A Girl Named Zippy (12 page)

“What?” I said, kind of whispering.

“I fell straight down on the ground.”

“You didn’t.”

“I just fell right down on my back, as if I’d fainted, only I was still aware of everything around me, including what had made me fall down in the first place, which made me think I might never be able to get up again.”

“So what happened?”

“My dress started getting wet from dew, which was uncomfortable enough that I stopped thinking about the stars and went inside and my dad gave me a drink of beer.”

“Wow.”

“My dad believed in beer.”

I sat for a few minutes looking at the floor. I still didn’t feel so good.

“Do you want to tell me what you were thinking about?” She laid her hand on my back.

“Nothing. It doesn’t matter.”

We continued sitting there a while, then I got up and headed for the door. If I hurried, I might make it to Rose’s before the rain began.

“Sweetheart?” Mom called as I started through the curtain that separated the den from the living room. I looked back at her.

“You’ll be all right. You’re going to be fine.”

I nodded. Once on the porch I decided I could get everywhere faster if I jumped, so I leaped down the stairs and hopped like a frog down to the corner, and from there I just took off running.

LOCATION

D
ana entered my life like a firestorm in the middle of our second-grade year. On that fateful day I was dropping all the items out of my desk one by one, trying to get Sammy Bellings to bend over and pick them up, because she had once again come to school in a dress too small for her, without any panties.

Sammy sat next to me, and Roger sat on the other side. I didn’t even pretend to like him, the way the nice children did. He always smelled like he had peed in his pants, and he had epilepsy. He was skinny, and he had little gray monkey fingers that gave me the hookey-spooks. They were the fingers of a career nose picker. Once he had fallen right out of his desk while having a small seizure, and all I could do was watch, frozen with shock and fear. I hated medical emergencies. I was convinced that sick people were dangerous, like wounded animals, a misconception that was compounded when, during Roger’s seizure, our first-grade teacher yelled, “Stay away from his mouth! Don’t put your hands in his mouth!” My horror was only increased when I asked my dad what on earth might compel a person to put her hand in the mouth of a seizing person, and he said, I swear,
to grab his tongue, so he couldn’t swallow it
.

I was down to one last crayon, and I was about to drop it in front of Sammy when Mrs. Caroline, our plump and very kind teacher, answered a knock at the classroom door. It was the principal, Mr. Moore, and he had his hands on the shoulders of a . . . well, the shoulders of Dana. The two of them escorted Dana in and stood her in front of the class, and when I got a good look at her I dropped the crayon by accident, which caused Sammy to bend over and pick it up, which in turn caused the class to collapse with laughter for the eleventh time that day. Mrs. Caroline gave me her soft and long-suffering look. I was killing her. Mr. Moore cleared his throat principally, unaware that we were laughing at Sammy’s smiling brown bottom and not at Dana, whose general demeanor did not invite ridicule.

She was not as tall as I was. But she was very wiry, and her skin was dark, and I couldn’t tell if it was a tan or if she was just born that way. Her hands were strong and masculine looking, with blunt, clean fingernails, like my father’s, and the back of her hands were ropy with thick blue veins. I’d never seen that on a girl before. She had a long, brown neck, and her hair was also long and brown and aggressively straight, and her eyes were brown and slanted up in the corners. Unlike nearly everyone else in our class, she had all of her permanent teeth, and they weren’t clunky and square and oversized, but long, white, and adult. Dana’s face was completely finished. By the time she was seven years old, she had grown into the face she would have all the rest of her life.

Now all of this was problematic and titillating, but not unbearable. The one detail that none of us could overcome or tear our eyes away from was her miniature, black leather biker jacket, with five zippers. Motorcycles themselves were just a rumor in Mooreland in 1972, but hoodlum dress was out of the question. In addition to the jacket, Dana wore scuffy little Levi’s, and black boots. They were not cowboy boots. She caught me staring at her and tilted her chin up in a defiant and challenging way.

“Children,” Mrs. Caroline began, “I’d like you to welcome our new student, Dana. She has just moved here from Los Angeles, California. Can anyone here show us on the map where we would find California?”

Los Angeles, California. I let a little whistle escape through my teeth, the way my sister had taught me. When it became clear that no one in the room knew how to find L.A., Dana walked over herself and pointed to it on the map.

