Alice in Charge

by Phyllis Reynolds Naylor

  “Our mother will be cooking in the restaurant where she helps out. She will go in very early and come home very late,” he said.

  “Then why don’t you and your brother come to our house for dinner?” I asked, sure it would be all right with Dad and Sylvia.

  “We will come!” Daniel said enthusiastically. “We will bring a roasted pig.”

  “What?”

  This time Daniel broke into full laughter, getting the attention of students at the other tables. He ducked down again, still grinning. “No pig,” he said.

  I got Sam to come over on Monday night with his camera and take a picture of Gwen, Pamela, Liz, and me in our traded dresses. We didn’t do our hair or makeup.

  “If everybody knows in advance what we’ll be wearing, we’ve at least got to keep something a surprise,” said Pamela.

  It was a riot. Gwen’s green and black polka dot dress was too tight for me, so I left the zipper open in back beneath the wide sash. My midnight blue dress was way too big in the torso for Pamela, so for the picture—the four of us lined up with our arms around each other—Gwen and I had a hand in back and each of us tightly clasped a big hunk of material to make Pamela’s dress look, from the front, like it fit. Gwen was really hot in Pamela’s salmon-colored dress with the spaghetti straps, and Liz looked seductive in my black halter dress.

  “Say cheese,” said Sam. “Woops. No, wait a minute. Gwen, that neckline is really dipping on the left.”

  We glanced over and saw half a breast visible—she needed a strapless bra and hadn’t brought one, so she wasn’t wearing any. We howled as Sylvia moved in with a box of pins and pulled the strap down some in back.

  Sam said he got at least three good pictures, and we could come by the newspaper office the following day when he’d have them at full size, so we could choose the one we liked best.

  After he left, Pamela said, “Now all we need for the Snow Ball are dates. You going with Keeno, Liz?”

  “Yeah, I mentioned it to him,” Liz said.

  “Mentioned it? Are you guys in a relationship or not?”

  “We don’t label it. We’re just really close.”

  “Alice is going with Daniel, I’m going with Austin, Liz is going with Keeno, what about you, Pamela?” Gwen asked.

  “Why don’t you ask Louie and we’ll double,” said Liz.

  “Keeno’s friend from St. John’s?” said Pamela. “I hardly even know him.”

  “So what? You’ve seen each other naked—how much more do you have to know?” Gwen joked.

  “Shhhh,” I said as Sylvia gave us a wary smile and raised one eyebrow. “Erase, erase. Why don’t we all go together? Invite Louie, Pamela, and we’ll make it eight.”

  “Okay,” said Pamela. “Dress? Check. Date? Check. This’ll be the easiest dance I ever attended. I’ll worry about shoes later.”

  Sylvia went over our dresses while we were still wearing them, pinning up sides here and there and marking what needed to be let out.

  “I’m not a fancy seamstress, girls, but I don’t think anyone will notice my alterations,” she promised. “There’s just one problem,” she added with a twinkle in her eye. “The dresses self-destruct if you try to take them off.”

  The photo looked great on the front page of the school newspaper, and Phil liked my idea and headline. Four senior girls, the article began, have caught the wave of a new trend for school dances: exchanging dresses with each other. This, of course, made it seem as though it must be happening all over the country, but so much the better.

  Though we had one of the other reporters write this particular story, it was a thrill to see my byline under a growing number of feature articles—one on our new football coach and his family and, in this issue, one on relationships.

  I hadn’t even imagined that Jill and Justin were going to break up when I wrote the relationship piece; it was a follow-up to a question the roving reporters had asked in a recent survey:

  HOW DO YOU DEFINE A “RELATIONSHIP”?

  I’d say exclusive dating a few months or more.

  —Marcella Bogdan, senior

  Why do you have to call it anything? Why can’t it just be “guy likes girl,” “girl likes guy”?

  —Chris Weil, junior

  You’ve got to at least know her last name.

