“Drop dead,” he says to Cici, and starts to walk away. How dare he talk to my mother like that! I’ll never forgive him.
“Mom!” she screams and races out of the room and down the hall, shouting for my grandmother in my sister Nina’s best I’m-being-murdered voice.
My ex-favorite uncle takes off pretty quickly, and by the time my grandmother gets upstairs he’s safely back in his room with the door shut.
“How many times do I have to tell you to stay out of your sister’s room?” my grandmother says, opening Uncle Steve’s door. And to my mother: “I can’t leave you two alone for two minutes without trouble. Aren’t you embarrassed to have your friend see you behaving like a two-year-old?”
If she wasn’t embarrassed before, she certainly is now. So am I. At least I can see where my mother learned her mother phrases. But, funny thing, my grandmother seems to have forgotten them. I never hear her talk like that now. I just had a horrendous thought. Maybe mother-talk is something you use for a while, then pass on to your daughter, and one day I’ll be sounding like that. No way! I swear it.
Now my grandmother studies me closely, squinting even though she has her glasses on this time, and I get the strong feeling maybe she’s going to recognize me. Of course that’s dumb—how could she? I haven’t even been born yet. Instead, she shakes her head and smiles and says, “You know, you two look enough alike to be sisters.”
Both of us look in my big mirror above the dresser. Funny, people are always saying I look like my mother but I could never see it. Now I can. I mean, we really do look alike, almost the same color hair, and we both have oval-shaped faces. I don’t know but for the first time I can really see the resemblance. And it’s eerie.
“Felicia,” my grandmother says, zeroing in on the pile of clothes on the floor, “don’t leave this room without putting your clothes away.”
There’s only one sentence in the world that can follow those instructions, and it begins, “How many times do I have to tell you …”
“How many times do I have to tell you to hang up your clothes when you take them off?” Of course that’s my grandmother talking. What did I tell you?
“I said I will,” my mother whines.
“Don’t let me walk in here and see them on the floor again.” I think they’re reading from a script.
My grandmother stands in the doorway, hands on her hips, waiting. With a hopeless shrug my mother bends down and starts to gather up her clothes. Satisfied, my grandmother turns to leave. “I have a Red Cross meeting. I should be home in a couple of hours. If Daddy calls tell him I’ll meet him at the ration board.”
The minute my grandmother goes out of the door, Cici rolls her eyes and whispers, “Isn’t she the cat’s pajamas? Is your mother as bad as mine? I mean, is she always nagging you about how your room should be and things like that?”
Unbelievable! Now my mother is asking me to tell her all the horrendous things about herself. I ask you, does that do your head in or doesn’t it?
“Are you kidding?” I’m not about to pass this one up. “Nobody in the whole world”—if she only knew!—“can bug you like my mother. All I have to do is leave one little soda can under my bed and she practically goes berserk. It’s her big thing. She’s a neatness freak. Of course she’s also a homework freak and an on-time freak and a don’t-borrow-anybody’s-clothes freak and a don’t-fight-with-your-sister freak, and that’s only the beginning. Honestly, I swear I’m never going to be that way with my kid. How about you?”
“Me? Fat chance. I told you, I plan on being the most terrific mother that ever was.”
“How are you going to do that?”
“Easy. Like with her room. It’s hers and she can keep it any way she wants.”
“You mean that?”
“You bet. Not only that, I’m never just going to barge in without knocking. The way I feel, a person’s room is her own private property and that’s that.”
“Even if it’s filled with dirty laundry and old grungy leftover food?”
“Well,” Cici says with a tiny hesitation I’m not too crazy about, “maybe then I’d ask her to empty it once a week or something like that.”
“What if she forgets?”
“Then I’d remind her.”
“Suppose she keeps forgetting?”
“Then I’d keep reminding her.”
“Probably she’d say you were nagging.”
When I say that she really cracks up. In fact we both burst out laughing.
