by Dyan Sheldon
“No, Mommy! No, Mommy!” he shrieks, leaning backwards and tugging on his mother’s hand. “It’s a monster! It’s a monster!”
The mother laughs, dragging him forward. “It’s not a monster, honey. It’s just a girl dressed up like a plastic bottle.”
Earlier – when she was full of optimism and hope and hadn’t yet been publicly humiliated – Maya would have laughed, too. By now she is lucky to be able to smile.
“I’m not really a plastic bottle,” she explains as the mother and child come nearer. “I represent the billions of plastic bags and bottles we throw out every year. And that’s just in America.”
The mother smiles back in a placating, stay-away-from-me way, tightening her grip on her son’s hand.
Hoping to make them stop or at least slow down, Maya talks faster and louder. “That’s bags and bottles that are produced squandering precious resources. Bags and bottles that are used once and then spend the next thousand years in landfill.” She carefully stretches out the arm that holds the collection bucket to block them. “Think of it! The only thing with a longer life span is depleted uranium!”
“I’m afraid we’re only visiting here,” says the mother, darting past her with the bear in tow.
“What? Visiting the planet?” Maya calls after them. “Where did you park the spaceship?”
While Maya is temporarily distracted, another small child comes up to her. This one signals her presence not by screaming hysterically but by pulling on Maya’s skirt.
Maya looks down.
The little girl is gazing at her earnestly and eating a candy bar, her mouth smudged with chocolate.
Maya’s stomach growls. Lunch is another thing she didn’t plan for.
“Yes?” Maya gives her a friendly, non-monster smile.
The little girl chews slowly, almost meditatively, as though deciding exactly how to word her question, which is obviously an important one. “How come you’re dressed like that?” she asks at last.
Maya has approached scores of people this morning to tell them about the Environmental Club and Earth Day celebration, but this is the first time anyone has approached her. Maya responds with enthusiasm. She explains about climate change, plastic bags and plastic bottles. She explains about the Earth Day celebration and all the fun things there are going to be there. “We’re even having a contest to see who can make the best sculpture out of junk,” she finishes. “Do you think you’d like to enter?”
The little girl shrugs. “I just wanted to know why you’re dressed like that,” she repeats. “You know, because you look so dumb.” She runs after her mother (a woman who doesn’t look as if she’s ever turned a light off in her life) and Maya turns back to the car park with a sigh.
How much longer should she stay here, gazing out at nothing? She looks into her bucket. At the rate she’s going, another week might not be long enough.
The project they did in the eighth grade was called Where I Live Now, and it was all about the animals that used to live in the area, before Jeroboam Clifton colonized it in the name of the English queen. Not just bears, wolves and deer, but muskrats, otter, possum, raccoon, skunk, beaver, wild ducks and turkey and the sky full of birds. And there was a Lenape village near the river – the same river that no one wanted to help Clemens clean last year. When the Lenape lived there, the river would have been filled with fish, not garbage. Maya sighs again. There would have been a lot more to see then – and a lot more to hear than traffic and stereos and car doors slamming and shopping carts rattling over the asphalt.
Suddenly something catches Maya’s eye that makes the Birch Grove Shopping Centre look a lot more interesting than it did a few minutes ago – though not in a good way. A fire-engine red people carrier has just turned into the far entrance.
Maya feels herself go as rigid as concrete. There is only one people carrier that colour in Clifton Springs and it belongs to Brion Tovar’s parents. She squints into the distance. Mr Tovar is driving and beside him is Brion. Behind Brion are Shelby, Jason and Finn. Gott im Himmel, what are they doing here? It’s Saturday afternoon. They’re supposed to be at Mojo’s, eating bagels. But for some reason, they aren’t. They’re cruising through the car park, searching for an empty space. And in less time than it takes to throw a potato chip wrapper into the gutter, they are going to find one and be jumping out of the car.