  —Jim Donovitch, senior

  I’d picked up on that second comment for my article—that from what I’d gathered, listening to people talk, girls were usually the ones who wanted it defined:

  The big question for girls is “Are we going together or not?” And if the guy agrees that “Yeah, we’re going out,” the girl wants a name for it. “Are we a couple? Is this a relationship or just a hookup?”

  Amy had heard a lot of talk about Jill and Justin too, and when I told her that it was sort of awkward, my feature article coming out practically the very week the breakup had happened, Amy wanted to know who broke it off, Jill or Justin.

  “I heard it was Jill,” I said.

  She was mystified. “If I had a boyfriend, I’d keep him,” she said.

  “Well, some time you will, Amy,” I told her. “By the way, you’ve been looking great these days.”

  She really was looking better, dressing more carefully, choosing more figure-fitting clothes.

  “I did my nails,” she said proudly, and held out her hands. The nails were bright pink, with a little rose stenciled on the ring finger of both hands.

  “They look fantastic, and you’ve been doing a super job as a roving reporter,” I said.

  “I like asking questions,” she said. “It used to be when kids saw me coming, they’d whisper and turn away. Now you know what a boy said?”

  “What?”

  “He said, ‘You want to ask me a question, Amy?’ And I said, ‘Yes. How do you define a relationship?’ and he said, ‘The first time a girl asks me out, I’ll call it a relationship.’ And then he said, ‘No, don’t put that in the newspaper. I was just kidding.’ And I said I wouldn’t. But he was nice.”

  “That was a good decision,” I said. “If a person asks for a remark to be off the record, you have to respect that.”

  “Off the record,” Amy said, and she fumbled around with her notebook and wrote it down.

  It did seem to me that Amy was happier, but she also seemed a little more excitable and flustered than usual. There was just a certain charm about her in the brave and hungry way she approached life, and I figured if I accomplished nothing more my senior year, I’d at least done well by helping her become a roving reporter. The truth was I loved my job as features editor. I felt needed, appreciated, and capable when I was in the newsroom, and I even wondered now and then if I should major in journalism instead of counseling when I got to college.

  We hadn’t heard the last of Bob White. Hadn’t expected to, actually. This time, though, the note was typed on a computer, and it was even more hateful than the one before. It was also unsigned:

  The only way to save this country is to take back our streets and our schools and kick ass. If we let the Jews, the beaners, and the black vermin take over, who’s going to carry the torch for the white race?

  We silently passed the note around the conference table.

  “This doesn’t even sound like the same person,” said Phil. “I don’t think it is.”

  Tim nodded. “We’re dealing with more than one. They know we’re not going to print this, though, so what’s the point?”

  “To let us know they haven’t backed off. That they’re still out there,” said Phil.

  And that was the chilling part. They’re out there.

  15

  DINNER GUESTS

  Sylvia and I set a beautiful table on Thanksgiving. Some of the decorations she had brought along after she married Dad were two little log cabins, the kind the Pilgrims might have built, that were also candleholders. We put them at each end of the table, with a low bouquet of carnations in fall colors in between.

  I’d baked two
pies the night before—pumpkin and pecan—and Dad was doing the turkey. Sylvia took over the mashed potatoes and veggies; Les and Paul, his roommate, were bringing wine; and Kay, whom Dad had invited at the last minute because her parents were out of the country, was bringing a salad. We hadn’t expected anything of Daniel and his brother, of course. I figured it would be culture shock enough just eating at a table with Lester.

  Daniel and Geri arrived first. “We are on time!” Daniel announced proudly.

  “We Sudanese are notoriously late for appointments in our own country, but in the United States of America we do as Americans do,” said his brother. “I am Geri.”

  “Welcome!” Sylvia said. “Some of us are notoriously late for appointments too. Please come in. I’m Sylvia.”

  Geri was just as thin as his brother, cheekbones prominent like Daniel’s, his skin even darker, but he was taller by four inches. Both of them wore lighter jackets than seemed practical for November.

  Geri handed Sylvia a baking pan covered with foil. “This is a gift from our mother for your table. It is a special dish that we enjoy very much in Sudan.”

