I'm Down

by Mishna Wolff

  I quickly raced back down the stairs, mortified. I had no idea what I had just walked in on, but I knew it was not for me to see. I also couldn’t believe that Jackie wanted him. I just assumed she had kicked him to the curb. I was actually a little confused.

  Is Dad really picking Yvonne over Jackie? Does he not care what I want at all?

  The next morning, as Dad made Yvonne and her kids pancakes, she insisted on playing a Janet Jackson cassette. But I was so bummed about Jackie that even the idea of pancakes wasn’t cheering me up. Why is Dad trading my one chance for a normal life for this young woman who doesn’t do much?

  When the song “Nasty” came on, Yvonne jumped up from the table and started dancing next to the stereo. She lipsynched the words, “Oh you nasty boy,” and entreated Dad from behind the breakfast bar and into the living room. He slowly began to move his hips in unison to her. And emboldened by her laughter he went for it. In nothing flat, he was throwing his body around looking like a teenage boy as he tried to keep pace with a girl thirteen years younger than him. Anora jumped up, too, and joined in, which made Dad even more fearless. He started grinding and thrusting in a way that made me wish I had a stun gun so I could zap the Patrick Swayze out of him. The babies laughed and clapped and I just watched in silence, feeling like an eighty-year-old. Then the song ended, and Yvonne said, “Girls, your dad sure knows how to move his thing.” And though he looked happy, I was sure I didn’t ever want to hear any more about Dad’s thing.

  Eight

  HERE AND NOW

  ON THE NIGHT of Yvonne and Dad’s wedding, I stood trembling in a rented A-frame hall holding my violin. My dad stood across from me at the altar, looking down in order to stay serious and not start mugging for the audience. My skinny eleven-year-old body floated in a cream-and-black rayon dress with huge shoulder pads that I wouldn’t have bought off the dollar rack at Value Village, but that Yvonne paid top dollar for in the women’s section at Kmart. It was meant to look like a cream top tucked into a black skirt, but what made it so badass was that it was really just one piece. It was also at least two sizes too big.

  Yvonne thought it would be really smooth if I played the wedding march on my violin. I was to play the traditional march first, and then she would walk down the aisle to a Luther Vandross song. Which was fine for her, but I had a little stage fright about playing solo for a room full of people I knew, especially on the day Dad was making such a big mistake. Still I agreed when Yvonne said, “Well, then, maybe you don’t need violin lessons anymore . . . right, John?” And Dad proceeded to nod like a bobble head.

  Anora was across the room, next to Yvonne, in a dress similar to mine but with a vest. Her hair had been done by Yvonne’s hair guy that morning and she was sporting three french braids. She was waiting to go down the aisle in a sort of ill-defined bridesmaid/fashion show capacity and salivating over the audience of relatives she would get to mug for on her way to the front of the hall. In the months since Yvonne and my dad decided to get married, Anora had been so into the wedding, you’d think she was getting married. As Yvonne dieted up until the big day, Anora discussed in intimate detail the different wedding picture combinations that would happen and what angles they should avoid posing in. And seeing Anora studying Yvonne, it was clear she dying to be a bride soon, and maybe several times.

  Yvonne cued me from offstage and I put my violin under my sweaty chin and began playing one of the easiest songs ever written. But besides being sweaty, my hands also shook almost uncontrollably. I raced through the short piece, but no matter how fast I played, the wedding march seemed to go on forever. I finished and tucked my violin under my arm and ran to my seat to hide from her and everyone else in the room just as Luther Vandross kicked in.

  I was sweating and staring in my rayon dress as Yvonne and Dad stood at the head of the hall and gazed into each other’s eyes as “Here and Now” played in its entirety. It was the longest five minutes and twenty-two seconds of my life. Dad shed a single tear, which trickled down his right cheek and glistened in the light. And I discretely sniffed my armpits.

  In a show of things to come, Yvonne elected to have no food served—just cocktails and passed hors d’oeuvres. She said it seemed “cleaner” than serving a messy dinner. So I walked around the reception unable to reach the hors d’ouvres and feeling quite clean in the stomach, as my relatives walked up to sell me on how great it all was.

