Revenge of a Not-So-Pretty Girl (11 page)

Friday turned out to be worse than I could have imagined. There were all these stares and snickers and giggles. And let’s not even discuss Devil Nun, who took one look at me and mumbled, “Karma.” I did the only thing that could have been expected of me. I looked right back at her and mumbled, “Fat!”

So there was nothing to do but feign sickness the entire
weekend and keep to my room. I went with abdominal cramps, which are always a good bet because they imply that you need to be near a bathroom at all times. They got me out of church and out of running Mama’s stupid little errands.

Unfortunately, Mama does not believe in missing school, so unless I actually mess on myself, there’s no way I’ll be able to stay home today. But I’ve got a plan. I’ll get up when Mama’s leaving, like I always do, and head to the bathroom like I’m about to tidy up. Once she’s gone, I’m going to whip up a little breakfast and camp out on the couch in the living room, where I’ll spend a glorious day watching TV and doing whatever I please.

Today is actually supposed to be the first day of our Easter break, but on account of the school shutting down for a snow day earlier in the year, we’re forced to make it up now. The way I see it, I’m honoring the original school schedule. Come tomorrow, I’m officially on break, and I won’t have to worry about my hair for nearly a week.

I turn over, bury my face in my pillow, and drift off as I try to close out the thoughts of the last few horrible days.

“Faye, up, up, up,” I hear. Only, the words come to me dreamlike and hazy.

“Faye, get up and get ready for school.”

My eyes shoot open and I see Mama standing in her blue-and-white-striped robe in my doorway. I squint at my alarm clock.

“Mama, it’s not even six o’clock.”

“I don’t remember asking you the time,” she says. “I just remember telling you to get up and get ready for school.”

I have no idea what the heck is going on, so I do as I’m told. I wash up and brush all my hair back, trying to get some type of variety, though it doesn’t look particularly attractive this way either. I kind of look like Frederick Douglass, only with a much smaller Afro. After I put on my clothes and suck down some cornflakes, Mama walks into the kitchen dressed for work.

“Come on. Get your schoolbag and put on your coat,” she says.

“School’s not for another two hours,” I say. But the heaviness of her stare convinces me to do as she says.

I stand out in the hall and watch as she locks the door.

“Where are your keys?” she asks.

“My bag.”

“Give them here.”

Once I hand them over, Mama jingles them a little, then stuffs them into her purse.

“I need those to get back into the apartment,” I say. But she doesn’t answer. She just starts down the hall toward the elevator. Once inside, she presses the button for the fourth floor instead of the lobby. It’s bad enough I’m getting the feeling I haven’t shaken this bad karma yet. Then, to make things worse, those menacing words from that Shakespeare play pop into my head:
Something wicked this way comes
.

The elevator jerks to a stop one floor below ours, and Mama gets out. I walk slowly behind her. Very slowly. We pass apartments D4, D3, D2, and then I see her approaching D1. She extends her long, graceful pointer finger and pushes the bell. Oh God! Everyone knows what goes on in
apartment D1. I think about making a mad dash. Why didn’t I just tell that robber to do with me as he pleased?

“Since you’re not responsible enough to be on your own,” Mama says as she waits for the door to open, “you’ll be coming here each day.”

And suddenly, I’m feeling very faint. Is this woman for real? This has got to be the ultimate humiliation.

The door creeps open, and there standing before me is Viola Landish, child-care purveyor, aka babysitter. I mean, who’s ever heard of a fourteen-year-old having to go to a babysitter? Aren’t fourteen-year-olds supposed to be the ones doing the babysitting?

“It’s good to have you here with me, Faye,” the sitter says as she clutches a tiny, sleeping baby to her bony chest. She maneuvers it a little, frees up her left hand, and latches on to my forearm for a squeeze. The mortification that has taken over me prevents me from speaking.

“You’ll be helping Ms. Viola with whatever she needs help with,” Mama adds. And I feel a glimmer of hope.

“So I’m gonna be working?”