  “Well, we’re glad to have you. Oh, it smells delicious! Thank you so much,” Sylvia said, and introduced Dad, who came in from the kitchen.

  “Come on back to the next room,” Dad coaxed. “We’ve got a good fire going.” They seemed reluctant to let go of their jackets so Dad let them keep them on. But they had barely sat down before the doorbell rang again, and this time it was Kay, with a large salad bowl in her arms, a bottle of dressing in one hand.

  “Did you know it’s snowing?” she asked. “Hi, Mr. M. Hi, Sylvia.” Dad took her coat, but at the word snow, both Daniel and his brother went hurrying to the windows in the family room.

  We had to look hard to see the flakes, but they were in the air, melting the minute they hit the ground. Daniel was entranced, though not enough to go back out in the cold.

  “When do you make the men?” he asked.

  “The snowmen?” I guessed. “It has to come down a lot harder than this.” I introduced Kay to them just as we heard Les and Paul arriving, and suddenly the house was filled with voices and introductions and exclamations about the possibility for a white Christmas.

  There were the usual murmurs of praise as each person was asked to pass the platter closest to him. Geri asked about each dish and its relationship to Thanksgiving, and Sylvia gave a brief synopsis of the first somewhat mythical Thanksgiving Day.

  Les, knowing he had a captive audience, couldn’t help adding his own version: “With only two drumsticks per turkey, of course, the early colonists were already figuring out how they could trade each drumstick for a river valley, while the wily Indians offered a few steaming ears of corn for all the pies on the table.”

  “Les!” I said. “It’s going to take me a week to untangle all that for Daniel. Why don’t you say something useful?”

  Lester pondered that a moment. “Hmm. Useful,” he said. “Okay. How’s this?” He held out his plate for Daniel and Geri to see, pointing to the turkey and mashed potatoes. “The bland and the bland,” he said. He added a scoopful of dressing to the plate. “The pièce de résistance,” he intoned, and then, lifting the ladle from the gravy boat, “and this is the gold that binds it all together.” He poured the gravy over the meat, potatoes, and dressing, and in a final flourish, he added a little spoonful of cranberry sauce atop the heap.

  Daniel and Geri, glad for the demonstration, prepared their own plates in the same manner, interrupted now and then with the arrival of hot rolls and sweet potatoes and green bean casserole.

  “Whatever this is, it’s delicious!” Kay said, savoring a mouthful of the dish Geri and Daniel had brought. She dissected another spoonful on her plate. “Spinach … peanuts? … some kind of wonderful spice …”

  “It’s my favorite,” said Daniel. “Our mother cooks this for the restaurant where she works, in exchange for our apartment.”

  “How does that work?” Kay asked him.

  “I am here because of a scholarship to George Washington University,” Geri explained. “A church sponsored our mother and Daniel, and we live in an apartment owned by a man in the church who also owns a restaurant. That’s where our mother is today—cooking.”

  “My parents are on a cruise, or I’d be at their place,” said Paul.

  “Mine are visiting family in China, or I would be eating with them,” said Kay. “This is so wonderful, Mr. M—inviting me here.”

  “Then you, too, are a long way from home,” Geri told her.

  “Not really,” said Kay, pushing back the shiny lock of hair that kept falling over one eye. “I was born in China, but this has always seemed like home to me. We’ve been back twice, both times before I was ten, but I don’t remember a lot. I didn’t want to go with them this time because I need to work; I’m saving for grad school.”

  “I would like to go back to Sudan as a lawyer,” Geri told us. “I will be going back whether I work in law or not—that is the agreement. But I hope to be able to help my people make a better government.”

  I noticed that Daniel was paying close attention to how we ate—what we ate with our fingers and when we used a fork or knife. By the time the platters were passed around the second time, however, he didn’t seem to care. He and his brother loved the meat, and they had second and third helpings.

  When there was a pause in the conversation, I asked Les how George and Joan’s wedding had gone.

  “I didn’t tell you?” Les said. Then he filled in the rest of the table: “George Palamas was our former roommate, and it was almost the wedding-that-wasn’t.”

  “He tried to back out?” I asked.

