Not the End of the World (10 page)

“You!” Mrs. Jolly said, pointing a skinny finger at me. “You are not leaving this house until your parents come home.”

“What about school?” I said. “You can’t make me stay home from school. You can’t make me do anything.”

She started coming at me and I wasn’t happy any more; I got up on my knees and backed into the corner and thought,
if she touches me, I’ll kill her. I looked around for a weapon but there was nothing with which I could bludgeon her. She kept coming closer and closer and I wanted to scream, to run, to be a tank and roll right over her, squashing her into my ink-stained carpet, making her into just another grey blob that Mother couldn’t get out. Save me, save me, save me, I thought and then suddenly Margaret appeared, fierce and vicious, and shouted, “Don’t you TOUCH me!” in a voice so shrill and powerful Mrs. Jolly stopped, still as a stone. Cindy and Ruthie stood in the doorway, their eyes popping out like bubble gum, while Mrs. Jolly started to shake with rage as she backed up.

“She said I was evil,” I told Mother as I plopped the silverware on the table, letting it rattle loudly and watching while Mother’s back stiffened.

“Who did, dear?” she asked, turning to smile, as if clattering silverware didn’t bother her in the least.

“Mrs. Anything-But,” I said. “She said I was a fiend from hell.”

Mother shrugged. That was all in the past and better forgotten.

“I liked it when you were silly,” Ruthie said, looking up at me adoringly. “You were nice to me.”

Her eyes were shining with innocent, devoted love and I felt terrible—how could I be so mean to someone who was so sweet and vulnerable? If I so much as smiled at her, she beamed with happiness; she’d instantly forget all the times I made her cry or gave her the evil eye. I wanted to reach out and tousle her billowy curls, to grab her and throw her up in the air like a baby, to cuddle her like a doll, as I did when she was little. She was so trusting, so willing—I knew she’d trust me to catch her, just like a baby, just like a little kid, always thinking someone would be there to catch you if they tossed you up.

I looked down at her, grinning up at me as if I were some kind of hero, and I suddenly felt this horrible rage wash over me, like a blood-red tidal wave, pounding down and sucking me in, pulling me deeper and deeper down to the bottom of the Lake. Ruthie wasn’t Ruthie any more, she was turning into a baby, a tiny baby, and all I could see were her eyes, staring at me, and I wanted to shake that baby, make it miserable, hurt it, give it what it deserved. Better get used to it, better get used to it, a foggy voice in the back of my head was saying, better learn to like it.

I shook my head, trying to make the baby go away, to shake the voice out, but they wouldn’t go. The baby just kept staring at me, just eyes, so innocent and full of trust, and the rage kept churning like a disease and my insides were burning and I wanted to start pulling my skin off, to get away from myself, from the fury, to get
out
.

Ruthie’s hand was tugging at my arm. “Peggy! Peggy!” she said and I nearly smacked her.

“What did you call me?” I screamed, scaring her and making her cry.

“Maggie,” she sobbed, “I called you Maggie! It’s your
name!”

I looked down at her, crying as if her little heart was broken, and I thought maybe everybody was right, maybe I
was
crazy, maybe I
was
nuts, maybe they
should
tie me up in a straitjacket and haul me off to Lapeer, where I couldn’t do damage to anyone but myself.

“I’m sorry, Ruthie,” I said, “I didn’t mean to scare you.”

She looked up at me hopefully. “I wish you were silly all the time,” she said, and so did I.

R
UTHIE
always said grace. She was the religious one in the family; she believed fervently and cried for my soul when I said damn. “You’re going to hell!” she’d sob and I’d say so what, what difference did it make to her where I went after I was dead? “You’re my sister!” she’d weep. “I don’t want you to suffer for ever!”

I wasn’t looking
forward
to it, but I didn’t think it was anything to cry about. At least, I told her, I’d finally find a place where I fit in.

“No talking about hell at the dinner table,” Daddy declared and we sat silently, waiting to be served.

