Thirteen

“Of course,” Dad said. “Winnie, can you get Ty some chocolate milk?”

  On the outside, I was a rock. On the inside, I was seething. My chair screeched on the floor as I pushed it back, and Mom winced. Get over it, I thought. This is the life you picked for yourself, so buck up and deal.

  At Kool Kuts for Kids, Ty first picked the fire engine chair to sit in, then changed his mind and insisted on switching to the game chair, where he could play Nintendo while the lady cut his hair. Not that he knew how to play Nintendo. He was woefully behind in little boy skills like steering monkey-mobiles over winding rainbow racetracks.

  But when the lady turned on the razor, Ty threw down the controller and clamped his arms over his head.

  “I changed my mind,” he said. “No haircut!”

  The lady looked at Dad. Dad looked at me.

  “Ty,” I said. “You’re already in the chair.”

  “No!” Ty said. “No no no no no!”

  Other parents stared. Dad shifted uncomfortably. Mom usually headed up these outings, the upshot being that Dad kind of didn’t know how to do it.

  “Ty, you need your hair cut,” he said.

  “Not unless Winnie does,” Ty said stubbornly.

  “Ty,” I said.

  “Winnie, just get a trim,” Dad said.

  “What? No way!”

  “If she’s not, then I’m not!” Ty said. He drummed his heels against the metal base of the chair.

  The haircutting lady let her wrist go limp, so that the razor dangled like a dead mouse. Her expression conveyed both contempt and impatience, which I didn’t think was very good for someone who worked at a haircutting place for kids. They should only hire nice people, people who knew that not everything was perfect every second of the day, and that yes, sometimes even almost-seven-year-olds threw fits.

  “Just a trim,” Dad said to me. “Is it really such a big deal?”

  “Yes,” I said. “Ty’s being a pain. You need to be talking to him, not me!”

  “He’s going through a phase,” Dad said. Which was true—Ty was going stir-crazy like the rest of us.

  “I’m not getting my hair cut, Dad. It’s important.” I tried to communicate with my eyes the whole Locks of Love thing, because I didn’t want to say it out loud. Saying it out loud would taint it, given the ickiness of this situation.

  Dad rubbed his temples. I felt sorry for him, but I also thought, Hey, he’s your son, not mine. And it’s your wife who got you into this.

  “Then would you reason with him?” he said. “Your mother’s going to kill me if I bring him home looking like a street urchin.”

  “Street urchin.” Mom’s term. Geez, she cracked the whip even when she wasn’t present.

  “I want to look like a street urchin,” Ty said. “I like street urchins.”

  “Stop lying,” I said. “Why don’t you want to get your hair cut, for real?”

  Ty glanced at Dad. Then he glanced at the haircutter lady.

  I stepped closer, bending down and putting my ear way up close.

  “My hair is my friend,” he said, his breath hot. “I will miss it.”

  Oh, god. It was the fingernail thing all over again. Only the fingernail thing hadn’t truly been about his fingernails…so what was truly bothering him now?

  “Are you feeling sad about something?” I asked.

  He hesitated, then nodded.

  “What is it?”

  “Nothing.”

  “Something.”

  He picked up the Nintendo controller. He wiggled the joystick. I straightened up in frustration.

  “Sir?” the haircutter lady said to Dad. Her tone suggested that there were other children waiting, children who would be happy to get their hair cut and be given a cheap balloon.

  Ty beckoned. I lowered my ear back into range.

  “I don’t want Mom to break into pieces,” he whispered.

  I was confused. He didn’t want Mom to break into…?

  Then I got it. Ohhhh.

  “Ty, Mom’s not going to break into pieces. She’s not going to break at all.”

  “But last night—”

  “She didn’t mean like that, like a plate or something. She meant that if we didn’t start behaving, she’d get so overwhelmed that she’d…” I broke off, imagining Mom in a nuthouse. I imagined her rocking back and forth like a Weeble Wobble and never washing her hair.

  “She’d what?” Ty asked.

  “Never mind. Nothing’s going to happen to Mom.”

  “How do you know?”

  “Because I do. Because I’m your big sister.”

  “Oh.”

