by Mona Simpson
The teacher asked me a question and I said, I’m sorry, I lost my place.
She moved on, kindly, to the next person. Finally, the lunch bell rang. I followed behind the crowd down to the basement cafeteria, but I didn’t have any money, so I walked around to some trees in front of a smaller playground, with low gym equipment for the little kids. The air was hazy, hot but not clear, and cars moved on Wilshire, a block away. I didn’t know if I would ever like it here. It wasn’t the way I’d imagined.
I stood there, looking at the empty painted playground toys. I was thinking of my mother, where she was. Two girls walked up in front of me. One was tall and messy, messy hair, knee socks too thin for her legs and a large mouth. The other was small. They were the two girls wearing dresses.
“You new?” the big one said.
“Yeah.”
“Where do you live?”
I knew the right answer. But I didn’t live on Roxbury or Camden or Rodeo, or on any of those streets with the pretty names. I didn’t live anywhere.
“I don’t know,” I said. “I don’t remember the name of the street.”
The big girl bent over her open palm, concentrating. “Is it above or below Santa Monica?”
I shrugged. She used the lines on her palm as a map. “Say this is Wilshire, the next big street is Santa Monica and above that is Sunset. You don’t know which one you’re closer to?”
“I think Sunset, but I’m not sure.”
The bigger girl looked down at the small one. “She probably lives near Sunset.”
A bell rang then and we moved towards the door.
“What does your father do for a living?” the taller girl said, her hand on my arm.
Two answers came to me. “He’s a doctor,” I told them. The first thing I’d thought was, He’s dead.
The teacher stood drawing a map with colored chalk on the board, her dress lifting to show her strong, tan legs as she reached, and outside, a buzz saw tore the air. I read the part in the book and I liked it. School was so easy. I had darker things; the judge’s sentence on my mother and me, the word no. I would have given anything that day to be twelve and I was twelve.
The two girls in dresses turned up next to me in the hall, after the last bell rang. Now that I’d lied to them, they bugged me. I wished they’d go away.
“You know what you could do to be really pretty? I think you’d be really pretty except for your teeth are crooked. You should get them straightened.” She looked at the smaller girl. “Don’t you think she’d be pretty with even teeth?”
The smaller girl nodded avidly.
“You should go to an orthodontist and get braces.”
In the surprise of sun, I was wondering where I could walk that wouldn’t show I was going south of Wilshire. I’d never thought about my teeth before. I’d always thought my teeth were fine. I’d looked at my face hundreds of times in the mirror, looking at it different ways for when I would be on television. Always, the best angles were ones only I saw. When I was alone and no one else could see. Now I worried about my teeth. I made my mouth go narrower.
Then my mother’s car pulled over by the curb and I was so glad to see it, I ran and got in and she started driving before she even said anything. It was something she’d picked up from the summer. She drove to relax now, just anywhere, just to drive. We rode through the quiet residential streets with big houses and green slatted tennis courts. We both liked to look at those houses. What my mother had thought before in Bay City was true; it helped to have a car we weren’t ashamed of. There was so much else we had to hide.
“Well,” she sighed. “It looks like we can stay. They gave me another school in West Covina. I went out there this afternoon and saw it already. It’s in the Valley, it’s a long drive every day, but it’s a white school, middle-class, all houses. So, I guess we’ll have to really start looking for an apartment.”
“Isn’t that good? Aren’t you happy?”
“Well, I’m tired. It’s an hour and twenty minutes there, and another hour and a half back. I’ve been driving all day. Let’s go get an ice cream cone.”
We parked in front of the Baskin-Robbins and my mother gave me five dollars to buy our cones. She would never go in herself. At night, she said she wasn’t dressed well enough and she didn’t want to run into anyone. As if we knew anyone to run into. But today she had on her best suit.
We tried to meet people. My mother asked about kids at school and about their parents, but nothing seemed to come of it. We called a family named the Flatows, who’d moved from Bay City a few years ago, when Mr. Flatow’s company transferred him to Beverly Hills. In Bay City, their family owned an expensive children’s clothing store. I remember shopping there with my mother when I was little. The saleslady would take out a drawer full of socks which were all your size and they would be folded up so they looked like colored eggs.
My mother and I sat in their apartment for an hour, having tea. They lived south of Wilshire, too. They had a daughter a year younger than me, but she left to go to a dog show a few minutes after we arrived. Her parents asked my mother about news in Bay City and my mother told them what she could, but they didn’t seem to know the same people. They praised the Beverly Hills High School, where we kids would all eventually get to go, and encouraged us to drive by. “It’s like a college campus,” they said as we left. Nothing came out of that visit, either. We didn’t see them again.
We met Julie Edison the way we’d met other real estate agents. My mother called and said we were looking for a house. Weekends, we toured Beverly Hills mansions for sale. We saw houses with five bathrooms and only one bedroom, houses with tiny kitchens and ballrooms, a house that had once belonged to William Holden. We saw where the Monkees lived for a while. We walked through houses with more than one real estate agent. That was when we were living at the Bel Air Hotel. When we moved to the Lasky House, all of them but Julie stopped calling. She kept showing us houses, and the places she took us to were smaller and smaller. Finally, she showed us a house we really liked.
