by James Howe
Someone beautiful.
Someone who might be famous one day.
Someone who would grow old
with a scrapbook full of memories.
Her name was Anna Goodspeed.
You probably never heard of her.
Only
It’s not like I planned to be an only child.
It’s not like I planned to drift to sleep to the sound
of my own voice whispering stories in my own
lonely head. What I planned was a little sister in a bed
just the other side of my narrow room, to whisper back
and giggle and say “It’s Addie’s fault” when our mom
came to the door and gave us one last warning
to settle down because “tomorrow is a school day.”
I would have taken a big brother if a little sister
wasn’t available, one who would give me piggyback rides
and teach me knock-knock jokes and say “If those girls
at school bother you again, let me take care of it.”
There was a time I had both, a little sister I watched over
and a big brother watching over me. Sometimes all three of us
would sit on the sofa sharing a big bowl of popcorn, even though
if you had walked through the room you would have seen
only me sitting there, my hands passing the bowl back and
forth. You would have heard only my voice laughing
at the parts of the movie we all thought were hysterical.
Maybe this is what it’s like for all only children: To love
the family that isn’t almost as much as the one that is.
Sweet Dreams
Oh, I don’t know if I love DuShawn. I mean,
we’re only thirteen. When you come right down to it,
I probably love my cats more, even if DuShawn is the one
who holds my hand and gives me presents and private looks
and never coughs a hairball into my shoe.
But then it’ll be late at night and the cats will be off somewhere
doing whatever cats do late at night and my phone will buzz
and it will be a text message saying sweet dreams
and I’ll text back you too and I don’t know. Maybe that’s love.
Loving Us Our Joni
Grandma is rocking out to Joni Mitchell,
her hips moving slower than the beat and
trying hard to catch up. She winks when
she catches me watching.
“Oh, I do love me my Joni Mitchell,” she says.
“Do you love you your Joni Mitchell, Addie?”
“I do love me my Joni Mitchell, Grandma.”
Soon we are rocking out together, our hips
catching the beat and riding it like a wave.
The Girl She Was
That’s her there,
in the photo with the tear in the corner
and the thumbprint
that can’t be wiped away,
wearing shiny white boots up over her knees
and shiny blond hair down past her waist
and a skirt so short you’d think
her mother wouldn’t have let her
out of the house.
“Who made you such a prude?” Grandma asked
when I told her that. “I’m still that wild
and crazy girl, Addie, somewhere
behind these drugstore glasses,
somewhere deep inside.”
Last summer Grandma took me to a museum
down in Bethel so I could see for myself
what her generation was all about. “Three days
of peace and music” is what they called
the Woodstock Festival. The summer of 1969.
There was a line to get into the museum. “Old hippies
like me,” Grandma joked. “But this is nothing.
You should have seen it then. Four hundred
thousand of us. Girls and boys, women and men, and oh
the performers! Joplin and Baez, Country Joe,
Hendrix, Arlo, the Grateful Dead.” Grandma shook
her head as we walked past the photos of
the hippies dancing in the mud, the flowers,
the flowing hair, the flashing eyes, the swirling
capes, the sun, and then
the rain
and the rain
and the rain
that never
wanted
to stop.
The gypsy clothes and for some no clothes at all.
I blushed. “Did you . . .” I started to ask, and then
it hit me how there was so much I didn’t know,
how my grandma was once a girl
who lived in a time I think of as history.
My grandma in her high white boots
and her short short skirt was a mystery I
would never solve, only glimpse in photos and
moments she chose to share.
“I thought it would go on forever,” she said,
“that life would always be that good, people
would always be that kind, the music
would never end. How funny to go to a museum
and see your life frozen in time.”
That’s my grandma, there, with her hair gray
in a braid down her back, dancing to her music,
her Joni, her Joplin, her Country Joe and the Fish,
her bare feet brushing the kitchen floor
as she puts away the dishes.
I wish I’d lived in the Sixties.
I would have made a good hippie, I think,
except I would have kept my clothes on and,
well, those boots were entirely impractical.
But that was my grandma’s time and this is mine.
If there is ever a museum about my life, I wonder
what will be in it. What moments will it freeze,
and what will live on, free of photos and memory,
live on in my hair and my hands and my knees
dipping, feet brushing shush-shush-shush
across a kitchen floor at twilight.
