“My granddad! Is right there! Buy the tickets,” I said, shoving my last twenty dollars in her hand.
I threw the hood of my sweatshirt over my head as I stepped back on the bus. “She’s buying my ticket,” I said hurriedly, cinching my hood so tight I almost couldn’t see. With my right hand out, I felt the seats along the way for balance before throwing myself in the long back seat and slouching down.
The bus jerked into gear just as Leslie reached the back seat. “Did he see you?” she asked.
“I don’t think so. He was reading the paper.” The good thing about Granddad working all the time was that he wouldn’t be able to pick any of my friends out of a lineup—he’d never met any of them.
The whole bus ride home, I waited for Granddad to fold his paper, walk down the aisle, and ask me what the hell I was doing. But he stayed in the front. I could see the top of his head peeking out over the seat. I didn’t take my eyes off it.
As we got closer to Warwick, I had to formulate a plan. I turned to Leslie. “Hey, if I hop off with you at the park-and-ride, can you just give me a lift back to my house?”
“Yeah, totally.”
A terrible thought pierced through my brilliant plan. “But then I’ll have to get off the bus before him. He might still see me.”
“Just pull your hood up and run off again,” Leslie said, as if she’d been dodging grandparents on commuter buses for most of her life.
As we cruised into the lot, I readied my hood. When the bus came to a complete stop, I bolted down the aisle and ran off the bus so fast you would have thought I had fire ants crawling all over me. I ran to Leslie’s car and leaned on the hood, fully relieved.
Leslie dropped me off right in front of the house. On my way in, I took off my jacket, bundled it into a ball, and threw it on top of a damp pile of leaves under the front steps, just in case Granddad saw the blue plaid print and got suspicious. When I walked into the house, he was just where I expected him to be, sitting at the kitchen table, a can of sardines cracked open with a bottle of Tabasco next to it, and a plate full of crackers to pile it on top of, reading the paper.
“Hey, Granddad,” I said cheerily, reaching into the refrigerator for the iced tea pitcher.
“Hey, baby,” he replied, looking up.
I went to the cabinet to get a cup. “Sardines, gross.”
“You’ve never even tried one; how would you know?”
I poured my iced tea and sat down across from him.
“You’re in late tonight,” he said, looking back down at the paper.
“I was out with Leslie. Roller-skating.” I surveyed his face to see if there was any reaction, but he was as docile as ever.
“So,” he said, turning the page and snapping the paper flat, “did you have a good time in the city?”
I stopped breathing for a few seconds. I thought about lying, but I just caved instead.
“Yeah. Um, it was fun. I went to a concert.” I looked at him, but he was still reading the paper, holding a sardine cracker while he chewed. I rushed to fill the silence. “Grandma doesn’t know. But we really just wanted to go to the concert. So please don’t tell her.”
Granddad looked up at me over his glasses, his watery gray eyes glittering under raised eyebrows. “I don’t like the idea of you going to the city.”
“I know, but I swear this was the first time,” I lied. “I never do anything bad. I just really wanted to go to this one thing.”
He maintained eye contact with me while he slipped the sardine cracker into his mouth. He crunched the horrid mix of fish flesh for a few seconds, then looked back at the paper. “I don’t think we need to tell your grandmother if you don’t do it again,” he said nonchalantly, as if he didn’t have the power of permanent punishment at his fingertips. “It’s not really a place young girls should be running around, especially at night.” He looked at me again. “You hear me?”
“Yeah. Yes. Of course. Thank you, Granddad,” I said as I stood up. I hugged his shoulders and kissed him on the head. “I should probably go to bed now.”
He motioned for me to lean down and kissed me on the cheek. “And don’t lie to me—I hate liars,” he said.
“I never lie,” I lied.
17.
It took nine years, but I finally caught up with God again.
When the Greenbrier Room closed and was converted back to a nuns-only dining room, Grandma took a job at the Mount Alverno switchboards. It was easier than being on her feet for eight hours, but talking to people all day on the phone sent lightning bolts of irritation through her.
