The Cheer Leader

by Jill McCorkle

  The cabin looks dark except for the small candle burning in the front room and the gray silence of a T.V. with the volume turned down. I walk in because I have done that before. Scott and Wanda sit, their glazed eyes staring into the candle. Tricia’s hands cling softly to my sweater. “I don’t like this,” she whispers. “He’s not here.”

  “Well, hey,” Wanda says and looks up. “Come on in.”

  “Where’s Red?” I ask. “Isn’t he here?”

  “Somewhere,” Wanda says. “He’s somewhere.”

  “Nah, he left,” Scott says and I can tell he is lying. “He wasn’t feeling well.”

  “I thought there was a party,” I say. “Beatrice said that Y’all were having a party.”

  “Beatrice?” Wanda asks and holds up a glass of burgundy wine. “You can’t believe a word she says. Have some? We can make it a party.”

  “No thanks.” I walk to the door leading to the other room.

  “Don’t, Jo,” Tricia says. “Let’s go.” She hangs by the door where it’s dark.

  “Oh, I thought there was just one of you,” Wanda squeals. “It’s like personalities splitting apart. That really gave me a rush.”

  “Everything gives you a rush,” Scott says and twists her nipple.

  “Jo, please!” Tricia’s voice is almost shrill, almost like a warning signal and I want to turn around, to get in her car because I know what I am going to find. I know, deep down, I know. I just don’t know who it’s going to be and at the same time I am thinking, “It can’t happen again. What Bobby told me were lies or did Bobby tell me anything? Did anybody tell me anything? Did it happen? Is this happening?”

  I turn the doorknob slowly and gently push the door open. I try to ease any creak that the door might make.

  “Hey, Mark’s in there.” Scott jumps up and weaves like a top in slow motion to get his balance. I push the door open and for just a second all I see is the light that goes back and forth like a seesaw, a captured ocean wave that rolls under fluorescent blue light. That tacky light holds my attention, my breath, against the rustle of sheets, feet on the floor.

  “I tried to stop her, Red.” Scott pushes past me and stands in front of Red. Now, my eyes are focused and I see him, sitting on the side of the bed, no shirt, his jeans pulled down below that hideous inny navel. He is alone.

  “What the hell are you doing here? I told you not to drive down here at night.” He acts as though I am out of place, as though I have no right, no cause. There is a minute second of relief but no, it’s not good enough—there are sounds; there is a light, just a thin crack of light, coming from under the bathroom door. Red sees me looking.

  “Somebody’s sick,” Red says very calmly. “I was just waiting to make sure they’re okay.” They are? They’re?

  “Oh God, I’m sick,” the muffled voice rings in my ears like some haunting nursery rhyme. “Somebody help.” I know that voice, now, I know that voice.

  “You are sick,” I say to the closed door. “You’re all sick.” I want to slap Red, to spit on him but I am afraid. How could I have loved this person that I hate so much. The fear comes over me like a wave, rocking, shaking like that blue captured wave.

  “Ah, leave him alone,” Scott says. “The boy’s had a rough night, got a little messed up because he had looked forward to seeing you tonight. He’s just trying to help out a sick friend.”

  “Yeah,” Red says and flops back on the bed and covers his face with his hands. “Your May dance was more important than me. I can dig it but you can’t expect me to sit home and watch T.V. every time that you have something better to do.” He is making it sound like I have always done this to him. No, I haven’t done anything, nothing at all and I want to scream it but I can’t get the words out. Nothing; then there are moans in the bathroom, a stammering, “Help me.”

  “Boy, she’s out of it,” Wanda says and flops down on the end of the bed. “Who invited her anyway?”

  “Nobody,” Scott says. “She invited herself after Mark told her to fuck off; ugly little screwed up bitch.”

  I hate them, hate them all; I hate Beatrice but not enough to ignore her, not enough not to spite them or maybe I do hate her. I go to the bathroom door.

  “Jo, I’m leaving,” Tricia says and turns around.

  “Wait for me. Please, wait.” I am crying and I can’t control it. “Please, I’ll be there in a minute.” I push open the bathroom door and I hear the front door slam behind Tricia and I can only hope that she will wait for me.

  “Come here, Jo,” Red yells and jumps up off the bed. I slam the door and lock it. It is bright, a stark white bulb without a cover, a shower with no curtain, gold specks on dirty white, hairy drain.

