Dootsie was jabbering in Perry’s face as I walked in. Perry looked past her ear and gave me a smile and turned to Stephanie. “This is her,” he said.
This is her.
Stephanie looked up at me. Her red hair was especially bright in the fluorescent light. She pulled a string of cheese from her chin and fed it into her mouth. She wiped her fingertips on a napkin and jabbed her hand out to me. Her smile looked unforced. “It’s really Stargirl? Your name?”
I shook her hand. “Really,” I said.
“Homeschool, huh?”
“Yes.”
She wagged her head. “Too bad.”
“How’s that?” I said.
“We could use you at the high school. We need some fascinating people there.” She flung the word “fascinating” across the table at Perry, her eyes flaring for an instant. She turned back to me, smiled. “We already have enough boring ones.”
Perry said, “I didn’t say ‘fascinating.’”
She pistol-pointed at him. “That’s right. He said you were weird.” She chuckled and picked a pepperoni disk from her slice and pitched it across the table. Perry caught it in his mouth. It could not have been done so neatly without a lot of practice. “I’d hit him if I were you.”
“I told her you were interesting,” Perry said to me.
Dootsie wanted attention. She rose up on Perry’s lap. She grabbed him by the ears and swung his face to hers. “I’m telling you how I won.”
The word “interesting” fluttered about my head.
“Sit,” said Stephanie.
I sat. I felt like I was auditioning.
A blood-splattered hag appeared at the table. “Hello, Alvina,” I said, but she was focused only on Perry. Perry had just picked up a slice of pizza and was about to chomp into it when Alvina snatched it from his hand. “Yo,” he said, “take that one.” He pointed to the last piece on the platter. “I want this one,” she said, and bit into it.
“She beats up boys,” Dootsie told Perry.
Alvina took the last empty chair.
“Congratulations on your honorable mention,” I said.
“I stunk,” she said.
“I won!” said Dootsie.
“Where are your parents?” I asked Alvina.
“They went home.”
“Out alone at night,” said Stephanie. “Big girl.”
Dootsie piped, “She is a big girl. Look.” She grabbed Alvina’s little finger and displayed the fancy fingernail.
Stephanie whistled. “Impressive.”
Dootsie reached across the table and plucked the last pepperoni disk from Stephanie’s slice. “Open,” she commanded Perry, and from a distance of one inch she tossed it into his mouth.
Alvina picked a pepperoni from her own slice and pitched. She missed. Dootsie picked the piece from Perry’s lap and handed it back to Alvina. This time Alvina held the piece out to Perry’s lips. He took it between his teeth. He tugged. She held it for a second, then let it go. I wondered if he still believed she didn’t have a crush on him.
“Looks like I’m the only girl at the table who hasn’t fed Perry tonight,” I said.
Then a voice behind me: “Hi.”
It was Ponytail. With a zombie.
“Ooh, yum,” said Ponytail. She grabbed the last slice and took a big bite. “How’d you know I wanted pepperoni?”
Zombie snatched the slice from Ponytail, folded it, and stuffed the whole thing into her mouth. She said something that came out: “Yuh yuh yuh yuh.”
All the girls started laughing and swatting playfully at each other. There didn’t seem to be any animosity among them. Suddenly Zombie leaned in to Perry and gave him a long kiss on the lips. Dootsie folded her arms and glared at the smoochers. Alvina looked the other way, as if the chair beside her were empty. She pretended to be searching for someone in the restaurant. Finally, while the kiss was still going on, she popped up and left. I wished I could have too. Zombie somehow managed to take Alvina’s vacated seat while continuing to kiss Perry. Finally Dootsie snarled, “That’s e-nuff,” and pushed Zombie’s face away.
More laughter.
“Who’s the little chick?” said Ponytail.
“Miss Dootsie Pringle,” I said.
“I’m not a little chick,” said Dootsie. “I’m Mrs. Blob.”
Perry gestured toward me. “And this is Stargirl.”
