“What happened to The Odd Cases of Fleur and Lizeth?” Jennifer asked.
“I’m writing something else now. It’s called The Outside Child.”
She scratched her chin and looked like she was gearing herself up for punishment—another long chapter she’d have to endure, and then I’d be badgering her about what she thought.
“What’s it about?” she asked. She grabbed her Hula-Hoop and started swirling it around her waist—hands free—with her eyes closed.
“It’s about a child that a man has with a woman who is not his wife.”
Jennifer’s eyes popped open. “You mean an illegitimate child?”
Oh yeah. Another word for an outside child was illegitimate.
“If the mother and father aren’t married to each other, that’s what’s called illegitimate,” Jennifer went on.
“I know what illegitimate means,” I said, momentarily happy that I wasn’t one of those children.
“So the setting is going to be a long time ago. And it’s going to be really bad to be an outside child. Twice as bad as it is today. And she doesn’t even know she’s an outside child. She always wonders why some children are not allowed to play with her and why people whisper about her.”
Jennifer didn’t say anything. She was back to Hula-Hooping slowly with her eyes closed. Then she opened them. “You know what?” she said excitedly. “There should be this picture—a fake picture—of her father on the mantle over the fireplace. Um, um—you know how when you buy a frame and it comes with a picture? The mother can use that picture and say it’s her father.”
“Yeah,” I said slowly. “But those frames come with pictures of white people, and the outside child is not white. She’s colored.”
“Okay. Then let it be just this person the mother once knew—some old friend. She can pretend that guy is the girl’s father. And she can make up all kinds of fake stuff about him. Have the girl really believe it.”
“Yeah,” I said slowly. That was actually a good idea.
We got permission to walk to the library on Fifty-Fourth Street. We both needed something new to read. I was nearing the final third of Footlights for Jean and Jennifer was almost finished with Black Beauty. I wanted to be ready with a new book the moment I’d finished the last page.
“When we get back, my mother will probably be home and then you can tell her what happened,” Jennifer said. “You can tell her I really stuck up for you.”
We’d reached the bottom of the hill where Escalon, Presidio, and Montego Drives came together like the spokes of a wheel. That’s where we spotted Jilly and her sister Marcy (the dimwitted one) and another girl we didn’t know. “Let’s hide and throw rocks at them,” Jennifer said.
“No, let’s beat ’em up,” I said, feeling confident for a moment. There had been too many on the Bakers’ side when I’d gone down to their house to swim, but now there were just three of them—and the third person looked like a scrawny little cousin or something.
Jennifer led the way across the street. She stopped in front of the three girls and I joined her. But I changed my mind about beating them up. I didn’t know how to beat up anyone. I wouldn’t even know where to begin.
“Hey,” she said.
Jilly, who was the biggest of the three, stepped forward as if to say, I’ll handle this.
Jennifer stepped forward, as well. “You and your whole family are prejudiced,” she said.
“How come you didn’t say that last year when you were swimming in our pool?”
“I didn’t know you were prejudiced back then. And now that I know, you can’t come to my house.”
“We don’t want to come to your house,” Marcy piped up. “Anyway, we’re the ones with the swimming pool. Everybody wants to come to our house. Everybody. No one wants to go to your house. Don’t you know that?”
“And we can’t help it if colored people steal and start fights,” Jilly added.
My mouth dropped open a little. I’d never stolen anything in my life. And I’d never started a fight.
The only thing left for Jennifer to do would be to punch her in the face. But of course, she couldn’t do that. It wasn’t her battle. It was my battle. Yet, I was letting Jennifer do all the talking.
The cousin started snickering. They moved past us and she turned and pointed, then glided one forefinger over the other as if to say, Shame on you!
“I should have smacked that girl,” I said, looking back at them and feeling sorry, for two seconds, that I’d missed the opportunity.
“It was three against two,” Jennifer said.
“Two and a half against two.”
“Yeah, you don’t want to beat up a half.”
We were quiet as we turned down Fifty-Fourth toward the library. “I hate those girls,” Jennifer said then.
“And I’ve never stolen anything in my life.” I gritted my teeth at the injustice of being accused of something I’d never even done.
We were passing Transfiguration. “Me and Lily went to that church because this boy she liked once goes there.”
“What was it like?”
“Like a regular church.”
We stopped and gazed up at the tiled roof, then down at the tall heavy doors that looked like they’d been taken from a mission. I’d studied California history in fourth grade. I was fascinated with California missions and how the priests did such nice things for the Indians, civilizing them and all. According to my teacher.
But then, it seemed as if the Indians had been helpful to the settlers as well, so I didn’t see why they needed civilizing. And something told me that they probably liked their own ways and religion just as much as the priests liked theirs. Why were people always trying to change other people, anyway?
“Let’s go in,” Jennifer said.
“I don’t feel like it.” I was eager to get to the library.
“I want to look inside.”
She started up the steps and I followed her. I owed her this, since she’d tried to take up for me while I’d just stood there watching. I pointed out the sponge in the bowl of water on a stand inside the door.
