Starting With Alice

  “Wrong!” said Lester.

  3

  THE TERRIBLE TRIPLETS

  AT LEAST I HAD SOMEONE TO WALK WITH on the first day of school. Dad had already registered me, but he asked if I wanted him to go along. I tried to think how it would look if I showed up for class with my father.

  “I don’t think so,” I said. “I’ll walk with Donald.” I didn’t have much choice, because Donald was standing at the back door with his nose pressed against the screen, watching me finish my Cocoa Puffs.

  “Okay, if you’re sure,” Dad said. “It’s good that it’s only two blocks away.”

  I brushed my teeth, got my backpack, and went out to walk with Donald. He had a faint gray smudge on his nose from pressing it against our screen door.

  “Dad said our teacher was Mrs. Burstin,” I told Donald as we walked around to the front of the house and started down the block.

  “She had a baby last year,” he said.

  “She did? Then I guess she’s got somebody to take care of it,” I said.

  “Or else she ate it,” said Donald.

  I stopped on the sidewalk and stared at him. My dad wanted me to be friends with this boy? “What?” I said.

  “Some animals eat their young,” Donald said, grinning.

  “You’re really weird, Donald,” I told him.

  “You can’t leave lion cubs alone with the male lion for a minute or he mauls them,” Donald went on.

  “Don’t you ever talk normal?” I said.

  “What do you want to talk about?” he asked.

  “Anything except this,” I answered.

  The closer we got to school, though, the noisier it got, and we didn’t really have to talk about anything. I watched to see what other girls were wearing. I guess I didn’t look too different, except that a lot of the girls were wearing thin glass bead bracelets on their arms. I wished I had a bead bracelet just then.

  Donald suddenly saw some boys he knew and gave an earsplitting bellow before he cut across the playground and ran to join them.

  I just kept walking along the sidewalk, but when I got to the school driveway where I had to cross, a large patrol girl, with socks bunched around her ankles, held up the palm of her hand and I had to wait. She went out in the middle of the driveway to move the orange traffic cones so that a school bus, far down the street, could pull in.

  But the bus was behind a line of cars that were all stopping to let kids out. I could have gone across the driveway and back eleven times before that bus got there, but each time I shifted my feet, the big girl came over and stuck the palm of her hand within two inches of my face.

  Finally the bus pulled in. By this time there were six more kids standing beside me, all wanting to cross. We figured she’d let us go, but now she saw a bus coming from the other direction. It, too, was behind a line of cars that were stopping to let people out.

  A boy next to me started to cross anyway, but the patrol girl blew her whistle and put her hand against his face. She leered at us when she did it. The very first girl I met on the first day of school, and I didn’t like her at all.

  When we finally got to cross, I looked around for Donald, hoping he’d come over and talk to me, but he was running around the monkey bars. This time, though, he was all by himself. Maybe all the whooping and hollering he’d been doing before was to make it seem as if he knew everybody on the playground. Maybe even people who had grown up right here in Takoma Park didn’t have a million friends either. I went over to the front entrance and sat down on the steps.

  Three girls came by. They were sort of dancing along the concrete, their arms across one another’s shoulders, singing a silly song like they were in a TV commercial. Like they were triplets or something. They each had glass bead bracelets on their arms, and one of them had pierced ears. They must have known I was watching them, because when they got right in front of me, they sang even louder, looking my way. I just reached down and tied my shoe.

  But I wondered if that would ever be me, laughing with two best friends, our arms around one another. I decided right then that this would be perfect—two best friends, so that if one was busy, I could still do something with the other, and all three of us would get together for birthday parties and after school. By the time the bell rang and we lined up to go inside, I decided that my first job in third grade would be to make two best friends.

  Mrs. Burstin was a thin, wiry-looking woman with metal-rimmed glasses and very curly hair. She smiled at each of us when she called our names. The three girls who had danced by me on the playground were Megan, Dawn, and Jody, and they were all in my class.

