Mom walked over and turned off the TV without any help from Mini. “What did you say?”
“Everyone said Lauren had the best audition and should have gotten a main role.” I had forgotten he’d been there, too. “But she didn’t get the part because she didn’t look all-American. Like Tara.”
“According to?” said Mom.
“Mrs. Tyndall,” I said. “I told you I was in the ensemble.”
“But that other part I had not heard,” said Mom.
“Because you were away for work.”
“Lauren,” said Dad sharply. “I was here, and you could have told me. And we were excited that you made the ensemble.”
Mom tapped her fingertips together. “Making the ensemble is an achievement, but I want to know more about Mrs. Tyndall,” she said.
“She wanted the audience to have a good experience,” I said as I walked out of the room. “I wasn’t her all-American girl.”
Right before bed, Wai Po knocked on my door. “I want to talk to you,” she said. She walked in and sat at my desk.
I nodded. I was actually surprised that I hadn’t gotten in trouble for talking to Mom the way I did. Instead, I had been up in my room, trying to think of new buttons to make. DISAPPOINTMENT came to mind. EMBRACE MEDIOCRITY. WHY DREAM?
Wai Po sighed. “My daughter is sad, because her daughter is sad.”
It took me a second to realize that her daughter meant me. It took me another moment to realize that Wai Po probably thought of Mom the same way that Mom thought of me.
“So why won’t your daughter come talk to her daughter?” I asked.
“She thinks you are mad about law school,” Wai Po said.
“That’s true,” I said.
“And that you need some time,” she said.
I nodded. When she didn’t say anything else, I felt obligated to fill the silence.
“I’ve just decided that singing is not for me,” I said. “You should like that. You never liked me singing for other people anyway.”
“That’s not true!” said Wai Po. “I was worried that when you perform for strangers, people might think you are not a nice girl.”
“Like, I am a mean person?”
“No, no. Like you are not a respectable girl. That you are from a not-good family,” she said. “Performing for people you don’t know.”
I had imagined a lot of reasons why Wai Po had a problem with my performing. Maybe she thought it was too show-offy, or it took time away from my studies. Maybe she thought it would cost too much money. This was a reason I had never even considered.
“That is the way it was when I was a girl,” she said.
“But this is different. This is America. No one thinks that way,” I said. I also wanted to say it was a long time ago, but I didn’t want Wai Po to think I was being rude.
“Maybe. Maybe not. It’s just that I …” Wai Po glanced around the room, trying to find the right words. “I want you to have a good life, a good job. This is why I think it is good that your mom is going to law school. So she can have a better life, and that better life includes you. A lawyer is a secure, well-paying job.”
“Well, then, you are probably glad that I won’t be singing anymore,” I said.
“No,” said Wai Po. “You used to sing all day! Sing commercials, sing songs from the radio. Sing about the weather. Sing songs so I will make lunch for you and your friend, Oscar Mayer. Everything is a reason for a song. Now nothing is, and that is worse.”
“You’re so confusing sometimes,” I told her. I wrapped my arms around her, feeling her birdlike boniness under the sweater.
“If you decide that you don’t love singing anymore, that is fine,” said Wai Po. “But I don’t think that is the problem.”
“How do you know?” I asked.
Wai Po looked right at me. As she got older, her eyes were getting lighter colored. Instead of being dark brown, they were bluish-gray. She answered my question with a question. “Why don’t you want to watch Star Search?”
It would have been easier to say that Star Search was for babies, or that I could tell who was going to win. But when Mini turned on the TV, the truth was much harder. Of course I still wanted to go on Star Search. Even knowing that I would never get on didn’t change that one bit.
What I said instead was, “It’s stupid. It’s just singing.”
Wai Po didn’t say anything, so I did the silence-filling thing again. “You lived through a war!” I said. “Singing just isn’t that important.”
“Who,” asked Wai Po, “are you trying to convince?”
