “Scrambled eggs and toast sound good?”

  He shakes his head and says one word. “Coffee.”

  You get out the machine and the filter and measure everything carefully. When the coffee has perked, you pour a cup for him and another for yourself and sit down across the table, and you can’t help thinking that if he was on the father job, right now, right this moment, he’d say something fatherly about coffee not being good for you.

  He doesn’t say anything, though, not even thanks, and after a few gulps of coffee courage, you lean forward and say, “Dad? I saw you in Big Burger on Thursday.”

  He still doesn’t say anything.

  You clank down your cup. “Dad. Why are you working in that place?” Your voice sounds mean, and then even meaner when you say, “Dad! Will you answer me? Please!”

  Then he says three more words. “It’s a job.”

  “But you have a job,” you say.

  And now he says two more words. “Laid off.”

  Your stomach clenches. Didn’t they like him on his night watchman job? Is that why he was fired again? Your ears throb as if someone is beating drums inside them, and you know it’s punishment for your mean thoughts. You want to say something good to him to make up for those thoughts, but you can’t think of anything.

  You gulp the rest of your coffee and try not to hate him for his head drooping down and his eyes almost closed, and try to believe you’re not ashamed of him, but you know you are, and you’re thinking you don’t want anyone to ever meet him, especially not Sara.

  “Dad,” you force yourself to say, “can I get you anything else?” He shakes his head no, and you say, “Are you sure? You should eat something,” because you know that’s what your mother would say.

  But he doesn’t say anything. He just sits there. And you sit there. Even though you want to leave, you can’t. Something is holding you.

  And then he looks up and he says two more words. “Nothing helps.” A wild look appears in his eyes then and seems to hurtle him out of his chair straight into the hall, but just before he disappears into the bedroom, he says six more words in such a low voice you almost don’t hear them.

  “I’m sorry, just so damn sorry.”

  A Dream

  I’m swimming in our lake,

  flipping over and over, sky in my eyes,

  then water, then sky, blue, blue, blue,

  the loons trilling their wild ululations.

  I want to follow them, fly where they fly.

  A Moment

  Rain smacks against the window.

  Dad is standing in my room.

  He’s dressed for the outdoors—

  deer-hunting jacket and cap.

  Dad, it’s late. Are you going—

  and then I’m asleep again,

  dreaming again of loons and lakes.

  Maybe I dream Dad as well.

  Poem Without a Title

  Gone for a while.

  Don’t worry.

  I love you all.

  I’m sorry.

  Mom found his note

  on the table

  under the salt

  shaker.

  The First Night Your Father Is Gone

  your mother sleeps

  your brothers sleep

  you think you will never sleep again

  never, until he comes home

  never, until you can stop thinking

  Why did I say those things Saturday morning?

  Why didn’t I stop him last night?

  Why didn’t I stay awake?

  Why didn’t I know?

  Why did I go back to sleep?

  The Second Night Your Father Is Gone

  you sleep at last, then come awake hearing steps, hearing voices, your heart beating wildly. You sit up and listen, listen, listen. The house is still. There are no footsteps. There are no voices. The red numerals on the clock say 4:13 A.M. Soon, Sara’s father will be on the air, his voice a real voice, the voice of a father who’s left his family only to go to his job. You curl into a C and rock as if the sea were rocking you. Sleep … sleep … sleep … the sea murmurs. And, oh, you want to sleep, but sleep refuses you, and with each turn in your bed, each ache of your knees, and each creak of the floor, you see your father’s face, you see his slumped shoulders, his half-shut eyes. And you can’t quite hate him.

  The Third Night Your Father Is Gone

  you leave your bed, dragging your quilt around your shoulders. Windows rattle wildly. The wind is blowing. Radiators hiss, and in the tiny room in the front of the apartment, you climb over boxes and kneel on the cot, pushing the heat of your face against the cool of the window, and you pray. You pray without words. Words have left you. You kneel there, praying, praying and waiting. Waiting for him to come home.

  Mom Tells Us a Secret

  Kids, something happened once. No one knew.

  It was like an ugly weed your parents

  thought they could kick into dust. Now it’s come

  thrusting up into my face like a poison plant.

  Foolish us. Thom, you’re white as a fish!

  All of you, just listen, okay? Please don’t cry!

  Your dad left me once before. Oh, I cried

  then. I was only nineteen, newly

  wed, a small-town girl, still fishing

  for the way to live, still tied to my parents,

  still not knowing how I would plant

  myself in this world. Wait. Let me come

  clean here. What I know now—back then, apparently

  I was clueless. I never sensed anything fishy

  in Larry’s emotional state. True, he’d come

  undone after his mom died, but he never cried.

  He seemed all right. Not a seed of suspicion planted

  itself in my mind. Then he left me. Left a note. I knew

  I was terrified, but I turned a flat, smiling fish face

  to the world. I denied my despair. No good came

  of that! I was floundering. It wasn’t apparent

  that I was gasping for hope as if it were air, crying

  if I broke a fingernail or dropped a dish. The newness

  of loneliness left me exhausted. All the planning

  we’d done seemed pointless. But I was also planting

  flowers, telling myself He’ll be back to see the new


  blooms. I needed to dream. I was frantically fishing

  for faith, but so messed up I couldn’t comb

  my hair or make a cup of coffee without a crisis.

  Kids, telling you this might not be best for parental

  status, but these past years you’ve seen your parents

  bruised by life, and you’ve held up, so I think planting

  the truth with you—Oh, Vicki! You’re crying.

  Sweetie, he came home that time, renewed,

  so fine I hardly questioned him. For me, it came

  down to trust. He’d saved himself. Why fish

  for explanations? Why cry? Your parents aren’t newbies

  at sorrow, but I so wanted to spare you. Your dad will come

  back. He will … maybe bearing gifts—plants, bread, fish.

  What They Say

  Mom deplores panic: Kids, please stay calm. You must!

  Thom says he trusts Mom, but: I think you should call the police.

  Spencer implores: Put up missing person signs. That, at least.

  What I Want

  For none of this to be real

  to unreel this movie

  to move us back

  to back us out

  of this mess

  to miss this part of my life

  to lift the curtain on a new scene

  to see us together

  to gather up Dad

  to know he’s not dead.

  Sara’s Signature-Theory Sestina

  In home base, Sara leans toward me. “V., we have to practice

  writing badly. All famous people have awful signatures.

  It proves they’re important!” She smacks her forehead,

  winks, but she’s half serious. “We gotta write our names

  big and messy. It’s our preparation for fame,

  you as a great lawyer, and me on screen and stage.”

  Mr. F. raps for quiet. “We’re now signing up for Winslow Stage’s