Alice In-Between

by Phyllis Reynolds Naylor

  I had only been there two or three minutes when a car drove up and out stepped Loretta Jenkins. I was all ready to spring to my feet and go warn Lester when she waved. I decided I wasn’t God. I couldn’t be in two places at the same time, so I might as well stay put.

  “How you doing, Alice?” she said, coming up the walk in a pair of pink leggings and a black halter top.

  Should I lie to save Lester? Should I say he wasn’t here? I could always say he was playing cards with friends or something.

  “Les around?” she asked, and I could see that the polish on her fingernails and toenails matched her pants.

  “He went down the street to play cards with some friends,” I said. Which was better? Honesty or saving your brother’s life?

  Her face fell. “Heck. I saw his car here, and …”

  “Hey, Al, we have any more suntan lotion?” came Lester’s voice as he walked out onto the porch in his swim trunks, and then he stopped dead still.

  “You’re back!” I cried.

  “Huh?” said Lester.

  “Must have been a short game,” I said, turning around and raising and lowering my eyelids like blinking warning lights.

  “Oh … yeah. Well, I made a few baskets, so it was okay.”

  I didn’t dare look at Loretta. But I guess she wasn’t even listening, because she crooned, “Soaking up the old sun, huh?”

  He gave her a weak smile. “Looks that way.”

  “You’re a nature lover, Les, I can tell,” she said. “You’d rather be outdoors than in. Right?”

  “Well, it depends, but …”

  I could see that Lester was going to do himself in. Any moment now he’d agree to go camping with Loretta and wouldn’t even realize it.

  I slipped back inside, ran through the house, and out the back door, where Crystal was baking her beautiful bosom.

  “Crystal,” I said, kneeling down beside her. “Remember how Lester and I saved you from the Octopus?”

  Crystal took off her sunglasses and looked at me.

  “Well, we need you now! Lester is in big trouble!”

  “What?”

  “All you have to do is walk out on the front porch.”

  “Why?”

  “Just do it, Crystal! Hurry!”

  Crystal got up and fastened her bra in back. Then she went in the back door, through the house, and, with me tagging along behind, stepped out onto the front porch.

  “You’d love it, Les, really! A tent right beside the lake, with just you and me and …” Loretta stopped talking as suddenly as if we’d turned off a voice on the radio.

  I didn’t stick around to see what happened next. Lester told me later that I had saved his life. I didn’t know then that when Pamela, Elizabeth, and I took the train to Chicago, one of us would be the one needing rescue.

  6

  OF HEAVEN AND HELL

  I SPENT THE REST OF THE DAY WASHING all my sweaters and putting them away in the trunk in the attic. It’s a huge trunk that Mom and Dad bought when they were first married, I guess. You could put Pamela, Elizabeth, and me in it along with our clothes and send us anyplace in the country. About half of it is used for storing our out-of-season stuff, and the other half is used for old photos and letters and other keepsakes.

  I was just about to close the lid when I saw a bit of peach-colored cloth sticking out beneath some scrap-books on the keepsake side, and pulled it out. It was a rayon nightgown, long and straight and sort of clingy. I realized I could just about fit into it, so I carried it down to my room.

  Standing in front of the mirror, I held it up in front of me, then slipped off my jeans and shirt and pulled it on over my head. It felt really strange to be wearing a gown that Mom had worn. It was too big, of course, because Mom was on the tall side, Lester said. It hugged my waist and hips, but there were baggy pockets where the breasts should be.

  I was turning around real slowly, studying my rear end in the mirror, when I saw Dad stop outside my half-open door and stare.

  “Just found it in the trunk, Dad, and thought I’d try it on,” I said, a little embarrassed.

  “It’s your mother’s, Al.”

  “I know.”

  “Sort of large, don’t you think?”

  “In places.”

  “If you need a new gown, I’ll buy you one.”

  “No, it’s okay. I was just curious.”

  As soon as he left, I got out of the gown as fast as I could. I wondered what he’d felt seeing me in it, and how much it still hurt him that she was gone. A lot, I’ll bet.

