I am going to make Dickie Mac fall in love with me,” I tell Cherylanne.
She is dropping peanuts into a Dr Pepper. She takes a chew and a swallow. “Huh!”
“I can do it,” I say. “And then I’m going away with him.”
“Where to?”
“Not Texas.”
“Well,” she says, “I suppose not. I suppose New York City.”
“I suppose gay Paree,” I say. “I suppose I could go anywhere I want to that isn’t here.”
“I suppose your nose is a garden hose,” she says, inspecting her manicure. Bride’s Blush, frosted. Two coats, with a thorough drying in between. Your nails tell a lot about you, Cherylanne says. A good manicure is a big part of being well dressed. Dial the phone only with a pencil or a pen. Eat gelatin.
“Well, you can say what you want,” I tell her. “I am serious.”
“I suppose your brain is insane,” she says. “Your mind’s in your behind.” She will go on that way, sometimes.
“I mean it,” I say. “I’m leaving here soon. I’m just telling you.”
“Well, Dickie Mac will not take you anywhere. You don’t even have your figure!”
“So?”
“Men don’t run away with girls who are twelve.” She says “twelve” like she can smell it.
“Oh, I believe they do,” I say. “I have read many a time about that very thing.”
Cherylanne snorts. “I’m sure. Where?”
“In novels,” I say. That will quiet Cherylanne down. She doesn’t read novels. I believe if you asked her what a novel was, she would only say, “a book.” It’s magazines for Cherylanne. She fans them out on her made bed, saves back issues on the floor of her closet. She likes the beauty tips, the romance stories with illustrations of women with their hair blowing beautifully, the advice columns, the quizzes. She likes to compare her tan with the progressively darker girls in the Coppertone ads. She is second from the best. “Your gold will always show up best next to a tan,” she tells me. “The darker you get, the better you’ll look in white. You want to go for the dramatic look.” Also, she likes to send away for the things she sees advertised in the back pages: Garden of Eden Bust Developer, Ever Ageless Night Cream. She spends every cent she makes baby-sitting on things that don’t work.
“I’m having a party tonight,” Cherylanne says. “And Paul Arnold is coming.” Paul Arnold, number two next to Dickie Mac. I try to hold my face still. “You want to come?” she asks.
I shrug. “Okay. Who else is coming?”
“Jerry Runk. Vicky Andrews. Bill O’Connell. Gary and Tim Nelson. Randy Dreaver.”
“No other girls?” I ask.
She is incredulous. “What for?”
I am under my bed, thinking about the party. The sun is setting; it is almost time. Cherylanne’s father ordered a whole case of Coca-Cola. Belle has set out bowls full of potato chips and pretzels and California French onion dip. They will stay in their bedroom while Cherylanne has the party. They always do this, at her request. “You don’t want older people at your parties,” she says. “You want your guests to feel they can be themselves, and mix.” I know it is more than that. Cherylanne likes to play kissing games, spin the bottle. The kissers go into the kitchen. I guard the door. So far, I have not played. But tonight will be the night.
I push one hand up idly against the bedsprings, consider whether to shave my legs. Cherylanne advised me to. “The boys call you Gorilla Legs,” she said, confidentially. And then, seeing the shame in my face, she said, “Well, they like you. But they have … noticed.” I recall the nonchalance with which I have displayed myself—legs stretched out on the lawn before me in the early evening when the boys out on their bikes stop to talk; legs wet from the swimming pool, the hair (I now realize with horror) pressed flat and dark against them, sickening rivulets of water making their zigzag way down; legs revealed beneath the straight skirts I wore to school in the hopes that they made me more appealing than the full ones. Oh, I hadn’t known. I hadn’t known.
Cherylanne knew what to do. “Get Diane’s razor,” she said, “and your dad’s shaving cream. Then soap your legs up good, and go real slow so you don’t cut yourself. Go all the way up to the top. You want everything silky smooth, even the parts you can’t see.” I felt one of Cherylanne’s legs. There were sharp bristles that felt like pushing your flat hand against a hairbrush. “This is not silky smooth,” I said.
“Because,” she said icily, “I have not shaved yet. You want to shave just before the event. And when I do shave, my legs will be exactly silky smooth.”
