Kissing Doorknobs (6 page)

“Uh-oh! You’re clumsy, Tara,” Paulo said, smirking. “You’re nuts and you’re clumsy.”

I was mortified. I got up and ran home without counting. I figured that the bad thing for that day had already happened, so my mother would probably be safe from a broken back.

At home there was a note from my mom that she had gone to see my grandma, who was having bladder surgery. I sat home alone and cried until my sister got home from Girl Scouts.

“Want me to beat him up for you?” she asked casually. She put a cold, wet washcloth on my forehead. It seemed funny: Greta standing there in a Girl Scout uniform giving me a compress and asking me whether I wanted her to beat someone up.

“Is … there a … badge for that?” I asked between gasps for breath.

“Probably.”

She was wearing a mobile cast on her arm because of a Rollerblade accident.

“How about your … arm?” I asked.

She looked at the cast, looked at me and smiled. “It’s no big deal.”

The next day Greta walked to school with me. I was counting like mad, partly to protect her. She was silent, as usual. When we got to the playground, Paulo was standing near the sidewalk with a group of boys, including the two who had witnessed what he did to me.

My little sister didn’t let a second go by. She walked
up to Paulo and said, “You got a problem?” Then, without waiting for an answer, she slapped him in the face. Real hard.

Teachers would have paid money to see confusion replace Paulo’s normally cocky expression.

“I heard you like putting your hands where they don’t belong,” she said. Actually, it was more like, “I”—
slap
—“heard”—
slap
—“you like putting”—
slap-slap
—“your hands where they”—
slapslap
—“don’t belong.”
Punch.

“Hey!” he said. “I’m not fighting a fourth-grade
girl
wearin’ a
cast!”

“Oh,” she sighed, “don’t let this bother you.” And as fast as lightning, she peeled back the Velcro, removed the soft cast with the metal stays and hit Paulo in the face with it. Before Paulo could respond, she jumped on his back and started punching him. Everyone was laughing, mostly Paulo’s friends.

In seconds Paulo and Greta were on the ground. Within a minute Paulo’s face was bruised and bleeding and Greta had a little scratch on her leg. Although Paulo never shed a tear, Greta had done some serious emotional damage.

She dismounted her victim like a warrior-heroine and bent down to look him in the face. “If you look at my sister again, I’ll get our
baby
sister to
kill
you.”

Her performance was brilliant down to her exit line. We didn’t even have a baby sister! People stopped laughing at Paulo and started cheering for Greta. Keesha, Anna, Kristin and I made a nest out of our hands and threw her in the air a few times to celebrate her victory as she was putting the temporary cast back on her arm.

I read about this Italian dictator who said that it’s better to live one day as a lion than a hundred days as a lamb. Greta was a lion. And not just that day.

Greta and Paulo were both suspended. And Greta’s arm took more time to heal than it would have if she hadn’t taken off the cast and beat up Paulo. But it was clearly worth it.

Both their reputations were changed forever. As a result, Paulo transferred to another school the next year. The rumor was that he had become a ballerina.

Greta, on the other hand, found her place in the sun. If she had to take a back seat to my quirks at home, she was definitely in the driver’s seat on the outside. If I was a slave to my thoughts, she was a master of the universe. If I was a victim of my quirks, she was a victor over bullies and evil.

So even with my problems, life seemed good. My parents still loved me. My sister was willing to fight for me. And my friends were loyal to me. With all that incentive, I tried to fight my quirks as best I could. And I stayed very, very busy.

Because I didn’t like being away from home too much, Keesha, Anna and Kristin came to my house after school once or twice a week, and usually they’d stay for dinner and after. We’d look through magazines and talk for hours.

“Ohhh! Look! She’s so beautiful,” groaned Kristin while examining a model wearing more makeup than clothes.

Keesha grabbed the magazine out of Kristin’s hands. “She look like she been starved and beaten about the head.”

“She does not!” Kristin grabbed the magazine back and touched the glossy page lovingly.

“Then how come her eyes are so black?” Keesha responded. “She’s been battered.”

