Will the Real Raisin Rodriguez Please Stand Up?

by Judy Goldschmidt

Now I’m asking her to tell him that she made a mistake and that she must have been imagining it. . . .

  Now she’s telling me—ooh! That Sam—who knew she had such a potty mouth?

  I guess I better go talk to CJ. Which is fine because I can still put the extra nice into effect even without the Sparkle.

  9:18 PM, EST

  I just got off the phone with CJ. Kept it really simple, in light of my PSS (Pre-Sparkle Syndrome) and stuck to the extra nice. All I talked about was Saturday night. I asked him (extra nicely) if he would be so kind and gracious as to accept Lynn’s invitation to go to the movies and pizza with Jeremy and her on Saturday night. And how does he feel about participating in the exchange of gifts?

  He said a movie and pizza with JereLynn sounded delightful. That maybe we could go to the Mainline Multiplex. Or otherwise he’d check and see what was playing at the Art House. Either way, pizza afterward sounded perfect, presents sound terrific, and what time should he pick me up?

  9:19 PM, EST

  OK. That’s not exactly what happened. What happened exactly is that I said, “Do you want to go to the movies with Lynn and Jeremy on Saturday night and then out for pizza afterward where we’ll exchange gifts?” and he said, “OK.” But we each knew what the other meant, and that’s what’s important.

  9:20 PM, EST

  Ya know, I think it’s really great that CJ doesn’t talk much. In fact, it’s one of my favorite things about him. It’s not about quantity, it’s about quality—just ask the Hiltons. I’m pretty sure they’re the ones who said that too.

  9:21 PM, EST

  Though it is rather interesting to consider from a medical standpoint. When I first met CJ, he had a pretty severe talking deficiency. Then right before we started going out, he came down with sudden onset chatty-osis. And now he seems to be experiencing a deficiency again.

  I wonder if he was born with only a certain amount of words and he just used them up?

  That’s OK. We all have our differences. And just like I’m not going to judge CJ for his talking disorders, I can only hope he won’t judge me for my PSS.

  Comments:

  Logged in at 9:28 PM, EST

  PiaBallerina: Rae, I feel bad. It sounds like you’re really nervous about leaving CJ. Do you think you’ll be able to have a good time once you get here?

  Logged in at 9:29 PM, EST

  kweenclaudia: don’t worry, pi. rae’s going to have a great time. as soon as she sees us, she’ll forget about cj and all the sweet nothings he never whispers in her ear.

  9:41 PM, EST

  I’m so so sorry, you guys. You know you kittens are the loves of my life. My reason for being. The ones I owe it all to. If I didn’t know you two were back home waiting for me, I never could have survived this move. You can’t possibly think I’m not looking forward to going home. Ever since I got to Philadelphia, I’ve been living for the moment I’d finally see you two again on sacred soil. The moment I’d get to stroll down historical

  Telegraph Avenue and grab a light breakfast of Cruelty-Free muffins and hot Postum before heading to the delightful annual Holiday Street Fair. Then comb through the vast array of folk art and jewelry booths in search of the beaded necklace to outdo all other beaded necklaces. And then to find one that looks almost exactly like all the ones you already have but know that this one’s better because it was fashioned by a person of indigenous persuasion or possibly a former hippie who may or may not have noticed that the sixties ended forty years ago. A Tofurkey burger at Karma Kow for lunch will be just the thing to tide us over as we venture into Amoeba Records in search of old vinyl and then finish the day off with a light supper of Chicken-style nuggets at McVeggie’s before making our final stop of the day at House of Pies for some Fluffernutter pie made with real sugar and white flour (but just this once)!

  So you see? I really truly sincerely lovingly muchly fantastically stupendously stupendeliciously cannot wait to get to Berkeley to see you two, the best Kitties a girl could have. And don’t forget. I’m also dying to see my dad. It’s been four months, and I really miss him. So it’ll be nice to have him all to myself for once. I guess that’s the one teeny tiny good thing to come out of my parents’ divorce. That I’ll be able to spend time alone with my dad, which I was never able to do when he and my mom were together, especially at the end, when they were always fighting.