“You know what?” she says, still laughing, “she’d probably be right. I can just hear me.” And then she turns to me like I was her kid and, hand on hip, finger shaking, and sounding for absolute real, says, “Victoria, this room is a pigsty. How many times do I have to remind you to hang up your clothes and take that empty Coke bottle out of here this instant!”
“Help! Stop! You sound just like my mother.”
“God forbid!” And we both get hysterical again. Except maybe it’s not so funny.
“What about other things?” I figure I’m never going to get this opportunity again so I charge ahead. “I mean like curfews and school work and being on time, and what if she accidentally on purpose pushes her pain-in-the-butt sister down in the railway station…. What about those things?”
Now she gets kind of serious. “The way I figure, I’m going to take very good care of my child when she’s little, but when she gets about our age she can run things for herself so I’m not going to interfere too much. Unless, of course, she needs me.”
“My grandmother says that you change your mind about a lot of things when you grow up and have to be responsible for someone else. Especially if that someone is your own child.”
“Maybe some people change, but not me. I mean it, I know exactly what kind of mother I’m going to be and I don’t see how responsibility is going to make that much difference. Do you?”
“I didn’t used to, but now … I don’t know.”
“Oh, well, lucky we don’t have to worry about it now. We got tons of time before we’re mothers, and while we’re waiting …” The kooky look is back in her eyes. “Wanna see something neat?” She takes out some black-and-white speckled notebooks and a skinny blue pamphlet. “I’ll show you the slam books after. First look at this,” and she puts the school books aside and hands me the pamphlet.
I have no idea what a “slam book” is, and the little blue book she gives me looks like just a bunch of dumb cartoons stapled together. The title on the front is “Wally and the King.” I flip through and it turns out to be a comic book about a girl named Wally and a guy with a crown on his head and nothing else. From page two on they’re having sex. Big deal!
“What d’ya think?” Cici is really anxious for my reaction so I make it big.
“Wow! That’s wild,” I say, but I don’t really think it. Compared to The Joy of Sex or a lot of other stuff you can buy in any bookstore, this is a joke. I mean, it’s for five-year-olds, but I guess way back in the forties this was real far out. The only thing I can think of is, “Why do they call the girl Wally?”
“Didn’t you ever hear of Wallis Simpson and King Edward?”
Now I’m the dumb one so I just shake my head and say, “I guess not.”
“He was the King of England who gave up his throne to marry an American divorcée. You know, the Duke and Duchess of Windsor.”
“Oh, yeah, I’ve heard of them.” I really did but I never knew anything about them. “But I just didn’t recognize them without their clothes.” I try to make a joke so I don’t look so jerky.
“My brother Steve has a deck of French cards in a little metal box but he keeps it locked up. I’ve combed his room from top to bottom a million times when he wasn’t around but I still can’t find the key.”
Things really have changed a lot since my mother was fourteen. All I have to do now is look on the bookshelves in my own house and I can find all the books on sex I want, and they’re a lot more explicit tha
n this silly cartoon book.
“And I have something else. Well, I don’t have it but Steve does and I’ve seen it.”
Sounds interesting so I ask, “What is it?”
“Did you ever hear of Henry Miller’s Tropic of Cancer?”
“Sure.”
“Well, I know where there’s a copy.”
Me too. Down the street at the bookstore. But of course, I don’t say that because it’s such a big deal to Cici, so I pretend I’m really shocked, and that’s not easy because I think I’m going to get hysterical in one minute. I mean this is really too much.
“Nice one. Let’s get it.”
“Later, when he goes out. Then we’ll look for that key, too.”
“Cool! Are the slam books porno stuff too?”
Cici laughs and grabs one of the books and shoves it in my hands. “I can’t understand how you never heard of slam books. Things must really be different in the city. Here, look through it.” And she starts to show me the pages. “See, every page has a heading like cutest, best dresser, funniest, stuff like that. What you do is pass the book around the class and everyone writes in the name of the person they nominate for that category.”