It was a normal house, with two bedrooms, just above Santa Monica Boulevard on an old, unimposing street. None of the houses were big or fancy. This one was white brick with a red chimney and bushes out in front. It had two stories, a fireplace, a nice kitchen with windows looking over the backyard. We fell in love with the house.
We’d seen it twice already. It was the picture I held in my mind at night when I was trying to fall asleep. My mother told Julie what she’d told other real estate agents, other times: that we’d come ahead to start looking, but we were waiting for a husband to join us. After a while, my mother stopped returning Julie’s phone messages. They came on little pink slips the man behind the reception desk handed us when we walked into the Lasky House. My mother stuffed them in her purse.
While we licked our ice cream cones at night, we drove by the house. Once, my mother parked in front. We just stared.
“It really is a beauty, isn’t it? It’s small, but elegant. It has charm, more charm than a lot of these that have been added on to and added on to so they end up one big hodgepodge. I’d do it all in white wicker and chintz. It’s really the perfect little place for two girls. And in the winter, we could make fires in the fireplace. We could go to the woods and collect pinecones, remember how nice they burn?”
“But we can’t afford it, can we?”
She sighed. “I don’t see how. But who knows, we’ll see.”
“It’s a hundred thousand dollars. How much is that you’d have to put down?”
“I don’t know, twenty, thirty.”
“And we don’t have that much?” I had no idea how much money we had.
“Honey, we’ve got barely enough with what I’m making to pay the Lasky House and our food every night. Plus your school clothes and when we get an apartment, we’ll have to give a deposit, plus, plus, plus. I can’t do all this on my own.”
“So it’s out then. We can’t afford it.”
; “I told you, we’ll see. I just don’t know right now. Who knows, Gramma might even give us something.”
We parked on the street in front of Julie’s condominium, a new high-rise building.
“Now, you know, this might be the last time we see her, once she finds out we don’t want the house. She knows she won’t get her commission then,” my mother said.
We’d called home, collect, to my grandmother many times.
“I know, I don’t care.”
We sat in the car. It was October and a little cool in the evening. We had the heat on.
“Okay, as long as you know. So you won’t be disappointed.” My mother hadn’t wanted to return Julie’s messages. She thought the best thing would be to drop it and just run into her again sometime, later, when we were all set. It was my idea to call.
We rode up the elevator in silence. When she opened the door, Julie was standing, holding a phone to her ear. A thirty-foot extension cord dragged behind her. She ushered us in, smiling, all the while saying, “Right, right,” into the receiver. She was wearing a man’s long-sleeved shirt rolled up to her elbows and purple panties. Her fingernails looked newly polished. There were cotton balls stuck between her toes.
We sat down primly, waiting for her to get off the phone. We liked Julie.
“So, how are you,” she said, as she hung up. “I’ve missed you, I’ve been calling.”
“Well, we’ve been busy, haven’t we, Ann?” my mother said. “And I have some unhappy news. My husband won’t be coming. We’ve decided to get a divorce.”
Julie pounced on the couch beside us, her fingers spreading on my mother’s back.
“It looks like he won’t be joining us. I’ve decided to leave and so … we’re on our own.”
“Oh, no, I’m sorry.”
“Well, I am too. I’m really sorry for her. And she’s being a very brave girl. But I think it’ll be for the best. I’ve really known that for a long time. And I just don’t think I can live with him again. I just can’t.”
“Jesus, let me make some coffee.”
My mother said she’d decided to leave; she thought turning down money was a claim in itself. I’m sure to Julie it made no difference. Julie wasn’t a snob. She was a practical person. If you had the money, you bought a house. If you didn’t, you rented.
“I can’t do it, it’s just not right,” my mother yelled into the kitchen.
“Maybe then it’s not bad news,” Julie called. “Maybe it’s really good news. Or it will be. If you’ll be happier.”
“I think we will, in a little bit, when we’re settled. But unfortunately, I’m afraid it means we won’t be able to swing the house. On our own, we just won’t be able to do it.”
“There’ll be other houses again when you can. That one was a particular steal, but if you can’t, you can’t.”
“I’m just sorry for all your trouble.”
“Oh, don’t be sorry about me, that’s my business.” Julie squeezed my shoulder. “Ann, I’ve got a half gallon of Jamoca Almond Fudge in the freezer, why don’t you dish it out for us.” She yelled after me. “If there’re no spoons in the drawer, they’re in the dishwasher.”
“Oh, none for me, please,” my mother said, “I really shouldn’t.”
“You shouldn’t. I shouldn’t.” Julie slapped a thigh. “Come on, Adele, you should.”
“Well, a wee bit.”
“So, you’re going to need an apartment.” From her pink lacquered file cabinet, Julie took out a map of Beverly Hills. She squeezed between us on the couch. We each ate our ice cream staring down at the map on the coffee table. We listened and memorized, alert, to all she could tell us.