“I thought so,” said Ponytail. “Cool name.”
“Thanks,” I said.
“Your parents name you that?”
“I did.”
“And it’s okay with them?”
“Sure.”
“Cool parents. Your mother homeschools you, huh?”
Was there anyone Perry hadn’t blabbed to?
“Yes,” I said.
“Cool. Did you ever go to real school?”
“Homeschool is real school,” Perry said.
She stuck her tongue out at Perry, then turned a friendlier face to me. “You know what I mean.”
I nodded. “I know. Yes. I went to a regular high school last year.”
“Yeah? Where?”
“Arizona.”
The girls boggled. “Really?” said Stephanie. “What was that like?”
“Hot.”
Zombie snickered. “You mean the guys?”
I thought: One guy.
I said, “I mean the weather.”
“Didn’t like it?” said Ponytail. “That why you’re back to homeschooling?”
“It didn’t go as well as I had expected,” I said.
Zombie said, “But don’t you miss, like, the people? Other kids?”
“I’m with people a lot,” I said.
“I’m a people,” said Dootsie. “I’m a human bean.” She clamped Perry’s nose between her fingers and twisted hard.
Perry yelped: “Oww!”
Dootsie wagged her finger in his face. “Don’t let me catch you kissing any more girls.”
Zombie smirked. “That’ll be the day.”
“Looks like you have a new girlfriend,” said Stephanie. Then she turned to me, but she didn’t speak. She just looked at me. She seemed faintly amused. Finally she said, “So. Stargirl. What do you think?”
Everyone’s eyes were on me.
“Think about what?” I said.
“About joining Perry’s harem?”
I don’t know how long I sat there looking like a doofus before Dootsie finally rescued me. “What’s a harem?” she said.
Ponytail, the only one left standing, reached down and button-pressed Dootsie’s nose. “A harem is when a bunch of girls all like the same guy.”
Zombie stuck her finger in Perry’s ear. “Even if the guy’s a wing nut.”
Ponytail laid a hand on my shoulder. “Little Perry over there doesn’t want to get serious about anybody—”
“—so he’s semi-serious about a bunch of us,” said Stephanie.
“Perry’s a rolling stone,” said Zombie. “He belongs to nobody. Right, Per?”
Perry kept his usual stone face, but I could tell he was enjoying all this. The winky looks I was getting from the girls made me wonder if he had told them about our night on the roof. I hoped not.
Zombie poked him. “Tell her your nickname, Per.”
Perry sniffed. “You tell her.”
She grinned. “Dandy.”
I looked at Perry. “Dandy?”
“As in dandelion,” said Zombie.
“As in flower,” said Ponytail. “As in a flower that attracts lots of honeybees.” She looked at the others, grinning. “And we are—ta-da!” Each of the three girls hoisted a leg onto the table to show nickel-size black and yellow tattoos of honeybees on their ankles. They looked fake, the wash-off type. I hoped they were.
“And Dandy”—Zombie pinched his cheek—“is the flower.”
Ponytail snapped her fingers. “Hey—” She pointed at me. “Stargirl—” She pointed at herself and the others. “We could be…Perry girls!
”
Stephanie and Zombie did a drumroll on the tabletop. “Yes!”
Stephanie was staring at me. “She thinks we’re kidding.”
Ponytail studied me. “She thinks we’re lying.”
Zombie poked Perry. “Are we lying, Dandy?”
Perry looked at me. He nodded. “They’re lying.”
“I lie,” said Dootsie, but her confession was lost in the laughter and playful battering Perry took from the three girls.
“There’s only one thing about Perry Delloplane that’s a lie,” said Stephanie.
I took the bait. “What’s that?”
“He didn’t really go to boot camp. He went to—” She looked at the others and swept her arms like an orchestra conductor, and on the downbeat they all belted out, “BOOTY CAMP!” and laughed and slapped hands.
