Giraffe People

by Jill Malone

  Jeremy doesn’t come to our joint birthday dinner. Kelly comes, and Meghan (doing her best “I love everybody here equally!”) and Doggy Life, and Bangs, and Alicia, and a bunch of effusive kids from Nigel’s chess club. Every time someone walks through the door, I think it must be him.

  Ernie plays Happy Birthday on the piano—figures the guy can play piano—and everyone sings. Meghan sends me upstairs for my guitar, and we jam a little, trading the guitar between Joe and Bangs and me. Nigel keeps requesting U2 songs. Trevor tells us to buy a hand drum before the next party.

  When Gabby stops by, around ten, to pick her brother up, she and Joe decide to cut my hair.

  There are ancient peoples, right, that chop off all their hair when they’re in mourning. I’ve heard of these people. Greeks or Syrians or something. Anyway, that’s what I’m thinking when Gabby chops my hair.

  “This is going to be amazing,” she promises.

  Shorn. Their hair is shorn in their grief. It’s like the ultimate physical gesture of loss, isn’t it? Except for being temporary.

  “You can just mousse it all out,” Gabby says. “It’ll be wild.”

  Amazing. Wild. Whatever. The three of us are in the bathroom; Joe reclines on the edge of the tub, Gabby shimmies around my chair, murmuring. She brought clippers and scissors with her, almost as if they’d planned it. Cross-legged on the carpet in my bedroom, Bangs strums my acoustic.

  “This guitar is sonic.” He watches the chop and buzz.

  I figured she’d cut to my chin. She goes half again as short.

  “Holy god,” I say, when I look in the mirror.

  “It suits you,” Gabby says.

  Joe puts his hand on my shoulder. “I want you to think about deep purple highlights.”

  “Holy god,” I say.

  Gabby grabs my hair dryer, and bends me forward. “All you have to do,” she tells me over the roar, “is mousse, and blow-dry like this.”

  Bangs slouches in the doorframe. “What do you think?” I ask him once I’m upright.

  “You’re a little punk,” he says.

  Friday morning, I wake, and try not to freak out. I won’t need mousse and a blowdrier to get whacky hair. At the bus stop, Stacy grins at me. “Now do something unpredictable,” she says. My face feels hot, despite the cold, and the considerable absence of hair. “It looks good.”

  “Thanks.” Liar. Why couldn’t I just tell them no? Why did I submit to this?

  When we board the bus, Stacy squeezes into my seat. “I thought Jeremy had chicken pox or something,” she says as the bus lurches forward, “and then I saw him in the hall.” Braiding the strings on her bag, she focuses on her fingers.

  “Nothing like that,” I say.

  “Well, who wouldn’t want to ride the bus, and get to school 45 minutes before it begins?”

  When I first met Stacy Masteller, her hair was brown, and she wore these cute little striped sweaters, and played football with us, and got super-aggressive and would tackle the guys and sack the quarterback and everything. And then, halfway through eighth grade, she starts bleaching her hair, and worshipping cosmetics, and ignoring anyone who isn’t dressed in a Metallica shirt.

  We were never friends, really, but I liked her. Girls eager to tackle: fairly rare in my experience.

  “Are you OK?” she asks now.

  I shrug.

  She hands me an orange square of gum. “I saw you guys play at Board.”

  “Did you? I didn’t see you.”

  “There were a lot of people there. You guys are good. So many bands, they just pretend to be bands, you know what I mean? They’re like in band costumes or whatever, but you guys—you are a band. And you sound good, which is a bonus.”

  “Thanks. You coming to the show this Saturday?”

  “I’m thinking yes.”

  “You should say hey if you make it.”

  She nods.

  “What about you?” I ask. “How are you?”

  “If I shrug, will you believe I’m fine?”

  “Sure,” I say, “if you want.”

  She shrugs. “I’m totally over Jersey. I’ve never been so ready to go.”

  Over Jersey, the way Jeremy and Meghan are over me. Next year I’ll be as far from this place as you can get and still be part of the U.S. Far from West Point, and Doggy Life, and this school, and this life. “Maybe we should switch places.”

