The Boys of My Youth

by Jo Ann Beard

  We will see God this afternoon — this is an Eric Clapton concert. We’re sitting on one of our grandmother’s worn quilts, spread out on the ground twenty feet from the stage. “Hey, look.” I show Wendell a scrap of fabric. It’s blue-and-red plaid with dark green lines running through. She and I used to have short-sleeved shirts with embroidered pockets made out of that material. On the ride over here we each took a small blue pill, a mild hallucinogen, and now Wendell has to put her face about an inch away from the quilt in order to get a sense of the scrap I’m talking about.

  “It used to be seersucker,” she says sadly. “And now it isn’t.” We think that over for a few minutes, how things change, how nothing can be counted on, and then Wendell remembers something. “My shirt had a pony on the pocket and yours had a schnauzer.” She snickers.

  For some reason that irritates me no end. I hadn’t thought of that schnauzer in years, and she has to bring it up today. Thanks a whole hell of a lot. It did used to be seersucker, too, which is very strange, because now it’s not. What could have happened to it? How can something go from being puckered to being unpuckered? You could see if it was the other way around, but this just doesn’t make sense. My halter top keeps feeling like it’s coming undone.

  We put the cooler over the unsucked seersucker so we can quit thinking about it. Wendell stretches out on her back and stares at the sky. I stretch out on my stomach and stare at some grass. We are boiling hot but we don’t know it, my hair is stuck to my back and Wendell’s is standing straight up in a beautiful manner.

  “Your hair is standing straight up in a beautiful manner,” I tell her. She nods peacefully. She holds her arms up in the air and makes a c with each hand.

  “I’m cupping clouds,” she says. I try to pay closer attention to my grass, which is pretty short and worn down. It looks like it’s been grazed. I read somewhere once that hysterical fans used to eat the grass where the Beatles had walked.

  “Do you think Eric Clapton walked on this grass?” I ask Wendell. She looks over at me and considers. She thinks for so long that I forget the question and have to remember it again.

  “No,” she says finally. I feel relieved.

  “Well then, I’m not eating it,” I tell her flatly.

  “Okay,” she replies. I wish she had said “Okey-dokey” but she didn’t. She said “Okay,” which has an entirely different meaning.

  I sit up and my halter top sags alarmingly. All I can do is hold it in place. There’s nothing else to be done, I wouldn’t have any idea how to retie it. Wendell is curled up in a ball next to me with her eyes shut.

  “My top is falling off,” I tell her. She doesn’t open her eyes. I can feel sweat running down my back like ball bearings. Wendell groans.

  “The clouds are cupping me now,” she says. “Get them off.” She’s still got her eyes shut, making a whimpering sound. I don’t know exactly what to do because I can’t see any clouds on her and my shirt is falling off. I have to think for a moment. If I had just taken one bite of grass this wouldn’t have happened.

  A guy on the blanket next to us tries to hand me a joint. I can’t take it because I’m holding my chest. He looks at me, looks at Wendell balled up on the ground, and nods knowingly. “Bummer,” he proclaims.

  I can’t stand to have Eric Clapton see me like this. I let go of my shirt for one second and wave my arms over Wendell. My halter top miraculously stays in place. In fact, it suddenly feels too tight. “I just got the clouds off you,” I inform her. She opens one eye, then the other, and sits up.

  “You look cute,” she tells me. She’s turning pink from the afternoon sun and her hair is hectic and alive. We open beers from our cooler and start having fun.

  By the time old Eric comes out, we’ve completely forgotten about him, so it’s a pleasant surprise. We climb up on our cooler and dance around, waving our arms in the air. We’re so close to the stage he is almost life-size. This is amazing. We dance and mouth the words while Eric sings tender love songs about George Harrison’s wife and plays his guitar in a godlike manner.

  The sky has turned navy blue. Eric stands in a spotlight on the stage. I pick him up once, like a pencil, and write my name in the air, then put him back down so he can play his guitar again. My halter top stays stationary while I dance around inside it naked. Darling, we sing to Eric, you look won-der-ful tonight. The air is full of the gyrations of six thousand people. My cousin is covered with clouds again but she doesn’t seem to notice. Although it’s still five months until Christmas, tiny lights wink on and off in her hair.