“Then what?”
“Then nothing. That’s it. It’s just fun to see who gets the most votes for anything. Especially the bad things, like who goes the farthest, the fastest, the worst rep—you know, all the awful things.”
“Boy, I’d hate to be Janet Foley. She’s got her name on all the gross pages. She must be pretty rank.”
“You should see her—boobs out to here.”
“Felicia! Felicia!” A girl’s voice from somewhere outside the house is calling my mother.
“That’s Carolanne, the kid from next door,” she says, sticking her head way out of the window. “Yeah?”
“I got the carriage. Wanna go now?” Carolanne whoever shouts up.
“I promised her I’d go collecting this afternoon,” my mother says to me.
“Collecting?”
“You know, silver.”
I don’t know silver, but I hate to look too dumb so I say, “Yeah, sure.”
“It’ll only take an hour or so if we go now.”
“I’m ready.” No big deal missing the rest of that porno stuff.
Eleven
We both shoot downstairs and you wouldn’t believe what’s waiting outside for us. There’s this dumpy little twelve-year-old pudge who’s got to be Carolanne pushing a million-year-old doll carriage stuffed full of rolled-up balls of silver paper. I’m smart enough to figure she’s either a freak or a loony so I keep my mouth shut.
“Hubba, hubba,” my mother says, and she really looks impressed.
By now she’s up to her elbows digging in the mound of silver balls. “You really found the mother lode.” Then she turns to me. “Terrif, huh?”
I search her face to see if she’s putting me on, but no, she’s serious. I figure it’s probably safest to play it by ear for now. “Hubba, hubba,” I say, just because I can’t resist it.
We store the silver Carolanne collected in the garage and start off down the street, pushing this raunchy old carriage. We stop at every house on the block and the people are so nice. They open the doors right away (mostly they aren’t even locked, and half the time they’re wide open already) and give us tons of silver paper. I guess you couldn’t go out and buy silver paper like you can now. You had to peel it off old cigarette wrappers or other kinds of packages.
Some of the people offer us cookies and fruit or a cold drink. It’s a little hard getting used to all this trust and friendliness. In fact I haven’t yet. Every time my mother takes a cookie or a piece of fruit I hold my breath waiting for her to chomp on the razor blade.
Little by little it begins to dawn on me that this silver has something to do with the war. I don’t know too much about it, but I do know that World War II happened in the forties. It must be going on right now. They probably melt down the silver and use it to make guns or something like that. I notice how concerned everybody is with what they call the “war effort.” Wherever you look there are flags and big signs telling you to buy defense bonds or support your boys overseas or even A SLIP OF THE LIP CAN SINK A SHIP. I like that one best. Everyone seems tremendously patriotic.
It’s amazing. We’re back home with a full carriage in less than an hour. Easiest collecting I’ve ever done.
“Hey,” my mother says, “how about playing a little tennis down at the schoolyard? It’s only over at the next block.”
I don’t believe it. Finally my mother actually wants to play tennis with me. “Okay by me, but I must tell you I’m not too great.”
“Me neither.”
Yeah, sure.
“C’mon you can use Steve’s racket. Wait here a sec—I’ll get the stuff,” she says, and shoots into the house.
Maybe I should have said no. I’m crazy about Cici, but I don’t know if I’m in the mood to get blitzed at tennis. She’s really going to make me look lousy. Oh, well, too late. She’s back with everything already.
“Let’s go,” she says, and we jog off down the block.
The court is empty when we get there. Phew. At least nobody will see the massacre. As soon as we get in the court she starts apologizing, giving me a whole load of baloney about how she’s only a beginner and she’s pretty awful and she has no backhand and she can’t serve and all that. For the first time I’m feeling a little negative about her because I hate to be conned. So I don’t say much and I just let her serve.