  “I’m going to let you choose your own desks,” Mrs. Burstin said, “but it will be up to you as to whether you’re allowed to keep them for the rest of the year. So you may sit with friends to begin with, but if this proves to be a problem, then I’ll assign your seats myself.”

  She had hardly finished talking when kids began scurrying across the room, changing seats, calling out to each other. I was sitting in the second row and didn’t know anyone except Donald, so I just stayed where I was, Donald behind me. But Megan and Jody scrambled to save an empty seat near them for Dawn, and she skidded when she went to sit down and missed, landing on the floor.

  All three of them shrieked with laughter. It really was funny, so I laughed too. But they looked at me as though this was their own private joke and I wasn’t included. I didn’t laugh anymore.

  The big thing in third grade is the multiplication tables. We’d already learned our twos and fives and tens in second grade, but now we had to learn our numbers all the way up to twelve times twelve, Mrs. Burstin told us.

  Not only that, but we would be learning the names of the states and their capitals, and their time zones and principal products. We would memorize the presidents and have a field trip to the Capitol, and sometime during the year, we would be tested in reading and arithmetic. I could see right away that I was going to be a lot busier in third grade than I’d ever been back in second.

  Was all this necessary? I wondered. When I was forty years old, would it matter if I knew what eleven times twelve equaled or what the major products of Nebraska were?

  I was hoping that Donald would eat with me at lunchtime so I wouldn’t have to eat alone, but the boys gathered at one end of the lunchroom and the girls at the other.

  I’d brought my lunch so I wouldn’t have to worry about how things worked when you bought one. I sat down at one end of the table where Megan and Dawn and Jody were eating. Jody turned and looked at me, and then she faced her friends again and they went right on talking.

  A girl with dirty hair came and sat across from me. “Hi,” she said.

  Jody and Dawn and Megan looked at the girl and giggled.

  “Hi,” I said, staring down at my peanut butter sandwich.

  The girl with the dirty hair didn’t say any more either. She was eating a little packet of potato chips, and she chewed with her mouth open. I couldn’t look.

  Four more girls squeezed in at our table. One didn’t talk at all, one talked all the time, the third one laughed at everything the second girl said, and the fourth one got sick and had to go to the nurse. She’d just made it out into the hall before she threw up.

  “Euuuuew!” everyone went, so she threw up again.

  In the afternoon Mrs. Burstin handed out maps of the United States with each state outlined in black, but without a name. Our homework was to fill in all the names of the states along with their capitals and their principal products.

  “If you don’t have a map of the United States at home, you might look in an encyclopedia or a road atlas. There are many places where you can find all of the states,” Mrs. Burstin said. “We have fifteen minutes before the bell, so you may begin, and you’re welcome to use any book in this classroom.”

  I found a map in the front of our geography book and started in. The first state I looked up was Illinois. The second state I found was Maryland. They were very
far apart. I hadn’t known they were that far away from each other, halfway across the country. And suddenly I wanted so much to be back in Chicago near Aunt Sally and Uncle Milt and Carol.

  I wanted to stand by Aunt Sally in the kitchen and make Christmas cookies, and read the comics with Uncle Milt, and help Carol blow-dry her hair. I didn’t want to be in Takoma Park with the Terrible Triplets sitting on one side of me and the girl with the dirty hair across from me at lunch; I didn’t want to live next to Donald Sheavers and his stupid dog.

  I didn’t even wait for Donald when school was over that day. I hurried outside and sneaked across the driveway when the patrol girl with the saggy socks wasn’t looking.

  “Hey!” I heard her yell as I walked on down the sidewalk. I didn’t even turn around.

  In Montgomery County, high school begins a lot earlier in the morning than elementary school and it gets out earlier in the afternoon, so Lester was already home. He was out in the kitchen eating pretzels and drinking Mountain Dew. He swallowed in big gulps, and his Adam’s apple moved up and down.

  I just plopped down in a chair across from him and reached for a handful of pretzels.

