The Cheer Leader (24 page)

“I have an A in Poetry,” she says. “The other grades are not so hot. But, I can get them up. Oh yes, I'll get them up.”

“You used to never have trouble with your grades in high school,” her mother says. “Of course, there's a big difference in college, I know.”

“Oh, there is,” she says and opens her eyes. Why does it feel like they aren't her eyes.

“Plus being away from home for the first time,” her
mother says. “You've had right much to happen, what with Red and Beatrice.”

“What about Red and Beatrice?” She has tried to forget all of that. She wants to forget that and the nightmares. They aren't real. She must remember to forget and forget to remember.

“Maybe you need to talk about it,” she says. “You know we're always here.” Yes, she knows that and it is like a jolt to remember that. It is so big and so real that it makes her cry. It makes her reach up and put her arms around her mother and squeeze, to hide her face. “You know Bobby's a good listener, too. And Y'all have always been so close. Right?”

She nods. “I'm okay, really I am. It's just good to be home, that's all. I think I feel happy, that's all.” She says that and now she must be happy; she must be a happy hoppy picture like a good Jo Jo. No sense in making them worry over nothing.

Bobby wants her to go fishing, just the way that they used to. “We don't have to go to the lake,” he says. “We can drive down to the beach for the day.”

“I don't mind going to the lake,” she says. “Come on, Bobby, do you think that will bother me? Nothing bothers me!”

“Do you ever hear from any of your friends?” Bobby asks when they are in the car on the way to the lake.

“Some,” she says. “They're real busy, too.” No, she hadn't heard from anybody recently and she hadn't tried
to get in touch with any of them. They probably were real busy, besides, it hasn't been a good time to see people.

It is a very calm day and Jo Spencer and her brother go out to the end of the pier where she used to lie out in the sun. The watch tower is still there and if the water wasn't so cold, she would jump in and swim out there and dive and flip. She could still do it. The sun is very bright and Bobby pulls out his sunglasses and puts them on. They look so normal on him.

“Hey, Christine left her sunglasses in my car. Wanna wear them?”

“No, they make me feel funny,” she says and pulls out a big fat bloodworm and slits him down the middle. He wiggles in three different pieces, still wiggling and looping when she sticks the hook through. She must put her hands in the water fast, get the blood off. “Out! Out! Damn spot!” she says and Bobby smiles but he doesn't laugh the way that she had intended. Then they just sit and stare at their poles. Bobby looks like he always does when he is worried and just about to ask a question. Probably, does she think that Christine really loves him? Should he get married? Yes, she is an Ethiopian Queen, tie the knot, begin to begot. She expects to hear voices any minute, laughs, to feel the pier vibrating and to look up to see Red jogging up to her.

“You thirsty?” Bobby asks.

“Water, water everywhere and not a drop to drink,” she says and Bobby doesn't see any humor in this at all.
He pulls a thermos of Tang out of the canvas bag with all their junk and lunch in it.

“Do you want some or not?” Bobby is mad.

“To drink or not to drink . . .” Jo Spencer lifts her hand, one finger pointed upwards and Bobby slaps it; he slaps it hard.

“Cut it out, Jo!” he screams. “Now, what in the hell is bugging you. I'm your brother, remember?” Remember to forget and forget to remember.

“Do you?” he screams.

“I know that,” she says. “Yeah, I remember that! Hooray!”

“Jo, listen. I know you're not doing well in school. Probably partying a little too much.”

“I never go to parties,” she says. “Very rarely do I get invited to parties.”

“Well, I know you went to one,” he says. “You know Pat Reeves called me because he was a little upset about you.”

“Why should he have been upset?” She reels her line in slowly and watches it winding around the reel, around and around.

“He said that you just weren't yourself.”

“Who did he say that I was?” That is a very clever thing to say. It is hilarious!

“Look, if something's bugging you, tell me.” Bobby pours his cup of Tang into the dark green water and stares behind it as though he can find the orange Tang down in all that green.

“Nothing bothers me—not ever—jamais plus!”

