White Oleander - Janet Fitch [157]
Yvonne pretended she was my sister-in-law, and that her husband, my brother, was in the army. Patrick, she liked the name. A TV actor. “I got a letter from Patrick, did I tell you?” she told me during the break, while we all drank sweet juice from tiny paper cups, ate ginger snaps. “My husband,” she told the couple next to her. “He’s getting sent to, you know —”
“Dar es Salaam,” I said.
“I miss him, don’t you?”
“Not that much,” I said. “He’s way older than me.” I imagined a big blond man who brought me dolls from his different tours. Heidi dolls, dope hidden up their skirts.
“He sent me five hundred dollars for the layette,” she said.
“Made me promise not to go to yard sales. He wants everything brand-new. It’s a waste of money, but if that’s what he wants...”
This was fun. I was never a little girl playing games with other little girls, dolly mommy daddy games.
They showed her how to hold the baby to her breast, holding the breast in one hand. She suckled the plastic child. I had to laugh.
“Shhh,” Yvonne said, cuddling the space alien, stroking its indented head. “Such a pretty little baby. Don’t you listen to that bad girl laughing, mija. You’re my baby, yes you are.”
Later, Yvonne lay on the orange mat, blowing and counting, and I put the tennis balls under her back, switched to the rolled towels. I held the watch and timed her contractions, I breathed with her, we both hyperventilated. She wasn’t nervous. “Don’t worry,” Yvonne said, smiling up at me, her belly like a giant South Sea Island pearl in a cocktail ring. “I been through this before.”
They explained about the epidural and drugs, but no one there was going to have drugs. They all wanted the natural experience. It all seemed wrapped in plastic, unreal, like stewardesses on planes demonstrating the seat belts and the pattern for orderly disembarkation in case of crash at sea, the people taking a glance at the cards in the seat pocket in front of them. Sure, they thought, no problem. A peek at the nearest exit and then they were ready for in-flight service, peanuts and a movie.
RENA SOAKED UP the fierce April sun in her black macramé bikini, drinking a tumbler of vodka and Fresca, she called it a Russian Margarita. The men from the plumbing contractor next door loitered by the low chain-link fence, sucking their teeth at her. She pretended she didn’t notice, but slowly applied Tropic Tan to the tops of her breasts, stroked down her arms, while the workmen grabbed their crotches and called out suggestions in Spanish. The metal chaise was half-collapsed beneath her, we were lulled by the sound of the rusty sprinkler watering the lawn of crabgrass and dandelions.
“You’re going to get skin cancer,” I said.
She rolled her bottom lip out. “We’re dead long time, kiddo.” She liked to say these American words, knowing how they sounded in her mouth. She lifted her Russian Margarita, drank. “Nazdaroviye.”
It meant to your health, but she didn’t care about that. She lit a black cigarette, let the smoke rise in arabesques.
I was sitting on an old lawn chair in the shade of the big oleander, sketching Rena as she soaked up the blistering UV rays. She sprayed herself with a small bottle filled with ice water, and the men watching over the chain-link fence shuddered. You could see the shape of her nipples through the knitted fabric. She smiled to herself.
This is what she loved, to make a few plumber’s grunts come in their pants. A sale, a Russian Margarita, a quickie in the bathroom with Sergei, that was as far into the future as she cared to look. I admired her confidence. Skin cancer, lung cancer, men, furniture, junk, something would always come along. It was good for me to be around her now. I could not afford to think about the future.
I had only two months until graduation, and then a short fall off the edge of the world. At night, I dreamed of my mother, she was always leaving. I dreamed I missed a ride out to New York for