Well, thank God my hair is finally dry! I have to finish getting ready. I am up to my favorite part of putting perfume on my pulse points. You remember you have to do that half an hour before they arrive or you smell too much and it is vulgar. It is Saturday night, the big one.
I hope everything is okay there. Well I mean I hope it gets better. I know it will!! Sometimes you have to try to be friendlier, you’?e always been so quiet. Try this. Next time you go to school, smile in the halls. Just smile! One thing people cannot resist is a friendly smile and a flirty wave of the hand. The boys. And the girls like a smile themselves. Good-bye for now,
Love,
Cherylanne
I put the letter in my underwear drawer. Cherylanne’s pile is pitiful low. Two letters and one postcard. I go out into the kitchen, where Ginger is cleaning the sink. “You know that envelope you put on my desk?” I say.
She turns around, and the rag she is holding drips two pure drops onto the floor. “Yes?” she says, and then, noticing the drips, turns quickly back to the sink, throws the rag in there. Then she wipes her hands on her apron. She has on a green shift under that, with some geometry shapes on it. Plus her hair is fixed up, bouffant style with some curls over her cheeks. She must have a date tonight. Sometimes she’ll go right from work. Her boyfriend’s name is Wayne, but I can tell she doesn’t think that much of him. She is never excited when they’re going out. It’s more of a second-prize feeling.
“That was a long letter from my best friend in Texas. Cherylanne.”
“Oh. That’s a nice name. Cherylanne. I like that.”
“Well,” I say, casual so she’ll know it’s true, “She was very popular. She still is.”
“Nice to have a friend like that.”
“Yes.” I look over the fruit bowl, select an apple. “But now I have friends here.”
Ginger smiles. “I’m glad. When do I get to meet some of them?”
“Well, so far it’s really only one. But more are on the way.”
“Who is the one?”
“Her name is Cynthia O’Connell. I can ride my bike to her house. Which I am going to do now. But I’ll bring her here next time, if you want.”
“That would be nice. I’d like to meet her.”
I go back to my room, sit on my bed. Well, it’s official, now. I have kind of broken up with Cherylanne, telling Ginger about my new friend. I would have always had Cherylanne first, but she just couldn’t write back. I wasn’t her real friend, anyway. She was too old. Now I have found a friend my own age. I have to admit that I don’t like her as much as Cherylanne. At least not yet. She’s different. Not as interesting or kind of lit-up, like Cherylanne was. But maybe that’s good, and as I get to know her better I will collect things about her, and she will become the one I tell things to. I squeeze out some tears for Cherylanne and then I go to get my bike.
Outside, Greg is on his lawn, throwing a football to some friend of his. Marsha is sitting on the steps, eating marshmallows out of the bag. Something she doesn’t know about me is that is one of my favorite things, too. You can toast them over the stove on a fork, you don’t need a campfire. I don’t think either of them will say anything with Greg’s friend there. But I am wrong. “Hey, dipshit!” Greg yells.
“Greg!” Marsha says. What she means is, “Yeah, get her, let’s have some more fun.” But I guess she has a crush on the friend so she is acting like oh my delicate self is so offended by this tough talk.
I don’t say anything. Last time they made fun of the dog. I wished so hard she would attack them but all she did was wag her tail and strain at the leash for them to pet her. I tried to send thoughts down into her but no, she liked them.
I walk my bike down the driveway and don’t look over. “Hey!” Greg says. “It’s November! You don’t ride your bike in November!”
Well, I do. I do, pecker head. I can feel my brain wishing my mouth would rear up and speak those very words back to him. But I can’t do it.
“She’s so weird,” Greg tells his friend. Loudly.
“What’s your problem, Greg?” the friend asks. He is halfway between puzzled and laughing. I see he is holding the football at his hip like they do. It’s kind of like their purse.
“She’s the new neighbor,” Greg says, and it sounds like he’s taking some bad food out of his mouth.
