I noticed that Donald didn’t say, Why don’t you eat your piece now. But I got out a knife and two forks. I know I’m not supposed to have boys in the house when I’m alone, but I don’t even consider Donald a boy. Donald is just… well, Donald.
“So what did you get for Christmas?” he asked me.
“A radio and a pillow and soap and stuff,” I told him.
“Soap?” said Donald, scraping some frosting off his slice of cake and eating that first. “You stink or something?”
“You tell me!” I said.
Donald leaned over and sniffed at my neck at the same exact moment my dad came in.
“Donald!” he said.
Donald jerked to attention like a soldier.
“Al, what… ?”
“His mom sent over a cake, and I forgot to lock the back door, and he just walked in,” I explained. “We’re eating my share of it now.”
Dad was still looking at Donald curiously.
“He was sniffing me to see if I needed any soap,” I said. It gets very complicated sometimes, trying to explain Donald Sheavers.
Dad smiled then. He read the note. “Tell your mother thanks very much,” he said to Donald. “I’ll be saving some for Lester, too, because this is one of his favorites.” And then he added, surveying Donald’s plate, “. . . if there’s any left.”
After Donald went home, I figured I’d get a scolding about letting him come inside, but Dad just hung up his coat and sat down in his chair in the living room, staring at the Christmas tree lights. I went in and pulled my beanbag chair closer to him so that I was leaning against his legs and we could look at the tree together.
“Did Elaine like the present you gave her?” I asked. I didn’t know what the present was, and I wasn’t about to ask.
There was a long pause from Dad—so long that I didn’t think he was going to answer. And then he said, “Well, she was gracious about it, anyway.”
I sat straight up. “She didn’t like it?”
“She has rather expensive tastes, I’m afraid. I think she was expecting something more.”
“A diamond ring?”
He laughed. “No. I guess we’re just from two different worlds, that’s all.”
“But… maybe… after you get to know each other better, she’ll want to marry you anyway!” I said.
“It’s a long road from friendship to marriage, sweetheart,” Dad said. “Let’s just say that Elaine and I wished each other Merry Christmas and Happy New Year, and let it go at that.”
7
RUNNING AWAY
ONE MORNING AT SCHOOL ROSALIND opened the top of her desk to take out her geography book, and there, lying right on top of her things for all the class to see, was a sanitary pad with Rosalind written on it in red Magic Marker.
Rosalind dropped the lid of her desk so fast that it made a loud bang, and everybody jumped and looked around. I saw Jody and Dawn giggling together at the back of the room.
I had never seen Rosalind’s face so red. We didn’t know if any of the boys had seen the Kotex pad or not. Donald Sheavers did, I think. And if he saw, the other boys would soon know what was in Rosalind’s desk.
“I just might run away,” Rosalind told me at recess while the other girls were playing kickball with some of the boys to keep warm. All of them looked over at Rosalind from time to time and smirked.
I almost felt like running away with her. I never knew that fifth graders could be so cruel. Some of them were mean to me in third grade, and mean to Sara in third and fourth, but writing a name on a sanitary pad and leaving it in someone’s desk was the worst thing yet.
“Where would you go?” I asked her.
“If I knew, I wouldn’t tell you, because then they’d torture you until you told,” she said.
“Who would?”
“The principal, maybe.”
“Mr. Serio doesn’t torture people!”
“The FBI, then.”
“Rosalind, are you nuts?”
“Okay, but if I ever do disappear, I won’t tell you where I am, but I’ll be okay and will probably come back the next day. Only I won’t tell anyone else that,” Rosalind said.
I had two worries now: my cat and Rosalind. And I was keeping them both a secret.
Rosalind disappeared on Friday after school. It seemed like a normal day. Mrs. Swick never laughed, as usual, and I missed three problems in math, as usual, and Rosalind wanted to know if I had anything in my lunch we could trade, as usual. But about six that evening Rosalind’s stepmother called our house and wanted to know if Rosalind was with me. She said that she had just come home from shopping and that Rosalind wasn’t there.
