Not the End of the World (13 page)

“I’m making a fort in the woods,” I said and she said that sounded like fun.

“It is,” I told her. “I’m hunting for something.”

She raised her eyebrows. “What?” she wanted to know and I said it was a surprise.

“How are your classes?” she asked, trying to wheedle information out of me.

“They make my butt hurt.”

“Oh?” she said, trying to be nonchalant. “Why is that?”

I sighed. It was
her
job to figure those things out. Why did she need me to tell her?

“Because it reminds me of Mr. Howard, that’s why.”

“And why would thinking of Mr. Howard make your butt hurt?” she asked but that was all I was saying. I’d said too much already. Besides, I didn’t know. Why
did
thinking about Mr. Howard make my butt hurt, why not my head or my arm, which was the part of my body that had got bruised, why not my leg or my foot? And what was it about the trouble that made me unable to pee at McKinley? It didn’t make any sense to me and I wasn’t going to tell her any more.

I shrugged and she sat there, watching me, and I felt sorry for her because she really seemed to want to help but I wasn’t cooperating. I never cooperated; it was against my principles.

“Our time’s almost up,” she said. “Is there anything you want to tell me?”

I told her I had something to ask her and she said that was all right, go ahead.

“How much longer do I have to do this?”

“Do what?” she asked.

“This, this talking to you stuff.”

“Don’t you like talking to me?” she asked, just like an adult, never answering your questions, always turning it around to trick you.

“You didn’t answer my question,” I said and she smiled as she imitated my sullen shrug.

“I don’t know,” she said and the bell rang.

M
ISS
Dickerson said I had an inferiority complex, but Grandmother said that was the most ridiculous thing she’d ever heard.

“She doesn’t think anything’s good enough for her,” she said. “Not the other way round.”

I think Grandmother was talking more about herself than me, but that was just the way it was in our family. Whenever anyone talked about anyone else, they were really talking about themselves. They’d look at me and see themselves; whatever I did was interpreted through their own feelings, without even considering that I might feel differently from them. When I wanted to be alone, Mother thought it was because I was hiding my loneliness and Daddy thought it was because I was independent and Grandmother thought it was because I was selfish and arrogant. They never even
asked
me, they just assumed, and they would have laughed their heads off if I’d told them I liked to be alone because it was the only time I could be myself.

It was hard, not knowing who or what I was, not knowing what was mine and what was just a genetic trait, handed down like some dusty heirloom. When I was good, they’d fight over me like dogs over a bone. “She’s just like
me!
” they’d cry and I’d stand there feeling empty and stupid, like a mere bowl they molded in pottery class, to hold their brilliant genes. Sometimes, they’d even compete with me—I’d come home from school with my little drawing with the gold star and Mother would say, “That’s nice, dear, did I ever tell you about the time I won the Michigan School Arts Prize? I was just about your age …” and I’d look at my little stick-girl, smiling under a stick-tree, and feel ashamed. I’d trudge upstairs, wondering why the teacher gave me a gold star when my drawing was so childish and stupid. She was just being nice, I’d think resentfully, wishing she’d given me the F I deserved.

Even Daddy had to compete. “It’s the American Way!” he always said, but not with your
kid!
When I came home with the letter saying I’d been chosen for the Accelerated Program he patted my head and told me I took after him, he was so accelerated he’d skipped three grades.

When I was bad, they didn’t know me. Nobody would claim my temper, my fits, my sullen lack of respect. They’d act as if I’d just flown in from another planet or try to push my bad behavior off on errant genes in the other’s family—Daddy’s crazy Cousin Leroy or Mother’s Aunt Rachael, who ran away with an India Indian and was never heard from again.

It was bad of me to be so angry about it. “Oh, big deal,” Cindy used to say when I’d complain about it. “Everybody’s parents are like that. What have you got to complain about—you’re the luckiest girl in North Bay!”

I guessed I was. My parents were usually pretty nice to
me, except when Grandmother was around and Mother turned into a podperson. It was as if Grandmother took over her soul and every rotten thing Grandmother did to Mother, she’d end up doing to me, not because she wanted to, but because she
had
to. She couldn’t help herself and she didn’t mean it and I could always tell she felt terrible afterwards. She’d cry and try to make it up to me, but she never said she was sorry. If she said she was sorry, she would have to admit she hurt me, and she couldn’t do that.

It wasn’t her fault. She just had Bad Luck, losing her father and getting stuck with Grandmother, and her bad luck was written all over her. “If only,” she always said, “if only this and if only that.” She ate and breathed “if onl”; she exuded it, like perfume—she’d walk through the house, leaving behind a faint odor of regret, of loss, of promise unfulfilled and I hated that smell. Worse than skunk, worse than dog-do, worse than Frank Risdesky’s garlicky house, worse than Hilary Kiley’s grandmother’s room, all powdery and decayed, Lysoled to cover the odor of death, to cover up the smell of life rotting away.

It sat over our house like a fog. It got in through our pores. At night, it drifted under the doorway and oozed into our dreams. Mother would have died if she’d known, for what she wanted most of all was for our lives to be better than hers. If she’d known she wasn’t hiding it behind her smiles of attempted cheerfulness, her eager assurances that everything was fine, fine, fine, she would have been horrified. She would have locked herself into a leak-proof bubble and lowered herself into the Lake, to protect us from her own fumes. “I’m doing this for you,” she’d say as she waved through the plastic peephole. “Don’t worry about
me
. It’s fine, really.” We would sob and wonder who would cook our dinner, who would tend our wounds, who would get out the vaporizer when we
had the croup, who would make our beds. “Oh, your father will find someone to replace me,” she’d say, her voice echoing in the water. “You don’t need me.” And down she’d go, with only a few air bubbles to trace her descent.

