Girl, Hero

by Carrie Jones

  “She’s my sister.”

  My mother cuts her meat with quick sharp slashes and whispers, “Not your problem.”

  “We have to save her.” I stab my fork into the mashed potatoes. “Somebody has to save her.”

  My mother leans back in her chair, closes her eyes. “We can only save ourselves.”

  After dinner, Mike goes to watch TV and we clear off the table. He doesn’t help, of course.

  “I’m worried about Jessica,” I say, grabbing two glasses.

  “I’m sure she’s fine.” She takes the glasses from me and rinses them. I get some plates, load one on top of the other.

  “But what about Brian?”

  “She is fine.” My mom accentuates each word. I put the plates on the counter. CNN blares in the background. Mike watches TV too loudly. The anchorman drones on about a man shooting up a Best Buy. Mike yells, “Yee-haw.” And starts clapping. The pork chop solids up my stomach, weighing me down. What is it about some men? Do they think being stupid is cute?

  I imagine going to Jessica’s house. There’s Brian with his fists, and his mouth, and his twisted face. He’s going to hit her and I reach up and grab his arm, just like that.

  What would I say?

  I’d say, “Think again, partner.”

  I’d say, “Pick on someone your own size.”

  But with my mother, tonight, while she washes dishes, all this anger is burning inside me like strong gin. It just sizzles there in my esophagus. How can she pretend like things are fine? How can she pretend that?

  “But what about her face?” I put a plate upside down on the counter. “Remember, Mom? Her face?”

  My mother shoves her hands into the hot, sudsy sink water. “It was nothing.”

  She doesn’t even look up.

  So then I just pull out both barrels, all the big guns. “Don’t you think Mike drinks a little too much?”

  She throws down her dish rag. It plops into the sink. “What is wrong with you? Do you want everyone to be miserable? You want everybody to be just like you?”

  I stand there. I do not stand there. I turn. I walk away.

  Pow.

  Well, the first week that Mike O’Donnell stays with us stinks. At night there are moans. In the afternoon he is there. Everything is different. It smells like man socks and Wal-Mart cologne. At night my mother talks all prissy and giggles. I don’t get to drink straight from the milk jug and I always have to remember to be polite and cover my mouth when I cough all the time, and sometimes I feel a little displaced, like I wonder if this house really is my house or whether or not I’ve been suddenly hurtled into this parallel universe where I’m actually good at something (acting) and maybe even have a boy who could possibly like me (Paolo Mattias) and where Nicole might not really be my best friend anymore. But mostly it feels as if I’ve been taken apart molecule by molecule and some of my molecules are lagging behind in my old life, maybe a second out of synch. It’s the same way you feel when you have a cold.

  Of course in this brave (!) new world, I have this strange man in my house and my mother is getting bootie all the time and taken to batting her eyelashes like some kind of saloon whore. I don’t get to sleep much, and when I do I’m stuck dreaming about knife fights and bars and newspaper headlines: One Man Dead.

  Each afternoon Mike O’Donnell sits at the kitchen table, a glass of Coke or ginger ale resting on the corner of the newspaper classifieds he’s folded out in front of him. A ballpoint pen waits like a weapon in his hand. I go to my room. He goes to the bathroom. He stands outside my door and just breathes.

  For a minute I imagine he bursts in, but I’m ready for him. I’m ready for those bloodshot eyes, like a werewolf’s at night. I’m ready for those thick-fingered hands. I’m ready for that greedy mean mouth and I pull out a gun, release the safety and … and … and …

  And I can’t imagine any more.

  I’ve got to tell you, Mr. Wayne, that I do not trust this character. He makes me think of shifty eyes even though his bug out a little. He makes me think of those men standing outside the saloon, leaning against the post acting all casual when you know their gun hands are twitching all over the place. What does he want? Why is he here? Why would he even like my mother? Why doesn’t he have a job yet?

  I fix a stare on him. I mosey over.

  “Any luck?” I say.