“Josie, you know that I love you don't you?” Bobby looks up and he looks like he is going to cry. It is like waiting for the rain to start at her Grandma Spencer's house where there is a tin awning over the porch and each drop can be heard, one by one, until there is a steady drone, the humming of rain. There, slowly, one drop. She can hear it as it rolls down his face. “I can't stand to see you like this.”

“Like what?” she asks and casts her line way out. It's the farthest that she has ever cast a line.

“Pat said that you said all kinds of things. I couldn't believe that you would act like that.” Bobby hides his face in his hands. “He said you sort of came on to him but that he knew it wasn't like you at all. He said you had had too much to drink.”

“And you believe all that?” she asks. “So what if I did? Haven't you ever done anything like that? Huh? Maybe I just wanted a little of what you've got, you know? You've got everything, Bobby, you've always had everything. Look what you've got right now, you're going to med school, you've got somebody that you love, somebody that loves you! Really loves you! Don't you see how I just wanted to have something like that? What about that time that you took all of my Easter eggs and ate them? You've always had everything!”

“Things haven't always worked out for me,” he says. “Don't you remember Nancy Carson?”

“Whore bag.”

“Pat said that you said that at the party.” Bobby rubs
his hand over his face and halfway smiles. “You were probably right about that but you shouldn't have said it.” Bobby puts both of his hands on her face and makes her look up. “Things will work out for you, too, Jo. You just have to give it time.”

Hurry up please, it's time. “I'm tired of waiting,” she says.

“But, you're young.”

“But, I feel very old.”

“Mom says you're doing real well in Poetry.”

“I have an A.”

“Can I see some of your stuff?” he asks and puts his arm around her.

“Maybe but you'll have to wait until I'm better.”

“You mean feeling better?” He gets a serious look again.

“Writing better,” she says and laughs. There is a look of relief on Bobby's face and she thinks for a minute that maybe things will get better. Maybe things will get worse. She doesn't know, can't see, because the trees are blocking the horizon. They sit on the pier until late in the afternoon when the sun looks like a big orange ball sinking behind those trees, and it is a sad sight, just the very way that it moves and goes away. They haven't caught any fish but Bobby says that it has been worth the trip. She has not heard or seen Red but his presence has been in every silent moment, every dark green ripple beneath that pier at Moon Lake, and she wishes that he would get out of her head because he has no business being there.

It is the second part of the second semester so she must begin again. The nightmare, that exposed ghost nightmare, has only come to her one early gray morning since spring break and now, she has come up with a solution to keep that nightmare away: She must go back to the original rules except that she will go to all of her classes and make good grades instead of riding the buses. Then, after she eats dinner with Andy, she will stay in that robin egg blue room and study. She will no longer go where everybody goes because right now, she is a nobody and must prove herself otherwise. She must not drink too much. Bobby said that she should not drink too much. “And especially during the week!” he had said. “No wonder you're flunking a subject.” But if she doesn't drink, she cannot sleep during the night because that is when the other nightmare comes, the one where she is running through the gray. She must start all over. She must begin by catching up on her English II journal because she is way behind, because she made a C- on her research paper because she didn't DO any REAL research because there were no footnotes. “An interesting topic though not what I asked for,” the scratchy red ink said. Don't worry about that, look ahead, start over. Wasn't that what Bobby had said?

She must turn to a new clean sheet and begin. She cannot get off of her bed even to use the bathroom until something is done:

