by Foxglove Lee
“See?” my aunt was saying. “Now don’t you wish you’d taken my advice?”
I looked at her blankly. “Huh?”
“Well, look what you’re wearing, then look at what all the other customers have on. Is anyone else in denim overalls?”
“No.” I slunk a little lower in my chair. My aunt was right. I felt self-conscious in overalls and a tank top.
“I think it’s important for people to wear clothes they like,” Tiffany chimed in, making me feel vindicated against my aunt and the elderly tearoom patrons. “Clothes represent your personality. If you wear frilly pink dresses just because your mom wants you to, you’re telling the world something that isn’t true. You’re being inauthentic. I hate people who are inauthentic.”
“What if you dress like a pop tart?” my aunt asked Tiffany, evil-eyeing her Madonna outfit. “Then what are you telling the world?”
Tiffany sat up a little straighter, and I did too. “That you’re a liberated woman and you’re not concerned about what other people think of you.”
“Hmm.” My aunt nibbled at a sandwich and chuckled when egg salad spurted out the back. “Oopsie.”
“What about me?” I asked Tiffany, like she was some kind of clotheshorse fortune teller. “What does it say if you wear overalls and tank tops?”
“It says you’re a lesbian,” Tiffany replied without looking up from her scone.
Aunt Libby choked on her tea. When she’d recovered she chastised, “Tiffany!”
Tiffany didn’t say anything, and neither did I. My throat burned the way it always did when I was about to cry. I couldn’t look at her, and not because it wasn’t true. Because she’d said it in front of my aunt, like it was nothing, like it didn’t matter.
None of us said a word the entire rest of lunch. I couldn’t figure out whether I resented Tiffany for saying that about me, or whether I was grateful. All I knew was that if I tried to talk, I was going to cry.
The red-headed girl never set foot in the dining room again the entire time we were there. When new patrons came in, our waitress seated them. It made me wonder. It made me question my eyes and my ears. I hadn’t remembered messing up my room the other day, or cleaning it afterwards. Now I was obsessing over a restaurant hostess who didn’t seem to exist? What was happening to me?
My aunt paid the bill silently, and we followed her out of the tearoom. When her feet hit the sidewalk, she turned toward the car.
That was not the way to the movie theatre.
Chapter 12
“Where are you going, Auntie Libby?”
She turned to me and smiled. It didn’t look like one of her real smiles, but I was glad to see it regardless. “The used bookstore. Your uncle asked me to find him a few choice paperbacks.”
“Oh,” I said, thinking ‘Thank God!’ I didn’t want to go back to the cottage in silent shame.
“Tiffany,” my aunt asked as we crossed the road. “Do you like to read?”
“Depends on the book,” Tiffany replied. “I don’t like books that are boring.”
Aunt Libby laughed, and it sounded fake, but I didn’t care and I don’t think Tiffany even noticed. “Well, everyone’s idea of what’s interested and what’s boring is different.”
“Different strokes for different folks,” I said, and a sudden ache came over me. I hadn’t realized how much I missed TV.
When we stepped into the bookstore, the old man who owned the place was sitting at the front desk, listening to the incoherent droning of CBC Radio. “Bags at the front,” he said, pointing to a sign that said PLEASE LEAVE ALL SHOPPING BAGS WITH THE OWNER.
I was holding the bag from Lucy’s Craft Store, and for some reason I felt really ashamed when he took it from me, like I’d been caught stealing or something. I’d never stolen anything in my life. Well, not from a store. I thought about the dozens, maybe even hundreds of maxi pads I’d stolen from other people’s houses, and my cheeks blazed. I guess I’d stolen a tea biscuit from the Joneses too, but I paid Tiffany for that eventually. So not really stealing.
There were no other customers in the store, and I could see why. The place smelled like dust and mould, just like a library. It made me want to sneeze.
“Can we not stay here too long?” I whispered to my aunt.
The old man at the desk glared at me from behind his bifocals. He had the kind of nose that looked like a raven’s beak, and I was half afraid he’d peck me to death with it.
