Or Not

by Brian Mandabach

  “So, now it’s official,” she said, stirring the paint.

  I held the ladder while she climbed up and continued painting, all the while yelling down her advice and answers to my questions.

  She was fifteen the first time. Yes, it hurt some, but mostly it just wasn’t any good. Good means you’re in love, and you trust each other, and you’re nice to each other and, of course, both of you come. (Of course!) They all know how to come themselves, but only some of them know how to please a girl.

  I think her being at the top of the ladder made it easier to talk, though I kept looking over my shoulder as she yelled stuff down at me with no sense of inhibition whatsoever. Also, it was good that she spared me details about Sean, who was the part in this I tried not to imagine.

  She thought it was good that I didn’t have a boyfriend because I would be wanting to experiment with him, and I was too young. At my age, she said, I was better off touching myself than touching others.

  “That’s how you get to know yourself, what feels good,” she said.

  “Yeah, right,” I said. No one had ever gone beyond telling me that it was “normal” to touch myself. Ally was recommending it.

  “What if I don’t want to,” I said.

  “Don’t let yourself take advantage of yourself. Just tell yourself no, and if you don’t listen to yourself, say to yourself, ‘Self, no means no.’”

  “You’re a real comedian.”

  “Well, if you don’t want to, don’t. But as the old-school hippies used to say, ‘If it feels good, do it.’ Do you want to take a turn up here?”

  “Not really,” I said. “Do you mind?”

  “No,” she said coming down, “but let’s move the ladder.”

  That was about it for the sex-ed talk. She closed it up by telling me sex was all about love—it was just a deep and powerful and fun way of showing love. It can get weird because it’s intense, so you have to really love the person you’re fucking, and trust him. She put in a final plug for masturbation, saying you have to trust yourself and love yourself first, before you can trust and love others.

  “Okay, MOM,” I said. “Are you sure you don’t want to talk about my self-esteem now?”

  “Maybe,” she said, “you should try some affirmations.” Then she put her hand on her shorts, closed her eyes and moaned, “I truuust myself, I looove myself, I truuust myself … ” We cracked up then—I as much out of embarrassment as humor. When Sean returned later, and the next day when Mom and Dad came up, she kept trying to work self-trust and self-love into the conversation just to make me start giggling.

  We had a farewell dinner outside the cabin on Saturday night—it seemed like it had been ages since the welcome dinner just a week before. Everyone, especially me, thought that the tipi looked incredible. There is something cool about the way a tipi looks, set up in the open land. It takes you back, makes you imagine olden days. But now, painted by Ally, my tipi was a giant painting, a work of art—as corny as that sounds. It was vibrant—hugely so—but just as she’d promised, it didn’t look out of place. I think we were all in awe of it.

  “I need pictures to take back to school,” Ally said. “And I wish I had video of the whole process to play at my senior show. But that might have spoiled it. We would have been too self-conscious.”

  “Yeah,” I said, beginning to choke with laughter before I even said it. “I’m not sure I could trust myself on video.”

  “I don’t think your particular brand of klutz is capable of self-trust,” said Ally.

  We started cracking up, but Mom broke in, “You girls seem to think that trusting yourself is a funny idea,” she said.

  We were maintaining, holding it back.

  “But we’ve always tried to build Cassie’s self-esteem.”

  Okay, so far—still, maintaining.

  “And I should think, Ally, that someone like you would trust herself a great deal.”

  “I do,” she choked. “All the time.”

  “And I hope you would encourage Cassie to trust herself as well.”

  “She does,” I said, as we lost it and couldn’t stop. It was all we could do to stay on our chairs. Ally was letting loose with high, pealing giggles, and I was practically sobbing, shaking, and about to wet my pants.

  As I tried to catch my breath, Mom was saying that she was glad we were having so much fun. She stays on top of things, but what can you do when somebody has an inside joke? I felt a little bad about it, but Ally told her that what was so funny was that she had advised me, “just yesterday” on the subject of self-trust, which got us going again. When we finally wore ourselves out, I felt like I had been kicked in the stomach, but I hadn’t laughed like that in a long time, maybe ever.

