3 Willows: The Sisterhood Grows (16 page)

Ama had loved how fast you could go. She loved the feeling it gave you in the bottom of your stomach. And the grass -was soft or the snow -was soft, so you never hurt yourself. She’d liked the view from the top of the hill. She’d liked trying to pick out their trees in the -woods beyond, even though you couldn’t really see them from up there.

Ama put her chin on her hand and felt her joints softening a little. It seemed to her she’d felt differently in her body back then. She’d lived in more of it. She -was closer to the ground then.

She also remembered the particular kind of tiredness you got from being outside all day. It -was a nice kind of tiredness, languid rather than grumpy. She had that feeling now.

The sun dipped behind the mountains and the valley glowed a beautiful color. Ama thought she recognized it from the poster.

She opted to sleep outside the tent that night. She -wasn’t sure -why.

“I -won’t bring anybody in the tent. I swear,” Carly pledged.

Ama laughed in spite of herself. “Thanks. But I just feel like being in the open tonight.”

While she lay there, her ears tuned in to the many noises. There was the occasional snap of the fire dying yards away. There was the light wind blowing and rustling against every kind of thing. Most of all, there were the birds. There were many kinds of birds, and probably owls among them. There was a keening sound that could have come from a bird or a coyote or even a wolf. She expected her nerves to begin to coil, but they didn’t. Her limbs felt heavy and loose, like they were sinking into the ground. She wasn’t in a mood to be fearful, for some reason. She’d made it this far -without being eaten by a wolf; she’d probably make it another night.

Who are you and what have you done with Ama? That was how Jo used to tease her -when she acted in some way that was unexpected. It had been a long time since Ama had surprised herself.

She relaxed into the layers and layers of bird sounds. As she grew sleepy they stirred a memory even older than rolling down Pony Hill. The sounds stirred a deep-down feeling of Kumasi, where her memory existed in bits: images and sounds and smells rather than full scenes. The bird sounds were different there, but she did think of them. She thought of rough, squawky birds and delicate, -whistling birds that stood and cried to her from the mango tree outside the front door. She thought of the birds that had settled in the courtyard -where she used to play and how sometimes at a loud sound, like a blasting car horn, they’d all rise and fly away together. Ama pictured herself playing on a blanket on the grass and looking up and seeing the cloud of them against the bright sky.

She suddenly felt sad for her little brother, Bob, who’d been born here. She missed him achingly as she thought of him, -with his baby teeth and his round head. He wouldn’t have any of those things buried in his memory. He’d never had a mango tree outside his front door, only a carpeted hallway and two elevators.

Nicky and Katherine Rollins and Polly’s body were playing pick-up sticks on the sunny carpet in the front hall of the Rollinses’ overcooled house. Polly’s mind had picked itself up and floated to its spot by the ceiling.

She was a better babysitter, she knew, when her mind stayed in her body, but she couldn’t make it stay today.

Today she imagined herself not as the hungry, goose-bumpy girl on the carpet below, but flattened into the pages of a magazine. She imagined her face in an ad for lip gloss or antiperspirant. But she imagined an altered version, a better, Photoshopped version of her face, with straighter teeth and knowing eyes.

She pictured piles and piles of the magazine with her face in it sitting in a warehouse. She imagined them getting tied up into blocks and trucked all over the country. She imagined them in the hold of a freight plane, going to other parts of the world. She imagined herself existing a little in every one of the magazines, bits of herself distributed to all the places the plane went.

She imagined appearing before the eyes of all the people who turned to her page—readers looking at her and her looking back at them. She imagined being seen and getting to see all the people she’d ever known and would someday know and even people she didn’t know but wanted to know, like her father, for example. What if her father saw her there? Would he know her if he saw her? Would he think for a moment that he was looking at his own mother -when she was young?

You could see so much more of the world when you were flat than -when you were full. You could be in so many more places when you were weightless than -when you -were heavy. I’d like to be two-dimensional, she thought. That was what models got to be.

“Do you guys have plans for tonight?” Jo asked Megan as she brought an armful of menus back to the hostess station.

