Alice in Charge

by Phyllis Reynolds Naylor

  “Thanks,” I told him, and headed for Sylvia’s car over in student parking.

  General unease. Self-protection. Martial arts. What did those students know that the rest of us didn’t? Who was intimidating them? Could the majority of the student body be so out of touch that we didn’t even know what was going on in our own school? Never an idea of what was going on until it happened?

  Gwen and Pam and Liz and I took in a movie that night—anything to get away from the grind at school. I found that the easiest way I could use either Dad’s or Sylvia’s car was to offer to fill the tank and wash the windshield. They let me use their credit cards, of course, but hated the chore of having to stop at a station.

  I picked up my friends early so I could get gas on the way. After I’d inserted the credit card in the slot, I was surprised when Liz got out of the car and asked if I could show her how to pump gas. Her dad usually filled their tank himself.

  “In case I ever run low and have to do it,” she said.

  “You want to take over?” I asked, unscrewing the gas cap. She warily studied the hose and nodded.

  “Okay,” I told her. “After you take back your credit card, follow the instructions on the screen.”

  Lift handle, it read.

  Gingerly, Liz grasped the handle with both hands.

  Lift latch.

  “Where?” she asked, looking around. I pointed.

  She flipped up the latch.

  “Now put the nozzle in the opening.”

  Suddenly gasoline started squirting out the nozzle, all over the pavement.

  “It’s coming!” Liz shrieked, jumping backward.

  “Don’t squeeze, Liz!” I yelled. “Stop squeezing!”

  Gwen and Pamela piled out of the car, screaming with laughter as Elizabeth dropped the hose on the ground like a hot potato, and the flow stopped.

  “You have to wait till you get it in,” Gwen hooted as customers turned to look.

  “I’m terrified of that thing,” Liz said.

  “Don’t squeeze till you get the nozzle inside,” I told her. “Pick it up and push it all the way in, but don’t squeeze yet!”

  Liz bent down and picked up the hose, holding it as far away from her as possible. She moved over to the gas tank and thrust the nozzle down inside.

  “Now,” I said, “squeeze the handle.”

  Liz’s fingers clamped down hard. “Nothing’s happening,” she said. I looked up at the pump window. No figures moving across the screen.

  “Are you squeezing?” asked Pamela, barely able to get the words out, she was laughing so hard. Liz’s anxious concentration made it all the funnier.

  “As hard as I can,” said Liz.

  “Let up and squeeze slowly this time,” I said.

  “Awk! It’s coming! Take it, Alice!” she said.

  “What?” I grabbed the nozzle before she could pull it out, and Liz jumped back.

  “What’s wrong?”

  She backed up against the pump. “It’s too embarrassing!”

  “Embarrassing?” I asked.

  “So … so phallic!” she cried. “Put it in. Squeeze! Don’t squeeze. Squeeze harder! Squeeze slower!”

  We exploded with laughter. When a young attendant came over and asked if he could help, we could only shake our heads and wave him on.

  When Gwen finally caught her breath, she said, “Only one thing to do, girl. It comes natural to guys. Get Keeno to show you how.”

  My AP English teacher was sick for three days, and Dennis Granger filled in for her. There was sort of this unspoken feeling of … I don’t know. Uneasiness? Excitement, even? Cautiousness? Like I couldn’t be entirely comfortable around him. I wasn’t the only one either, and he wasn’t the first or only teacher who had made me feel this way. It was just that among girls, when we said his name, it was our tone of voice, the accent on Granger, that signaled to each other, Oh, that guy! Watch it!

  He was always finding a reason, it seemed, to reach over us or around us. If his arm brushed against my breast, I’d think, Did I just imagine that because he’s so handsome? If I thought his hand grazed my butt as I passed his desk and I turned to look, his attention was somewhere else, and I’d think, That didn’t happen.

  Yet it was the kind of thing you didn’t talk about seriously with your friends for fear they’d say, or think, You wish! We didn’t cluster around him, though, like we did with some of our favorite teachers. We each made sure we weren’t the last girl out of the classroom. And what could we report, even? He might have brushed my breast? He possibly touched my butt? He was undressing me with his eyes, I think? Right.

