Joy School (13 page)

D
ear Katie
,

It is a Saturday morning. My father has just come back from the grocery store. I start unloading the bags. Good, I see he bought some Lay’s potato chips and they are exactly right, you cannot eat just one. Plus Hawaiian Punch, which shows he is in a good mood. Everybody wants to buy it because they get to say, “Hey, want a Hawaiian punch?”

“I got a letter from Cherylanne,” I say. “She wants to know if she can come and visit here.”

He pulls out a package of sardines. He eats those things. On soda crackers.

“December 16th, for a few days. She’d come on the train.”

He stops pulling out groceries, thinks a little. “I suppose that’s all right.”

“So I’ll tell her yes?”

“Yeah.”

“Can I call her?”

He looks at me.

“Or I could write.”

“Why don’t you do that.”

I finish putting away groceries, go back into my room. I am not so excited. I used to be under Cherylanne, but I just don’t think I am anymore.

“Thirteen!” Nona says. She is sitting up today in a chair by her bed, her feet on a hassock, a plaid blanket over her lap.

“Right. Thirteen.”

“That’s-a big!”

“I guess.”

“Little
woman.”
Nona cackles softly, and I get a little nervous. Cynthia says if Nona laughs hard, she wets her pants. She says Nona has underwear that is much too big for her now, but she won’t part with them. She
wears safety pins to keep them up. “They’re
huge,”
Cynthia said. “Like flags or something.”

“It’s-a time for love, no?” Nona says, in her low, secret voice.

This startles me. What does she know? What has Cynthia told her?

“I don’t know,” I say. “I guess.”

“I’m-a give you something,” Nona says, and from under her blanket she pulls out a battered black book. It looks like a diary. She opens it, reads a little, smiles, closes it again. Then she hands it to me.

“You’re giving this to me?”

“Happy birthday to you.”

“But… This is your diary, isn’t it?”

“It’s-a the book from
love.”

I open to the first page. It’s in Italian. “I can’t read it, Nona.”

She shrugs. “What’s the difference? It’s-a to
feel.”

“Oh! Well. Thank you.” I am shy grateful. And I think I do feel something, already.

Nona leans forward. “I had-a love.”

I nod.

“You know how it was? It was like-a trees. Oak and elm.” Her voice has been soft, like it was lost in memory, but now she stares at me, her eyes narrowed, and she makes a fist and pounds the side of her chair. “The roots, they bound-a together, but the trees, they are free. You know what it’s-a mean?”

I nod, but I’m not sure. Cynthia told me that when her grandfather died, he’d been in the garden picking tomatoes. Nona looked through the window, saw him lying down and ran out and kicked him. She thought he was sleeping. She was yelling at him for being lazy and then when he didn’t move, she knelt down and saw. She held him in her arms, kept his straw hat on his head, rocked him for hours. And then she went to her room and didn’t come out except for the funeral. This went on for months. And then came the day when she came into the kitchen and put her apron back on. Fiercer.

“You gotta have you tree. He’s-a gotta his. No?”

“Yes.” I rub my hand gently over the cover of the diary. It’s old leather, softened and nearly touching back, the way that old leather will. I actually like it better than what Cynthia gave me, which is a best-friends necklace. I got one half of a heart, she got the other. Now I will have to wear it every day or she will say, all hurt, “What’s wrong?”

“You gotta boyfriend?” Nona asks. Her eyes are watery, pleading.

“Yes,” I say softly.

“Ha!” she says. “I’m-a think right!”

In bed that night, I turn the thin pages of Nona’s diary. I like that I can’t read it. This way, the story will change and change. I find places where she underlined, places where it looks like tears fell on the page. The diary
whispers and whispers, sighs and sighs, and then, on one page, yells out loud. It’s huge writing, just three words but they are happy, you can tell, the writing is happy. Cynthia said Nona gave the diary to me so Mrs. O’Connell would never read it. She said Nona’s been giving lots of things away lately. She gave Cynthia all her jewelry, wrapped in a few of her man-sized handkerchiefs. We sat on Cynthia’s floor and took it out and put it all on. It was a lot. We put rings on our toes, necklaces on our ankles, draped bracelets from our ears. There was so much, we had to improvise. It was pretty amazing fun. We felt like forgiven thieves.

I
have outdone myself on the macaroni and cheese, if I do say so myself. Miss Woods said put it under the broiler for just a second and you have a crust all will admire. And she is right.

Not that my father is admiring it. He is just eating as though he is reading the newspaper, but there is no newspaper.

“What do you think of Ginger?” he asks.

“Pardon?”

“I said, what do you think of Ginger?”

“I think she’s great!” Please don’t fire her, I’m thinking. And then I think, Oh. “Why?” I say.

He looks at me, tongues off a tooth, shakes his head. “No reason. Just wondering.”

“Don’t you like her?” Inside I get a dangerous feeling, like something growing bigger and bigger in there.

“Yeah. I do like her. She does a fine job and … Yeah.”

“Yeah,” I say. This conversation sounds like idiots. The words we are saying, that sounds like idiots. The
words we are meaning scare me to death. I’d forgotten about this, how he might find someone else. I just don’t know if it’s all right. The pain of missing my mother has been a dull and distant thing. Not anymore.

“What do you think of my father?” I ask Ginger. It is Monday, and she’s made herself a cup of tea to have before she goes home. She made me Jell-O with peaches and I put mayonnaise on top of it like frosting, which I wouldn’t let just anyone see.

