Hyacinth Girls (2 page)

“That's not true,” I said. “You know that's not true!”

Callie nodded. Robyn just thought it was funny.

“I would completely understand if you did throw paint on her for saying a thing like that.”

“I didn't, though.” She tugged out of my grip.

Right then I imagined Robyn as the worst kind of child. A girl who'd never lost anything, who lacked empathy and depth. I'd read about kids like that, whose emotions were actually dying. They spent all their time online and forgot that humans could feel.

“There must be something wrong with her to say such a nasty thing,” I said.

Callie reached for a pinecone on her bedside table, turning it over in her hands. Whenever she needed comfort you'd find her outside. She collected twigs, leaves, and tiny bird skeletons, stashing them around her room like they were deeply precious. Callie poked her fingers inside the pinecone's ridges, then fixed her green eyes on me. “Can I stay home tomorrow?”

“Hon—”

“They think I did it.” She shuddered. “They'll all think I'm horrible.”

“Nobody thinks that. They probably think
she's
horrible.”

“I can't go back.” She suddenly pressed the pinecone to her lips. “I can't go back with everyone thinking I did it.”

I sifted my brain for advice. What level of outrage would help her? Even after all these years, I often felt like a bumbler. I could dole out sympathy all night and it might not make any difference. I looked at Joyce's picture on the wall, hoping for inspiration.

“What do you think your mom would do?”

Callie shrugged and shook her head.

“People talked about her, too. Remember how come? After those boys in our junior high tried to throw me down the stairs.”

Callie didn't answer, although she knew this story well. We used to
act the whole scene out when she was a little bit younger. Callie would deepen her voice the way I'd taught her and narrow her eyes at our imaginary tormentors. She once cracked the wooden coffee table when she jumped on top of it during a reenactment.

Callie finally spoke. “She changed what everyone saw.”

I met Callie's mother when I was twelve years old. I was about to be thrown down the eighth-grade stairwell in my first week of junior high.

Over the summer, my cousin tried to prepare me because he'd been through it, too. Curtis used to come home with black eyes after disputing a certain small-town rumor. “If they talk shit about Grandma, don't get mad or deny it,” he said. “Just find out their names and I'll take care of them for you.”

Curtis's girlfriend listened to this advice skeptically as she rubbed sunscreen over her freckles. “Why don't you just knee them in the balls?” Lara said. “Kick them where it counts.”

Lara pounded the sunscreen bottle against her palm: no one would call
her
grandma a whore.

“She's not fighting.” Curtis squeezed my scrawny shoulder. “Rebecca's not a fighter.”

But when Curtis went to the beach snack bar, Lara made me get up and practice. She showed me how to aim for their weak spots, kicking her strong, hairless legs in the sand. “He's worried about you,” she said. “He thinks they'll eat you alive.”

If Curtis thought I was going to get eaten he didn't say so, not even on the first morning of school, when he put his hand on the back of my neck. “You've got an invisible force field,” he said. “And that's me. Okay?”

But when I ended up in the eighth-grade stairwell the force field
didn't seem to be working. Something bounced off the side of my head. “Tell your grandma thanks for last night.”

A boy had thrown a penny at me and it disappeared among the moving bodies. I didn't aim for his balls, but I spoke loud enough for people to hear.

“Congratulations. You have AIDS,” I lied, obviously not thinking very tactically. Announcing my grandma had AIDS wouldn't improve my reputation.

“Oh, shit. Silibetti got AIDS.”

“Chris, you got Grandma AIDS!”

This is where I would've liked to walk away, having dissed Silibetti, but Silibetti wasn't done. His hand clamped down on my arm, and then he grinned for just a second.

Guys aren't supposed to hit girls, especially not small ones who still sleep with teddy bears, but Silibetti lived by a code that was different from most. My face stung from the shock of his hand. Then his friends grabbed me around my knees, laughing as I struggled and flailed in the air.

