Groan. Sickening thud as my stomach drops to my knees. Kicked out!
“They can’t do that!” I blurt.
“Why not?” My mother’s eyes are practically smouldering. “Tell me why not.”
I’m afraid to look at her.
“You apparently think you can do anything in the world that you want. Why can’t the school? Why shouldn’t you get thrown out? You cause nothing but unhappiness and embarrassment and …”
Suddenly she kind of sinks down on the edge of the bed and buries her face in her hands for a couple of seconds. I hear a deep, long sigh. Finally she raises her head and stares right into my eyes. I never have the guts to look back, especially if I’m feeling guilty. Instead I get real busy brushing invisible things off my jeans or concentrating on nothing in the middle of my empty palm.
“Victoria,” she says after a couple of seconds, “are you deliberately trying to hurt us, your father and me?”
“No.” Very small voice.
“Then why do you keep doing all these awful things? Please, tell me.”
I wish I could tell her, but all I can do is shrug my shoulders and say, “I don’t know.” Because honestly, I don’t. I mean, these things never seem so terrible when I’m doing them, it’s only later, when they get so blown up that I know I shouldn’t have done them, but then, of course, it’s too late. But that’s me. Always messing up. You should hear me with the boys. I say the dumbest things. Even the way I look is all wrong. I must have spent ninety million allowances on face gook and my complexion is still horrendous, my hair looks dirty two seconds after I wash it, and my knees are so bony that I’ll probably have to wear jeans the rest of my life. Oh, what’s the use? I could go on forever. The thing is, I’m a mess. Also, it’s horrific the way I don’t know where I’m supposed to be. I mean, I’m certainly not a little kid like my sister Nina, but nobody lets me be as grown-up as I feel inside. Of course there’s no point trying to tell my mother these things. She’d just say I looked fine and probably blame it on adolescence, like it was some kind of disease. Maybe it is.
“I hate to keep punishing you,” my mother says, shaking her head and looking just a little bit sad. “I wish there were some other way.”
“Well, I don’t know,” I mumble. Why do I always grope like a jerk when I want to say something important? “I guess you could try to understand me a little better.” I expect to hear her say, “I understand you perfectly,” or something like that. But she surprises me.
“All right, Victoria, I’ll try. What is it I don’t understand?”
Oh, God, what a question. Doesn’t she know there’s no way to answer?
“Well?”
“Me.”
“Okay. What is it I don’t understand about you? This is serious, Victoria, so let’s talk about it. Tell me what I’m doing wrong.”
Now she wants to talk—when she’s got me on the torture rack. That’s just like her. How come she always gets to pick the time for these little chats? “You have to tell me what’s on your mind, Victoria. I can’t do it without your help.”
See. It’s hopeless. I mean how am I going to help her when I don’t know what’s going on either? I finally say, “Well, you don’t ever let me live my own life. I’m not a baby, I can take care of myself. But all you do is keep treating me like a child. I’m not a child. I’m an … I feel I’m as adult as a real adult.”
I really don’t want to go on, but she doesn’t interrupt and kind of forces me to keep talking. Maybe I’d do it anyway. Sometimes I’m a real motormouth.
“Like, I hear what you and Mrs. Weinstein and the Elliotts and all your other friends talk about when they come over,” I blabber on. “The movies, television, why you don’t like Mr. Bailey, where the good places are to eat, and things like that. What’s so adult about that? Those are the same things I talk about with my friends. I mean, I don’t see any difference.” I take a deep breath so I can keep rattling on, but the fact is I can’t think of anything else to say.
“All right,” my mother says. “You have a point. A lot of things you and I do are pretty much alike. I’ll even call them adult things. But how about this? Suppose I came home and you asked me what I did this afternoon and I said, oh, I was with the Weinsteins and the Elliotts and all my friends at the movies and we spent the whole time secretly smoking and giggling and running up the aisles and throwing spitballs. What would you think, Victoria? That I was behaving like an adult? Do adults do that? Do they?”
Naturally I’m not going to answer that one.
