The Other Side of Dark

by Joan Lowery Nixon

  “You should have seen her in the clinic after I did her makeup,” Jan says quickly. She holds up an overnight case. “I’ve got everything here! Even hot rollers and scissors.”

  “And we’ll choose something for you to wear,” B.J. adds. “Oh, isn’t this fun!”

  I take a step backward, bumping into the wall. “Wait a minute. You said to wear jeans. I’m wearing jeans.”

  They both examine me slowly from head to toe. “They’re new jeans,” B.J. says. “Besides, they’re a little baggy. You haven’t shrunk them yet, have you?”

  “Well, no. I mean, why should I shrink them? They’d be too tight.”

  “We’ve got time to shrink them. Take them off.”

  Jan giggles. “Stacy, you aren’t going to wear that flowered cotton shirt?”

  “I like this shirt.”

  Jan puts down her case and opens it. Triumphantly she pulls out a bright red T-shirt with short sleeves and a V-neck. “I brought you a present,” she says, handing it to me. “With your dark hair you’ll look super in red.”

  I try to step back again, but there’s nowhere to go. “Look,” I say, “why can’t I just go like I am?”

  B.J. tucks her chin down and stares at me with determination. “Because you have something to live up to, Stacy. You’re the Sleeping Beauty, coming back to the world, and you have to make an impact on it.”

  “Don’t call me that,” I plead.

  Jan grabs my hand and pulls me toward my bedroom. “We don’t have much time. Let’s stop all this talk and get to work!”

  They’ve got a goal, and I’m it. I can’t fight the two of them, so I give up and follow orders, getting into a robe as B.J. marches to the laundry room with my jeans and Jan lays out an array of bottles and jars and cans on the bathroom ledge.

  She shampoos my hair and plops me into a chair that B.J. has brought from the kitchen. I’m facing away from the mirror over the sink, but that’s all right because I’m nervous about what I’ll finally see. I just hope Jan knows what she’s doing.

  Chunks of my hair fall into my lap, and I squeeze my eyes shut. I may need that paper bag after all.

  She squirts a handful of some kind of foam into her hands and rubs it all through my hair. Then come the hot rollers.

  “So far, so good,” Jan says with satisfaction, and B.J. nods approval.

  “Now for her face,” B.J. says, and reaches for a bottle.

  They seem to take turns patting and smoothing things over my skin. Finally I say, “Isn’t that enough? This seems like an awful lot of trouble.”

  “Keep quiet,” B.J. says. She picks up a blue pencil. “If you talk, we might make a mistake.”

  “But—”

  “You’re going to be our masterpiece,” Jan says, and she giggles with excitement. “Wait till you see yourself, Stacy!”

  I can wait. Believe me, I can wait.

  “Wait till everybody sees you. Wait till Jeff Clinton sees you!”

  “I heard the big exciting news about you and Jeff,” B.J. says. From the expression on her face I guess the excitement must have passed her by.

  “It’s no big deal about Jeff,” I tell them. “He just offered to help me learn math. That’s all.”

  “Stop talking,” Jan says. “I’m getting to your mouth.”

  They make enthusiastic comments to each other, which I try to ignore. Finally they step back and grin at me. “Don’t look yet,” Jan says.

  She takes out the rollers, pulls me from the chair, and leads me out of the bathroom back into the bedroom. “Put on your T-shirt before I comb your hair, so your hair won’t get all messed up.”

  “But where are my jeans?”

  “Here they are.” B.J. comes into the room, holding them out before her. “They’re still a little bit warm, but they’re dry now.”

  It takes the three of us to get me into the jeans. I have to lie on the bed and wiggle and grunt and hold my breath until the zipper is up. “I told you they wouldn’t fit me!” I complain.

  But Jan says, “Of course they fit you. They look just right now. Pretty soon you’ll learn how to put them on by yourself. You have to wiggle in just the right way to make it easy.”

  “You’ll get the hang of it,” B.J. says, and she helps me sit up. Stiffly I swing my legs over the edge of the bed. My knees can actually bend. “Good,” she says. “Now, don’t move until we finish your hair.”

  As Jan brushes my hair I sneak a quick glance at the clock by my bed. “It’s already eight o’clock. We’re going to be late.”

