Girl in Reverse (9781442497368) (6 page)

Deep voice. I grip the phone. Elliot James!
Oh, God!
“Mr. Howard found your books and purse and stuff in the
art room.”
What's in my purse? Oh, God.
Did you look in my purse?
“The side door doesn't lock every time, so somebody could just come in there. . . . Anyway, I left them on your front porch.”

“Yes, w . . . w . . . well . . . Okay. Bye.”

I squeeze the receiver of our magical telephone. Ralph is standing one and a half inches away, coating me with Wrigley's spearmint breath.
Git!
I bump him with my knee. “Go away—
now—
or die.” I walk to the front hall and creak open the heavy door. My textbooks are in a neat pile with my purse on top. I look up and down the block. No Elliot.

I flutter upstairs, past Dad with his newspaper spread on the kitchen table. I unclasp my purse and paw through it—just dull stuff: an elastic headband, comb, my detention slip, Tangee, pen, money. Thank God.

I sit on my vanity stool, lean in, and stare at the mirror. Same face,
new
me. I have been telephoned by the mysterious, know-it-all, future artistic genius of the century Elliot James. “So there!”

Like clockwork Ralph is at my door demanding, “Who was that?”

“Michelangelo.” I know Ralph has no earthly idea who Michelangelo is, but he'd never admit it. “He brought my books over.”

“Yeah,” he says, “thought I recognized him. Hey, check this out.” He drags me to his room and opens the door to
the attic. The bottom stair holds his Scout gear—binoculars, a camping heater, ditty bag, magnifying glass, his
Handbook for Boys
.

The next step houses his newly revamped Scout collection. “I've got a theme now, like you suggested.” But it doesn't look like it. There's the odd polished stick and the fossil shell. The rotten squirrel tail has been replaced with a bundle of bamboo poles and string. “Wind chimes,” Ralphie says, lifting them in front of me. He sits back on his heels. “For my pigeons.”

“Why, yes, of course. How excellent.” I shake my head. “
What
pigeons?”

He points. “Up there. I'm doing the Pigeon Raising merit badge. You know,
squab
.”

“No.”

“For racing and flight contests and carrying secret messages. There's coop sanitation and seeds and grit and record keeping . . .”

“Ew. Where'd you buy them?”

“Didn't. The pigeons were already up there. Now all I have to do is raise 'em.” He jiggles the wind chimes. “These'll keep them in a good mood.”

“No, stupid. Where'd you buy the wind chimes?”

“Chow House gift shop.” Ralph backs away from the steps on his knees and turns to me. “We've gotta eat there sometime.”

“I told you, I'm never going in there.”

“Their shop is neat. They also sell
wrist rests
like this. New ones. Chinese artists use them to prop their forearms up while they paint. Gives a better angle for the brush. But this one of mine is
old
. An antique.” Ralph gives me long look. “Have you ever seen one before?”

I hear a car cruising slowly down our street—
Elliot?
I hop up, peek out of Ralph's window, but I can't see a thing. I turn back. “Huh?”

“Like I just
said
, they sell these at the Chow House.”

Ralph waves the stick in front of my face. “Ding-dong, anybody home?” He puts it in my hand.

I look down “What'd you say this was?”

“God! Never mind.” Ralph puts it back on the step. Sighs.

My brain is fuzz. What a day!

It started in Kansas City and ended in Weird Town.

Neil Bradford's brother, Tom, is missing in action in North Korea.

After attendance is taken Friday morning the principal announces an all-school gathering outside by the flagpole. Neil and his sister, Susan, who is a freshman, stand by the principal. Susan is crying. She looks scared to death. Neil has his arm around her. Everybody is shivering. After a moment of silent reflection, the ROTC honor guard raises the flag. It is regal and reassuring lifting in the wind, snapping strong against the Red Scare. Neil salutes. The flag helps everybody focus.

Anita glances over. She actually looks scared of me. I stare at my feet, feeling responsible for Neil's missing brother. The principal pledges that the school will keep a vigil for Tom Bradford and his family. I feel terrible for a
thousand reasons, especially for the possibility of Elliot and these other guys joining the army someday and trudging across Korea dodging bombs and bullets.

