“In this very exact spot,” said Elizabeth, sitting down beside me, “only twenty minutes ago, Tom asked me to go with him.”
I gave a squeal, then stopped. “Why can’t you tell your mother?”
“She’d be furious!” Elizabeth said. “I’m not supposed to go with a boy till I get to high school.”
I kept wondering who makes the rules. Pamela’s not supposed to kiss till she’s sixteen, Elizabeth’s not supposed to go steady until high school… . I just don’t understand how one day you aren’t ready for something and then, after a birthday party, you are.
“Tell me everything,” I said eagerly.
“Well …” Elizabeth got breathless again. “We were holding hands and he was sort of looking the other way and swallowing and then he looked back and said, ‘Elizabeth, will you go with me?’”
“And then what?”
“I said yes, and he squeezed my hand and took off his ID bracelet and put it on my wrist.” She held out her arm so I could see.
“He put it on for you? He fastened it and everything?” I ran one finger over the shiny metal bracelet. Oh, wow. This was about the most romantic thing I’d ever heard.
“Yes.” Elizabeth hugged her knees and sort of moaned.
“Then what?”
“Then I told him to wait here, and I went upstairs and got one of my school pictures and gave it to him, and he put it in his wallet.”
I moaned too. All of us—Elizabeth, Pamela, and I—had been doing a lot of moaning lately, but it was just too wonderful for words. Patrick and I had been going with each other longer than anyone else so far, and we still hadn’t exchanged pictures or bracelets or anything.
“What if your mother sees the bracelet?” I asked suddenly.
“She won’t. I’ll never wear it in the house. I have a special place for it in a velvet box in my drawer,” Elizabeth said. “We’re three couples now. Isn’t that wonderful, Alice? We’ll all have boyfriends when we start seventh grade.”
The next night we started walking ’round the neighborhood holding hands, the six of us—the couples, I mean. Up until then we’d just been horsing around the playground, but now that we were all officially couples, we’d just walk in the summer darkness and sometimes we’d kiss in the shadows. We’d kid around under the streetlights, too, and the boys would get silly, and sometimes we’d go to High’s for ice cream, but we spent most of the time just walking. Elizabeth and Tom never held hands until we were at least a block away from the Prices’ house.
Each couple had a style. Pamela and Mark always walked in front, with their arms around each other and, if they were wearing jeans, with their hands in each other’s back pocket. I don’t think I could ever do that—put my hand in Patrick’s pocket. Right over his hip, I mean. I can imagine what Aunt Sally would say about that.
Elizabeth and Tom usually walked in the middle and they just held hands. They never kissed in the dark places, either. They were very polite. If their hips happened to bump into each other, Elizabeth always said, “Excuse me,” and Tom kept in step with Elizabeth.
For some reason, Patrick and I always walked at the end. I guess we just felt more comfortable, not being on display for the others to watch. Sometimes we kissed and sometimes we held hands, but a lot of the time we’d catch lightning bugs and put them on each other’s shoulders, or pick leaves off trees as we passed, or just talk.
When we got to High’s, we’d all order ice cream in cups so we’d have an excuse to hang around the store to eat it and drop the cups in the trash can before we left. You never knew who you’d see at High’s, and it was sort of nice to be one of the couples and have kids from school walk in and see you. We’d order one of their exotic flavors—Heavenly Hash or Rum Pecan—and then we’d stand there making up flavors of our own: Chocolate Syrup Fudge Brownie Chip or Strawberry Marshmallow Banana Mint. We even gave our suggestions to the manager once, and he said, “Look, all I do is work here.” One night Mark was showing us how he could fake a burp and the manager asked us to leave. The next night when we were eating ice cream, though, Elizabeth belched accidentally, and the manager even frowned at her.
I don’t know if this was what started it or not, but we’d been going to High’s for about a week when Elizabeth began getting weird about food. Every night when we’d get to High’s, she’d say she wasn’t hungry, and when Tom would order something for her anyway, she’d get red in the face and hardly even touch it. So one day when Pamela and I were at her house in the afternoon, we came right out and asked: “Elizabeth, what’s wrong?”
