Durable Goods_ A Novel - Elizabeth Berg [20]
Cherylanne is at the movies with Bill O’Connell. Diane is with Dickie. I have started my period and I am alone. I put a wide blue ribbon I saved from a birthday present into my hair. I climb into bed with a book. I lay my hand across my stomach, feel the outline of the belt. Just making sure. It’s always that way with the biggest things: they never feel real. You have to keep on checking them forever.
He comes into my room later that night, turns on the light. He is holding my pajama bottoms in his hand.
“Are these yours?”
I swallow, nod. Diane does the laundry. Did she tell him?
He looks around the room, sighs, then looks at me. “You know about this?”
“Yes.”
“How?”
“School.”
“All right.” He starts to leave the room, then turns back. “You soak bloody things in cold water. I guess they didn’t tell you that, huh?”
“No.”
“Well, now you know.”
“Okay. Thank you.”
“All right.” He turns out the light. I hear his steps going downstairs.
Here is the thing: other ways are unfamiliar and, in a way, they only hurt. A month ago, when his father died, he burst into my room, stood still for a moment, then said, “Your grandpa died.”
“Oh,” I said. My grandfather held himself unto himself. I never sat on his lap. He never smiled. When I saw him, he would ask how old I was, and I would tell him; and he would shake his head, as though he were a little angry. That would be our conversation. He would lean forward onto his cane, groan a little, adjust his upper half, then settle back into himself, staring straight ahead. I didn’t love that grandfather. And the fact of his dying made no difference to me. But I knew I needed to react and so I made myself cry. I put my hands over my face and thought of a book I’d read recently where the dog died. I was sitting at my desk and my father came over to me, pressed my head into his stomach. I cried for him until he was finished with something deep and private inside. Then he left my room. I felt a terrible relief. I stood up and shivered, like I was shaking things off me.
It is better when he doesn’t touch. We are used to it. Mostly when he offers you a kindness, you only feel bad, wondering how to hold yourself, how to be now. And wondering, too, about the other times.
In the morning, I forget for a minute about my miracle. But then, when I go into the bathroom, I remember and suck in air, happy-quick. I run back to bed, lie still with my eyes closed. I can get pregnant. I can have something its own self, and yet part of me, growing inside. Cells of all kinds, serious and dividing. Hair sprouting underwater. Fingers, and fingernails coming. An ear on each side of a new head, eyelids, moving legs and arms. This is too much! Why can I be pregnant already? At some time it must have made sense. At some time you were not in junior high at this age, but ready to be making your own dinner and rocking your babies to sleep.
I get up, pour cereal into a bowl, turn on the television to a low volume. I like Saturday-morning television: the drama of Fury and Sky King; the jerk-back kind of watching you do when the Three Stooges are on. I also like Popeye, though why Olive Oyl chooses him over Bluto I do not understand. Those misshapen arms. Never mind that after some spinach they can become helpful things, like mallets. The rest of the time you have to look at them, and the tattoos do not help one bit. Bluto is better looking. His character is a little rough, but I believe that in the long run Olive would be better off with him.
Once I told some GIs that Cherylanne and I watched Popeye. We were at the PX looking at records and they asked us which ones were the most popular. I said we didn’t know. “Don’t you watch American Bandstand?” one of them asked. He was grinning, flirting a little.
“We like Popeye better,” I said.
Cherylanne gasped slightly, then stormed out of the record area into Young Juniors. “Don’t you ever tell anyone that again!”
“Why not? We do like Popeye better.”
I saw her face change around with the beginnings of a few answers to me, but she didn