* * *
—
Just before the bell rings, Mr. Dulick decides he hasn’t tortured us enough for the final few weeks of junior year and throws the guillotine blade down on all our necks.
“Okay,” he says. “Here’s what’s going to happen these last few weeks. Partner up with someone you’ve never partnered up with before. Talk about the rest of the book like we did today. Really think about its meaning—every word, the symbols, the metaphors. And then, together, you’ll share a five-minute presentation of what it means to you.”
Oh no. An echo chamber of moans and groans and “Come on!”s and “Oh man!”s fills the room as my brain instantly starts fizzling. Here’s why:
1) Presentation. Let’s get one thing clear: This is not your run-of-the-mill-read-from-a-three-page-book-report-and-call-it-a-day presentation. No, Mr. Dulick’s presentations mean one thing and one thing only: Broadway-caliber performance. If your presentation isn’t worthy of a Tony Award by the end, you might as well drown yourself in the Missouri River. And it counts for fifty percent of your final grade. In other words: Big. Frigging. Deal.
2) Partnering up. I mean, I wasn’t even the last person to be picked on a team for dodgeball in PE. They’d forget I was standing there altogether.
3) Talking. To anyone except Starla. Tried it once in a kingdom far, far away. Decidedly not good at it.
“Hey now. Hey now. This is going to be good for you,” Dulick says. “We have to learn to work together, friends, if we have any chance of saving the planet. Now, hurry. Partner up before the bell rings.”
Okay, I highly doubt the inevitable destruction of the planet will be thwarted by a three-minute Bob Fosse tap dance to some story about a seagull, but our fates are signed, sealed, and delivered.
Everyone scrambles for a partner.
Everyone, that is, except me and the shimmering, lonely boy on Desk Island.
Perfect.
6.
RIDING STINGRAYMOBILE HOME. Letting the wind carry my thoughts away. Trying to, anyway. My wrists and thighs are aflame. Stupid effing side effects. How am I going to work with him? I can barely stand in front of the class on my own without hurling myself out the window, but with HIM? Oh man. He seems nice, though. He gave me a note in health class, for Ziggy’s sake! We can be friends. Yeah. That’s what normal people do. But that smile: It’s slightly crooked and dints two dimples on his cheeks. And his hair, the way it glistens like a Black Sea on his shoulders. Or his eyes, the way they spark—ZAP! A shock zips up my leg. Ow. No. Stop. You know better, Collins. You’re so close now and no—I’ll talk to Ziggy when I get home. He’ll know what to do . . .
God. I pedal onward, following the sounds in the wind to deflect. Whatever it takes. Navigate the negative. So. I’ve heard each city has its own white noise soundtrack. In New York, it’s horns beeping. In Los Angeles, palm fronds slapping the sky. In St. Louis, it’s the rattling of cicadas. They’re just starting to emerge and their song can usually lull your thoughts to a deep sleep. Usually. It starts working some . . .
But as I round the corner, I’m jolted back: Dad’s golden Cadillac glints in the driveway. Oh no. Why is he home? He’s usually at the Blues Note by now. Damn, my plan’s foiled: Sneak up to his room, throw the stupid dollar back on his nightstand, run.
Instead, as Stingraymobile wobbles up the driveway, my heart wobbles up my throat. I throw them both down on our porch, and creep open the screen door. Only it hasn’t been greased since 1927, so it screeches through every room in the house.
I peek my head around the corner. Dad’s still asleep on the couch. I think. A rerun of Leave It to Beaver plays on the TV. Okay. I can just sneak past, dash up the stairs, replace the Bill of Dreams on his nightstand, and no one’s the wiser. The theme from Batman starts playing in my head.
I hit the second stair when:
“Hey.” He speaks. I freeze.
“Hey, Dad.” I inch around. “Why are you home?”
“Where is it?” He doesn’t move, doesn’t even open his eyes. I’m not convinced he’s actually talking. It could be my brain has created invisible words flying from his mouth. Wouldn’t be the first time.
“Where’s what?” I whisper just in case it’s the latter.