I don't remember screaming as they lifted me up at the top of the staircase. I was too busy trying to grab the railing as they bounced me up and down. My fingers kept slipping off the bars, sweaty and useless, while they held my legs out behind me like I was flying through the air.

“Wheee, Superman! Haaa, wheee!”

And I could already feel the jolting impact, the way they'd let go and I'd plummet down.

“Satan!” a girl's voice rang out. “Praise my Satan brothers!”

If I wasn't still bouncing I might've seen her purple polo shirt, her blond ponytail bobbing as she pretended to bow. “Sacrifice her soul,” she cried, as I felt something hot trickle down my face.

I suppose nowadays to get the same effect you'd have to pretend to be a terrorist, start screaming about jihad and the infidels to create such instantaneous alarm. But in 1987 we were all scared of the Satanists—they were the ones on the evening news, infiltrating schools and churches, posing as pastors and preschool teachers, abusing kids in the sewers.

The crowd murmured and fell silent. The blood drained out of my arms. I felt the moment when I would fall rapidly rushing closer.

“Shut the fuck up, little girl!” That was Silibetti.

“We'll throw you over, too.”

Apparently the girl just smiled. “Praise Lucifer.”

That was when they dumped me on the floor, letting me slump down by their feet. They didn't throw me over the railing but instead went after her. I tried to remember Lara's coaching. I kicked at their ankles, and then I felt a small hand swiping across my face.

The girl had touched me. I saw my blood on her hand. She held it up at the boys and started to chant. “DIGAdigaDIGAdigaDIGAdigaDIN! LucIFerLUCiferLUCIFER COME IN!”

Her voice vibrated through my body, shaking me to the core, and the boys didn't grab her or throw her over as she rocked back and forth. Her voice was dark, complicated, and kids started pointing at her, and then at Silibetti, too, like they were both part of some blood-drinking cult. Was Silibetti afraid? Did he know he'd been branded? He called her a crazy bitch as I gave one last kick. Then the bell was ringing and people were trampling past. They stepped on my feet and fingers, and I felt groggy, unsteady. I decided I'd stay on the floor. I'd take a nap on the cool gray tiles. Soon Curtis would find out what happened and I imagined he'd leave high school to come here and get me, speaking in the soft voice he used when our moms were asleep. Then he'd offer to carry me home, and I'd twine my arms around his neck, and he'd say it was all a bad dream. I would never have to go back.

There was a girl's face in front of me. I realized it was her.

“Do you want to go to the nurse?” she asked sweetly. “I think they busted your lip.”

I stroked Callie's hair as I finished with the familiar words. “They called her Joyce McFrenzy, Evil McFrenzy, or EMF for short. People claimed she'd summoned the devil and levitated for a full minute over the stairs. I once asked her why she was willing to do it just to save somebody she didn't know, and she gave me this grin. ‘I knew we were meant to be friends.' ”

“And then you were hyacinth girls,” Callie said.

“Yes,” I said. “We were.”

 

All My Interactions with Robyn Doblak, #1

For Rebecca/From Callie

I won't count all the times I saw her in art class.

I'll just start with the first time we talked in school. We probably wouldn't have even met if I didn't have to see Miss Baranski. You know, she never said anything useful—she wasn't a REAL psychiatrist. It was always just
How are you feeling? How are things at home?
She used this fake soothing voice and I always gave the same answers.
Good. No problems
. But the worst thing about it was she was always running late. You had to wait outside her door, and sometimes people saw you, so you had to lean against the wall to keep your face hidden…or stroll back and forth to the water fountain, like people wouldn't guess what you were doing there.

ANYWAY, it was right before Christmas, I could hear the chorus practicing “Frosty the Snowman,” and I'd been waiting for Miss Baranski for the last ten minutes. Robyn was waiting, too, humming along with the music. Then she noticed one of my wristbands. “Pit bull awareness?”

