What Girls Learn

by Karin Cook

  Something clicked. They began lingering by their doors, batting around some last point on an issue of local importance. Zoning. The dump. They had a lot to say about where traffic lights should be installed. Road conditions and speed limits. A couple of guys even got together and drafted a letter to the editor of the local paper. Lainey DeWitt typed it up and sent it off.

  We at TransAlt are concerned about what we feel to be laziness on the part of some homeowners who leave their garbage unsecured along the roadside. This makes for dangerous driving, especially along the bottom curve of Zigfried Street near Frock Avenue. Trash cans and lids are blown into the street, causing nervous drivers to swerve into the other lane. Trash torn loose by raccoons and other animals clogs the drains and causes flooding during rain storms. Please, for the sake of a safe community, use consideration when disposing of your trash.

  The day that letter appeared, you would have thought they’d won the lottery with all the yelping and high fives. They had been published. Nick bought up every paper in the deli. The drivers sent copies to relatives in other states. Mama hung it on the fridge. There was great excitement and pride all around the garage.

  But they hadn’t counted on the responses. It had seemed so simple. A matter of common sense and community concern. But for weeks they heard back. The families along Zigfried and Frock felt singled out. Why had TransAlt picked on them? Why didn’t they mention the sanitation workers who are always in such a hurry? They often forget to tie down the lids. They often leave loose trash behind. The sanitation company was furious. It always came back to the workingman. They were always the scapegoat. The Mothers Against Drunk Driving wrote that surely there were other things more hazardous to driving in Brooklawn. Why hadn’t TransAlt said something about drunk driving? Why didn’t they help sponsor a SADD chapter at the local high school? Had they ever considered running a late-night escort service in conjunction with the bars? The bars wanted everyone to know that they abided by New York State Law, they were aware of their legal responsibilities and did not have a problem refusing to serve any patron who appeared too drunk to drive. They thought the community should know that TransAlt had always cooperated when called upon to take an intoxicated patron home.

  Lainey stayed longer shifts just to field the phone calls. Was TransAlt becoming more involved in politics? Did they want to donate a car for the Driver’s Ed program? What was TransAlt going to do about the broken railroad crossing? Lainey had been nervous under fire; they had been so insistent, so upset. She wanted Nick to know that she had made some promises.

  “I had to do something,” she said.

  Lainey arranged for some of the boys from the motor vehicle program at the high school to work on the TransAlt cars when they weren’t being used. Just to practice. She shrugged. “I’m sure nobody will follow up.”

  By the end of March there was a host of boys in the yard. Each with his own set of tools. They took things apart, leaving batteries and carburetors in a pile outside the garage while they went for deli runs. Straw papers littered the driveway. Old cars lay like carcasses against the back fence. Elizabeth and I watched, first from the landing outside my room and then as we got braver, from ground level. These guys were serious, older boys; they seemed closer to the rest of their lives than the boys we knew at Brooklawn Elementary. With Nick’s permission, we stood nearby and gave them tools—fishing through the hard metals for the right grip or head, the thrill of our fingers brushing against their calloused hands, grease under their nails—my first twinges of attraction tied up in that smell of gasoline and tires.

  Those late-winter afternoons, Mama would find us lingering outdoors past dusk, putting off chores and homework to watch the boys in action. Our conversations with them were minimal, mainly “hand me this” and “pass me that.” Elizabeth was the first to break into more. Jamie Sanders was her favorite; at fourteen, he was still in junior high. He had been left back once and had friends at the high school. He had shiny black hair and eyes so intent, people often looked away from his gaze. Nobody was supposed to know that he drove without a permit, but I’d seen him do it, parking at the bottom of Connally Drive and walking up the hill to TransAlt. He kept to himself and didn’t say much. Elizabeth would talk extra loudly when he was around. I liked that he didn’t pay any attention.