  “Jo, I’m sorry. Nothing happened.” The words are slurred and lost in the echo of the toilet.

  “I don’t know what to say.”

  Beatrice gazes up and it occurs to me that there is no trace of intentness left in those eyes. Or if it is there, it is hidden by a film, the black of her pupils so large that they look like a deep deep blue, like a helpless blind dog. I want to slap her, to choke her but instead, I reach and pull her hair out of the commode, flush.

  “Get up,” I say. “Get up,” and I shake her shoulder but it is like rubber, her neck is like rubber.

  “I can’t,” she mumbles. “I’m so sick.”

  “Please.” I pry her hand from the seat and it goes limp in mine, cold and clammy like her face, the white walls.

  “Jo, I need help. I need something.”

  “What? What do you need?”

  “Something.”

  “Come on, get up. Wash your face.” I pull on her arm but she only sits back and slumps against the wall. “We’ll take you home.”

  “I can’t go home.” She closes her eyes and her head drops forward. “I can’t go home like this.” She grips my hand as hard as she can and I could so easily break it off, snap her wrist, her neck. She looks up and her eyes look wild, foreign and frightening like I have seen before, another time. “You’ve got everything, do you know that? You’ve always had everything—even in Kindergarten—perfect princess—perfect cheerleader—good at it all—goody-goody—get anything you want.”

  “That’s a lie, Beatrice.”

  “Jo, get out of there!” Red is beating on the door.

  “Come drink some wine!” Wanda screams.

  “Get the hell out of there. Do you hear me?” He pounds again.

  “You see, I’ve never had anything, you know? I just wanted a little of what you have, Jo.” She slumps lower against the wall, her stringy hair pulled to one side. “You see, I’ve never really had anything, never really fit in with you and your friends. That’s why for all of this, you see, because I don’t have anything especially since I don’t have Mark.”

  “I see,” I say or do I? Do I even care? I feel as cold and distant as the white light.

  “I’ll knock this damn door down!”

  I want to leave, to get far away. “Don’t be mad. Don’t hate me,” Beatrice mumbles and lowers her head to the floor. I open the door to leave.

  “Why didn’t you let me in?” Red steps forward. “I can explain everything. Nothing happened, baby, I’m sorry.”

  “Yeah,” I say and look at Beatrice.

  “Leave her alone. She’ll sleep it off.” He nudges Beatrice’s foot with his toe. “She’s always screwed up.”

  “What about you?” I ask and I can feel my scalp bristling. “Are you always screwed up?” Before I can even finish, he has both of my arms and pins me to the wall. He has that same blank look and he is right in my face.

  “Nothing happened. But don’t you see . . .” He shakes me. “Something could have happened and it would have happened because you weren’t here, because there are things more important to you than being with me. You never want to be with me.” He shakes me harder and I have to think of something else, something that can make me feel like this isn’t happening. “You don’t care a thing at al
l about being with me, really being with me, and all of a sudden, she comes up and she wants it! Yeah! You know some people really do want it! Everybody’s not like you, Jo. Everybody’s not frigid and unfeeling. You’re fucked up all by yourself. Don’t you see? The crying, the way you never say anything—you’re crazy! Only a crazy person would be like you. You’d like it if you never had sex, if you never had; you want to pretend that nobody knows that you have. Well, let me tell you baby, they know, everybody knows!”

  The smallness comes back, like being wrapped in cotton, so fragile; I can’t feel my heart, my breath, can’t find a thought, can’t cry—numb and black spots—light too bright.

  “Even Beatrice, your friend there that you’d like to save, she thinks you’re crazy!”

  “No, no she doesn’t.” I look and Beatrice has stretched out on the floor, her pants are wet and her face is as white as the porcelain. I see another face, shoestrings around the head, the old thick glasses resting on her nose, snoring quietly through the night at Holden Beach while I lay awake, even then, awake and trying to think of something that could make some sense.

