Sister Mischief

by Laura Goode

  “Yeah, Marcy’s car is over there,” Rowie says. “What are you going to do with the goats?”

  “We’re pretty sure they came from a petting zoo in Waconia. My husband’s coming with a truck for the trip.” Mrs. D. sighs. “And we never even got to ‘The Raven.’ I’ve taught through twenty-seven Halloweens and lived to tell, but this one dwarfs them all.”

  “Well, thanks for volunteering to take them,” I say, handing over the lace leash. “And hey, Johanna, you were really smart in class today. I was impressed. Sorry if anyone was a jerk to you.”

  Johanna beams. “Thanks. I like your shoes.”

  I look down at my Timbs. “Thanks! Hey, Mrs. D., is Johanna named after the Bob Dylan song?”

  Now it’s Mrs. DiCostanza’s turn to beam. “I had no idea anyone your age still listened to Dylan. Yes. She is.”

  “My mom was named Johanna after the song too,” I tell her, a little surprised that I’m telling her. “If I ever have a daughter, I’m naming her Ramona.”

  “Like Ramona Quimby, Age 8?” Johanna pipes up excitedly.

  “Dude, totally,” I tell her. “Beverly Cleary is the shit. I mean, uh — yeah.”

  “We’re gonna take her home and wash her mouth out with soap,” Marcy says.

  “Have a nice Halloween, you girls.” Mrs. D. chuckles, shaking her head, and she and Johanna take two goats each, receding.

  “We can go to my house,” Rowie says. “My mom’s been asking about you guys anyway.”

  “Okay, but can we run by the SA first? I need a Diet Coke and there’s never anything chemical to sip on at Dr. R.’s house,” Tess says, jumping into the front seat. “Shotgun!”

  “Sold,” Marcy says. “Oh, we missed lunch — that’s why I’m starvacious. Call Priya and tell her to put, like, twenty-five samosas in the oven.”

  “Okay, bossy,” Rowie mutters, dialing her phone. “Mom. You’re not going to believe why, but we’re on our way over.”

  “Let’s get the eff out of here,” I say, rolling down the backseat window and gazing back at the empty, sudsy building. “Figure out how to really drop some bombs on this place.”

  Marcy takes a long, roundabout way to Rowie’s house, savoring the freedom from school, still high from our local media victory: a Diet Coke–and–gas pit stop at SuperAmerica, a gratuitous roll around Lake Harriet and the bandshell, anything to prolong the slanty yellow afternoon sunshine before the later-day clouds gather. Marcy’s car feels like the only square footage in Holyhill that really belongs to us. I cast a deliberately nonchalant arm over Rowie’s shoulders; to my surprise, she lets me. Tess turns around and regards us.

  “This is going to sound super weird, but you guys would make a hot couple,” she says, squinting. “I don’t know, you just kind of look like a good hot mess together.”

  Rowie squirms and lets out an uncomfortable laugh.

  “Yeah, man,” I play along, “we’d be the hottest interracial gay MC couple in the Midwest.”

  “Seriously,” Tess hoots, clapping. She shoves Rowie, who’s blushing furiously. “That would be so nutty.”

  “Yeah,” Rowie manages. “Nutty.”

  “Can you guys tell if we’re good girls or bad girls?” Tess prattles on. “I can’t tell anymore. Does our flipping off Ross Nordling on KIND-11 make us bad?”

  “I think — I think we might be good girls who maybe like the idea of being bad girls, but aren’t that good at being really bad,” Rowie says.

  “Yeah,” Tess says. “I guess I just never thought about being a bad kid until now.”

  “I mean,” Marcy says, “we never really had a reason not to do what everyone told us to do until now. Or at least you didn’t.”

  “I know,” Tess says. “I’m not that used to it yet.”

  “Maybe that’s what growing up is,” Rowie says. “When you can’t be who you are and do what everyone’s telling you to do at the same time anymore.”

  “Preach,” Tess says.

  “Do you guys know where you want to go to college?” I say. “I think good kids know by now.”

  “New York City,” Tess says.

  “Any Big Ten school that’ll pay for me to go there,” Marcy tosses in.

  “I have no idea where I want to go. Does that make me a fuckup?” I ask. “I know I want to go to a good school, I guess, and that I don’t want to go anywhere where the people are going to be lame. The idea of a women’s school sounds all right, but is that too predictable?”

