Saving Ruth

by Zoe Fishman

  “Hey, girls!” screeched Bootsie.

  “Hey, Bootsie,” we all screeched back, playing the game of I’m so glad to see you! even though we weren’t. She up-downed us all before going in for hugs. Her beer sloshed out of her red cup and dripped down my back as she gave me mine.

  “Ruth, it is so good to see you! I swear I wouldn’t recognize you if it wasn’t for your crazy hair!” Zing. “You look awesome!”

  “Thanks, Bootsie,” I mumbled. “So do you.”

  “Well, now I know you’re full of shit. I am fatter than one of them Kobe beef cows. You’re gonna have to share your diet secrets with me later.” Okay, here you go, Boots: don’t eat. I laughed nervously.

  “Where’s the beer?” asked Jill, saving me.

  “Oh, the keg is in the back.” She pointed us toward it.

  We made our way through the crowd, tossing out the requisite heys and hugs. In the kitchen, I searched for a beer alternative amid Bootsie’s mother’s disturbing collection of ceramic cows. Everywhere you turned there was a cow—a cow cookie jar, cow pot holders, even a cow figurine inexplicably perched on a tiny toilet. What’s the message here? I wondered. Easy on the cookies, heifer?

  “Ruth?” I screwed the top back on a Jim Beam bottle and turned around.

  “Chris!” I hugged him. Chris had been friends with David since they were in first grade, and I had had a crush on him exactly as long. He was always at our house—playing with GI Joes and then video games and then soccer and then who knows what. They would lock themselves in David’s room for hours, emerging only to eat everything in the refrigerator.

  Chris was tall, with broad shoulders, blue eyes, and dark hair that curled around his neck like ivy. His forearms were my favorite part of him—they were lean and sinuous like a pit bull’s haunches. His whole body looked like that, actually. I had volunteered to chase enough rebound balls for their basketball games of 21 to know.

  “Hey,” he said sheepishly. “How are you?”

  “Good, good,” I answered. I nervously took a sip of my drink and almost gagged. Holy Jim Beam, Batman. As others crowded the makeshift bar, we moved to the other side of the kitchen.

  “And how are you? How’s Tech?” Chris had stayed in town for college, for reasons that weren’t quite clear to me. I knew his family didn’t have a lot of money, but he had been something of a basketball star in high school. I had asked David about it once, and he had called me a snob. You’re judging him because he decided to stay here, he had said. He was right.

  “It’s fine.” He took a sip of his beer. “You look all grown up, Ruthie.” I smirked and blushed simultaneously.

  “Thanks, I think. You don’t look so bad yourself.” Had I really just said that?

  “No, really. You look great. Hey, is David home? I tried calling him, but no answer.”

  “Yeah, he’s home. We’re both lifeguarding and coaching again this summer.” I took another sip. “Who knows, he may show up here tonight.”

  “Oh, cool.” He put his hand through his hair. “How’s he been? He’s sort of avoiding me, I think. Trying to break up with me or something.”

  “Ah, the old, ‘it’s not you, it’s me’ bit?”

  “No, more like an outright Heisman. The kid never calls me back.”

  “Join the club.”

  “Oh yeah?” he asked.

  “Yeah.” We stood there in awkward silence for a moment or two. My attraction to him had reduced my conversational skills to zero. “Well, I’m gonna go find M.K.,” I mumbled finally. “I’ll see you around, I guess.”

  “Yeah, of course. I’ll see you,” he offered, as I made a beeline for the door.

  “Um, he was flirting with you,” M.K. informed me, appearing suddenly by my side.

  “Give me a break, Reed.” I took another sip. The sugary sweetness coated my teeth.

  “Don’t play cool with me, Wass.”

  “Is that what was happening? Really?”

  “Really. This is your summer.” She gave me a mock up-down. “By the way, everybody is whisperin’ their heads off about you.”

  This was sort of thrilling, actually—to be the talk of the town. I don’t think my name had crossed the lips of any of these people my entire life thus far, other than to say, Oh, Ruth? David’s sister? Yeah, she’s all right.