“I FEEL LIKE WE’RE GOING BACKWARD here,” said Mrs. Tyndall. “Something is still missing.”
She was about to say more when a weird, whispery voice stole across the stage. Missing. Missing. Missing.
Mrs. Tyndall stopped talking and held stock-still. “Do you hear that?” she asked us.
I nodded, but the rest of the cast shook their heads.
She waited a few more moments, but there was no more sound.
“Is someone in the booth?” asked Mrs. Tyndall.
No answer.
“Why don’t you step out into the hallway and practice,” said Mrs. Tyndall. She must have really been unnerved, because she didn’t like us to leave the auditorium. “David, go with them.” Being hoop wrangler had somehow given David a teacher-like status.
But it was Duncan who took over.
“I have an idea,” he said. “Let’s mix it up, and instead of having boys and girls singing, we’ll have different parts of the group singing.”
Duncan’s idea made me nervous. I could hide easily in larger groups, but a smaller group would be a challenge.
“But we shouldn’t sing too loud, right?” I said. “We’re in the hallway.”
Duncan gave me a weird look. “There’s no one else here.”
“But we don’t want to attract attention,” I said.
“The whole point of being in the musical is to attract attention,” said Duncan. “Are you okay? Do you need a drink of water or something?”
Duncan divided us every way he could think of. The right side of the group sang, and then the left. The front sang, and then the back.
“Listen to each other,” said Duncan. “We’re supposed to sing as one.”
Except when you’re the one not singing, I thought. But no one seemed to notice.
We went back to the auditorium and took our usual places in the back.
“QUIETLY, ensemble,” Mrs. Tyndall shouted.
Cheryl pulled out a piece of paper. I was sitting to her right and saw her write What was missing? at the top. Then she handed the paper to her left. Then it went to Andy and Lila and Michael Spiers and Hallelujah. When it got to Duncan, who was sitting on my other side, I pulled out my pen, and he handed me the paper. I was going to write something smart, like enunciation. But when I looked down, there was my name, over and over, in six different types of handwriting.
Why didn’t you sing? Duncan wrote.
How did you know I wasn’t?
Because the group you’re in should sound better than the group you’re not in, he wrote.
Not anymore, I wrote back.
THE FIRST PASSOVER SEDER WAS on Monday night, so I had to leave extra early from play rehearsal. I made my mom write a note, in case Mrs. Tyndall didn’t believe me.
Please allow Lauren Horowitz to miss the end of rehearsal. Tonight is Passover, and we need her home in time for this important religious observance.
I could see her lawyerly touch, even in those two lines. “Can you add that it’s a Jewish observance?” I asked.
“I’m sure she knows,” said Mom. “That’s just general knowledge.”
“She may know it’s a Jewish holiday, but she doesn’t believe I’m Jewish,” I said.
Mom looked at me for a long moment and then wedged the word Jewish above religious in her careful handwriting.
Mrs. Tyndall didn’t say anything about that when I h
anded her the note, though. “It’s never good to miss a rehearsal this close to the performance,” she said. “But at least you’re not the lead.”
Thanks for reminding me, I thought.
Sometimes we have big seders, like when my aunt and uncle come to visit. But this year it was just the usual suspects.
I helped set the table and added the charoset and roasted egg to the seder place. They were kind of strange-looking, but they all belonged there.
We dressed up for our seders, but they were still pretty casual. Last year Hector and Tara came, because Mom thinks it is important to share the meal with other people, and to introduce them to things like matzoh ball soup. There’s a line at the beginning that says, “Let all who are hungry come eat.” That pretty much covers Hector.
This year she’d invited Gary, an intern from her office who was Jewish.
One of the parts at the beginning of the seder is called the four questions, where the youngest child asks four questions about the Passover holiday. Usually David does them with me, to keep me company. My stomach tightened up. The questions were usually sung. I went to David to see if he was still singing.
“But I had my bar mitzvah,” he said.
“So?” I said.
“So I’m a man now,” he said.
