D, My Name Is Danita

by Norma Fox Mazer

  “This way,” Bunny was yelling. “Over here, Emily.” Just as I finally located her in the crowd of kids, she ran toward me and grabbed my arm. “Emily, look at us!”

  “Oh, no!” We were wearing practically identical outfits, flowered jeans, black cotton sweaters, and black boots.

  “I can’t believe this,” Bunny said. “I went for these clothes half asleep; I didn’t even think about what I was going to wear.”

  “I did.” I’d stayed in bed ten minutes after the alarm, figuring out my clothes exactly. Of course, being best friends, it wasn’t the first time we’d ever come to school dressed alike. We used to do it all the time when we were in the sixth and seventh grade, but at least then it was planned.

  “Well, our earrings are different, anyway,” I said. I was wearing dangly purple bead earrings that I’d bought on sale. Bunny had on the Guatemalan ones her father had given her after one of his trips. They were handmade little knitted dolls in native costume: a tiny man in her left ear and a tiny woman in her right ear.

  “Let’s braid my hair,” Bunny said as we went up the stairs into the building.

  “Then we really will look like twins.” I’d done my hair in a single braid down my back, with a bow at the top.

  “I should only be so lucky. You gorgeous thing!”

  I blushed. Bunny is always doing that, talking as if I’m a beauty queen or something. Even though I’m aware that it’s just her way of building me up, building my confidence, it sort of works. When I’m with her, I do feel much prettier than usual.

  In the girls’ room, I started brushing and braiding her hair. It’s thick and honey-colored. Mine is sort of wispy and dark. I like her hair much better.

  “Did you watch Meridith Finkle’s show last night?” Bunny sighed. “If I could ever be one tenth as funny!”

  Bunny wants to be a clown or a comedian. She has a million jokes and a rubber face. I think she’s going to be famous someday.

  “I love her voice and the way she walks and everything about her. Her timing is exquisite.… I wanna grow up to be Meridith Finkle!” she honked in a flat voice, just like Meridith Finkle’s.

  I laughed. “You’ll have to get fat first.”

  “Oh, don’t say it!” She puffed out her cheeks. “Shad made fudge last night. My whole diet down the drain. Now I’ll have to be extra good all week.”

  Shad is Bunny’s nine-year-old brother. She also has an older sister, Star, who’s away at college studying physics. They’re all smart in that family, but Shad is so smart, I think he might get to college before either Bunny or me.

  “I was eating my fudge and I was eating Shad’s fudge,” Bunny went on. “I couldn’t stop. I had a fudge hunger, a fudge craving, a fudge obsession. Shad got so mad he tried to beat me up.” She snickered. “That skinny little pacifist didn’t know who he was tangling with.”

  Bunny went on talking, but suddenly I sort of blanked out. Did you ever have that happen to you? Someone innocently says a word, and all at once there’s this moment from the past in your mind that pushes everything else away. It was the word tangle that did it. That, plus braiding Bunny’s hair, I think, because the memory was about braiding: my father combing and braiding my hair one morning about seven years ago.

  It was so strange. There I was, in the girls’ bathroom, calmly pulling one strand of Bunny’s hair over the other, and yet I seemed to be there, too, back in the living room of our old house on Oak Street. The feeling was so vivid my cheeks got hot, my whole face flared up.

  In my mind I could see little things like a crumpled tissue on the floor near the brown couch and a loose thread on my father’s sweater, and I could feel the boniness of his knee as I leaned against him. I heard him calling me Miss Tangles and saying that Mom wasn’t out of bed yet, so he’d braid me this morning. And I remembered how I was convinced my father was the tallest man in the world and the nicest and definitely the most fun.

  “My hair doesn’t look good this way, Em,” Bunny said. “We gotta take it out.”

  Her voice startled me. My stomach jumped. It was like being awakened from a dream. As suddenly as it had come, the memory, the whole thing, the realness of it was gone.

  “You can wear a braid, Em, because you’ve got great bones,” Bunny was saying, “but pulling my hair back makes my front teeth look even huge-er.” She started yanking out the braid. “I hate these teeth! They stick out.”

