by Mira Ptacin
My third-hour orchestra conductor, Ms. Phelps, a zany woman with mad love for her students and massive eyes and a giant Tom Selleck poster that hangs over her desk, delegates me to lead first violin sectionals in another building. On our way to sectionals, my first violins ask if we can just leave. “She’ll never know,” they tell me, so I try it. We sneak off, smoke cigarettes, get away with it; so we try it again. And again, and again. And now each time I lead first violin sectionals, I say, “Just go do whatever, but be back by the time class is over.”
I start skipping math class, too, then Spanish, then history. My art teacher tells my mother I am “provocative,” so I stop going to that class as well; too bad it was one of the only ones I gave a shit about. I’m prickly and nauseating, but I don’t see this. My behavior is encouraged by the Bad Kids. “Do what you want,” they whisper, and I realize for the first time that I actually can. Amanda urges me to stay away from them, but I’m howling like a wolf on the inside and want to run with the ones who do the same on the outside. We are passion searching for a target. We are uncontrolled energy. We take ourselves seriously and we make a game of it.
We make believe and we believe it hard: that we run the school, that we run the town, that we are the adults. We are gruff and we are wiser than everyone around us, but in reality, it’s stupidity by osmosis. We drink rum and coke in the parking lot in the mornings before school. We try acid, cocaine, crack (once); we try crystal meth, and I am still under the influence two days later when I have to go take my PSATs.
The boys are new.
I have a boyfriend named Jeff. He used to be good, smart and studious, but now he’s bad. A rebel. Says yes to everything. Will try everything. The boy courted me for months and months, giving me rides to school, bringing me sugar-powder-water cappuccinos from the gas station, letting me drive his car. Persistent as hell until I realized the word “no” didn’t make any sense to him. And that, to him, I was a goddess. And that he was brilliant and daring and funny, and that I’d started to fall in love with him. So I said “yes” and now we are together. He’s had a hard life. After passing out in his easy chair with a cigarette in his hand, Jeff’s dad died in a fire, so now Jeff lives with his stepdad, who works the night shifts and sleeps during the day, so the boy can do whatever he wants. Jeff has a car, and after my mother drops me off at rehearsal for Man of La Mancha, he scoops me up outside of the school, just as we’d planned. I’ve got the booze in my backpack and a bag of weed in my violin case. But Dirt is also in the car, sitting in the front seat. My seat. Not part of the plan.
Dirt is Jeff’s friend. To me, Dirt is more like a cobra, but we don’t call him that—Cobra. Dirt picked up the name because he’s dark skinned, and because he’s been with lots of ladies. Either the boys gave him the name, or he took it to them. Either way, he keeps it and introduces himself with it. He is smart and he is sly. Sometimes the boys call him Ol’ Dirty Dawg because he’s real smooth with the ladies. Because of this, he’s had lots of success—I’ve heard he’s fathered some kids—and this makes my hackles go up, so I keep my distance. Sometimes I like Dirt because he smokes me out and can freestyle very smoothly and I think he has a photographic memory, but what I don’t like is how he can shift from being lax and tender to being angry and hot. Sometimes when Jeff isn’t looking, Dirt turns to me and licks his lips all tender while staring hard and says things like, “Girl, you’re so cute, like a little white feather. I’ll bet you taste so good.” I tell him he’s a turd and ask him where his mother is. “She stay in Chicago,” says Dirt.
Jeff and Dirt are inseparable, so that means the three of us are always together. I’ll wait around while the boys steal rap music from Sam Goody and blast it from Jeff’s car stereo while he drives Dirt around to wherever he wants to go, bass on high, and lends Dirt money and lets Dirt live with him. I think it’s because Jeff is ashamed to be white. I think he wants to get out of it by association. I think Jeff knows we are privileged, just by being born with this skin color. Sometimes I feel that way, too.
Without saying anything, I get in the back of Jeff’s car and shut the door, disappointed. We drive to Irving Park, get out, and go sit on the grass underneath a statue of an American Indian where we drink wine and smoke Marlboro Reds. Jeff drapes his arm over my neck and tries to impress Dirt with some raps he just made up. Across the street is the hospital where my father works. He’s probably there now.
