by Karen Bender
“I’ll go with you,” said Ella.
“No,” said Vivien.
“Why not?”
“Because,” said Vivien. “I’ll be right back.” She dashed out of the room.
Ella started to follow her, but Vivien had already disappeared by the time she reached the doorway. Ella stood there, alone.
Vivien was trying to be a good daughter to her in ways that Ella did not quite approve of or understand. Sometimes, Ella would open the door to her apartment and there was Vivien, with a roast chicken from Junior’s or a box of Kleenex. “I was just in the neighborhood,” she’d say, as though she always toted around a roast chicken in her station wagon. Sometimes she brought a supermarket bouquet of roses, swathed in cellophane and dripping water, which made her visit seem even more precisely planned. She’d move through the living room, peppering her conversation with pointed questions. “I love your hairdo! Did you call the electrician? The hall light’s still out.”
“Feed your own family with it,” Ella might say, indicating the chicken that Vivien was trying, with some obviousness, to slip into the refrigerator. “What? With what?” Vivien said, rushing into the living room, swiping a mint from the crystal dish. When Ella did eat the chicken—she could never bring herself to throw it out—she did so as though not to admit its presence. She would pull off a leg and eat it over the kitchen sink. She made a point not to slice it properly or put it on a plate.
She could buy her own chicken, her own Kleenex. It was simply a waste of Vivien’s time to bring these items to her now.
The hallway leading from Lena’s room was hazy with fluorescence, and some of the doors were slightly open. There were cheap, sentimental oil paintings on the walls—of fruit baskets and Parisian streets and noble St. Bernard dogs gazing into a snowy sky. Ella thought she heard the sounds of whisperings in the air. There were no words that she could identify—they were simply hushed and intense and perhaps saying things about her. Ella tried to follow the sounds, until she realized that she was hearing the whir of a plastic fan at the end of the hall.
She had no idea where Lena was. She was aware now of a dampness in her armpits, a sobbing sound in her breath. She wanted to walk throughout the entire building, looking into all the rooms, but the hallway suddenly seemed unsafe. Heading back to Lena’s room, she sat down in a sunny spot on the bed. It was as though she existed only in this room, in its warm sun and softness. She watched the tiny bits of snow still floating, slow and aimless, inside the snowdomes, falling onto the miniature skiers and hotels and pine trees; she waited for Vivien to return.
Vivien came through the door about twenty minutes later. She lurched into the room, jangling her car keys. Her expression of frustration shut off as she entered the bedroom, like a light quickly dimming.
“I’ve looked everywhere; they’re not here.”
“Well, where are they?” Ella asked, glad to accuse someone.
“You tell me.”
Ella remembered Shelley and Lena hurrying down the hallway together, moving toward an unknown place.
“They went on an errand.”
“What kind of errand?”
“To buy soda. Toothpaste. Soap.”
Ella slowly smoothed the cuffs of her blouse. She hated the pleading quality of her voice.
“Why did you let them go?”
Ella turned away and looked out at the light-spangled garden. A long row of pink pansies stretched across the yard like a bright, fragile seam stitched across the earth. Ella waited for a good answer to reveal itself to her. But she had done something wrong. She looked up at Vivien with large eyes.
“I don’t know,” she said.
Vivien took a sharp, deep breath. “You know that we told Shelley not to come here after what happened. You know that.”
“I don’t think you told me.”
“I did.” Vivien picked Ella’s sweater from a chair.
Ella’s shoulders curved forward in the posture of someone who had been scolded. She remembered holding the phone, the kitchen curtains fluttering, as Vivien told her the rule about Shelley’s visits. She did not remember Vivien’s exact words.
Vivien held out Ella’s sweater. “Put this on,” she said. Ella thrust her arms into the sleeves and Vivien smoothed the sweater on her shoulders.
“Where are we going?” asked Ella.
“We have to look for them.”
Ella folded her hands and held them, trembling, in front of her chest.
Vivien had her purse over her shoulder. “Ready?” she asked, in a softer voice.
