The Whole Stupid Way We Are

by N. Griffin

  “What if no one else comes?” Dinah worries.

  That has been the other concern of theirs, countering their hopes about the show. And given that more than once they have been fully one-half of an audience, or close to it, it’s a valid concern. Even the best possible music and a loving donkey caretaker won’t help if the hall is empty and the donkey made to feel redundant.

  “Well, we’ve come,” says Skint, though he does not look optimistic either. Dinah cranes her neck and looks down the street, hoping to see throngs of people picking their way under the lanternlike streetlights that bow their heads over Main Street’s curb. It’s not like there is anything else to do in Aile Quarry. The nearest movie theater is half an hour away and only has two screens, both of which are always dedicated to showing the class of movie Skint shorthands as “monster love stiletto.” And if people have already seen what’s on offer there, what’s left to do on a Friday night but see Walter?

  “But if it turns out to be just us,” Skint continues, “we’ll really sock it to ’em with the clapping.” He breaks off, head cocked to the door. “Listen!” he says. “There’s bustling within.”

  Dinah shakes her head no.

  “That’s not attendees. It’s just Bernadine and the rest of the Girls’ Friendly.”

  The Girls’ Friendly Society is kind of a service club at St. Francis, and Bernadine is its leader. Bernadine’s old mother, Mrs. Chatham, will be in there, too, fluttering about and unhelpful. Ms. Dugan is also a longstanding member of the Friendly and will be the one doing the brunt of the work, bellying coffee urns and snacks onto the table. Dinah knows this scene well. She has been a member of the Girls’ Friendly since she was five. She is its fourth fourth or its fourth fifth, depending on who you ask.

  Dinah herself refuses to acknowledge any choice but the latter.

  Usually Dinah would be in there as well, folding programs preparatory to passing them out. But this time she is slated for cleanup instead. Skint will clean, too, but he will not be thanked for it. Skint, the fifth fifth of the Girls’ Friendly (depending on who you ask), is willing to wear a skirt to appease those who feel strongly about the “girl” part but can do nothing to appease those who might question his very membership. Such people would have staunch and unflagging support from Bernadine.

  It was maybe a little bit cheating of Dinah to sign up for cleanup. She cleans the church every Saturday anyway (Skint, too, of course), and she is planning to leave tonight’s mess for the morning.

  Look at Skint now, stone-cheeked and pale. How can she trick him into wearing her mittens? Dinah has planned about this many times before. But her mittens are pink and he knows her too well. Please, she thinks, just open the doors.

  Whoom.

  The church doors are flung wide at last, and yellow light trickles out in a puff of warmth. Thank you, thinks Dinah. Not thank you for this, though:

  “Dinah Beach!”

  A terrible voice.

  “Why aren’t you helping with setup?” Bernadine is fifty-eight with no-nonsense hair.

  “We signed up for cleaning,” Dinah reminds her, but Bernadine is already all over the plural.

  “It’s a big job for JUST ONE PERSON.”

  “Skint is helping, too,” says Dinah grittily.

  “As befits a member of the Friendly,” Skint agrees, gazing steadily at Bernadine.

  Bernadine snarls. Dinah scowls.

  They wait.

  “We’re here for the show, not the Friendly,” says Dinah finally. “Can we come the rest of the way in?”

  Bernadine steps to one side. “Where’s your coat,” she mutters, looking over Skint’s head. “It’s not even twenty degrees.”

  “I’m fine,” Skint tells her, but Bernadine is already turning back to the foyer.

  The Girls’ Friendly is no hotbed of teen activity, and obviously Bernadine is no barrel of fun, either. So why does Dinah stick with that club?

  Guilt is one reason. There used to be more people in the Friendly, more girls Dinah’s age. But the Friendly has lost a lot of momentum. People keep growing up and getting bored, or dying. So Dinah stays partly because she’d hate it if Ms. Dugan, for one, believed Dinah thought her so boring that Dinah couldn’t bear to spend one measly evening a week with her at the Friendly. Ms. Dugan’s a grand gal, and Mrs. Chatham is nice, too. And finding new members has been impossible. When Dinah was in elementary school, Bernadine and Mrs. Chatham were always asking her if she didn’t know a girl or two. Dinah never did. Most girls besides Dinah were interested in other things: school, famous people, hair and one another. They were not interested in Dinah, except as occasional gossip fodder, and they were certainly not interested in scrubbing the St. Francis rectory toilets or helping old people address their Christmas cards, which is the kind of thing people do in the Friendly.

