Giraffe People

by Jill Malone

  “All right, Peters,” Diofelli says. “Amaze me.”

  I start with a backward roll, and keep pretty much on the mat. That’s sort of the highlight of my efforts. At the end of the mat, Jeremy offers me a hand up.

  “Nice,” he laughs.

  “Yeah, we couldn’t just square dance, right? A solo routine maximizes the humiliation factor.”

  “Maybe I should tutor you,” Jeremy says.

  I look at him in his sweats and white-socked feet: his black hair frantic with static from the mat, his grin lopsided.

  “How would that work?” I ask.

  “We could start,” he says, “with your bridge.”

  This statement is as forward as he has ever been, as aggressive, and if we were not in the middle of gymnastic torment—well, if we were any place else—then I could respond the way that I want to respond. Not with words. I’m tired of words, especially words like savor. “Yes,” I say. And I mean that I am ready. That I am more than ready, that I am exhausted with readiness, and that I agree to know this—with him, with Jeremy—to know this.

  Diofelli blows her whistle, and we stand for a minute, ignoring the whistle and the dusty, noisy room, and the kids filing from it. Then Jeremy grins, and tugs the sleeve of my shirt, and walks dutifully away.

  On our night walk with Pepper, Dad seems extra quiet. The streets are patched with ice, the night cloudless and stinging. He wears his parka with the hood pulled up. Short on his arms, the coat makes him seem sort of Incredible Hulk or something, suddenly too large for his clothes. We are giraffe people.

  “Have you seen Stacy Masteller,” he asks me, “around school at all?”

  “We have Chorus together, but we haven’t talked or anything. She sits with the sopranos.”

  “How does she seem to you?” He scrutinizes me after he asks this, and then looks away, as if my answer doesn’t matter after all.

  I don’t really know what to tell him. Since Thanksgiving, I’ve tried to tell if she’s pregnant—showing or glowing or running to the bathroom to barf or whatever—but she pretty much just looks miserable all the time, which is how she looked before and not really conclusive regarding the whole pregnancy thing. “Sad,” I say. “She seems sad.”

  “Her mother came to see me. This is a hard time for them, with Dave gone.”

  “Where’s Mr. Masteller?”

  Dad stares at me, and then shakes his head. “Deployed,” he says, “since September.”

  “Oh, right.” My father thinks I’m the most self-involved person on the planet. It’s his favorite refrain during his lectures, and my not knowing Stacy’s father is in Saudi Arabia is so going to bite my head off. “I forgot.”

  “Well, Stacy hasn’t forgotten.”

  “No,” I agree, seriously. If Stacy had forgotten her dad was deployed to the Middle East, then that would certainly put me out of the running for most self-involved person on the planet.

  “Cole, I know you’re busy, that you have a lot going on.” It’s funny how he can say this with sincerity, and still make it sound like I’m not trying. “You’re not the only one, though. Stacy has a lot going on too. Your brother has a lot going on.” My brother? “And I’m tired of the two of you not speaking. Whatever is going on, I want it dropped. Especially if it’s about Kelly.”

  He’s mad. He’s yelling at me. I stop walking—in the dark the metal slides bend like tragic figures in the empty playground. I hate this man. I hate his tirades and his random indictments and the way he’s taking all his disappointment out on me. “I wish they’d let you go to the desert,” I tell him. “I wish they’d sent you. Then I could be drunk and pregnant and maybe you’d worry about me for a change.”

  “Cole—” he yanks my arm. Even in the dark, I see his anger. “Don’t you ever—”

  I rear back, but I can’t pull away. He’s hurting me. He has hurt me. I’m wounded. Pepper barks. “Let go of me. I haven’t done anything. You’re yelling at me like I’ve done something and I haven’t done anything.”

  “Cole—”

  “Let go. Let go.” I’m crying so hard that I can’t breathe. And now we’re struggling. Dad tries to grab both my arms, and I hear my atheist, the voice I’ve given him, saying, Tell your god to remember, or forget, or anyway, to spare us. And I’m afraid. “Let go of me,” I say, and I fall back in the grass, and Pepper barks again and stands between us, and then I run, in the dark, away from the park while he yells after me, my name in a roar.

