by Mona Simpson
My mother taught me how to diet and smile right so all my teeth showed and to practice, looking in the mirror. I knew how to eat right so if a Hollywood agent came to Bay City, he would pick me. I thought of it every meal. Every meal I didn’t chew with my mouth open because I didn’t want the Hollywood agent to pick another girl.
But then, my mother went to Las Vegas and married Ted, and in the new house she didn’t talk about California anymore.
She gave me her old Sears jacket and she bought herself a new one. It was a zip-up jacket, too big for me, mustard-colored, plain. I walked around in it after school, in the fields, the under-developed parts of the new neighborhood. I thought I would just stay there in a plain jacket and no one would ever see me. My mother had told me I was a girl with potential, but now it seemed nobody would ever know.
One night we were driving—my mother and Ted in the front seat, me in the back, to the Lorelei for prime rib. I sat by the dark window and didn’t say anything. We passed intersections, the colored lights slick on the road.
“Ann,” Ted said to me from the front seat, looking in his rear-view mirror, “your mother tells me you’d like to be on television.”
I sank further down into the jacket, I could feel my neck flush with blood. She’d told what I wanted. I was ashamed. I was embarrassed to want something like that.
“I know a man who works at WBAY. I can ask him to get you on a local commercial, would you like that?”
My mother leaned her arm on the seat divider. “Just think, you’d be on TV.”
Something opened like a clam in my chest. I felt so happy.
“Yes,” I said.
“All right, I’ll talk to him.”
My mother raised her eyebrows and clicked her tongue. “Here’s hoping.”
We kept driving in the dark but it was different. I watched the red disks throb on stakes by the side of the road. I looked for the skeletal antennas of the radio stations out in the fields, in the country, broadcasting through the night. We felt safe together in Ted’s car, we could feel ourselves moving.
I got Mary Griling to come to Carriage Court. It was easy because I was older. I drew her a map and she rode after school on her brother’s bike that she had to stand up on so her feet reached the pedals. At our house on Carriage Court, we had a new Instamatic camera. We still didn’t have any furniture, but my mother and Ted bought equipment. We had the camera and a radio that picked up international channels. We set the large radio, with the antenna extended, in the middle of the living room floor.
I got kids to come to our house and I took pictures of them. Younger kids, eight- and nine-year-old boys. Mary was the first girl. I didn’t know why I did it. It was just one of the things I did.
Mary was different from the other Grilings. Her collars were straight and her dark hair fell evenly onto her shoulders. My grandmother said she was lucky she was pretty, that could help her, God knew nothing else would. I’d watched her coward little kicks during football games, and in school I’d seen her stand by the window, watering plants on the ledge. Careful, she always seemed to be concentrating. I didn’t live on Lime Kiln Road anymore and I didn’t go to the same school anymore either. But once when I was there playing tag, I held Mary’s wrist and pulled her by a tree. Clouds moved above us, it was going to rain before supper.
She came after school before it was dark, that still time of day. I took her through our empty house to the big bathroom, the one my mother and Ted used, and locked the door. I told her she had to do what I said. I told her to take off her shirt and stand by the wall.
I said the same thing to the boys. I was always amazed when they did it. People are so easy to boss.
Mary looked down and unbuttoned carefully, her chin tucked against her collarbone like a bird cleaning itself. I took a picture. Her bare chest was incidental; what I liked were her shoulders curling down, her distracted eyes as she stood with her hands hanging useless at her sides.
They all looked up at me while I did it. They seemed frightened, their faces sunk back, except their eyes. I asked them to lie on the long, fake-marble counter by the sink. They always looked so serious.
Mary rubbed her tennis shoes off, one by one, toes pushing down the soft heel of the other shoe. Kids are so shy. She was lying there, looking up at me, her eyes large and muscular, wet like a fish’s eyes. That was what made me want to touch them, that tremble. Some flinch. They were afraid of me. The boys tried to look brave, setting their teeth, breathing in. It’s amazing the power people give you. Mary Griling just lay there, her face flattened, I could do anything to her and she looked up at me, weakly and kind, a nerve pulsing in her cheek. The muscles gathered in her stomach. My fingers turned heavy and sensitive, as if all my blood poured down to their tips. I lifted the elastic band of her skirt and looked down at her face. She was peering at me, more and more humbly, the veils of her eyelids closing, knowing she was giving herself up. I could have reached down and killed her, she was just lying there, trusting me.