  But if she’s honest, even with more members, Dinah could never stop going to the Friendly. What with one thing and another, her participation in the Friendly has become something of a long-term FoE.

  “What do you do in that club anyway?” Skint asked her once on their way home from school almost a year ago.

  “Projects for helping.” Dinah was crouched beside him, working a pebble loose from her shoe. “We eat a lot, too.”

  “So you are in it for the snacks?”

  “No, jerk,” said Dinah, scowling up at him from her shoe-fixing stoop.

  Skint hesitated. “Is it because of your grandma?”

  Dinah said nothing. Skint nudged her toe with his.

  “Is it some mentoring thing?” he asked. “Do all three of those ladies mentor you?”

  “Yes,” said Dinah, who often felt mentored to within an inch of her life. “Older members are supposed to mentor the younger ones.”

  Skint shivered. “Still,” he said, “that’s good that you do that. My dad used to say everybody should do something to help other people.”

  Dinah paused at Skint’s mention of his dad. “Hey,” she said, placing the pebble from her shoe carefully on the toe of his boot. “You should come with me next time.”

  “Dude, I’m a boy.”

  “But you are Friendly to Girls,” Dinah argued, “and besides, they are always after me to bring in the next generation. Come!”

  “Would I have to mentor you?” Skint asked.

  “Shut up,” says Dinah.

  “You shut up,” said Skint. “Fine. Count me in. A satisfied stomach and altruism in one fell swoop.”

  So Skint came. Bernadine did not acknowledge Skint then, nor has she since. Nor does she permit him to speak in the meetings. But he has not been barred outright from coming.

  “Why does he want to hang out with a bunch of old ladies, anyway?” Dinah overheard Bernadine shout to Dinah’s mother. “With his father needing so—with that whole situation going on, can’t his own mother use his help at home?”

  “Oh, Bernadine. Why do you think Dinah brings him?”

  Now Mrs. Chatham appears behind Bernadine in the foyer and stands helplessly next to the table with a bowl of snack mix in her arms. Her hair is sausaged into its customary curls.

  “Lemme,” says Skint, and takes the bowl from her hands.

  “You are a good child,” says Mrs. Chatham, beaming. Bernadine snorts.

  “Not really,” says Skint. “Just good at snack placement.”

  Dinah knows Bernadine is extra cranky because of the show itself. (“Animals in church!” Bernadine shouted at the last Girls’ Friendly meeting.—“Well, what do you think people are? Just with less fur and more prevarication.”—“Dinah, you grow more peculiar every year.”—“That was Skint, Bernadine!”—But Bernadine dismissed them: “Good-bye, Girls, I’ll see you next week!”)

  Mr. Beach, Dinah’s father, is the one who arranged for the donkey (“What more fitting event for a church called Saint Francis?” he’d cried), but he won’t be able to enjoy it. His role at the church tonight is double: He is choirmaster as well as warden and it’s essentia
l that his choir rehearse—with only a week left before their Evensong performance and the music so hard, they can’t afford to miss a single practice.

  Dinah’s father hates his choir, but he can’t stop trying to improve them.

  So Bernadine is not only peeved that Mr. Beach booked the act but also that he is not available to manage the donkey. And forget about the pastor, elderly and kind and in bed nights by eight. Things always fall to Bernadine.

  “Can we go in to where the donkey is?” Dinah asks Bernadine. Maybe she can get an eyeful of his living conditions before the show after all. “And have you seen my dad?”

  “No and yes,” says Bernadine. “But your father is busy. You let him alone.” Bernadine gets this way about Mr. Beach. Once, at a bean supper, Dinah saw her trying to cut his meat. “The show is in the basement. You wait until I say you can go down.” She strides off, looking for people to boss.

  “Grr to Bernadine,” says Dinah to Skint. “I’m going to tell everybody about how her toenails have gone black.”