Not even close, I thought, but that would not have helped my case. “So?” I said again. “Does that mean after my bat mitzvah no one will do them?”
David thought about this.
“Besides,” I said, “you like questions.” In the end, he caved.
Before we started singing, I took a deep breath and hoped that sadness would not well up inside me and that I would not ruin Passover for everyone. I planned on keeping my voice low, letting David carry the music.
But something else happened. It felt familiar and comforting, like coming home after a long time away. I thought about all the kids who had sung these melodies and asked these questions before me, who were probably asking them right now. The song made me more than myself.
We took turns asking the questions in English.
They sound more complicated in Hebrew, in song, but the four questions are actually pretty basic questions about the holiday, like why, on this night, we eat matzoh instead of regular bread.
My dad liked to tell guests, especially when they weren’t Jewish, that they could stop the seder any time to ask other questions. And the questions didn’t just have to be about Passover, either.
This year, I had other questions, like why, on this night, was my best friend not my best friend anymore. And if I wasn’t part of the Royal We, what was left? The Royal Me didn’t sound right. Without Tara, I didn’t feel royal. When she came to our Passover seder last year, she’d been polite enough to say she liked gefilte fish until I told her she didn’t have to say that.
“Oh, good,” she said. And everyone had laughed.
After we finished the first part of the service, and everyone had choked on the horseradish to be reminded of the bitterness of slavery, I helped Mom put out the first course, the gefilte fish Tara had secretly hated. It was in a sort of oval mound, and there were little bits of a clear, jellylike substance stuck to it. If I was a side dish, I hoped I was never that.
“Do you think this would be good in soup?” Wai Po said.
The questions she asked at Passover seder were usually about the food, like: “Don’t you think we should tell Gary he doesn’t have to eat the potato kugel if he doesn’t like it?” Everyone turned and stared at Gary when she said that. Gary looked down at the heap of kugel on his plate and took a big bite.
Safta had made the kugel. Her questions were things like: “So, Gary, have you met any nice Jewish girls? I may know someone.”
Gary’s question was, “Do you need any help in the kitchen, Natalie?” His voice squeaked a little at the end.
While we were eating, I realized that Patsy asked a lot of questions in her songs. Some of her song titles were questions, like “Have You Ever Been Lonely?” and “How Can I Face Tomorrow?” Sometimes she had questions in her songs, like in “Walkin’ After Midnight,” she wonders if the man she loves is crying for her.
Big questions. Life-changing questions.
The thing about questions is, at some point you have to start thinking about the answers. Maybe my question shouldn’t have been about what happened to the Royal We, but how to fix the Royal We. Or if I wanted to fix the Royal We at all.
FOR THE NEXT TWO WEEKS, IT WAS like we were operating in parallel universes. Tara’s universe was at the front of the stage. Mine was at the back. Sometimes, a portal opened up and we waved at each other through it. But mostly, she stayed in her universe and I stayed in mine.
Cheryl’s birthday was on Saturday, and she invited the sixth-grade girls in the ensemble out to the movies at Oak Faire Mall. “After the movie, we’ll go to the food court,” she said. “My mom will treat for pizza.”
I hadn’t been to the movies in a while, as part of our plan to save up for my bat mitzvah. My mom didn’t see any point in paying four dollars a ticket when the whole family could rent a movie for one dollar. But she had to make an exception for a birthday party. “Meet me at Sears at nine,” she said as she dropped me off.
I checked my purse to make sure I still had Cheryl’s present, a pack of soda-flavored lip glosses and a button I made her that said ENSEMBLE MEANS TOGETHER.
I saw Hallelujah and Lila in the lobby of the theater, and then Cheryl joined us.
I was looking forward to not thinking about the play and not singing. Just settling into the dark of a movie and being somewhere else for a while. Then a portal opened between universes, and Tara and Jennifer Gallagher walked in. Tara smiled and waved.