“The others did this, too?” Her rib bones rose, the highest part of her body. She pulled her stomach in, shy.
“Yes.” I’d said there was a club, all the girls on Lime Kiln Road. I didn’t tell her there were boys.
I had Mary, good little Mary, serious Mary Griling who worked hard to be neat, to do well in school, in my house alone. She was lying there under my hands. I touched the pancake of her breast and something fluttered beneath my flattened palm. Then I pushed her skirt and her underpants down to her ankles. She flinched while I took the pictures. I was watching her face turn funny.
“Is that enough pictures?”
“Okay.” I put the camera under the counter, where my mother stored the Ajax and extra soap. But she still stayed there and I looked at her. The tiny muscles of her upper thighs clinched when I touched her. She looked at me as if my finger was on the wet muscle of her heart. Then I licked my finger. It tasted like flour. I put my hand in her mouth and ran two fingers over the bumps of her gums. I felt like I owned her, then. With the boys it took longer. I stood over them until they shuddered and cried, biting their lips until they bled, arching up and down on the counter, in my hands.
She sat up, sideways, with her legs hanging down and then she jumped. I looked back at her, her buttocks pressed towards each other as if she could feel me watching. She dressed against the wall, in the corner.
“Does your father see you undressed?”
She was clasping the top button of her blouse. “No,” she said, guarded but obedient, duty-bound to answer.
“Want me to help you?” Her shirt hung down, lopsided.
“I can do it by myself.”
I was thinking of Griling’s messy house, the junk in the front yard, piles in the closets. She finished dressing. Her collar folded down, even. I smoothed it carefully, against her neck. She looked up, not knowing if she should be afraid of me.
“You can’t tell anybody about today,” I said. “I won’t show the pictures.”
“All right,” she said, not sure.
Then she left, walking in one line through the kitchen to the front door. As I watched her go, she seemed to collect mystery again, to draw it back into her small body. Her head was dark as she rode down our street on her brother’s wobbly bike. The boys always looked over their shoulders at me, asking, dipping their eyes. I knew they’d be back, I didn’t wonder. I hadn’t had a girl before because I worried they would tell their mothers. But Mary Griling had no mother.
“I’m really bleeding,” my mother said, turning to me in the car. “It’s just all over. And thick.” My mother said absolutely anything to me. It was as if she were alone.
“I don’t want to hear about it,” I said, “and could you please keep your eyes on the road.” We were driving from my grandmother’s house, just the way we did a hundred times after she married Ted and we moved away. The stars were small and dim through the windshield. I sat against my car door, worrying.
I ha
d homework for the next day. We turned off our old road and onto the highway, we drove by barns and silos, we passed a high blinking radio antenna in a deserted field. Then I remembered that my science book, which I needed, was in my locker at school. That made me exhausted. I couldn’t possibly finish.
“I have a Super in and a Kotex and it’s still going right through. I can feel it. Yech.” She made a gagging face. “You’ll never believe what that man did. I still can’t believe it. Open the glove compartment, Honey.”
When I didn’t, she reached over and opened it herself. “There. Look at those bills. Those are all our bills, Annie, un-PAID. You need clothes, I need clothes, I don’t have anything, I go to work in that old junk, in rags, five, ten, fifteen years out of date. I should really go to work looking a little nice, too. But this man, with my money, with our money, goes out and buys himself a new car. Yeah, uh-huh, you can imagine, Annie? He thinks he needs a new used Cadillac. The old one wasn’t good enough.”
“Could you please be quiet?”
“I’ll say what I want in my car,” she said. “Don’t get fresh with me now, Ann, because I can’t take it from you, too. And you should know a little about these things.”
She jerked the steering wheel and the car bumped over a curb, turning.
“Where are we going?”
“We’re driving past the Lorelei.”
