The Belief in Angels (34 page)

I wrap myself in a towel and take off my pants for Betty to launder. Betty hands me a pair of Smith’s underwear. Pink, of course. She leaves and I lock the bathroom door.

This is the part where I get my period and Wendy tries to teach me how to use a humungous tampon while she stands outside the door shouting instructions.

I ignore Wendy’s voice barreling through the closed bathroom door as I read the directions on the paper inside of the tampon box. I’ve never been interested enough in my own anatomy to explore what the inside of a vagina might look like, and the diagram is a revelation.

How could I have that much space inside me? I envisioned a much smaller space, more like a grape than a small, deformed banana.

In the hallway Wendy argues with Betty about the benefits of using tampons vs. pads. Wendy wants me to try using a tampon, but Betty says she plans to start Smith on pads for a year or two before she buys her tampons—until she’s “developed.” I don’t quite understand the relevance of the word until I start trying to fit the plus-sized tampon inside of me. I become convinced I have tried the wrong orifice. Perhaps I am horribly disfigured and I am grape-sized?

I decide I’ve tried the wrong angle. I begin to explore the various angles of insertion based on the diagram in the directions. Nothing works. I’ve been inside the bathroom for about an hour. Wendy finally gives up her shouted instructions from outside because I yell at her to go away.

Betty, however, hovers somewhere outside and asks at intervals, “Okay in there?” to which I repeatedly respond, “Yeah …”

Finally, I give up on trying to use the tampons; I’ve massacred about four of them in my attempts. I use the small pins I’ve been given to pin the pad into place in Smith’s borrowed underwear.

When I come out, Betty, who’s been standing in the hallway, hands me a pair of cutoffs to wear, and tells me she put my pants into the laundry and she’ll give them to Wendy the next time she sees her. She tells me she can’t find my underwear.

“I don’t wear underwear,” I explain while I pull the cutoffs on. I figure this won’t be shocking for her, since she thinks orgies are okay.

She smiles. “I don’t wear underwear either.”

I smile back although I don’t want to hear this.

“My God, you’re thin! Those shorts fit Smith when she was ten. Does your stomach still hurt?” she asks.

“Yeah.”

“Let me find you a Midol.”

“Oh, no. I don’t take any drugs.” I’m afraid it might be one of Wendy’s types of pharmaceutical fixes.

Betty laughs, “No, it’s not … it’s okay, these come from the drugstore.”

This doesn’t appease my fears, since I know most of what Wendy keeps in her
special pharmaceutical drawer
has been prescribed to her or someone else by a doctor.

“I don’t take any drugs.”

“But this will make your stomachache go away.”

“I don’t care. I’d rather take the pain. I don’t do drugs.”

Since I know she does, I also know I risk offending her, but I don’t care. I know enough about the way Wendy and her friends abuse the legal meds they obtain to know any drug is capable of making people behave oddly. I’m odd enough without the help of a pill.

Wendy’s annoyed when I tell her I need to go, but Betty tells Wendy she should let me rest at home. In the car, Wendy yells at me about ruining her day and says we can’t go to my grandfather’s apartment. I pretend to fall asleep. At the house she pulls up and drops me off before she goes out again to grab a book from the library for a psychology class she’s taking.

Wendy’s started insisting that we lock the front door ever since she caught a kid from the neighborhood trying on her bras one day. I pull the key out from under the milk box and let myself in.

I call my grandfather to tell him we can’t make it because I don’t feel well. He sounds sad and tells me my Grandmother Ruth made a nice dinner for us. I apologize. He asks me if Wendy plans to come and visit without me.

“No, she decided not to come.”

My grandfather is quiet at first. But I can tell by the way he’s breathing that he’s mad about it. He’s sort of snorting into the phone. “Good. It’s better this way,” he suddenly says.