Some people think that Columbus was Jewish and I can believe this because I only know a couple of Jews that I think are
dumb. The rest are very smart. I heard one time that overall they are the very smartest with Japanese coming in second and I can easily believe this if Chris indeed, was one. Some people think that Jews are trying to take over the world but they aren't. I know who is though. Swinish people whose names are the names of colors; those people (other than Warren Beatty) with sort of simian features. They are the kind of people who will murder and screw anything on two legs. It isn't the Jews. What does that mean anyway? I know a lot of Jews that are better Christians than a lot of Christians but I have never seen a Christian who is a better Jew than a Jew. I am a Christian but not a Christian's Christian. I do not hand out pamphlets at K-Mart's, nor can I abide bumper stickers that say “Honk if you love Jesus,” or “Jesus is coming soon.” I have never and never intend to give a testimony or to sing “Day by Day” for contributions. So what kind of a Christian am I? If Columbus was or was not Jewish really isn't important. What is important is that he took a chance and I have recently heard that there is no room for chance in a deterministic society. It is all a matter of survival of the fittest and yet, the meek shall inherit the earth? Contradictions upon contradictions and yet, if I could only contradict the contradictions that I made another time, then I would be back where I started from. But sometimes that is more difficult than it sounds. I simply am not certain. Once, a long time ago, someone told me that I was frigid and I contradicted that and now, I will contradict that contradiction. I am that way and it is only during those winter months when the weather outside is colder than I am that I appear to be thawing, to be warm. I'm not. I'm stone cold, stone cold sober and drunk, petrified. The good part is that hair in the bathroom because it is always there every time that I go in and my hands are there, the same hands that used to catch grasshoppers, only a
little bigger, these hands that finger-painted with a cross-eyed girl who it seems got her eyes fixed but could not fix anything else like dying. That's how it seems but these are the same hands. I read a story about hands one time that I liked a lot and I could probably write something about hands, my own hands because I know them so well.

Now, she must sit and think, about hands. Beck has come in and wants to know what she is doing but she cannot let on about the thinking.

“I have to write a poem,” she says very intently so that Beck will be quiet.

“Want to go out? Paul and a bunch of us are going bar hopping.”

“Thanks,” Jo Spencer says. “But I'm behind in my work.”

“Maybe you can get it all done,” Beck says and gets her books. “I'm going to the library. Be back soon.”

“Okay,” she says and acts like she will try real hard to get her work done so that she can go, too, when all the time, she knows that she is not going to go. She must concentrate very hard; she must take a chance. You must stay on this bed, in this room. You must not even consider going bar hopping until you gain control, until your false feet make controlled patterned steps, or you will wake up in a place that you don't know, your hands will have touched someone that you don't know. Oh no! Not these hands!

Now, it is dark. Beck left over two hours ago. The light at the window has failed and she cannot see to see. Turn
on a lamp. There, and then there was light! She must sit with her legs crossed very tightly, endure those little pee shivers, until she gets the very end for her poem. She cannot help but wonder what the poetry professor sees in her poems. What does he think of her? Does he think that she takes chances? Does he think that she has a chance? It has become a very important part of her day to think about this—to think about what he must think. If she had to pick a new Daddy, she would pick this man. If she had been born forty years ago and had found herself in a dim smoky room where people were dancing to the good songs, she would have asked this man to dance. If she ever had a son, he would be just like this man.

The shivers are getting worse and she must hurry and finish the poem, read it over very carefully, and if it meets her approval, she may be excused. It is something to look forward to. What can she name it? The hardest part about writing a poem is finding a name for it. The professor had said that the title is very important, because sometimes the title helps to understand. But some poems don't have titles and this poem is not difficult to understand. It is about using your hands to talk, but not sign language, something bigger than sign langauge. “When someone holds my hands a certain way, I feel that they are holding every word that I will ever say.” Warm hands/cold heart, deceptive digits. She will call it “Hands.” Now, she can go to the bathroom so she walks slowly, steadily, down that fluorescent hall. She can endure the pain now that she can see relief. That is a very important thought
but she must not think about it until she is seated. It takes a minute for this very natural bodily occurrence to begin because she has waited so long. And then, relief, and it is the first time that she has ever realized what a pleasurable event this can be. It is a part of life that is taken for granted just like hands and it shouldn't be, and even though everyone enjoys this function, hers is isolated from all the others because she sees the pleasure. And why? Because she has suffered through the waiting. Isn't that what they say in philosophy? To know pleasure and truly appreciate it, you must know pain, the opposites, to be happy you must know sadness. To enjoy using the bathroom, you must endure the pain of not going. Yes, and by not eating very much, she will one day find pleasure in devouring a pepperoni pizza! That is what it's all about, the opposites.