“Your leotard’s dirty,” Ella said, reaching forward and rubbing a spot. “You need a better detergent.”
Vivien looked at her mother’s face. “Okay,” she said. She put her hand gently on Ella’s shoulder, and they walked out, Vivien closing the door of Lena’s room. The two of them headed down the sidewalk toward the station wagon. Butterflies and silver moths curved happy, crooked paths in the air.
Nine
WHEN LENA was fifteen, Ella decided to tell her the Rules of Being a Woman. She could not ignore Lena’s adolescence anymore. It had taken the seven-year-old girls in the Van Nuys Community Pool locker room to tell Ella that Lena had breasts now. Lena had joined the beginner swim class, and on the first Wednesday afternoon, she stood in the locker room, a fifteen-year-old looming over several seven-year-olds. The first time she peeled off her wet swimsuit, they stared at her body with a new respect. Their giggles, clear as bells, quieted, and they gave her room.
Ella, holding Lena’s towel for her, looked at Lena more critically. Lena’s breasts were beautiful, like small tulips, but Ella understood that they had no clear purpose. They would never, she thought, be kissed by a man; they would never be suckled by an infant. Lena’s skin shone in the locker room, innocent not like a woman’s skin, but like a child’s—available in a way that adult skin was not.
That was the first event. Then Lena tried to figure herself out. She sauntered through the house bare-chested, examining her new breasts, pulling at her nipples. Sometimes when she sat at the kitchen table, she would pluck pubic hairs and hold them up, curiously, to the kitchen light. One day Ella came on her in the backyard with a neighborhood child. The girl was sitting beside Lena, whose small breast was in the child’s mouth. The two of them looked peaceful. “What are you doing!” shrieked Ella, and the girls popped apart, both looking with interest at the place where the child’s mouth had been. Ella wanted to slap them, especially when Lena said, wistfully, “I just wanted to see what it was like.”
That evening, Ella sat beside Lena at the kitchen table. She had a yellow tablet with a list of carefully considered rules. She had written them with a black ballpoint pen to make them seem official. “Here,” said Ella, “are some Rules of Being a Woman. You must follow every one, all the time.”
“Why?”
Ella thought. “Otherwise, you won’t be a woman.”
“What would I be?”
Ella hesitated. “I don’t know.”
Vivien was at the table, too, doing her homework and listening.
“One,” Ella said, “you can’t walk through the house barechested.”
Lena sat perfectly still.
“Two, don’t put your breast in anyone’s mouth. Three, don’t put your hands in your pants.”
“Even when I go peepee?”
“Only then. Four, don’t talk to boys. Smile nicely but walk away. Five, don’t get into a car with strangers.”
“I talk to boys,” Vivien said.
“This is between me and Lena.”
“I go peepee without my hands,” Lena said, urgently. “Sometimes I do!”
Vivien got up and read over the list. “I don’t always wash my hands before I pick up fruit,” she said. “I don’t always brush my hair at eight-thirty in the morning.”
“All right, all right!” said Ella, shielding the list with her hands. “Sit.”
“I forget everything,” Lena grumble
d.
“You are not going to forget,” said Ella.
The sisters looked at her. They were like flowers in a desert, ready to drink whatever she said.
“I want a list, too,” said Vivien.
“You can have some of mine,” Lena offered. She grabbed a sheet and began to tear it in half.
“Hey!” said Ella, standing up and grabbing back the paper. “Both of you. Calm down.”
“What’s six!” Lena wailed.
“I have a rule,” said Vivien, excited, “No sleep before ten!”
“No asparagus!” said Lena.
Now they were hysterical; Ella left the room.
There were issues for which Ella had not even imagined rules. Lena did not understand about menstruation, so each month presented a new problem. Once, she forgot to strap on a Kotex, and left streaks of blood on a neighbor’s couch. Another time, Ella found her sitting at the kitchen table, her hands cupping her genital area; she was trying to catch the blood. She thought she’d been injured and she wanted a Band-Aid.