  “Am I on my deathbed, dying of starvation?”

  “No, but you do a lot of blow. And you may be a lesbian.”

  “No way.”

  “Way.”

  “Sweet Jesus.” I lit a cigarette. “Gonna be a hell of a summer, Reed.”

  She slapped me on my bottom and went to use the bathroom. Alone, I retreated to the perimeter of the lawn to people-watch. Everyone here looked exactly the same. They acted the same, they dressed the same, they went to the same schools, dated the same people, and named their kids the same names. It wasn’t as if Michigan was a giant melting pot. There wasn’t a whole lot of room for individuality there either. I knew that. But at least there you could count on a couple of different shades of human at a party. I’d never been to a party here that hadn’t been 100 percent white, except for Malik, Jill’s boyfriend.

  “Deep thoughts?” asked Jill, interrupting my inner rant. She handed me a joint. “You look mighty serious over here.”

  I took a hit. “Just thinkin’. Hey, where’s Malik?”

  “He’s working tonight.”

  “How does he do it? Deal with all of these annoying white people all the time?”

  Jill produced an exaggerated expression of surprise. “Oh, you’re not white now?”

  “No, of course I am.” I stubbed my cigarette out. “I’m just lookin’ around, you know? At this party. So I wondered.”

  “I mean, it bores the crap out of him most of the time, I guess. He goes to my parties when I drag him, but he never really takes me to his.”

  “Does that bother you?”

  “Sure.” She grabbed my drink out of my hand and took a big gulp. “Ew, that tastes nasty, Ruth.” She paused. “Listen, a white girl and a black guy together in this town is pretty rare, and people are ignorant. It is what it is. We deal with it.”

  “I can’t imagine.”

  “No, you probably can’t.” She sighed. “Want to do some gravity bong hits in Mrs. Compton’s tub?”

  “You serious?”

  “Do I look serious?” We walked toward the house.

  “Oh look, it’s your brother,” Jill gushed. I looked up to see him leaning against the porch banister in his dress pants and a wrinkled soccer T-shirt. He was alone and smoking a cigarette—pinching the filter awkwardly and squinting through the cloud that hovered around him. “Go on in, Jill. I’m gonna say hey for a second.”

  “What’s up with him? He looks pissed.”

  “I dunno. Go on, I’ll meet ya inside.” From behind, I tapped his left shoulder but lingered over his right. His head swiveled accordingly, and he greeted me with a smirk before turning around to face me.

  “Hey,” I said.

  “Hey.”

  “How were services?”

  “Fine.”

  “Chris was looking for you before.”

  “Oh yeah?” He put his cigarette out in his cup of beer.

  “You should go find him. I think he’s still out here somewh—”

  “Nah, I’m gonna go. This party sucks. I shouldn’t have come.”

  “You okay?” David loved a party. I’d never been to one with him where he wasn’t the absolute center of it. Tonight he hovered around the edges judgmentally like—well, like me.

  “Yeah, I’m fine. Look, I’ll see ya.”

  He raised his hand in a half-wave as he walked away, but didn’t turn around.

  7

  I opened my eyes tentatively. I had set my alarm clock for 7:30, and it wa
s 7:28. I switched it off before its shriek sounded. My head felt like rubber.

  I had been dreaming of fountain soda and crushed ice—I was so dehydrated even my subconscious was thirsty. I sat up slowly. What a night. Nothing had happened really, but I had gotten pretty wasted. So much for “nothing stupid.” I touched my growling stomach, checking for bloat. Later cereal, but first, I would hurl myself through a sweat-soaked run. I winced, thinking about it. Too bad, Ruth, I whispered. I hadn’t exercised since I’d been home, and I could feel my thighs growing. I rolled out of bed and into the bathroom.

  Minutes later I was in my running gear and guzzling a giant glass of water in preparation at the kitchen sink. Through the window, heat ribbons bounced off the driveway.

  “You’re going running in this?” I turned to find my dad behind me, his hair askew from sleep.

  “Yeah.” I sighed, still a little nauseous. “Gotta do it.”

