Reluctantly Alice

  Then I wondered if World Studies wasn’t even less helpful than math. Where would I ever go that I would be ashamed if I couldn’t define Alexander II’s Act of Emancipation of 1861? In Language Arts, would the world really end if I didn’t know everything there was about predicates? I don’t think Miss Summers liked predicates any more than I did. I always felt that her heart was in poetry or stories, and that she only taught us grammar because she had to. Home economics was probably the most useful subject except that I already knew how to cook the things I like best and didn’t care whether I ever learned to cook liver and Brussels sprouts or not.

  “You’re missing the point, Al,” Dad said when I complained to him about all my useless subjects. “You may not need to know what 17 percent of a gross is, but there will be plenty of times you’ll need to know a certain percentage of something. You just need to learn how to apply these things to other problems, that’s all.”

  I didn’t answer.

  “Sometimes,” Dad went on, “when we’re upset about one part of something—school, for example—we feel angry about it all.”

  When I still didn’t answer, he said, “So what’s up?”

  “P.E.,” I told him, slinging the plates into the cupboard like I was dealing cards. “When you were in junior high, Dad, can you remember what you had to do in P.E.?”

  Dad finished wiping off the top of the stove. “Oh, baseball, basketball—maybe a little wrestling. Track.”

  “Do you know what we have to learn this grading period?” I told him. “The ring swing, the rope climb, the wall kick, and the frog stand.”

  “Oh,” said Dad. “Well, that explains it.”

  The rings I liked fine, actually. You grabbed hold of a ring hanging by a long rope from the ceiling, got a running start, and swung yourself over to the next ring, which was a little higher off the floor. Then you pumped your legs back and forth until you reached the next ring and the next, before you worked your way back down again. But useful? If I were ever in a jungle and had to cross a swamp with alligators in it, and there were grapevines handy, I suppose the ring swing would be good to know.

  I could also understand having to know how to climb up to the ceiling and down again on a knotted rope in case I was ever on the tenth floor of a burning hotel and had to lower myself by bed sheets.

  But the wall kick and the frog stand must have been thought up by some troll who lives in the school broom closet.

  “The wall kick,” said the instructor, standing before us in shorts and T-shirt, “helps strengthen the thigh and calf muscles, and requires a certain agility that takes a bit of practice. But that’s the name of the game, girls. Practice.” And then she demonstrated.

  Standing twenty feet back from the cinderblock wall, the instructor charged like she was going to throw herself right through it, then leaped up against the wall with her left foot and, bringing her right foot over her left leg, jumped down onto the mat again facing us, back to the wall. It looked so easy.

  “What you’re doing,” she said, “is using your left leg as a yardstick, and jumping over it.”

  What we were doing, in case she didn’t know, was the second stupidest thing we would ever be asked to do in P.E. all semester. The only use I could see for it was if we were running across a field at night and suddenly came to a barn. If we knew the wall kick, I guess, we could keep from crashing into it by leaping up on it with our left foot and turning ourselves around. But the first most stupid thing we had to do in P.E. in seventh grade was the frog stand, and I couldn’t think of anything useful for that at all.

  The hardest part was not laughing when the instructor demonstrated. She squatted down, knees poking out to the sides, arms between her knees, hands flat on the floor. Then she tilted her body forward, bracing her arms against the insides of her knees, until her feet were off the floor and her whole body was balanced on the palms of her hands. That would be useful, I suppose, if I were a frog in the process of laying eggs.

  “Why can’t they teach us something important, Dad?” I asked, following him into the living room. “Like how to walk like a model or dance the mambo or something I’ll want to know in high school?”

  “I’d settle for teaching girls how to climb a ladder and clean out the gutters,” Dad said, trying a new song on the piano.

  It was because Dad was playing the piano that he didn’t hear the phone ring, so I answered it. It was Aunt Sally.

  “Alice, dear, I’ve been so curious to know how things came out with that Sherman woman and the girl your father met at the beach,” she said.