“So you’re not an adult yet, Victoria. And if you think you are, then the misunderstanding’s on your part. I’m not saying you’re a child either. You’re something in between. It’s a difficult time and I’m sorry, but until you’re a lot more mature than you are, you need supervision. And that includes punishment when you do very childish and very bad things.”
“I don’t do very bad things.” I pout. “Or anyway I don’t do them on purpose. That’s another thing you don’t understand. They’re just normal nothings that go a little wrong.”
“You mean to say that all those things that happen are … are what? Accidents?”
“Not exactly. I just mean that I don’t cause all that trouble on purpose. Besides, mostly they’re just little things and I don’t know why everybody always gets so excited about them. Like today …”
“A perfect example. Because of your shenanigans today the entire movie was ruined for everyone. Are you going to tell me that was an accident?”
“But it was, sort of. I mean, nobody meant to ruin the movie. All we wanted to do was sit in the balcony. You know, Mom, it’s really gross the way they treat us like such babies when we go on a class trip. It’s positively horrendous when you’re almost fourteen to have to march through the streets in pairs. And then in the movie they never let us sit next to our friends and you can’t talk and you can’t buy sweets. And if you do some little thing like changing your seat without asking, they practically freak.”
“According to Mr. Davis, you weren’t just out of your seat, you were smoking and creating a ruckus.”
“So all Mrs. Serrada had to do was shush us and we would have been quiet. Instead she comes charging up the steps like some bull elephant …”
“Victoria!” She doesn’t even let me finish. “You were breaking the rules. Can’t you understand that?”
Rules. How come adults are always so hung up on rules? Even if I tell my mother that a lot of Mrs. Serrada’s rules are really dumb, she’ll still say, “That’s no excuse for breaking them.” Except I think it is. Boy, if they let kids make the rules things would be a lot better. I’d probably never get into trouble.
“Well? Can’t you?”
“Huh?”
“Can’t you understand that you were breaking the rules?”
“I didn’t exactly think of it that way. Anyway, it wasn’t my fault.”
“Of course not. It’s never your fault, is it? It’s always somebody else’s. The teacher’s. Or the principal’s. All the complaints they’ve had about you in school, none of them are your fault, are they? Everybody’s picking on you.”
See, I told you, no matter how many kids are involved, I’m the one who always gets blamed the most, and it’s not fair, and now they want to throw me out into the street, and my whole life is ruined, and maybe I should just run away and make them all feel sorry for what they did.
My mother says: “Mr. Davis is setting up an appointment for us at school. We will go and see him and you will be very humble and very sweet. I’ll try to straighten this whole matter out. I don’t know how successful I’ll be. Mr. Davis sounded pretty final about not wanting you back. You’re too disruptive. But we’ll try because the only other alternative would be a boarding school.”
“I won’t go!” I blurt it out. I know all about boarding schools. My friend Monica’s sister Laura had to go away to one called the Barley School someplace up in Maine, and I heard they beat you
and make you go to bed at eight o’clock and scrub the floor every morning. I’d rather die. As it is I’m crying like crazy already.
“Come on now, Victoria,” my mother says, pushing a couple of wet strands of hair back off my face. “Boarding schools aren’t anything like those awful places you see in the movies.”
“I’ll run away. I will!” Which is what I thought about doing anyway except this time it’s real.
“Calm down for a minute and listen to me. Actually Daddy and I have talked about it before all this, and it might be the best thing that could happen to you. These places are fabulous, like sleep-away camps, only they have classes. You’d probably end up loving it. There’s a wonderful school called the Barley School up in New England. Laura Baer went there and she loved it.” Of course I know better, but I’m too destroyed to argue.
“I’ll hate it,” I sob.
“There’s no point in discussing it until after we’ve seen the principal. In the meantime I want you right here in the house where I can keep an eye on you all weekend. I’m sorry to have to punish you, but you have certainly earned it.”
