Keeping the Moon (13 page)

She just looked at me.

"So it was kind of funny."

She wasn't smiling.

"When you did," I finished. "Forget it. I'm sorry."

She sighed and moved the spoons. "Oh, I'm sorry too." She leaned back against the coffee machine. "It's just that Mark left early, and things didn't go the way I wanted them to." She paused. "And I always make deviled eggs when I'm upset. I mean, I guess it
is
kind of funny."

"No," I said solemnly "It isn't." Norman ambled out of the kitchen, heading toward the storeroom. He came to a sudden, whiplash kind of stop when he saw the eggs.

"Hey!" he said. "Those deviled eggs?"

"Yes," Morgan said quietly.

"With paprika?"

Morgan nodded.

Norman lifted up the edge of the cling wrap, examining the rows and rows of perfect half-eggs underneath. "Wow."

They did smell good.

"Can I, uh, have one?" Norman asked Morgan, who just

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keeping the moon

covered her eyes with her hand and nodded. He took his time picking one out, selecting it from the top left corner and cradling it in his palm as if it was precious. "Great," he said happily, carefully replacing the cling wrap. "Thanks."

"No problem," Morgan murmured. We watched him walk to the storeroom. He disappeared inside, came out with a bag of hamburger buns, and passed us again, the egg still cupped in his hand.

"Want to savor it," he explained. He went back into the kitchen.

Morgan sighed. "I," she announced, "am so pathetic."

"You are not," I said.

"I am." She went over and straightened the cling wrap, corner to corner. "Do you know how many times I've brought in deviled eggs? This is, like, the only time I haven't been sobbing and that's only 'cause I cried all night. And Norman," she said, her voice rising to a wail, "sweet Norman, always just acts so
surprised
to see the eggs, and pleased, and he never, once, has ever acted like he knew what they meant."

I looked over at the eggs.

"I hate my life!" Morgan cried, breaking down completely, her shoulders shaking. Behind her, the spoons rattled.

"Oh, Morgan," I said helplessly.

She kept crying. In the kitchen, Norman was slowly eating his egg, watching us solemnly.

"It's so awful," she sobbed. "I finally get to see him and he's so distant, he doesn't want to talk about the wedding at all...." . "Oh, Morgan," I said again. What was I supposed to do? In

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the movies women hugged and cried and held each other, but that was as foreign to me as another country. I decided to sort the Sweet'n Lows.

She kept crying. I ate an egg. And it probably would have kept up like that forever if Isabel hadn't come through the door.

First she saw the eggs. Then she looked at Morgan.

"Morgan," Isabel said softly, which just set her off again. Isabel came behind the counter and I knew to step out of the way. "Morgan, come on."

Morgan was still crying, that blubbery bouncy kind of sobbing you can't control. "It was bad," she said. Her nose was running. "He didn't even stay for breakfast." The rest was lost in her sobs.

"Oh, honey," Isabel said, stepping forward and putting her arms around Morgan. "What a jerk."

I kept my head down and moved on to stocking straws.

"Don't say you told me so," Morgan said finally into Isabel's shoulder, her voice muffled. "Please don't."

And Isabel shook her head, one hand smoothing Morgan's hair. "I won't."

"Thank you," Morgan sniffled. "I know you're thinking it...."

"I am," Isabel agreed.

"But just don't say it." She pulled back; her eyes were puffy and red, her bangs stuck to her forehead.

"Oh, my God," Isabel said suddenly. "What did you do to your
bangs,
Morgan?"

"I cut them," Morgan said, bursting into another round of tears.

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"What did I tell you about messing with your hair when you're upset?"

"I know. I know..." Morgan tried to fluff them with her fingers but they were much too short. "I'm having a bad hair day, okay?"

"It's all right," Isabel decided. "We'll fix them later."

"Okay" Morgan sniffled again. "Good."

Isabel looked at the eggs. Then she reached under the cling wrap to slide one out, making a mess in the process. She popped it into her mouth, whole.

I could tell Morgan was itching to fix that plastic but she didn't move.

