I had everything figured out perfectly.
I heard the sound of the Chevrolet in the driveway. Four doors slammed and one of the twins yelled, “Sylvie, Sylvie, we’re home!”
So soon! I snapped the radio off and jumped into bed. I pulled the covers over me.
They were ten minutes early. It’s a good thing I hadn’t stopped to take a shower.
“Sylvie?” It was Uncle Ted. I could hear his footsteps coming up the stairs.
“Sylvie, how are you feeling? It’s barbecue time!”
With no one in the house, I’d forgotten to shut the door. I turned toward the wall and pretended to be asleep.
Chapter 2
“Sylvie! Sylvie! Daddy’s going to barbecue!”
Honey and Bunny, the twins, came barreling into the room right behind Uncle Ted. One of them jumped on my bed. I turned over slowly, pretending I was just waking up.
“Get off the bed, Honey,” Uncle Ted said irritably. “You might catch what Sylvie’s got.”
“What’ve you got, Sylvie?” Honey bounced on my bed until Uncle Ted grabbed her under the arms and lifted her off.
“A stomachache,” I said. “I wish you wouldn’t bounce on my bed. It makes me feel sicker.”
“I’m not bouncing anymore,” Honey said. But she was. She was bouncing on the floor, she and Bunny, jiggling around in their matching yellow sunback dresses, like jumping jacks that had to go to the bathroom.
“Now you two get out of here,” Uncle Ted said sternly. “Sylvie isn’t feeling well and you’re just making her feel worse.”
Hardy har har, I thought. Just like he was really concerned. There was only one reason he wanted them out of my room and it had nothing to do with my pretend sickness.
“That’s okay,” I said. I made my voice sound brave and noble, like I was really suffering but determined not to show it. Like Judy Garland in A Star Is Born when she gets the Academy Award. “They don’t bother me.”
“You can’t even eat, Sylvie?” Bunny said. “Not even hamburgers and hot dogs?”
“I don’t think so. Oohh,” I groaned, and held my stomach. It was absolutely vital that they think I was too sick to go to school tomorrow, which was one of the two reasons I had to start being sick today. The other was so that I could get out of going to church with them and get my packing done.
“Not even barbecue hamburgers?” Honey said, like she could hardly believe it.
I could have kicked myself for saying I had a stomachache instead of a headache or sore throat or something, because I really was hungry. I should have sneaked something to eat while they were at church. I hadn’t eaten anything since supper last night and I was starving. And now it looked like I wouldn’t get to eat until tomorrow.
Aunt Grace came into the room. “How are you feeling, Sylvie? Any better?” She pulled off her white gloves and fanned herself with them. “My, it certainly is hot up here. You must be perishing.” She took off her little white hat and patted her Blonde Mink curls. (Courtesy of Mr. Anthony’s Salon de Beauté.)
“Sylvie is sick,” Honey said. “In her stomach.”
“Sylvie might throw up,” Bunny added. She sounded like she was almost excited at that idea.
“Now shoo, you two, and change out of your dresses and leave Sylvie alone. Goodness, Sylvie, I wish you had come to church with us. It just isn’t the easiest thing in the world to pray and keep your eye on those two at the same time. They were just impossible without you.”
I’ll bet they were. I noticed it never occurred to Aunt Grace to worry about how I was supposed to pray and keep the twins from leaping all over the church like they were in a Martin and Lewis movie.
“We prayed for the President,” Honey said importantly. “That he should get better.”
“That he shouldn’t die,” Bunny said, nodding.
“And we prayed that Elvis Presley should die,” Honey said.
“Oh, Honey, you’re all mixed up,” Aunt Grace laughed. “That was the sermon. You should have been there, Sylvie. The sermon was very appropriate. It was all about this rock-and-roll music.”
“Did he really say Elvis should die?” I asked, horrified. Dr. Cannon could get pretty worked up about juvenile delinquency and communism and all, but I never heard him actually wish for somebody to die.
“No, he just said the music ought to die out and probably would. He certainly doesn’t think much of that Elvis, though, I’ll tell you that.”