At first she acted as though she didn’t know what we were talking about, but finally she said she was just too embarrassed about eating to do it in public.
“It’s disgusting,” she said. “Think about it. You put food in your mouth and it gets all mixed up with spit and you chew it up into a revolting mess and swallow it. And we’re supposed to do all that in front of boys?”
“Elizabeth, it’s only ice cream!” Pamela told her. “They do it in front of us!”
“But it could be something else,” said Elizabeth. “Have you ever looked at food after you’ve chewed it awhile?”
“You’ve been chewing ever since you had teeth,” I said. “What’s happened all of a sudden?”
“I don’t know,” Elizabeth said miserably. “The longer I go without eating in front of Tom, the scarier it gets.”
Pamela and I told Elizabeth that if she didn’t start eating soon when Tom was around, the boys would start staring at her and that would make it all the worse. And we told her that if she would eat her ice cream the next time we went to High’s, we’d distract the boys so that no one would be watching her.
The following night at High’s, Elizabeth ordered a small dish of French vanilla, and Pamela and I started balancing our plastic spoons on our noses. It was a good thing it was the manager’s night off, because he would have sent Pamela and me out of the store, but pretty soon we had the boys doing it too, and the next time we looked, Elizabeth had finished her French vanilla.
“Thanks, Alice,” she told me later.
The next night, though, just as we were leaving, Tom bought a package of potato chips and we stood out under the streetlight eating them. Even Elizabeth took one. I don’t know how it happened, but the exact second Elizabeth popped it in her mouth was the exact second everybody stopped talking, and a loud crackling, popping sound came from Elizabeth’s mouth. She was mortified.
“Wow! What’s that? Your teeth?” Mark asked, and the next day Pamela and I had to distract the boys again in order to get Elizabeth to eat a potato chip.
We were talking about it on Saturday when Pamela and Elizabeth came over to sun in my backyard. We stretched out on the grass in our bathing suits.
“It’s bodies!” Elizabeth told us. “I mean, they’re so embarrassing.”
“Everybody’s got one,” I said.
“The noises they make!” she said. “I have to eat four crackers just before I go out with Tom to keep my stomach from growling.”
Now that’s the kind of thing you learn from a mother. I never in my life knew that the way to stop your stomach from growling was to eat four crackers before you went somewhere. When it happened in class, I usually just folded my arms across my abdomen or pressed my history book against my stomach.
Pamela lifted one leg up in the air and smeared some more suntan lotion on her thigh. “The thing about bodies that bothers me is how women can stand to have babies,” she said.
“I can’t even think about it,” said Elizabeth. “When my mind even starts to think about it, I switch to something else.”
“Do you suppose it hurts a lot?” Pamela asked, looking at me.
“Why are you asking me?” I bleated. “I don’t even have a mother!”
“It can’t be too terrible or women would just have one baby and stop,” Pamela said.
“Let’s don’t talk about it,” said Elizabeth.
Pamela flopped
over on her stomach and grinned. “Now, making babies might be nice.”
“Don’t talk about it!” Elizabeth warned, so Pamela shut up.
Sometimes I don’t understand Elizabeth at all. If I had a mother, I’d bet we’d talk about things like that all the time. I asked Dad once if having a baby hurt much, and he said that Mama sometimes said she’d rather have a baby than go to the dentist. That didn’t make me feel much better about dentists.
“What bothers me most,” said Elizabeth, “is how you can tell a boy that you have to go to the bathroom. Even if you say restroom, he’ll know.”
“Everybody goes to the bathroom, Elizabeth,” I said.
“But they don’t have to know that you do,” she said.
I stared at her. “Elizabeth, if people thought you didn’t go to the bathroom, they’d really think you were strange.”
“But it’s so gross! I’ve decided that if I’m ever out with a boy and I have to use the restroom, I’ll just tell him I want to wash my hands.”
I told Dad and Lester about that at dinner.
“Well,” Dad said, “some people love to make up things to worry about.”
I looked at Lester. “What does Crystal say when you’re out on a date and she has to use the restroom?”
