The Little Friend

by Donna Tartt

  Adelaide began to fan herself with a copy of Mississippi By-ways magazine that she’d brought to look at in the car.

  “If you’re not getting enough air back there,” said Edie, “why don’t you let your windows down a little?”

  “I don’t want to muss my hair up. I just had it fixed.”

  “Well,” said Tat, leaning across, “if you crack it just a little …”

  “No! Stop! That’s the door!”

  “No, Adelaide, that’s the door. This is the window.”

  “Please don’t bother. I’m fine like this.”

  Edie said: “If I was you I wouldn’t worry too much about my hair, Addie. You’re going to get mighty hot back there.”

  “Well, with all these other windows down,” Adelaide said stiffly, “I’m getting blown to pieces as it is.”

  Tat laughed. “Well, I’m not closing my window!”

  “Well,” said Adelaide primly, “I’m not opening mine.”

  Libby—in the front seat, next to Edie—made a drowsy, fretful noise as if she couldn’t quite get comfortable. Her powdery little cologne was inoffensive, but in combination with the heat, and the powerful Asian clouds of Shalimar and Souvenez-vous? simmering in the rear, Edie’s sinuses had already begun to close up.

  Suddenly, Tat shrieked: “Where’s my pocketbook?”

  “What? What?” said everybody at once.

  “I can’t find my pocketbook!”

  “Edith, turn around!” said Libby. “She’s left her pocketbook!”

  “I didn’t leave it. I just had it!”

  Edie said: “Well, I can’t turn around in the middle of the street.”

  “Where can it be? I just had it! I—”

  “Oh, Tatty!” Merry laughter from Adelaide. “There it is! You’re sitting on it.”

  “What did she say? Did she find it?” Libby asked, looking around in a panic. “Did you find your pocketbook, Tat?”

  “Yes, I’ve got it now.”

  “Oh, thank goodness. You don’t want to lose your pocketbook. What would you do if you lost your pocketbook?”

  As if announcing something over the radio, Adelaide proclaimed: “This reminds me of that crazy Fourth of July weekend when we drove down to Natchez. I’ll never forget it.”

  “No, I won’t forget it, either,” said Edie. That had been back in the fifties, before Adelaide quit smoking; Adelaide—busy talking—had caught the ashtray on fire while Edie was driving down the highway.

  “Goodness what a long hot drive.”

  Edie said tartly: “Yes, my hand certainly felt hot.” A redhot drip of molten plastic—cellophane from Addie’s cigarette pack—had stuck to the back of Edie’s hand while she was slapping the flames out and trying to drive the car at the same time (Addie had done nothing but squeal and flap about in the passenger seat); it was a nasty burn that left a scar, and the pain and shock of it had nearly run Edie off the road. She had driven two hundred miles in August heat with her right hand jammed in a paper cup full of ice water and tears streaming down her face, listening to Adelaide fuss and complain every mile of the way.

  “And what about that August we all drove to New Orleans?” Adelaide said, fluttering a hand comically over her chest. “I thought I was going to die of the heat stroke, Edith. I thought that you were going to look over here in the passenger seat and see that I had died.”

  You! thought Edie. With your window shut! Whose fault was that?

  “Yes!” said Tat. “What a trip! And that was—”

  “You weren’t with us.”

  “Yes I was!”

  “Indeed she was, I’ll never forget it,” Adelaide said imperiously.

  “Don’t you remember, Edith, that was the trip you went to the drive-through McDonald’s, in Jackson, and tried to tell our order to a garbage can in the parking lot?”

  Peals of merry laughter. Edie gritted her teeth and concentrated on the road.

  “Oh, what a bunch of crazy old ladies we are,” said Tat. “What those people must have thought.”

  “I just hope I remembered everything,” Libby murmured. “Last night, I started thinking that I’d left my stockings at home and that I’d lost all my money.…”

  “I’ll bet you didn’t get a wink of sleep, did you darling?” said Tat, leaning forward to put a hand on Libby’s thin little shoulder.

  “Nonsense! I’m doing beautifully! I’m—”

  “You know she didn’t! Worrying all the night long! What you need,” said Adelaide, “is some breakfast.”

  “You know,” said Tatty—and clapped her hands—“that’s a marvelous idea!”

  “Let’s stop, Edith.”

