Freckled

by T W Neal

  She smells of chemical flowers from the cut glass bottle of Chanel No. 5 on her vanity. The first time I came in unexpectedly and saw the things she wears under those bright flowered dresses, my eyes bugged out. Her bra was pointy, and the girdle with its SuperFlexx Diamond Tummy Control Panel looked really uncomfortable.

  “Foundation garments,” she says. “Ladies wear them under their clothes.”

  I remember the woman from Taylor Camp squatting beside me as I cleaned fish on the beach, wearing nothing but her braids. I saw her pie as I cleaned the fish, because she wasn’t even wearing panties. I guess she wasn’t a lady, and if foundation garments make you a lady, then my mom isn’t either.

  “You have paint on your hands!” Gigi exclaims. “Go wash!”

  “It’s just watercolor,” I say, going to the kitchen sink.

  “Use the guest bath.” She gestures. “Ladies use private facilities to wash their hands, not the kitchen sink.”

  I go into the little guest bath with its cut crystal fixtures, white carpet-covered toilet, and gold-plated sink. I wash the watercolor off, but I don’t want to unwrap one of the pile of fancy soaps and use it up, and I don’t want to wipe my hands on the fluffy monogrammed towel and mess it up either.

  I end up flapping my hands to dry them and wipe the rest of the damp on the front of my dress as I come out. Gigi sees this with her x-ray vision—she always seems to catch me when I try to shortcut something.

  “There’s a perfectly good towel right there.” She’s rubbing the big colored stone rings she wears like her fingers hurt. They’re so big, they must.

  “I’m sorry, Gigi, I didn’t want to mess up the towel.”

  She puts her hands on my shoulders, small and bony as bird claws, but heavy because of her rings. Stacked on her wrist are gold chains, bangles, and a charm bracelet I long to inspect. In fact, I wish she would take off all of her jewelry and let me play Aladdin’s Cave with it.

  “Look at me.”

  I gaze up at her. Gigi’s breath smells like Tums, and her eyes are very blue. One has a tiny square of black in the blue part. “This is your home now. You can dry your hands on the towels; use anything you need. We have a maid who comes and cleans. Just don’t—rub paint or mud into the furniture.”

  “Okay.” I don’t know what a maid is. Does she mean Conchita, the nice lady who comes every week and made me pancakes one day? Conchita takes all the sheets off our bed and washes them. I help her, and she likes that.

  Gigi straightens up and touches my hair, her favorite thing about me. “Don’t forget. You have ballet tomorrow.”

  I love my ballet lessons over at the Beach and Tennis Club. I’m old to be just starting, behind at the lessons like I was at La Jolla El, but I try really hard to make up for that. I wear a black, slightly scratchy leotard with pink tights, and soft ballet shoes that make me feel graceful. I always slide and skip, pointing my toes, when I wear them.

  Bonny takes the lessons with me. She’s just turned four, and still has a little plumpness around her middle and cheeks that remind me of Argos. In her pale pink tutu with her long silver-blonde hair hanging down her back, she looks really pretty. While people say, “Toby’s cute with her freckles and red hair,” they say, “What a beauty!” about Bonny.

  “Good thing I’m smart,” I tell myself when I hear that. I’ve only been at La Jolla Elementary a few months, and I’m caught up already. But being smart doesn’t seem as good as being pretty, especially since Bonny’s smart, too.

  The next day in ballet class, one hand on the barre, practicing my plié, I keep an eye on my green-eyed, blonde-haired sister jumping across the room in her interpretation of a jeté. Mom’s walked us to the lesson, and she’s watching from a chair. She claps her hands, her mouth open in a big smile I haven’t seen in ages as she watches Bonny’s bouncing.

  I like physical challenges. Mastering the plié and footwork, holding my hands and body just so, definitely count as challenges. We older girls run through the room in a line, jeté-ing, and I feel like I can fly. I really give it my all, hoping Mom will smile watching me, too.

  “You’re picking it up fast,” my teacher says, and nods approvingly, but looking over, I can’t tell if Mom was happy or not—she’s got that glassy look again.

  Our grandparents’ house is right across the street from the Club, and after the lesson we walk past the pond and tennis courts, across the mini golf course and between the tall date palms. I run to do a cartwheel and more jetés as we walk home, unable to go slow, and I skip and spin all the way to the front door.