Dootsie was fed up with being ignored, and now she saw her opening. She climbed onto the table and stood on the empty aluminum pizza platter. “I got a booty!” she proclaimed to everyone, and she hiked up her toga and started to wiggle and a dozen tiny gray Babars shimmied in our faces. Whistles and catcalls flew across the restaurant.
I stood. “Okay. That’s it.” I lifted her from the table. She protested. So did the girls. “It’s past your bedtime,” I told her. “Your parents are going to kill me.”
Patrons applauded as I carried her off. As we went out the door, she called back over my shoulder: “I won!”
On our way up Bridge Street we passed a Laundromat. A lady was sitting inside, reading a magazine. In front of her, two dryers were running. Behind the portholes clothes were tumbling…tumbling…
Like me.
August 25
The mockingbird does not dump me. The mockingbird has no harem. The mockingbird takes nothing, demands nothing. The mockingbird does nothing but give—give its song. After listening to the mockingbird all day, I feel Mockingbird is now my second language. I offer here the world’s first Mockingbird-to-English translation, as recorded late this afternoon:
“Ha ha ho ho hee hee! Wait’ll you hear this one. Beep! Beep! I feel like crooning. Bah bah bah bah boo! Barry Manilow, eat your heart out. Hey hey the gang’s all here! Ha ha ho ho hee hee! Don’tcha just love me? Hey hey the gang’s—hey, where’s the gang? Who needs ’em anyway. Bababababaaaaa bababababooooo. Hey, I just heard a cat-bird the other day. Check this out: meow meow. Nailed it, didn’t I? Carnegie Hall, eat your heart out. Heeheehahahoho. And now, ladies and germs, my impression of a cow-bird: Meowmoo! Meowmoo! Thank you thank you. No need to stand when you applaud. Don’tcha just love me? Hotcha hotcha hotcha!”
August 29
First day of school. I’m now a retired gardener. And Dootsie starts first grade. I hope her teacher got a lot of rest over the summer.
The public school kids will have just a half day. Not this homeschooler. My mother doesn’t believe in half days. “You either have a day or you don’t,” she says. “Is education so scary they feel they have to sneak up on it? Doesn’t it bother anybody to cut time in half?”
I guess all this led her to my first assignment of the new school year…
FIELD TRIP:
THE CLOCK ON THE MORNING LENAPE BUILDING
Must clocks be circles?
Time is not a circle.
Suppose the Mother of All Minutes started
right here, on the sidewalk
in front of the Morning Lenape Building, and the parade
of minutes that followed—each of them, say, one inch long—
headed out that way, down Bridge Street.
Where would Now be? This minute?
Out past the moon?
Jupiter?
The nearest star?
Who came up with minutes, anyway?
Who needs them?
Name one good thing a minute’s ever done.
They shorten fun and measure misery.
Get rid of them, I say.
Down with minutes!
And while you’re at it—take hours
with you too. Don’t get me started
on them.
Clocks—that’s the problem.
Every clock is a nest of minutes and hours.
Clocks strap us into their shape.
Instead of heading for the nearest star, all we do
is corkscrew.
Clocks lock us into minutes, make Ferris wheel
riders of us all, lug us round and round
from number to number,
dice the time of our lives into tiny bits
until the bits are all we know
and the only question we care to ask is
“What time is it?”
As if minutes could tell.
As if Arnold could look up at this clock on
the Lenape Building and read:
15 Minutes till Found.
As if Charlie’s time is not forever stuck
on Half Past Grace.
As if a swarm of stinging minutes waits for Betty Lou
to step outside.
As if love does not tell all the time the Huffelmeyers
need to know.
My mother raved over it. She put it on the refrigerator. “Wait,” she said, and left. She came back with her wristwatch and a hammer. We went out back. “You want to do it?” she said.
“Okay,” I said.
I laid the watch on the bottom step. I hit it with the hammer. The crystal cracked, that was all.
“Here,” she said, taking the hammer from me. She wound up like Paul Bunyan and down came the hammer and to pieces went the watch. Minutes flew off like fleas.