Boy, was I sorry I missed that sermon! It was probably the first time in history Dr. Cannon preached something I was interested in.
“All right, look,” Uncle Ted said impatiently. “Are we going to get this barbecue started or what? Sylvie, you want to come down and lie on the patio where it’s cooler? Even if you don’t want to eat—”
“No, maybe later. I just want to rest. I feel real weak and dizzy.”
“All right. Maybe you can have some tea and toast later,” Aunt Grace said. “Now, come on everybody, and let Sylvie rest in peace.”
Finally! They all cleared out of my room, including Uncle Ted. I heard the sounds of drawers and closets opening and closing as they changed from their Sunday clothes into their backyard clothes.
Soon the twins were shrieking in the backyard at the fire, and the smell of charcoal smoke began to drift up through my window. I got out of bed and went into the bathroom. I washed all over with a washcloth and cold water then patted myself dry with a towel and dusted with Cashmere Bouquet talcum powder. I didn’t have to worry about Uncle Ted coming upstairs as long as the barbecue was going.
He loved to barbecue. He made a real big deal out of it, like he was chef for the day and no one else could turn a hamburger on the grill like he could.
Aunt Grace acted the same way, and it was such a joke! She got him this barbecue apron with a picture of a chef in a tall white hat holding a big platter of hamburgers and saying, “Come and get it!” And the only thing he actually did was to light the charcoal and turn over the hamburgers and hot dogs. Because Aunt Grace mixed up the hamburger and squeezed it into flat patties, and made the potato salad and the coleslaw, unless she bought them from the delicatessen. And I peeled the cellophane off each hot dog, so what was the big deal about Uncle Ted doing all the cooking?
But everybody had to make a fuss about how good his hamburgers were, and you couldn’t get that charcoal taste in a restaurant, and even a hot dog at a baseball game didn’t taste this good, all black and puffy and squirting juice out when you bit into it.
What it was, really, was that when we had barbecues, Aunt Grace and Uncle Ted could act like we were all one big, happy, normal American family, just like in the article in Look magazine, with pictures showing how the weekend barbecue is the most popular way for families to practice togetherness.
We would come home from church, where everyone knew how good and kind Uncle Ted and Aunt Grace were to poor Sylvie, taking her in even though they had two children of their own to care for. I guess no one ever stopped to think that that might be just the reason Aunt Grace and Uncle Ted took me in. Maybe the O’Connors hadn’t needed a baby-sitter that much, but here I was practically the twins’ second mother. And then there was the money the county paid them every month. That didn’t hurt either.
Anyway, when the church service was over, Uncle Ted was all cheerful and smiling, seeing all those men he sold insurance to, slapping people on the back and praising Dr. Cannon’s “thought-provoking” sermon and probably feeling so all-around noble and fatherly and religious that he completely forgot all the times he came into my room to “kiss me good-night.”
And Aunt Grace would be showing off the twins in their matching dresses, and putting her arm around me to show everyone I was just like her own daughter, and telling Dr. Cannon that his sermon was so inspiring, it really gave her something to think about. And a minute later she’d ask Uncle Ted whether she should try to make a heart-shaped marshmallow Jell-O mold for her canasta group the next day, or would
it get all mushed up when she tried to unmold it?
So, feeling all warm and churchy, they’d go home and change and set us all up in the backyard, just like we were posing for those pictures in Look magazine. The perfect family, doing what the perfect family does every weekend. They probably wished a photographer would come and take a picture of us and print it in some magazine so everyone could see what a perfect family we were.
But I bet Uncle Ted wouldn’t want any photographers around at night. Say, ten o’clock at night. Upstairs. In my room.
I turned the radio back on. Harry Belafonte was singing “Sylvie.”
It was like a sign. I love that song. It’s just like it was written for me. Except some of the boys in school sing it to me and change the words, so they sing it: “Sylvie, Sylvie, I’m so hot and dry. Sylvie, Sylvie, can’t you hear, can’t you hear me callin’, Bring me little mm mm Sylvie, Bring me little mm mm now-ow . . .” Instead of “water,” they sing “mm mm” in a really dirty way.