It wasn't like when you met Mom. It wasn't some amazing scene. I wasn't saving Robyn and she wasn't saving me. I was only killing time. I started to explain.

“There was once this pit bull who saved thirty peoples' lives. But all anyone thinks is they're these vicious crazy killers.”

“Thirty people? How did he save them?”

“They got stranded in a flood and this pit bull—she brought them food.”

She nodded and I looked at the foil trees stapled to the wall. I would give Miss Baranski two more minutes and then I was taking off.

“My dad wanted me to get a dog,” Robyn said. Then she started touching her silver headband. She said her mom changed her mind because dogs were too much work. I already knew that her dad was dead. I'd heard about his leukemia. Pretty much everyone in school heard about it when he died in seventh grade. What I didn't expect was that Robyn would start crying. Right there, out in the hall. I probably should've knocked on Miss Baranski's door, but I didn't think of that until later. I just started talking about whatever popped into my head. I told her about the imaginary dog I had when I was little and how she used to chase me around the house. I was just trying to make her laugh and I started talking louder and louder. “Imaginary dogs are great,” I said. “You can get a whole pack of them. And the best part is they'll attack whoever you want.”

I did a little growl and Robyn finally smiled. Her mascara was running so I raised my hand to her face. I used my sleeve to wipe it and Robyn let me. She seemed really thankful, but embarrassed, too.

The next day, I met with Callie's principal. Mrs. Jameson was a large, distracted woman whose makeup had melted into a thick soup beneath her eyes. Her jewelry hung sloppily into her cleavage and as she offered me a seat she called me “Mrs. McKenzie.”

“I'm actually Rebecca Lucas,” I corrected her. “I'm Callie's guardian, not her mother.”

“Pardon me,” she said without warmth, and I wondered if she'd even bothered looking in Callie's file. How could she miss that one of her pupils had no parents? She made a notation on a loose piece of paper as I settled into the plastic chair. There was a single leafy plant on her desk and a framed landscape on the wall, but the room felt dead, as if she'd intended to decorate and had given up early. Mrs. Jameson looked at me intensely, her eyes crossing a little behind her glasses, searching my face for something. Guilt, deceit. I'd arrived late, trotting through the halls, perspiring and uneasy, gulping down air that smelled of new computers. I already sensed how this would look. I'd got trapped in unusual traffic—a vintage tractor show was on that weekend—and for ten minutes, I'd been delayed behind a steam-powered tractor. The gargantuan
machine belched smoke, chugging along at twelve miles an hour, bullishly refusing to let anyone pass.

“Tractor show?” Mrs. Jameson repeated doubtfully, as sweat pooled inside my blouse. I offered a second apology and then proceeded with Callie's defense.

“I was shocked by your call yesterday,” I said. “I'd never had a call like that before in my life, and I knew before I even spoke to Callie that she couldn't have done it. She's been extremely upset by what this girl said—”

Mrs. Jameson cut me off, looking down at the loose paper on her desk, a hint of disgust tugging her coppery lips. “I'd just like to start with the incident report,” she said, and then she began to read in a disappointed tone. “The student Callie assaulted was working at her desk when Callie approached her and called her ‘Bullets.' She then threw ink on the student's shirt and hair—”

“It wasn't ink,” I interrupted. “It was paint, and Robyn actually put it on her own shirt to get attention.”

“I understand why you'd like that to be true, Ms. Lucas. But I'm afraid that you're misinformed.”

I began trying to make Callie's case then, telling how Ella had witnessed everything, while Mrs. Jameson responded with icy, noncommittal phrases.
I see. That's what she told you. Mmm. Mmhmm
.

“You don't think it's possible Robyn did this to herself?” I asked.

“It's not rational.”

“It is if she wanted to get Callie in trouble. If she did it out of spite.”

