Orfe (2 page)

“If you don't keep your promises, you aren't good enough to have the perfect thing, are you?” I asked.

“He had no right to make her promise,” Orfe said.

“That doesn't matter, if you've promised. You have to keep it.”

Orfe held her hands up, cupped, as if they held a golden ball in them. I could almost see it shining there in her hands. When it was shining there in her hands, I could see why you would promise anything to get it back if you lost it. Even if you didn't mean to keep your promise.

Orfe was always being different. Except for Friday afternoons after singing class
when they forgot about that, everybody thought Orfe was the Creature from Outer Space, an alien being.

I couldn't exactly blame them. I didn't dare disagree with them, except by having Orfe for my friend; that was all I dared at the time. But the way Orfe would break rules, there were times I could see what everybody meant.

Like red rover. Red rover was the game we played at recesses that year. We would be picked into two teams, with Frannie as one captain and Rab as the other, and the rest of us waiting to be chosen for one team or the other. Hoping we wouldn't be left until last. Orfe was always the very last chosen. The rule was, of course, that everybody had to be on one team or on the other.

To start the game, one team joined hands and stretched out in a line across the macadam playground. The other team milled around facing the first team. Then the captain of the first team, firm at the center of his line, called out a name. Sometimes it was the fastest, strongest runner who was called first, the biggest threat selected when the line of defense was freshest, strongest. Sometimes it was the weakest runner.

If the runner broke through, that captain got to pick someone to change onto his team. If the runner failed to break through, it was the runner who had to change teams. Until someone broke through, the line held its position. When someone broke through, the teams switched sides, and what had been the line separated into individual team members, who became the milling group out of which a runner would be called.

It was a game of team spirit and individual achievement, of loyalty to your captain and hope for your own heroism. It was a game for standing fast and sturdy but also for running quick and clever. To be on Rab's team was better than to be on Frannie's, the King being better than the Queen; and in fact Rab's team most often won the game. But Orfe—

Orfe changed the rules, she wouldn't keep to the rules. She didn't care if her team won, if her captain was the winner. Everybody yelling at her at once couldn't make her do what they wanted. She broke the game down into chaos. Nobody ever knew, on any day, what Orfe would do, how she would play.

Orfe in the line sometimes, and never for any reason, let go of both the hands
she held, to start turning in a circle with her fingers twined high over her head. Or sometimes she turned to grab both of a teammate's hands and raise them up to make a gate; the world shifted before the runner's eyes as if between the moment he was called and the moment he reached the line the game itself had been changed, from red rover to London Bridge.

Or if Orfe was called to run—and she ran fast, unexpectedly fast, effortlessly—she would dart toward one section, then feint to another side, run backward, or simply run down around the end of the long line, and the line would pull itself sideways like a drunken snake to try to keep Orfe in the game. Sometimes Orfe fell onto her knees to crawl underneath the wreathed arms, causing everyone to crouch down so that—sometimes—she would jump up then and jump over the barrier of bodies and arms, to run on, laughing. Or she might dance, singing, up and down the line—sing, dancing, back and forth—until in anger and laughter they would come to mill around her, her own team as well as the opponents, and follow her around the playground.

The geometry of line and moving dot that was red rover Orfe could at any time
turn into chaos: Because where she sang, people gathered around her, and when she sang, the rules seemed impotent.

*  *  *  *  *

“Pain like you can't imagine,” they said. “Imagine it.”

“She can't
begin
to imagine.”

That wasn't correct.

“Like putting cigarettes out on him. On his chest.”

“His face—”

“The insides of his elbow—”

“They get excited. You know what I mean.”

“They get off on it.”

“Listening to him screaming, blubbering.”

They had found me alone on the playground and circled around me.

“Nobody can do anything to make them stop.”

“Like the river, the way nobody can stop chemicals being dumped in the river, poisoning the water, killing everything.”

“A company is too big. Too powerful. It's got friends in government and nobody can stop government. It's too big.”

“Yeah, if you're strong enough, nobody can ever stop you from what you're doing.”

“Or if you've got weapons. Like nuclear bombs. Imagine a nuclear bomb.”

The ends of my mouth pulled down and I couldn't stop the quivering. My eyes overflowed.

“It was just an ordinary morning,” they said, “like today, and there must have been kids in school then too.”

“And they blew everything up, all it took was planes in the sky, the
Enola Gay.”

The sky overhead was empty.

“Before you could turn your head to see what it was—whoosh—gone—”

“Except for the survivors. 'D'joo
see
those pictures, Enny?”

I had seen them.

“Except for the ones who looked normal, after, but there was radiation and they had monster babies—”

Orfe stood with her head bent down.

“It happens here too, but they don't tell you. It's in the air. From the testing. In milk because the cows eat the grass that grows in the air. Nobody can stop them. They're the government, they're the army.”

Tears oozed down my cheeks. I was sick with fear and pity.

“If you're the strong one or rich or just big—like parents—”

“Nobody can stop parents from beating their kids.”

“And the kids snivel, like Enny, or they'll scream if it's bad enough—”

“And the parents like that, a lot of them do. It's a turn-on. Know what I mean?”

“She
wouldn't know. She doesn't know anything about anything.”

Orfe raised her face to look at me.
What's wrong with you?
I could hear, as clear as if she'd said it.

I didn't know. I couldn't help it.

*  *  *  *  *

“I really hate it when you cry like that,” Orfe said.

My eyes filled with tears. I couldn't say anything, for fear of crying if I tried to say something.

“Look,” Orfe said. “I didn't say you shouldn't cry. I said you shouldn't cry like that. When they start in on you, the way you sort of weep with your head bent like some . . . slave or something.”

“I know. I'm sorry,” I said, tears oozing out and mucus thickening in my nose and thickening my voice.

