Starting With Alice

  “Is this a bona fide group, Alice? Does it have a name?”

  “The Naked Nomads,” I told her.

  “What?”

  “Because they take off some of their clothes and—”

  “Alice, put your father on right away,” she said.

  Ten minutes later, when Dad came out of the closet, he said, “Alice, the next time your Aunt Sally calls, God bless her, I am fine, you are fine, Lester is fine, the cat is fine, we are all fine and eating our vegetables, and we haven’t burned the house down yet. Okay?”

  I grinned. “Okay,” I told him.

  The next day at school, we had art class. We had to choose partners, and the Terrible Triplets were upset because one of them would have to find someone else to be partners with. They asked the art teacher if the three of them could do their project together, and she said no, we had to be in pairs.

  I proved I could be just as stuck-up as they could by looking the other way when Jody turned in my direction. When a chubby girl asked if I wanted to be her partner, I said, “Sure.”

  We were studying mirror images, and each pair was given a large sheet of paper folded down the middle, from top to bottom. We could use any colors we wanted and draw any design we wanted, but everything that one person drew on one side of the fold had to be copied by the other person exactly the same way on the other side, but in the opposite direction.

  “Think of a heart,” the teacher said, and drew a large valentine heart on the blackboard. Then she drew a line down the middle of it and showed us that the two halves of the heart were exactly the same, only the lines on the left side were going one way and the lines on the right side were going the other.

  My partner’s name was Rosalind, and I’d never paid much attention to her before. In the art room, where we shared a table, she said, “My brother plays in a combo with your brother.”

  I looked at her. “He does? The Naked Nomads?”

  She giggled and suddenly we both started laughing. Just the name made us laugh.

  “When the two girls at the second table stop laughing, we can begin,” the art teacher said.

  Rosalind and I wiped the smiles off our faces, but we were still smiling on the inside. Every time our eyes met, we tried to keep our mouths straight, and that made us giggle. Once we started planning our design, we were friends. Just like that. Because of the giggles.

  Our design was pretty ordinary. We drew a heart just like the one on the blackboard, but then we added a lot of twists and curls, and whatever one girl did on her side of the paper, the other one did on hers, drawing it backward. It wasn’t as easy as it looked.

  “Why don’t you come over too, the next time your brother comes to our house?” I asked Rosalind.

  “Maybe I will,” she said.

  When the Naked Nomads met at our house again, Rosalind came too. Her brother was one of the guitar players, Billy.

  “I brought the brat,” Billy said to my brother when they came in. “I guess our sisters are friends.”

  “Okay by me,” said Lester.

  I could tell that Dad was really, really happy about it. He said that Rosalind could come over whenever she wanted. He let us have the TV; he made some popcorn for us; and he even made hot-fudge sundaes, he was so glad I had a friend.

  Rosalind lives about six blocks away up the hill. Megan, one of the Terrible Triplets, lives only two blocks away in the other direction. I wished it was Rosalind who lived only two blocks away and Megan who lived up the hill. Rosalind and I are a lot alike because we laugh at the same things. She has two brothers instead of one, though, and a stepmom, too.

  At school we started doing things together. We always ate at the same table at lunch, and in gym, when we had to pair up again for square dancing and the Terrible Triplets had one too many, Megan and Jody paired up and Dawn had to find someone else. She asked me if I’d be her partner, and I got to say, “Sorry, I’m with Rosalind.” That felt as sweet as sugar corning out of my mouth.

  You never know what’s going to come out of Rosalind’s mouth, though. We were talking once about whether or not there would be snow for Christmas, and Rosalind said she didn’t think so. She said the Earth is getting warmer, and a hundred years from now, Takoma Park will be a lake. She said if we came back to Maryland then, we’d all be riding around in boats. I never know whether to believe her or not.

  But she knows a lot about animals. At lunch one day, a girl at our table brought in a snake’s skin and said it was a poisonous water moccasin’s. Rosalind said no, it wasn’t, it was from a common water snake. When Dawn asked how she knew so much about animals, Rosalind said she wants to work at the National Zoo when she grows up. “Where? In the elephant house?” Dawn said, and everyone laughed. But afterward, Rosalind told me that’s exactly where she does want to work: with elephants.