“Don’t play this game with me.” Nope. It’s him. “I ain’t got time for this crap. Where is it?”
“Sorry. I needed lunch money and—” On the plastic table next to the couch: an empty glass of whiskey, two empty bottles of Bud, and his Playboy ashtray, so piled with cigarette butts I can barely see one of the girl’s boobs. Three drinks in. Still safe.
“Where is it?” He flings his eyes open. I scrape through my pocket and iron the dollar out best I can before handing it to him.
“What happened to it?”
“Sorry. It’s not my fault I—”
“I’m still home. Because you stole my money.” Okay, technically this is not true. When Grandma died, she left all her money to me. I just can’t touch it for another five years, when I guess the world’s going to end anyway. Figures. Until then, he can use the funds at his disposal to keep us both comfortable. And since he was laid off two years ago, he doesn’t look too hard for work. “Goddamned Vietnam War! There ain’t never any construction jobs in this city no more,” he says. Every day. Not true. Still, not the time to bring up this minor detail.
Instead: “I know. Sorry.”
“She’s been waitin’ for me to call. You know that? And I couldn’t. I had to sit here. All day. Waiting for your thievin’ ass to git home.”
“Yessir.”
“So help me, if she don’t pick up—”
He springs from the couch. I squinch. He’s never hit me, but still, one can’t be too prepared. Instead, he pushes past, tripping over the two steps that lead to the phone in the kitchen. “Goddamn shag,” he mutters, falling against the wall. He picks up the receiver, each number ticktickticking like a jackhammer as he dials.
Please pick up, please pick up, please pick up. I see three things:
1) Jesus on a wooden cross, speckled with gold dust, hanging above our TV. It was Mom’s. Yeah, was. When I was born and she pushed me out of the dark, I sucked up all the light in the world and she was gone. Aunt Luna said it was divinely orchestrated, but she also thinks St. Louis is the astrological center of the universe, so I don’t know . . . And even though Dad and I don’t go to church anymore, we refuse to take it down.
2) A framed needlepoint hanging next to the cross: HOME IS WHERE THE HART IS in orange squiggly letters. Grandma’s. Well, Dad made it for her when he was little because Grandma used to say it every day like someone would say “Good morning.” (She loved it more than “Heaven itself” because he worked for months on it and misspelled heart.) We leave it up even though we both think it’s a stupid cliché. No offense, Grandma.
3) Beaver’s dad holding the crying Beav on TV. The volume’s turned down, so I can’t hear what they’re saying, but I imagine it’s something like, “There, there, my sweet son. You could do anything and I would still love you more than my bottle of whiskey.” Or some such jive.
“Hey. Heather? . . . Hey, hey, it’s Robert. . . . From the Blues Note last night? . . . The one who bought you tequila shots? . . . We made out in the bathroom, and . . . Yeah, hey, that’s me.”
Man. This girl sounds like the prized Blue Ribbon Whore at the St. Louis County Fair. At least she’s home.
Dad puts his hand over the receiver. “Pour me a drink, willya, son?” he says.
I duck under the bar and grab a fresh glass: two ice cubes from the tiny freezer, Jack Daniel’s halfway, splash of soda, squeeze of lime. Glance in the mirrored wall behind me, brush my hair down to cover my scar, run back with the drink.
He’s crouched on the floor now, twirling the telephone cord like a thirteen-year-old girl. He used to be movie-star
beautiful—I’ve seen old pictures—tanned and muscled with sandy hair and a smile that broke girls’ hearts. Now he’s a melted-down version of that: a Robert Redford waxwork dummy that got thrown to the curb.
“Mm-hmm. . . . Yeah, baby,” he says. “I’ll meet ya there tonight.”
Gross.
When he shoos me away, I dart up to my room. Safe again. BATMAAANNN. Muffled schoolgirl gabs waft through the cigarette smoke drifting up the stairs. Something like, “Can’t wait. . . . Be there or be square. . . . I’ll bring the coke, you bring the grass.” Romeo and Juliet, eat your heart out.
Anyway, he’s happy. That’s what matters. I close my door, grab Aladdin Sane off my desk, and duck into my closet.
