Once a bunch of us went to see a man who was supposed to be a mind reader. He was old and a little crazy, dressed in layers of things that didn’t go together, gray whiskers roughing up his face, stick-out ears, long uncombed hair. He lived in a falling-down house at the edge of the army post. After we knocked at his door and asked him to show us something, he came outside with a greasy deck of cards. We sat in his backyard, in high grass, in a nervous circle. He looked at each one of us full in the face, nodded. We were scared, tittering a little. He held the deck of cards up in the air. “Now,” he said. “Which one will I pull out?” We all guessed, one by one. I said, “An ace. A black one,” full of an odd kind of sureness, and suddenly very aware of the space between me and the kids beside me. The old man closed his eyes, ran his dirty hands over the deck, and pulled out the ace of spades, showed us. The kids looked at me and hooted but the man said serious and straight to me, “Yes. You got the gift, little lady. I saw it when y’all was walking up here.” And of course he had seen it, despite his house and his clothes and the knee-high grass in his yard. He knew.
I let it go. I made fun of him all the way home with the other kids. Now I see how that was a bad sin. I see lots of things now, and the knowledge takes its right place. I turn onto my side and go to sleep, another mystery, really, if you only think about it.
Cherylanne is sitting beside me on her bed, teaching me to make spit curls. “You make a lying-down C,” she says, bobby pins coming out of her mouth like bad-made teeth. “You anchor it down tightly, with two bobby pins lying at opposite angles from each other. Then, to make sure your curl will stay flat and flattering to the contours of your face, you can use some tape over the bobby pins. When you comb out, you can fluff with your rat-tail comb for a more natural look.” Her magazine would be proud: she has memorized all this. Probably inside her head as she speaks, little black-and-white how-to pictures run by, step by step. Still, it takes a talent. Cherylanne knows just how many petticoats to wear to make her skirt the right fullness. Her bangle bracelets jangle and collide on her arm and she ignores them professionally. “Generally, you always want to look natural so the man won’t know what you do to look so good; he’ll think you just are that way,” Cherylanne says. She finishes my spit curls, pulls her head back to regard with pride her excellent work. “Now, when you sleep tonight, you keep your pillow below your spit curls, or you’ll mess them up good. They’ll be sticking out of your head like handles.”
“What happens when you get married?” I ask. “What do you do then? If you wear your curlers to bed, he’ll see.”
“Well, you do it in the day, when your husband’s at work. Make sure it’s after your marketing—don’t be wearing rollers around on the outside. That’s tacky. You take your hair down just before he gets home. Spray your brush with his favorite cologne.” She throws that last one in, free.
Cherylanne may be right about all this. It is pretty much how my mother did it. Just before it was time for him she’d comb out her hair, too, though it was naturally curly, so she didn’t have to mess with making spit curls. She’d wash her face, put on a clean apron and red lipstick. She’d watch out the window for him. She loved for him to come home. Remembering her in her apron, the folds of it warm and fragrant with the smells of dinner, sets up in me a longing so strong I become breathless and have to lie down and close my eyes. I believe for a moment I am meant to be taken from this earth, float up straight to heaven, held in the center of a brilliant shaft of white light. It does not happen. My breathing returns, regular and imperfect. My eyes open. Cherylanne is leaning over me, saying, “Well, do you want to learn this or not? You’d better stop goofing around. “Now, this is important.” Apparently miracles are over for the time being.
Finally, he does call the MPs and the next day they bring Diane home. My father, Diane, and the two MPs have a short low-voiced meeting in the kitchen. I am not allowed to be in the room with them. I lie on the sofa, listen to murmurs, to the clock tick, to the wind rise up and settle down again. I can’t make out one word except for one of the MPs saying, “circumstances.” But when they are done, I see that something has changed. The puppy is here, for one thing. And there is a line around Diane that he can’t cross. They pass by each other with straight-ahead eyes. Their silence is whole and complete.
