The Day I Ate Whatever I Wanted (15 page)

“Mommy
,
Mommy
,
Mommy!”

Instinctively, Ethel pulls back in her chair, and just as instinctively smiles at the children. They appear to be about six and eight years old, and are dressed in look-alike pants and tops—hot pink pants and white, ruffled blouses that expose their midriffs—uselessly, Ethel thinks. She hopes it’s uselessly. They have ponytails high on top of their heads, and they wear star-shaped studs in their ears.

Their shoes are pink, see-through plastic, with gold glitter embedded in them. Each carries a Barbie doll whose hairdo makes her look as though she’s just been ravished, 114

t h e d a y i a t e w h a t e v e r i w a n t e d and the older girl carries a pink plastic suitcase with “Barbie!” written across it in silver glittery script.

Ethel feels an old, familiar stirring inside. She would like to see what’s in that suitcase. She loved playing dolls as a little girl and in fact gave up doing so only because her family and friends shamed her into it. She pretended she wasn’t really playing after she turned twelve, but she was.

She played her doll was a flower girl at a lavish wedding.

She played her doll won an Academy Award. She played her doll had been told she couldn’t play dolls any longer.

The doll let her say everything she was feeling, let her
know
everything she was feeling.

Ethel had loved Emma Jean. She loved her just-right length of thirteen inches, her turquoise-colored eyes fringed with thick black lashes, her red lips painted on to look as though she were puckering up or musing, dimples at the sides of her mouth and at her knees. She had a slightly rounded belly and a flat little chest, fat auburn curls that were tolerant of multiple brushings, a faint pink blush on her cheeks. She had dress-up clothes and play clothes: a blue silk dress with a wide ribbon tie; red pedal pushers with a red-and-white-striped shirt. She had a pair of yellow flannel pajamas with light blue piping, and Ethel’s mother had embroidered “EJ” on the pocket. She had black shoes and red shoes and white shoes, little plastic Mary Janes; and she had a pair of fuzzy white slippers that looked like little, little dogs. She had a lace-trimmed slip with a rosebud at the bodice and white organdy underpants.

Ethel doesn’t know if those Barbies wear underpants, but she wants to know. Maybe she could ask one of the little girls. Maybe she could—

“Ethel!” Birdie says.

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“What?”

Birdie smiles. “You didn’t hear me?”

“No, what did you say?”

“You’re getting worse than I.”

Their old battle. They fought about who was getting worse in order to amuse and comfort each other. Starting in their late fifties, they’d begun giving themselves terrible pretend diseases, so that Birdie might answer the phone in those days and Ethel would say, “Today I have diabetes mellitus and essential hypertension. Also gingivitis and a worrisome fatigue.” Or Ethel would answer the phone and Birdie would say, “Well, it’s uterine cancer, and it’s bad, it’s very bad.” It made them laugh. It made them happy to understand that they didn’t have any of those things they were beginning to fear. Yet.

“I’m not worse than you,” Ethel says. “You’re worse than I by a long shot. Now, what did you say?”

Birdie stares blankly and finally says, “Well, fine, now I’ve forgotten,” and they both start laughing. Oh, what relief, to laugh about such a thing. No, Birdie could never move to L.A.

“That’s MIIIIIIIINNNNNNE!” the older girl screams, a high-pitched, bloodcurdling scream, and Ethel and Birdie both turn to stare.

“Knock it off!” the girls’ father yells. “Didn’t I tell you guys you’d have to behave in here? There are real sick people in here!” He smiles at Birdie, raises his hand. “How you doing.”

“But it’s MIIIIIIINNNNNNNE!” the girl screams again, and, unbelievably, the father ignores her. He grins and sits on his wife’s bed. “Ready for a tall cold one?” he asks her.

“I’d say so!”

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t h e d a y i a t e w h a t e v e r i w a n t e d The man lowers his voice, but Ethel can still hear him say, “Ready for a long, hot thick one, too?” He licks her neck.

“Baby, don’t,” the woman says, laughing, but it is from a place low in her throat that changes the meaning of

“don’t” to “yes indeed.”

Ethel gets up and closes the curtain that separates the beds. They don’t have to
see
it.

When she sits back down, Birdie says, “Why’d you close the curtain? Do you want to LICK MY NECK?”

Ethel’s eyes widen and then she begins to silently laugh, her body shaking. Birdie laughs right along with her, not silently. The younger little girl comes over to their side of the curtain and stares solemnly at them. She’s holding five dolls.

“Hello,” Birdie says. “Can I do something for you?”

“No.” The little girl shifts her weight, one foot to the other.

After a while, Ethel says, “Can I?”

Now the girl nods and walks slowly over to Ethel and lays a boy doll in her lap. “Ken’s head keeps popping off,”

she says. And indeed his head has popped off; it falls from Ethel’s lap and rolls across the floor and under Birdie’s bed.

The girl scrambles to get it.

“Ow,” Birdie says, and Ethel asks quickly, “Are you all right?”

Birdie waves her hand. “Yes, I’m fine. I don’t know why I said that. I guess I thought she
might
hurt me.”

Now the girl moves close to Birdie to say, “I wouldn’t hurt you. You’re sick.”

“That’s right,” Birdie says. “But I can fix your doll.

Give him to me.”

The girl points to Ethel. “She can.”

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Birdie says, “Give him to me, or you can’t be on my side of the curtain.”

The girl looks at Ethel, and Ethel raises her eyebrows, offers up her palms.

The girl places the doll and his head in Birdie’s lap as though she is offering a piece of meat to a dog she doesn’t trust.

“Wash it off first,” Ethel tells Birdie.

“What?”

“Why don’t we wash the doll off, it was on the floor.”