  “Of course we are. Nobody’s ever on time,” Jan says. “If we get there at eight, they’d think we were nerds.”

  B.J. sighs. “Stacy, you’ve got so much to learn!”

  Jan steps back. “What do you think?”

  B.J. studies my hair, then pokes gently in one spot with the end of the comb. “Perfect,” she says, and reaches for the hair spray.

  I squeeze my eyes shut as the spray hits my hair, but Jan cries, “Don’t ever do that, Stacy! It does terrible things to eye shadow!”

  B.J. takes one of my hands, Jan the other. “Come look at yourself,” B.J. says. “The Sleeping Beauty emerges.”

  “Don’t call me that!”

  But Jan interrupts. “Not the Sleeping Beauty. My Fair Lady. That’s it. Stacy is like Eliza Doolittle.”

  “No, I’m me!”

  By this time I’m in the bathroom. They push me in front of the large mirror over the basin and stand on either side of me. “Well, look!” Jan says.

  My hair is shaped so that the front strands barely reach my shoulders, and it’s full and wavy and soft. A few tendrils escape over my cheeks and forehead. I reach up automatically to push them back, but Jan grabs my hand. “It’s supposed to be that way,” she says.

  The shadows under my eyes are gone. They’re under my cheekbones now, highlighting them. My eyes seem brighter, my lips softer. Jan was right about the red T-shirt. Red is my color. In the T-shirt and jeans I’m snug and straight and so rounded in all the right places that I blush and hunch my shoulders forward a little. B.J. still shines in her own orbit, but now I have nothing to complain about. I won’t need that paper bag after all.

  I laugh. “Is that really me?”

  “Stand up straight,” Jan says, and pokes me between my shoulder blades hard enough to make me jerk my shoulders back.

  “But I—” My voice drops to a whisper. “I’m so—I mean, on top I—” My face grows even warmer.

  “You look just the way you’re supposed to,” Jan says. She studies me in the mirror. “Don’t you like what we’ve done?”

  I have to admit it. “I do. I really do!” I give Jan a quick hug and turn to B.J., but she steps back quickly.

  “Don’t do that,” she says. “Only grandmothers hug.”

  The telephone rings. Forgetful of everything except the girl in the mirror, the new Stacy, I run to answer.

  It’s the same voice I heard earlier. The same whisper. “Where are you, Stacy?” it says. “The party’s started. We’re waiting for you.”

  This time I slam down the receiver. I’m not going to talk to this jerk. I’m not going to give him the satisfaction of knowing that he’s really getting to me. I’m scared at the sound of that horrible whisper. It isn’t funny!

  I turn around to see B.J. and Jan watching me.

  “Is something wrong, Stacy?” Jan asks.

  “Somebody I know has a warped sense of humor,” I answer. “He thinks he’s being funny by trying to scare me.”

  “What did he say?” Jan asks.

  I shrug. “Nothing much. Just whispering about will I be at the party. Real dumb stuff. Second-grade humor.”

  B.J. and Jan look at each other. “Mort?” Jan asks. “He thinks he’s so humorous, and he isn’t at all. Remember when he pretended to throw up in Mrs. Watkins’s wastepaper basket in front of the whole class?”

  “Disgusting,” B.J. says, “but I don’t think he was invited to this party.
At least I hope not.”

  “Buddy likes to play practical jokes.”

  “I doubt if it’s Buddy.”

  “It wasn’t nice to do to Stacy,” Jan says, “and when we find out who it was, we’ll totally ignore him.”

  Each name pops a face into my mind, but I see seventh-grade boys full of mischief, loud belches, and side glances with snickers. Some of them were okay, I guess, but a few were spoiled mean. That was the time of the big oil boom, in which some families in Houston bought bigger houses and guard dogs and handguns and let their fat wallets spill out all over their kids, who grabbed for what they could get and more.

  B.J. picks up her handbag. “Let’s go,” she says.

  Their conversation has made me feel better, even though I don’t know who they were talking about, so I grab my handbag and follow them to B.J.’s car, making sure a light in the den is left on and the front door is locked.

  “You’ll have to learn to drive, Stacy,” B.J. says. “You can’t get around Houston without a car.”

