Shout Her Lovely Name

by Natalie Serber

  “Sit still already.” Ruby balanced a wine spritzer against her chest and held a cigarette between her fingers as she flipped through the journals, counting up the pages. When she came across Nora’s journal she set it on the sofa between them.

  Nora didn’t touch it. “You can read it. If you want.”

  “Holy shit. Will you look at Elena’s?” Ruby held up a journal. Elena had drawn a star at the top of every single blank page in the book, inviting Ruby to read exactly nothing. “It’s her screw-you gift to me.” Ruby shook her head, and then she wrote, I’m here if you ever want to talk. Followed by a red zero.

  “Why’d you give her a zero?”

  “Listen, Beanie”—she held her drink in front of her mouth—“even though in your life it doesn’t seem like it yet, there are plenty of men to go around. Beautiful women don’t have to hate each other. We don’t have to compete. Elena wrote nothing, she gets no credit.” She sucked ice into her mouth and crunched down hard, like she was chewing rocks. “Holy shit. I could be her friend . . . her mother even, her really young mother.” She tossed Elena’s journal aside.

  Nora was uncertain what her mother meant about men to go around and what any of it had to do with the blank journal. Was she talking about married Frank Lessing or Nora’s absent dad? As far back as she could remember Ruby had always been focused on getting Nora a dad. Ruby was either dewy in love, angry about an argument, or sad after a breakup. Nora wedged her feet beneath her mother’s legs. “Why don’t you read everything?”

  “I want them to trust me, to feel safe enough to write anything at all.”

  Ruby stayed true to her word until she sat up and plunked her drink down hard on the coffee table. She’d found it. Celia’s journal was star free but Ruby flipped back and forth through the pages anyway, biting her lip.

  “Did Celia say anything to you?”

  Nora pretended to think. “She chews her nails.”

  Her mother watched a Nice ’n Easy hair dye commercial then stubbed out her cigarette. The closer he gets . . . the better you look, the voice from the TV said. Finally Ruby commented, “Celia has no friends,” as if nail biting and friendlessness were linked. She totaled up the pages and circled an eight and two pluses on the cover. Something about that eight hugged by a circle of red ink made Nora happy. It was as if her mother’s decision to honor the girls’ secrets meant that Nora’s future secrets would be safe too—safety by association. She shifted her position on the sofa again, this time resting her head against her mother’s bony shoulder. Ruby set her work aside and wrapped her arms around Nora. They turned up the TV and watched Monty Hall pay a woman twenty bucks for the can opener in her purse. Ruby told Nora to switch to the news, where they followed a story about the hiring of the first-ever women FBI agents.

  “Shh.” Ruby held her finger to her lips and then continued to talk right around it. “You are going to have so many choices.”

  Spring came so early that by April the volunteer flowers—daffodils, cornflowers, dandelions—out by Nora’s sofa were already withered. For months she’d been sneaking the girls’ updated journals outside, and as a result, she was panicked and enthralled by all that could happen in a teenage life. You just never knew.

  Unlike her mother, Nora read all the pages—heady and alarming stories of dates gone bad, overcrowded apartments, broken wrists, calls to God, formal dances, withdrawal method, probation, and VD—whether there was a star or not. After her fuck entry, Celia starred all her pages. Her brothers had beaten a boy she spoke to at church. Elena had cut off the end of her braid during science period. Celia found her locker filled with kitty litter. She didn’t trust any of the girls at school. She wanted heels. Her father would not allow her to wear store-bought clothes. She had to wear the shapeless dresses her grandmother sewed for her. Her mother had no say because her mother was dead. Boys and wine were the only things that made Celia happy, so she started sneaking out her bedroom window. Happiness was worth risks, she wrote in one entry.

  Nora thought about that for a long time. The statement seemed essential and romantic.

  When Celia was caught with a boy, her father, a welder, blackened her eye, then installed bars on her window to keep her in and to keep thieves out. She was miserable, and her brother supplied her with reds. She mentioned suicide. It was so huge, Celia’s isolation, that Ruby had created a contract in the journal. Next time I want to swallow reds, I will call Miss Hargrove. In return, Ruby promised discretion. They both signed it, Celia in her flowery cursive, Celia Delgado.

