I take Gracie into the library, which is the best place as long as she's quiet. If I let her taste the books she doesn't cry. We stay in the back aisles and I rotate the books in her hands so none of them get too soggy. She drops them a lot and it used to make me mad. All of the people here are nice. I got a library card last week so I check out some fairy tales for the baby and a book called Zami for me. The cover is orange and has a woman standing between an island and a city. I look at Sheila's watch: 4:00, too early to go back but I'm tired. I want to go home.
When we get back, Paul's station wagon is still there. It's unlocked. I think about putting Gracie in the backseat. She's falling asleep. I've put the books in the dirty blue canvas seat of the stroller and I'm carrying her; she's still cranky and her face starts to ball up when I try to put her down. Her little body is hot and sticky and heavy. I could sit in there with her and read or just lock the doors and go for a walk by myself. I'm not sure I want to go upstairs now. What are they doing?
The baby sighs. She doesn't know we're almost home. I have a key. I park the stroller, leaving the books at the foot of the stairs. I grab the diaper bag from the back and walk quietly up the stairs. Gracie starts to whimper but I hush her. Maybe they're in the bedroom and we can just sneak in. I open the door and tiptoe in, glancing to the left. I can see down the hallway just far enough to see the bedroom door is closed. I put the diaper bag on the kitchen table and Gracie starts crying again.
They're in the living room, on the floor, but it's dark in there so I can't see if they are dressed or not. Gracie is really wailing now and I take her and put her in her crib, try to give her a bottle which she knocks away from her face. I keep saying sssh but she won't even look at me, her eyes are sweeping over the room like a searchlight.
"What's wrong with her?" My sister is suddenly there, picking up the baby who is hiccupy from all of her crying.
I almost say she wants her mother, because that's the first thing I think and the first time it's occurred to me. But I don't want to admit it.
"I think she's got a fever."
Sheila starts pacing slowly up and down the room, running her hand against Gracie's forehead, bouncing her. Gracie is quieting.
I go into the living room and Paul is sitting on the couch, reading one of Jack's magazines. He looks up at me.
"Come here and talk to me," he pats the sofa beside him. I sit in the chair next to the sofa, look out the window behind him.
"Did you have fun?" he asks and I wonder if he expects me to ask him the same question. I shrug. He looks at my face.
"So, you're sixteen, huh? Sheila tells me you're sixteen."
I look down at the floor but remember they were just there, doing something I don't want to think about now.
"You and I should get to know each other, spend some time alone together. Sheila talks a lot about you," he says, moving closer to my chair.
I look at him. Why do I think he's lying? His Sheila doesn't even know me, maybe that's why.
"I want to get to know Lilly, the woman of mystery and babysitter extraordinaire," he is leaning on the arm of the sofa, whispering and smiling like he's telling me some great news.
"Sure," I say.
"What do you want?" he asks.
"What are you talking about?"
"You know, what do you want out of life?"
"Oh, what do I want to be when I grow up?" This is the question adults love to ask, like they're taking a survey.
"No. No one ever knows that and even if they do, who cares? What do you want now? What does Lilly want, right now?" he pokes his finger at my chest, a few inches away. I pull my shoulders in tighter.
I shrug. "Everybody wants something," he says.
I wonder when my sister is coming back in. I can hear her singing to the baby.
"Why do you want to know?" I decide I don't have to be as nice to him as I am to regular adults.
"If you find out what somebody wants, you know who they really are. I just want to know you."
"What do you want?"
"I just told you: to know you."
"You know my sister."
"Lilly has claws. Good for her. Come on, Lilly, if you had three wishes, what would they be?"
Wishes? Is this what he teaches at his community college?
"World peace."
"Come on, that's a cop-out."
"There's nothing wrong with world peace," I say, sitting up straighter. He's somehow honeyed his voice so that the words seem smooth and inevitable.
"Boring."
"I'd wish for everyone to be happy, including me." I know I don't want to be unhappy but I haven't given much thought to the alternative.