  Mom hardly seems to notice anything I’m doing. She’s slow and clumsy from the medicine, shuffling along at Bonny’s walking speed, looking down at my sister. I feel invisible, and it hurts—and that makes me want Bonny to hurt too. Sometimes I pinch Bonny when no one can see and pretend a bug bit her when she cries.

  I’m also learning tennis at the Club. Bonny doesn’t like tennis. She runs away from the ball and complains of being hot—but put me in front of one of those machines spitting a yellow sphere at me every thirty seconds, and I’ll go all day. I even like the little white pleated skirt with built-in panties and the collared polo shirt I wear for lessons. My cousin Jennifer, Uncle Chris’s daughter, is already a very good player who wins contests and everything. I want to do that, too.

  I miss my fort in the forest, and the window with the sunlight where I read, but the things I liked best about that place are gone—my puppy. Mom’s happiness.

  We visit Nanee, my great-grandmother, on Sundays. Mom takes less medicine on Sunday so she can drive and hold a conversation. Nanee lives in a big tall building that has a man in the elevator who pushes the button for you, and she’s short and round and smells like baby powder. She gives great hugs and smiles the whole time we visit.

  Nanee has none of the fast-moving sharpness of Gigi, even though she’s Gigi’s mother. She wears tons of sparkly rhinestone jewelry, and if I get up close and ogle it, she takes off whatever I want to see and lets me wear it and play with it while I’m there.

  “Such a magpie,” she says, smiling. “You love sparkly things, don’t you, Toby?” She says it like it’s a good thing.

  Mom loves Nanee, too, and when we’re there, we all relax. Nanee lets Bonny and me roll around on the silky carpet and furniture because it’s so soft, and she just laughs at our antics. “You girls are just like kittens!” She doesn’t seem to care if we’re ladies or not.

  When Nanee puts a box of Turkish Delight down on the coffee table, I glance at Mom to see if it’s okay. Turkish Delight is a fruity, chewy candy covered with powdered sugar, and Nanee always gives us a few pieces. Mom’s staring in our general direction, but her eyes don’t seem to be registering anything, so I take three pieces of Turkish Delight and chomp them down, my cheeks bulging, as Bonny and I play Go Fish with Nanee.

  Mom has that little smile on her mouth that says, “I’m here, and it’s okay.”

  That little smile doesn’t reassure me. I wonder if she’s getting better. Nobody tells me anything, and I’m not sure that this shuffling, vacant, sleepy Mom is better than the emotional, angry, acting-strange Mom.

  One day when I’m alone with Pop, I ask him what’s wrong with Mom. He’s sitting on the fancy white couch in the living room, putting new guitar strings on his Martin. He hardly ever plays it here in La Jolla, so I like to watch and listen when he does because it reminds me of home in the evenings in the Forest House.

  “They tell me she had a psychotic break and paranoid schizophrenia, which is a fancy name for crazy. But I think it’s just that she took too much acid and peyote while doing that occult study course. She tried to kill herself three times while we were out there, you know.”

  I didn’t know.

  Even with my curiosity, even with how much I love Mom and try to observe and stay on top of things, I missed some big stuff that was going on.

  “Why?” I ask. My lips feel numb, imagining having only Pop and Bonny
as our family and living here with Gigi and Grandpa forever. “Why would she want to kill herself?”

  “The tree spirits were talking to her, and they told her to. I had to get her out of that place because the mana was so strong.”

  Mana. The Hawaiian word for spiritual power. It’s true—there was a lot of mana at the Forest House. I’m thankful I didn’t know Mom was trying to die while we were there; I would never have stopped worrying.

  Pop tightens his new set of guitar strings. He turns the knob on the head of the guitar, plucking the string with the thumbnail he keeps extra-long for guitar, and it makes a pweeeeew sound. He blows a black plastic tuning whistle and adjusts again.

  These two sounds have never really made sense to me because they don’t match, but somehow they do. I’ve never been able to figure out how he knows when they do. When he tried to teach me, the strings hurt my fingers too much. It was the one time I just didn’t want to make him happy enough to persist through that pain.

