Tales From My Closet

by Jennifer Anne Moses

  “I like it,” I said.

  “I know,” she said. “You should blog about me. You can call it ‘V is for Very Awesome.’”

  “Ha ha. Funny. Not,” Justine said.

  “But I mean it!”

  As it turned out, she did mean it. And she wasn’t the only one. Even though she’d been in our first post, Robin had liked it, too. I know because she’d told Polly, and Polly had told me, and I told Justine, and the next thing I know, Justine and I were hanging out again. It was weird, though, hanging out with her like nothing had ever happened, when we both knew that things had changed. Big-time. And that my stupid blog was the cause of at least some of it.

  Then one day, out of the blue, Robin herself sat herself down with us at the Latin Girls table, saying: “Do you have any clue how much I love clothes?”

  “And?”

  “No, really,” she said. “I’m not just talking about your blog, either, which, by the way, everyone and their dogs know you did.”

  “I know,” I said.

  “We know,” Justine said.

  “Yeah, well, that’s not all — you guys know my twin brother, Ben?”

  Of course I knew Ben — everyone did. He was actually a pretty nice kid, but he had one of the biggest mouths in all of Western High, plus he was a supergeek, skinny and tall and smart, the kind who understands what black holes are and reads the Wall Street Journal. He hung around with Weird John. But Justine was like: “Ben’s your brother?”

  “My twin brother.”

  “OMG,” she said. “That kid . . .”

  “Tell me about it,” Robin said. “I have to live with him. And you know that email that was going around about Becka? ‘Teenage Tears and Fears’? The one that was like an article by her mother?”

  The whole table nodded. Anything related to Becka was still considered to be good gossip.

  “My brother sent it. He and my cousin, John, together. As a joke. He thought it was so funny.”

  “But it was stupid,” I said.

  “And mean,” Polly said.

  “I didn’t see it,” Justine said. “What article? What are you talking about?”

  “My brother sent out a group email that was like a parody or something — something he wrote as a joke, but he said it was from the Daughter Doctor, which is what Becka’s mother calls herself, and when I found out, which wasn’t actually all that hard, I was so mad I wanted to kill him.”

  “How’d you find out?”

  “John confessed. After Becka hurt herself. He thought you were going to go to jail, or something crazy like that, I don’t know. He helped write it because he was so in love with you.”

  “I’m going to puke blood,” Justine said.

  “Seriously?” she continued. “And Ben thinks he’s so smart, like he knows everything about everything. But he’s not. And one thing he definitely doesn’t know about is clothes. Which is where your blog comes in.”

  Justine and I just looked at each other.

  “I want to write it with you,” she said.

  “You want to work with — us?” Justine gasped.

  “Why not? When it comes to dressing it, you two are the best.” Then, turning her attention to me, she said: “Except, I mean . . . I mean . . . Can I ask you a question?”

  “I guess.”

  “What happened to you?”

  “Huh?”

  “Your fab fifties look. I mean, not that you don’t look cute now, but it’s just that I loved that look you started getting into, and now . . .” She let her sentence trail off.

  “I know,” I admitted. “Blandorama, right?”

  “Yeah. Kind of.”

  “I’ve been telling her,” Justine said.

  “I know it’s not my business, okay? But if I had clothes like yours — and your cute little figure to pull it off — I’d never wear anything but those old styles. God! I’m so jealous.”

  “You’re jealous — of me?”

  “God, yes,” she said. “First of all, I don’t know if you noticed, but my own wardrobe . . . How can I say this? I kind of feel homeless.”

  “You mean the PJ look?”

  “It’s awful, right?”

  “Actually,” I said. “I liked it.”

  “Really?” she said, turning slightly pink around the edges. Today she was wearing a more standard look: cords and a sweater, with clogs. “You didn’t think I looked — just — totally stupid?”

  “What can I say?”

  “It’s just — that I love clothes. I know they’re just clothes. But I love them. I just do.”