At least she did get her period. Ella marked Lena’s cycle on a calendar and checked each month to make sure it occurred. She flipped through fashion magazines with a secret ambition—to find clothes that would make Lena pretty enough to be treated well by other people, but not so pretty that boys would be drawn to her. She decided that Lena would wear loose, flowered dresses that ended right below her knee. Her auburn hair could be decorated with rayon headbands or, on occasion, hats decorated with small, delicious-looking fruits. Her bras would be simple, but would have complicated hooks that only Ella could manage. When they whisked through May Company together, Lena slowed down by the makeup counter, delighted by the glossy, oyster-shaped compacts, the seductive, silver mirrors.
“You don’t need those,” Ella said.
Lena hung by the counter, unconvinced.
“Honey, you’re so beautiful in your natural state, you don’t want any cosmetics interfering,” said Ella, and, to her relief, Lena seemed to accept this as fact.
In the ladies’ clothing department, Ella marched through the racks and picked out dresses. Lena followed her in a haze of shyness; she didn’t know what was all right to want. When Ella saw a dress that fit her specifications, she held it out to Lena with happy enthusiasm. “This!” she said. “I know. This is you.” They went into a dressing room, and Ella brought salesgirls over to tell Lena how wonderful she looked. The dresses had the unusual effect of making Lena appear ageless. As she turned around in the dressing room, she looked both older and younger than she was.
One day, Lena picked out a dress by herself. The May Company had reduced a rack of orange dresses that had not sold during the summer, and Lena was enchanted by the color. She fingered the cotton sleeves and gave Ella a beseeching look. “I want this,” she said.
Ella looked it over. “It’s the same color Henrietta wears,” she said. “You’ll look just like her.” Henrietta was the crossing guard at the intersection near the school.
The idea of wearing a uniform thrilled Lena. She wore that dress only on Thursdays, and each Thursday was a special day.
Vivien walked home with Lena every afternoon. When Vivien started her dance classes, taking a bus to the studio, Ella went to fetch Lena. Lena always waited in the shadow of a large eucalyptus tree, its silver-leafed branches stretching upward like celebratory arms. The other students were socializing on the lawn, their voices frenetic. Lena sat on a wall, clasping her lunch pail in her lap, and watched the kindergarten children playing next door.
One afternoon when Ella arrived to pick her up, Lena was not sitting in her usual spot. Ella stood by the empty wall and waited—twenty minutes, then thirty—and her heart grew chilled.
She looked for Lena in the crowd of teenagers. The circles of young men and women formed soft, interlinking rings of desire. Many of them had attended Lena’s elementary school and middle school, but they had become unrecognizable with age. The boys sported hair slick with pomade; the girls lifted hands flirtatiously to adjust the collars of the boys’ shirts. Ella touched the arm of a blond girl she remembered; her name was Marjorie. Now Marjorie was about sixteen, elegantly dragging on a cigarette. She looked at Ella warily.
“Marjorie. Have you seen her?” Ella said.
She was startled. “Who?”
“Lena. Lena Rose.”
“The slow girl?”
Ella winced. “She wore a bright orange dress today.”
The girl shrugged. “No.”
“Oh, yes, Lena,” said a boy, smirking. “She went on a date.”
“With who?”
“A whole bunch of them. They went out on the town.”
“What are you talking about? Where?”
“Can’t say.”
He wore a smile the way the girls wore their hair clips: lightly, easily, on and off. A deadly feeling poured through Ella’s heart. “What do you mean?” she asked. “A date?”
His eyes had settled appreciatively on Marjorie’s shapely calf.
Ella stepped up to him. “What did you do to her?”
His eyes snapped back, stupid. “Nothing!”
“If anyone bothers her,” Ella said, “I’ll kill you. Do you hear me? I will shoot you with a gun.”
The two teenagers froze. They stepped back, their hands raised. “Hey, lady,” said the boy. “Why don’t you cool it?”
Ella rushed through the crowd. She felt crazy, searching. Lena was nowhere to be found.