  “Sue lay in the road naked and waited for a car to hit her,” he goes on, talking to the guitar as much as me. “The cops got called one time, and another time the driver just told her to get out of the road and go home.”

  He doesn’t tell me about the third time, and I don’t ask.

  I picture my mother’s long tanned body spread-eagled in the narrow, winding, lightless road as she stares up into the stars overhead, talking to the spirits, waiting for death as a car comes around the turn.

  The squealing of the brakes.

  The fear, the yelling, the confusion.

  That all of this went on without me knowing is huge. I should have been around the cottage more, keeping an eye on things. Guilt stabs me in the guts, and I fold up small, holding the couch’s fancy gold satin cushion, letting Pop’s soothing plunking comfort me as I lie down and suck my thumb.

  A few nights later, I overhear my parents talking in their room. “I hate this place.” Mom’s crying. “It’s killing our family. Our spirit. Who we are. We have to go home to Kauai.”

  I can hear my dad’s rumbling whisper but can’t make out his words. I stare at the ceiling, sprayed with white swirly plaster stuff that has glittery gold bits in it. Bonny and I have twin beds separated by pale carpet. I glance over at my sister. She’s asleep, her finger still in her mouth, and I get out of bed and climb in with her. She moves over without waking up.

  I do that many nights, and Bonny doesn’t seem to mind. She’s always there with me, my best and only friend, even though I’m jealous of her sometimes.

  Home. Kauai. Most days here in La Jolla, Kauai seems as fake as Neverland in my Peter Pan book. But sometimes, when the window’s cracked so I hear the morning wind in the date palms that surround the Beach and Tennis Club below us, or there’s a big swell breaking on the La Jolla Shores Beach and I can hear the surf, I’m back at the little cottage on the beach at Rocky Point. Sometimes when the trees outside cast shadows over my book as I read in my grandmother’s guest room, I’m back in my little bed next to the window at the Forest House, and there’s nothing before me but a long day of playing barefoot in the friendly jungle.

  I close my eyes and imagine it. In my mind I can be there without mosquitoes, bullies, weird guys with glittery eyes, or a beloved puppy suddenly gone.

  Chapter Twelve

  Lady Lessons

  Mom and me

  Age: 8, La Jolla, California, 1973

  I’m getting used to La Jolla, and I’m even starting to like it. I’ve ridden in my new friends’ Jaguars and Mercedes, swum in their pools, petted their poodles. I come back from one playdate super excited. “Sarah has an elevator in her house!”

  Mom makes a squinchy face. She’s definitely feeling better because she says, “How ridiculous.”

  Gigi and Grandpa Jim take us all for a family dinner at the La Jolla Country Club once a week. I like this because of the tasty food and that I get a Shirley Temple. Other than that, it’s boring and one long “lady lesson.”

  The evening always begins with a cocktail in the formal seating area at home. Bonny and I wear matching long party dresses with white, ruffled yokes and flowered, flowing material that Gigi bought us. Hers is blue, mine is red, and we both have on Mary Janes with itchy white lace socks.

  Pop drinks an amber drink with ice that Grandpa gives him. He usually has two before we get out the door, and I can see his mood improve by his second or third. Mom drinks white wine and wears a shirtwaist with a belt and that little smile. Grandpa makes Bonny and me ginger ale with a lime slice at the wet bar and forbids us to spill. We sit on the stiff white couch, and Gigi coaches us on making conversation: “Begin with a compliment when you greet someone. Notice the weather. Talk about anything but religion or politics.”

  We need to take two cars to get us all to the club. Gigi and Grandpa don’t want us driving the van, since “it’s not suitable,” so we separate into their cars: Mom and Bonny drive with Grandpa in his big black Cadillac, and Pop and I drive with Gigi in her cream-colored Thunderbird.

  In the back seat where they can’t see me, I lie down and wriggle around, enjoying the softness and breathing in the smell of the leather, which makes me think of saddles and riding the Black Stallion across a starlit desert as the car glides up the steep drive to the Club.

  We pull in under the portico and Pop, who’s driving, hands the valet the keys. Pop’s big bushy beard gets a glance, but he’s packed into one of Grandpa’s suits, so he passes muster. I’ve already been told that “ladies must wear dresses or dressy slacks, and men wear a coat and tie at the Country Club.”

