by M. E. Kerr
Her daddy pulled some strings to get her there, we all knew that. Maybe her daddy figured poor kids wouldn’t be so mean, and she’d fit right in with us. What her daddy didn’t know was kids are kids. Nice kids are nice kids and mean ones are mean ones, and someone like her was a target for anyone with Satan’s meanness in his blood.
She was two grades ahead of me, so it was a while before I really met up with her. I might never have met up with her at all, if Bobby John hadn’t taken to her, and spent most of what was left of his senior year being her protector. (The last girl Bobby John took up with was Selma Smetter, who was all the way in the other direction, a girlie girl who wore dresses all the time because she liked to, and used up all the school’s toilet paper covering the seats good before she sat on them. She plugged her ears if she heard cussing, and sang solos at The Hand until she ran off with a bus driver bringing in Nassau County people for a healing. On her wedding day Bobby John got drunk the one and only time in his life, tore all her pictures in half, and put them in the garbage.)
Bobby John was the only one at Central, or anywhere else far as I knew, who ever called her D. Y. They took shop together, and she made him some kind of dumb-looking footstool he took to his bedroom and treated like it was treasure. He pulled it out from under his bed once a week, sprayed it with Pledge and polished it, and never put his feet on it.
Lunchtimes they ate together in the cafeteria. He’d trade her his Twinkles for her real chocolate éclairs from Fancyfoods. When she couldn’t stand having her locker next to Ripper Blades’, the school bully, Bobby John let her move her stuff into his locker.
Ripper Blades was one of the ringleaders of the group who called her names when she went by: Die Young Cheek was one name, Why Die?, Di-Dike, and Pink Eye.
She told Bobby John Central High was still better than Seaville, because she didn’t really know the kids. She didn’t have to walk in their direction when school was out, or ever meet up with any of them around Ocean Avenue where she lived. She said she never wanted to see the Seaville crowd again in her life, because she knew too much about all of them.
Bobby John said she didn’t know about all of them, but she knew plenty about a lot of them, because her mother was the town shrink who specialized in teenagers. Her mother called herself Dr. Antoinette Young, and she taped all her sessions with her patients. The thing that got Diane-Young into so much trouble was she sneaked down to her mother’s office, listened to the tapes, and began telling stuff she’d heard about kids who went to Seaville. (“She had to do something,” Bobby John said, “the way they was always picking on her.”)
There was some kind of big showdown with the kids and their parents and Diane-Young’s mother. Right after that, she drank a lot of Coca-Cola with rum in it and made her leap.
The first time I ever met her, really, was last winter. I came home from school and they were in Bobby John’s room, off our kitchen. The phonograph was going, Gary S. Paxton singing “Jesus Keeps Takin’ Me Higher and Higher.”
I made a lot of noise getting myself some Flavor-Aid, and by the time I had the ice in it, they both came out to say hi.
She was on her crutch, and Bobby John had his arm around her neck. He was so much taller than she was, he couldn’t get it around her waist without kneeling down next to her.
Bobby John’s hair was all messed up from doing something. Her hair always looked messed up, looked like things might be making their home in it.
Bobby John was carrying this picture of Jesus Daddy got for him. It was a neat picture because no matter where you went in a room, His eyes followed you.
“This thing makes D. Y. nervous,” Bobby John told me, “so it’s now all yours, Opal.”
“It’s the pits to have the eyes of Jesus watching every move we make,” Diane-Young said out of the side of her mouth, “but it’s so tacky I almost want to keep it myself.”
“I wouldn’t call it ‘tacky,’” said Bobby John.
“You”—she gave him a little punch in the stomach—“wouldn’t know the difference.”
They were always giving each other these little punches. She’d aim one up at his chin and go “Pow!” He’d pretend to pound her head and go “Pow! Pow! Pow!”