The Lorelei was the restaurant near the ice skating rink where the three of us used to go on Sundays for prime rib. They were supposed to have the best prime rib in Bay City, thick and tender. Now Ted ate there without us, after night skating. We drove slowly into the gravel parking lot. Across the road was the pale green dome of the arena, BAY CITY painted in large black letters.
“There’s his car,” I pointed. Ted’s maroon and white Cadillac was in its usual spot.
My mother pulled behind it and turned the motor off. She walked out and peered in at his dashboard. “There he is. That man. Oooh, when I think of it. The dirty devil.”
“How do you know he bought a new car?”
“How do I know, they called me, that’s how I know. Van Boxtel Cadillac called and said, Well, you must know about the gold Cadillac, it’s all set, ready to go. I laughed and said, No, I didn’t know a thing about any car. But then I drove out and saw it there on the lot. A gold Cadillac, barely used. A ’65.”
I still didn’t say anything. My mother started up the engine again and tried harder.
“Do you know what this means, Honey? This means no money for us. No clothes, no toys, no nothing. This is it. He’s spent all your money, what should have been for your lessons and your clothes.”
“So, why don’t you go in and talk to him if you’re so upset.”
That seemed to subdue her. “No, that wouldn’t be a good idea.” She shook her head, turning the ignition. “He’s in there drinking with his friends, he wouldn’t say anything in front of them. I know this man. This man is a creature of habit. I’m just going to go home and go to bed. And you, too. Don’t say a word about any of this, do you hear me? Not a word, young lady. See, I’m not going to tell him they called, so he won’t know I know. We’ll just wait and see how he tells me, we’ll just see how he tries. Now do you understand? Not one word. Because that could spoil everything. Everything.
“Let’s set the alarm for five and get up then. Come on, Pooh, we’ll be fresher in the morning. Our minds will think faster.”
We were never done with our work, it seemed, all those years with Ted.
We fell asleep, alone in the house. But I didn’t sleep good sleep anymore, the way I had when I was younger, at my grandmother’s. Now, I had cowering sleep. I snuck under the covers, exhausted, stealing time and comfort I didn’t deserve.
It was the fourth or fifth time that winter I’d lost my key. My mother was furious when she drove her car up the driveway and saw me, sitting on the porch. She slammed her door and marched out.
“Your lights,” I said.
“Damn.” She almost fell, she turned around so fast. “You’re ten years old, Ann, you ought to be able to keep one key.”
She opened the door and let us in. I stood in the front hall, stamping my feet. My mother set the thermostat up. My hands had swelled and turned red.
“Somebody’s going to break in one of these days with your lost keys and then you know where we’ll be. In the poorhouse.”
“There is no poorhouse in Bay City.”
She sighed. “I’m going to have to string it around your neck. And how would you like that, for all your kids to see?”
“Go ahead.” I started for my bedroom, then turned around. “What happened with the Cadillac?”
She sighed again. “I don’t know. I just don’t know yet.”
When I first saw the ’65 Cadillac, snow was blowing in tiny balls across the gold roof. The Cadillac sat like a huge painted egg on our driveway. There was one streetlamp in front of our yard and as I walked up the road, I could see the glass and chrome glitter. I went up close. It had molded fins and I walked the length of the car, running my hands on the sides, brushing down snow. I pulled off my mitten. Through the windows, the inside looked safe and closed and tended like a home. I lifted up the chrome door handle and it gave with a soft click. Ted never locked things. His office in the arena, his cars; in summer he left our back door wide open. Inside, it smelled rich. I didn’t sit down because my clothes were wet and my boots were muddy with slush. The car had thick tan carpets and no plastic mats. I reached over and opened the glove compartment. It was there, what I was looking for and afraid to see: Ted’s glasses, folded together in the beaded case that said LAS VEGAS IS FOR LOVERS. The car was his, definitely. I closed the glove compartment and then I shut the door, lifting the handle so it would fall quietly.
I was afraid to go in the house. I would have stayed in the car, but I didn’t want my wetness to ruin the leather. I did what I did all summer. I went around the garage to the side of the house and listened against the wall. In summer, if I heard fighting, I wouldn’t go inside.
