by JoAnna Novak
I’d dreamt the stupidest dream: Jim Carrey, in his clothes from The Truman Show, smooched me. Antic clownish puckers on both cheeks, the way the owners at the salon kissed me and my mom. Jim Carrey didn’t peck once and say hola. He pivoted at the waist and kept kissing, left cheek, right, again, again, and the more he kissed, the more of me I wanted him to kiss, my face, my hair, my neck, my throat. I wanted him to kiss my ribs. My hipbones. I woke squirmy and inspired: an orgasm would wow Lisa.
I’d come.
Go to the Breit’s.
Where she couldn’t hang up on my face.
My thoughts flitted in the kitchen, where I perched on a stool at the island. I wore glam red PJs and felt luxurious, a hand cushioning my kneecaps, sipping green tea in a gasp of snow-bleached sunlight. The snow had been falling all morning. Anna’s note—“Home by four. Will call if reach boiling point w/croissants. Sorry about last night”—implied she wanted to move on, forget the empty wine bottle and iced tea spoon in the kitchen sink, but I was whatever. Mom, Marissa: insolence bored me. Real Talk didn’t need a dumpy body and my life didn’t bad vibes. I’d find someone else.
I flapped my Spanish book, Bienvenidos!, open to the tense charts. I began fill-in-the-blanking a worksheet on the difference between ser and estar, irregular verbs of being. The pages smelled like chicken nuggets. Below the conjugations was a random picture: two girls in splatter-painted sweatshirts tossed their crimped hair in a convivial exchange over refrescos. I studied their faces; were they actually fat, was the angle bad, or what? Afternoon light blushed their skin Bubblicious pink, and whoever’d used the book before me had blackened their eyes so they looked like UFOs. Despite being socket-heavy, though, their expressions were too nice to be for real: Lisa and I’d never looked like that. I wondered if the photographer had asked them to kiss, more tongue, yes, take off their terry tops and caress each other’s breasts once the textbook portion of the photo shoot had wrapped, if there was a second, sordid aspect to every job. I wished teachers at Park would make kids have secret orgies so I could be forced to do … stuff.
This was the sort of thing I thought now that I’d seen Terrible Twos.
In other news, my worksheet was cinchy:
1. Los niños _______ estudianties.
2. Sammy Sosa _________ guapo.
3. La chica estúpida dice: el padre ___________ embarazado.
“Ser describes a permanent condition or feature, like height—unless you’re Tom Cruise,” Señora Lurke had told our class in her sheetrock voice. “Estar is temporary. Say I have a cold. Estoy enferma.”
We were rapt, unmoving, zitty, greasy, everyone except for Denzel Washington, Señora Lurke’s screensaver, who was ping-ponging across the computer. To be or not to be wasn’t just an existential question or a T-shirt slogan. That blew some kids’ minds, minds that struggled to remember Benjamin Franklin had never been president.
Por supuesto, Ethan Suva yoinked the silence.
“What if I’m a sicko?” he said. I heard my pulse tick, like chalk touching slate. “Soy enfermo.”
Suddenly the room’s focus seemed to have shifted. I half-expected the red-and-purple maracas Lurke kept under the overhead projector to start shaking in excitement. Ethan’s protests—their warped logic, their futility—were beautiful in the damaged way I loved.
Behind her square glasses, Señora Lurke’s eyes were suspicious. She shook her wooly hair no.
“Si,” Ethan insisted, stridently. “Soy muy enfermo. Para siempre.”
··
I piled my schoolwork. The stove clock’s green numbers read 11:11 a.m. Make a wish: I asked for an easy orgasm (I’d read they weren’t automatic for girls like for boys) and an amenable Lisa, who’d join me on my quest to stay thin forever.
I opened the refrigerator and stood in its uric glow, shivering. I thought about eating: the five bad apples banging around the crisper, spoons of the Edmond Fallot green peppercorn mustard unopened from Marky’s Christmas basket two Decembers ago, shakes of Tabasco. But the chasm between eternity and now wasn’t bridged by slacking; anorexia and I had to be till-death-do-us-part. Repetition transformed a quirk into a habit, a symptom, dogma: in fifth grade, I’d skipped lunch for 142 days before I could say soy anorectic, before I could use my favorite word, flaca. Since then, I’d spent more hours ogling food than eating.