I’m shocked. It’s been worse between my grandfather and Wendy lately. I noticed it got especially bad after his wedding to his new wife, Ruth, but he’s never said anything unkind about her to me before. I think he must realize how he sounds because he says, “Never mind. We’ll miss you, Chavalah.”

I promise I’ll visit him before I leave for camp. After I hang up I call Leigh to tell her about the arrival of my period and my trouble with the tampons.

“That’s wicked pissa!” Leigh reserves this exclamation for the best news. She laughs and continues, “You have to use the junior-sized tampons though.”

“No wonder,” I say.

I laugh. I’m happy Leigh and I are friends again.

“I can’t believe you got your period. You don’t even have boobs yet. Mine are practically bigger than my sister’s and I still don’t have my period.”

I had no idea boob size was supposed to correlate with the start of your period.

“Don’t you remember the film they showed us after Christmas break?”

“Um, no. I don’t remember much about last semester.”

“Oh, right,” Leigh says. “Sorry, I forgot …”

“No, it’s all right. It’s weird, I know. I still don’t totally understand it myself.”

“It’s trauma,” Leigh says matter-of-factly. “You suffered a major trauma and your brain compensated by giving your memory a rest for a while.”

Leigh sounds like one of the articles Wendy reads in Psychology Today. I’m surprised to hear Leigh using psychology terms. She talks with the authority I hear adults use.

“Have you read Elizabeth Kübler-Ross?” I ask.

“Who?”

“Never mind. I can’t believe she’s making me go to camp next week. I wish I could stay here for the summer. “

“You’re gonna have a great time,” Leigh says gamely. “I asked my mom if I could go too, but she says we don’t have enough money.”

I know she’s as sad as I am, but she’s trying to make me feel better.

“Write and tell me how you’re doing and I’ll write back,” she says.

Jules, 13 years | July, 1974

TWIRLING

I DO WRITE to her. I use the tiny boxes of Raisin Bran I eat for breakfast at camp every morning as stationary. I take the box apart and write on the inside, then I fold it back into a square, put masking tape over the sides, add a piece on top for an address label and a stamp on the corner, and mail it to her. I do this a few times a week. I wonder in the beginning if she’s getting them, but then I start receiving her responses on her own cereal carton creations. This becomes our communication mode all summer. I send them to David at his camp too, but he never writes me back. I figure he’s having fun.

Camp turns out to be a good thing for my nightmares. I don’t dream a single one while I stay here.

My days are busy and I never have a moment to journal. I spend my time water skiing, boating, and canoeing in the cold lake. At the camp festival I win first place for archery, which I’ve never even tried before. We have arts and crafts activities every day, which is, of course, my favorite. Every mealtime we sing camp songs like “Black socks they never get dirty, the longer you wear them the stronger they get. Sometimes they long for the laundry but something inside you says, ‘Don’t send them yet.’” I even have a new camp name. We all give each other camp names. I’m called Dusty.

The best part of the summer is that I’m making new friends and I hardly ever see Smith. She hangs out with some other snotty girls who spend all day rehearsing a play we’re going to be forced to watch at the end of camp.

The summer flies by. I thought I’d be able to read through the old, leather-bound Shakespeare canon I brought from our library, but I’ve only made it through a couple of comedies. I’ve been checking off days on a small calendar I brought and hung on the wall of the small cabin I share with my camp friends. In the beginning of the summer I checked off how many days until I
got
to go back to Withensea; now that it’s the end of the summer, I check off how many days before I
have
to go.

When I get back to Withensea it’s two weeks before the start of school. Leigh and I spend every day hanging out by the seawall at the high school. We’re excited to start Withensea High, but feel nervous about being freshmen. Timothy Zand, the neighborhood guy she has a crush on, has started training with the football team, and Leigh’s always trying to find reasons to hang around and talk to him. They started to get to know each other when I went to camp.