  Elena had written exactly four entries, all marked with stars. She wrote about a boy, Hugo, who was twenty and deluged her with warm kisses. Hugo tattooed her name on his arm twice . . . once was not enough for him, Elena wrote. Next she wrote about sitting by herself in the last row at Our Lady of Solitude, staring at the back of Hugo’s mother’s head, afraid to look inside the casket. Then she wrote to say her family was sending her away indefinitely to visit an aunt in Juárez. Ruby responded to that entry. I am so sorry. If there is anything I can do to help, anything at all, let me know. You have choices. She’d signed her note Ms. Hargrove and then she’d crossed that out and written Ruby, along with their address. The fourth entry said only goodbye and thank you.

  The journal idea was working. Nora felt glad her mother wanted to aid and comfort the girls. It made her mother seem stronger somehow, as if there was enough of her to go around. Sometimes, late at night, her mother sat alone in their living room, on the brink of something Nora did not understand. The first time Nora felt her mother awake in the apartment, she tiptoed to the threshold of the living room but found the sofa empty. The red glow from her mother’s cigarette was the only point of light in the dim room and once Nora’s eyes grew accustomed to the dark, she found her mother sitting on the floor in front of the door mirror, blowing smoke rings at her reflection. “It’s quiet,” Nora worried out loud. Her voice butted up against a soft thing rising in her throat. “It’s a lonesome night,” her mother murmured back and Nora swallowed hard. Lonesomeness often threatened to descend upon her mother, and when it did, Ruby sometimes couldn’t get out of bed. How could she feel lonesome when Nora was right here, right beside her? A smoke ring hovered between her mother and the mirror but it was her mother who seemed like she might fade away. Nora curled up on the floor next to her that night, one arm hitched over Ruby’s thigh. How could a person feel safe when she never knew anything about anything?

  On her couch outside, Nora traced the blue ink with her pinkie —Ms. Hargrove, Ruby. Her mother wanted to be a safe place in her girls’ harrowing lives. That had to be good. She stretched out long, wondered what it would be like to be sent away like Elena, to be locked in like Celia, to weep in the dark like her mother. She stared up into the orange-tinged haze that forever clung to Los Angeles. It was all tragic and beautiful. The journals she clutched to her chest grew heavy as the Yellow Pages. She felt tired and imagined dropping them in the dirt. Dead flowers, strange alien light, the faint thrum of traffic helicopters scuttling up and down the freeways bordering her neighborhood, reporting on delays, accidents, and air quality. Then she imagined a sudden rise and swoop, being lifted by the whirring helicopter blades. She imagined looking down upon a never-ending line of brake lights below her, red like the pills Celia’s brother gave her, like the blood in the diagrams from the Family Life filmstrip, like the wine spritzers her mother drank at night with the phone in her other hand. She imagined sweeping down and gathering motherless Celia from her imprisonment, ducking to climb back aboard. Celia’s long hair would fly up dangerously close to the propeller, and Nora would help to gather it together at Celia’s neck. They would hunt the Greyhound bus that carried Elena with her Life Savers–candy–green eyes and the dead boy in her heart. Hugging herself, Nora thought she would like to save Celia but she would like to be Elena, with her amazing tragedy, her name written twice on a dead boy’s arm. Would anyone ever love Nora enough to tattoo her name onto his skin?r />
  “The closer he gets, the better you look,” her mother narrated in a throaty, lilting voice. She was posing before the last-look mirror she’d nailed to the back of the door for giving herself final once-overs before greeting anyone or heading out.

  Nora, who had just returned the journals to Ruby’s desk, gazed into the mirror from behind her mother. Her bangs and front teeth were crooked. Beneath her rainbow T-shirt she saw the small soft beginnings of her adult life. There were so many frightening questions she could not ask. The room with its beige walls, heavy tweed rental drapes, and ham-colored sofa felt terribly close. Stiff-looped carpeting caused the soles of her bare feet to itch horribly. Her mother had all the windows shut, and the sun glaring in showed streaks from her attempts at cleaning with newspaper and vinegar. A small oscillating fan whirred on the coffee table, stirring the hot air. Their tiny apartment could not contain all that Nora yearned to know. She wanted to sit her mother down and ask but she had no idea where to begin. Her heart felt gummy and slow in her chest. What she needed to know, what she wanted to ask . . . was happiness worth risks? Does it hurt this much to be in love?

