True to Form

  Well, I guess this letter is long enough! I will try to write again soon, but the best intentions are of mice and men, as you know. Here comes some love to you, Katie, and a comforting and resounding pat on the back. Close your eyes and you can feel it.

  Your friend forever,

  Cherylanne

  (and her baby girl Sandra or Annette or Scarlet and if it’s a boy?????? as there are no good boy names, including Darren)

  I fold the letter up, put it back in my pocket. Cherylanne and I are a lot alike right now. We have both blundered into a place where we’d rather not be, and now we have to make the best of it. I lie down on the warm dirt, which smells so calm, and look up into the sky. It seems like people are all the time making themselves themselves, but they don’t really know it. You can only have true vision when you look behind. A person can slide so fast into being something they never really intended. I wonder if you can truly resurrect your own self.

  In an hour or so, my father will be home for dinner, and I am going to talk to him about how I don’t want to go to the Bartlett School after all. I will keep Cherylanne’s letter in my pocket to help me when I say it. The thing about people like Cherylanne is, you can’t be so fast about what to think of them. It’s like the way you find beautiful crystals inside some plain gray rocks—who would have known they were there? Cherylanne says a lot of strange things, and her style is not exactly Shakespeare, but this is the first time I have felt soothed inside since I did what I did. And it is Cherylanne who did that. I also feel some hope about the future. Which will not include the Bartlett girls, I hope.

  This morning, Leigh called to see if her poem about her and her boyfriend was ready, and I said not yet. Then there was a moment of cool silence, as though I had offended her. I suppose she thought I should be honored to write about her and Barrett, but I don’t even know him. And even if I did, I don’t want to write about what someone else tells me to write about.

  When I start a poem, the center of me lifts up—I feel myself floating before I start to put the words down. Sometimes they are good words and sometimes they’re not, but always the lift comes to take me to the place that is not really a place, yet feels realer than this ground I lie on. But when someone tells me what to write a poem about, I’m not lifted at all, I’m weighed down. It’s as though something comes down over me, cutting off my view, taking up my breathing space. I can’t do it. And I don’t want to do it. And I won’t do it for Leigh; this is what comes to me now. I won’t do it because I don’t have to do it. In the dirt, I use a stick to write no. Then I stand up and start back home.

  GUESS WHO CALLED?” Ginger says, when I walk in the door.

  “Cynthia?” I ask quickly, and Ginger gets a soft look and says, “No. Not yet.” I told Ginger about what happened, although I must admit I made myself look better than I actually was. I said that Leigh was talking about Cynthia and that I didn’t defend her, and that’s all. This was a lie of omission, of course, which, according to Father Compton, is just as bad as other lies, but I just couldn’t tell the whole truth right then. Later I will. It will have to be at the right time.

  But now Ginger says, “It was Mrs. Randolph. She’ll be leaving tomorrow afternoon, and she said she would love to see you before she goes.”

  “Oh,” I say. “Okay.” Mrs. Randolph wants to see the me from before. But I am different now, I am someone who did a bad thing, and who now wants to refuse the gift that her husband gave me. I won’t tell her I don’t want to go to the Bartlett School anymore. But I wonder if it will leak out my eyes. I wonder if I’ll end up telling her and then she’ll feel so disappointed in me too.

  “I can run you over to the nursing home tomorrow morning,” Ginger says. “But it will have to be before ten.”

  “Okay,” I say. “That’s fine.”

  Now I hear the car door slam, and here comes my father up the steps. I swallow hard, and go to wash my hands before I take my place at the table. Sometimes I wish people didn’t have to wash so much. Sometimes when you’ve been outside and gotten dirt on your hands, it just feels so friendly and connected.

  MACARONI AND CHEESE IS WHAT Ginger has made, with little baby peas to go along with it, which is the perfect choice. Fruit salad with whipped cream for dessert, and the only thing wrong is that she uses oranges in it, the cheater fruit. My father is sitting in his army uniform with the neck of the shirt open, and you can see his T-shirt which is so white it’s almost blue. He is not saying anything, which is normal. Ginger is making a little comment here and there, also normal. She says things in a low and musical voice that always reminds me of the sound birds make when they’re settling down for the night.