The packing boxes come. I like this part, seeing ordinary things get wrapped like presents, get taken from your sight until they reappear at the new place. You can count on some fragile things being broken; always when we moved, my mother cried a little when she found the shattered china cup, the arm off the procelain ballerina. “Why do you keep buying that stuff?” my father would ask. “Buy durable goods; that’s what’s going to make it.” But even with the sorrow of some things being broken, you are mostly happy when you unpack. You are glad to see a frying pan with a curved handle your hand already knows. You are glad to have your own same bed back again, your old clothes hung in the new closet. You flip through pages of your books before you put them away. In the lonely first few weeks, you take all you can from your old things. Then one day the kids come to get you, and your regular time starts. Then you like to get new things again.
On Friday, five days before we are to leave, Cherylanne invites me to spend the night. Though I have always been honored whenever she’s asked me in the past, this time I am not so sure I want to go. I am almost done here. It seems important to keep things the way they usually are, so I’ll remember. “I’ll let you know,” I tell her after school. I have no homework. I have no books. My arms felt curiously light on the bus ride home, as if they were going to rise up and off me. I had only my bucket purse, a rabbit’s foot hanging sickly off the side. My report card will be sent to my new school, as soon as I know what it is.
“What do you mean you have to let me know?” Cherylanne asks.
I shrug. “I don’t know.”
“Well,” she says, “I could make other plans, you know. A lot of other ones. I turned down plenty of people in school today. I could have gone out in a car.”
I look at her, check for lies. This seems true enough. “Okay,” I say. “I’ll be over after dinner.”
“We’ll do the Ouija board,” she says. “We can stay up all night and inquire of the oracle.”
I go into the kitchen, open the cupboard for a snack. Oreos. A handful is six. You fill the milk glass three quarters up, dunk one cookie, eat the next one dry. In the cardboard box, the puppy is sleeping. Diane has been coming home from school to let her out, and my father has not complained one time about her.
I go into my room, lie on my back, contemplate the ceiling. There are some good things about being in a new place. You have to remember where the bathroom is every time you need to go, and that is interesting. You sit in your new kitchen, looking around for fun. You notice. You have an edginess in you, like when you are waiting to be called on to read the long poem you were supposed to memorize. You are waiting for your new life to happen.
Downstairs, I hear the back door open. Diane. I come down to see if I can help with the puppy. But it is not Diane, it is my father. I stop short when I see him. He has not seen me. I can go back upstairs, free. He bends over the cardboard box, looks at the puppy. His face is plain and clean, like it is resting. He reaches out a hand, pets the dog, says words to her in a voice too low for me to hear. Then he sighs, stands up, hands on hips. When he sees me, he drops his hands, straightens, nods. “Has that dog been out?”
“No, Diane does it when she comes home.”
He nods again.
“How come you’re home?” I ask.
He sits at the table. “Why? Are you about to get caught doing something?”
“No.” Well, this could be a joke, him warming up. I sit at the table with him, finger the embroidery on the tablecloth. On the sofa, shoulder to shoulder with my mother, laying out colors of floss before she began this. The light coming in through the window at a four o’clock angle. I suggested deep pink, an apple green
, a dark yellow, and she used every one.
“I’ve invited Nancy over for dinner tonight,” he says. “Would you like to join us?”
“Can’t,” I say. “I’m going to spend the night with Cherylanne and I’m eating with her, too.” I hope Belle won’t mind.
He unbuttons his top button. “Get me down one of those cans of Vienna sausages, will you?”
We are going to have a little party, refreshments. I get out the can, ask if I can open it. I like turning the church key, seeing the little sausages all lined up like eager kids saying, “Pick me!” I am almost through when my finger slips down onto the edge of the can. I know I am bad cut because I see so much blood, but I can feel nothing. I hold my hand over the sink. It’s the pointer finger on my right hand. I won’t be able to write, I think. I won’t be able to do my homework. And then I remember I have none.
I touch the top of my finger, and it wiggles. It looks as though it’s ready to fall off. “Dad,” I say, and then I start to hurt.
He leaps up when he sees the blood, grabs a kitchen towel and wraps it around my hand. “Sit down,” he says. He unwraps the towel, whistles low, looks up at me. “Does it hurt?”
I nod.
“Yeah.” He wraps it back up, goes to the cupboard, gets out his whiskey. He pours some in a coffee cup, hands it to me. “Drink this.”
I look up at him, unsure. “This?”
“It’ll help,” he says. “You’re pale. You need stitches. I’m going to have to bring you into the dispensary.”
