What We Keep (13 page)

“Can we have bacon, too?” I asked. My mother tightened her apron around her waist. She was smiling a little, though I was sure she was unaware of this. She always smiled when she was feeding people; she loved doing it. Every time she baked, she’d tie small bundles of extras onto the mailbox for the carrier. She made the cakes that fetched the greatest sums at our school’s bake sales; they were famous for their height, their rich flavors, and their whimsical decorations: fresh flowers, old jewelry, a paper doll wearing a tiny cloth apron, feet rooted in the frosting. She got a little nervous about going to dinner parties unless they were potlucks; at those times, she was always ready to go before my father was. It seemed her contribution was what made her valid.

Now she laid strips of bacon in the frying pan, cracked eggs into a yellow bowl. She beat them vigorously, then came to the table with the coffeepot to refill Jasmine’s cup.

“Thanks, Marion,” Jasmine said, and there was something in the rich tone of her voice that had me look quickly at her, then away. An image came to me: a hand pushing into folds of black velvet, a hidden discovery.

I pulled my chair closer to the table, straightened my fork and knife, put my glass of orange juice directly over the knife, where it belonged. Then I put my hands in my lap to wait. Polite. Proper. “Where’s Dad?” I asked.

“At work, silly,” my mother said. “You know that.”

So I did. He was at work, missing the party. Not even knowing if he liked where he was or not.

At five o’clock that evening, Sharla and I were seated at the kitchen table, shucking corn for dinner. I hated this job because I had once found a worm when I was doing
it, and I was sure it would happen again. But my mother was frying chicken and the aroma made up for my discomfort. She used many spices for frying chicken, among them tarragon, ginger, and rosemary. But she always added things quickly, and so it was hard to see everything that she used. Once I asked her, but she wouldn’t tell me. She said, “Oh, it’s a secret. I couldn’t tell you all the ingredients. It wouldn’t turn out anymore if I did.” She seemed to be both joking and not; I did not pursue it. Sharla said our mother wouldn’t tell what went into many of her recipes because
she
didn’t know; she just made things up. I didn’t see why she couldn’t admit that, if it were true.

After I cleaned the last ear of corn, I laid some of the whitish silk across the top of my head. “I am a sun-streaked blonde,” I said. “I am on the cover of
Life.
” No response, not from Sharla or my mother. I moved the silk to rest under my nose. “I am a man,” I said narrowly, through my pooched lips. They both looked at me, then away.

I pulled the corn silk off my face. “I am a man in a circus,” I said loudly. “I train animals that would just as soon kill you both as look at you.”

“Uh-huh,” my mother said, turning the chicken pieces carefully.

“They would kill you if they would kill us,” Sharla said.

“No,” I said, “they would not. Because I would know how to charm them, and they would love me.”

“Huh, they would eat you first, because you’re so annoying,” Sharla said.

She was mad at me. As far as I could figure, it was because Wayne had liked me better than her. Sharla had
tried to show off at the record store, pretending to know more than she did. But Wayne noticed that she confused Fabian with Pat Boone, and she shut up after that, sulked all the way home.

When we had all gone into the woods, Sharla had hung around listlessly for a while, then gone inside the house. At first, I felt guilty, imagining her lying on her bed, bored, holding her arm up in the air to watch the charms on her bracelet dangle. But then I forgot about her. The truth was, meeting Wayne had let me see that I was tired of Sharla’s company. I recognized in Wayne a kindred spirit. His gaze lingered on the things I found interesting, too: a bent-over woman wearing a print kerchief on her head and crossing the street with achy slowness; a shop window with merchandise arranged into the shape of a pyramid; a truck with a canvas flap blowing open as it took a corner. Wayne liked to read. He picked up a shiny penny he passed on the sidewalk, pronouncing it lucky, then gave it to me.

In some ways, I could hardly stand being with him; it was too new and too much. But I also wanted to be nowhere else. I felt thirsty and thirsty; I felt hungry and hungry. I wanted to show him everything in my box hidden in the closet; I wanted to have a picnic with him; I hoped he’d try to kiss me on the mouth. I was ready, suddenly, to be kissed. My stomach ached mildly, then occasionally leaped up as though it were being poked. I guessed I had a boyfriend. I guessed, actually, that I was in love. I couldn’t stop smiling, though I had enough self-control not to show my teeth.