Outside, the snow fell in clumps like wads of Play-Doh. I was chilled down to my toes. I wandered upstairs, ready for a hot bath and avocado.
The halls were dark. Lisa’s house was better—she had a white TV/VCR in her room, a popcorn-colored loveseat—but she’d been over, a few times. What’s the word, she’d said, sterile? Does that mean something?
I didn’t bother switching on the light, especially passing the one portrait. The photo made me gag: me with Anna and Dad. Anyone who saw old-Elliot (fourth grade, obsessed with shower-singing “Circle of Life”) and the girl I was today wouldn’t call us cousins. In the picture, fat softened my face: I looked less haggard fifty pounds heavier, regular, a bison, unibrowed, rectangular. It wasn’t even a good shot of Anna; she wore a crushed velvet bodysuit and a crocheted vest, a style you could call gypsy frump. I tried to only see my father’s brilliantined mustache, his fisherman crewneck. He didn’t look outdated. His clothes were fine.
On another wall, a sheet of sad brown paper hid “Enter Key,” a poem by Anna that’d been listed—not published—as an honorable mention in Best American Poetry three years ago. My dad had hired a printer who used a letterpress and pulped rose petals into homemade paper; there was a painter who built birch frames. Juxtaposes your critique of Microsoft as some kind of twentieth-century manipulator—or masturbator!—with the artisan’s what I was thinking, my dad had said. My mom had pounded her own nail and hung the poem backwards. Thanks, she’d told him, But I’ll play my piano in the closet.
I lifted the frame off its fastener. The rectangle of wall was pale, like a finger after an old bandage is peeled off. If I was going to avocado, I wanted to read the poem, especially if it was about masturbating. I flipped the frame. But where there’d been a sheet of glass all that remained of Anna’s broadside was the feathery fringe of torn handmade paper.
··
The master bathroom was all sex. Basil and eucalyptus reeds herbed the air from a diffuser that looked like a beaker. I flipped a switch: a swarm of heat lamps buzzed.
A few years ago, after Interview with a Vampire came out, my parents had remodeled their bathroom. I’m thinking austere, Anna had said. What they got was a drably erotic torture chamber. Slabs of slate for floor. Bare lights, edgy cylinders. Half-boulder towel hangs mounted on velvety gray walls.
The perfect place to avocado.
I’d tried before: in my own bed, through white cotton Jockeys, listening to a cassette tape of Mariah Carey singing “Dreamlover”; once, on the living room couch, a few days after watching Terrible Twos, home alone, the Leo Romeo + Juliet playing, slipping my hand under the waistband, finding wispy pubes. I’d been too shy to legit finger myself in the same room where Anna indulged in Seinfeld and ER. I’d never had hot water pelting me in the tub. This orgasm, I knew, would ripple through my body like a crowd at the United Center doing the wave.
In glass apothecary jars on the counter, Anna’s soaking salts and bath confetti, pistachio-green and pink crystals, paper-soap cutouts of hearts and stars, were lined up like candy and sprinkles. Bathing burnt calories or at least sweated out bodily impurities. I ran the tub. In the floor-to-ceiling mirror, I saw myself. I pinned on a scowl.
I could never find my pretty parts. At least, not pieces girls would want. I had searched. I was resigned to the fact that I was a rawboned aberration, something for the Mütter Museum I’d visited with my parents in second grade, where I got an anatomy coloring book and saw 139 nineteenth-century skulls, each a calcified treasure chest that had once protected an individual and perverse brain.
I unbuttoned my pajama top, the collar a deep V that re
vealed my stumpy neck. My eyebrows stood out too—at least they’d been plucked into eyebrows-plural now—shingles over my face, Byronic, parched-dirt brown. My skin was pimpled. My nipples, dime-sized: I knew because Lisa dared me to empty her piggybank on my boobs at our first sleepover, and of course I’d submitted.
I untied the floppy bow at my waist and let my pants drop.
Here’s what I liked:
Two ocular moles above my left hipbone.
The coastal margin of my ribcage, showing through my skin like a dark girdle.
