The Cheer Leader

by Jill McCorkle

  He doesn’t even smile, doesn’t clap. How humiliating. He could at least say that he thought it was good even if he didn’t. “You did write about yourself after all,” he says. “I thought you said it was about Beatrice.”

  “It is!” she screams. “Do I have blue eyes? Tell me, do I?” Ah Ha! She got him on that one. The nerve!

  “What don’t you like about yourself?” he asks right out of the blue as though that’s significant. As though there is something about herself that is not likable! “Come on think. Everybody has something that they don’t like about themselves.”

  “So what don’t you like?”

  “Patients that ask me questions,” he says and laughs. “But if you’re so nosey that you must know and if you’re so childish that you have to wait until someone has gone first so that you can play follow-the-leader, I’ll tell you. I would like to be taller.”

  “Is that all? That’s all you can find wrong with yourself?”

  “For the moment,” he says and looks stern again. “Now, what about you? Are you going to take a turn or does the game skip you and come back to me?”

  “You can quit trying to make me mad. I’m wise to that. I knew from the very first day that you were acting like a real shit on purpose. You were so nice to my parents! Ha!”

  “Changing the subject?”

  “This fuckin’ hair, how’s that?” she screams and pulls her hair out to the sides. “I’ve never had long fuckin’ hair and I don’t want it. It’s ugly and it doesn’t look like me. It looks like stringy long hair parted down the middle. It looks like I ought to be barefooted and handing out flowers singing ‘We Shall Overcome’ or ‘Pass It On,’ and that is not me.”

  “Cut it then if it makes you so mad,” he says and laughs. “There is such a thing as a haircut.”

  “I don’t know how it should be.”

  “Ask somebody that knows something about hair and just take a chance.”

  “Just take a chance?” she asks. “Like maybe wearing sunglasses?”

  “If you think that’s chancy, yes,” he says. “But don’t do it unless you really want to.”

  “I don’t want to wear bright colors.”

  “So don’t.”

  “Or paint my nails!”

  “Does somebody make you?” he asks and looks at her hands. It looks like she is holding five jelly beans, hot pink jelly beans.

  “My roommate says that painting her nails makes her feel good.”

  “Does it make you feel good?”

  “Hell no!” She looks at her watch and realizes that her hour is almost over. Some hour, they didn’t even talk about anything.

  It is the last day of Poetry, her very last class of the year and then exams begin. Before they begin the sonnet reading they must wind up the discussion of William Butler Yeats. The final poem is “Among School Children” and she likes this one very much. The man is remembering, thinking. It is obvious that her professor likes this one very much the way that he reads it aloud, especially the very end: “O chestnut tree, great-rooted blossomer, are you the leaf, the blossom or the bole? O body swayed to music, O brightening glance, How can we know the dancer from the dance?” He stops, closes his book and takes a deep breath. “Who wants to explain that?”

  She wishes that she knew the answer, that on this last day, she could speak out and tell it. “It’s the continuation of life,” this boy at the back of the room says. The boy gets a nod and no one else says anything and then so very easily, he tells it, he tells the answer.

  “It is the Platonic belief that you cannot tell what something is until it is complete. Once completed, it is immortalized. For example, the dancer cannot be distinguished from the dance until the dance is finished and then the dance is something complete, isolated.” She must listen to every word because this is very important to her life in general. “For instance,” he glances around the room and then stops on her, “we will never know who Jo Spencer is until she is dead and gone. Then we can see the whole life, know what she was.” The whole class laughs at this and she feels her face getting warm. He is picking on her, making fun of her but it doesn’t make her mad. He has picked her out of the entire class to make a point, a joke, and he doesn’t even know who she is, not entirely and neither does the Doctor and neither does she. It is a big thought to hold onto and her voice doesn’t even quiver when she stands to read, even though the professor has announced that he doesn’t give final exams, that he will never see them again unless they take one of his courses next year.

  It is difficult to stand up beside the desk, difficult to hold the paper steady, to hold her chin steady, all of those good words from Geology seeming to blur and run together. “The title is ‘The Beginning of the End,’” she says, her voice sounding so high and unnatural, her voice, the only sound in the room. She does not look up when she finishes but just stands there, folds the paper in and out in teeny folds like an accordian fan. People begin to talk and so she sits back down. It is not good, but it is not bad; it is a good time to be in the middle.

