Sister Mischief

by Laura Goode

  “Cool,” I say. “It might have been nice of you to mention that before. I mean, if in your infinite wisdom you knew it was all going to turn out shitty.”

  Pops sighs. “You’re in pain, and you’re lashing out, and that’s okay. It’s healthy to let it out, but there’s no need to be nasty, babes. You have no idea how awful it is for me to see you hurting like this.”

  “Women are bullshit. Why do they all leave, Pops?” I say. “Why was she ashamed of me?”

  “Listen to me,” Pops says with gravity. “You are the most beautiful and amazing seventeen-year-old badass I’ve ever known in my entire life, and no one with half a brain would ever be anything but proud and lucky to love you. Rowie’s not ashamed of you. She’s afraid of herself. It’s not your fault. You deserve to be loved for exactly who you are, and I’m sorry the best school district in the state is full of assholes, and I promise — I promise you — that you are going to come out of all this even more beautiful and amazing than you went into it. And then you can go to college. You can’t do everything you want to do and be young all at the same time.”

  “AAAARRRRGGGGHHH,” I roar into his waffle-knit shirt.

  “Hush, hush, my parakeet.” He strokes my head, shushing me. “This will all be better tomorrow, I swear. And better yet the next day. Oh, hush, love. You are my child, Esme. You are an artist. Use all the ugliness you’re feeling to make something beautiful. Don’t you know that you’re the most amazing artist I’ve ever met?”

  “What about the time you met Leonard Cohen in San Francisco?” I mumble into his shoulder.

  “Pshaw.” He tosses the thought away, rocking me back and forth the way he used to do when I was little and scared. “You are a hundred times prettier than Leonard Cohen, and more talented to boot. You have to just open your mouth and let this all out. You did the most sacred human thing in the world — you fell in love with another human being. I know how it feels to lose that.”

  I look up at him; his face is blurry through my tears. “How — how did you get over Mom?”

  “I’ll never get over her. I’ve forgiven her, the best I can, and I’ve moved forward, and the only way I’ve done that is by remembering that love . . . creates things. You were created by love, for one,” he says.

  “Ew,” I respond feebly.

  “Oh, get over it,” he says, mussing my hair. “But you have to use the love you still have for Rowie to create some things yourself. You fell in love. That’s brave. Find the courage it took to do that and use it to write something that makes other people feel something. It isn’t just about getting everyone’s attention, about shocking people and making them laugh. It’s about giving people a reason to think about something they’ve never thought about before, something only you can make people consider. It’s about moving people, honey. About telling your truth.” He puts a hand to my cheek, his eyes crinkling. “I know you can do it. You move me every day.”

  “I can’t rap without Rowie.” It’s the first time I’ve said it out loud.

  “You can. And you will. Because you have to give things away. Give yourself away.”

  I take a big breath. “I don’t know how.”

  “Just try. Try to make something out of all of this, and it won’t fix everything, but I promise you will start to feel better. Do you understand what I’m saying?”

  “I think so,” I say. “I love you no shit, Pops.”

  “You bet your best bunch of bananas I love you no shit. Do you want some tuna salad?”

  “Pickles and onions and lots of mayo?” I say, taking another shuddering breath and trying to smile.

  “Pickles and onions and lots of mayo,” he says, smiling back.

  Dear Mom,

  For the last few days, all I’ve been doing is bailing on all the people I love. I guess I probably learned that from you. But Yom Kippur was a few weeks ago, and since then I’ve been thinking about atonement.

  I’m thinking about actually sending this letter.

  I’m mad at you. Mad at you for being too nuts to handle anything, for leaving me stranded as a Jew in the Christian heartland, for not even sticking around to tell me how to be a Jew, or how to be anything, really. When you left, it felt like a chandelier crashing from heaven to the ocean floor and taking me with it. The noise it made was people talking. There were crazy rumors: that you’d run off with our gymnastics coach, that Pops kicked you out for beating me, that you died on the operating table during a botched boob job. Only Pops and I knew that the difference between those stories and what actually happened was that in all of the made-up shit, there was an explanation for why you left.

