In Trouble (15 page)

Used. The compact, lipstick, pencils. Carol’s notes from Mr. Morabito’s last class. There! Bottom corner of the bag where the lint lives.

Spencer! That’s it, Dr. Spencer, and Lois had written what to say: vaginal discharge.

My hand shook. Could I say those words? I shoved everything back in the bag, grabbed a sweater and left.

174

Grandma sat in the rocker reading.

“Be back soon.” I left before I changed my mind.

The phone booth by Mrs. Manny’s candy store was empty. How much money did I need to call Pennsylvania?

Mrs. Manny didn’t smile much, but she liked me.

She looked up in surprise. “Your father, he picked up the paper this morning.”

“It’s me. I need candy today,” I said and held up the Almond Joy and Hershey bars I’d taken from the rack. I pocketed the change she gave me.

Outside, I dialed the operator. I pictured her in a long line of operators sitting in front of a gigantic telephone board, shoving phone jacks into little holes, pulling them out, crossing wires, uncrossing them—millions of connections traveling overhead along telephone wires from pole to pole all the way from New York City to Ashland, PA.

“I want to call Pennsylvania.”

“You can dial that directly now.”

I held the phone, bewildered. I had to do this alone?

The phone in Ashland rang. Fifteen times. I must have dialed the wrong number. I hung up and tried again.

Twenty-seven rings. Then I remembered Lois had said the police warned Dr. Spencer before a raid, and he’d shut down for a while.

This couldn’t be happening.

It’s getting close to three months. Would I run out of time?

175

I didn’t stay long at Aunt Sheila’s. You don’t have to.

She doesn’t ask a lot of questions. I told her a friend in college had missed her period and was . . . you know. The college part was important. I didn’t want her asking how old she was.

“That name you said. The lady in Brooklyn?” The flashing knitting needles were still for a moment.

“If you’re asking me for help,” she said, knitting again and looking at me without missing a stitch, “I assume your friend can’t go to her mother’s doctor.” Aunt Sheila is smarter than you might think. She wrote down a name on a piece of paper. “Your friend, she’s eighteen, I assume. She has to be.” Aunt Sheila folded the paper and handed it to me.

I love my Aunt Sheila.

I don’t dream much. Everybody says you dream all the time, but if I do, I don’t remember. That night I dreamt and remembered.

I was in a city. Tall buildings lined the streets, tilting in like trees in a savage storm. I turned corners. Sometimes I ran. I clutched a small brown paper bag. I held the bag in front of me. People walked past me without looking. The streets turned into hallways, long corridors.

I opened doors and held up the bag. The doors closed.

Nobody would take the bag.

I woke up with my pajamas sweat-soaked.

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36.

I was behind Georgina on the cafeteria line. I had to make sure she would come with me.

“You really want to do this?” she said.

“Absolutely.” I tried to sound a hundred percent con-fident, but my voice cracked. I was terrified.
Did
I want this? Was it right? What if I died? Like that lady in the newspaper in Brooklyn, which is where I’m going.

“It’s tonight at 6:30,” I said. “Meet me at 5:00 by the subway at Castle Hill?”

She mouthed yes as Kay joined us. All I ate was mashed potatoes. I’m ravenous, but everything else was too awful to consider.

Grandma was in bed when I came home from school.

She looked tiny with only her head and arms above the quilt.

177

“Would you like me to open the window?” She patted the quilt. “I’m napping, that’s all. Come, sit.”

“Some tea? I can make some tea? A danish? A cracker?” Her eyes grew soft. “Jaimele, something is happening with you. Tell me.”

Without thinking, I touched my cheek, the side with the rash. Grandma reached up and took my hand.

“Trouble?” she said.

“Oh, Grandma,” I curled by her side, my head on her shoulder. “I don’t know what to do.”

“It’s you, not just your friend, yes?” I sat up. “I want to graduate and go to college.” She stroked my arm. I told her but didn’t say who or when it happened or about tonight.

She listened without saying anything. Her long grey hair was draped over each shoulder. There were no hairpins to poke. They lay in a pile on the bedside table.

