by Mona Simpson
Walking back to the apartment, he kicked sand into the air. He turned to me suddenly, as if he’d just then thought of something.
“How do you like school?” he asked.
“Fine,” I said. “I like it.”
“That’s good,” he said. Our conversations were always like that, like lighting single matches.
I sat on a towel by the hotel pool while my parents tried to win back our money for Disneyland. When my mother rubbed lotion into my shoulders, she pointed to a woman sleeping on her back, with a washcloth covering her eyes. A child squatted next to her head, brushing the woman’s hair with a toy brush. A boy, asleep next to them, had a white bar of soap hanging from a braided cord around his neck; his fingers moved over the soap, as if he were dreaming on it.
“Those kids are in the shows at night. Look at that,” my mother said. “The kids make the money and the mother just lounges.”
Later, when my parents went into the casino, the little girl pulled the woman’s hair.
“Shhhh,” the woman said. “And let him sleep. He was up late. Go in the water, Honey.”
But the boy woke up and ran onto the diving board, the muscles in his stomach jiggling like a bowl of shaken water. The sound of his yell made the woman sit up and lift the washcloth off her face.
His feet flapped on the surface of the water, then he stopped and shook. His mother and sister and I all stared but he didn’t seem to notice us. He seemed to be splashing with other, invisible bodies in the pool.
I watched the boy most of the afternoon, hoping he would look at me. He stood gurgling water, his head tilting up, soaping himself with bubbles from the bar around his neck. His mother would pull to a sitting position every once in a while, taking her sunglasses down from the top of her head, and smile, watching him, look nervously over to his sister; then, having counted each of her children, she would sigh, sinking back to her towel, opening a magazine over her face.
I waded in the shallow end. My mother said I could play with these children so I knew I could, but I didn’t know how to start. It seemed too hard. I closed my eyes, tumbling through the water, and thought that when I went home I could write letters to them. Months later, back at my grandmother’s house, times when I wasn’t even thinking of my father, I felt like writing a letter to that boy. But I didn’t even know his name.
“So we’ll go to Disneyland next trip,” my father said, walking me back from the pool. There were no lawns in front of the parked trailers, but the sand was raked and bordered with rows of rocks. My father’s black slip-on shoes were scuffed. He was holding my hand but not looking at me.
“When?”
Suddenly, I wanted the name of a month, not to see Disneyland but to see him. Taking long steps, trying to match his pace, I wanted to say that I didn’t care about Disneyland. I dared myself to talk after one more, two more, three more steps, all the way to the apartment. But I never said it. All I did was hold his hand tighter and tighter.
“I don’t know,” he said, letting my arm drop when we came to the porch.
On the plane home, I held the package of headbands in my lap, tracing each one through the cellophane. My mother turned and looked out the window.
“I work,” she said finally, “and I pay for your school and your books and your skates and your lessons.”
She picked up the package of headbands and then dropped it back on my lap. “A seventy-nine-cent package of headbands,” she said.
I hid behind a tree, watching my grandmother walk down the driveway, the back corner of her scarf whipping in the wind. The red metal flag stood up on the mailbox. I watched her shuffle through the mail and shove it into her pocket. She didn’t hold any of the letters in her hand or look at one for longer; that meant there was nothing unusual. Then I ran up to her.
I thought I still wanted to go to California, but later. My blood ticked from running, the damp air touched my temples, the wind was a battle in my sleeves. Twigs lifted off the ground as we headed towards the backyard, where the wash was still moving on the lines. I helped my grandmother gather the sheets, collecting clothespins in our mouths and pockets, to carry them in before the rain. The sheets that night felt stiff on our beds, smelling of soil and cold water. When it started to rain, we hauled out our buckets to collect in the yard, under the eaves troughs. My grandmother believed rainwater made our houseplants grow. At night, we listened to the sounds on the roof. It was a different life from my father’s, from what we imagined was California. I didn’t know whether I watched for the mail because I wanted a letter from my father, or because I was afraid and hoped he would stay away, so we could keep what we had.