  “So…are you ready to get your hair cut? We’re holding people up.”

  Once more, Ty hooked his finger to draw me close. He whispered into my ear.

  “Ty,” I said, after absorbing his request.

  He made begging hands. “Please?”

  I rolled my eyes and headed for the door of the salon.

  “Where are you going?” Dad said.

  “He’s going to get his hair cut,” I assured him. “Just give me a sec.”

  I went to our car and rooted around in the backseat until I found a grubby plastic bag with a few lonely animal cracker crumbs in it. I turned the bag inside-out over the asphalt and emptied it as best I could.

  “Here,” I said when I was back inside the salon.

  The haircutter lady was confused. “Why are you giving me that?”

  “For his hair. He wants to keep it.”

  She blanched. She turned to Dad, who shrugged. Then she turned to her coworker, and the look she gave her said Why me? as clear as day. Reluctantly she accepted the bag, pinching the uppermost edge with thumb and forefinger.

  “Thank you, Winnie,” Dad said as the lady shaved Ty’s head and shook the clumps of brown hair into the plastic bag. “You’re the best.”

  I raised my eyebrows. “Tell that to your wife, will you?”

  For the entire next week, Ty kept his bag of hair safe and close. He placed it beside him on the sofa when he watched TV. He snuck it into his lap during dinner. He cuddled it like a teddy bear when he slept. At his birthday party, which was at the Buddy Factory, he tried to persuade Mom to buy his hair bag one of the cute buddy outfits or at least a pair of shoes.

  “No, and don’t ask again,” Mom said, balancing a Tupperware container of cupcakes and a bag of plastic dinosaurs.

  “That thing is vile,” Sandra said the following afternoon during a halfhearted game of M&M Monopoly, which Ty had gotten as a present. It was still boiling hot outside, and Sandra was pissy because Bo had canceled their trip to Lake Lanier. The heat had thrown his Jeep into vapor lock—or something oil-and-gasket-y like that—and he was busy doing boy stuff to fix it.

  “It really is, Ty,” I said. “It’s disgusting.” It was a cold hard fact that hair looked far prettier when it was actually on someone’s head. In a bag, it looked dull and scuzzy. It didn’t help that Ty was constantly fondling the hair through the plastic, molding the individual strands into a fat mud-colored sausage.

  “It’s like a hair turd,” Sandra said. She threw her Monopoly money into the center of the board with a gesture of finality, and I followed suit. Our game was going nowhere.

  Ty opened the bag and plopped his hair turd onto the table.

  “Put that thing away,” Sandra said. “It smells!”

  Ty lifted it to his nose. “No, it doesn’t.”

  “Yeah-huh,” Sandra said. “It smells like poop.”

  “Really?” Ty asked.

  She grabbed it and sniffed, then tossed it back. It held its shape alarmingly well. “No, but it does smell musty. You’re seven years old now. You need to throw it away.”

  Ty turned to me. “Does my real hair smell musty?”

  I leaned toward him and inhaled. “Ugh. Yes!”

  Ty giggled. He loved being musty. “Look,” he said, holding the hair turd above his upper lip. “It’s a mustache.”

 
I guided his hand down to his chin. “Now it’s a beard. You look like Santa Claus.”

  “No, you look like a pervert,” Sandra said. “With musty hair.”

  “What’s a pervert?” Ty asked.

  Mom strode into the kitchen. “Hey, kids. What are you guys up to?”

  “We’re playing Monopoly,” Ty said.

  “We were playing Monopoly,” Sandra clarified. She pushed back her chair, but didn’t stand up. “I’m going to call Bo and see if his Jeep’s fixed. As soon as I get enough energy.”

  I peered at Mom from beneath my bangs and stayed quiet, because I was still feeling hostile toward her. Or not hostile, exactly, but…something. In the deepest fiber of my being I knew I loved her. I mean, of course. She was my mom. But she’d been acting so strange recently, and it had twisted that easy love into a more complicated shape.

  She hadn’t repeated her crazy-lady screaming episode, but yesterday I’d found her in her walk-in closet, sitting with her back to the wall and her knees drawn to her chest. I’d come to ask if I could go swimming with Dinah and Cinnamon, but seeing her like that made the question fly from my brain.

