Fudge also loved invading Peter’s room. In Tales of a Fourth Grade Nothing, when Fudge sneaks into Peter’s room and destroys his class project poster, Peter furiously cries to his mother, “You don’t love me!”
I knew exactly how he felt. In fact, when he asked his mom for a lock on his door, she replied diplomatically, “We’re a family, Peter. And families don’t have locks on their doors.”
Well, family or no, I wanted a lock on my door. In fact, Peter asking for one gave me an idea. I’d ask for one, too. Only I wouldn’t give up as easily as Peter.
Like Peter’s mom, my mom initially vetoed the idea of a lock. That’s when I decided to appeal her decision to a higher power: Santa Claus.
That Christmas, the only thing on my list was a lock on my door.
At age ten, I had no idea how much locks cost. For all I knew, they were really expensive. But I wanted one. I wanted one worse than a bike or Barbie’s Pink Corvette.
Mom kept asking me, “You’re sure you don’t want something else? A Cabbage Patch doll? Barbie’s Swimming Pool?”
“No,” I said resolutely. “All I want is a lock.”
The way I figured it, without a lock, new toys would just be ruined in a matter of days. Matt would rip them apart and then flush the pieces down the toilet.
My mom finally took pity on me. She relented after Matt wrecked my Barbie dreamhouse. He stomped on it like a mini-Godzilla, then flushed pieces of the cardboard elevator along with Barbie’s head down the toilet.
That Christmas, I got the lock I wanted. And a new Barbie.
Of course, like all things I asked for, the lock turned out to be a mixed blessing. My brother’s next trick was locking me out of my own room. He did this by lying in wait outside my room when I left, then running into it and locking it from the inside.
I learned quickly how to pick my own room lock with a screwdriver, and so did my brother.
He and I were in an arms race, only instead of nuclear weapons at stake, it was my privacy. I wanted it, and so did he.
And every time I went to Mom, she said, “Work it out. This is your responsibility.”
We didn’t work it out. We were too busy fighting our own version of the Cold War. We couldn’t openly declare war in front of our parents, but we both knew what was on the line. Total and complete household domination.
He ran over my favorite “My Little Pony” with his tricycle. I changed the channel during important parts of his favorite cartoon, “Thundercats.” He flushed my Bonnie Bell collection down the toilet. I took all the batteries out of all his toys and hid them. He ran—naked—through the house, embarrassing me in front of a cute boy visiting his grandparents next door. I put him in a headlock and tickled him until he cried uncle. He stole my diary and ripped out all the pages, then told everyone my secret “crush.” I sent him into a bush to get a Frisbee where I knew a couple of wasps lay in wait.
Our fights were so numerous and so bad that my grandmother told us we couldn’t come to visit anymore. We spent two weeks with her one summer, and by that time, she’d had enough. This is the woman who is a born-again Christian, and who is, by all accounts, the sweetest woman on earth. And she uninvited us.
Sure, I could’ve been more patient. More inclusive. More caring of my Fudge. But come on. He played in the toilet and ran around without pants on. It’s not exactly the sort of show you want your friends to see.
And worse, like Fudge, Matt got everything he ever asked for. He was spoiled—through and through.
Mom told me I couldn’t have bunk beds in my room because I was only one person. Matt got a bunk bed. Mom told me I couldn’t have small pets in my room. Matt got two guinea pigs, two lizards, and a hermit crab. Mom told me I couldn’t have a television in my room. Matt got a TV with cable and Nintendo. And the list goes on. And on. And on.
But every so often, you’re reminded that none of that really matters.
One afternoon, when Matt was four and I was eleven, everything changed.
Mom was getting ready for a party. She was having friends over, so she shooed us both out of the house so that she could clean. Cleaning was impossible if Matt was in the vicinity, with his sticky chocolate-covered hands and crayons, and besides, he’d probably just flush the sponges down the toilet.