  “Quit spazzing. We’re only juniors,” Marcy says. “Just think how much easier beer and weed will be to find in college.”

  “True. The whole Where and Why question just freaks me out. Ro, what about you?”

  Rowie sighs. “Ambivalent. My dad just wants me to apply to the Ivies and Madison and Minnesota. He says if I can’t get into an Ivy League school, it’s not worth paying out-of-state tuition.”

  “I sort of see where he’s coming from,” Marcy says, “but that’s mostly bullshit.”

  “You’ll get into one of the Ivies,” Tess assures her.

  “Is that where you want to go?” I ask. Fire-colored elm and maple trees shed a hail of leaves on the windshield as Marcy turns onto the lakeshore drive.

  Rowie looks at me with a wide expression of surprise. “I guess so, if they’re better than everywhere else.”

  “Who says they are?” Marcy says. “Rich people, that’s who.”

  “I mean, maybe they are the best,” I say. “But maybe you should tell everyone to go fuck themselves and go where’s best for you.”

  “Easy for you to say,” Rowie says. “Your dad would let you go to clown college if you wanted to.”

  “My mom didn’t go to college,” Marcy says. “I guess her dad didn’t think girls needed to.”

  “My mom was up in some activist shit in college in India, but she never talks about it,” Rowie says.

  “Yeah?” My ears perk up. “What’d they do?”

  “Vague. All I know is that it had something to do with banned books. Like I said, she doesn’t talk about it.” Rowie says.

  “My mom was in a sorority at the U of M,” Tess says.

  “Sororities are for bustas,” I say.

  “Hey, cranky.” Tess flicks my nose. “Got some opinions?”

  “I didn’t get that much sleep last night,” I mutter. “Makes it harder to turn down the volume on my internal monologue.”

  “Okay, since you brought it up,” Tess says, “can we talk about your Twilight look of late? I swear the dark circles under your eyes are starting to take over your face.”

  “Aw, thanks, hon,” I say sarcastically. “You sound like my dad.”

  “Hate to say it, dude, but blondie’s got a point,” Marcy says. “You fall asleep in Precalc a lot these days.”

  “Like that’s news?” I say, electrically aware of Rowie’s prolonged silence and backpack-digging. “I always get a second wind at like eleven, and then if I don’t make myself go to bed by midnight I end up dicking around until like three. I’m nocturnal is all. Like raccoons, and bike thieves.” I’m rambling.

  “If you say so,” Tess shrugs, giving me a last lingering look of suspicion.

  “Did your mom go to college?” Rowie says.

  “Yeah,” I say. “Berkeley. That’s where she met my dad.”

  “What’d she study?” Tess asks gently.

  “I don’t know.” I shrug.

  “Do you remember anything about her?” Rowie brushes my shoulder with the back of her hand.

  “Only, like, a snapshot here and there,” I say. “I have this memory of her wearing a green sundress, eating chunks of pineapple out of the can. I was trying to get her attention with one of my weird art projects, but she wasn’t taking the bait. She just sort of stared into space. I think it was around then that she left.” I pause, watching the joggers and strollers lap the lake. “Fruit cocktail still makes me kind of anxious.”

  “Have you heard anything from her since
then?” Rowie asks.

  “She sends me a letter on my birthday every year,” I say.

  “From Israel?” Tess asks.

  “Yup,” I say. “Who knows, maybe this year’s is already in the mail.”

  “Did you guys hear some parents wanted to give Halverson a talking-to about his moon rocks?” Marcy says. “Because they’re older than Genesis. The rocks, not the parents.”

  “Yeah,” Tess says. “I think Mary Ashley’s folks were probably behind that.”

  “Seriously?” Rowie says. “I mean, really? It’s a public school, for Christ’s sake.”

  “I think it’s ridiculous,” Tess says. “I believe in God, and I believe He’s intelligent, but I don’t expect teachers to teach that at a public school.”

  “Are you actually saying you believe in intelligent design? That’s pseudoscience!” Marcy says.

  “I didn’t say that, and why do you care even if I did? I’m not asking anyone else to believe it. I have a right to believe what I believe.” Tess’s tone grows heated. “They’re all theories.”

  “This is what I don’t get about you, girl.” Marcy pounds the steering wheel. “You’re so — smart. And yet you believe this shit.”