  I’m running the wrong direction, of course, to get to Meghan’s dorm, so I cut into the alley and backtrack through the neighborhood, keeping away from the streetlights but running near the road. I have a stitch, but I’m afraid to stop, and when I get there, I know I should take some time to get control of myself and not look like a raging snot head, but I run inside, and up the sky-lighted staircase, and down the hallway past a girl in her pajamas, and knock on Meghan’s door. And when a black girl I don’t know opens the door, I fall into her arms, sobbing, and probably take six months off her life.

  “Cole?” Meghan asks from somewhere behind the girl. “What’s happened? Cole?” They set me on a bed, and Meghan tries to uncover my face, but I’m pretty determined to keep it buried in the bedspread, and then I hear the other girl say, “I’ll get water.”

  “Cole? What’s happened? Cole, you’re scaring me.”

  Yes, scared. Me too. But for a while I can only cry.

  After she brings my water, the girl—Regina—packs a couple of books and her bathroom kit, and tells Meghan she’s going to sleep in Heather Shorthair’s room. She pats my head awkwardly as though I’m some kind of sad puppy, and says she hopes I get some rest.

  “I’m sorry,” I manage.

  “Baby,” Regina says, “whatever it is, we’ve all been there.”

  So, that’s my lesson for the night, right? We have a lot going on—every one of us—and we’ve all been there before. Why do people think it’s comforting to point out that your experiences imitate everybody else’s?

  I drink the water. Meghan sits on the edge of the bed, with her hand on my shin, and stares at me. Regina’s bedspread is mussed, and there’s a book on the floor—the place almost looks trashed. “I’m sorry,” I say again.

  “Are you hungry?” she asks.

  “Starving.”

  She tosses me a granola bar. “Tell me what happened.”

  I devour the granola bar, and tell her. No one listens like Meghan.

  “Let me see your arms,” she says. I take off my coat, and my sweatshirt, and pull up my sleeves. Only my right arm is bruised, and not deep or anything. I feel wrenched, but that’s going away now, that feeling of being wrenched, and scared.

  “I love that I’m the rotten one,” I say. “I’m the one who isn’t trying, and meanwhile he’s prying my arm off, and being insane, and trying to wreck his marriage.”

  “What do you mean?”

  “He’s fucking his secretary,” I say.

  “Miss Jensen? She’s sixty years old with half a dozen grandkids. What are you talking about?”

  “She’s sixty?” OK, so I’ve never actually met Miss Jensen. I figured her for thirty, with strategic makeup and clothes and dialogue. And there’s the way he says her name. “For real, she’s some old lady?”

  “Yes,” Meghan says.

  “Well, anyway, he’s trying to ditch us and go to war.”

  Meghan laughs. “Like Théoden King.”

  “Like who?”

  “Théoden King, from The Lord of the Rings. He wants to die like a warrior, in battle.”

  “Great, so Dad wants to ditch us and die in battle. That makes me feel so much better.”

  “It’s not about you at all, Cole. I think he just wants some meaning. Your dad doesn’t enjoy being an administrator.”

  How does she know all this? How does she know about Miss Jensen, and what my dad doesn’t enjoy? “He’s told you this?” I ask.

  She shrugs. “It’s more an impre
ssion I have.”

  “You’ve met Miss Jensen?”

  “Sure, at his office.”

  I’ve never been to his office. I don’t even know which building it’s in. “Is he in love with you?” I ask.

  Meghan reddens, and says in a harsh, scary voice, “Don’t be an ass. Your father is in love with your mother. He’s not having an affair with Miss Jensen, or me, or anyone else. For a perceptive kid, you’re being really stupid.”

  “Now you’re mad at me,” I say. I try to stand, but she pulls me down.

  “Cole, stop. I’m not mad at you.”

  “This is the worst night ever,” I sob. “And now I’m homeless, and your roommate thinks I’m unstable, and tomorrow I’ll be sixteen, and we have to sing that hideous Little Mermaid song at the assembly, and my grandmother called tonight and said she got married when she was sixteen, and what kind of thing is that to tell somebody?”