“Your mama, have you talked with her?” There was no judgment in her voice, just a question.

“I will. Later. I want first—”

“She will help.”

I shook my head. “It’s me, Grandma. Me, and I’m . . .” How do I tell her I’m so scared and I don’t want to be talked into anything or out of anything and I don’t know for sure what they’ll say?

“I gotta go now.” I bent down and kissed her dry cheek.

Georgina was waiting for me. I showed her the address Aunt Sheila had written, and we climbed the stairs to the 178

subway platform. I have no idea if the train came right away or we had to wait. We were on, and I was grateful for the rumble as we moved, the screech when we stopped, the whistle as the train started up again, the sliding
whoosh
of the doors—all the noises blocked out everything. Except the pit in my stomach. That stayed and grew. The train tilted around curves, and suddenly we were plunged into darkness as we went from the overhead track down into the underground subway tunnels.

“When is a subway not a subway?” Georgina said. She didn’t expect an answer. We hardly ever called it the El, and never the Elevated. You just said subway. We barreled on into Brooklyn and came up into the air again.

On the street I showed the address to a woman pushing a baby carriage. She pointed ahead. “Make a right at the corner, then the second left, three blocks down and you’ll cross Rose Hill. Keep walking. You’ll find it.”

“Don’t say a word,” I said to Georgina as we walked toward the corner. “I don’t want to hear anything about roses or hills.”

“I wasn’t thinking anything like that,” she said.

“I’m sorry. I’m just . . .”

“Hey, it’s okay. So what does this lady know about me?”

“I didn’t tell her anything.”

The black pit inside me was getting bigger. I stopped and leaned against a lamppost.

“You scared?” she said.

I was sweating.

179

“If you want,” she took a deep breath, “when she . . .

you know, does it, I’ll hold your hand.” That was major for Georgina. She’d been excused from dissecting the frog last year in biology. Couldn’t stand cutting into flesh.

I squeezed her hand. She was a true friend.

“Just don’t tell anybody,” I said.

She looked appalled that I could even think she might.

A really true friend.

Past Rose Hill the house numbers were going down, so we were headed in the right direction. We stopped in front of a little grey house with green trim. Georgina opened the gate of the low fence, and we walked toward the front steps. I started counting. Eight steps from the gate to the stoop. Five steps up. Two steps to the door.

Two rings on the bell.

I think the lady who opened the door was normal-looking, but I couldn’t swear to it. I couldn’t swear to anything. Her voice sounded like it came from across the ocean. We went in, and Georgina asked if she could use the bathroom. The lady pointed down the hallway,

“Second door on the right.” Then she began to ask me questions, but she didn’t write anything down. And she never asked me about my husband, even though I wore the ring. She did ask where I lived, and said she had a sister in the Bronx.

“On the phone you said you were eighteen. Is that right?” she asked.

180

“Eighteen, yes.”

Georgina came back and sat in one of the chairs next to a table with magazines. The lady turned to her. “Are you a relative?”

Georgina closed the magazine. “A cousin.”

“And how old are you?”

Georgina smiled. “Same birthday,” she nodded toward me. “March 3, 1940.”

The lady’s face twisted in shock. She stepped back.

“1940!” and then everything turned upside down.

“I’m sorry you came all the way.”

She steered us out and shut the door. The lock turned.

I slumped down on the stoop. My ears filled with a ferocious pounding. I held my head to try to stop it.

“What happened?” Georgina sat down next to me.

I couldn’t look at her. “You’ve ruined it. I told her I was eighteen.” My voice was flat. I had nothing left.

Georgina gasped. Then she took my arm and led me to the subway.

181

37.

It was late when I got home. They were all in the living room. Grandma in the rocker, Dad half-asleep in his chair, Mom on one end of the couch, plus two uncles and an aunt. Stevie must have been in his room.

“My, you look down,” Mom said.

Grandma leaned a little forward, her eyes questioning.

I looked away.

“Hey, kid, what’s up?” Uncle Maury folded the newspaper and smiled at me.

