It All Comes Down to This

by Karen English

  I was speechless. I didn’t get it. I was taller and had just started growing breasts—​more than what Jennifer had. How was it that she’d gotten her period before me? I picked up the pamphlet and flipped through the pages. Maybe there was something in it that I didn’t know.

  In sixth grade, all the girls had been taken to the auditorium for a special film on the subject. When we returned to the classroom, Stanley Harvey, who sat next to me, badgered me about why only the girls had seen the film and what was it about and how come the boys weren’t allowed to get out of math drills and go? It wasn’t fair.

  I wasn’t going to tell him. I didn’t particularly like Stanley Harvey. He called me touchy just because I’d drawn an eraser line down the middle of the table we shared and asked that he not cross it. Especially when he came in from recess dripping sweat.

  I stared at Jennifer. She didn’t look any different. “Are you wearing one of those right now?” I asked, gesturing toward the box of Kotex.

  She slowly nodded. “Yep,” she said.

  I must have looked forlorn because she added, “Don’t worry—​you’ll be starting yours soon.”

  And she was right. I was feeling something strange, right then and there.

  “Um, Lily,” I said.

  “What, what, what?”

  “I think I just started my period.”

  “What?”

  “Yeah.”

  “Okay. We’re outta here.”

  Our mother was napping when we got home. So Lily gave me what I needed, including a little pill in case I got cramps, which I’d heard could be so bad, they could make you faint. Or vomit.

  “Unfortunately this pill only helps a little bit. I don’t know why they claim it does more.” She dropped it into my hand and went to the kitchen to get me a glass of water. I sat down on my bed and waited.

  “Should I tell Mom?” I asked when she returned with the water.

  “Of course tell Mom. But I wouldn’t wake her up to tell her.”

  Lily reached over and picked up the receiver of our Princess phone. She listened for the dial tone. She was doing this a lot these days—​checking to see if the phone was still working. At the sound of the tone, she got a funny look on her face, as if she was trying not to cry. She replaced the receiver, sat down on the end of her bed, and put her face in her hands.

  “Lily,” I ventured.

  She removed her hands and said, “What? What?”

  “Are you in love with Mrs. Baylor’s son?”

  She didn’t say anything. It was almost as if she couldn’t say anything.

  The telephone rang and she jumped. She placed her hand on the receiver and waited for it to ring three times, all the while keeping her eyes closed. Then she picked it up and with a cool, calm voice she said, “LaBranche residence.” Her shoulders slumped. “I’m sorry. She’s not available. May I take a message?” She rolled her eyes at me. “Yes, I have a pencil.” There was a pause while Lily closed her eyes again and sighed. “I’ll give her the message,” she said, and hung up the phone. She hadn’t written a thing.

  My mother eventually came out of her room. She stood in our doorway and announced that something terrible—​absolutely terrible—​had happened to the Mansfields.

  “I just got off the phone with Dovie.” She paused and frowned. “It seems Dale has gone off and gotten himself enlisted—​in the Marines.”

  Lily and I looked at each other. He’d done it.

  “He’s not returning to school. In fact, he’s officially dropped out.” My mother paused again as if she was trying to take it all in. “He’s just gone off—​devil may care—​and broken his mother’s heart.” She shook her head. “What’s this world coming to? How could he do that to his parents?” She didn’t wait for us to answer. She just needed to say these things to reassure herself that we’d never do anything remotely like that—​especially Lily.

  She clapped her hands once and held them together, sighed a relieved-sounding sigh. “Well. I’m so glad that I don’t have that problem.”

  My sister said nothing. She looked at me and got up to leave the room. “Yeah, that’s a shame,” she said.

  “How was the movie?” my mother asked before Lily could get out completely.

  “Great,” Lily said.

  “Yeah, great,” I added.

  “What was it about?”

  “Oh, you know, music,” Lily said.

  “Music? I thought you were going to see Cat Ballou.”

  Lily didn’t miss a beat. “We were, but then Sophie wanted to see The Sound of Music.”