  “Mom?” I’d said. “Are you hiding?”

  At least she had the decency to blush. “I just…”

  “You just what?”

  “I needed a moment to myself.” There were circles under her eyes, and she was hiding in her closet. My mother.

  “You’re not having a breakdown, are you?” I said. I felt angry before she even answered.

  “I don’t know. Maybe,” she said. Not the reassurance I was looking for.

  She caught my reaction and sighed. “No, Winnie, I’m not having a breakdown. I sometimes wish I could have a breakdown, but I’m not constitutionally wired that way. Unfortunately.”

  I narrowed my eyes. She was digging herself into a hole.

  “You look pale,” I accused.

  “My stomach’s been a little queasy,” she admitted.

  Whoa, whoa, whoa, I thought, an insane idea blooming in my brain. Mood swings? Queasy tummies?

  “Holy pickles, you’re not pregnant, are you?”

  Mom’s lips twitched. “‘Holy pickles’?”

  “Are you?!”

  “No, Winnie, I’m not pregnant. I’m just hot and queasy and ready for summer to be over. Now—did you need something?”

  That dose of weirdness had happened yesterday. Today, from my spot at the kitchen table, I studied her critically. Would we get Nice Mom or Psychotic Mom? Happy Mom or Grumpy Mom?

  I hadn’t seen Happy Mom in a long time.

  She spotted Ty’s hair turd. “Ty, put that thing back in the bag now,” she said. “You’re going to get hair everywhere.”

  Ty’s lip trembled. I dropped my eyes.

  Almost as if she’d read my thoughts—which was that she was a mean mother, and she should just move to Mexico if she hated us so much—she softened her expression and tried again.

  “Sweetie, I’m sorry,” she said, coming over and giving Ty a leaning-down hug. “I didn’t mean to snap at you.”

  “You used your sharp voice,” he said.

  “I know. But I love you. So sorry, ’kay?”

  Ty stroked his hair turd. “It is my baby,” he said. “You have to be nice.” His mouth did that funny sideways thing that meant he was thinking. “His name is Jimbo.”

  “It’s a boy?” I said.

  “Yes, because it has a penis.”

  “It is a penis,” Sandra said under her breath.

  A bit of a smile poked through my mad-at-mom mood. The hair turd—Jimbo—did look a bit like a penis. More like a penis than a vagina, that’s for sure.

  Mom put her oh, you children face on, but it was more pretend than real. “Well, please put Jimbo back in his crib.”

  “Is his crib his bag?” Ty asked.

  “Yes. It’s time for his nap. Babies need a lot of sleep.”

  “Okay,” Ty said, tucking Jimbo in.

  “Winnie, can I talk to you for a sec?” Mom asked.

  Uh-oh. I hadn’t done anything wrong—but my stomach tightened as if I had.

  I followed her to the living room. She took a seat on the sofa and patted the spot beside her. I sat down, leaving a ribbon of space between us.

  “Winnie, I need to tell you something,” she said.

  My heart beat faster. “Okay.”

  She started to speak, then stopped. Twin spots of color blossomed in her cheeks.

  “What is it?” I said.

  “I am pregnant,” she said. She gave me a sheepish glance. “Can you believe it? Is that not the most ridiculous thing you’ve ever heard?”

  “You’re pregnant?” I repeated.

  “Uh-huh. Go figure.”

  “You’re pregnant.”

  “I’m pregnant, all right.”

  “Did you just find out, or did you already know?”

  “Your dad and I have known for about a week.”

  Oh, I thought, piecing it together. Since the screaming day. “So you lied to me, yesterday in the closet?”

  “I guess so,” she said. “That wasn’t good of me, was it?”

  “No, it wasn’t.”

  “But that’s why I’m telling you now.” She put her hand on my knee, and I looked at it. Her graceful long fingers. Her silver wedding band, because she’d always preferred silver to gold.

  “It wasn’t exactly a planned thing,” she said slowly, checking to see if I understood.

  Heat rushed to my skin as I caught her drift. Mother. Father. Sex.

  “Uh, okay,” I said.

  “But you know what? I love you kids more than anything in the world. Another baby will just add to the love.”