  “Listen! I wanted to leave at six this morning! If we stop now, it’ll be noon before we get on the road! Didn’t you all eat before you left?”

  “Well, I didn’t know how my stomach would feel until we’d been on the road a while,” said Adelaide.

  “We’re hardly out of town!”

  “Don’t worry about me, darling,” said Libby. “I’m too excited to eat a bite.”

  “Here, Tat,” said Edie, fumbling with the thermos. “Why don’t you pour her a little cup of coffee.”

  “If she hasn’t slept,” said Tat, primly, “coffee may give her palpitations.”

  Edie snorted. “What’s the matter with you all? You used to drink coffee at my house without complaining about palpitations or anything else. Now you act like it’s poison. Makes you all wild.”

  Very suddenly, Adelaide said: “Oh, dear. Turn around, Edith.”

  Tat put her hand over her mouth and laughed. “We’re all to pieces this morning, aren’t we?”

  Edie said: “What is it now?”

  “I’m sorry,” Adelaide said, tightly. “I have to go back.”

  “What have you forgotten?”

  Adelaide stared straight ahead. “The Sanka.”

  “Well, you’ll just have to buy some more.”

  “Well,” Tat murmured, “if she has a jar, at home, it’s a shame for her to buy another one—”

  “Besides,” said Libby—hands to her face, eyes rolling with wholly unfeigned alarm—“what if she can’t find it? What if they don’t sell it up there?”

  “You can buy Sanka anywhere.”

  “Edith, please,” Adelaide snapped. “I don’t want to hear it. If you don’t want to take me back, stop the car and let me get out.”

  Very sharply, without signaling, Edie swung into the driveway of the highway branch bank and turned around in the parking lot.

  “Aren’t we something? I thought it was just me forgetting things this morning,” Tat said gaily as she slid into Adelaide—bracing herself with a hand on Addie’s arm for Edie’s rough turn; and she was about to announce to everyone that she didn’t feel quite so bad now about leaving her wrist-watch at home when from the front seat there was a breathless cry from Libby and BAM: the Oldsmobile—struck hard, in the passenger side—spun nose-around so that the next thing anyone knew the horn was blaring and blood was gushing from Edie’s nose and they were on the wrong side of the highway, staring through a web of cracked glass at oncoming traffic.

  ————

  “Oh Harrr—riet!”

  Laughter. To Harriet’s dismay, the ventriloquist’s denimclad dummy had singled her out of the audience. She—and fifty other girls of varying ages—were seated on log benches in a clearing in the woods the counselors called “chapel.”

  Up front, two girls from Harriet’s cabin (Dawn and Jada) turned to glare at her. They’d been fighting with Harriet only that morning, a fight which had been interrupted by the chapel bell.

  “Hey! Take it easy, Ziggie old boy!” chuckled the ventriloquist. He was a counselor from the boys’ camp named Zach. Dr. and Mrs. Vance had mentioned more than once that Zig (the dummy) and Zach had shared a bedroom for twelve years; that the dummy had accompanied Zach to Bob Jones University as Zach’s “roommate”; Harriet had already heard much, much more about it than sh
e cared to. The dummy was dressed like a Dead End Kid, in knee pants and pork-pie hat, and it had a scary red mouth and freckles that looked like measles. Now—in imitation of Harriet, presumably—it popped its eyes and swivelled its head full circle.

  “Hey, boss! And they call me a dummy!” it shrieked aggressively.

  More laughter—particularly loud from Jada and Dawn, up front, clapping their hands in appreciation. Harriet, face burning, stared haughtily at the sweaty back of the girl in front of her: an older girl with rolls of fat bulging around her bra straps. I hope I never look like that, she thought. I’ll starve myself first.

  She had been at camp for ten days. It seemed like forever. Edie, she suspected, had had a little word with Dr. Vance and his wife because the counselors had established an irritating pattern of singling her out, but part of the problem—Harriet knew it lucidly without being able to do anything about it—was her inability to fit in with the group without attracting attention to herself. As a matter of principle, she had neglected to sign and return the “covenant card” in her information pack. This was a series of solemn pledges all campers were pressured to make: pledges not to attend R-rated movies or listen to “hard or acid rock” music; not to drink alcohol, have sex before marriage, smoke marijuana or tobacco, or take the Lord’s name in vain. It wasn’t as if Harriet actually wanted to do any of these things (except—sometimes, not very often—go to the movies); but still she was determined not to sign it.