“You wet your fingers on the sponge and then touch your forehead and shoulders and chest.”
“I already knew that.”
“How?”
“We’re Episcopalian—the Church of England,” Jennifer said. “Episcopalians make the sign of the cross as well.”
“My mother’s Methodist, so I think that makes us all Methodist. But not my father. He never goes to church. He doesn’t want to miss football, probably. Which I think must be a sin.” I thought about that for a minute. “My mother’s church is on Adams, near the Children’s Home Society, where Lily did her volunteer work last summer before the cotillion. All the debutantes had to do some charity work.”
“How’d she like it?”
“She said she was kind of disappointed that there were no children. She thought she’d be able to see real orphans, but apparently the orphans were kept somewhere else. That big white house is just for offices.”
We pulled open another set of tall doors and went into the main part of the church.
Jennifer looked around. “The people you see in this kind of church are usually old. Have you noticed?” she whispered. “I mean, when they show church scenes in movies.”
“Old women,” I observed. “They don’t show old men.”
“Because the women are more holy,” Jennifer said. We tiptoed up the aisle. Sure enough, three old ladies were kneeling in polished pews, holding rosaries with somber looks on their faces. I envied them their holiness. I looked at the stained glass windows all around us depicting several holy scenes.
I showed Jennifer how to almost kneel before we found seats in one of the back pews. “The right knee goes almost to the floor, but not all the way,” I told her. I had noticed this over and over while I was in this church with Lily. Jennifer and I looked at the prayer books, but we didn’t pick them up
because that wouldn’t have felt right. We did stuff a few donation envelopes in our pockets, though. There were a bunch, so I thought it would be okay.
At one point we saw a woman get up, kneel slightly at the end of the pew, cross herself, then go to the array of little cups of candles near the altar. She put some change in a basket on a shelf above the candles. She took a match from a small dish on the table and lit it from one of the flames. Then she touched it to the wick of another candle.
“She’s lighting the candle for a wish,” I explained to Jennifer. “If you want God to do something, you make a wish and light a candle. But you have to donate some money first. For charity.”
“How much?”
“I’m not sure.”
Jennifer stared at the glowing candles, probably thinking of all the wishes that had been made there.
I motioned toward the little doors along the wall at the back of the church. “Those are closets for telling the priests your sins. You go in there and kneel down and tell all the sins you committed during the past week.”
“But what if you don’t have any sins?”
“Everyone has sins. Otherwise you’d be an angel—they don’t have sins.”
“I don’t have any sins,” Jennifer said. “I’m serious. I try really hard not to get sins.”
I glanced up at the stained glass depictions of Jesus all around and then at the statue in the front of the church. His hands were turned palms forward as if he were giving or receiving something. I’d seen this Jesus with the long, flowing brown hair at my mother’s church, too. They looked exactly the same.
When I glanced over at Jennifer, she was doing that “om” thing. Making that meditation sound with her eyes closed. She’d picked that up somewhere and now she did it from time to time. “Jennifer, cut that out. That’s not for church.”
She giggled and snapped out of it.
“You know what I wonder?” I whispered to her.
“What?”
“How come they make Jesus look like that?”
“What do you mean? That’s the way he looks.”
“When I was little, my Sunday school teacher said that in the Bible it describes Jesus as having ‘skin like copper, hair like lamb’s wool.’ So why don’t they make him with ‘skin like copper and hair like lamb’s wool’?” I asked.
“Because that’s not the way he looks,” Jennifer whispered.
“But what about the Bible?”
She shrugged. “I don’t remember reading that.”
“Well, have you read the whole Bible?”
“No, but if it was in there, everybody would know about it,” she said.
I thought about this. It didn’t make sense to me, but for some reason I let it go.
“Can we light a candle?” Jennifer whispered.
I looked over at them—at the few already lit and glowing. “I suppose so.”
I had four quarters. Daddy had given me money for no reason. Sometimes he did that, probably so I would remember him as being a good father when I grew up and left home.
“Do you have any money?” I asked.
“A quarter,” she said, digging it out of the pocket of her pedal pushers.
“We’ll both put in a quarter, and then we can wish for something together,” I said.
“What should we wish for?” she asked.
I thought about Lily leaving for Georgia in August. I could wish that she would stay and go to a college close to home, that we could share our room until one of us got married. But that would benefit only me, which wasn’t fair, since Jennifer was putting in a quarter, too.
“I know what we can wish for,” Jennifer said.
“What?”
“That Marcy Baker will be bitten by a dog with rabies and have to get thirteen shots in her stomach.” We both giggled over that one. And then the giggles grew, until one of the old ladies looked up at us with a frown. She brought one gloved finger to her lips, which were scrunched and hard looking and made me vow that when I grew old, I would make sure that I smiled all the time.
“Look at that old woman,” I said to Jennifer, nodding in the woman’s direction. “If the wind changed, her face would freeze like that.”
“How do you know when the wind changes?”