I had my own key, another copy, stuffed with the string down my pocket, and I let myself in. No one called when the door slammed and I stamped my boots in the front hall. The kitchen was dark and the counters were dry and perfectly clean. I opened the refrigerator. There were only jars of things and one head of lettuce in a plastic bag. I guessed we were going out for dinner.
“I’m home,” I said and then I heard something in my bedroom at the back of the house. It was dark in there, it took my eyes a second to adjust.
“I AM your little lotus blossom.” My mother was banked on my bedspread, talking baby talk, with a light mohair blanket thrown over her. “Won’t you get your lit-tle lotus blossom a glass of wa-wa?” She still hadn’t seen me.
“Get up, Mom, it’s suppertime.” I switched on the overhead light. Ted was sitting on my bed next to her as if something was wrong. All of a sudden, I thought she was sick. Perhaps this was what happened when people were dying. She still didn’t notice me. She smiled up at Ted, her face swaying. “Wa-wa for the little lotus flowa.”
Ted turned to me. “Your mother is drunk,” he said, smiling his zipper smile. “She’s had too much to drink.”
“I am not drunk!” she screamed as Ted stood up to go to the kitchen, to get her a glass of water.
“You’re disgusting,” I said, looking straight down at her. Then I took dry clothes into the bathroom and locked the door.
Later, Ted knocked and asked if I wanted McDonald’s. I said no, I was going to take a bath.
I packed a blanket and pillow in a brown paper grocery bag and put on my boots and coat over pajamas. I stuffed my robe in the bag, too. It was nine o’clock and our whole house was dark and asleep. I slipped out the front door and walked towards the Cadillac. There was a new lawn of snow on the ground. I knew my mother’s car in the garage would be safer, but it was old and the seats were vinyl and one of the windows wouldn’t go all the way up. Besides, the doors wou
ld be locked.
I wanted the Cadillac. I sat on the front seat and let my legs dangle outside while I pulled off my boots. I laid my robe and then the blanket and pillow on the backseat and I wrapped the boots in the thick brown paper bag. Then I crawled low so no one could see me and pushed the locks down into the doors.
I felt safe there with the snow falling in one bank on the slanted back windshield. The leather warmed under me. The streetlamp lit the snow. I closed my eyes and thought about driving all night on a dark road, the car moving smoothly, my mother and father sitting in front, my mother’s arm falling down over the seat on my stomach, patting my hands under the blanket, telling me to Don’t worry, go to sleep, it’s still a long ways away. They would wake me up when we came to California, before, so I could see us crossing over, riding in.
Then I jerked the way I sometimes do and it feels like my heart should stop but doesn’t. The streetlight was glaring and now it was hot in the car. It was still night. I took off my pajamas and sat, naked, in the driver’s seat, with my hands on the wheel, making it swivel. I slid down to reach, but I was afraid to touch the pedals with my feet. I thought I might make the car go. I could feel the leather sticking to the moisture of my skin. I wondered if my body would leave a stain. I moved my thighs and my arms as if I were making an angel in the snow. That way my print wouldn’t be recognized. I would seem to be someone larger.
Then I heard a noise. There’s a difference with the things you imagine, that make you jerk in your sleep, and the things you know are real. I crowded down in the footspace and put my pajamas on again. I took my boots out of the paper bag and pulled them on my bare legs. They were heavy rubber boots, much wider than my legs. When I sat up, I saw it was the snowplow, dragging chains, coming down our street, mowing the banks like hedges on either side, blocking all the driveways.
I ran back in the house and to my room. The alarm clock was still ticking, too early to ring. My mom and Ted’s door was closed and I could hear them inside, breathing. No one knew I had been gone. I couldn’t fall asleep again, so I dressed for school. I sat on the kitchen floor against the refrigerator and worked on my homework. I noticed the kitchen windows coming light and I was still working. It seemed like I had endless hours. I worked out all my math problems and copied them over on a new sheet of paper, the numbers neat like houses on blue lines. I read my reading, called “The Sound of Summer Running,” about a boy who didn’t have money for new sneakers. Finally, I was finished. I stacked my books up in a neat pyramid and sharpened all the pencils in my case.
