“I didn’t know that!” I said as blood trickled down my leg and onto the bedspread.
“I think you’re supposed to wipe the shaving cream off first so you can see what you’re doing,” said Dawn.
Jody got some Band-Aids, and we stuck them in a row over the scrape. “I don’t think I’ll shave anymore,” I said.
“Oh, you have to!” Jody said. “Once you start shaving, you have to shave for the rest of your life.”
“What?” I cried.
“Once you shave, the hair grows back in real dark and coarse. That’s the thing about shaving,” Jody said.
“You didn’t tell me that!” I gulped.
Jody shrugged and shaved her other leg. “Well, I’m telling you now,” she said.
I stared down at my bandaged leg and felt like crying. Great. I would have one normal leg and one with a line of thick dark hair right down the front. I would be “Alice the Ape Girl” in high school. I would be “The Ape Lady” when I got to college.
Dawn and Megan didn’t even try to shave. I was angry at Jody, but it was her house so I couldn’t really say anything. We ate some more of our candy and brushed our teeth, and then Jody’s dad came upstairs and blew up the inflatable mattress. Her mother gave us some sheets and blankets and pillows.
When the lights were out, we tried to see if we could name all the kids in our fifth-grade class, first and last names both. We got all the girls’ names right, but we couldn’t remember all the boys.
Then Jody started dividing the girls into two groups: the “Okay” girls and the “Huh-uhs.” She’d name a girl, and then the other girls were supposed to say “Okay” or “Huh-uh.” But when we got to Rosalind, I was the only one who said “Okay.”
Jody and Dawn looked at me sort of pitifully.
“You’d better not hang around with girls like Rosalind when you get to junior high, Alice,” Jody said, “or you’ll get stuck with her. Nobody else will want you around.”
“Why?” I asked.
“You’ll get a reputation. Look at her! Do you want to look fat like that?”
“But I’m not! Anyone can see! I just like her! She makes me laugh.”
They gave me the pitiful look again. Even Megan did.
“In junior high you have to be careful how you look and how you dress and who you hang around with, Alice. It’s important,” Jody said knowingly.
“But what if you don’t want to dress like everybody else and do what everybody does?” I said. “That’s like being in the army! That’s like being in prison!”
Jody shrugged. “Well, if you want to go your whole life without the right friends, it’s okay with me,” she said.
I knew I was going to stay friends with Rosalind no matter what. I knew I was going to invite her over even if she weighed five hundred pounds. I wondered if Jody was right about junior high school, though. It scared me to think I had to be like everyone else.
“Bor-ing!” I said aloud, but Dawn was laughing about something else, and nobody heard. As the other girls drifted off to sleep, I heard a soft hiss of air. Around two o’clock in the morning I realized that the mattress was deflating, and by six, when I woke up again, it felt almost as flat as the party.
5
A COMMA WITHOUT A TAIL
I DIDN’T WANT ANYONE TO SEE THE LONG scrape on my leg. But when I went home the next day, I was reading the comics with my feet propped up on our big coffee table, and Dad said, “What did you do to your leg?”
I looked down and saw that he could see partway up my pant leg. I quickly set my foot on the floor. “Just a scratch,” I said.
“I thought I saw a couple of Band-Aids up there, Al. Let me see what you’ve done,” Dad said.
I think he worries about me more than most dads. Since Mom died, he probably worries about losing Lester and me.
“It’s nothing, Dad!” I said, but that only made him more determined. Lester lowered the sports page and watched while Dad tugged at my jeans to find first one, then two, then three… four… five Band-Aids marching in a column up my leg.
“What did you do? Try to climb over a barbed-wire fence or something?” Dad said. “I need to know, because this could get infected if you cut it on something dirty.”
“It was clean,” I said.
“What was it?”
I took a deep breath and held it. “A razor,” I said at last.
“A razor?” yelled Lester. “It wasn’t one of mine, was it?”
“No,” I said. “Jody was showing us how to shave our legs at the party.”
“Hoo boy!” breathed Lester.