  One reason she likes to come to our house, though, is to play with Oatmeal. Her father’s allergic to cats and dogs, so she has only goldfish and a turtle. What she would really like, I guess, is an elephant, but you don’t exactly see many of those in Maryland.

  The reason I like Rosalind to come over is because, number one, she likes to play with Oatmeal; number two, she laughs a lot; and number three, if she doesn’t know the answer to something, she just makes it up. I can’t exactly trust her, but at least she’s interesting.

  7

  SWEETHEARTS

  DONALD SHEAVERS NEVER HAS ANY IDEA what he wants to do when he comes over. He’ll do anything I ask. If I say, “Let’s play Monopoly, Donald,” he’ll play Monopoly. If I say, “Let’s make hot chocolate,” he’ll say, “Okay.” If I say, “What do you want to do, Donald?” he’ll say, “I don’t know; what do you want to do?” I’ll bet if I ever said, “Put your shoes on your ears, Donald,” his sneakers would be on both sides of his head.

  Dad wouldn’t let me go out on Halloween by myself, so I said, “Want to go trick-or-treating, Donald?”

  “Okay,” he said. I figured I was getting old enough to go trick-or-treating without Dad or Lester along now.

  “What are you going to be?” I asked.

  “I don’t know,” said Donald.

  “You want to go as a ghost?” I said, thinking of the most stupid, common thing that came to mind.

  “Okay,” said Donald.

  “No, Donald! Think of something really different!” I said.

  “Okay,” said Donald.

  I waited a minute or two. “Have you thought of something?” I asked.

  “No,” said Donald.

  “Why don’t you be a werewolf?” I said.

  “Okay,” said Donald.

  “Do you know what a werewolf looks like?”

  “No.”

  Donald is hopeless.

  “Donald, be something that you know. A vampire, even.”

  “Okay,” said Donald.

  On Halloween night Donald came over to get me. He had an old sheet over his head, with two holes cut in it for his eyes. There were huge fangs coming out of the slit where his mouth should be, and his hands had two big werewolf paws on them. Nobody knew what he was, but he looked fabulous.

  I was a gypsy girl. For the Halloween party at school, I’d been Schubert. Every year Dad lets me wear the jacket of his old tuxedo and I dress up as a composer, carrying a baton. It’s quick and easy! But I wanted to be something else when we went out for tricks or treats, so I was a gypsy. I wasn’t fabulous. I looked ordinary.

  “Gracious!” people said when we knocked on their doors. They all looked at Donald. “What are you supposed to be?”

  Nobody asked me because they already knew what a gypsy girl was. Donald couldn’t answer because of the fangs, but he looked so great, we got caramel apples, super-size Milky Way bars, bags of candy corn, quarters, and soft-dough pretzels.

  When we were crossing the street at the corner, we passed a cowgirl and her horse. Well, it was a girl wearing a horse’s head. The other girl was holding the reins and laughing at the way her horse ki
cked and bucked. I recognized the laugh.

  “Rosalind?” I said.

  “Alice?”

  Donald couldn’t speak because of his fangs, so I had to tell her who he was. Rosalind was out trick-or-treating with her cousin Tracy, who lives in DC.

  “Say hi, Tracy,” Rosalind said.

  Her horse only neighed and bucked again. They’d collected even more stuff than we had.

  “You want to come back to my house for some pop or something?” I asked.

  “Some what?” said Tracy.

  “Pop.”

  “She means soda,” said Rosalind.

  I didn’t know that out East it’s called soda. In Chicago it was always pop.

  “Okay,” said Tracy. So we all went back to my house. Lester was eating popcorn in the living room, so we poured out our candy on the kitchen table. I traded my Baby Ruth bars and Butterfingers for Milk Duds and jelly beans. Then I opened a big bottle of Pepsi and poured some into four cups. Tracy drank the most. She had short blond hair and dark brown eyes that looked like coat buttons.

  When the Pepsi was gone, Tracy asked, “What are you going to do with the bottle?”

