by Lisa Alther
The girls glanced at each other.
“All right, so here’s what happens,” she gasped. “The daddy puts his pee-pee in the mommy’s wee-wee, and a baby grows in her stomach. Oh, here, read it for yourselves.” She thrust the pink book at them. Hyperventilating, she raced from the room.
Astonished by the concept that Mr. Elkins’s tiny, pale pee-pee could somehow enter Mrs. Elkins’s never-seen wee-wee, Molly and Jude spent several hours giggling nervously over the diagrams of this unlikely procedure. Molly pointed out haltingly that French kissing was merely this unappetizing act performed with the tongue. They gazed at each other with horror as they realized that each had done this with various boys. Did this mean that they weren’t “virgins,” which the book said it was very important still to be when you gave yourself to your new husband on your wedding night?
As she slipped into an exhausted sleep toward midnight, Jude finally understood that her father had killed her mother with one of those strange lumps that lurked like hand grenades in the pants of the new, improved Commie Killers.
CHAPTER
6
JUDE’S GRANDMOTHER looked up from soaking her baking-powder biscuit in redeye gravy to say, “Daniel, you’re raising this child like a boy. Football, and horses without saddles, and jeeps in the pasture. And all this arrowhead nonsense. You may have gone to school in New York City, but you’re every bit as much of a savage as your father was. I declare, I’m shocked to my core!”
“Yes, Momma. I’m sure you’re right.”
Jude realized that her father couldn’t have cared less. He was beaming at his wife, whose belly was swelling with new life. Aunt Audrey’s carrot-colored bouffant framed a foxlike face with small, pointed features. She was upset that Jude couldn’t call her Mother. But each time Jude had tried, her throat had closed up, leaving her gasping like an asthmatic. Calling her Aunt Audrey was their compromise. Jude was trying to like her, but they had nothing in common except Jude’s father. So Jude was polite to Aunt Audrey for his sake, and Aunt Audrey was polite to her for the same reason. Her father maintained she’d gained a mother, but she felt she’d lost a father instead.
“At least I wear shirts now,” mumbled Jude.
“I beg your pardon?” barked her blue-haired grandmother. “Speak up, young lady.”
“Nothing, ma‘am.”
“At the rate you’re going, my dear, you’ll never qualify for the Virginia Club Colonial Cotillion. And I refuse to ask them to lower their standards for you simply because I’m president.” She returned the ladle to the silver gravy boat with finality.
Jude managed not to say that the only thing she wanted right now was to get this gruesome meal over with so she could go riding with Molly. Now that Molly was in junior high and Jude still in grade school, they saw each other only after school and on weekends. The Wildwoods were suddenly abloom and the alfalfa in the valley was greening up. The air had turned soft and steamy, and the soil would squelch under the horses’ hooves when Pal and Flame loped along the riverbank in shafts of sunlight through the chartreuse willows.
Aunt Audrey said, “Yes, Jude, and you’ve got to think about how you’re going to catch yourself a man when you get older.” She plucked complacently at her bulging smock of rose linen.
Jude looked at her. If she wanted a man, she could always steal someone’s father. Aunt Audrey was always making little jokes no one else thought were funny. It was pathetic.
That evening as Jude lay on her bed reading her assignment for Bible study class on the meaning of the lions in the story of Daniel, her grandmother phoned to say that Jude and Molly were enrolled in Miss Melrose’s Charm Class at Fine’s Department Store.
Jude held the phone receiver away from her ear and stared at it.
“They’ll teach y‘all how to dress and walk and sit,” her grandmother promised.
“But I can already do that, Grandma.”
“Not properly. Not like a young Virginia belle.”
THE PROPER WAY TO WALK required placing one foot directly in front of the other as though crossing a tightrope, hips swaying side to side as ballast. Math texts balanced on their heads, Molly, Jude, Noreen, and several other apprentice charmers swayed along behind Miss Melrose (whose shiny false eyelashes and switchblade fingernails were all about an inch long) through the shoe department, down the escalator, past the waxworks of writhing plastic amputees in the lingerie department, and into the makeup department, which reeked of competing colognes.