“Mrs. Benson called,” Mother said as Daddy handed me a plate piled high with chicken and scalloped potatoes. “She said you were sneaking around their yard again.”

“I wasn’t ‘sneaking around.’ I was cutting
through.”

“That’s Private Property,” Daddy said sternly. “You have got to develop a sense of respect for other people’s property. How would you like it if people used your bedroom as a short cut?”

I shrugged. It wasn’t the same, but there was no use arguing about it. Besides, they could burst into my room any time they wanted—Mother wouldn’t let me put a lock on the door: “What if the house burned down?” she wanted to know. “How could we get you out?” But really she just didn’t want me to have any privacy. I’d be in the middle of dressing and suddenly Mother would open the door and leer at my half-naked body and say, “My, my, you’re already quite a woman,” and I’d want to die of shame.

“So!” Mother said cheerfully. “We had a wonderful game today!”

“What do you mean, wonderful?” Grandmother snapped. “We
lost!”

“Yes, but we had a lovely time.”

“Maybe
you
had a ‘lovely time,’ ” Grandmother growled, “but I don’t consider losing lovely.’ I want to
win
. And we would have, if you’d learn to bid, for Chrissakes.”

Ruthie gasped and Daddy grunted. “Now, Kay,” he said, “this is dinner.”

Daddy was the only one who could shut Grandmother up. She seemed to be scared of him, but I don’t know why. She wasn’t scared of anyone else, but maybe she worried that he’d kick her out or that we’d move during the winter and not tell her where we were. She’d done that once, to Mother. Mother came home from college and when she got to her house, there was another family living in it. Grandmother had just upped and moved and not bothered to tell Mother. “I forgot,” she said when Mother finally found her, and Mother didn’t do anything. I would have killed her I would have strangled her, I would have spat in her face and said, “I don’t want to live with
you
, anyway, you old hag.”

“Let’s have a peaceful meal,” Daddy said and I rolled my eyes and Ruthie gobbled her chicken wings, already greased up like a body builder. It was disgusting. Mother went on
and on, talking about no trump and finesses, and I wished Donald were home, so I’d have someone to kick under the table and make faces at. “Dinner is family time,” Daddy always said but I never felt part of it. It was supposed to be the time during which we discussed family problems and told each other about our lives, but I didn’t want them to know anything about me.

“How’s Julius Caesar?” Daddy asked and I shrugged. I told him I wasn’t sure I wanted him to be my hero.

“Why not?” he asked, chuckling as if I were getting ready to say something hilarious. “What’s wrong with Caesar?”

“He starved out the rebels in Gaul and then had the survivors’ hands chopped off,” I said.

“Margaret!” Mother gasped. “We’re having
dinner!”

“Well, he
asked,”
I protested, and Mother sighed and wanted to know why I couldn’t have a nice hero, like Betsy Ross.

“Betsy Ross!” I cried, rolling my eyes. “Oh,
please!
All she did was
sew!”

“Yes, but she sewed the flag that kept our soldiers going,” Mother said. “She did something very important, just by staying home and sewing. ‘They also serve who only stand and wait.’ ”

“Blah,” I said.

“Miss Nonconformist,” Grandmother said scornfully. “I’m surprised she didn’t choose Attila the Hun. He’d be right up her alley.”

“No, he’s right up
yours,”
I said and Mother turned cement-colored and Grandmother said, “Why, you little sh …”

“Now, Kay,” Daddy said, trying to stop her before she said shit, as if our pure little ears had never heard it before. Shit, shit, shit, Donald and I said it all the time; on family trips, we’d ride in the way-back of the station wagon and look for “sh” words on the billboards and the one who got the most
shits by the end of the trip, won. We’d crouch down, with only the tips of our heads and our eyes peeking over the back window, and laugh and laugh until Mother said, “Just
what
are you two doing back there?”

“She needs to be taught a lesson,” Grandmother said. “If she were mine …”

But I wasn’t. I wasn’t hers or anyone else’s and she couldn’t touch me. I wasn’t a piece of property, some shell on her Florida beach, that she could crunch under her heel or toss back in the ocean or cover with shellac and set on a glass-topped table.