“So?” I hear the friend ask as I am riding away. He seems like an angel to me. Compared to Greg. I saw that he had blond hair. I pump hard, wish so much that I had a three speed. I’ll ask for one for Christmas. “Something wrong with your old bike?” he’ll ask. And I’ll say no, nothing is wrong with it.
One thing I already know about Cynthia is that she has a Princess phone. In her own bedroom. It’s pink, and if you use it at night when the lights are out, no problem, it has a light-up dial right in the receiver. I guess you have to quick put your ear there after you dial or the person you are calling will just be hanging in space saying, Hello? Hello?
Another thing I know is she is an only child and her closet has two doors on it. That is more or less as far as we’ve gotten from talking at lunch. What she knows about me is I’m an army brat from Texas.
I find her house pretty easily, it’s just like she told me how to get there. It’s a big house, too, also like she told me, and she has a weeping willow in her front yard so she is even luckier. I turn into her driveway, then lay my bike down on the front lawn. I ring her doorbell, which is the rich-people chime, and her mother opens it.
“Katie?” she says, smiling.
“Yes, ma’am.” The mother is very pretty, curly brown hair with a scarf tied in it. A pants and sweater outfit, gray, with some pearl buttons and even gray shoes. Her cheeks are rosy pink and she has light blue eyes. Cynthia’s eyes are like that, but I am sorry to say I don’t think she’s as pretty as her mother. Cynthia already has a little bit of a complexion problem which we haven’t talked about yet since it’s so recent that we decided to become friends. Later, I can tell her some things I know about complexions. Like you wash your face with boiling hot water and rinse with freezing cold. This shocks your pores and then they behave. Once Cherylanne started crying after she did a face treatment and I said well then why do you do it so hot? and she said the more severe you do it the better you look. She said you know how they always say you have to suffer for your beauty, well how do you think that got started?
I start to go into Cynthia’s house, but Mrs. O’Connell puts her hand to my shoulder, light. “Is that your bike, dear?” she asks.
I look back, as though the bike might have changed into someone else’s. Now already I have done a dumb thing.
“Yes, ma’am.”
“Well,” she says, and looks troubled, little puffs of flesh come between her eyebrows. And then she says, “Let’s you and I go out together and we’ll move it, how’s that?”
“Okay.” I follow her back out.
She picks up my bike and wheels it over to the side of the garage, props it there. “Now, you see, it’s out of the way,” she says. And I nod. One thing I know is my mother would never have done a thing like this. She tried hard to be polite to the other person’s way of looking at things. Plus she knew what was worth it to say and what wasn’t. This was definitely not worth it. I feel like leaving, but there is Cynthia, waving from the front porch. Well, she of course is the one I came to see.
“Cynthia!” Mrs. O’Connell yells to her. “In in in! It’s too cold for you to be out here!”
Cynthia disappears back inside and I meet up with her again in the hallway. She takes my coat for me, formal as you please, and then we go upstairs. One thing I see is they have wall-to-wall carpeting. The steps feel like they are higher than they are.
Cynthia has a canopy bed, white and pink, and a fuzzy pink rug on the floor beside it, which makes for two rugs because of the wall-to-wall. Wide pink ribbons tie her ruffly curtains back. They look like party girls bowing to each other. I see her Princess phone on the table b
eside the bed on its own doily. Later, I’ll ask to use it.
Cynthia sits down on her bed and puts her hands in her lap, jiggles her leg a little. “Did you find the house okay?” she asks. Inside myself I’m saying, Whew, this girl is worse off than me. I don’t think she’s hardly ever had a kid come over to see her.
“Yeah, it was easy,” I say. “It was just like you drew.”
I am still standing there. I’m not sure that I can really sit on the bed beside Cynthia and I don’t want to sit on the floor. There’s a flowered chair by the window, but it’s full of fancy pillows.
We look at each other a little, and then I figure I might as well take the plunge. “Does your phone really work?” I ask, sitting down beside her.
She nods.
“Could I try it?”
“Well …” She moves her head in a way that looks like it’s trying to slide off her neck. And then, “Okay.”
“I’ll just do operator.”