  Another baby. Another baby. I knew that’s what pregnant meant—duh—but the reality of it suddenly sunk in. Forget the sex, forget the lying…Mom was having a baby!

  “I’m going to have a new brother or sister!” I exclaimed.

  “And I’m going to have a new son or daughter.” She smiled. “Holy pickles!”

  “Do you know yet? Which it’ll be?”

  “I’m only eight weeks along. We won’t know the baby’s sex for another couple of months.”

  “When is he or she due?” I asked. I was pretty sure that was the right term, “due.”

  “Well, the baby was conceived in June, so to figure out the due date, you count nine months further.”

  I did the calculation. My eyebrows shot up. “His birthday will be in March, just like me!”

  “Or hers, if it’s a girl. Isn’t that cool?”

  “As long as it’s not on the eleventh,” I qualified.

  “I’ll do my best,” Mom said.

  “Hey, Mo-o-m,” Sandra called from the kitchen. “Ty’s using your hairbrush to brush his hair turd! Just FYI!”

  “You mean Jimbo!” Ty yelled. “He was looking scraggly!”

  Mom groaned. “That thing really is revolting. One good thing about babies—they’re generally too little to collect hairballs.”

  I giggled. “Do they know? Sandra and Ty?”

  She shook her head. “You’re the first person I told. Other than your dad, of course.”

  “Oh.”

  She put her arm around me and drew me close. “Love you, Winnie.”

  “Love you, too.” I rested against her for a moment, long enough to inhale her perfume, then hopped to my feet and pulled her up.

  “Come on,” I said. “Let’s go tell them the news.”

  September

  THANK GOD YOU’RE HERE,” Cinnamon said, panting. She’d jogged up the hill to the stone bench south of the junior high building, our rendezvous spot for the first day of eighth grade. She, Dinah, and I had decided to meet early so that we could stride in as a group of three. But Dinah had yet to arrive.

  Cinnamon glanced around to make sure we were alone, then kicked her leg up like a Rockette. “Am I okay?” she asked.

  “Huh?” I said. She was wearing brown gauchos. They w
ere adorable and gave me serious doubts about my own wardrobe choices.

  “I got my period,” she said furtively. “This morning, like fifteen freaking minutes ago. Is that fair? Does God hate me?” She eyeballed me hard, then did another high-kick. I quick-checked for a telltale spot, then shook my head.

  “You’re good,” I said.

  She turned around, glancing at me from over her shoulder. “From the back?”

  I gave her a thumbs-up, noting with a sinking feeling how her white cami hit just right to reveal a sexy stripe of summer-tanned skin. “A-okay.”

  She faced me and slicked her hands through her hair. She’d gotten her period for the first time only last month, so she wasn’t yet completely with the program. And periods were hard, granted. They were a pain in the butt. No, a pain in the bagina—tee hee.

  Cinnamon and I both thought it was ironic that Cinnamon started her period right around the time that Mom’s period ceased. Cinnamon was excited for me about the new baby (Dinah was, too—even more so) but it drove home the point of what periods were all about. Cinnamon had turned green when she put it all together. “You mean babies eat blood?” she’d said. “That’s why your period goes away when you’re pregnant?”

  “No,” I said, making a you foolish mortal face. Of course, the only reason I knew this was because of the crash course Mom had given me when I’d posed the same question. “The baby gets its food from the mom’s umbilical cord. Whatever Mom eats, the baby eats. The period blood forms the lining of the uterus.”

  “Uh-huh,” Cinnamon said. “And the uterus…?”

  “Is where the baby lives. The womb.”

  “Oh,” Cinnamon said.

  It wasn’t often that out of the two of us, I was the more knowledgeable. But I’d had my period since seventh grade, and now I was the one with a preggo mom. So go figure.

  Being the resident menstruation expert meant zilch, however, when it came to the first day of the new school year. First days scared me. They always had. Even though we were eighth graders now—and therefore the top dogs of the junior high—there was still so much pressure! Especially since today would be my first time to see Lars in three months. Eeek, eek, eekie-eek!

  We’d talked on the phone since he’d gotten back from Prague, but only once. And it had been awkward.