  The tablecloth is covered with pie crumbs and empty coffee cups, a space has been cleared for the cribbage board and ashtrays. The sisters are smoking, staring at their cards, and talking about relatives. Neither of them can believe that Bernice is putting indoor-outdoor carpeting in her kitchen.

  “You can’t tell her a thing,” my mother says. She lays down a card and moves her red peg ahead on the board.

  “Shit,” my aunt says softly. She stares at her cards. One of the husbands comes in for more pie. “What do I do here?” she asks him. He looks at her hand for a moment and then walks around the table to look at my mother’s hand. He points to a card, which she removes and lays down. “Try that on for size,” she tells my mother.

  The back door flies open and two daughters enter. There is a hullabaloo. Barbie’s little sister, Skipper, was sitting on the fence and accidentally fell off and got stepped on by a pig. “She’s wrecked,” Wendell reports. “We had to get her out with a stick.” I show them the stick and Wendell shows them Skipper.

  “Stay away from the pigs,” my aunt says. She’s looking at her cards.

  “We were staying away from the pigs,” I answer, holding up the muddy stick as evidence. “Tell them to stay away from us, why don’t you?” My mother looks up. “Well,” I say to her.

  “You might find out well, if you’re not careful,” she tells me.

  Wendell takes a whiff of Skipper, who is wearing what used to be a pair of pink flowered pajamas. A small bit of satin ribbon is still visible around her neck, but the rest, including her smiling face, is wet brown mud and something else. “Part of this is poop,” Wendell hollers.

  My aunt turns around finally. “Take that goddamn doll outside.” She means business so we go upstairs, put Skipper in a shoe box, and find our Barbies.

  “Mine’s going to a pizza party,” I say. My Barbie has a bubble haircut, red, and Wendell’s has a black ponytail.

  “Let’s just say they’re sitting home and then Ken comes over and makes them go to a nightclub,” Wendell suggests. Hers doesn’t have a pizza-party outfit so she never wants mine to get to wear one either.

  “Mine’s going to sing at the nightclub then,” I warn her.

  “Well, mine doesn’t care,” Wendell offers generously. She’s eyeballing a white fur coat hanging prominently in my carrying case. Her Barbie walks over to mine. “Can I wear your fur tonight?” she asks in a falsetto.

  “If I can wear your bola,” my Barbie replies.

  “It’s boa, stupid,” Wendell tells me. She digs out a pink feathered scrap, puts it in her Barbie’s hand, and makes her Barbie throw it at mine.

  “Let’s say it’s really hot out and they don’t know Ken is coming over and they’re just sitting around naked for a while,” I suggest.

  “Because they can’t decide what to wear,” Wendell clarifies. “All their clothes are in the dryer.” She wads up all the outfits lying around and throws them under the bed.

  “Oh God, it’s so hot,” my Barbie tells hers. “I’m going to sit at the kitchen table.” Naked, she sits down in a cardboard chair at a cardboard table. Her hair is a smooth auburn circle, her eyes are covered with small black awnings, her legs are stuck straight out like broomsticks.

  Black-haired, ponytailed Barbie stands on tiptoe at the cardboard sink. “I’m making us some pink squirrels,” she announces. “But we better not get drunk, because Ken might come over.”r />
  Both Barbies do get drunk, and Ken does come over. He arrives in an ill-fitting suit, and the heat in the Barbie house is so overwhelming that he has to remove it almost immediately.

  “Hey baby,” Ken says to no one in particular. The Barbies sit motionless and naked in their cardboard kitchen, waiting for orders. This is where Dirty Barbies gets murky — we aren’t sure what’s supposed to happen next. Whatever happens, it’s Ken’s fault, that’s all we know.

  The Barbies get tired and go lie down on their canopied bed. Ken follows them in and leans at a forty-degree angle against their cardboard dresser. He’s trying to tell them he’s tired, too.

  “You’re going to prison, buddy,” Wendell finally says, exasperated. She heaves him under her bed and we get our Barbies up and dress them.

  “Ken better not try anything like that again,” ponytailed Barbie says. She’s wearing a blue brocade evening gown with the white fur coat, and one cracked high-heeled shoe.

  “He thinks he’s funny but he’s not,” my Barbie replies ominously. “He’s in jail and we’re the only ones who can bail him out.” She’s got on a yellow satin-and-net dress with a big rip up the back, and the boa is wrapped tightly around her neck. By the time they get Ken out of jail and into his tuxedo, the whole evening is shot. The judge has to be bribed with a giant nickel that ponytailed Barbie holds in her outstretched hand.