And, just like that, she walks out of the room. Can you believe that? My whole life is coming to an end and she won’t even let me talk about it. That absolutely proves she doesn’t care one iota about me. None of them do, I suppose my sister Nina does a little. But who wants an eleven-year-old pain in the butt on your side?
Oh my God! “Hey, Mom!” I cry dashing into the hall.
“What now?”
“The party down at Liz’s!”
“I told you. I want you home all weekend. You can forget about going to Philadelphia.”
“But, Mom! She’s expecting me. My own cousin. That party’s practically in my honor.”
“Out of the question. Now go and wash your face and comb your hair—Grandma’s coming.”
I know it’s going to be futile, but I’ve got to try to convince her. I’ve been counting on going to that party for two months, and my heart would crack right in two if I couldn’t make it. Still, for once in my life, I play it cool. I don’t say another word. I just head straight for the bathroom like she said and do my best to wash the crying look off my face and even pull my hair tight back with an elastic band just the way she likes it. By the time I’m finished I hear my grandmother in the living room. What a bore!
Don’t get me wrong. I’m crazy about my grandmother. She’s absolutely the greatest. But you know how grandmothers are, they take everything so seriously. All she has to know is that I’ve been suspended from school and she’ll probably be up all night worrying.
Wait a minute! I don’t have to tell her. My mother certainly isn’t going to bring it up, so how’s she going to know?
“Victoria, darling,” says my grandmother as soon as she sees me, “what’s the matter? Your eyes are ail red. Are you sick?” And she’s up in a flash testing my forehead for fever. “I told you she looked a little green the other day, Felicia,” she says to my mother, and there’s just a hint of accusation in her voice like maybe they’re not feeding me enough or something.
“No, Grandma, I’m fine.”
“You don’t look so fine to me. You look like you’ve been crying. What’s wrong? Did you have trouble at school today?”
I must be the easiest person in the whole world to nail. Nothing left to do but tell the whole gruesome story again. Ugh. I can see that my mother is embarrassed but I wade right in, and just when I’m at the part where it’s so unfair that I was the only one suspended, the phone rings. Naturally I jump up to answer it.
“Oh, no you don’t young lady,” says good old Mom. “When I say no phone calls, I mean no phone calls.” And with the steam rising from the top of her head, my mother storms out of the room to answer the phone. I pray it’s not for me.
“Boy, is she mean!” I say to my grandmother.
“Being suspended is a very serious matter, dear, I can see she’s very upset.” That’s one of the beautiful things about my grandmother. She always sounds like she loves me. Like calling me dear and talking so sweetly even if she doesn’t agree with me. And we don’t agree all the time mostly because she’s, you know, sort of proper and old-fashioned sometimes. But she never really loses her patience or gets angry with me.
“Every time I get caught in something the school makes such a big deal about it. They’re always suspending me for nothing at all.”
“You mean this isn’t the first time?”
“Well, not exactly. But you can’t really count that other time because it wasn’t my fault. I just happened to be there when the trouble started.”
“Maybe it wasn’t, but you must admit, dear, you do seem to be in the wrong place at the wrong time more often than just about anyone else.”
“I guess I’m just unlucky. How come my mother can’t look at things the way you do instead of always flying off the handle.”
“I used to do some pretty fancy flying off the handle when your mother and Uncle Steve were children. They could be very irritating at times.”
I can believe that about my mother. She irritates me all the time. But Uncle Steve? Grandma has to be kidding. He’s the best uncle in the whole world. I can practically talk to him like a friend. He’s in the advertising business and knows everybody and he’s always getting tickets for us to shows and concerts and everything. Mom has him over to dinner a couple of times a month (he’s divorced) and always cooks something special for him. I know she’s his sister but I always think of him more as my friend than her brother, if that makes any sense. That’s probably because he treats me practically like an adult. You know how most adults don’t really listen to kids or take them seriously? Well, he’s just the opposite. Boy, is my mother lucky to have him for a brother.
“Yes indeed,” my grandmother is saying. “Being a mother can be a very hard job.”
“Well, it doesn’t look so tough to me.”