At Bob’s Big Boy, one day in the summer, my mother and I pressed together in the phone booth and emptied her purse out on the metal ledge. There were hundreds of scraps of paper, pencils, leaking pens, scuffed makeup tubes, brushes woven with a fabric of lint and hair, a bra, and finally, my mother’s brown leather address book, with the pages falling out. We wanted to call my father in Las Vegas. It was already over a year since we’d flown there. The number was written, carefully, in brown ink.
My mother dialed, saying Hold your thumbs, here’s hoping. She said a quick, mumbled Hail Mary, rounding off the four points of the cross to a touch on her forehead and three quick taps on her chest. I scraped all the coins from the bottom of her purse. When the operator came on to say how much the call cost, my mother lifted me up and I dropped in the money. We both waited, our mouths together by the receiver. A sleeping male voice answered.
“Yeah?”
My mother asked if my father was there.
“No,” the man said. “Wrong number. Nobody here by that name.”
“Well, do you know where he went? He used to live there, we saw him there.”
“Not since I’ve been here.”
“Would one of your roommates know?”
“I’ve been here the longest.”
“Oh,” my mother said. “All right.”
We called information in Las Vegas then and gave my father’s name, but they had nothing listed.
Sunday was the day my mother took over the house. My grandmother woke up early and drove to church. Everyone on our road went to church except us. In the morning, when our neighbors were driving into town, the women holding the clasps of their purses in their laps, Lolly drove on the same highway, in the other direction, with the car radio on, and a box of warm cinnamon rolls open on the passenger seat.
She went to Krim’s, Bay City’s best bakery, early, before the after-church crowd and bought twelve of the large soft rolls for just us. They were expensive and we loved the extravagance. By the time Lolly stamped to our back door, my mother was up and around the kitchen singing “I’m Gonna Wash That Man Right Out of My Hair” and the pitcher of dark, thick orange juice was slowly filling. It was my job to squeeze the oranges.
Lolly tore open a new carton of cream and walked out to the porch. “So did you try it?” she asked my mother.
With my grandmother gone, they didn’t even send me inside when they talked. We ate slowly, on our second rolls each. My mother and Lolly sipped their coffee. They gave me a mugful just to warm my hands. I took small drinks and it tasted like dirt. I was trying to learn to like it.
“Why do you ask?” my mother said.
“I just thought, it seemed last night on the ice, there were some, shall-we-say, new jumps?”
“Well, yes. Mmhmm. I did try it.”
“You did?”
I was bouncing my slipper on the edge of my foot, over the side of the porch, and it fell. The ground felt cold when I hopped down to get it.
“Where did you go?”
“Nowhere. Just here.”
“In the bedroom, with the troops upstairs? You’re kidding. With Mama in the house?”
“We watched Carson. Everyone was asleep.”
“And?”
My mother sighed, blowing on her coffee and looking out over the yard. The grass seemed fa
ded and the fall light was whiter than in summer. “It was fine. It’ll be fine,” she said. Sometimes my mother seemed older.
Lolly scanned her face as if there was something different she couldn’t quite put her finger on. Finally, she looked at me as if I knew. My mother seemed slow and collected, it seemed she’d come to some resolution. When the train passed and her coffee cup chattered in its saucer, she looked down and smiled, as if the noise were music.
“So what about California?”
“I don’t know,” my mother said, looking straight at Lolly, holding her cup in the air, “but with a man like that, who can? Who does know?”
“You haven’t heard anything?”
“Not a thing.”
“And you don’t think you will?”
“Oh, I think so. I’m sure of it, in fact. Someday, he’ll have a record out or they’ll cast him in a movie and he’ll come into some money and, then, I’m sure he’ll call us. But who knows when?”
“I know what you mean.”
“And she’s growing up. I can’t just stay here forever.” My mother nodded at me.
As soon as she said that, I wished I was younger. I fell out onto the grass and started doing cartwheels. My hair knocked against my cheeks. I walked on my hands.