I knew Sharla was very much taken with Wayne, too, but it didn’t matter: clearly, she was not his type. She
only went for his looks. When he showed her a mockingbird, she barely looked, missing entirely the fabulous white bars on the wings. When he told a joke, her laughter sounded false. When he told her he was a magician, she did not inquire as to his repertoire; and when I did so, she listened only to be polite—I could tell by the fixed expression on her face. But for me, things were opening like a flower.

We had eaten lunch at Woolworth’s. Wayne and I got patty melts and coffee—the latter after Wayne told the sleepy-eyed waitress that we both had hypothyroidism and needed to drink it to stay alive. Sharla, tight-lipped, ordered a tuna salad sandwich and milk. After the waitress left, Wayne and I had talked about her earrings, how they didn’t match—one was a gold knot, the other a blue rhinestone flower. We wondered if it could possibly have been intentional; then, why that might have been so. “Maybe she wants to get fired,” I said. “Maybe her boss is mean.”

“Maybe she has two personalities,” Wayne said. “Two names. Two houses.”

Sharla hadn’t noticed the earrings. At that point, it was clear to me—and to her, too, apparently, since she stopped trying to make any kind of conversation—that Wayne was all mine.

So after we got home and Sharla went in the house, I had brought Wayne to our tepee, and he lay down in the center of it. I sat off to the side, cross-legged, in peaceful silence. Outside, buffalo roamed.

Wayne closed his eyes, breathed in deeply, then raised himself up on one elbow to look at me. “You want to get married?” he asked.

“I—what?”

“Do you want to get married?”

What did this mean, I wondered. “Are you kidding?”

“No.” There was, in his blue eyes, a steadiness older than both of us. I felt as though my real name had at last been spoken, my self cracked open unto myself. There was something inside me—not quite developed, but there nonetheless: a potential, a bud of my coming self that he recognized, and it responded to him. I believed he had a kind of rightness and wisdom. Instinctively, I trusted him—without reason, without thought, without care.

But
married!
“You mean, when we grow up?” I asked.

“No.”

“We can’t get married now; we’re too young.” I couldn’t believe I was saying words like these. It felt as if birds could fly down and pluck jewels from my mouth.

“No, we aren’t,” Wayne said. “We’re just too young to use a minister. So we’ll do the ceremony ourselves.”

I said nothing. My heart was stretched. I felt as though I were either going to start crying or laugh out loud.

“It wouldn’t be a real marriage,” he said.

“I know.”

“It wouldn’t be legal, I mean.”

“Oh. Yes.”

“But … otherwise, it would be real.” He lay down again, closed his eyes. “You’re the one for me.”

“I am?”

“Yes.”

“How do you know?”

He turned his head, looked at me. “Don’t you?”

“I’m only twelve,” I said. “Well, soon I will be.”

“Yes. I’m fifteen.”

We stared at each other. I heard the faint drone of an airplane. A dog barked, then barked again; a car door slammed.

Finally, I looked away, drew a faint line in the dirt, laid my hand on top of it.

“We’ll have a ceremony tonight,” he said. “Meet me here at midnight.”

Midnight! Well, there you had it. It was meant to be. I took my hand off the tentative line I’d made in the dirt, etched the line deeper, drew a circle around it. “Look,” I said, wanting something.

Wayne studied my drawing, nodded once; twice. Then he drew another line in the circle, parallel to mine, the same size exactly, and looked up at me. I nodded back slowly. A foreign word wanted out of my mouth. “Ahuna,” I said. “Ahuna,” he said back, then whispered, “Take nana.” And then neither of us moved for a long time.

I was alive with love, generous because of it, and so I tried to make up to Sharla for taking the only available boy of the summer. “Want me to help you finish cleaning the corn?” I asked.

She shrugged.

I took a fat ear from her, shucked it carefully. It was so easy to be wonderful to others when someone thought you were special.
Ginny Meyers
, I thought. I didn’t like the sound of it, really. But that was small, that was a very small thing, compared to the expanding personal universe inside my chest.

My mother was leaning against the kitchen counter, arms crossed, looking out the window and daydreaming.
“Hey, Mom,” I said. I didn’t like it when she daydreamed; it made her not continuously available to me. “Mom!”