Anna and I laughed. Kristin didn’t.

“She’s beautiful and you know it,” moaned Kristin, who was every bit as beautiful, without the black
eyes.

“Why?” mocked Keesha. “Why do you think starved, skinny and bruised-lookin’ is beautiful?”

“Forget it!” Kristin was sulking. “You don’t get it and I can tell you never will.”

“Actually,” Anna said seriously, “neither do I. I mean, so what if she’s beautiful? What is she beautiful
for?
For someone else to look at? What’s the point?”

“That
is
the point!” said Kristin defensively. “Beauty is the point. What’s wrong with that?”

“She hun-gry! That’s what’s wrong with that,” said Keesha. And we all laughed, except for Kristin, who was on a diet.

“Maybe they’re not hungry,” Kristin said. “Or just a little hungry.”

“But again,” said Anna, “why do it? Why be hungry so that somebody else can take pleasure in looking at you? Why deprive yourself of anything so that someone else will like you better? I mean, what do those models get in exchange for their discomfort?”

“Victimized and probably hospitalized, but what the hell,” said Keesha. “They’re
thiinnn!”

“Oh, come on! They get to feel special. I’d
die
to be a model,” said Kristin.

“Well, I’m special because I’m alive,” said Keesha. “And I don’t have to do anything special to feel it …
least of all starve myself and paint bruises around my eyes.”

“Laugh now, but when I’m rich and famous and—”

“—hungry and tired and married to your seventh husband …” Keesha had gone too far and she knew it as soon as she saw the color drain out of Kristin’s face. Kristin’s mom is married to her third husband.

“I’m sorry, Kristin. I really didn’t …” Keesha was hugging Kristin.

“That’s okay. I don’t think I’m getting married.” Kristin brightened. “After all, I’ve been to enough weddings … mostly Mom’s!” We all laughed, and I felt happy that she had made her first joke about something that made her sad.

“Hey, let’s make a pact,” I said. “Let’s never get divorced.”

“Unless we want to,” said Kristin, and we all shook hands.

“What kind of a pact is that?” asked Anna.

“The flexible kind,” said Keesha. We all licked our thumbs and pressed them against each other’s thumbs.

“Saliva sisters,” I said, laughing.

“Hey, it’s safer than mixing blood,” said Anna, and we all agreed. Then we lay back down on the floor and picked up our magazines again.

“Think I could model?” I asked while puckering my lips goofily.

“If you were thinner,” said Kristin seriously.

“I’m already thin!” I hollered.

“Not thin enough to model,” she said matter-of-factly.

“How come white girls think they have to weigh less to be more?” Keesha asked.

The three of us
white girls
shrugged.

“No wonder you all don’t do as good in math as the boys,” said Keesha, laughing. “Less is not more!”

Kristin was unconvinced. “Don’t you ever feel unsure … about your opinions, Keesha?”

“I do,” I volunteered.

“We know you do!” they said in unison.

“You’re unsure you’re sitting here!” said Anna.

We all laughed and kicked each other. Then Keesha looked at Kristin seriously. “I feel unsure sometimes too … but I know one thing for sure …”

We looked at Keesha, who had paused on purpose to get our attention.

“I know that no matter what I do with my life … I’m probably gonna do it as
a fat woman.
And I refuse to feel bad about it, now or then. My mama’s got a beautiful big butt and I’m probably gonna have an even bigger one! And if I do … if I do … I’m gonna honor it as a family tradition!”

“No matter what I do, people are probably going to think I’m gay because I’m a jock and not interested in makeup or magazines,” said Anna.

“No matter what I do, people will probably think I’m an airhead because I’m blond and pretty,” said Kristin seriously.

Keesha rolled on the floor and kicked her feet in the air while imitating Kristin’s voice.
“Ohhh! Poor blond beautiful empty-headed me! I’m so mistreated by the world, and it has nothing to do with the stupid-ass things I say about myself like I’m blond and pretty
…
or the fact that you have to starve yourself in order to feel special and would die in exchange for a magazine cover
… I repeat … you’d choose to be dead so that a lot of
other people who are alive could look at you and maybe even think you’re pretty…. Now, why would anyone think you’re stupid?”