  I see; I see. I see the moon and the moon sees me. God bless the moon and God bless me. “And then the windows failed—and then, I could not see to see.” Tricia drove very slow all the way home and talked so low like a lullabye that everything disappeared. Yes, I was okay. I could handle it. It was just a matter of letting go, giving up, throwing in my guns and hanging up the towel. I told Red that I never wanted to see him again and I suppose that I cried but I really don’t remember. I really don’t even remember when I got crowned May Queen and Pat Reeves, as a favor he said, stood behind me as my escort. But it happened. I have an old brown negative of us standing there and if I hold it up to the light, I can see our bodies, brownish blood red forms. He, in a suit with a smile on his face. She, in a strapless gown with a tulle skirt and maybe a smile on her face. She is a little overweight, just a little, but everyone tells her that she is the prettiest that she’s ever been. Perhaps that was true. It seems to me that I did a lot of thinking, a lot of worrying and somewhere in the midst of all of that, there seemed to be a fear—a fear of being sought out, hurt, squashed like a spider on a sidewalk.

  But I had little time to think, for after graduation, the summer bled and ran faster than any other summer ever had. It bled and ran into fall and a forest full of colored leaves, the prettiest that I’d ever seen, and I would crunch, crunch, through them on my way to class where I would sit quietly like a good Jo Jo, do my work like a good Jo Jo, and go back to the robin egg blue room that I shared with a girl named Becky who was very nice and had the slowest Alabama drawl that I had ever heard. She was very funny and had already made friends with everyone on our hall. She kept asking me to go out to eat, or just out, but I wasn’t ready for that, yet. I was still thinking quite a bit, about Red, about how he was going to be sorry for what he had done to me. I saw Pat from time to time but he had made it perfectly clear that we were just friends, that he was dating other people and that I should, too. It sounded like a lie to me but I told him that that was just fine. I didn’t want to date anybody.

  Tricia and Lisa had both gone to Meredith and they really liked it there. They called every now and then but I never really saw them. Cindy had gone to Davidson and it was very hard, she reported, but she loved it because there were so many more guys than girls. And how are you doing, Jo? Fine, just fine. Beatrice’s grades had gotten so low that she had had to go to a technical school right near Blue Springs. I never heard from her. As a matter of fact, I had never even spoken to Beatrice since that night. She had sent me a note in school one day via this red-neck guy that I didn’t know from Adam’s housecat and it was something about how she was sorry and how Red had told her that he would never love anyone else but me. Let’s be friends, it had said, I want more than anything to be your friend, you know, like we used to be way back in Kindergarten and grade school. I hadn’t answered her because I was so busy what with helping to choose the cheering squad for the next year when I would be long gone, what with having to get ready for college, getting sheets and towels that were pleasing to the eye but also of durable quality. And graduation night! That took so much planning and we all sat together and cheered and cried and said little things like “Friends til the end, I’ll keep in touch, Oh silly! How could I forget you?” and when I walked out of that school for the last time, I expected it to fall down and crumble behind me. Instead, it seemed that something had crumbled up inside of me and I didn’t even remember having felt that way until I went home for Thanksgiving and found that Beatrice had slit her wrists and bled like a stuck pig.

  Everyone talked about it, probably everybody in town between bites of turkey and dressing, talked about it, wondered why she would try such a thing. I did not eat my cranberry sauce or those sliced thin white pieces of meat. I did not want to eat those candied yams with the brown sugar on top either but I did because everyone knows that is my favorite. I didn’t want to go to the hospital but I did. I sat in a plastic chair and did the Word Power in an old Reader’s Digest. Mark Fuller was waiting to see her, too, and he shouldn’t have been. It was his razor blade that she used, his bathroom; it was his fault. Her mother was standing by the door, twisting her hands and talking to the doctor; she probably thought it was her fault. Her mother was nice to Mark Fuller and she shouldn’t have been; she was nice to me, squeezed my hand and thanked me for coming, and I wanted to say, “You’re welcome,” wanted to smile or say something cheerful but there were no words, no right way to say, “I am so happy that your daughter did not bleed to death. I am so very sorry that everyone thinks that she is crazy.” I got all the Word Power words correct. That meant that I was a master, exceptional. Beatrice did not want to see Mark Fuller; she told her mother so. Her mother said, “I’m sorry,” and Mark Fuller stared down at the floor like he was hurt, like HE was hurt. “I’m sorry, Jo,” her mother said. “She doesn’t want to see anyone.” I said, “I’m sorry,” though I was not, there were no words that I could have said. Beatrice did not want to see me; she did not want to be my friend anymore. She had changed her mind since she wrote me that note way back when the very leaves that I had crunched through up that hospital walk had just turned green. Mark Fuller did not speak to me; I did not give him the chance. He sat in the end chair near the elevator and I stayed in mine and read Points to Ponder. There were none that struck me as something that I wanted to think about. I wanted to ponder the fact that Beatrice’s mother was so nice to Mark Fuller when it was his fault; he made her do it and then he came in and found her before she could finish. I wanted to ponder the fact that Beatrice did not want to see me, that she was going to get so far behind in her school work, that she would have to always wear long sleeves, that once she got well it would all be over and everybody would go right back to being the way they had always been, like everybody had done after her pajama party that time, or worse, things would never go back to the way that they were before and people would only remember that she had done that to herself. She may as well have been dead.