  “Your dad’s married!” my aunt Alice said, her eyes about to pop out of her skinny head. “Aren’t you excited?”

  “Sure,” I said. But she wasn’t satisfied with my level of my excitement and repeated, “Isn’t it exciting?”

  “Yes, Aunt Alice. I’m so excited. Just like the song.”

  “Are you happy to have a new lady in the house?”

  To which I responded, “I think I see Uncle Dick. . . . I really should go say hi to him.”

  I walked through the crowd as people mingled and smiled and my father and Yvonne danced and danced. But I wasn’t mingling, I wasn’t smiling, I wasn’t happy.

  I approached my uncle Dick, who was bartending.

  “Hi, Uncle Dick,” I said.

  “Hey, kiddo,” he said. “What are you drinking?”

  I felt sullen, and I must have looked it, because when I said, “Champagne?” his response was, “I guess this is as big an occasion as there is.” But he poured me only a tiny sip for the toast. Still, it made me a little happier. So happy, in fact, that when Dad and Yvonne opened presents, I began drinking whatever was left in the clear plastic party glasses that had been left behind on the tables.

  And by the end of the night, I had a much brighter outlook on everything. I walked right up to my new stepmom to tell her how much I loved her. Dad was very happy with this outcome and said, “We are all gonna be a family. It’s gonna be like a real dream come true, and stuff.” I nodded furiously, agreeing with all my might. I wasn’t sure if he could tell that I was wobbly, but when he tried to get me to take a dance with him, I talked him out of it, unsure about my coordination and knowing I would be better at sitting.

  Instead, I watched him and Yvonne dance all night, happily telling anyone who would listen: “My dad just got married!” And explaining, “That’s why I’m dressed like a waitress.”

  Nine

  DUCK-BUTT

  “LADIES”—THAT’S WHAT Yvonne had taken to calling my sister and me—“men are just big dumb animals that need you to control them.”

  Yvonne stood rifling through a clothes rack at Kmart, explaining to us how she “caught” my dad.

  “First of all, you can never tell a man what to do. . . . You can only steer him.” She grabbed a 50 percent cotton miniskirt and held it up to herself.

  “How do you do that?” My sister needed to know, even though she was only eight.

  Yvonne paused for effect and then said like it was a magic word: “Mystique.”

  “What’s that mean, mystique?” I asked skeptically.

  “It means something you don’t have any of, Duck-Butt!” Duck-Butt was my new nickname, because Yvonne said my backside looked like a duck’s.

  Anora laughed, repeating, “Duck-Butt.” And then said, “Hey . . . do I have mystique?”

  “Well,” Yvonne said, picking out a purple rayon dress with gold buttons and dolman sleeves. “It’s too soon to tell, because mystique is about secrets, and you’re too young to have any secrets.”

  “What kind of secrets?” I asked.

  “It doesn’t matter,” she said. “What the secret is, is not important, ladies. It doesn’t matter if it’s big or small or what. The only thing that is important is that they can never totally know you or have you.”

  “But don’t you want the person you’re with to know you?” I asked.

  “Of course,” Yvonne said, “but you have to fight that urge.”

  “But if you get married, they’re gonna find out eventually, right?” I asked.

  “No,” Yvonne said, “because,
there’s always something that you can withhold from a man.” She waved her hand as if to demonstrate. “For example, I didn’t let your dad kiss me for our first four dates. So, he had to wonder what it was like. . . . And I didn’t tell him I had kids until after he said ‘I love you.’ ”

  “Oh, I get it,” Anora said, nodding.

  “Isn’t that like lying?” I asked.

  “Ugh, God!” Yvonne said, exasperated. “You’re not lying! You’re protecting your mystique!”

  “But what about stuff people need to know?” I asked.

  “A woman knows what a man needs to know,” Yvonne replied. “Plus, you can withhold lots of other things, too: your time—you can be real busy and stuff . . . sex, secrets, doesn’t matter. What matters is that you’re almost available, but not quite.”

  “That makes sense,” my sister said maturely.

  “How is that good for my dad?” I asked.