  I’m just a teeny-weeny bit nervous that CJ won’t like me when I get back—that’s all. But I’m working on that so it won’t get in the way of our fun once we’re together.

  Comments:

  Logged in at 9:46 PM, EST

  PiaBallerina: Okay, Rae, I feel much better. As long as you haven’t given up on us.

  9:54 PM, EST

  I promise I haven’t. In fact, Honies, I’m almost home! Mark your calendars. I’m arriving on December 23 at one o’ clock. I already talked to my dad, and he said he’d drive me over to see you guys as soon as I dropped my bags off at home. So it’s all set. Roll out the red carpet—Berkeley, here I come!

  9:57 PM, EST

  That is, if you still want me . . .

  9:59 PM, EST

  You do still want me, don’t you?

  10:09 PM, EST

  I’ll take that as a yes.

  PS—There’s something I neglected to mention earlier. I hope you can forgive me. It’s not like me at all to forget something so crucial. I guess I’ve just been a little preoccupied lately. What I’m trying to say is this morning I was in the shower and I realized that I ran out of shaving cream. The only product in there was shampoo, soap, and conditioner. Now, which do you think I turned to? You’re probably thinking the shampoo or the soap, right? But surprise, surprise, it was the conditioner! It’s meant to soften hair, right? Well, what better product to use as a substitute for shaving cream but something that softens hair? Word to the wise—conditioner makes an even better shaving cream than shaving cream.

  PPS—Now if only it made a better ketchup than ketchup, we’d be sitting on pure gold!

  Tuesday, December 14

  7:03 AM, EST

  Kitty Kitten Kats,

  Even though I haven’t spoken to Sparkles about sparkling yet, I think it’s safe to bet that looking as beautiful and gorgeous as possible couldn’t hurt. And seeing that super-modelitis isn’t going around at the moment, I’m going to have to work very hard at achieving my goal.

  Now, why can’t the Hiltons give us a saying that explains how to do that?

  7:07 AM, EST

  I bet that saying would have something to do with false eyelashes. Like, false eyelashes make the eyes grow gorgeouser.

  Or, out of false eyelashes, out of beauty and gorgeousity . . .

  And you know what? It’s absolutely true. Everyone looks better in false eyelashes. Even my bathroom sink looks prettier with them sitting on top of it.

  I’m going to find mine and put them right on. Because when the Hiltons speak, you’d have to be a fool not to listen.

  7:14 AM, EST

  Help! Emergency! My lashes are glued shut. Someone call 911! I can’t see a thing! Thank goodness I can touch-type or else I’d have no way of communicating with anyone and I’d be left in my bedroom to die helpless, sticky, and alone.

  7:15 AM, EST

  Unless of course I had the good sense to make use of my voice and shout for help.

  Let’s see what happens . . .

  (I’m shouting for help.)

  No response . . .

  (Trying again.)

  Still no response . . . (Trying a third time.)

  Still nothing . . .

  Exactly what is wrong with these people who claim to care? Who claim to be related to me by blood? For all they know, a sniper could be sniping me with his snipe, but they’re content to take their chances.

  What’s this? Do I hear the pitter-patter of little feet? The tiny gasps of breath trying to make its way through mucus bubbles? The counting off of steps climbed? Wait! Good news! She’s made it up to nu
mber eleventeen! Help is finally on its way!

  7:18 AM, EST

  I never thought I’d say these words, but thank heavens for Lola Rodriguez! Who knew that the chubby little buddha has had healing hands? That or enough grease on her palms to dissolve a layer of eyelash glue with a mere pat-down. Either way, the important thing is that I can see again.

  Meanwhile, as far as the rest of my family goes, I might as well be sniper kill.