  “They do not.” I pushed her hands away from her hair. “Let me do that, you’re making a mess.… Did I ever tell you how my father used to make up songs for me?”

  “Only about a million times. And my teeth do too stick out. It’s the curse of my life.”

  “I remember one he used to sing. ‘Frogboy is comin’ to visit Emilybird, ooh la ooh la, bring her some green guggy food, ooh la ooh la …’”

  Bunny looked at me in the mirror. “Pardon me if I don’t comment; I don’t want to insult your father’s talent. I like him too much. Remember when he took us up in the balloon?”

  I nodded. “He never writes,” I said.

  “Oh, Em, don’t start getting depressed.”

  “He never calls, either.”

  “When my father goes away on a trip, he doesn’t write or call, either.”

  “My father’s not away on a trip, Bunny.”

  First bell rang. Bunny put her arm through mine. “Smile. Or I’ll have to tell you a joke.” I forced my lips up. “You gotta do better than that,” Bunny said. “I see a joke is needed here.”

  “Bunny, shut up, please.” Why couldn’t I just be gloomy and depressed if that’s the way I happened to feel?

  “Did you hear what the ceiling said to the wall?”

  “Nooo.”

  “Hold me up, I’m plastered.”

  “Drunk joke, ugh.”

  “A guy spent thousands of dollars to have his family tree checked out … he discovered that he was a sap.”

  “Bun-ny.” But I laughed that time. “That was a terrible joke. I laugh at anything.”

  “You are my best audience,” she admitted.

  I dug into my sack and pulled out a copy of Great Bones, the book I’d finished reading last night. “You have to read this.”

  “Who’s the cute guy on the cover?”

  She always wanted to know that. “You’re going to love this one. There’s one part in there that’s so hilarious, where the girl says, ‘My name is Jan Bones. Call me Jan or call me Bones.’”

  Bunny looked at me, raising her eyebrows. “That’s as funny as it gets?” She flipped through the pages. “Any hot scenes?”

  “A few.”

  “How far do I have to read to get to them?”

  “On page fifty, they kiss—”

  “Fifty! Not before that?”

  “Bunny, it’s worth the wait. When they kiss, it’s so romantic. When I read that part, I could imagine myself being Jan. They’re near a waterfall and I could practically hear the water, and it was like I was Jan—”

  “You have a great imagination, Em.”

  “—and I was trying to tell him I wanted him to kiss me.”

  “What do you mean, you wanted him to—I thought you said they did kiss.”

  “They did, but first she had to convince him.” I stuffed the book in her knapsack. “Promise you’ll read it this weekend.”

  “I’ll read it, I’ll read it.”

  Chapter 2

  I hate Sundays. We all just hang around the house. Mom acts tired. The twins fight. And I do homework. “I can’t think of an opening for this essay,” I said. “Does anyone want to help me?”

  It was almost suppertime, but the lunch dishes were still on the table. I cleared a space for myself at one end. The twins had been playing Monopoly until Wilma got mad because Chris was winning. Now she was in the living room, shrieking over her favorite TV show. I call it Stupidest Home Videos. What’s so funny about a woman getting her head stuck in a toilet? Or a man on a ladder with his pants falling dow
n?

  Chris was lying on his back in the middle of the kitchen floor, playing with his Original Melted Snowman paperweight. Dad gave it to him ages ago. Inside the glass are a tiny black hat and two carrots floating in water. Get it? We’re all fairly sick of the joke, but Chris won’t go anywhere without the Original Melted Snowman.

  Did I say my sister and brother were twins? Not identical, naturally. Fraternal. Two eggs. “Two very different eggs,” Mom says. Chris is like her, slow and sort of dreamy. I think I’m like my father, but Wilma is just—Wilma! “She’s a force of nature,” Bunny says.

  “Can someone help me with this essay?” I repeated. I meant my mother. She can have good ideas about writing. She got A’s in college. But right now she had her head stuck in the refrigerator—like another scene from Stupidest Home Videos! Lately, she irritates me a lot. The way she doesn’t finish her sentences. And the way she dresses. She’ll go outside to wash the car or get the newspaper in anything, even her green running pants with the baggy seat.

