What Girls Learn

by Karin Cook

  Acclaim for KARIN COOK’s

  WHAT

  GIRLS

  LEARN

  “A gripping first novel.”

  —U.S. News and World Report

  “What Girls Learn paints the confusion of puberty, a young girl’s ambivalent sexuality, and the nuances of family relations with vivid, assured strokes.”

  —Elle

  “Her writing is like poetry: potent, rich with details and images. … Cook has written with dignity, aplomb, and humor about a topic that is usually shrouded in silence.”

  —Washington City Paper

  “Keen and original … as intimate and disarming an experience as finding a teenager’s secret diary under the mattress.”

  —San Francisco Chronicle

  “Unusually wise and understated, and it rings true.”

  —Washington Post Book World

  “Cook’s book is solid, a personal story turned universal—and it’s very, very good.”

  —Harper’s Bazaar

  “An engaging and moving first novel. Cook writes clean and direct prose, infused with just the right amount of the aggressive innocence and lyricism. … An auspicious debut.”

  —Publishers Weekly

  “An exquisite book. … What Girls Learn is a book that I have longed for my whole life. Karin Cook reveals the awful secrets of girlhood in exhilarating, totally original prose. She has an ear—for language, for truth, for dailiness, for sorrow.”

  —Stephanie Grant, author of The Passion of Alice

  “Karin Cook is a bright light on the horizon of new writers. Her sensitivity and honesty about the struggles of female adolescents are unusually insightful. I have no doubt that she will be one of the cherished storytellers of her generation.”

  —Naomi Wolf, author of Fire with Fire

  “A poignant story written with a keen understanding of loss.”

  —Pearl Abraham, author of The Romance Reader

  “Telling a story of betrayal without bitterness is a real feat, and Cook has the tools—the deftness and authority, the sly humor—to pull it off beautifully. This is an unusually fine portrayal of lost innocence and sisterhood under stress.”

  —Jonathan Franzen, author of Strong Motion

  “You will recognize every one of these masterfully composed, razor-sharp details, and you will be claimed by this life of Tilden’s. … Its proud resolves, its terrors, its intimacies, its celebrations and tender mortifications will fit you well.”

  —Carolyn Chute, author of The Beans of Egypt, Maine

  KARIN COOK

  WHAT GIRLS LEARN

  Karin Cook graduated from Vassar College and the Creative Writing Program at New York University. An activist and health educator, she currently works at The Door, a multi-service youth center in New York City.

  FIRST VINTAGE CONTEMPORARIES EDITION, FEBRUARY 1998

  Copyright © 1997 by Karin Cook

  All rights reserved under International and Pan-American Copyright

  Conventions. Published in the United States by Vintage Books, a division

  of Random House, Inc., New York, and simultaneously in Canada

  by Random House of Canada Limited, Toronto. Originally published in

  hardcover in the United States by Pantheon Books, a division of

  Random House, Inc., New York, in 1997.

  Grateful acknowledgment is made to the following for permission to

  reprint previously published material:

  Lastrada Entertainment Company, Ltd.:

  Excerpts from the lyrics of “Bad, Bad Leroy Brown” by Jim Croce.

  Copyright © 1985 by Denjac Music Co. Courtesy of The Lefrak-Moelis

  Companies, administered by Lastrada Entertainment Company, Ltd.

  Edward B. Marks Music Company: Excerpts from the lyrics to “

  (You Took the Words Right Out of My Mouth (Hot Summer Night)”

  by Jim Steinman. Copyright © 1978 by Edward B. Marks Music Company.

  Used by permission. All rights reserved.

  The author is donating a portion of the royalties she earns from this book to

  The Huntington Breast Cancer Action Coalition.

  The Library of Congress has cataloged the Pantheon edition as follows:

  Cook, Karin 1968-

  What girls learn/Karin Cook

  p. cm.

  eISBN: 978-0-307-76615-1

  I. Title

  PS 3553.055385W48 1997

  813′.54—dc20

  Author photograph © Marion Ettlinger

  Random House Web address: http://www.randomhouse.com/

  v3.1

  to

  Dr. Walter T. Carpenter

  for filling my life with books

  and

  my sister

  Jennifer Barrett Cook

  for sharing all of life’s lessons

  …treachery is the other side of dailiness.

  —ALICE MUNRO

  CONTENTS

  Cover

  About the Author

  Title Page

  Copyright

  Dedication

  PART I White Lies

  Geography

  Popularity

  Current Events

  PART II Directions

  Euphemism

  Privacy

  Chores

  PART III Blasphemy

  Home Remedies

  Beauty

  Heat

  Relative

  PART IV Spelling

  Gift

  Primary Care

  Duty

  PART V Independence

  Cooperation

  Home Economics

  Procession

  Memory

  Acknowledgments

  PART I

  WHITE LIES

  Mama raised us to be just. If not entirely honest, then at least well intended. Good intentions could justify almost anything, even white lies. White lies were merely polite untruths. Not something to aspire to, but to fall back on, a safety.