  I didn’t want to go into the whole business of what happened, so I just said that Janice Sherman wasn’t bothering Dad anymore and that Helen Lake would be coming to Washington soon to visit.

  “That’s wonderful!” said Aunt Sally. “So he’s in love, then.”

  “Well, sort of,” I told her. “I can’t really say.” And then, because I had her on the phone, I asked, “Aunt Sally, what did you have to do in P.E. back in seventh grade?”

  “What’s P.E.?”

  “Physical Education.”

  “Oh, gym, you mean. Well, we had to wear heavy blue cotton dresses with short skirts and snaps down the front, and matching panties with tight elastic around the legs. I remember that,” she said. “They were perfectly dreadful.”

  I could imagine. “But what did you have to do?”

  There was silence. “You know, Alice,” Aunt Sally said. “All I actually remember about gym class is that a woman was hired to play the piano while we did our exercises. We had an instructor who believed that if we did anything more strenuous than that, our wombs would drop or something. So we ran around in huge circles flapping our arms in time to the music—‘Leap, run, run. . . . Leap, run, run.’ That was even worse than the gym suits.”

  I agreed.

  “Mostly,” said Aunt Sally, “I spent my seventh grade in mortal terror because there was a rumor that sometime during the year, the eighth-grade boys descended on the seventh-grade girls’ dressing room and nobody could stop them. They’d go on a rampage, stealing bras and panties and things, and we were always afraid they were going to come roaring through while we were naked. They never did.”

  I stood listening with my mouth half open. Way back in Aunt Sally’s time, then—when Moses was alive, practically—there were initiations, ceremonies, that scared you to death.

  “Had they every really done it?” I asked her.

  “Everybody said they had, but I never met anyone who had actually seen it happen. But Alice, I was so shy and scared that I always dressed and undressed in a curtain.”

  “A curtain?”

  Aunt Sally gave an embarrassed laugh. “The dressing room was divided into tiny cubicles, and each cubicle had a heavy white curtain in front of it. I would always wrap the curtain around me, sort of hold it closed with my chin, and take off my clothes inside it, so that if the eighth-grade boys came running through, I could hold the curtain tight and they wouldn’t see anything.”

  I think I understood Aunt Sally a little better after that.

  We were soon going to be tested on the four exercises in P.E., though. The teacher had already told us that in order to get a C for the grading period, each girl had to pass three out of the four. Elizabeth, Pamela, and I were really scared we might not make that C. We’d mastered the ring swing and the rope climb, but we’d given up completely on the wall kick. That left only the frog stand to see us through.

  I invited the girls over one afternoon to practice. We pushed the folding table against the wall in the dining room, and then, one at a time, squatted down and tried balancing on our hands while the other two girls gave pointers.

  Surprisingly, I was the one who got it first. It’s sort of like learning to ride a bike, I guess. First you tip too far one way, and then you tip too far the other, and finally you learn what you have to do to be perfectly balanced, and after you get the feel of it, it’s not so hard.

  ?
??Croak!” I said, squatting there with my rear end and heels off the floor.

  Pamela got it next. She teetered back and forth a couple of times, and then, there she was, heels up, her weight resting on her hands. “Croak, croak!” said Pamela.

  But Elizabeth just couldn’t get it. She was either tipping forward, landing on her head, or tipping backward, landing on her rear. Even when Pamela and I steadied her from either side, like training wheels, Elizabeth went down the minute we let go. She collapsed in tears.

  “I just can’t do it!” she sobbed.

  “Elizabeth, relax,” I said. “Maybe you’re trying too hard.”

  “I’m going to fail gym!” she wailed. “They can keep me in every day after school for a year, but I’ll never be able to do it. My body’s unbalanced or something.”

  We tried explaining to her that everybody has a different center of gravity, and that one way or another, she’d find what was right for her. Elizabeth went on bawling.

  “W-when you go on to high school and I’m still back in seventh grade, will you come visit me?” she wept.

