Eating the Cheshire Cat

by Helen Ellis

  “That’s not till September.”

  Sarina said, “It’s in Birmingham now. Let’s go, please, let’s go.”

  On the Ferris wheel, Sarina let Stewart put his arm around her. Forty feet above the fair, they could hear the catcalls from the freak-show tents. Sarina snuggled closer. She reached down his Duck Heads and pulled out his shirt. She reached further down and felt the elastic of his briefs. Without looking, she could tell they were white Fruit Of The Looms. He could not have changed that much. She dared her fingers even further. She coaxed out a few hairs from under his underwear.

  “They’re curlier,” she told him and bent sideways to peer into his pants. “They’re darker.”

  “Quit it,” Stewart said, but did not take her hand away.

  Sarina could see the sweat start on his stomach. She wondered if that counted as getting her bandages wet. As their seat swung down, Sarina moved her hand in careful, slow circles underneath the teeth to his zipper. When their seat rose up, Sarina moved her hand like madness.

  When it was time to get off, Stewart staggered past the ticket-holders’ line, tucked in his shirt, and tripped and fell onto the flat wooden monkey whose sign read, “You must be this high to ride this ride.” Sarina dropped down on top of Stewart. She balanced herself on the monkey’s chipped lips. She kissed Stewart as bystanders whooped and stopped sucking on their hot cinnamon-candied apples.

  “Win me something,” Sarina teased.

  “What?” said Stewart.

  “One of those big pigs.”

  As they made their way through the game booths, Sarina ignored the operators’ solicitations. “Hey, little lady!” “Hello, gorgeous!” “I got two balls for a dollar!” Stewart pulled blue strands of cotton candy from the paper cone. He tilted his head back to feed himself in a tempting way.

  “You want?” he said.

  “No thanks.”

  Sarina noticed overlooked stubble on his Adam’s apple. His face was fuller than it used to be. His cheeks stuck out, but they were tan without one freckle.

  “How about the basketball toss?”

  “It’s fixed,” said Stewart. “The hoop’s bent so you can’t see.”

  “How about the swinging ladder?”

  Stewart said, “That’s worse than the Flying Dutchman.”

  “Bear shoot?”

  “Fixed.”

  “Ring toss?”

  “Fixed.”

  “You pick,” Sarina said, although she did not know what he would choose. Stewart was the high scorer on the math team. Each spring, he did Olympics of the Mind. He never showed up for any of the other events. The cheerleaders made him nervous.

  “There!” said Stewart. “At last. A game of chance!”

  Pick a Duck. Before them bobbed what must have been two hundred two-inch-tall plastic ducks. Various shades of Easter eggs, their heads were discolored from years of being snatched from the stream, flipped upside down, and scanned for a number matching a big prize. Currently, the game was surprisingly vacant. Sarina smiled at Stewart. She said, “Go for it.”

  Fifteen minutes later, they left the fairgrounds. Pick a Duck had not been a successful endeavor. Sarina knew the game was rigged. That ugly bitch behind the counter kept giving Stewart small prizes. Sarina wanted a big pig. When Stewart didn’t win one for her, she lost her temper and things got out of hand. Even though that Pick a Duck girl started it, the security guards asked Sarina and Stewart to leave.

  On the way to the parking lot, Stewart toted a caramel apple rolled in peanuts. He tried to put his arm around her, but she was angry and did not want the night to end with a wilted bouquet of felt snakes in her hands, their black eyeballs rolling loop de loop in their sockets.

  Stewart opened the passenger door for her. Sarina watched him walk around the hood. He dropped into the driver’s seat and the car rocked just a little. While he buckled their seat belts, he held the caramel apple in his teeth.

  Sarina said, “Let’s go to Deerlick.”

  Stewart said, “I got to get home.”

  “Come on, it’s not even ten. Please, Stewart. Please, let’s go.”

  Stewart looked at her. Sarina knew he was remembering that night before camp, his lips on her puffy nipples, his fingers on her breasts that had hardly formed at all.

  Sarina said, “I wear under-wire now.”

  Stewart started the car.

  They drove back to Tuscaloosa. Deerlick Park ran into the woods behind her house. Stewart parked the car in the lot, and he and Sarina wandered into the thick of it. They followed a trail to the shore of the lake.