Secret: Behind my color-coordinated clothesline is a small door that opens to a tiny room. No one knows about my secret closet. Not even Starla. I think everyone needs a secret place in the world, a place you can count on to keep your dreams safe . . .
I have no idea why it exists, but because our house was built in the twenties, I’ve always imagined it was a hideout for some gangster named Bubs McGee or a little boy hiding from war criminals. And now it’s my own hideaway from Adolf Dad and every other radioactive particle in the outside world.
Look, Dad wasn’t always this way. I mean, he was never one of those super-happy-hippie kids singing on the hillside in that Coca-Cola commercial, but he also wasn’t the town drunk. No, I broke something in him after my fateful day at the lake in 1969 when IT happened and everything changed. That’s one of the reasons I still work so hard to fix it. It’s my fault he is who he is now . . . and I don’t know if either one of us will ever be right again . . .
When I flip on the light,
Mom’s portrait turns to me, smiles.
“Hey, Beetlebug.”
“Hey, Mom.”
“Good day today?” she asks.
“Weird day today.”
“What happened?”
“Later. Now I gotta disappear.”
“Sure thing, sweetpea.” She sits back, floofing her hair in her handheld compact.
I turn on my record player, put the cushioned headphones on, and drown my life away to the greatest album in the history of ever: The Rise and Fall of Ziggy Stardust and the Spiders from Mars. I’ve played it every day since the concert last year. The whole damn thing is positively genius, but the beginning gets me every time: a slow, steady drum, ch-chch-ch, ch-chch-ch, a sttrrrrummmm of guitar, and then, his voice . . .
Oh man . . . his voice . . .
At the concert, when that struummm happened, red lights faded up onstage and I finally saw the audience in all its glory: mini alien-Ziggys flocking the orchestra pit. Screaming. Glimmering. Crying. One of them, with Bowie’s same fire-orange hair, bumped into me. He blew glitter in my face, said I was “shiny enough to make a wish on,” and kissed my cheek. Ziggy sang. My heart stopped. And the rest, as they say, is history . . .
I clutch Aladdin Sane in my hands, and before I can even ask:
Ziggy’s eyes lift and twinkle. “Don’t you worry, little Starman, I’m here. Ch-ch-ch-change is comin’, baby. You gotta turn and face the strange. It’s the only way to survive.”
“I’m not ready.”
“We never are. Remember: Friends are your greatest force fields, my superstar space invader.”
“You’re right . . .” I say. “It’s the only way . . .”
“Wanna boogie?”
“Let’s.” So we pray.
The hundreds of Ziggy eyes I’ve cut from magazines splatter my closet walls. They blink and sing along with us. I reach into my satchel, unfold the crumpled note—the one he gave me in health class—and pin it up next to Mom’s portrait. To keep us safe.
“Yeah . . .” I whisper. “Where to next, Web?”
7.
SLAM. SCREEEECH. HOURS LATER, Dad’s Cadillac whizzes away. I throw my headphones off and crawl out of the closet. The sun’s disappeared, leaving behind a burnt glow. I peek through my curtains: Starla’s window flickers like a strobe light. She’s alive! Probably watching the news. I dash downstairs.
With fourteen minutes before The Sonny & Cher Comedy Hour, I only have time to throw one of Dad’s fried-chicken TV dinners in the oven and call her. Not ideal, but it’ll have to do. I grab some Ritz crackers and peanut butter while I wait.
“Hey, baby love. What’s crackin’!” “Killing Me Softly” blasts through the receiver. Of course.
“Whatcha doin’?”
She turns down her player. “Working on my Levi’s.”
“Cool. You’re definitely going to win their contest.”
“We’ll see . . . You okay? You sound funny.”
I smear a cracker, stuff it in my mouth. “Where were you today?”
“Downtown. The women’s march. You forgot again? You sure you’re okay, Jonny?”
“I’m fine. That’s right.” Still don’t remember. “How was it?”
“Totally far-out. Throngs of women’s libbers gathered around the Arch screaming for equal rights. It was beautiful. Some even carried wire hangers, yelling, ‘Never again!’”