  “See, this is why it was easier sometimes to hang out with the church kids,” Tess says. “There are things about them that I don’t agree with. But they never thought having faith made you dumb. Believing what my family believes, feeling like I have a relationship with an entity that’s greater than I am — that doesn’t make me an idiot. I believe in a world in which some things can’t be reasonably explained.” She takes a breath, molding her last bullet. “Your reason isn’t better than my reason.” A hush falls across the car. For a moment, at a just-so angle, we can see the downtown Minneapolis skyline across the lake.

  “I don’t think you’re an idiot,” I say. “I wish I felt what you feel. Sometimes I think I might.”

  “I don’t think you’re an idiot, Tessie,” Marcy says, softening. “You’re just — you’re better than the ones you hung with. MashBaum and her cronies think it’s, like, their God-given mission to shit on me.”

  “Yeah, well, I haven’t been that impressed with Mary Ashley’s interpretation of what it means to be a Christian lately,” Tess snaps. “Or Holyhill’s. And your painting us all with the same brush is just as hypocritical as them trying to ban hip-hop or say gay kids shouldn’t have a safe place at school. So lay off.”

  “I know. Sorry, dude,” Marcy mumbles.

  “Are you a Christian because your mom is a Christian?” I ask Tess.

  “What do you mean?” Tess cocks her head to the left.

  “I don’t know. I just feel like my mom never stuck around to teach me how to be a Jew, so I don’t know what I’m supposed to believe.” I look out the window at the arc of the abandoned lake beach. “But I wouldn’t be a Jew without her, so where does that leave me?”

  “Well,” Tess says, “where do you think you’ve learned what you do know about being a Jew?”

  “From her books, I guess,” I say. “And Pops, and the ABCs of Minnesotan Jews: Al Franken, Bob Dylan, and the Coen brothers.”

  “The Minnesotan Jew,” Rowie say. “Shit’s complicated, huh?”

  “Sort of,” I say, putting on MC Paul Barman’s Paullelujah!

  “Oh, my God, you are so into nerdcore,” Marcy groans.

  “MC Paul Barman is not nerdcore,” I inform her.

  Tess smiles and smacks Marcy lightly upside the head. “Shut up. Maybe you should just keep reading, Ez. You seem to find something divine in words.”

  “Maybe you’re right.” I watch the lake recede as Marcy turns onto France Ave. “I thought I was mad at God when Mom left. But I think maybe I was just mad at Mom. And I’m still trying to figure out how not to be.”

  “I think you’re allowed to be,” Rowie says.

  “Yeah,” I say. “I know. But I want to forgive her. I just don’t know how.” I take out my notebook.48

  48. SiN: Almost seventeen, I’m angry, young and green / I’m so pissed off at God that I think I’m gonna scream / My moms packed up and peaced to go and chase some crazy dream / She left me decent genes but damn, she weaned me mean / I’m gonna cause a scene, can’t get out from in between / Moms, you’re the reason God and me can’t get clean.

  “The funny thing about forgiveness,” Tess says, “is that if you want to feel it, it’ll come on its own.”

  “Dude.” Rowie cuts her off, gaping at her BlackBerry. “Check it. KIND-11’s already got a teaser of the interview with us up on their website. The headline says: Holyhill Students Speak Out Against Hypocrisy by School Administration.”

  “OMG,” I say. Tess lunges for her iPhone.49

  49. TheConTessa @Marcedemeanor @WowieWudwa @pockettrockett: Holyhill Students Speak Out Against Hypocrisy bySchool Administration.

  “Whoa,” Marcy says. “Shit just went public.”

  “We’re gonna be so Googleable!” Tess screams in delight.

  “How long do you think it’ll take for Nordling to call another meeting with us?” Rowie says, snickering.

  “At least until tomorrow,” Marcy says. “The six o’clock news hasn’t even aired yet.”

  “I don’t know, man.” Tess shakes her head. “I posted the link on my profile literally thirty seconds ago, and five people already like it.”

  “OMG squared,” I say. “This is gonna be huge.”

  Marcy rolls down Iroquois Lane, Rowie’s copper door in sight.

  “Maybe we should think about finding an agent.” Tess unbuckles her seat belt as Marcy parks. I tuck my notebook back in my bag and tumble out after them.