"Come right home after work," Isabel told her through the mouthful of egg. "We'll do your hair and have a few beers and open the Columbia CD package I got last week."

"A package?" Morgan said, blowing her nose in a napkin. "You didn't tell me we'd gotten another one."

"I," Isabel said, dragging out another egg and putting on her sunglasses, "was saving it for a special occasion. See you later, okay?"

Now, finally, Morgan smiled. "All right. You don't have a date for the fireworks already?"

Isabel chucked that egg in her mouth too, grinning the entire time. Then she shook her head. "Nah. These are
good,"
she said. Then she looked at me as she pushed the door open. "You come too, Colie. Okay?"

I was surprised. "Sure," I said.

"Good. It'll be Chick Night." She stepped outside. "Later!"

We watched her walk over to the Rabbit, then make another

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one of her trademark gravel-scattering exits. As she pulled into traffic, someone speeding by in a pickup truck whooped and beeped at her. And then she was gone.

"Chick Night," Morgan said slowly, walking over and lifting out two eggs. Then she wiped the back of the plastic wrap. "You know, I think that's just what I need right now."

I nodded. She handed me an egg and I took it. We stood there, chewing, until our first customers pulled up.

Chick Night,
I thought. Another first for me. I didn't quite know what to expect.

But I would find out soon enough.

We could hear the music from the end of Mira's driveway. I was carrying the tray with the few eggs that were left; I myself had eaten six and was trying not to look at them.

"Ah," Morgan said, as we came closer, the music getting louder and louder. "Disco."

"What?"

She nodded towards the little house. All the lights were on and the door was open. "Disco," she explained, "is great for healing. Not to mention dancing."

At this I froze, my fingers tightening on the egg tray. No one had mentioned anything about dancing.

"I don't dance," I said.

Morgan looked at me. "What?"

"I said I don't dance."

"Everyone dances," Morgan said simply.

"Not me."

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She pulled open the door, letting out a burst of music: Sister Sledge, singing "We are Family"; a standard on
Kíki's Disco Years Workout
tape. On it my mother wore a purple leotard and bell-bottoms, doing the Hustle, while three rows of overweight people huffed and puffed behind her.

"You will," she said. And she reached behind her, holding the door open, the music spilling out to greet me.

I didn't dance. And I had my reasons.

As a fat girl, I'd experienced a wide range of humiliations. Add in the fact that I was almost always new, too, and I hit trouble everywhere I went.

Once, in elementary school, I came home after a particularly bad day and gorged myself on Oreos. I sat down with a full package and a half-gallon of milk to drown my sorrows, twisting off the tops and licking out the white insides, one after another.

Thirty minutes later I was in the bathroom, kneeling before the toilet and throwing up black stuff, which swirled away only to be replaced by more black stuff, and more black stuff, for what seemed like an eternity.

I never touched an Oreo again. I honestly cannot even be in the room with one.

I feel the same way about dancing.

It was the Fall Harvest Dance. My first dance. As usual, I was at a new school: Central Middle, in some small suburb of Maryland. My mother was working at a dentist's office; it was the first time in my life I'd had clean, well-inspected teeth.

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Maybe this made me feel confident enough to go to the Harvest Dance. Or maybe it was my mother, who never let her extra pounds get in the way of having a little fun. Either way, when I was only two months into a new school, fat with no friends (other fat kids wouldn't hang out with me because I was
new,
part of the complex stratification even among the losers at Central Middle), my mother spent all the grocery money to buy me a new pair of Misses Plus jeans and a cute top.

The top was long-sleeved, with green and pink stripes. I wore my white Keds and a pair of heart-shaped earrings my mom had given me for my birthday. We spent a lot of time selecting this combination, and she even let me wear some of her makeup. She dropped me off on the other side of the football field, the cool thing to do, so I appeared to have just walked out of the woods.

"Have fun," she called after me. I'd gotten the sense, through all the shopping and preparation, that she would have gladly traded places and gone herself. I was more than ready to let her.

The engine of the Volaré rattled as she drove off. "You look great!" she yelled as I stepped through the brush and started across the field. I could already hear the music, could see the lights in the cafeteria, and despite myself I felt a little flutter of excitement.