  “There’s a bus to school, isn’t there?”

  Jan and B.J. give me one of those wide-eyed looks. “We’re talking about after school, weekends, doing things,” B.J. says.

  Oh, no. I said the wrong thing again. Embarrassed, I slump against the car seat.

  “Sit up, Stacy!” Jan exclaims. “There are a couple of other things you’ve got to get used to!”

  We giggle all the way to the party.

  The one-story Maconda house sprawls across an oversize tree-shaded lot that backs onto Buffalo Bayou. Tony opens the ornately carved front door and ushers us into a huge entry hall. Part of my mind takes in the marble and gold and mirrored glass, so that I remember it later, but for the moment I concentrate on Tony. The chubby little boy I knew in seventh grade has changed into someone who is tall with broad shoulders and is very good-looking. He grins at me so appreciatively that I blush.

  “Hello, Sleeping Beauty,” he says. “You were worth waiting for.”

  He steps toward me, but B.J. takes his arm, tosses her handbag on a nearby chair, and leads us toward the den. “Come on,” she tells him. “We’ve got to let everybody else meet Stacy.”

  I follow her into a large wood-paneled den. “Stacy’s here,” she announces loudly. People crowd around me. Even a woman dressed in a maid’s uniform peeks out from the door to the kitchen. I’m overwhelmed by the faces, the voices, the curious stares, the giggles, the questions.

  “What was it like, being asleep for so long?”

  “How does it feel to be a Sleeping Beauty?”

  “Did you have amnesia, Stacy?”

  “Do you remember being shot?”

  I feel as if I were in a nightmare. The faces are all familiar, yet they’re all different. Everyone has changed. I try to match these faces to the faces I remember, and it makes my head hurt.

  Suddenly it’s more than I can stand. “I don’t want to talk about it!”

  Jeff has elbowed his way through the group, and he takes my hand. “She means she can’t talk,” he says.

  “What do you mean, can’t talk?” a girl named Debbie asks. “You make it sound mysterious.”

  “C’mon, Debbie,” Jeff says. “You’ve seen police shows on TV. You know that nobody’s allowed to talk about a case until it goes to trial.”

  “Oh.” Debbie shrugs and looks at me as though I’d suddenly gained a new importance.

  A small dark-haired girl in a maid’s uniform, who’s carrying a bowl of snack mix, pauses for just an instant to stare at me. I hate being a curiosity! I just want to be myself!

  I glance around the room. So many faces. Some of them are drifting into groups; some of them are still staring at me. One of the people in this house must be the one who called me, trying to frighten me. How can I look past all those smiles to find out who it was?

  “Do you know many of the people here?” Jeff asks.

  “No,” I answer.

  But a stocky guy steps forward. He has brown hair and hazel eyes so light they gleam yellow. He’s wearing a linen jacket with the sleeves shoved up. It’s almost a twin to Jeff’s jacket. For just an instant he glances at Jeff, and I imagine that I feel Jeff’s fingers tense. I glance at Jeff, too, but he’s standing easily, smile in place.

  The stocky guy is staring at me. “Don’t you remember me, Stacy?” he asks, and grins.

  “No.” I shake my head.

  He laughs. “Four years make a difference. I’m Jarrod Tucker.”

  I didn’t know Jarrod Tucker well. He was a few years ahead of me in school. He lived down the street from Jan, so I saw him around his house once in a while. Mostly we ignored each other. Jan didn’t like him. She said Jarrod was spoiled rotten and bragged that he always got his own way about everything. He’s probably changed too. Look at Bick. Four years ago Jan and I thought Bick was sickening, yet across the room she’s hanging on his shoulder and looking into his eyes as though he were the most fascinating thing in her life.

  “I remember. You lived down the street from Jan.”

  “Still do,” he says.

  “But you’re a lot older. I mean, this party—you’re not—”

  He laughs again at my embarrassment. “You’re trying to ask why I’m at the party since I’m older than everyone here? Look around. Not everyone. Some of the people who were in high school with me are here too.”

  “I’m sorry. I didn’t mean—”

  “Tony and I are good friends,” Jarrod adds. “You might say I’m a fixture at most of his parties.”

