It’s a rainy day and we are
playing dolls in Allison’s room. I am seven
or eight and am undressing one of her Barbies on Allison’s bed. Allison is nine or ten and is happy I am
playing with her. She never wants to play
by herself or with my green plastic soldiers.
My older brother Charley won’t play with my soldiers either. He’s three years older than me and only wants
to play baseball. We aren’t allowed to
play baseball in the house. Besides I
don’t like playing with Charley. My soldiers
are stuffed in an old shoebox at the foot of Allison’s bed along with my plastic
Indians and cowboys.
Mother says I can’t have my friends
over. I have to play with Allison. At least with Allison, who is a
year-and-a-half older than me, the game won’t end with her sitting on top of me,
drooling spit on my face – a frequent punishment reserved for me by my
bother. Not today. Charley is off with Daddy watching the Pittsburgh
Pirates play baseball. They went into
Pittsburgh this morning. Charley said I
couldn’t come because I am too much of a baby.
“Am not.”
“You still play with dolls.”
“Do not.”
Daddy scuffed my head and said,
“Next time.”
At Allison’s suggestion, we decide
to put sparkly outfits on her Barbies so they can go to the grand ball with
Ken…
But then...
Allison remembers she has something
she wants to show me.
“It’s in Mother’s room.”
We aren’t allowed to play in Mother
and Daddy’s bedroom. I am at the bottom of
Allison’s bed; Allison’s Barbies and their clothing – gowns that Allison has
made with bits of material and loose stitches – are everywhere on the white bedspread.
Rifling around in her old doll
box for outfits has been fun. Now this.
I can see the rain through
the window behind Allison sitting cross-legged at the head of her bed. She is studying her Barbie. I finger the red saffron material I’m about
to put on my Barbie. I would rather be
outside playing with my soldiers.
“I don’t want to go to their
room.” They keep their door closed.
“What if she catches us?”
I can hear her in the kitchen
with the washer and dryer.
“You’re a scaredy cat.”
“Am not.”
“Besides, I know something
you don’t.”
“Do not. What?”
“It’s a secret. Holly said she will kill me if I tell anyone.”
“She will not. Mother won’t let her.” – but then, maybe, she
will. My oldest sister Holly can be great,
but she can be awful too. Holly does
what she wants, especially when she babysits us on Thursday nights.
If Holly is involved, this
raises the secret to a Nancy Drew or Hardy Boys mystery. If Holly doesn’t want Charley to know, what
could it be? Will Charley hate her all
the more if he finds out – more than he does already because she’s the oldest?
But why does it have to be in
Mother’s room?
Their door is always closed,
and we aren’t allowed to shut our bedroom doors. Holly shuts her door or, if Mother insists, only
opens it a crack. When Holly slams her
door, we know she’s mad. Charley doesn’t
have a door; he shares his room with me.
When he’s mad, I wish I could lock our door from the hallway. Our room is next to Allison’s and I could
sleep with her, even though she’s a girl.
Mother and Daddy’s bedroom is
at the other end of the hallway. When we
open their door on a Saturday or Sunday morning, the smell is always different:
stinky, morning sun mixing with sweat and perfume, socks and underwear.
What could be in their room?
I know what’s on their
dressers. On Mother’s dresser is long
and low and has a mirror behind it on the wall.
On her dresser are an assortment of earrings and necklaces, scarves, lipstick,
and makeup. Mother can be really pretty
when she wants to be, when she dresses up.
Daddy’s dresser on the other side of the room is taller. If I pull over the chair from the corner, I
can find all sorts of things on his dresser: white plastic collar braces, coins,
keys and tie clasps, and schedules of baseball games.
Charley and Daddy wouldn’t
let me go with them. I am not a baby.
My dresser is full of stupid
stuff, like jacks without the ball, or a yoyo that never works right – and it
isn’t my fault – or a shirt Mother says needs to be put away, or my clip-on tie
for Sunday school. Mother and Daddy’s
dressers have stuff to finger and smell if only to figure out where it came
from, what it does, what’s going on. Not
broken stuff.
Between the two dressers is
their large bed and it is mysterious. Daddy,
who was once a boy, sleeps with Mother, who was once a girl, on that very bed. Barbie never even kissed Ken. Yet they sleep together every night and kiss
each other. At night, when a thunderstorm
thunders above the house, I run to their room, open their door, and hide
between them. Allison does too.