  “Crap,” Wendell says when they holler at us from downstairs. I pack up my carrying case, drag it down the steps and out to the car. I keep sitting down the whole way because I’m tired.

  “Get moving,” my mother tells me. My aunt calls me Jody and gives me a little whack on the behind, but she doesn’t mean anything by it. I climb in beside my sister and roll down the window.

  “Whaaa,” Wendell says to me. This is the sound her Betsy-Wetsy makes when it gets swatted for peeing.

  The car pulls out onto the highway and turns toward town. I left my Barbie’s pizza-party outfit under Wendell’s pillow so she could use it until next time. Too bad, I miss it already. Red tights and a striped corduroy shirt with tassels that hang down. It goes better with a bubble cut than a ponytail, really. I should never have left it.

  August, early evening. We’re crammed into Uncle Fred’s yellow Caddie, driven by Little Freddy, our cousin. I have on a low-backed, peach-colored dress with spaghetti straps and a giant, itching wrist corsage made of greenery and tipped carnations. Wendell is wearing an ivory wedding gown with a scoop neck and a hundred buttons down the back. It’s the dress our grandmother married our grandfather in and it makes Wendell look like an angel. There are guys present — my boyfriend, a sweet, quiet type named Eric, and Wendell’s brand-new husband, Mitch, a mild-mannered, blue-eyed farmer who is gazing at the cornfields streaking by.

  Cousin Freddy is in control at this point, possibly a big mistake. One misplaced elbow and all the windows go down at once, causing hot air to whirl around inside the Caddie, stirring up everyone’s hair and causing a commotion. “Okay, okay,” Freddy says in a rattled voice. He pushes another button and all the windows go back up, the commotion stops, the air conditioning comes back into play.

  Wendell has a wreath of baby’s breath perched on top of her head like a crown of thorns. A slight crevice has appeared in the front of her hair, the baby’s breath has lifted with the landscape and sits balanced on two distinct formations. The back is untouched. She wrestles herself over to the rearview mirror and gets a glimpse.

  “Oh my God, it’s the Red Sea,” she says. “You parted my hair, Freddy.”

  There is an audible combing noise inside the car for a moment as she tries to impose some discipline on it. Freddy looks at her in the rearview mirror. He’s got Uncle Fred’s five-o’clock shadow and Aunt Velma’s tiny teeth, he’s wearing a powder blue short-sleeved shirt and a flowery necktie, fashionably wide. “We can borrow you a rake at one of these farmhouses,” he says, braking. The Caddie, dumb and obedient as a Clydesdale, slows down, makes a left and then a right, pulls onto a dirt track leading into a cornfield. Freddy gets his wedding present from under the seat, lights it, and passes it back. We pile out into the evening and stand, smoking, next to the car.

  The sky is way up there, a lavender dome. There’s a gorgeous glow of radiation in the spot the sun just vacated, a pale peach burst of pollution that matches my dress. The corn is waxy and dark green and goes on forever. We’re standing in a postcard.

  “This is my big day,” Wendell mentions. The crown of thorns is resting peacefully, swifts are swooping back and forth, drinking bugs out of the sky. We’re trying to keep the hems of our dresses from dragging in the dirt.

  “This corn is ready,” Mitch says quietly, to no one in particular. The stalks are taller than us by a foot, a quiet crowd of ten million, all of them watching us get high and wreck our outfits.

  “Don’t lean on the car,” I tell Wendell. She stands in her usual slouch, one arm wrapped around her own waist, the other bringing the joint to her lips. She squints and breathes in, breathes out. “You look like Lauren Bacall only with different hair,” I say.

  She considers that. “You look like Barbara Hershey only with a different face,” she says kindly. We beam at one another. This is Wendell’s big day.

  “Hey, bats,” Eric says suddenly. He’s looking up into the air where the swifts are plunging around. I’m very fond of him for a moment, and then I feel a yawn coming on. A breeze has picked up and the corn is rustling, a low hiss from the crowd. We’re making Wendell late to her own party.

  The Caddie takes us out of the cornfield, haunch-first. Freddy steers it up to the highway, sets the cruise, and we all lean back, stare out the side windows, and watch the landscape go from corn to soybeans to cows to corn. Next thing you know we’re getting out again, this time at Wendell’s old house, the farm.

