What Girls Learn

by Karin Cook

  “Barely,” Elizabeth added.

  “Like two sides of the same coin,” Lainey said, looking between us and Mama.

  Elizabeth flopped down on the couch and wrinkled her nose when a cloud of dust rose out of the cushions. She was in a smell-good stage, bathing twice a day in bubbles, and dousing herself with after-bath splash and powder. She looked clean against the couch. “She’s the color of angels,” Nick had said to Mama in the car while he thought we were both sleeping. It was true; as a child she’d always worn the frail, winged costumes of a princess or ballerina on Halloween. My costumes had been heavy, animals with tails and lots of fur—a lion, a dog, a cat—with whiskers springing out from my freckles. Looking at me in the rearview mirror, Nick had made a low noise that sounded almost like a warning. “But Tilden. Well, she looks … wise.”

  Great, I thought, I’m an owl.

  The radio played quietly and constant in the background. A man in a nasal voice sounding excited, like a sportscaster, was predicting snow. Lainey saw me notice. “Nick tracks storms the way most men follow football,” she exclaimed.

  “Why?” Elizabeth asked.

  “Weather is important to business,” Mama started, then hesitated and looked to Lainey, embarrassed. It had been too bold of her to speak first, before this woman who clearly knew more about TransAlt. It implied knowledge beyond what she had. She shrugged a bit and waited for Lainey to answer.

  “Weather is everything in this business,” Lainey said, gathering up the slack. “Take a day like this: overcast and cold. Everybody wants to stock up, but nobody wants to walk or get caught in it. We’ve got three cars out just covering the grocery store.”

  “I guess we better finish getting unpacked before it starts snowing,” Mama said, signaling for us to join her.

  “Let me know if you need anything,” Lainey said, following us out. “I can give you the rundown on the neighborhood if you want. All the best shops, the drugstore, anything you need.” Lainey raced back to her desk, riffled through her bag, and came back at Mama with a business card. “Of course you can come to me for styling. I’m trained as a cosmetologist. See the number …” she said, “641-N-A-I-L, the first in Brooklawn to be name and number in one.” She looked self-consciously around the garage. “I’m just doing this for the money until I get my license,” she whispered, though there was no one but us in the room.

  We stepped out to the driveway. Mama looked tired. She turned her head skyward and watched for signs of snow. Elizabeth inhaled the cool air deeply and pushed her breath out to make clouds. When we got around to the front of the house, Mama ran her hand lightly across her hair and turned to me, “Tilden, do you think I need a haircut?”

  Nick had promised us that there would be snow at his house. Once again, he hadn’t let us down. That evening, just after we’d finished unpacking the linens and setting up our beds, the sky fell. First in icy pings and then larger, quiet flakes. Nick dressed himself in thick layers and went out to salt the driveway. Elizabeth and I stood still on the landing of the outdoor stairs, with our arms out wide, so that the snow would stick to us. Every few minutes we moved over one step and watched our footprints disappear. When I couldn’t wait any more, I scraped the banister clean, and packed a snowball.

  “Don’t,” Elizabeth said, wincing and holding her hand in front of her face.

  I waited until Nick’s back was turned and transferred the snowball from palm to palm as it shrank under the heat of my bare hands. Twice, I cocked my arm back and pretended to throw as Elizabeth danced and ducked in front of me. When my hands got numb, I set the snowball on the railing and warmed my fingers against my mouth.

  Elizabeth knelt down and wrote her name across the top step with one bare finger. After she finished, the i dotted with a heart, she looked up at me and said, “What if we don’t fit in?” Her face was flushed, all pink and white with fear.

  “That’s stupid,” I said, but didn’t mean it. I was worried too. The amount of snow made me realize how far away we really were from anywhere we’d ever lived. Things were going to be different here, I could feel it. From an early age we both knew that there was some kind of shame in the South. Conflicts over flags and songs in school confused our notions of patriotism. Mama always said that Southern pride was best kept discreet.

  “We don’t even have the right clothes,” Elizabeth complained. “And people talk so fast here …”

  Just then Nick climbed the stairs, wiping each step clear of snow with his boots. “Have you girls ever built a snowman?” he asked.