  “Ah. The Sound of Music,” she said. “Was it good?”

  “Spectacular.”

  CHAPTER 19

  Letter

  * * *

  ON SATURDAY, LILY DIDN’T have to be at Marcia Stevens until noon. They’d be doing inventory after the store closed. That worked out for her because the night before she’d gone to a birthday party for one of Lydia’s cousins and she’d gotten back late. Unlike her friends, Lily didn’t like being out late.

  “You know what?” she once confided. “Sometimes when I’m getting ready to go out—​like when someone’s coming to pick me up—​I look at my bed and the book on the nightstand and the glow of the lamp and I realize, I’d just rather stay home and read.”

  “Really?”

  “Yeah, really.”

  For the past few days she’d been quiet and brooding. I figured out that she was bound to see Nathan again because there was more work my mother needed him to do. Lily’d probably come to this conclusion, as well.

  The night before, when Lydia came to pick up Lily, she’d pulled me aside. Lily had run back to our room to get her sweater.

  “Don’t pester her too much,” Lydia advised, her eyes under hoods of bright blue shadow, her hair teased into a chestnut-colored globe surrounding a face that suddenly seemed too small for all that hair. “She’s trying to adjust to being dropped.”

  My mouth fell open. Dropped. She’d been dropped.

  Now I put the script aside, pulled on yesterday’s pedal pushers, and slipped yesterday’s T-shirt over my head. I padded to the kitchen barefoot and got the stepladder off the back porch. So far I was feeling fine. No cramps or anything.

  I sometimes hid the Frosted Flakes from Daddy at the back of the very top shelf. He loved Frosted Flakes and tended to eat them all up in record time.

  As I was climbing down from the stepladder with cereal box in hand, a voice from the breakfast nook said, “Hey, Sophia.”

  I whipped around, surprised. Nathan was sitting with his back against the wall at the end of the bench. “What are you doing here?” I asked.

  “I’m picking up my mother for a dentist appointment before she goes home for the weekend.” I suspected that he’d come inside on purpose. He could have easily waited for her in his car.

  I took a bowl down and got the milk from the refrigerator. I didn’t know what to say or even if he was expecting me to say something. I heard Lily then, shuffling down the hall on her way to the kitchen, her slippered feet making a swishing sound on the hardwood floor. She was wearing her pajamas and robe, her hair falling down from what was once a neatly twisted French roll. She yawned and opened the refrigerator to see what she felt like eating. It was going to be another long work day. Then she must have seen Nathan in her side vision because she jumped and clutched her robe at her throat.

  She looked at him with her face reddening, then quickly looked away. She went about the business of gathering breakfast items, her lips pressed together against saying anything. She got the eggs and juice out of the refrigerator and the bread out of the bread box.

  Determined, it seemed, to ignore him, she took in a deep breath and proceeded to crack an egg into a bowl.

  “Lily,” he said, and his voice sounded odd and sad.

  She didn’t answer. She began to whip the egg. “You here to pick up your mother?” she asked finally.

  “She has a
dentist appointment.”

  “I see.” She stooped to get a pan out of a cabinet under the counter, then turned toward the stove. “I think you’ve been playing around with me,” she said. She glanced over at me. I’d settled across from Nathan with my bowl of Frosted Flakes, pretending that I wasn’t paying attention to anything. Her look told me to find some other place to eat my breakfast.

  I got up and moved to the dining room. I was still within earshot.

  “You know better than that,” Nathan said once I’d left the kitchen.

  “I’ve been waiting for you to call me and explain things and let me know you’re all right. And—​nothing. You’ve had me worried about you for days. For you, I think, I was just something . . . different.”

  “What makes you think you’re different?” Nathan asked.

  My sister didn’t say anything. But I knew what she meant.

  “Oh, because you can be mistaken for white? On occasion?”

  “That’s not what I meant.”

  “Oh, I get it. Because my mother works for your mother?”

  “And maybe you just wanted to play around with me for that reason.”