“Okay,” I said.
Silence from her, except for a short little sniff.
I shrugged, apologized.
Of course I intend to do exactly as she says, except for the shaving cream part. Cherylanne doesn’t know everything.
I slide out from under my bed, stand at the top of the stairs, yell down, “Anyone home?” No answer. I fill the bathtub with water, get Diane’s razor from the linen closet. I will shave my legs and tonight I will dance a slow dance with Paul Arnold. Sometimes we call ladies’ choice. I get into the tub, soap up my legs, hold the razor above my ankle, and begin. I feel a thrill at the back of my neck. “I’ll be out in a minute,” I say. “I’m just shaving my legs.” And then, “Well, I was a little late. I had to finish shaving my legs.” The thrill travels down into the core of me, splays out like fireworks.
I pull the razor up in straight, careful lines. It is not so hard. I relax. There are some other things I need to think about, to remember, about tonight. Keep my chin up. Cherylanne at first advised looking down somewhat, in order to make the boy feel important. But then when she watched me practice, she said, “Oh. Well, we’ve got a problem I hadn’t figured on. Double chin. You can work on that. Twice a day, on arising and before bed, pat your chin with your hand. Like this.” She demonstrated a flapping motion on the back of her hand, a rapid up-and-down attack on her not-double chin. “You can expect results in a few weeks,” she said. “For tonight, look up. And ask them about sports.”
When I come out of the bathroom, I see thin lines of blood running down my legs. They are everywhere, like roads on maps. I’ve been warned about this. I find the individual sources and cover them with pieces of toilet paper. Then I go into my bedroom to dress. I take off my robe, check for breasts. Nothing from the side, nothing from the front. I put on a T-shirt and underpants. I put on some Evening in Paris. Then I open my top dresser drawer and take out my mother’s bottle of Tabu, put a little of that on, too.
There is a knock on my door, and Diane comes in and stops short, staring at my legs. “What’d you do?” she asks.
I shrug.
“Did you shave your legs?”
I say nothing.
“Dad’s going to kill you.”
“He won’t even notice.”
“Ha!” She sits on my bed, shakes her head slowly. “Well, you damn near cut yourself to death!” she says. I don’t know how she can do that, swear so it rolls right off her tongue, when she is only eighteen. She says “shit” like she’s saying “Pass the butter.”
I look down at my islands of healing, the pieces of white toilet paper that have turned dark red, nearly brown. I pull one off, and the bleeding starts again.
“Well, don’t pull them off yet, dummy!” Diane comes over, squats down beside me to inspect the damage. “Jesus H. Christ.”
I step away. “Just get out,” I say. “I didn’t even say you could come in, for one thing.”
She stands up, looks at me for a minute, sighs. “Come on,” she says. I knew it. She will fix me.
She puts a towel down on her bed, tells me to lie on it. “You need to stop standing up,” she says. “Then it will stop bleeding better.” She starts counting my cuts until I ask her to stop. Then she says, “What did you do this for?”
“They make fun of me. They call me Gorilla Legs.”
“Well,” she says, “the hell with them.”<
br />
“I’m old enough, anyway,” I say.
She looks at me, her face turned slightly away in the way that she does. “How’d you like me to pluck your eyebrows?” she asks.
I hadn’t planned on such remarkable generosity. I can only nod.
“You’ve got to hold still,” she says.
“I will.”
“If it hurts, that’s too damn bad. You’ve got to keep still or my line will go crooked.”
“I will!”
“All right, then.” She goes to her magic dresser, takes out her tweezers. “Close your eyes,” she says, and begins. It hurts, all right. But I don’t react. “Left! (humph) Left! (humph) Left!” I am saying in my brain. When it is over, she hands me a face mirror. There is a little redness along my new, thin brow line. Otherwise I look good. I hold my chin up high and stare at myself while Diane gently picks at the toilet paper on my legs. “Ugh!” she says. I love her so much I want to reach out and touch her black hair. But I don’t. Diane doesn’t like to be touched by hardly anyone.
When Diane has finished, I stand up and thank her. “What are you wearing?” she asks.
