Secrets in the Attic

  Karen always wanted to sit in the last seat at the rear, which was the most undesirable, because it would take longer to get off the bus. She liked to curl up as if she were at home on her sofa or up in our nest and look out the window the whole trip there and back. She had a way of shutting out the noise and ignoring the spit balls.

  Because of her, I sat back there, too. Sometimes we talked, and sometimes we made the whole journey without saying a word. I could tell when she had shut herself down. I knew it usually meant it had been a bad morning at her house or a bad evening. Usually, she was just as quiet at school those days. Like a snail, Karen could crawl into herself and practically disappear. I learned to respect her need for silence and just wait for her to resurface. Sometimes, she would just burst out with a stream of thoughts as if she had broken the surface of water in a pool, and, voila, we'd be chattering like two mad squirrels.

  Karen didn't easily tell me about all the trouble in her home. She disclosed it in little ways, sometimes not even in words. She would have a look on her face that revealed she and her mother had been arguing, usually, according to her, because of the way she had treated Harry, whom she even refused to refer to as her stepfather. He was just Harry. Those arguments grew worse as time went by, but in those days, everyone kept his or her home life and intimate information behind closed doors, so no one but me really knew the extent of them. That wasn't unusual. There were no shows like Oprah and Jerry Springer. People were ashamed of their difficulties and not willing to share them. I'm not sure if that was better or worse. It is probably true that holding it all in made for little explosions that became bigger and bigger ones.

  Through her fantasies, Karen started to drop little hints that things were not just getting worse, they were getting impossible.

  "Last night, they locked me in the tower," she would say. "I was given only bread and water, and the bread was moldy, too."

  Or, "My mother had a tantrum last night and sliced up the mattress with a meat cleaver."

  Her tidbits seemed to grow more and more violent, even though she always followed her statements with a laugh.

  The first black-and-blue mark I saw on Karen was on her upper left arm. It looked like the imprint of a thick thumb, as if she had been grabbed and held until the capillaries broke and there was trauma. I knew all about that medical stuff because of my mother being a nurse. Karen covered it with her longsleeved shirt, but she kept the shirt unbuttoned, and when she was curling like a caterpillar in the back of the bus, the shirt slipped off her shoulder and fell down enough on her arm for me to see it.

  "What's this?" I asked, pointing at her blackand- blue mark.

  She turned, realized what had happened, and quickly pulled her shirt back, up, and over her shoulder.

  "Nothing. I bumped into something while I was sleepwalking last night," she said. "And lucky, too, because if I hadn't, I might have fallen down the stairs."

  "You never told me you sleepwalk," I said, smirking.

  "Didn't I? I must be forcing myself to ignore it," she said, but she didn't sound truthful at all.

  By now, if we cast a lie at each other, it flew for a second and then fell like a bird with heart failure. She glanced back at me, her eyes flickering and her expression pleading with me not to ask anything else. I folded my hands on my books and stared ahead.

  At the time, I didn't have enough of a diabolical mind. I thought it was possible she had been in some altercation with one of the other girls and I just hadn't heard about it yet. When we arrived at school, I listened to see if anyone was talking about a fight between Karen and someone, maybe in the girls' bathroom, but no one was. Of course, I became even more curious.

  On the way home that day, I nodded at her arm and asked, "That still hurt?"

  "Never did. It looks worse than it really is," she told me, and again turned away to signal that this was not a topic for discussion.

  And so I put it back into my log of things I would rather forget. I didn't think of it again until I saw her walking alone one early evening soon after and realized she was crying. I had come into the village on my bike to get myself a chocolate marshmallow ice cream cone at George's Ice Cream Parlor. It was a reward I was giving myself for finishing all my homework early, including reading all four assigned chapters of Huckleberry Finn and answering the study guide questions. Lately, I had become a very good student, and my father took another look at me and decided I would be as much college material as Jesse was, after all. It came under the heading "Some Take Longer to Grow Up."

  "Finally," he said, "you have your priorities straight. There is hope for you yet, Zipporah."

  I didn't say anything. In my mind, it didn't require a thank you. I never thought there wasn't hope for me, and I doubted my father ever thought that, either, even though I was never on the honor roll. I never failed anything. True, I swam in the pool of the average or just above, but there was nothing about me that would bring my parents any shame. The worst crime I had committed to date was talking too much in class and serving two days' detention.

  I saw Karen walking toward the east side of town, her head down, her right hand periodically moving across her cheeks to flick off tears like a human windshield wiper. I decided to forgo my ice cream reward and pedal on after her. George's was dangerously near closing anyway, since it was the offseason, and by this time in the evening, most people had retreated to their homes and wrapped themselves in the glow of their television sets. The streets were deserted, and the periods between some automobile traffic and none were longer and longer. I didn't want to scare her, so I called out while I was still a little behind her. She walked on as if she hadn't heard me. I drew closer and called out louder.

  She stopped but didn't turn. I saw her shoulders rise as if she were anticipating a blow or a shout or simply wanted to hide inside herself more. It put some hesitation in my excited approach, and I slowed my pedaling.