My heart almost jumped out of my chest. Dad was holding the phone in his hand, waiting for me to answer.
“No,” I said. “I don’t know where she is.”
Dad repeated what I said to Rosalind’s mom.
“Did she say anything at all to you about where she might go after school? Mention any other playmate?” Dad asked me.
I shook my head.
“No,” he said into the phone. Then, a few moments later, “Yes, please call us when she comes home. I understand how worried you must be, but—knowing these girls—I feel sure she’ll turn up.”
When he put down the phone, though, he said, “I shouldn’t have said that. Knowing Rosalind, I’m not sure of anything.”
I felt horrible knowing what I did about Rosalind’s talk of running away.
Dad started making dinner. He opened a can of salmon and mixed it with an egg and cracker crumbs and celery, forming it into little cakes to fry on the stove. I sat on a kitchen stool, silently watching, the way I used to watch Mrs. Nolinstock cook our meals.
“It’s pretty scary when you don’t know where your kid is,” Dad said.
He looked so worried that I heard myself saying, “She’ll be okay.”
He looked up. “How do you know that?”
I shifted uncomfortably on the stool. “I just think she will. Rosalind’s pretty good at taking care of herself.”
“After the trouble you two have been in, I don’t believe that for one minute,” Dad said, and turned the fire on under the skillet. “Her brothers are out looking for her right now.”
I pressed my lips together hard so I wouldn’t say anything more.
“Rosalind’s mother is calling all her friends,” Dad went on. “If nobody knows where she is, she’s going to call the police.”
“Will they call in the FBI?” I asked.
“Well, that depends. I wouldn’t be surprised if they’d want to talk to you.”
I swallowed. And finally I said, in a small voice, “Does the FBI ever torture people to make them talk?”
“What?” asked Dad just as Lester came in the door.
“What’s this?” asked Lester.
“What on earth made you ask that?” Dad said to me.
“I just wondered if they’d torture me to make me say where Rosalind was even though I don’t know.”
“Of course not!” said Dad. “Even if you did know. Do you know?”
“No.”
“Rosalind’s missing?” asked Lester.
“Yes,” Dad said, and told him about the phone call. They both looked at me hard. I could feel my cheeks turning pink and knew I was cooked.
“O-kay!” said Lester, putting down his books. He pulled out a kitchen chair, straddled it, and sat with his arms resting on the back. “Yes or no. Do you know where Rosalind is?”
“No,” I said.
“Do any of your friends know?”
“No.”
“Hmm,” said Lester. Then I knew for sure I was cooked. “Did Rosalind tell you a secret?”
I didn’t know how to answer. Running away was a secret. I couldn’t lie.
“Yes,” I said. Dad turned the fire off under the skillet and folded his arms across his chest. I felt like I had been arrested. Like I was being questioned by detectives. I felt as though they were go
ing to make me sit up all night under a single lightbulb without food or water until I told them everything I knew about Rosalind.
“Alice,” said Dad, “did Rosalind ever tell you she might run away?”
“Yes,” I said, “but she said she’d be okay and that she’d probably come back the next day and that she wouldn’t tell me where she was going so the FBI couldn’t torture it out of me.”
Dad tipped back his head and closed his eyes.
“For the love of Mike,” said Lester.
Dad called Rosalind’s mother and made me tell her everything I had told him and Lester.
“Why, Alice?” Rosalind’s mother asked. “What was she so upset about?”
So then I had to tell her about how the girls tease Rosalind because they say she’s fat and how they put a sanitary pad with her name on it in her desk.
“Thank you, Alice,” said Rosalind’s mother. “And thank you for being her friend.”
It was a quiet supper. Dad and Lester didn’t say too much, except that Lester said kids could be really cruel sometimes. I helped with the dishes, and Lester wanted to call Lisa, but Dad told him to stay off the phone in case someone needed to call us.