I had to think about that. I didn’t know. I shrugged, then said, “I suppose we have to wish for something good and not bad.”
She squinted, considering this. “It’s hard to think of something good.”
“That we make all As in ninth grade,” I whispered.
“That we grow breasts and get out of our undershirts.”
“No, not that!” I said quickly. “We can’t wish that in church.”
“Okay, all As.”
I put our quarters in the basket and she lit the candle. Then we both closed our eyes and wished for good grades.
We made it to the library and realized immediately that we didn’t feel like being there. But it was lucky that we at least went through the front door to look at the community bulletin board. It was always full of the same kinds of things: old, used items for sale; tutoring requests or tutoring offers; quilting classes; gardening classes, and on and on . . . But this time there was a flyer posted that was of interest. The community center was hosting a play called That Talk, sponsored by the drama club (the one for adults), but it was for the youth. Youth ages thirteen to seventeen.
That’s what caught my attention. Thirteen to seventeen. We were twelve—very nearly thirteen. My birthday was in September and Jennifer’s was in October. If you rounded up, we were thirteen!
“We did this play at my school. Last year,” Jennifer said, full of excitement. “Oh, I love this play! I couldn’t be in it because it was open only to seniors. Oh my gosh—I can’t believe it! We have to do this! It’s kind of an adaptation of another play called The School for Scandal. The setting is in a school, but also in an attic. Olivia is this girl who opens the play with the line, um . . . ‘I am missing. But I haven’t gone anywhere.’”
My ears perked up.
“It’s got villains and everything. We have to try out. Oh, we have to,” Jennifer went on. “I mean we have to.” She pulled me by the arm toward the circulation desk. “Let’s see if there are scripts. Come on.”
The librarian pointed to a stack of mimeographed sheets at the end of the counter. “Tryouts—first week of August,” she announced. I felt the most wonderful warmth wash over me. Outside of writing, acting was what I was born to do! Actually . . . I was born to do so many things.
“Good,” Jennifer said. “I’ll be back from sleep-away camp by then.”
I’d forgotten about sleep-away camp. Jennifer had been mentioning it here and there since June. I guess I was just putting her upcoming absence out of my mind. I didn’t like the thought of being on my own after she left.
I skimmed the first couple of pages and decided I liked the play already. I could tell from the names and the plot summary.
Sixteen-year-old Olivia has pretended to run away from home. She’s actually hiding in the wardrobe in the attic. While she is “gone,” she explains her reasons for taking this “vacation.” As she mentions each person who has wronged her, the audience sees a scene revealing a slice of their lives. During these scenes, we see and hear Olivia’s comments and we also hear about Olivia from each character’s point of view. At the end, Olivia returns and it is as if she’d never gone away.
Olivia: I am missing but I haven’t gone anywhere. Finally, my mother has checked my diary and has read exactly what I planted for her to read. Now she thinks she knows everything.
It was those first three lines that grabbed me. I knew that part was written for me. And no one had better get in my way.
Jennifer wanted the villain role. She said she was born to be Julie, the English teacher’s pet and Olivia’s number one tormentor.
My stomach suddenly had butterflies. “I’ve got to be Olivia.”
“Yay-yah,” Jennifer sai
d. (This was her new way of saying yeah.) “Give me five.”
We slapped palms and left the library thumbing through our scripts.
“Tryouts are kind of far off, but I’m taking the script with me to sleep-away camp, anyway.”
“Let’s go home and read our scripts tonight—to get an overview—and read them together tomorrow.”
With our plan agreed upon, we decided to go by the community center on our way back to Montego Drive. Just to get a feel for the stage—because as far as we were concerned, we were going to be on that stage performing in a few weeks. After Jennifer came back from sleep-away camp.
“Remember, when we try out, we have to act like teenagers and not mention our real ages,” Jennifer said as we walked down Fifty-Fourth toward Angeles Vista.
“How do we act like teenagers?”
“By being mostly quiet and kind of above it all. If we don’t say a lot, people will think we’re mature.”
Mature . . . I liked that word because then we could refer to certain boys as “immature,” and feel pretty mature while saying it.
We pushed through the doors of the community center and found ourselves in the multipurpose room, where only a few kids were hanging out. Three boys who lived around the corner on Orinda were at the carom table, which is like pool but with small wooden disks instead of balls. Anthony Cruz and some boys I’d never seen before were playing doubles Ping-Pong. I glanced at Jennifer. She wasn’t looking at him, but I knew she’d seen him. She shook the hair out of her face and took a few steps into the room.
The foosball table stood ignored. Some older girls were sitting off to the side watching the happenings listlessly. At first, they barely glanced at us.
“There’s Anthony Cruz,” I said in a low voice.
“Who cares?” Jennifer said.
“Don’t you still like him?”
“Maybe I do, maybe I don’t.” She shook the hair out of her face again. She sure was doing a lot of that since we’d arrived, and I was beginning to find it annoying.
At one end of the room was the stage. I felt a pull in that direction.
It All Comes Down to This Page 7