  One Monday evening, we stayed out late at the garage, eavesdropping on the guys talking about their weekends. Gradually, but steadily, the conversation took an uncomfortable shape: it was no longer engines or hubcaps, movies or concerts, but second and third base. Elizabeth stood red-faced and quiet off to the side. A few yards away, Jamie Sanders was revving an engine, walking back and forth from the front seat to check under the hood. He walked right by me with each pass. His baseball hat was turned backward, a small piece of black hair sticking up through the clasp.

  “Why don’t you make yourself useful,” he said finally, and I jumped to help. “Come here and hit the accelerator when I tell you to.”

  I climbed into the car and waited, with my foot just above the pedal, for him to give the sign.

  “Okay,” he shouted and I pressed down steady. The engine raced, straining harder and harder. I could see Jamie working through the crack in the raised hood until he lifted up his hand and motioned for me to stop. We went on like this for twenty minutes—his gesture, my response, like a conversation. Finally, he closed the hood, pitching it gently upward to undo the catch and letting it come down hard. The slam echoed in the silence between us. He wiped his hands on a rag, twisting it into a rope and letting it go against my leg.

  “Gotcha,” he said, when it connected with a snap. It was the first time I had seen him smile.

  “Nick says you’re really good,” I offered cautiously, and then grew shy. “I mean, he thinks you’re amazing with engines.”

  “Yeah?” Jamie looked up, switched his hat from backward to frontward. “It’s nothing.”

  We stood there in an awkward silence, the fumey smell of gasoline and oil all around us, until I heard Mama calling me for dinner.

  “Gotta go,” I said and raced by Elizabeth toward the house.

  Nick was in the kitchen, helping Mama pull TV dinners out of the oven. I stood behind them, breathing heavily and waiting to see what was under the aluminum covers.

  “Where’s Elizabeth?” Mama asked.

  “She’s too busy flirting to eat.”

  Mama went quickly to the back steps and screamed for Elizabeth. She even went so far as to count to ten.

  “I’m coming,” Elizabeth shouted. She came into the house, frantic, cheeks blotchy. “God, Mama. I was only in the driveway.” She slammed the fridge closed and poured her juice. “You made it sound like I was halfway to town.”

  “Don’t you have any homework to do?” Mama asked, when Elizabeth joined us at the table.

  “No.”

  “Well, I want Tilden to help you with that report that’s due next week.”

  “I don’t want her help,” Elizabeth said.

  We ate the rest of the meal in silence. When Nick had finished his last bite, he balled up his napkin and pushed back his stool.

  “I’ll help you,” he said. “What’s it on?”

  Elizabeth flashed me a nasty look.

  “Energy,” Mama said. She excused herself to do the dishes and dragged me with her.

  Over the stacking of dishes and clanging of pots, I could hear Nick talking about waterwheels and windmills, nuclear and solar. He walked through the kitchen toward the den in search of some article he’d read recently. Elizabeth was sulking behind him.

  “I hate you,” she said as she walked by me.

  Mama looked up when she heard this. She always said that hate was a dangerous word and we were not to use it lightly. Hate had been known to cause the dissolution of families, sometimes even whole countries.

  “Take that back,” Mama called after her. “I mean it.”

  Her words seemed to make no impact. Elizabeth marched after Nick
without apologizing. Mama turned on the water to rinse each plate before putting it in the dishwasher. I stepped alongside her, offering to do the loading. After we’d settled into a rhythm Mama asked, “What’s with you two?”

  I shrugged, hoping that my silence would make her keep asking. I wished she really wanted to know how I felt.

  “I’ve never known you to be so cold to each other. Ever since we got here …” She paused and looked startled by her own thought, “Is it about being here? Did something happen at school?”

  I forced myself not to answer. What if it was about being here? What if after the past four months I decided that I didn’t like it, that I wanted to go back home or at least have things as they had been before.

  Mama looked worried, stared deep into my eyes, then gave up and became irritated. “If you’re not going to talk to me, there’s nothing I can do. All I can say is that we live with a wonderful man in a beautiful house in a neighborhood with a good school …” She trailed off. “You have a nice new friend. What’s not to like, Tilden?”