“This is it, right here,” she said, as confidently as if she were the teacher. She pointed to a large area way over at one edge of the map, and down low.

“Very good, Dana. Is there anything you’d like to tell us about where you came from?” Mrs. Caroline often sounded bored, or drugged, but I guessed she was just exhausted.

“Sure,” Dana said, shrugging her shoulders. “There are more people in the city of Los Angeles than in the whole state of Indiana. We have palm trees and the sun shines all year long and there is no winter and all the famous movie stars in the world live there.”

I looked over at Julie and made a little nyah-nyah-nyah face. I desperately needed moral support. Julie looked as stunned as the rest of us.

Mrs. Caroline exchanged a tired glance with Mr. Moore, and sighed. “Thank you, Dana. You seem to know a lot about California. Why don’t you just take that empty desk right there,” and she put Dana right in front of me.

Sammy Bellings’s bottom never crossed my mind the rest of that day. In fact, I didn’t think about the alphabet, or coloring my dancing bear page, or how on earth I was going to fit my name between the two solid lines and one dotted line that were supplied to me. As my fat pencil hovered above my Goldenrod pad, I could think about only one thing: that shiny brown hair falling over the collar of the leather jacket in front of me. How my life was over. How nothing would ever, ever be the same.

I FOLLOWED DANA HOME
from school. She lived, of course, in the only new house in town. It was built at a slanty modern angle, and rather than being sided with either the traditional painted wood or aluminum, it was covered with stained cedar shingles. The house sat on half an acre, and there was a largish barn in the backyard. It had been sitting empty for almost a year; no one had seen Dana’s family move in.

Just as she reached her front porch, Dana wheeled around and yelled, “Are you following me?” Her voice was so deep that it startled me and caused me to jump backward a step. Without looking at her I crossed the street and continued on toward home. In my peripheral vision I could see her standing on her front porch like a traffic cop, with her legs spread and her arms crossed. That leather jacket was so impressive I could smell it and hear it crackling even from a great distance.

THERE WERE IDENTICAL TWINS
in my class, Anita and Annette. By any standard, Anita was the sweetest person available, plus she could turn the best cartwheel and bake in an Easy Bake Oven. Annette was quite diverse. She could play any sport and could also draw very handsomely. I sometimes got them as best friends; not together, one at a time, although having one was like having both. I considered them a real best friend coup.

In the third grade, Dana stole them from me. The minute I saw Anita on the teeter-totter with her I knew I was in trouble. I turned to Kirsten, who was a great fall-back best friend, because she had seven brothers and sisters and going to her house was like going to the zoo. Dana stole her from me. I started spending more time with Rose at school, which I didn’t like to do because I spent so much other time with her that we hated each other like sisters. Dana stole her, plus she told Rose all the things I had said about her behind her back, like that I thought it was irritating that she was all the time left-handed. That left only Julie in the first tier of best friends, and Julie could not be monopolized at school. If a good-looking football game formed in an afternoon recess, no way would Julie spend that hour jumping rope with me. Julie had extensive playground duties, most of which revolved around defending her championships in every single sport. The afternoon I walked out and saw Julie and Dana playing H-O-R-S-E, I knew something had to give.

“Hey, Julie,” I said, giving her a little wave as I walked onto the cracked asphalt. She gave me a nod in reply then took her shot, which she sunk from about fifteen feet.

“I don’t remember anyone inviting you over,” Dana said, as if she were genuinely perplexed by my presence. Her voice sounded like she had spent the whole previous evening screaming. Julie passed her the ball and Dana tucked it under her arm while she studied me menacingly for a moment. I said nothing. When she finally turned and shot, from too far away and at a difficult angle, the ball missed the hoop by a good two feet. H.

“Thanks a lot,” she said, with no gratitude. “I missed that shot because of you.”

“Well, I’m glad there was a reason,” I said, watching Julie slide over to take her shot from the same impossible place. Julie walked so smoothly she might have been on skates. She dribbled twice, then shot without setting up, and hit it.

“Did I mention ‘go away’?” Dana asked, cocking her head and looking like Los Angeles. I could see that the situation was escalating, which was good, because as far as my best friendships were concerned, I had hit rock bottom.

