Inside Madeleine (5 page)

Polly stopped rubbing the notebook against her now burning burst nipple. Her face turned red from embarrassment, from exertion. “None of your business.”

“You’re disgusting.”

“Fuck you,” she said to him.

He looked her squarely in the eye. Then he spit, slowly, a large wad of spit onto the floor next to his desk. Polly then spit herself, an equally large wad next to her desk.

“I bet I can make a bigger pile of spit than you,” he said.

“Betcha,” she said.

In the weeks that followed, Polly and John continued their effort, every day a different puddle. Neither of them ever declared anyone a winner, but it made the time pass. Finally, the teacher, Mr. Rotterman, noticed.

“Hey! Hey! What’s going on there!” He was on them now, from the blackboard at the front of the class to the two of them in the back in a heartbeat, grabbing John by the arm and pulling him away. “Go to the principal’s office. Now,” he said. And then to Polly, “You. You I’ll talk to after class.”

The bell rang. Everyone left. The room seemed enormous, empty like that. Mr. Rotterman, from behind his desk, said, “Come here.”

Polly sat still.

“I said, come here.” His voice boomed across the room, echoing off the tiled floor, the empty white walls.

Polly stood up and then stood on her chair. She felt tall this way. She was tall this way. “No.”

“I don’t want to call your mother. But I will.”

Fuck you
, Polly thought.
Fuck you
, she thought, hopping down from the chair, her feet thwacking the floor, like a capgun sounding off. She walked to the desk. She was wearing a pair of white corduroys, and they were too small. They crawled up the crack of her front and back. They also didn’t reach her shoes—floods, they called them. When she got to Mr. Rotterman’s desk, he grabbed her, quickly, and leaned her over the desk.

“That,” he said, as his hand slapped her ass hard, “is for being bad.”

“Bad, bad, bad,” he repeated as he spanked her over and over again.

Fall turned to winter and Polly had a friend. The friend didn’t like her very much and wasn’t nice to her, but Polly was so grateful that none of that mattered. Her friend’s name was Breanna and she was from the other side of town, a skinny white girl, much like Polly herself, but one whose parents were divorced and one who was allowed to watch as much television as she wanted and eat sugar cereals for dinner.

Once, during a Saturday night sleepover, while they were watching the dancers gyrate on Solid Gold, Polly said, “Mike Turley says my dad is a fag.”

“Really?” Breanna grinned and looked at her with interest. Generally, anything that caused another person pain or humiliation interested Breanna.

“Yeah. Maybe we should kick his ass.”

“Whose ass? Michael Turley’s or your dad’s?” Breanna nearly fell over laughing.

“Shut up!”

“Maybe your dad is a fag.” Breanna started to guffaw. Then she smacked Polly’s arm.

“How could he be married and have a kid if he’s a faggot?”

“Fuck if I know. I don’t anything about fags.”

When getting ready for bed, in the bathroom at Breanna’s, Polly stared at herself in the mirror. She opened her mouth and stuck out her tongue. She grinned. She had big teeth in a small head. She pulled down her underpants and looked at the dark wisps of hair forming. This was new but not as troublesome as her nipples. It was more hidden, and it didn’t itch
quite so much. She touched herself gently, just there where the hair was growing in. Then she looked at her teeth again. When she was a little girl and her teeth were coming out, she could barely stand the feeling. The agony of waiting! It was like her other itches. She would tie dental floss around the tooth and saw, saw away. Back and forth, saliva, then blood, and still the tooth wouldn’t come out. Her mother would say, “It’s barely loose! Wait until it’s looser before you pull it out.” But Polly couldn’t wait. She tried tying the string to a door and slamming it, but that didn’t work. She always moved toward the door inadvertently. So she’d sit back down on the couch, sawing away, cartoons on in front of her that she barely watched because she was so intent on her sawing. And when it came out! Shooting across the room, smacking the TV dead on. The relief of it! The tooth was long and strange looking, because the root was still on it. Blood poured into her mouth, dripping down her chin onto the rug. She could feel her mother’s anger. Looking into the mirror, she’d see the gaping, throbbing hole and it gave her a sort of satisfaction, but it was never long lived.

