Call me Jane (The Oshkosh Trilogy)

by Anthea Carson

  There was a side area with long, white tables and chair, which didn’t quite look right. They didn’t look like they belonged in a bar. They looked more like the tables we used to play on at the library chess club.

  I wanted to sit by Paul, but I couldn’t because now he was far away, across the bar, near the stage with the rest of the band, standing in front of a black, velvet curtain. The bright lights shone on them, making them look larger than life. They practiced, found their chords, and tuned their instruments. Walt grabbed the microphone and bobbed and weaved around before the music started.

  Suddenly I realized that I had known Walter before. Maybe it was the angle from which I was looking at him.

  He would reach down under that grand piano and tickle me every now and then. I couldn’t stay out of the living room whenever Walter was there for voice lessons.

  He was strange, Walter was. He was a strange guy, and he had strange taste in music. We all did.

  I stared across the table at Gay. She was pretty strange too, with her Buddy Holly and her Turtles collections. That’s not what most kids listened to in the days of disco. There she sat across from me, chugging beer. She was beginning to need a haircut.

  “What?” she yelled at me, as if she were trying to start a fight. “What are you looking at?”

  “Nothing, why?”

  “You look so fucked up!” she yelled.

  “When do they start?” I yelled.

  “They already started about a half an hour ago,” she yelled.

  I thought that was funny. I thought it was so funny that I fell out of my chair laughing. I think I must have been rolling around under that table for a while when I noticed everybody staring at me, including Ziggy, who stared at me from where he sat with his feet up on another chair, hands folded behind his head, looking very amused at my antics.

  Soon Krishna and I were in the mosh pit. Actually we didn’t call it the mosh pit. The term hadn’t yet made it to Oshkosh. Usually through Ziggy all those punk terms made it to us, eventually.

  Dave twirled his drumsticks in the air for an impressive five minutes. He dropped one of them on the floor and laughed as he picked it up. He received a couple looks from Raj, and finally stopped that silliness. He was all energy and focus, once his attempt to twirl the sticks in the air came to an end.

  Paul focused on his guitar; they all did. Every now and then one of them would move one or two feet.

  Me and Krishna slammed into people hard. I became uncomfortable with my bra and tore it off and threw it angrily at somebody’s face. Ziggy thought this was pretty funny. I wanted that bra to suffer like it had made me suffer, and to let everyone know just how sick I was of it pinching me. We continued slamming, a bra in the middle of the floor.

  Some of the dancers didn’t mind being slammed into, or having a bra thrown at them, but some looked pretty shaken up by the whole experience of slam dancing.

  The band played on.

  I stared at Paul. I was grateful Lucy wasn’t there. I asked Krishna where she was and she said, “Sick.”

  Ziggy was talking to me about something, I had no idea what he was saying, and I fell asleep for a little while with my head on his shoulder. Then a little while later I found myself making out in the corner with Paul, behind that same table.

  That’s when Raj interrupted us with, “It’s time to go,” We dragged ourselves to his car and continued kissing and mauling each other in the backseat when Raj finally yelled, “Hey, could you guys knock it off back there?”

  Now, I could see why there was something wrong with racist jokes, but kissing? What could possibly be wrong with that? It looked to me like Chrystal and Dave were up to the same thing. I couldn’t tell. I just knew Lucy wasn’t there, and she wouldn’t be there the entire drive back from Milwaukee, which was at least an hour. An hour and a half if you counted the stop-and-go traffic lights in town, where Raj seemed the most irritated at us.

  TWENTY ONE

  I woke to see my angry-faced mother standing over me. She had that morning angry look. It was different from her other times of the day angry look.

  “Um, I don’t know?” I said it like a question.

  “Well it’s not here and I’m getting pretty sick of this; I never drive it anyway with you carousing around town day and night with it, but now it’s gone!”

  “What–I,” I was genuinely trying to figure out where it was. “Just look outside!” I said.

  “It isn’t there; obviously I looked there.”

  “Well,” I said, rolling over and turning away from her, facing the backyard maple, “look again.”