I take a drink, shudder big. I feel a wave of nausea, shudder it away, stand up. “Okay,” I say, “let’s go.” He crosses his arms over his chest, smiles. At last I have done something right.
Cherylanne has rollers in her hair, a black net around it. I have six sutures in my finger, a white Band-Aid around it, serious and medical looking. “Who do you think I’ll marry?” Cherylanne asks the Ouija board and happy-sighs.
“Wait,” I say.
She looks up, irritated. “What? Now look, now you have gone and wrecked the mood and it won’t answer.”
“I want to know what you mean. Like, are you looking for a name?”
“Well, I don’t know,” she says. “You don’t ask questions you already know the answers for. What is the point of a Ouija board if you already know?” She sighs, leans back. “I don’t think you’re the one to do this with. Let’s do you a make-over.”
The sting of her insult is overtaken by my stubborn excitement at getting a make-over. I don’t know why. Cherylanne has given me make-overs before, and every time we get to the end, there is just my plain old face hanging out, breaking through all the tricks. Not that Cherylanne sees that. She thinks she is Makeup Queen of the Universe. She tells me about mistakes she sees on the stars when we go to the movies. “See, she has the wrong kind of eyes for that type of shadow,” Cherylanne whispered to me once—about Elizabeth Taylor! Like the movie people are just sitting around the set all sad, doing the best they can until Cherylanne can get there.
I sit down on her dressing-table chair, look at myself in the mirror. One time she did manage to cover up a lot of freckles. She ties a scarf around my head to hold my hair back, and then spreads on a layer of cold cream to remove the damage of everyday living. Much of the dirt on your face is microscopic, Cherylanne says. She says if you could see your skin under the microscope you’d about throw up. I don’t believe anything under the microscope would make me throw up. That would be like making fun of someone’s house when they invite you over. Looking at things so close up, that’s a modern privilege, and you owe what you see some respect.
“Now you just relax,” Cherylanne says in her makeup lady voice, “and I’ll be right back.” It’s a too-slow voice, like she’s talking to someone stupid, or a dog. She puts her robe over her yellow pedal pushers and matching blouse, ties it tight and efficient. Now she will go into the bathroom and make her selections for transforming me. I will be turned away from the mirror. I can’t look until she’s all done, and then I’m supposed to nearly pass out with pleasure. I have figured out the number of compliments I have to say to keep her from being mad: four. Of course, more are always welcome. She likes best when I ask for tips on doing it myself. Then she can rattle off some prepared beauty speech like the Gettysburg Address.
Well, I don’t mind any of this so much, especially since at the end I get to have my hair done, and Cherylanne does it so gentle. She makes me a French twist with two spit curls, and I am happy it takes a long time for her to get it right. It is so relaxing to have someone do your hair. It is near to a tickle, without the torture. You close your eyes, and all in the world you hear is a blurry voice asking you for a bobby pin every now and then. Your brain is near asleep. You lean into those slow, fixing hands and you feel so good you could be Doris Day on the French Riviera, wearing your one-thousand-dollar white bikini, Rock Hudson leaping up to get you lemonade. “How’s this, darling?” “Oh, fine, Rock.” “Well, good, darling.”
When Cherylanne is done, I have to sit up straight while she takes my picture. She always takes pictures of her work. She keeps them in a special scrapbook decorated with pictures of makeup products: compacts and lipsticks and creams and blush and brushes and pencils float across the cover. So far I am her only customer. I wonder who she will do when I move, and the question is like a pin in the balloon.
“Okay, you can turn around and look,” she says. Well, I have on two-tone green eyeshadow and bright-red lipstick. My eyebrows are black and long as the Mississippi. My blusher looks like a twin slap. Obviously, Cherylanne is having an off day.
“Well,” I say. “It’s good.” One. “I really like the dark-green color.” Two. “I could pass for twenty.” Three. And then, I can’t help it, I say, “But I sort of look like a stop-and-go light.”
“Well,” she says, “you don’t know fashion at all. This is the English look, and it’s very popular.” She begins untying her robe, the flush of her displeasure moving into her cheeks. “Whether you can appreciate it or not,” she says, a little under her breath like she is having a conversation with herself, “I have a real gift. I can bring out the best in everyone. I do my mother’s makeup every time she needs to look good.”
