Women & Other Animals (16 page)

He said, "You have great mammaries."

She digested the word "mammaries." Like mammals, like whales, like cows with hairy, sagging milk sacs. She tried to think of soup for the hungry, of cures for diseases, but mostly she felt the nag of protest against sloppy udders and nipples like rubber glove fingers. Terry had no idea of the roundness of her breasts and the gravity they defied. He could not fathom her areolas like the salmoncolored centers of solar systems.

"You want to see them?"

"Sure." Terry's short bangs stuck straight out over a forehead newly afflicted by acne.

"Stand there." She pointed five stairs down. Debra stayed above him on the landing so she could see if anyone was coming. She hiked the velveteen fabric over her breasts, imagining herself on the cafetorium stage in breezy fabric, the audience holding its breath, waiting for her to uncover her middle school holy grail. She held her shirt under her chin as she unworked the bra hooks. The two sides snapped away from each other, but instead of being stunned into devotion, Terry lunged forward and grabbed a breast in each hand. He squeezed as though her breasts were not made of a person's flesh but were leather wrapped around hard rubber centers, oversize baseballs meant to be pitched and shagged and clobbered with bats.

In trying to pull away from him, Debra let herself be driven into the brick wall. She continued backing into the corner, snagging her shirt on the rough surface, slapping Terry, screaming "Stop it! Stop it!" When she was all the way in the corner, she looked into Terry's grimace. He was not laughing or grinning or enjoying himself—he seemed to be seriously engaged in pulling her treasures right off her chest. Adrenaline surged through Debra. "They're mine, damn it!" she screamed and kicked toward Terry's crotch. "Let go of me!'' She knocked one of his arms loose and he backed away from her kicks but continued to hold with the other hand, stuck on her like a sea lamprey. Debra looked up past Terry and saw her classmates now

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standing at the railing, twenty faces staring down like pigeons from a bridge.

"Terry!" boomed Mr. Chiccoine. Terry's hands dropped automatically to his sides. Students gawked at Debra's redstreaked chest, but their shock and silence deteriorated quickly into giggles. Debra turned to face the brick corner as she worked to reconnect her bra, whose strap had twisted under both armpits. Though her anger started out solid, it liquefied in the fluorescent lights, and tears spilled onto her face. Vomit rose halfway up her throat and settled as she struggled with the clasps. Her breasts had been stretched and transformed into pulpy, veined appendages, sagging like fungus from trees. As she got them covered and adjusted her shirt, Mr. Chiccoine grabbed her neck with one hairy arm and Terry's neck with the other.

In the office, Debra couldn't look into Mrs. Kraft's face. The viceprincipal positioned Debra and Terry on opposite sides of the office while he called Debra's mom and Terry's dad; Debra couldn't see Terry around the filing cabinet, but his reflection showed in the window. He was leaning back in his chair, a foot crossed over his knee, twitching. When the parents showed, the story came out sounding different, as though Debra had caused the problem. She defended herself: "Hey, I offered to show them to you, not have you tear them off." During the whole meeting, Debra's mother wore a face like a frozen chicken pie. The viceprincipal sent both Debra and Terry home early.

The next time she saw Terry, Monday in homeroom, he acted all proud, huddling with a bunch of snickering boys. When he brushed her shoulder on the way to the pencil sharpener, Terry said, "I've seen better boobs than yours on my uncle's milk cows." Nicole's new best friend Becky flashed a fake smile, and Debra had to wonder how much Nicole had told her—everybody in school probably knew that Debra had started her period on the TiltoWhirl and that she didn't notice until a lady carnival worker pointed it out to her. Nicole and Becky wore matching Minnie Mouse Tshirts and light pink lipstick. The color dulled Becky's brunette lips.

Debra's throat stung. Crying over a girlfriend would be stupid. Girls in
Woman!
magazine didn't cry over other girls—they cried because of leaking silicone Page 107

breast implants and turning forty. The outline of Nicole's trainer bra showed through her Tshirt, but otherwise her chest stretched as flat as a new canvas. Becky had breasts like anthills built at sidewalk cracks, the kind Debra would step on without hesitation.

Throughout the day, groups of guys radiated heat toward Debra, in the locker banks, in the cafetorium at lunch, their stares digging into her like the ends of fingers.