  “I need help,” I said.

  Mom had finally shut the refrigerator. But now she was looking out the window over the sink. We live on the second floor of a three-family apartment building. It’s a tall, narrow house. Mr. Linaberry, our landlord, lives downstairs from us, which makes Mom constantly worry that we’ll be too noisy and disturb him. The Falansons live upstairs. There are only two of them, but when they’re home it sounds like a herd of galloping horses trampling over our heads. They never seem to worry about being too noisy and disturbing us.

  Where we live now is nothing like the house we had until the divorce. Mom and Dad’s bedroom was bigger than our living room here. Mom doesn’t even have a bedroom now. She sleeps in the living room, on the convertible couch. Our real house was better in every way. Everything was better then. Even the street name and number were better! 215 Oak Street, on the east side of the city. Now we live downtown at 9½ Degler Avenue. 9½? Degler?

  Last month, on the twelfth, was two years my parents have been divorced. It’s not exactly a joyous anniversary. I’d be just as happy if I didn’t remember the date. After Dad moved out, he called and came to see us a lot. Then he and Marcia moved to Chicago. They’re both lawyers. “Your father has a new life,” Mom told us. Right. After that, for all we saw of him, he might as well have been at the North Pole and named Robert Edwin Peary instead of Maxwell Boots.

  After my half sister, Rachel, was born, I was curious if she was like me or Wilma. Or completely different. When Dad sent pictures, you couldn’t tell. She was just a baby and sort of blobby. We were supposed to visit them a couple times, but it never worked out. Things kept coming up, like Dad having extra work and the baby getting sick.

  I glanced at the clock. “If I don’t have an opening line, I can’t write this!”

  “Line …?” my mother said. Finally!

  “Yes! For my essay.”

  “You want me to, ah—”

  “Yes! It’s due tomorrow morning.”

  “You shouldn’t put things off to the last moment.” Mom leaned over my shoulder. “And the topic is—?”

  “A Wish, a Dream.” That was the only thing on my paper so far, besides Mr. Pelter’s name and room number.

  “‘A wish, a dream,’” Mom repeated. “Well, when I was going to school, what I did was take the title and go with it … and you know it worked, so …” Her voice dropped away. “It’s …” She nodded. “Yes. Useful method.”

  Bunny claims my mother has never, ever finished a whole sentence in her life. Slight exaggeration, but you do have to know how to read between the lines. Usually, I don’t have any trouble. “You did what with the title?” I tapped my ballpoint on the table.

  Mom took a pile of dishes and stepped over Chris to the sink. “How about spaghetti and …” She ran water over the dishes.

  Spaghetti and … probably meant spaghetti and meatballs for supper. Though it could be spaghetti and butter. Or spaghetti and garlic. I tried to think about my essay, but how could I with the TV blasting and Chris mumbling to himself and Mom crashing dishes around in the sink?

  “Mom, what was your suggestion for my essay?” She was looking out the window again, pinching her upper lip. What was so fascinating out the window? I stepped over Chris and looked out the window, too. All I saw was the scrawny little backyard, Mr. Linaberry’s red pickup truck, the shed where he had his welding business, and Mr. Linaberry himself, raking up leaves.

  “Don’t you miss our real house?” I said to Mom.

  “Sometimes.”

  In the yard below, Mr. Linaberry was cleaning matted leaves off the rake prongs. I didn’t know much about him, except that he was an awful grouch and a widower and had one son who lived in Denver, Colorado. I also knew he was very neat and clean. Right after we first moved in, Mom had sent me down to his apartment once or twice to ask things, like where the fuse box was. That’s when I’d seen his apartment, neat neat neat and dark dark dark. It looked like nobody lived there. It was full of old furniture with wooden arms and claw feet.

  I didn’t see how Mom could even stand to look out the window at him. He was so ugly, short, with a potbelly and a balding head. And he never smiled, never. Not once in almost two years had I seen him smile, and whenever Bunny came over, no matter how many times I politely introduced her, he didn’t say Hello or Glad to meet you, or anything like that. He just barked, “Hello, you!”