“Come on,” Tiffany said, taking me by the hand while Aunt Libby perused the paperbacks at the front of the store. Her skin was soft like an angel. “You know where you have to look, right?”
I didn’t know what she meant. I only read when I had a book report due.
Tiffany quietly moved a step stool from one of the aisles and set it against the back wall. Climbing up, she ran her fingers across the books on the top shelf.
“What are you looking for?” I asked.
She glared down at me, a silent shhh! Pulling out a few books, she looked behind them and seemed disappointed. I didn’t understand what she was doing, or I’d have helped.
“No use,” she muttered, stepping down from the stool. And then her gaze landed on something on the bottom shelf, and her countenance brightened. “Oh my God, I can’t believe it!”
“Believe what?” I fell to my knees beside her as she pawed through a bunch of paperbacks with the covers ripped off. “What are they?”
“You’ve never read one before?”
“Read one what?”
“They’re pulp fiction,” Tiffany said, flipping through the pages until she found the ripped-off cover jammed in the middle like a bookmark. It was a painted image of two scantily-clad women under the title The Evil Friendship.
“Pulp fiction?”
Tiffany nodded. “Lesbian pulp fiction.”
I’d never heard of it, but those words sounded as racy as the cover.
My throat closed up, and I got that feeling like I was going to cry, but I also got goosebumps all down my bare arms. The content was pretty clear from the covers. These were naughty books.
“I’ve never read one,” I said. “I’ve never even heard of them before.”
“Oh, Becca.” Tiffany’s expression darkened, but not in an evil way. In a way that made her seem like she was on fire. “Becca, they’re goooood. You should read one.”
We flipped through more books and found covers stashed in all of them. Titles like, The Fear and the Guilt, Prison Girls, Sisters in Sin, and images that made my cheeks blaze. “How old are these?”
“From the thirties, some of them.” Tiffany fingered the pages like feathers. “Thirties, forties, fifties.”
“I didn’t know there were things like this, back then. Or people like… this.” I wanted to say people like us, but it wouldn’t come out. I was making an assumption. I knew in my heart it was right, but it was still just an assumption.
Tiffany glanced all around like she was up to something, then tried to slip one of the books down the front of my overalls. “Here, shove them down your pants.”
“What are you doing?” I asked. I was laughing. I thought it was a joke.
“Shh!” Tiffany picked up another one and came close enough that I could feel her breath on my cheek. “My purse is too small and my dress is too see-through. You’ve got lots of space under those overalls. The elastic of your underwear will keep them in place, trust me.”
“You want me to steal?” I asked, loud enough that she cupped her hand over my mouth.
“You got a better idea?”
“Yeah,” I said, but my voice was muffled by her hand. “How about we pay for them?”
“Right. Sure. ‘Here, Mister Bookseller-man. We’d like to buy these raunchy lesbian pornos, please. Have a nice day!’ How do you think that’s gonna go down?”
I sat back on my heels and Tiffany let go of my mouth. She was right. And even if the shop owner did let us buy the books, my aunt would be standing right ther
e. I doubt if she’d have allowed me to bring home filth. And lesbian filth, better still.
“Fine,” I said.
I should have felt defeated, but instead a terrified sort of excitement raced through me. Tiffany handed me a coverless book and I shoved it down the side of my overalls, fitting it just under the waistband of my cotton panties.
“Stand up.” Tiffany grinned like a demon. “See if it stays.”
When I rose to my feet and wiggled my hips, the book stayed right in place.
“Here, put in another one.” Tiffany stuck her hand inside my overalls, and the heat of her wrist against my belly made me shudder. I couldn’t look her in the eye, but I took over for her, wedging the paperback inside my underwear just enough for it to stay in place.
“How am I gonna get these out without my aunt noticing?” I whispered. “I can’t walk around all day with books down my pants.”
“In the bathroom at the theatre,” Tiffany said, like she had it all planned out. “Just bring the craft store bag into the stall and put them in there, then take them back out before you get home. Now, is there room for one more? Maybe against your butt?”