The sun has set. We open another bottle, finish all the wine—two bottles total that I’ve stolen from my mother’s wine cellar—and then some Tanqueray that Jeff had in his pocket. I am weightless. It is hilarious. Nothing else matters now but now, and me. This is my park, I own this park, and I fear nothing. I love these guys, and I’m drunk and I’ve forgotten to watch the time, so when 9:45 rolls around and I’m running so sloppily late, I don’t even waste time trying to come up with a valid excuse for my mother. I tell Jeff to drive fast. I tell him to forget about stopping at the C-Store where I should have picked up some gum, and by the time I’m out of Jeff’s car and booking it down my driveway toward the garage door, I realize that I’ve also forgotten to spritz myself with Dirt’s Cool Water cologne to cover up the smell you get when you’re up to no good.
“How was rehearsal?” my mother asks as I try to sneak through the kitchen.
“It ran late,” I tell her. “Sorry.”
“I beg your pardon?” asks Dad. He is also in the kitchen. Jules and Sabina are not. “Because Ms. Phelps called to see if you were okay after you didn’t show up.”
“Let me smell your breath,” says my mom. Before I can refuse, she grabs my cheeks and squeezes my lips apart like a conch shell. She takes a short whiff. “You’ve been drinking.”
“No. I haven’t,” I say. “You’re insane.”
She turns to face Dad. “Mira is drunk,” she tells him.
I am drunk and I wobble back, raise my finger, and point it at my mother. “No,” I say, “I think yoooou’re the one who’s drunk,” and she smacks me. A warm bud begins to sprout on my cheek as Dad steps in between us.
Now we are in his car, my father and me. In the kitchen, Dad suggested we head to the hospital to pick up an alcohol detector test—“just to be fair,” he proposed. Either we’ll prove my guilt or Mom’s overreaction. We drive the twelve miles in silence, then pull into the physician parking lot. Dad shifts the gear into park, leaves the car running, and unbuckles his seat belt. “Stay here,” he tells me. “You’ll take it at home. Mom will want to be a part of this.” He gets out of the car, closes the door, and walks with tall posture toward the back of the hospital. His stethoscope is still draped around his neck. It’s nearly 10 p.m. on a school night.
On the floor of Dad’s Nissan are mini-Snickers wrappers, empty cans of Diet Coke, and a half-eaten bag of Oreos. He drinks and eats this stuff to stay awake. My father says, “I’ll sleep when I’m dead.” He told us he’s planning on giving up caffeine and junk food for Lent, and for good. He said that when Mom isn’t around, he turns into a caveman. Sometimes Dad eats ice cream for breakfast. I do that too. I’ve inherited my father’s metabolism and athletic legs, his long fingers and sensitivity.
Like my mom, I’m hot-blooded. Sometimes, Jules and Sabina and I make her so angry that she just explodes. She gives up on us and disappears. We’ll come up from swimming down at the lake or playing in the yard and find out that something we did pushed her over the edge. Mom will have left a note on the table saying she needed a break, that she was going to stay at a hotel or just drive somewhere and that she didn’t know when she planned on coming back. Dad will come home from work, we’ll hand him the note, and in an unruffled tone he’ll say, “What did you guys do to your mother this time?” He’ll order Little Caesars for dinner and we’ll hang around ruefully, waiting for Mom to come home, which she always does, by dusk. She’ll pull into the driveway and Dad will meet her at the front door, walk her into their bedroom, a
nd close the door behind them. Like my mother, I have a short temper and am easily moved. Unlike my mother, I have small breasts.
It was my father who bought me my first bra. The event did not go well. We were in the checkout lane at Meijer’s Thrifty Acres, just Dad and me with Mom’s shopping list. The conveyor belt cluttered with lots of things we didn’t need—stalks of broccoli, a pound of pecans, more grapes, Stove Top Stuffing—had created a traffic jam of grocery carts and impatient shoppers. After asking the cashier about her day, Dad turned to me with an expressionless face and said, “Mira, do you have a bra?” I was simultaneously mortified and thrilled. Mortified, because my father had broadcasted MIRA PTACIN HAS BOOBS, thus planting the image of my naked chest into the minds of everyone nearby with ears, and thrilled because, no, I did not have a bra of my own. The closest thing in my possession was the padded red and white polka-dot bikini top that I’d stolen from my sister. I was going to get a bra.