I pick up the phone and I have to say they’re right, it is a little exciting, all the light-up numbers right there in the receiver. It makes for a coziness in the stomach. I dial 0, and when the operator comes on, I hang up. “It works, all right,” I say.
“You can talk on it if you want.”
“That’s okay.”
Cynthia’s door opens and her mother pokes her head in. “Honey?” she says. “Do you need this door closed?”
Well, I’m the one who did it. It’s an automatic thing to me, that when two friends go into one of them’s bedroom, you close the door. Then you have made your own place. You can talk.
“I did it,” I say.
“You closed the door?”
“Yes, ma’am.”
“Uh-huh. Well, that’s all right. You didn’t know. We’ll just leave it open now, though, would that be all right?”
“Sure.” Like I am really the one deciding.
“Did you girls want a snack?”
Cynthia looks at me.
“I don’t care,” I say. “Either way.” I don’t want one because the mother has ruined my mood.
“Yes, please,” Cynthia says.
“Be right back,” her mother says, her voice trying to make up, sounding as soothing as the school nurse when she takes out the thermometer and sees that you really are sick. I can just imagine what the snack will be. Pea soup or something like that. Cucumber sandwiches, or mixed nuts in a fancy bowl. Or watercress, which I don’t even know what is. Nothing like just a bag of bar-b-que chips and a couple of Dr Peppers.
“Mariannnnnna!!” I hear coming from somewhere nearby. It’s an old lady’s voice, thin and shaky, but full of rage.
“Just one moment, Mother,” Mrs. O’Connell calls back.
“No, NOOOOOWWWWW!!” the woman yells.
Mrs. O’Connell smiles at us. Lipstick is clear to the exact corners of her mouth. “I’ll be back with your snack in a little while,” she says.
Next I hear her low tone talking from somewhere down the hall and the old woman yelling back in another language. I look at Cynthia.
“That’s my grandmother.” She shrugs. “She’s Italian.”
“Oh.” I never have gotten to have grandparents. One thing my parents had in common when they met is that their parents were dead. It was kind of an odd connection, but they took it as step one.
“Do you want to play the Barbie Game?” Cynthia asks.
No. But what can you do on the first time? I say all right, and Cynthia opens her grand-size closet to take the game down from the shelf. I see a blue velvet dress in there that goes all the way to the floor. It has plastic wrapping over it. “Is that yours?” I ask.
“Yes. It’s for piano recitals.” She is kneeling on the floor, setting the game up. “Who do you want to be?”
“Barbie.”
“Ohhhhhhh!” she says, disappointed like her cat has been killed.
“Well, I don’t care,” I say. “I’ll be Midge.”
Now she is happy again. I really miss Cherylanne.
When we are playing, her mother comes in with a tray. She sets it down beside us. On it is cheese and crackers. Well, it could have been worse. The drink is orange juice in glasses with polka dots on them. “Mariannnna!” we all hear again. Mrs. O’Connell smiles a smile that is a sigh, and walks out of the room, her back straight as a fence post.
I roll the die, take my turn. Then I check the sky, see if it’s turning dark yet.
We play in silence for a while, and then Cynthia says, “I can vag fart.”
I look up. “Pardon me?”
“I can vag fart.”
I don’t say anything.
“Fart from my vagina.”
“What do you mean?”
Cynthia stands, moves to a corner of her bedroom, lies on the floor, raises her legs up against her chest and makes an odd sound come out of her. Well, what is a person supposed to do. “Uh-huh,” I say. And then, “Well, I have to get going.”
“It’s early!” Cynthia says, sitting up.
“I know, but I have an appointment. With the dentist.”
“We’re not done playing! We need dates and you still need a dress!”
“I know. But we can just say you won. You would have won.”
Cynthia frowns, begins putting the game away. I start to help her and she says, “No, I’ll do it. You have to go, remember?”
“Well, I have a couple of minutes.”
She says nothing, continues stacking up the cards. I see the careful part in her hair and I all of a sudden feel sorry for her. She can’t help it that she’s so strange. She doesn’t know how to do friends. And anyway, she’s all I have.
