Trying to Float (12 page)

THE SHAMAN

THERE WERE THREE
problems with the dances at my school, and not one had a solution or, at least, not one I could figure out.

The first was that most of the kids at my school were girls, which meant that a lot of time was spent dancing with other girls.

The second was the hygiene of the boys.

Despite certain problems I had with rhythm and my earlier experience with Pippi, I really enjoyed dancing, and the class I most looked forward to in seventh grade was ballroom dancing. My fantasies included Sleeping Beauty and Prince Phillip gliding around the forest, their fingertips touching, his hand gently guiding her minuscule waist. Prince Phillip smelled permanently of Febreze. It turned out to be nothing like I'd imagined; unenjoyable and awkward. I had always suspected that boys were unclean (leapfrog), but now, in such close proximity to their sweaty, nervous bodies, my fears were confirmed. The boys in my class and I were like two boats passing in the
night—except that one boat had terrible night vision and kept steering into, and sweating on, the first boat at inopportune times. One of my teachers regularly shouted out at the boys: “It's called deodorant!” These same boys had a tendency to stare at, well, as the same teacher put it, “Her eyes are up here.”

Into the center of this dropped Ned Frisco—the third unsolvable problem.

Ned, who had transferred from another school, was the nephew of the crossing guard, Krysta, one of the most reviled people at the school. Krysta stood on the corner of the street and screamed at those who crossed without her permission. It made no difference whether you were a student, parent, or teacher. You had to ask Krysta before crossing.

What's more, Krysta's decision to usher you across had nothing to do with the traffic. The street could be empty and Krysta would force you to wait for her word. She could often be cruel.

The first thing we noticed about her nephew, Ned, was that he had a beard. It stretched from the bottom of his overgrown Elvis sideburns to the middle of the wobbly thickness that was his chin and then back up the other side. A thing of alien beauty.

One last thing about Ned. He believed himself to be irresistible to females. All females. No one was beyond his advances—classmates, obviously, but teachers and mothers as well.

The place he proved most adventurous was on the dance
floor. There were already too few boys in the ballroom dance class, and Ned Frisco made a point of dancing with every girl. He was impossible to avoid. We all waltzed, fox-trotted, and tangoed with him, one hand firmly grasping our nose to avoid the odors from whatever was fermenting in his beard and the other swatting at his hand as it traveled farther than necessary down our backs.

After class one day, as I was doing my best to engage a cute boy in conversation, Ned walked up to me, winked, snapped his stretchy pants, and said, “I'm glad my auntie didn't see us on the dance floor,” implying that he and I had been doing something we shouldn't have been.

Another time I was standing with a small group of girls when he came up, tugged his pants up over his great girth, and announced, “If any of you need a dance partner,
caballero
Frisco is available.”

Stop. I forgot to mention that Ned had man boobs, which made him all the more interesting. I wondered why Ned stared at the breasts of girls in my class when he had a perfectly respectable pair of his own. Ned's breasts were some of the most developed in our grade and were often looked at with longing by followers of Penelope Brewster.

The boys in the class had a different reaction to Ned. To them, he embodied something they had only glimpsed from afar—manhood. With his suave manner (the snapping of his stretchy pants and suggestive remarks) and his beard, Ned Frisco was a shaman of sexuality.

Boys consulted him, gave him gifts, showed him their pizzles, all in the hope that he'd allow them into the kingdom of maleness. But it always ended with a shake of Ned's head. None of the boys were allowed to cross over. Adulthood, though attractive to those who are constantly told to “wait until you're older,” was not a venture any of us were ready for. Ned Frisco guarded the gateway to our side of innocence, and knew none were ready for the frustration growing up had to offer.

In that way he was much kinder than his aunt.

In the meanwhile, I was coming to the conclusion that dance and I should find different partners.

TIC-TAC-TOKE

ONE GRIM DAY,
as I was entering the subway, still smoldering from gym class, my oversized book bag around my shoulders, trying to push back ugly thoughts about the waves of humanity around me, I felt a tug on my pack.

Greta. Hair perfect despite the humidity, carrying nothing, her face bright and undisturbed by the subway at rush hour.

“Nic, where are you going?”

She knew exactly where I was going: Twenty-third Street, where I would exit and walk half a block west to the place where I lived—actually, just next door to the place where Greta lived. It was the same route we took every day.

The only difference was that today Greta was speaking to me.

“Nicolaia, I thought we should catch up. We haven't talked in ages.”

Come to think of it, Greta, you're right, I thought. When was the last time we talked? Oh yes, now I remember:
it was when you announced that I was pregnant!

“As you may know, Nicolaia, I have a boyfriend.”