  It was a day after gym class that I got the vibes. We’d played a hard game of volleyball, and there was a line at the water cooler before we went to the showers. I decided to wait. But later, as I left the gym, I realized I still hadn’t had a drink, so I headed to the fountain in the west corridor. Someone was ahead of me, and I waited until she was through, then eagerly bent over the machine, filling my mouth with the ice-cold stream, then swallowing it down, filling up again, my throat welcoming gulp after gulp.

  I felt someone waiting behind me, and then I felt something else. Pressure, hardness, just for a moment. And when I straightened up and turned, Dennis Granger smiled and said, “Excuse me,” and leaned over the fountain as I quickly moved aside.

  That was no accident, I told myself as I walked on to my next class. I felt I was blushing, but there was no one to see. He didn’t follow, didn’t call out to me, but just knowing that I turned him on, that he … what? … must have found me attractive, made me feel … confused. Ashamed, sort of, I don’t know why. Even excited. I hugged myself and felt a shiver. The three Cs, I told myself. When you’re not Comfortable with it, it’s not a Compliment, it’s Creepy. Yet how do you walk into the office and say, I want to report a teacher who stood too close to me at the fountain? You don’t. I didn’t, anyway.

  Just stay five feet away from him at all times, I thought, and was glad my English teacher was coming back the following day.

  Christmas comes practically the day after Halloween—for merchants, anyway. As soon as the witches and black cats come down, the angels and Santas move in, and Thanksgiving gets lost in the middle. Step in any store the first of November and you’ll be surrounded by twinkly lights and “I wonder as I wander …” over the sound system.

  We’re always late making the switchover at the Melody Inn. Because we have so many schoolkids trooping in for music lessons in the upstairs soundproof booths, we do Halloween up big, with fake cobwebs over the grand piano, black cats with arched backs protecting the sale table, and a life-size witch doll sitting on a stool by the front door.

  In years past Dad declared that November should be dedicated to Thanksgiving. But this year, with sales down and stores closing on Georgia Avenue, we went right to Christmas. I spent one Sunday morning arranging a Christmas window display while Dad and Marilyn, in coats and scarves, stood out on the sidewalk and indicated whether I was to move the Christmas tree to the right or left and where to put the puppy.

  It had taken three men to roll the piano up a ramp and into the display window. The scene we were trying to create—one of several that came from corporate headquarters—was of a happy family opening gifts from the Melody Inn on Christmas morning. The mom mannequin we’d rented was seated on the piano bench, wrapped in a blue silk shawl on which a score from the “Moonlight” Sonata was reproduced. The dad wore a sweatshirt with a profile of Beethoven on the front.

  My job was to maneuver myself around this display in my stocking feet, trying to fit a teenage mannequin in place, holding a music box with a dancing fox on her lap, surrounded by more Melody Inn gift boxes, as well as a baby, sucking on a pacifier, crawling about in his little Santa Claus pj’s. There wasn’t a lot of space, and it seemed that every time I’d get one thing right, it accidentally threw something else off balance. The baby pajamas that came with the rented set were a size too small, however, and
I struggled to make them fit. But Marilyn’s nose was pink with cold and her coat wouldn’t button all the way over her growing belly, so Dad sent her back inside and finally, when I was down to the small details, he came back in too.

  We’re usually closed on Sundays, but for the Christmas season we were now open from eleven to five, and I hurried to get things set up for my regular stint in the Gift Shoppe. When I returned to the main showroom at last, Dad turned on the twinkly lights that rimmed the display window and put in a CD of madrigal music.

  “Hope it sells loads of pianos, Mr. M.,” Marilyn said.

  Kay came in a few minutes later, and when Dad unlocked the door at eleven, there were already four people waiting.

  We were busy from the get-go. A father came in to buy a guitar for his son; someone wanted to mail an accordion to Kansas. I was gift wrapping a coffee mug for a customer when Kay noticed some people standing outside the window laughing. More people stopped. They laughed too.

  “Now what?” said Dad. “Al, check the display window, would you?”