  Sarina remembered the rumors that the area was haunted. Couples had reported seeing ghost legs left over from water-skiing accidents, and not-so-bright brimstone reflected in the water. It turned out to be the local Ku Klux Klan. Sarina did not know which she was more afraid of. But the park was quiet that evening. It was dark and there were stars. Stewart and Sarina slid off their shoes and stepped forward, anxious to feel the water that was indistinguishable from the shore. The lake was quiet and not too cold. They waded in to their ankles.

  Stewart said, “It’s so good to see you again, Ree. Your skin’s so nice. It, like, glows in the dark.”

  Sarina did not hear him. She was distracted by the possibility of a broken bottle under foot. Plus, she had led him there for a reason. She leaned forward and kissed him, careful to keep her feet planted, fearful that she might lose her balance, lose her nerve, and come home, mission not accomplished, her bandages reeking and stinking of pond scum. She opened her mouth to say what she had rehearsed while laid up in bed. Her voice came out cracked, not at all like she’d planned. “Make love to me.”

  “Are you crazy?”

  “Make love to me,” Sarina said, this time more assured, this time a little annoyed that his answer was not immediate, to the point, a resounding Yes.

  Stewart said, “Are you on finger drugs?”

  “Why are you making this so hard for me?”

  “I’m not. I’m confused, that’s all.”

  “Well, don’t be,” Sarina softened her voice. “It’s just sex. I want the first time to be with someone I trust.”

  Stewart said, “I always knew you’d come back.” He looked sheepishly at Sarina. “I hoped you’d come back. And, now, here you are and we’re doing all this date stuff and I feel like I just kissed you for the first time and now you want to go all the way. It’s weird. It’s like too good to be true.”

  “I know,” said Sarina. “But I’m tired of not knowing what all the fuss is about. Aren’t you tired, Stewart? Don’t you want to find out?”

  Stewart’s mouth fell open slightly as Sarina led him back to the shore and eased them down to the sand. She straddled him and wrapped her legs around his waist. Between her legs, she could tell that he was not as lean as he used to be. The muscles in her groin strained, but not enough to make her uncomfortable.

  “Do you want to?” She kissed him. “Huh? Do you want to?”

  Stewart nodded under the warmth of her mouth against his cheek, his jaw, the corner of his nose. He whispered, “I don’t know how.”

  “Me either,” smiled Sarina. “That’s what makes this so perfect.”

  As Stewart turned off the ignition two houses from Sarina’s, he said, “I’m so glad we’re back together, Ree.”

  Sarina motioned to her seat belt. She said, “Undo me.”

  Stewart did. He kissed her and Sarina smelled all the sugar from the night. She felt his semen clotting the breathable crotch of her panties. She wondered if he would fix himself a bologna sandwich before he went to bed. Sarina looked straight ahead. “We’re not back together.”

  Stewart said, “What?”

  “After tonight, it all goes back to the way it was.”

  Stewart whispered, “What?”

  Certain that there would be no repercussions, Sarina got out of the car. In her sixteen years, she had learned that not all bad deeds were deservedly punished. Her fath
er got to live with that stewardess-slash-cowgirl. She herself had gotten to leave Camp Chickasaw without coming clean on how she’d treated that maintenance man. And sleeping with Stewart was not the worst thing she could have done to him. It’s not like she stole his virginity. It’s not like he didn’t enjoy it.

  As she shut the car door, Sarina leaned through the open window. Stewart looked at her as if she’d just keyed his car. For a second, she felt sorry for him. Then she got over it. She said, “If you tell anyone about tonight, I’ll tell the Kendricks that when I was babysitting Mary Jo, you touched her when I was changing her.”

  Stewart said, “But I didn’t.”

  Sarina said, “But they’d believe me.”

  As she walked away from the car, Sarina looked back through the windshield. Stewart covered his eyes with one arm, reclined the seat, and sank from view. Sarina looked toward her own house. The sprinklers were humming, which meant her mother had not stirred. Water filled the gutter and the grass smelled good. As she stepped onto the welcome mat, she felt taller, wiser, more grown up. She was ready to start eleventh grade. She was ready to compete with older girls. She turned the door knob that she had left unlocked. She snuck inside and left the lights off.

  Nicole

  FROM HER bedroom window, Nicole Hicks had watched the whole thing happen. She couldn’t believe it. In the course of one evening, Stewart Steptoe had been beckoned, then dumped. As Stewart drove his car away, Nicole wondered how far Sarina had let him go. She wondered if he had seen what she, herself, had seen in locker rooms, at sleep-overs, at the peak of games of Truth or Dare.