  The professor says that it shows a great deal of improvement; she likes the sound of that, improvement; she is getting better but that’s not good enough, got to get best. She’s got to get better and better, make good solid future steps that can make up for the past false steps, steps so much better that when she has finished her dance, and when people leave her graveside and are sitting with their gin and tonics, they will all say that she has danced a wonderful dance, that there were steps that could have been better but overall, it was a wonderful dance! And what would Beatrice’s dance be? It had been awkward from the very beginning and then she almost quit, but it’s not over. Even Beatrice has time. Now that she sees all of this, the class is over and that seems very sad. But, too, she can see the class in its entirety because it has ended, a true end, and it has been a very good class. She must tell him.

  “I’ve really enjoyed this class,” she says. “I hate to see it end.”

  “Thank you,” he says and he looks like he really means it. She would like to tell him about that wonderful yellow hat that she had seen him wear but he might get the wrong impression, think that she is brown nosing. “You’re going to take the next level course next year, aren’t you?” he is asking her and she must answer. He must think she’s good enough to go on; he must still see the Could Be’s in her. Next year seems like a long time away, a very long time away. Once she had even thought that she wouldn’t come back, that maybe she’d live at home and go to that technical school where Beatrice had gone and get a quick degree, start over, but there is no starting over, just continuing.

  “I don’t know, yet,” she says and shrugs. “I don’t even know what I want to be.”

  “What are you good in?”

  “Swimming,” she says and laughs. For some reason this man makes her feel very honest. “Dogs. I know almost all of the tunes to the old T.V. shows.”

  “And out of all that, you can’t find a career?” He laughs and she can just see him in that yellow hat, serving coffee to all the people at the party, the living people, the dancing people. All of the other people in the class have left and she wants to talk to him another minute. It feels like the first time that she has talked in years.

  “Hey, do you know the music to Dick Van Dyke? I have tried for months now to remember it.” She laughs and it is an honest laugh, a laugh that feels good.

  He laughs but then he stops and stares out the window for a minute. He’s got it; he remembers the music, the little trip over the stool part and everything. “How’s that?”

  “That’s it!” she screams. “That’s it! Thank you. Thanks a lot.”

  “Have a nice summer,” he calls after her. “Think about taking the class.” She will think about it.

  Jo Spencer has taken all of her exams and now, she is just waiting for the grades to be posted. Becky has already left for the summer and that was sort of sad, sad because a whole school year had ended. They had not said a
nything like “Friends til the end” or “Silly! How could I ever forget you?” Beck had just said, “See you in the fall, Jo. Have a good summer, take care of yourself, write,” and Beck had hugged her. Beck had even asked her opinion. She had said, “How do you like my hair parted in the middle?”

  “I don’t,” Jo Spencer had said. “It looks better on the side.”

  “Well, thanks a lot!” Beck had said and for just a minute Jo had been very scared that she had done the wrong thing, said the wrong thing. “I think you’re right,” Beck had said and laughed. She had parted her hair back the way that it looks the best and had gone down the stairs with two big bags to where her parents were waiting.

  Now, Jo Spencer is left, waiting, because in just two days, after she has seen her grades and after she has seen the Doctor, she is going to Blue Springs. Bobby is coming to get her and she cannot help but wonder how she will spend the summer. Only Fridays are taken care of because that’s the day she will drive up to see the Doctor. She is starting to get tired of sitting in that big black chair but not so tired that she can stop, not yet. She needs to do something to pass the time. The Doctor had said, “Get out. Make some friends. Pick friends who are right for you. Be a friend; be yourself. Don’t be hard on yourself; reward yourself.” That was it! She can reward herself. She can go outside and walk around. She can walk downtown. She can get a haircut.

  The young man standing there with the comb and scissors says that she is the best customer that he has ever had. “Most people tell me exactly how to cut,” he says. “Very few people tell me to do what I think will look best.”

  “I trust you,” she says and laughs. “I like to take chances!”