  “No way.” She laughs. “I could never pull off that haircut.”

  So, Mr. Henderson, the lazy bastard, takes the entire week to grade our Geometry tests; at the end of class, he places them face down on our desks, and yes, wait for it: I got an 87.

  Joe leans over my shoulder. I hold the test up for him to examine, and say, “I’m the queen of B.”

  “You’re pretty righteous in E flat too.” He shows me his 83. “Better than me.”

  Never mind that I studied for five hours, and still got a B. Whatever. I’m over it. Joe stuffs his test into his square green field bag. Bleached blond, and more than stubble, his hair has lost that sad chemo baldness.

  “Walk you to class?” he asks.

  I nod.

  “That song you played, you wrote it?”

  “Yeah.”

  “Do you have more?”

  Hundreds probably. “I have more.”

  “I’d like to hear them,” he says.

  “Sure,” I say. “If you want.”

  “Maybe next week you could come over for dinner, or whatever, and play them for me.”

  “Don’t get your hopes up. They’re all super simple, and don’t really even have bridges.”

  He puts his hands on my shoulders and steers me toward the door to English. “You pick the night—any night—and let me know.”

  Senor Fernandez gives us the entire period to write a story in Spanish. Tonight we have a gig at Ichabod’s, and tomorrow at Board, and next week, we’ll play at a new place in some kind of battle of the bands competition. I finished my mat routine in gym, and have been working on the balance beam. Lame doesn’t come close to capturing how much I suck—even walking across the beam I barely keep from falling. Jeremy tried a handstand on the rings, and almost managed it. Diofelli cheered like a schoolgirl.

  I want to kick something. Being civilized, wearing clothes, and walking upright, has officially become too much. Another two sentences, and I finish my story. Senor Fernandez will probably think I’m psycho—I’ve written about housecats banding together to take over the town. Los gatos aterrorizan a la ciudad. The humans, enslaved, beg for mercy, and grimness abounds until Pimienta el perro—Pepper the dog—frees them.

  If I’d played basketball, I wouldn’t have to take gym, and I’d never see Jeremy. Never have to walk the balance beam like a plank, or do jumping jacks, or pretend this is all no big deal. A haircut never made anyone new. At the bell, I turn in my story, and wander around the corner to Biology.

  Once Bangs comes in, he digs through his bag and hands me a Charms Pop—sour apple, my favorite.

  “Are you skating this afternoon?” I ask.

  “Yeah, the guys want to go to Board.”

  “Shit, we have a quiz today, don’t we?”

  “Open book,” he reminds me.

  “When did I fall out of my life?”

  He unwraps my lollipop, and grins at me. “You guys all play soccer, right—your brothers and Meghan and you?” When I nod, he goes on, “We’re organizing an indoor game this Sunday afternoon. If you guys come, we’ll have enough people for two teams. Interested?”

  “Totally. I love indoor soccer.” Just the idea of running up and down a gymnasium relieves me, not to mention the constructive, purposeful kicking. “I’ll check with everybody else, and let you know tomorrow.”

  “Cool.”

  I have to take every book in my locker home for the weekend. My bag weighs five million pounds, and I get to ride the bus home, and Jeremy passes us while Stacy and I wait in line, and he doesn’t even look at me. I am invis
ible now.

  I leave my bag on the landing outside the kitchen door, and follow the sawing sound. Uneven grey stone, a sheer staircase, all the exposed pipe work, I tend to avoid the basement. Mom’s workspace, with interrogation lamps, myriad sharp implements, and a swivel chair like dentists use, actually amplifies the creep-out factor.

  From the bottom step, I watch her—the giant ear protectors, the goggles and face mask—as she saws wood on a jigsaw or bandsaw or some whirring thing. The place smells of wood and machinery.

  Mom turns, and pulls off her ear protection. “Cole? Is it so late?” She checks her watch, and then says my name once more, differently. “Nicole?” She crosses the room, and crouches down in front of me. We’re almost level. She reaches around to rub small circles on my back.

  “I hurt,” I say. “I hurt all over.” I’m telling my shoes. I want my shoes to know how hard it is. How much I want to stop feeling anything, to stop wanting. “He—I thought—I thought he—” I don’t know what I thought. Something. I thought something once.

