The Letter Q

by Sarah Moon

  You don’t light the match. But you sure don’t stop Jeff, a neighbor boy, from lighting it. You’re fascinated by the way he knows how to gather a ball of pitch from the tree, place it in a nest of paper scraps. The fire flares up as a group of kids stand by and watch. You know you should stop this from happening. Instead, once the fire is real, engulfing the tree, soon to jump onto your half-built fort, you run. You never find out who called the fire department. You stand with the other neighbors at a distance and watch the firefighters stretch their hoses into the woods. Everyone hates Mr. Peterson, but no one wants his house to burn down. It is an awful moment, and you feel a hefty responsibility.

  The firefighters manage to put out the fire. You and Michelle abandon that fort.

  Fort #4: Your last fort is the most elaborate of them all. It exists only in your imagination. You are thirteen years old. You’ve quit those ballet lessons. Michelle has moved to Canby, Oregon. You are actively trying to sort out what kind of girl and woman you want to be. Nothing that you see around you fits the bill.

  So you and your best friend, Shannon, come up with what you called Our Plan, or OP for short. In the near future you are going to run away. You spend time in the garage stockpiling sleeping bags and a tent, canned foods and reading material. You study maps and select Duniway Park. Not only does it have lots of shrubbery and trees for cover, it’s located near downtown for easy access to stores. Each week driving to church, piled with your siblings in the family station wagon, you pass Duniway Park. You always study the landscape, looking for the perfect tree under which — maybe even in which — to set up camp. You and Shannon make maps, draw plans for the campsite, and keep notes on how exactly you will survive.

  When you finally do run away, you haven’t yet set up the camp and so you have nowhere to go. Several hours later, you’re forced to return home.

  You never quite finished building any of your forts. But I know what you were doing. You were constructing safety. Places where you could sort out who you were. Places where you could be somebody very different from all the other somebodies in your life. Sitting in all your forts, from the found one in the bushes to the half-constructed ones deep in the earth or in the woods or in written plans, you also knew that you loved your body. You loved the way it moved, the way it absorbed food, the way it felt a deep pleasure in nature. The forts housed your love for trees and animals, your need for privacy, your deep, deep knowledge that you did know what is true for you. The forts housed your imagination too, the stories you wanted to someday tell.

  I’m much older now, but I’m still building forts. I call them novels. I build stories to house the dreams, mishaps, loves, and shenanigans of people I want to have around. A good novel, like a good fort, houses what is true.

  So that’s the good news. You don’t have to have courage. You don’t have to fight or change anyone. You just have to know what’s true. Trees. Friends. Singing. Love. Stories. And you already know that.

  Love,

  Big Lucy

  Dear Toto,

  I know you’re worried now that you’ve entered ninth grade and still don’t feel like you belong. For a long time, you’ve understood that you’re not a boy like most of the boys in school (except for always-in-trouble Herbie, you’ll see), not like your brothers or cousins or any of your sister’s boyfriends (except Amir, she’ll see). I know you don’t feel like a normal boy. You never have. You hate to fight and you don’t get baseball. You like to be friends with girls, but that’s all. You don’t even feel very American, having grown up in Guadalajara. In fact, the only boys you like to be around are your Mexican cousins (this will change) because they look up to you. The boys at school only seem to want to play sports or play rough (this won’t).

  Toto, feeling like you belong is never going to be easy for you. I’m writing to you from your older self to share a little advice.

  Those urges you’re having about Coach Pugmire (thoughyou dread PE) and Mr. Boswell from World History class (which you love) — you’re afraid they aren’t normal feelings. (By the way, one day, I promise, you will actually like to exercise, and you’ll never forget sapere aude from Mr. Boswell’s class: “dare to know.”) You’ve been hiding these urges about these teachers and about some of the boys at school because you think they’re wrong. Everybody says they’re wrong, in so many words. You even prayed for them to go away but they haven’t.