I didn’t walk—I sprinted through those thrifty acres until I reached a rack of Hanes Her Way lady undergarments. My business was urgent. But I didn’t know how to pick out a bra. No one had ever shown me how to measure myself, or explained what the letters or numbers meant, so I grabbed a handful of friendly-looking cotton trainers that came in either small, medium, or large and darted back to the aisle where my dad and the checkout woman were waiting. I slid the brassieres onto the conveyor belt and placed a massive box of Cheerios on top of them, then impartially thumbed through a Reader’s Digest while my bounty worked its way toward the register. Just as the checkout clerk was tallying up our goods, my dad reached into one of the grocery bags and pulled out one of my bras, still on its little plastic hanger. He held it under his nose and studied the price tag.
“Mira, do you really need four bras?” The words came out in slow motion—fooour braaas?—as my father turned to face me and the clogged line of customers watched. Then he held out an open hand, folded his thumb into his palm and repeated the question. FOUR BRAS? I looked down and shook my head. After I’d returned three of the four to the rack where I’d found them, after that silent, sullen ride car ride home, after we’d finally unpacked the car and put away all the groceries, I rushed downstairs to my room with my one new bra—my bra—and closed the door, threw off my t-shirt, tried it on. It didn’t even fit.
In my father’s tape deck there is a recording of Con Te Partirò. Dad has been memorizing the Italian ballad so he can serenade Mom on her birthday, which is in a couple months. May 1st. May Day. On Saturday mornings, Dad’s been going to the home of one of his patients, an Italian man, who corrects my father’s pronunciations and translates the lyrics so he’ll know what he’s singing about. Con Te Partirò. With You I Will Leave. My father is affectionate, but it’s not an inherited trait.
“She was a tyrant.” That’s what Mom says about my paternal grandmother. That she was a dictator, cold and unsympathetic. When my father was a boy, he pooped the bed once. Mom said that as an adult, Dad confided in her. He told her that after the accident, Grandma got angry, laughed at him about it and rubbed his nose in the soiled sheets, as if she were potty training a puppy. Good grief. That’s what my dad said a lot as a child. Good grief. It’s what Dad’s parents named their cottage up in the Wisconsin wilderness. After they’d built their vacation home but before they’d christened it, my grandparents asked each of their six kids to come up with a name for the cottage. Dad was maybe eight or ten years old. He proposed “Corn Is High,” a saying he’d made up, something he thought sounded cool, something he imagined the Native Americans would tell one another when everything was in harmony. Corn is high. All is well. It meant that you could be hopeful. You’d think that the sight of a little boy sharing his secret wishes for peace would be warmly received, that it was precious and poetic and that Corn is High would trend, but when little dad pitched his idea to his family, all that happened was that his siblings teased him for being a big sap and, maybe so they could rub his nose in it even more, his parents named the cabin “Good Grief” instead.
When we’d visit Dad’s parents in Chicago, Mom made us do things the way Grandma expected. We had to always be helping and asking what else we could help with. We had to eat everything that was on our plates and when we were finished, we had to say, “I had an elegant sufficiency,” even though we didn’t even know what that meant. It was a phrase Grandma had us say. After we were excused, we were to clear the table and wash the dishes. Mom hated it. She hated being there, felt unwanted, but still, she made us do it. “Kill ‘em with kindness,” she’d say. She did it for Dad. Even when she was furious or insulted, if it was for her husband, she exuded dignity. Maybe Grandma was a bully, or maybe she was just strict, but judging by the surface of things, it was hard to notice. The details didn’t reveal themselves until after Grandma Ptacin died. I was eleven. During the wake, Mom and I ate peanut M&Ms and she told me that Dad’s parents never said I love you to one another, rarely said it to Dad, and that it was a mystery and a miracle how Dad turned out the way he did: the most loving man in the entire world. Mom believes she has to protect my father all of the time because he loves everybody and is always giving people credit instead of criticism. He pulls me up and I pull him down and we reach the right level, is how she explains their dynamic. We make the good balance. I always admired that—how much love Dad would give. How Dad could share his hope for peace and prosperity while putting himself at risk for sounding silly or naïve. One year, out of the blue, my mother bought a personalized license plate for herself and one for Dad. For Mom’s minivan: rsvp1. And on the rear of his Nissan, stamped onto a royal blue in long white font is Dad’s cheerful reminder, Corn Is High. But it’s scrunched together in crowded capital letters and looks like this: cornshi, which makes everyone scratch their head and wonder why my father has a license plate that reads, “Corn Shit.”
