True To Form (2 page)

Well, you never know what life will turn out to be. Sometimes when I lie in bed at night, I think of bad things that can happen and how much we can never know, and it's so scary. It's like taking the lid off a box that's in front of you all the time, but usually you leave it alone. But every now and then, you take the lid off and you
look in and the box is so dark and deep and full of writhing possibilities it gives you the shivers.

I lean back against my bed, let out a big breath, and look around my bedroom. I am used to it now, which probably means it's about time to move. Every time I get used to something, it's time to leave it. “We have orders,” my father will say, and that's that, we're on the way to wherever the army tells us to go.

I like this room. It feels more private than any place I've ever had, situated the way it is at the end of the hall. If my sister, Diane, were still living with us, she would have gotten this room; she always got the best room. But she lives by herself in California now, because she ran away when she was eighteen. We talk about twice a month, and once in a while she comes to visit, but mostly it is just no good between her and my father; it never was. My father was always fierce, but after my mother died it seemed like he got a lot worse. And Diane finally just left. He never talks about it, but I know he is sorry. One thing my stepmother has done is to make my father a little softer, not so mean. It's odd; I think he loved my mother more, but he treats Ginger better. And I think I know why. It is because she is not as nice to him as my mother was. She pushes back, sometimes. She draws a line and says don't you cross this. Now you tell me why someone is nicer to the person who treats him worse.

My favorite place in my room is my desk drawer. In it is a little figure of a bird all covered with jewels. I don't think they're real jewels, but maybe they are. It was given to me by a boy I did not know, for no reason. It was a while ago, just after my mother had died, and I was sitting out by myself in the middle of a field on a summer day, and the boy appeared out of nowhere. He was younger than I, I thought—smaller, at least, and so I wasn't afraid. I said, “Hey,” and he said nothing back. “What are you doing?” I asked, and again he said nothing. I asked him if he spoke English, and he just smiled and shrugged. I stared at him
for a while, and then I patted the ground. He sat next to me, his knees drawn up under his chin, and together we watched the movement of the breeze through the tall weeds, the lazy shifting of the gigantic cumulus clouds that filled the sky that day, and, once, the magical hovering of a dragonfly, colored metallic blue. We only pointed at things, but it was a good conversation. We sat for a good fifteen or twenty minutes, and then the boy got up to leave. But first he took the bird out of his pocket and gave it to me. I was amazed by his generosity, but I am ashamed to say that I made no move at all to refuse that gift. It is the main thing in my drawer, because it was a miracle and it came without asking. Sometimes when I think of that boy, I think, Wait, was he mute? And sometimes I think—the thought very small and private—Was he an angel? And sometimes I think, in a way that makes me feel like bawling, Was he my mother? That thought is the smallest and most private of all, and it lives in my heart, and it will never be told to anyone.

Also in my drawer is a photo of baby pigs. I remember them vaguely from a time we lived on a farm in Indiana. I think I was three. I remember being barefoot, standing on the wooden rail of a fence, looking down at those pigs. I wanted them to be my dollies; I wanted to wheel them in a carriage, put bonnets on their heads, feed them from bottles, and cover them when they slept. But they were not babies, they were pigs. So I only watched them lie by their mother in their neat, pink row; and I watched them take their grunty little steps around the sty.

I have some rocks I cracked open and kept for their gorgeous insides. I have some acorns, because look what comes from them. I have a pressed flower, a rose I would still call pink, even though its edges have turned tea-colored. I have pictures of beautiful things cut out of magazines: a willow tree next to a river, a kitchen lit up by morning sun, a monarch on a red poppy, a herd of sheep on a hill in Ireland, a wooden, straight-back chair positioned by a window
with a blowing white curtain. I have a lot of pictures of dogs, too. I would like to have seven dogs.

