“Because. Show her that her hands still look like a teenager’s.”
You want to make Ma and Leah look at each other. It’s like you’re four boats tied to a dock, but Leah’s rope has come untied and she’s starting to float out into the ocean.
“I don’t want to get up,” she says.
“It will only take a second. Just show Ma that her hands still look like yours.”
Ma waves you away. “Oh, stop.”
Daddy looks up from the paper, his glasses slipping down his nose. “You look the same as the day I married you,” he says and winks at Ma. Ma waves him off, just like she did to you.
Leah just sits there, staring straight at the television. You get up and take her hand and tug a little on her arm.
“What is wrong with you?” she says and pulls her arm back.
“Leah,” Daddy says. “Be nice.”
“Nice,” she says. “You want me to be nice?”
You, Ma, and Daddy all stare at her. Her voice gets louder.
“Because I don’t think it’s very nice to tell me I can’t be with someone I love.”
“Not now,” Ma says.
Leah stands up, puts her hands on her hips. “Then when? When are we going to talk about this?”
“I didn’t mean to make you upset,” you say to Leah, but maybe you did. You wanted her to say something, anything. She turns and glares at you.
“Don’t be mad at me,” you say.
“I’m not mad at you,” she says and takes a deep breath. “I’m mad at them.” Her shoulders fall a little. The broadcast goes back on. “Mostly at her,” she says, pointing to Ma.
“Little girl,” Daddy says. “Don’t talk to your mother that way. As long as you live in our house, our rules.”
No, you think. Don’t put it like that, Daddy.
Leah crosses her arms and sits back down. You all continue watching in silence, but you don’t think anyone is paying attention to Mr. Cronkite.
After a few minutes, Leah speaks again. Her voice is calm. “You’re right, Daddy. I’m sorry.” Then she gets up and puts her hand on top of Ma’s. “See, Ma. Ari was right. Your hands look just like mine. Youthful as ever.”
Ma beams at Leah, pats her hand. You’re not sure why everything is suddenly okay. You sink back into the couch, feeling like maybe you’ve fixed something.
The truth is Ma does look younger than a lot of mothers you see. She puts on a cold cream mask and uses globs of hand lotion every evening before she goes to bed. She always wears a smart dress with nice shoes, does her hair up in a neat bun, and finishes off her look with a coat of fresh lipstick every day, even at the bakery.
* * *
In the middle of the night, you hear Leah get up. She drops a hard object, maybe a book, and you open your eyes a tiny bit as she moves toward the door. Moonlight shines through the window, making Leah look like a ghost in her white nightgown. She opens the door and slowly closes it behind her. After a minute, you get up and look at the clock. It’s one thirty in the morning. You rub your eyes and press your ear to the door to see if you can hear anything else. Standing there, your eyes fall on the surface of the desk that is empty now for the summer but is usually filled with schoolbooks and papers.
You think of how Leah is always willing to help you with your homework. She does it during the evenings with the door shut so Ma won’t get involved. She knows you don’t like the way Ma helps you with your writing, tapping her fingers on your paper impatiently, constantly telling you to slow down and focus.
Sometimes Leah will even write down things for you, a little messy so it still looks like your handwriting, but better. She said it isn’t cheating if it’s still your words. It’s so much easier for you to only have to think of what to say without also having to write it, and Leah knows that. She has a way of helping you better than anyone.
As you press your ear harder against the door, Leah’s voice from the kitchen travels in muffled bursts through the cracks. Is she talking on the phone? You open the door carefully and make your way down the little hallway that separates your bedroom from the living room and kitchen area. You stand with your back against the wall and peer around the corner, like a spy. Leah’s back is facing you. She holds the yellow receiver to her ear, the cord dangling down. You lean in and try to hear what she’s saying.
“I can’t live like this anymore. I miss you,” she says. Then more muffled talk. You catch the words “Raj, you don’t understand. That’s just the way they are.” A minute goes by, and she’s quiet, listening. She starts to talk again. “Don’t be like that. Your parents haven’t understood, either,” she says in an angry whisper. “Are you saying you don’t love me the way I love you?” she continues, panic creeping into her voice. More silence. Then she says, “I know. I’m sorry. But aren’t we supposed to be the strong ones?”
There’s another long silence as she holds the phone to her ear. “I have to go” is the last thing she says before putting the phone gently back in its cradle. Her shoulders start to shake. After a minute, she turns. You run back into your bedroom and jump on your bed, but as you pull the covers up, you realize you forgot to close the door. You wonder if you should get out of bed again, but it’s too late. Leah stands in the doorway.
“Were you spying on me?” she asks, wiping her eyes and sniffling.
“No,” you say.
“I didn’t leave the door open.”
You don’t answer. She plops down on her bed.
“What’s going on? Were you and Raj fighting?” you ask.
“Shhhh,” she says, looks at you for a few seconds, then lies down. “It’s all fine.”
“It doesn’t sound fine,” you say.
“Raj thinks we should wait. But we had a plan. I trusted him.”
“Wait for what? A plan?” you ask. You thought Leah had told you everything. You wonder how many secrets she has.
“You can’t tell them,” she says.