  Right then, I knew what I had to do — what we all had to do. “Okay,” I said. “You’re hired.”

  “But we don’t have a blog!” Justine said. “Remember how we’re not allowed to do the blog anymore and will be put in prison for the rest of our lives if we do it again? Unless you want me to be grounded forever.”

  “Where there’s a will, there’s a way!” I said, and suddenly, I realized that I meant it.

  The first thing I did when I got home was throw open my closet. Then I reorganized all my clothes — putting my Mama Lees in front, my weekend clothes in back, and my last year’s bland, blah basics in a giant black plastic Lawn & Leaf bag for Goodwill. As for the red dress with the white flowers — I put it over to the side. After all, it was still too cold to wear it. I figured that I wouldn’t even think about that dress again until it was warm again — and then, somehow, I’d figure it out. Afterward, I felt so good that I strode into the kitchen, where Mama was sorting the day’s mail, and said: “What is the big deal about my wanting to be an artist?”

  “Not now, Ann,” Mama said.

  “And about Mama Lee’s clothes, which, by the way, fit me perfectly. I mean, so what if you wore the red dress in that painting? What does that have to do with me?”

  Finally, and for the first time ever, my big mouth achieved something. Mama looked up and, squinting a little, said: “Who told you about that painting?”

  “Er? Martha?”

  “I should never have told that girl! Oh! What on earth is wrong with me?”

  “But, Mama! So what? I mean, you were only a teenager yourself. You didn’t do anything wrong.”

  “I didn’t?” she said. “How about I humiliated my mother — and my father, too? How about I nearly threw my entire future away? How about I acted like a fool?”

  “But, Mama!” I was nearly shouting now. “So what? That was — that was a million years ago.”

  “I never wanted you to find out,” Mama said. “Oh! I’m still just so ashamed of myself.”

  “But, Mama!”

  “I wanted you — you and your sister — to be proud of me.”

  I couldn’t believe what I was hearing. Proud of her? I’d never really thought about it before, that she wanted us to be proud of her. I’d always thought it was the other way around, that I wanted her to be proud of me — but that she never would be, not with me being so like me, and so not like Martha.

  “And not only that,” I blurted out. “But you have to know something else.”

  “Oh, no.”

  But I was off and running, Ann the blabber-puss, back in business: “Because, and I hope you know it, and Daddy, too, but I’m never going to go to Princeton.”

  “I wouldn’t put yourself down like that.”

  “It’s not a put-down, Mama. It’s reality. I’m just not that into it — school, I mean.”

  “Don’t be ridiculous,” she said. “Even if you don’t like being a student, you have no choice. Going to school is your job, and Daddy and I expect you to do your best.”

  I couldn’t believe it. After all that blowup and upset and blogging and mess, and she still didn’t get it? Feeling like I’d been stabbed, I let out a long groan.

  “What?” Mama said. “Is there something you’re not telling me . . . again?”

  “OMG! Mama! I really, really, really want to make sure that you know that even if I study twenty-fou
r hours a day, there’s no way I’m going to get into Princeton.”

  “Nobody said anything about your having to go to Princeton.”

  “Or . . .” I had to think a minute, because it wasn’t like I had all the colleges lined up in my head in order of their prestige. “Or the University of the Midwest!” I finally burst out with.

  “There is no University of the Midwest.”

  “Or even, like — I don’t know. Mama, what I really want to do? I want to be an artist. I want to go to art school.”

  “You’re too young to decide where you want to go to college. And you’re certainly too young to decide to give up on a well-rounded liberal arts education.”

  “You’re not listening to me. What’s so awful about my wanting to be an artist? Just because that man — whoever he was — was a painter . . .” and I would have continued except that Mama shot me one of her “enough is enough” looks. Then, instead of answering me, she said: “Honey, you have some talent. I can see that. I’m not blind. But art school? That’s the kind of dream that can only let you down.”

  “But why, Mama?” I was nearly crying by then. “What’s the big deal?”