  Elizabeth shook her head no, even though I remembered a time when we had tried but couldn’t get the snow to stick. We watched as Nick gathered snow into piles and packed the sides, rolling the balls to the edge of the steps and stacking one on top of another until the snowman took shape. Elizabeth pulled her hands into her sleeves and used them to pat the snow into place. I dug in my pockets, unearthing pennies to use for the eyes and a pen cap as a nose. When we finished, Nick tied his scarf around the snowman’s neck. The snow hadn’t been the best kind for packing and Frosty turned out small and lopsided, with edges instead of curves.

  Mama finally came to retrieve us. “You’re going to freeze to death out here,” she said. She ushered the three of us inside as if we were goslings. “This cold! It can do permanent damage, you know.” Nick looked at her and laughed. “I’m serious,” she continued, “Haven’t you heard of hypothermia?”

  She filled the bathtub with hot water and instructed us each to soak for twenty minutes. Elizabeth went first and by the time she finished, I was already long in bed. Mama came in to my room with an armful of extra towels and lined my drafty windows. When she finished, she tucked me in, and blew warm breath on my icy fingers.

  I couldn’t fall asleep. I listened to the strange sounds settle around me. The click and rattle of the refrigerator, a slow drip somewhere in the bathroom, and the occasional sound of snow crunching against gravel each time a car went up or down the driveway. The headlights made me jittery, the way they angled across my room and illuminated the boxes that remained stacked against the wall. I decided that I needed to feel settled in order to sleep. I climbed out of bed and began to unpack my books, filling the small shelf at the side of the desk, and then stacking the rest in order along the floor. The atlas, I kept near my bed where I could reach it. I sorted my supplies—a ruler, erasers, pens, and scissors—into the top drawer of my desk and locked it, hiding the key in my pillowcase.

  Outside my window, I watched the snow fall—blanketing the walk and drive, the cars and mailbox—making a clean slate of the world, the way wiping a chalkboard or shaking an Etch-A-Sketch erases what came before. For a few sleepless hours, I played a game from my bed: waiting for the headlights to flash across the room, I tried to name as many books from my shelf as possible before the light disappeared. I stared so hard at the spines in the darkest corner that the rest of the room fell away. I imagined Elizabeth curled on her side, breathing heavily into her arm, the wheezy rhythm my backdrop for night. I had never slept without her nearby. As I drifted off to sleep, I heard the unfamiliar cries of a train in the distance. I could have been anywhere.

  POPULARITY

  My lips were chapped, ringed red like a fruit punch stain that made my mouth seem wider than it was. It was so bad that even Elizabeth knew not to tease me. Mama gave me everything she had—Chap Stick, Vaseline, Carmex—and ordered me to keep my lips protected at all times. I coated my lips over and over until my mouth was slick, an oozy pucker standing out from my face. I hated what I saw in the mirror. I had never looked worse. Mama said the lack of humidity created flyaway hair, made it stand on end, charged with electricity. No matter what I did with the curling iron, the cowlicks made my bangs bend around my forehead like parentheses.

  Mama took Elizabeth and me shopping to buy corduroys, turtlenecks, and thermal underwear. She was a firm believer in layers, even back home, where it sometimes got cold. “Once a chill gets through you
, down in your bones, no heating system in the world can shake it out,” she said the night before the first day of school. I dressed my chair in preparation: nylons and long Johns spread out across the seat with the toes dangling just above my boots on the floor. In one boot, I put a pair of thin cotton socks, in the other boot, wool. My yellow turtleneck was pushed through a cranberry sweater, the neck flopping over the back, one sleeve on the arm rest. Around the chair back, my new down parka hung with matching gloves clipped onto the pockets.

  I watched the chair as if it were a body sitting upright and tried to imagine myself inside those clothes, moving through the big front doors, down a crowded hall and into a room filled with sixth graders from New York. Nothing was worse than starting a new school midway through the year.