  I gave Ally and Sean the tipi for the night, their last together, and at least they were quiet with Mom and Dad there.

  The next day Sean and I took Ally to the airport. They had a long goodbye at the car, while I looked the other way, and then I walked her inside. I cried when we said goodbye at the security lines, but laughed through my tears when she hugged me and whispered, “Trust yourself.” She gave a final wave once she was through the scanner, then she was gone.

  Journal Five

  16 September

  Weekend over, and it’s back to school—back to that nurturing place where we can all follow the exciting path of knowledge, where we can all be ourselves within the safety of—oh, forget it. There’s really no point in trying to be clever about it. Today sucked.

  I started out feeling great. All that writing about Ally got me inspired to violate the Invisibility Code, so I braided my hair Indian-style and wore the tie-dye tank that she gave me. Who cares if people noticed!

  And first thing this morning, St. Matthew greeted me by saying, “Nice top—you’re like a hippie Osama!”

  How sweet of little Bible-Boy to notice! And it wasn’t just the colorful aspect of my shirt that he complimented—he must have liked the fit, too, because he was talking directly at my boobs.

  I thanked him, of course, and enjoyed all the other complimentary looks I got until lunchtime, when I glided into a landing at my usual table. Why should I hide in the library?

  “Haven’t seen you in a while,” said Hannah, looking me over. “Too busy causing trouble?”

  “Not at all,” I said. “I’ve just had some reading to catch up on.”

  “So, what’s going on with you?” She dipped a French fry in ranch dressing.

  “Even Gwen and I are hearing about you,” Sophia said, smiling. Gwen looked inside her lunch bag.

  Oddly, I felt uncomfortable. Probably my fault, right? Friends are always there for you!

  “I’m fine,” I said. “I had a great weekend in the mountains.”

  “But what about last week?” said Hannah. “Didn’t you get in-house or something?”

  She’s the best, isn’t she? Friends don’t let friends change the subject!

  But foolish me kept trying. “Can we talk about something else?” I said. “It’s just that, well, it’s kind of complicated.”

  Gwen glared up at me. “Doesn’t seem complicated to me. You blame your own country. Don’t you appreciate what you have?” She took a bite out of her sandwich, fiercely, as if it offended her.

  “You haven’t heard her side of the story,” said Hannah, the essence of support.

  “It’s complicated.”

  “Okay,” I said. “Okay … ” I must have been missing something, because now Gwen seemed to be offended by me.

  “We’d like to sympathize, Cassie,” Sophia said. “And we don’t believe in gossip, but some people have said some things—”

  “Who and what?”

  “Well, since we don’t repeat gossip—”

  “Everyone,” Hannah said.

&n
bsp; Friends always let you know what people are saying about you!

  And Gwen must have been mad, not at me, but because she was watching my back.

  “Who and what,” I repeated.

  “Almost everyone,” Hannah said. “Especially Matthew, Jenny, Nathan, Shelly—that whole crowd. Also people in show choir. And Mr. Kimble.”

  “Mr. Kimble?” I said. Great to know that the teachers were watching out for me, too. “What did he say?”

  “He told the rest of the show choir that he had kicked you out because you disrespect your country. And the kids say that you were happy about 9/11, that you blame America, that you’re a Muslim, and that you hate America and really hate Christians.” While Hannah was listing my crimes, Gwen continued to glare, clearly because she was outraged on my behalf.

  But then I got sort of confused, because I started to get the impression, from the look Sophia was wearing, that she was embarrassed because maybe she believed what people were saying.

  “They call you Osama O’Sullivan, and,” Hannah paused and smirked a little smile, “you have apparently been seen facing Mecca and praying several times daily.”

  “I never believed that one,” Sophia protested.