“The bottom line is you want to keep her in Beverly Hills for the school district. But I think we can do even better than that. In high school—they’re all together. But this year, for seventh grade, there’s four elementary schools. And if you can get her in with a good group of kids, she can just keep on with them.”
“RIGHT,” my mother said, hitting the table. “It’ll just carry over. That’s why I wanted to get her in now, while she’s still in the seventh.”
Julie traced the map and its districts with her pink fingernail. The names enchanted us. Trusedale Estates and all the long, wide streets with palms down the center belonged to Hawthorne School. Canon, Rodeo, North Elm Drive.
“I’d try to keep her in El Rodeo. Beverly Vista is mostly apartments. And see, Horace Mann’s way over here. That gets into La Cienega.”
My mother reached over and ruffled my hair. “We’ll keep you in El Rodeo.”
Julie snapped her fingers. “I have a friend who has a daughter in seventh or eighth grade in El Rodeo and she’s in with a real chic crowd. She’s the only one in her group who doesn’t live in a house. All the others live above Sunset. Should I call her and ask if she has any advice?”
“Would you?” My mother dabbed the corner of her eye. My mother loved being grateful. She crossed her fingers while Julie dialed. I turned away.
“Okay. Good.” Julie stood on one leg with the other foot crushing down a sofa cushion. “She should. Okay. One sec.” She looked at us. “She says she should work it in the conversation that she’s from Wisconsin. A lot of the new kids are just from other schools in LA and that’s a bore. But Wisconsin’s different, so see if she can mention that.”
Excitement built on my mother’s face. She loved social strategy, careful planning. It was one of her lifelong passions.
“Oh, Annie, I’ve got it,” she said, hitting her hands together.
“What.”
“You can say, how’s this, she can say, Gee, in Wisconsin, where I’m from, by now, by this time of year, I’d be wearing my bunnyfur coat. It’d already be so cold.” One of the great prides of my mother’s life will always be that when I was ten, I owned a real rabbit coat. “Say, Every year I was wearing it by November. Or even October. Say October.”
“I’m not gonna say that.”
“Why not? Or, let’s see, you could say, Boy, is it ever warm here. I wonder if it’ll ever get cold enough to wear my bunnyfur coat. In Wisconsin—”
Julie’s hand slapped over the mouthpiece again. “And she should be a little shy, aloof. Don’t chase them. Let them come to you.
“Yes. Let them come to you. Do you hear. Don’t PUSH. Wait. Just let them come to you in their own time. Because sometimes you push.”
“No I don’t.”
“Yes, you do. I’ve seen you.”
That was a theme of my mother s. She thought I was too aggressive.
She tried to teach me to be feminine. The art of waiting. I thought if she were a little more aggressive, we might know people and have a place to live.
“Why don’t you worry about making friends yourself? I don’t see why you’re so worried about me.”
“Where am I going to meet anybody? You’re the one who can.”
Julie found us a one-bedroom apartment on South Elm Drive, just inside the El Rodeo border. It had nice windows overlooking the street and gold shag carpeting throughout. We lived there with no furniture except a queen-sized Sealy Posturepedic mattress and box spring we’d ordered over the telephone.
My mother was obsessed with paint. The first few weeks, she found spots the painter had missed. She called the landlord, a large-breasted woman who lived north of Sunset and drove down to our building in a brown Mercedes once or twice a week. The landlord had also promised my mother white shutters for the windows. My mother became enraged each succeeding week they were late. She began to doubt that they would ever come. Every day, I arrived home from school before my mother. And when I saw the windows still bare, I got nervous, knowing my mother would yell for a while when she came in from work. She had long, angry telephone conversations with the landlord at night. Sometimes, the landlord put her husband on. I could hear the change in my mother’s voice. She was softer with a man.
Finally, the shutters arrived. The landlord had promised white shutt
ers and they were white, but a shade off from the color of the walls. My mother felt heartsick and furious. After two nights of phone calls with the landlord, the same painter came back to repaint.
“It’s cheap. She got the cheapest bad paint and slapped it on. With all this cheap stuff around not right, I don’t even want to be here. I JUST CAN’T LIVE LIKE THIS!” my mother screamed.
I stood there. I used to make myself peanut butter sandwiches on toasted English muffins and eat them standing up.
The second day the painter came back to match the shutters to the wall, I stayed home sick from school. I wanted to offer him something, but we didn’t have the usual things, like coffee. All we had were sunflower seeds and peanut butter and English muffins.
Then the landlord walked in and I hid in the closet. The painter knew I was there, but she didn’t.
“Just impossible,” I heard her say.
“Oh, she’s all right once you get to know her,” the painter said. “I think she’s really a good person underneath.”
I didn’t know if he was saying that because I could hear. He and my mother used to talk, though. She’d cry and tell him how frustrated she was, how hard everything was for us here, at the same time pointing to spots on the wall and saying, “Oh, oh, you missed” or “This little bit looks thinner, would you mind, just to even it? Thank you.”