  “I’m starving.” Rowie slams the car door behind her, then gives an impish flash of her eyes to Marcy and Tess, who seem to be in on something I’m not.

  “Go!” she cries.

  The three of them scramble to the front door and slam it in my face, giggling. I knock, confused.

  “Guys? Was it something I said?” I call.

  I can hear them gobbling like a brood of turkeys on the other side of the door. It flies open.

  “SURPRISE!” They’re standing around Rowie’s mom, who’s holding a birthday cake with candles and everything. I know it’s for me because it says HAPPY BIRTHDAY, ESME in big loopy red-frosting letters.

  I’m stunned. “But it isn’t until tomorrow,” I manage.

  “No matter, come in, come in!” Dr. Rudra crows, ushering me inside. I’m holding back that rising feeling again. “We were going to have it tomorrow, but when Rohini called, I just hurried up the frosting a little bit. Happy birthday, pretty girl.” She puts the cake down and hugs me, and I can’t say anything because I know if I do, I’ll cry at how nice she’s being and at feeling so guilty that I was breaking and entering in her basement twelve hours ago. Rowie’s mom does all the things that moms are supposed to stick around and do.

  “Thanks, Dr. R.,” I whisper as we embrace, willing the words not to catch in my throat. Rowie’s eyes meet mine over her mother’s shoulder. She smiles, and means it, but that still, persistent distance is there in her eyes again; lately, it almost never goes away.

  “Come into the kitchen. We’ll have cake with lunch. Why not?” We follow Dr. Rudra and the cake. Rowie tugs at my wrist, letting the others go ahead of us.

  “Too much birthday hoopla?” she asks. “It was Marcy’s idea. Was I wrong to tip Mom off? She, like, loves you.”

  “No,” I say, shaking my head fervently, “just enough hoopla. Thanks.” I go to kiss her on the cheek and she makes a face, flinching, but lets me.

  “So what’s everybody going to be for Halloween?” Priya Rudra asks as she sets out fresh fruit and silverware next to the samosas, roti, curries, and cake.

  Marcy raises her hand. “Missy Misdemeanor Elliott.”

  I cackle nostalgically. “That’s hardly a costume. Do you remember the firestorm you set off at Plainview Middle School when you started dressing like a honky baby Mi
ssy at age, like, twelve?”

  “Whatever, that warm-up suit was fierce, and it still is.” Marcy looks satisfied. Dr. Rudra looks confused.

  “Remember when we didn’t get what Halloween was?” Rowie asks her mother, diving into the buffet.

  “Oh, my gosh, I remember.” Tess laughs, close behind. “You showed up at my house in this super fancy sari, and I was all ‘Who are you supposed to be, your mom?’ I guess you sort of were.”

  “There’s, like, a cultural gap between Indians and Halloween,” Rowie explains, a little embarrassed. “The closest thing we have is Diwali, which is sort of like Halloween on steroids with fireworks instead of costumes, but you get presents.”

  “I thought I could just dress her up nicely.” Dr. Rudra shrugs matter-of-factly. “I used the clothes we had around the house.”

  “Wow,” I say. “That’s kind of — fraught.”

  Rowie dips a samosa in ketchup and pops it into her mouth, shrugging. “Just another Midwestern desi girl with identity issues.”

  “So, Miss Esme.” Dr. Rudra claps her hands. “Tell us all about your seventeenth year. What are your dreams for the next three hundred sixty-five days?”

  “Well,” I say, thinking, “hmm. I have a dream that . . . Sister Mischief gets to play a live concert in Holyhill.”

  “Holla back,” Marcy says, pumping a fist in the air.

  “And I want to write more rhymes with my girls.”

  “Check, check,” Rowie says, chewing. “On that.”

  “Worthy dreams.” Dr. Rudra nods thoughtfully, and I notice that she and Rowie have that same speaking tick, the one-bullet modifier: vague, worthy. She pauses. “Is there anyone special in your life?”

  I freeze, and Rowie looks like she’s going to choke on her paneer. I wonder, for a flash, if there’s any chance that Dr. Rudra has any idea what’s been going on between me and her daughter. She can’t. Or could she? Could she know and let it go on? I wonder if she could be offering an opportunity, a litmus test for how everyone might react. Then I look over and see the black panic in Rowie’s eyes, begging me not to do it, and I remember that she isn’t my opportunity.