She can’t let them see her. Maya has weathered the teasing, ridicule and mockery with patience, if not actual good humour, but riding the pink and blue bike (now equipped with brakes) to school, always asking what’s in the soup or sauce or telling them what’s in that cookie or that body spray, and often being seen with her new friends Clemens and Waneeda are nothing next to this. If they see her dressed like this with her bucket, she’ll never live it down. Uninvited, Alice’s voice echoes through Maya’s head. It’s really uncool… Everybody’s going to laugh at you… Well, if they’re not laughing now, they will be very soon. And the hip image she’s worked so hard to build since the beginning of high school – and already dented – will never recover.
The normal response to danger is, of course, either to stay and bravely fight or to run away as fast as you can. There is no time for Maya to get out of her costume – and no way she’s going to be standing here looking like The Scourge of Landfill when Brion, Finn, Jason and Shelby stroll by. Especially Jason. The only question is in which direction she’s going to flee.
The car park’s too dangerous. The alley down the side of the supermarket’s too far. Maya turns as sharply as a girl enveloped in plastic bags and bottles can, and rustling and clacking, heads for the supermarket’s automatic doors. The opening is narrow for her costume, but by twisting her body she manages to squeeze through without knocking anything off the displays dotted around the entrance. With all the grace and ease of a robot made of tin cans, Maya moves into the produce section. It’s unlikely that the boys are coming into Foodarama. Probably they’re going to the pizza place or the taqueria at the other end. But if some evil star does guide them into Foodarama, it’s even more unlikely that they’ll be looking for vegetables or fruit. They’ll cut straight across to the snack aisle.
Paying no attention to the people staring at her in open-mouthed amazement, holding aloft an apple or an avocado or a box of croutons that has been forgotten in surprise, Maya lumbers over to a revolving tower of salad condiments and stands beside it, ready to bury her face in the shelf of thousand-island dressing and Italian vinaigrette if Brion, Shelby, Jason and Finn do suddenly appear.
The same shoppers who would have pelted past her outside Foodarama show no fear or surprise at her presence beside the salad dressings. They come and go, testing the tomatoes and sniffing at the oranges – and looking over at Maya with indulgent smiles and mild curiosity. Several people ask her what she’s promoting, and if she has samples. “What are you supposed to be, honey?” asks one woman. “Plastic Girl?” There hasn’t been this much laughter in Foodarama since the pigeons got in last summer.
Word of the presence of Plastic Girl in Fruit and Vegetables moves through the store. Something’s about to happen. There will probably be giveaways. A small crowd starts to gather, watching as if they expect her to start singing and dancing. Maya does, in fact, recognize some familiar faces – friends of her parents, a woman from her block, Shayla’s mother – but for some reason this no longer bothers her. The panic that drove her through the electronic doors has vanished as completely as the Labrador duck. This, Maya realizes, is her great opportunity. She has an audience. An audience that is waiting to hear what she’s going to say.
“Hi, everybody!” says Maya. “I’m Plastic Girl. And I’m here to tell you what’s happening to the Earth.”
She is still talking when there is a call over the loudspeaker for security guards to go immediately to the produce department.
Chapter Thirty-six
Truly great reasons not to save the trees
Clemens and Waneeda have spent the mornin
g, as they have spent most weekend mornings for the last couple of months, trudging up and down the streets, roads, crescents, drives and dead ends of Clifton Springs with their petition to save the old-growth oaks from being turned into firewood. Clemens has his jacket open so his Trees Don’t Grow on Money T-shirt is visible. Waneeda’s jacket is also open to reveal the T-shirt Clemens made for her (a picture of a tree being felled and the caption Chainsaw Massacre). Her hair, in keeping with the arboreal theme of the afternoon, surrounds Waneeda’s head like a bush.
They stop in front of a blue ranch house whose front window is filled with china rabbits.
“Rabbits is a good sign,” Waneeda decides. “It means they like animals. At least that’s a start.”
“Or maybe all it means is that they like buying figurines,” says Clemens. Maya isn’t the only one who’s had a long morning. He slips a coin from his pocket. “Your call. Heads or tails?”
“Heads you do the spiel,” says Waneeda. “Tails I do it.”