  “I don’t know,” I said. “Do you want it?”

  “We could play spin the bottle,” she said.

  I couldn’t believe she was serious. Tracy looked at Donald. “You want to play spin the bottle, Donald?”

  “Okay,” said Donald.

  “Oh, no!” I said. ‘’I’m not playing spin the bottle. I’m not kissing Donald.”

  “This is a fortune-telling game, it’s not kissing,” said Tracy. “Just think of a question and the bottle will tell you the answer.”

  “Okay,” I said. We all sat down on the floor in a sort of circle with the bottle in the middle.

  “Which one of us will be the richest?” asked Donald.

  Tracy picked up the Pepsi bottle and held it mysteriously out in front of her. Then she slowly brought it close to her face and blew down inside it, making a ghostly whistle. “Whoooo,” she said into the bottle, “will be the richest one here?”

  She put the bottle back on the floor and spun it around, and when it stopped, it was pointing at Tracy.

  “Oh, I’m the lucky one!” Tracy cried happily. “What else do you want to know?”

  We thought for a moment. “Who will be the most famous?” I asked.

  Tracy brought the bottle to her lips again and blew down inside it. “Whooooo,” she said, “will be the most famous one here?”

  Again she spun the bottle, and—guess what?—the bottle pointed to Tracy.

  “Hey! You stopped it with your finger,” said Donald. “I’ll spin it next time.”

  “Okay, I’ve got a question,” said Rosalind. “Which one of us is going to be kissed?”

  Donald spun the bottle around and it pointed to me. I jumped to my feet. “Not me!” I said. “I’m not kissing anyone.”

  “Let’s try this one,” said Rosalind. “Who is going to die first?” This time she spun the bottle as hard as she could, and we all jumped up, stumbling over our feet, to get out of the room before the bottle stopped spinning. Lester was coming into the kitchen just then with a half-empty bowl of popcorn, and Tracy ran right into him. There was popcorn all over the place—the floors, the chairs, Tracy, Lester.

  “Hey, let’s spin the bottle and see who goes home first,” said Lester.

  “I’m sorry,” said Tracy.

  We all got down on our hands and knees and started picking up popcorn. I caught Rosalind’s eye and could tell she was trying not to laugh. So was I.

  Just then Oatmeal woke up and came out into the kitchen. She saw the popcorn and started batting it around the floor, chasing it under the table and through the legs of chairs. This got us all laughing, even Lester.

  When Halloween was over, I said, “Lester, did you ever play spin the bottle?”

  “My favorite game,” he said.

  “Did you kiss?”

  “Sure.”

  “Who?”

  “Some girl named Gloria Kingsberry.”

  “Was she your girlfriend?”

  “No,” said Lester.

  “Did you like her?”

  “Not particularly,” Lester told me.

  “Why did you like kissing her, then?”

  “Because she’d just eaten a doughnut and had powdered sugar all around the rim of her mouth,” he said.

  “That’s gross,” I told him.

  “Not as gross as kissing Caroline Mullins.”

  “What was wrong with Caroline?”

  “She had a runny nose,” said Lester.

  Don’t ever talk to Lester on Halloween, or you won’t want to eat any more of your candy.

  At school on Monday, Rosalind told me that Tracy wanted Donald to be her boyfriend. I didn’t like hearing that. I didn’t particularly want Donald Sheavers to be my boyfriend. I just didn’t want him to be Tracy’s.

  At lunchtime Rosalind asked Donald if he wanted to be Tracy’s boyfriend.

  “I don’t know,” he said.

  Rosalind giggled. “Do you want to be my boyfriend?”

  “I don’t know,” said Donald.

  “Do you want to be Alice’s boyfriend?” asked Rosalind.

  Donald looked at me. “Okay,” he said.

  I could feel my face growing hot.

  The Triplets had heard what Rosalind said to Donald.

  “Hey, everybody!” yelled Megan. “Donald is Alice’s boyfriend!” And the Terrible Triplets began to chant:

  “Donald and Al-ice,

  Sitting in a tree,

  K-I-S-S-I-N-G!”