Matt took his new motorized mini-three-wheeler (a plastic thing you could pedal or press a button to make it go—another injustice. I had only a Big Wheel and a bicycle—all manually powered. My brother, ever spoiled, had the option to buzz around on an electric-powered three-wheeler) and started taking laps around the kidney-shaped pool in our backyard. Mom admonished me just minutes before that I was to watch him and “make sure he didn’t get dirty.” This was a little like asking me to negotiate a peace treaty between Palestine and Israel, but I decided I’d do my best. My brother could find dirt from the inside of a hermetically sealed bubble, so it was an uphill battle trying to keep him clean for more than thirty seconds at a time.
It was spring but too cold to swim, even though the cover was off the pool. I saw him take a sharp turn, a little too close to the water’s edge. And then, plop. He went in.
Now, my brother had taken his first swimming lessons the previous summer. He didn’t learn much, though, in part because he had a habit of biting his instructor rather than letting himself be placed calmly in the water. While my brother loved toilet water, he didn’t like pool water so much.
My mom was shocked that he was capable of such viciousness, but I’d been on the sharp end of those baby teeth a million times. I could’ve told her that Matt fought dirty. After the biting incident, he didn’t get a lot of one-on-one time with the swimming instructor.
So I knew Matt wasn’t a strong swimmer.
I ran over to him. The battery-operated tricycle had sunk to the bottom of the pool like a stone, tires still spinning in the water. Matt, bug-eyed and scared, was dog paddling in the middle of the pool. His mouth and nose bobbed just below the water, and everything about his face screamed panic.
Meanwhile, I was thinking Mom is going to kill us. Matt was wearing his “good” clothes, which were now soaked, and I was wearing a dress Mom bought especially for the party.
I leaned over and reached for Matt, holding my hand out, trying to grab him, but he was too far out. His head bobbed down under the water. He was sinking fast.
I glanced back at the house, thinking I should run to get Mom. But then I looked back at Matt and realized there was no time. His head bobbed up and then under again, and all I could think of was Mom’s admonition to me: “You’re responsible for your brother. Keep an eye on him.”
So I did the only thing I could do.
I jumped in.
I grabbed Matt, pulled him to the side of the pool, and shoved him out. He was wailing at his dogs-and-the-entire-neighborhood-can-hear setting.
I took him by the hand and led him into the house, where Mom found us, dripping wet.
“What on earth have you done now? I told you two not to fight today,” she shouted, angry that I’d ruined my new dress and that we were both soaked from head to toe, dripping pool water all over her newly polished floor.
“He fell into the pool,” I told her, pointing outside. Mom glanced at Matt and his panicked face, and then she realized what happened.
Immediately, she consoled Matt, whipping him up in her arms, soaked and all.
“My poor baby!” she wailed. “Are you okay? You must be scared to death.”
Naturally, Matt got all the attention, but that was okay. For once, I didn’t mind. I was relieved.
Because the thing I realized that day was that I do love my brother. And I was glad to be there to look after him, because that’s what an older sister is for.
Reading the Fudge books helped me understand that no matter how much of a pain they are, little brothers are worth having. Judy Blume helped me see that you can love someone, even if he or she can be annoying, because that’s what family is all about. After coming
close to losing him that day, I realized that no matter what Matt did, I’d never trade him for any other brother or sister in the world. Because he was my little brother. And although I saved Matt that day, maybe one day he’d be there when I needed him, and he’d save me back. Because that’s what family does.
And I’m pretty sure Matt understood this, too. As a show of respect and gratitude for pulling him from the pool, Matt waited a solid hour before flushing one of my Strawberry Shortcake dolls down the toilet.
Cara Lockwood is the author of I Do (But I Don’t), which was made into a movie for Lifetime Television, as well as I Did (But I Wouldn’t Now), Dixieland Sushi, and Pink Slip Party. She is currently at work on a book series for teens, which are being published by MTV Books. Cara lives in Chicago, nearly twelve hundred miles away from her younger brother. Bickering is kept strictly to Thanksgiving and Christmas.
Are You There, Margaret?