As you may know? The two of them were never apart, and Greta made certain that everyone at school understood that they were boyfriend and girlfriend. They were the cutest couple in the school.

“Well, Nicolaia, something is happening with Joseph that is very disturbing.”

Trouble in Cuteville?

“Greta, I'm not sure I'm the best person to talk to. I've never had a boyfriend.”

“You're an old . . . friend. You know me. You would tell me if I'm boring, or losing my looks, or if . . . he's going out with someone else.”

A single, perfect tear was on its way down Greta's cheeks, and when Greta cried, nothing could stop me or anyone else from doing what Greta wanted.

“Okay, Greta. What happened?”

“When we first started dating, he wanted to do things with me—go to the movies, hang in the park, listen to music. Now when we're together, he watches videos and sleeps. I can't get him to do anything. Be honest with me, Nicki.”

Contrary to my previous denial, I knew something about Greta's problem, though I wasn't sure what to do about it.

A few months before, I had entered my social studies class and discovered that a boy was occupying my seat in the second row. With my eyesight less than it should be (which may or may not have been a side effect from the months I spent
partaking in optical testing), I needed to be close to the front, so this was unacceptable.

The boy refused to move. With class starting and my pleas going nowhere, I took the last vacant seat in the room.

It was only after sitting down that I noticed a strange odor. When it became clear that the odor was not passing, I leaned toward the boy on my right.

“What is that odor?”

He looked confused.

I asked him again.

He turned to me.

“I don't want any cookies today,” he announced.

I turned to the boy on my left and posed the same question. He stared at me for a few seconds and put his head down on the desk.

At lunch, the others at table 17 tried their best not to sit next to me, and I realized that I'd transported a small, but still horrible, part of the odor to the lunch table. I was now the outcast of outcasts.

I explained that I'd been forced to move chairs in social studies and was now in a part of the class where everything smelled bad. When I was finished, Horatio the Planker spoke.

“You, my odoriferous friend, are in the Stoner Corner.”

“What?”

“Those fellows in your class meet every morning, have a smoke with their OJ and cereal, and then go off to class. Over
lunch, they have another smoke, followed by food, lots of food. There are at least a couple of them in every class, and teachers let them do whatever they want so long as they don't bother anyone.”

“So what's the odor?”

“You really are naïve. Now, if you don't mind, it's that time of day.”

“Horatio, no, I have more questions.”

But he was already planking.

With each day, the odor in the Stoner Corner was less offensive, like when an anthropologist, having finally deciphered the spitting rituals of a tribe, is no longer bothered by the clots of saliva decorating his trousers. And the stoners, sensing that I knew their secret, seemed friendlier.

One day, sitting in social studies, squinting at the board, I received a poke in the ribs from a resident of the Stoner Corner.

“Do you play tic-tac-toe?”

A trick question?

“I haven't played in some time,” I said, “but I'm pretty sure it'll come back to me.”

“Well, you're going to have to be good because we practice every day.”

He may have sensed concern in my face, for he volunteered a piece of advice.

“Don't play Dale. He's the best.”

I turned toward Dale, who, from the size of the puddle
gathering next to his mouth on the desk, had been napping for most of class.

“Thanks. I'll keep that in mind.”

When I described my conversation about the tic-tac-toe game to Horatio, he remarked that if I really wanted to understand what was going on inside the heads of these gentlemen, I needed to play tic-tac-toe with them.

It was not as if I hadn't thought of this; the problem was, as I'd foolishly explained to Horatio, if I played and lost, I would never recover my pride. With this, Horatio rose from his chair.

I knew what was coming and did not like it: when not planking, Horatio was given to delivering speeches. Why? I don't know, but it was always infuriating, since what one expected to be a personal exchange could suddenly turn very public.

“Fellow members of the lunchroom . . . [long pause as he gazed around] . . . let us assume, for the purpose of this speech, that Nicolaia has pride.”

For all of his oddity, he was not without insight. But he could be so insulting.

“And let us further assume,” he continued, “that her pride is worth saving.”

What did I tell you.

I left the lunchroom.

Later that day, as I made my way to my seat in social studies, I sensed a change in the atmosphere. One of the boys, Tim, tapped me on the shoulder.

He spoke quietly. “It's time.”

I gulped. He pointed to my opponent, Jeremy, a burly stoner who played the drums.

“Ready your paper, get out your pens, we will let the newbie go first.”

I decided my safest course of action would be to put an “X” in the center. It was now Jeremy's turn.

Jeremy stared at me. Jeremy fidgeted. Jeremy cracked his knuckles. Jeremy let out a grunt. Jeremy picked up his pen. Jeremy put down his pen.