  And then the whole table began to call out, “Kiss her, Donald! Kiss her!”

  “Okay,” said Donald, grinning. He got up from his chair at the next table and came around to ours. I slid under the table. Everyone peeked under to watch. All I could see were feet and faces. All the feet came forward and tried to trap me so Donald could catch me. Everyone was screaming and laughing.

  The principal came into the lunchroom.

  “Children?” he called.

  They went on screaming. He clapped his hands for attention.

  The screaming stopped.

  “What’s going on?” Mr. Serio asked.

  “Donald’s kissing Alice,” somebody said.

  Mrs. Burstin hurried across the room. “Donald, sit down,” she said. “Where’s Alice?”

  “Under the table,” everyone cried.

  All the feet stopped swinging. I saw Mrs. Burstin’s legs. Then I saw her face looking at me under the table.

  “Come out of there, Alice,” she said.

  Now my face was so hot, it felt as though it was on fire. I crawled out from under the table. “You shouldn’t be under the table at lunchtime,” she said. “Are you through eating?”

  I wasn’t. I’d hardly even started, but I nodded yes.

  “Then take care of your lunch bag and go outside,” she said.

  I could feel my cheeks burning. I took my lunch bag with my half-eaten sandwich in it and dropped it in the trash. My Hostess cupcake went with it.

  Rosalind raised her hand. “I’m through too,” she said.

  “Then you may go outside also,” said Mrs. Burstin. Donald raised his hand.

  “No,” said the teacher. “You stay in here.”

  Out on the playground, Rosalind said, “I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to get you in trouble.”

  “I know,” I said.

  “Megan and her big mouth,” said Rosalind.

  “Yeah,” I said.

  “Are you mad at me?” asked Rosalind.

  “A little,” I told her.

  “Is there anything I can do?” she asked.

  “Tell Tracy to go jump in the lake,” I answered.

  8

  EMBARRASSING MOMENTS

  I THINK THAT MORE EMBARRASSING things happen to me than to anyone else. My very first memory is an embarrassing moment. Lester says he can remember being
in his crib. He says that Mama and Dad were giving a party and guests came in his bedroom and looked down at him. He says he can still remember the wallpaper.

  The very first thing I remember is a day in nursery school. I had to go to the bathroom, but I couldn’t get the door open. I don’t know why I didn’t ask the teacher to open it for me. I just went back and sat in my little chair and wet myself and wet the chair, and when someone said, “This chair is wet!” I said I’d spilled some lemonade. We didn’t even have lemonade.

  And I remember playing in Aunt Sally’s flower garden even after she’d told me not to. When I saw her coming out of the house, I knew I couldn’t run away in time, so I just lay down in the dirt and pretended I was dead.

  Then there was the time Uncle Milt took Carol and Lester and me to the movies and I got the hiccups and hiccuped all through the movie, and finally the people in front of us got up and sat somewhere else.

  Sometimes I wish that after I do something stupid, my face would change and no one who saw me do it would ever recognize me again.

  I remember thinking once, when I was in kindergarten and cried during a thunderstorm, that maybe once I got to first grade I wouldn’t do things like that anymore. When I got to first grade and was still doing embarrassing things, I told myself that maybe when I got to second grade my life would be different, but it wasn’t. I mashed my teacher’s fingers in the door. And now that I was in third grade, I decided that nothing was going to change there, either.

  “Did you ever do anything embarrassing?” I asked Lester one morning at the table.

  “Huh-uh. I’m perfect,” said Lester, and poured half the syrup over the pancakes on his plate.

  “You never wet your pants?” I asked.

  “Hey, Al, I’m eating breakfast,” he said.

  “Embarrassing things go on happening to people all their lives,” Dad said. “It’s part of being alive.”

  I didn’t want to hear about it.

  “They’re just different kinds of things,” said Dad.

  “Like what?” I asked.

  “Like forgetting people’s names. Like thinking Mr. Brown is Mr. Green and going up and saying, ‘Hi, Ted, how are you?’” to the wrong guy.

  Somehow that didn’t seem as embarrassing as mashing your teacher’s fingers.