“She’s nothing but trouble with a capital T,” she said, and Daddy said, “Leave her alone, she’s just a kid.”

“Kid, my derrière,” she retorted.

“Come on, come on, let’s have some peace around here,” Daddy said. “What do you all say to the Dairy Queen?”

“Bawk! Bawk! Bawk!” Ruthie squawked, indicating her approval and Mother thought it was a wonderful idea, the Dairy Queen would be lovely.

“What do you say, Boo?” Daddy asked.

“I’m on a diet,” I said and they all hooted.

“Whoever heard of such a thing?” Mother wanted to know. “A twelve-year-old on a diet?” But I wasn’t going. I wouldn’t be caught dead at the Dairy Queen with my
family
.

Mother knew what I was thinking and she looked sad and I felt bad for hurting her feelings. I hated it when they did that; when they’d sit around looking like lost souls, making me feel like a monster because I didn’t want to pile in the car and sing songs and drive through town looking like some stupid TV family, happy and carefree and clean. How could I expect her to understand when she was so dutiful herself—after all, for four months a year, she had Grandmother clinging to her back like a snarling hump.

“Oh, Maggie, please come,” Mother said and I wanted to
scream. Why couldn’t they just leave me alone? I’d said I didn’t want to go, so why couldn’t they just say “OK” and
go
; why did they have to stand at the door, looking back at me as if they’d never see me again? It made me so mad—if I went with them, I’d hate myself for giving in and doing something I didn’t want to do just because someone’s stupid feelings would be hurt otherwise; but if I didn’t go, I’d hate myself for hurting their feelings.

Grandmother was already in the car, shouting, “Let’s get this show on the road!”

“Are you sure you won’t change your mind?” Mother asked, kind of pleadingly, and I wondered if she wanted me along so Grandmother would torment me, rather than
her
.

“No,” I said and went upstairs.

M
Y
bedroom was long and narrow, with a little dressing room at the end that Mother called the Black Hole. At either end of the Black Hole were storage spaces directly under the sloping roof of the main part of the house, which we called “under the eaves.” The one on the left-hand side of the room overlooked the sunroom and there was a crack in the floor where I could see down and hear what people were saying if they talked loud enough.

On nights when I was banished from the dinner table, I’d hide there and wait for them to move out into the sunroom to watch TV Donald would be first, then Ruthie would follow, sucking on her stuffed zebra and climbing up on the end of the couch to rock. I hated that couch. I wouldn’t even sit on it; I’d rather have sat on the floor or the footstool than on that dumb couch. It was stupid and ugly and I wished Mother would get rid of it, toss it out on trash day and replace it with something nice, something soft and smooth and comfortable, something to sink into, something covered
with pink flowers, not that scratchy brown tweedy stuff. It hurt. It hurt to sit on it, it hurt to look at it, I hated it and I wished Goober would pee all over it so Mother would have to get a new one.

Ruthie didn’t seem to mind. She’d put her hands on the armrest and start rocking back and forth, back and forth, for hours. She’d done it all her life, practically since the day Mother brought her home from the hospital. “Sweet dreams,” Mother used to say as Donald and I trudged upstairs after
I Love Lucy
, and I’d lie in my dreamy white four-poster bed, listening to Ruthie across the hall, pounding her crib against the wall with an impossible fury “How can a two-year-old have that much strength?” I had asked Mother and she said it was normal for children to rock in their cribs. “Rock, yes,” I said, “not break through the wall like a tank!” Hoo-WHOP! Hoo-WHOP! Hoo-WHOP! Hours and hours of it—rhythmic, monotonous pounding like cannibal drums, Hoo-WHOP! “I think you’d better get her checked,” I told Mother. “I think there’s something wrong with her.” But Mother said that was nonsense, of course there was nothing wrong with her, how could there be? She was just a child, a perfectly well-adjusted child and I ought to be ashamed of myself for suggesting anything to the contrary.