The Geography of Girlhood (3 page)

like blue diamonds pulled from the bottom of the bay.

One of them, the one everyone knows is Jenny Arnold’s

boyfriend, smiled at me. When I smiled back, he put his

hand to his mouth and before I knew it, Jenny Arnold’s

boyfriend was blowing me a kiss. I will say here and

now that it was like getting an A+ in a subject I knew

nothing about, or waking up with straight teeth after

years of crooked ones, or winning the lottery with a

ticket that just happened to be found on the ground.

I walk out of detention dazed and in love,

rewinding and replaying over and over

my moment with Jenny Arnold’s boyfriend

on the movie screen in my head.

That’s what I’m doing when Denise

comes careening up and yells,

Glynis Peterson has bronchitis!

I have no idea what she’s talking about

and I stand there staring at her

until she says,
Hello? The play?

You’re not the understudy anymore!

You’re the star!

I.

Tonight the lead role in
The Diary of Anne Frank

will be played by me, Penny Morrow. Tonight I am the

girl in the attic, writing it all down. All this would be

wonderful if I could remember my lines. But that is

not the case. If I were Anne Frank, history would never

have been recorded. If I were Anne Frank, history

would have been lost for good.

II.

After everyone gets their money back, Mrs. Hillstrom

tells me she’s found a second understudy to take over

for the rest of my remaining performances. But what I

really wish is that she could find an understudy to take

over for the rest of my remaining life.

III.

I wait until after everyone else has left, and I walk to

the parking lot in my bad stage makeup to meet my

dad, who will most undoubtedly be late. Then, there,

in the rain that has just started to come down, is

Randall Faber. In his hair is a bit of sawdust, and in his

hand, a half-dozen pink carnations are glowing in their

green Safeway wrapper.

IV.

I got you these
before
I saw the show
, Randall Faber

says, handing me the carnations. I give him a shove and

he laughs and we walk out into the rain and it’s like I’m

finally giving the performance I am supposed to give.

Okay, I tripped once, but at least the audience is

smaller.

The next day at school,

my newfound status as Screw-Up In The School Play

has been faintly dimmed thanks to

my newfound status as The Girl Randall Faber Likes.

Maggie Cartwright and Skyler Reeves

smile at me during Science

and Stan Bondurant

doesn’t pick on me at recess.

Elaine wants to eat lunch with Denise and me

as if the three of us

were suddenly best friends again.

That’s the upside of being The Girl Randall Faber Likes.

That’s the part I can handle.

The other part is happening now,

when Elaine comes up to my locker and tells me

what will happen after the sixth period bell has rung,

what will happen when I go from being someone

used to standing on the outside of a story

to someone standing smack dab in the middle of one.

The First Kiss walks on two legs

just like everyone else.

He has a birthmark and a good soccer kick.

He’s first base in spring and fullback in fall,

he’s too cool for hot lunch.

Today, after the bell, in front of the bus,

he’s going to take me to a place I’ve never been.

I hear this news secondhand and third,

because, like the soldier’s wife,

I am the last to know.

I am on the blade edge of the knife all day,

all I want is to stay small and young and out of the way

but here comes Elaine with lip gloss choices:

Bubble Gum, Lemon-Lime, Tutti Fruity.

She explains that this is what I am to taste like,

that the First Kiss narrowed it down from the full set
of six.

I pick one, but all I really want

is to drop out of ninth grade and never come back.

All I want is to go somewhere where things like this
don’t happen—

kisses and the planning of them.

He holds my hand as we walk toward the bus.

From somewhere, somebody yells,

Go for it, Randall! Wooh, yeah!

and suddenly, his mouth is upon mine

and the air is reeking of Tutti Fruity,

the pineapple hitting the banana up against the cherry,

the air is smacking of fruit.

When I wake up, I’m lying on the curb.

The First Kiss has fled the scene

but the school nurse is on her way.

Elaine is patting my hand and saying,

Everything will be okay, I promise.

What she doesn’t understand is that

I have really done it now,

I have really gone

and ruined my life.

You are such a retard
,

my sister says when she hears what happened

because my sister is beautiful and perfect

and immune to humiliation.

I wonder if my mother

fainted after her first kiss.

Maybe it’s something that I inherited from her,

maybe it’s a secret only the two of us share.

