Mademoiselle

by Suzanne Jenkins

  “Three today,” he’d say, giving her the thin envelopes with the exotic stamps in the corner and the long return addresses ending in APO.

  If there was nothing for her, he’d stop by to tell her so she didn’t have to walk to the mailbox and discover it was empty. I’d seen her do it, and she held a tissue to her eyes afterward. Very rarely, he’d say, “Nothing today. You’ll probably get several tomorrow.”

  The day came when she didn’t get any letters for several days in a row, the palpable anguish permeating the house so even Lynne and I knew there was something terribly wrong.

  And then the official looking car pulled up in front of the house and two uniformed men got out. I remember her putting me down, backing away from the door, crying before they even rang the bell.

  “Girls!” she screamed for my sisters, who came running at the alarm in her voice.

  Later, she would say how sorry she was that she’d needed us to be there when she got the news. But my sisters, growing up overnight, disagreed. The impact of the loss hit them all at the same time. Lynne and I were too young to understand much more than my family was sharing sad news together which involved our father. We cuddled with the older girls, and something about having a small child in their arms brought them comfort.

  I remember Martha holding my mother up. At almost eight-years-old, she became mother’s helper, and willingly looked after us during the time my father’s affairs were being put in order.

  Angela was only a year younger, but completely unprepared for the responsibilities of big-sistering. Daddy’s favorite, mother said, she was devastated after the news. Angela didn’t appear to recover from his death, and was in a continuous state of grief. Functional, she was pleasant and responsible. But rarely smiling, when she did, it was very slow and deliberate.

  Even though at age three I was closer to Lynne, we were not particularly close. At four, Lynne and Ida, age six, were inseparable, the same as they are today. They whispered to each other, staying out of the path of grief. They were affected, but not in a life changing way, like the older two.

  My mother was quiet, sticking around the house for the week before the funeral. It wasn’t like the man had had a heart attack, or had been hit by a car. The logistics of getting his body home were different; it had to be shipped from places foreign to us, and then examined by men on the base where he served. I remembered words being spoken carelessly in front of us. Autopsy and head wound. Brain trauma. Contusion.

  Angela carried me although I was old enough to walk; I think she was using me as a shield from more pain. Alternately hugging me to her chest, she cried throughout the day. They were excused from school until the funeral was over.

  My grandparents from Brooklyn came, tiny people who spoke Yiddish when they thought no one was listening. I was almost too heavy for my bubbe to pick up.

  “You’re a big one,” she said, bouncing me. “How much does this baby weigh?”

  “Muter, she’s over three years old,” my mother answered.

  “Harrumph, she feels like a rock, whatever her age,” she said, kissing me with a smack on my cheeks.

  My grandparents never liked my father. There was no discussion of it; only that his people looked down their noses at us. My mother reassured her parents, putting an affectionate hand on her mother’s shoulder.

  “You don’t have to worry any longer,” she said, tenderly. “He’s dead now. They’ve lost their only son.”

  I don’t think they felt guilty for badmouthing him.

  “You need to move back to Brooklyn with us,” my bubbe said.

  My mother whispered to her sister, my Aunt Jane that she’d rather poke out her eyes than move.

  Shortly after, my father’s family arrived. They scared me. His father was a giant; six foot seven inches tall, at least three hundred pounds, and his wife, not my real grandmother, tall for a woman at five-eleven. Towering over everyone the day of the funeral, many of the soldiers who came to pay their respects had to look up.

  Afterward, my paternal grandparents didn’t stay in touch with us. Every year before Thanksgiving, I’d ask if they were going to come for the winter holidays, and the answer was always not this year.

  Until I was seven, my mother said I’d approach any man in a uniform and ask “Did you know my dad?”

  Martha told anyone who would listen that her father was killed in Vietnam. My mother, bless her heart, allowed us to grieve as we must, never asking us to stop talking about it or that we shouldn’t feel the way we did.