  “Hay Hun! Didn’t you forget something?” said Nursie Vance brightly, putting an arm around Harriet (who stiffened immediately) and giving her a chummy little squeeze.

  “No.”

  “I didn’t get a Covenant Card from you.”

  Harriet said nothing.

  Nursie gave her another intrusive little hug. “You know, hun, God don’t give us but two choices! Either something’s right or it’s wrong! Either you’re a champion for Christ or you’re not!” From her pocket, she produced a blank Covenant Card.

  “Now, I want you to pray over this, Harriet. And do what the Lord guides you to do.”

  Harriet stared at Nursie’s puffy white tennis shoes.

  Nursie clasped Harriet’s hand. “Would you like me to pray with you, hun?” she asked, confidentially, as if offering some great treat.

  “No.”

  “Oh, I know the Lord will lead you to the right decision on this,” said Nursie, with a twinkly enthusiasm. “Oh, I just know it!”

  The girls in Harriet’s wigwam had already paired up before Harriet arrived; mostly they ignored her, and though she woke one night to find her hand in a basin of warm water, and the other girls standing around in the dark whispering and giggling at the bottom of her bunk (it was a trick, the sleeper’s hand in warm water, thought to make the sleeper wet the bed) they didn’t seem to have it in for Harriet particularly; though, of course, there had been Saran Wrap, too, stretched under the seat of the latrine. From outside, muffled laughter. “Hey, what’s taking you so long in there!” A dozen girls, doubled over laughing when she came out stony faced, with wet shorts—but surely that trick hadn’t been directed specifically at her, surely it had been just her bad luck? Still, everybody else seemed to be in on the joke: Beth and Stephanie, Beverley and Michelle, Marcy and Darci and Sara Lynn, Kristle and Jada and Lee Ann and Devon and Dawn. They were mostly from Tupelo and Columbus (the girls from Alexandria, not that she liked them any better, were in Oriole and Goldfinch wigwams); they were all taller than Harriet, and older-looking; girls who wore flavored lip gloss and cut-off jeans and rubbed themselves with coconut oil on the water-ski dock. Their conversation (the Bay City Rollers; the Osmonds; some boy named Jay Jackson who went to their school) bored and irritated her.

  And Harriet had expected this. She had expected the “covenant” cards. She had expected the bleakness of life without library books; she had expected the team sports (which she loathed) and the skit nights, and the hectoring Bible classes; she had expected the discomfort and tedium of sitting in a canoe in the broiling windless afternoons and listening to stupid conversations about whether Dave was a good Christian, whether Wayne had been to second base with Lee Ann or whether Jay Jackson drank.

  And all this was bad enough. But Harriet was going to be in the eighth grade next year; and what she had not expected was the horrifying new indignity of being classed—for the first time ever—a “Teen Girl”: a creature without mind, wholly protuberance and excretion, to judge from the literature she was given. She had not expected the chipper, humiliating filmstrips filled with demeaning medical information; she had not expected mandatory “rap sessions” where the girls were not only urged to ask personal questions—some of them, to Harriet’s mind, frankly pornographic—but to answer them as well.

  During these discussions, Harriet burned radiant with hatred and shame. She felt degraded by Nursie’s blithe assumption that she—Harriet—was no different from these stupid Tupelo girls: preoccupied with under-arm odor, the reproductive system, and dating. The haze of deodorant and “hygiene” sprays in the changing rooms; the stubbly leg hair, the greasy lip gloss: everything was tainted with a slick oil of “puberty,” of obscenity, right down to the sweat on the hot dogs. Worse: Harriet felt as though one of the gruesome transparencies of “Your Developing Body”—all womb, and tubes, and mammaries—had been projected over her poor dumb body; as if all anybody saw when they looked at her—even with her clothes on—were organs and genitalia and hair in unseemly places. Knowing that it was inevitable (“just a natural part of growing up!”) was no better than knowing that someday she would die. Death, at least, was dignified: an end to dishonor and sorrow.