  “Janey Lou, get up, wake up, and sit up. I have to find my car!”

  I sat up, spun around, rubbed my eyes, and faced her. I had to think. The band playing, Paul in the backseat… “It’s in the school parking lot.”

  “What is it doing there?” she asked.

  “Probably just sitting there,” I said.

  “Now how am I going to get it?”

  “You want a piggyback ride?”

  “You are a little snot,” she said.

  “Well, how am I supposed to get you there without the car?” I asked her.

  “Look at the situation you put me in!” she said.

  “I’m sorry, okay? What do you want me to do?”

  “Well, I guess I’m going to have to figure it out for myself. Oh, and by the way, Ziggy called,” she said, and shut the door.

  What, was that a parting shot? Now I was afraid not to call him back. I didn’t want to receive public humiliation again. Okay, I decided, I’ll call him back this time, but not till I’d had some coffee.

  “Hello?”

  “Did you call?”

  “Yeah, can you give me a ride? I need a ride to—” he began.

  A request for a ride. I breathed a sigh of relief.

  “I don’t have my car right now, but if you still need one later I can pick you up,” I said.

  I picked him up once I did have it and drove him where he needed to go. He smoked a bowl with me in return for the ride. We talked about bands. I took him to the record store and dropped him off at his friend Richard P’s. Then I went over to Krishna’s. I knocked on the kitchen door and her dad answered. Whenever he answered the door, he would just stand there looking all Hindu and stuff.

  “Krishna’s upstairs,” he said. He has a very strong, foreign accent.

  “Thanks.” I went past him. If I turned left, I would pass Krishna’s mom in the kitchen, then make my way through the dining room, then to the right there was a door and a very narrow set of steps. If I ever grew too fat, I wouldn’t be able to fit through that narrow stairway. If I took a right, I would pass Raj reading the Wall Street Journal in the living room, then turn left at the stereo, then the door to Krishna’s room would be on my left.

  “Hi Jane,” Krishna’s mom said. I could hear the clacking of dishes being put away. There was a huge window in the dining room. It had those same sections in it that all the windows had, with dark wooden frames, and there were funny ways to open them. You had to crank a hard-to-turn handle, and the glass would open awkwardly over the green of the yard, or into the room. There was no place to sit down in the kitchen except a little two-seat table at the edge.

  If you went the opposite direction from the stairs up to her room, you would be in Raj’s room. Once you closed the door behind you on your way up to her room, it was like none of the rest of the house, or the rest of her family, existed.

  The stairs were a transition between their world and hers. There were usually a few things her mother asked me to bring upstairs: some folded clothes, some books, a bagel with cream cheese, and I would set them on her red desk on the way in.

  “Hi.” She would look up from the coffee table. Only she didn’t say “Hi” like anyone else. It had a certain sound to it. It was like a bark. A happy bark, a sharp, outgoing sound. A sound that said, “I’m happy all the time. You are welcome to join me in my happiness.” She w
ould be turning the page to a magazine, or patterning something on her coffee table, or looking for a record.

  “How’s Paul?” She looked up and smiled wickedly.

  “Good,” I said, feeling a little defensive.

  “Lucy,” Krishna said and started giggling. “She’s gonna be fucking hot!”

  “You’re not going to tell her are you?”

  “Me?” she looked up shocked. “No way! But someone will, you can bet on that!”

  TWENTY TWO

  “Where’s Lucy?” It wasn’t me that asked this time, but Glinda.

  “Yeah Paul, where is she?” someone else echoed her. People were just starting to wonder.

  Paul shrugged. He looked so cute when he shrugged. He was looking down, lying on Ziggy’s floor, leaning on one elbow.

  “Shh, it’s back on.” Someone’s arm reached out in front of my face and turned up the small black-and-white TV set with antennae, which stood precariously on a TV tray.

  “I hate it when we all stare at that stupid idiot box,” I said.

  “Shh. Star Trek.”

  It was like some holy sacrament, that stupid show. Everyone was riveted now, and that meant no one, including Paul, was paying attention to me.