  When Angela was suffering; she’d pull me to her and bury her face in the top of my head. Or she’d get busy doing something nurturing, which was totally unlike her, like helping my mother clean house or reading to Lynne and me.

  Eventually, life returned to normal as my mother took over the task of raising five girls alone, doing a pretty good job. Like a hawk, nothing got by her, setting high standards for us to live up to. Ready with a switch, she’d cut it off a pussy willow bush that grew by the back door, just in case anyone decided to get out of line. I don’t think she ever used it, but in spite of it, I grew up frightened of my mother, giving her a wide berth whenever possible.

  Martha and Angela fought with her about the things girls fight with their mothers about; the appropriate clothes, dating, curfew. But mother was like a rock; she wouldn’t budge.

  “You’ll understand someday when you have children of your own,” she used to say repeatedly. “You’ll want your girls to be successful. Letting you dress like a hooker and stay out all night, that’s not the way to raise a lady.”

  The noise level my sisters made, indignant after their own mother said they dressed like hookers, increased a few decibels.

  Except for the clothing issues my sisters had and the bullying I experienced through elementary school, we probably led a fairly common existence in the middle-class, white suburbs. For me, it would become agonizingly boring.

  A young widow raising children was a rarity in our neighborhood. Everyone was stunned to learn that we wouldn’t be moving back to live with our grandparents. Evidently, that was the normal thing to do when tragedy struck. But since my mother didn’t have to work outside of the house, she didn’t need her mother to babysit. She owned the house we lived in, and with my father’s social security, we were okay financially. They’d started college funds for each of us, but we were expected to contribute heartily by working as soon as we were able and saving every cent.

  When Martha turned fourteen, she got a weekend job cleaning hotel rooms at the new Holiday Inn a few miles from our house. Every Saturday morning, she got up at dawn, put on an ugly yellow uniform, hopped on her bike and drove down Outer Drive, the youngest chambermaid ever hired. The manager was a neighbor and promised to watch out for Martha. Working there for four years until she graduated high school, every weekend and full-time in the summer, she encouraged Angela to find something else when the Holiday Inn came knocking.

  “Trust me Angie, you’d hate it there. The only reason I cope is I like flirting with the maintenance men, but don’t tell Mom.”

  Angela found a permanent job at Anthony’s Pizza. During the school year, they let her answer the phone and fold pizza boxes. But during the summer when she was older, she started waiting on tables.

  “If ever there’s a catalyst to stay in college, it’s that damn restaurant,” Angela said. “I’m actually looking forward to going back to school in September.”

  We were sitting on the balcony off their bedroom on a late summer’s night while she and Martha smoked. Earlier, Ida and Lynne sneaked out with their boyfriends. Mother would kill both of them if they got caught, so we made it our business to make sure it didn’t happen. Younger than the other girls, being part of their intrigue made me feel accepted.

  “What does that mean?” I asked, when Angela complained about her job.

  “It means hopefully, I won’t have to wash the smell of pizza dough out of my hair every night for the rest of my life.
It means not taking flak from mean customers who get pissed off if their food isn’t cooked correctly. I won’t have to stand on my feet all night. There’s so much about working there I hate, the only alternative is to stay in college and be what Mom wants me to be; a teacher.”

  “Pipi,” she said, grabbing my left hand. “Promise me you’ll never work at Anthony’s. Cross your heart.”

  I crossed my heart with my right hand and put two fingers of left my hand in a peace sign.

  “I promise I’ll never work at Anthony’s,” I said.

  Early the next morning, with Ida and Lynne back home, safe and sound asleep in their beds, I crept out of the house like I had almost everyday that summer to go for an early morning run. The cemetery across the street, ten acres of rolling, wooded hills was perfect for doing laps around the grave stones for half an hour. Leaving the safety of our yard, I paused at Outer Drive to cross even though at that hour on the weekend, there were few cars out. Crossing, I’d walk the block to the entrance. The groundskeeper gave me permission to open the gate and enter as long as I didn’t tell anyone.