I have something that I drew, a woman's face that is full of sorrow. And it looks like a real picture that an artist did. It looks that way to me. And the thing is, I don't know how to draw. I was sitting at my desk one day, my head in my hands, and I had that middle ache that is just the pain that comes with being alive sometimes, that kind of personal despair. I don't know why it comes, but I know it used to get my mother too. Every once in a while, she would sit so still, her hands in her lap, and she would have a little smile on her face that was not really a smile. What's wrong? I once asked, and she looked up quickly and she saw that I saw. After that, she would usually close herself in her bedroom until it was over—it never took that long, really. She didn't like for anyone to see her that way. She didn't want anyone to know.

But I had that same kind of feeling one day, that veil of sadness between me and the world, and I had a piece of paper in front of me and I drew that woman's face like I was in a dream, like someone else was borrowing my hand. And I have never shown it to anyone, and I have never drawn anything good since then, either.

Lately, I have begun writing a lot more poems, and I have been saving them in my drawer. And it's funny, the same thing happens, about someone else borrowing my hand. I get a feeling; I step off into space; and a thing makes up itself.

I have red lipstick in my drawer that was my mother's, with the mark of her mouth on it. I have a rhinestone button I found outside, feathers from birds, pennies that mean good luck. I have a box of crayons that I intend never to use, I just like to look at them all perfect and read the names of the colors out loud, and I like to smell them deep, like I smell the test papers at school that have just come off the mimeograph machine. I have some torn-out hairdos that I would like to get, if my hair will ever grow really long instead of acting paralyzed.

Sometimes I think, What if I died and someone looked in my drawer? I wonder what they would understand about me. Probably not so much—for one thing, they would get the crayons wrong. I think, actually, that none of us understands anyone else very well, because we're all too shy to show what matters the most. If you ask me, it's a major design flaw. We ought to be able to say, Here, look what I am. I think it would be quite a relief.

E
VERY YEAR
I
DO THIS
. Every year I go outside to tan for the first time and I know I'm only supposed to do fifteen minutes a side, but then I think, Oh, maybe a little more, and then a little more, and then I see the redness and I know I'm in for it. I come inside and take a cold shower, but no, it is too late. I am cooked.

It is Monday morning and I am lying in bed with no clothes on because that's how much it hurts, I can't even wear clothes. Ginger didn't say anything because that's the kind of person she is. My father came to stand in my doorway and look at me before he went to work, and he moved his mouth like he was shifting a toothpick from one side to the other. Finally, “When are you going to learn?” he asked, and I shrugged. Which hurt, because my shoulders are the worst.

“How long were you out there?” he asked, and I mumbled something.

“What's that?” he asked.

“About twenty minutes.”

“And you got burned like that?”

“Maybe it was thirty. Or a little more. It
might
have been forty, but I don't
think
so.” It was an hour, said the angel on my shoulder, and the devil said,
Shut up!

He shook his head and said, again, “When are you going to learn?”

I just nodded. There was no answer. But then he knew that. He called Ginger, and when she came up to him he jerked his head toward me and said, “Take care of her, will you?” His tenderness, in its usual disguise. Ginger looked at me, a message in her eyes, and I stared back, I know.

The first thing I do after he leaves is call my friend Cynthia to come over. I know she will read aloud to me from
True Romance,
or hold up movie magazine pictures, or play the records I ask her to put on. At lunch time she will make the sandwiches we like and bring one to me: baloney and lots and lots of mayonnaise on white bread with lettuce and potato chips on there too. I am sorry to say that one of the biggest reasons we are friends is that we are both sort of losers. The only good thing about that is you can do certain things like the sandwiches and who cares.

O
NE THING
I
DO NOT
understand about parents is how out of their mouths come two different things at almost exactly the same time. They are the true forked-tongue people of the world.