  “Thanks, Henry,” Gigi says, as the valet comes around and opens her door. He lifts her out by the hand like she’s a queen. I open my door and hop out, slamming it. Henry smiles—he didn’t have time to get my door. He’s shiny black from head to toe, and his teeth look like pearls.

  “You like to do things yourself,” he says. I nod, staring openmouthed at his beauty. His skin looks like purple-black satin and his hair seems like it would feel good to touch. I haven’t seen many black people—we didn’t have any on Kauai.

  “Ladies wait for the door to be opened,” Gigi hisses in my ear, grabbing my hand too tightly and tugging me away from staring at Henry. Bonny and Mom are already standing with Grandpa, waiting for us in the fancy lobby with its gigantic vases of flowers and the crystal chandelier dripping stars and rainbows of light over the patterned carpet.

  We gather under Grandpa’s formal portrait, painted to commemorate his stint as President of the Board for the Club. Set in a big, curlicued gold frame, his rugged face looks off into the distance like Christopher Columbus considering new worlds to conquer.

  Tonight, Gigi’s wearing her red Chanel suit with the gold buttons and her real diamonds. She begins her oft-repeated spiel, gesturing with her sparkly hands. “After your Grandpa sold his rubber factory, he made investments in stocks and real estate. Now he gives his time to managing those and guiding worthy organizations like the La Jolla Country Club.”

  “Honey, they’ve heard it,” Grandpa says. “Let’s eat.” Holding Bonny’s hand, he ushers Gigi ahead of him toward the dining room. He likes Bonny better than me, but Gigi likes me better, so it works out. Gigi takes my hand and we walk into the restaurant. Grandpa and Bonny follow. Mom and Pop bring up the rear, leaning into each other as if they’ll tip over otherwise.

  The hostess leads us to a round table for six by the window. The Club’s dining room looks out over the ocean and the rest of La Jolla, twinkling with lights as the sun goes down. The way the window curves, it seems to me that the whole town and the ocean beyond is held inside a fishbowl along with the setting sun, and I want to plaster my face against the glass just to look and look.

  We sit where Gigi tells us to, always an important decision that she spends time considering aloud. This time, I’m between my grandparents, Bonny is next to Grandpa, and Mom and Pop are across from us behind an expanse of draped white tablecloth.

  Fa
cing me are rows of utensils, a couple of glasses, and a fancy gold plate that’s not to be eaten from, decorated with a napkin folded into a swan. I remember my “lady lesson” from the last time we were here and take my napkin, shake it out, and drape it over my lap.

  Gigi pats my arm approvingly.

  A waiter comes to take our drink orders. Bonny and I tell him, “Shirley Temple, please,” when it’s our turn.

  After that, we can hold the massive leather-bound menus. Gigi points a coral-colored nail at the Children’s Choices section. “Something from there will be more than enough.”

  I order the Hamburger and Pommes Frites. Bonny gets Mac and Cheese. My dad and Grandpa Jim have Ribeye and a Baked Potato. Mom has the Vegetarian Selection. Gigi has Veal Piccata. After we order, she leans down to whisper in my ear. “Ladies never eat much in front of other people. And they always watch their weight.”

  Watch their weight? What does that even mean?

  The bread comes in a steaming basket that makes my mouth water. Gigi’s eye is on me as I lift the white napkin covering hot sourdough rolls and use the tongs on the table to lift a roll onto my plate. Remembering my lesson from last week, I tear off a fragment and butter it lightly, pop it into my mouth and chew with my mouth closed and elbows off the table. She nods, and then frowns as she spots Bonny cutting her roll in half and buttering the whole thing.

  “No, no,” she says. “Just little bits. Like this.” She demonstrates.

  I glance across the table. My mom’s eyes are narrowed. She’s not appreciating Gigi’s instruction of us, and just like noticing that she picked the Vegetarian Selection, I can tell she’s feeling better. She’s finished her chardonnay and orders another with a raised finger and a tap on her glass.

  I’ve eaten my roll, but I know better than to reach for another even though I’m still hungry. Conversation about golf, fishing, and the stock market go on over my head as my burger arrives at last. I pick it up in both hands and open my mouth wide. I get a tap on the wrist from Gigi. “Wait until the senior lady takes her first bite.”