  Why am I thinking so much about childhood, about you, about when you used to be here? Did you know I once got attacked by a Canada goose? It was the autumn after you left: Pops and I were taking a walk around the lake, and Make Way for Ducklings was my favorite book. I was mesmerized by this mama goose and her baby goslings, and I kept trying to get close to pet them, giving Pops the runaround as he tried to chase me. I was a pretty fearless kid — maybe you remember that — kind of drawn to dangerous places: the tip-top of the playground slide, the deep end of the pool, too close to wild animals. Anyway, I crept toward the mama goose near the edge of the lake, and she rose up in this big majestic wingspread like a thunderbird, scaring me off for a minute. She had one beady eye fixed on me the whole time, so I don’t know why I thought I could sneak up on her, but I got away from Pops and bum-rushed the birds, determined to crash-bang my way into the family. I got within about two feet of the terrified goslings before the mama dove for my arm and bit me harder than I’ve ever been bitten, even by Marcy. I hollered bloody murder and burst into tears and Pops actually kicked the goose. My arm was so black and blue — the doctor said I was lucky Mother Goose didn’t break it — that we got funny looks at the grocery store for weeks. That’s why I hate birds. That and I think you liked them.

  I like being scary a lot more than I like being scared. But it’s strange, you know? Feeling apart from people all the time.

  You hardly know any of the people in my life. You don’t even know Marcy. And you don’t know Rowie, but she’s the girl who just broke my heart. Rowie’s real name is Rohini and she has beautiful black eyes and long branch-brown arms and we’re — well, we used to be — MCs together and I haven’t talked to her since we fell out. I don’t even know if she’s, like, okay. She doesn’t know it, but I pick up the phone and start to call her every day. I wondered while I was falling asleep last night if she’ll ever be glad I happened to her. Despite everything, in a secret sacred place that no one will ever be able to gossip about, I’m still glad she happened to me.

  Rowie and I had, like, a secret relationship and my friend Tess found out, and from there word just got around the way shit does here, a place where nothing ever happens, and the next thing everyone knew, everyone knew. I’m not even really mad at Tess now, even though I was at first. In a weird way, I’m almost grateful to her for doing what I couldn’t, whatever it was that Rowie’s fear or my own mournful borders kept me from doing.

  I’m out. I’m not like the pretty girls, the salon-blond birds hanging out the passenger windows of all the hockey players’ trucks, with their indoor laughs and shallow lacquered faces. I’m a lot of things — hardheaded, smart-mouthed, kind of oddly dressed — but I’ll never be like those girls. And I’m glad. I needed to get honest about who I am, honest about the fact that I’m not ashamed to be this kind of girl, and I have that gladness now. I wear it like a pendant on a chain. I’m Esme Rockett, foul-mouthed, prickly syntaxed, oddly dressed, and gay.

  I can’t decide whether being an only child makes it easier or harder for me to reject. Sometimes for a hot minute I hate Rowie, hate her in a heated humiliated way, for always wriggling farther away whenever I wanted to get closer, for telling me I didn’t understand the way she was different and never realizing how much she has that I don’t: a sister, a mother. Do we all hate the people we love sometimes? So
metimes I imagine myself breaking up with everyone in my life. (You did that.) I’ve never told anyone this, but I’ve always been secretly terrified that all the people I love most privately despise me, that I’m, I don’t know, a trying person, a vexacious, snarky, know-it-all brat who can only be tolerated for so long. Maybe I was even worse than I think I am, like really awful, and that’s why she couldn’t ever be my girlfriend.

  It’s funny how experience is made up as much of what we forget as it is of what we remember. I never remember how mean I was to Charlie Knutsen back in August. I do remember every mean thing I said to Rowie the night we fell out. Or maybe I don’t. I’m not funny anymore. Or I worry about that. My thoughts aren’t really connecting; this has been happening a lot lately. I find myself having to talk myself through things, narrating my own life, having to understand it in words, a lot lately. Pops says I should make things out of what I’m feeling, so I’m making things: making rhymes, making sculptures, making letters. The words hang all around me like hot summer lemons and limes, like suspended jewels hungry for my touch, and I am in love with them, and with the sound of them.