“Why?”
“Roe v. Wade. I mean it finally passed in January, but do you know how many women had to die at home before abortions became legal?”
“No, I—”
“Oh! There was this one woman being carried in a wooden coffin, pretending like she was dead . . . It was fantastic!”
“Wow.”
“And some were only in their bras. You would’ve loved it.”
I chuckle. “Yeah . . .”
“I felt so alive, Jonny. To be part of it all. Such a great time to be a woman. To be free from the shackles of The Man. It’s crazy out there, you know . . .”
“Yeah . . .” I never know how to respond to this. So I smear and stuff another Ritz in my mouth. “Well, I’m seriously bummed you weren’t in English today.”
“Why, what happened?”
“We had to partner up for a presentation.”
“Oh crap.”
“Yeah.”
“Who’d you get? Aaron the Squarin’?”
“Nope. This new kid.”
“New kid?”
“Yeah, he just started today. He’s American Indian—”
“Really?”
“Yeah . . .” I rub my fingers on the gold-flecked wallpaper, tracing a pattern that strangely looks like his crooked smile.
“Far-out. Was he at Wounded Knee?”
“No, he was walking fine, he—”
“Jonathan!”
“What?”
“I’m talking about the place in South Dakota? That site on the reservation where hundreds of American Indians were slaughtered over a hundred years ago? That’s one of the reasons they took it over.”
“Oh. I don’t know.”
“Wounded Knee’s only the greatest occupation of our time. I almost went there with Poppa to help them—you don’t remember me talking about this?”
“No. What is it?”
“You gotta pay more attention, Jonny. This is important.” She clicks off Roberta. Man, this really must be serious. “Here’s the skinny: The American Indian Movement seized the site back in February for seventy-one days. Barricaded themselves in to bring attention to, like, generations of injustices they’ve had to suffer through. Then Nixon’s cronies showed up and tried to force them out, surrounding the perimeter so no one else could get in. There was gunfire and fighting every night. A few Native people died. It was tragic. The whole country was watching . . . You never flip on the news?”
“I mean . . . No. Why were they there?”
“Ow!”
“What happened?”
“Stupid sewing needle—trying to stitch my name on the hip and—anyway, it’s like what we’re tryi
ng to do, you know, fight for who we are. But they did it to the most supreme degree, Jonny. After they occupied the site, Native peoples from all over the country started showing up in solidarity—it was beautiful. That’s why Poppa almost took us there, but Momma thought it was too dangerous.”
“Well, yeah, I mean if there was gunfire and fighting—”
“Can you blame them, baby? They’re sick and tired of being ignored, having everything they own stolen out from under them, you know? So they stood together to take their voice and lands back, and fight for what’s been promised them for, like, hundreds of years: to finally be free from the white man’s rule. Whambamthankyou-power-to-the-people-SHAZAM.”
“Whoa.”
“Yeah. Totally inspired.”
“Did they win?”
“Depends what you mean by win. They negotiated something, but if history tells us anything, they’ll be swept right back under the rug. They brought more attention to who they are as a people, though, and in my eyes, that’s a huge win.”
“Maybe Web was there. He said he just moved here. Not sure from where . . .”
“We should ask him. That would be so fantastic—”
“Yeah—”
“Who else was missing from class today?”
“Can’t remember.”
“Maybe I can join you guys. You know, we can make it a threesome—”
“Starla!”
“Is he cute?”
“No—I mean I don’t know—anyway, that’s a good idea.” I grab the TV dinner out of the oven even though it’s still cold. “NOT the threesome thing, the working together thing. That’d make everything easier. Let’s ask Dulick tomorrow, okay? Look, I gotta—”
“Go. I know. Sonny and Cher. To be continued.” She smacks a kiss and hangs up, and I set up the TV tray just as Cher flashes on the screen singing “The Long and Winding Road.”
* * *
—
Hours later, I squint my eyes open. The empty remnants of a foil-covered TV dinner sit on the table. Cher’s voice still jingles in my head— No. The phone’s ringing. What time is it?
Ziggy, Stardust and Me Page 4