  “What about the rest of it?” I asked.

  “Of course not—but I am curious as to how such rumors get started.” She looked at me with interest. A good-hearted girl who didn’t want to believe anything bad about anyone, especially her BFF, she must have felt there was a misunderstanding—that the gossips were not cruel any more than I was a terrorist sympathizer.

  I could tell all, and as my BFF, she would listen. Hannah would, too—though she would enjoy the drama. I could probably even come to a civilized disagreement with Gwen. Weren’t she and Sophia both my best girls? Not to mention Mormons, whose people had been stereotyped and discriminated against? Of course they would sympathize!

  I imagined an impassioned speech to win them over. But I couldn’t make it.

  “You know how rumors get started,” I said, getting up. “People talk. People listen.”

  This was a great line for ending the conversation, for ending the charade of Best Friends For Life, for getting up and walking away. But the question was, now that I was up, unopened lunch in hand, where to?

  I made my way between the tables and through the door to the outside. Kids were bunched up around the benches or spread out on the grass, yelling for the football. Mr. Bad stood talking to Dr. Hawk. Behind their sunglasses, they registered my presence, like predatory insects, like security-droids. Dr. Hawk spoke and Mr. Bad listened as I turned and walked the other way, and just then the football hit me in the back, the pointy end jabbing me below the shoulder blade. I kept walking as somebody shouted:

  “Osama! Little help! How ’bout a little help, Osama? The football, Osama! OSAMA!”

  “O-sam-a, O-sam-a,” somebody began to chant. Others joined in, then still more. “O-sam-a, O-sam-a, O-sam-a, O-sam-a.”

  I saw an empty space in the shade against the building, and I drifted over, sat on the concrete, and opened my lunch, but I couldn’t eat. I drank some water. Eventually, the chanting faded. The tinted glass of the windows at my back concealed the kids inside, but I felt them there even before someone knocked on the glass. I ignored it.

  I was far beyond Stay Cool. I was ice. The knocking got louder, and was joined by more knocks. The glass vibrated against my back like a massage, a massage of hate, and I imagined the glass shattering around me, the whole pane broken up into sharp, gray pebbles falling all around me as my eyes remained fixed on the summit of the Peak, floating above the city, pink rock and behind it, dry blue sky. The pounding stopped. I finished my water.

  A whistle blew. The patio emptied and grew quiet.

  With no place to go except class, I got up and went, moving behind a few other stragglers toward the eighth-grade wing. The sound of the crowd ahead was dim.

  “Let’s get to class! Come on, move along, people,” Mr. Bad called out. He spoke to me as I passed him, then I went to my locker, entered Sinclair’s room, and slid into my seat. Everyone was silent and reading.

  As my eyes went over the same paragraph again and again, I tried to comfort myself with my trip to Oregon, but I couldn’t get excited by it because the days between then and now were impenetrable.

  I imagined the beach but could only think of sand, that I was buried in sand. At first I could move in it, painfully slow, muscles aching, but then it held me fast.

  I stopped trying to move and was still, and it became almost pleasant. The cool, moist sand conformed to my eyelids, gently. It was tight against my ribs. I didn’t need to breathe. From a spring below, icy water seeped in around my toes, up my ankles, around my calves and shins. And as the tide washed above me, seawater percolated down, the two seepages creeping closer and closer until they met, with a final tickle, at my navel.

  The water carried with it a soft, clay silt, filling the spaces between the sand, pressing close against my skin. The silica clay began to seep into me, cell by cell, molecule by molecule, until I became something like a fossil, something like the flesh of an Anne Rice vampire. The sea covered me with layer after layer of sand and silt and the collected shells of a billion creatures as I rested inside a sepulcher of sand, and far above me, the moon shone onto the smooth, swelling surface. The moon pulled the water to it, and the sun pulled against that, but the earth held the ocean close, and I was part of the earth, but I could hear the waves above me singing surcease, surcease, surcease, surcease.