  And then he shakes his head so sadly it makes me want to hug him, but I don’t trust it. It might be a trick to draw me in closer. My uncle did that. He pretended to be sad about my stepdad dying and then what does he do? He tries to get to second base with me even though I’m eleven. He scores a home run with my mother even though she was less than seven days a widow.

  So, the week after Mike O’Donnell arrives passes, the weekend comes and goes. Time comes and goes. Sunsets I don’t ride off into. There is a math quiz. A surprise. I get a ninety-eight. Two points off because in my hurry to get done and daydream, I put only one line in an equals sign instead of two. Stupid rookie mistake.

  I have a new look now. That seems shallow, I know. But I was tired of looking like everyone else. Sasha wears long, swishy skirts and dangly earrings so she looks part gypsy part poet, but that’s not me. So, I’m wearing jeans a lot. They ride sort of low, and then I wear one of my stepdad’s old button-down shirts that I found in the basement. They’re too big, so I tie them at the waist, and then I put in some new holes in his old belt. It’s big and brown and thick and good like that, with a big ole silver buckle that has a picture of a boat on it.

  Sasha and Olivia really like it, but Nicole rolls her eyes and so does my mom.

  “What? Are you trying to be a cowboy now?” Nicole laughs so hard she covers her mouth because her fillings are showing. Fillings, she always says, are unattractive. “Oh my God. You are.”

  I shrug. I stand tall, but I want to crumple into a ball and roll down the hallway, past all the lockers and the gym and into the street and away, just a lonely tumbleweed. Stand back folks, nothing to see.

  “You’re turning into such a theater freak,” she says, laughing still, doubled over. “Oh my God, I’m so sorry, but you are.”

  She says that, right? But at lunch one of the boys at the football table keeps staring at me with greedy eyes and everyone knows what that means. Then at play rehearsal Paolo Mattias goes, “I like your jeans.”

  I put my fingers into my belt loops. “Really?”

  “Yeah.” He stares at me hard and long and good. “I like your buckle too.”

  I finger it. I’m figuring that’s not all he likes. Then I screw it all up and blurt out, “My dad’s not gay, you know.”

  His eyes go blank and he leans against one of the theater chairs that are bolted to the floor. It squeaks. “It’s okay if he is.”

  “He’s not.”

  “Okay. There’s a lot shittier things dads can be than gay. Or a cross-dresser. Is that what he is?”

  “Really,” I shoot at him.

  He staggers from the blow, lifts up his hands to surrender. “You sure you’re okay? You’re wicked worked up about this.”

  I am not sure. I am not sure. He wears women’s tights. I have no clue, but then I think it’s pretty obvious, isn’t it? I slam myself down into one of the seats. The whole row rocks.

  Paolo sticks one shoulder higher than the other, makes his back go rigid and says, “‘Even grown men need understanding’?”

  His voice is all low and drawly.

  “What?” I fire.

  He stands posture-perfect tall, moves his head so that his chin is straighter than ever. “I said, ‘Even grown men need understanding’?”

  “Are you quoting John Wayne?”

  He blushes and his posture goes back to normal. “Yeah. Did I get it wrong?’

  “You’re q
uoting John Wayne to me?”

  He nods. “It’s from Cahill U.S. Marshall.”

  I shake my head. I don’t know what to say. This boy blows me away, and he doesn’t even have a gun. Quoting John Wayne.

  “I know where it’s from,” I say, and my voice is soft again. “I just can’t believe you know it.”

  “I thought you liked him.”

  “I do … but …” I eye him something good. “Are you pretending to like him?”

  He loses his smile. “No.”

  I wait. His lip quivers for a second and my finger longs to touch that lip, make it strong again. My stomach twists. Why did I even ask him? I’m such a jerk.

  He starts talking again. “It’s not like he’s my hero or anything. But he’s cool.”

  “Who’s your hero?”

  His shoulders relax into broadness again. “David Belle.”

  I can’t get a fix on David Belle, and Paolo must notice because he goes, “He founded parkour.”