  “Be fair,” says Skint. “You know she paints them that way. Look!” He gestures to the doors. “More people are coming.”

  Dinah looks round and is cheered. Three more people! One is trying to pour himself coffee, but Bernadine’s on the job. (“Intermission only!”—“I’m sorry. Shall I pour it back in?”)

  “Let’s go.” Skint tugs her toward the basement steps. The basement is the smaller of the two gathering spaces in the church, but Dinah supposes the show’s down there because people worried about the donkey falling through the floor. She is not sure what donkeys weigh, but this church is old and needs a lot of shoring up. The floors in the big room have dips in them that puddle after a rain or a thaw. It’s hard to imagine those dips holding up under a donkey.

  “Bernadine says not yet,” Dinah reminds him. The choir’s rehearsal is starting; the unmistakable sounds of Mrs. Wattle’s warm-up are coming from within the big room.

  Skint doesn’t answer.

  Dinah looks over her shoulder to where he is looking. Oh. Ms. Dugan. Her sweater is particularly fitted. “You look insane,” she tells Skint. “You’ve got an enormous chunk of hair flapping over your temple.”

  “You look insane,” Skint tells Dinah, “because you are.” And he propels her toward the steps, where Mrs. Chatham stands primly at the ready.

  “Program, Skint, dear?” she asks.

  “Thanks,” says Skint, and takes two.

  “Not YET, Mother!” shouts Bernadine. “I said to hold on to the programs until I give the signal!”

  “Oh, dear!”

  But Dinah seizes Skint by the wrist, and down the steps they go anyway. Dinah stops midway and turns around to face him.

  “The donkey!” she cries. “How will he get down these steps!”

  “Bulkhead from outside, brain trust. That ramp that leads down.”

  At the front of the room is the donkey. He is parked no more than three feet from the first row of seats, barrel-chested and still. A rope tethers him to a post set in a concrete block in the middle of the floor, even though he doesn’t look like a running-away kind of donkey.

  Dinah squeezes Skint’s bicep as they sink into their seats.

  “Look how he blinks,” she whispers. From this close comes a puff of his breath. Dinah is desperate to touch his soft, velvety nose.

  Skint nods.

  Dinah breathes and breathes. She is sorry for her dad he’s not here.

  Overhead comes the tramp of many feet. Dinah wheels hopefully round.

  Look at her, thinks Skint, her eyes all shining with hope. Dinah acts like she’s ten. She’s a certifiable nut.

  If anyone is an asshole to her, he’ll beat them until they bleed.

  Okay. Maybe not beat.

  But he will, at the very least, express himself firmly. Tersely, even. While backing away.

  Maybe a sucker punch or two before he runs.

  Skint shakes his head no. “It’s not audience members,” he says. “Only the choir. Won’t that sound great once the Wattle gets going. Choir upstairs while the donkey’s down—who thought that was a good idea?”

  “It’s my dad’s fault,” says Dinah. “He forgot to consult the master schedule.”

  Kind but disorganized, that is Mr. Beach.

  “Here,” says Skint. “Have a program.”

  There are more clompings now as a few people come down the stairs, soft mutterings as they settle. Dinah is pleased that more people have come, even as she scans the stage area for signs of impending awful. “What if it’s like that dog show?” she whispers to Skint. Last summer at the state fair she and Skint were seduced by a sign that said DOG SHOW! WITH RIDES! But it turned out to be two hours of dogs limp on leashes, their movements sad and low. The whole time, Dinah cried. An Awful FoE. Excruciating beyond belief.

  “Shush,” says Skint. “It’s starting.”

  Someone comes out to the front. It isn’t the donkey man. It’s Bernadine, come to introduce the donkey. “Good evening,” she says, hatchet-faced and peevy. “Welcome to Saint Francis. It is my duty to introduce to you—”

  “It ought to be her pleasure!”

  “Shush!”

  “—and Walter, his dancing donkey.”

