3 Willows: The Sisterhood Grows (17 page)

“We’re still in Yosemite. Maman?”

“Yes?”

“I don’t think I’m coming back tonight.”

“Ama! Pourquoi pas? Est-ce qu’ily a un problème? They will drive you, won’t they? The flight is confirmed.”

“Yes. I know. They will drive me. But I think I should stay.”

“Ama! Why?”

Ama was quiet for a minute. She was glad she was standing in a spot all by herself. “Because I think I should stay and finish.”

“Ama, you don’t owe them anything. You can do exactly what you want.”

“I know. You’re right. I guess … I -want to.”

“You want to? You said you hated it.”

Ama sighed. “You’re right. I know. I don’t know how much I -want to. There’s one part of it—the rappel—that I’m dreading. But I feel like I should stay. Not because of them or you, because of me. Do you see what I mean? I think I’ll be happier -with myself if I stay.” Ama thought of Polly’s words, and how she had wanted them to be wrong.

“Are the group leaders telling you to stay?” her mother asked.

“No, Maman, they’re not. I’m choosing.”

“You’re sure?”

“Yes.” She looked down at her boots. “It’s really beautiful here, you know.”

“Is it?”

“It really is. It reminds me a little bit of Kumasi.”

“Does it.” That struck her mother silent for a moment.

After she’d said her good-byes and hung up the phone, Ama realized how much easier it was to stay now that she was allowed to go.

Jo got a text message from Bryn fifteen minutes before the lunch shift the next morning.

if i were u i wld call in sick

Jo had been planning to call in sick. She was still in her pajamas, in fact. She’d already made a few significant coughs in the kitchen in an attempt to convince herself and any neighbors who happened to see or hear her.

But now, staring at this message, she had to rethink it.

Everyone knew. Everyone. If anyone didn’t know, Bryn would tell them. Probably even Hidalgo knew. Everyone was talking about it, and the shift hadn’t even started yet.

What would Zach do?

She went to her room. She’d have to get dressed quickly. Maybe she was a hoochie girl and public enemy number one at the Surfside, but she wasn’t a coward. She’d wear her scarlet A to work if she had to, but she would go. The fact that everybody already knew was strangely liberating.

Bryn -was the first to see her -when she walked through the door. She materialized by Jo’s side in an instant.

“Did you get my message?” she asked urgently, under her breath.

Jo nodded.

“Then -what are you doing here?” Bryn -was barely breathing. This was the drama of the summer, and Bryn was clearly proud to play a role in it.

“What am I supposed to do? Call in sick for the rest of August?” Jo didn’t bother to whisper in return.

“Violet says Effie is ready to kill. That’s all I’m saying,” Bryn hissed.

“If she kills me, there will be a lot of witnesses,” Jo said. Part of being miserable was not caring as much -what happened to you or -who said what.

“Sorry, Jo, but you’re crazy.”

“Thanks for looking out for me,” Jo said.

Jo put her stuff in her locker at the back of the restaurant and pulled her apron over her head. She saw Jordan as she passed by the office. She hoped he would put her on flatware, as he liked to do, but he seemed to sense that it would bring her relief today.

“You’re on the floor today, Joseph,” he barked at her. “Section one.”

Jo hesitated for a moment. She cleared her throat. “Is Zach on?” she asked.

Jordan gave her a look. Even he knew. “He called in sick,” he said.

Coward, Jo thought. She could hardly picture his face the way she had the day before. She wanted him to be somebody important, somebody whose love could change everything, but she couldn’t make him be that today.

As she walked into the dining room she had a premonition that Jordan understood the -workings of her misery more deeply than she had guessed. She suddenly knew -who the lead waitress in section one would be without even needing to look. She wondered if he’d somehow found out about the Tic Tacs.

She saw Effie standing across the way in section one. Megan -was there in section three. Violet was at the hostess station. Jo looked from one to the other. How bad is it? she wanted to ask Megan or Violet with her eyes, but neither of them looked back. Scott didn’t look at her either, but he passed by humming “Under the Boardwalk.”

Boy, you had to kiss another girl’s boyfriend to know who your real friends were. In her case, that was no one.