Last night I had another dream. I was up a tree, out on a limb, with a saw.
I was sawing between me and the tree
trunk
. What do I say? “I’m fine, Uncle Maury. I’m up a tree.”

“Tell them, Jamie.” Grandma’s voice was barely above a whisper, but every head turned first to her and then to me.

182

Nobody said a word, but booming through the room was “Tell us what?” They thought in one voice.

I weighed five hundred pounds, too tired to walk away.

Too tired to stand. I leaned against the table. Nothing I’d tried had worked. Paul had come with me. Georgina had come with me. But in the end it was me, alone. Nothing had worked. I saw them sitting there. The closest people in the world to me, and strangers.

What did I know about them? Mom loves me, but she’s busy working. Dad, he loves me too, but he’s busy job-hunting, and he’s not all himself. Uncle Maury loves me, but he thinks I’m smart because I say the right thing on a questionnaire. Not fair? I’m not fair. I don’t want to be fair. I want something to make this right.

And Grandma, she . . . she loves me, period. I went over to the rocker and sat down on the rug next to her.

She reached down and took my hand. “Tell them,” she said again.

“How?” I really wanted to know. “How?”

“Tell them.”

I did. I don’t remember where I started, and I know it was mixed up and out of order, but everybody listened, not a single interruption. “This guy,” I said, “he was Lois’s friend, and we went to a party—not Lois, just me and him—and I drank wine and we went to a restaurant and he took me to his apartment and I shouldn’t have gone but I thought he was just going to kiss me . . .” I started to cry.

Grandma saved me. “Advantage he took, he violated!” 183

Aunt Sheila’s hand flew to her mouth. Dad closed his eyes, and Mom reached out to touch me.

The next part was hardest. “I missed my period.” Great timing—Stevie came in, and Mom motioned him to go back.

“I need a glass of water,” he said. “What’s going on?” Dad looked at him over his glasses, and Stevie went into the kitchen. Nobody said anything until he was back in his room, and we heard his door close. I knew he probably opened it again and was listening. That’s what we always did when they sent us away. But I didn’t have the energy to care.

Dad started. “What do you want, Jamie? Now I’m saying it, what do you
really
want?”

“How does she know what she wants? She’s a child.” I was startled. I hadn’t expected that from Uncle Maury.

Dad came right back. “She may be a young person, but she has lived sixteen years and knows many things about herself.”

Dad!

Uncle Maury kept brushing his hair off his forehead.

“Of course. You’re right. I only meant we have to help her.

Jamie,” he appealed to me, “that’s what I meant.” Mom fidgeted. She pressed the folds of her dress and started to say something, but stopped. She reached behind her legs to straighten the seams on her nylons. Then she folded her hands in her lap. “If you want to have the child, Jamie,” she said, “we will help you.” 184

I stopped breathing.

She went over to Dad’s chair and sat on the arm. He nodded, and I knew it wasn’t a baby Dad wanted. He wanted his family.

“I love you both,” I said, and I meant it. “But I can’t.

I don’t know all of why. It’s not just going to college.” I touched my belly. “This is not a baby yet, and I can’t let it be one. I mean, how could I have a baby and not take care of it?”

Grandma kissed the top of my head.

Mom held out her arms.

“We will figure this out,” Dad said.

This is my family.

185

38.

After lunch I went to the
Record
office. I knew Paul would be there, and I gave him my article. He put it down without looking at it. “You never told me what happened,” he said.

“Did you call the doctor’s office? The test must be back.” He looked sweet and caring. And I felt much older.

“It’s real,” I said. “I called, but I knew it anyway.” He stood up and walked to the windows and back at least three times.

“What are you going to do?”

I turned toward the door.

“Jamie, listen, whatever you decide . . . I mean, whenever . . . I mean . . .”

I looked at him.

“. . . you want to go to the movies tomorrow night?”

“Okay,” and I left.

186

The mailbox was full when I got home. Mom’s
New
Yorker
magazine took up a lot of the space. A couple of envelopes looked like bills. And a letter from Elaine. I hadn’t heard from her in a while, and I hadn’t written after that last letter. I tore open the envelope. The beginning was a shocker.