Annie On My Mind (21 page)

“Are you crazy?” he said. And then he actually held the door open for me, and stared hard at a couple of sophomores who sort of snickered.

“Good luck, Sis,” he whispered. “Yell if you need me. I’ve got a left jab that packs quite a wallop.” I suppose I embarrassed him by doing it, but I hugged him right there in the hall. Foster felt like a place I’d never been before when I walked through the hall that day and downstairs to my locker. I guess it was mostly that I didn’t feel I could trust people there any more, and somehow that made even the familiar shabby walls look potentially hostile. There were the same rooms, the same people, the same staircases, the same dark wood and stuffy smell, the same dining room with little vases of violets from the school garden on each table, the same bulletin board on which Sally had put her ear-piercing sign a hundred years ago, my same old battered locker … Would there be another note? There wasn’t. A couple of kids came to their lockers when I was putting stuff back into mine, and I said hi and they said hi back, but of course it was a little stiff and embarrassed on both sides. Valerie Crabb, who was in my physics class, tried, though. She held out her hand to me and said, “Welcome back, Liza. You want any help making up stuff in physics, say the word.” That was really nice. But then I went into the girls’ room and that wasn’t so nice. No one said anything specific but one kid said hi loudly, like a warning: “Hi, LIZA!”—and she and another girl who’d been combing their hair left immediately and someone who’d just gone into a booth flushed right away and hurried out without even washing her hands or looking at me. I told myself it would be great to have the john to myself every time I wanted to use it, but I didn’t convince myself. Then, on the way to chemistry, I ran into Walt. He stopped right in the middle of the hall when I was still a few feet away and held out his hand to me. “Liza, hello,” he said, all smiles. “Hey, it’s really good to see you back. I mean that—really good.” I tried to shift my books around so I could shake his hand, since he was holding it out so persistently.

“Hi, Walt,” I said, and started walking again as soon as the handshake was over.

He fell into step beside me. “Hey, listen, Liza,” he said. “I hope you’re not going to let any of this—well, you know—affect you at all. I mean, well, sure Sally was upset, but I want you to know I’m behind you all the way—I can understand Sally’s reaction, but—well, I’m not going to desert a friend just because of a little—sex problem or anything. I mean, the way I figure it, it’s just like any other handicap …” Luckily we’d just about reached the lab by then, and luckily Walt’s first period class was Latin, not chem. I didn’t really notice in chemistry that the only people sitting near me were boys, especially since, when we broke to do an experiment, my lab partner, who was a very intense, brilliant girl named Zelda who was going to be a doctor and who hardly ever smiled, began asking me questions. She started innocently enough, saying, “Welcome back, Liza. I mean that sincerely.” I thanked her, trying not to make as big a thing of it as she was, and started trying to figure out how many pages to skip in my lab notebook to allow for experiments I’d missed and would have to make up. Zelda was setting out apparatus, not looking at me, but then she said in an odd, sort of choked voice, “If you’d like to talk about it any time, Liza, I’ll be glad to listen.”

I looked up then and when I saw her face the icicles started coming back to my stomach. “Thanks,” I said carefully, “but I don’t think so.” Her face seemed very serious, but her eyes didn’t.

“Liza, may I ask you something?”

“Sure,” I said reluctantly.

“Well—I think you know me well enough to know this isn’t out of any prurient interest or anything, right?” The icicles in my stomach got colder; I shrugged, feeling trapped. “Well,” Zelda began, “since I’m going to be a doctor and all …” It was at this point that I realized there were several other kids, mostly girls, but a few boys, too, clustered around our table, as if they were all suddenly coming over to borrow a test tube or ask a question—but there were too many of them for that. Zelda went right on talking as if they weren’t there, but I could see she was very aware of them. “I just wondered,” she said smoothly, “if you could tell me, from a scientific standpoint, of course, just what it is that two girls do in …”