I try to ignore it and to just walk away with my head high to show them how juvenile I think they are. And they really are. They’re just juvenile babies. None of the boys in school are mature enough for me and it makes them mad because I won’t even look at them, so that’s how they get back at me.
A lot of them try to act like James Dean and dress like him and let their cigarettes hang off their lips till you think they’re going to set fire to themselves. But it takes a lot more than a pair of jeans and a garrison belt to be James Dean. They just end up looking hoody, and some of them really are JDs, but the thing is, you know James Dean isn’t; you know that he’s just misunderstood, and on the inside he’s good and it just takes the right person to understand him and sympathize with him for the goodness to come out.
These guys who imitate him, they don’t know how he suffers, they don’t understand how he really hurts inside. So they’ll never be James Dean because they don’t know what it feels like to hurt so much that you can hardly talk to people.
Anyway, another interesting thing about that song, “Sylvie,” besides that it’s my name is that it’s the first song I ever heard with the word “damn” in it. I didn’t know you could say that on the radio, but it’s in the song, and they play it on the radio. And none of the rock-and-roll songs I like have any swear words in them, so I don’t understand why people are more upset by rock and roll than by “Sylvie.”
Also, I think Harry Belafonte is beautiful. Not just handsome, but beautiful, and I never thought any man was beautiful before. He isn’t in too many magazines so I only have one picture of him, but I love to look at it and imagine him kissing me. Even if he is a Negro, I don’t care, it doesn’t make him any less beautiful, and when I hear him sing “Sylvie,” I imagine him holding me in his arms and singing the words softly right into my ear.
The barbecue smells really began to get to me, so I got into a pair of capri pants and my striped boat-neck top and went downstairs.
Uncle Ted was toasting marshmallows on the grill. “Well, well, how’s the patient?”
“Sylvie, Sylvie!” the twins screamed, like they hadn’t seen me for a year. “Marshmallows! Daddy’s toasting marshmallows!”
“Yes, I see.”
“Are you feeling better?” Aunt Grace asked.
“Not really. It’s just so hot up in my room.”
“Sit down on the chaise longue,” she said. “It’s nice and cool down here now. Would you like to try some toast and tea?”
“Well,” I said doubtfully, “at least I could try.” I really would have liked a hot dog, but a person with a sick stomach couldn’t ask for a hot dog. It was toast, or starve to death.
“I’ll make it,” I said, as Aunt Grace started to get up from the redwood table.
I went through the back door into the kitchen and made the tea and toast. I ate it there, where nobody could see me wolfing it down. I had four pieces of toast with chunks of Velveeta on them and two cups of tea.
I went back outside, holding my stomach.
“I don’t know if eating was such a good idea, Aunt Grace.”
“Oh, dear. Maybe we’d better call Dr. Fitch if you’re still feeling this way tomorrow.” I could see Aunt Grace didn’t like that idea too much. Monday was canasta day. Well, I didn’t want the doctor either. I had to be just sick enough to stay home from school, but not sick enough to have Aunt Grace miss her game at Millie Reemer’s.
“Are you going to throw up, Sylvie? Are you going to throw up?”
“Stop it, Honey!” Aunt Grace said sharply.
“I better go back to bed.”
“Take the little fan from our room, Sylvie,” Uncle Ted called after me as I went inside. “That’ll stir the air around, anyway.”
“Okay. Thanks.”
The afternoon dragged on forever. I lay on my bed with some of my magazines, the fan whirring away on my desk, the radio playing the top twenty-five songs of the week.
I began counting how many hours I had left to live in this house. Each hour that dragged by seemed longer than the year I had already been here.
I don’t really know for sure why Aunt Grace and Uncle Ted took me in, especially because the way I got myself out of the O’Connors’ was by being as much trouble as possible without actually being a JD.
Like I said, I knew the social worker wouldn’t believe me if I told the truth about Mr. O’Connor and what he was trying to do, so the only thing I could think of was to make the O’Connors want to get rid of me.