  “So?” he said. “How was it?”

  “It stunk,” I said.

  “How come?”

  “Nobody’s friendly and Donald’s dumb,” I said. “And the only girl who talked to me chews with her mouth open.”

  “Yeah?” said Lester. “So do you.”

  I immediately pressed my lips together and promised myself that I would never, ever eat like the girl with the dirty hair.

  “Did anybody talk to you?” I asked Lester finally.

  “Yeah, a couple of kids. I met a girl who was really friendly. It might not be too bad,” Lester said. “Cheer up. It’s only your first day.”

  I went to the living room and sprawled out in my purple beanbag chair. What I was really missing right then, I think, was my mother. If I had a mother, she’d come in and talk to me and maybe brush my hair back from my forehead and make me a special dessert. Or maybe we’d go to the mall and she’d buy me a bead bracelet. Or we’d go to a park and feed ducks.

  Dad came home early from the Melody Inn. I was still in the beanbag chair with a half-finished map of the United States on my lap and my geography book open beside me. This was a dumb assignment.

  “I don’t care about soybeans,” I said to Dad. “I don’t care about timber.”

  “Well,” he said, “sometimes it’s not so much what we learn that’s important as the fact that we’re training our minds to connect things and remember.”

  “I remember when I used to help Aunt Sally bake Christmas cookies,” I said.

  That made my father look sad. “I don’t think so, Alice,” he said. “I believe that was your mother. Don’t you remember? You always stood on a chair at the table around Christmas and helped your mother bake cookies.”

  I do that a lot, I guess. Get my memories all mixed up. I don’t care about the multiplication tables; I wish I remembered more about my mother.

  That night, just before I turned out the light, I took her picture off the dresser and sat down on the foot of my bed. She was wearing a blue dress with white buttons, and she was holding me. I was probably about one and a half in the picture. Somebody must have been making silly faces at me because I was laughing at the camera. Playing with the buttons on my mother’s dress and laughing. Mother, though, was looking at me and smiling. It’s the best picture we have of my mother and me, but I wasn’t even paying attention.

  4

  OATMEAL

  FRIDAY NIGHT, DAD WAS LATE FOR DINNER. Because he’s the manager, he often stays late, but he usually calls when he does. This time Lester and I had made macaroni and cheese and heated a can of green beans, but when Dad hadn’t come home by six thirty, we ate without him.

  Whenever I think about something happening to my dad, though, I get a stomachache. Once you’ve lost a parent, I guess, it’s sort of like losing an eye. You can’t help but think what would happen if you lost the other one.

  “Where’s Dad?” I asked in this small voice I get just before I cry.

  Lester was reading the sports page at his side of the table. “Working late, that’s all,” he said, not even looking up.

  Now my voice was shaking. “Well, why hasn’t he called?”

  Lester looked over at me. “Something probably came up at the store. When you’re the manager, it’s easy to lose track of the time.” He studied me some more. “If you’re really worried, go call him.”

  I got up from the table and dialed the Melody Inn. The phone rang and rang. Nobody answered. I came back and sat down across from Lester. I tried to imagine what would happen to us if Dad had got in an accident or something and Lester had to raise me himself. “Can you cook anything besides macaroni and cheese?” I asked.

  “Bacon-and-tomato sandwiches,” Lester said, and went on reading.

  I thought of the things Aunt Sally cooked that I liked. “Do you know how to make pot roast?” I asked.

  “No.”

  “Strawberry pie?”

  “Alice, I’m trying to read,” Lester said.

  I leaned back in my chair and played with my green beans. I turned one to the left and the next to the right, all around the edge of my plate. “I know how to use the washing machine,” I said.

  “Good for you,” said Lester.

  “But I can’t iron shirts.”

  “Al, will you please shut up and let me finish this article?” Lester said.

  Just then I heard a car door slam, and a minute later, Dad’s footsteps on the porch. I was so glad to hear him, and at the same time I was angry at him for making me worry.