Other than Charley or Holly,
who wouldn’t?
“I’ll show you if you promise
not to tell anybody. You got to
promise.”
“I promise” – but I know I’ll
tell if Charley starts hurting me.
“What is it?”
Allison is dressing her
Barbie in a tight blue gown.
“I can’t tell, but it’s in
Mother’s closet.”
Oh, their closet!
Holly goes into their closet
at Christmas and pries open the boxes on the shelf above their suits and
dresses. She always teases us with what
we got from Santa. Holly, I knew, knew better
than they knew what was in their closet.
Holly is a teenager. She knows everything.
“Holly showed me.”
“Did not. Where?”
“Did to. I’ll show you.” Allison carefully places her Barbie dressed in
her beautiful blue gown down onto the pile of Barbie clothes spread out all
over the bedspread. She gets off her bed
and opens her door.
“Are you coming?”
I follow Allison out of her
room and walk slowly behind her down the hallway of our one-floor “L-shaped,”
ranch house. We stay along the inside
wall away from the windows where Mother could see us from the kitchen. We go past Holly’s room and my younger
brother Jerry’s room and stop at our bathroom.
Holly is away with her girlfriends from high school and Jerry is down
for his afternoon nap, and, like every Sunday afternoon, we are under strict instructions
not to wake him. Allison has me wait by
Daddy’s work desk next to our bathroom in the hallway alcove. His big desk is littered with papers; I spot the
black telephone; next to it are telephone books along with other books and
papers stacked on top of them; all around on the desk are loose pads of paper
with his and Mother’s scribbles on them.
Allison goes by herself through
the archway on the left and into the dining room that separates our hallway
from the kitchen and living room. She is
quiet and on tiptoes. Allison can be
really sneaky when she wants to be. That’s why I have to stay where I am. I am more of a bumbler. Mother says I need to practice being careful.
Do not.
Allison sneaks around at
night. She walks in her sleep and
carries her trash can throughout the house.
Mother and Daddy will be watching tv and suddenly there is Allison with
her trash can. Or, if they are already
in bed, in the morning her trash can is sitting in the living room or the
kitchen. Mother always tells me to take
it back to Allison’s room while she gets my cereal ready. I never told Mother, but sometimes Allison
visits me with her trash can before walking out to the kitchen. She doesn’t visit Charley. He’d smack her.
I finger the dials of the
phone and, by chance, knock the receiver off the cradle, which bangs the
telephone books and sends papers fluttering to the floor. I quickly pick up the papers and put them
back on the desk; I put the receiver on the cradle and step away from the desk,
just as Allison comes back into the hall.
“Mother is talking to Mrs.
Coffrets.”
We both know what that
means.
Mrs. Coffrets is one of the
ladies in Mother’s art class on Thursday nights. There’s a group of them – men and women – and
now they’re all friends, and they talk all the time – boring stuff: golf, Bridge,
people from the country club, getting together.
Mrs. Coffrets doesn’t have children, but Mother will be on the phone with
her for hours.
Allison leads to me to
Mother’s door, peers back through the archway into the dining room, then,
quickly opens the door. We go into their
bedroom and Allison quietly closes the door behind us.
The room is dark and already
I regret being here. Why couldn’t Holly
or Charley show me? Allison’s a tattle
tale – I know her, she’ll tell Mother it was my idea, and Mother will believe
her. Allison gets away with everything. I’ll get spanked by Daddy.
The curtains are not closed,
but adjusted to keep us from looking into their room when we are outside. The
sheets have been pulled off of their bed, and Mother has placed a pile of
folded clothes on the mattress to be put away later. The nightstands have paperback books on
them. Mother is reading something about Tournament
Bridge. She loves this card game and
plays with one of her friends from art class, some man from the Country
Club. I don’t like him. Holly says he hates kids.
Bridge is more complicated
than Crazy Eights; Mother plays it a lot.
I like War or Fish. Charley hates
cards.
I go over to Daddy’s side of
the bed; he is reading something called “Atlas Shrugged.” I pick up the paperback and stare at the
picture.
“Put that down before you
knock something over.”
“Will not.”
“Get the chair.”