“My black straight skirt, and my hot-pink blouse, with the big buttons.”
“All right,” she says, and I exhale, relieved. “You can wear a pair of my nylons,” she says.
“I can?”
“Don’t run them, and you wash them out good when you’re done.”
She hands me her garter belt and a pair of light-brown stockings rolled up perfectly and smelling like baby powder. She sighs then, a sadness in her, and waves me out of her room. I close her door quietly, to thank her.
I arrive first. Cherylanne is wearing a light-pink blouse and a pink skirt, nylon stockings, and pink flats with jewels all over the tops of them. “Well, I didn’t know you were wearing pink!” she says. She doesn’t even notice my eyebrows.
“Mine’s hot pink,” I say.
“Well, I am going to have to change,” she says, scowling.
“I will,” I say. “Sorry.” I go home and put on a yellow blouse, the first one I put my hand to. I want to get out of the house before my father comes home. He has already told me I could go, but he is an expert at changing his mind.
Downstairs, I hear the grandfather clock strike one. I cannot sleep. I feel a sweet warmth lying across my chest. I have gone over and over the events of the party. I want only to know how to work time, to make the party come back again and stay longer.
I get up, bring my pillow with me into the living room to press it against the air conditioner for a moment. Then I stretch out on the couch, lay my head against the coolness. I close my eyes, feel myself again in the arms of Paul Arnold. We slow-danced to “Theme from A Summer Place” moved around and around in our intimate circle. Cherylanne turned the lights off as soon as her parents shut their bedroom door. I pushed my face into Paul’s neck, felt the bristles at the end of his haircut, smelled his aftershave, its mysterious combination of scents that were not woman’s. He was wearing black pants, a plaid shirt with the sleeves rolled up, a watch, and a ring with a red stone. He danced with me over and over, pulling me closer each time. I knew he was tired of Cherylanne and he didn’t like Vicky Andrews for the way she bragged, so he was mine for the night. When we played spin the bottle, he was first and he cheated. He put his hand on the bottle to stop it when it pointed at me. Then, despite the complaints from the others, he looked right at me, held out his hand. He led me into the kitchen while Cherylanne watched the door. I had never felt so mature. I stood still in the center of the dark room.
“Have you done this before?” he asked.
“No.”
“I didn’t think so.” He put his hands on my shoulders. “First, you relax.”
I stepped back and he followed me. I stepped back again, bumped into a kitchen chair, and nearly fell. I looked up, laughed, and he kissed me on the lips. I felt electrocuted. I never knew bodies were capable of this. I put my arms around his neck. I kissed him back. And then it was over and he took me by the hand and led me out. Cherylanne grabbed my arm and pulled me aside. “Now,” she whispered in my ear, “you are a woman.”
I was the one. I was the most important one at the party.
I run my hand across my chest. Something. Yes. I can feel something. Maybe when your brain decides you’re a woman, your body gets going.
I flip the pillow over, breathe in deep. Sometimes life is so hard and then bingo, it’s like happiness is pushing at your back, waiting to come out your front.
The next day, I see Paul at the swimming pool. I am ready. I have Vaseline on my lips. But he has forgotten everything. He waves casually at me, then keeps talking to a girl in a polka-dot bikini. She is wearing a matching headband and a gold ankle bracelet. I cannot turn away. I stare at them like you watch a cut bleed.
“Well, what did you expect?” Cherylanne asks later as we lay by the side of the pool, drying off. “Just ’cause they kiss you doesn’t mean they love you!”
She says this with her eyes closed, her face pointed at the sky. I turn toward her. I want to ask why not. I feel why not. But I say nothing. I sit up and draw with the water that drips from my fingertips onto the concrete. I make a little heart, then an X. Then I say, “I do mean to leave here, Cherylanne. I want to run away.”
She turns toward me, shields her face from the sun. “Is this more of your little Dickie Mac dream?”
“It isn’t a dream. Maybe he doesn’t have to fall in love with me, but he likes me and he has a truck and I know I can get him to take me somewhere.”
“What about Diane?”
“She can come, too. So can you.”
“Why should I come?”