Alison Pace
Growing up, I enjoyed the lucky safety of knowing I was surrounded by good people, good friends. Though never the most popular, and certainly never the best at academics or sports (definitely not sports), I can remember in my childhood the feeling of being liked and in the company of friends. There were seats saved at lunch tables, there were Ding Dongs shared. I often felt, for the most part I’d say, included and happy. The thing is, though, I didn’t always feel the same. Which is where Margaret came in.
Margaret, of Are You There God? It’s Me, Margaret fame, this character created on paper with such vividness and authenticity by Judy Blume, was the only person I knew, other than myself, who was almost in seventh grade and didn’t yet need a bra. And, more than that, she was the only friend I had in the world who, like me, was half Jewish and half Christian. And, yes, I know it’s not very often that bras and God are mentioned in corresponding sentences, but for Margaret, and for me, the two seemed to hold a very large significance.
Are You There God? It’s Me, Margaret was one of the first books I ever loved, one of the first books that made me feel really, truly understood. And so it was Margaret who became one of my favorite and most understanding friends. Margaret knew what it felt like to be half one religion and half another, knew what it felt like to have to explain that it didn’t really mean you were technically this or technically that, or worse than that, nothing. Margaret knew what it was like to have people ask you if you didn’t believe in God, and also knew what it felt like to dread bras and bathing suits and anything even remotely up-the-shirt related.
Much in the manner of the brokenhearted, who are certain that every sad song about someone who’s done somebody wrong has been written expressly for them (actually, I do that, too), when I first read Are You There God? It’s Me, Margaret, right before seventh grade, I was pretty sure that every understanding and in-tune word had been written just for me. It’s a rarity still for me to feel like a book “gets it,” gets me, the way I felt at twelve, that Margaret got it.
Like Margaret, I, too, had a Philip Leroy, a crush to whom I remained somewhat unbeknownst. His name was Andy Cammaker, and he was good at sports and wore a green rope fisherman’s bracelet—the kind that shrank to your wrist—for all of sixth grade, long after most other people’s mothers would have made them take it off. I can still remember the looks of Andy Cammaker, who had beautiful black curly hair, who had milky white skin and freckles, and who was so far out of reach to me.
“Have a good summer, Pace,” he’d said to me on the last day of sixth grade as he walked toward his mom’s car. “You too, Cammaker,” I’d said, wondering even as I said it, did I sound cool? And if I had managed, somehow, someway, to sound cool while speaking to him, did I sound cool enough? As I replayed our final words of the year in my mind, all over the entire summer, the only thing that I was sure of was that I wasn’t cool. I wasn’t quite sure I knew anyone would understand how hard it was to feel cool around certain people, certain boys, and how hard at other times it was to feel cool in general. And then, at the end of that summer, when I read Are You There God? It’s Me, Margaret and at last met Margaret, I was sure that if I’d been invited to New Jersey to a sleepover at her house along with her slightly annoying (and bossy and untruthful) friend, Nancy Wheeler, and sat down and explained it to her, that she would have understood.
And the reason she would have understood? Because Margaret Simon, much more than anyone I’d come across, knew the deep, inextricable connection between “boobs, having them,” and “cool.” A thing I’d always felt was very much related to the lack of romantic attentions from Andy Cammaker was the fact that I, much like Margaret, was a bit lacking of bust. Unlike Margaret, though, I did not sit with my best friend practicing the “I Must, I Must, I Must Increase My Bust” exercises because my best friend was Jenny Layton, and Jenny was already a proud proprietor of a very nice-size chest. I did my chest-increasing exercises on my own, and my negotiations for the speedy and imminent arrival of breasts were admittedly more with the breasts themselves than they were, as in Margaret’s case, with God. Though to be fair, my chest, in its absence, did attain such mythic proportions in my young mind that it became quite godlike in importance.