“Ma and Daddy? Tell them what?” You really wish Leah would make more sense.
“About the phone call.”
“I won’t,” you say. “But what plan? Please tell me, Leah. You know I’m good at keeping secrets.”
“There’s no plan, not anymore,” Leah says and lays the back of her hand over her forehead. Sometimes she falls asleep like that. “Don’t worry, Ari. It’s late. I’ll tell you more in the morning.”
Leah doesn’t say anything else. She just lies there, her hand on her forehead. You think about what she said, how she couldn’t live like this anymore. You wonder what makes her feel that way. Is it Ma and Daddy being mad at her? Is it having to be apart from Raj? Is it having to share a bedroom with you? Leah wondered if Raj loved her the same way she loved him, but you wonder that about Leah, whether she loves you as much as you love her. You watch her body rise and fall with her breathing. You drift off, too, and when you wake up, her bed is empty.
You rush out of the room, barely awake, and to your relief, Leah and Ma are sitting there, just like any old morning, while Ma has her Sanka and Leah sticks her spoon in half a grapefruit. She’s in her dance clothes, her hair wrapped tight in a bun. How did you not hear her getting ready?
“There you are,” you say, a little out of breath.
They both look at you.
“Where else would I be?” Leah says.
You squint at her.
“We need to get you a new pair of pajamas,” Ma says, and you look down at your tight Wonder Woman pj’s.
“I hope they make these in a larger size, because I plan to wear them forever,” you reply, puffing out your chest. You cross your wrists like Wonder Woman.
Ma shakes her head and takes another sip of coffee. “Leah, tell her she needs more ladylike pajamas.”
Leah takes another scoop of her grapefruit. “Wonder Woman is a lady, Ma,”
she says. Your heart lifts, and you smile. You feel like the old Leah is back. Maybe she and Raj broke up last night on the phone. You like Raj, but you don’t like what’s happening to your family. You don’t want Leah to be sad, but maybe it’ll be easier for everyone this way.
“Gotta go,” Leah says. “The bus.” She grabs her bag and gives both of you a kiss on the cheek and a hug, which surprises you because she never does that. Then she walks out the door.
How to Write a Poem
Nearly two months later, the first day of school starts like any other. You sit at a desk with a stack of textbooks and notebooks stored neatly inside it and wait for the teacher to tell you to read, write, add, subtract, and divide. Gripping your pencil as tightly as you can, you hope it all feels easier this year. Your teacher is new to the school. Her name is Miss Field. She has the longest hair of anyone you know. She also wears a long skirt and very long earrings, which look nice dangling against her long neck.
First, Miss Field asks everyone to share their names and their favorite fruit. You say apples to keep it simple even though the real answer is the strawberries you once picked with Leah at a farm four years ago. They were still warm, as sweet as candy, and stained your lips red. Leah said it was nature’s makeup and rubbed some juice into her cheeks like blush. Ma didn’t let Leah wear makeup yet. Then she put some on your cheeks, too, while you laughed and laughed. You get a pain right in the center of your stomach thinking about it. It feels like a memory from another person, another life.
After the names and the fruit, you expect to be asked to take out your math textbook or told when the first spelling quiz will be. But something different happens.
Miss Field says the class is going to write a poem. You hear the sighs leak out as everyone finds their composition notebooks. Then she asks the class to write about what their summer sounded like. You don’t want to think about your summer. Your mind goes right to the last time you saw Leah, that day she hugged you and left for dance class, except that’s not where she went.
You push away your thoughts and stare quietly, waiting for Miss Field to explain. Her earrings swing back and forth, back and forth as she moves her head. You watch the fan standing in the corner blowing the hot air around. No one starts writing. Lisa Turner raises her hand because she always has something to say. “Miss Field, how can a whole summer sound like one thing?” she asks.
Miss Field says it doesn’t have to sound like one thing. She says it can sound like as many things as we want it to sound like.
“Should it rhyme?” Lisa asks.
“It can be any kind of poem. It can rhyme or not rhyme,” she explains.
“But—” Lisa starts to say.
“Lisa,” Miss Field says. “There’s no way to get it wrong.”
There must be a way to get it wrong, you think, and you’ll probably be the one to do it. You’ve only written one poem in your life. It was in third grade, about the color green. Your teacher said every poem had to have eight lines, but you could only think of two. She said your poem didn’t count.
“I won’t be grading it, and please don’t worry about spelling and grammar,” Miss Field says.
You look up and blink. You’ve never heard a teacher talk like this. You take a deep, deep breath and pick up your pencil. It takes you a while to think of things to write. When your hand touches a pencil, your brain feels as if it’s filled with molasses.
Lisa raises her hand and asks, “How long does it have to be?”
“Any length you’d like. It could be one line,” Miss Field says. Your shoulders suddenly feel lighter. One line. You can do that. You hear more murmuring and then the scratching of pencils moving on paper.
After a few minutes, you write four words, one short line. You try to keep it straight, but your writing has a life of its own. It grows bigger and wavier the more you write. Usually your teachers give you the little-kid paper with the wider spaces, but that makes you feel stupid.
