Lizard Girl & Ghost

by Olga Werby

  “You talked with my grandmother?”

  “Well, I talked, and she was in the same room. Does that count? She doesn’t talk much, does she?” Angie said. There was genuine concern in those remarkable eyes.

  “No, she doesn’t, but she listens well,” I replied. Babushka Bo had spoken a total of about a dozen words in the last year. I didn’t like that Angie might have bothered her. Somehow it made me feel insecure. I tried to stop that train of thought, too. I had felt enough emotion today. I could feel my tears start to return.

  “Are you in pain, dear?” asked a nurse. She was trying to rotate my bed to take me somewhere. Mom and Dad were still dealing with all the hospital’s paperwork. “You’re lucky. Dr. Gordon had an unexpected cancellation, and nobody ever cancels on him! You’re in very good hands. In a few months, your leg will be as good as new.”

  “Yes, lucky,” I replied. I didn’t feel lucky.

  “You’ll get to stay home from school for a long time. Definitely lucky,” Peter pouted.

  “Peter? Angie? Do you mind giving us a bit of privacy?” Mom asked. She hardly made a sound as she entered the room and walked to my bedside. She sounded better than I expected.

  “Come on, Peter,” Angie said. “We’ll play hearts on my cell phone.” She led Peter away.

  “I’ll come back for her in a few minutes,” said the nurse.

  “Thank you.” It was just Mom and me in the small curtained partition of the emergency room. “What happened at school?” she asked.

  “Sam saw me kissing Derek,” I said. It sounded like my voice.

  “Hmm.” It was difficult to read Mom’s face. But she had certainly heard the whole story by now and must have figured I’d lost it.

  “She saw me. The whole school saw.” Tears started to flow now. It was not how I had hoped to have this conversation.

  “I didn’t even know you felt that way about him. And Derek isn’t worth breaking your leg for.” Mom sounded tired.

  “Who cares about Derek?” I really wished she didn’t insist on us talking about this. It wasn’t helping.

  “It’s Sam,” my mother sighed.

  “We’ve been friends for ten years! I knew how much she liked Derek. But he was just… there. And before I knew what happened, we were kissing. I don’t even like him that much. I was… it just happened! I didn’t want it! And even if I liked him, I was perfectly happy to have Sam have him.”

  Mom just stared at me. She didn’t interrupt.

  “Really! Even if I really liked Derek… there’d be other guys. But Sam and I were going to be together forever. We were going to go to the same schools, work for the same companies, plan each other’s weddings, take care of our kids together.” I noticed that I had spoken of my relationship with Sam in the past tense. It just made me feel sicker inside. I was crying so hard now that I could barely speak. “Why did he do it?”

  “He?”

  “I…”

  “Why do you think you did it, Jo?”

  “It just happened. Just happened,” I repeated. “I can’t take it back. I don’t think Sam and I are friends anymore.”

  “She’s been calling all day—” Mom said.

  Oh, God. “You didn’t tell her about the accident, did you? Sam’s not coming here, is she?” I was horrified. That would be too much. I had hurt her so; I couldn’t have her worry about me in the hospital.

  “For now, a clean break seemed best,” Mom said, glancing at my leg. She was very upset for me. “Not every friendship works out, Jo. We told her not to contact you. At least not until you’re ready. That’s what you wanted?”

  A clean break from my ex-best friend sounded terrifying, but it was what I desperately wanted. I couldn’t bear to face her. I was just too evil. Too selfish to have friends. To deserve Sam. Or Derek. I was a bad person. Somehow, yelling at myself inside my head made feel a bit better.

  Suddenly Paris: 2. Thursday to Sunday

  I don’t like hospitals. There’s no privacy, and people constantly demand your attention. Mom was there a lot. And Babushka Bo came, brought real food, and sat quietly by my bedside for hours. Angie stopped by a few times and brought me little boxes of rice candy to “supplement my nutrition.” They were good. All the doctors and nurses seemed to know and like her. Some people are just like that, I guess. Likable. Well, I was different.