"You're a regular fucking Girl Scout, aren't you?"
"If everyone isn't happy and you are, then they have a reason to want to make you unhappy. The only way to guarantee you can stay happy is to make sure everyone else is." I'm making this up as I go along but it makes sense to me. I like it.
"No one stays happy, Lilly." He puts his hand over mine on the arm of the chair, like he's consoling me. I just look at it.
He leans closer and says, his voice thick now, "You're a virgin, aren't you?"
I get up and lock myself in the bathroom. My sister hasn't gotten into the bathroom for a shower yet. She's in her bedroom. She always showers after Paul. Sometimes when I get back she has already showered, sitting around the living room in her robe with her hair still damp, smoking and listening to the same albums she listened to when she still lived at home.
I take off my clothes and leave them in a pile on the floor. I look at myself in the medicine cabinet mirror. I can hear them saying good-bye to each other. It takes a long time. I wish there were a full-length mirror in here but the only one in the apartment is in Sheila and Jack's bedroom and they don't really like it when I go in there. Or worse, they think it's funny when I look at myself for too long, or Jack does anyway.
Sheila pounds on the door. "Let me in. I need to take a shower," she yells.
"I'm in the tub," I call out sweetly.
"Well get out!"
"Don't you need to be fixing Jack's dinner anyway?"
She hits the door again hard but goes away.
In this mirror I can see down to my waist. Once I took the little stepladder in with me and stood on it in front of the mirror.
I could see almost all of the way down to my knees and it looked like a painting, or something someone should paint. But Jack saw me taking the ladder out of the bathroom and kept asking me what I was doing with it.
I don't like my face so much but I like my body though I know girls my age aren't supposed to. My face is a little too sharp, wolfish in the wrong light and bad pictures, pale with always at least two pimples at any one time, like there's a demon beneath my skin with a pimple quota. My lips are like Sheila's but without lipstick it isn't all that noticeable really. My chin is a little pointier, my nose a little bigger. And my eyes aren't brown like hers, soft like a puppy's or something. My eyes are not any color really, sort of gray, sort of blue, sometimes kind of green, a little gold. One day a tall girl all in black in the lunch line stared at my face and then started saying real loud, "Your eyes is two different colors. That's creepy. Look, look, Charlene. One's blue and one's green." They peered into my face and I didn't know what to do so I just stood there. "You must be the devil or something," she concluded. After I finished my lunch I went into the girl's bathroom and put my face close to the mirror.
I like my ribs, just a faint ripple under the skin, the belly and the belly button (which isn't a button at all, more like a little tunnel and I imagine it going clear through me so that if I stood outside naked I could feel a breeze blow all of the way through my center), my breasts which my hands can cover completely when I want them to, my collarbone, my shoulders, my arms which I position to look like women in paint' ings or pictures. I pretend I'm an artist's model and hold a pose for a valiantly long time.
I run hot water in the t
ub and put one of Sheila's red bath oil beads in the water, watch the skin of the ball peel away and the oil creep out like timid schoolchildren. I lower my body slowly into the hot water, having to let my skin get used to the heat. I take the wash cloth and cover my pubic hair, the edges of the square of yellow fabric almost touching my hip bones. I relax my body and the cloth drifts away.
I used to sit in the bathroom with Sheila while she took a bath, before she moved out of Mom's house. Sometimes I'd even wash her back for her. She'd tell me about the people at her school, Stonewall Jackson High School, where I'd go too one day. She'd tell me who said what, who liked who, who wore what, who was getting fat (and that ugly girls got fat and the pretty girls got pregnant).
I raise up my wrist. I'd forgotten to take off Sheila's watch. I unclasp the silver buckle of the black band and lean over to put it on the toilet lid. I used to borrow Sheila's stuff all the time; I loved wearing her clothes, her jewelry, her makeup. I don't like wearing her watch now. My wrist has a pasty white indent around it from where I strapped the watch on too tight.