We say the Pledge of Allegiance and dismiss, but the Bamboo Curtain blocks my way. Kids literally sidestep around me. I see ching-chong head tilts. I hear “commie” coughs. A thousand students and staff head back into school, but not me.

My heart pumps glue. I hate my impossible self and the impossible warring world. I sink onto a low brick wall by the bike racks. Go back into school or go away? I could take a quick walk across the street and become missing in action too. What's the right thing to do in this wrong world?

Mr. and Mrs. Chow must rise above slights and slurs every day, just go on about their business. What did Gone Mom do? I guess she gave a big part of her
problem
to the Sisters of Mercy and went on about her business. I pledge to the flag: “I will never do that to anybody!”

Mr. Howard comes down the school steps. He walks past the flagpole into the crosswalk in front of the building to retrieve the portable
STOP FOR PEDESTRIANS
sign. The base of the pole is stuck in a tire filled with cement. He spots me on the wall, pauses. Cars gather on both sides of the crosswalk but Mr. Howard is in no hurry. He glances at the flag and then back at me. He seems to read my mind. He tips his hand toward the stop sign—
are you going to be a pedestrian or
not?
For a frozen moment our eyes lock. The second-hour bell sounds. I stay put. In the wind the metal hooks on the flag rope clank against the pole. Mr. Howard straightens his back, salutes me, and walks toward the building, rolling the sign along.

A gust of wind whips the flag around the pole until all but a little red corner disappears. I get up and disappear too, back inside the building.

*  *  *

Social studies is torture. I feel like everyone expects me to confess which of my chink relatives captured Tom Bradford.

Lights off. Thank God. Venetian blinds closed. Miss Arth starts a newsreel about the war. She sits at her desk and slides a nail file from her drawer. I have concluded that showing movies is a way to avoid teaching us something. The first film features a man who is finding homes in America for “war waifs”—unbaptized babies with mixed Asian and American blood that nobody wants. A beaming crowd of dignitaries applauds as the orphans are unloaded from military planes. The man and his wife wave, surrounded by six waifs they have adopted themselves. The kids look too petrified to blink, despite the flashbulbs.

I think back to the second grade at Our Lady of Sorrows. Patty and Anita and I played a game called “pagan babies” in which we acted out the dynamics of our real Pagan Babies classroom project. I was always the pagan
baby who got saved, which I now understand was because I was foreign and lesser. In our real classroom Pagan Babies activity we were all encouraged and coerced to bring pennies, nickels, and dimes for the coffee can on the teacher's desk. When we had five dollars we sent it to a Catholic mission in a heathen country to baptize one baby and save its soul. We got to vote on the name. Once somebody put my name in the ballot box. Sister read it out loud before realizing the
joke
. Everybody laughed at me. I laughed too, but I never played pagan babies again and I never stopped worrying that I might become one someday.

Maybe I have.

Another newsreel shows blasted bridges and bloodstained snow and marines cooling their guns with river ice after an attack by “the Reds who are trying to split the free nations of the world apart.” Another has Chinese Lieutenant General Wu speaking at the United Nations, blaming UN troops for the criminal acts that precipitated the Korean War. Only the Russian delegate shakes hands with the general after his speech, evidence of commies sticking together.

To close, the announcer asserts, “We must not capture the enemy; we must
destroy
the enemy. Red China's atrocities will be judged by the parliament of the world.”

*  *  *

Friday after school I'm lying on my bed when Ralph barges in as usual. “Scram. This waif has a horrible headache.”

“Waif?”

“Orphan.”

“Hold on.” He exits to the bathroom and comes back with two aspirin and a glass of water. Ralph chews his thumbnail, rocks back on his heels, looking down at me. “Tell me as soon as it's gone, 'cause I've gotta show you something.”

“What?” I say, rising onto my elbow. Ralph's hair is stuck up funny in the front. “I am not doing a guessing game. I had a humiliating, horrible day.”