It did get better, although it took a while for some of the girls to sit next to me again in class. That was funny, in a way. At Foster we didn’t have assigned seats, and as I said, I really didn’t notice it in chemistry that first morning, but by afternoon it had become pretty obvious. When I realized what was going on, I purposely arrived a little late to my classes so I’d get to choose who to sit next to and could maybe show the girls that I wasn’t going to rape them in the middle of math or something. I don’t know; I’m probably exaggerating, but it did seem a little grim at first. I guess if I add it all up, though, I’d have to say that for every kid who was rotten—and there were really only a few—there were at least two, like Valerie and all the kids who just said hi to me in an ordinary friendly way, who counteracted it. Mary Lou Dibbins, for instance, came up to me and said, “Thank God you’re back—Angela can’t even begin to stand up to Mrs. Poindexter at council meetings.” There was a girl in history class who just smiled, came over to me, and as if nothing had happened asked if I had an extra pen. And then there was Conn, and what he told me. It was later in the afternoon of that first day before I got around to reading the bulletin board in the main hall. A notice had gone up, dated noon, from Mrs. Poindexter, canceling the next two council meetings—which meant that, despite what Mary Lou had said, there’d probably only be one more I’d preside at, since finals were coming up soon. Seeing that notice was like having the last bad thing happen on one of those days when everything goes wrong.

Conn came up to me when I was standing there and he obviously figured out what I was going through, which made it partly worse and partly better. “Life,” he observed, looking at the bulletin board instead of at me, “is a crock of you-know-what, with all the wrong people falling into it. Still—you hear about Poindexter?”

“No,” I said through the damp haze in front of my eyes. “What about her?”

“Leaving at the end of the year. Some order from the Board of Trustees. It’s not around school yet, but there was this official-looking letter in the office that I just happened to see Baxter weeping over. Something about ‘demonstrations of poor judgment and overreaction to trivial incidents.’ And ‘overextension of authority to the point of undermining democratic principles.’ Also, you might like to know that Friday afternoon, Mr. Piccolo announced that the pledges are really starting to come in now.” Conn put his hand on my arm, still looking at the bulletin board. “Liza,” he said, “listen, MIT’s going to be great, you know that, don’t you?” I managed a nod, and Conn patted my arm and said, “Don’t forget it,” and then he even had the tact to go away—and I still stood there. Right at that moment it didn’t matter to me very much how good it was that Mrs. Poindexter was leaving. It did matter that it was obvious she’d been kicked out by the Board of Trustees, and that even though the disciplinary hearing was clearly not the only reason, it certainly must have been one of the reasons. The trouble was, all I could think was I did that, too—because right then I didn’t want to have an effect on anyone’s life, not even Mrs. Poindexter’s. I just wanted to be as anonymous and unimportant as the newest freshman, from then till graduation. But I decided, since this was my first and only free period that day, to go ahead with what I’d been on my way to do when I’d stopped at the bulletin board: go to the art studio to see Ms. Stevenson and find out how Ms. Widmer’s and her hearing had gone—I didn’t have English till last period, so I hadn’t seen Ms. Widmer yet. But there was a strange woman rummaging in Ms. Stevenson’s supply cupboards. She looked up blankly when I went in, and said, “Yes? May I help you? I don’t think there’s a class here this period—is there?” The woman laughed in a friendly way as she went to Ms. Stevenson’s drawing board and picked up a schedule. “I wonder how long it’s going to take me to learn what’s when … Is anything the matter?”

Ms. Stevenson’s got another cold, I told myself as I ran out; she’s just absent. I think I ran all the way to Ms. Widmer’s room. There was a class going on, but Sally was right outside the closed door, at the water fountain. “If you’re looking for Ms. Widmer,” Sally said with a little smile, “I’m afraid you won’t find her here.”

“But she should be back today,” I said, still stupidly bewildered. “The way I am. I mean, I got my notice Saturday, so she must’ve …”

“I’m sure she got hers Saturday, too, Liza,” Sally said almost sympathetically. “That’s why she’s not here.” I think I said, “Oh, God,” and started to walk away.

But Sally came after me. “Liza,” she said, “listen. You may not believe me, but—well, I’m sorry I had to do what I did. I’m sorry I was mad, too, and—well, I’d like to help you, Liza; Walt knows of this really good doctor, a shrink, I mean …” I tried to brush her away and I probably said something terse like, “I don’t need your help” but she hung on. All I could think of was getting to a phone and calling Ms. Stevenson and Ms. Widmer. “Listen, Liza, the trustees had to do it, don’t you see? Even if there hadn’t been a fundraising campaign going on, they’d have had to fire Ms. Stevenson and Ms. Widmet. Having teachers like that—it’s sort of like my causing ear infections, isn’t it? Only this is so very much worse. I mean, it just ruins people for—for getting married and having kids and having a normal, healthy sex life—and for just plain being happy and well-adjusted. The thing is—well, think of the influence teachers have.” She smiled sadly. “Oh, Liza, think of yourself, think of how influenced you were by them! You always liked Ms. Stevenson especially; you almost idolize her …” I swear it was all I could do not to shake her.