“Now, girls,” said Miss Melrose from behind the glass counter as she picked up a cotton ball and a bottle of caramel-colored liquid that looked like a urine sample, “at this particular moment in time, y‘all’s lovely little ingenue faces aren’t anything but nasty old cell cemeteries.”
Using the moistened cotton, she demonstrated on Noreen’s oily forehead how to defoliate and moisturize these cemeteries. Then she promised to unveil the mysteries of eyeliner at the next session. Their homework assignment was to memorize the first ten silverware patterns in their Learning to Be a Lady handbook. She warned that they would be tested on this.
“Now y‘all don’t forget to bring you some high-heeled shoes next time,” she called as they exited through the revolving door to the street, “and we’ll practice our walk some more.”
“Oh, please,” muttered Jude as she and Molly headed home in the soft spring twilight, up the main street past the display windows at the five-and-dime. Jude felt acutely conscious of the incorrectness of her everyday gait, an ambling shuffle, faintly pigeon-toed. But Ace maintained that the fastest sprinters were always pigeon-toed, and it was true that Jude could outrun everyone else on the football team.
Molly was silent, which was making Jude uneasy. She had seemed alarmingly attentive during the skin-toning demonstration. The next thing you knew, she’d be wearing false eyelashes and a piecrust of makeup, just like Miss Melrose.
“I have something to tell you,” said Molly as they passed their redbrick church, its white spire topped by a copper cross tarnished to the blue-green of bread mold. “I hope it won’t hurt your feelings.”
“What, for God’s sake?”
“I’m having a party in my basement Friday night.”
“A slumber party?”
“A boy-girl party. A Dirty Shag party.”
“But you don’t know how to shag.”
“Yes, I do, Jude. They have sock hops at junior high during lunch break. To raise money for different charities.”
“Well, I guess you could teach me to shag by this weekend.”
“Jude,” she said in a low, guilty voice, “it’s just for junior high kids.” She was staring at the sidewalk.
“Okay,” Jude finally said. “So I’ll just see you Saturday morning. We’ll watch ‘Fury’ together. And maybe go riding. Or look for arrowheads in the afternoon with my dad.”
“Great,” said Molly. “You know you’re my best friend. Nothing can ever change that.”
“Yes, I know that.”
They had reached the crack in the sidewalk between their two yards. For old times’ sake, laughing, they put their hands on each other’s shoulders, glanced into each other’s eyes, and chanted in unison, “Best friend. Buddy of mine. Pal of pals.” Molly seemed relieved to have made her confession, and Jude vowed always to help her feel free to do what she wanted.
Following supper and homework, Jude and Molly stood side by side in their shorty pajamas before the mirror in Molly’s bathroom, setting their hair on rollers as big as frozen orange-juice cans. Then they encased the rollers in stretchy silver lame hair nets that made them look like spacemen. Climbing into Molly’s bed, they tried to discover a comfortable sleeping position that wouldn’t result in stiff necks in the morning.
Finally settled on her side with Molly’s chest against her back, Jude tried to relax, despite the fact that her ear was touching her shoulder. Molly twitched her legs irritably several times. Sighing, she sat up.
“What’s w
rong?” asked Jude, rolling over to look up at her in the glow coming through the window from the streetlight.
Molly reached under the covers and stroked one of Jude’s calves. “Your legs. They tickle when we sleep like that. Couldn’t you shave them?”
“I guess I could,” said Jude. “I never thought about it.” She ran her hand along one of Molly’s calves. It was silky-smooth.
Molly rested her pumpkin head against the quilted headboard. “Jude,” she said, “you know, it’s not that easy for someone in junior high school to be best friends with a sixth grader.”
Jude sat up and looked over at her. “I know it must be hard,” she said, recalling her rash vow that afternoon to help Molly do as she wanted. “Do you want to see less of me?”
Molly said nothing for a long time.
God, Molly, don’t leave me, Jude screamed silently. But she gritted her teeth and revealed nothing, as though bluffing during Over the Moon.