  Especially now, since watching those two men kiss in that movie on Showtime while locked in your bedroom (even though Kate Jackson from Charlie’s Angels was the star, it was still R-rated and you couldn’t risk anyone walking in) — you’re absolutely certain you’re not like other boys. Not normal. There they were on television, two handsome men kissing as passionately as Jeff and Fallon on Dynasty! You had never seen two men kiss before. It made you shake inside and feel weak and out of breath, like when Coach Pugmire makes your PE class run around the field. Your knees were wobbly and your heart was pounding. When the movie was over, you went to the bathroom and stared at yourself in the mirror for a long time like you didn’t recognize the person in it, as if this was the very first time you saw yourself. I remember what you whispered very quietly: “I’m one of them.”

  Toto, the first thing I want to tell you is that being one of them will someday feel like a gift more special and luxurious than that angora sweater Mom and Dad bought you. Whatever anguish you’re experiencing now about these urges will eventually disappear and you’ll feel as right as you’ve ever felt, as if granted by one of Mrs. Templeton’s permission slips. And then, one day, in about four years, you’re going to experience your own real kiss for the first time. You’ll be on a date with a guy from Switzerland (really!). He will seem different from anyone you’ve ever met but wonderful with his golden hair and thick accent. It’ll happen after dinner as you walk out of the restaurant onto the crowded street. Before saying good night he’ll lean in to kiss you but you’ll flinch your head back, startled. He’ll whisper, “It’s okay. This is West Hollywood,” and those words will sound like a revelation. That’s all you’ll need to hear! You’ll let him kiss you on the lips without paying attention to the people around you, as if it were normal, two young men kissing on the sidewalk in public in full view of traffic chugging along the avenue.

  Toto, you’re going to feel a lot of pressure from kids (and adults!) to be normal. But you’ll never feel normal when by “normal” you know that people mean “like everybody else.”

  Your family is not normal. They’re Mexican and Italian and different than all of your friends’ families. Growing up in Mexico isn’t normal, not to the kids at school who sometimes say awful things you can’t believe they mean (“You’re not Mexican-Mexican,” one of the girls said to you once without blinking, as if that was supposed to be a compliment). But you already know a lot more about the world than they do, that there’s a whole universe outside of El Cajon, California. When Mom made that entire tray of pollo con mole for you to take to the school banquet back in the sixth grade, you fretted that she hadn’t made enough. But not a single kid tried it, not even one of your teachers, and you brought the whole tray back home (which Aunt Chagua was happy about). To the kids at school, eating mole wasn’t normal. So then who wants to be normal?

  Here’s the most important thing I need to tell you, Toto. Don’t ever confuse “normal” with “better.” People will confuse the two your entire life (especially adults) but they’re wrong. Being different (some people will say “weird” but, remember, they’re just boring) is going to bring you thrills and great adventure. Being “one of them” will make your life interesting, different, unique, and you’ll wonder, Why was I ever worried about being normal?

  Love,

  Tony

  Dear Carole,

  I want to talk to you about Sanibel Island, Florida. I hear it’s still a beautiful spot: wild and lush and a world away from everything — the perfect escape. Perfect for a plan dreamed up in the backseat of that old Dodge, Dad
driving due south, fleeing the frigid Lake Erie winds, the Ohio-gray sky — Mom on the passenger side, busy with the maps.

  The whole family drove down together right after Christmas that year. As we passed through West Virginia, the Carolinas, and down through Georgia, the weather got sunnier and warmer; pretty soon we were looking at oranges growing on trees, real palm trees, and an azure sky. It was a minor miracle — vacation — a real one, with a beach. For once, everyone was happy.

  Kind of a mess, now, isn’t it.