“Exactly,” Mama says.

“I thought I couldn’t start working till I turned fifteen. Okay … well, how much am I gonna get paid?”

But instead of an answer, Mama throws her head back and cackles, pivots, and walks back down the hall and into the elevator. I turn to Ms. Viola, who is standing there smiling. Her face is really chubby for someone who doesn’t have much meat on her bones. I’m thinking all the fat in her body just happened to have gotten stored north of her neck.

“So how much will I be getting paid?” I ask.

“Well, dear, it’s not exactly like that.”

Ms. Viola is one of those people whose age you can’t really figure. She looks like she could be in her thirties, but she speaks and acts like she’s someone’s grandmother.

“What’s it like, then? If you work, you get paid.”

“Well, in this case, your payment is your mother not having to pay me to watch you.”

“So I’m not really working. I’m really being babysat.”

“Oh no. You’re working.” And with that, she hands me the baby.

I try to hold it as far from my body as my arms will allow, but she takes him and presses him right against my chest. And he starts crying and squirming and basically alerting me that he dislikes me about as much as I dislike him. And so I just continue to stand there in her hallway with this alien baby attached to me, unsure of what exactly to do with it.

Within the next few minutes, four more kids under the age of three show up. So there you have it. I’m the oldest person there by far, if you don’t include the babysitter herself and her lanky son, Gerald, who is fifteen and keeps stealing glances at me and flashing his toothy smile. I’ve heard a few kids in the building calling him Mr. Ed—you know, as in the talking horse. And to be honest, with his giant, Chiclet-shaped chompers, he does look like he would be right at home grazing in some field. But Ms. Viola and Gerald live here. They don’t have to hang around being “sitted,” or whatever it is you call it.

I hand off the kid I’ve been holding to Gerald as he walks
by, and scope out the rest of the apartment. There are two bedrooms and two bathrooms toward the back, but everyone is camped out in the living room. Ms. Viola only has one couch in there, which is pushed up against a wall. There’s also a small television set. But those are the only things that suggest any adults ever use that space. The rest of the room is taken up by playpens and toys and a couple of miniature desks. And on the walls are posters of Big Bird and Bert and Ernie and a family of Smurfs. Once I see this layout, I know I have to find a space that’s all my own.

I decide to set up camp in the dining room. Outside of the bedrooms, which are off-limits, it looks as if it’s the only place in Ms. Viola’s apartment that doesn’t get much in the way of toddler traffic.

“You’re kind of old to be coming to a babysitter,” I hear once I’m seated there. I know who it is without even looking up. Gerald has returned and is leaning against the doorway staring down at me. I can’t really tell whether he’s smiling or whether his lips just refuse to close all the way over his colossal teeth.

“Why do you have to come here?” he asks when I don’t respond to him.

“I really don’t want to be bothered right now. Got some homework I need to finish up,” I say. I need for him to leave so I can come up with an alternate plan of action now that Mama has thrown this monkey wrench my way.

“Well, I’m sure this must suck for you,” he says, which is followed by what sounds like a laugh. I give him a sideways glance.

“I’m not laughing at you. It’s just, whenever I get nervous, I snicker a little.”

“I make you nervous?”

“A little.” And then he just stands there for a while. “Look, if you ever need to escape, let me know. I’ll come up with some errand and get Mom to allow you to tag along with me. Or if you ever just wanna talk …”

“I think I’ll be okay,” I say. Gerald flashes those teeth at me again before finally lurching away. What a weirdo.

But I’m not allowed any peace, because the moment he’s gone, I see Ms. Viola’s head poking into the room.

“So glad to have you as my little helper. And as I’ve always believed, the best way to learn is to dive right in,” she says as she extends a diaper my way.

“I don’t know how to use that,” I bark out as I try to hand the diaper back.

“Oh, it’s easy to learn. Baby Owen needs changing, so why don’t you come watch? Then maybe you can help me with the other kids.”

“Why don’t you get your son to help?”