She looks at me, smiles. “Well.”

“No, for real,” I say.

“Okay.” Her face grows serious. We are eyeball to eyeball. Woman to woman. I straighten in my seat. “I like him quite a bit, Katie. I think I’m in love with him.”

“What about Wayne?”

“Well… Wayne. You know, I like Wayne. But he’s…” She puts down her cup. “I have always liked a little danger in a man, Katie. That’s the truth. I can’t tell you why, or that it’s a good thing. But it’s the truth. I like a kind of… well, yes, that’s it, I like a kind of
danger.”

“Well, that is one thing
he
is.”

“Yes, I know. But you know, your father has a great capacity for tenderness. He feels things, Katie.”

I look down at my Jell-O. I know he does. And now I see I am not the only one who knows. It is a relief and a sorrow.

We have come to this inside junction. I could get kind of mean now, let her know I’m going to fight this. But I’m tired. I think I’m ready. And last night, late, in those velvet hours when sleep is one-half there and the truth comes, I asked my mother, Was this all right? What she told me more or less is that there is room in life for more than we imagine.

“He likes that dress you wore the other day,” I say.

“The blue one?”

“Yes.”

“Oh,” she says, and I think she is starting to blush a little. “Well, thank you.”

“You’re welcome.”

My mother said directly to me it was all right, but I’ll tell you, a hurt has come in me like a Mack truck. Nothing against Ginger, really.

“I have to do my homework,” I say, around the sideways ache in my throat.

“Okay.” She knows I’m lying clean through.

I start to put my dishes in the sink and she says, “Leave it, honey. I’ll do everything.”

“All right,” I say. I know that, too.

I
t is Saturday afternoon, and I am shopping with Taylor. First we went to Steinbeck’s and I got to watch her walk around in front of people, wearing outfits. She knows how to do all the model things: walk out so sauntering, turn in a pretty circle, walk back, haughty on her long legs. She was the prettiest one, no contest. Her sister wasn’t there, they alternate weeks.

Then we went out to lunch at a little restaurant with lace curtains and the same thing happened, Taylor left a tip and pocketed the bill. I started to say something but she said, “It’s no big deal. Don’t worry about it. They figure this in. As long as you leave a tip, it doesn’t hurt anyone.”

“What happens if we get caught?” I asked, on the way out. Taylor acted like I hadn’t said a word until we got about a block away. Then she said, “Don’t ever say that, about getting caught.”

I got a terrible sinking feeling then, like I just wanted to go home. We are too different. But there is something about Taylor, like the pull of a magnet. She knows how to change people’s moods, even when they
don’t want them to be changed. I think she is the kind people say “She could charm the devil” about. I can see it, the devil putting down his pitchfork, saying, “Oh, all
right.”

Now we are in the dressing room of a fancy store and Taylor is trying on clothes. I didn’t see anything I wanted to try, so I’m just watching. The women who work here make me nervous. They act like they’re doing you a favor being here, they could be oh so many other better places. They are all pretty but fading, when they look down, you can see their skin is loose like an elephant. There are scarves and gold jewelry in cases, dresses lined up with plenty of space between them, all on fancy hangers. The dressing rooms have real doors, gold hooks to hang things on, pretty little benches inside in case you get tired from snapping and zipping.

Taylor has on a beautiful blue skirt and sweater. They go together. “That’s nice,” I say. Underneath, she has on a bra that is the same exact flowered material as her underpants. Her underwear is an outfit, too. Every day.

“Yeah, it
is
nice,” she says, turning to inspect how she looks from behind. She is chewing gum, cracking it loud. Those women didn’t mind anything about Taylor. They took her seriously, like she comes in every day and says charge it to one million dollars, even though she has never been in here before. Me, they knew about. Taylor says you have to come into these stores
looking like a million bucks, then the old bags leave you alone. “Uh-huh,” I said, like this was a possibility for me.

She pulls off the sweater, steps out of the skirt, folds them both up small.

“Are you going to buy them?” I ask.

“Yeah, they’re on special.”

“How much?” One sweater I’d looked at had a price tag of $88. I’d put it back gently and then put my hands in my pockets.

“Free.”

I watch as she crouches down and stuffs the outfit in her purse.

Now, this is too much.

“I’m going,” I say. “I’ll wait for you outside.”

She looks up at me, some of her famous hair over one eye.

“You’re going to get in trouble, Taylor.”

She looks around the dressing room. “You see how many clothes I brought in here?”

“Yes.”

“You think they’re going to notice one outfit gone?”

“I don’t know.”

“They won’t. Believe me.”

“Well, I’m just going.”

“Fine.” She doesn’t look up.

I walk on the thick, pale blue carpet to the door. Then I get nervous. If I just stand there, I may look like
I’m a get-away person. They may suspect her. One saleslady, her half-glasses perched meanly on her nose, is watching me like a vulture. I smile, go over to the dresses.

“Something I can help you with?” she asks from across the room, which shows just how sincere she is.

“I’m just looking,” I say and study the polka-dot dress in front of me. Even though it’s navy blue and white, the belt is red.

Taylor comes out of the dressing room, walks up to the counter, her wallet out. She is carrying a black belt with a silver buckle.

“That’s all?” the woman behind the counter says, but it is a nice voice, almost like a flirty sound.

“For today,” Taylor says, and looks her right in the eye, bored and tired-kind, like she is saying, You are one lucky lady to get to help me, now get on with it.