  I could hear the tears and hurt in Lily’s voice. She thought she was right. She must have been thinking and thinking about this.

  He laughed, and that was the wrong thing to do. “You really believe you’re something. Well, I don’t live on Avalon anymore. I live in Berkeley most of the year, remember? And I’m surrounded by girls who have much more privilege than you, and guess what? They’re just now turning to guys like me. Trying to put a little spice in their lives. It’s on their list of things to do. You’re not special.”

  “I didn’t say I was.”

  There was silence.

  “I left a note on your door.”

  “I know. Thank you for being concerned.”

  Mrs. Baylor came into the room. I heard Nathan scoot to the end of the padded bench in the breakfast nook and pull himself up. After a bit, I heard my sister sit down and start in on her breakfast.

  And that’s the way they broke up—​if they’d even been together in the first place. I was glad I’d been there to witness it all. I knew I’d never get anything more from Lily. She turned inward over the next week and acted as if she wasn’t bothered about a thing. I couldn’t even tell Jennifer about this latest turn of events because she was at sleep-away camp.

  On Monday morning Nathan was back on the ladder, putting a second coat of white paint on the window sill next to the front porch. I caught sight of him when my mother sent me out to get the morning paper. He waved and I waved back, feeling a little like a traitor. On Saturday Lily had spent the night at Lydia’s. They’d gone to a movie and then Lydia had dropped her back home. I was glad. She could put her mind on other things.

  When I went back inside, I looked out the den window and could feel Nathan’s watchfulness with every paint stroke. I knew he was hoping to see her. I just knew it. In a way, it was as if he’d broken up with me as well. I thought of the three of us swinging at the beach. Didn’t that mean anything to him? How about singing “My Girl” as we drove around Pacific Palisades. Hadn’t it been fun—​all of us together? I decided to go outside, stand on the curb, and wait on the Helms man and see what Nathan had to say. See if he was going to talk to me. I had two dimes—​enough for two doughnuts.

  “You waiting on the Helms man?”

  “Yeah,” I said, feeling a bit disloyal to my sister. After all, he’d dropped her. But there was that small part of me that was satisfied he’d spoken first.

  Then he was setting his brush on the edge of the paint can balanced on the ladder’s little tray and climbing down. He reached in his pocket and took out a quarter. “Can you get me a bear claw?”

  I nodded quickly and looked toward the front door. Lily hadn’t left for work yet. “Okay,” I said.

  He sat on the porch after I handed him his pastry and gestured for me to join him. I settled on the top step.

  “I have to apologize,” he said. “I guess I seemed kind of”—​he stopped and sighed—​“rude and callous.”

  “Yes, you did,” I said directly.

  “I’m sorry. I was just so angry, I had to be alone to . . . think. Does that make sense?”

  I nodded, though I didn’t believe it did—​because why did he have to say those mean things to my sister about her thinking she was special?

  He glanced my way. “Do you think she’ll speak to me?”

  I shrugged and stared straight ahead. “I don’t know,” I said. I could feel him looking at me. He stood up and reached into his back pocket. He pulled out an envelope—​sealed. “Will you give her this?” He put it in my hand, and it was as if I was taking it almost against my will.

  “I’m counting on you,” he said. Then he pulled the bear claw out of the bag and took a big bite.

  “Mom up?” Lily asked when I came inside. She’d overslept and now she was hurrying to get into her work outfit and muttering under her breath. “I’ll have to call Lydia and see if she can give me a ride.” She noticed the pastry bag in my hand. “You got doughnuts?” She uncoiled her hair, ran a brush through it two or three times, and then pulled it up into a ponytail.

  “Here,” I said, handing her a glazed doughnut.

  “Mmm, breakfast.”

  “Mom’s still asleep. I think.”

  “Don’t forget to tell her about your period. Why are you waiting? Go on and get it over with.”

  I nodded. Why was I waiting? Why did I feel embarrassed to tell her?

  Lily was now looking in the mirror, putting eyeliner on her lower lid.