  “Your dad doesn’t know what’s best for him.” She held up a pink rayon blouse. “I do.”

  She put the blouse back and then grabbed one next to it that was even more hideous. It was mustard-colored rayon with three-quarter-inch sleeves and matching pants with an elastic waistband. She looked at the outfit and handed it to me. “Duck-Butt,” she said, “why don’t you try this on?”

  “That’s for grown-ups. I wear kids or juniors, but that’s for women.”

  “So?” Yvonne said. “You’re almost a woman.”

  “I’m twelve,” I said.

  “Well, you’re very tall,” she said. “Besides you can’t imagine what I was doing at your age. I was almost out of the house.”

  “I don’t like shoulder pads,” I said.

  Yvonne was aghast at my disobedience. Her nostrils flared and her eyes got vicious. “But your clothes never match! And they look so old . . . and they smell!”

  “That’s because they’re secondhand,” I said, grabbing the wool V-neck sweater I had on. “This is really good quality, though. Feel it. It’s Nordstrom brand.”

  Yvonne’s anger was replaced by coldness. She took a deep breath and when she exhaled, I didn’t even exist. She looked over at Anora, who was trying on a felt hat, and said, “Drop the hat, we’re going now.” Then she grabbed Anora’s hand and began dragging her out of the store.

  “I’m sorry,” I said as I marched behind her out of the store, trying to keep up as she dragged Anora into the parking lot. But Yvonne wasn’t responding; instead she said to my sister, “Do you hear something, Anora?”

  The second my father and Yvonne had gotten married, Yvonne decided that she would mold me from a twelve-year-old tomboy into a sophisticated young black woman. And even though I seemed utterly ungrateful, she would benevolently share everything she had ever learned about being a lady in her twenty-three long years of life. By now she had convinced my father that my general weirdness reflected poorly on the family, and that it was his fault for not knowing about periods and such.

  But no one in our house was particularly consistent, including Yvonne, so her charm school was intense and intermittent, and usually ended with Yvonne calling me Duck-Butt and leaving the room. I was what she described as “unteachable,” because I just couldn’t believe most of the things she told me about men and women. It depressed me to think that love was like steering a mule with a rubber carrot. Besides that, she was hymen-obsessed, and everyone’s virginity was constantly suspect. She insisted that my friend Violet was promiscuous because “virgins couldn’t wear tampons,” and Violet used them. And that turned into a big production with Dad about what kind of girls I should and shouldn’t be hanging out with. I insisted, “Violet is in the math club! Trust me, we’d all know if a boy even looked at her!” But then it was Lilith, and then Kirsten, and as time went on, I noticed that Yvonne just thought every twelve-year-old was a whore. She also had all these feminine taboos about what men could and could not see, and when we were doing laundry she went to great pains to make sure Dad never saw her underwear or bras. Saying, “Ladies . . . the only place a man should see your panties is on your body. They lose their power if men see them lying in a drawer.” She would even hide drying bras in closets and other weird places to keep their power charged while they were drying. It was like I was learning about adolescence from the mom in Carrie.

  Dad seemed content to step aside and let Yvonne mold me. Even though, if he was as gullible as she made men out to be, he was a total tool.

  Among my chores were new womanly endeavors, as well. My allowance went up for the first time in years and now part of my new responsibilities was the job of looking after my stepbrother and -sister. This included a range of activities, from feeding them to doing their hair before school.

  The first time I was asked to do the babies’ hair I was baffled. Their hair was soft and curly yet completely different from my sister’s hair. I had no clue what to do, so I just treated their hair like white hair. I ran a brush through Andreus’s flattop, and pulled Yvette’s hair into a ponytail. I stood back and took stock of my work, thinking they looked pretty good—paired down, but playful in a “kids being kids” kind of way. And seeing that Yvonne and Dad had already left for work, I walked Andreus and Yvette to day care.

  But that evening when we picked them up, Andreus’s hair looked like a sheep’s back, and Yvette’s had popped out everywhere except where the hair tie was. It was worse than I expected. I mean I knew that black hair was unruly enough that Zwena was willing to subject herself to hot pressing combs and scalp-searing relaxers to maintain order. But Yvette’s hair defied gravity. She looked like she had spent the day in the dryer.