  "Hey," I said when I drew up to her.

  She took a deep breath and turned. She didn't say anything.

  "What are you doing? I mean, where are you going?" I asked.

  "For a walk. Just for a walk."

  "Oh. I came into town for an ice cream. You want an ice cream cone?" I asked, even though I was nearly certain that by the time we would get to George's now, the lights would be out.

  She shook her head.

  "So, how come you're just taking a walk?"

  She didn't answer.

  "Karen?"

  "Leave me alone," she replied, and walked on.

  I felt as if she had slapped my face. I remember the blood rushing into my cheeks.

  "Sure, I'll leave you alone," I said indignantly. I watched her for a moment and then turned and pedaled back, now annoyed that I wouldn't get my ice cream cone.

  I pedaled harder and faster in frustration and had worked up a good sweat by the time I arrived at my house. I put my bike away in the garage and tried to get up to my bedroom without my parents noticing. My mother was off for two days, and my father had just finished a case and was taking a breather. They sat in the living room watching television, although I knew my father would have a book opened as well and would read during the commercials. He hated wasting time.

  "A minute lost is a minute gone forever," he told me repeatedly.

  I conjured up some great lost-and-found department with the shelves weighed down by seconds, minutes, and hours. There was a meek little bald man with thick eyeglasses, clicking a stopwatch and waving his long, bony right forefinger in my face as he chanted, "Lost and forgotten, lost and

  forgotten."

  The steps of the stairway betrayed me with their gleeful creaks and squeaks.

  "Zipporah?" my mother called. "Where were you? Why didn't you tell us you were going out? Where could you go this time of night, anyway?" She rattled off her questions as if she thought she might forget one.

  I turned slowly and walked to the living room. My father looked up from his book. It was always a mat
ter of great interest to me to see how my father considered me. Sometimes he looked genuinely confused and gave me the feeling he was wondering how someone like me could be born of his seed, and sometimes he looked delightfully amused and gave me the feeling he saw something of himself at my age, just as he often saw in Jesse. Right now, he looked vaguely. annoyed, because I had caused an

  interruption in either his reading or his relaxation.

  My mother just looked curious.

  "Well?" she asked.

  "I went to get an ice cream at George's, but the store was already closed," I said. It was half true, and half-truths were not officially lies. I was still at the age when lying to my parents flooded me with guilt. When you're very young, you're filled more with fear, because you actually believe parents can see lies. If they don't contradict you, it's because they're being generous and permitting you an escape.

  "I could have told you it would be," my father said, and returned to his book.

  "You should at least tell us when you leave the house, Zipporah."

  "That's right," my father seconded.

  "I'm sorry."

  "You do all your homework?" my mother asked. "Yep."

  "Try yes and not yep," my father said, not taking his eyes off the page.

  "Yes," I said. What was wrong with yep? Jesse sometimes said yep.

  "I'm sure you did all your homework," he muttered.

  "Yes, I did. Why don't you believe me?" I cried, with as much passion as if I were denying I had murdered someone.

  He looked, up, his face pained.

  "Okay," he said. "Sorry. Don't have a nervous breakdown."

  "Don't forget we're heading up to Grandmother Stein's this Saturday, Zipporah," my mother said. She already had told me twice that we were visiting my father's mother at the adult residence in Liberty, New York. She had been moved there when it became clear that she couldn't look after herself. Since both my parents worked, it would have been impossible to have her live with us. At least the Liberty residence was close.

  "Okay," I said, and started to leave the living room. "Don't you want to watch Ed Sullivan?" my mother asked.

  I shook my head. I was still very disturbed about the way Karen had blown me off, and I wanted to go upstairs to the sanctity of my own room to think about it. There I could talk to myself in a full-blown split- personality mode, actually looking at myself as if I were a different person. I could ask myself questions, answer them, and criticize myself. I was confident that everyone, even my parents and Jesse, did the same things in the privacy of their rooms.

  I was sure that from time to time, everyone thinks of himself or herself as weird. Keeping your sanity was truly like walking a tightrope. No matter what age, how successful, how happy you were, you could easily slip too far to the right or left and fall. Everything about us was so fragile. We spent most of our lives pretending we were too strong to be defeated by disappointments or disillusioned by anything that happened to us. It was like admitting we were mortal. Who would want to do that? Instead, we kept looking straight ahead and ignoring all that indicated we would get old, sicken, and die someday.

  There was no place like your own room for such reassurance. Familiar places nourished the growth of hope. Your own room was a garden in which to plant secret thoughts and dreams that would grow into full- fledged ambitions.

  I closed, the door and flopped onto my bed to look up at the ceiling and let my thoughts spin out of control.

  Why was Karen crying?

  Why wouldn't she talk to me? I thought I was her best friend. We were supposed to be birds of a feather. We had already translated it into French, les oiseaux d'une plume, and Karen thought we should print it on T-shirts that we would wear to school. Surely, all the other girls would be jealous once they found out what it meant. We even created the Bird Oath, which we recited in unison often: "We'll be friends forever and ever, and we swear to protect and help each other as much as we would ourselves."