Why, indeed. Cherylanne likes Texas. Her father has a job in the army where he can stay put. Plus, he never hurts her. He doesn’t even yell. He gives her extra money when she asks for it for the movies, tells her with a wink not to tell Belle. If Bubba would die, her life would be perfect.
“You’re not going anywhere, either,” Cherylanne says. “So just stop talking about it. Let’s go practice back dives.” She stands up, hikes up the straps of her suit, pulls down on the bottom, puts her hand petulantly on her hip. “Come on!” I have to come. I can’t get her too mad at me. I am always on thin ice, being so much younger than she is. At school, I am not allowed to sit with her in the lunchroom or say anything to her in the halls. But in the neighborhood, I can know her.
I stand up, but rather than concentrate on back dives so I can assign them a number value, I let my own thinking in. Cherylanne is probably right: Dickie will never agree to take me away, even if Diane sits between us. But there is an alternative. My mother could come back. This thought is dangerous, something I shouldn’t do, like a sin. But I fall into the luxury of it, let it have me like quicksand. I think, she could be not dead. Her sickness made her look dead. But then right after we left the grave site, she woke up and said, “Just a minute, just a minute, I am still alive.” Someone helped her out of the casket and said, “Well, for heaven’s sake, let me call your family.” But she said, “Oh, no, let me rest a little and surprise them.” Now she was ready, and when I got home from swimming, there she would be, making dinner, and she would see me and rush to take the wet towel from me, say, “Why, honey, look at you. Why don’t you dry off and I’ll fix us a snack.” She would give me red Jell-O, slices of banana suspended in it like magic. She would be making scalloped potatoes and ham for dinner because they were my favorite. She would be singing in her shy voice, and when it was time for my father to come home, she would watch out the window for him. She always did. And he would come home and his happiness in seeing her would set him right. I knew rightness was in him. I’d seen it. Once Cherylanne and I were in the book section of the PX. She was picking out magazines, and I was reading a horse book, one of the Black Stallion ones. I saw my father at the same time he saw me. I put the book back fast, waited for some punishment. But he wasn’t mad. He took the book off the
shelf, asked me, “What’s this?”
I shrugged. “I don’t know.”
He flipped through a few pages, then looked down at me. “You want this?”
“I don’t know. I guess. Okay.”
“Come on, then,” he said, and he bought it for me. The only thing better would have been if he’d said, “Give me your magazine, Cherylanne. I’ll take care of that, too.” But that would have been too much. I have a bad habit of doing that, wanting too much. Once I kissed a horny toad to see if he’d change into a prince. I thought all I had to do was believe hard enough. I kissed him where his lips would have been if he’d had any. Then I watched him carefully. No blinding flash. No small, seizure-like tremors to show he was ready to turn. No glimmer of humanness coming to his round, yellow eyes. He stayed a horny toad through and through. Still, looking at him close up like that let me see his holiness. I rubbed his tough underbelly and he cut loose on my hand. Scared, I guess. I dropped him too hard and he ran away.
But my father did buy me that book, for no reason. I know it happened, because I still have it. And always at Christmas, he buys everything we put on our lists. Except not my mother’s. On her list she would put “Stationery. Bath oil. Gloves.” He would buy her negligees, filmy things the color of butter or twilight. He would buy her cashmere sweaters, ropes of pearls. She would hold them up and say, “How beautiful. Oh, how lovely,” and then put them away. I never did see her wear any of those things. I was allowed to look at them, spread them across her wide bed in different arrangements when my father wasn’t home. I couldn’t put anything on, though.
He did it this past year, too, the first Christmas without my mother. That part stayed the saune. He bought so much for Diane and me and watched us open everything, and it made me so ashamed, that bigger and bigger pile of presents. “Oh, thank you,” we always say after we open each one, and he nods, not saying a word. He’s sorry, that’s all. Sometimes he tells you he is sorry about the way he is. And then, you can’t help it, you feel sorry for him. My mother in her apron, breaking off the ends of the green beans, then putting them into the colander: “You must understand that he doesn’t always know what he is doing. He doesn’t mean it.” Her forgiving hands along either side of my face, her close and still look into my eyes. “You must understand this, all right?”