“Gerald? Oh, please, child. You know how boys are. He just shuts himself away in his room doing God only knows what.”

“Well, I have homework,” I blurt out.

“It’s Monday morning,” she says. “Didn’t you do it over the weekend?”

“I was sick.”

“Oh, you’re just stalling,” she says as she waves me off. “I get the feeling that no matter how sick you might have
been, that mother of yours would have seen to it that your homework was completed. Besides, this won’t take very long, and you have almost an hour before you have to leave for school.”

No amount of sighing and eye rolling will deter the woman. So I end up standing over this changing table with this kid gawking at me. I try not to watch as Ms. Viola unfastens the tabs on the sides of his diaper.

“So, I want you to remove the diaper and take his legs,” she says.

“Me? Why?”

“Because you’re going to change him.”

“I thought you were. You know, to show me how it’s done.”

“No better way to learn than to be involved … now come on.”

Has this woman lost her mind? I’m not changing this little mini-humanoid. I’m thinking, since Ms. Viola lives on the fourth floor, maybe I could step out onto the ledge of her window and just jump. But with my luck, I’d probably miss the pavement and land in a rosebush and be perfectly fine, with the exception of my eyeballs, which would be scratched to blindness by the thorns.

“Death by hanging,” I mumble as I separate the kid’s two fat Michelin Man legs and pull the diaper down. That’s when I’m greeted by the foulest stench ever known to man, and I’m faced with a diaper coated in some runny orange-brown glop. I feel my stomach quiver, and I have to make a beeline for the bathroom. It’s like the whole peanut butter and Hi-C incident in Caroline’s room all over again.

“Don’t worry. You see enough of those diapers, it won’t even bother you anymore,” Ms. Viola tries to reassure me as I rush past her.

It’s taken me all of twenty minutes to realize I don’t like babies much. Seriously, what came out of that child was inhuman. I don’t understand why people think they’re cute and get all stupid around them, talking that weird baby talk. Talking like an idiot isn’t cute. And babies aren’t cute. They look like old people, only shrunken down, like little old Yoda dwarf aliens. And they smell funny—milky and sugary sweet and stinky, all at the same time. It’s like medicine and lotion and Johnson’s Baby Powder and farts all mixed into one.

I’ve got to get out of this place. I go over my options in my head. No keys means I can’t get back into my apartment. I obviously can’t stay at the sitter’s all day. Go out on the streets, I risk getting picked up by truant officers. And until I can figure out what to do with this hair, I’m not going back to school. Death by slow torture would be better than that.

That leaves only one option.

I’m a lot calmer
this time around, walking across the shiny lobby floor and down the all-too-familiar hallway with the pretty wooden banisters and sparkly baby chandeliers. Out of habit, I try the doorknob once I get to apartment 1H, but it doesn’t give. I never thought I’d be here again, but I really need a place to lie low. Besides, the old lady seemed so desperate for a friend before, I’m sure she’ll be grateful to see me. I put my ear to the door, trying to detect whether there are any voices coming from inside, but there’s only silence, so I ring the bell. Nothing. I ring the bell again. Still nothing. Finally, I hear some footsteps. It takes just shy of forever, but then I see the peephole open up. She doesn’t say anything. I stand there waiting.

“I can see you looking through the peephole,” I finally say.

“Who is it?” comes her old-sounding voice.

“It’s me. Faye. From the other day.”

Again, nothing.

“Faye,” I say again. “I found you and helped you up into your bed.…”

“What do you want?” the voice says dryly. Okay, not the enthusiasm I expected.

“I just came by to see if you’re okay.”

Once again, there’s no answer.

“Um, and just to see if you might need anything.”

Another long silence.

“I need some lemon for my tea,” she finally says. “A quart of milk, a few sticks of butter, a loaf of bread. Wheat. And applesauce.” That’s it. She doesn’t open the door. She doesn’t say anything else. Then I hear her moving away. I don’t really know what to do. The whole point of coming here was to keep off the streets. But what choice do I have? So I go to the market.