“With Mom?” Ralph asks, as if everything impossible in my life has to do with her.

“At school.” I rub my eyes and explain about Tom Bradford being missing in Korea and the devil Lieutenant General Wu newsreel and the traveling waifs and how I feel responsible for the invention of Communism.

He nods. “Bad day.” Then holds up a finger. “But not as bad as Tom Bradford's day.”

“Right.” I picture Susan Bradford looking so dumbfounded and Tom in a grisly prison camp with U.S. soldiers stumbling and starving and dying. Ralph sits beside me on the bed. I lean on him, my heart stopped. He's quiet for a change. I think he's crying a little bit too.

I start sobbing. “Don't ever go in the army, Ralph. Or the navy or the marine corps. Promise. I know it looks all brave and everything, but please, promise me you won't go.”

“I thought you
had
to enlist with the selective service or something if you're a guy.”

“Then get a bad-back deferment like Dad, or a hernia, or flat feet, or . . . get married.”

“Getting married wouldn't keep an eleven-year-old out of the army.”

“You're right. But being crazy would.”

“Okay. I won't get married.” Ralph stands. “Is your head better? There's something I need to show you. Don't move.”

He runs to his room and returns with his hand behind his back. He shuts my door, breathing hard.

“Now, close your eyes and put out your hand.”

I start to, then pull back and make a fist. “Is it gonna be wet?”

“No.”

“Alive?”

“Nah.”

“Dead?”

Ralph sets something in my hand.

It's the same wooden wrist rest from his collection.

“Oh, this is certainly exciting,” I say. “You've shown it to me a million times already.”

“But see the carving on the bottom?” Ralph points to the flat side.

It has engraving so faint I have to close my eyes to feel
it. I rub my thumb over the gouges and swirls. “Yeah. So? Do wrists really need to rest?”

“Allow me to demonstrate.” Ralph puts the stick on my vanity, grabs paper. He holds a pencil, props his forearm up on the wrist rest, and writes his name. “This holds your arm steady if you're doing calligraphy, you know, Chinese writing, or painting with ink.”

“What's the joke?” I ask.

“No joke.” Ralph looks right at me. Pink creeps up his neck. “This one's used. A rare
Chinese antique
. Like you'd find in a museum.”

“No way. Where'd you get it?”

“Found it.”

“In the Chows' trash?”

“Nooo.”

I take a breath, then another. A bell chimes in my mind. I turn to him. “Where
did
you get it, Ralph?”

He looks like he is trying to swallow a straight pin. “In our attic.”

“You found this in the . . . ?”

“Yep! You have to swear not to tell, Lily. If you don't swear—Boy Scout's honor, I will join the army tomorrow.”

Before I know it, Ralph has me holding up three fingers and repeating that on this day of January 26, 1951, I will never divulge that he found a Chinese wrist rest in the Firestone attic.

I rub my forehead. “My headache's worse.”

“Yeah, well, it's gonna get
real
worse in a sec. . . .” His look has a story behind it.

“Why?”

“Well, I also found that swirly carved rock in our attic.” Ralph's eyes narrow.

I sit back on my heels. My insides hum. “When?”

“When I was building my pigeon coop. I found a box hidden under a tarp.” Ralph's face is sweaty.

“What box?” I ask.

He points, swallows. “It's up there. Chinese stuff. It's yours.”

My hands fly up. I leap off the bed and face him. “Why didn't you tell me about it?
God!
You should have told me the second you found it!”

He shakes his hands at me. “I
am
telling you. I tried a thousand times—before Michelangelo called. And before that, I showed you that shell thing and pretended I was making a Scout collection, which I'm really
not
, but you didn't catch on. I thought you might recognize the wrist stick from your past and figure it out yourself so I wouldn't get in trouble and . . .”

“You
never
get in trouble. What else is in there?”

“Paintbrushes.”

I blink at the curved pattern Mother's vacuum has made in the carpet. I run my foot back and forth until it's gone.
Ralph stares at me. He looks miserable. I rub my cheeks.

“And tools and rocks and sticks,” Ralph adds, “and Oriental dust and . . .”