“Why are you calling me again?” Grandma was sitting behind her desk in the big, bright, new reception area. I was there to bring her wallet; she had forgotten it and called after school to ask if I would walk it over. I bit my tongue about how Bobby could have done it, considering all he did was sit at home all day. I was leaning over the counter that served as her desk. Sister Mary Francis stood on the other side, waiting patiently. I smiled at her.
“I just answered that. Now, do you want to call back and ask me the same question again in ten minutes, or are we done here?” Grandma laughed into the receiver. “Okay, bye bye.” She looked up at me. “All people do all day is bother me. Use your common sense!” She wheeled around to Sister Mary Francis. “What do you want, sister?”
The sister’s eyes got huge as she stumbled nervously through her question about the chapel.
“I don’t know—I have to ask Joe, and Joe is gone for the day already, naturally. You think that man hangs around here a minute longer than he needs to? Can this wait until tomorrow?” Sister Mary Francis nodded her head. “Thank you kindly.” Grandma turned back to me and held out her hand. I dropped her wallet in it as the sister walked away.
I was used to seeing Grandma’s grade-A ball-busting at home, but this public interaction with the sister was like witnessing a drive-by bullying.
“Why were you so mean to her?” I asked.
“Mean?” Grandma hoisted her thumb over her shoulder. “She’ll be back here in ten minutes asking me the same thing—she doesn’t know whether she’s coming or going. All she does all day is hang out here and annoy me. It’s a goddamn nuthouse around here. Right?” She pointed to a sister walking by the desk. “Is it crazy in here all day or what, sister?”
The sister laughed and nodded her head sheepishly while she bustled away.
Grandma laughed and looked at me. “I’m telling you, child. If I get like this when I’m old—”
I cut her off, already knowing how the lyrics went to this particular song. “Put you in a boat and push you out into the ocean,” I said, rolling my eyes. “But you know you’re already old, right?”
Grandma shooed me away with her hand, using the other to pick up the phone. “Get out of here, you asshole. No, not you, Father Allen.” She put her fingers to her mouth and then held them toward me, a kiss in the form of a goodbye wave, before turning her mouth back to the phone. “So what do you want?”
Mount Alverno was tucked back from the road, just beyond a low brick wall and a tapestry of maple trees lining the property on Grand Street, and was home to the Franciscan Sisters of the Poor. The majority of the residents were retired nuns; they bustled around in brown, long-sleeved dresses, black shoes, and brown habits, with dark, delicate wooden rosary necklaces finishing the look. It was rare to see them off campus; they had everything they needed, and if they left for any reason, it was to save the souls of people who didn’t live in Warwick.
I had started indicating that I might want a car. I already had my permit; you didn’t need a car for that since it was just a written test. But my sixteenth birthday was coming up, and I’d be able to get my license.
“You think I have car money?” Grandma said one night, dipping a damp chicken thigh into a bright green Tupperware bowl full of paprika-sprinkled f
lour. Fried chicken was one of the five dishes she knew how to make, but we rarely had it for dinner; she hated standing over a hot stove getting pelted with pops of grease from the cast-iron pan.
“I can buy my own car,” I said. “I just need to make more money.”
Most of the kids I went to school with got their parents’ hand-me-down cars; boxy Reliant Ks and wood-paneled station wagons they foisted off on their kids while they upgraded to cars with CD players and daytime driving lights. Bubble-shaped Saabs were the used car of choice among the preppy kids. The incredibly wealthy inexplicably got their own brand-new cars, even though half of them ended up wrapped around telephone poles or crashed through onion fields.
I still rode the bus into the city, but I was desperate for more independence. It was never a foregone conclusion that I would ever have a car, hand-me-down or otherwise. Neither Grandma nor Granddad had ever been behind the wheel of a car, so there was nothing to give, and I knew better than to assume there would be a red-ribboned gift of a car waiting for me on my birthday from a woman who made me buy my own bras. Babysitting and the toy store provided enough income to pay for my phone bill and a few trips to the mall, but if I wanted wheels, I had to come up with another plan.
“You could work at the convent—they’re hiring in the kitchen, and I can talk to Deneen—GODDAMMIT!” She leapt back and rubbed a spot on her bare arm where the hot grease landed.
“How much do they pay?”