  TV helped a bit. Daytime soaps seem so contrived though. And yet how was my life any better? My best friend had caught me kissing her first real boyfriend in front of the whole school. I ran away, fell off a cliff, and broke my leg, requiring surgery and large metal screws. That’s a script for a cheesy soap opera, not real life. I deserved those screws.

  I switched over to Star Trek and Stargate reruns. But like the soaps, they seemed almost realistic in comparison to my life.

  The nights were worse. I couldn’t watch television at night—the noise would disturb other patients, I was told. But nights were bad for me. It was like my brain was stuck on auto-repeat. I kept reliving the moment Derek and I kissed. I saw it from different angles. I felt his lips and tasted the chocolate from that candy bar he’d eaten earlier.

  But this was only half as bad as my endless imagined conversations with Sam. She kept asking me: Why? Did I really like Derek that much? What about her? About Sam? Didn’t I care about how she felt? Didn’t I understand that we were friends forever, that we loved each other much more than some guy? Was being with Derek so much better than being with her? Was she happy now? Was I? Was Derek? How did I think I was going to survive school after this? How was she?

  It was a painful conversation loop. Self-torture. A fitting punishment for betrayal, perhaps.

  And since my parents wouldn’t let me have access to a computer, I couldn’t read the school gossip. I could only imagine the extent of my social humiliation, the total collapse of my social life. But that was no problem; I have a good imagination.

  Suddenly Paris: 3. Sunday

  It took several days of begging to finally get permission to go home. At last, my prison term at the California Pacific Medical Center was up. Dr. Gordon set me free, provided I allowed him a “look-see” every few weeks. The hard cast would be part of my life for the next forty-two days.

  Angie came with my mom to help sign me out. Dad was waiting outside, circling around the block—parking is hard in Pacific Heights. It was amazing to watch how quickly Angie managed to get us a wheelchair and arrange for our getaway. The girl had talent. And my mom seemed enamored with her. They chatted like old friends.

  “We have a big surprise for you,” Mom chirped as she pushed my wheelchair to the exit.

  “Really?” I asked. Had they found a way to keep me home from school until I graduated? Did they invent time travel? Or an “undo” button for human failures? Had Derek’s lips fallen off? Had he gone bald? Somehow I figured my parents’ idea of a big surprise wasn’t going to match up with mine. I moped. I felt myself deserving of punishment, not surprises.

  “Oh, stop this continuous self-flagellation,” Mom said, her expression suddenly dark. She looked at me with deep suspicion. I think she still thought I jumped…

  “Mom—”

  “Oh, you’ll like this surprise, I promise,” Angie said, interrupting and smiling at Mom. Since when has she become a family friend? I’ve only been gone a few days.

  “Don’t look so sour, Jo. We all worked very hard on this. At least pretend to be pleased,” Mom said. The pressure was on.

  “I’m sure I’ll love it, Mom. Don’t worry.”

  It took all three of them, Mom, Dad, and Angie, to maneuver me into the back seat of the minivan. My leg cast was rigid from the hip down. I took up the whole seat. Angie climbed in via the hatch door. Her pink tutu, the same shade as her hair, didn’t seem to be a hindrance. I guessed Angie didn’t have a problem with the attention she attracted.

  To my dad’s continuous delight, we hit every green traffic light on the way home. He liked getting lucky like
that. The drive was short, mercifully, as I could feel every painful bump in the road.

  We lived in the heart of San Francisco’s second Chinatown. The famous one that the tourists flock to is in the center of the city, but ours was in the Richmond District on the west side of town. We lived on the commercial part of Clement Street, in an apartment on the second floor of a three-story building, just above my parents’ accounting business. The two-and-a-half-bedroom apartment took up the whole second floor. Babushka Bo and I shared one of the two large bedrooms in the back, and Peter had a small walkthrough room adjoining ours; my parents had the other bedroom.

  The building itself was a typical ’50s Victorian knock-off: hardwood floors, bay windows, a tiny staircase twisting up to the two apartments above the street-level office spaces. It had completely unremarkable architecture. On the ground floor, Vorovs Accountants, CPA had the front office, and Lee Travel Agency had the back one. The offices shared a downstairs bathroom. Unfortunately, the long tandem garage had long ago become Mr. Lee’s storage space, so we needed to find street parking every day. Parking around Clement Street was even more difficult than in Pacific Heights. Mr. Lee, who owned the building, traveled all the time, and my parents kept an eye on the building and his office while he was gone.