  Warming up, I’d do laps, climbing the hills that wound among the cedars, ending up in the very back corner, by the baby graves. The first time I saw them, I knew right away what they were for; headstones of baskets of cement bunnies, or a marble angel with a tiny infant in its arms, angels and infants carved into granite plaques. Most of them were very old, at least fifty years old, with mossy etching invading the porous stone. Few were tended with flowers. After my initial curiosity was satisfied, I avoided the baby graves, too much sadness and hopelessness lurking there.

  My father’s grave was there, as well. Laid to rest in a copse of cedars, his stone was provided by the government, and every Veterans Day, someone from the VFW came out and put a flag on his grave. My mother never walked over to visit the gravesite like other widows did.

  “He’s not really there,” she said, eyeing a small cardboard box on the bookshelf in the living room; my dad’s ashes.

  The rest of the cemetery didn’t scare me or make me sad. It was a great, safe place to run away from the danger of cars. I hoped that when school started, I’d be able to join the track team.

  When I returned home from my run that Saturday morning, my mother was sitting at the kitchen table drinking coffee and making a list.

  “You need to let me know when you’re going out,” she said, frowning.

  I went to kiss her cheek.

  “Sorry, mom,” I said, guilty that I’d made her worry.

  Taking an apple out of a bowl of fruit on the counter, I took a bite with her staring at me looking me up and down, still with that frown.

  “You’re so skinny. Sit down and let me make you breakfast,” she said, pushing back her chair to stand up.

  “Mom, it’s okay. Don’t get up. I don’t want anything to eat yet. It’s too early.” I turned to go upstairs to my room. “I think I’ll go back to bed for a while.”

  She sat back down with a plunk nodding her head.

  “Take advantage of it,” she said. “School starts soon. I can’t believe summer is over already. My baby will have her first day of high school!”

  Looking down at the floor to avoid eye contact, her emotions embarrassed me. Calling me her baby was so unlike my mother, acting melancholy completely out of character for her. Wondering how my going to high school would change her life, I left the kitchen without asking her or saying more, uncomfortable. We’d just had the classic Weiner argument, where I’d begged her to let me stay home while she homeschooled me, but she wouldn’t hear of it, telling me I needed the socialization, like I was a puppy.

  The last days before school started were spent laying on my bed, eating snacks and reading in front of an open window, the breeze coming in through the screen and blowing the curtains against my body.

  ***

  The excitement of Wax Spencer noticing me on first day of my freshman year made it special. Lynne told me he was a sophomore, like her.

  “He’s in my English Lit class,” she whispered after we finished our homework. “The last class of the day. You’re right; he’s gorgeous. Go for it.”

  Smacking her arm, I didn’t know what go for it meant, but absolutely sure it was something our mother would not approve of.

  “I mean, have fun,” Lynne explained. “Nothing bad.”

  I smiled and squeezed by her on the staircase to get to my room.

  “Do you want to go for a run?” she asked.

  I loved running with her and nodded my head.

  “I’ll change,” I said.

  I discovered as we were pounding the pavement, that she had an ulterior motive.

  “He lives around the block from us,” she said as we rounded the corner of our street.

  “How do you know?”

  Although he’d told me, there’d been no chance to tell her.

  “I’ve seen him around,” she said. “I remembered when you asked about him. Slow down a little bit.”

  As we slowed our pace, I followed her eyes, sweeping the landscape of postage stamp lawns and modest brick bungalows that typified our neighborhood. I didn’t see anything that led me to where he might live.

  Suddenly, Lynne smacked my arm. In the backyard of a house about five hundred yards from the corner was a group of boys shooting hoops, and Wax was in the middle of the mob, trying to take the ball. My heart picked up an extra beat or two.

  “Oh, let’s not stop. I don’t want him to see us,” I said. “He’ll think I’m looking for him.”

  “Right,” she said, grabbing my arm and pulling me back into a run.