Over the Christmas break Polly’s mother announced she was taking her bra shopping. They drove out to the mall to the Hudson’s Department Store. The lingerie section was pink-walled and brightly lit. Everywhere stood racks of enormous, stiff bras and panties that were so huge she could have easily stuck both her legs through one of the leg holes. What the hell
was she doing here? Her mother hated shopping. It made her sweat, she said, and also dizzy. But here they were.

“Excuse me,” her mother said to a gray-haired saleslady, “I’m looking for a training bra for my daughter.”

“Oh, yes.” The lady smiled at Polly. “Right over here.”

The training bras were white little things with triangle shaped cups on a rack that had a big picture of a girl smiling her ass off. Polly went into the dressing room and put it on. Her pale bubble-gum-sized nipples didn’t come close to filling out the training bra. She understood that wasn’t the point, the point was to hide her shame. Just the name of the bra confounded her. Training for what? Olympic boobs?

“Come out and show us!” the saleslady said.

“No,” said Polly. She heard them whisper, then giggle.

On the car ride home, she asked her mom, “Is Dad a fag?”

“What? Jesus Christ! Where’d you get that?”

“I’m just asking.”

“Your father is not a fag. For God’s sake.”

“Mike Turley says he’s a fag.”

“Mike Turley! That family has no class. All those kids and they’re all wild and stupid. A woman shouldn’t have more kids than she can take care of.” Polly’s mother’s face was red now.

“Well then how come he doesn’t have a job?”

They were at a red light. Her mother turned to her. “Your father is mentally ill. He’s not a fag.”

“Mentally ill?”

“Remember that time we visited him in the hospital? And he was making belts and little stools with stenciled paintings on them?”

Polly remembered. Her father making crafts, like a boy in shop class. She liked the stuff he made. It was nice. But that had been years ago, around the time of her chicken pox. She remembered he seemed quiet, but he was always quiet.

“You said he was sick. He was in the hospital.”

“He was sick. Mentally sick. They gave him electroshock in the hospital, a hospital for mentally ill people.”

The way her mother said mentally ill made Polly angry.

“He’s crazy. Dad’s crazy.”

“Mentally ill!” Her mother screamed. Then the light changed.

When school started up Polly wore her training bra. She put little cotton balls in it to fill it out. But gym class was a problem. What was she going to do? Take off her training bra and let the cotton balls fall out? There she was, in the fluorescent glare of the locker room, stiff with terror. She had to get naked and get in the shower. She had no choice. The raging, lesbian gym teacher who sported a crew cut and weighed a solid two hundred pounds was yelling at everyone, herding them in and out of the cold hard spray of water with a fierce delight noticed by all. The bra came off. The cotton balls fell. Breanna was the first to point it out.

“Look! Polly stuffs her bra! Oh my God! Look!”

Polly ran for the shower, and like all the girls, crossed her arms over her chest. The girls laughed, they pointed, they grabbed her bra and the cotton balls and tossed them back and forth between each other. Someone smacked her arm when she came out of the cold spray, probably Breanna, but Polly was seeing white. The gym teacher hollered, “Everyone in, everyone out!” It was the only thing she ever said in the locker room. Outside of the locker room she had more sentences, like, “Get the ball. What are you doing? Get the ball!”

Polly stopped wearing the training bra. Her mother said nothing and probably didn’t notice. Beer does that to people. Spring came and there was a fair at the Town and Country shopping mall right off the main strip, where teenagers cruised their cars high on dope and booze. The fair consisted of one small ferris wheel; a tilt-a-whirl; the very popular Himalaya, a fast ride that screeched out heavy metal music while it whipped everyone around forward, and then backward; a sawdust pit with a goat, a pig, and a spitting llama; and a food stand that sold corn dogs, soda, and cotton candy.

It was a Friday night.