  Tony calls out, “Who changed the radio station? All we’re getting is commercials.” He heads toward the built-in equipment across the room. Jarrod follows him.

  A freckle-faced girl edges toward me. “What was it like being out of your head all that time? I mean, did you dream or what?” She looks as spacey as her question.

  “No more questions,” Jeff says. He murmurs to me, “Let’s get you away from the inquisition,” and leads me toward a small library. “You need a chance to sit down and relax.”

  I look around the room. “I like this.”

  “So do I, and we’re lucky. No one else has discovered it yet, so we get a chance to talk.”

  I sit on the wide sofa that’s in front of a wall of bookshelves, and he sits next to me, twisting so that he faces me. I get the peculiar feeling that he’s trying to memorize my face.

  “Your friends are glad to see you again,” he says.

  “Are they? I feel like something on exhibit.”

  “No. It’s not like that. Your story is new and different, and they’re excited about it.”

  “But I don’t want to be different. I want to go back to school and just be me.”

  “It will all settle down soon. You’ll probably get more questions, but just hang on.” He smiles.

  “I ought to go home. I feel like I used to when I was a little kid looking on at my big sister’s party. I don’t belong here.”

  “It’s hard to grow up all of a sudden.”

  “How do you know that?”

  “I can put myself in your shoes. I can imagine.”

  “Nobody else has tried to do that,” I tell him.

  “Maybe they just haven’t told you.”

  I shrug. “I don’t think so. You’re—you’re different.” I’m furious at myself as I feel my cheeks becoming hot and red. “I’m sorry. I mean—Darn! I sound like a kid. I say all the wrong things.”

  He laughs as he stands and holds out his hands to me. “You’ll learn in a hurry. Come on. Let’s get back to the party.”

  I’m reluctant to join the others. Jeff pulls me to my feet, but I hesitate. Maybe I’m trying to stall. I find myself saying, “I know most of the people in there, but I don’t know you. Tell me about yourself.”

  “There isn’t much to tell.”

  “When did you move to Houston?”

  “Around a year ago.”

  “Where did you live before that?”

&
nbsp; “Michigan. Come on, I’m hungry. Aren’t you? Somebody said there was going to be pizza.”

  “Did I know you before, Jeff?”

  “I thought you didn’t like a lot of questions.”

  “It’s just that I get the feeling that we’ve met somewhere.”

  “Where could we have met, Stacy?”

  “I don’t know.”

  He heads for the den, pulling me with him. “Maybe I’m just the man of your dreams. Let’s check on that pizza.”

  But as we reach the crowd in the den Jeff and I are separated, and I see him near the kitchen, talking to B.J.

  Jarrod pulls me off to one side and pushes a Styrofoam cup at me. “You’ve got to be thirsty by this time. Here’s something to drink.”

  I can smell it. Making a face, I hand it back to him. “No way. That’s got liquor in it.”

  He leans close to murmur in my left ear. It tickles. “Come on, Stacy. You’re not a kid anymore. This will help you loosen up. You want to have some fun, don’t you?”

  “Forget it.”

  “Okay. One soft drink coming up.” He squirms a pathway into the kitchen and is soon back with another Styrofoam cup. “Lemon-lime okay?”

  Carefully, suspiciously, I smell it, then take a sip. It’s all right. “Thanks,” I tell him.

  I start to move toward the kitchen, but Jarrod says, “The pizzas aren’t ready yet. Talk to me.” He takes my arm and leads me to a small garden room with floor-to-ceiling glass windows overlooking the backyard and patio with a lighted pool. At the far end of the room a couple has snuggled together in a wicker swing. He’s nuzzling her neck. I turn my back on them quickly, blushing again.

  Jarrod grins at me. “You really are a Sleeping Beauty, aren’t you?”

  “Don’t call me that!” Angry at him and at myself, I take a long swallow of the soft drink.

  “Okay,” he says. “You’re a beauty anyway.” He puts an arm around my shoulders. I stiffen.

  “What’s the matter?” he asks.

  “Nothing,” I answer. I’m very much aware of his arm and of the warmth of his hand that is kneading my shoulder. What am I supposed to do? No guy has ever put an arm around me.

  “I wonder where Jeff is.”