At a quarter of ten the phone rang. It was Rosalind’s mother. She said that the custodian at the public library had found Rosalind hiding in one of the toilet stalls after the library closed and that the police were bringing her home.
I grabbed the phone away from Dad when he repeated that and begged, “Please don’t punish her!”
And Rosalind’s mother said, “I wouldn’t dream of it. I think she’s been through enough already.”
I was glad that Rosalind had a nice stepmom. And I wondered if that would ever be me—with a stepmom who loved me that much, I mean.
8
GROWING-UP STUFF
NO ONE AT SCHOOL FOUND OUT THAT Rosalind had “run away.” On Monday when they asked her where she’d been, because Rosalind’s mother had called their mothers, she just said, “At the library.” So everyone forgot, except Rosalind and me.
I asked Rosalind what happened after the police brought her home, and she said, “Nothing.” So I didn’t ask any more. But I noticed one change over the next week. There weren’t any potato chips in Rosalind’s lunch sack. There weren’t any cheese crackers or candy bars, either.
There were pickles and peanut butter sandwiches and apples and pretzels and hard-boiled eggs. I wondered if it had anything to do with my telling Rosalind’s mom that girls called Rosalind fat. I didn’t talk to Rosalind about it, but I didn’t trade any more food with her either.
Around the first of February, Rosalind came to school with four invitations to a sleepover. She gave me mine first. “If the other girls ask if you’re coming or not,” she said, “say yes—that it’s about secret grown-up stuff.”
“Wow!” I said. “Okay.”
The other girls seemed surprised to get an invitation. Jody looked as though she didn’t know whether to keep it or throw it away. When we went out on the steps at recess and she asked if I was going, I said, “Sure! We’re going to talk about secret grown-up stuff. You know!”
“Really?” said Jody. “Like getting your period?”
I nodded.
The thing about periods is that every girl who hasn’t had one yet—all the rest of us—wants to hear about them. And because Rosalind was the first, we figured she could tell us everything we wanted to know. We knew that soon, in health class, we’d learn about stuff like this, but we wanted to know now. We wanted to learn it before anyone else did.
Because I said I was going, Jody said she’d go. And wherever Jody went, Dawn followed. Megan had to check with her mom first because she was in a piano recital and didn’t know when it was. I called her that night to see if she was coming. Marlene, her bratty sister, answered.
“Is Megan there?” I asked.
“Who is this?” asked Marlene. Just like that.
“It’s Alice, and I need to talk to Megan,” I said.
“What about?” asked Marlene.
“It’s none of your beeswax,” I said.
“Then you can’t talk to her.”
If I had a little sister like Marlene, I’d want to throttle her. I don’t suppose you can divorce a sister.
“If I have to come over there to talk to her, Marlene, there’s going to be trouble,” I said.
“Says who?” said Marlene.
Then I heard Megan calling, “Who’s it for, Marlene?” There was a reply I couldn’t understand and the sound of wrestling, and then Megan came on the line.
“Don’t mind Marlene,” she said.
“I just wanted to know if you were going to Rosalind’s party,” I said. “I hope so.”
“Yes, I’m coming. Anything to get away from my sister!” Megan told me.
The girls were nice to Rosalind that week because they knew they’d be spending the night at her house. Rosalind didn’t say a word about the Kotex pad someone had put in her desk. Maybe they thought she had forgotten, but who ever forgets something like that?
The more I thought about Rosalind’s party, though, the more afraid I was that maybe she’d do something mean to the girls to get even. Or maybe her mother would scold them for the way they’d treated Rosalind.
But when we got to her house on Friday night, her mother was friendly and cheerful and had a huge bowl of popcorn waiting for us in Rosalind’s room. We watched a video and painted our toenails raspberry red. Then we left our sleeping bags on the floor and crowded onto Rosalind’s bed. Megan wanted to tell ghost stories, but Rosalind asked if we wanted to see a private book.