  Without saying anything, I handed her Nathan’s letter.

  “What’s this?” She frowned at my offering.

  “It’s from Nathan.”

  Lily met my eyes in the mirror. She seemed to stop breathing.

  She sat down on her bed, held the envelope with both hands, and stared at it on her lap. Then she glanced up at me with a pleading look in her eyes.

  I went up into the den to watch morning cartoons. When I heard the door slam, I looked out the window in time to see Lily hurrying toward Lydia’s idling car, passing Nathan without a word—​not even glancing his way. He noticed this—​and I knew he was surprised and disappointed.

  When I heard the car drive off, I rushed into our room to search for the letter. I looked in her drawers, under her bed, under the area rug, in her cigarette hiding spot in the bathroom cabinet under the sink . . .

  Finally, I gave up. She must have taken it with her to show Lydia.

  Then I heard my mother moving around in her room. I knocked on her door.

  “Come in,” she said.

  I entered and stood just inside. She was propped up in her bed, reading a book. The other side of the bed looked still made. I stared at it for a few moments.

  “Did you want to talk to me?” my mother asked.

  “I have something to tell you.”

  She patted my father’s side of the bed—​the made-up side. It felt strange sitting on it.

  “Spill it,” she said, trying to sound lighthearted, I supposed.

  “I started my period a few days ago.”

  I could tell I’d taken her by surprise because her eyes widened for just a second. Then she was all business. “Do you know what to do?”

  “Lily told me.”

  My mother looked relieved. She wouldn’t have to give me instructions about the messiness of it. Lily had told me hygiene was key—​especially during that time of the month. And not to flush pads down the toilet, and to soak soiled underwear in cold water. “Make sure it’s cold,” she had emphasized. And there were pills for cramps, and to expect pain the first few days of every period. Expect it to make you feel like you’re going to throw up or faint.

  “And you have what you need?”

  I nodded.

  “Well,” my mother said. “I guess everything is all taken care of, then.”

 
; I didn’t ask Lily about any of her business. I just watched her. Watched her as she came and went. Spied Nathan observing her when she left for work or when Lydia dropped her off from a sleepover. I liked the way Lydia and Lily pulled up with the radio blasting and I liked watching Lily hop out of the car as if she was way past the tears she’d spilled over Nathan—​as if she hardly noticed him up on that ladder, putting a second coat on our window sills.

  But one day, as she sailed by, he caught her with a straightforward “You not gonna speak to me?” There was no pretending she didn’t see him then. She stopped and looked back at him standing there in the middle of the walkway. “Oh, hello.”

  “That’s better,” he said.

  I waited in the shadows of our wood-paneled den. But they moved in opposite directions, like two ships sailing to different ports. What had he written in that letter? Whatever it was, it didn’t seem to matter to Lily.

  I was bored. Jennifer was still at sleep-away camp, and I wasn’t in the mood for writing. I’d abandoned Minerva to concentrate on Olivia, and now I felt too blah to think about Olivia. I’d finished reading Footlights and I’d finished a diorama of a stage scene.

  There was Oscar, but tossing him a ball just did not appeal to me. I could walk to the community center and see if Anthony Cruz was playing Ping-Pong. That idea did seem appealing. I could hang out on the curtained stage and peek through the opening at the cute boys.

  But then I thought some more. Could I go there on my own? Actually walk in and go around unnoticed? Lily would do it—​and dare anyone to even look at her funny. She had no fear. Not even of that white policeman who called Nathan a nigger. She’d dared ask him if he was in the Ku Klux Klan. If anyone looked at her funny, she was liable to get in their face and tell them, “Why don’t you take a picture? It’ll last longer.” If only I could be like Lily.

  I decided if I was going to visit the community center alone, I needed Oscar’s support. I put him on his leash, and when I came around the corner of the house, I saw Nathan in the process of moving the ladder. He settled it and took the paintbrush in his hand. He put the can of paint on the ladder’s little shelf and raked the brush against the rim. His hair was covered in a kerchief.