“So … you play piano?” I ask.
She keeps her head down, nods.
“Will you show me next time?”
She looks up, hope. “Yeah! I’ll teach you ‘By the Sea,’ you can learn that in one second.”
Well now, that would be worth it. I have always wanted to learn to play a piano. “By the Sea,” I think, and see the gulls spinning their slow circles over noisy waves. I have an idea already how the song might go: a rush of notes up, and then a tired coming down.
“Want to meet my grandmother before you go?” Cynthia asks.
“That’s okay.”
“She’s funny. You’ll like her. She’s only mean to my mother. She really likes kids.”
Well, when you are on your way out you can do more things than you might ordinarily. “All right,” I say.
Cynthia leads me to a room at the end of the hall. Here, the door is closed. Cynthia knocks quietly, then pushes the door open. In a bed by the window, I see a very small old lady propped up on pillows. Her hair is thin and bright white and wild about her head. She has huge brown eyes, focused on us like magnets to metal. She is wearing a brown plaid flannel shirt open over a pale blue nightgown, and she has one of those knobby chests, mystery bones sticking out all over the place. She has many rings on her fingers. I see a square blue stone, a round yellow one, some diamonds.
“What’s-a matta?” she yells. “Who’s-a this?”
“It’s my friend Katie,” Cynthia says.
“Come over here,” the old lady says, quieter, and I step a little closer.
She slams her hand down on the bed, mutters something at the ceiling in Italian. Then she looks at me and says, “Here, scaredy girl! Little wa-wa! Come here so I can-a see you!”
I move closer and she sits up, leans forward, cranes her skinny neck out like a mean bird. She stares at my shoes, and then her gaze travels slowly all the way up to my face. Then, as though exhausted, she leans back against her pillows, closes her eyes. “She’s-a nice,” she says, nearly in a whisper. “It’s okay.”
“In school, we have history together,” Cynthia says.
Her grandmother nods, then opens her eyes wide. “What’s-a the clock?”
“Four-fifteen,” Cynthia tells her.
“Put him on! Put him on!” the grandmother says, and Cynthia mov
es to a television positioned on a nearby dresser so that it can be seen from the bed. She turns the knob and a soap opera comes on. You can spot them a mile away. All the people with the same kind of face, kind of secret and like they’re playing a joke on themselves. Like when the director says “Cut!” they’ll all explode laughing. Cherylanne used to like soap operas. Once she dreamed what was going to happen the next day and it did. She was hard to live with for awhile because she thought that was such a big deal. She said, “This dream has told me that I could be a writer. That is now one of my career options.”
The soap opera Cynthia has turned on is a famous one that takes place in a hospital, I forget the name. The old lady holds out a trembling finger, points to the screen, at the doctor and nurse who are standing beside each other in a patient’s room. The patient has about nine hundred bandages on. The doctor is talking to him and the nurse is watching the doctor.
“Ha!” The grandmother says. “You see her, that nurse, she’s-a stand by the doctor?”
“Yes,” I say.
“She’s-a fuck him.”
“Nona!” Cynthia says, and then starts laughing. And so do I.
“Yes! That sullamabeech, he’s-a sleep with everybody! And one woman, Susan, he’s-a marry her twice! Che puzza!”
“What’s that mean?” I ask Cynthia quietly.
“‘Disgusting,’” Cynthia says. “Once she got mad and threw her shoe at the TV. It broke the screen.”
Well, this visit has picked up. I’ll come back here.
Nona pulls a bag of hard candy from the drawer in her bedside table, pops a piece into her mouth. With out taking her eyes from the screen, she offers the bag to us. Even from where I am, I can still see the lint all over the colored balls. “No, thank you,” I say.
“She has a dentist appointment,” Cynthia says.
“Sssshhhh!” Nona waves her hand at us. We are dismissed.
On the way downstairs, Cynthia says, “She’s always like that. You can’t control her. She fights with my mother all the time. It’s kind of embarrassing.”