“No,” Molly finally said. “But do please think about shaving your legs.” She scooted to the far side of the bed and pulled the covers up to her chin.
Jude lay in the dark listening to the soft, steady whoosh of Molly’s breathing. She could smell the floral cologne Molly had started splashing on her limbs after baths. She wanted to reach across the expanse of sheet and stroke Molly’s hair. Or roll on top of her and lie nose-to-nose with their limbs aligned, giggling in unison and gazing into each other’s crossed eyes. But they weren’t children anymore.
Sidney yelped and snuffled in his sleep on his cushion in the corner. Baby frogs were peeping down by the river, and a coonhound was baying from some distant moonstruck cove.
Finally drifting off to sleep, Jude dreamed fitfully of losing her pocketbook, and being late for school, and having a flat tire on her bicycle, and having her teeth fall out in her hand at a party. Abruptly, she woke up. Molly’s father was growling down the hall, followed by the high-pitched wail of her mother. Why couldn’t they just be nice to each other and keep quiet? They were supposed to be the parents. Grabbing a tissue from the nightstand, Jude tore it up, plugged each ear with a wad, and tried to ignore their incomprehensible misery.
Toward dawn, she descended into an exhausted stupor.
She and Molly were lying on a raft in the river under a hot spring sun, floating past drooping willows that were mustard with new shoots. The raft rocked slowly in the current. Cawing crows were wheeling overhead. Sunbeams were flickering like hummingbird wings, back and forth across their flesh.
While the raft bobbed, the water began to flow faster and faster. She and Molly rolled toward each other and fitted their bodies together, interlocking their thighs and enfolding each other in their arms. As they were swept along down the river, their mouths met. They began to caress each other’s lips with their tongues.
The current raced more and more swiftly, as though about to carry them over a waterfall. The rutted red banks rushed past on either side. And then a towering wall of water rolled down the river and raised the raft high up toward the sky, swirling it into the air like an autumn leaf on a whirlwind. And Jude felt a sweet, haunting pain pulsing through her body, as though she were being stung to death by a swarm of bees injecting her veins with honey.
And then the whole world burst apart like fireworks. Bits of Molly’s and her flesh flew off into the churning river and roiling sky. And they were no longer Molly or Jude. They were each other and everything. The mountains and the trees and the birds singing in the swaying branches. The river and the pastures and the cows grazing on the lush grasses. They all formed a whole. They always had and they always would, but she had lacked until now the eyes to see it.
Waking up in the scarlet rays of the rising sun, Jude discovered that she and Molly were completely wrapped up in each other’s arms and legs in the middle of the bed, breasts pressed together. Molly’s eyes fluttered open and she stared blankly into Jude’s, only inches away, as though unable to remember who she was or who Jude was. Slowly, the blankness faded and was replaced by consternation. Hurriedly, she untangled her limbs and scooted to the far side of the bed.
Glancing around bemusedly, Jude discovered that their giant curlers had been yanked out and hurled around the room and that their hairdos for that day were in ruins.
At school, Jude sat through her classes in a daze, constantly reviewing what had happened between Molly and herself. It comforted her to know that Molly was sitting in study hall at the junior high school just then, also trying to figure out what it meant.
She watched a gray squirrel on a branch of the oak tree outside her classroom window. It sat on its haunches munching an apple core retrieved from the trash basket. Its fluffy, twitching tail was draped along its spine like a Mohawk haircut. As she watched, Jude thought maybe she finally understood what her father had always tried to explain to her. Beneath their different appearances, she and that squirrel were animated by the same force. It was the force that had joined Molly and her together last night. The Cherokees called it the Great Spirit, and Clementine called it graveyard love.
JUDE CRAWLED ACROSS THE LAWN to Molly’s house, trying to pretend that she was an orphan raised by wolves who had just emerged from the forest. She was actually nothing more than a common Peeping Tom. But Aunt Audrey and her father were at the hospital having their baby, so no one would miss her. She lay in the shrubbery, looking through a basement window. Molly was dancing with Ace to “The Twelfth of Never.” Ace had her arm twisted behind his back in a reverse hammerlock. Molly’s hair was teased into dark cascades around her face. Eyes closed, she rested her cheek against his thick neck. Jude realized that Molly actually had the hips they’d been encouraged to sway at Charm Class.