It was Diane-Young who told Bobby John he let Daddy walk all over him, told him he ought to fight back. But she never criticized him in a mean way like Daddy did. She’d aim her crutch at him from across the room like it was a rifle she was going to shoot him with for saying “ain’t,” or “she don’t,” and he’d correct himself (got to correcting me, too, when I’d slip) and say, “Sorry, D. Y., honeybunch.” He got her to stop saying “shit” every other word (“Excuse my French, B. J.,” was what she’d say), and both of them found a lot of things real funny I never saw the humor in. They’d laugh and laugh and tickle each other all over.
They spent a lot of time in his room, when Mum wasn’t home, her radio/cassette playing top ten full blast once she got tired of Gary S. Paxton, which was about all Bobby John had for records. When Mum was home, they’d hang out in Bobby John’s car in our backyard.
It was her bought him the CB radio Daddy never let him forget he got from a woman.
“One thing I never did was take anything from a woman,” Daddy’d go around boasting, “particularly one who don’t look like a woman, and for another thing ain’t been saved.”
Bobby John would say he was working on getting her saved, then slouch out to his car and fiddle with the CB: “Put your ears on, good buddy, and put the hammer in the toolbox. Make a 10-25 with the Lord Jesus Christ. If you don’t, you’re headed for a 10-70.”
One afternoon last April I came home to find them sitting in the kitchen with this radio/cassette of hers on the table.
“Quiet, please, Opal,” Bobby John said, “because we’re trying to hear this tape D. Y. is playing.”
“Praise the Lord,” I said, dropping my books on the kitchen counter and hurrying to sit down and listen, because I thought now we were going to hear everyone’s secrets, too.
What came out instead was Diane-Young’s mother.
Di-Y, now that you feel so rejected by the Seaville High crowd, aren’t you going too far in the other direction? If it was Reverend Cloward’s son, Dickie, who you were seeing, we would welcome your interest in him, and your new religious enthusiasm. What we are not comfortable with is this Pentecostal religion, and we are not comfortable with this B. J. His background is too unlike your own. His particular faith is not for educated, sensitive people. It is a shouting, emotional mishmash based on superstition and mistaken, literal interpretation of the Bible. Di-Y, dear, religion is a quiet, inward questioning. Commotion isn’t emotion. Fever isn’t fervor. Deep, true, honest feelings never shout, dear. Now that I’ve shared my thoughts with you, tape yours to share with me. Remember, there is a u in us.
Diane-Young turned off the tape. “Well, you guys, that was my morning message yesterday, which is why I say life is such a shitty pity, pardon my French.”
She said her mother often got up early, taped her a morning message, and left it on her napkin at the breakfast table before she went to her office.
Bobby John said, ‘“O clap your hands, all ye people; shout unto God with the voice of triumph.’… It says that right in Psalms. Says ‘all the sons of God shouted for joy.’ Says leap for joy in Luke.”
“Chester Best Cheek and Dr. Antoinette Young think emotionalism is crappy, Bobby John,” Diane-Young said, “and kissing anyplace but at the airport, on the cheek, is the pits.”
“‘Let him kiss me with the kisses of his mouth,’” Bobby John said. “Song of Solomon.”
“Song of Solomon, but definitely not song of Chester Best and Dr. Antoinette,” said Diane-Young.
“When The Rapture comes, everybody’ll be kissing all over the place,” I said, “and it’ll be all right to do it.”
“10-1. I don’t have a clue what your sister’s talking about,” said Diane-Young, lighting up a More.
Bobby John didn’t let me finish. “She’s all taken up with The Rapture,” he said.
“10-1,” Diane-Young said. “10-1. What’s The Rapture?”
“It’s when we get lifted up to heaven without dying,” I said, “and when it comes, everybody’ll be—”
“Opal!” Bobby John barked at me. “Can’t you see we got a serious problem here and we don’t want no talk of The Rapture right this minute.”
“I was just trying to make you feel better,” I said.
Hot nights in summer sometimes I’d sit in my room in the dark and sing softly to myself, sing songs like
Somebody knows when your heart aches,
And everything seems to go wrong,
Somebody knows when the shadows
Need chasing away with a song.