  I do feel better when I make things. I remember to feel better. Seeing yourself in a letter is funny, like seeing yourself naked in someone else’s house. The whole body business gets really gross by now; you never told me that. Why didn’t you stick around to explain any of this shit to me? My boobs are bigger than last year, and I don’t know if I’m supposed to be this hairy. No one ever told me having sex makes you look different but only to yourself.

  Pops says it’s my Jewish responsibility to atone for you. Tess says forgiveness comes if you let it. So I guess my tasks are to atone for your sins to God and forgive you myself. I may be working on that for a while.

  Well, Mom, I know this is sort of random and wandering, and I’m sorry. I’m trying to get better at telling people how I feel about them, because I’ve learned that it really sucks when other people can’t tell you how they feel about you. So I’m still mad at you, and I don’t even really feel like I know you, but I suppose that I love you, or that I could try to love you if you ever stuck around long enough for me to stop being mad at you. I’ll probably just keep trying to figure out how to love you and be mad at you at the same time, while I work on forgiving and atoning for you. Do you miss me, ever?

  Sincerely, your spawn,

  Esme Ruth Rockett

  About a week and three or four dodged Chem classes later, I resolve to go to a full day of school, because this is post–9/11 America, after all, and you can’t let the terrorists win. The morning goes passably; the hissing in the halls has reduced to a dull simmer. After AP English and the pressure of avoiding eye contact with Rowie, I drag Marcy out for a walk around the school to recuperate after Precalc. She smokes a Parly. I try to breathe regular. We don’t talk. I start to feel edgy about Chem, needing a release.

  “Can we go to your car and have a dance party really quick?” I blurt out.

  “What?” Marcy says. “Now?”

  “Yeah, now. I just — I just need to dance really hard for a minute.”

  “Okay.” Marcy shrugs, heading for the James. She reaches in and starts the car. “What’s your poison?”

  “Your choice,” I say. “Just something with a beat.”

  Marcy cranks Brother Ali’s “Forest Whitaker.” I reach into my hair with both hands, ratting the curls out into my best Jew-fro, and start to shake my shit sans abandon. I jump around, loosening my arms, dancing from my core. For three minutes, I don’t think about Rowie, don’t think about school, think only about being in my body. Marcy laughs and busts some moves with me.

  “Shake it, girl,” she hollers.

  The song ends and I’m breathing hard, my heart racing. I throw my arms around her.

  “Thank you,” I say. “I needed that.” I’ve worn myself out a little bit, and it makes me feel less keyed up. We trudge back to the school entrance.

  “Meet me by the gym after last period,” she says casually as we throw a what-up to Mrs. Higgiston, the nearsighted attendance lady. She smiles and waves — for some reason, if you’re nice to her, she never gives you shit about coming and going at will. It makes me wonder if she’s lonely. Maybe she just feels invisible.

  “For what?” I ask, stomping dirty slush off my hand-painted Timbos.

  “Just something I had cooking while you were AWOL. No bigs.”

  “Whatever, dirtbag. Later.”

  I summon my courage, one foot in front of the other, and walk into AP Chem. Rowie’s there early, of course, already taking notes from the whiteboard, and she’s sitting at our table. Breathe. Breathe.

  I sit down and she looks at me as though we’ve never met, as amazed as if I were a stranger boldly taking the seat next to her on an empty bus. She’s wearing all black again. This is the fifth day in a row that Rowie hasn’t worn a single color.

  “Um. Ez?” she croaks.

  “Let’s not,” I say.

  “Okay,” she says, looking back down at her notebook.

  The bell rings. I look up and realize twenty-six pairs of eyes, including Mr. Halverson’s, are trained on Rowie and me. I resist the urge to flip them all off.

  I lean forward on the lab space, widening my eyes. “Boo.”

  The room is a tomb for a moment, my crack falling flatter than the drive from Minneapolis to Fargo, until Halves the Calves clears his throat and starts his lecture.