  “No. Sprained an ankle. The morning of the wedding, he was running up our side steps with his tux and tripped over the bottom of the dry-cleaning bag. We got an Ace bandage and bound him up as best we could, gave him a couple ibuprofen, and he held out long enough to dance with his bride at the reception. Then they were off to Greece for the honeymoon, and I haven’t heard from him since.”

  “That’s awful, spraining his ankle!” Sylvia said.

  “Yeah. I was the best man,” said Paul. “I could see sweat on his brow. I slipped him another pill when I gave him the ring, and I think he swallowed it without water just before they came back up the aisle.”

  “Well, better his ankle than getting cold feet,” I said.

  Daniel looked from Paul to me. “A man with cold feet cannot marry?”

  We all broke into laughter.

  “It’s an expression, Daniel,” I said. “It means he’s having second thoughts.” And when I still wasn’t making myself clear, I said, “When a man or woman doesn’t want to marry after all.”

  Geri shook his head. “That would not be good.”

  “What are weddings like in your country?” Dad asked.

  “There were no big weddings in the refugee camp, and we were there since I was nine,” Geri said. “But I remember some when we were still in the south. Those were great times and would last for several days. The bridal dance would go on almost till morning, with much singing. Now the wedding party must end before sunset prayers and be supervised by sheiks and the police. It is not a happy time for Sudan.”

  “Are the marriages arranged?” asked Kay, who was helping Sylvia pass slices of pie around the table, followed by a bowl of whipped cream.

  “It is the joining of two families, and all are concerned with the arrangements, but there must be approval by the spouses,” Geri explained.

  “My parents had an arranged marriage, and it seems to have worked for them,” Kay told us. “They’re modern in some ways but old country in others. They want me to meet a son of their Chinese friends. I know that’s why they wanted me to come with them this time.”

  “Maybe you’d end up liking the guy,” I suggested.

  Kay gave me an anguished look. “I already have a boyfriend, and he’s not Asian. I met him my senior year at Georgetown,
and I don’t know how to tell my parents. They don’t even know I’m seeing anyone. They think I only go out with girlfriends. I would be with my boyfriend today, but he’s a parttime waiter at the Hyatt and had to work.”

  “Perhaps your parents would like him if they met him,” Sylvia suggested.

  Kay shook her head. “No, I’m afraid not. They didn’t let me date all through high school. ‘Concentrate on your studies,’ they would say. ‘A boyfriend will not help you get to college.’ Well, I got through college, and you’d think I could make some decisions myself, but they say, ‘Trust us, we know best.’ When you’re an only child, so much is expected of you. They sacrifice so you can go to school, so you can go to college, have the best tutors, the music lessons, the chess, the challenges. … And then, when you disappoint them …”

  “This all must be very hard on you,” Sylvia sympathized.

  “It’s hard in one way, easy in another. When you have your life all laid out for you—what school to attend, what courses to study, how long you study, where you live, whom you marry—you don’t have to worry about choices,” Kay said. “You don’t have to decide between this or that. It’s all arranged for you. But it’s hard because I might find—when I’m forty—that it’s someone else’s life I’m living … my parents’, not my own.”

  There were a few seconds of silence while we thought that one over. Then Les raised his wineglass and said genially, “To life, everybody, confusing as it is!”

  “To life!” we said, clinking our glasses, and I know we were all thinking about how lucky—or unlucky—we were.

  On Saturday we had a girls’ night out. Molly Brennan was home for the weekend from the U of Maryland, still leukemia-free, and Gwen brought her friend Yolanda. We went to a chick flick, and Yolanda said we could celebrate the loss of her V card. Gwen said maybe we should just celebrate Thanksgiving break.

  The guys would have hated the movie—all about weddings and mix-ups and breakups and makeups, and so Hollywood that you could almost predict exactly where the car chase would take place and about when Mr. Right would enter the picture. It was afterward that we had the best time—at a little Greek restaurant where you could spend a couple hours just drinking strong coffee and eating appetizers. I told them about Kay’s American boyfriend.