  “Mr. Spock is just like Ziggy,” Krishna said, giggling.

  We all looked over at Ziggy. He was leaning back on that colorless couch with his arms folded behind his head, a slight smile on his face, his feet crossed way out in front of him.

  Every time the ship jolted around, sending Captain Kirk and his crew flying around, grabbing chairs and bolted-down desks, everyone in the room cracked up laughing. Raj would grow one of his almost smiles, and make a wry comment about the show. The more dope we smoked, the funnier the show became. Then, during the commercial, the TV would be turned down again and everyone would start grilling Paul some more about Lucy. Where was she? Aren’t you seeing her anymore? Why won’t you tell us? And then this gradually deteriorated into teasing until Paul reached over and turned the TV back up when the show started, which would silence the room again.

  Later that night, Paul and I snuck out to the back porch. We passed through a room I’d been in once before. I’d never spent any actual time in it. It was the space between the porch that hung over the backyard and the bathroom that had no shower, only an antique bathtub.

  We passed through this room on our way toward the porch, which overlooked the scraggly yard behind the house. We were back there kissing when Gay interrupted us to say she needed a ride. When I left, Paul said, “You’re coming back here, right?”

  On the ride home, I said to Gay, “Glinda doesn’t like me, does she?”

  “She’s just mad about Lucy I think. She’s weird like that. She has some bizarre sense of justice.” Gay grew very animated then, and said, “Like this one time back at Webster.” She paused and reached into my purse for a cigarette and a light. “Hey, where’s your lighter?” Then she tried the car light. It didn’t work, so she asked what happened to it. I told her about the time Lucy’s old boyfriend blew it out, and she gave up on the cig and continued with the story. “This girl came to school, I don’t remember who she was, but she had some story she was telling. Some bragging story or something like that, you know? Anyway, Glinda, I called her Sieglinda back then, she made her bring a note from her mom testifying that it was a true story.”

  Yeah, that’s a pretty funny story, I thought. So even though Glinda, or Sieglinda, seemed contemptuous of me, I had to grudgingly respect her. What a bummer.

  She was there when I returned, too. I thought maybe she would be gone, but she wasn’t. Why did she have to be there now? Now that Paul and I had nowhere else to make out. She kept having to walk over us on her way to the bathroom. She stepped way over us, going out of her way to make us feel uncomfortable.

  “Hey, do you think you guys could find someplace else for this?” she asked.

  Ziggy was still awake on the couch and I heard him laugh. Then he said, “They are fine right here. They can stay.”

  We had tried to move out of everyone’s way.

  “We could go to your house,” Paul whispered.

  I suppose we could, but somehow that didn’t sound as fun, so we didn’t.

  This became a nightly ritual, Paul and I meeting over at Ziggy’s to make out at his feet. And we weren’t the only ones. I think we had started a trend. There was Dave and Chrystal making out in one corner, lying on the floor in the dark making smacking sounds with the occasional sound of a hand slapping a roving hand away. There was me and Paul. We liked it near the freezer so Glinda would have to walk over us on her way to the bathroom. Raj was bringing a curly-haired, blonde girl over. Krishna dragged Ames in, and he immediately began interrogating Paul as to Lucy’s whereabouts. And through all of this, Ziggy sat like a king presiding over court. He sat, arms folded, always folded, leaning back on his couch. Sometimes he had his friend Richard P. there with him. Glinda was beginning to complain to Ziggy that she couldn’t bring her dates in there anymore, but Ziggy said, “They can stay. They can all stay.”

  Finally Glinda had to find another place to bring her dates, so she stopped being there. Paul and I kind of missed her walking over us on her way to the bathroom.

  Gay began bringing Walt around. I had no idea what those two were up to. You really couldn’t tell. One minute they went off together in the backyard or the porch, the next they ignored each other and watched TV.