Sometimes my sister would sit in the bathtub and cry. She would let me stay sometimes or she'd yell at me, tell me to get out, and call me names. One night, just after she'd started eleventh grade and I'd started sixth, I sat on the toilet lid talking and talking, telling my sister what my teacher Mrs. Cline had said about my art project, and about this girl I couldn't stand. The little window high over the tub was open because it was still warm out, and I could hear crickets. My sister just sat in the water, staring at the dripping faucet.
"Nobody gives a shit," she finally muttered. It hurt my feelings. I stopped talking and looked at her. Her long brown hair was wet and draped over her pale, freckled shoulders and back. I could see two big bright pimples in the field of freckles on her cheek and a row of blackheads on her nose. She drew her knees up to her chest.
"Quit looking at me, you fucking freak." She said it slowly and didn't even turn to look at me.
"What'd I do?"
"Everyone's all caught up in their own stupid shit. You talk and talk and talk about fucking nothing. Just like everyone else. No one cares about any of that shit." She put her head down on her knees and her body trembled, causing a tremor in the water. I could hear her muttering "nobody fucking cares" over and over. I stood up and started to pat her back but I was afraid to.
She lifted her head and snarled, "Get out!" and splashed water at me, soaking the bottom of my pants and the floor and her pile of clothes.
I hold my own arm straight up into the air and watch drops of water glide down it. I can hear my sister singing along with Marvin Gaye. I bring my arm down, clench that hand into a fist. It causes a dent behind the blue strokes of veins leading into the palm. Veins carry blood to the heart, and arteries carry blood away from the heart: I like knowing that. Sheila's knock on the door makes me jump.
* * *
When I get to the table, Sheila, Gracie, and Jack are already there. And the flowers that Paul brought are in the middle of the table. I feel hot, trapped. Has Sheila decided to come clean? The baby looks fine now and is patting the tray of her high chair and saying, "Annnh." Jack is spooning mashed potatoes onto his plate.
"You drown in there?" Jack asks.
Sheila jumps up. "I forgot the butter."
Jack strokes his beard twice, which he always does before he takes the first bite, three times at the end of the meal.
"Were you in there primping for your boyfriend?" He smiles across at me. I can only see half of his face because of the flowers. I notice the one red rose. The baby stops patting and regards me too.
I shrug. "No," I say like I'm guessing.
"Sheila's told me all about it."
"What?" I get busy putting meatloaf, mashed potatoes, and peas on my plate.
"About Paul," he drags the name out, making it two syllables.
Sheila puts the butter on the table and sits down. I look to her for direction but she won't meet my eyes.
"Your new boyfriend, Paul," Jack prompts. "The poor bastard brings you flowers and you forget him the same day," Jack laughs. "Fickle must run in this family." He leans and reaches for Sheila under the table. She just scowls and pulls away.
"Paul," I say and nod down at my plate.
"When do I get to meet him?" Jack asks, talking before he's completely finished chewing. I'm glad the flowers are obstructing my view of him. And his of me.
"I dunno. I think I can do better." I glance over at Sheila to see if she'll react. She doesn't.
"Well, aren't you something?" He looks over at Sheila, sniffs the air like a dog, grinning. "Are you wearing a new perfume?"
"No. It's the same kind I always wear." She won't look up at him.
He actually gets up and kisses her. She tilts her head away so he gets mostly cheek. He thinks the perfume is for him, which in a way it is, and the clean sheets, the clean floors, the vacant smiles.
He sits down, smiling. "You're too young to be serious about anyone anyway," he tells me. "There's plenty of time for marriage and babies when you grow up."
I spoon in another mouthful of mashed potatoes. They are lumpy and bland; my sister is an awful cook. Gracie starts opening and closing her mouth, watching my spoon. I reach over and spoon a tiny lump of the white paste into her mouth. She makes cooing noises around it.
"Paul's only after one thing," I say as clearly as I can. I feel like I'm in a school play.
Sheila gets up and turns the music up. "How was work?" she asks Jack.