She throws up the ball and I brace myself for her killer serve. It doesn’t come the first time. Or the second time or even the third. In fact you couldn’t even call what comes plopping over the net the fourth time a serve. Not only that, she doesn’t have a backhand, a forehand, or anything else. She wasn’t kidding. She stinks. Wow! I’m totally stunned because I could beat her with my eyes closed. It’s almost too easy. I should just take it gently, lob them over nice and easy right in the center court. Give the kid a break. Hah!
I beat her. Three sets, all of them 6-love.
“You’re terrific, Victoria. You must show me your serve. It’s fabulous.”
And so I teach my mother the very serve she taught me last summer. How does that grab you? It grabs me. Naturally I could play all day, but by now some other kids are waiting for the court so we grab our stuff and head home.
There are some kids playing a game called ring-a-levio in the street in front of the house and they ask us to join them. Everybody’s a little surprised that I don’t know how to play but they show me, and after a while we switch to “kick the can” and they have to show me that too. I’m embarrassed to tell you that we even played jump rope. I haven’t played that baby game in years. When that breaks up, Carolanne, my mother, and I play something called comic book. Everyone is a character from some comic. This is obviously my mother’s big game because right away she says she’s somebody called Sheena of the Jungle. I’m her handmaiden and poor Carolanne gets to be the jungle. It’s not exactly my favorite game, and I keep thinking that if anyone saw me playing it, I’d just die. In my time thirteen-and fourteen-year-old girls just don’t play games like that. Mostly we do more mature things—like pulling our friends apart, complaining about our parents, polishing our nails, and planning the next party. Maybe we’ve been missing something because I’ve been having a fabulous time this afternoon. Kick the can is a great game. So what if it’s a little babyish?
“Felicia!” My grandmother’s voice comes singing down the street. My mother pays no attention the first five times (temporary deafness runs in the family). There’s not too much song left in my grandmother’s voice on the sixth, seventh, and eighth yells, and by the ninth it’s an angry croak followed by, “If you don’t answer this second I’m coming to get you!” That does it.
“In a minute,” answers my mother.
“Right now!” The command from my grandmother. It really cracks me up to hear my grandmother
giving my mother orders.
“I’m coming,” shouts my mother, making no move to end the game. We play for another five minutes or so, then my grandmother calls again and we beat it home. I have to admire my mom. I’d have folded after four yells and no more than two extra minutes at the end.
My grandfather is home when we get there. It’s amazing but he practically looks the same as he does now, only with a little less belly. And he’s still as funny. I mean he can really crack me up with his jokes. Dinner is the best, though. We have chicken soup with little tiny unhatched eggs (no shells or white; they just look like mini-yolks) in it. Cici and my uncle Steve spend half the meal arguing about who gets the extra egg. A real Nina-and-me-type situation, the kind that makes you want to throw up if you have to watch it. At one point it looks like my grandmother’s going to attack them, but they get the message first and cool it. From the egg argument we move smoothly on to the lost-comic-book fight, then my uncle Steve tells on my mother because she was late for school yesterday morning, and my mother says that my uncle Steve hides his cigarettes under the hall radiator, and he turns purple and calls her a liar, and she says and he says and he says and she says, and I want to cry because it feels so good, just like home.
When my mother and my uncle aren’t fighting, my grandmother is bugging my mother about eating. She can’t leave the table until her plate is clean and she has to finish every drop of milk in her glass because everybody is starving in Armenia. My mother is a worse eater than I am, and not wanting to spend the rest of her life at the table, she secretly stuffs her broccoli under the potato skins, her meat into her napkin, and when everyone leaves the table, she feeds her milk to the geraniums. I have to admit my mother did learn something as a kid. She never bugs Nina and me about eating. She’s definitely the type to, because she hassles us about everything else, but I suppose she remembers how terrible it was for her. Anyhow, that business with the potato skins was pretty sharp.
My Mother Was Never A Kid (Victoria Martin Trilogy) Page 10