Dad stared at me. “You’re only ten years old, for Pete’s sake! What’ll it be next?”
“Her armpits?” said Lester.
“Al, don’t try to grow up too fast,” said Dad.
“Don’t worry, I won’t,” I told him. I didn’t tell him I was going to develop a hairy leg and he’d probably have to put me in a freak show. One half of a hairy leg.
It was Rosalind who was really curious about what I did at Jody’s, though. She came over that afternoon—Sunday—and we went to the playground to sit on the swings and talk, even though it was chilly out.
“How was the sleepover?” she asked. There was no use pretending I didn’t know what she was talking about. Rosalind knows everything.
“It was okay,” I answered.
“Did you get a lot of candy trick-or-treating?” she said.
“Yeah. Did you?”
“Not too much. So what did you do at Jody’s?” she asked.
“Ate hamburgers. Watched a movie,” I told her. And then, because I knew she would find out somehow, I said, “Tried to shave our legs.” I showed her where I’d cut myself.
“They think they’re so grown up!” said Rosalind.
We were quiet for a minute, and I was afraid she’d ask why I’d gone to a party she wasn’t invited to, so I said, “Want to come back to the house and I’ll give you half my candy?”
“Okay,” said Rosalind.
And then I was ashamed of myself. Rosalind needed friends, not candy. But I gave it to her anyway.
Mrs. Swick didn’t look like she ever ate candy. She didn’t look like she ate at all. When November came and she still hadn’t laughed out loud once, Donald said he thought there was something wrong with her cheeks. Her lips. But I thought she looked sad. I walked by two teachers in the hall who were talking about her once, and I heard one of them say, “. . . such a shame.”
When everyone went out for recess one day, I stayed behind and asked if she knew what had happened to a girl who should have been in our class this year, a girl named Sara.
“No, I don’t,” she said. She was sitting with her chin in her hand, staring out the window.
I waited. “I think they had to leave their house because they couldn’t pay their rent,” I said.
She turned and looked at me then. “That’s really too bad,” she said. “Was she a good friend of yours?”
“Yes. I thought we’d go all the way through school together.”
Mrs. Swick gave me a little smile. “We don’t always get what we want in this life, do we, Alice?”
“No,” I said. “We don’t.”
Out on the playground I saw Mr. Dooley, our fourth-grade teacher, so I asked him about Sara. “Do you know what happened to her?” I said. “She was supposed to be in our class again this year, but she’s not.”
“I heard that her family went to live with a relative in North Carolina. Sara’s grandmother, I believe,” Mr. Dooley said.
“Then she’s not living in a tent! She’s not living in a car!” I said happily as he stared. “Thank you, Mr. Dooley!”
I went spinning around and around and went to find Rosalind. Then I spun her around too. “Sara’s at her grandmother’s,” I said, and we both danced right there on the sidewalk.
That afternoon in class something strange happened. During math Mrs. Swick was calling on different students to go
up front and put a problem on the board. Ollie Harris, a freckled guy, went up and so did a girl with glasses. But when Mrs. Swick called on Rosalind next, Rosalind just sat there with a strange look on her face.
“Rosalind?” Mrs. Swick said again. “Would you please go to the board and work out problem three?”
Rosalind just looked at her. Then she shook her head, got up, tied her sweater around her waist, and left the room.
We all stared. Rosalind had never done anything like that before. We looked at Mrs. Swick.
“Rosalind?” the teacher called. She got up and followed Rosalind out into the hall. From where I sat, I could see her talking to Rosalind. Mrs. Swick came back inside, but Rosalind didn’t.
“Alice,” Mrs. Swick said, “will you put problem three on the board and explain it for us?”
I was so worried about Rosalind, though, that I copied it wrong and had to do it over.
We finished math, but it wasn’t until we’d opened our history books that Rosalind came back. I kept trying to get her attention, but she wouldn’t even look at me. After a while Mrs. Swick called on Rosalind to read the next page, and after that, I guess, most of the kids forgot that she’d ever left the room.
