“Oh.” Buddy places his feet up on the glass table. A single look from Jim and he places them back on the ground.
I light a cigarette. “You’re not of legal age to buy cigarettes. Where are you getting these?” Buddy again. Fake ID. Heard of it? He turns to Jim. “You let her smoke here?”
Jim lights his own cigarette. “She’s got a mind of her own, and she understands the health risks. This has been a difficult time for us both. I’m inclined to think we’re allowed this vice—at least right now.”
Just let us survive the summer without her. If we can do that, we’ll figure out the rest later. Deal with the cancer part when it happens.
“I gave up smoking last winter,” Buddy says. “‘Lord, I ain’t what I oughta be, I ain’t what I am going to be, but Lord, oh Lord, I thank you that I ain’t what I used to be.’” AA again. Character choosing to play caricature again.
Jim responds in AA-speak: “‘You don’t need to “find God.” He isn’t lost.’”
“What?” asks Buddy.
I stifle a giggle.
“Are we paranoid?” I direct the question to Jim.
“How so?”
How quickly Buddy is blocked out, and it’s just me and Jim again, smoking and talking. Just like old times, just like yesterday. “I mean, is the rest of the world out to get us? Why do they hate us so much?”
I need to understand hate before I can understand how to live in the world Laura opted out of. Buddy’s presence alone is enough indication to make me understand: I can only block out so much. The strategy isn’t foolproof.
“That’s a big question,” Jim says.
“Does the rest of the world figure that the root of all evil emanates out of Washington alone, or is Washington just the decoy to pin all the blame on?” There’s a difference between “Washington” and “D.C.”, and that difference is those who come here to rape and pillage domestic and foreign policy, and those who are born and bred here, who care about the actual city, the non-federal government blocks. “We live here trapped in ground zero for all the world’s antagonism, yet our own citizens in the nation’s capital, who reside in the apex of the land of supposed freedom, actually have no real rights to influence our country’s agenda. We just have to live with the hate. You’re a D.C. native, Jim. You always say it’s a completely different city now than the one you grew up in. More sophisticated, but more sterile, less respected—and totally paranoid. How did this happen to D.C.?”
“Used to be a cow town,” Buddy chimes in.
We ignore him.
“What changed?” I ask Jim.
Jim responds, “You can start with our Cold War paranoia, I guess. Any Soviet bloc country that built an embassy here was sure to be plotting nuclear war against us, right in our own backyard. But the anxiety and intrigue of that time also came with the relative comfort that we were indeed just paranoid. Now the paranoia is for real reasons.” Jim’s index finger points upward, to a plane flying low overhead.
I find it fascinating that post-World War II suburban Americans used to build bunkers in their backyards, they were so sure The Bomb was going to drop on them. Who’d want to come out of such an escape hatch, survive the aftermath of an apocalypse? Better to just die in the maelstrom. Don’t live to see the cookie-cutter dream world destructed.
I ask Jim, “What was it like to live in D.C. when it was a place that was admired instead of loathed? Was it so Camelot-enchanted that its own citizens, the real ones, not the transients, didn’t notice they were living in a state of taxation without representation?”
“Miles, are you actually expressing civic pride and outrage—or at least interest? I’ll be sure to phone Dr. Turner. She’s got some D.C. committee work she needs help on this summer.”
How nice. Jim wants to save me, like he wants to save everybody.
It was his own daughter who needed saving, not me.
“You sure have a lot to say for a girl who just woke up, Miles.” Buddy. Again.
I sure have a lot to say for a girl whose best friend didn’t call her once today to see if she made it home okay from the party he ditched her at last night so he could hit on an anorexic bimbo who’s not even from D.C., legitimately.
Jim says, “I’m going to go call Dr. Turner right now, in fact. Good evening, folks.” He gets up to leave. The amazing part is, I gave him the escape hatch from Buddy without realizing it. You’re welcome, Jim. You owe me.
“You seem pretty smart, kid,” Buddy says to me once Jim is gone. “Tell me something about yourself.”
“Like what?”
“I don’t know. What do you want to be?”