Because I’d been quiet for too long, all
eyes
turned toward me. I wasn’t laughing. I was busy counting Kate Moss’s eyelashes.

“Twenty-four … twenty-five,” I said, and waved them off.

Kristin went back to the magazine in her hand. “And no matter what Tara does, she’ll do it more than once.”

Anna and Kristin shrugged. My friends tried to ignore my quirks, since they didn’t have a clue what to do about them. It didn’t seem hard on them, though. They were already trained to ignore their parents’ alcohol abuse, constant bickering, serial marriages and nonsensical advice.

T
rying to control my thoughts, my worries, my prayers and my counting was exhausting. It was like paying attention to a dozen things at once. I was tired all the time. As a result, I got more anxious. I prayed more nervously. I counted with a vengeance.

My parents fought about me all the time. Although they both wanted to help, they didn’t know how, or even what was wrong with me. They got increasingly frustrated. They blamed each other by taking turns initiating and ending the following dialogue:

“We should do something.”

“What?”

“I don’t know.”

As time passed, they released their anxiety by fighting about money, movies, friends, the news. I think they eventually got bored arguing with each other, because after a few months they both started to look for reasons to not be at home.

My father turned his care, nurturing and attention toward the American Legion. He’d been a member for years, but it wasn’t until he felt the need to “do something” that he turned the Legion headquarters from a
decaying money pit into a community center filled with life, laughter and piles of cash.

I hated the Legion. I hated having him gone all the time. I hated feeling as if I had to compete with that stupid building and those stupid events for his attention. But I liked going there with him. And I really liked leaving with him. Because after we’d washed all the glasses, my dad would carefully lock the Legion doors and take me to lunch at the Cavaccios’ beef stand. We’d order beef/sausage combos, dipped in gravy with hot
gardiniera
, sweet peppers and lots of salt. Then, standing side by side, gravy running down our arms and the comfort of spicy meat in our mouths, we felt a wave of peace that no amount of conversation could bring. It was comfort, jump-started by smelling, chewing and just being together. It lasted about fifteen minutes, every week. Our happiest times together.

During this same period, my mother took a part-time job as a saleswoman in a department store. An odd choice for a woman who wasn’t particularly interested in fashion, but maybe that showed how desperately she wanted to get out of the house. Afterward, however, when the store was closed and locked for the night, instead of coming home to my sister and me, she’d go to the American Legion to meet my dad and socialize for an hour or so. I continually visualized my mother and father in terrible car accidents or being mugged and killed. I could see them lying in pools of their own blood and was terrified every moment they were gone.

To keep them safe, I developed a new ritual and performed it until my anxiety subsided. It wasn’t planned. Like the others, it just popped into my head
and stuck there. Unfortunately, it was a very odd, obvious and humiliating one.

Aching with embarrassment, I dialed the telephone. The phone rang and rang and rang. I considered the rings a personal rejection.
Pick up! Pick up!
Finally, on the ninth ring, a voice I knew barked into the receiver.

“Legion!”

“Hi, Mr. Spivac. Um, this is Martin’s daughter Tara. Can you page either my father or my mother?”

“Sulliivaaann! Your stalker
is calling again!” Actually, he pronounced it STAW-ker. I waited for what seemed like forever, hating Mr. Spivac and listening to the rest of my father’s friends laughing at me in the background. Finally I heard my father’s irritated voice.

“What now, Tara?”

“I’m scared.”

“Of what?”

“I don’t know.”

“What do you want me to do?”

“Come home.”

“I already told you I’d be home later on.”

“When exactly?”

This went on and on, sometimes four calls in two hours. Both of my parents were patient. But they were mostly glad to be out of the house. No matter how many times I called, I hung up with a lump in my throat and walked down the hallway to my parents’ room. I said a prayer to the Virgin Mary plaque that my dad kept on his dresser.