“More than you have.” She pushed her glasses up her nose. “You know you have to pay insurance, too, right? It’s not just the price of a car. And insuring teenagers is expensive.”
“So many teenagers drive; it can’t be that expensive.”
“You’d be surprised.”
Grandma always knew a lot about the world just from paying attention to it, and she talked with the authority of someone who experienced things she never did. This was her other superpower: shitting all over your enthusiasm with her reality bombs.
“Should I call Deneen?”
“Yeah, call her at work tomorrow.” She flipped a few pieces over, revealing the bubbly crispness of the side that was already cooked. “Here—come do this.” Grandma stepped to the side as I walked up to the stove. “I’m sick of standing here.”
Deneen, the kitchen manager, was a family friend. She and Grandma got close from their time in the trenches of the Greenbrier Room. Deneen was tall, with strong freckles and almond-shaped eyes. Her dark skin was always shiningly well-moisturized, and she was the first person I ever met who had a smile that could legitimately light up a room. We looked like we could have been related, except for the fact that she also had enormous boobs—they stuck out in front of her like a natural version of the Jean Paul Gaultier bras featured in Madonna videos. I was still so flat-chested you could have used my torso to measure right angles.
Getting hired in the kitchen was easy; I had to have a meeting with David, the tiny mustached man who was officially the boss, even though Deneen ran the show. I came prequalified; both David and Deneen could rat me out to my grandmother if I ever fell out of line. The after-school job was explained easily: I was responsible for setting up the dining room for dinner, laying out the flatware, filling the water jugs, and stacking the clean plates for the buffet-style dinner. At the end of service, I would collect the dirty dishes in big gray tubs, bring them to the dish room, stack them in green racks, spray them down with a high-pressure hose, and push them through the industrial dishwasher. They came out of the other side scorching-hot; after letting a full rack cool down, I dried them with a towel and stacked them in piles again for the morning crew. It was a damp and steamy job that left my hands simultaneously wrinkled and callused, but I liked the solitude and easy sense of accomplishment.
Sometimes I would be responsible for loading the food onto a cart and bringing it to the different floors of the campus so that the nurses could dole out meals to the residents. Most of the sisters who needed to have their meals delivered were bedridden or unable to get to the dining room.
A few of the more active sisters lived in a large farmhouse across the driveway from the main building. We had to bring them food, too, which meant I had to use the tunnel.
To access the tunnel, you would take the elevator from the kitchen to the basement. The doors opened to a long, dark hallway. Caged lightbulbs hung uselessly down the center of the ceiling every few feet, showcasing the hospital-green walls dulled in reverse by a distinct lack of sunlight. If you followed it to the end, you’d come out near the garage, but if you turned left, the tunnel would come out under the house. I liked going down there; it was like delivering dinner to Batman.
Sister Rosamaria lived in the farmhouse and often used the tunnel to get around. Originally from Italy, she had a thick accent and a commanding presence, despite her short stature. Her dark hair was cropped short and streaked gray, like a firecracker had exploded on the crown of her head and left a trail of ashes. She wore black soft-soled Reebok sneakers, making it impossible to hear her when she snuck up behind you to poke you in the middle of your back with her knuckle. This was her way of telling me that I had terrible posture, along with frowning deeply and hunching over as a way of mimicking me before giving a wink and scampering away.
One day, Sister Rosamaria exited the elevator just as I was about to wheel my cart full of Ensure and pot roast into it. As I leaned over to hold the door open for her, she narrowed her eyes. “Donyellah. Are you a vir-jean?”
The question took me by surprise, primarily because I had no idea where this line of questioning was going. “Y-yes,” I stammered. It wasn’t embarrassing to admit that I hadn’t had sex, but it was uncomfortable to be talking about it with a feisty, unpredictable nun.
“Ah! Good girl!” She clapped her hands once in place of punctuation and started walking toward the chapel, even though she was still talking. “You a vir-jean, you become nun.”
I laughed nervously. “Probably not.”
This made no more sense than the sex advice I got from Grandma. When I was nine, she casually told me that I should never get married, but I should sleep with as many people as possible before settling down.
Repeat: I was nine.