  She sits and repeats this to herself over and over while she watches that long auburn hair fall to the speckled floor. It doesn’t even look like her hair and she is glad to get rid of it. When he turns her around to the mirror, she can’t believe it. Her hair is very short, about a half an inch all over, and it makes her look young, to feel young. She shakes her head back and forth and nothing moves; she can rub her hands all over it and it won’t mess up. It will be perfect for swimming and diving.

  Next, she must go to the drugstore and look at sunglasses. They have several racks just full of them! She spins one rack around and around. What is she looking for? She takes some great big round buggy looking glasses like what Jackie O. wears and puts them on. No, these make her feel very old. She tries some more but they all make her feel very old; they make her feel funny like she has no purpose, no cause. She doesn’t need these anyway. Maybe she will buy some shampoo for her new hair, some real suntan oil that smells like coconuts and bananas, some little plastic disposable razors. They look safe enough and she will have to be very careful, take her time so that she doesn’t cut herself in a wrong place. She watches the woman ring up her items and the woman looks hot, miserable, exasperated in those tight stretch pants and that polyester pregnant looking top. She does not want to be like this woman; there is nothing about the woman that she wants to have.

  Now, she must go to the grocery store. What does she want? She gets a box of Country Morning Cereal with raisins and dates. It is so good like candy that she starts eating it dry while she waits in line. By the time that she gets out of the store, she has already eaten a third of the box. Well, if she runs out, she will just have to go buy some more, maybe get a half gallon of Breyer’s ice cream to mix with it.

  It is a clear blue day, so sharp that she sees things that she has never noticed. Has that Stop sign always been there? Have these people always been here? She sees one person that she recognizes, there, sitting in the window of the coffee shop, sipping coffee and reading. Is that girl always sitting there? The girl with the big brown eyes and does that girl recognize Jo Spencer with short short hair walking by? “Get out, meet people, make some friends,” the Doctor had said. She cuts through campus and walks along the brick sidewalks that curve in different directions. There is a girl running around in an open space. She is holding two leather leashes and two blond cockers are chasing her around, turning, unleashed. That girl has a life just like that girl in the coffee shop, her very own place to live, a chair that she sits in to eat, a bed that she sleeps in; she sleeps—so does the poetry professor, the woman with the sort of wild curly hair and crystal clear blue eyes that she saw tap dancing on a stage one time, the tall thin boy that always wore basic black and always knew the answers in English II, the tall girl with dark curly hair and dark deer eyes that she had just seen in the grocery store. That girl is probably at her home now, putting all of those T.V. dinners in her freezer. Bobby? Andy? Pat Reeves? She is not so different from all of these people. She sleeps; she has her very own place to sleep; she eats, walks, talks, uses the bathroom. Even the Doctor uses the bathroom! He is a person and she is a person. She can make friends just like she used to have. Beck is her friend. She could have walked up to that girl at frozen foods; she could walk up to that girl running around unleashed and talk to her. She could have just said “hello” to that boy in basic black, the girl in the coffee shop, the tap dancer. She can have friends. She can just walk around all day and eat dry cereal if she wants to. She can do anything that she wants to do.

  It is the last day, the end, and she has to check the final grade; she has to check Geology. She made an A in Poetry, a B in English II, a C in Philosophy, a D in French, and maybe an F in Geology. All she wants is a D, a D- even. Maybe they were not all the same course anyway. She has done everything that she can to put off looking. She has even written a note to the poetry professor and if she passes Geology, she can slide it under his office door even though the year is over.

  The building is very quiet and it is just as well. It is very dark in here and she can’t see well because it was so bright outside. She looks at her watch; Bobby will be coming for her in less than two hours. She looks at her legs, so brown and silky smooth, the pale pink wraparound skirt that she has not worn in years. She has to look. She walks up to the rows and rows of numbers, thank God they don’t put names; she finds her number, runs her finger across, slowly, steadily so that she sees it right the first time. There, a D”. It is happening.