  Dinah swivels around. The audience, swelled to thirteen people, has smiles on its faces, but they are the kind of smiles people wear when they are ready to make jokes and be clever. And look back there. It’s the Vole. Also in ninth grade, part of the cigarette, rear-kicking crowd. What is he doing here? Dinah wouldn’t have thought he’d go in for this kind of thing. Those contemptuous eyebrows. That stupid smacking gum. Or it’s probably tobacco, knowing the Vole. But their town is so small, and again, what else is there to do when you can’t drive? Drink. Smoke. Steal stuff. Disrupt. But it’s cold out, and theft takes some planning. Dinah imagines it’s easier for the Vole just to go for some heckling.

  Beside the Vole sits a small boy, about five years old. K. T., the Vole’s little brother. Oh, Dinah thinks. That must be why he’s here. Even the Vole has to babysit sometimes.

  The Vole knuckles K. T. on the head.

  Poor K. T. Imagine having such a blarb as a brother.

  Oh, Dinah. Skint wishes she would quit glaring around. Don’t attract their attention.

  Skint pokes at Dinah’s arm.

  “Turn around, idiot.”

  The donkey man has come out.

  He’s a tiny man with a sandpaper chin. Gray hair, gray clothes, gray face. Skint stares at him and Dinah’s heart is pounding. She can’t tell yet whether he is kind or cruel or indifferent.

  The room is still.

  The man doesn’t say anything. He unhooks the donkey’s tether, whispers something to him, and pats him, gently, on the cheek. Walter nuzzles the man’s hand, then faces front, carefully positioning his feet. The man arranges his own feet and coils the tether loosely in his hand. Dinah stops breathing. The man clears his throat.

  He hums.

  The music is thin, in a minor key. Dinah’s mouth opens a bit. She knows this ilk of music, plaintive and spare, from the singing her dad’s granny did when she was alive. Shape note. Buzzy singing, because Granny had adenoids and hummed as much of a song as she sang.

  The man takes a step right. The donkey steps away from him, left. The man turns, lightly, a turn to the right, and the donkey turns carefully the opposite way. The man circles around Walter, releasing more rope until there is enough for Walter to circle round, too.

  Step left, step right, turn and stop. The man coils the rope as they near one another until the dance brings him close to Walter’s head. He lifts the rope from around the donkey’s neck and places it around his own, all the while stepping and turning about.

  Walter is loose, dancing unled. Dinah loves him so much she can’t breathe.

  Step back for three. Pause and turn. Stately they dance, and slow.

  It’s silent in here. Nobody stirs. Only humming, hooves and boots.

&nbs
p; This dance is like talking, like being on a porch. Like buzzy singing, like sitting on a lap.

  Outside is wind and flailings of snow. In here, the humming grows faster. It leaps and shifts and the dancing shifts, too, the man’s feet counterpoint to the donkey’s. His steps are faster, light, at first in double time, then even faster than that.

  But then the man slows himself down. He drags with each step. Is he slowing too much? His boots slide a half beat too long. No, not a half, some messier fraction. The man’s steps and Walter’s no longer overlap. The man drags still more, slows, and finally stops, while Walter circles around to the right.

  Their lack of unison makes Dinah uneasy. What happened to the together-dancing? It was so lovely just a minute ago. Fix it, she wills Walter and the man. Do like you did before.

  But they don’t. Though the humming slows and slims and the dancing is softer, delicate, the man and Walter are still not doing the same steps. And while the melody shifts back to the thin tune from the start of the dance, even that is not quite the same. Different notes are sounded, or held longer, or skipped.

  Then it stops. Everything. Man, humming, feet. And when it does, the donkey is facing the back right-hand corner of the room and the man is facing away from him, to the side. It’s awful, wrong-feeling. Ending all separate, not even looking at one another, not even positioned so they could walk in the same direction? The man looks as though he doesn’t even remember about the donkey, like they never danced so lovely, like he never sang music for the donkey to hear. Dinah’s shoulder blades scrunch with the bleakness of it all. Maybe they made a mistake? But Walter and the man don’t look confused, like anything got messed up. Both of them have finished looks on their faces.

  Different ways of feet and buzzy singing. Dinah sinks back in her seat. A wave of missing Granny suffuses her chest, cold and unexpected, thin as a blade and spare.

  She waits for the music to start up again. But it doesn’t. Nothing more happens but snow.

  The audience all are clapping.