  “. . . the better you look. Beanie, would I look better as a redhead?” Ruby raked her fingers through her hair. “Hey.” She squinted at Nora. “What’s wrong with you?”

  Nora shook her head and was shocked by the weight, as if a bowling ball had rolled across the floor of her skull.

  “You weren’t outside? I told you not to go outside.” Ruby placed a cool hand on Nora’s forehead. There was a stage-two smog alert. “Look, I need you to feel better.”

  Nora followed her mother’s quick movements into the kitchen. Ruby was making spaghetti sauce. Maxine was on her way over. “We’re coloring my hair.” Plus, she had a date later. She pulled an ice cube tray from the freezer, yanked up the metal bar, and released the ice onto the counter. The sound was deafening. “Go lie down.”

  Her mother filled a towel with ice, a glass with water, and brought in two aspirin. She commanded Nora to keep her eyes closed and stay still. “This will pass quickly, you’ll see.”

  Nora slept on and off, a dark and empty sleep without dreams. She might have heard Maxine arrive, the door slam. Perhaps she heard the whoosh of the blow dryer or the rise and fall of conversation. She tried her best to not throw up. Someone set a plate of buttered spaghetti and a glass of ginger ale on the coffee table. There was delighted laughter and Nora saw her mother through half-closed eyes. Ruby’s hair was fierce red. “What do you think, Beanie?”

  “Did you call poison control?” Maxine was standing over Nora.

  “What could they do?”

  “They say milk helps.”

  Nora wondered, Were they talking about the dye or the smog alert?

  “This damn city.” She felt her mother’s lips against her forehead, inhaled the thick chemical/floral scent of the dye. Her eyes and mouth watered. The muscles at the back of her throat contracted and Nora retched, nothing but foam and soggy noodles, like wet, stringy brains.

  “Poor little thing.”

  “Holy shit.” Ruby ran into the kitchen to get paper towels, then knelt at the foot of the couch, sopping things up.

  “Who are you?” Nora whispered, which made both women laugh.

  “See, she’s rebounding,” Ruby said.

  And then Nora was. She sipped ginger ale, and, to make Maxine feel helpful, she drank some milk before Maxine left. Her mother turned on Room 222, the show Nora liked about a student teacher at a big Los Angeles high school, and tucked a blanket around her knees.

  When Frank Lessing arrived to take Ruby out for just one drink, he patted Nora’s leg and asked again about the TV.

  “We love it, okay?” Ruby said. Then she turned to Nora and her voice softened. “Don’t answer the door and only answer our special ring. You remember?”

  “Ring twice, hang up, call back.”

  “Stay inside.”

  “Will you bring home ice cream?”

  Her mother kissed her forehead. “You’d better be asleep when we get back.”

  “What flavor?” Frank Lessing winked at her. His shirt was so white it hurt Nora’s eyes.

  At first she mistook the knocking for a sound in her dream, her mother pacing the wooden floor of her classroom. By the time Nora crossed the carpet to the door, the whimpering voice sounded desperate. “Ms. Hargrove.” The doorknob felt comforting against Nora’s hot palm. She bent down and touched her forehead to it—so cool; she paused and closed her eyes. “Ms. Hargrove,” the voice said again and Nora was confused. Her mother told her not to open the door but this person knew them.

  “Who is it?”

  “Is your mother home?” Nora thought she recognized the silky, gritty voice. She opened the door and there was Elena, leaning against the doorjamb, her palm pressed to her forehead. She attempted to smile, but to Nora it looked like a grimace.

  She opened the door wider and Elena stumbled in. She wore a simple black dress and flat shoes. Her hair was flat too, and her face was bare of makeup. Her green eyes were clouded, and her gaze darted around Nora’s living room.

  “My mother isn’t home.” Nora hung back by the open door, gripping her elbows in front of her chest. Her arm burned where the boy would have Elena’s name inked onto his flesh, twice.

  “You’re home alone?”

  “I’m sick,” Nora answered, as if that had anything to do with it.

  Elena slumped onto the sofa, her knees squeezed together. “What’s the matter with you?”