  “The big deal is that you’re still too young to understand that most dreams are just that — dreams. Life is a compromise, honey. It is for me, it is for your father, and one day, as you’ll see, it will be for you, too.”

  “Why? Why does it have to be like that?”

  Which is when Mama put her face in her hands and remained that way for a while. Finally, she looked up and spoke. “I don’t want your spirit crushed, like mine was.”

  It took me a little while, but finally I understood.

  “Told you,” Mama Lee said that weekend, when I took Justine with me to help her do her spring cleaning. Mainly that meant climbing up on her kitchen cabinets and dusting the parts she could no longer reach. That, plus raking up the last of last year’s leaves. Mama Lee was a stickler about that kind of thing: Everything had to be perfectly neat. “Your mother loves you no matter what. And she believes in you, too. But I guess you just had to go learn it for yourself.”

  “But she’s still kind of weird about my wearing your clothes.”

  “That’s something the two of you will just have to work out, I guess.”

  “But why, Mama Lee? Why is she still so — so totally freaked out when I wear something that has some pizzazz?”

  “Sounds to me like she already told you. “

  “What did she tell me?”

  “Your mother just wants to keep you a little girl a might bit longer,” Mama Lee finally said, “you being the youngest and all. And how much you look like she did when she was your age. And also, I don’t think she ever quite forgave me for allowing her to spend so much time with that man — and he was a friend of mine, too! I had no idea that something had started up between them. Oh! I was just stupid, letting her spend so much time with him. What was I thinking?”

  “But,” I said, “it wasn’t your fault!”

  “And you,” Mama Lee said, ignoring me completely while she turned her gaze on Justine. “I understand that you had a hand in this whole blog business, too.”

  “Yeah, but it was Ann who dragged me into it.”

  “Well, it could have been really good,” Mama Lee said. “Next time, you girls just have to be sure that you go about it the right way: with kindness. Because I haven’t met a teenage girl yet who doesn’t like a little attention — just so long as it’s the right kind.”

  “Told you,” I told Justine.

  Justine had never met Mama Lee before, and from the moment we’d walked in, I could tell she was kind of in awe of her — of how beautiful she still was, and how fashionable, in one of her lightweight pantsuits, of gray linen, with a scarf knotted jauntily around her neck. I’d never seen her haul her butt so readily before, either, letting Mama Lee order her around like she was a soldier in a private army of two.

  “Do you really think so, ma’am?” she said.

  I’d never, not once, heard Justine call anyone “ma’am,” and nearly busted a gut laughing.

  “I do indeed,” Mama Lee said. “You’ve got a way with words. And your friend here has a way with a pencil. You make a great team. The way I see it, God wouldn’t have put you two girls together just so you could mess up.”

  Justine’s eyes were like two rocks underwater, swimming black in their pupils.

  On the night that it happened — that terrible night when Dad slugged me — Ben sprang out of the TV room and, brandishing the remote controls like guns, stood between me and Dad until Dad left. We both heard the sound of his car backing out of the driveway, and from there, racing down the hill.

  “I’m taking you to the emergency room,” Ben said as he lowered himself to the floor and drew me onto his lap.

  “I don’t need the emergency room!” I wailed.

  “I’m going to call the cops.”

  “No!” I wailed even harder.

  And we sat there, hugging each other, and rocking back and forth in each other’s arms until Ben finally got up to get me some ice. Then Ben reached for the phone to call Mom, but Mom was already at the door, letting herself in. And when I say she freaked out, I mean it. But at least I didn’t need to go to the emergency room, or even to the doctor. Dad had hit me pretty hard, but nothing was broken. At least, not physically. It was just my entire life that was broken. So broken that, in bits and pieces, as Mom applied more ice and then Neosporin to my face, I spilled the entire story — including pretty much everything, even how Becka had gotten drunk and ruined my work dress — and when I was done, Mom didn’t say anything at all. Instead, she pulled me to her so tightly that I could hear her heartbeat and the sound of her blood moving through her veins and smell her smell of soap and fatigue and old red lipstick.