  I grew up on white lies. My sister, Elizabeth, and I learned early that there was more than one way to bend the truth. There was the aspirin-crushed-in-grape-jelly kind of lie, where things were not always as they appeared. And the read-between-the-lines kind of lie, where what mattered most was left unsaid. But the worst kind of lie, the kind Elizabeth and I were forbidden to tell, was the bald-faced lie. Mama believed that telling an out-and-out lie was malicious and unnecessary. Unless, of course, it was to save someone feelings.

  Making the world appear better was Mama’s speciality. Not the whole world, necessarily, but our world. Every time she moved us, it was always to some place better than the last. But the new place was never quite as she said it would be. The art gallery in downtown Atlanta turned out to be a makeshift basement studio with a darkroom that smelled of vinegar. And the mansion in Lawrenceville was really a garage apartment at the edge of an estate. We lived bunched up alongside other people’s expanses, close enough to dream.

  “Isn’t it romantic,” she’d say, whenever we showed signs of disappointment.

  Within a day, she was always able to coax us toward appreciation. Each place had its own charm and adventure. A crack in the ceiling held mystery; the mark of a child’s green crayon told a story. Mama had the kind of hope that could make you stand and watch one red balloon disappear into the sky, believing that it might come back on a bird’s wing.

  Some people are from a particular place, a somewhere that stays part of them no matter where they end up. You can see it immediately in the way they talk and dress, how they long for a certain time of year. No matter where we lived, Mama was always from Atlanta. But she must have known from the start that no one place would be part of me. She named me T
ilden, after her favorite street, a quiet, tree-lined road that curved its way out of town. Elizabeth got a normal name. Perhaps because when she was born, a year later, Mama had already left our father and things were harder.

  Moving as often as we did forced Elizabeth and me to present a united front—always allies against the unknown, we were instant enemies the minute our boxes were unpacked. We fought over drawer space and bunk beds, pillows and stray socks. Elizabeth wanted equal shelves in the bookcase, even though I was the one who loved to read and collected the most books. When finally Mama agreed to give me an additional shelf, Elizabeth demanded to know which one of us she loved more.

  “I love you the same,” Mama answered, “in different ways.”

  “How, different?”

  “Well,” she said, “you’re different people so the way I love each of you has to be different. But the amount of love is the same.”

  Same but different. That phrase of Mama’s extended to every aspect of our lives. As if we each existed only in contrast to the other. We both had Mama’s smile, every store owner and teacher said it was so, but I was less trusting, more serious and reserved, where Elizabeth was lean and lanky and fearless. The knowledge of what we each lacked gave us ammunition. There were things we knew by instinct only to say in a fight.

  “What if I murdered someone?” I asked.

  “I would be disappointed in you,” Mama said, “but I would still love you.”

  “As much as you love me now?”

  “Yes.”

  “What if I murdered Elizabeth?”

  Mama shook her head. “You know, girls,” she said, “I would have given anything for a sister.” She sat down next to me and gave my shoulder a little shake. “Tilden, a sister is forever.” Her cheeks were surprisingly flushed. I felt ashamed.

  I hated how lonely she was.

  The year I turned twelve and Elizabeth eleven, Mama announced that we were moving North. I felt the gulf of a secret widen between us. She had gone to New York earlier that year for a wedding and met someone. She returned restless, talking endlessly about fulfilling her dreams. Nick this. Nick that. It had been love at first sight, she finally confessed. I didn’t know how I was supposed to feel about her loving someone I had never even met.

  Mama looked at me, her whole face open and promising. “Nick knows all about you. He’s been waiting to meet you girls.”

  Neither Elizabeth nor I said a word. I could feel Elizabeth’s body tensing up, her arms growing rigid with the thought of moving again. So some guy named Nick wanted to meet us? I crossed my arms and stared off into the distance.

  The only thing I wanted in the world was for Mama to tell me the truth.

  “This is permanent,” Mama said, “you just wait and see.”

  Wait and see meant everything would be all right, justice would be done, ailments would be cured, and pain would go away. What wait and see did was keep us holding on, never saying good-bye, never believing that bad could happen and that when it did it could eventually be righted. Wait and see justified telling white lies, allowed us to cover ground, backpedal, and borrow time. It was that stale air of waiting before storms.

  I should have known better than to believe her.

  GEOGRAPHY

  We were packed and ready on the front steps when Nick pulled up in one of TransAlt’s limousines. He looked like a movie star, stepping out from behind tinted windows, with dark wavy hair and sunglasses. The neighborhood was early-morning still, the only sound an echo from the nearby highway. I checked to see if anyone else was watching, but the slight chill of a Southern winter had made activity scarce that Saturday. Nick was younger than I expected with a worried mouth that seemed tight and small. When he smiled at us, his lips parted and then sprang back quickly. He lifted his mirrored sunglasses onto his head, handsome still, but slightly more plain than he first appeared. He started talking before he even reached the front steps.

  “I’m Nick,” he said, “you can call me Nick.”