  I was right, because after I’d put the gown back and had gone downstairs, I found Dad sitting out on the porch, leaning against a pillar, hands in his lap, just staring out across the treetops.

  I sat down across from him, hands in my lap. “Sorry, Dad,” I said.

  He looked over as though he’d just realized I was there. “Why? What did you do?”

  “Reminded you of Mom.”

  “You don’t have to put on her clothes to do that, Al. Sometimes, just the way you smile or turn your head reminds me. But that’s okay. I don’t want to forget.”

  I thought about that for a while. “Do you think about Mom when you’re out with Miss Summers?” I asked.

  “Sometimes.”

  “Does it … I mean … does it keep you from loving Miss Summers?”

  Dad smiled then. “I don’t know yet,” he said.

  Elizabeth and I rode our bikes over to Pamela’s the next Saturday afternoon. Her dad was paying her to wash their car, so we pitched in and helped, and when we were through, we lay out in her side yard under the sycamore and drank Cokes.

  “I’ve decided what I’m going to wear on my wedding night,” I said suddenly.

  Elizabeth turned over onto her stomach. “I don’t know why you always think about things like that, Alice.”

  “I don’t always,” I said. “I think about homework and Dad and Lester and what we’re going to have for dinner … about Patrick and music and teachers, but sometimes I think about my wedding night.”

  “So what are you going to wear?” Pamela wanted to know.

  “A long, red, clingy gown with spaghetti straps,” I said.

  Pamela whistled. “What are you going to wear, Elizabeth?”

  “I don’t even know if I’m going to marry,” Elizabeth answered.

  “But if you do, what do you think you’d wear?” I asked.

  “I don’t even think about it.”

  Pamela and I looked at each other and laughed. “What she should do is wear her wedding dress—the whole thing, veil and all,” said Pamela, “and let her husband undress her slowly.”

  “Pamela!” Elizabeth said angrily. “I’m not going to lie here and listen to this.”

  “Okay, we’ll talk about Pamela then,” I said. “What are you going to wear?”

  Pamela took a long, slow sip of Coke and started to grin. “I’m not going to wear anything at all. I’m going to step out of the bathroom with my hair down loose, covering my whole body like a cape. All my husband will have to do is pull it apart and …”

  Elizabeth jumped up. “I’m going home, Pamela. See you later, Alice.”

  “All right, all right, we’ll stop talking about it,” said Pamela. “Honestly, Elizabeth, what’s the matter with you?”

  “It’s just wrong, that’s all,” Elizabeth told us.

  “But how can it be wrong to talk about something that is probably going to happen to you with the blessing of the church?” asked Pamela.

  “I just don’t think now is the time to think about things like that. When I’m married, then I will,” said Elizabeth.

  I don’t know. It seems to me we should be getting ready for things like that. Thinking about them, at least. Our bodies were certainly getting ready. At least Pamela’s was. I’ll bet she would have filled out Mom’s gown.

  What happened next was what Pamela referred to for months afterward as the Disaster. On Tuesday, in gym, w
e were told we were having coed volleyball for the rest of the semester, and after we had our gym clothes on, we met the seventh-grade boys in the gym, and we all sat down on the floor together while our two coaches explained the rules and demonstrated how to serve.

  Brian, who is probably one of the handsomest guys in school, and Mark Stedmeister, were sitting behind Pamela on the floor. The guys were all teasing us. When the instructors looked away, Brian and Mark would poke Pamela in her side and she’d jump and sort of shiver, and the next time they’d poke her in her other side. Patrick was sitting behind me, drumming a rhythm on my back with his fingers. It felt good, actually.

  There was a boy sitting behind Elizabeth too. He had his feet straight out in front of him and was trying to worm the toe of one sneaker up under the back of Elizabeth’s T-shirt. When she realized what was happening, she gave him a dirty look and scooted forward.

  I don’t know why instructors have to talk so long about the way to play a game. We’d all been playing volleyball as long as we could remember, but teachers like you to play absolutely by the rules.