My iliac crest, protruding as if I’d swallowed a shoebox.
The goosebumps that stippled my upper arms.
Decent as those details were, they couldn’t erase my thighs. From above, my legs were timber for Paul Bunyan and Babe’s hoisting mirth. I pinched my butt.
Cold flesh = fat.
I toed the water, hot but not scalding. I dumped in bath confetti. It skimmed on the bath’s surface, dissolving as it floated, leaving a trail of oily orange slugs. I stepped in. Heat was shackling my calves when the phone rang.
Whatever: I descended into the water, chin glued to my sternum. I was always cold, and the heat felt itchy, but I liked discomfort, how it made me fidget and ball up my body, so no one could touch me. I dunked my head. In a sec, the phone would cease, and gentle lapping wavelets would accompany my first bliss. I shut my eyes.
“You have reached Anna, Rolf, and Elliot,” answering-machine Anna said in her poetry voice, each word cradled with space and enunciation. “Clearly leave a message and a number, and your call will be returned.”
The beep always sounded too long to me.
Then I heard my dad.
“Hi Smelly, it’s your dad. I’m calling from … well, you know where I am. About, oh, six or a little after here. Your mom told me you weren’t feeling hot, so I thought I’d check in. I hope you’re getting some rest, taking care of yourself, doing the chicken soup and chamomile thing. I’ll—”
I jumped out of the tub. Naked I ran into my parent’s bedroom, where the phone and answering machine sat on a capillaried marble planter.
“—catch you later. Love you, honey,” my dad said as I grabbed the portable.
“Dad? Hello?” I said.
He had already hung up. But I wasn’t mad at my dad. Headphones would’ve avoided this, unplugging the phones. I hadn’t prepared and now I’d wrecked my avocado session. I was mad at myself.
··
In the big mirror, through a column of fog, channels of wet shone on my legs. My dime-nipples were bullet-hard. I twisted one: it felt like an Indian burn, not sex.
I turned off the water, sloshing over the tub’s brim. Most of the confetti had sunk soggily to the bottom, but a few pieces sailed on the surface like melting Pop Rocks.
Now I understood ruining the mood. Lisa had accused me of this after we watched Terrible Twos, when we were half-asleep, playing Truth or Dare. Put a finger in every one of my holes, she dared me, and I’d said, sure. I knelt down in front of her couch. Open your mouth, I said, and I touched her tongue. Let me see your ear, I said, and I touched her canal. Do you pick your nose, I said, and I poked each of her nares. I’d paused. How about my butt? said Lisa. Junior Carlos wants to put a finger in. How about you, El? Would you? Sure, I said. Lisa got quiet. Okay, she said, and pulled down her flannel pajama pants. Through your underwear, right? I asked. Sure, whatever, she said. All right, I said, but I’m afraid there’s going to be … shit. You know. Then she’d snapped, like whatever spell we were under had been broken. What the hell is wrong with you, Elliot? You were actually going to do that?! Why are you so sick? Do you have to make everything disgusting?
I walked to the mirror, pressed my nose to the glass and locked eyes with myself. I licked my fingers. Sexy desirable vixen minxy: I wanted someone to go hot dang. I wanted Lisa in awe. I reached my hand like a flipper and rubbed my puny clit. It felt like a sliver of hot dog. Clitoris: the word sounded like a disease. I’d learned it from Anna, who explained during the Mulva episode of Seinfeld. Mole-ish George confronting the éclair reentered my mind. I smacked the mirror.
“Dumb cunt.” I pinched my nipple again, angrily. This time, it felt better.
I took a deep breath. Work on Real Talk, finish a play (I was a scene-girl, perennially stuck), I told myself; drain the tub, try again. Lisa’s not going anywhere.
Then, suddenly, I had an idea. Forget Marissa. I’d impress Lisa; I’d remind her what she was missing without all eighty pounds of me in her life. If my clients wanted a picture of us together, they could do the Xeroxing. They could tape their Polaroids next to mine. I’d give them measurements, my dimensions. I’d lay down the gauntlet. Enough dillydally inspiration. Elliot Egleston, they’d see, was the real deal:
“Ser or Estar? A Photo Essay from the Editor.”