  “Blow your nose, Elizabeth, and try it some more,” I said. “Remember when you first learned to ride a bike or skate? Once you got it, you got it. It’ll happen.”

  And it did, about fifteen minutes later. Just after Pamela had mastered the art of not only balancing but of taking a few steps on her hands, Elizabeth shrieked that she had done it, only to fall over on her nose. But she tried again, balanced again, and once she knew what it felt like, she did it a third time and a fourth.

  “Croak!” said Elizabeth happily.

  “Croak! Croak!” I said, balancing beside her.

  “Croak, croak, croak!” said Pamela, waddling around the dining room, her rear end bobbing up and down.

  Suddenly we all froze, because there in the hallway was Lester, jacket in his hand.

  “Don’t tell me, let me guess,” he said, closing the door behind him.

  Elizabeth promptly gave a little squeal that sounded like air going out of a tire, and fell over on her side. Pamela shrieked and fell backward.

  “A handsome prince came by to kiss you, and this is what happened,” Lester said.

  Before I could explain, Elizabeth and Pamela had rolled across the floor toward the kitchen, stumbled to their feet, and locked themselves in the pantry.

  A pantry, I found out when we first moved into this house, is a little closet off the kitchen, where cooks used to store their food.

  “We’re practicing the frog stand for P.E.,” I told Lester, “and we finally got it.”

  “Shall I open a bottle of champagne or something?” he said, and went right out to the kitchen.

  “What are you doing?” I asked, knowing that Elizabeth and Pamela wouldn’t come out until he left.

  “Making myself some lunch,” he said. “I had a one o’clock exam this afternoon and haven’t had anything since breakfast.”

  I figure he’d put a pizza in the microwave, take it upstairs, and turn on his stereo. Instead, he opened the refrigerator door and stood there, talking out loud to himself. “Shall I make eggs Benedict,” he said, “or boil some pasta? The pasta’s quickest, but . . . naw. Why don’t I go all out and make pancakes from scratch? Blueberry pancakes. I’ll have to thaw the blueberries in hot water, but I could get the griddle going, and—”

  Suddenly the door to the pantry flew open and, like marathon runners, Elizabeth and Pamela bolted to the front hall, their faces red as Santa’s britches. I ran after them as far as the porch.

  “Tell Lester I will never forgive him as long as I live,” said Pamela. “He just did that on purpose.”

  I went back inside. “Pamela says she will never forgive you as long as she lives,” I repeated.

  “Good,” said Lester.

  On the day of the test, the P.E. instructor walked along the girls seated on the floor, drawing imaginary lines between groups and naming each one: “Group A here, Group B, Group C over here, and Group D.”

  She took four clipboards and handed one to each group. “I want you to grade yourselves on the four exercises we’ve been learning. Each girl, for each exercise, should receive either a pass or fail, and after class, I want to see each girl who did not pass at least three.”

  I was glad I hadn’t happened to be sitting next to Denise Whitlock and two of her friends. They were all in the same group, though, and I knew right off they’d pass one another whether they could do the exercises or not. It wasn’t fair.

  I didn’t know any of the girls in my group except Elizabeth. I think most of them were eighth and ninth graders, and one of them had done the wall kick perfectly the first time she tried it. I felt like an elephant in a field with deer. But I passed the three I expected to, and then, when our group finished early, we sat watching the girls in the other groups.

  It really made me angry the way Denise and her friends were passing one another. Denise only made it halfway up the rope climb, but her friends wrote “pass” beside her name. She couldn’t do the frog stand, either, not for more than half a second, but they passed her on that, too. When she sent to do the wall kick, she went lumbering toward the cinderblock wall, got one foot only inches up, stumbled over it with her other foot, and landed on her stomach with a loud “Oof!”

  I saw a number of girls smile, but I was the only one who laughed. I couldn’t help it. It wasn’t a loud laugh, not a long laugh, but a quick chortle of pure delight.