  That was the night all three of us moved into our cousin’s house. It was Mom’s decision: She insisted that our safety came first, and even though I didn’t think that Dad would do it again, and Ben said that he’d sleep on the floor next to my bed, Mom just kept saying: “Better safe than sorry.” Which is how I ended up at my cousin Weird John’s house, watching TV in the basement, with Polly and Justine. That was the night when I got to know Justine a little, the night when I realized that I didn’t need Becka’s approval anymore, that I could be friends with whomever I wanted to be friends with.

  A couple of days later, Dad moved out of the house, and Mom and Ben and I moved back in. I didn’t want to, though, and ended up staying over at Polly’s for a couple of days. It was weird, but even with Dad gone, Mom was still there, and I just didn’t want to deal with her. At all! I came home anyway. Ben told me I had to. He said that Mom felt so guilty her hair had turned gray. For the first time in his life, though, he wasn’t exaggerating. When I finally came home, Mom’s stubborn black hair was the color of tin.

  The first thing she said to me was: “Let’s go shopping.”

  “Very funny, Mom.”

  “Really,” she said. “Want to?”

  “Do you mean it?” I finally said.

  “And maybe we can get something for me, too?”

  I couldn’t help it: It just jumped out of my mouth: “How about a trip to the hair salon?”

  “Do I look that bad?”

  “Yeah. Kind of.”

  “We’ll do both, then.”

  So we did.

  In March, Daphne called me to say that she needed someone to help out on Saturdays, as the girl who had been helping her just quit. This time, Mom didn’t quibble, but instead said that she was proud of me. Even though I still wore an occasional semi-showing under-cami, or tight woolen leggings, I’d mainly upped my look to something I thought of as affordable-funky-classy, a redo of preppy, wherein I combined basic button-down shirts with, say, a wide belt and slim-cropped bright-pink pants, or a cord mini with my black boots and an oversized pullover sweater. (My mother had upped her look, too, and was actually wearing jeans that fit, sweaters that we
ren’t covered with small granules of ancient pills, and dresses that didn’t go down to her ankles.)

  A week later, I was back at work, this time with a name tag and two more amazing dresses, which Daphne said were mine to keep for as long as I stayed. “But the minute you quit on me,” she said, “these two babies come back to me. Understood?”

  I understood, all right, and I also understood that I wasn’t ever going to let Becka see me in my work dresses — a beautiful light-blue Kate Spade and a Theory printed charmeuse. These were the clothes, I thought, of my future, of the day when, instead of just being a salesgirl in a local dress shop, I’d inhabit an office in New York where, every day, I’d dress in beautiful silk or woolen clothes, in lace-trimmed shifts and colorblock dresses, in multistriped scoop necks with elegant black heels, and designer wool crepe.

  But as it turned out, I didn’t really have to worry about keeping the dresses in good shape. Now that it wasn’t the preholiday rush, the job was pretty low-key, so low-key that at times there were no customers in the store at all. That’s when, bit by bit, Daphne told me about herself, and she was amazing. Her husband had been killed in a car accident when their only daughter had been two, and Daphne had had to move home to live with her parents until she could work again. That’s when she started in retail and eventually bought what became Daphne’s Designer Digs. She was sending her daughter to college in the city. “And let me tell you,” she said, marking down prices or taking inventory, “it costs me a pretty bundle, too. And it doesn’t help that the girl has such uptown tastes.”

  She sighed. “She’s my daughter, and I love her more than I can say. I just wish I saw her more. But she’s growing up, and has her own life, in the city. She’s my gem. Worth every late night doing inventory or pulling my hair out over taxes.”

  I just stared as Daphne’s eyes grew wet.

  “What? You don’t believe me?”

  Finally I found my voice. “Of course I believe you.”

  “I’m going to have you over for dinner sometime,” she continued. “I want you two girls to meet. What do you say?”