  After we’d played a game and it was time to shower, of course, the boys went to one dressing room and we went to another. Elizabeth doesn’t like coed gym because she doesn’t like boys to know she sweats.

  “It’s so gross,” she said.

  “If you didn’t sweat, Elizabeth, they’d really think you were a freak,” I told her.

  “But I smell!” she said, sniffing under one arm. “As long as we’re playing volleyball with the boys, I’m going to put on deodorant twice a day.”

  I was pulling on my socks after my shower and had just tied my sneakers when there was a scream from Pamela. I went over to the mirrors where Elizabeth and some of the other girls were crowding around her.

  Pamela was holding up a long lock of blond hair. “Look!” she cried.

  I looked. It appeared that someone had tied or braided a large knot in her hair in back, which was probably because someone had. But what was worse, we discovered when we tried to untangle it, was that they had tied up a wad of chewing gum along with it. The more we worked to untangle it, the worse it got. Her hair kept breaking off, and then little ends were sticking out at odd angles from the knot. We actually seemed to be spreading the gum around.

  Pamela was sobbing. “Brian and Mark did this!” she cried.

  A teacher came over to see what was the matter, and said if you rubbed ice on it, the gum would shrink away from the hair. Elizabeth and I promised to come over to Pamela’s as soon as school was out and put ice cubes on her hair.

  None of us would speak to Mark or Brian on the bus.

  “Honestly, Pamela!” Mark kept saying. “I knew he was braiding your hair, but I didn’t see him put the gum in it.”

  “Don’t speak to me,” said Pamela.

  “Pam-ela …!” said Mark.

  “Again ever,” Pamela told him.

  As for Brian, he didn’t even exist. Every time he spoke to any of us, we turned our heads away and put our noses in the air.

  Pamela’s mother was still at her slimnastics class, so Elizabeth and I got ice cubes and placed them around Pamela’s long lock of hair while she sat on a kitchen chair and wept. The knot was up about as high as her shoulder blades, which was very high up when you consider that Pamela’s hair is so long she can sit on it.

  “How long do you think we should pack it in ice?” Elizabeth asked.

  “I don’t know, maybe ten minutes,” I suggested.

  When the time was up, we worked at the knot again. The big wad of gum seemed to have shrunk some, but the hair was still wound around in it, and when we pulled to see if the hair would come loose, it broke.

  “Try cutting the gum out of it,” said Elizabeth.

  But when we tried, we discovered that we were cutting the hair as well as the gum, and there was already a dent in Pamela’s long blond locks.

  She was crying again when her mother came home.

  “Pamela,” her mother said after she’d heard the story and looked the situation over. “I don’t see any way out of this except to cut your hair above the knot.”

  “Moth-er!” Pamela sobbed.

  “I am so angry at those boys, I don’t know what to do. Pamela’s hair has never been cut since she was born,” Mrs. Jones said to Elizabeth and me. “Now she’ll have to start growing it all over again.”

  She called and got an appointment at the Cuttery, and Elizabeth and I went along for moral support. We handed Pamela tissues while she sat in the waiting room and bawled.

  “I—It’s like having a part of my body amputated,” she wailed. “It’s like losing an arm or a leg or an ear or s-something!”

  When she finally got in the beautician’s chair, Elizabeth on one side of her, me on the other, she decided she wouldn’t cut her hair shoulder length and give Brian the satisfaction of knowing he’d made her do it, but would get a short, feather cut instead, sort of like Peter Pan.

  “I w-want to save it all,” she sniffled to the hairdresser.

  The beautician gave Elizabeth and me two paper sacks, and as the hair dropped, we held the sacks underneath. Pamela closed her eyes and wouldn’t open them at all, but Elizabeth and I couldn’t stop staring. As the shape of Pamela’s head and neck began to emerge, then that blond hair feathered around the curve of her head and down around the ears, Pamela looked about five years older. And finally, when the beautician handed her the mirror so she could see for herself, Pamela gasped. A young, sophisticated woman stared back at her, and when all three of us walked out of the shop, I felt as though Elizabeth and I were in the company of an older sister. A much older sister.