  When Mama woke me up, I was tangled in my sheets. There was snow sitting four inches high on every slope and ledge. The driveway had already been plowed and all around me I could hear the deliberate scrape of shovels against pavement. The trees were encased in ice, low branches bowing under the weight.

  “Nick’s been out in the garage since sunrise,” Mama said looking out the window with bright eyes. “Tilden, the superintendent of the school district calls TransAlt first when deciding whether or not to have a snow day! Isn’t that exciting?” I pulled the blanket up to my nose and stayed snuggled down in the bed until she threw the covers off me.

  Elizabeth was disappointed in Mama’s news. She wanted to hear the cancellations for herself over the radio. She waited in bed until WSKY announced that there would be delays in district two.

  Downstairs, Mama was cooking hamburgers with sesame seeds and mashed potatoes. She thought it was important to have protein on eventful days. Her philosophy was that it was healthier to eat in reverse order—heavy to light. To help get us off to a good start, Mama usually served vegetables and meats with rice or potatoes in the morning. Our breath was strong at an hour when our friends smelled of sweet cereals and syrups. The smell of breakfast made me anxious and I moved slowly, dressing with dread. As I hesitated on the stairs, Elizabeth blew by me. She was wearing her pink turtleneck by itself. I didn’t think it was supposed to be worn that way, but didn’t say anything. I pulled the neck of mine up over my chin to hide my raw, chapped lips.

  Mama had already made some minor adjustments to the kitchen, rearranging and making room. She’d found it cluttered, all those tarnished pans and mismatched cups. This is what it looks like, a man living alone his whole life, she told us. She moved some plants into the kitchen. One, a welcome gift from Nick’s mother in Florida, was long and viny. It hung from the shelves above the windows and brushed above the appliances. Mama had to hook the froggy veins around a nail, like strands of hair behind an ear, when she used the toaster. Nick said not to expect much more from his mother. She wasn’t the type to get involved.

  “She’s great with protocol,” he said. “That’s where I get my good manners.”

  We stuck fruit-shaped magnets on the fridge, hanging some work from our old school. Elizabeth’s picture of a turtle, made with glue and yarn, was from art class in fourth grade. My scratchboard image of an American egret was bent from the move. Nothing we did made it seem more like home.

  A snow plow drove by the house, banking the snow into walls and covering the road in sand. I watched out the window and counted the bird tracks on the lawn while Elizabeth twisted her hair to give it body. We had opposite sides of the same fear. I was terrified of standing out. She worried that she wouldn’t. Neither of us said it outright. Elizabeth got demanding; she wanted hot chocolate in her thermos. I got quiet.

  Mama set our plates down in front of us. The smell of meat at that hour made my stomach turn. I picked the sesame seeds off the burger and made as many trips to my mouth as there were seeds. Mama hated when I did that.

  “You’re using more energy than you’re taking in,” she said. “Maybe you’re nervous?”

  I wouldn’t answer. Elizabeth excused herself from the table and out in the kitchen I heard Mama trying to talk her into wearing snowpants. Elizabeth said she would rather drop dead on the spot than put on a pair of snowpants. I understood how she felt. I could barely bend my limbs as it was.

  Nick came in the back door and kicked his heels against the frame to unearth the clumps of snow from his boots. “Time to get going,” he said.

  “Are you going to take us to school in the limo?” Elizabeth asked.

  “Not in this weather. We need something with better control.”

  “Aren’t we lucky to be living here with the town expert?” Mama said to no one in particular.

  I used the moment to scrape my plate extra loud.

  In Atlanta we never went for a family drop-off at school. If we missed the bus and had to be driven, we usually made Mama leave us a block away. But Nick insisted on driving us door to door. Secretly, I was relieved. We had taken a tour of the new school the week before, but I was worried about finding my way. Doors had a way of changing on me, seeming distinct when following someone, and completely foreign the next time around. Elizabeth was worried about other things: the proximity of her classroom to the bathroom, would she have recess?