The chair in the corner has Daddy’s
clothes on it: Daddy’s pajamas. I put
them on the bed and drag the chair over to Allison as she opens the
closet. There’s no time to look at
what’s on their dressers. Allison has
slid open the door on Daddy’s side of the closet. She places the chair in front of Daddy’s
suits.
She stands on the chair and
reaches up to the shelf. In the back
behind the sweaters and extra coat hangers I can see a small box of some sort. She struggles to reach it.
“Help me!”
“No. Let’s get out of here.”
“I’ll tell. I’ll tell Mother you were going through their
stuff again.”
“Was not.”
“Yes, you were. I saw you.”
I hate her.
“Get me the phone books.”
I hate her. I hate her.
I hate her.
I run to their bedroom door
and slowly open it, peeking out: no one is in the hall, the washing machine and
dryer are running in the kitchen. I
don’t hear Mother.
I slip out the door and close
it behind me. I run to the desk. I am reaching for the telephone books, when
Mother steps out of Jerry’s room. She
sees me right away.
“Jonathan, what are you
doing?”
“Oh!” I knock papers everywhere.
“Jonathan!”
Mother comes up the hall as I
back against the wall, staring at her trying to think of what to say. Why isn’t she on the phone with Mrs. Coffrets? What if she goes into her room? Already I can feel Daddy’s hands stinging my
bottom.
“Pick up the papers,
Jon. What were you doing?”
I quickly stoop to pick up the
papers and promptly bang my head on the side of the desk. I fall down on the floor and grab my
head. I am about to burst into tears,
but do my best to hold back. The pain is
awful!
Mother looks down at me with
her hands on her hips and shakes her head.
I am a bungler, a bungler, and I just proved to her how I could hurt
myself while bungling my effort to gather papers that I bungled by knocking
them off the desk.
She feels my head.
“You have a serious lump
there. Maybe we should go into my
bathroom and put something on it.”
Mother’s bathroom is in their bedroom and the bathroom door is right
next to their closet.
“No, no. It doesn’t hurt. See.” Half
blind, I begin pulling the papers together.
Allison will kill me if I walk into their room with Mother. Beside I hate the medical stuff Mother keeps
in her bathroom. Going with her always
ends in pain, a Band-Aid, and teasing from Charley.
She rubs my head. “Hmmm…
That’s a big boy, but you’ve got to be more careful.”
“What were you doing, anyway? Where is Allison?”
Suddenly I feel sick. She’s going to find out. I’m going to be told to go to my room until
Daddy gets home. I pick up the papers and
avoid her eyes.
“Jonathan…”
“I had to pee.” I lie as I put the papers on the desk.
“Did you wash your hands?” Oh no.
I barely shrug my head. Why did I
say that?
“Go wash your hands.”
I hate washing my hands. I hate washing my face too, oh, and brushing
my teeth. Bathrooms should be just for
peeing.
“You and Allison are awfully quiet. I was coming down to see you. Are you behaving?”
“We’re playing with her Barbies.”
“Good. Let Jerry sleep … and stop going through this
desk all the time. Did I hear you pick
up the phone earlier?”
“It fell over.”
“On it’s own?”
The phone rings and I jump.
“Jonathan, calm down. Why are you so fidgety?”
Mother picks up the
receiver.
“Hi Polly, that wasn’t long
at all. Hold on for a moment.”
“Take the phone,” she says,
“When you hear me get on in the kitchen, hang up. I mean it.
I don’t want you listening in. I’ll
bring you and Allison a treat shortly.“
“Is that little Jon-Jon?” Mrs.
Cofferts asks through the receiver. Her
voice is high. She is one of Mother’s
friends from Somerset and she is nice.
Squishy nice.
“Yes, mam.”
“When are you coming back to
my house? Didn’t you have fun?”
Allison has opened Mother’s door
and is gesturing me to hurry. One
afternoon Mother had Allison and me stay with Mrs. Coffrets when we were
supposed to be running errands.
“Yes, mam.”
My Mother’s has picked up the
phone in the kitchen. “Hang up, Jon.”
she says.
“Tell your mom you want to
come to my house again sometime. She can
run her errands all afternoon and we’ll play.”
“Polly…“ Mother says. “Not now.
Hang up, Jonathan.” I hang up
the phone.
“Get over here,” Allison
whispers.
I move the papers from the
telephone books to the chair. I grab the
phone books and run to Allison who opens the door wide enough to let me through;
she closes it quietly behind me.