  When you’re embalmed in sand and silt, a thousand feet below the ocean floor, it’s hard to care about discussing a book with your classmates. From that great distance, I heard them demanding to know why I had given them the wrong ending for the book. Why would I say that the Jewish family had been betrayed and killed when, in fact, they had escaped? And I answered that it did end that way for many, even if this book ended well. Someone ratted out the Frank family, and although Anne’s Diary ends with her saying that she still believes that people are good, her biography reports that, by the time they murdered her, she’d changed her mind.

  After writing that cheerful bit about Anne’s death, I lay back on my bed, unable to stop thinking about her.

  And I’m so tired of thinking.

  The writing sort of helps, but then it just seems like thinking on paper, and I have a long night before me, and I want to do something else, but I don’t know what.

  Maybe I should watch TV. Maybe I should do some on-line shopping. Maybe I should go to sleep.

  I was going to continue my tale of the summer. The past seems more real than the present when I’m writing it, but now I can’t seem to get there. I have a beginning, something like, “After Ally left, I missed her all the time and could only think about August, when she was coming back.”

  But who cares? I can’t pretend that I have a life. Maybe I shouldn’t even go to Oregon next weekend. I feel so heavy, and I can’t even imagine the sand and silt anymore. It’s just nothing.

  I wouldn’t mind hearing my Jimi Hendrix record, “I don’t live today. Maybe tomorrow, I just can’t say.” But I don’t want to get up and put it on.

  I was fighting, but now I don’t feel like I can. I told the story of my day, but so what? Ally said to write in you, Di, to fight in you, to gather everything that I love and hate. To tell the story, to make random life a story, to make art.

  If only I could sleep. Maybe I could sleep. Maybe I should eat something. Maybe nothing.

  Stupid to feel this way. What happened today? Do I really care about those people? I hate myself—I’m so tired of being me. I can’t stand being in my own skin, that barrier with the world that prickles when anything touches it, even my soft bed/torture rack. I want to be out of it. I, I, I, I, I, I, I. Shut up!

  17 September

 
It’s not fun, Di. I need to try to gather myself, but I can’t.

  Suddenly, I hate my clothes. I don’t care about clothes—why can’t I think of a single thing that I want to put on?

  I want to eat meat, I want to smoke something, I want to wear a short, tight, red shirt.

  I want to wear a burqa, I want to cut off all my hair …

  ?

  Yes.

  It’s amazing the difference a little change makes. Just after I dotted a definitive period after that “Yes” up there, I grabbed my scissors.

  Then I remembered Dad’s clippers—he used to cut Sean’s hair—and I knew just where they were. I tiptoed down to the second floor landing. I could hear Mom and Dad in the kitchen, so I slipped into their room and grabbed the clippers.

  Since I was going to buzz my whole head, it didn’t matter if I made clean scissor-cuts, but it took me a while to get up my nerve. I leaned forward, letting my hair hang down like a tent around my face, and I felt the weight of it, the smoothness of it, and its darkness.

  Then I pulled on a hunk and sawed through it. Unlike when I get a trim, and Mom’s stylist, Susan, snips neatly, I had to really hack away at it. I held it for a minute, debating whether I should save it, then dropped it into the trash.

  Once I had it short—uneven shags all over the place—I plugged in the clippers and snapped on attachment number one, choosing a close buzz over total baldness. Then I flipped the switch and cut a strip from the front all the way back to my neck. Chunks of hair fell into the sink, and I took another swath and then another. The mirror was messing me up, because it reversed all my movements, so I closed my eyes and did it by feeling, going over and over it until I thought I had it all done. I dared a look.

  My eyes blinked back at me, huge and surprised looking. It was like looking at my face for the first time, and I thought how surprised Narcissus must have been, encountering his reflection in the pool and wondering who this youth was. Not that I fell in love with myself, Di, far from it—my nose was too big and I had zits on my forehead and the new-shorn look gave me the appearance of a frightened animal.