I did the same to my watch. We got a garden trowel and buried the pieces. We took down all the clocks in the house and dumped them in the trash.
“I don’t have to tear down Calendar Hill, do I?” I said.
“No,” she said. “That’s real time.”
August 30
Two more porch lights have joined the Cantellos’ along the way to Calendar Hill. Curious.
September 1
I sliced an orange in half.
In the back of our backyard sits a barbecue pit. It came with the house. We haven’t used it yet. It’s made of brick. The top row of bricks is almost as high as me. That’s where I placed an orange half, sliced side up.
September 3
Margie herself was sweeping the floor today.
“Where’s Alvina?” I asked her.
She leaned on the broom, sighed, wagged her head. “I fired her.”
(Can you be “fired” from a job that pays you in donuts?)
“What happened?” I said.
“Fighting with those boys again. I told her too many times already. Don’t bring that stuff into my shop. One more time and you’re gone. She can’t say I didn’t warn her.”
“She’s a pip,” I said.
“Tell me about it.” She stared at me. “So…you want a job?”
“Not this one.”
“I’d pay you real money. Plus donuts.”
“I love your donuts too much to be around them all the time,” I told her. “If I worked here, smelling them, eating them every day, they would stop being so special to me. When I walk in your door I want to be thrilled.”
She looked at me as if I were daffy. She shrugged—“Okay, have it your way”—and went on sweeping.
I thought of Betty Lou. Who would bring her donuts every Monday now? I asked Margie.
“Same as always,” she said. “I’d never forget Betty Lou. When I fired the kid, she said she’s still gonna come for Betty Lou’s donuts on Mondays. Fine, I said.”
Good for you, Alvina, I thought.
“Sounds like she’s not mad at you for firing her,” I said.
“She’s never mad at me,” she said. “She knows I don’t take any guff.”
“So,” I said, “you know Betty Lou?”
“Sure. We graduated together. She was a looker in those days. Dogwood Festival. She was in the Court.”
“She told me.”
“Should have been Queen.”
“Really?”
“Really. Her problem was, she wasn’t flashy enough. Her hair was mousy. Plain clothes. No pizzazz. Shy. Never talked. The best-looking girl in the class, but you had to strain to see it. It’s a wonder she made the Court. Probably got the votes of all the other shy violets.”
Margie was at the counter now, using a marker on a sheet of paper. She held it up to me. It said HELP WANTED. She found a roll of tape and fixed it to the shopwindow. She gave the front door a punch. “Doggone that girl. She was a great sweeper.”
September 5
Speaking of Alvina…
I got a phone call today from her mother. She started off saying Alvina “always speaks well” of me and that I seem to be one of the few friends she has these days. She said she appreciated how I handled the Calamity of the Broken Fingernail, and she was very happy with my work in the garden. Which was all very nice, but I wondered what she was getting at. She asked me if I knew Alvina had been “dismissed” from her job at Margie’s. I said yes, I had heard. She said did I know Alvina had been home from school today? I said no. She said, “Well, she was. She was suspended for one day.” Her voice snagged on the word “suspended.”
“Can you guess why?” she said.
“Fighting?” I said, maybe too quickly.
“Yes,” she said. “And the school year is just beginning. I’m afraid to think what lies ahead. She seems to be getting worse.”
I thought of Alvina’s stare down with Dootsie across the table at Margie’s. I thought of her promise to continue delivering Betty Lou’s donuts even after she’d been fired. “Mrs. Klecko,” I said, “I know I don’t have any business saying this to you because you already knew it long before me, but Alvina is a good kid. I think there’s nothing wrong that a little time won’t cure. I think she’s just sort of caught between dolls and boys.”
There was silence on the other end of the line. I got the impression that Mrs. Klecko was composing herself. Finally she said, “Thank you. I think so too. At least I hope so. In the meantime”—she gave a little chuckle—“we’ve all got to live through it, don’t we?”
I chuckled. “That we do.”