“Mom, I’m going to the fair with Breanna and then spending the night at her house.”

“Okay,” her mom said, not looking up from the paper.

“I need some money.”

“My wallet’s on the table.”

Polly went over to Breanna’s house. The two of them
applied black eyeliner, mascara, and used her mother’s curling iron. After they were all tarted up like miniature hookers, Breanna’s mother drove them to the shopping center and dropped them off.

“Call me when you want me to pick you up.”

“Okay.”

Polly bought tickets for the both of them; Breanna never paid for anything. They rode the tilt-a-whirl twice, then they rode the Himalaya three times.

“She was a fast machine, she kept her motor clean,” screeched the sound system. Polly’s ear burned and the bass of the music thumped inside of her chest in an uncomfortable way. She was happy to be there with her friend. At the food stand, Polly ordered them a soda and a cotton candy. Three boys, high school age, with heavy metal T-shirts and mullets, came up to Breanna.

“Aren’t you Angie’s little sister?”

“Yeah, I’m Angie’s little sister.”

“Want to go for a ride?”

The girls looked at each other like they’d won the lottery.

“Sure,” they said at the same time.

They all walked over to where the cars were parked. It was dark out, around nine thirty, and the air smelled of fumes from the rides and the rich pollen of spring. Lights from the ferris wheel glittered in front of them and crossed and bled into the lights of the cars coming up and down the strip. The smallest of the boys, a sandy blond-haired kid with bad acne, lit a small joint.

“It’s just a pinner,” he said, “but it’s really special.”

The stood in a circle, the five of them, and passed the joint around. At first Polly was intimidated, but she watched Breanna and did like she did. She held the tiny little white joint between her thumb and her forefinger and sucked real hard on it. The tallest of the boys said, “Damn, this is good weed.”

The boy whose joint it was nodded, seeming pleased. The other one, a chubby sort, stayed real quiet and looked at Polly in a funny way. After the joint was smoked the oldest looking boy asked, “Want to go for a ride in my van?”

Suddenly, as if hit with a brick, Polly felt very strange. A fierce, hot energy surged through her body, from her feet to her head and everything went numb. She looked down to see if her feet were on the ground.

“My feet!” she said, “I’m floating.”

Everyone laughed in slow motion. It was like a movie, where a camera slowly pans over a crowd, first Breanna next to her, then the tallest boy, then the quiet boy, his tight Poison T-shirt moving in slow motion over his stomach, then the little one with acne who had the joint, his wiry body bobbling while his feet grounded him. They were laughing so slowly, and now Polly couldn’t hear them either, just see their mouths opening, their heads leaning back.
Maybe they weren’t making any noise
, thought Polly.

“Let’s cruise the strip,” someone said. Polly wasn’t sure who said it, but she was glad she was able to hear. Somehow she managed to get in the back of the van. Someone had helped
her, had lifted one leg and then another, to make them crawl into the back of the van. She lay on her back and Breanna was next to her. The boys were in the front of the van; she couldn’t see them. Occasionally she heard them say something: “Turn on the radio.” “Give me a cigarette.” There was laughter, lots of laughter. From where Polly lay in the back of the van, she could see out the back window, a blur of red and yellow lights. Her feet were not floating anymore. She looked at her arm and tried to lift it, but couldn’t. What happened to her arm? She tried to turn her head to face Breanna, but she couldn’t do that either. Somewhere deep inside her was a core of fear and panic, but it was wrapped tightly with layer after layer of fog and bewilderment. She tried to say, “Breanna,” but nothing came out.

She heard the boys up front. Her ears worked. Her eyes could see. Nothing else worked. She heard one of them close to her now, as if his mouth were right against her ear. He said, “You’ve done been dusted, little girl.”

Then there was quiet for a while. She stared at the lights out the back of the van. Again, she tried to say, “Breanna.” It didn’t work. Then a voice from far away said, “To Eric’s house, motherfucker. It’ll be a lemon pussy night! Drive, motherfucker.”