  Sometimes I wonder if I give my little Loly enough credit. I used to think all she was good for was a nice strong squeeze every once in a while and a pinch or two of those little rolls on her wrists and knees. But there’s so much more to her than meets the eye. She’s very bright. And loyal. And she has excellent taste. Not just in clothes (I’m not just saying this because most of her clothes were handed down to her by a certain fashion icon with the initials RR either), but also in animals. As I recently discovered, she also loves monkeys! It started with Curious George. Then she demanded to go to the zoo to visit the monkey house. And now she’s carrying around this picture Samantha downloaded for her. It’s a monkey swinging from a tree. A squirrel monkey—just like my favorite monkey, Gordo, the first monkey in space.

  One day when Lola’s old enough, I’m going to tell her about Gordo. But for now I don’t want to upset her. If she started to love Gordo as much as I do, she’d be really upset to find out that he died during splash-down.

  Oh, Gordo, you are terribly, terribly, missed.

  Now I have to go to school sparkle free and without eyelashes, when all I really feel like doing is thinking about that monkey and how he gave his life for science and the exploration of space, our final frontier.

  Poor Gordo. Astronaut. Hero. Monkey.

  At least I’ll see Sparkles soon. He always cheers me up.

  10:15 AM, EST

  That didn’t go quite the way I expected.

  I found Sparkles standing by his locker, sparkling as always in his knee-length kimono (with a tie, of course, in accordance with the Franklin Academy dress code) and combat boots.

  “Hey, Sparkles,” I said, hesitating. “Can you tell me your secret to sparkling?”

  He took a very long, very deep breath “New Girl, I don’t usually disclose that kind of information. That’s why my home phone number is unlisted and my cell phone has blocked ID. But since you’re in such a serious pickle, I’ll make an exception for you,” he said. I have no idea how he knew about my situation, but I’ve learned not to question Sparkles’s methods. I did, however, question why he’d bothered to tell me he would share his secrets but was now moonwalking away.

  At first I thought the moonwalk was just another case of Sparkles sparkling. Kind of like a pre-show to the big Sparkles Extravaganza. But once he turned the corner and disappeared out of sight, it was clear he had no intention of coming back.

  I called out his name—“Sparkles! Wait! Aren’t you forgetting something?”

  “Sorry,” he said as he sheepishly moonwalked back toward me “This is just a bit difficult for me.” He gave me a look of extreme boo-boo eyes. One that said, Please don’t make me do this.

  And I can’t say I didn’t understand. He had the secret to something very special and precious and he wanted to keep it all to himself. Which is why I gave back a look that said, I’m not noticing the look you’re giving me. Now tell me everything. A better person might have taken his hint. But I’m not that person. Something to work on once I start sparkling.

  We exchanged one more round of looks and then Sparkles gave in.

  “Here goes,” he said, his lip quivering. “My secret to sparkling is this.” He took a pause that was almost too torturous to bear. I was drooling in anticipation of the secret that could be my salvation. “Basically, I just act like myself.”

  “That’s it?” I asked, not sure if he was being straight with me. “You just act like yourself?”

  “That’s all it is,” he said, nodding.

  “Would that work for me?” I asked.

  “Excellent question. Here, let’s take a look,” he said, spinning me around slowly and knitting his brows as if he were thinking really hard.

  “More or less. But in your case, I’d add a little bit of this,” he said, sticking his arms out to his sides and waving his fingers. “And some tra la la,” he said, vocalizing the tra la la part like an American Idol. “And finally, some of this,” he said as he mimed cracking a whip in a way that made it look so believable, I flinched in fear. And in the split second that my eyes were off him, he vanished, leaving me no closer to understanding the art of sparkling.

  Which left me with the same old boring tools I started with: extra niceness and a keen understanding of the fine art of makeup application.

  I can hardly blame him, though. He’s very very very unique. That’s three verys. If he gave his secrets away, then he might only be two.

  11:05 AM, EST

  I just saw Lynn and Fippy during homeroom, I asked them if I looked any different.

  “Like how?” Lynn asked.

  “Am I sparkling?”