“Did you see, Mom, did you see me?”
My mother and Lolly both sat with their coffee cups in their laps, not talking.
“Do it again, Honey,” my mother said.
Skating the next time, I didn’t get off the ice. When the music stopped, my mother and Lolly stepped delicately onto rubber mats at the exit, my mother taking a few last breaths, as if she were leaving precious air. The Zamboni, a machine that cleared the ice, already stood growling at the other end of the rink. I took one last run around the ice, skating as fast as I could, my arms flailing. The Zamboni followed close behind because the man who drove it believed I needed to be taught a lesson.
It was like being chased by an animal; I heard the thing behind me, I couldn’t tell how near it was. I was ready for its paw on my back, to tip me over, any second. My mother stood at the exit yelling and I saw her but I couldn’t hear. The Zamboni behind me, I raced, running on my tips, trying not to fall forward because if I did I’d be caught underneath the machinery. I raced for my life, believing I could die and that if I tripped and fell and the Zamboni ran me over, it would be fair, because I shouldn’t have been on the ice.
Maybe I wanted to die. I ended up ramming against the barrier at the exit, falling hard into the wood.
And just then, my mother and Lolly looked at each other, turned and walked downstairs. They refused to acknowledge me; they wouldn’t encourage such behavior. Besides, my mother felt embarrassed because of Ted. She wanted Ted to think she could make me mind.
I had some pride. Instead of running after them, I stood at the exit, kicking sheets of ice off my blades. Another mother, there to pick up her children, hugged me against her belly, a strong arm pulling me in. She whispered, “Tell me, does your ma hear anything from your daddy?”
“I don’t know,” I said.
“Awww,” Mrs. Bayer whispered, rubbing down my hair.
For a moment, but only for a moment, I let my eyes close.
“You must miss your daddy,” she said, her face dropping into a loose expression of pity.
I pulled away. “No.”
Taking the skates off on the bench was pure joy. My work was done. My shoes seemed sizes too big for my feet and my ankles felt filled with air. Walking over the thick rubber mats, my body seemed to start at my shins. I was light. I’d done what I could do.
We heard from my father again two years after my mom married Ted. He called my grandmother first. He didn’t know about Ted or the house on Carriage Court. He seemed to suppose we stayed the same the years between his phone calls. He told my mother he lived in Reno, with a new wife. So, apparently, he still hadn’t made it to California. He told my mother he wanted to take me to Disneyland.
“Well, I don’t know. Do you think we’ll really get there this time?” She snorted into the phone.
“Oh, no, you don’t,” my mother said then, after huffs and pauses, impatient sighs. “Nothing doing. I’m not taking her out of school to fly out there alone. Either I come too or she’s not going.”
My father wanted to have just me. Finally, he agreed to send the money for two tickets. Then, she covered the receiver with her hand. “Ann, his new wife has an eleven-year-old granddaughter. She’s never seen Disneyland and they thought they might bring her along. Would you like that or would you rather it be just us?” She whispered, “If you’d rather just us, then say so.”
“I’d rather be just us,” I said.
My mother took her hand off. “She feels she’d rather not have another child there.” I hated the way it sounded like that, loud. I hopped around the kitchen in a circle and yelled, “I don’t care. I don’t care who comes. Bring her.”
“Don’t worry, I’m sure he won’t bring her,” my mother said. We stood in front of the open refrigerator, eating slices of cold châteaubriand. That way there were no dishes to wash. “What do you think, a granddaughter your age. His wife must be as old as Gramma.”
“Why couldn’t I go alone?”
“Honey, there’s a lot of things you just don’t know, okay? Believe me, I’m a lot older and I know this man.”
She waited and I didn’t say anything. I had the salt shaker. I shook on salt.
“Ann, he could get you on a plane to Egypt in a couple hours and who’d ever know? Yeah, you didn’t think of that, did you? And let me tell you, you wouldn’t like it. They’d get you married and pregnant in no time. Over there, they educate the boys, not the girls. There’s no such thing as a high school girl. Your dad was just darn lucky.”