  He nodded. “Be careful, please.” The combination of just waking up and having to engage in conversation seemed to perplex him.

  “When did you get home last night?”

  “I think around one?”

  “I thought I heard you come in. How was the party?”

  “It was okay. Saw a lot of people I hadn’t seen in a while.”

  “Any good gossip?” he asked, yawning.

  “Dad!”

  “So? I need some sort of news to jazz things up around here.” He rubbed his eyes.

  “Hey, how come you were sleeping in your office?” I had noticed him splayed out on the daybed in there when I got home.

  “Oh, I just fell asleep there, I guess.” He stood up suddenly, seeming uncomfortable.

  “Okay, well, see you in a little,” I said.

  “See you.” He opened the refrigerator and stared into it instead of making eye contact with me.

  Outside, I switched on my iPod and slid it into the tiny interior pocket of my shorts. I took off slowly—testing my legs. They felt wobbly and unsure. I dug deep into myself with a giant inhale. My lungs creaked in response. My body was angry at me. Who could blame her? I pushed the old girl to the limit every day.

  I made a right on Price Street, glancing down to acknowledge the drain that had taken my kindergarten lunch box after an unfortunate slip on the icy street. I pictured it floating down there still—101 Dalmations banished forever to the suburban underworld. I began a slow climb up what felt like Mount Everest and tried to distract myself from my burning lungs.

  As I ran I thought about David. I’d never seen him alone at a party. Ever. He was the person who was constantly surrounded by groupies hanging on his every word—guys and girls alike. Last night he’d been a ghost.

  At the edge of our neighborhood was a giant church, and I crossed its front yard at a decent clip. The South loved it some churches. And banks. Giant structures of money and Jesus worship were a dime a dozen.

  David had taken me, Jill, and M.K. to our first high school party. Oh, the weeks, the hours, the minutes we had spent laboring over the most minute details of what we would wear and how we would talk and who we would emulate. Walking in with David, though, it was clear that our time had been wasted. Because I was David’s sister, we were okay. I’d lingered in every corner of that house, too self-conscious to make conversation, sipping Schnapps and observing him. He was the King, and I was in awe. It seemed so effortless for him. Your brother is the shit, M.K. had whispered, her beer breath hot in my ear.

  In the driveway of Heather Garby’s old house, a little black boy and girl diligently tossed a tennis ball back and forth. The ball went over the girl’s head and rolled to a stop at my feet. I stopped to toss it back to her before running on. Where had Heather Garby gone? One day we had been painting eye shadow on each other and the next day she was gone. To Arkansas maybe? That rang a bell.

  It seemed like a lot of people had left the neighborhood in the past five years or so, and in their place, black families had moved in. The pool had been slow to reflect the change—we had only two black families as of last summer—but already you could feel the tension brewing. Most of the parents exchanged nervous glances anytime they showed up.

  I was at the end of my run, headed downhill. I could see my house on the corner, the yard already sprouting weeds. Finally finished, I walked it off gratefully.

  Good work, Ruth, I whispered to myself. This skinny thing wasn’t easy.

  An hour later, slathered in sunscreen and my stomach at long last filled with cereal, I coasted down the hill to the pool. Kevin was already there, opening up the snack bar.

  “Hey, Ruth.”

  “Hey, Kevin.” I joined him inside and took off my backpack.

  “Here we go, right?” I pulled out my towel and hung it on the back of a plastic chair.

  “Whaddya mean?” he asked.

  “You know, the official start of summer and all.” I slipped my whistle over my neck as he looked at me blankly.

  “I guess so. How was Boston this year?”

  “Michigan. I was in Michigan.”

  “Oh yeah, shit. Sorry. What’s it like up there?”

  “It’s cool. I had a good time. Just different from the South, you know? Are you at Tech? I can’t remember.” He took off his T-shirt, revealing a taut stomach and those little hip divots that only the genetically blessed could claim.

  “Naw, college ain’t for me.”

  “Oh.”

  “I was workin’ for my dad, doin’ some real estate stuff, but then summer rolled around. This job is easy as shit, you know?”