  My mother isn’t a murmurer. She doesn’t say Shh, or It’s OK, or I know, or any other lies. “Do you know what I thought about today?” she asks. “Your second day of kindergarten.”

  She moves around so that she’s seated on the step beside me, still rubbing my back, a fine sawdust now on my knees and shoes. “The first day they took you all around—showed you the office, and the classroom, and the toilets. And the second day, you were just to start. Go right in and join the class.”

  I don’t remember this. I remember kindergarten—the teachers speaking only German, the bins of toys, the great windows, and the bright yellow wooden furniture.

  “Nigel was in a stroller,” she continues, “and you walked beside him, holding his hand. And then, once we got to school, you stood there, looking at the doors. And finally you said, ‘I don’t want to go.’ And then you let go of Nigel’s hand, and you walked inside. You didn’t hesitate or look back. ‘I don’t want to go’—and then you went. Nigel and I waited for you. Just in case. I don’t know how long. I almost wished—” She coughs, and then says, “I almost wished you’d come back out, said you weren’t ready, or needed a hug first, or more time. I needed more time. I think I cried every day that week.”

  I don’t remember that either, her crying. “It’s cold down here,” I say.

  She pats her knees, and stands. “Give me just a second, and I’ll go up with you. I have to start dinner.”

  “What are we having?”

  “Beef stroganoff.”

  I wait while she sweeps, and turns off the lights, and puts her tools away. I wait because I’m tired of struggling, and because she asked me to, and because for the first time since Jeremy left my room in his slippers, I’ve said that it hurts, and I’ve said it out loud, and I want to be with the person I told.

  Parity. Equality, as in amount, status, or value. Noun. I think parity is a rarity.

  Joe holds the tank top up to his own chest. “It’s as blue as your eyes,” he tells me. The ugly dog has its head back and bays into a microphone. Doggy Life in the same script as on the t-shirts—Trevor’s wearing the new black one.

  “You can change here,” Trevor says, and winks.

  “Aren’t you supposed to be topless?” I ask.

  “I will if you will,” he says.

  Seated on an amp with his guitar cradled in his lap, Ernie says, “Shut up.”

  Trevor looks at him. “Dude?”

  “Cole,” Ernie says, “you rock those sweatshirts. You don’t need to wear some little tank top or spike your hair all out like Sid Vicious or any of that shit.”

  “Do you hear yourself?” Trevor asks Ernie.

  “I thought we were serious about this,” Ernie says. “I thought we meant it. This is us, all right, this—metal boy and Robert Smith’s baby brother, and the sweet girl, and me. This is the wrong crew for safety pins and Mohawks. So leave her the fuck alone already.” Ernie stands to take the tank top from Joe, and swaps it for his own button down. “I’ll wear the tank top. I don’t want to hear another fucking word about this.”

  “Dude,” Trevor mutters, “menstrual much?”

  We have the tightest set we’ve ever played. Ichabod’s, smoky and dark, must be filled past capacity. The bouncers toss anyone with a drink off the dance floor. Whenever I note Ernie’s blue tank top in my peripheral vision, I smile.

  His knees bent, legs spread, he blitzes licks and power chords and solos. Joe’s grind looks pornographic. Boys in the crowd thrash against one another, and up into the air like orcas. From the moment we took the stage, there’s been steady screaming from the back of the bar.

  Meghan, sporting an orange wristband to identify her as underage, sits on a stool at the edge of the dance floor, and mouths lyrics. When we play my song, she jumps to her feet and dances with her arms over her head.

  The sweet girl. Dig me, the sweet girl. Joe harmonizes for the chorus, and leans against me during Ernie’s solo. Fuck, I’m alive. We will groove through you. We will sing you a rhythm. We are an electric current, the last thing you’ll ever remember.

  “You played one of Cole’s songs,” Meghan says when she comes backstage. She grabs my shoulders and hugs me. “You guys were absolutely unreal tonight.” The three of them blush as she hugs them as well. With her arms still around Ernie, she says, “And I want one of these tank tops.”