Tiffany whirled me around, and giggles bubbled up inside me. I’d almost let them out when I realized I was staring straight into the face of the old man who owned the bookstore.
“Shoplifters,” he said in a low, dark growl, “will be prosecuted to the fullest extent of the law.”
My head buzzed. There was a weird ringing in my years, and it took a few seconds before I realized it was coming from inside of me. I didn’t even try to speak because I had no idea what I should say. This wasn’t me. It was Tiffany, Tiffany’s idea. Not mine. Not mine at all.
“What are you talking about?” Tiffany asked, hopping up and cutting in front of me. “We’re just looking at some books. We didn’t steal anything.”
“I think this young lady’s unmentionables have other ideas,” the shopkeeper shot back.
Tiffany folded her arms in front of her chest, lying through her teeth. “What are you gonna do, strip search her? I think you’re the one who’d end up in jail, old man.”
“Tiffany!” Aunt Libby appeared in the back aisle, clutching paperbacks for my uncle. “Rebecca, honey, what’s going on? Is this man giving you trouble?”
“Am I giving them trouble?” he cackled. “That’s rich! Why don’t you ask what your daughter’s got shoved down her shorts, eh? And then you tell me who’s giving whom trouble.”
Aunt Libby’s face strained with confusion, like she thought the man had committed some indecent act against me. She took me by the arm and held on tight. “Becca, what happened? It’s okay, you can tell me. Whatever it is, I won’t be upset.”
I could feel Tiffany staring at my arms like she could lock them at my sides with just her eyes. She couldn’t, of course. I couldn’t lie. I pulled the books out of my overalls, one after another, and handed them to Tiffany.
What happened next was like a tornado of words. The bookseller said we should be ashamed, and I was ashamed. Tiffany shouted back at him that we had hadn’t stolen anything.
“We’re still in the store, aren’t we?” That was Tiffany’s reasoning. “You can’t accuse us of stealing anything until we walk out.”
The worst of it was my aunt’s reaction, because it wasn’t at all what I expected. She was calm, way too calm, and she kept saying, “They’re just young girls. They’re curious about their bodies, about sex.”
We never talked about sex in my family. We never even said the word sex.
I was mortified, but my aunt said, “You can’t blame them.”
“I can blame,” the shop owner said. “And I do. And I blame the parents too. Well-bred children know the difference between right and wrong.”
Despite the man’s false assumption, Aunt Libby didn’t say anything about not being my mother. Maybe that should have bothered me, since I had a mother back home, but I needed a saviour and my aunt was it.
“Let me pay for the books,” Aunt Libby said. “No harm, no foul. Are you hiding anything else in there, Rebecca?”
I whispered no so quietly I was surprised that she heard me.
“Oh, you’ll pay, right enough.” The old man grabbed the pulp fiction from Tiffany and the paperbacks from Aunt Libby and stormed to the front of the store. As we followed him to the register, he said, “You’ll pay, but that doesn’t mean I’ll be putting up with any more malarkey. I don’t want to see any of you in my shop again. Where are you lot from, anyway? That trailer park down the road, I imagine. No good, the lot of you.”
My aunt didn’t answer him. She stood tall like Queen of the Nile. In a voice that matched her posture, she asked, “How much do I owe you for the books?”
“Call it an even twenty,” he said, though there was no way eight old books cost so much. Our pulp fictions were priced at fifty cents. “Cash only.”
Aunt Libby slid a wrinkled old twenty across the wooden desktop, and picked up all eight books. “Come on, girls. Someone grab the door for me. Thank you.”
The man behind the counter grumbled something as I grabbed our bags, but I didn’t make out what it was.
“Did he call us trash?” Tiffany asked, lagging behind as my aunt stormed down the sidewalk.
It wouldn’t have surprised me, but Tiffany obviously wasn’t the sort of girl who got called things like trash. I bet she got called a princess a lot, or a snob, or a mall rat, or even a bitch. But not trash. People like me and my mom got called trash. Because we were useless. Because we were always in the way. We were holding others back from what they really wanted in life, weighing them down like anchors.