··
The Polaroid Spectra had a self-timer. I set it and scurried to pose. I never knew what to do with my eyes when I took a picture of myself, so I turned my face. I took one shot close-up, getting the gleam of water on my collar bones, the crosshatch of my clavicle. A mid-distance shot, where my torso’s contours—like an obscene hourglass, wide at the shoulders and my favorite iliac crest—would shut up anyone who said I was too narrow. And one with the door open, inside my parent’s bedroom, so everything—from my blue toenails to the flaky crown of my scalp—would be in the picture. Full-bodies were my fave: I took one straight-on, another in profile.
The bathwater was scuzzy now. The drain burped. I wrapped myself in my mom’s thick white robe. It fit, more snugly than I’d expected it to. I was bigger than I thought or my mom was smaller.
In my parent’s room, on the heap of white sheets atop the sleigh bed, I laid out the Polaroids to develop. My body emerged like a concentration camp snuff film in those squares, going from ghostly gray to Technicolor. I was pleased. My clients’ bodies weren’t even the same species as mine. Now all I needed were measurements.
My hair fell on my back like a wet rag. Somewhere my mom kept a sewing kit. Back in elementary school, she’d mended my acid-washed Lee’s, the denim inner thighs I’d worn away. There were skittles-colored pins, spools of blue and black thread, coffee-colored velum patterns, a gallimaufry of scraps: I could picture her supplies—and her pale pink tape measure.
I needed that.
I opened the closet and paused, admiring Anna’s wardrobe. Someday, when I grew up and sat front row on opening night, watching my actors perform, maybe I’d be her. She was too stylish to be a teacher. At Park, adults chose corduroy and tapered chinos, plaid jumpers and billowy-butted jeans. My mom looked like Posh Spice. Through plastic sheaths from the dry cleaner’s or garment bags, I saw black, a runway of chic mourning, the sharp collar of an Anne Fontaine blouse, a boiled wool sheath, calf hair belts, spare leather gloves. Black ponte leggings with silver ankle zips, ribbed stirrup pants, pleated skirts with leather buckles. Knits loose enough to waggle a pinky through, turtlenecks chiffoned at the cuffs. Everything smelled woodsy, like the vetiver perfume she sprayed on her throat.
On the floor there was an empty cellular phone box, probably my dad’s. In the corner, beneath the hems, the sewing box.
It was ugly. No wonder she kept it so far out of sight. The box was plastic, embossed like a wicker picnic basket, the color of a brownie.
I unclasped its metal hinge. The lid squeaked as it fell backwards. You could tell it was old because things didn’t open like this anymore. Now, boxes had plastic clasps; they were color-blocked, like the blue-and-green Kaboodle in my closet, where I kept vials of Chanel No. 5 that the Fields perfume ladies pressed into my hand with a wink.
The inside of the sewing box was compartmentalized like a Lean Cuisine, but everything was chaos. That was Anna. Loose pink string and flathead pins in three separate spots, notions that smelled like skin and must. No tape measure. I lifted out the top tray.
On top of a stack of denim patches, there was a baggie of white powder.
Once, while running the mile at the Park District during gym class, Zoe Rozich had found a used, bloody condom on the wooden bridge that straddled the Flagg Creek. Everyone’s time was messed up: Who could resist stopping to stare? Even most girls—they pinched their noses and fake gagged. That’s how I felt now—fascinated and disgusted—by Anna’s drugs.
Heads or tails. Boys or girls. Truth or dare, Lisa. Heroin or coke?
I saw Anna’s clothes. Her affection for Panic in Needle Park. How, she’d been playing Geggy Tah in the car yesterday, Nirvana and Blind Melon the months before.
Whatever drug this was, I picked it up.
The powder was heavy like when you fit an empty balloon over a faucet and dribbled in water. Fear was pointless. Jerry-curled Officer Angie had awarded me a D.A.R.E. completion certificate, like everyone else at Park, just for learning that, around adults, I should say no.
Rules were different with girls.
“Oh my god.”
When I wrote, I talked out my dialogue. Now, I was too excited to be quiet. My life felt more dramatic than any plot I’d ever invented. It had to be heroin. Coke was so boring. My mom would never do coke. “’K, here’s what I do.”