Girls eyed her as though she were covered with flaking skin. A bathroomsmoking girl with a scar in her chin like a chip in a cocoa mug distinctly said "slut" at lunchtime even though Miss Spartan could have overheard. When Debra reached up into the top part of her locker, a short boy grabbed at her from behind, but missed her breast and squeezed her arm muscle instead. When Debra looked back, she saw only the blurred figures of four boys in hightop shoes running away.

Later, somebody shot paper clips at her, and when one went down the front of her shirt she just left it there. She exited the school with her head high, keeping to the side of the cement path, but groups of people jostled her or whispered as she passed. On another sidewalk, heading in a different direction, Southwell Banks shuffled away from the school, his collar buttoned high onto his neck.

At dinner that night with her mother, father, and idiot fourthgrade brother, Debra ate her baked French fries, then picked at her drumstick. Her mother avoided looking at her, and every couple of minutes her dad shook his head for no reason.

"Why do you hate me?" asked Debra.

"We don't hate you," said her mother.

"You hate my breasts."

"How could we hate your breasts?" asked her mother. "They're just breasts, for Christ's sake. Why are you making such a big deal out of them? Believe me, Debra, women have grown breasts for millions of years."

Her father shook his head again.

Her idiot brother asked, "Are you a whore?"

Debra kicked him under the table and said, "No, but you're an idiot."

When Debra unhooked her bra in the upstairs bathroom, the paper clip from fifth hour fell out and chimed on the ceramic tile—

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it had imprinted its shape into her skin. She showered for about the tenth time in four days and retired to her room. She didn't even care that she was grounded. Good thing for her parents there were bars on her window, because otherwise she might jump and end it all on the concrete patio. She tried to imagine her body lying there all perfect, her hair spread out around her head, shining like satin in the light from above the garage. But Debra knew she wouldn't tumble gracefully. She'd tangle herself into the patio furniture and land in a sickening twist of limbs and dangling boobs. Nicole and Becky would be there in matching outfits. "Gross," Nicole would say. Terry Orphid would say, "Sick, man," and if Mrs. Kraft didn't show up to stop him, Terry would poke at her chest. Mrs. Kraft
would
come, though, and in her quiet voice she'd send everyone away, and she'd rearrange the robe to cover Debra.

Debra opened her robe and looked in the mirror as she had not done since Friday. As much as she had imagined her breasts sagging and sinking, they did not.

Despite all that had happened, her great pyramids jutted forward, temples still fully worthy of worship. She turned sideways and admired her cherry blossom peaks angled slightly upwards, as reverent as lips in prayer. In the bedroom light, her skin glowed all the way up her neck to her face, where a few pimples didn't really matter. As her hair dried, it began to shine with a halo like the base of a crown. Her mother was wrong about her breasts being like other breasts on millions of women. Debra had seen those other poor, regular tomatoes, small or plain or flattened. Jesus couldn't have breasts, but if he had them, they'd be like hers. And just as Jesus showed all men their holiness by his example, Debra's divine bestowal uplifted all the less than perfect bosoms around her. Held aloft by the hand of God, her oblate shrines offered salvation to all humanity, even if the humanity around here was not worthy of them. Terry Orphid said he'd seen better ones on milk cows. Well, he could go back to his uncle's farm because he was a heathen turd who didn't deserve to stand in the glow of their magnificence. Debra pulled her curtains closed, and the golden light of her incandescent lamp reflected against them, back to her. She curled on the bed, tucked the crushedvelvet robe around her, and hugged herself.

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Sleeping Sickness

A crocodile. That's what I felt like. Hot, slow, and mean. But crocodiles live in Egypt, halfsubmerged in cool rivers, and I was frying like an egg outside of Alexander, Michigan, near the Indiana line. The humid air pressed on me from all sides, so I tried not to move, swatting at flies only when they buzzed in my ears or touched my face. I didn't bother to keep flies off the vegetables in front of me—people should know enough to wash them when they got home. For breakfast I'd had the last few pieces of my twelfth birthday cake, which I'd made and eaten almost entirely myself, and now the sticky yellow plate was covered with ants. When I put it on the grass, my orange tiger cat Ripley slid from the table to lick it clean. As I watched some crows picking at a roadhit possum, I was thinking that a person could forget to breathe on a day like this and then just pass out and die.