  The situation over at Ziggy’s was becoming amusing. Dave started making jokes about it, saying things like, “Okay guys it’s a race; let’s see who can get the farthest.” Then you would hear a slap. Or you would hear, “Hey are these yours, or did I just accidently grab Krishna, I didn’t think yours were that big!” Slap.

  When Glinda stopped being around to annoy, it grew kind of old making out in the corners. So the lights would come on and the chess games would break out. Ziggy had three or four sets. We’d sit on the floor.

  Paul loved to play chess with me. He was pretty good actually, but he could never beat me. I was the only girl there who could beat any of them. The other girls seemed kind of interested in the game, except for Glinda, who never played, and had a haughty disdain for anyone who did.

  Just like back at the chess club, Ziggy and Raj usually beat me. Both their plans were so bizarre there was just no way I could understand them.

  TWENTY THREE

  Everyone was gathered in my kitchen. It seemed we had been arguing about music and the Beatles and what it means to be punk for hours, although it might have just been a few minutes. Drugs and alcohol do that to you. They change time, foreshortening it, elongating it.

  A summer breeze blew through the big kitchen window and into the Beatles/Stones argument, cooling it, making it seem beach-like and peaceful. But I wasn’t peaceful. And Krishna, standing by my icebox looking for ice cream, seemed determined to keep it that way. She argued people to her side. She even seemed to be convincing Ziggy over to her way of thinking. I started becoming visibly agitated.

  Out of the blue I shouted, “No,” and pounded both my fists on the table. Spoons and cups jumped an inch and everyone stopped their joking and talking and looked over at me. I pounded it so hard I was surprised it didn’t shatter, but that rippled glass was very thick.

  “What is it?” Ziggy asked, “What’s wrong?”

  I started to mumble something incoherent about the Beatles, and then my mother appeared in that threadbare, tattered, blue nightgown of hers that I hated.

  “What is all this noise?” she asked. “I am trying to go to sleep.”

  “Ugh!” I shouted. “Just go back upstairs!”

  I could feel everyone’s eyes on me. I could feel Paul’s, without looking up. I knew he looked confused and concerned about me. I could feel Ziggy’s too, same thing.

  “We’re sorry, Mrs. Anderson,” said one of them. I think it might have been Krishna. “We’ll be quiet.”

  My mom went back upstairs.

&n
bsp; I didn’t want to be quiet. I didn’t. So I shouted something really rude and loud at her, and I saw Ziggy shake his head at me.

  “Should we just leave?” I think it was Krishna again who said this, but I replied “No, to hell with her,” and continued, “let’s just be as loud as we want.”

  They all stared at me. There was some nervous laughter from Krishna, and then Gay broke the tension somehow, with some rude joke that made everyone laugh. I didn’t hear her joke. I was too full of blind rage, and too confused as to why.

  Then, to break the silence, I heard myself say, “The Beatles are way more talented than the Stones.”

  “Who cares about talent?” Krishna asked.

  “What do you mean who cares? That’s just silly,” I said.

  “The Sex Pistols have no talent, and I like them more for not having any,” she said.

  “What do you mean they have no talent?” asked Dave. “There is no better song than ‘Bodies’. Nobody else can scream that loud.”

  “The Sex Pistols are fun, but they are clearly not talented. It isn’t good music,” I said.

  “It’s not good music,” Ziggy said. “It’s totally irrelevant whether they are good; it’s actually better if they’re not.”

  And that’s how we started on the topic of abortion. Because of the whole issue of whether Sid Vicious was talented.

  “So it is relevant,” I said, “because it’s better if they’re not. In fact–I get it now. It’s better if they have no talent and say nothing and do nothing artistic whatsoever. Thanks Ziggy. Suddenly I understand all of modern art as well.”

  Ziggy gave me a thoughtful look, and then Gay broke the whole thing up by blurting out that they were talented; who else could write, “She was a girl from Birmingham! She just had an abortion!”

  “Shh, you want her mom to come down here again?” Krishna said.

  “Yeah, I do!” Gay said. “I want to check out that nightgown she was wearing again!” Gay continued screaming out the graphic lyrics to that song “Bodies”, which was about abortion.