I knew there was more in me waiting to burst out, bigger sounds caught way back in my heart, but I never bade them come forth.
When I was just about sung out, I’d put my radio on, and outside my window I’d hear you all going places in twos. Hear your cars and your shouts.
Just like into the ark, in twos.
You’d go to your hangout, The Sweet Mouth Soda Shoppe, across from the A&P, and I’d wonder what you’d say in there for hours, what you’d do when the sodas were all drunk, sitting there in booths for half the night.
Daddy’d say, “Opal, I never want you to date anyone unsaved, hear?”
“Well, that isn’t something I think you have to worry about, Daddy, since no one’s pounding on the front door to get in for a date with me.”
“The time will come,” he said.
What used to get me in my heart of hearts was you all going by in your cars, some with tops down, tape decks playing, hair flying in the wind—I’d watch you without you knowing it.
I’d ask myself: If Jesus was to say you could be down there right now laughing your fool head off in The Sweet Mouth Soda Shoppe with the rest of them, or be a part of The Rapture, what would you choose? My answer’d come The Rapture, but I’d wrestle songs of Satan arriving at that conclusion.
Sometimes I hated being just a watcher.
I remember right after the healing, that last week of school, when we were cleaning out our lockers and taking tests. One afternoon when it was real hot, like August weather, V. Chicken showed up at Central High with Jesse, in her little sports car. Top down. Music playing.
I came out the front steps and it was the first thing I saw.
I was carrying my plastic book bag with “Let the Son Shine!” written on the sides. The handle was broken, so I was carrying it under my arm, and wished I wasn’t when I saw her behind the wheel, because she’d be offering me one of her book bags next thing. (“Do you know anyone who can use this?” was what she’d say, both of us knowing who could use it.)
Head down, I had no plan to even look in her direction, curious as I was as to what those two were doing down at Central. Then Jesse Pegler called out my name, loud as a blast on the ram’s horn: “Oh-pull!” saying it the way he did. “Oh-pull!”
I’d have had to pretend I was stone deaf not to look around.
“Hi,” I said, so soft only I could hear myself.
He just jumped right over the side of the car, not even opening the door to get out, and came loping across the green lawn up to where I was walking on the pavement. “Don’t call me Bud, now,” he said, putting his little hand across my mouth, grinning at me. “Your mother’s already done that.”
“I know.”
“She tell you?”
“When you came to the healing that day. She thought you were Bud.”
“I’m his brother, Jesse.”
“I know.”
You could smell they’d just cut the lawn, and there was a soft wind blowing in our faces, ruffling his hair.
“How are you?” He stood there smiling down at me.
“I don’t know.”
He bent double laughing at that one. “What kind of an answer is I don’t know?”
“I’m all right.” I didn’t even know him yet, which was why it was hard.
“I suppose you know Bud?”
“I know him from working up at the von Hennigs’, same as Mum.”
“We’re brothers,” he said, so I knew he was real nervous himself.
Then out the front door of school Diane-Young came, in her green corduroy Levi’s and red hooded sweat shirt, sweating hard in the heat, with her “shit kickers” on and her radio/cassette blaring out top ten.
“Diane-Young!” V. Chicken shouted. “Hey! Diane-Young!”
Diane-Young stopped in her tracks and looked around with this “Who, me?” face. She held a hand up to her pink glasses and looked toward the car.
“Yes, you!” V. Chicken shouted.
Diane-Young did one of her funny I May Faint numbers, holding her CAT cap on with one hand, staggering as though she was going to fell down from shock. She did that all the way to the car.
“We’re taking Diane-Young over to meet my dad,” Jesse said.
I didn’t ask why, but I wanted to.
Jesse said, “Gee, Opal, we’d give you a ride, but the car’s too small.”
I could see Diane-Young getting into the jump seat, while V. Chicken held her radio/cassette for her. If Diane-Young saw me, she didn’t let on.
“I always walk, anyways,” I told Jesse, shifting my broken book bag from under one arm to under the other.