“That’s a big question.” In another time, I would have wanted to be a writer who traveled the world in search of adventure, and torrid love affairs. But the world feels closed off to me now, blocked, based on the sins of past presidents. And size two is the new size six. I’m ten sizes up, on a good day, from the old new size.
“Here’s a bigger one,” Buddy says. There had better not be another AA saying coming. “Your pupils are dilated and your walk is all wrong.” Mel never noticed. “You want to tell me why you’re doing pharms?”
Could we go back to what I want to be?
I don’t care enough to lie. “To feel something other than what I feel now.”
“Which is what?”
Despair.
I also don’t care enough to let Buddy in further. “Nothing. I’m fine.”
When I’m high, I don’t have to try to block out anything, or anyone. When I’m high, I’m not fat, and Jamal is all mine, and the world is safe and understandable. No escape hatch necessary—I’m already living inside it. I’m allowed the suspension of disbelief.
“You’re not fine. And I joined the union just so you could have health insurance, so why don’t you see a shrink or something? You know what that health insurance costs me? Might as well use it.” He says this as though I should feel grateful for this luxury that Mel insisted he bestow upon me, in lieu of monetary support to us, ever. Ketchup drips from Buddy’s sandwich on to his tattered white T-shirt. “I remember what it was like at your age, feeling like it’s your right to experiment. But do you want to hear about the friends I had who didn’t live to tell? C’mon, Miles. You’re smarter than that. Don’t be a loser like your old man. Look what it’ll get ya.”
Honeysuckle Sweet
ONCE UPON A TIME, TWO SISTER-COUSINS IN A TREE HOUSE played a game called Good Housekeeping.
When they were thirteen-going-on-fourteen, in a soot-covered, untended bookshelf at their favorite old neighborhood bookstore, they had discovered what would become their reading Bible that summer: The Good Housekeeping Cook Book, 1942 edition. The D.C. summer days were so hot that the cobblestone pavement in their garden appeared to roll, the air felt still, the trees wilted in exhaustion. At twilight, when the temperature became bearable, the two girls took refuge away from the castle’s air conditioning to slip inside their shaded fortress tree house, where they read aloud passages from their new archeological discovery.
AFTERNOON TEA FOR A FEW: Half an hour to get it, and clear it away, if you’re busy. An hour or longer, if you’re having a few friends in. But the very act of appearing serene, makes you feel that way. And the hot tea with a dainty accompaniment or two, helps to turn your mind to happy repose.
They drank iced tea with fresh mint from the garden and imagined what a “happy repose” could possibly be. They had discovered cigarettes but not yet the fresh herbs and other bloodstream enhancements that could truly make them feel serene. One of them had kissed a boy already. One of them would wait much, much longer, possibly forever.
They knew they would grow old together, best friends always—but more, because they were blood. They acted out Good Housekeeping future sister-lives that included lavish weddings, palatial homes, beautiful children, and always—always—a properly-set table, using the good linens, real dinner napkins, a floral centerpiece, candles, and the silver grudgi
ngly passed down from a domineering mother-in-law.
A formal dinner party calls for damask in either linen or a very fine rayon, with a table pad beneath it for protection, or an allover lace or embroidered cloth laid on the bare table. In laying such cloths have the center fold running down the exact center of the table. The cloth should overhang about 8”-10”.
They kept a ruler in the tree house, and discussed anatomical parts that could be wedged within that 8”-10” overhang. By the end of their Good Housekeeping summer, one of them had touched, through a pair of jeans, an upper thigh near to the very anatomy that hung between the legs of a boy at summer camp. The other had not, but she could rely on books and/or her better half for anecdotal evidence.
OVERWEIGHT AT THE TEEN AGE: In many families there is a boy or girl who is definitely overweight. It is true that some extra pounds through adolescence are not harmful and they are often lost naturally as the child matures. But to be excessively overweight presents a real problem both to the child and the parents. There is often ridicule from companions which causes hurt feelings and a withdrawal from companions, resulting in a hesitancy about entering into active sports, so that the child does not get the proper exercise as well as the desirable association with other children. There may even be some dulling mentally, though often the reverse is true because the child may turn to intensive reading and study to fill his time to compensate for the lack of companionship and other outlets.