  True: some of the girls in her cabin, Kristle and Marcy in particular, had good senses of humor. But the more womanly of her cabin-mates (Lee Ann, Darci, Jada, Dawn) were coarse, and frightening; and Harriet was revolted by their eagerness to be identified in crude biological terms, like who had “tits” and who didn’t. They talked about “necking” and being “on the rag”; they used poor English. And they had absolutely filthy minds. Here, Harriet had said, when Lee Ann was trying to fix her life jacket, you sort of screw it in, like this—

  All the girls—including the ingrate Lee Ann—burst into laughter. Do what, Harriet?

  Screw, said Harriet, chillingly. Screw is a perfectly good word.…

  Oh yeah? Idiotic snickers—they were filthy, all of them, the whole sweaty, menstruating, boy-crazed lot, with their pubic hair and their perspiration problems, winking and kicking each other in the ankles. Say it again, Harriet? What’s it mean? What’s she got to do?

  Zach and Zig had now turned to the subject of beer drinking. “Now tell me this, Zig. Would you drink something if it tasted bad? And was bad for you, too?”

  “Phew! No way!”

  “Well, believe it or not, that’s what a lot of grown people and even kids do!”

  Zig, astonished, surveyed the audience. “Kids here, Boss?”

  “Maybe. Because there are always a few really dumb kids who think drinking beer is cool, man!” Zach gave the Peace sign. Nervous laughter.

  Harriet—who had a headache from sitting in the sun—squinted at a cluster of mosquito bites on her arm. After this assembly (over in ten minutes, thank Heavens) there was forty-five minutes of swimming, then a Bible quiz, then lunch.

  Swimming was the only activity Harriet liked or looked forward to. Alone with her heartbeat, she winnowed through the dark, dreamless lake, through the sickly, flickering shafts of sunlight that penetrated the gloom. Near the surface, the water was as warm as bathwater; when she swam deeper, spikes of cold spring water hit her in the face and plumes of powdery murk rolled like green smoke from the plushy mire on the bottom, spiraling with every stroke, every kick.

  The girls only got to swim twice a week: Tuesday and Thursday. And she was especially glad that today was Thursday because she was still reeling from the unpleasant surprise she’d had at Mail Call that morning. A letter from Hely had arriv
ed. When she opened it, she was shocked to see a newspaper clipping from the Alexandria Eagle which read EXOTIC REPTILE ATTACKS WOMAN.

  There was a letter, too, on blue-lined school paper. “Oooh, is that from your boyfriend?” Dawn snatched the letter away. “ ‘Hey, Harriet,’ ” she read, aloud, to everybody. “ ‘What’s happening?’ ”

  The clipping fluttered to the ground. With trembling hands, Harriet grabbed it up and crunched it in a ball and stuffed it in her pocket.

  “ ‘Thought you’d like to see this. Check it out …’ Check what out? What’s that?” Dawn was saying.

  Harriet, her hand in her pocket, was clawing the newspaper to shreds.

  “It’s in her pocket,” Jada was saying. “She put something in her pocket.”

  “Get it! Get it!”

  Gleefully, Jada lunged at Harriet and Harriet hit her in the face.

  Jada screamed. “Oh my God! She scratched me! You scratched me on the eyelid, you little shit!”

  “Hey you guys,” someone hissed, “Mel’s gonna hear.” This was Melanie, their wigwam counselor.

  “I’m bleeding!” Jada was shrieking. “She tried to put my eye out! Fuck!”

  Dawn stood stunned, her frosty lip-glossed mouth hanging open. Harriet took advantage of the confusion to snatch Hely’s letter back from her and jam it in her pocket.

  “Look!” said Jada, holding out her hand. On her fingertips, and on her eyelid, was blood—not a lot, but some. “Look what she did to me!”

  “You guys shut up,” said someone shrilly, “or we’re gonna get a demerit.”

  “If we get another one,” said someone else, in an aggrieved voice, “we can’t roast marshmallows with the boys.”

  “Yeah, that’s right. Shut up.”

  Jada—fist drawn theatrically—stepped towards Harriet. “You’d better watch your back, girl,” she said, “you better—”

  “Shut up! Mel’s coming!”

  Then the bell had rung for chapel. So Zach and his dummy had saved Harriet, for the moment at least. If Jada decided to tell, she’d get in trouble, but that was nothing new; getting in trouble for fighting was something that Harriet was used to.