  “I’m an ignorant dork obviously,” I say, “but parkour …”

  “Parkour is parkour.”

  “Funny.”

  “No, that’s what they call it because it’s so hard to define. It’s like a martial arts thing, but instead of fighting, it’s running. Like your body gets these super-efficient movements down and then you can just get over any obstacle, jump between buildings.” His eyes light up his whole face. His whole face lights up his body. “You can scale walls. It’s amazing.”

  I can see it. “Like in the James Bond movie with the new guy on the skyscraper.”

  “Exactly.”

  “That stuff is amazing.”

  “I know! Isn’t it? It’s brilliant.”

  “Can you do any of it?”

  “I’m learning.”

  My breath whooshes out. “Really?”

  “Life’s not all about fighting. It’s about flight, too, you know. And in parkour, it’s like your only opponent is you. It’s not very John Wayne, but I like it.”

  I nod. “I like it too.”

  He smiles all big and ambles away. He tips an imaginary hat at me and against my will, my faces blushes bright red. Sasha giggles, slips into the empty seat next to me and grabs my arm. “Somebody likes somebody.”

  “Shut up,” I mumble, but I can’t stop smiling.

  “It’s okay to like him. He’s so long-legged cute and he moves … have you noticed the way he moves?”

  “Like he knows where every one of his muscles is?” I say.

  “Yeah.” Sasha squishes her eyes tight. “And he likes you. He’s memorizing John Wayne lines for you. It’s so cute.”

  “He keeps asking me if my dad is gay.” When I say it, it’s like all the good whooshes out of everything, like I’m jumping between buildings and I’ve missed the edge. I’m just whooshing down towards a concrete parking lot and a dumpster full of trash.

  Sasha saves me. “Lily, everyone thinks your dad is gay. He’s probably just trying to give you a way to talk about it.”

  I slam back in my theater seat. “They do?”

  “Yeah.”

  I bend over, touch my face to my knees. “Oh God.”

  “It is so not a big deal.” She rubs my back in little circles. “And Olivia thinks he might just have gender identification issues and cross-dress. And who cares? He is what he is. He’s your dad first, anyway.”

  My jeans smell like honey from my bodywash or something. I breathe it in and say, “Nicole doesn’t think he is.”

  “What?”

  “She doesn’t think he’s gay.”

  Her hand starts rubbing again. “Oh, sweetie. Nicole is very good at seeing the world the way she wants to and ignoring the rest.”

  “People!” Mrs. Gallagher shouts. “Act One. Scene Two. Places.”

  I sit up. Sasha smiles. “It’s okay.”

  I repeat, “It’s okay.”

  But Sasha doesn’t fall for it. “What are you thinking?”

  “That I wish I could do parkour. That I could run up walls and leap things. Or that I could just stand my ground and fight.”

  She cocks her head at me. “But you can.”

  Play rehearsal starts and we all read the script. I shoot off glances at Paolo, who is all stretched out on the stage. I have so many lines. Most people highlight their lines but I don’t. I highlight the lines around mine. Sasha taught me this. By highlighting your lines you focus only on your character, you become stilted, too focused on your own words. By highlighting the others’ lines, you focus on interactions, interplay, the cause and effect of the movements, the beats of the play. Motivations.

  Sasha’s amazing. And right.

  So as we read through the play, the entire cast sitting in a massive circle on the stage, most of us cross-legged, Sasha, yoga-style. Tyler Reed, the cute boy with the eyes, and Paolo lie on their stomachs. Stuart Silsby gets bored and tries to balance his body in weird pseudo-yoga poses until Mrs. Gallagher yells at him.

  I sneak peeks at Paolo Mattias, who wears jeans and work boots, which aren’t cowboy boots, but kind of close. I highlight with yellow all the lines of everyone around me.

  My character is stupid. I can’t stand her. She’s bigoted, but comes through in the end. All she cares about is this Emile guy she’s in love with. She’s prissy and corny. You can see her smiling while scrubbing the greasy scum off the stove. That kind of person. The kind of person that would just say the Pledge of Allegiance and never think about the words, just repeat it every day, mindlessly.