Of the two girls, the wider, duller half was mentally astute enough to invent a Good Housekeeping product for their game, an air freshener she branded “Honeysuckle Sweet.” The two girls sprayed imaginary Honeysuckle Sweet throughout the tree house as they acted out commercials advertising the product. In their favorite commercial, a happily married gay couple’s union was threatened by unfortunate, embarrassing incidents of bathroom odor; lucky for this wholesome couple to have Honeysuckle Sweet to mist through the awkwardness. The two girls didn’t understand why these commercials weren’t on television already. The families they understood were never represented unless they themselves created commercials portraying them.
The summer the left behind girl was seventeen-going-on-eighteen, her back-up best friend represents in the tree house at twilight. He wants to talk about the backup best friend to the girl who was now gone.
“I think this is it,” he says. “The girl. The one to change my life. Bex.”
The left behind girl remembers an evening not many months earlier, when she and her sister-cousin were strung out on weed, mellow and silly. The lighthearted, lightweight girl had just chosen to attend Georgetown University the following year. The weighty other girl was weighing dropping out of high school entirely. As they passed a joint, the weighty girl made up a story imagining the future wedding of the college-bound girl: After graduating Georgetown with a degree in foreign affairs, beloved sister-girl would marry her high school sweetheart, he who was truthfully only partially beloved and this girl would marry him mostly because she was used to him—but she could conduct foreign affairs secretly to keep her entertained if she so desired. The royal bride would break with tradition and wear a gown made of table linens, damask or a very fine rayon, but never allover lace (tacky). The chapel would be lined with Honeysuckle Sweet bottles rather than floral arrangements. The bottles would be situated exactly 8”-10” apart. After the ceremony, guests would spray air freshener rather than throw rice at the mostly happy couple. The wedding cake would be tiered in fresh honeysuckle. The bride and groom would toast their union with honeysuckle wine.
It was a good story and a fabulous wedding, and the two girls in the tree house giggled through the sweet haze of their happy repose. Then the prospective story bride, coughing between hits, announced that she would not live to see the day of her own wedding. At the time, the other girl—who would have worn the honeysuckle-hued maid of honor dress but not sleeveless; that would be tacky on a plump girl—thought this rejection simply meant the story bride would chose a different groom. Or a better dress. That was all. The storyteller girl didn’t understand: The princess bride already knew she would be cutting off her own future, in real life. She was trying to prepare her lady-in-weighting.
“You can’t be serious,” the left-behind girl says to the boy in the twilight tree house. After. “You’ve only known her a couple weeks. You met her at a funeral.”
The left-behind girl thinks, If I were thin, could I have been her? The girl?
She has a physical feeling when this boy is near her; she can feel him in every ounce of her flesh, in every single beat of her heart. She wonders if she is lying to herself and to him by acting like she wants nothing more from him than friendship. Could that lie kill their friendship?
But she’s had enough of death for now. She’s not ready to let him go, too. Not yet.
“I don’t want to go to Morehouse, Miles. That’s my parents’ path for me. Their dream, not mine. Bex is going to Columbia in the fall. I might want to follow her to New York. My dream is to become an actor. New York’s a place to do that.”
His cocoa face is cast in the tree house window’s tangerine sunset light as he speaks. He is a vision of perfection, completely unaware as he talks that the girl in whom he is confiding literally wants to die hearing him profess his powerful new feelings for a skinny vanilla girl called Bex.
The girl called Miles wishes she could tell this Jamal boy all that she loves about him. His daring. His talent. His crooked smile with the two crooked bottom teeth that only brighten his handsome dark face. His kindness, his loyalty, the smell of him, his honeysuckle sweetness. He has never accepted her for anything less than who she is. He seeks out and enjoys her company where so few others will dare. He confides in her, considers her to be his dearest friend of the heart and soul.
Her heart and soul share that feeling of friendship, but also feel . . . attraction.