My mother and father wanted to take me out of school and fly to Disneyland right away, but Uta, the new wife, insisted we wait for Easter vacation. That gave my mother and me three weeks to shop. We bought new dresses and my first stockings and white gloves.
Then my mother read about something she wanted: a new Sony portable color television. A jewel. They were small; she showed me the picture she cut out of the magazine. She wanted a white one, she felt sure they came in white. The article said they wouldn’t be available in the States for another year, but my mother thought they’d have them in California. “I’m sure of it,” she said, “it’s right across the water from Japan. I bet they’ll be all over the stores.”
My mother had stopped telling Ted about the things she wanted, because he tried to get them for her and he made mistakes. For Christmas, he’d bought her a console record player instead of a stereo with component parts. He surprised her with a dishwasher, just after she’d bought hand-painted plates. She shuddered talking about what he’d come up with if she told him about the Sony: a big, cabinet-sized Zenith or RCA.
She picked me up after school and we drove downtown to Shreve’s. We browsed on the electronics floor, watching all the televisions. They had Sony black-and-whites but no colors. All the colors were huge things, whole varnished cabinets.
“Can I help you,” a young woman said, her hands in the pockets of the brown store smock.
“Oh, no, thank you.” My mother nudged me as we walked to the parking lot. “We’ll have the first one in Bay City.”
Ted walked us outside to the aluminum steps of the plane. It was a windy, wet afternoon. My mother hooked my hair behind my ears and then put her hand on her own head. She wanted to go inside the plane, so we wouldn’t get mussed, but Ted just stood there and so we waited.
His smile seemed different to me that day, higher on the left side, bent, not like a zipper.
Our airport wasn’t large. You could see runways going into the fields and around the perimeters; behind the blinking lights, trees started again, birches and pine. The inside terminal was small, too, with one coffee shop where high school girls worked as waitresses.
“Well, you have fun,” Ted said
. He laid one arm on my shoulder and his other hand reached under the back of my mother’s hair.
She sighed. “Well, I don’t know if it’ll be fun, I doubt it, but necessary. And it’ll be fun for her, you’re right, for her it should be fun.”
My father sat with his legs crossed, staring as if he wasn’t seeing anything, in a plastic, molded airport chair. A woman stood behind him, with a hand on his shoulder. Her other hand was cocked over her eyebrows, as if she was looking for something far away. It seemed they’d been waiting a long time.
“John, is that them?” I heard her say. But John was not my father’s name.
Then my mother waved, he stood up and we all met. The granddaughter stood there, too, a girl whose legs were so thin it looked as if something might be seriously wrong. She kept shaking my hand up and down.
The five of us were going to eat right away in a restaurant in Beverly Hills, Uta told us. She had already made the reservation. But first, my mother wanted to use the ladies’ room. She asked me to come along.
“Don’t feel bad about the granddaughter,” she said, in front of the mirror. She brushed out our hair. “Because I’m sure he didn’t want to bring her. She insisted. Did you see how she’s the one with the money. She made the reservation. She had the camera around her neck. It’s like she’s the man and he’s the woman. So don’t feel bad.”
They had a rented car and my father drove. He and Uta sat in the front seat. My mother had to climb in the back with the grand-daughter and me. Her high heels made it hard to balance, getting in. She put her hands on her lap and smiled right away and you could tell she didn’t like this.
“So, Hisham, do you still have the Valiant?”
He chuckled a little. “No, I had to get rid of that.”
I thought of our Valiant in a Nevada dump somewhere. Benny was good with cars. Even though he was only eleven years old, he drove up and down Lime Kiln Road in his dad’s truck. I’d been to the dump in Bay City where they put the old cars; Griling ran it, walking around with a stick. The machine dump covered two sides of a hill and a long valley. It wasn’t just cars, there were old wash machines and refrigerators, their doors open, and warm from the sun. Cats lived on the empty wire shelves.