  “Not really,” Fippy said through sealed lips. She always keeps them shut when she talks. I think it’s a trick to make people think she’s too busy with glamorous and important things to waste energy on moving her mouth when she speaks. “Though there is some glistening happening over your top lip and brow.”

  I guess I was hoping that all that weird stuff Sparkles said at the end of our little session together was actually some kind of magic spell he put on me.

  “How ’bout now?” I asked, waving my hands, tra la la-ing and cracking the whip the way he showed me.

  “Now you look like you’re having a seizure,” Lynn said.

  Then Fippy started rifling through her backpack. “Here’s a spoon. Let me hold down your tongue so that you don’t swallow it,” she said.

  “Never mind that. Can I borrow your makeup bag?” I said to Fippy. I’d have asked Lynn, but all her makeup is black and I was going for sparkle-y, not spooky.

  I went to the bathroom and did an expert makeup job if I do say so myself. One that’s sure to make a lasting impression on CJ.

  12:33 PM, EST

  Looks like my two old standbys (niceness and makeup) might be just enough to get the job done. I don’t know what I was so worried about. CJ sat across from me during lunch today and couldn’t stop telling me how nice I am and how pretty I looked.

  Ok, he didn’t actually say it in words. But I could tell he was thinking it by the way he was staring at me.

  12:50 PM, EST

  I ran into Lynn outside the computer room on the way to fifth period. According to her, CJ wasn’t staring because I looked pretty. He was staring because I looked like I fell into a bucket of Bozo the Clown.

  “I guess I overdid it,” I said to her as we walked up the stairs from the cafeteria to our lockers. I was completely mortified. People had been looking at my face all day long. They must have thought I went completely mental.

  “Have you looked in the mirror?” she asked.

  Of course I had. And between us, I thought I looked kind of . . . good. In fact, all during lunch I felt a little sad for the rest of the girls who didn’t think to put on extra makeup today.

  “But doesn’t everyone look better with makeup on? Don’t my richer, thicker, fuller-looking lashes make my eyes pop? Doesn’t my bronzed glow make me look more radiant? And the red lipstick? A lot of people don’t know this, but it’s the fashion stylists’ secret to making teeth look whiter. Are you sure it’s not just your dislike for the beauty industry talking?”

  “Raisin, I’ve never been more sure of anything,” Lynn said, looking even more serious than the day she threatened to lead a strike against the faculty for insisting that all students wear footwear to school. “You should probably go wash your face off before anyone else sees you.”

  “Isn’t there any possibility that CJ didn’t notice?”

  Lynn shook her head. “He’d have to be mi
ssing his eyes,” she said. “And since he’s already missing his ability to speak, the likelihood of that seems pretty slim.”

  “Maybe he was blinded by my extra niceness?” I offered.

  Lynn just shook her head again.

  “Do you think he’s going to stop liking me?” I asked as I started to mount the stairs.

  “Absolutely not,” she said with confidence.

  “How can you be so sure?”

  “I’m sure he noticed something was different. He probably thought you did something new with your hair. Guys can be pretty clueless. It’s one of their best qualities.”

  At least that was comforting.

  When I got to the bathroom, I took one last look at myself in the bathroom mirror. I must admit, I still kind of liked what I saw. It was a bit rough taking that first soapy swipe at my work of art. Maybe I have a disease like the one really skinny girls have where no matter how much weight they lose, they see someone fat when they look in the mirror. Only my symptoms are that no matter how many pounds of makeup I’ve piled on, whenever I look in the mirror I see someone who’s wearing just the perfect amount.

  . . . And a little bit of eyelash glue left over from the morning.

  4:55 PM, EST

  I think I solved all my Christmas-related problems.

  After school was over, I waited on the front staircase for CJ and tried to think of more ways to be extra nice since sparkling and now looking beautiful and gorgeous were both out.

  “Hey, Raise,” said Fippy through pursed lips. “Can you play electric bass? I just wrote this great tune 'Santa Claus Is Dead’ and I’m trying to get some musical accompaniment together for Black Christmas.”

  “I don’t,” I told her. “But what’s Black Christmas?”