  Yvonne was quiet as the two kids got in the car and started chatting about what they did at “school.” She listened to them adding an “uh-huh” here and there or a “That’s nice,” and I thought maybe she hadn’t noticed their hair. But as soon as they piped down, she looked at me and said under her breath, “What the hell did you do to my kids’ hair?”

  “What do you mean?” I asked. “I think it looks good.”

  “What’s good about it? My daughter looks like a Troll doll.”

  “I mean . . . it’s a different look,” I said, hoping to defuse the situation. “It’s a more natural look.”

  “What the hell are you talking about, ‘natural’? Her hair’s sticking up all over the place! Is that ‘natural’?”

  “I don’t know,” I said.

  “So . . . what exactly do you mean by ‘natural’?” Yvonne asked pointedly, and glared at me for an uncomfortably long time. I avoided eye contact.

  “What was that, Mrs. Natural?” Yvonne asked. “That’s what I thought.”

  The next day I was eating breakfast while Yvonne tried to get ready for dental hygienist school. I always tried to steer clear of the frenzy that was her getting out the door. She kissed Andreus and Yvette, who were sitting next to me, and then on the breakfast counter, next to my bowl of cereal, she angrily deposited two products: a tub of something called Bone Strait, and a bottle of Luster’s Pink oil.

  And as she walked out the door she pointed to the products and told me, “I think you can do beaucoup better on the hair than yesterday! Beaucoup!”

  I hated that she pronounced the p on beaucoup.

  I sat Yvette down in the living room and opened the tub of Bone Strait. It smelled familiar, and my immediate reaction was, Oh, that’s what that smell is. As I started to brush it into her hair, Yvette got squirmy and kept trying to get up, so I turned the TV on to DuckTales. Yvette was only three, so her vocabulary was limited to what my sister and I taught her when no one was looking and food words. But she knew how to say, “DuckTales ooh-hoo, ooh-hoo.” And as she mumbled-sang to the opening song, I pulled her hair back into a ponytail at which point Yvette stopped singing and started hollering at the top of her lungs, “Ow! Ow! Ooooww!” as though I were killing her. In fact, even after I had completely stopped touching her hair, she was still screaming as dramatic tears streamed down her face.

&n
bsp; “Oh, come on,” I said.

  “It hurts,” Yvette sniffed, and stood up, stopping me from continuing.

  “I’m not even touching you,” I said.

  “Don’t pull, Duck-Butt!”

  “Okay, okay,” I said. “Now can I finish your hair?”

  Yvette sat back down warning me, “Don’t pull, den.”

  So, giving in, I pulled her hair as tight as I could without her screaming, which wasn’t very tight. And rather than leave it as a ponytail in the back, I braided it, closing the end with a poodle barrette, and then smoothed on a touch of the Bone Strait, which made it look much less frizzy. For Andre, I rubbed some of the product into my hands and then worked it into his hair as I brushed it. I felt confident that the product would keep their hair looking perfectly styled for the whole day and that I had done a fantastic job.

  But that afternoon when we picked them up from daycare, Yvette’s hair was worse than the day before. The barrette was long gone and all her hair was sticking out except for one clump with the hair tie hanging on to the end for dear life. And as they got in the car, Yvonne looked at me and said sarcastically, “good job on the babies’ hair . . . very natural.” I didn’t know what it was gonna take to make those kids’ hair look neat for more than an hour, and I clearly wasn’t the person for the job.

  “Maybe I shouldn’t do their hair,” I said. “I’m not very good at it.”

  “You just need to try a little harder. Not half-ass it,” Yvonne said. “Yvette wants to look her best, same as you. I mean, don’t you want to look your best?”

  “I don’t know,” I said. “I never really thought about it.”

  “You might want to think about it,” Yvonne said.

  That night while Yvonne got ready for a date with my father, I worked on my homework at the kitchen counter. I was in the middle of an essay question when Yvonne called, “Mishna, come here.” I got up and followed her voice into the bathroom.