The bell rang.

Jeremy turned to me.

“I want a rematch.”

He then collected his notebooks and left the class.

I turned to Tim, the referee. He looked at me in awe.

“Whoa, maybe you should play Dale.”

I headed to lunch and sat down next to Horatio.

“Horatio, I don't think they've ever finished a game.”

He nodded his most superior nod.

“Of course not.”

Thus, I came to know the members of the Stoner Corner, and there were several whom I liked. They were never alert enough to have a full conversation, or tic-tac-toe match for that matter, but we would have short exchanges, and there were things I came to learn about them, one of which was that they included among their sleepy society a fellow with long bangs and a longer name—Joseph Eliot McCormick Potter—or, as he was better known, “Greta's boyfriend.”

—

By telling Greta that her boyfriend was a stoner, I would give her comfort or, at least, release her from the fear that she had become uninteresting or, worse, no longer cute.

But was I the one to tell her? The stoners were a secret group, and they'd allowed me the privilege of peeking into their clubhouse. Besides, if Joseph Eliot McCormick Potter had wanted Greta to know what he was up to, he would have told her.

I decided to keep my mouth shut. But as I walked away from my conversation with Greta, I heard a swell of whimpering.

I turned around.

“Greta. Do you know how to play tic-tac-toe?”

She paused, feigning reflection, her index finger now laid against her cheek.

“I haven't played in a long time, but . . . ”

I remembered why she and I had been friends.

“Greta, you might ask Joseph if he wants to play. It might keep him awake and away from videos. And from there, who knows . . . ”

After that, there was no more Greta retelling the baby-in-the-pool story, no more pregnant Nicolaia dreams, no more I-am-cuter-than-you attitude. In short, Greta was grateful.

SUMMER CAMP

ONE AFTERNOON, AFTER
school, I put Cream Puff in her ball and took her out into the hallway of the hotel. After thirty minutes or so, I went to help my mother with something in the apartment, leaving Cream Puff behind. When I returned minutes later, there was no Cream Puff and no hamster ball.

I was confused but also frightened: the door between the hallway and the rest of the hotel was closed, as were all of the rooms on the floor, and there was no vent or other place in the hallway into which Cream Puff and her ball could have disappeared.

I called to Mom, and the two of us began to knock on doors. In one of the apartments lived a middle-aged woman whose apartment was filled with hundreds of shiny glass objects—vases, paperweights, mirrors, and chandeliers.

She dressed in vintage clothing and had the manner of a child: with her pageboy haircut, dyed nightmarish black, she skipped, never walked, and spoke in a high-pitched whine.
When asked about Cream Puff, she claimed that she'd just returned home and had seen nothing.

When we had asked every neighbor on the floor, Mom and I opened the door between our hallway and the main stairway.

At the bottom, six floors below, was Cream Puff, framed in the shards of her ball.

I believe that the woman-child across the hallway had opened the door to the staircase, purposely allowing my hamster to roll to his death. She resented Cream Puff. She, unlike Cream Puff, could never get her shiny ball spinning fast enough to make herself happy.

—

Because of what had happened to Cream Puff, Mom began to look for a summer camp that would give me a chance to spend time with animals.

After a great deal of research, she found the perfect camp: not only was its focus on teaching kids to care for animals, but it was in the Ozarks, not far from my maternal grandmother's home in St. Louis. The plan was for me to spend a few days in St. Louis and then depart for two weeks at Camp Maximilian.

Maria's parents, who would soon return their family to Italy, thought that Camp Maximilian would be a great way for their daughter to experience America, and signed her up to join me.

Maria and I spent hours talking about camp: our wardrobes—crop tops, multiple floral skirts, skinny jeans, ballet
flats for day wear, party dresses and heels for evening—and, of course, the boys we would meet, all tall, strong, well-­mannered; in short, nothing like the boys we knew at school.

Months later, we were off. After two days in a television-induced vegetative state at my grandmother's, Maria and I boarded the bus to camp. As we rode through what my grandmother called “
Deliverance
country,” we began to feel a burgeoning sensation in the pit of our stomachs. For Maria it was excitement. I, however, found myself holed up in the tiny bus bathroom. When we arrived, I rallied ho and raced with Maria to our cabin, where she and I claimed the bunk farthest from the bathroom. The Winter Valley experience had taught me that much.

We didn't have much time to settle in before we were called to the assembly where we would be assigned our animals. The idea behind the camp was that each of us would pick an animal, and from the first day to the last we would be responsible for everything having to do with it.