When we traded spelling papers later, though, I asked, “What happened to you?”
“Tell you later,” she said.
After the bell rang, when we were putting on our jackets, I asked her again. “Why did you leave the room?”
And she whispered back, “Got my period and I leaked.”
“What?” I said.
Rosalind gave me a funny look, took down her lunch box from the shelf, and left the building.
I walked home with Donald Sheavers. Sometimes I do and sometimes I don’t. Last year I wanted him to play a romantic scene from a Tarzan movie with me, but every time he tried to kiss me, I got the giggles. Finally he got tired of trying and went home. Now, when he wants to embarrass me, he thumps his chest and gives a Tarzan yell. If he starts doing that, I won’t walk with him at all. If he acts halfway normal, I will.
“Sara’s not living in a tent or a car,” I told him. “She’s staying at her grandmother’s.”
“She could be living in a tent or a car at her grandmother’s,” said Donald.
You never win with Donald Sheavers.
Lester was there when I got home. He had books piled all over the coffee table and was studying for a test. Oatmeal was at the other end of the couch sleeping.
It’s Oatmeal who’s growing up too fast. Growing old too fast, anyway. She’s only two and a half years old, and all she wants to do is sleep. As I stroked her on the head and behind her ears, I wondered who I could ask about periods.
“Could I have Lisa’s phone number?” I asked Lester.
“No,” he said.
“Could I have Mickey’s, then? I need to ask her something.”
“What do you want to ask?”
I didn’t think Lester could help me much. “Do you remember a long time ago when I asked you what a period was?”
“Yeah? What’d I say?”
“A comma without a tail.”
“That’s a fact,” he said.
“Is there any other kind?”
“Ask Dad,” said Lester.
I forgot about it until we were in the middle of dinner that night. “Dad,” I asked, “what’s a period?”
“Are we talking punctuation here?” said Dad.
“No. Rosalind said she got her period.”
Dad glanced over at me. “Already? You do know about menstruation, don’t you, Al?”
“Is that what Kotex is all about?” I asked.
“Yes. When girls get to be a certain age, they release a little blood a few days each month.”
Release? Dad sounds so formal sometimes. I’d heard of releasing a prisoner or a herd of horses…
“You mean… like releasing floodgates or something?” I asked.
“Yeah, Al. When a girl gets her period, it’s like the destruction of the Hoover Dam,” said Lester.
“Les!” said Dad. “It’s just a small amount of blood, Alice. Nothing to worry about.”
“Then let’s discuss another topic,” said Lester.
But I wasn’t through yet. “When will I get periods?” I asked.
“Maybe around twelve or thirteen,” said Dad.
“Then why did Rosalind get hers?”
“Her body’s maturing a little faster, that’s all. Some girls may not begin till they’re sixteen or older.”
“Do boys get periods?” I asked.
“No.”
“That’s unfair!” I said.
“That’s life,” said Lester.
6
THE CHRISTMAS BURGLAR
EVERY CHRISTMAS IS THE SAME SINCE WE moved to Maryland. Dad calls his father and brothers down in Tennessee to wish them Merry Christmas, or Uncle Howard and Uncle Harold call here.
Then we call Aunt Sally and Uncle Milt on Mom’s side of the family, and we have to answer all Aunt Sally’s questions, like are we eating right and is Lester running with the wrong crowd and am I having my teeth checked regularly and stuff. If Carol, their daughter, is around, we get to talk to her, too, and that’s the fun part. But mostly it’s Aunt Sally who does the talking. She’s Mom’s older sister, and I know she promised she’d look after us when Mom died. Because we’re in Maryland now, though, and she’s in Illinois, that’s sort of hard for her to do.
But this Christmas I was worried about my cat. Last year I could dangle a piece of ribbon in front of Oatmeal and she’d leap and twist around and bat at the ribbon, trying to catch it. Now she just looked at it. Sometimes she’d roll over on her back and swat at it with her paw, but she wouldn’t jump.
“You’re no fun anymore,” I said, putting her in my lap and stroking her head. “What’s wrong, Oatmeal?”