  Well, here goes.

  “Dad?”

  He looks at me.

  “I was thinking about the Bartlett School.”

  Nothing.

  “I was thinking I might not go.”

  He smiles and nods his head in a knowing way. “Oh, you’ll go, all right.” He looks at Ginger, who smiles back at him, Yes indeed. They think I’m just nervous.

  “But the thing is, I might not want to go.”

  His blue eyes on me. “What do you mean?”

  “Well, I’ve decided something. I’ve decided my regular school will be all right. It will be fine. I want to go to my regular school, it’s really pretty much the same as the Bartlett School.”

  “Your regular school is nothing like the Bartlett School. You are very lucky to have gotten a scholarship, and you’ll go there.”

  His voice has risen and everything else has gotten so still. This is the part where I am supposed to put my head down. Okay. Sorry.

  But I don’t. I put down my fork and look right at him. “Dad. I have changed my mind. I have come to know some of the girls and I don’t think I’d fit in. I don’t think I’d be happy there.”

  “Well, I’ll tell you what. You can be happy when you come home.”

  “Honey?” Ginger says. “What happened? Why in the world would you want to turn down an opportunity like this?”

  “I just don’t like the kids. I don’t think I—”

  “You’re going,” my father says. “End of discussion. Pass me the bread, Ginger.”

  I wonder how it feels to say this, to have that kind of power. I wonder, Does it feel like a thrill, do your insides swell up proud like a peacock on full display? I wonder when it started, my father being mean. When did he go from being a kid himself to saying Do it! Now! with veins of his neck standing out.

  Sometimes I try to remember things my mother told me about the awful way he was raised. But why does he have to keep on going. Why would you take something bad out of your mouth and then hand it to another, saying, Here. Eat this.

  I look at Ginger, Help me, but she says nothing. She agrees with him. She doesn’t know what’s happened, that I am not by any means a member of the Bartlett School Girls’ Club, and I never will be. I am in the club with Cynthia, only now she won’t be with me in anything, not anymore. What do I have left, I wonder.

  I sit and stare at my father, but he won’t look at me. I don’t know what to say to make him hear. I see the muscles in his jaws moving as he chews. He takes a long drink of water. Dinner, that’s what’s in his head. That person inside me who rose up so confident when I was out in the field this afternoon is not inside me anymore. Nothing is inside me anymore. Wind could rush through.

  I look at the kitchen clock and wish it moved in years instead of hours. Because I’m going to California to live near my sister, Diane, as soon as I’m done with high school. You think everything can change, but the truth is that some things never can. Living with him is like living in a box. Ginger can hang curtains and put some pictures on the wall, but it is always a box. You can’t move far. You can only rise up when you’re able and move out altogether.

  “Finish your dinner,” he tells me, and I pick up my fork, swallow around the lump.

  I won’t write him, either. I won’t call. Huh, he will say
, sitting out on the back steps at night, his cigarette held low between his knees. He will run a hand over the top of his crew cut, stare at the clothesline pole standing simple under the stars, and he will say it again: Huh. Ginger, sitting beside him, will say nothing, but he will hear exactly what she is thinking. That he will hear.

  IAM IN MY ROOM, SITTING at my desk. Right after dinner, Leigh called to say she and Barrett were going out tomorrow night, it was his birthday, and could I read that poem over the phone to her so she could put in her own writing and give it to him for one of his presents? And oh yes, did I want to come with her and Kristi to a movie . . . sometime? Right.

  But. I have to go to the Bartlett School and I will have to be around those girls. Every day, I will have to be around them. Look where I have gotten myself. I lay out a piece of paper, smooth it with my hand. Then I pick up a pencil and smell it for the mix of lead and wood. I take in a long breath, stare at the page. And then I put the pencil down and go out to the hall phone to call Cynthia. My father and Ginger went to a movie; at last I have some privacy.