  I couldn’t imagine calling an adult by his first name. Just the thought of it made my tongue feel thick. Nick knew our names without needing to be introduced. He squeezed Elizabeth’s hand tight with both of his and held on for a long time. I gave him one of my dead fish handshakes, letting my fingers lie limp in his palm. I had already decided not to like him.

  “These are for you,” he said, reaching into his coat and handing us each a stiff white business card with an imprint of a shiny black limousine stretched across the bottom. TransAlt, it said, Dependable Transportation Alternatives. And in big block letters, NICK OLSEN, PRESIDENT.

  I slipped the card into my back pocket and turned away from him, pretending to look for something in one of my boxes. Elizabeth skipped down the stairs toward the limousine, gushing and asking to see the inside. Springing off the porch after her, Nick held the door open and shadowed her head with his hand to keep her from hitting the roof as she crawled into the backseat.

  “Let me give you the grand tour,” he said, using his free arm to flag me in their direction.

  I lurked outside, refusing to show interest. The limo was plush with carpet and lined with a miniature TV and bar. Nick demonstrated the automatic windows and channel controls, talking through each gadget as he operated it. When Mama walked onto the front steps, he stopped midsentence and turned to face her. For the first time I saw her not just as my mother, but as a woman belonging to the world.

  Mama was beautiful, but didn’t dwell on it. When other people did, she was quick to deflect attention back to her origins, revealing that she’d inherited her mother’s fine features and her father’s long, thin legs. I just think she liked to mention Grandma and Grandpa any chance she got. It was a way of keeping them with her long after they were gone. Mama had a glamour that set her apart from the other mothers I knew. Her cheekbones were high—the kind magazines taught girls to make by combining two shades of blush—and her nose sculpted. Her eyes were blue with flecks of brown and when she smiled they closed up at the sides in a wink. If you looked closely you could see that her lashes were blunt and stubby, which she tried to compensate for by filling in the corners of her lids with brown eyeliner pencil.

  That morning, she had set her hair in curlers and pulled it back into a loose ponytail so that the ends fell in coils down her back. This was the style she reserved for fancy occasions and holidays. She was not dressed to match: her head looked more glamorous than the rest of her body, almost as if she had outgrown herself. Still, the familiarity of her clothes comforted me: a white cotton shirt belted over a long khaki skirt, white sneakers on her feet.

  Mama’s arms were full of the things that we had forgotten to pack—a painted wooden picture frame, a glittered pencil case, red sweatshirt, and one tattered sneaker. Nick moved to help her and I watched to see what would happen between them. But as he stepped nearer, she balked, turned away from him, and nervously looked over her shoulder in our direction. Nick bent next to her and closed the top flaps of the cardboard box, willing each side into place with his large, rough hands. When he finished, he reached out as if to touch Mama’s face and ended up squeezing her ponytail instead.

  “You ready, Frances?”

  “Ready,” she said, smiling at him and stepping back. She turned toward us. “Girls?”

  Panic rose in me. Every time we’d moved before, it was just the three of us, setting out somewhere Mama had described as ideal. But this time, we were getting into a strange car with a strange man who wanted Mama’s attention. As Nick began to load the boxes, heaving them high on his shoulders, I raced back into the house for a final look.

  Standing in the living room, I was startled to see how empty the place seemed. I had been there when Mama sold the furniture, kitchen appliances, even her bedroom set. I’d watched as big men in cuffed T-shirts came and carried each piece away. Still, it seemed suddenly bare and lifeless. Except for the stencil Elizabeth had insisted on painting around the border of the kitchen and Mama’s porc
elain cabinet knobs, you would never have known we had been there. Everything else, we loaded into a box and gave to the Salvation Army. We were to pack light, Mama instructed, two boxes each and a share suitcase.

  The week before the move, Mama didn’t tell us much about where we were headed. Instead, she organized a cleaning session, where Elizabeth and I were encouraged to weed through our belongings and throw out everything that was not essential. It was a crisp, clear day. Mama woke up saying that she felt slim and clean, perky, as if she were ready to begin again. She had a saying for everything.

  “A woman’s relationship to clutter,” she began, throwing away some of her hairpins, “says something about her character. A woman who allows things to accumulate, to stack up in the corners of her life, is in danger of being overrun by her past. A woman who can sort through and weed out, is free to move forward into the world unencumbered.”

  “What’s essential?” Elizabeth asked.

  Mama thought about this for a moment. “Only those things you need to survive.”

  We watched as she weeded through her bathroom cabinets, conflicted, would she or wouldn’t she have a need for the eyelash curler, the plastic hair brush, the mandarin orange bath beads.

  “First you smell it like this,” she said, putting a bit of lotion on her wrist and holding it under her nose. She closed her eyes as she inhaled. “If it’s off at all, chuck it right out.”

  She waved her hand under each of our noses and waited for us to respond. It all smelled the same to me. Chalky and medicinal with the faint flowered scent of her shelf paper. But Elizabeth could call it right away. She didn’t seem to feel any responsibility to save.

  “Your life,” Mama said to Elizabeth, stroking her perfect yellow hair, “will never be cluttered.”