  The wedding cake is a tiered affair with peach-colored roses and two very short people standing on top. Our mothers made the mints. This is a big outdoor reception, with a striped awning and a skinned pig. The awning is over a rented dance floor, the pig is over a bed of coals. There are as many relatives as you’d want to see in one place; the men standing around the revolving pig, the women putting serving spoons in bowls of baked beans, potato salad, things made with Jell-O, things made with whipped cream, things made with bacon bits.

  Two uncles are tapping the beer keg. They keep drawing up tall glasses of foam and dumping it on the ground.

  “I need a beer bad,” Wendell says. She touches her head. “How’s the crown?”

  “Firm,” I tell her. We get ourselves two glasses of foam to carry around and wander over to the food tables.

  “This has prunes in it, if you can believe that,” an aunt tells us, uncovering a bowl full of something pink that just came from the trunk of her car. Our mothers are standing at a long table where more women are unwrapping gifts and logging them in a book. Wendell’s mother is wearing a long dress, gray silk with big peach-colored roses and green leaves down the front. My mother has on a pantsuit that everyone keeps admiring. They’re both wearing corsages. “Ooh,” my aunt says. A box has just been opened containing an enormous macramé plant hanger, with big red beads and two feet of thick fringe.

  “Holy shit,” Wendell says, taking a drink of foam.

  The guests eat salads and chips and pig, the sky turns pewter, deep cobalt, then black. The band strikes up; four guys, two of them relatives. They play a fast number and everyone under the age of ten gets out there to dance. The littlest kids concentrate on trying to get it exactly right, swinging their hips and whirling their arms around. After about two songs all of them are out of control and sweating, hair stuck to their head, girls seeing who can slide the farthest on patent-leather shoes, boys taking aim and shooting each other with their index fingers without mercy. The parents have to step in, remove a few examples, and put them in chairs. One gets spanked first for calling his mother a dipshit in front of the whole crowd.

  A waltz begins to
play and the older couples move out onto the floor, husbands with wives, various uncles with various aunts. My own dad dances me around a few times, tells me my dress is pretty, and delivers me in front of Eric, who looks stupendously bored and not quite stoned enough. “Hey, lotta fun,” he says insincerely. I make him go dance with my mom.

  Wendell takes a break from talking to people and we pull up lawn chairs next to the dance floor. Her ivory dress shines in the darkness. “I keep losing my drink,” she says. We share a full, warm beer that’s sitting on the ground between our chairs, passing it back and forth, watching the fox-trotters.

  “I wish I could do the fox-trot,” I say wistfully.

  She nods. “We can’t do anything good,” she says wearily.

  “We can two-step,” I answer, in our defense.

  “Yeah,” she says through a yawn. “But big whoop, the two-step.” Two short great-aunts glide by at a smart clip and wave at us, the bride and the bridesmaid. Wendell waves back like a beauty queen on a float, I smile and twinkle my fingers. “Yee-haw,” I say quietly. On the other side of the dance floor Mitch stands listening intently to one of our distant, female relatives. He winks at us when she isn’t looking and we wink back hugely. “That’s my first husband, Mitch,” Wendell says fondly.

  The night air is damp and black against my arms, like mossy sleeves. There are stars by the millions up above our heads. Wendell and I are sitting directly under Gemini, my birth sign, the oddball twins, the split personality. Part of me wants to get up and dance, the other part wants to sit with my head tipped back. All of me wants to take off my wrist corsage.

  “Nice ragweed corsage,” I tell Wendell. My arm itches like fire, long red hives are marching up to my elbow. I take it off and put it under my chair.

  “Give it a heave,” she suggests, and I do. It lands within twenty feet of our lawn chairs. A giant calico farm cat steps out from nowhere, sniffs it, then picks it up delicately and fades back into the blackness. Under the awning the air is stained yellow, the band is playing a disco song. Our mothers are in the midst of a line dance, doing their own version of the Hustle, out of synch with everyone else. Their work is done, they’ve mingled, they’ve been fairly polite. Now they’ve got about twenty minutes of careening before they collapse in lawn chairs and ask people to wait on them. They’re out there trying to kick and clap at the same time, without putting their drinks down. I decide I’d better join them.