Megan looked tentative as she stacked the menus on the shelf. “Waitresses’ night out,” she explained apologetically. “Effie organized it.”

“Well, my mom is away tonight. My house is totally empty. You guys should come over.” Jo was surprised at how quickly and eagerly she played her trump card.

Megan looked sorry. “I don’t know, Jo. I think Effie had something else in mind.”

“We’ve got a lot of chips and stuff. My mom and I went to Costco over the weekend. We could invite the boys, too. And I shouldn’t really say this, but”—Jo dropped her voice—”the liquor cabinet is full.”

The part of Jo’s brain that wasn’t talking -was -wondering why in the world she was saying the things she was saying. Her mom -would find out if she had a bunch of people over and raided the liquor cabinet. She had never done anything like that before and she -would get in huge trouble. Why -was she offering it?

“Jo.” Megan looked pained. “Maybe another time. Effie said no bussers. I didn’t make the plans.”

“I’ve hung out -with you guys a ton of times this summer. Can’t you tell Effie that?”

Megan made a face, and Jo -wasn’t sure she -wanted to try to interpret it.

It had to do -with Zach, she knew. Zach -was in large part the secret of Jo’s social success this summer, and now that Effie -was back and claiming him, Jo had become controversial. No one seemed to -want to look at her or talk to her today. She -was to be avoided. And Zach -was avoiding her too.

Why -were they all -willing to side -with Effie right away? Jo -was the one -who had been around all summer. Did they all know that she and Zach had made out many times? That it -was more than just a flirtation? She had as much of a claim on him as Effie did, if not more.

It -was almost like everyone -was scared of Effie, but Jo wasn’t going along -with that. She was not scared of Effie. Let Effie be scared of her.

The last table cleared out by ten, seeming to know how little Jo wanted to get home. She watched the waitresses leave, all dressed up and made up. Overnight, Effie had become their ringleader, and apparently she was more hierarchical than the rest of them.

Jo couldn’t go home to her empty house with nothing to do. She didn’t want to call Bryn. She wished she could call Polly, but she’d been horrible to Polly. She was too guilt-ridden from not calling her dad to call her dad.

“I don’t understand why you haven’t called him,” her mother had said to her before she left for Baltimore that morning.

“He can call me if he wants to talk,” Jo had responded.

“Maybe he’s concerned about having to talk to me in order to talk to you,” her mother suggested. It was an honest and reasonable thing to consider.

“Maybe he could call my cell phone.”

“Maybe dads don’t understand about cell phones.”

That was true in her dad’s case. He carried a pager. He probably didn’t even know her number.

Jo sat in the quiet back office for a while. She wondered what Ama was doing at that moment. Even after everything, she knew Ama would listen to her tale of woe and not sound happy about it. Ama was the kind of friend who was sad if you were sad. But she couldn’t call Ama on her -wilderness trip.

Jo decided on impulse to write a letter to Ama on the back of a paper children’s menu. She didn’t write about the restaurant or about Zach, but she did tell Ama about her parents. “They say it’s a trial separation, but I have a feeling they are going to be pretty good at it. They’ve been practicing for a long time.” At the end of the letter she wrote, “Enjoy the maze and word search.” She stole an envelope from Jordan’s desk—along -with his two boxes of Tic Tacs—and addressed it to Amas house, knowing Amas mother -would get it to her.

Hidalgo brought her some crab bisque -with extra packets of the little round crackers.

“Thanks,” she said to him, and tried to smile. “Gracias.” She felt like she might cry and she -wasn’t even sure -where it -was coming from.

She -wished she had called Polly the same afternoon she’d left. She -wished she’d kept calling her until she’d reached her and apologized right away. She -wished she had sent her a care package of chocolate chip cookies. She -wished she could erase the -words that she had said to Bryn that day. But Polly practically had a tape recorder in her ear. Though Polly might forgive her, there -was no -way she -would forget.

At last Jo set out for home.

“Goldie.”

Zach surprised her on the boardwalk.

Her heart surged at the sight of him. She couldn’t help herself. “Hi,” she said.

“What’s up?”

I’m supposed to be mad at you, she told him in her mind. You’re a skank. So why was she so happy? “I’m just heading home,” she said.