  “Hello?” Mrs. O’Connell says. I say nothing. “Hello?” she says, again, and waits for a moment, then hangs up. I go back to my room and sit at my desk. Here is what I am: a sandbag in a chair.

  I pick up the pencil. It is a little log, heavy in my hand, and that is all. I turn off my desk lamp, lean back in my chair. Outside, branches move in the wind. It’s supposed to rain later. My inside self and my outside self used to match. A compass needle pointed true north. Now the needle spins around and around, indicating the sad direction of nowhere.

  I get up to turn on the radio, then turn it off. I stand at the window, looking out at the house across the street. Someone is in a kitchen in her robe, eating something from a bowl. Some people are watching television. Some houses are all dark, the people gone. Someone has the lawn sprinkler on, and the high fan of water moves back and forth, back and forth.

  I think for a while, then go to my desk and write a few lines. I read them out loud to myself in a whisper. Again. Then I cross out one line and substitute another, read that aloud. Good enough.

  I go to the phone and call Leigh. She answers on the first ring. “It’s me, Katie,” I say. “I have your poem.”

  “Already?” she says. “Wow, you’re a genius.”

  “Do you have a pen?”

  “Hold on.” I wait for a moment, and she comes back, breathless. “He is going to be so surprised! He will never believe that I wrote a poem for him!”

  I say nothing, waiting for her to realize her error. But she doesn’t.

  “It’s a haiku,” I tell her.

  “Oh?”

  “That’s what I like doing, lately.” An inside blush of shame, Sorry.

  “Well, I guess that’s all right. So how does it go?”

  I hold up the paper, recite the words I’ve written to her:

  Love alights inside

  On glad heart’s branch of welcome

  Wings flutter, then still

  “Wait,” she says, and my stomach takes a ride to the basement. “ ‘On glad heart’s branch of welcome?’ ” She says the phrase like she is holding it away from herself with two fingers.

  “Yes.”

  “I don’t get it.”

  “Well, it’s . . . It’s like you are waiting for love? And your heart extends itself? So love has a place to land? And it’s glad when it does?”

  “I see.”

  No, she doesn’t.

  “Um . . . ”

  “If you don’t like it,” I say, “maybe you could just find something else in a poetry book and copy that out.”

  “Yeah,” she says, doubtfully. Irritably. “I suppose. But I guess I was—well, it’s really good what you did! But I was sort of hoping for something more personal. Where somebody could read it and know the poem was about us. Like, his eye color and mine could be in there, something like that. Or how we met.”

  “How did you meet?”

  “At a school dance. It was so great.”

  “Well,” I say. “Here’s my idea for you. You write it.”

  A moment of silence. And then, “Oh, okay. Now you’ve gone and got your feelings all hurt.”

  “Not at all.”

  “I’m sorry. I know people who try to write poetry are oversensitive.”

  “No, I just think you should write it. You know what you want. You can do it. I can tell by the way you’re coming up with ideas already.”

  A moment of silence. And then, “Really? Do you really think so?” I can practically hear her smile.

  “Sure.”

  “Well . . . what rhymes with green that could be in a love poem? Because his eyes are green. Maybe . . . bean?”

  “Or dream,” I say.

  “That’s it! It was like a dream! And I felt like a queen, I could use ‘queen’!”

  “There you go,” I say. “I have to hang up now. Good luck, and I’m sure he’ll like it.”

  “Thanks, Kate!”

  Kate. I have never been called that in my life. I start to say you’re welcome, but then don’t. I put the phone back in its cradle, so gently. Just to see if I can do it without making a sound. Like no wake in the water. No evidence of anything.

  Back in my room, I stand at the window again for a long time. It’s dark out, but the full moon is bright enough that you can see a little circle of leaves skittering down the street. I turn them into Greek women holding hands and dancing barefoot around and around. Thin ribbons woven into their long, black hair. But the image won’t hold, it fades, and I see again only leaves, curled up at the edges and dying. I don’t know where they came from. It’s summer; nothing should be dying so soon.