I paid my three bucks and went inside, passing clumps of kids along the hallway; no one seemed to be dancing yet. The fat girls were all in a far corner. One of them had brought a book and was reading it.

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keeping the moon

I went to the bathroom and checked my makeup under the glaring fluorescent lights, to see if I looked different. Then I washed my hands twice and went back to the cafeteria.

By then some people were dancing. I went inside and stood against the wall, watching as the most popular kids took the floor, the girls shaking their hips and hair, the boys all doing that same white-guy shuffle with their eyes somewhere else, their faces bored.

It wasn't bad, all of a sudden, being there. Everyone around me was moving to the loud music, even the other fat kids. So I did, too.

No one ever really teaches you how to dance. I was kind of moving back and forth, looking down like everyone else. I couldn't even find myself in the crowd reflected in the cafeteria windows. That was nice.

There was a girl standing next to me with glasses and long hair, and when I looked over she smiled shyly. The music was good and I relaxed, letting myself move a little bit more, copying some of the moves I saw other people making. Maybe this would be different, this school. Maybe I
would
make friends.

I kept dancing, thinking this, and I realized suddenly why people liked to dance; it did feel good. Fun, even.

Then I heard it. Someone laughing. The noise started off quietly, but as the music was dying down, the song changing, it got louder. I looked up, still dancing, to see a boy across the cafeteria with his cheeks puffed out, moving like a hippopotamus, his legs straight and locked, rocking back and forth. Everyone was standing around watching him, giggling. The more they

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laughed, the more pronounced he became; sticking out his tongue, rolling his eyes back in his head.

It took a few seconds to realize that he was imitating
me.
And by that point everyone was staring.

I stopped moving. The music changed and I glanced around me to see that the girl with the glasses was gone;
everyone
was gone. I'd been all alone, dancing, in my big fat Misses Plus jeans and new shirt.

When this happens in the movies and in after-school specials, the fat, teased kid is always befriended by some nice person who sees her for the wonderful, worthwhile person she really is. But in real life, middle school just isn't like that.

No one followed me as I walked back across the football field and sat beneath a stubby pine tree for two and a half hours, waiting for my mother. I could hear the music from the cafeteria. I could even hear voices through the woods, people sneaking away from the chaperones. When my mother pulled up at ten o'clock I climbed into the car and didn't say a word the whole way home.

I told her later as I sat with her arms around me, crying, my voice hiccuping and ashamed. She just rocked me back and forth, her mouth set in that thin, straight line that meant she was angry. She stroked my hair and told me I was beautiful, but I was old enough by then to know not to believe it anymore.

Two weeks later, she gave up her job at the dentist's and we moved to Massachusetts, where I was the fat new kid all over again. But I never forgot Central Middle or that dance. I never could.

There's something about dancing that's like being stripped

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naked; you have to be very self-confident to thrash around in public, deliberately attracting attention. I'd never been that way, even without the weight that once kept me in everyone's eyes. Dancers were the lightest and brightest of butterflies, while girls like me stayed low, bellies scraping the floor, and watched from there.

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***

chapter ten

The first thing I saw when we stepped inside was Isabel, her hair in rollers, crossing the kitchen floor to turn up the CD player. She had on cutoffs and a short white shirt, and her bare feet had cotton balls between each toe. The polish on her toenails was bright red and still looked wet.

"Is this new?" Morgan yelled, as I put the eggs down on the coffee table. Isabel tossed her a CD case before heading back to the kitchen. Morgan turned it over, examining it.

"I love disco," she said.

I nodded. I had my eyes on Mira's house, my excuses ready. I could not stay.

"I bought supplies," Isabel announced, coming back into the

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living room with a grocery bag. She started unpacking it, stacking its contents on the table and floor: two six-packs of beer, a six-pack of Diet Coke,
Cosmo,
two bottles of nail polish, a pack of Fudge Stripes, and a plastic container of what looked like cold cream. Then she picked up the bag and shook it, emptying out a handful of Atomic Fireballs, two packs of gum, and some cigarettes; there were a couple of boxes of sparklers, too.