  “Where were you?” I bellowed as soon as he came in the door. And then I stopped, because he was holding a pillowcase in his arms, and it was moving as though it were alive.

  “I had a little errand to do and it took longer than I thought,” he said.

  A high, desperate wail came from inside the pillowcase. Dad knelt down and opened the end, and out came a little gray-and-white kitten. Its fur looked exactly like a bowl of oatmeal with cream showing through in places.

  “Oh, Dad!” I cried, and knelt down beside the kitten. “Is it ours?”

  “If you want it to be.”

  It had a little pink nose and a tiny red mouth. When it opened its mouth and mewed, I could see its pink tongue, and then it wobbled over to me, one paw in front of the other, and leaned against my leg, mewing again.

  “Oh, it’s beautiful!” I said. “So tiny!”

  Dad was smiling. “One of the clerks at the store had a cat with kittens, and she’s been trying to find homes for them. I drove out to her house in Olney to pick it up.”

  I gathered the kitten in my arms. It was as light as a Kleenex. Hardly weighed anything. It squirmed and mewed again until I stroked it under its chin, and then it started to purr.

  I took it over to Lester. “Isn’t she cute?” I said.

  “How do you know it’s a she?” he said.

  I stared at the kitten.

  “Look underneath,” said Lester.

  I held the kitten up, but all I could see was fur. I handed her to Lester. He looked. “It’s a she,” he said, and gave it back. “Good grief! Another girl in the family!”

  Dad smiled and came over to the table to eat the cold macaroni. The green beans were cold too. He dished both up on a plate and put them in the microwave. “She’s probably hungry. Janice sent some food along. The kitten’s been weaned from her mother, so she doesn’t need milk, but you’ll have to feed her several times a day and make sure she has water.”

  “Who’s Janice?” I asked.

  “One of the clerks. Our best clerk, actually.”

  “And don’t forget the litter box,” said Lester.

  “That’s right. There’s a plastic box in my trunk with a bag of litter. Bring those in, will you, Lester?”

  He grunted and got up from the table. “Whe
re do you want me to put it? How about Al’s room?”

  We decided on a corner of the kitchen for the food and water dish, and the little alcove by the back door for the litter box. I wanted to call the kitten Oatmeal, and Dad said that was a good name. Lester said I could call it anything I wanted as long as he didn’t have to take care of it.

  I spent all evening playing with Oatmeal. I sat on the floor and let her crawl into my lap. I took a long string and dragged it along the floor, while Oatmeal hunkered down, her eyes huge, and then pounced. I put a ruler on the rug with a pillow over it and tugged at one end so that the ruler moved in and out from under the pillow. Oatmeal went bananas.

  “You’re just the sweetest little kitten in the whole wide world,” I whispered, holding her close to my face, then cuddling her in my arms. She felt as though she had a motor inside her, the way her whole body vibrated when she purred.

  I held her as I watched TV that night, and I suddenly realized that Lester hadn’t asked to hold the kitten once. He hadn’t petted her either. It didn’t seem possible that anyone could not like this kitten.

  And then I remembered something from long ago. We had a dog once. It was Lester’s dog. I think Uncle Milt gave it to him right after Mom died. It was a little dog with pointy ears named Tippy, and I remember Lester playing with it. I didn’t. I was afraid of dogs then, the way they jump up on you and try to lick your face.

  The longer I sat there with Oatmeal on my lap, the more I seemed to remember about Lester and Tippy. It was like trying to grab hold of a memory that was slipping over the edge of my mind. Now I had it and now I didn’t. But I’m sure I remembered Lester lying on the rug and laughing, his arms up around his head, while Tippy tried to pry his arms away and lick his face. I remembered Lester and Tippy asleep in the same bed together. Tippy riding in the car with us.

  Then I remembered something else. I did remember. The awful day that Lester was coming home from school, and somehow Tippy got out and saw Lester across the street. Tippy ran, and a car was coming, and…