“Just letting them get away with it,” Orfe said.

I nodded and wiped my nose with the back of my hand, then wiped my hand on the seat of my jeans.

“Helpless, I hate it when you—”

I shook my head, to clear it, to get her attention, to tell her she'd better stop saying that, please. “I can't help it,” I explained.

“I know.” Orfe's eyes filled with tears, but she blinked them clear. “I know. I know exactly. You have to
do
something to those boys.”

“They'd just laugh. It wouldn't make any difference.”

“Just because you're crying doesn't mean you can't hit someone—or throw something—your lunch box or your desk. That desk could hurt somebody. Or you could kick—kick Rab because they all do what he tells them to, that's what they're doing. You know what I mean?”

I knew what she meant.

“Or yell at them, at least. You can cry and still do all those things. It doesn't have anything to do with crying. I would too, I don't blame you.”

“I do,” I said. I turned to go home.

“Wait.” Orfe's hand held my arm and she tried to pull me around.

“I'm sorry.” I just wanted to get away and go home.

“For what?” Orfe asked.

I wished she'd leave me alone.

“Where are you going, Enny?”

“Home.”

“Why?”

“Because—” But I couldn't say it. “Because—”

Orfe shook her red hair and lost patience with me. “You make me so mad, you really—”

“I
said
I was sorry.”

“You act like you're nothing, some absolute nothing. You're as pretty as Frannie and you know it, even prettier in your own way. And better at math than anyone in the class. But you act as if, if you can't be one particular way, you're nothing. As if there was one way you had to be—”

I stared at Orfe, but she didn't notice me.

“It's so dumb and you're really smart.” Her feet danced on the sidewalk in impatience and anger. “You're more like me than anyone I ever met before!”

“No, I'm not.” I was shocked. “Orfe, I'm not at all like—I'm not musical at all. I care about school, I like school. I'm not brave. I care about other people, I pay attention, I'm not self-centered. I'm just
or
-di-nary.”

“It's ordinary to be self-centered,” Orfe said to me. She was standing still now and
about to burst out laughing—I could see that in her eyes. “Maybe you're the one who's extraordinary.”

Orfe cared about having me for her friend. She cared about me. Nothing much else mattered at that moment. “I feel better,” I said, which was the truth.

But they still returned and circled me in the hallway or on the playground or at my desk. I still hunched down over my desk until I wept with their words.

Orfe at her desk next to mine had her own head bent—as I now understood—so that she wouldn't have to witness my shame.

Until one day she raised her face and it was anger shooting out of her eyes. “Cut that out,” she said. “You, Rab—what you're saying is—horrible, you're—”

Rab's cheeks were pink and his eyes were bright. “Lookit that, will you?” he asked. “ 'D'joo hear? The Creature speaks.”

Orfe pushed herself up from her seat. “The things—what you're saying—”

I didn't know what she was going to do, I couldn't imagine.

They were laughing. Orfe was about halfway standing up, leaning toward Rab with her hands flat on the desk and her face pushing toward him—when she
threw up. She vomited—it was sickening—hard, so hard that some of it spattered onto Rab's face from his chest. You could hear the vomit hitting his chest.

I stopped crying. I wiped at my eyes. I was worried about Orfe, if she was sick and how I could help.

Orfe vomited again, like a hand pump when the pressure comes right and suddenly water pumps out.

I remembered that she'd said she could do it on purpose. I sat dumb and wondered.

Rab tried to leap back, but the boys were in his way. “Goddamn it!” he bellowed.

Orfe leaned forward, turning her head to one side, like pointing a hose. The boys behind Rab scuttled away. “You fucking did that on fucking purpose!” Rab shouted in a fury, his chest dripping, chunks falling, and a stink rising from him.

Rab was of course sent home. The teacher dragged him out of the room by his arm for swearing like that. The principal suspended him for two days. I accompanied Orfe to the nurse's room and sat with her while she recovered. I had the foresight to bring my lunch box with me, and we shared the sandwich, cookies, and fruit equally between us.

*  *  *  *  *

Orfe had routed them and I was proud of her, but the day Rab returned they were back, and Orfe was sitting with her head bent, and my eyes were filling with tears. It was as if all of Orfe's victory was good for nothing, except that they stood a safe distance back from her desk now. All the trouble she had gotten Rab into was worth only a few inches in the end. As if what Orfe did wasn't worth anything.

So I took my lunch box and tried to hit Rab in the face with it, or over the head. My lunch box was metal and had sharp corners. He grabbed it, but I wasn't about to let it go. I kept my hold on the handle even while I was pulled up out of my chair, and I came around from behind the desk—where I could kick at his shins while he held my lunch box over my head and danced his legs free. I don't know what he was saying because I was crying. But now I was crying from the sheer excitement of hitting at Rab and kicking him.

I had detention that day, copying over one hundred times, “I will not fight in school.”

The next day I got a good clip in, across his cheek and nose, a wide broadhand
with the lunch box, before he could block it. Blood poured out of his nose, and I spent the afternoon sitting on a chair out in the hallway. I sat alone, with nothing to do, no books or papers, feeling glad. Feeling as if I had been shut up in a little closet, but now I had broken down the walls and broken myself free.

After that, a couple of times, I was sent to the principal. I didn't care and it didn't make any difference to the way I acted. If Rab came near me and jabbed his nose at me that way, I would go crazy. Sometimes I would cry and go crazy, and sometimes I would not cry and go crazy. But every time I would try to club him a good one—on the hands or head, ears or elbows, anywhere it would hurt. Rab had no idea what to expect, and his friends hung back, out of danger. Rab only kept at it because he was embarrassed not to. I would hit him with my fist or my lunch box, or I'd shove my desk right into his hips—except after the first time I did that, he was always ready to hop back, away.