  Every dog has its day, a line came to me. Now where had I heard that before? From Aunt Sally? Something my own mother used to say?

  When Denise got her breath back, she sat down and wouldn’t try it again. The instructor came over to be sure she was okay. I pressed my lips together to stop the smiling. It was worth the ring swing, the rope climb, the wall kick, and the frog stand just to see Denise fall flat on her stomach. It was worth all the torture of the past few weeks just to hear that “Oof” when she landed.

  When I was in the shower later, though, I didn’t feel that good about it anymore, because the feud with Denise Whitlock stood in the way of my goal for seventh grade. So far I got along with all my teachers, even Mr. Hensley. I hadn’t had any quarrels with Pamela or Elizabeth, and Patrick and I were still good friends. I could honestly say that I was on good terms with everyone in junior high school except for Denise Whitlock and her gang.

  I wished that whatever problems you had could be washed away in a hot shower. Too fat? Too skinny? Too tall? Too short? Too loud? Too shy? Just step in the magic shower, turn on the water, and you’d come out perfect.

  I’d been in there longer than I should have, so I quickly turned the water off and reached for my towel. My fingers felt along the shower rod but didn’t find it. I moved the curtain aside to see if it had fallen on the floor. It wasn’t there. I knew without asking that Denise and her friends had come by while I was in there and made off with my towel.

  I was late already, but I had to come out of the shower naked, go out into the dressing area in front of all the other girls who were standing outside their cubicles now, pulling on their jeans and tying their sneakers. I had to go back up to the towel desk and ask for another.

  A piercing wolf whistle rattled the windows of the dressing area, and I heard some girls laugh. I knew it wasn’t eighth-grade boys coming in for a raid, but I almost wished it was. I’d simply roll myself up in a dressing room curtain the way Aunt Sally used to do and let them come. But there was nothing to roll up in to protect myself from Denise, and the war went on and on.

  9

  MOTHER ALICE

  ON WEDNESDAY, LESTER WAS REALLY SICK. I went over to Pamela’s for a couple hours after school, and when I got home, Lester was lying on the couch, one arm dangling off the side, his fingers curled on the rug.

  “You cooking tonight or am I?” I asked. When he didn’t answer, I walked over to see if he was breathing.

  “Pizza,” I said in his ear. “Hot pepperoni pizza dripping with cheese.”


  His back was moving up and down, but he still didn’t open his eyes.

  “Ice cold Coca-Cola,” I said, six inches from his face.

  He didn’t budge.

  “Marilyn in a bikini.”

  When he gave no sign that he was even conscious, I put one hand on his forehead. It was warm as cocoa.

  For the first time in my life, I was worried about Lester. Really worried, I mean. He wasn’t sick very often, and then it was usually only a cold. I guess I figured that because he was eight years older than me, he could take care of himself. Now he couldn’t even open his eyes.

  I shook his arm. “Lester? You okay?”

  “Unngghh,” he said finally, his mouth half buried in the couch cushion.

  “Les,” I said, “you’re burning up.”

  He licked at his lips. I kept pestering him, shaking his arm until he finally opened one eye.

  “Should I call Dad? You’re really sick.”

  He rolled over on his side and put one hand on his throat. “It’s sore,” he said.

  “You ought to be in bed,” I told him.

  He tried to sit up, then fell back. “I’ve got a date with Marilyn. What time is it?”

  “Time for you to see a doctor, Les. I’m worried. Feel your head!”

  “I’m okay,” he said, but his voice was raspy. “Go call the cleaner’s, will you, and see if my shirts came back?”

  I went to the phone and called Dad. He said he’d be home in fifteen minutes, not to let Lester out of the house, and that he didn’t have the brains of a cocker spaniel.

  I imagined having to put my bicycle chain around one of Lester’s ankles and padlock him to the sofa, but it wasn’t necessary. When I came back in the room, he was on his stomach again, eyes closed, and didn’t even speak.