What Every Girl (except me) Knows (2 page)

One of the dreams that I have recorded in my dream journal over and over is that I miss my bus home. I dream that I am standing at my locker and I can’t get it open. My legs feel like they are twisted in rubber, and I have to struggle to get to the bus line, and when I get there I can’t find which bus is mine. In some dreams, I see my bus but it’s too late. It leaves without me.

Last week, I mistakenly confided in Rhonda Littleman about my dream journal, because she had just done an oral report called “The Mysteries of the Mind.” I told her about my recurring bus nightmare.

She said that something was wrong with me, because most people dreamt about missing their ride to school or to work—it represented anxiety. Dreaming about missing the bus home was pathologic.

Like I said—telling Rhonda was a mistake. What did she know, anyway? I think I hated her.

I grabbed my coat out of my locker, and with my backpack banging against my legs I ran for the bus. I prayed, between huffing and puffing, I wasn’t going to miss it. No one would be home to pick me up if I did. My dad had student critiques at the college Wednesday afternoons.

“Wait!” I knocked on the tall doors. The bus driver looked down three steps at me. I waved up at him, pathetically.

“Almost didn’t make it,” Mr. Worthington told me as he maneuvered the doors to open.

“Almost,” I said, stepping inside.

Then I wished I hadn’t. Debbie Curtis sat in the only available seat not filled with three people. I really was afraid of Debbie Curtis. I had heard that her father was a prison guard at the Wallkill State Penitentiary. Her brothers were both football players at the high school. Size-wise, the family resemblance was unmistakable.

I had no choice. I sat down and right on cue Debbie Curtis hissed, “You look so stupid.”

I saw someone on the
Oprah Winfrey Show
once who said to respond with “So?” to anything a bully says. But it didn’t seem like that was going to help. I thought it best to remain silent in this situation.

Debbie decided to explain her uninvited commentary. “You look like a boy in that old coat.”

Now, I knew that my coat was not old. It was new, actually. It was a dark-olive, drab, down bubble jacket. My brother had one just like it. But now in addition to looking like I was ready to go two hundred miles behind a dogsled team, it seemed I looked like a boy.

“You’d look like a boy if you were wearing a prom dress,” I said and braced myself, my fingers clutching the edge of the seat.

Debbie Curtis gave me one big shove, and despite my grip I landed in the rubber aisle between the seats. I could see Mr. Worthington’s frowning eyes in the rearview mirror.

“Sit down behind me,” he said. There was always one bench seat directly behind the driver, reserved for troublemakers, and no one could sit there unless ordered to. I think Mr. Worthington knew he was doing me a favor. I gladly moved up and slipped behind his seat. I looked up to thank him, but Mr. Worthington’s eyes were now fixed on the road.

Rhonda Littleman was wrong about one more thing—riding home on the bus did represent anxiety.

Chapter 3

“When I got home from school, Cleo was in the kitchen chopping up raw vegetables. I wasn’t so surprised to see real vegetables instead of the frozen ones we usually had, but I was surprised to see Cleo at my house in the middle of the week; surprised to see Cleo at my house when my dad wasn’t home.

I did quickly take in some thoughts about peeling carrots but not green peppers for my list journal. And why was she washing mushrooms like that with a paper towel? I stood quietly for a moment in the doorway.

“Oh, hi, Gabby,” Cleo said with a big smile. “I didn’t hear you come in.”

I was suddenly caught in that itchy space between being angry that Cleo was here when I wasn’t expecting her and feeling like I was going to cry because I hated my winter coat that made me look like a boy, even and especially to Debbie Curtis.

I knew I didn’t want to cry.

“What are you doing here?” I said, dropping my backpack on the floor. I couldn’t put it on the counter where it usually goes, because Cleo had a bowl of raw chicken soaking there.

“Oh.” Cleo’s smile vanished.

Just then I heard my father’s car pull up in the driveway. Cleo put down her cutting knife and hurried out the back way.

“I guess Larry’s home,” she said—to the air and to the bicycles hanging in the garage, since she was already out the door. Her voice sounded thin and it made me feel bad for what I had said.

At dinner, I sat in self-imposed silence; punishment for being mean to Cleo for no reason. Punishment for looking like a boy. If I wanted something passed to me that I couldn’t reach, I did without it. I did without butter on my bread. I did without chicken on my plate.

“Ian’s been taking lessons for almost six years.” My dad was chatting away “He started when he was only eight.”

My brother didn’t bother to correct that particular piece of information. In reality, Ian had picked out the chords to “This Land Is Your Land” when he was only seven years old on one of my dad’s old girlfriends’ ukulele. My dad left that part out, too.

“He studies with François. You know, that guy over at the college who knew Coltrane?”

My dad usually wasn’t too good at regular talking. He never asked to see our homework or who our friends were. Or why I didn’t have any. But when it came to discussions about “art” he was downright chatty. And when Cleo was around he seemed to talk so much you couldn’t stop him. He kept on talking about John Coltrane, the famous jazz musician, and Cleo said, “Oh, I love John Coltrane. I used to have a roommate who owned lots of his records.”

Then Dad said, “Oh, really? Which ones?”

Lately, he was turning into a regular Mr. Upbeat.

I was getting hungry for something more than the steamed vegetables I was pushing around on my plate. I wanted the now-cooked chicken, which smelled like sweet-and-sour, but the platter sat by Cleo’s old elbows and I couldn’t reach it. I hadn’t spoken a word to her since my dad came home. Ian came back an hour later, and half an hour after that we were all there: sitting down like one big, happy something. This was our first all-family-plus-Cleo sit-down meal.

“You look so much like your father,” Cleo was saying to Ian. “So you’ve inherited his artistic talents, as well.”

“But my dad’s a painter and Ian is a guitar player,” I added quickly. And I figured once I had spoken I might as well get to eat.