  "We're so close not only can we finish each other's sentences like we do in class, but we can finish each other's thoughts," she said, and we hugged.

  But if that were really true, why did she lie to me about her bruise? Why did she suddenly have to make up story after story with me or change the subject quickly? I never did that with her. Come to think of it, I thought, I never even sulked or pulled the silent act on her, either.

  Seeing her crying and having her be so indifferent to me was very troubling. What would she be like tomorrow? I wondered. Was our friendship about to die? Had I done something I was unaware of doing? Did something I said to my parents get back to her mother? I couldn't think of a thing for which she could blame me, but what if she was so angry at me she would no longer want me to be her friend? Even Jesse would think it was somehow my fault. We had swum too far out to sea together. I thought I would be lost without her.

  I fell asleep with my clothes on and woke up when I heard my parents coming up the stairs. After undressing for bed, I looked out my window at the dark forest that surrounded our property. The woods were deep, and one could walk for hours north and not come upon another house or road. To the south, one would eventually reach the highway that connected to busier streets and roads.

  It didn't bother me or frighten me that we lived in so isolated a place and that nearly a hundred years ago, someone might have been murdered here, and his bones might still be hidden on the property. I rarely thought about it, even after seeing a scary movie, unless Karen brought it up, of course. Most of the time, I rode my bike through the darkness unafraid. I was still at the age when I thought I was invincible, anyway. I couldn't even imagine myself terminally ill, chronically sick, or disabled. I never thought about being in an accident.

  In effect, I was still living in that world of fantasy that we have to slip out of the way snakes slip out of old skin. We look back at it when we're older, and we long for the time when we didn't have many serious responsibilities, when someone took care of us and protected us. We walked on a shelf of selfconfidence that would be harder and harder to find as we grew older. We would realize that we were blessed then but never knew it. Whoever dared harm us- risked the wrath of the Almighty.

  Karen surely knew this, too, I told my image in the mirror. And then, I thought, if that was so true, then why was she crying?

  And why did she seem so terribly afraid?

  What did she know about the future that didn't?

  3 Head in the Sand

  The next morning on the bus, Karen said nothing about the way she had treated me or why she was so upset. I didn't know what to make of it. She was quieter than usual, but she wasn't especially unfriendly. She gazed out the window and, as she usually did, made comments about places we passed. This house looked like a house made of gingerbread, that one looked as if it was leaning worse than the Langer Dairy building and could be blown over in a strong wind, or that side road looked as if it led to a secret lake where frogs waited to be turned into princes. We were soon in a contest to outdo each other with fantastic possibilities.

  Whatever had been bothering her had passed, I thought, and decided to let it go.

  "I'm going to see my grandmother on

  Saturday," I told her, "but I'll be back by four. My mother is on duty, and it's my father's poker night. You want to come over? We can try to make a good pizza again."

  She didn't answer immediately, so I held my breath. In fact, she acted as if she hadn't heard me. I was about to repeat it, when she turned and nodded. She said nothing more about it, and I didn't see much of her in school, because toward the end of the third period, she went up to our teacher and asked to go to the nurse's office. She didn't look at me when she walked out with her pass. She remained at the nurse's office through lunch. Usually, when a girl did that, it was because she was having bad cramps, but later, when the school day ended, Karen told me she had gone to the nurse because she had a terrible headache.

  "She wanted to send me home, but I begged her not to,
" Karen told me.

  "Why?"

  She didn't reply. I could see from the way she frowned that she still had the headache.

  "Maybe you should go to the doctor," I suggested. She shook her head.

  "No doctor can cure this," she told me, which was very cryptic and mysterious.

  "Why not?"

  "Take my word for it, Zipporah," she replied, and pressed her lips together firmly, which was usually what she did when she wanted to stop talking about something.

  She frightened me, because I thought she might be talking about something terminal, like a brain tumor. Maybe that was what had happened the night before. She had gotten terrible news. I told my mother about it later that day, and she tilted her head to the side as she often did when something puzzled or interested her. When I was little, I believed some thoughts weighed more than others and shifted in your head to make it tilt. I told my father, and he went into hysterical laughter, which brought tears to his eyes. From that time on, he would kid my mother about her having heavy thoughts.

  "I doubt it's something like that," she told me. "There would be other symptoms, Zipporah."

  I breathed with relief.

  "I'm sure it's just something emotional. Part of growing up," she said.

  Adults were often saying that to us: "It's part of growing up."

  When are you grown up? I wondered. When do all these parts come together and form you?

  "I don't understand how that could be part of growing up," I told my mother. I knew some young people had pain in the legs from growing so tall so quickly, but a headache?

  She looked at me with more concern than usual and said, "Come with me a moment."

  I followed her into the sitting room, that special feminine place in our house.

  "Sit," she said, nodding at the small settee with the light pink flowery design.

  "Why do we have to come in here to talk?"

  "It's long past the time when you and I should have a mother-daughter talk," she said, and sat in her rocker. "I should have done it the first time you had a period, but these days, girls are having periods so young, it seems."