  I walked to the front of the store and saw nothing unusual so I went outside. The tightly stretched pajama bottom of the baby had slipped down his plaster body, and there he was, mooning the shoppers out on their holiday errands.

  Things were getting more complicated at home. My decision to go to the University of Maryland so I could be here for Dad and Sylvia was being severely tested. Sylvia, in fact, had good news. She had just received the results of her biopsy of the week before and the test was negative, she announced to Dad and me when we got home on Monday. Her smile was one hundred percent genuine. On Sylvia, you can tell.

  Dad gave her a bear hug and rocked her back and forth. “Wonderful news, sweetheart,” he said into her ear.

  “The radiologist wants me back in six months for a sonogram, just to check, but she said everything looks perfectly normal.”

  “Dinner out?” I said hopefully.

  “I don’t know why not!” said Sylvia, and out we went.

  Well then, maybe I should apply to the other colleges, I thought. I needed a “safe” school, and that would be Maryland. Once again the thought of a whole new place, a new roommate, difficult courses, and possibly unsupportive professors—all happening to me at the same time—brought back some of that panicky feeling. But I thought of myself at William and Mary, walking to class with someone like Judith, walking on a brick sidewalk thinking of Jefferson and eating Moroccan chicken in the caf. I could do that.

  So when we got back, I fished two more applications from the heap and began.

  13

  CALL TO AUNT SALLY

  November is one of the dreariest months. It hits you on the day you realize that all the leaves have fallen and everything is gray—the trees, the sky, the ground. Even people look gray. Which is why the seventh-period assembly the following week was so much fun.

  There’s an organization that sponsors amateur actors—teens and college age—who emphasize responsible sexual behavior. They put on awareness-based shows at high schools, focusing on issues like abstinence, birth control, HIV, prenatal development. … Each show has a number of skits, and they’re just goofy enough to keep our attention.

  The skit I liked best had a guy with a long curvy tail playing the part of a sperm, and a girl, sitting in a large cardboard oval, playing the egg. Emphasizing that it takes both to make a baby, the sperm darts carefree about the stage, chanting, “Sperm alone, no baby,” while the girl files her nails and chants, “Egg alone, no baby.” But when the sperm finds himself drawn into her orb, she wraps them both up in her blanket, and they emerge holding a doll between them.

  Then, to show that both are responsible for bringing up this child if they make a baby, they do a frantic pantomime where he’s feeding the baby while she’s changing its diaper, then he does the diapering and she feeds the baby, at fast speed. A voice announces that condoms are free from Planned Parenthood, and the skit ends with the couple singing a parody of “Don’t Worry, Be Happy,” renamed “Don’t Hurry, Use Condoms.” I guess you’d have to be there.

  We’ve had assemblies like this before, and like this one, the actors are kids our own age, and the group’s purpose—“to inform, entertain, and educate”—is easy to swallow.

  Some of the other skits were about eating disorders, body image, sexual abuse, suicide, rape, teen pregnancy—any personal thing that affects our lives.

  Okay, so maybe most of us already knew the facts about this stuff—it wasn’t old hat. But Jill, sitting behind me with Justin, got on my nerves.

  One of the actresses was stating the reasons she’d decided to be celibate until she married. Jill, in particular, was whispering and giggling, mimicking the girl. The actress wasn’t being preachy or anything—just saying that for her, abstinence seemed best. Jill obviously found it hilarious. It was especially annoying because I was trying to take notes so I could write up the program for the newspaper, and I missed some of the lines.

  “Hey, Jill, knock it off, would you?” I whispered over my shoulder.

  There were a few seconds of silence, then sputtering laughter from Jill.

  “Quiet, everybody. Alice is learning something here,” she responded in a stage whisper, and got a few, but only a few, titters in response.

  Later, when Jill began laughing again, I heard Justin say, “Shhhh,” and I wondered, for maybe the hundredth time, what—other than her absolutely gorgeous body—he saw in her.

  Amy Sheldon liked the show, though. She must have been sitting near Jill too because afterward she said to me, “I don’t know why some people didn’t like it. It was just facts. You shouldn’t be afraid of facts, my dad says.”