  The elevator bell rings and it seems it rings and rings and rings, turns into a long moaning buzz inside my ears. Red gets out and lifts his hand to Mark Fuller to which Mark shakes his head. Red gets this sad look on his face like he cares. It is difficult to get up from that plastic chair but I do when I see Red getting closer. I get up and I walk down that hall to where it says “Stairs.” I stare at “Stairs,” my feet moving so quietly, so softly.

  “Hi Jo,” Red says and puts his hand on my arm ever so lightly, ever so slightly. He strokes my hair which is now very long, very much the way that he had always wanted to see it but it hadn’t had the time to grow for him to see it; now it’s grown and it doesn’t matter. “Didn’t expect to see you here.”

  “Why? I cared.” No, not right. “I care.”

  “I know you do. We all do,” he says and for some reason, I forget the time. I think that it is old times and I hu
g him and press my face into his shirt to hide, get safe. He strokes my back up and down, up and down. No, it isn’t that time; it’s this time.

  “I’ve got to go,” I say and stare at “Stairs.”

  “Jo, can I see you some time?” He is begging but so did Beatrice. She begged the night when he kicked her foot and said she was screwed up. She begged but nobody cared, but I cared and I can’t listen. No, I can’t hear because of the buzzing. No, he can’t see me because I am so busy. I am going to the movies with Tricia, Lisa and Cindy. I am going to go home and get the new Reader’s Digest, do exceptional on a new Word Power, find new Points to Ponder.

  I didn’t tell Becky about Beatrice; no one should talk about Beatrice. Becky said that I was acting funny and did I want to go out to eat and talk about it? Who was that boy that had called me long distance? Acting funny? Just because he keeps calling me to say how he has realized how much he loves me? How we can work things out, have a future. That’s funny? A future of razor blades and wide mouth laughs? I have taken my final exam for the semester and gotten all C’s and that’s funny? “But you’re through,” Becky says. “Let’s go celebrate. I go home tomorrow.”

  “I can’t go out,” I tell her. “I’m not ready for Christmas.” I must sit up all night and read. I get Winesburg, Ohio and begin it for the third time. I like the story about hands very much. It makes me feel sad but sort of good inside because it is a feeling that belongs to me. Yes, and I like the story that tells how some people must live and die alone. I feel like that person; Beatrice is like that person. Am I like Beatrice? Was I ever? Did I ever wish anything bad on her and will I almost die because of it? My eyes hadn’t crossed way back in Tiny Tots when I accidentally made fun of her but that time, I had made up for that sin. I had made it all up by being nice in such a fit way. But no, I’m not fit anymore, not fit to go into that room. Must get thin, stay small, stay very little so that people can’t see me. The phone rings and it is him again. He wants to see me over the holidays, says he’s seen Beatrice and she looks so good. Compared to what, I ponder, compared to what? You can’t see me, I think, because I am so small. He wants me back, wants everything the way that it was. How was it? I ask but he doesn’t know the answer. It is just one of those questions without an answer. I want to see you, he says and I hang up and go back to read. I can’t read, though, because my head’s too full, my body too heavy. His voice keeps saying the same old stuff, same old shit; you’re crazy, Jo, fucked up. I have to get out, run down the stairs, get outside where I can breathe. I love you, Jo Jo, Buzzy wants to kiss you, Jo Jo. It is so cold that the air shoots straight up my nose and into my brain. I must walk fast. Young girls shouldn’t walk around by themselves at night. I don’t want you driving at night. I can’t go outside of the tent, can’t walk to the latrine because it’s dark and I am so small. I’ve got to see you, Jo. I hear it; I hear him and it’s getting louder and louder. He’s here somewhere, in those dark bushes, behind a tree. He’s coming for me.