  I worry that I was picked to be Nellie because I’m like her.

  “I hate Nellie,” I say in the car, perched between Olivia and Sasha.

  “Oh, no,” Sasha says. Her hand covers her mouth.

  “I can’t stand her.”

  “Why?” she asks and takes a stick of gum out of her jacket. She breaks it in three and offers some to me and some to Olivia.

  “Thanks.” Olivia pops it into her mouth and drives the car with one hand, and that hand barely on the wheel, not gripping the wheel or anything, just floating on it.

  “Thanks,” I say. “It’s just that she’s so, she’s so …”

  “Stupid?” Sasha suggests.

  “Yeah. Stupid and mindless and sappy.”

  “A man wrote South Pacific, right?” Olivia asks.

  “You guessed it,” Sasha says

  Olivia snorts. “Figures.”

  “Why?” I ask, chewing my gum with my mouth closed, not like Olivia who opens her mouth wide and then clamps it shut on the gum like she’s an alligator or a snapping turtle biting its prey, or a machine, each stop exact and hard.

  “Men always made women stupid in musicals.”

  “Why?” I ask again.

  “Because,” Sasha says, “that’s how men like women.”

  “Stupid?”

  “Stupid in life. Smart in bed.” Olivia laughs.

  I don’t know if this is true, but I don’t follow up on it because then I would have to think about my mother and Mike O’Donnell. So instead I ask, “How am I suppose to play this woman if I don’t like her?”

  “Play her like a caricature. Make fun of the playwright’s intentions. Then it’s a statement. You know?” Sasha says. We are almost at my house. Mike will be waiting inside.

  “Is that what you’re doing?” I ask.

  Sasha nods. She’s Bloody Mary, an Asian woman who is the comic relief of the musical. Greedy with stilted English, but with a mystical part to her as well.

  “What if no one gets it?” I ask as I climb out of the car.

  She shrugs. “I don’t know if they will. Maybe one person will get it, and that makes it worthwhile.”

  “Just one person,” I say.
<
br />   “All you need is one,” Sasha and Olivia sing at me together before Sasha shuts the door and they turn around to go home.

  I’m going to have to kiss Tyler, the other romantic lead. I haven’t told Nicole. We haven’t done it yet. Whenever we get to a kissing part Mrs. Gallagher yells, “KISS!” and Tyler and I look at each other and laugh. I can’t imagine kissing him. What it will be like. Better than my pillow I’m sure, but what if it’s too wet like a dog, or too dry like cardboard? I have to start eating more Certs. Thank God I don’t like him that way. I’d never be able to do it.

  I stop halfway up the rock path behind my house, grab a dandelion that’s growing between the stones. I think of what Sasha said: All you need is one. Maybe that goes for kisses too, just one and then they’ll be coming to me all the time, a whole life of kisses.

  It sounds like a chant. All you need is one. All you need is one. All you need is one. I wonder if they’ve learned that at a protest somewhere. I mosey up the path to the house and worry about my character being a caricature and it makes me think of my uncle, the one who visited from California right after my stepfather died. And thinking of him makes me shudder and wonder if I’ll ever be able to kiss a boy at all without my mind straying.

  My chest feels hot where that cross would hang. My chest feels his hands there, feels them lower. I stagger against a tree and close my eyes, but that doesn’t help. I open them and stare up at the leaves, all orange and yellow.

  “Beautiful leaves,” I say. “Beautiful leaves.”

  But that’s what he said to me: “Lily, do you know how beautiful you are?”

  And there were his fingers, moving back and forth, back and forth.

  “Hello,” I say to Mike when I muster up enough courage to go inside my own damn house.

  “How was your day?” he asks and stands up, blocking my way out of the kitchen. He is big, big, big. He is just too tall and his shoulders are broad, like the doorframe or a guillotine.

  “Good,” I say, taking a step backwards into the kitchen even though I want to go forward to my room. “Long rehearsal. Lots of homework to do.”