  The campus is empty except for a few people here and there and so she runs as fast as she can, pulls the note out of her pocketbook when she reaches the English building. She gets just outside of his door and stares down at the note, the letters, words, that she had carefully written. “See you next year because I want to take your class. May your dance last a very long time. Joslyn Spencer.” She hesitates a minute, her hand by the crack under the door. Would he think that an odd thing to say? A crazy thing? No, she must not think things like that. As long as she knows what she means, it will be okay. As long as she is honest and with that, she pushes the note, now beyond where her fingers could reach if she suddenly wanted to take it back. A decision made. She walks away, down the stairs, through the big glass doors and back to that robin egg blue room that she has come to think of as her room, where Bobby will be in less than two hours and she cannot wait to get in the car and ride through that golden spring day to Blue Springs, North Carolina, where the house will be exactly as she has always remembered.

  IV

  JUNE 24, 1980

  I wake and the room is so dark that at first I cannot remember where I am. I get my bathrobe off of the end of the bed, drape it around my shoulders and go to the window. From there, I can see Moon Lake, a smooth green oval, the reflections from the lights on the pier so clear and so sharp that I think that the real light is coming from beneath the water. The sky is dark gray and misty; it would blend into the dark green of the water and form a perfect rim, that infinite edge of the world if it weren’t for the line of spindly pine trees holding it back. I run my fingertip along the pane, up and down, the erratic pattern of the trees against the sky, and it frightens me but I can’t stop, not until I have traced it, drawn that fine line that separates the two, connects the two. It is the gray that frightens me, that gr
adual gray blend that separates night from day and yet, the skies of dawn and dusk are so similar that I am confused, uncertain of what is about to happen, uncertain if I am seeing the beginning or the ending of day. My tongue will not work, my hand will not move from the glass. Then I remember that I sleep at night now, I remember the time, and the fear dissolves in a laugh of relief. I laugh and my hand moves from the window. I laugh because night is almost over. I go into the kitchen, fill the copper kettle, place it on the eye of the stove, put instant coffee in my mug, and then there is nothing, a nothing that I am not even aware of until I am awakened by a shrill hiss, a sudden alarm that sends me, disoriented, into the kitchen where I find the fire-red eye glaring from beneath the empty kettle.

  It was only a dream that has prompted me to look back, a dream that like those of the past seemed to slip into reality and I am without knowledge as to when it became real, unaware of the point at which I stopped watching myself and began going through the motions; the questions alone bringing with them that dull sense of dread, the sudden panic of waking. But, I am not there anymore. I am not a child sitting in the bathroom; I am not a college freshman sitting in a shower stall. I am Joslyn Marie Spencer, age twenty-three, spending the summer at Moon Lake, standing in my kitchen with a blackened copper kettle, wondering what to use to boil my water.

  When I look back, it seems to me that those last few days of my freshman year when I cut my hair to the scalp and ran around eating dry cereal lasted forever. It’s always springtime and there is always that fresh smell of everything thawing, warming. There is always a clear sharp picture as though every day was sharp blue and cloudless, as though the big dorm windows were always thrown open with the smell of near summer sifting through the screens. And it wasn’t that way, not always. In the three years to follow, there were long dark winters and rainy nights, occasional nightmares that threw me into the day before I was ready. And yet, glancing back, there is a slow motioned moment when I don’t see any of that, as though everything was resolved in those last days. Perhaps several years from now, I will look back and see things more clearly, but for now, I’d rather accept it as a resolution. It is like Pascal’s Wager where it is better to believe that there IS a God, since it can’t be proven otherwise, so that if indeed it’s true, then you would reap all benefits of the afterlife, than to believe that there ISN’T a God and take the chance of going to hell. For now, I would rather accept it all. For now, I choose to believe that life is like a cardiogram where you must always be moving up and down, back and forth, past and future, briefly touching down in the present, coming some distance before a pattern emerges. If you get stuck on any level and stay on the straight and narrow, if your beep beep turns into a low droning monotone and does not veer from that steady gray, then you are a dead duck, so I must look quickly back and wonder where all of the faceless people are, wonder if that pubic hair is still clinging to that shower stall, if there’s a young girl sitting there right now, staring up at it, thinking that she is the only person who has ever seen it. But then I must touch down, work a little while on an overdue paper that I am doing for a graduate course, tracing back the witty sayings of the sixteenth century. Then I can look to the future for a brief while; I can think to myself that one day I will really fall in love, that Pat Reeves or someone very much like him will suddenly appear at my door, take me to the movies, tell me about their childhood. I could be anywhere when it happens; I could be here, in this rented house at Moon Lake.