We decide to try out for the majorette squad. Leigh insists. It probably has something to do with the football games where we would be performing, and, of course, Timothy. Becoming a majorette isn’t exactly something I’ve longed to do, but Leigh has her heart set on it and I know if she plans to spend every afternoon practicing with the majorette squad I should do it too, or I’ll be totally bored.

We start practicing like mad with big silver batons we buy at the hardware store in Withensea. They’re clunky and old-fashioned, but they’re all we can find. I feel sure they’ll pick Leigh. The way she swings her baton around seems professional. She’s been practicing all summer. Even with a few of the easy moves she teaches me I’m still bad. I can’t learn the knack of catching the baton on the throws. I’ve never been particularly athletic. I can run fast, but my hand/eye coordination rots. Also, the majorettes are the pretty, popular girls at school and Leigh will fit right in. The majorettes usually go on to become the Homecoming Court and Queen, then the Prom Court and Queen. There’s a lot of dressing up and pretending to be royalty in high school. I think it seems dippy, but I don’t tell Leigh. I figure if she wants to be part of it she must like that stuff. I pretend to like it too.

The tryouts are the first week of school. I ramp up my own practice to include a session every night in my backyard. I stay out there, sometimes in the near dark with the porch light on, and twirl my baton for hours.

There are multiple days of tryouts. On the first day we’re all taught a choreographed dance routine that incorporates several different twirling patterns. All the ballet and dance classes I’ve taken as a kid make the choreographed dance part of the routines easier for me.

We have to learn all the new twirling patterns in few days. We carry our
batons constantly, twirling every spare minute of the day. Over the next few days we meet in the gym to learn new routines and practice. I walk rather than ride the bus all week so I can twirl all the way to and from school. I twirl between classes and I twirl right up until I go to sleep every night. Even in bed.

On the day of the final tryouts Leigh and I walk to the gym. Leigh seems confident, but I feel nervous. Leigh studied gymnastics and dance and her baton skills are great. She goes first and performs perfectly. Even the majorette captain comments that she’s given a great performance. The majorette captain leads the selection committee. Sometimes you can tell a lot about a girl based on what type of earrings she wears. The majorette captain wears big, white, plastic hoops. Definitely not trustworthy, I decide. But at least she was honest about Leigh’s performance being good.

The committee includes the band teacher, who also teaches math, an English teacher, one of the gym teachers, the home economics instructor, and the school nurse. So altogether there are six of them including the majorette squad captain. I don’t know any of the teachers well yet and want to make a good impression.

When it’s my turn, I stand in front of all the teachers and wait for the music to play for my routine. The next thing I know, I’m sitting on the bleachers next to Leigh and the other girls.

I don’t remember my routine. I don’t remember sitting down. It’s freaking me out. I’m having the memory loss thing again and I thought I was done with it.

“I think I’m in trauma mode,” I whisper to Leigh. “I don’t remember doing my routine.”

“I got scared too,” she says. “It happens when you’re scared. You did great!”

I’m not convinced about memory loss being related to fear, and I’m not convinced I did great.

I force a smile. “You were amazing!” I say.

Leigh and I are both chosen, which feels like skyrockets.

Afterwards, we walk along the seawall by the high school.

“I’m glad we got picked,” Leigh confesses. “I worried one of us might not and we’d never see each other because of practice and the games and all that.”

“Yeah, I know what you mean. I didn’t think I’d be picked either.”

Leigh laughs. “No, that’s not what I meant. I don’t think they picked based on our twirling abilities. I think they want to give certain girls a chance to belong to a club. Like a step-up or something.”

I nod, not understanding what she means.

She sees that I don’t get it. “I think they’re trying to end the popularity contest it’s been and turn it into more of an equal opportunity for everyone,” she explains.

I think about what she said. They told us at the beginning of tryouts that there were three slots open for the majorette squad. There were already two seniors, two juniors, and one sophomore on the squad. This left three extra spaces to complete an eight-person squad. They picked four of us. This means the squad is now an uneven nine.