  Nicole imagined Sarina unzipping her pants, untying her shoes, settling into bed, still in her clothes. It was a ritual of hers: to sleep with the smell of the boy who had driven her home. Another ritual was to call Nicole, no matter how late, and tell her what time to come over the next morning. Sarina liked to tell the details of her dates in person. She liked to act things out, to use her hands, to close her eyes and open her mouth, to kiss the air in front of her friend. She liked to make Nicole blush and Nicole liked it too. Nicole waited for the phone to ring.

  Nicole said, “If you don’t call, I’ll kill you.”

  Nicole checked for a dial tone. Since Sarina’s sweet-sixteen party earlier that week, Nicole had not heard word one from her friend. When Nicole called Sarina’s house, Mrs. Summers had told her, “Sarina’s got mono. She’ll call you when she’s not contagious.”

  “But I can’t catch it over the phone.”

  Mrs. Summers had said, “Aren’t you sweet.”

  Nicole dreaded a summer without her best friend. She had seen girls with mono disappear from school for entire semesters.

  “Nicole,” Sarina had told her, “they’re pregnant, not sick.”

  Nicole wondered if Sarina was pregnant, sneaking out to plan her elopement, then suddenly aware that she wanted none of it. No baby. No boyfriend. No rumors she could never live down. Maybe Stewart’s was a consolation call because Sarina was laid up after an abortion. Her mother would have known just by looking at her. Sarina probably never said a word. Mrs. Summers just made an appointment and put her in the car.

  This is how Mrs. Hicks tried to operate: mother and daughter as one well-oiled machine. Boom, boom, boom. One, two, three. Like clockwork or coworkers in a monstrous mission mill. But Nicole never could keep up with Mrs. Hicks. She was the monkey wrench in her mother’s works.

  In the fifth grade, Mrs. Hicks had sent Nicole to the Cheshire Elementary School science fair with a model of the solar system. To craft the universe, Mrs. Hicks had skipped a Tri Delta luncheon and advanced-intermediate yoga for more than a week. She manhandled coat hangers and spray painted Styrofoam snowballs left over from the Girl Scout Christmas-parade float where Mrs. Hicks had been the only mother skinny enough to slide into the chicken wire–crafted Frosty the Snowman suit. Jupiter was orange. Mars was red. Earth was green and blue and took the most time. It had to be perfect. She had to get the continents right. On the day of the science fair, Mrs. Hicks spray painted the round Frosty head silver, plucked its cardboard carrot nose, and topped off her daughter’s semblance to Interplanet Janet, the Galaxy Girl.

  As Sarina and Mrs. Summers approached the school bus with a poinsettia they had sung to and a poinsettia they had screamed at and kept in the dark on top of the clothes dryer, Mrs. Hicks spit on her fingers and wiped oatmeal off Nicole’s tinfoil blouse. She whispered, “We’re so much better than that. You can beat her. Just remember what I taught you.”

  Sarina placed second only to Norvin Roberts, who’d taught one of his mice to scale over six Lincoln Logs when he tapped C-A-T in morse code. Nicole received her first failing grade when, in response to her teacher’s flurry of questions, she blanked on her mother’s galaxy drills and blurted the only fact she knew to be true.

  “The yellow one is the sun! The big one in the middle is the sun!”

  Nicole had been sent home with her helmet in her hands. Mrs. Hicks was discouraged from attending PTA meetings for the rest of the year.

  Sarina had phoned. “Forget it, Nic. That teacher’s a loser. If my flower’d lived with her it would have died from ugly-itis!”

  Mrs. Summers had brought over a green-bean casserole.

  “Nobody’s dead,” Mrs. Hicks said and refused to take it. She slammed her front door on Mrs. Summers, her oven mitts and Corning Ware.

  Nicole stared at the telephone and used all her mental powers to make her friend call. If Sarina was healthy enough to sneak out with Stewart, she was damned well healthy enough to call her best friend. And no one would ever be as good a friend as Nicole. In all of history, there had never been a better second banana, an orange to her apple, a pea in her pod. Nicole and Sarina were a budding buddy salad. They were a well-balanced meal. They were Cabbage Patch Kids.

