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You Can Run, but You Can't Hide the Truth

NaNoWriMo Day 4

Stephanie and her mom were going to pick me up and we were going to go somewhere teenagers go—the mall, the movies, ice skating, I can't recall. What I remember clearly is running around the house trying to make some order of the disaster scene that was the living room. I collected pieces of clothing—an entire outfit down to bra, underwear and earrings; three shoes—no two a pair—and a bottle of hair spray.

The coffee table was littered with papers: unopened bills and crumpled receipts, beneath which hid a plate with unidentified food dried on it. I finally found what I knew was there somewhere: a pipe, a bag of weed, and a pack of rolling papers. I put them on the plate and scurried around to see if any other incriminating evidence was lurking in plain sight, unnoticeable to me since I saw it all the time. I piled the clothes on the sofa and fluffed the cushions, then straightened the papers. I grabbed a shirt from the pile and wiped the table with it. I took the dirty dish and drug paraphernalia to the kitchen, which looked even worse, but what could I do? They would be there any minute. I tossed the dishes into the sink, then ran to Tanya's room, opened the door and tossed everything else in. Before I could catch my breath, the doorbell rang, and I ran to my room, grabbed my bag and coat, and ran to the front door.

Both Stephanie and her mom were there. I smiled and tried to step out onto the porch, but they did not move.

Mrs. Reynolds had a pained look on her face. "Kari, do you think I could use your powder room?"

I gave Stephanie a "Please! Help me out here!" look. She just shrugged.

"Oh, my mom is sleeping. We probably shouldn't disturb her. She works nights." Every part of that was a lie, but even Stephanie didn't know that.

"It’s an emergency."

What do you say to that? I reluctantly led the two of them inside and pointed the way to the bathroom. Stephanie's mom ran down the hall and—I am sure she did this on purpose, because she was never confused in her life—went all the way to the end of the hall and opened the door to Tanya's room.

"Oh, my! That’s not the bathroom."

I glared at Stephanie, who was oblivious. She was busy taking in the thinly veiled disaster of the living room.

"How long have you lived here?" she asked me.

"Too long. Way too long."

"It’s nice." It was hard to tell if she was trying to be polite or actually found some charm in the place.

"No, it’s not. It’s a dump. But thanks."

Stephanie was unfazed. "Well, at least you don’t have to spend your Saturdays cleaning."

Before I could reply, we heard the bathroom door open and, thinking Mrs. Reynolds was done, we stood up to leave. Then Mrs. Reynolds screamed.

Tanya, as if she had just bumped into Mrs. Reynolds at the grocery store, said "Sorry! Didn’t know someone was in here. And you are?"

Stephanie could not possibly have been more mortified than I was, but she looked pretty mortified.

We heard Mrs. Reynolds say, "If you please! May I have a moment?"

"Oh. Sure," Tanya said in a fake-polite voice, then shuffled into the living room, right up to Stephanie.

"Hi. I’m Tayna, Kari’s mom. I’m guessing that’s your mom in my bathroom."

"Mom, This is Stephanie."

"Hi Stephanie."

Mrs. Reynolds returned, doing her Good Housekeeping best to hide her embarrassment.

"Hi, Stephanie’s Mom. I'm Tanya. Sorry about that. Not used to having guests in the house." The stricken look did not leave Mrs. Reynolds' face, so Tanya tried again: "Oh don’t worry. I didn’t see anything I haven’t seen before."

I moved everybody to the door. Tanya followed us. Extended her hand to Mrs. Reynolds.

"I still don't know your name, but it was very nice to meet you." She gave us her own Good Housekeeping wave as we walked to the car, into the quietest ride I think I have ever taken in my life. I felt I had to say something, offer some explanation or apology, but all I could think of was, "Well, now you know why we don't have sleepovers at my house."

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Never 'Mrs.'

Never 'Mrs.'

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Denise and I shared a table in first grade, and so we became friends. One day she invited me to go home with her after school. She did this via a note that her mom wrote to Tanya. One Monday, Denise handed me a light blue envelope and said, "This is for your mom. It's a letter asking her if you can come home with me afterschool on Thursday and if your mom can pick you up from our house before dinner. You're not invited to dinner."

The envelope was small but weighty; the paper had a softness I had never felt on paper before. This small thing, from Denise's mom to mine, itself a surprise, was a prelude to a revelation. That afternoon, I handed it to Tanya while she had her pre-dinner cocktail in the living room. When she saw the dark blue script on the outside, she snickered. "Mrs. West! Oh, this is going to be good." I cannot say this was the first time her words started to sting, the first time I felt her reproach without being able to see what I had done to provoke it, but it is one moment I remember distinctly, maybe because it led to bigger illuminations.

Tanya put down her drink but kept the cigarette in hand and opened the envelope. I watched her eyes dart left and right, then she looked up at me.

"Did you read this?"

I shook my head no.