The instant the hospital door closes behind my father, I open the passenger door and step out. I’m busted, I’ve already lost; Mom is at home waiting for me and I can’t pass that Breathalyzer test. I scan the parking lot to see if anyone is watching, but I’m the only one here and Dad’s is the only car. The amber light of a streetlamp casts my shadow along the asphalt and I tense up to prevent something deep inside from unraveling. Fuck that, I tell myself and spit at the ground, half-supposing it will sizzle.
“Bye-bye, Cornshit. I am so out of here,” I say, and walk away.
The night is cold and fresh on the streets of Battle Creek. I will walk about two miles, past the dry cleaners and B.C. Burger on Calhoun Street, past the cantaloupe-colored halfway houses lining Fremont. I will reach the Dixie Mart on Emmett Street and hang a right. Bundles of tennis shoes dangle by their laces from telephone wires over Orchard Street, where the gardens are small and gated. These miniature yards make me think of how when we were kids, Jules and Sabina and I invented a game called “Survive in the Wilderness.” The purpose was to gather provisions. We’d pile grass and dandelions onto giant ferns then roll them up like tacos. We’d collect water from the lake in pails and sharpen the ends of birch branches, just in case. We were preparing for something, for what I’m not sure, because that thing never came. Growing up, there were no school playgrounds near our home and we didn’t call the place where we played a “yard.” We called it “land” because that’s what it was, wilderness.
The trees lining Orchard Street, however, are singular and scrawny. I continue to meander, round a corner or two until somehow, somehow, I arrive safely at my friend Luke’s house. I pick up a few rocks and throw them until I hit Luke’s bedroom window and wake him. He laughs at me, then comes down to the lawn where we smoke Newports. Then, from the phone in Luke’s kitchen, I’ll call Jeff, who will pick me up, bring me back to his house and I’ll fall asleep rather quickly. In the morning, while my parents are at work and my siblings at school, I’ll sneak back to my home and gather what I need: some clothes, my stereo, my wallet and violin while Jeff waits in the
car. It’ll be enough.
One afternoon before my parents were married, my mother sat in the cafeteria of St. Luke’s Presbyterian, the hospital in Chicago where she and my father both worked, and watched my dad search for her in a snowstorm. “Shit or get off the pot,” she’d told him a couple of weeks before. They’d been dating long enough and he still hadn’t proposed. Shit or get off the pot; my mom had a life to live. So they split. A week or so later, Dad came to his senses and realized Maria was the one woman he wanted to spend the rest of his life with. He raced back to tell her the good news but she wasn’t anywhere to be found. Dad searched the hospital cafeteria, table by table, then went outside to search in the snow, hoping she was taking a smoke break despite the snow blowing hard from above and despite Dad being clad only in scrubs. Mom knew he was looking for her, but she let him panic. A little suffering did one a little good. She’d let her phone keep ringing, let Dad keep leaving messages and writing apologies, let him get a little bit scared. The day he came searching for her in the hospital, she watched him from her seat in the cafeteria. As Dad lunged from bench to bench through several feet of snow, desperate for her forgiveness, Mom knew she’d marry him. The man should always love you a little bit more than you love him. When she’d seen enough, she stood up, cleared her cafeteria tray and returned to her lab.
This was exactly the same way Mom treated my situation. Mira will come to her senses. Just let her be. I’m just a dumb kid. If they step back, I’ll calm down, come to my senses, give in and return. My parents find out where I am and they give me space. A week goes by. I stay with Jeff in a two-bedroom house with Dirt and Jeff’s stepdad. It’s a party house. There are always people swinging by, teenagers, strangers. I eat Hot Pockets from the freezer and Jeff introduces me to Miracle Whip and bologna sandwiches, which I never got to eat at home and I think they’re delicious. Jeff starts selling acid. We each take a hit and go see Jurassic Park at the movie theater where I work for eight bucks an hour. Jeff has a dog, a boxer named Louie, who keeps me company when Jeff isn’t home. I stay up late, sleep in, and skip a lot of school, but I continue to go to orchestra rehearsals. I like my orchestra conductor Ms. Phelps because, despite how horrible our ensemble sounds, she isn’t ashamed of us. She still has faith in me and trusts that I will lead the violins, possibly improve them. I try a little. Three weeks pass. All is well.