And what a range of animals there were! Sheep, parrots, snakes, chimps, bush babies, scorpions, and llamas. The list of animals had been distributed before we arrived at camp, and I'd chosen a lemur. Maria had picked a wallaby.

True to the camp's promise, I was introduced to my lemur that first day. His name was King Julius. He was overweight with big bug eyes and a white patch on his head.

The next day I would begin to receive my instructions on how to care for him. That night, my dreams were filled with
images of King Julius and me walking through the fields, his tiny monkey-like hand clasping mine.

—

Our first morning at Camp Maximilian began with a breakfast of pancakes, eggs, grits, and sausage; just the sort of food I loved. As soon as we finished, Maria and I raced to the area where the animals were kept.

Calling our names, the counselor pointed to the buildings where our lessons in animal husbandry would begin. Mine was white, with green shingles and ivy. Plain and sweet.

Inside the cottage I noticed a crowd of people standing around a table. A man left the group and greeted me at the door.

“Nicolaia,” he called out.

“Yes.”

“I am the director of the camp.”

We shook hands.

“Your animal is King Julius?”

I nodded and started to tell the director how happy I was to be there, to meet him, and to spend time with King Julius.

He cut me off, pulling me toward the table where others were standing.

“Not right now. We need to remove King Julius's testicles.”

It took a second or two for this to sink in, but it was just long enough for me to exchange glances with King Julius, who gave me the look that Christ gave Judas, Sirius Black gave
Peter Pettigrew. King Julius had obviously not been consulted on whether he needed his testicles removed.

Lathered on top of this was the fright of the operation. The syringes and scalpels, the white gowns and lights, King Julius clamped on a metal table. I spent the next fifteen minutes handing the vet in charge different tools as he snipped important bits away from King Julius.

It was quickly apparent that my dear mother, undoubtedly distracted when she scanned through the list of camps, had picked one intended for junior veterinarians. Which is to say that the camp's population (with the exception of Maria, myself, and King Julius) was less interested in the emotional give and take between man and animal than in taking animals apart and putting them back together again.

I was still suffering from the feeling that I was responsible for Cream Puff's death. With King Julius's trauma now weighing on me too, I was feeling pretty down.

After a few days, though, King Julius, still laid up but less testy, was willing to consider me his friend. And he proved to be a fine friend.

Every morning I would come and sit in the room, which he shared with two other lemurs, and feed him pieces of banana, which he would nibble off of my finger. I would talk to him about my life and the Chelsea Hotel, which I missed. It was especially hard to be away from the Crafties, to whom I confided everything (much, no doubt, to their annoyance). King Julius would gibber back in lemur language. Sometimes I
would adjust his bandages or bring him toys I had made out of toilet paper rolls and string.

On the weekends Maria and I signed up for various classes. One of those was Goat Feeding. We imagined prancing in Dorothy-­esque dresses with baskets of goat food tucked under our arms, flinging the feed into the air as the goats danced at our feet.

Twelve of us arrived at the barn early the first morning. The goat-feeding session was led by a bubbly counselor in training who introduced herself as Daisy.

Daisy started passing around a stack of papers.

“I need y'all to sign these and return 'em right now.”

She twirled her ringlets. Daisy was used to being cute.

As the papers were being distributed, Daisy began to recite the different types of goat feed and what went into them.

“Chaffhaye, clover, alfalfa, grass . . . ”

A tiny boy in the front raised his hand.

“Excuse me, Miss Daisy?”

“Yes.”

“Why do we have to sign this?”

Daisy's cute began to blacken.

“Why, honey, in case you get hurt.”

“I am only eleven years old, I don't think I can sign things,” the little kid insisted.

Daisy had already returned to the feed list.

“Oats, wildflower honey, urea . . . ”

What did she say?

“Buddy up!” Daisy hollered, ushering us inside the barn.

As we marched past, Daisy forced our sleeves up to our shoulders.

The barn was dark inside. In the middle of it were two large vats, one filled with an amber liquid and the other with a mixture of oats. Daisy grabbed the nearest camper, dipped her arms into the amber liquid—honey—then into the feed.

Daisy did this with each of us, and when she was finished, we stood there, arms perpendicular to our bodies, dripping with honey and goat feed.

She opened another door leading to the outdoor goat pen.

“Walk two-by-two through the pen,” Daisy shouted. “In a nice straight line.”

Miss Clavel?

“Arms out straight. And don't come out until all the goats are fed! Bye now.”

The door closed behind us.

As our eyes adjusted to the sun, we discovered that we were standing directly before forty ill-tempered goats.

The goats moved toward us and began to nibble and slurp at our arms. We were all too scared to move. Some of us began to tremble.