Private sounded more interesting than ghost, and we all said yes.
It was a thin booklet with a paper cover, and on the front it said: A Girl Grows Up.
It wasn’t easy for the five of us to look at the book all at the same time, so Rosalind said, “You want to take turns? Each one of us can read a page aloud. This book is about every thing!”
Jody nodded eagerly, so Rosalind said, “I’ll read the first page and you read the second.” And she began: “‘Congratulations! You and your body are about to change in new and wonderful ways… .’”
It didn’t take long for us to realize that it was talking about menstrual periods. And since none of the rest of us had a book called A Girl Grows Up, we wanted to hear every word.
When it was Jody’s turn to read, she put the book flat on the bed so we could see the drawing that went with the page, showing what the inside of a girl looks like with all the parts included.
“It looks like a pear sliced open,” said Megan, fascinated.
It pointed out things like ovaries and fallopian tubes, the uterus and bladder and vagina.
Jody read how the ovaries release an egg once a month, no bigger than a teeny-tiny dot.
“‘The egg travels down one of the fallopian tubes to the uterus,’” Jody read. “‘If there is sperm to fertilize it, the egg attaches itself to the inner lining of the uterus and will grow into a baby. If fertilization does not take place, the soft bloody lining of the uterus slides out the vagina once a month.’”
“What’s the vagina?” asked Megan.
“The opening between your legs,” said Rosalind.
“Oh.” Megan looked confused. “I thought that’s where you pee!” she said, then giggled and pulled the covers over her head. We all laughed and poked at her through the blanket.
“There are two places!” I said, because I knew that much. “One is the vagina and the other is where the pee comes out.”
Now Rosalind poked me. “Three places! One where you poop,” she said, and this time we all shrieked and stuck our heads under the blanket.
But it was Dawn’s turn to read next. The booklet told how some girls use stick-on pads in their underpants to catch the blood, how some use tampons that you could insert into the vagina, and how these had little strings attached so you could pull them out when you needed to change them.
&n
bsp; “Euuuw!” said Megan.
When we had finished reading the booklet, we passed it around again and again so every girl could see the drawings of what she looked like on the inside. It was awesome being in the same room with the one girl who had already started her periods.
“Does the blood come out all at once?” asked Dawn.
“No. It just sort of leaks out for three or four days,” said Rosalind.
“How do you know when it’s coming?” asked Jody. “What if you’re walking to school when it happens?”
“You don’t know exactly, but when it starts, it’s just a little bit,” Rosalind said.
“But what if you drip and you don’t have a pad? What if you have blood in your pants by the time you get to school?” I asked.
“Then you go to the office or you tell the teacher, and she’ll get a pad for you,” said Rosalind importantly.
Dawn sat stiffly over by Megan. They all looked like soldiers going to war. “I’m going to put a pad in my backpack and have it ready at all times,” she said.
“And an extra pair of underpants, too,” said Megan.
The girls glanced over at Rosalind. I’ll bet all of us were thinking that somebody might tease us the way they had teased Rosalind. That we might find a sanitary pad in our desks or someone might find one in her backpack. The classroom suddenly seemed like a dangerous place.
And then Megan asked the question that all of us were wondering about: “When there is sperm inside you to make a baby, how does it get in there?”
For a minute nobody said anything. We just looked embarrassed, because we had some idea of what happened between a man and a woman, but none of us knew exactly.
“I think the father squirts it up there,” I said finally, which was about all I knew about sex.
“How?” asked Jody, joking. “With a spray bottle?” We all howled then, so hard that we rolled off the bed laughing.
When we climbed back on again, Rosalind said, “I think he puts it up there with his penis.”
Megan clapped one hand over Rosalind’s mouth as though she’d said a bad word, and then Dawn reached up and turned off the light. It was easier talking in the dark.