“I do not idolize her!” I shouted “I like them both—the way most other kids in this school do. I didn’t even know they were—I mean, I didn’t …” I sputtered for a few seconds more, thinking it might still be risky to say outright that they were gay.

Instead I said, “Sally, I’d have been gay anyway, can’t you understand that. I was gay before I knew anything about them.” Then I heard myself saying, “I was probably always gay—you know I never liked boys that way

...”

“Gay,” Sally said softly. “Oh, Liza, what a sad word! What a terribly sad word. Ms. Baxter said that to me and she’s right. Even with drugs and liquor and other problems like that, most of the words are more honestly negative—stoned, drunk out of one’s mind …”

I think it was at that point that I did take hold of Sally’s arm—not to shake her, but just to shut her up. I remember trying to keep my voice from breaking. “It’s not a problem,” I said. “It’s not negative. Don’t you know that it’s love you’re talking about? You’re talking about how I feel about another human being and how she feels about me, not about some kind of disease you have to save us from.” Sally shook her head.

“No, Liza. It isn’t love, it’s immature, like a crush, or a sort of mental problem, or-or maybe you’re just scared of boys. I was too, sort of, before I knew Walt.” She smiled, almost shyly. “I really was, Liza, even if that sounds funny. But he’s—he’s so understanding and—and, well, maybe you’ll meet a guy like him someday and—and—oh, Liza, don’t you want to be ready for that when it happens? A shrink could help you, Liza, I’m sure—why, they said at the hearing that …”

I stared at her. “Were you at the hearing?”

“Why, yes,” she said, looking surprised. “At Ms. Stevenson’s and Ms. Widmer’s. I thought you knew—I came in just as you and your parents were leaving. I was going to speak at your part, too, but then they thought I shouldn’t, since I’m in your class and we’ve been friends and all, and I agreed. But Mrs. Poindextcr wanted me to talk about what kind of influence Ms. Stevenson and Ms. Widmer had on the students, on you, especially.”

“And you said?”

“Well, I had to tell the truth, didn’t I? I told them that you idolize them, because it’s true, Liza. I don’t care what you say, you certainly idolize Ms. Stevenson. And I said that maybe you thought that anything they did was fine and that you sort of—well, want to be like them and all …”

“Oh, God,” I said.

It’s snowing, Annie, Liza wrote—but the echo of Sally’s words and of her own stalled thoughts interrupted: Running through my head—running through my head—Running through my head … was … what? She wrote again, groping: The snow here on the campus is so white, so pure. Once when I was little—did I ever tell you this?—I saw a magazine picture of a terrible black and twisted shape, a little like an old-fashioned steam radiator, but with a head on it and stubby feet with claws. Someone, maybe my mother, said jokingly, “See, that’s what you look like inside when you’re bad.” I never forgot it. And that’s what I’ve felt like inside since last spring. Running through my head—running through my head now is … Annie, if I’d been at their part of the hearing, I could have told the truth. I probably could have saved them—well, maybe saved them—if I’d been there. And even at my own hearing I might have been able to help them; I could have said—I wanted to say—that they’d had no influence, that I’d have been gay anyway …

Liza put on her jacket; she went outside and stood on the deserted riverbank, watching the snow fall lazily into the Charles. If I hadn’t been gay, she thought as her mind cleared; if nothing had happened in that house, in that bedroom … “But dammit,” she said aloud, “you are gay, Liza, and something did happen in that house, and it happened because you love Annie in ways you wouldn’t if you weren’t gay. Liza, Liza Winthrop, you are gay.” Go on from that, Liza, she told herself, walking now. Climb that last mountain …

It comes back in clouds, in wispy images. I remember walking with Annie to Cobble Hill late in the afternoon of that first day back at school, the day Sally told me Ms. Stevenson and Ms. Widmer had been fired. It was raining again; I remember that, too, and there was no one at home in the little house with the gardens front and back. I remember Annie looking up at the doorway, saying, “I can’t hate it, Liza, can you?” I didn’t understand what she meant, so I asked her, and she said, “I’ve been afraid that I’d hate this house. But I can’t. I love it. So much of what happened here was beautiful.” And Annie kissed me then, in the rain in the dark doorway. The front door was open when we went back on Saturday and there were cardboard boxes all around and suitcases and Ms. Stevenson’s “masterpiece” from the art studio was propped up in a corner, and the cats were in carrying cases so they wouldn’t run outside in the confusion and get lost. The little house in Cobble Hill was being stripped of all the things that made it look warm and loved and lived in.