It turned out there was one person -who was –willing to look at her. One person, and unfortunately that person -was Effie. The look -was not pretty and it was not friendly.

Jo half considered going right up to Effie and apologizing. But what would she say, exactly? It hadn’t been an accident or a mistake. Jo could sincerely pledge that she wouldn’t do it again, but it was a bit late for that. She couldn’t make Zach like Effie better, or make Effie care about him less. Zach’s was the apology that could matter, and Jo couldn’t give her that.

Anyway, the force field around Effie was so dark and scary, Jo couldn’t get near enough to try.

“Bitch,” Effie hissed at Jo as she strode by her to the kitchen.

Jo felt her cheeks reddening as she stood in place. She looked down at the vomit-brown carpet and up again. Still, no one dared look at her. She forcefully blinked back tears and went to the nearest waitress station to begin filling baskets with bread.

“I bet my tips are going to be terrible today,” she said to Bryn as she went by, trying to sound light, but even Bryn had ceased speaking to her.

Jo didn’t consider entering the staff room for lunch. She ate lunch in the kitchen -with Carlos and Hidalgo. She was so grateful to them for talking -with her, even if it was in Spanish. She used her halting Spanish to ask Hidalgo about his daughter. She brought them each two miniature candy bars after the rush resumed.

No one said another -word to her until she was packing up to go home, absurdly grateful she was only -working one shift today.

It was Effie, standing on the back step, towering over her.

“Don’t come back,” she warned.

“It’s my job,” Jo said bravely. She didn’t step back or look away.

“Nobody wants you here.”

“It’s still my job,” Jo said, and she turned and walked home.

In her quiet house, Jo sat in the kitchen, staring at nothing for a long time. She moved into her room and stared at nothing there for a longer stretch of time.

She looked at her trundle bed and thought of Polly. What she would give to have Polly there now.

She thought of her dad, alone in their other house. She pictured him surrounded by little white cartons of takeout Chinese food. He had been to China in his twenties, before he’d gotten married to her mom, and he always tried to order dishes in the restaurant by their proper Chinese names. She’d thought that was impressive when she was little and embarrassing -when she was older.

She wished she had called him.

Polly arrived home from here fifth babysittng job in the five days, her heart trotting at the sight of the mail stacked on the hall table. She riffled through the pile, letting everything that wasn’t from the IMTA glide to the floor.

It was here! Her nervous fingers were sloppy ripping the envelope open and unfolding the letter. A return card and envelope fell to the floor, but Polly was too agitated to pick them up.

It began:

Dear Polly,

We are pleased to invite you to the twenty-third annual convention of the International Modeling and Talent Association.

That was it. She was in. She’d been accepted. She wasn’t -wrong to think she could do it. She’d been invited.

She scanned the rest of the page. It gave dates and directions and hotel information and payment instructions and blah blah. On the back of the page was a list in small print of all the modeling and talent agencies that would be represented. There were hundreds of them.

She had to go.

She ran to the phone in the kitchen and called Dias studio number. When her mother didn’t pick up, she called her cell phone. She got voice mail there as well. She hated leaving voice messages for Dia. Explaining herself seemed a guarantee that she wouldn’t get a quick call back. Uncertainty and possible-emergency fears -were her best chance. She called the studio number again. She hung up again on her mother’s outgoing message.

Polly stared at the kitchen clock. She wished herself back in time to when she could call Jo or Ama anytime she liked—when they were happy to hear her voice. She wished she had somebody to tell.

She glanced out the front window. She probably would have told the neighbors or the garbageman if she could’ve. The mailman, of course, had already come and gone.

She even thought of calling Uncle Hoppy, at his old-age home, and he couldn’t hear -well enough to talk on the phone. He was a lip-reader. That idea seemed ridiculous to Polly -when she pictured it.

She really needed to talk to Dia.

She stuck a ten-dollar bill and her house key in the front pocket of her jeans and strode out the door. Her mother’s studio was at least three miles away, but Polly knew how to get there, and anyway, the walking -would be good for calorie burning.