I started not answering them when they talked to me. I didn’t do anything they told me to. I went out of the house and wouldn’t come back till all hours of the night. If I didn’t have a baby-sitting job I’d usually go to the movies and then just walk around till I was sure it was late enough for them to be plenty worried about me.
I knew what I was doing was making Ernie and Georgie very nervous and upset, but I couldn’t help it. I had to get out of there. I was a nervous wreck myself, from having spent all those months practically running from Mr. O’Connor, and not always getting away. Somehow he always managed, no matter how cagey I thought I was being, to get his hands on me one way or another, a couple of times a week.
When I started acting like a real “troubled teenager,” Mr. O’Connor got madder and madder.
One night when I came in late from baby-sitting, Mr. O’Connor was dozing in front of the television. All the lights in the house were off. I closed the door real softly behind me, but just then the TV blared out the “Star-Spangled Banner” and Mr. O’Connor woke up and saw me.
“This is a fine hour for you to come waltzing in,” he said, snapping on the floor lamp next to his chair.
“How do you know what time it is?” I said. “You were asleep.”
“Don’t be fresh with me, young lady, or I’ll teach you some manners with this.” He held up his fist.
“You lay a hand on me,” I said, my voice all shaky, “and I’ll tell the social worker and you’ll never get any other kids at eighty bucks a month.”
He dropped his fist to his side. I guess the thought of losing the money the county paid for the three of us made him think twice about hitting me.
Then he got this real sly look on his face.
“Why do you have to be that way, Sylvie?” he said. “Why do you always have to make me mad? I don’t want to be mad at you. I don’t want to hit you. I want us to be friends.”
He started walking toward me, a phony-kind smile on his face.
I darted toward the hall to run to my room, but for a heavy guy he was pretty fast. He grabbed my arm and pulled me against him.
“Sylvie, be nice. I’ll be nice to you, you’ll see how nice I can be.” He slobbered on my neck, his fingers pawing at my collar.
My heart hammered in my chest. I was smothering, I was suffocating, my face pressed into his shirtfront, his sweaty hands grabbing at my buttons.
I socked him in the ribs and screamed.
“You dirty old pig! You
fat old pig! Don’t you dare touch me!”
I ran down the hall to my room, just as Mrs. O’Connor came running to see what the noise was about.
“Sylvie, what is it? What’s going on?”
“Ask him!” I yelled. “Ask the fat old pig yourself.”
“Sylvie!”
I slammed my door shut and threw myself across the bed, crying like crazy.
I was scared to death. I was crying because I was mad, but I was crying because I was really terrified, too. I’d made him too angry. It wasn’t my fault, this time I hadn’t started it, but I’d made him so mad I knew he was going to get me. He was big and he was strong and he was an adult, and he’d figure out a way to lie to the social worker so she’d believe him and not me.
It wasn’t going to be all fake fatherly smiles and accidental touching anymore. He wasn’t going to bother to pretend after this. It was too late for pretending. I had hit him. He knew he wasn’t fooling me. And he was going to get me. He was going to force me.
Even crying into my pillow, gasping for breath, I could hear him yelling. “Impossible! Incorrigible! . . . don’t know what gets into her.” I couldn’t hear what Mrs. O’Connor was saying, she was talking too softly, but I was sure she would believe whatever lies he was telling her.
And then she’d go back to bed and he’d stay up and wait, until he was sure she was asleep, until he thought I was asleep....
I groaned and slammed my fist into my pillow. No!
I hauled myself off the bed and looked around the room. There was a big, old oak chest of drawers next to the door. I ran to it, leaned my shoulder against it, and pushed. I couldn’t budge it.
Still crying, still hardly able to catch my breath, I opened all four drawers and dumped the things in them on the floor. Then I pulled the drawers out and pushed the dresser against the door. I put the drawers back in and threw all the stuff back into the drawers.
“Sylvie, what are you doing? Sylvie, what are you moving around in there?”
I fell back on the bed, exhausted. The doorknob turned, rattled, the door thunked against the dresser but didn’t move another inch.
To All My Fans, With Love, From Sylvie Page 2