  Nicole’s mother disagreed. She saw Sarina as a choice cut of steak who used Nicole like salt to bring out her flavor. Mrs. Hicks wanted her daughter to be seen as prime rib. Even if that meant putting Sarina through the grinder.

  Freshman year, when Sarina convinced Nicole to join her at tryouts for the junior-varsity cheerleading squad, Mrs. Hicks bought a trampoline for their backyard.

  “I hear that Summers woman hired a personal trainer for your friend. Now there’s good alimony going to waste. Nobody beats this baby.” Mrs. Hicks patted the boost-up bar.

  After supper, Mrs. Hicks would leave the kitchen window open and turn the television volume up as she and her daughter went barefoot into the night.

  Nicole’s father was the senior anchorman for the six and ten o’clock Tuscaloosa News. As Nicole bounced, flipped backward, landed hard on her butt, she could hear her father’s voice as if he were watching from the house.

  “The Dow fell two hundred points today, while Greek hazing at the University of Alabama is at an all-time high.”

  Mrs. Hicks barked, “Higher, Nicole! You’re not even trying!”

  “This is Bert Hicks saying good night, Tuscaloosa. Have you talked to your kids?”

  “HOW DO YOU EXPECT TO BE HEARD WHEN YOU’RE WINDED LIKE THAT?”

  Nicole did not like to be alone with her mother, who watched so closely and expected so much. Mrs. Hicks wanted Nicole to win the top pyramid spot, to have the loudest voice, to be tossed so high she could free volleyballs lodged in the gymnasium rafters. Nicole was good enough be captain. When Mrs. Hicks was a girl, she was on the spirit squad. Being best was like blond hair: passed from mother to daughter like a stick of DNA dynamite.

  Mrs. Hicks was right. Nicole was a natural athlete. With only one month of training, one-handed cartwheels came as easy as breathing. Splits were no problem. She was limber and trim.

  Nevertheless, Central High West junior-varsity tryouts were tougher than the Army, Navy, Air Force, Marines. Over the course of three days, girls were subjected to intense choreography and regulation gymnastics. There were weigh-ins and shouting matches. Pom-pom hurls and shows of strength. To
claim one of twelve spots on the squad, Nicole had to beat out two hundred hopefuls. To stay close to Sarina, she competed heroically.

  Both girls made the squad.

  But when it came time for pyramid placements, Nicole did not give it her all. If parents were allowed at practice, Mrs. Hicks would have stormed the cheerleading sponsors and insisted on do-overs. Her daughter was just nervous. Let Nicole try again. With her mother confined to the Central West parking lot, Nicole had the freedom to do as well as she wanted. What she wanted to do was slightly worse than Sarina.

  Sarina was so happy when she was ranked number one. Nicole liked to see her happy. From the bottom of the pyramid, Nicole could see all Sarina had to offer. Dropping down from a basket hurl, Sarina’s pom-poms rustled like a plume on a bird kept at the pet store behind bullet-proof glass. As she fell, she made this incredible noise, which would not stop until Nicole caught her and placed her gently on the floor.

  Sarina said, “You’re the only one I trust, Nicole. The other girls would drop me. They’re so jealous. They’d love to see me hurt.”

  “I’d never hurt you.”

  Sarina said, “Duh!”

  Nicole loved the feeling that, to one person, she was irreplaceable. Her parents had her older brother, Rick. Her teachers had an abundance of students. There were always pretty girls. The world would keep spinning whether Nicole lived or died. But Sarina Summers would be empty without her. Nicole supported her soul. She was her spirit’s gauge and guide.

  On the football field sidelines, Sarina kept Nicole close at hand. Her arm around her waist, Sarina cozied next to Nicole as the squad walked leg over leg and roused the crowd with “Hey! Hey you! Get out of our way, because today is the day we will push you away!”

  Mrs. Hicks mouthed the words from the alumni section. Her husband shook hands and gave the A-OK sign he gave on TV. Nicole’s parents had been sitting in the same spot for years, her mother wearing Mr. Hicks’s jacket. Mr. Hicks left with only one of his collection of cardigans. Junior varsity and varsity games were played on different nights on the Central High East campus field. Before Nicole started cheering, they watched her brother, Rick, one of the best high school linebackers T-town had ever seen. When he graduated, Rick got an athletic scholarship to the University of Georgia. Saturdays, he could be seen on TV. He was still the talk during halftime entertainment.