  Mr. Lee didn’t like dealing with tenants, and as a result, the apartment on the top floor was usually empty, except for occasional, temporary business guests. My parents had rented our apartment and the office space long before I was born, so maybe we were exempt from Mr. Lee’s general aversion to new people. I wondered how Angie and her dad had managed to talk Mr. Lee into renting the top floor to them.

  Mr. Lee was one of the few outsiders Babushka Bo talked to. I think he had the hots for her, but my dad believed he had some Mongolian ancestry and treated Bo as a fellow compatriot.

  Angie—with her green, almond-shaped eyes, pink hair, and tiny stature—was a mutt like me. I’m a quarter Mongolian and the rest is Russian Jew. It’s difficult to figure out my ancestry by looking at me. Here in San Francisco, being “ethnically diverse” isn’t much of a problem. Back in Russia though, it was very hard for my dad. He, Mom, and Babushka Bo arrived in America as refugees in 1982. Peter and I were born here. We were San Franciscans through and through.

  As we drove back from the hospital, Angie maintained a continuous commentary about California’s weather, the condition of the streets, and the driving abilities of the natives. I didn’t listen much; I was busy trying to visualize how they were going to drag me up to my bedroom on the second floor. It was going to be a challenge.

  Dad double-parked in front of the glass window with “Vorovs Accountants CPA” painted on it. It was nice to be home. There was a large new potted plant sitting in front of the boarded-up garage.

  “I like the tree, Mom. Nice welcome home surprise.” I was trying.

  “Glad you noticed, dear.”

  They all tried to carefully lift me out the car. Maybe for the first time, I was glad that I had Babushka Bo’s genes for height. Being only five feet tall made this ordeal easier all around.

  Peter had come downstairs and was holding the front door open for us. Next to him was a little dark-haired girl. She had Babushka Bo’s intense green eyes too. She was smiling at me and holding on to Peter with a possessive grip.

  “This is Paris, Angie’s little sister. I’m her official babysitter,” Peter said, proud of his new responsibilities.

  “Nice to meet you, Paris,” I said. Strange that no one had mentioned her before. Where were her parents? I felt like I was returning to a whole new social order. Everyone seemed so cozy with this new arrangement, and it made me feel like a stranger.

  “Wait until you see your surprise, Jo. It’s awesome!” Peter practically shouted.

  I inhaled deeply and prepared to like it, whatever it was.

  Instead of maneuvering me up the stairs, they turned right through a small door and helped me into the garage. Except now it was a small room with my bed, a table, an empty bookcase, a chair, a chest of drawers, and a small loveseat tucked in the back corner. It still smelled like paint. The late afternoon sun filtered in through beautiful yellow curtains, splashed across the bed, and illuminated the dust particles swirling quietly around the room. It was amazing.

  “Welcome home, Jo,” Dad said with a grin.

  “How did you do it?” I gasped.

  “We all worked very hard while you were in the hospital,” Peter said. “Mr. Urt—he’s Angie and Paris’s dad—talked Mr. Lee into converting the front of the garage into this bedroom for you. Apparently Mr. Lee was just about to offer it to us already, and your leg was just perfect timing.” Peter seemed happy to explain the mystery to me.

  “You did all this in just three days?” I couldn’t believe it. Just cleaning out Mr. Lee’s old junk should have taken months. And there was no way Mr. Lee was “just about” to give up half his garage. He hated it when anything changed.

  “It was mostly empty already,” Peter said. “Mr. Urt and Dad built the back wall. And we all painted it. And we put in this nice window for you. And Mom insisted on getting that big potted tree, so no one can look inside from the street. Paris and I picked out the fabric from that store on Second Avenue, and Babushka Bo made the curtains and bedspread. We didn’t have time to move your stuff in yet. You’d better like it, Jo.” Peter needed praise right away.