  Mama had packed the outside pocket of our bookbags with Carnation breakfast bars. I put my hand in and felt the cool foil. It calmed me. Also, there was a piece of paper, folded in half, with Nick’s telephone number on it. I went over the numbers in my head, trying to memorize it: my fourth phone number in six years. Elizabeth knew them all by heart. Every time we moved, Mama copied the new one in our schoolbooks and pushed it deep inside our pockets. In case of emergencies, she always said.

  As we drove in the parking lot at Brooklawn Elementary, I panicked, unable to remember the location of the main office, and asked Mama if she would come with me.

  “Left in the door and turn right,” she said, “you’ll be fine.”

  Just then a crossing guard with a neon vest came striding across the parking lot, blowing a whistle and waving a flag. There was some honking and the kids who were waiting on the platform outside turned their necks in our direction. Nick had pulled into the “buses only” zone.

  “Keep going,” Elizabeth demanded.

  “Nonsense,” Nick said and hopped out to open our door like a chauffeur.

  We hurried out so quickly that I forgot to kiss Mama good-bye.

  “They’re going to love you,” she said out the window. “You just wait and see.”

  Ms. Zimmerman, my new teacher, came all the way down to the main office to get me. On our walk to class, she explained that they were in the middle of current events. “Do you receive any kind of periodicals at home?” she asked.

  I raised my chin out from under my turtleneck and answered that Nick received a daily paper and some monthly magazines that I’d seen stacked behind his chair. I explained that I hadn’t been there long enough to know what they all were. “I also have a subscription to National Geographic,” I said.

  She looked at me with real interest. “You’ll like this class.” She patted my right shoulder. I could barely feel her hand through all my layers.

  When we got to room 211, Ms. Zimmerman led me to the coat area and strode off across the room to find me a desk. I was startled to see that there was a whole section of the classroom just for coats. I squeezed mine in between two identical parkas before realizing that I was in the boys’ section.

  Ms. Zimmerman pushed an empty desk up to a cluster of four girls. Each desk was set off from the other by a tall divider. She flagged me over and sat me at the end, closest to two big-eyed, curious girls. From the way they had decorated their dividers, I could tell right off that they were different. Girls with ideas.

  Susie Rhombus had stapled black construction paper as a backing for a series of articles on nations outside the United States. She’d used red magic marker to color over the words she wanted to emphasize. All I could think about was my near-bleeding mouth. I held my hand over my lips, parting my fingers when I needed to
speak. I was sure Susie had noticed. She pulled out a Cherry Chap Stick and smeared it over her mouth.

  “Want some?” she asked.

  “No thanks,” I said, more quietly than I wanted to, “it’s … too late.”

  Samantha Shaptaw had left her divider blank in some kind of protest.

  “Her father is an environmental lawyer,” Susie whispered as an explanation.

  Samantha smiled at me in anticipation, but said nothing. The fibery board had a small hole which looked as if it had been made by a pencil. That way, I imagined, Samantha and Susie could look at each other or pass tiny scrolled notes through the hole.

  Susie became my guide, pointing out the kids in the class—who was serious, funny, a teacher’s pet; who had crushes on whom. She had once been new somewhere, I could tell. She knew how to get a lot of important details across quickly.

  Jill Switt, a bouncy girl at the next table, craned her neck anytime Susie spoke to me. Jill’s board was about fashion in different cultures. Ms. Zimmerman kept stopping midsentence to reprimand Jill for something. She was not only chewing gum, but snapping bubbles. She would have been punished in an Atlanta school for bad manners. I remember Mama had said that New York had a broader definition of good behavior.

  Christy Diamo’s board terrified me. She had stapled pictures of Jesus on the cross to a red background.

  “Isn’t it weird?” hissed Susie. “She’s totally into Christ and the Crucifixion.”

  It wasn’t long before I was asked to explain my religion.

  “Episcopalian,” I said with more confidence than I felt.

  “What’s that?” Susie asked.

  I didn’t know exactly. Mama only took us to church on Easter. So Susie asked Christy, who I could tell liked to be asked, but didn’t like to show it.

  “It’s a cross between Protestant and Catholic,” she said primly.

  I started to add “nonpracticing,” which is what Mama had always said when someone came by the door dressed in a suit and tie and carrying a pamphlet, but I decided against it.