  She puts her arms around me and squeezes. “Which hideous Little Mermaid song?”

  “Part of Your World.”

  “I thought you were singing An Unexpected Song?”

  “We’re singing both. We’ve had to rehearse during lunch with the school band. It’s ridiculous. All the songs out there and we’re singing something from a cartoon.”

  “What time tomorrow?”

  “Two,” I say. “And you’re not coming. It’s embarrassing enough without you, thanks. Are you listening to Depeche Mode?”

  “Yes, and don’t change the subject. I want to come. I want to hear you.”

  “Since when do you like Depeche Mode?”

  “It’s Regina’s.”

  “I’m still hungry.”

  Meghan looks around her room. “I think I have a bagel in my bag. Where’s my bag?”

  At some point her bag fell behind the bed, and once she digs out her bagel, she stands and tells me, “I’m going to call your parents; tell them where you are.”

  “I don’t want to go back there.”

  “I know.”

  I don’t even have a toothbrush. What if Dad demands Meghan bring me home? Or worse, what if he storms down here and drags me away? Cyclone dad.

  Meghan comes back and hops onto the bed. “Do you want pajamas?”

  “He said I could stay?” She nods. “Are you like a hypnotist or something?”

  “Pajamas, toothbrush, what do you need?”

  “Are we going to bed already? What time is it?”

  “After eleven.”

  “It’s practically my birthday,” I say.

  “Not quite yet.”

  By the time we’re back in Meghan’s room, both soaped clean and dressed in plaid flannel pajamas, it’s midnight. “Happy birthday to me,” I say.

  She tosses a wrapped box onto her bed. “Happy birthday to you.”

  “What is it?”

  “One way to know.”

  I tear the paper from the rectangular box. It’s a copper bracelet—a hammered piece the width of a shoelace, with two small copper knobs that fasten to my wrist. “It’s beautiful,” I say.

  “Do you like it?”

  I nod. “Thank you.”

  “You can wear it in the shower and everything.”

  “I love it.”

  We’re on her bed: the striped comforter warm and twisted between us, her mattress as unrelenting as Regina’s all the way across the room. I lie back. Her pillow smells of tropical fruit. Under the desk lamp, my bracelet flashes.

  “Any birthday plans?” Meghan asks. On her belly, beside me in the narrow bed, her head rests on her arm.

  “Babysitting for the Thorns actually.”

  “You’re babysitting on your birthday?”

  “It’s their anniversary,” I say. “Anyway, the actual day never matters; since Nigel’s birthday is two days after mine we always have a joint celebration. Except this year he’s going skiing with the youth group, and I’ve got gigs at Ichabod’s and Board, so I think we’re having flank steak next week or something. If I haven’t been disowned.”

  “Somehow I doubt you’ve been disowned.”

  “I’m sixteen,” I say, yawning. “I’ve waited forever to be sixteen.”

  “Why?”

  “Why? What are you, a hundred and two? You don’t remember? Sixteen—in practically every other state—means you can drive. In Germany you can drink in bars. And it sounds different—sixteen—like I’m not a kid anymore.” I turn the light off, and roll to face her. Our knees touch in this little bed, but I can’t bring myself to move. I want to ask her if we bomb kids, and if she’d volunteer to go to war, and if Jeremy was serious today on the mats.

  “Do you feel different?” she asks.

  “A little squished maybe.”

  “That’s the thing about getting older,” she says, “it’s harder to keep the weight off.”

  “Hey, easy with the giving of complexes; it’s my birthday.”

  “You’re right,” she says, curling around me. “You know I love you, don’t you?”

  “I don’t know what I know,” I say. “Sometimes you won’t even look at me.”

  She rests her hand on my hip, and then sings this dirge version of Happy Birthday, which is weirdly consoling, like a lullaby. She has a pretty voice that warms the room, or perhaps tiredness warms us, or proximity. And I pray for my atheist, and for Stacy Masteller, and for forgiveness.

  Soughing. To make a rushing, rustling, or murmuring sound. Verb. This is onomatopoetic, right? I actually thought it might be a violent act. You know, death by soughing.