  You needed to reinvent yourself, you thought, wedged into the backseat with your two brothers, one still in a baby seat. You needed something to help you stand up to those locker room girls back home — the magazine-reading, gum-smacking, cigarettes-in-the-john taunters with their mascara wands and their ice-blue eyelids. And — especially — for her. Your ex–best friend with her exacting standards for how feet should look in sandals, or breasts in halter tops, along with benchmarks for appropriate progress in the boyfriend-area. (“That top looks too slutty! And your heels are the wrong shape. They shouldn’t go out in a bump but down smoothly like this, see?”) Her mom bought her halter top in an expensive department store, and it was a different kind of garment altogether — it looked like a costume from South Pacific. And there was nothing at all to be done about your feet.

  Mom — looking deceptively benign up there in the front seat — has gone from bad to worse recently, prohibiting halter tops of any kind, as well as short skirts, platform shoes, tight jeans, and even tank tops. You’ve been stashing away money from babysitting and sneaking out to stores. How did the other girls control their mothers? Maybe they didn’t have to. Anyway, the scrap of blue polyester that was your new halter top didn’t pass muster with your friend either. Maybe it could pass as half a bathing suit in Florida. Mom might buy that.

  And once you got to Sanibel, there he was, your dream come true: cute, older — seventeen, he said — tough-looking with dirty blond hair down to his tan shoulders (no shirt), jeans. It was cool, walking down the beach with him, with the sea right there, and the palm trees. You’d been tanning with baby oil, and wearing that halter with cutoffs. In Florida it fit right in. He slipped his arm around your shoulders on the beach, held your hand for a while — it felt wild and free, dangerous, thrilling, dizzying as the sun, after a day lying out, listening to the surf. You’d never even made out with a guy, and it was high time to fix that. Maybe he’d give you a photograph to take back home. That’s about as far as your thinking went.

  It didn’t play out that way, though, did it?

  I know. You’re shit-scared. And it’s hard to think straight, because all of that baby-oil tanning came out in blisters, a rash all over your body, and a fever. Sun poisoning. That giddy feeling felt great, while the waves were crashing. And then it didn’t.

  Here’s the Kleenex box. I’m sorry; so sorry. And I have to tell you that you’re right about a few things. One is that telling Mom and Dad, which you will have to do because they’ll drag it out of you, is only going to make it worse. I wish I could go back and redo that scene, inject some kindness into it.

  OK. Let’s go over it in detail. Not just what happened — what led up to it, the whole tumbling mess of thoughts and feelings that led up to this jam. Because things have to change, right? They’ve changed already.

  First, home. The Florida trip aside, it’s pretty bad, not that you know exactly what’s going on. Mom and Dad say you’re too young to understand, but still they seem to be turning to you to take care of them and fix things. How can you fix them if you don’t know what they are? Do the dishes, Mom says. Scrub the tub. Change the baby. But these tasks, aside from being tedious, solve zero problems, zilch. Mom and Dad are holding the reins and driving everyone off the cliff, yelling and screaming the whole way. All through this year, you feel like you’d been asleep in the back of the wagon (like Laura in Little House on the Prairie) and woke up in the middle of a disaster. You can see it so much more clearly now. That’s been the net result of being fourteen.

  Your best friend changed too. No more long talks, sleepovers, and secrets. Now, it’s only about boys, clothes you can’t afford, and full-body critiques in front of the mirror. Those boys at school … there’s not a decent prospect in the bunch, but somehow, she finds guys to cultivate. Her idea is to find a boyfriend at a lower rung on the popularity ladder, but still acceptable, then hang around with him and his friends and work her way up. She ranks them all, according to a system. Where did this technique come from? One day, she just announced it. The idea you put forward (tentatively, in the face of her master plan) was that you should at least like the person, first — his personality or something about him, anything. She got rid of that idea. Totally the wrong way to go about it, she said. And there she went. She has a new best girlfriend now too, one who lives in a neighborhood conveniently close to the current target guy.

  It’s lonely without her, that’s what hurts. She was the smart, funny friend who dreamed up adventures like no one else, who read books and told stories, who understood everything without any need for explanations. Now there’s a big blank space where she was, a gap in your life.