“I just wanted to introduce myself. We’re both P.K’s.”
“What’s P.K’s?”
“Preachers’ kids.”
Even the horn on her car sounded different from other horns, sounded like some goose honking overhead.
Jesse called back that he’d be right with them.
Then he said, “I’ll see you, Opal.”
“All right,” I said, but I didn’t believe it. And there was Diane-Young, back in with them from up at Seaville High, laughing in the backseat, with the sun making all the silver in her mouth flash.
Jesse said, “Okay, Opal?”
Then ran off, almost as though something had been promised.
He got me thinking about Bud, I guess.
Maybe he got me thinking about him and I just thought I was thinking about Bud, but I didn’t know enough about him like I did about Bud.
Before Bud ran off you couldn’t be up to the von Hennigs’ very long without being aware of Bud Pegler.
There was a case of a whole family, with the help included, being in love with one boy.
If he wasn’t there in person, he was being talked about, or he was looking at you from out of a picture frame in her bedroom or her bathroom.
She’d pin his notes up on her cork bulletin board, too, for anyone to read, that’s what amazes me.
Sweet passion, beloved baby, you blow away my mind.
One of them said that, and she just put a pin in it and stuck it up there next to a torn stub from Seaville Cinema, souvenir of some movie they’d seen together.
I’d’ve buried a note like that in my sock drawer if anyone’d sent it to me, which isn’t a likelihood I’m going to lose any sleep over.
I think I lost a lot of sleep imagining being in her shoes, know I did. One time I put on one of her cashmere sweaters, then crossed my arms across my chest and felt the sleeves with my fingers, thinking of him holding her, and the softness he touched. Sometimes he began his notes: Dear soft, green-eyed lover, sometimes just Seal, soft Seal.
Seems in that house when he wasn’t there it stopped breathing until he was. You’d hear Mrs. von Hennig called out, “What time’s Bud coming by, honey?” Hear Seal’s father telling her, “When Bud comes, I want to show him something, sweetheart.”
Even the cook, who looked mean enough to star in a horror show, said she was making cinnamon rolls for Bud, or frosting a cake with coconut because Bud loved coconut.
In my time I’ve had daydreams
and night dreams of Bud. Then when he took off they stopped some until Jesse showed up in my life.
Then in some of my daydreams Jesse said everything Bud would say, which had to be the most secret part of my whole existence. No one even guessed, I know that much.
Afternoons after school I’d take my pillow off my bed, go sit in my chair looking out my window, thinking of summer coming with the pillow hugged against my body.
I’d think of the last week in July. I’d think of The Last Dance.
You would have all probably had a good laugh at the idea of Opal Ringer dreaming about going to that dumb dance of yours, but I was that human.
I’d seen V. Chicken dressing for it often enough, felt the excitement up there in their house those hot days of summer getting ready for the big event.
It is like you to have something called The Last Dance in the middle of summer, as though you really know no dance you dance will ever be the last one. There will always be another dance for you.
In my daydreams there was Jesse then, or Bud again, one of them crooking his arm out to touch my fingers to, holding on lightly, on my way with one of them to the lawn of St. Luke’s Church, to The Ladies’ Association of Seaville Township’s big dance of the year. A summer’s night, under the stars with the smell of honeysuckle from the bushes on the church grounds, moon coming up and me wearing my favorite color, which is lemon yellow.
Bud saying, “Opal, you’ve got real pretty eyes, and someday—”
Jesse saying, “We’re P.K’s, sweet passion, beloved baby.”
The next time Diane-Young Cheek came into view was right across our living room on the fourteen-inch screen of our Sears Sensor Touch TV.
School’d been out a week, and I still didn’t have a full-time summer job, just part-time stuff, helping out at the von Hennigs’, waitressing here and there weekends.
This was on a Sunday, about a half hour after the noon whistle blew.
Mum was out in the kitchen cutting up carrot for a chicken-in-the-pot, in her own little world, humming, “Remember Whose Child You Are,” barefoot.