“Can someone pass me the chicken?” I asked right away.

Cleo handed me the platter. “Well, I meant artistic in general. Ian probably inherited his musical abilities from…”

I knew what she was thinking.

She stopped herself, but it was too late.

From your mother
, she was going to say. One of the very few things I knew about my mother—I think but I’m not sure—was that she liked to sing. I knew she had brown hair and little eyes, like me. And I knew her first name was Arlene, because I had her real driver’s license in my photo album. But that’s about it.

I wondered how Cleo could know anything about my family, but I could tell she
did
know from the way she stammered.

Cleo regained her composure. “…from your mother. Your dad told me your mother liked to sing.”

Boy, Cleo really
was
open. She wasn’t afraid to say anything. No one ever mentioned my mother. It was as if the expression “your mother” didn’t exist for me. It was only for other people talking about somebody else’s mother. I was immune. I was no woman’s daughter. I was my daddy’s little girl.

End of story.

If Ian heard what Cleo had just said, his face didn’t show one sign of it. My dad was just chewing away, like nothing had been said at all.
Your mother.
It sounded so strange, like she couldn’t possibly be talking about me. Everything was quiet.

Too quiet.

So I just blurted out, “Dad, can I get a new winter coat?”

Last winter when Ian ordered a new winter coat from the L. L. Bean catalog, I wanted the same exact one. Last year, I was literally writhing on this very floor begging for a coat just like Ian’s.

“You just got a new coat last year, didn’t you, Gabby?” My dad was never entirely sure about anything.

Ian didn’t say anything, but he rolled his eyes, so obviously he remembered. But I hated my coat. It made me look like a boy. And I, for one, could not afford any surplus female disadvantages.

“But can I get a new one, Dad?” I asked again, confessing, but not entirely so.

“Let me see this coat you got last year, Gabby,” Cleo broke in. “Maybe it’s too small already. Did it fit last year?”

I needed no further prompting. I was out of my seat and heading for the coat closet. I returned as the olive drab marshmallow girl, Iditarod contender.

“Whew,” Cleo said, looking at me.

Neither my brother nor my father registered that anything was wrong with this picture. The coat fit and was obviously warm.

“There, I knew you got a new coat last year,” my dad said.

“But it’s so small,” I said.

I tried to push my arms out as far as they would go, hoping the sleeves would look too small, but the elastic held tight and the excess of bubble material stretched with me.

But Cleo knew.

“Whew,” she said again.

“It looks fine, Gabby,” my dad said, satisfied, and he began to clear the dishes. I was starting to sweat.

“Gabby needs a new coat,” Cleo said firmly.

My dad was already in the kitchen washing dishes and putting them right back into the cabinet wet, which I had always thought was normal until I saw a movie one day where a family was washing and then drying their dishes with dish towels. It went on my list.

“We can consign this one,” Cleo said. “I’m sure it was expensive. I bet we can even get a nicer one for less than we sell this one for.” She spoke louder so my dad could hear as she stared at me and my coat, shaking her head.

We. She had said, “We.”

“Whatever you think,” the voice came through, over the running water and clanking of plates.

“When?” I asked Cleo.

“Soon,” she said, with a smile and a wink. A girl-to-girl wink.

And before I even asked, Cleo added, “This weekend.”

Chapter 4

My town sat in the valley of the dark-green lumbering Wallkill River. The Wallkill River flows in the wrong direction. It flows north. Upstream. Against the tide. Away from the ocean. It runs right behind our house.

We learned in science class that the Nile River in Egypt also flows north. I went home and looked it up on the Internet and found out that the Nile is where Miriam from the Bible left her little brother, Moses. Miriam hung around to watch what would happen to him, because her mother told her to.

My mother didn’t leave anyone around to watch and see what would happen to me. Maybe she thought she left my brother to look out for me. Boy, was she mistaken.

Our science teacher, Mr. Everett, liked to study the river. He tested water and monitored pollution. He said the river had stories to tell if you knew how to listen. He had us bring in mud samples from the riverbanks and use litmus paper. We counted snapping-turtle eggs.

Mr. Everett wanted all his students to call him by his first name, George. We all thought that was pretty cool, even if not everyone could bring themselves to actually do it.

“Nobody has turned in their science project sheet,” George told the class toward the end of the period. He held up a blank copy to remind us.

I knew I hadn’t.

“Come on, people, work with me,” George said. “Any medium. Any idea. Any research. Artwork, drama. Just present your ideas for approval.” He added, “By the end of class. I’ll give you a few moments for quiet reflection on the topic.”

A report on the Wallkill River. It was worse than the report on the Huguenot Stone we all did in fifth grade. The Huguenot Stone marked the site of something very old and sat in the center of our town’s historic district. It was a huge rock, which was replicated on senior class rings looking exactly like a rock. Teachers loved stuff about our town, claiming the oldest remaining street in America, stone houses, and the deep and slow Wallkill River.

I had no ideas for my project. Most of us sat with our heads perched on our hands, hands bent at the wrist, elbows propped on our desks, staring into space. That’s exactly how I was posed when the new girl walked in.

The assistant principal stuck her head into the doorway and looked like something disembodied from a horror movie. Miss Crosby could never seem to bring herself to call George, George. “Excuse me…Mr. Everett? This new student is all ready to begin school.” Miss Crosby stepped fully into the room, however cautiously. The new girl stepped in beside her.

George was all ready. He pulled out his plastic glasses and nose, with the eyeballs that bounced out on metal springs.

“Hel-lo new student.” George hopped up onto the lab table and bowed like Sir Lancelot.

So here she was, my potential new friend. But I knew as soon as she entered the room that this new girl would be one of “The Ones” before the day was over. She was definitely Amber Whitman material.