To my knowledge, the only person Grandma had ever had sex with was Granddad; like me, Grandma didn’t really care much for dating in her teen years. Do you know what it’s like to get sex advice from a septuagenarian? It involves calling Madonna a hussy every ten seconds and is often wildly contradictory to their own experience.
Aside from the odd crush, I didn’t think about sex. The most I could muster was how nice it would be to hold hands with someone in a graveyard, which, for some reason, was the height of romance to me. My body still felt foreign to me; it wasn’t a source of pain anymore, but it wasn’t a source of pleasure, either. I still grappled with the instability of sleep paralysis and insomnia, and was battling persistent lethargy that Grandma chalked up to “just being a teenager.” I was still surrounded by whiteness and hadn’t yet learned that I was beautiful in a different way.
There was also the question of Luke. Molestation isn’t rape, but I’d still been pushed beyond my sexual boundaries before I even knew what my sexual boundaries were. In the eyes of God and the world, I fell somewhere in the chasm between virgin and sex.
But that didn’t stop Grandma, or Sister Rosamaria, from telling me what to do. “You a vir-jean!” Sister Rosamaria shouted over her shoulder. “One day, you live with me!”
A few days later, as I was filling water pitchers in a half-full dining room, Sister Rosamaria walked in. “Ah!” she said loudly as she walked over to me. She grabbed my hand and spun me around. “Every-wan! Donyellah is a good girl! She a vir-jean! She’s coming to live with us!” she shouted. Every head in the room turned toward us, and a blanket of silence fell over the room. I smiled nervously while Sister Rosamaria stood next to me, the top of her head ba
rely reaching my shoulder.
I felt my face grow hot as I tried to think how I was going to extricate myself from this virgin-obsessed stalker. I stood there and smiled as the sisters went back to eating, ignoring me as if to say “So what? We’re all virgins, get in line.”
When she let go of my hand, Sister Rosamaria turned to me, winked, and said, “You think about it, ah? You think.”
My virginity became a weird inside joke for Sister Rosamaria and quickly fell to shorthand as she rushed around doing her chores. “You still ah? Ah?” she’d say, pointing down to my waist. It didn’t feel like sexual harassment; it felt like I was interacting with the world’s randiest grandparent. Other sisters would clock us as they walked by; when Sister Rosamaria was out of earshot, they’d often grab my forearm and whisper, “You should be canonized for having to deal with her.”
18.
I recognized the pulsing blue and red lights through my bedroom curtains and had a brief flashback to Ackerman Road. That was the last time I’d seen police lights up close, until now.
Cory had always run toward every possible bad idea with open arms. He cracked his two front teeth into a perfect V-shape flipping over his handlebars after riding his bike down the steepest hill in town on a dare. He flicked matches at anything not bolted down just to see what would burn, like an arsonist Johnny Appleseed. Cory didn’t ever think about consequences—only the biggest laugh, the most immediate rush. This is part of the reason we didn’t connect—we had different motivations, and the idea of jeopardizing the future for anything in the present was alien to me.
The train tracks ran through the middle of town, and they were the first place Cory thought to go after finding out his friend Keith had snuck two bottles of Mad Dog out of the house. They grabbed two more friends, and the four of them set off down the tracks. Cory, Justin, and Chucky had split a bottle between them, which was plenty for them to each get blisteringly drunk. Keith had almost an entire bottle to himself; when he reached the bottom of the bottle, he started a rotation of puking and passing out. Even in their drunkest state, Cory and the guys were scared enough to start dragging one another back down the tracks toward town. Keith was fully passed out in the road by the time they reached South Street. Someone must have called; the cops came, and then an ambulance to take Keith to St. Anthony’s, where he was treated for alcohol poisoning. Cory, Justin, and Chucky were each brought home in squad cars. I peeked through my bedroom curtains as Grandma went out to talk to the cops. They were all standing next to the squad car; Cory was leaning on Grandma with his full weight, crying uncontrollably. She calmly talked to the officer and put her arm around Cory’s waist to steady him. Everyone got warnings, but no one was arrested. As Cory and Grandma made their way into the house, I ran downstairs.
The Ugly Cry Page 18