Dia had to say yes. She had to. Polly could pay for almost the whole thing if she kept babysitting at this rate. She’d earned $210 in the last five days alone. She’d put up flyers at the A&P for dog walking. She’d tell Mrs. Rollins and her other customers that she was available for even more babysitting. She’d go door-to- door in her neighborhood looking for -work if it came to that.

Polly kept her mind busy calculating for most of the -walk. First she calculated how many more hours she would need to work (eighty-five) to have enough to go to the convention ($1,160, including hotel and train tickets). When she’d figured that out she calculated the number of calories she’d eaten that day (340, so far) and the number of calories she could eat each day (1,100) in order to get to her new goal weight (102) by the day of the convention.

Entering the door of the building that housed her mother’s studio, Polly suddenly stopped in uncertainty. The lobby surprised her, in part, by being small. Had it been so long since she’d last been here? She couldn’t even think how long. The hallway, in all its flecked linoleum and sherbet-green plainness, was -wrong-sized and shrouded in the murk of old memory.

The most recent picture she could dredge up of herself here was of her -wearing the -white beret she’d -worn nearly every day in fourth grade. It couldn’t really have been that long, could it?

Polly -went on tentatively. She knew the right number of stairs to climb. That memory-was in her legs. She knew the feel of the cold stairwell door’s knob, though her height relative to it had changed. She felt its center lock, loose like a belly button against her palm.

The path to the studio door took fewer steps than it used to, but they -were slower steps this time. She used to rush down this hall, its contours speeding her along the -way the -walls of a canyon sped a river.

She took her mother’s doorknob in her hand, -wondering -whether to turn or knock. She knocked.

She realized she still had the letter, the invitation for the IMTA, clutched in her hand. She crushed it into her back pocket. She stood in a nervous hunch, picturing the studio on the other side. She pictured her mother coming to the door, not as she -was now but as she used to look -when Polly had come here a lot—before Dia had gotten her second and third tattoos and pierced her nose, -when her hair was longer and she tied it back in a pink bandana when she -worked. Polly remembered the loose purple bottoms Dia had called her harem pants, furry clogs, clay smudges drying into pale powder on her black turtleneck.

Polly knocked again. “Dia?” Her voice came up as a croak through layers and hours of quiet. She cleared her throat. “Hey, Dia? Are you in there?”

Did she hear something? A rustle? A-whir?

She knocked a third time, and when she heard no answer, she tried the knob. It turned, though she wasn’t expecting it to. She pushed the door cautiously open. Sunshine poured in the tall windows, -whiting out her vision for a few seconds. She took small steps in.

“Dia? Hello?”

She looked around, -worried for a moment that she hadn’t remembered the -way after all.

This couldn’t be her mother’s studio, because that -was so full, and this place -was empty. Polly scanned the -walls for the familiar piles, but they -weren’t there. She saw two armatures by the back corner on the left, caked -with old clay but unused.

Her mother’s studio -was packed -with sculptures and supplies and papered -with sketches. Where -were they? Where -were the huge bins of old broken cell phones, batteries, wristwatches, and computer parts? Dia spent almost every day of Polly’s life in the studio. Why -weren’t her things here?

Slowly Polly turned to look to the right. She pushed her eyes along the wall until they reached the little desk, her old desk, -where she’d drawn pictures -while her mother -worked. That -was still there, though it had only a laptop on it now. Pushing farther, she saw the old cot in the right back corner, -where she used to sleep. And feeling like the baby bear in Goldilocks, she recognized -with a dawning strangeness that her bed had someone in it.

“Dia?” Polly’s voice -was small and her mother didn’t stir.

Her mother-was asleep in the little cot, curled at the middle, bare feet hanging past the foot of it, her face turned away, toward the back -wall.

Besides the desk and the cot there -was a TV sitting on an old nightstand a few feet past the foot of the bed. And besides those things, Polly saw that there -were bottles lined up two deep along the back -wall. They -were mostly -wine bottles, uncorked and empty.

Polly suddenly felt scared to be there. She -wanted her mother to comfort her and explain -what -was going on, but it -was also Dia she -was scared of. It -wasn’t quite her mother in this changed place -with her back to her, but Polly felt that if she turned and Polly could see her face, Dia -would be her mother again.