  We sprinted to the corner and just as we were about to turn to our backyard, I heard my name being called.

  “Philipa!” he shouted.

  I grimaced. That name! But Lynne and I turned, synchronized. I couldn’t help myself as a huge smile replaced the grimace; he really looked like something, running toward us in his cut-off blue jeans and sneakers, his legs tan and muscular. Lynne squeezed my arm again and I shook her off as unobtrusively as I could. He reached us, not even breathing hard.

  “I saw you run by!” he said, turning to Lynne to hold out his hand.

  “I’m Wax. I recognize you from English Lit.”

  First looking at his hand with a smirk, Lynne shook it. Later, she would say it felt ridiculous that a teenaged boy was shaking hands, but after a bit she found it endearing, anyway.

  “Pipi’s sister, Lynne,” she answered.

  Wax looked over at me. “Is Pipi your nickname?”

  Nodding my head I promised myself that I would claw Lynne’s arm the first chance I got. “May I call you Pipi?” he asked, his voice soft.

  “Not so anyone can hear you, okay?” I replied, frowning.

  Wax and Lynne laughed, but I didn’t think it was that funny.

  “I don’t need anymore ammunition for bullying, please,” I explained.

  “You were bullied?” he asked, clearly distressed.

  “Unmercifully,” Lynne answered for me.

  “Oh, that’s horrible,” he said. “It won’t happen with me on watch, I promise.”

  Reaching up with his right hand, he grabbed my shoulder. I watched it happen in slow motion. The look of concern on his face, his muscular arm, tan from a summer at the lake, slowly rising with the open hand coming toward me, I didn’t know what to expect. Would it be wonderful, like the cool hand shake? Or painful, like the hand on my back? If I thought hard enough, I could still feel the place where the touch of his finger burned my neck.

  Amazingly, I knew it was going to be good. As that hand came toward me, I felt the sensation of expectation throughout the upper left side of my body, goose bumps rising before he even made contact with me. Something told me I was going to have to be very careful around Wax Spencer.

  “Do you want to come in? We have iced tea.”

  I wanted to slug her, but he’d have seen so I just stayed quiet.

  “No thanks.
My team waits for me,” he said pointing over his shoulder toward his house. “But I hope you’ll ask me again soon.”

  Then he looked at me, raptly in my eyes. “Tomorrow at eight, correct?”

  Speechless, I nodded my head.

  Chapter 3

  The first month of ninth grade passed by quickly. As I had hoped, I joined the track team, adding it to my already crowded schedule. The more I did to make my resume look good, the better my chances would be of getting on that magazine. Our coach pounded those words into us; team work, being part of a team, future goals, blah blah blah.

  Wax and I walked to school everyday, and he waited to walk home with me every afternoon on the days I didn’t have practice. In October, he hinted around that he’d like to be my date for the Sadie Hawkins Dance, which took place the weekend before Thanksgiving. After conferring with my sisters, and ensuring that my mother would allow me to go, I asked him in my usual, shy way, skirting around the issue. We were standing in front of a display case near the cafeteria where a big sign proclaiming the Sadie Hawkins Dance was thumbtacked to cork board.

  “What do we do at a Sadie Hawkins Dance?” I asked, pointing to the sign.

  “Ah, dance,” he replied, softly. “What did you think it was?”

  “I have no idea. It sounds like something from Li’l Abner,” I said the obvious because the poster included a blown up facsimile of the cartoon strip.

  “Li’l Abner?” he asked, smiling down at me.

  “Dogpatch, hillbillies and moonshine,” I said.

  Wax laughed out loud.

  “Don’t forget Daisy Mae,” he said, and then seriously. “We dance and then go out to dinner afterward. Do you think that sounds boring?”

  “No, not at all,” I said, sorry I’d been flippant. I didn’t want him to think I didn’t want to go. “So, would you like to be my date?”

  I looked up at him, hopeful.

  “Yes, absolutely. I thought you’d never ask,” he said, smiling. “I’d love to go as your date.”