  I sat down again. “Mom, you were telling me something for my essay, and you never finished.” I started out sounding reasonable. Then I yelled, “Mom!” I was in such a bad mood, and I had to do something to get her attention.

  She turned. “Emily?” she said, as if she’d just realized I was in the room.

  “My essay, Mom. My essay!”

  “Oh, yes. Well, what I would do is try to incorporate the title in the opening paragraph. Start right off with …”

  “You mean start with wishes and dreams?” I stared at my paper. I was still blank.

  The phone rang. “I’ll get it, nobody take it, it’s for me,” Wilma called. She came running into the kitchen. “It’s Max,” she said. “I called him this morning.”

  “You called your father?” Mom said. “When did you do that?”

  “When you were taking a shower this morning. I talked to whatsherface. I told her Max should call me.”

  “Marcia’s her name,” I said.

  The phone rang again. “Oh, I just know it’s Max,” Wilma said. “Oh, please, I’m praying that it’s Max.”

  “Wilma,” my mother said. “Wilma, the phone bill! You can’t just go calling long distance. How long did you talk?”

  “I’ll pay for it,” Wilma said.

  “With what?” I said. “Your nickel collection?”

  My sister picked up the phone. “Boots residence. Dad?” She caught herself. “Max?” Then she held out the phone to me. “It’s for you.”

  “Who is it?”

  “One guess,” she said disgustedly.

  I put the receiver to my ear. “Hi, Bunny.”

  “What are you doing?” Bunny asked. “I’m trying to write that essay. It’s due tomorrow morning. It’s driving me crazy! You have to help me, Emily.”

  “I haven’t written my own yet.”

  “Oh, you’ll just dash it off. I know you. Come over here and we’ll work on them together. Eat supper with us. My father will drive you home later. Just think, Emily, Shad can make eyes at you at the table! He’ll be in little boys’ heaven.” She’s always saying Shad has a crush on me. Even though he’s only nine and still in elementary school, it makes me somewhat self-conscious around him.

  Mom drove me over to the Larrabees’. I didn’t look when we passed our old house on Oak Street.

  Bunny met me at the door and threw her arms around me. “Wait until you hear my new joke. A dog went into a pizza place, sat down at the counter, and ordered a large pizza with everything. He ate it all. ‘Excellent,’ he said, when he was done. The cook s
aid, ‘You’re a pretty unusual dog.’ ‘Why?’ the dog said. ‘Well,’ the cook said, ‘the other dog that comes in here only orders a slice.’”

  I laughed.

  “Thank you! I told my father this joke, and he didn’t even curl his lip. How am I supposed to hone my comedy skills if he won’t laugh at my jokes? Let’s go upstairs.”

  “Did you finish Great Bones?”

  “I stayed up last night reading it.”

  “I told you it was good.”

  “Ma, Emily’s here, we’re going to work on our essays until supper,” Bunny yelled. “You’ve got to inspire me,” she said.

  I told her what Mom had suggested about the title and the first line. “But I still don’t have my opening,” I said. “If I had that, I know I could write the rest.” Just as I said it, I thought of it. The perfect first line. It would lead me right through the entire essay. The deepest wish of my life is also a dream.

  I sat down at Bunny’s desk and started writing. “The deepest wish of my life is also a dream. It’s for my parents to be together again, for us to be a family the way we were once. Only it isn’t just a dream, it’s an impossible dream.”

  Chapter 3

  I was in the lunch line, waiting to buy a carton of milk, when someone behind me said, “If you were the North Star and twinkled, I’d follow you, so I wouldn’t get lost.”

  I looked around.

  A boy in a green T-shirt smiled at me. “Hi!” He was big, with brown eyes, tall and sturdy. Big all over—big arms, big legs, a big head.

  I picked up a piece of cheesecake wrapped in foil and a container of milk.

  “Uh-oh,” he said, behind me, “do you know what that cheesecake has in it? Everything but cheese. All chemicals and junk and stuff. Nothing natural.”

  “How do you know that?”