It was not very long before the boy who'd asked about the papers panicked, bolting toward the wall of the pen.

Anarchy.

We ran around as the goats butted us and nipped at our
arms. I could hear Maria pounding at the door to the barn, begging Daisy to free us.

Racing toward Maria, a goat bleating at my heels, I hauled her under my arm and broke toward a bush at the corner of the pen.

We dove into the bush, just ahead of the goat.

“Well, this was unexpected,” I said to Maria.

No response from Maria.

I turned around.

She was licking her arms.

Holy mother.

She extended one of her arms toward me.

“Molto delizioso!”

I shook my head in disbelief.

“Really?” she questioned. “Wildflower honey and oats.”

There was no convincing me.

Maria seemed offended.

“And what do
we
get at this camp?! Cheeses and mac—­
disgustoso
.”

“Urea, Maria.” I felt obligated to mention this as a possible ingredient in the goat feed.

“Who's that?”

The door to the pen opened. Daisy.

“What did you think of our goats?” she asked cheerily.

We swarmed passed her. Maria looked back.

“Vado a mangiare il damn capre!
”

Which, as Marie explained it later, meant that given half a chance, she would eat Daisy's damn goats.

—

The boys at camp were nothing like what we had imagined.

What they lacked in sophistication, they made up for with other talents. Such a boy was Jimmy Robbins, whom Maria and I befriended in baking class. Jimmy looked like the love child of Robert Downey Jr. and a gorilla.

Maria and I signed up for all the baking classes because they were really more like eating classes. We would sit and chat as the teacher cooked food. It was perfect. As with most classes, the boys immediately claimed one side of the room, the girls the other.

We encountered Jimmy when we heard a commotion from across the room. Needing only the smallest excuse to visit the boys, we rushed over.

Jimmy was standing in the center of a small group. Next to him was his best friend. Half Jimmy's size, he was known as “Half-Jimmy.”

Half-Jimmy was holding a roll of brown paper towels—the sort one finds in a gas station bathroom.

Jimmy addressed his namesake (well, half namesake): “Half-Jimmy, I'm ready.”

Half-Jimmy grabbed Full Jimmy.

“You don't have to do this, Jimmy.”

“I must,” Jimmy replied.

Half-Jimmy handed him the roll.

Jimmy tore off a sheet. Inserting it between his lips, Jimmy
began to chew. When he had swallowed it, he tore off another, looked it over, and placed it in his mouth.

And so it continued.

As Jimmy's saliva ran out, he gripped the table, making the ungodly noises of a person scrubbing his throat with sandpaper.

Half-Jimmy stood by, pen and notebook in hand. Nervously, Half-Jimmy scribbled—the time, the people, the number of paper towels—all the while checking Jimmy to make sure he was okay.

Sweat gushed across Jimmy's face, the towels bulging in his mouth. Slowly the entire roll wiggled its way into his bowel.

Half-Jimmy hugged Jimmy. Jimmy belched.

“You've still got it, Jimmy,” Half-Jimmy cried.

Half-Jimmy then pulled Jimmy toward a chair, making certain Jimmy was seated before checking his pulse.

Maria and I ran back to the other side of the room to report the scene to the girls. No one cared.

As the summer passed, we came to learn more of Jimmy.

As a child in rural Iowa, he was no different from the others until, one afternoon, walking home from school, he was struck by lightning. What Jimmy lost mentally, he made up for in other ways, including the ability to swallow paper towels. He also won an award for being the least lucky person in camp (he managed to find a dead dog in a cave and was struck again by lightning, this second time with no effect).

While other boys found Jimmy freakish, Half-Jimmy loved and encouraged him, becoming his nurse and biographer.

—

Toward the end of our final week at camp, our cabin counselor, Lauren, asked Maria and me if we wanted to join an overnight outing arranged by the camp. She assured us that we would love connecting with nature—something us city kids didn't do a lot. Nature to me meant roaches, squirrels, and rats. When we heard there was going to be free food, we agreed to go. Having to stick to a strict three-meals-a-day schedule was hard, so Maria and I spent many hours scheming about how to get more food.

Decked out in flip-flops, shorts, and tank tops, we waddled to the mess hall, where Lauren shoved two plastic bags into our arms.

“What is this?” Maria asked after peeking inside.

I looked inside my own bag. “One uncooked hot dog, and one apple,” I announced.

“Camp!” Maria cursed.

Lauren ushered us to where the other kids were standing. They were dressed in down jackets and hiking shoes. My stomach started to turn.

“All right, survivalists,” Lauren joked, “let's get moving. We have a long hike ahead of us.”