“Crystal just says, ‘I have to go,’” Lester told me. He was staring at me strangely. “Al,” he said, “what happened to you?”
I got up and looked in the mirror. When we were lying out in the sun that afternoon, I’d kept a towel folded up over my eyes. My forehead was red, my cheeks and nose and chin were red, but the strip across my eyes was as white as a boiled egg. I shrieked.
The next day I was lying out on the grass with Elizabeth, getting a suntan, and I had everything covered up except my eyes. I told Elizabeth about Crystal—how she was pretty and had a big bosom and played the clarinet, and how I’d seen her in a concert once in a black velvet dress, and she’d looked like the Queen of Sheba or something. And I said that when Crystal was out with my brother and needed to use the bathroom, she just said, “I have to go,” just like that.
I don’t know if it helped Elizabeth or not. But by the middle of August, she was eating ice cream regularly in front of Tom, she wasn’t saying “Excuse me” anymore when they accidentally bumped hips, and she finally got to the point where she even ate a potato chip on the street corner. Politely. With her lips closed.
9
WHAT HAPPENED AT JIMMY’S
THE SCARY PART ABOUT HAVING A BOY-friend, I guess, is that you’re never sure what will happen next. In some ways, that’s the nice part. You always wonder. With me, though, I worried more than I wondered. The closer you get to someone, the closer you want to be. How close is too close? How close isn’t close enough?
Pamela said that when boys get together to talk, they use a secret language.
“What?” I said.
“They pretend they’re talking baseball, but they’re really talking about how far they went with a girl.”
“What?” I said again. This was the most unbelievable thing I had ever heard.
“It’s true!” Pamela said. “If they talk about getting to first base, it means they held hands with their girl. If they talk about getting to second base, it means they got as far as a kiss. If they say they got to third base, it means they put one hand up under her T-shirt, and if they say they made it all the way to home, it means …”
“I don’t want to hear about it!” Elizabeth said, putting her hands over her ears. If Elizabeth ever found herself alone in a house with a boy, I don’t know what she would do.
But that’s what happened to me. One Thursday it was raining and Patrick couldn’t mow lawns so he called me at the Bentons’ and asked if he could come over for a while. Something told me that this wasn’t quite right when you were on a job, but Mrs. Benton hadn’t said I couldn’t, and I knew that Pamela let Mark come over all the time when she was babysitting, so I said yes.
Jimmy Benton and I were getting along pretty well. His favorite game still was to run over the Playskool nurse with his fire truck, but because I let him and didn’t scold, this happened less, and during the third week, when he was eating his graham cracker, he even gave the Playskool nurse a bite. We were making progress.
Some days were better than others, of course. When he missed his mother the most, Jimmy would crawl around the floor pretending he was a dog and would try to bite my knees, but I’d get him to do tricks instead: “Roll over”; “Sit up”; “Play dead” (especially “Play dead”).
That day when Patrick came over, Jimmy had a fine time, and Patrick was really good with him. Patrick would build things out of Jimmy’s blocks and let him run them over with his cement mixer, or he would crawl around on the floor with Jimmy on his back. It was sort of as if we were playing house—Daddy, Mommy, and little Jimmy Benton.
When Jimmy took his nap, Patrick and I had the house to ourselves, and this was really embarrassing. At home, Patrick and I sat out on the porch, but here we were, with the Bentons away, and there I was on the couch, with Patrick’s arm around me.
I could tell by the way Patrick was looking at me that things were going to go a little further here than they had back home on my front porch, and I was nervous. He pulled me closer to him than he usually did. I closed my eyes when he leaned over to kiss me, but this time, I could feel his tongue pushing against my lips, pushing them open, and then he ran his tongue along my teeth. A French kiss!
I felt my palms begin to sweat. I hadn’t brushed my teeth after lunch! There could be all kinds of crud on my teeth! I tried to remember what I’d had for lunch. Pizza! A piece of Lester’s leftover pizza, and I’ll bet it was just loaded with garlic.