In the world of petitioning (as in most worlds) some days are better than others. This one has been a fairly demoralizing one. The people who eagerly snatch the pen from their hands have been very few and very far between. Although many of the good folk of Clifton Springs have been courteous and even polite, if only vaguely interested, it would be misleading to suggest that Waneeda and Clemens have been universally greeted with warmth and support. Very often, curtains have twitched, but no one has answered their ring. Just as often, someone has answered their ring and then shut the door in their faces. Dogs have run after them. Small children have jeered at them. Adults have been unpleasant and rude.
“Heads, damn it.” Clemens ruefully shakes his head. “I swear you have to be psychic.”
“Just lucky.” Waneeda tugs on a strand of hair. “Anyway, you’re better at talking than I am.”
Clemens pushes his glasses back up his nose. “Yeah, but people like you more.” He sighs. “Everybody thinks I’m weird.”
“You’re not weird.” She gives him an encouraging smile. Today, Clemens is wearing an old black beret and one of his grandmother’s many knitting projects, a scarf patterned with pine trees. “You’re just different.”
This time, the door is opened by a middle-aged man who listens patiently to Clemens’ plea, but when he’s finished says, “You don’t think maybe the town needs a new sports centre more than it needs a couple of trees? We’ve got plenty of trees, you know, but we don’t have plenty of sports centres.”
“But these aren’t just any trees,” argues Clemens. “Sports centres can be built anywhere, but these trees can never be replaced. They were here way before the white man. They’re the living past and have witnessed hundreds of years of history. They’ve seen whole peoples come and go and the sky black with passenger pigeons. If these trees could talk they—”
“Yeah, but they can’t talk, can they?” interrupts the man. “They’re just trees.” He grins in an I’m-laughing-at-you-not-with-you way. “And do you know what another name for trees is? Do you know what else they’re called?”
Clemens and Waneeda glance at each other, but neither answers.
“Wood!” shouts the man. “That’s the other name for trees! Wood!”
They can still hear him laughing after he’s shut the door.
“I think it’s time to take up our post at the village square for a while.” Clemens slips his clipboard into his backpack. “This neighbourhood’s got some kind of juju curse on it.”
“At least that last guy was original,” says Waneeda as they head back to town. “That’s the first time we’ve heard that one. I think that should go on the list. Which makes … what? Five or six for today?”
Truly great reasons not to save the trees is the game Clemens invented to keep them from getting too depressed.
“Well, let’s see.” He frowns, thinking. “The first three were: I can’t find the ferret, It’s too early and I once fell out of a tree and broke my leg. So that guy who said, Son, you just don’t get it, do you? The thing about trees is they grow back was number four.”
Waneeda laughs. “You know what would happen if we didn’t chop down trees? We wouldn’t be able to get our cars out of the garages was five.”
“Well, what about the lady in the tracksuit and the shower cap? What was it she said?”
“Trees cause pollution.”
Clemens looks as if he can’t decide whether to laugh or cry. “And even when I said that they only cause pollution when you cut them down, she still wouldn’t sign the petition.”
They turn into the historic town of Clifton Springs.
“Oh, wait a minute, wait a minute.” Waneeda pulls on Clemens’ arm as if she’s literally trying to slow him down. “What about that man with the funny-looking dog? The one who said that if I had to rake up the leaves I wouldn’t be so eager not to cut down trees? He’s number seven.”
Clemens takes her elbow and guides her across the road to the square. “And how about Mr Where-would-we-be-if-the-pioneers-had-felt-like-that?”
“And you said that we wouldn’t be shopping in Wal-Mart, that was for sure,” gasps Waneeda. “And he slammed the door in your face. Just like the woman with the Yorkshire terrier that time. Remember her?”
“Remember her? Even if she hadn’t had that dumb dog up her sleeve, I’d never forget her,” says Clemens. “She shut that door so hard she would’ve broken my foot if I hadn’t been wearing my steel-toed boots.”
“Well, at least you know that if you don’t become some kind of environmentalist, you can always get a job as a door-to-door salesman,” says Waneeda. “You’re pretty good with that sticking-your-foot-in-the-door routine.”