  Meghan parks beneath the trees in front of our house. Just midnight, the car warm, the streets empty, both of us reek of cigarettes.

  “Soccer on Sunday afternoon?” Meghan says.

  “Nigel and Nate agreed already, and of course, Nate’s bringing Kelly; and Bangs, and Gabby, and some of their friends.”

  “And Jeremy?” Meghan asks. “Will Jeremy come?”

  “No.”

  “He wasn’t at the birthday dinner.”

  “No.”

  “Why is that?”

  “He wasn’t interested.”

  “Wasn’t he?” she asks.

  “If he were interested, he’d have come, wouldn’t he? So, I think I can say with certainty that he wasn’t interested. That he isn’t interested. I think I can guarantee you that.”

  “Cole, what happened?”

  “There’s something wrong with me.” I tell her the story. The darkness helps. Could be any story I’m telling, just another grim fairytale. When I finally look at her, she has turned in her seat with her legs up so that she faces me, and her arm extends between us, her fingers sifting through my grief hair.

  For Graphic Arts, we’re supposed to shoot portraits. I’ve had trouble envisaging a portrait; I thought maybe I could get the guys to pose for me with their instruments, or convince them this had publicity potential or something; but the truth is, I’m bored by the whole idea of portraits.

  Yet, looking at Meghan—her blonde hair sitting at her shoulders, her knees pulled up against her chest, the night almost sifted down around her as if to illuminate her skin—she seems, in the car, to glow, and I wish I had my camera. I wish I could capture this.

  “Say something,” I say.

  “I don’t know what to say.”

  “Tell me I’m not a freak.”

  “You’re not a freak.”

  “Then why?” I ask. “He left my room that night, and now it’s like I don’t exist. Like none of it ever happened, or mattered.”

  “Cole,” she says softly.

  “Whenever somebody asks me about him, I want to fucking punch them. I don’t want to be this girl. This sad, dumped girl.”

  I bow my head and she runs her fingers along the back of my head, and down my neck to my shoulders. Soothing, and hypnotic, and something else—something I don’t have a word for—maybe this is how it feels to have your head anointed with oil. To be blessed.

  “That feels good,” I murmur.

  “Have you been dumped?” she asks.

  “If I haven’t, I have the shittiest boyfriend of all time.”

&n
bsp; “Maybe you should talk to him.”

  “Maybe I should just leave the whole thing alone. A week ago, I thought I couldn’t possibly feel worse, and now I know I can, and I also know that I don’t want to. This is plenty, thanks.”

  Her fingers tighten around my hair at the nape of my neck; she’s gripping it in her fist, and she tugs and twists so that my face is turned toward her. And, all at once, in a single motion, she glides forward and kisses me. A launching, gliding, leaning kiss. And then she straddles me, and cocks my head back, and I see that glow again as she dips her face to mine. I cannot stop shaking. I cannot breathe.

  Even with my eyes closed, I see that glow, that luminous dusting of night. I will put all my sorrow here, into her mouth. I will bury it, like a secret, and no one will ever know.

  Leroy has two chairs set up for us in the corner of the large room. “You don’t look so good, kid,” he says.

  “Not sleeping.”

  He stares at me and strums his guitar. “You know this one?” He plays Everybody Knows, sings the lyric in his raspy blues voice.

  “Concrete Blonde,” I say when he finishes.

  “Leonard Cohen,” he corrects. “Concrete Blonde covered it.”

  “Will you teach me?” I ask. We go through the song, both of us singing now, the lyric intricate and painful. See, it can always be worse: Jeremy could have cheated, or left me for somebody. Bright side!

  “How’d it go last night?” Leroy asks.

  “Tight. Ernie is so good, he changes his lines a little, improvises, you know?”

  Leroy nods. “Let’s hear some scales.”

  Yes, scales, something monotonous and rote. Something mindless. I can still feel her hands in my hair. Her weight on me, her mouth, scales.

  Dad builds a fire. Nigel and I have taken over the living room—our books on the coffee table and both couches, our bags on the floor. Does Nate ever do homework? It’s nearly two in the afternoon, and I don’t even think he’s out of bed yet.