“Did you hear? Mother is bringing a treat for us. We’ve got to get out of here.”
Allison puts the phone books
on the chair in front of Daddy’s suits.
“Get up there and grab that
box. You’re taller.”
What? Me? No
way.
“Jon, I’ll tell. I’ll tell Charley you were playing with my
dolls.”
“Was not. You’re a liar.’
“You were too. You know you were.”
Oh, how I hate her.
I get on the chair and slowly
step on the telephone books. They shift
under my weight. The top cover feels
like it is tearing. I hold onto the pole
holding Daddy’s suits and reach up onto the shelf. Behind Daddy’s sweaters is the grey box. I find the handle and bring it down to
Allison.
She grabs it from me and runs
to the door. “Put everything away,” she
says as she cracks open their door to see where Mother is. Quickly she is out the door. I know she has carried the box back to her
room.
She is such a creep, leaving
me here to cleanup.
I do not want to be alone in
Mother and Daddy’s bedroom. I jump off
the chair, knocking a phone book over, and run after her. Then, I stop and realize we are going to be in
big trouble. I run back to the closet and
drag the chair back to the corner of the room.
I pick up the phone books and hide them behind Daddy’s shoes.
I can’t get out their door
fast enough.
Allison is on the floor in
her bedroom on the far side of her bed.
Her back is against the wall and I can barely see her head above the
bed.
“Close my door,” she
says.
I join her in a minute and
watch her go through the box. I can see
right away, it’s only paper.
“These are secret papers,”
she says.
“They are? What are they?”
Allison shows me some: something
about Daddy being honorably discharged from the Army; another says Daddy and
Mother were married somewhere by some Presbyterian minister, one says he
graduated from college, and another says he was born in Ohio. Ohio!
Where’s Ohio?
It is clear, these papers are
not what Allison is looking for – she pulls out a white envelope near the
bottom. This is the one she wants. She shoves the other papers back in the box
and pushes the box under her bed.
“Guess what this is?”
“What?”
She opens the envelope and
pulls out tightly folded papers that are stapled together. The typed words look official. She gives me the papers, but I can’t read it.
“What does it say?”
Allison gets real close to me,
“You can’t tell anybody. Not Holly. Not Charley.
Not anybody.”
“I won’t. I swear.”
Allison whispers in my ear, “Holly
is adopted. She is not our real sister.”
What? That can’t be. No. No.
No.
That’s horrible. That’s
wrong. That’s a lie.
Holly’s our sister. She will always be our sister.
“Look,” she says, pointing to
the text. “Mother had Holly and Daddy
adopted her.”
What? Holly had a different father? Mother wasn’t always with Daddy?
But she has always been with
Daddy!
I start to cry. I don’t know why, but I hate this.
“It’s not true.”
“Holly found out and showed
me. She was a baby.”
“But I love Holly.”
Allison starts crying too.
“Are we all adopted?”
Is it just like Charley says
when he is on top of me? “– How could I
ever have such a baby for a brother?”
“I don’t know,” Allison says.
We pull out the box back out from
under the bed and go through all the papers.
No other adoption envelopes are anywhere in the box. We look at each other.
“I love Holly too,” Allison
says.
We put Holly’s adoption papers
back into the envelope and push it way down to the bottom of the box. We stuff as many other documents on top of it
as we can find, but, really, I want Allison to tear the envelope into thousands
of pieces.
This is all wrong. I wipe my eyes.
“What are you two doing?”
Mother is in the doorway of
Allison’ room. She has opened the door
and in her right hand is a plate of cookies.
Allison kicks the box under her bed with her feet.
“Playing Barbie,” she says
looking up at Mother.
Mother comes into the
room. “Here, get up on the bed,” she
says as if the day is wonderful and the afternoon isn’t raining. “Here are some Oreos.”
I love Oreos. I know exactly where she keeps them high on
the shelf in the pantry; the Oreo are always next to the Graham crackers and
the saltines. Watching tv after school
Charley, Holly, Allison and I separate the cookies and scrape the white icing with
our teeth.
I stare at Mother as she
places the plate on the bed. Now I am
not so sure I want one. Not from
her. I don’t want to play with Allison’s
Barbies either. Not with her. Instead I
pick up my shoebox of Indians, cowboys, and soldiers.
****