Clemens leans against the old cast-iron railings that surround the churchyard, solemnly shaking his head. “I couldn’t take the constant rejection. It’s soul destroying.”
“We haven’t had total rejection, though,” argues Waneeda. “We’ve got at least twenty signatures so far today. That’s not so bad.”
Clemens sighs. “Except that I bet we would’ve made a lot more than twenty sales if we were Avon ladies selling make-up and not just students trying to save the environment.”
“I doubt it,” says Waneeda. “I think that the sight of you in drag would make them slam their doors even harder.”
They are still laughing when Waneeda, who is facing the church, grabs his arm. “I think I must be hallucinating, Clemens – I could swear I see Sicilee Kewe coming out of the thrift store. With bags.”
Clemens turns around. “Well, shuck my corn.” He gives a low whistle. “It’s either her or her twin sister.”
“Hey! Clemens! Waneeda!” Sicilee comes hurrying towards them. “Look at all this cool stuff I got for, like, absolutely nothing.” She starts pulling things from one of the bags. “Can you believe it? They’ve hardly even been worn!”
On the other side of the road, Mr Huddlesfield, on his way to the hardware store for a washer to fix the leaking faucet in the bathroom (an environmental act inspired by his daughter, who taped a note on the bathroom mirror stating exactly how many gallons of water are dripping away every week), happens to glance over and see that very same daughter standing in front of the village square with Clemens Reis and a girl who definitely isn’t Joy Marie Lutz. Mr Huddlesfield rarely sees his only child out of the house or from any distance, and for a few seconds he doesn’t recognize her. This is partly because he still isn’t used to seeing her with her hair down and partly because she is animated and smiling (which is another way her father rarely sees her), talking and laughing with her friends. Mr Huddlesfield changes direction and goes over to see what’s going on.
“Well, maybe you’d like to sign our petition.” Clemens thrusts his clipboard into Mr Huddlesfield’s hands.
“You can’t fight city hall, you know,” says Mr Huddlesfield as he takes hold of the pen.
“That’s number nine,” says Waneeda.
Chapter Thirty-seven
Sho
p and drop
A light rain falls over the concrete sprawl that is Wildwood Mall, making the parking lot shine. There are no budding trees or early blooms outside the mall to herald the start of a new season, but to make up for that, the windows are brightly dressed for spring: pastel outfits and paper flowers; fluffy bunnies and baskets of coloured eggs; floral rubber boots and bright umbrellas under cellophane showers. You can almost hear Gene Autry singing “Here Comes Peter Cottontail”.
To complete the picture, Sicilee, Kristin, Loretta and Ash, dressed as gaily as a May garden, climb out of the Shepls’ people carrier and scurry through the drizzle to the south-east entrance. The doors open silently as they approach, and bright lights and potted trees welcome them inside to where it is always a dry and pleasant day with background music and plenty of benches.
Ash waves her hand at the concourse that stretches invitingly ahead of them. “It’s really hard to imagine life before they invented malls, isn’t it?” The walk from the car, though brief, has apparently put Ash in a reflective mood. “I mean, it must’ve been just gross back then – you’d have to go all over the place just to put a decent outfit together.”
Loretta thinks she may have stepped in a puddle and is examining her feet. “And you’d be out in the snow and rain the whole time, trudging from one store to another,” she says. “My God, if you didn’t get pneumonia or destroy your hair, your shoes would be totally ruined.”
“And what did you do in the summer?” asks Kristin. “Just think of it – lugging all those bags around in the heat…” She wrinkles her nose and shivers with distaste. “I mean, who’d want to shop outside when it’s ninety degrees and just breathing makes you sweat? You wouldn’t be able to go more than a block without having to change.”
Were he here, Clemens Reis would point out that people only used to shop when they actually needed something. That they replaced things when they were worn out, not when they got tired of the colour or fashion changed or they had nothing else to do but go to the stores. Clemens, of course, is not here – but Sicilee is, and Sicilee has now walked that last block to school with him and the others long enough to know that that is what he would say – and even to think of saying it herself. She catches herself just in time.