  “Yeah, it is a pretty sweet deal.” This was the longest conversation we had ever had. “Hey, have you heard from Jason?”

  “He just called me. He’ll be here in a few.”

  “Okay. I guess I’ll check the chlorine.”

  “Already did that. Gonna burn the shit out of some eyeballs since it’s the first day, but you know—just the way it is.”

  “Yikes. I’ll check the bathrooms then. Make sure no one is living in a stall or anything.” He looked at me blankly. “Right, well—be right back.”

  The bathroom looked just as it had the summer before, and the summer before that—dark and dingy with the faint smell of Lysol and mold. There were two showers and two stalls. I had spent a good thirty minutes trying to insert my first tampon in one of those stalls, at a swim meet long ago. I checked it for toilet paper now. All set.

  “Y’all ready?” asked Jason, who had arrived to shepherd us into the new summer season.

  “Ready as we’ll ever be,” I replied. “I guess I’ll go up on the stand first, Kevin, if that’s cool with you.”

  The pitter-patter of flip-flopped and Croc-ed feet came storming down the hill. They had arrived. In no time at all, the entire snack bar area was filled with children, as though they were multiplying like rabbits.

  The sun began to broil my translucent, Michigan-winterized skin as I made my way to the stand. I climbed the wooden rungs slowly. All eyes were on me, waiting for the inaugural whistle that meant the pool was open for business. That meant I had to take off my shirt and shorts in front of what was essentially a live studio audience. Jesus, Ruth, don’t make such a big deal about it. Just do it. One, two, three, and they were both off. I looked down at my red midriff with a sigh of disgust. No matter how many crunches I did, my stomach still refused to be flat. When I sat, my belly button disappeared beneath a generous swell of flesh. I adjusted my suit in an attempt to disguise it.

  I blew the whistle and on cue the pool was filled in an instant. I watched nervously as kids splashed around and screamed, dove for tossed rings, shot baskets at the water hoop, and threw themselves off the diving board. For the thirty-minute intervals during which I was on the stand, it was up to me to make sure no one was running, peeing, roughhousing, or drowning. The stimulation had my brain firing on all cylinders
. Parents waved to me as they set up shop on their lawn chairs and lubed themselves up with tanning oil. As the minutes passed and I found my surveillance rhythm—shallow end, deep end, diving board, basketball hoop, and back—I began to relax. It was all so familiar, after all. I’d either been part of the mayhem myself as a pool member or watching it from above as a lifeguard for my entire life.

  Jason canvassed the deck, hugging hello with various moms and parents. Kids attached themselves to his legs, and he carried them around until they were giggled out and ready to go back into the pool. Kevin manned the snack bar—handing out corndogs and popsicles begrudgingly.

  As the day wore on I watched my skin turn pink and the fingers and toes of everyone around me turn into prunes. Kevin and I exchanged places on the stand every thirty minutes, and the shade of the snack bar provided welcome refuge from the blazing sun. I wrote the kids’ names on their hot dogs with squirtable mustard, much to their delight. I might as well have been Van Gogh the way they watched their names emerge from the depths of that yellow bottle. Meanwhile, I kept my own hunger at bay with Lemonheads and Skittles.

  “Well, hey there, Miss Skinny Minnie!” I turned around to find Mrs. Moorehouse standing at the counter, her fuschia manicured hands on her flat brown hips. She was a fixture at the pool, with the kind of commitment to tanning that you had to admire, even if facing her head-on made you grimace.

  “Hey, Miss Laney,” I replied, adhering to the southern code of Miss First-Name-No-Last-Name. It drove me nuts.

  “Honey, just call me Laney. You’re makin’ me feel old, and Lord knows I don’t need any more of that.”

  “Okay, sure. Sorry. How’ve you been?”

  “Well, fine, I guess. Another year down the tubes.”

  “How’s Khaki?” I asked. “I haven’t seen her yet today. Is she here?”

  “Oh, Khaki’s doin’ just fiiine.” She fidgeted with her swimsuit top. “She didn’t feel like comin’ down today. She . . . well, she wasn’t feelin’ well.”