My sister looks at me then smiles.

You may be an idiot
,

she says before walking out of the room.

But at least you have a boyfriend now.

I do?

The beaks of birds

tell me what I need to know.

When my sister drives,

she tries to hit the pile of crows.

She swears they live cruel, uneven lives.

I, too, grow to hate birds

and to long for them;

their early pecking on the roof

of my house

and the puffy thump

when a sparrow hits the window.

My sister gasps,

my father barely stirs,

our dog twitches in the dull light.

I am the only one to rush outside,

because I want to see

something fallen down from flight,

I want to marvel at this

thing with wings,

I want to stand in front of

a pane of glass

and really believe

it was something I could fly through.

I guess we are going together now,

even though technically I was never asked

to have my hand held

every single minute of the day,

I was never asked to exhaust myself

trying to make conversation

with a boy I barely know,

I was never asked to

dance with only one person

at the Friday Afternoon Dances

to songs I’m not even sure I like.

Funny how the things you ask for

you never get

and the things you don’t,

you always do.

Penny has a boyfriend so you need a girlfriend
,

my sister announces to my dad.

My dad stares at me and says,

What?! You have a
boyfriend?!

Then my sister grins and says,

Don’t worry, Dad, she’s still a virgin—

but at this point

she’s probably getting more action than you are.

My dad looks like he might combust or implode

like one of those planets

he studies up there in the sky.

I tell my dad he has nothing to worry about

and he says he’d better not

and then goes outside

to work on his new telescope.

My sister says the sky is full of stars

and the sea is full of fish

and maybe if he found a new one

he’d stop being so cranky

all the time.

I don’t know much about stars

but maybe Tara’s right.

The sky is full of them,

so why keep staring at the ones

that have spun forever

out of reach?

It looks like my sister got her wish.

Dad came home the other night

smelling like beer and first date.

He’d gone to dinner with a marine biologist
named Susan.

She counts the salmon every season,

she’s the one who decides if the population is stable.

Like my sister says, there are plenty of fish in the sea

and here is a woman who knows

exactly how many.

My father’s new girlfriend is vegan

so that’s why tonight

we’re having squash and stir-fry for dinner.

My father used to be a man who loved meat

but now it seems he’s lost his taste for flesh.

Susan says that’s how they met.

It was at a barbecue at the Snyders’;

he asked her what a tofu dog tasted like

and she said,
Here, try a bite of mine
,

and he did.

My sister and I look at each other.

This does not sound like our father,

a man who doesn’t like new food

or new people or new anything,

and yet there he was,

eating some meatless wiener

out of the palm

of a strange woman’s hand.

There’s only one more week left of junior high, but I am

treasuring each moment of it because every day

between 2:10 and 2:17 Jenny Arnold’s boyfriend walks

by my sixth period science class. Every day between

2:10 and 2:17, Jenny Arnold’s boyfriend looks at me,

or winks, or smiles, or stares, or waves at me through

the window and it feels like my body is being hijacked

by the ocean or the wind or a lightning storm and I

wonder, Can you love someone if you’ve never spoken

to them? Can someone be telling you they love you

just by looking at you? I don’t know what love is,

but if it’s anything less than this, how could it possibly

matter?

When I break up with Randall,

everyone wants to know why

I’d do something so dumb.

What I want to know is,

haven’t they ever heard a song

or read a poem or watched a movie?

If they had, they’d know

that love is a school

where the only curriculum is kissing,

love is the first day of sun

after a whole winter of rain,

love is a secret thicket of small trees

just outside of town,

love is how you are born,

love is how you ruin your life.

So when people ask, I want to tell them

that whatever this was,

it definitely wasn’t that.

If there was a list of stupid things to do, flirting with

Jenny Arnold’s boyfriend would be smack-dab at the

tippy-top. Denise tells you the word is out: Jenny

Arnold is going to kill you the day you hit high school.

She tells you that Jenny Arnold says this summer is your

last, so you’d better enjoy it.

The next time you see Jenny Arnold’s boyfriend, he

doesn’t look at you. You stare at him through the

window of junior high, the one that looks out on the

rest of your life, and you realize this is the first boy

you’re going to die for, and if you live through the

summer, it probably won’t be the last.

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