  I go into the basement. Maybe I’ll do a load of towels and surprise Ginger. Fold them square and even. Let the good deed make up for the bad ones. I open my mouth to let out a low moan but it gets louder and louder like it is its own self. Finally, I just sit on a pile of dirty laundry and let the song of grief sing itself out.

  GINGER DROPS ME OFF IN front of the nursing home where Mrs. Randolph is staying. “Will half an hour be all right?” she says, and I say yes, a little worried that it will be too long.

  When I come into the hallway, I can’t see at first because of the contrast: so sunny outside, so dark and cool inside. But then my eyes adjust and I see the desk where the nurses are, and a woman sitting in a wheelchair beside it, staring at me. She is wearing a loose-weave gray sweater over her nightgown, holding an open purse in her lap. Her hair is in two braids criss-crossed on top of her head. “You! Girly!” she says.

  I point to myself, Me?

  “Yes! Come over here, will you?”

  I go to stand in front of her. She crooks her finger, asking me to lean closer. “The nurses stole my wallet again,” she says, in a near whisper. “I want you to tell someone. Now, I know the editor of the newspaper, I used to be a reporter there.”

  I don’t know what to say. I smile, start to nod.

  “They steal everything,” she says. “My socks. My boxes of candy.”

  “Oh,” I say. “Uh huh.” Now she’s got hold of my arm and doesn’t seem to have any intention of letting go.

  One of the nurses sees what’s happening and comes toward us.

  “Shhhhhh!” the old lady tells me, her finger up to her lips and spit flying out.

  “Now, Theresa,” the nurse says. “What are you telling this young lady?”

  “I’m telling her the g-d truth!” Theresa says, and drops my arm to point an accusing finger at the nurse. “I’m telling her you nurses stole from me again! And she’s going to do something about it!”

  The nurse smiles at me, then says gently to the old woman, “Tell me what’s missing, Theresa.”

  Theresa stares into space, scowling. She looks like she’s chewing her tongue. She has white whiskers growing straight out of her chin, and they look even stranger with all the rouge she has on. Her eyes are blue and watery, full of a kind o
f angry pain. “I’ll tell you what’s missing!” she says, finally. She holds up her open purse. “You see a wallet in there? I certainly don’t! I certainly don’t.”

  “We have your wallet,” the nurse says, and the old lady looks at me. “Ha!” she says. “You see?”

  “We have it locked up, as you requested,” the nurse says, and the old lady’s smile fades. Her knobby fingers grab at the top edges of her sweater, pulling it closer about her.

  “Would you like to see it?” the nurse asks.

  Theresa snaps her purse shut angrily. “Don’t be bothering me with such things! If I want my wallet, I’ll ask for it! Stop fussing around me now and get back to work! I never saw such a group of lazy women!”

  “Well,” I say, “nice meeting you. I have to go.”

  “Where are you going?” Theresa says. “You only just got here! What kind of visit is this?”

  “Well, actually, I—”

  “It’s all right,” the nurse says. “I’ll take her for a stroll.” She bends down to look into Theresa’s face. “How about it? Would you like to go for a little ride?”

  Theresa says nothing at first, just stares up into the kind nurse’s face. Then, “Well?” she says. “What’s the delay? Giddyap!”

  The nurse chuckles softly, then pushes Theresa down the hall.

  I head toward Mrs. Randolph’s room and find her sitting in a wheelchair, a small floral suitcase beside her. She is dressed in a pair of blue pants and a white blouse with lace on the collar. “Hey, Mrs. Randolph,” I say, coming in and sitting on the edge of the bed. I put my back to the woman in the other bed, lying sound asleep and snoring, her mouth wide open like a bottomless pit, no teeth. It’s scary to look at her—no offense, but she truly does look like a witch. That pointed chin, those twisted fingers.

  “Oh, Katie, what a pleasure to see you. I was afraid I’d miss you.”