  “It’s beautiful, Pamela,” Elizabeth breathed.

  But Pamela was still in shock.

  “It really is,” I told her. “You look a lot older. You honestly do.”

  “Even better than you did before,” said Elizabeth.

  All the way back on the bus, Pamela said hardly a word—just clutched her two sacks of hair. But when we got to her house and she turned to go up the steps, there were tears running down her cheeks again, and she said simply, “I will never forgive Mark and Brian as long as I live, because they r-ruined my w-wedding night.”

  She was serious!

  After Pamela went inside and Elizabeth and I were walking home, Elizabeth said, “I’m worried about her, Alice. That’s the unforgivable sin, you know.”

  “What is?”

  “Refusing to forgive someone.”

  “Refusing to forgive someone is the unforgivable sin?” I asked incredulously. But Elizabeth knows a lot more about religion than I do, so I had to take her word for it.

  I didn’t say much at dinner again. Seemed as though I wasn’t saying much at any meal these days.

  “What’s wrong now?” Lester asked.

  “Pamela’s committed the unforgivable sin,” I said.

  “Good Lord, what?” asked Dad.

  “She won’t forgive Mark and Brian for putting gum in her hair, so Elizabeth says that God won’t forgive her.”

  “God, who is all-perfect, won’t forgive Pamela, who is a mere mortal?” asked Lester. “Wait a minute, kiddo….”

  I was getting more mixed up by the minute. “If you’re wrong, Lester, Pamela will spend eternity in hell. Elizabeth’s really worried about this.”

  “Hell?” said Dad. “What about Mark and Brian?”

  “If they apologize, I suppose they’re okay.”

  “Mark and Brian started the whole thing, and they’re going to heaven, but Pamela, who had her hair cut off, is going to hell?” asked Lester.

  By then, I was really confused.

  “I’ll tell you what I believe,” said Dad. “I don’t believe that a just and loving God would condemn anyone—to hell. There is enough hell on earth to last a lifetime.”

  “Whew!” I said. “I’ll go tell Elizabeth.”

  “Now that may be a bit touchy,” said Dad. “Why don’t you just let Eliz
abeth work that out for herself?”

  I decided that Pamela ought to say, in so many words, that Mark and Brian were forgiven, just to be on the safe side. So after dinner I called Patrick.

  “Do me a favor,” I said. “Ask Mark and Brian to apologize to Pamela for putting gum in her hair.”

  “Mark already has,” Patrick told me. “He’s on his way over there now with a box of Russell Stover chocolates.”

  “What about Brian? See if you can get him to apologize too, okay?”

  Patrick said he’d try.

  About nine o’clock, Pamela called.

  “Come on over, Alice,” she said. “Both Mark and Brian have apologized.”

  “I’m so glad,” I told her.

  “So is Elizabeth.”

  When Elizabeth and I got to Pamela’s, we found her in her room. Mark had left a two-pound box of Russell Stover’s chocolates, and Brian had stopped by later with a one-pound box of Fannie May’s. Pamela figured there was a layer apiece for each of us, and we probably each ate six chocolates before we gave up. Pamela ate at least seven.

  The next morning, though, at the bus stop, Pamela looked as though she had been crying again. She had two or three pimples on her cheeks, and a real humdinger on her chin.

  “All that chocolate!” she wept. “I will never forgive Mark and Brian as long as I live.”

  “This is where I came in,” I said, and got on the bus.

  7

  A VOICE FROM THE PAST

  THE THING WAS, PAMELA NOT ONLY looked more grown-up and sophisticated with her new haircut; she acted it. She and Elizabeth came over Saturday afternoon, and Pamela brought along seven different shades of eye shadow and experimented with a light cream color just under the brow, then rose beneath that, and green on the eyelid. She looked like Christmas.

  “What I really need now are new earrings,” Pamela said. “I was wearing all those tiny little things before because I had so much hair around my shoulders, but now that my neck is bare, I need longer, dangly earrings to fill up the space.”