My vegetable table stood atop the hill, halfway between the house and the road, under two shagbark hickory trees, and ever since school had gotten out last week I was minding the stand fulltime. I was sitting behind my perfectly arranged cucumbers, peppers, and jars of milk labeled "milk for cats" when John Blain first showed up. He drove by in a station wagon, knocking up dust which drifted and settled on me. He turned around and went by again Page 110

slowly, then pulled into our dirt driveway and parked in front of my sign: "Cukes, Toms, Peps 6/$1." Ripley ran away toward the barn. John Blain got out of the driver's seat and left the door hanging open on its hinges. He was a white man about forty years old, wearing a Caterpillar cap. Dirty steam seemed to rise off him.

"What do you want?" I asked.

The garden was behind me on my right, farther up the driveway, past the barn. The house was on the left, surrounded by the unruly bushes Mom called bridal wreath, whose whiteflowered branches stretched out like octopus arms. The man took off his hat, wiped his forehead with it, ran a hand through forelocks as blond and rough as corn tassels, then put the hat back on. He had a pack of cigarettes in his Tshirt pocket. "Don't look like you got too much business, kiddo." He picked up a bell pepper, tossed it, and caught it, but he was looking beyond me, at the porch where Mom had just stepped.

"That your mom?"

"Maybe. What's it to you? She's got no money, so don't bother trying to sell her anything." I was telling the truth. In fact, she was needing all my vegetable money just to pay the power bill.

"I might want to buy something from her."

"She's got nothing to sell to you." I'd met enough men to know there wasn't any profit in being nice to ones like him. I was hoping for a breeze to blow in my shirtsleeves. For my birthday Mom had given me a bra, but all it did was soak up sweat, and I needed to readjust it. "You're blocking my sign," I said, but the man wasn't listening, so I went around the stand and moved my piece of plywood to where it could be seen from the road. Not many cars were coming by, but I was making a point of not letting this guy interrupt my life. Mom was walking up the driveway toward us, wearing a flowered dress. Though it was about twelvethirty, and I had been up for six and a half hours, she'd just gotten out of bed. I rearranged my cucumbers in order of their size, biggest to smallest.

"How you doing, Sunshine?" Mom talked sweet whenever she got around men. Sweat dripped from her temples, and she had to squint against the sun. She was talking to me, but looking at the man, smiling and blinking, her long, shiny hair dangling around Page 111

her shoulders. Her skin was pale except for a few freckles because she hardly ever went outside.

"This guy is blocking my stand." I slumped in my chair.

"Don't be rude, Reg." Mom gave the man an apologetic smile.

"Merle at the service station in Alexander told me you got a Plymouth station wagon, same year as mine," said the man.

Mom said, "It was my father's. The engine's no good. It's been sitting out behind the house more than a year."

"If the body's good, I might be interested," he said. "And what's your name, ma'am?"

"Margie." Mom pushed her hair over her ear in a shy way.

"I'm John Blain. Pleased to meet you." He held out his hand, and she wiped hers on her dress before she shook it. "We sure got us a hot one today," he said, adjusting his hat. "We ought to be up in the U.P. where I just come from. Nice and cool up there."

"I've never been to the Upper Peninsula," said Mom, as though it was some dreamy place she'd been meaning to go. The next thing you know, she'd invited John Blain to have lunch with us, and he said sure, he'd love a cup of coffee. I left him and Mom talking and went into the barnyard for some privacy in adjusting my bra, I picked grass from along my garden fence and dropped the bits into the chicken yard; it fell like confetti around our four hens, who dashed to peck it up. I cooled my arms, legs and face with the hose by the side of the house, but by the time I went inside, I was hot again.

"This isn't a restaurant," I said, too quietly for Mom to hear. John Blain looked me in the eyes and growled. I made a sandwich and poured a glass of last night's milk from Jessie, our brownandwhite cow, wondering all the while what kind of man would growl at a person. For sure both he and Mom were out of their gourds. It was hot enough for blood to boil in your veins, and they were sipping coffee, and John Blain took long, hot draws from his cigarette. Mom laughed idiotically at everything he said.