"Fine," he smiles over at her. His job and coworkers are the bulk of the conversations at dinner every night. He looks over at me, dropping the smile. "What makes you say that?"
"Oh, you can tell. Any woman can tell that when a guy's only looking to get in your pants." I sit up straighter in my chair, toss my hair back over my shoulder.
"Sheila, I thought you said this Paul was a nice boy."
Sheila just glares at her plate. I spoon some peas into Gracie's mouth.
"Today he grabbed my titties. I told him to leave."
"Lilly," he says my name sharply and pauses like he doesn't know what to say next. "We don't need to have that kind of talk at the dinner table, young lady. Next time he comes around, you call me. I'll set him straight." He puffs up his chest and squares his shoulders like Paul might be looking in the window.
I nod.
"Idddy," Gracie says, letting some half-chewed peas fall to the tray where she smashes them with her palms. "Iddy Diddy Diddy Diddy."
"What is she saying?" he looks over at Sheila.
"Sounds like Daddy."
She's trying to say my name and they know it but I don't say anything.
Jack reaches over and ruffles her wispy hair. "Are you Daddy's girl?" He gets up and plucks her out of the highchair. He starts dancing her around the kitchen. She grabs his beard with both hands and watches his face, then she starts patting his cheeks as they dance around the table.
"You're too good for him," I stage whisper to Sheila, meaning Paul. "I'm not taking the baby out anymore. I'm staying here. We don't need him."
She looks up from her plate at her husband dancing around, holding the baby over his head now. She still won't look at me. She bursts into tears, scrapes her chair against the hard clean floor, leaves the table without a word to me.
ROB: I want to start by saying something about the coming-of-age story or novel, and in general about child narrators and children as central characters. Such narratives present a particular problem, because we're trapped in the child and she isn't old enough to have any other yearning than: What's next in this process of growing up? I've got to get out of childhood.
I don't know the details of your life, or any twenty-two-year-old's life. It's very possible that through your childhood and your adolescence—periods when we are driven by our senses—many of you have gone through serious stresses and turmoil. Some of those intense experiences are the generic struggles of young people, and it may b
e hard to get past the surface track of those struggles and down to the source of your serious ambition as an artist. That applies to all of us at some point. I came back from Vietnam when I had just turned twenty-seven, and wrote the terrible story you've all heard. Clearly, my unconscious was not ready to be accessed. If I had known the things I'm telling you, I would not yet have looked to Vietnam for my material.
There are no child prodigies in literature—there is no Mozart of fiction—and the great writers, at age twenty-two, are not going to have the vision of the world, or the emotional readiness, or the developed unconscious that they will have
at thirty, forty, fifty, sixty, or ninety. That's exciting for you; you've got a lot ahead of you. I just urge you to be patient with yourself. Try to work within the range you will chafe at, because it will feel narrow to you; but work within that relatively narrow range of your artistic authenticity, the intimations that are no longer therapeutic and no longer literal but are tapping into something that no one shares. Be patient with yourself and work through that part of your dreamspace.
I know you're all sitting here with your copy of Rita's story, saying, "Oh shit! Don't tell me this one didn't work!"
This works. It's a wonderful story, Rita. The yearning is really rooted in the central character's situation. This is one of those coming-of-age stories, which does limit you somewhat, but within that range you do it beautifully. You have created little moments that let us know Lilly's identity is involved— a larger identity than "I've got to get out of childhood; I've got to get through a tough family situation"—both problems she has. You have in fresh ways manifested those problems in fine moments of action, and that's a rare thing.
When the story opens we understand almost immediately that this is about identity. Paul stands there grinning with the flowers behind his back, and our first assumption is that he's come for the narrator, Lilly. We do not feel cheated, however, when we realize he's here for someone else; that moment of confusion sets up for us exactly what's going to happen. Paul does—beautiful irony here—put the make on her, and the irony is repeated and twisted at the end, where her sister invents the story of Paul being Lilly's boyfriend. So beginning, middle, and end are tied up brilliantly in that way.
From Where You Dream Page 19