I thought about my father, about the names he called us when he was drunk, and my throat burned. I was crying before I realized it, and I wiped my eyes with the palms of my hands, hoping nobody would notice how red they’d gone.
Tiffany kept talking to me as we sped after my aunt. I didn’t know what she was saying. Her voice sounded angry, but the words blurred somewhere between my ears and my brain.
I stopped walking and my aunt kept going, and Tiffany kept going too, but just for a few steps. When she spun around, I asked, “Were you trying to get me in trouble?”
“No,” she said, and the expression on her face seemed genuine enough that I believed her. “Is your aunt really mad, do you think? Is she still going to take us to the movies?”
“I don’t know.” By that point, Aunt Libby was almost back at the station wagon. “Let’s not follow her. She can’t take us back if we’re not in the car.”
We ducked into the candy shop to pick up supplies for the movies, and by the time we came out, my aunt was storming up the path. “Where did you two disappear to?”
“Bought some candy for the movie,” Tiffany said with a green licorice shoelace sticking out of her mouth. She sat in one of the Muskoka chairs outside the Home Hardware. “We picked you up some Bridge Mix. Bec said that’s your favourite. I think it’s gross.”
My aunt surprised me with a smile. “So does Rebecca.” She put a scowl back on, but her eyes never stopped sparkling. “But I have news for you girls. We will not be going to the movies.”
Tiffany groaned, but I just listened.
“You will be going to the movies.” The smile came back. “You don’t need your old aunt tagging along, do you? You’ll have more fun just the two of you.”
With a squeal, Tiffany grabbed my hand. “Wow, thank you! I thought you were going to be so mad at us.”
“I’m not mad,” Aunt Libby said. “But the next time you’re after sleazy reading materials, kindly ask me for money rather than shoving books down your pants.”
I looked away, staring at a little girl on a bicycle with blue tires and rainbow streamers. Maybe Tiffany and my aunt could laugh about what had happened, but I was still mortified. I probably would be for the rest of my life.
But at least Tiffany and I were still seeing The Breakfast Club. My aunt had never seen it, and I
felt guilty that she’d opted to sit in the tearoom with one of Uncle Flip’s new books for two hours while Tiffany and I were at the theatre. It didn’t occur to me that she was giving us time alone—not until I’d settled into a threadbare velvet seat with a bucket of popcorn in my lap.
“Where is everybody?” Tiffany asked. “This place is, like, dead-o-rama.”
We’d taken seats in the last row of the tiny theatre. There were only eight other people in the audience, and they were all clumped in the middle. “Do you think my aunt was mad?”
Tiffany grabbed a handful of popcorn. “We didn’t steal anything.”
“You know what I mean.” I stared at her thigh, where her skin showed through the crinoline layer of her skirt. “Not just the books, but… like, what you said in the tearoom too.”
She turned in her seat so she was facing me. “You think your family doesn’t know already? I mean, it’s pretty obvious.”
I slunk down in my seat, hugging the big bucket of popcorn like a teddy bear. Thank goodness the lights went down just then, because I didn’t want to talk about what my family knew about me and what they didn’t know. We just didn’t talk about anything personal. We weren’t like that. Anyway, we had bigger fish to fry.
Tiffany’s white dress glowed blue in the darkness of the Coming Attractions. I felt so self-conscious beside her, like she’d be judging me by every chuckle or sigh. When our elbows touched on the armrest, I flinched but I didn’t move, and neither did she. Our elbows stayed like that, touching gently, until the movie started.
“Want some candy?” she whispered over the opening scene in the school parking lot, when Molly Ringwald was dropped off at school by her dad and Emilio Estevez by his.
“Hot lips,” I said. A rush of heat shot through my cheeks.
“Fish lips,” she said, and sucked her cheeks in, kissing the air. When I giggled, she shoved our paper bag of gummy candies down the front of my overalls. “Go fish.”