Love Songs
Grandma and her music, her music, her music,
always humming under her breath or listening
to her iPod out on her walks or the radio on top
of the refrigerator, her CDs, her vinyl, her eyes
shut, her eyes open and wet with tears, her feet
tapping, her hips swaying, that wisp of a smile.
“What are you listening to?” I’ll ask and she’ll
tell me, “Love songs, honey. All songs are love
songs because they’re written by people in love
with life.”
I Think Therefore
I Am Dangerous
I THINK THEREFORE I AM DANGEROUS
“What’s that supposed to mean?”
Royal Wilkins asks,
tugging at my backpack,
tugging at my backpack
on the way to gym.
“That button there,
what’s it supposed to mean?”
“It means,” says Tonni,
bumping elbows with Royal
while Becca and some other girls
squeal the Omigod Chorus
somewhere up ahead—
“It means,” says Tonni,
“that if you think for yourself
you might just act for yourself,
you might just shake things up.
Right, Addison?”
“Right, Tondayala,” I say,
shrugging my backpack
back on my shoulders,
shrugging my backpack
on the way to gym,
while up ahead, Becca
and some other girls
run their perfectly
manicured fingernails
through their perfectly
straighten
ed hair.
What I Don’t Understand About Tonni
Sometimes she acts
like she’s my best friend.
Sometimes she acts
like she doesn’t know my name.
Sometimes she says,
“Addie, you’re so smart!”
Sometimes she says,
“Addie, why you have to all the time act
like you’re so damn smart?”
The Omigod Chorus, or What I Have
to Listen to Every Single Day
Omigod, did you know?
Omigod, I hate him so!
Omigod, I love your dress!
Omigod, your hair’s a mess!
Omigod, like like like like . . .
Omigod, she’s such a dyke!
Omigod, he’s such a fag!
Omigod, I love your bag!
Omigod, does this school bite!
Omigod, I know, right?
Omigod, I need to shop!
Omigod, I love that top!
Omigod, do I look fat?
Omigod, what’s up with that?
Omigod, I hate my thighs!
Omigod, I ate those fries!
Omigod, don’t be a freak!
Omigod, that’s so last week!
Omigod, is that your phone?
Omigod, I love its tone!
Omigod, text message me!
Omigod, I hate this tee!
Omigod, I could just die!
Omigod, who’s that hot guy?
Omigod, he’s kind of punk!
Omigod, he’s such a hunk!
Omigod, don’t be a slut!
Omigod, keep your mouth shut!
Omigod, you’re my best friend!
Omigod, until the end!
Omigod, we are so fun!
Omigod, we’re number one!
Devalued
“In what ways do we devalue the English language?”
Mr. Daly asks a class of vacant faces and hidden,
texting hands. I shoot my hand into the air. Mr. D
smiles at me as he moves his eyes across the sullen
seventh-grade landscape. “Does anyone other than
Addie have a thought on this? Does anyone know
what I mean by ‘devalue’?” Now my hand takes on
a life of its own, wagging like an eager puppy. Me,
me, me, it whimpers as I try to ignore the snickering
around me.
“Yes, Addie?”
Snickers turn to sighs and groans and cries of Here
she goes. “It’s when we use empty euphemisms,” I begin
(Jimmy Lemon mumbling, “What’s a youthanism?”),
“or overuse a word or phrase until it’s meaningless.”
“An example?”
“‘Oh my god,’” I promptly reply, to which Becca replies
under her breath, “Omigod.” “Shouldn’t that phrase
be saved for religious expression or an occasion
of great emotion? I contend”—here Bobby, my
friend, drops his forehead into his waiting palm—
“that overuse of a word such as ‘like’ or a phrase
such as the one I’ve just cited, devalues it. Another
example is—”
“Thank you, Addie. Let’s
give someone else a chance, shall we?” Mr. D winks
at me as if we’re in this together, and I sit down.
(Funny, I don’t remember standing up.)
Other hands are in the air now as Becca’s hand
reaches across the aisle and slides a note under my
binder. I don’t look at it until after class. “You
need a makeover in more ways than one,” it says.
Now she brushes past, her elbow bumping my shoulder.
“Omigod,” she says, “so, like, sorry.” Other girls
giggle, and Jimmy Lemon coughs an insult into his
hand. “You’re not funny,” I tell them, tearing Becca’s
note neatly down the middle. Bobby waits for me
as I gather up my books. He gives me a sympathetic
look, one that says he understands what it feels like
to be devalued.