Tara and I had never shown up to the same event without knowing that the other would be there. In fact, we usually gave each other rides. But when Cheryl said she was inviting some of the girls in the ensemble, I had mentally cut out Tara. Now it felt as if I had done something wrong, like I’d been cheating.
We clumped around the ticket booth, taking turns buying our tickets. Lila and Cheryl went to get the popcorn.
Tara walked over as if nothing was wrong. “Hey,” she said.
“Hey.” She was wearing one of the buttons I’d made for her mom’s campaign. “Nice button.”
“Nothing but the best,” said Tara. She moved to the front of the line and bought her ticket. We went in right away so we could all get seats together. I thought about my question from Passover, how to fix the Royal We, and called out to Tara.
“Sit over here,” I said, pointing to the seat next to me, just as Tara started lowering herself between Jennifer and Lila. Tara smiled and shook her head slightly. Were Jennifer and Tara becoming a new Royal We? Now I had made an awkward extra seat in our row, trying to hold it for Tara. I put my jacket and purse on the empty seat, hoping no one would notice.
And then it got worse.
Sixteen Candles is about a girl whose family forgets her sixteenth birthday because her older sister is getting married. I’d heard other kids talking about it at school. It was supposed to be funny, which was what I told Hallelujah as the lights went down.
“As long as it’s not horror,” she said.
But it turned out to be a different kind of horror movie.
In the movie, the main character’s grandparents bring a foreign exchange student with them named Long Duk Dong. I guess it was supposed to be a Chinese name, because people in the movie referred to him as a Chinaman, even though the actor was Japanese. At first, I was excited to see him up there on the big screen. But instead of being a real person, he was like a cartoon. A gong sounded after he talked or smiled.
Every time he appeared on-screen, everyone laughed, including my friends. I could make out Tara’s laugh, even in the dark. They laughed when he said his lines in broken English. I was supposed to laugh, too, but all I wanted to do was leave. He wasn’t the main character, so I kept hoping that every time he appeared on cam
era, it would be the last time. But he kept coming back, like a rash.
I wanted to jump into the movie and fix it. “Stop making fun of Long Duk Dong,” I wanted Molly Ringwald’s character to say. But she never really spoke to him, and maybe that was just as bad.
After the movie, Cheryl led the way to the food court and ordered two large cheese pizzas and Cokes for everyone. We snagged a long white table with someone else’s old mustard on it, and Cheryl sat at the head. I took a seat at the other end.
“Can you imagine if Jake Ryan went to our school?” Cheryl said. Jake Ryan was the boy that Molly Ringwald’s character had a crush on. “I bet he’d be playing Elvis instead of Ricky.”
Jennifer said, “Sorry, I have to stay true to Rob Lowe.”
“He wasn’t even in the movie,” Lila said.
“Can we talk about her dress?” said Hallelujah. “I’d love a dress like that.” As Samantha, Molly wore a delicate pink bridesmaid’s dress in her sister’s wedding.
The happy chatter flowed around me. But I felt like I was coming down with food poisoning, even though we hadn’t eaten anything yet.
I peeked at my watch. Eight fifteen. I wished I could get my mom to come sooner, but I was stuck.
A kid, maybe in fourth grade, came over to our table. He smiled like he had some good news to tell us. I smiled back at him, hoping he’d do something so we’d stop talking about the movie.
“Ching chong,” he shouted. His eyes narrowed, and he bared his teeth. “Long Duk Dong!” His voice was scratchy. “Donger.” He started to run off, but then something stopped him.
Me.
I had this weird, out-of-body feeling, as if I were watching myself instead of acting. I was holding the back of his T-shirt. I saw his shirt stretch as he struggled to get away from me, but there was no pull of the cloth against my fingers. My hand was clenched in a fist.
“Lauren,” said Hallelujah. “What are you doing?”
A man walked over. “Hey! Let go of my kid.” His face was very red. “Blake, are you okay?”
Not Your All-American Girl Page 12