It could have been worse. At least my parents weren’t like Cindy’s ex-dad or Mrs. Moore, at least they weren’t like Mr. Ditwell, who would come home from work and toss Tom’s friends out the back door like dried-up Christmas trees.

“We just want you to be happy,” Mother said, the first time they threatened to send me away to boarding school. Part of it was true and part of it wasn’t. There was a part of her that wanted to be rid of me, to get me out of her sight so she wouldn’t have to feel bad all the time. And there was another part that really thought that sending me away to some East Coast rich girls’ school would make me happy, but it wouldn’t make
me
happy, it would make
her
happy. She wanted me to go someplace where I’d learn to be a lady and be with girls from quality families. Where I’d get a good education and come home quoting Homer. Where I’d get invited to someone’s debut. Mother had this thing about “coming out.” She thought that everything bad that happened to her was because she wasn’t properly introduced to society and if only she’d had a debut, everything would be different.

Girls didn’t come out in North Bay, which was just as well, because Daddy would never have stood for it. “What a lot of nonsense,” he would have said. “We already
know
everyone worth knowing.” Instead, they had Sweet Sixteen parties at one of the golf clubs, something I was dreading, even though it was three years and one month away. With any luck, I wouldn’t have to have one, now that I was a pariah.

T
OM
Ditwell wanted to walk home with me, but I couldn’t risk it. What if I peed my pants in front of him? He’d tell the whole world and everybody would hate me more than they already did.

“I have a piano lesson,” I lied and he said he didn’t know I was taking piano.

“Oh, yes,” I said, “I’m going to be a concert pianist.”

I loved it when I lied like that, when the words came out so smoothly I almost believed them myself. The truth was, I had three lessons when I was six, but Mother took me out when I bit the teacher.

“Well, you won’t forget about Rocky, will you?” he asked and I promised I wouldn’t. He ran off to join Billy Jensen and Kenny Costello and I stood there, watching them, waiting to find out which way they were going so I could go another.

“C’mon, Goob,” I shouted and she jumped up and ran over. We cut through the woods behind the Donaldsons’ and I stood there for a while, looking at the swamp, wondering
what would happen if I just walked right into it. Maybe if I went into the swamp, I’d get sucked into a slimy world and turned into a mutant, like the Creature from the Black Lagoon, and then I could spend the rest of my life living in the muck, waiting for school kids to scare. That was probably what would happen to me, something murky like that. I was as likely to turn out to be a Creature as first woman governor of Michigan.

I decided to go to the fort and watch for the Pervert alone, even though I was kind of scared to confront him by myself. The whole point of watching for him was to catch him red-handed, to save his victim and bring him to justice, and I wasn’t sure I could do that alone. It would be his word against mine and who would believe
me?

“She’s lying,” Mr. Diller told my parents after the trouble. “She’s making it up.”

My parents were sitting in the two naugahyde chairs in front of Mr. Diller’s desk; I sat behind them on a low, plastic seated bench. I stared at the photograph of President Kennedy on the wall behind Mr. Diller and wondered if they’d take me in the Peace Corps. Probably not; they’d take one look at my record and say, “This is the
Peace
Corps, we don’t want troublemakers like you.”

Daddy was furious. “I want him fired!” he shouted. “I want him out of the school district.”

Mother was white, whiter than Mrs. Moore, whiter than Miss Nolan’s nose. She sat there, ladylike, legs crossed at the ankles and with a corsage pinned to the lapel of her navy blue suit, as if she were going to a Mother-Daughter tea rather than my execution.

Mr. Diller sat behind his desk, with his fat, round face, which normally looked so jolly and un-principal-like, scrunched in like a rotten grapefruit.

“I’m sorry, Mr. Pittsfield,” he said, “but I’m afraid it’s Maggie’s word against his and I believe him. Maggie’s … well, Maggie
exaggerates.”

Maggie exaggerates. Maggie’s got quite an imagination. In other words, Maggie’s crazy.

Mother hung her head and Daddy fumed. “I can’t believe she’d make something like this up,” he shouted. “I think
he’s
lying and I want him fired!”

Firing wasn’t good enough for him, as far as I was concerned. I wanted him dead. I wanted him branded and flogged; I wanted him to be tied to the flagpole and kept there for a month, to be jeered at and pelted with rotten eggs. I wanted him to disappear and never be seen on the face of the earth again.

“The matter is closed,” Mr. Diller said, getting up from his chair and dismissing my parents like naughty children. “Thank you for your time.”

That was in April. From the Accelerated Program to Summer Detention, in two short months. Grandmother was delighted when she got up here and heard the news. “I guess
that
will take the wind out of your sails, Miss First-Woman-Governor-of-Michigan,” she said gleefully, and I wished a tornado would hit and suck her right out the window and drop her on Alcatraz.

I cut through the Donaldsons’ woods and then across St. Joseph Avenue, into Edison Woods. I sneaked through the Tuckers’ yard and I could hear Cindy and her gang in the garage, shrieking and yelling and having a good time while they made toilet-paper flowers for her float. I wondered whether Ginger Moore was there and that hurt, thinking about her sitting cross-legged on the floor with a roll of yellow toilet paper, giggling and telling jokes, and totally lost to me.