Let’s Get Addie: Version 2.0
It begins with me opening my big mouth,
which last time I checked was not a sin, but
according to the Gospel of Saint Middle School,
unless you have something dumb to say:
Keep Your Mouth Shut!
So the newest version of Let’s Get Addie is in play.
Let’s call it Let’s Get Addie: Version 2.0, although
believe me when I tell you there have been way
more than two versions. This new version goes
something like this:
Omigod, like, hi, Addie. Addie, like, omigod.
Hey, Addie, like, how’s it, omigod, going?
Oh, it’s going just fine, thank you. I just love
listening to your little mouths spout
their little meannesses.
I guess we can’t all be geniuses, but can
someone tell me why I should be punished
for having a brain and using it, for opening
my big mouth and speaking a big thought?
Oh my god, I’d really like to know.
Listening from the last stall
in the girls’ room on the second floor
I hear Royal Wilkins talking to Sara Jakes.
“Uh-huh, that’s what I’m sayin’.
Why we got to sit at the same table,
all cuz she’s DuShawn’s girlfriend,
and lemme tell you this, girlfriend,
I do not know how she got DuShawn
to go out with her, seein’ as how
she ain’t exactly what you’d call pretty
or cool or nothin’—’cept smart,
I’ll give her smart—
but, ew, girl, she got some kind of mouth on her,
always flappin’ away havin’ somethin’ to say,
even Tonni can’t keep up with her.
Now why you think DuShawn gone
and fall for a thing like her?
I’ll tell you this, uh-huh, DuShawn is her
ticket out of Un-popularity, that’s right,
and that is why she is with him.
But what he is doin’ with her?
Mm-mm, that is anybody’s guess.”
Sara Jakes uh-huhs and mm-hms
her way along until she asks Royal,
“How’s my hair look?”
Royal says, “Pretty as a picture,”
and then adds, “I contend.”
They both break out laughing,
not bothering to wonder
who might be in the stall
with the closed door,
and if it might be someone
who often says “I contend”
and never knew two little words
could be quite so
hilarious.
Confession
Sometimes I hide
in the girls’ room
on the second floor,
hating myself
for all that I’m not.
But hate is a waste of time
or so my grandma says. “And
that goes for hating yourself
as well as others. Stay soft inside
as the center of a chocolate crème.
Even if your outside is hard,
let it be less bitter than sweet.”
The Cure
Some days it really gets to me,
the laughing and mocking, and then
I’ll see one of my friends walking
down the hall in my direction, maybe
not even seeing me at first, maybe
busy in his own head, but then
he’ll look up and say hey, or smile,
and seeing him gives me back
a part of myself that got lost
for a while. Like today, when Joe
caught me looking mopey and
called out, “Chin up, Beulah Mae!”
It was ridiculous. It was
the perfect thing to say.
TEENAGE GIRLS STAND BY THEIR MAN
the headline reads, and here I stand waving the newspaper
over my head in social studies, trying to get someone
other than Ms. Watkins to hear what I am saying:
“He hit her! And then there’s this fangirl going, ‘I don’t think
he’ll hit her like that again.’ Oh. Really? Really? What is up
with this fangirl? Is she excusing him because he’s cute
or hot or whatever it is she thinks he is and she’s got his poster
up over her bed and his music bouncing around her head
24/7? Does she think—does she actually think—that cute
or hot or whatever they are boys don’t hit their girlfriends
again? Or is it because he’s a star and stars don’t hit,
or at least not more than once?
Hello, fangirl,
he didn’t just hit her, he bit her too and nearly choked her.
Did you hear that part, did you think it was a joke?
Do you really mean it when you say, ‘She must have made
him mad for him to act that way. If she was dissing him, then
she brought it on.’
Are
you
for
real?”
This is where I take a breath and become aware of Sara Jakes.
Her glazed eyes stare at me. Her face, frozen like a death mask,
thaws slightly as she slides her tongue over her gloss-slicked
lips and prepares to speak. “I think she’s right,” she says.
“Thank you, Sara.”
“Not you, Addie. The fangirl. I mean, why would a big star hit
his girlfriend unless she was asking for it? Besides, she forgave him
and they’re back together. So it’s over. And what’s it to you, anyway?”