He checked the time on his cell phone. “You’ve got twenty-five minutes until your curfew.”

She was flattered that he still knew it. It’s only been a few days! Why wouldn’t he know it? she scolded herself.

“Can I -walk you home on the beach?” he asked her.

“Don’t you have a girlfriend?” she said. She meant it to sound pointed and mischievous, but it just sounded like a regular question.

He started walking anyway, and she went along behind him. “We’re just walking,” she added, quickening her step to catch his.

“You make it sound like I’m married or something,” Zach said, grabbing her hand and swinging it. “Trust me, I’m not.”

That shouldn’t be good enough, said a voice in her head that sounded like Amas.

You shouldn’t trust him about anything. He doesn’t deserve you, a voice like Polly’s piped up.

But Jo didn’t take her hand back. On the first night, Zach had told her she had strong hands. She still wanted to believe in him.

Believing in him shouldn’t take this much effort, Ama told her.

Shut up, you guys! she said to Ama and Polly.

Instead of leading her down to the water, as he usually did, he led her up toward the lights of the boardwalk. She was surprised that he wanted to go back up onto the boardwalk, but it turned out he didn’t. He led her underneath, to where it was dark and slightly drippy. Even the quality of the sand was different under here.

“Hey, Goldie?”

“Yeah.”

“I think about you all day long.”

When you aren’t making out with Effie. That was what she should have said. But she didn’t. She craved his attention so much it scared her a little. His eyes were on her and only her now, and she didn’t want to challenge him or ruin it.

When he grabbed her free hand and held both of them, she let him. He was so dazzling to look at. He had a regular flush in his cheeks under his tan, giving his face more innocence than he deserved. He had a reckless and joyful expression that he wore nearly all the time. His posture was loose and his confidence was intoxicating.

She thought of ways to deflect his kiss, but she mostly hoped it would come. She would take what he offered. She couldn’t help it. She wanted to be here and now and nowhere else. She didn’t want to have to think.

He leaned in and kissed her. She made no effort to fend him off. He put his arms around her, his hands on her back, pushing her chest against his. She kissed him back. She stopped thinking altogether.

She felt his hands under her shirt, warm palms on her bare back. Her heart was pounding. Don’t make me think, she told him in her mind. Don’t make me talk. I don’t know how to say no right now.

It wasn’t Zach or his creeping hands that made her have to think. It was the sound of a shout and of powdery footsteps on the sand nearby.

She looked up, forced from her dream in jarring fashion. There was one girl nearby looking at them and three more farther away.

Zach let go of Jo and pulled away.

Jo recognized the face. It was Violet. She got close enough to let them see it was her and then scampered back to the group. Effie was there, Jo could see that clearly now. Megan and Sheba, too. All the girls were looking at Jo and Zach, now standing several feet apart.

Jo felt a cold, flat drip on the top of her head and it seemed to wake her up. God. What was she thinking? The two of them under the boardwalk. How tacky could you get?

Jo knew, instinctively and ominously, that for a girl like Effie, it was much -worse discovering Jo and Zach at the same moment as her friends. There was no way for Effie to spin it or dodge it or gain some feeling of power over it. There was no way for her to save face, to make them all believe that Zach really did love her the best.

If Jo had doubted Zach -when he said Effie wasn’t his girlfriend before, she doubted him even more now. All the joy and the mischief were gone.

“I’m going to go,” Jo said quietly to Zach. Under the gaze of many eyes, she pulled herself together and walked home.

She felt empty. She felt like she’d been scrounging crumbs off a dirty floor, -wanting to believe she -was getting a full meal. She felt like she hadn’t truly eaten in many days.

She -wished she could make her sadness go backward or even forward, to look back on it or postpone it, but it -was here and now. How depressing of her to debase herself like that. How sad of her to try to find happiness in so little.

“Maman?”

“Ama?”

“Yes, it’s me.”

“What now? Are you all right?”

“Yes. I’m fine.” Her voice -was so much calmer this time. “Maureen let me call on the satellite phone.”

“Where are you? You should be on your -way to the airport, I think. No?”