  About two minutes after the bell, who should saunter in but Prakash Banerjee in the flesh, and he’s walking toward me. The situation rapidly goes from bad to worse. He’s standing next to me. He’s leaning in — revulsion — to tell me something.

  “Esme,” he trills, “you’re in my seat.”

  You. Have. Got. To. Be. Kidding. Me.

  “Are you for real?” I fix him with a withering stare. “Isn’t Jane your partner? Where is she?”

  “She got switched into a special section that’s taking the AP test this year instead of next year, and you weren’t here, so Halverson reassigned me to Rowie, and you to a single table. Over there.” He’s practically singing. You will pay for this, nerd, I vow silently. Rockett wrath remembers.

  Halves is clearing his throat again. Navy-blue sneakers today, but no point in noting it.

  “Yes, um, Esme, if you’ll just move to that table over there, you and I can go over the work you’ve missed after class,” he says.

  I can’t believe this. Humiliation churns like vomit in my middle as I pick up my stuff and march it over to the single table — the single table — on the other side of the room, where I have a perfect view of Rowie and Prakash. I would rather have a million of Chuckles’s babies, literally rather be barefoot and pregnant making Tater Tot hot dish in his kitchen for the rest of my life than be in this class right now. After a few minutes, I put my head down on my crossed elbows, watching the cracks of light between my arms, breathing in the antiseptic smell of the table. Maybe I can just hide here for a while, I think. Maybe when I look up, it’ll all have gone away. No such luck. I look up and Prakash is leaning over Rowie’s notebook just the way I used to; she gives me a guilty look when she sees me seeing them.60 Miserably, I turn my attention to Halverson’s drone, making a halfhearted attempt at taking notes. I’m such a phony. Rowie knows I never take notes.

  60. Text from Rowie: I’m so sorry. We got switched when u weren’t here. Super sorry.

  Ten thousand years later, the bell goes off in a soul-saving scream and I’m on my feet before it’s finished ringing. I barely pause at Halves’s desk to pick up the pile of papers he has waiting for me and flee, taking third lunch instead of my usual first, because more face time with Rowie is out of the question today.

  I merge into the lunch line. All I want is French fries. At the cash register, I grab a handful of ketchup packets and a Coke, and scan the room for a good, removed place to sit and read. God. I haven’t read through lunch since elementary school. Some days Marcy would make me play kickb
all with her and the boys at recess, but most days I curled up against the side of the school and buried myself in a book. I spot an empty corner of the cafeteria and head for it, trying not to make eye contact with anyone.

  “Esme!”

  I hear my name and have an off-kilter moment of searching for its source. Turning around like a dog bedding down for the night, I finally see Jane waving at me, motioning for me to come sit at her table. I melt in relief.

  “Hey, dude,” I greet her, taking an empty seat. Jane’s sitting with Angelo and a senior girl whose name I’m pretty sure is Courteney. “How’s it going?” I wave to them. “I’m Esme. Courteney, right?”

  “Right.” Courteney smiles. “What’s good?”

  “You know, not a lot right now, but I’m trying to be optimistic,” I answer honestly.

  “Girl,” Jane responds in a rush. “I feel so bad about the other day. I’m so sorry I spilled the beans like that. And then I heard Halverson made Prakash Rowie’s lab partner when I switched my section, and I felt like I had probably just ruined your whole life.”

  I wave her apology away. “Don’t sweat it. The lab thing isn’t your fault, and as for Rowie and Prakash, I would have found out anyway. I’m sorry I was so weird when you told me.”

  “Oh, my God, don’t even worry,” Jane says. “This shit about you, like, will not die. I’m pretty much sick of hearing about it, so I can’t even imagine how you must feel.”

  “Oh, snap, you’re the one everyone’s talking about?” Courteney asks. “Damn, even I’ve heard that shit.”

  “Yeah,” Angelo adds. “People are saying some crazy shit. I heard you tried to feel up Mary Ashley Baumgarten at a pool party and that you were, like, secretly dating Rowie Rudra.”

  I laugh for the first time all day.

  “Wow,” I say. “First part, very false. I did once tell Marcy I wanted to have hate sex with MashBaum, but that was before I really knew what it was. Or what she was.”