  I held my tongue. Nick, I wanted to say. Nick. Nick. Nick. But I knew that there would be no taking it back. Anyway, it wasn’t really his fault; he was okay on his own. What I disliked was how distracted Mama had become, as if there wasn’t room in her for all of us.

  PART II

  DIRECTIONS

  On the first warm day of April, Mama called me out from under the droop of the weeping willow at the edge of the yard. “Come keep me company,” she said. She had on big sunglasses and a loose, cotton skirt that caught the breeze like curtains and billowed beneath her winter coat. Her hair was twisted up and clipped at the back of her head.

  Nick had given Mama a car as soon as the weather broke, a station wagon that he bought used and had the guys from the motor vehicle program fix up. Jamie Sanders had taken it on as his special project. Parked as it was, in the lot, the station wagon stood out among Nick’s fleet of darker, more formal cars. Mama waited for me by the driver’s side and scraped at an old sticker on the windshield with a key.

  I parted the branches and stepped into the light, holding on to the end of one branch, and taking it with me as I walked, like a ribbon on a maypole. When it pulled taut, I let the pointed leaves slip through my hand.

  Elizabeth emerged from the back door eating a piece of fruit. Her hair whipped around her face in the wind until she caught it in a clump and wrapped an elastic holder around the ponytail. When she saw me heading toward the car, she broke into a run, clomping down the stairs and practically twisting her ankle in her clogs, those long limbs flailing out from under her.

  “I call it,” I said and slapped the roof first. As I ducked into the front seat, Elizabeth threw a wet paper towel at my head.

  “Stop it.” Mama put one arm out in each direction, her hands tilted upward. “One argument and you both stay here.” She kept her head raised between us as a warning, her chin high and waiting.

  Elizabeth gave in. She slumped down low in the back, extended her skinny legs across the seat and kicked her clogs onto the floor. Her feet were blistered and raw from not wearing any socks.

  “You can navigate from there,” Mama said as she reached back and locked Elizabeth’s door and then her own. She adjusted the rearview mirror and gave herself a quick look, lowering her sunglasses and digging through her purse for the makeup bag. She sucked in her cheeks, making a fish face, and highlighted her cheekbones with a touch of cream blush. When she finished, she held her rouged finger out to me.

  “Want a dab?” she asked.

  I leaned my face toward her and closed my eyes, breathing in that chalky smell while she rubbed a small circle on each cheek and then dotted my nose. Mama wore makeup when she went out in the world, smoothing on blusher and gloss, making her eyes big and bright. She snapped the clasp of the makeup bag and set her heavy purse beside her like a small child. Then, she put the car in reverse and swung back toward the garage where Nick was washing a town car. He had a squeegee in his hand which dripped milky-colored water down the leg of his pants as he walked toward us.

  “Where are you going?” he asked.

  “Just some errands,” Mama said, blinking up at him, “want to come?”

  “No thank you,” he said and leaned in to kiss Mama on the forehead. He smelled like Windex. I turned my head away; I hated when they kissed in front of me. He blew an air kiss at me and stopped to squint at Elizabeth in the backseat. She let out a deep sigh and turned away.

  “What’s with her?” he mouthed.

  “Nothing,” Mama said.

  “She’s being a brat,” I announced.

  Nick sponged off the little triangle of a window closest to Elizabeth’s head and wiped it clean with the squeegee. She didn’t look up, just kept picking at the Band-Aids on her feet.

  Mama swung around in her seat to face Elizabeth. “Chirp up,” she said, “I mean it.”

  Nick tiptoed backwards away from the car. “Have fun,” he said and gazing at Mama in that lovey-dovey way I hated, waved with his fingers, each dipping and rising, as if he were doing scales on a piano.

  It was Sunday. Throughout the neighborhood landscapers were surveying winter’s damage, raking piles of rotting leaves and branches into large black bags. Nick didn’t have as much to do. Half of our backyard was tarred, the driveway swelling behind the house into a miniature parking lot.