On that last day of sixth grade, I explained to my mother, “I’m giving my boobs until the end of the summer to grow.” I believe she nodded, if not in comprehension, then at least in agreement. I wanted them, reasonably so, for the first day of seventh grade. I wanted them for the first-day-of-school pictures we had taken every year. I wanted them, most of all, for the next time I saw Andy Cammaker. Andy Cammaker would ask me, and my new boobs, to go out (which really just meant we would talk on the phone). And, of course, we’d all three say yes. He’d be smitten, he would need only in life to be with me. He wouldn’t think I was skinny; he wouldn’t call me a Carpenters Dream. If Mrs. Cammaker ever took a group of us again to Great Adventure like she had in fifth grade, he wouldn’t say that since I was the smallest, I had to sit in the way-back of the station wagon. And he definitely wouldn’t turn around constantly throughout the entire three-hour car ride to New Jersey to remind me that I couldn’t talk because I was in the way-back where the dogs go. He’d never decide that for the duration of the trip I was a Basset Hound. “You are a Bass-et Hound,” he wouldn’t say, all elongated, Bass and Et like two separate words, Hound all stretched out, again and again the whole way there and the whole way back. “Bass-et Hooouuuund.”
And when the first day of seventh grade arrived, devastatingly too soon with nothing at all to fill out my lime green T-shirt with the bright blue E-S-P written on the front and the R-I-T written on the back, leaving me to wish I’d worn the red Benetton sweater instead, because the geometric illusion might have tricked the eye and the material would have added so much more bulk, I felt I had no other choice but to renegotiate. I told the boobs they had until Christmas vacation. But that was it. And I was sure then that Margaret would have understood. I was sure she would have known that almost as bad as not needing a bra was waiting to need one.
But cleavage aside (if it’s ever really possible in this world to put cleavage completely aside), what it was, what made me read the book two times in a row and refer to it numerous times throughout my middle school years, was that Margaret, like me, was half Jewish and half Christian. Margaret’s circumstances were the reverse of mine: her dad was Jewish and her mom was Christian; it was her Christian grandparents who were not accepting. For me, my mom was Jewish and my dad was Christian (technically both Episcopalian and Catholic, though he will tell you that religion isn’t a heritage, something my Jewish-But-Not-Practicing mother might be pretty quick to refute). It was my nana who was disapproving, who invited me over on Passover to search for money and a matzo cracker and to tell me that my father was from the wrong side of the tracks.
Both Margaret’s parents and my parents made the same decision: to raise us without religion. “Spiritual but not religious” is the way that people might describe it today, but back then, in the early eighties, growing up on L
ong Island, a place where it seemed so many things were separated by religion, it became not so much a designation as a recipe for a walking identity crisis. Margaret, who also felt this identity crisis quite deeply, dealt with it rather constructively by trying to learn about as many different religions as she could. I had my own variation on the theme. I tried to be as many different religions as I could. I slyly tried to get Nana to sign me up for Bat Mitzvah training, just as I implored Grammy to take me with her to church, even though by that point she was no longer her religion, Episcopal, or even her late husband’s religion, Catholic, but a later life convert to Ethical Culture.
I didn’t get very far, due mostly to a parental reminder to the grandparents that I was being raised without religion. And so I moved on to what I saw as being religious by omission. On Rosh Hashanah and Yom Kippur, I was very Christian, sitting in the lunchroom lamenting with all the other Catholics and Protestants the fact that we had to be in school while all our Jewish friends stayed home. There I was again, at school on Good Friday, at one with all my Jewish friends. I had, of course, suggested to my parents that in order to more fully understand my heritage, I should stay home on all religious holidays. They had not, as I believed was so very often the case, seen my point. So, to school, I went. Embraced, I very much wanted to believe, by all religions; the one-girl religious melting pot I thought maybe I could be.
Everyone was either Jewish or Catholic or some sort of Protestant. And I wanted so much to be able to say something simple like, “I’m Jewish,” “I’m Catholic,” “I’m Episcopalian,” rather than the complicated and ever-lengthy, “My mom is Jewish and my dad is Catholic and Episcopalian, and my parents decided to raise me without religion,” or the somewhat self-esteem-challenging, “No, I’m nothing.” And because I didn’t have a friend to my name who wasn’t fully Jewish or fully Catholic or fully something else, back then I really did take a lot of comfort in the fact that there was Margaret.
Everything I Needed to Know About Being a Girl I Learned from Judy Blume Page 23