Here is my father talking to me at the breakfast table this morning: “Katie, you're thirteen years old. You're really growing up, now, and I think it's time you started working in the summers.” No complaint from me so far. A lift in my chest of pure happiness, in fact, that inside yip. Because one thing I would love is to have a job, maybe at the concession stand at the swimming pool where lifeguards join the crowd in asking for a Nutty Buddy. They stand so handsome and nonchalant, their whistle lying in the little valley of their chest, zinc oxide on their noses, their eyes sexy behind their sunglasses. Oftentimes they take a dip before they come to the concession stand and you can see the little rivers of water zigzag down their hairy legs. Their faces look like boys', but their legs look like men, which gives you the inside shivers.

Some of the lifeguards have actually saved lives, have knelt beside a bluish body and made it breathe again. I saw part of that one time. I was on the outside of a thick circle of people gathered around someone the lifeguards had pulled out of the pool. He was a fat man, and all I could see was one of his arms, lying useless beside him. But then he got saved. An ambulance came, the crowd parted,
and he was carried off on a stretcher with a red blanket over him, an oxygen mask over his face. I remember thinking, If it were me, I'd be embarrassed about the oxygen mask. But the man wasn't embarrassed. I guess he was in shock, his eyes all blank. I watched him pass by and I thought, For the rest of his life, he will tell this story,
I wanted to go swimming.

Anyway, if you work at a pool, you can develop a personal relationship with the lifeguards and get your own money to buy things besides. But working at the pool is not going to be my job. Because what my father said next is, “There is an elderly couple two blocks over who need help for a few hours on Mondays, Wednesdays, and Fridays. And I know Mrs. Wexler is looking for a sitter for her kids a couple of days a week, as well.”

There is this sense of powerlessness that comes to me sometimes, and it makes my chest feel paralyzed, and it makes my stomach feel like someone is wringing it out. That feeling came to me then. I knew it was all over and there was nothing, nothing, nothing I could do, especially with my father who sometimes gets mad if you only say “But . . . ” Still, I tried. I made my face blank as a white towel, and I said, “My job is going to be baby-sitting?” Mrs. Wexler lives two doors down and has three kids, ages six, seven, and eight. All boys. I've baby-sat for her a few times. Trust me that it is not the kind of job you would say is fun. Or grown-up. I felt like standing in front of a wall and punching it again and again, but instead I had a little smile on my face, and I moved only to tuck my hair politely behind my ears.

“You're to start next Monday,” my father said.

“But . . . baby-sitting for a
couple?”

“Yes.” He stood and looked at his watch. “The wife is apparently quite ill. They need some help.”

Oh great, I thought, and right away I got an idea of how that place would be. I got the smell in my nose of the place. No offense, but when you're around older people there is a smell, even when
they're not sick. It is like old closet smell. Not the thing you want to be around in the summer, when everywhere else is suntan lotion and grass clippings. Plus old people always keep their houses dark and they are kind of cheap about food. I have been invited inside old people's houses, and when they ask if you would like some cookies, what they give you is two Vanilla Wafers or a Fig Newton on a saucer that is not the cleanest thing you've ever seen. It's not their fault, I'm not saying that, but I just so much do
not
want to be a
baby-sitter
for my summer job.

Here is how much my opinion counts: Zero. My opinion is called talking back. I can say things to my stepmother. Ginger will listen to anything, the calm look in her eyes a welcome mat to your feelings. But she would not be able to help me on this one. I was doomed for the whole rest of the summer, starting right at that very minute. It wasn't fair. And it wasn't right.

“Tonight, I'll show you where they live,” my father said. “Introduce you.”

“Okay,” I said.

My father kissed Ginger quickly on the mouth, and left. The screen door slammed. The car door slammed. The engine started. Next came the low whine of the car in reverse, backing out of the driveway. A pause, while he shifted gears. Gone.

So now I am lying on my bed with my door closed at ten in the morning, like I am a sick old person myself. I know if I went outside there would be the cheer-up sight of roses in gardens and clouds puffed up in the sky like they are pure proud of themselves. Little kids riding their bikes down the street full of the freedom of no homework. But I don't want to be cheered up until I am done with feeling mad. Here comes Ginger down the hall with the vacuum cleaner, which shows no respect at all.