Then there was a power failure and the lights went out. But the song continued: “Hold me close. Never let me go….” So apparently it wasn’t a power failure.
Yet the lights stayed out until Jude heard Mrs. Elkins’s voice on the steps: “…and I insist that these lights stay on, Molly. If I have to tell you one more time, there’ll be no more parties in this basement, young lady.”
When the lights came back on, Jude could see Molly standing apart from Ace, who was wiping his mouth with the back of his hand. Molly’s lips looked swollen. But how could she be kissing Ace Kilgore tonight after what had gone on between them last night on the raft?
Sidney came sniffing up to Jude’s prostrate body. Whimpering, he lay down beside her, resting his chin on her shoulder. Jude draped her arm across his back. They watched Molly knead Ace’s muscled shoulder with one hand while they resumed dancing, and Jude tried to figure out how to switch the lights off so that Mrs. Elkins would ban future parties. Closing her eyes, she willed the whole scene to vanish by the time she opened them.
Her mother was riding a puffy white cloud, a large picture hat clamped to her head with one hand. Smiling, she waved with the fingers of her free hand. Jude watched, worried to see her again after so many years, because her mother usually appeared whenever Jude was in for a bad time.
WHEN JUDE ENTERED MOLLY’S back door the next morning, Molly was sitting at the kitchen table eating a bowl of Cheerios. She had purple circles under her eyes, and so did Jude. Jude had lain awake all night trying to decide what to do about Molly’s betrayal.
Plopping down in the chair beside her, Jude asked, “So how was your party?”
“Fine, thank you,” said Molly without looking up. She tilted her bowl to spoon out the remaining milk.
“Was it any fun?”
“Yes, thank you.” Still Molly wouldn’t look her at her. And she seemed annoyed. Could she have seen Jude spying on her? Jude had believed that Molly should be free to do as she wanted, but that was at a time when she thought that what Molly wanted was to be with her.
Pulling herself together, Jude asked, “So do you want to go riding this morning, or what?”
“I’m afraid I can’t.” Molly leaned back in her chair, balancing on the rear legs like a circus tumbler. “It’
s one of Those Days.”
“Which days?”
“I have cramps.”
“Did you eat too fast?”
“No, I mean I have The Curse.” Molly tossed her wavy black hair off her forehead with the back of one hand.
“The what?”
“My period. You know, like we read about in that pink book my mother gave us last year.”
“You’re kidding?”
“No.”
“Since when?”
“Since yesterday.”
“So you can have babies now?”
“Yes, I guess so,” said Molly. She sounded vaguely pleased.
“Molly, for God’s sake, be careful.” Jude grabbed her forearm. “Babies can kill you.”
“Your Aunt Audrey just had one, and she’s still alive.”
“She was just lucky.”
“Honestly, Jude,” said Molly, irritably wrenching her arm out of Jude’s grip. “Grow up.”
Jude looked at her angrily. “Fine,” she snapped. “Have a baby. Die in childbirth. Get buried in the cemetery with all the other dead mothers. That’s where you’ll end up anyway if you get involved with Ace Kilgore.”
Molly glanced at her guiltily. “What does Ace have to do with this?”
Jude said nothing for a long time, trying to decide whether to confess to what she’d witnessed through the basement window. “Noreen told me you have a crush on him,” she finally murmured.
“What business is it of yours?”
Jude was stunned by Molly’s contemptuous tone of voice, stunned that she didn’t deny the crush, and stunned that she could even ask such a question. “How could it not be my business?” she asked in a low voice.
“What do you mean?” asked Molly, averting her eyes.
“After the other night…You know…”
“I don’t know what you’re talking about.” Molly returned her chair legs to the floor, stood up, and carried her bowl to the sink.
Jude watched her in disbelief, feeling desperately lonely. The most important experience of her life to date had been just a dream. And the indestructible bond it had established between Molly and herself existed only in her own imagination.