“I think it’s your shot again,” I answered, nodding toward Julie, who was holding out the basketball, patiently.

As I watched Dana shoot, I thought of what my brother would have said about her form. She pushed too hard forward, without applying an arc. She didn’t wait for the moment to get itself right before she let the ball leave her hand. There was no follow through in her fingers. Her knees barely bent; her thighs were completely stiff. She would have stood a better chance, even with the unlikely shots, if she had centered her shoulders above her hips. She missed. O.

When Dana bounced the ball angrily back to Julie, I took a few moments to study intently the one boxing lesson I had re-ceived from my father. Actually, I focused only on the section which I called Putting Your Hands Up In Front Of Your Face To Prevent Fractures. She stomped over to me and stood so close I was able to smell her skin, which radiated something between hot and scorched.

“You bug me,” she said, looking me hard in the eye. “You’re interrupting our game and Julie is
my
best friend now.” I could see that her right hand was itching for some violence.

I tore my eyes away from Dana, leaving myself vulnerable, and looked at Julie, who was heading toward the area that would become the three-point zone. She looked back at me for just a moment, then shot, and hit it.

When I looked back at Dana I saw just a glimmer of alarm pass over her face as she realized the distance she would have to shoot to stay in the game. She had no idea what being best friends with Julie was all about, or how absurd it was to think that she could really come between us. She might as well have announced she was going to steal my spleen.

Dana approached Julie’s position with what was left of her swagger. She wisely concluded that the shot called for some consideration, which she granted the distance and the trajectory, then shot her straight-on shot and missed. R.

“Are you even going to say anything?! Are you going to answer me?” she said, voice raised, as she headed toward me.

“Not yet,” I said, watching Julie prepare for a lay-up, which she breezed through and hit.

Dana turned in time to see the shot fall, then looked back at me. She issued a sound I’d heard dogs make at each other when they really wanted to fight but also had to finish their dinner. Julie tossed her the ball, and Dana walked back past the free-throw line. She dribbled a couple times while bouncing on the balls of her feet, then took off.

Her shot was a lay-up in name only. Basically the ball just went straight up the backboard to the right of the rim and straight back down again, barely missing Dana, who wasn’t sure where to go after shooting. She finally stepped out of bounds and stood there, dejectedly, while Julie decided where to take her final shot. S.

As she often did when we played, Julie picked the easiest spot on the court, right in front of the foul line, to end the game. It was a shot she could have hit while suffering from malaria.

Dana caught the ball under the basket and walked out slowly to the little jewel of a spot. She dribbled a moment, then looked at the basket hopelessly. Her too-hard shot hit the back of the rim and bounced up hard in the air. Julie watched the ball arc up above the basket, then caught it as it came down. E.

“Did you come over here for a reason?” Dana asked as she walked toward me, with a fair piece of resignation.

“Yes. I wanted to know if you’d like to come over and ride bikes with me after school.”

She gave me a you-must-be-kidding look, then spit on the court and rubbed it in with the toe of her boot. “You live in that ugly mustard-colored house behind the Marathon?”

“Yeah. Julie’s parents own that station,” I said, thinking I might provide her with a little Mooreland information.

“I know that,” she said, sneering. “I guess I could ride bikes with you for a while. I just have to make sure the house is clean before my mom gets home at nine.”

“Nine
at night
?” I asked, disbelieving. I didn’t know any church that held services that late on a Tuesday.

“Yes, nine
at night
. That’s when she gets done bowling.”

“
Bowling
?” I tried, fruitlessly, to imagine a mother in a bowling alley.

“Are you some kinda parrot? Yes. Bowling. She belongs to a league. They all work at Chrysler.”

I bit my tongue to prevent myself from saying
a factory
? The recess bell rang, and Dana and I headed for the line that formed under the big gym door, girls on one side, boys on the other. I turned and looked back at Julie, who was completely oblivious to the political coup I had just pulled off. She was moving around the court, taking various shots. Always, just before she shot, she let the ball fall gently back into the cradle of her hand, which nearly touched her shoulder. It was a beautiful moment. It seemed that everywhere Julie went, there appeared a horse.