  “Smog poisoning.”

  She huffed like she didn’t believe Nora, only the huff turned into a groan and she tipped over onto her side.

  Nora shut the door. “What happened to you?” She was part frozen, part ready to spring into action. “What do you need?” She tried to imagine what her mother would do if she were home. She would move around. She would get things.

  Elena squeezed her eyes tight and Nora ran to the kitchen. A moment later she was back with aspirin, an ice pack, a bowl with two meatballs, and ginger ale. Strands of dark hair clung to Elena’s forehead where she was perspiring, other bits curled in tiny ringlets. Her face was very pale and she was sweating on her top lip as well, perfect little dots. Her hand shook as she brought the glass to her lips to swallow the aspirin. “Do you know.” Elena paused. “When will she be back?”

  Nora shook her head but she said soon. “They went for one drink.” When she reached out to take the glass away, Elena grabbed on to her wrist and squeezed. Nora didn’t say that one drink could take a long time. Something was terribly wrong. Elena was supposed to be on a Greyhound. How long ago had she written that entry? Nora thought of Celia and the reds. She didn’t even know what reds were but maybe they could make you this sick. Elena reached down and touched between her own legs. When she brought her hand up, she cried out, and Nora stepped back, her hand covering her mouth. “Should I call for help?”

  “No, no, no, no. Don’t. My parents can’t know.”

  Nora ran from the room and returned with her knapsack. She dug out the maxi-pad and gave it to Elena, who gripped it in her hand, leaving a dark red smear.

  “A towel,” she said, and Nora ran from the room again.

  Elena lifted her hips and slid the towel beneath. She was lying flat now. Her eyes closed; she was terribly pale.

  “Promise you won’t leave me alone. Even if I fall asleep,” she insisted. “Promise.”

  Nora sat stiff straight on the floor, near to Elena’s head, far from the other part. She slipped a small pillow under Elena’s head then stared at the door, mouthing the words Come home, come home, come home. Just in case, she wanted the telephone beside her, yet she was afraid to get up. The long black cord snaked from the kitchen into Ruby’s dark bedroom. Once Elena slept, Nora would turn on all the lights in the apartment and retrieve it. From health class she knew where to feel for a pulse. Nora wrapped her fingers around Elena’s slim wrist and began to count while on the TV Johnny
Carson told jokes. The audience laughter nearly drowned out Elena’s coarse and shallow breathing. Nora lost count twice before she gave up and took small comfort in the faint beat.

  “Dr. Beautiful?” Elena whispered. “Do you have a boyfriend yet?” She offered her smile-grimace one more time.

  “You should rest.”

  It was the station sign-off on the TV screen, an American flag flapping in a stiff breeze, when the doorknob finally turned.

  “. . . not what I meant. I do, I like it, very, very much,” Frank was saying, and Ruby responded, “Shh. Nora’s asleep.”

  As soon as Nora saw them she ran at her mother. “Why did you leave me alone?” she wailed.

  Ruby stepped back, away from Nora’s fists. “You’re up?” There was a laugh behind the question, which disappeared when she looked into Nora’s worried face.

  “Who’s that?” Frank said.

  “She’s bleeding.” Nora sank down onto the floor and began to shake.

  “Elena?” Ruby knelt at the couch, ran her hands down Elena’s arms, checked the tender skin of her wrists. She looked at Nora over her shoulder. “What do you mean, bleeding? Did she tell you anything?”

  Nora rocked on her knees, afraid to ask if Elena was dead.

  In her spring-loaded voice Ruby told Nora to make coffee. “Black and strong.” She repeated Elena’s name, louder each time, while she hooked her hands beneath the girl’s armpits to pull her upright. When Elena inched upward Ruby caught sight of the sofa. “Holy shit. Get towels. Forget the coffee. Get water.”

  Frank was already dialing.

  “Can you make her better?”

  “She’s hemorrhaging. Quick, elevate her legs.” Ruby pushed Elena’s upper body back down, then stepped to the other end of the sofa to heave her legs farther onto the cushions. Elena’s black dress fell to her hips. Her bare legs emerging from the pink of her underpants looked rubbery and gray, completely wrong. “Shove pillows under her hips. She needs blood to her brain and heart.”