She settled down, but even her purr didn’t seem as strong as it used to be. Sometimes when she followed me to the basement and then tried to go up again, she’d stop halfway on the stairs like she was out of breath. Now I tipped her head back and stared into her eyes. Green, like mine.
“Please don’t die, Oatmeal,” I whispered. “I couldn’t stand it if I lost one more thing I love.” She won’t die, I told myself. And I didn’t say a word about her to Dad or Lester.
We opened our gifts on Christmas morning in our robes and slippers. Every Christmas morning Dad makes pecan pancakes, and the rule is, we have to put something in our stomachs before we eat a lot of chocolate. But we can go the whole day in our pajamas if we want to, though we usually don’t.
I gave Dad some new aftershave lotion so he would smell nice for Elaine, and I gave Lester some cologne from the dollar store so he could smell nice for Lisa. Lester said thank you but did I mind if he returned it and got another kind, English Leather or something. I said it was okay with me if he’d rather smell like a horse.
Dad gave me a little pink radio and an overnight bag, and Lester gave me a denim pillow with ALICE embroidered on it in yellow yarn, with a yellow daisy for the dot over the i.
Then Dad made a roast, and when it was time for dinner, I mashed the potatoes and Lester made a salad. We’d bought a Mrs. Smith’s coconut pie for dessert. We lit a candle for our table while we ate, and we played our favorite Christmas music, some we just heard a few nights earlier at the Messiah Sing-Along. Dad loves going to that every year, because he says Christmas is a time for music and caroling. I knew he wished I could carry a tune. Lester can carry a tune, but he didn’t want to go caroling.
After dinner Dad went to see the woman named Elaine, and Lester went out too. He took Lisa Shane a present even though she doesn’t celebrate Christmas. That left me alone on Christmas night, but I didn’t care because I had a huge chocolate Santa all to myself, and I was enjoying every bite.
Dad said he’d be back by nine, and Lester said he’d be back by eleven. I was opening and closing the lid on a little basket of soaps that Aunt Sally had sent
me when someone rang the doorbell.
I’m not supposed to open the door to anyone I don’t know, and I’m especially not supposed to answer the door at night. If I turned on the porch light now, though, to see who it was and then didn’t open the door, the person out there would know I was in here. So I just stayed where I was on the couch, sniffing each of the bars of soap, trying to figure what kind of flower each smelled like.
The doorbell stopped ringing at last, and someone began knocking instead. I didn’t move a muscle. I didn’t make a sound.
Finally the knocking stopped and I heard footsteps going away. I let out my breath and went back to smelling the soap again. I had just taken another bite of my chocolate Santa when I heard a noise at the back door. And then… then . . . I heard the back door open.
The door! I had taken out the garbage and the wrapping paper before dinner, but I’d forgotten to lock the back door again when I came in. The phone was in the hall. If I got up to call 911, the burglar in the kitchen would see me. Hadn’t I heard that burglars go around on holidays looking for houses to rob while the families are out?
I heard slow footsteps coming across the kitchen floor. Maybe it wasn’t a burglar. Maybe it was a murderer! The Christmas Night Murderer! I could just see tomorrow’s headline: FIFTH-GRADE GIRL WITH MOUTH FULL OF CHOCOLATE FOUND FATALLY STABBED. I jumped up on my knees and had just swung one leg over the back of the sofa to hide when Donald Sheavers walked into the room.
I screamed anyway, just to let the fear out.
Donald jumped. “Jeez!” he said. “Calm down! Why didn’t you answer the door?”
“Well, why are you creeping around at night?” I said, climbing off the sofa. “Where’s your mother?”
“She sent me over with this,” said Donald, holding out a German chocolate cake wrapped in cellophane. To Ben from Harriett, with affection, read the tag.
“Dad’s not here,” I said.
“Good,” said Donald. “Want a slice?”
“What?” I said. “It’s for Dad!”
“He’s going to share it with you, isn’t he?” said Donald.
“Sure, but…”
“So let’s eat your piece now.”