She startled, looked over at me. “What?”

“What are you doing?”

“Nothing.” She began washing the dishes that were piled in the sink.

“It’s your birthday soon,” I said. “And then mine.”

She smiled. “Yes, it is. Are you sure you want the same thing for dinner again?”

In our family, you got to have anything you wanted to eat on your birthday. You got to not make your bed, to forgo all of your chores and lessons, in fact—I was living for the day my birthday fell on a dance class day. You also got to skip school if you wanted. Since my birthday fell in the summer, I got to skip any day of the school year. I always wanted to pick the first day, but never could. Therefore I usually picked the last. And, since age four, I had always picked the same thing for my dinner.

“I want what I always have,” I said. I loved my mother’s enchiladas. I always got to eat one of mine when she had just wrapped them, before they were baked. “Can I eat all of mine raw this time?” I asked.

“It’s your birthday.”

“Then I won’t have any dinner when you eat yours.”

“You’ll have some rice and beans.”

“Okay. And I want caramel frosting on my cake. Caramel.”

“I know. And a white cake, in the shape of a star. And pink candles.”

Well, I had to be sure. She’d been so dreamy lately. I thought maybe she’d better start getting more sleep.

She poked at the chicken, then took off her apron. “I’ll be right back.”

“Where are you going?” Sharla asked.

“Just to borrow something from Jasmine.” She turned down the flame under the chicken, covered it. “This should be fine, but keep an eye on it.”

We watched from the window as she knocked on Jasmine’s door, then entered without waiting for Jasmine to open it. “They’re best friends now,” Sharla said, sighing.

“I know.”

“I wish I had a best friend like her.”

“Me, too.” I thought of Wayne; maybe I
had
found a friend like her. Only more.

Sharla turned to me, spoke in a low voice. “Jasmine gave me a gold bracelet, don’t tell Mom.”

“She did?”

Sharla nodded. “It has a
diamond
on it.”

“Huh. I doubt it.”

“It
does
. It’s real, too, she told me.”

“Can I see it?”

“After we go to bed.”

“Well … okay.” I was worried. I had something to do after we went to bed: get married. I’d make sure Sharla showed me the bracelet right after we turned in; then she’d be asleep by midnight.

After about ten minutes, my mother returned from Jasmine’s empty-handed. “What did you get?” I asked.

“Pardon?” She lifted the lid on the chicken, covered it again.

“What did you get? From Jasmine. You said you were going to borrow something.”

She stared at me blankly. Then she said, “Before a birthday, some things are secret.”

“All we
talk
about is her
birthday,
” Sharla said.
“Everybody
has a
birthday.
”

“Shut up,” I said quietly.

“What did you say?” my mother asked.

“She said, ‘Shut up,’” Sharla answered.

“I have told you I do not want to hear that kind of talk in this house.”

I shrugged.

“Apologize to your sister, Ginny.”

“Sorry,” I said. And, actually, I was. I felt bad for Sharla. She didn’t have a boyfriend and her birthday wasn’t until December.

“Jasmine asked if you girls wanted to go to the movie with her and Wayne tonight.”

“I do,” I said quickly.

“What a shock,” Sharla said. And then, “I’ll go, too. If you don’t mind.” She smiled at me then, a small, sad smile, and I knew she was giving him to me completely.

“Yes, of course I want you to come,” I told her. I sat back in my chair, pleased with myself.

“Want to make me a French twist before we go?” Sharla asked.

“Okay.” I would be so gentle.

“Should we do our nails after that?”

“Sure!”

“Use that red if you want to,” my mother called after us as we headed up the stairs. “It’s in the medicine chest.”

This stopped both Sharla and me in our tracks. Not long ago, we had brought home a bright red polish from
Woolworth’s. “Well. It’s very pretty, but I don’t think
quite
yet,” my mother had said, and she had taken the polish away to “save” for us. (She was also “saving” a strapless bra a friend of Sharla’s had given her, as well as a paperback book called
Real Treasure
, which I’d brought home from the drugstore. The cover featured a bare-chested pirate standing next to a busty woman in lovely distress.)

“When can we have red?” I’d asked.

“When you are eighteen,” she’d answered, her standard response.