  Early on the morning of my birthday, Meghan drops me off at home, and I sneak into the kitchen to grab a banana, intending to flee upstairs, to avoid everyone. But Dad’s making waffles, and when I walk in, he turns, and gives me a giant, swallowing hug. “Happy Birthday,” he says. And I want to believe him, the hug and the waffles and the cheer in his voice. I want to believe.

  Nigel and Mom call to me from the dining room, and I walk through to another chorus of Happy Birthday, and bacon and scrambled eggs and grapefruit juice, and presents. Presents!

  From Mom and Dad: cash and a little bottle of perfume that smells citrusy and amazing. Cards with checks—my favorite kind of correspondence—from the rest of the relatives. Nigel wrapped his present in a paper sack, stapling it closed.

  “Nice,” I say, and then I lift out the short black skirt and can’t speak.

  “Meghan helped me pick it out.”

  I nod. It’s my size and everything. “Perfect choice,” I say.

  “You can wear it Friday to your gig.”

  Maybe Meghan’s bracelet works like a blessing, or a charm or something. Maybe we’re all under a spell.

  “You kids need to get ready for school,” Mom tells us. She’s deliberately not looking at the skirt. “Cole, don’t forget you have your assembly today.”

  No, I haven’t forgotten. Ms. Ruhl wants us all to wear black slacks and button-down white shirts, like waiters. For years she danced ballet professionally, and moves through the world at a different tempo from regular people. She’s regal or whatever, and during our choral rehearsals, she stands at the piano and directs us with nods of her head, and sudden flicks of her arm, while she accompanies us.

  Jeremy and I leave the base with plenty of time to get to school, but detour before we arrive, and sort of lose track of everything in the universe. With the passenger’s seat tipped back and some keen contortion, he manages to destroy the starched smoothness of my white shirt and give me hickeys and make me beg before either of us realizes that we’ve missed first period.

  “Please,” I say again.

  Idled in some parking lot, my pants are half off, and there’s no one in any direction. The heater hums, and our breath, and we’ve fogged the windows as he pulls my shirt away. Will it happen like this? In a car, in daylight, on a school day—none of these things as I imagined.

  In the cafeteria, Joe and Bangs and Ernie have gathered around a large box at our table.

 
“You’re here,” Bangs says. “I worried when you weren’t in Graphics.”

  “You have second lunch?” I ask Ernie.

  “No,” he says, “I’m not here.”

  “Oh.” They’re grinning at me like scheming nine-year-olds. “What’s in the box?”

  Bangs holds up a white t-shirt with Doggy Life printed across the chest in medieval font, then turns it around to reveal a graphic of a small ugly dog playing bass in front of two tremendous speakers.

  “Oh my god,” I say.

  Joe throws me a shirt. “Try it on.”

  “Oh my god.” I’m hopping now. “We’re like for real with merchandise and a logo and everything.” The boys resist bouncing with me, but they totally want to, they’re all drunk with excitement.

  “Ernie and Christian drew the graphic and printed the shirts,” Joe says. “We wanted to surprise you.”

  “You guys!” And then I jump at them and kiss their blushing faces, convinced now that sixteen is charmed.

  “You working as a caterer?” Bangs asks, pointing at my outfit.

  “The assembly,” I remind him.

  “So you came to school for lunch and a slack afternoon of school spirit. Well plotted.”

  “Mostly I just wanted to miss gymnastics.”

  We eat hamburgers, and tater tots, and avoid the weird non-ketchup sauce. I get t-shirts for Nigel and Jeremy, and I’m not the girl I was yesterday, I don’t even remember her.

  Annie Thorn has learned to climb. She scales the bookshelves, the kitchen counters, the furniture, even the dining table. If it were summer, I’d have her up in trees, but trapped in the house we’re forced to be inventive. We link chairs with sofa cushions and ottomans, and I’m the crocodile that gets Annie if she touches ground, as well as Karen’s guide on her tentative expeditions. They’re squealing with delight, and occasional terror, and I tell them a story about a window in the moon and the boy who climbs down when he’s bored.