  Between her new ideas, though, and Mom’s out-of-date ones, it’s like being drawn and quartered. It’s all about to explode and it may as well. So, Florida. Cue the palm trees and the breeze and the baby oil, and a guy who had it all over any of those jerks at school. Even she would have to admit he was a total coup. You’d need a photo, though. She’d never believe you otherwise.

  As luck would have it, Mom and Dad were so happy on Sanibel that they decided to buy a few more nights at the hotel. Another miracle. And the sun had done its magic; you were tan, and rosy, with a feverish feeling that the world was tipping and you could almost fall off, shake off everything about the old life and become one with the beach, the gulls and sandpipers, oranges from the trees, and a guy’s tan hand holding yours.

  A bunch of girls had planned a big pool party for the last night. The halter was again deployed. Things got a little rowdy at the pool, with a gaggle of girls, the beach-guy and his friend, who was bigger, older, and not so cool looking. You all pretty much took over the place, for an underwater treasure hunt or something. I don’t remember — some game. In the midst of this you discovered the strings on the halter top had suddenly been untied — his uncouth friend was responsible, not him — and there you were, bare on top, and surprised, a little freaked out but everyone was laughing and having a good time, so it wasn’t such a big deal. But Mom must have been watching from the balcony because before you could even get that thing tied back up she was yanking you out of that pool by the arm, breaking up the party. Humiliation.

  The sun poisoning was beginning to kick in, though. You took a lot of aspirins, and the combination numbed you out to the worst of her yelling.

  The next day — the last day — he told you to meet him, not on the beach but in a part of the hotel that was vacant, about to be cleaned by the maids. He even might’ve said he wanted to apologize, just hang out before your family left. But when you met him there, it all happened so fast. Way too fast.

  OK, I won’t go into the gory details; we both remember them well enough. He didn’t care about hanging out, talking, whatever. He got you down on the bed — hey, wait a minute! But he didn’t. Pinned you down on someone else’s dirty sheets with an ashtray of butts on the table next to it. It all happened in an instant. But he must have planned it.

  You got out. Belted out a scream and bolted, as soon as you could get him off you. Not quite soon enough.

  OK — another tissue. Don’t worry, we have a full box.

  I can tell you, now — you’re not irrevocably harmed. You’re not pregnant, and you don’t have a venereal disease — these are the kinds of things Mom is obsessed with, and punishing you for — for the possibility of either — although, either would be punishment enough. Yes, they are concerns, but what has really hurt you is something else, something she doesn
’t see. It’s gotten pushed to the background because fending off Mom and Dad has taken precedence, now, over what was wrong to begin with.

  How could he have treated you like that, all of a sudden? The simpático of the beach — the talking, laughing, joking around with everyone — that was gone. It had all been a lie, an act, a feverish mirage. In that room you were no longer yourself but someone else, who did he think you were? He snapped his fingers and turned you into a non-person, not-yourself, with no say about what was going to happen. A thing. That’s what it was like. It was what you had always been afraid death would be like. Just — not-being.

  Now, all you want to do is get past it. Forget it as quickly as possible and get Mom and Dad off your back. But, you had a role in what happened, and that must be looked at — through your own eyes, not your best friend’s, not your mother’s. What you really felt, on the beach, even: that you were swimming out beyond your depth. In fact, you were breaking your own rule: that you needed to like something about him, first. Aside from the way he looked, which, mainly, was how he’d look to her. To the others back at school.

  What he did was wrong (that fact, in all of the blame you’re putting on yourself, seems to have gotten lost). But, now you know there is something more important than living out someone else’s story, or even one you invent. It is something that you must take more care to guard. You must stand as gatekeeper to the realm of the not-you. To places you don’t belong, people to whom you don’t belong. To what can hurt you even as you go out to explore the world.