“But it is. Imagine being solely responsible for another person.”
“She doesn’t have to be so responsible for me. I can take care of myself a lot better than she thinks.”
“You seem to have slipped up a little today.”
“Yeah, well …”
“And the other times?”
“Maybe it’s like you said. I was in the wrong place at the wrong time.”
“Maybe. And possibly when you get older that will happen less and less. But in the meantime somebody’s got to take very good care of someone who’s so unlucky, and that, my dear, is a full-time job, with a lot of close watching and plenty of worrying. Believe me, Victoria, that can make even the best mother a little mean sometimes.”
“Still, I bet you wouldn’t be if you were my mother.”
My grandmother smiles and starts to say something, but then my mother comes back so she changes her mind.
“That was Mr. Davis calling,” my mother says to me. “Our appointment is for nine o’clock Monday morning. I suggest you think very hard over the weekend about what you’re going to say to him.”
“Speaking of the weekend,” Grandma says, “what train are you taking to Elizabeth’s tomorrow, Victoria?” I guess my mother didn’t tell her about me not going.
“Mommy says I can’t go because of the school thing.” I’ve got the feeling this may be my last chance so I play it big. You know those hound dogs that always look like they’re going to cry? That’s a giggle compared to my face right now.
“Well, that’s a shame,” my grandmother says to my mother.
“It certainly is, and I hope she learns something this time.”
“Elizabeth will be so disappointed.” Now I’m not saying my grandmother winked or smiled or did anything big like that, but I just got this vibe from her that is definitely good stuff.
“I know,” says my mother, “and I feel terrible to have to disappoint her….”
“Especially on her birthday.” God bless Grandma.
“I don’t know what to do about that.”
<
br /> “Oh, why don’t you let her go … for Elizabeth’s sake?”
I’ve got to not smile. I’ve got to not smile. I’ve got to not smile.
“You’re probably right. I certainly don’t want this to be a punishment for Elizabeth.” She looks at me and says, “Why should she suffer just because you don’t know the difference between right and wrong?”
I almost leap at my mother and kiss her for letting me go. Instead I give my grandmother a huge kiss and shoot out of the room to start packing.
Two
I’m taking a morning train tomorrow. I can hardly wait. I’m going to get away from this whole grungy scene and visit my favorite cousin, Liz, down in Philadelphia. She’s almost a year older than me, but we get along great. I was down there for Christmas vacation and we had a fantastic time. There was this boy David (he’s sixteen), a friend of Liz’s boyfriend, who really liked me. Of course he thought I was a lot older than thirteen. Everyone thinks I’m very mature for my age so it was easy to fool him. Anyway, we went to a party at his friend’s house, and when they turned out the light, he kissed me. Some jerk turned it on again a couple of minutes later and we were still kissing. It was such a long kiss that I thought I was going to faint from holding my breath so long. But it helps. Holding your breath, I mean. Then you don’t think so much about how your lips are squashing into your braces.
I’ll never forget one of the girls at the party. Her name is Cindy, and she’s fifteen and thinks she’s really hot stuff. A lot of the boys do too, mostly because she’s very overdeveloped. I mean her breasts are gigantic. Liz says that she has a terrible reputation and that the boys only like her because she lets them go pretty far. I don’t think I could ever let a boy touch my breasts unless we were really in love and then it would have to be on the outside of my clothes. Sometimes I put my own hand on myself, you know, just to see how it feels. It’s not bad, but nothing special. But that’s probably because it’s me touching me. A couple of times Steffi and I were fooling around pretending to be movie stars and we’d make fun of a love scene. We always start off messing around and laughing a lot but then it would get kind of serious in the clinches. Don’t laugh, but I sort of liked it when she put her hands on my breasts. It felt sort of, I don’t know, tingly. That’s when we’d stop. I was always a little embarrassed afterward even though she is my best friend and it was only a fooling-around game. I think she felt the same way because we never talked about it and we usually share everything.
My Mother Was Never A Kid (Victoria Martin Trilogy) Page 2