"Well it looks like your friend Denise would like you to visit after school on Thursday." She took a drag and held the smoke back as she asked, "Do you like Denise?" I nodded. She exhaled. "Would you like to go to her place on Thursday?" I nodded. "Well don't sound so excited about it. What can you tell me about Denise? Have you met her mom? Or I should say, 'Mrs. Peterson.' Is she older? Is she nice or mean or crazy?"

Tanya always had something more to say, and so I learned to wait until she was finished. At a certain point, I just stopped talking unless I was sure she wanted me to. It was too tiring and too disorienting to start talking only to be interrupted with comments or questions that might take the conversation off in another direction altogether, making my remarks useless. And before long, I didn't have much to say to her anyway.

She put the note on the coffee table and picked up her drink. "All right. I will call Arlene—Mrs. Peterson to you—and let her know it's a date. And I will let her know that nobody, but nobody calls me 'Mrs.'"

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Ice Cream Island

Ice Cream Island

 

Ice Cream Island was true to its name: It was a shack floating in the middle of a gravel lot between a dentist's office and a vacuum cleaner repair shop. The chocolate-vanilla swirl ice cream cone that spun up out of the roof was visible from half a mile away. It looked like it had been there forever, but probably appeared in the '50s. It had not been painted since.

Santos was not the kind of guy you would expect to own an ice cream stand. He was over 50, had a scruffy face and a gravelly voice, didn't much like kids who were his biggest fans and liked their parents even less. And yet he would turn on the charm for the customers. Kind of. He would lean through the window of the shack to smile face-to-face with the five-year-old stretching up on tippy-toes to tell him what she wanted. He would ignore her parents if they tried to cut in and hurry her up. And if kids in the background got testy, he would shove his whole head through the window and bellow, "No ice cream for rude kids!" And he meant it. The tale was passed down through the years of a boy who flouted the warning and sassed Santos, then felt the breeze of the window being slammed down before him when he reached the front of the line. No one dared test the man again.

Santos saw something in me from the start. The first time Tanya took me there--well the first time I remember—I could tell he liked me, and I could tell this was something special, even though I was too young to have heard the tales. As we stood in line, Tanya blabbed with another mom, bragged about her job and her snooty important clients and described a vacation we were never going to take. I watched the other kids in line. They were not standing quietly. They were not being patient. Their parents were ignoring them, but they were ignoring what the kids were doing wrong. Tanya ignored what I was doing right. I wasn't being good to be good. I was being good because I had no friends to be bad with. And Tanya also did not notice this.

I watched the teenagers dispensing soft serve from machines, ice cream made for a small mouth to eat fast. It is hard to say which was more exciting: the prospect of eating the ice cream or the dream of one day serving it. Was that what Santos saw? A future earnest, hard-working employee? Or did he see what all men saw when they looked at me: a way to get to my mother?

The application and interview process was unlike any I have been through since. I walked up to the window at 10 p.m., and when Santos said, "We just closed, but what can I getcha?" I said "I'd like a job." He stared back at me for a moment, then said, "you want to start now? You can help me close." It was one moment in my life I can point to where I got what I wanted, just for the asking, without having to give something in return.

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Pinkie got placed, too, and we kept in touch for a while. I invited her over after school once because she wanted to see where I lived. She wandered from room to room and touched everything she saw: books, a stone coaster on the coffee table, an empty vase. Pictures on the mantle. Chazz and Marlene didn't have a lot of stuff, so you actually could touch it all. And everything they had fascinated Pinkie. She touched each item with reverence, as if it were as fragile or volatile as she. She took a hand-carved wooden tribal mask from the wall and gently drew it to her face. She looked around for a mirror, and I pointed her to the hall.

"Where is this from?"

I knew, because I had asked the same question my first night here, but I had not taken the mask from the wall and put it to my face, though I had wanted to.

"Marlene and Chazz got it in Bali. They went there after college."

Pinkie nodded, as if that were something she herself had done or might do. She walked back to where the mask belonged and hung it with care. I had felt the same fascination with this house and all the evidence in it of a life I had missed, and seeing Pinkie's expression embarrassed me. I saw on her face and in her movements my own ignorance and naiveté. I saw what I had looked like to Chazz and Marlene the night they brought me home. I discovered another facet of this new world and something else I had to hide so that no one would know I didn't belong. It was as easy and automatic for me to put on as any of the other deceits had been. By this time in my life, I was a pro.

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Our Story Begins: NaNoWriMo 2013

Each November, thousands of people (as of this writing, 238,710) around the world set out to write a novel (50,000 words of story) in 30 days. Today I became one of those people, logging 2,000 words to kick off the party.

To keep me honest and on my toes, I will post an excerpt of each day's work. I am not writing this thing in order, but in scenes, so the story will not necessarily flow from one day to the next, though the blocks themselves I hope will be interesting to read.

Your comments are welcome -- especially words of encouragement -- but  may be ignored, so that I don't fall into conversations that could derail my composition.

People are skeptical about this enterprise, and I suspect that most of these novels are not good reads. However, as Robert Kidney of 15 60 75 The Numbers told me, "I don't care if it's good; I care if it's done. If it's done, I can make it good." And, frankly, I'm not worried. There will be something worth posting every day.

Write on!

judy b.