  “And he’s absolutely right,” I told her.

  “Except sometimes people use facts to fool you,” she went on. “Some people call me a retard, and that isn’t true. You can be good in some things and slow in other things, and I’m very good at memorizing lists. My mom says I’m the best memorizer she’s ever seen. So does my tutor.”

  “You have a tutor? What subject?”

  “Literature. I’m good at memorizing the characters’ names and everything, but I don’t always understand the story. The theme, I’m not so good with at all. But I like facts.”

  It was good to see Amy broadening herself, connecting more with other people. And I noticed she wore her Edge reporter badge even when she wasn’t doing an assignment. Whatever works, I thought.

  It was also good to see the number of letters coming in for the “Sound Off” section of our paper, and we included the few that responded to “Bob White’s” latest comment:

  I’ll bet B.W. doesn’t even go to our school. I’ve never heard anyone else talk like that.

  —Caroline Eggers, sophomore

  How does he think he got to this country? Does he know where his ancestors came from? Every one of us came from somewhere else.

  —Mary Lorenzo, senior

  I thought Hitler died in 1945. Let’s not resurrect him here.

  —Cindy Morella, senior

  This is America, “Bob White.” Get over it.

  —Peter Oslinger, senior

  Mostly, I think, his letter was ignored. There were dozens of other items to interest the reader. The newspaper staff couldn’t ignore him, though. We kept mulling it over at staff meetings.

  “Who the heck do you think he is—one of the jocks?” someone wondered.

  “Or she is. Or they!” I said.

  “Whoever they are, they evidently scared the Safety Council right out of the school,” said Phil.

  “Into the martial arts, anyway,” I said.

  “I’ll bet it’s one of the Goths,” said a sophomore roving reporter. “Nobody wants to take on the Goths.”

  Amy Sheldon came in just then, flustered because she was late but wanting to fit into the conversation. “Some boys on the bus say bad things,” she said.

  “Like what?” asked Phil.

  “Like calling peop
le names.”

  “Do you know who they are?” he asked.

  Amy shook her head.

  “What kinds of things do they say?” asked Sam.

  “One of them said, ‘What do you get if you mix a retard with a Latrino?’ And the answer was ‘A clogged toilet.’ I don’t understand it, but I told it to Dad, and he said it wasn’t even funny.”

  “And stupid besides,” I told her.

  Miss Ames pulled last year’s yearbook from a shelf and turned to the student pictures of each class. She handed the volume to Amy and said, “Do you think if you looked over the photos, you could recognize any of the boys who were talking like that? We can skip the seniors, because they’re gone.”

  “And this year’s freshmen aren’t even in that yearbook,” said Phil.

  I knew this would be too hard for Amy. But she dutifully scanned picture after picture of juniors, sophomores, and freshmen, shaking her head, page after page. “That’s okay,” Miss Ames said, and closed the book. We were quiet for a while and sat doodling in our notebooks.

  “What I hate is the thought that we’re just waiting for something else to happen,” I said.

  “Well, at least we’re giving them a place to sound off. We published this faction’s letter. Maybe they’ll write again, give us some clues. Maybe that will be enough,” Miss Ames said. “We’re all waiting. The principal is taking this very seriously.”

  Things were piling up on me. I had a difficult paper to write for my AP English class on how Ernest Hemingway’s style relates to the main character’s detachment in the novel we just read. I had to go over a catalog at the Melody Inn and help select Christmas items to sell in the Gift Shoppe. I needed to help Sylvia get the house ready for Thanksgiving. I still had not written the feature article I’d promised myself I would do back in September in memory of Mark Stedmeister. And I had to finish Part II of the application to the U of Maryland, not to mention full applications to the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill and William and Mary. Just the list of stuff I had to enclose for Maryland was nerve-wracking: SAT scores; a 500-word essay; a response to each of the questions on page 11 of the application, each response five to seven sentences long; a résumé listing all of my experiences, interests, and extracurricular activities; a description of one activity most enjoyed by me and why….