You think a little more and write another short line. You stretch your fingers out, and after a minute, you write one more. You press the pencil down hard to make the letters clear. When you finish, you have three lines and a title. It feels a little something like baking—take black and white cookies. People think they’re hard to make, but each step isn’t hard. First, you mix the dry ingredients with the wet ones, the same ingredients in any cookie—flour, sugar, butter, eggs—then bake. The cookies need to cool before you add the vanilla glaze, then the chocolate. Step by step, line by line, it’s easy. You can even read most of the letters.
September 5, 1967
Poetry assignment
Miss Field
The Sound of Summer
My summer sounded like
the moment after
the last guest leaves the party.
Miss Field walks around and looks at everyone’s poems, every single person. When she comes to you, she picks up your paper and puts on her glasses. She squints at the letters. You expect her to say that she can’t read it, that it doesn’t count.
“This is very good, Ariel,” she says instead.
“Really?” you say. Maybe she’s a liar. Teachers never tell you anything you’ve written is good. They tell you it’s too short, or that it needs work, or that they can’t read it, or they just correct all the spelling mistakes with red pen.
“Yes,” she says.
“No, it’s not,” you say. “It’s just a few words. It doesn’t really mean anything.” But you know it does. You know you’re trying to tell the story of what it felt like after that day in July, when Leah left and didn’t come back.
“It is. Tell me more,” she says and hands it back to you.
Other kids are looking at you, and your hands start to sweat. You nod and stare at your paper; ideas of what to write float around in your mind. But after a few minutes, Miss Field asks the class to take out their history books, and there’s no more time.
When you arrive at Gertie’s after school, Ma is taking pumpernickel loaves out of the oven. You go over to the day-old, grab a slice, toast it, and slather it with butter. Then you pull a cola out of the refrigerator, pop it open, and feel the little bubbles tingle on your lips.
“When you finish your snack, we need your help with a big order,” Ma says, wiping her flour-covered hands on her apron.
“Okay, okay,” you say. Ma is always rushing, but lately she seems more rushed, and you wonder if it’s just going to keep getting worse. Daddy comes out of the kitchen, looking hot and tired.
“How’s my muffin?” he asks.
“I’m all right,” you say and stuff the rest of the bread in your mouth. “Same as always.”
Daddy nods. “Me too, Muffin,” he says. “Same old, same old.”
This is what you and Daddy always say to each other after school. And every day, you know that you are not the same and neither is he. When you and Ma get back to the apartment, you go into your bedroom and take a sniff of the Chanel No. 5 perfume on the dresser, a sixteenth birthday gift that Ma gave Leah. The apartment used to smell of it when Leah was still here, along with her Breck shampoo, but you didn’t notice until she was gone and the smell faded away.
A little part of you still hopes you’ll find her sitting on her yellow-and-white bedspread, playing the Beatles or the Rolling Stones. Or maybe even the Doors real quiet because Ma hates the Doors.
She would be unpinning her hair from dance class and look up at you. “Hey, Ari,” she’d say. “Why do you look so low?” “I’m not low,” you’d insist. “Then don’t look so serious,” she’d reply. She’d ask if you needed any help with your homework, and you’d always say yes, even if you didn’t need help that day. When Leah paid attention to you, it always felt like the light around you got a little brighter and clearer. You think Ma felt like that, too, even if she probably wouldn’t admit it.
; Instead, the bedspread stays smooth and untouched.
You take a seat at your little wooden desk, pull out your poem, and read the three lines again. A few more come to you quickly, which never happens. But this poem feels like finally writing down a list of things you’ve been thinking about for a long time.
September 5, 1967
Poetry assignment
Miss Field
The Sound of Summer
My summer sounded like
the moment after
the last guest leaves the party,
when all the laughter
and the slicing of cake
and the unwrapping of gifts
and the smiling
and the dancing
stops.
Those who are left
sit down, tired and quiet,
wondering if they’ll ever
feel that happy again.
How to Follow the Rules
Today on the bus, you sit with Jane. She’s not always on the bus. Sometimes she fakes sick and her mother lets her stay home to watch TV all day. Jane isn’t that good at school, either, but not for the same reason as you. She just doesn’t care. She says she’s going to be a famous actress and live in Hollywood and sticks celebrity magazines between her notebooks. You don’t know where Jane’s dad is. It’s just her and her mother, Peggy, in the apartment. She never talks about her dad.
Most kids in your town live in big houses, but you like living in the apartment building right outside of town. Sometimes, when you pass the big houses with their big lawns, they seem so lonely and separate from everything else. You already feel lonely. The last thing you need is a lonely house.
“I’m going to try out for Bye Bye Birdie,” Jane says, flipping through an old copy of Screen Parade magazine. She holds up a picture. “Don’t I look like Elizabeth Taylor?” she asks and smiles, the metal braces on her crooked teeth gleaming in the sunlight. You wonder how she got braces. Ma says they’re for rich people. Sometimes Jane talks about her grandparents and their big house in Maine. Maybe her grandparents are rich and they got her the braces. Luckily, your teeth aren’t that crooked.
How to Find What You're Not Looking For Page 4