“I didn’t say you don’t,” I say. “I know you’re good. Just, sometimes I have to get used to it.”
She is on her bed, looking away from me. Then, turning back, she says, “I mean, look at those spit curls. Exactly alike.”
“I know,” I say. “That’s what I mean. I know you’re good.”
She is silent, staring now at her feet. White sneakers, yellow pom-poms on them. Then she looks up and asks me, “Do you think you’ll ever come back here?”
I wait a while, then tell her what I know is the truth. No. We don’t do that ever, go back. You remember a place for a while, and then it fades like you’re going blind, and then you start making it up. You know you’re getting things wrong, but you make it up to not lose it all. And it’s like the places want to try, too. They jump into your head, a scene every now and then, like the too-bright light of a camera: your hallway, here, flash: don’t forget. The line of bushes in your front yard, here, flash: don’t forget. All of it fails. All of it fades.
“Well,” Cherylanne sighs. “Do you want some angel food cake?” Sometimes it seems to me that the only thing in the world is people just trying.
We are in Cherylanne’s bed, our voices drunk sounding, showing how near to sleep we are. “The man puts it in the hole and moves it around,” Cherylanne is patiently explaining. “When he does it long enough, sperm sprays out. And that’s what makes the baby.”
“That makes me puke,” I say.
There is a long pause, and after a yawn Cherylanne says, “Sex is a beautiful mystery you can’t understand until you do it with the one you love.”
Well, it sounds to me like the man has all the fun. The woman must just lie there, thinking about what to make for dinner the next day, and the man move
s it around until he gets some sperm out, which, according to everything, he enjoys quite a lot. And all this done pure naked, everything hanging out and unprotected! How would you ever be comfortable? How could you not be embarrassed forever? And then the next morning, the man right there, knowing everything that happened the night before.
“Do you really think you’ll like it?” I ask. “Marybeth Harris says it hurts like crazy for the woman. Her cousin did it and told her everything. She bled from down there, and it wasn’t the curse, it was just from getting hurt!” Silence. “Can you imagine?”
Nothing. I rise up on one elbow, look down into her face. Her breathing is deep and regular, her own and private. I look at her eyelashes, long and curled slightly upward, the pretty shape of her mouth. I would like to wake her up and give her a big present. I hope she will find the right husband. Lately she wants a veterinarian.
I get out of bed, pull the sheet up over her. Everyone in her house is sleeping, and I feel the quiet over me like clothes. Outside, the clouds could be gauze pulled thin across the stars, and the moon is near-transparent, as though someone tried to erase it. Cherylanne’s window faces the parade ground just as mine does, but the angle, of course, is not the same. It can be so different to be only next door.
Once Cherylanne and I fell in a river together. We were walking at the edge of the bank, picking flowers. She slipped in some mud, and all of a sudden there was her surprised and scared face sticking out of the muddy water. “Get out of there!” I said.
And she yelled, drifting along in the current, “I can’t! I can’t!” I ran along beside her, reached out my hand, and when she grabbed hold of it, I fell in, too. We held on to each other and worked to keep our heads up. I yelled for help once, but it embarrassed me and, anyway, there was no one around. I don’t know what happened—the current shifted, maybe—but we were suddenly propelled straight toward the shore, and we were able to get out. I’d lost a shoe, and Cherylanne had ripped off some nails trying to grab on to things she passed. Otherwise, we were only wet. We laughed, but it was with our eyeballs wide around. When we got home, we went to my house first. My father asked what happened to us and I told him. I was a little bit proud. First he shook his head, disgusted. Then, “What were you doing by that river?” he asked. “What have I told you about that goddamn river? You had no business down there!” I stood wet and embarrassed and I felt more than heard Cherylanne leave. Later, I went to her house and threw up. Belle called my father, saying, “She’s sick. She’s in shock. These girls could have drowned! Don’t you know that?” He gave a long answer, and Belle said nothing and then she hung up. She turned around to look at me, her eyes soft and sorry, and I wanted more than anything for her just to be quiet, not to tell me things I already knew and could do nothing about. And she was quiet. She walked away, made us some peanut butter cookies. At school the next day, Cherylanne and I told everyone how close we came to dying, how we swam out of the clutches of death in the nick of time and if they thought that was easy they were crazy.