“Oh,” Birdie says. “Right. All right, then, to the shower!”

“Where is the shower?” the girl asks.

Ethel points to the sink in their corner of the room.

“Use that sink right over there, honey, it has a control you work with your knee. There’s some antibacterial soap right on the wall.”

“Huh?”

“Tell your dad to help you,” Ethel says.

The girl looks at the curtain as though she can see through it. “He’s busy,” she says, and sighs.

“You can do it yourself,” Birdie tells her, and now they hear the girl’s sister. “I’ll do it!” she says. “Let
me.
”

“No,” the younger girl says, doubtfully, but here comes the older one charging over, her mouth open and ready to scream again.

“Don’t you dare,” Birdie says in a low, authoritative voice that stops the child cold. “You let your little sister do it. You go back over there with your parents. This was not your idea.”

“DAAAAD!” the older girl yells, and her father says,

“Come on, Jessie. Leave us be for just a minute.”

Jessie wrinkles up her nose as though she is smelling something bad.

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t h e d a y i a t e w h a t e v e r i w a n t e d

“Come over here,” Ethel says, “and you can sit with me.

We’ll just watch, how’s that?”

“NOOOOOOOOOO!”

“All right, that’s it, we’re out of here,” the father says, and the girls’ faces turn quickly toward him, though they do not otherwise move.

“Don’t forget your doll,” Birdie says, and the little girl says, “I don’t want him. He’s busted. You can have him.”

She looks over the other dolls she is holding and lays a brunette with a shorn haircut on Birdie’s lap as well. “You can have her, too. Her name is J.Lo.”

“Did you cut her hair?” Birdie asks, and the little girl shakes her head no, then points to her older sister.

“She
wanted
me to!” the older girl says.

The younger girl picks her nose and shakes her head.

“Nuh-uh, you made me.”

“I said, let’s
go
!” the father says, and the little girls run over to him. The sounds of their voices carry down the hall and finally disappear.

Ethel gets up to pull the curtain open but sees that Birdie’s roommate has closed her eyes, and so she leaves the curtain as it is.

“Yes,” Birdie says, when Ethel sits back down. “Keep it closed.”

They sit quietly for a moment, and then Birdie whispers, “Did you see how she didn’t think I could fix the doll?”

Ethel nods.

“Well, that’s it,” Birdie says. “That’s what happens.”

She closes her eyes. “That’s what scares me.” She says nothing more, and shortly her breathing changes to a deep and regular rhythm.

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Ethel sits for a while in a room where the two women sleep, and there is something about the sounds they make that reminds her of birds settling down into the nest.

Doves. She leans over to whisper into Birdie’s ear, “But you did fix it.” Birdie has a few fine hairs matted into an S

shape at the side of her face. Her skin is the color of pancake batter. Never mind, she heard Ethel. She heard her.

After a while, Ethel, too, dozes off.

“Swedish meatballs over multigrain pasta, mashed potatoes, Prince Edward blend vegetables, peaches on a cloud,”

Birdie says.

“What’s the cloud?” Ethel asks.

“Fake whipped cream.”

“And the Prince Edward vegetables?” This was the best one yet, better than last week’s fiesta blend, which did not even have corn and red pepper but rather broccoli and cau-liflower.

“It was a mix of green beans and yellow beans. Oh, and carrots.”

“So . . . what is the Prince Edward part?”

“He liked green and yellow beans and carrots mixed together?” Birdie asks. She’s laughing. She’s in a good mood today.

“He liked to wear green and yellow and orange together?” Ethel asks.

“His yellow hair had green and orange highlights?”

Now Birdie’s snorting a little in her laughter, an endearing little snort that always makes others laugh more.

“Wait! I know why they’re called Prince Edward!”

Ethel says. Because they came from a can, she wants to tell Birdie, remember that old telephone joke, where you call 120

t h e d a y i a t e w h a t e v e r i w a n t e d someone and ask if they have Prince Edward in a can and if they say yes you say, “Well, you’d better let him out!”

and hang up.

So long ago that Ethel did that. She was still playing jump rope in those days, she remembers making chicken calls one Saturday afternoon with her friend Emily Bean-blossom and then going outside to jump rope.

But, “Hold on,” Birdie says. “The doctor’s here. I’ll call you back.” Ethel hangs up the phone, worried. The doctor is there to deliver the news. She’d wanted to be there when he did that. Now Birdie will be all alone if it’s bad news.

And even if it’s good news, it would be nice to have your friend there.

Ethel dresses quickly. Never mind waiting for Birdie to call back. She ties a scarf beneath her chin and looks at herself in the small hall mirror. She is crying, just a little, that’s the way these things go, good news, tears; bad news, tears. And her hands are shaking! Well, now, this is too much. She needs to calm down. On the way to the bus stop, she chants a jump rope rhyme under her breath, just to keep her from thinking about anything else: “First grade babies, second grade tots, third grade angels, fourth grade snots.” What else? “Mabel, Mabel, set the table.”

Ethel imagines the doctor clearing his throat, asking Birdie if she has any relatives nearby. Birdie saying, “No.

Why?”

“Strawberry shortcake, blueberry pie.” And there was

“Postman, postman, do your duty”—oh, that was a nasty one, she used to like that one. It ended with “She wears her dresses above her hips.”

On the bus, Ethel watches a man sitting opposite her nod off, snort awake, then nod off again. He appears to be homeless: he’s wearing layers of filthy clothes and is carry-

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ing a variety of plastic, overstuffed bags. His skin is sallow, unwashed. Sometimes homeless people look mean—some-times they
are
mean, asking for spare change in a way that is just plain threatening, stepping forward to block your way and, if you don’t give them money, saying “God bless you” in a way that sounds like “I’m going to
get
you.”