  “It’s absolutely wonderful,” I said. “Thank you all very much. Really, it’s incredible.” I hoped that I sounded as grateful and as astonished as I felt. My own private room. It was more than I’d dreamed of having anytime soon. After I graduated from college, perhaps. Even then, though, I had planned on living with Sam. I hadn’t thought of Sam in a few minutes, and it gave me a jolt of pain.

  Mom noticed my discomfort and attributed it to physical pain. “We’re making her stand too long. Jo, I think you should get into bed. Dad was going to set up a little television for you down here, but you can use my cell phone for now. Call us if you need to get up. Don’t try to do it alone. You can use the bathroom downstairs. We’ll figure out the shower later.”

  “It’s all right, Mom. Really, I’m all right,” I reassured her. But I had already been placed on top of my bed with dozens of extra pillows propping me up from all directions.

  “We’ll bring your books and clothes down soon. We just ran out of time. Even so, this room is completely legal. It was amazing to get all the permits so fast. Mr. Lee must have some pull with the San Francisco Building Department,” Dad said. He sounded impressed. “I’ve never seen a turnaround like that. Usually it’s six months minimum.”

  “It’s wonderful, Dad. And I don’t need my books right away, but I would like my computer eventually.” I desperately wanted to check my email, Facebook, and Twitter to see the fallout from both the kiss and my accident. It can’t be worse than what I’ve been envisioning, I thought.

  Dad was a computer genius; Mom called him a hacker. That’s why their accounting business did so well—they always prepared good tax returns for their customers. None of their clients had ever been audited by the IRS. People called it the “Vorovs Miracle.” My dad considered it an added bonus that the word “vor” meant “thief” in Russian. He was very proud of his last name, even though he was scrupulously honest and never did anything illegal. He would say: “With a name like that, you’ve got to be a good guy.”

  “We’re still running wires,” he said. “And you’re supposed to take it easy. I know you didn’t get any rest at the hospital; you look gray. But Angie will stay with you awhile, won’t you?” He turned to Angie.

  “Dad, I don’t need a babysitter. And I heard Peter’s got that job covered.” I didn’t think spending time with a stranger was going to help me rest.

  “Don’t be silly,” Peter said. “I only take care of Paris.” He took the little girl’s hand and they walked out.

  “Just call. Dad and I will be directly across the hall, okay?” I could
tell Mom wasn’t going to let me be by myself. In her mind, I was under psychological assessment. She still didn’t believe I didn’t jump. So be it.

  “Fine. But Angie will get pretty bored hanging out with a gimp,” I snorted.

  “Don’t worry,” Angie said. “It’s fine. And we don’t have to talk. I’ll just read while you rest. You can completely ignore me.” She was holding an old Wired magazine, and I could see from her face that she really meant what she said.

  “Thank you.” I closed my eyes. I might like her eventually.

  I must have really fallen asleep, because when I opened my eyes, the room was much darker. I could hear someone typing on the computer in the office across the hall. Angie was gone, and the Wired she had been reading had slid under the chair. I could smell the dinner Babushka Bo was making.

  A pair of bright green eyes briefly spied on me from the open door, then disappeared.

  “She’s awake,” I heard a clear little voice announce.

  “Paris, thank you for keeping an eye on her.” Mom came in to check on me. “She is so sweet, isn’t she?”

  “Paris? Yes, she’s very cute. Nice eyes.” I pulled myself up into a sitting position. The leg really hurt now. A reddish hue pain—noticeable, but not too bad yet.

  “Peter is being very sweet to Paris,” Mom said. “I like how well he’s looking after her. It’s just the three of them, you know: Asa, Angie, and Paris. The girls never talk about their mom. It must be very hard for Asa raising them all by himself.”

  I wasn’t really listening. All I could focus on was the glass of water and the big white pill Mom was holding. A painkiller, I hoped.

  Mom noticed my interest. “Dr. Gordon said you could take up to four of these a day. But they’ll make you quite loopy.”

  “I promise not to operate any heavy machinery, Mom.” I was very grateful for the pill. I hoped it worked fast.

  “Babushka Bo made dinner. We’ll send down a tray for you. For the next few days, you’ll be eating down here. We’ll see how it goes from there. Angie volunteered to help move your books and clothes, when you feel up to moving around and doing things,” Mom said.