She understands: She doesn’t love this boy. She is in love with this boy. Previously she only understood the distinction between “love” and “in love” from reading about it in books. This feels real. Shame.
If she could only tell him the sum total of all she loves in him, he’d know she wasn’t some ignorant kid who couldn’t possibly understand or could experience love; he’d see that she knows it and she hurts for it.
“Bex is hurting,” this boy tells the left-behind girl who is in love with him. “She wants to talk to you about Laura. But she thinks you don’t like her.”
It’s not the loving that hurts this girl; it’s the understanding of it for what it is, that it will never be returned in the same way, that threaten to destroy her. But to unload the words—“I love you”—on an innocent party who didn’t ask for it, to reach across the dark space and touch him—it’s like the world she knows could end if she dared speak these words, dared make such a move.
She wonders if her heart could simply stop beating for being so unwanted in return.
She doesn’t want the boy causing the distinction between “love” and “in love” to see her cry, so she nods her assent; she’ll try to like Bex. She asks this boy to fetch her an iced tea with fresh mint from the garden. He loves her without the “in”; he will go.
She wishes the went-away girl was here now to play their old game, to help her invent a better ending.
Power to the People
DR. TURNER HAS HER SCHOOLHOUSE, HER CAUSES, HER willful determination. She’s so Jo in Little Men.
Sojourner Truth Charter Academy, her brainchild, my soon-to-not-be high school, is located in a converted waterfront warehouse at the river’s edge of Georgetown. Some rich folk donate their money and real estate to fund hospitals and orphanages. Jim chooses to allocate his resources to his friends and their shared cause to better the D.C. public school system—specifically, by establishing charter schools that offer alternative education to all the crap that hasn’t been working in the past.
I go along with Dr. Turner because the whole idea of her—Supermom and superp
rincipled high school principal along with super D.C. advocate, someone who cares so much—is so quaint as to possibly be inspiring.
In my fantasy future life, I could have grown up to become Dr. Turner’s super daughter-in-law: helping her out with charity events, lending a confidant’s ear when her perfect daughter Niecy rebels and dates the wrong guy (of course, I’d play the same angle with Niecy, railing against her mom to me in private sessions with her trusted sister-in-law), fixing a nutritionally-balanced but delicious dinner for Jamal when he comes home from work at night. Dr. Turner could count on me to Do the Right Thing.
In real time, I sit in my niche spot since kindergarten—the principal’s office. Only we’re not discussing my behavioral problems. Not yet, at least. Niecy and I are in Dr. Turner’s office, going through boxes and boxes of voter registration records, highlighting names and addresses for a future phone drive that will solicit funds and signatures for a D.C. statehood petition. Jim volunteered me to the cause, and I stepped up by not volunteering to unvolunteer me. It might not be so terrible to want to impress the big guy in the big house, even in some small way—besides sharing my smokes with him.
Anything to make this dreadful summer go by faster. Fill her void.
“That’s some trailer your daddy’s got parked on Jim’s street,” Niecy teases. “What, did he win that thing off some game show—twenty years ago?” She hums along to the R&B song playing on the radio. I don’t sing along with her. “You’re so sensitive, Miles. Don’t make that face at me, I didn’t mean it in a bad way. I like your daddy’s trailer. Brings some character to the neighborhood. And he makes good sandwiches, yeah.” Niecy opens the wax paper on the smoked gouda baguette Buddy delivered earlier this morning.
“Doubt Buddy will be around for long,” I assure her.
“Not according to Mama.” A fifteen-year-old girl can’t help but share the gossip; it’s basic biological instinct to her. Niecy leans in toward me and whispers, “Jim went ape-crazy when your mama left for London so soon after Laura passed. There was some kind of battle that went on behind the scenes. I heard Mama talking to Jim about it on the phone. I guess Mel told Jim you were old enough to be on your own now, didn’t need or want anybody around anymore anyway, but Jim told Mel, ‘Not true!’ and said, either you have a parent at the house, or Mel needed to take you to London with her. So get used to those sandwiches, girl.”