And then she spotted the bright orange figure heading with determination down the street, a group of children swirling around her. Ella ran. Just at that moment, Lena stopped in front of a house and pointed to the door.
“I’ll watch you,” Lena said. “Go.”
A girl of about six trotted up to the door and rang the bell. She waved to the rest of them and went inside.
Ella had caught up with them. “What are you doing?” she asked Lena.
“I’m walking them home.”
“Why?” asked Ella.
“I’m wearing orange,” said Lena proudly.
The children observed Ella. “My brother walks us usually,” said a little girl, “but he was sick today.”
The children looked obediently at Lena. “Everybody,” said Lena, “make a line. Quick!” They shuffled into formation, and Lena looked them over. “That’s good.”
Lena faced them. “Daniel,” she said, “say where.”
“Turn at this street, please,” said Daniel.
Lena led the line down the sidewalk, and Ella trailed behind. Lena was pleased with herself. She walked each child to his front yard and said goodbye. After Lena had delivered all the children to their homes, she walked to her own, occasionally glancing back at Ella; on Lena’s face was a cool expression of pride.
The next day, Lena heard from the teenage boy that her mother had threatened to shoot him. When she got home, she wanted to know why.
“No reason,” said Ella, lightly. “Just stay away from him.”
“But they like me.”
“Don’t go near them, honey. They’re bad boys.”
“He let me feel his muscle.”
Ella immediately said, “That’s rule number seventeen of Being a Woman. You don’t feel a boy’s muscle.”
“It was round,” Lena said.
“Rule eighteen. Don’t feel round ones.”
“Other girls feel muscles,” said Lena irritably.
“You’re not like other girls.”
The words just flew out of her. Lena wrapped her arms protectively around herself and stepped back. “Am I a boy?”
Her daughter stood before her.
“No,” Ella said, ashamed, “you’re not a boy. You’re Lena. You’re my darling.”
“I like to walk them home.”
“Okay,” said Ella, wondering how she could trail Lena each day so that her daughter could continue doing this. “And you were very good at it.”
She went to her daughter
and grasped her hands. They were limp, unresponsive. She shook off Ella’s hands and slid away from her.
“What, darling?”
“Nothing.”
Lena backed off farther.
“Tell me.”
Lena rubbed her fist against her mouth. “Are you going to shoot me?” Lena asked.
Lena graduated from high school on a hot day. The wind blew in the sweet, ancient fragrance of the desert; the grass was dry and brown. Lena stood with 219 other black-capped graduates of her high school on the faded baseball diamond. Their gowns rippled in the pure heat of the Santa Ana, making them look like a battalion of superheroes, and their hats flew into the air with the sound of hundreds of wings. It was 1948, and their futures spread out, sparkling, before them.
With the passing years, Ella had watched Lena’s classmates evolve into adults. Some changed into waitresses, and Ella spotted them at local restaurants, smartly writing down orders on their pads. Some got jobs building highways or planes. Others married and moved to new neighborhoods—Santa Monica, Redondo Beach. Some enrolled at Valley College or UCLA.
The look of the neighborhood shifted; the younger brothers and sisters became the older ones, and the older ones went off to live their own lives. They all assumed one thing, with absolute confidence: motion. But Lena was still. Every morning, after Vivien left for school, Lena got dressed and walked to the kitchen. Slowly, she ate a bowl of Wheaties—then another. Her spoon clinked against the bowl with an earnest sound, like a small animal trying to dig to a new place.
After breakfast, Lena would move from the kitchen to a chaise longue in the backyard. She kept a pair of heart-shaped sunglasses in the dirt of the potted geranium, and she would lie outside all morning wearing those sunglasses, even on cloudy days. An edgy, demanding quality crept into her voice. “I want my lunch now,” she’d call in the middle of the morning. “On a plate.” She glared at Ella as though her mother were a servant, became picky about the presentation of her food. She refused to eat a mound of cottage cheese that Ella had arranged nicely on a lettuce leaf. She wandered through the house, leaving half-eaten fruit on end tables. Her high school figure softened, swelled.