The kiss went on so long, I wondered when I was allowed to swallow. What were the rules about this? Should the boy let you up for air every ten seconds or were you supposed to sort of keep your nostrils to one side?
And then Patrick’s tongue was pushing against my teeth. I couldn’t let him touch my tongue! Couldn’t let him taste the garlic pizza!
Suddenly I backed away.
“Patrick,” I said. “I … I don’t think I’m ready for this yet.”
“Okay,” said Patrick. He looked a little relieved himself.
I was glad when Jimmy woke up early and we all went out in the kitchen for a snack. I poured some apple juice for Jimmy and gave him a graham cracker. We found some grapes in the refrigerator, too, and Patrick put five of them on Jimmy’s tray while we ate the others.
Patrick was in a silly mood. He sat down in a chair, tipped his head way back, and tried to see how high he could throw a grape and still catch it in his mouth when it fell. Whenever he missed, Jimmy screeched with delight. I began to think that Patrick was a better babysitter than I was. Finally I climbed up on a chair and held a grape up as high as I could, then dropped it. This time Patrick caught it and made a big whomp sound. Jimmy howled. I did it again, and again Patrick caught it. This time, though, we didn’t hear anything from Jimmy, and when I turned to look, Jimmy’s face was turning blue. I screamed.
Patrick leaped up.
“He’s choking!” I cried, and felt my legs turn to rubber.
In an instant Patrick was around behind Jimmy’s high chair, lifting Jimmy up on his feet. “Hold him straight up!” he said to me.
My hands were shaking. I grabbed Jimmy’s shoulders and held him up. Patrick slipped his arms around Jimmy’s body, clasping his hands in front, just under Jimmy’s ribs, and jerked his hands inward. Nothing happened. I was crying. Jimmy started to slump over.
“Hold him up straight!” Patrick yelled, and I grabbed Jimmy’s shoulders firmly. This time Patrick brought his fist in harder against Jimmy’s diaphragm, and whoosh—the grape shot out of Jimmy’s mouth with a rush of air and hit the opposite wall.
Jimmy was crying, too, but he was breathing. I picked him up in my arms and took him to the couch, holding him on my lap. Patrick came in and sat down at the other end
of the couch. There was sweat on his forehead. We were both so scared, we could hardly talk.
“H-He could have choked to death, Patrick,” I said shakily. “If you weren’t here, I wouldn’t have known what to do.”
“Yeah, but I wasn’t sure I was doing it right. I think with little kids you have to be careful how you do it or you might break something.”
“He would have choked!” I insisted.
“If I hadn’t been here, we wouldn’t have been goofing off,” Patrick answered.
I knew that was true. Patrick also had no business giving grapes to Jimmy, and I had no business letting him. I couldn’t believe I hadn’t been more responsible.
“I think I’d better go,” Patrick said. “You figure he’s okay now?”
I checked Jimmy again. He was leaning against me, breathing quietly. I nodded. Patrick got up and went home. By the time Mrs. Benton came back, Jimmy and I were playing with clay on the kitchen table. I didn’t say a word about Jimmy and the grape. The words just wouldn’t come out.
At home that evening, I was in the kitchen with Dad and Lester, cutting up celery for our stir-fry chicken, and I told them what had happened.
“That was pretty serious, Al,” Dad said.
“I know.”
“You ought to know the Heimlich maneuver,” Lester said. “I thought they taught that in school. I learned it back in ninth grade.”
“I’m only going into seventh,” I reminded him.
“You choked on a piece of candy once when you were little, Al,” Dad told me. “Your mother picked you up by your heels and shook you up and down.”
“She did?”
“I remember that!” said Lester. “Mom whacked her on the back, too.”
“Did it work?” I asked.
“You’re here, aren’t you?” Lester said. He reached around and grabbed me, turned me upside down, and held me by my heels, bumping my head on the floor while I yelled bloody murder. The thing about Lester is, that’s the way he shows he likes you.
After supper we went in the living room and had a lesson in the Heimlich maneuver. Lester demonstrated on Dad, Dad practiced on me, I practiced on Dad, and Lester gave us both an A plus.