  Mama drove slowly, watching Nick in her mirrors as we rolled down the driveway. When she turned left off Cranbrook, instead of right toward town, I knew we were in trouble. It was the long way to the Walt Whitman Mall, the route she reserved for quality time. I put my feet on the dashboard and brought my chin to rest on my knees.

  “Girls, we have to talk.”

  I pulled down the makeup mirror and eyed Elizabeth, waiting for her to look up.

  “I don’t know about you,” Mama said, “but I’m still finding it hard to be new.” She turned onto a narrow back road. Elizabeth sat up and watched out the window, her eyes taking inventory of each sign and landmark. “Being new can make you susceptible,” Mama continued, “more likely to fall victim to peer pressure.”

  Again, with those sayings. Why did she have to always teach us something? There was static on the radio and as I moved to find a station, Mama pushed my hand away and turned it off.

  “I know you girls are very responsible, but still I worry that you might get in trouble. Not on purpose or anything, but by accident. Things are different here. Faster. So you’ve got to be even more careful.”

  “I wouldn’t worry about it, Mama,” I said, looking over my shoulder to check the blind spot as she merged lanes.

  “I just can’t help but think of my good friend Lila Davenport … have I told you about her?”

  “About a hundred times,” I said. I could feel myself fading out, glazing over. Mama could never just come out with what she was thinking.

  “Well … Lila could never manage to stay out of trouble. It started small, of course—breaking rules in school, always late with her homework, then …”

  “We’ve heard this story,” Elizabeth said, cutting her eyes at me.

  “My point is simply that something that might seem like nothing can get out of control.” She blinked hard, raising her eyes over the rim of her sunglasses, looking first in my direction and then at Elizabeth in the rearview mirror.

  I pressed the ball of my foot against the silver button on the glove compartment, opening and closing it, until Mama reached over and squeezed my ankle.

  “Tilden, I want you to hear me.”

  “Green,” I said, as the light going the other way was turning yellow. I wouldn’t look at her. I knew how she hated that. Mama stepped on the gas and shot into the intersection too early.

  “Wrong way,” Elizabeth warned.

  “Damn it, girls,” Mama said. “Let me do the driving.”

  Elizabeth and I exchanged shocked glances. Mama rarely cursed, and almost never at us.

  Elizabeth
knew how to get to the mall. She was sure we’d gone right, back at some giant birch. She mentioned her concern in a small voice and, when Mama didn’t argue, she continued to rattle off each turn, like a waitress repeating an order. I could see her memory working behind her eyes.

  My mind was filled with things no one would ever ask about, not on tests or at sleep-overs. I remembered scraps mostly, like a book of swatches in a fabric store, thumbed over quickly and cast against bare walls. A chip, the shape of Africa, on the handle of Mama’s favorite mug. A missing z on the neon pizza sign. A picture of my real father leaning against a tool shed, his thumb raised high in the air, on the day I was born.

  As Elizabeth barked directions and cited landmarks, Mama gave in. I didn’t say a word, just tipped my head back and let the nameless streets and trees whirl around me. We drove in silence farther away from the beach, past the train station and the high school. No one ever said it, but I knew it mattered which of those places you lived closest to. The people who actually took the train always lived the farthest from it and were usually closest to the beach. The train tracks ran behind the library and sliced Brooklawn in three places: once at Rampart Street, once at Main, and once at Connally Drive. We lived all the way at the end of Connally, yet I could still hear the churning of the diesel trains coming from and going to the city.

  When we drove past a hitchhiker at the edge of town, Elizabeth sat up straight in the backseat and swiveled around to look. “Mama! He’s cute,” she said. “Pick him up.”

  Mama glared at Elizabeth in the mirror and started in again. “Under no circumstances are you to get into a car with someone you don’t know,” she said, “especially high school boys or men.” She hesitated and took off her sunglasses. “And while we’re on the subject of boys, there are some other things you should keep in mind …”

  I could tell that she hadn’t planned on this part of the discussion. But here we were again on the brink of another lecture, too late to turn back. “Certain things are just not acceptable …”