“I want to be clear,” Mrs. Jameson said curtly. “I take any kind of bullying seriously, but what happened yesterday was particularly disturbing to me. The student was distraught.” She gave me a woebegone look. “One of our teachers had to sit with her for an hour trying to calm her down.”

I pressed my elbows against her desk, staking out a little piece of territory. If I wavered for even a second things could devolve quickly. I might offer to pay for Robyn's shirt. Or promise to question Callie further. But I had to remember: a crying girl proved nothing. That was the thing about modern parenting: kids were treated like ticking time bombs, as if every misery or setback could trigger their own self-destruction. Mrs. Jameson was behaving as if Robyn was permanently damaged, but that just showed a worrying lack of perspective.

The night before, I'd gone downstairs to talk to our landlady. Mrs. Romero had raised her own kids in Pembury, so I was hoping for some good advice. In the eight years we'd lived on the second floor of her house, she'd never once raised the rent, and when I brought down the monthly check, Mrs. Romero always gave me a gift. If she didn't have a cake or casserole ready, she'd grab a box of cookies and hand it over as if this was what I was really paying for. But when she opened her door last night, I realized we wouldn't be talking about school. “There's a new one, Rebecca,” she said, and then she went to retrieve the letter. It was postmarked from York Correctional Institution, and had my name on the front. Mrs. Romero checked our mailbox daily so that Callie wouldn't find one. Most of the letters were addressed to me, but a few had been sent for Callie. “You're never tempted to read one?” Mrs. Romero asked, and I shook my head. I always burned them. After Callie fell asleep, I torched it in the sink. Now, if Callie's principal was disturbed by a little paint, how would she feel if I brought up murder? If I pointed out that
real
tragedies happened all the time?

“Do you know what Robyn said to Callie?” I asked instead. “She told Callie that her mother died so she wouldn't have to look at her.”

Mrs. Jameson looked down her nose at me as if I'd made this up on the spot. “Did Callie report this? Did she tell her teachers?”

“I'm sure she did.” I feigned confidence. “Yes, of course.”

“Well, I haven't heard that before, and I'll certainly look into it, but I do have an impartial witness who spoke to me about what happened yesterday. And according to her, Callie's been bothering this student for a while.”

“Who was the witness? Do you mean the alleged victim?”

“I don't give out student names, but there was a witness other than the student who was assaulted.”

“You have
one
witness out of a whole classroom of students? I'm guessing this isn't an adult. There wasn't an adult in that classroom.” My hands were starting to tremble, so I shoved them under my thighs. “And what about our witness? Ella
saw
Robyn put the paint on herself.”

I forced myself to look her in the eye. Mrs. Jameson tugged at the collar of her low-cut blouse as her jewelry swung drunkenly above her cleavage, and suddenly I realized what all the makeup and jewelry and cleavage were about. She wanted kids to like her, to think that she was cool.
That Mrs. Jameson, she's okay!
And why would she want that? Because she'd once belonged to the same tribe as me: the awkward kids, the unpopular ones. Maybe she'd been bullied herself. That was why she trusted Robyn over Callie. That was why she would harbor a grudge against a kid who was naturally popular and pretty.

“You've already decided Callie's guilty without any kind of investigation,” I continued. “You're assuming that because she's popular and this other girl isn't that she's the one with the power and she's the bully. But that's an old-fashioned idea and it isn't very helpful.”

Mrs. Jameson looked stumped for a moment, but then she began the “I'm just like you” speech that I often used myself. She had a daughter, too, and it was tempting to overlook certain things. Girls often had a difficult time admitting they'd behaved poorly, but if we didn't acknowledge their bad choices, we'd have trouble guiding them in the future.

“Mrs. Jameson,” I said sharply. “Callie's lost both her parents. Now
imagine that this girl was lying about you. Imagine that your reputation was getting dragged through the mud.”

Before she could respond, there was a knock on the door. For just a millisecond I saw a look of relief cross Mrs. Jameson's face. The school secretary stuck her head in. “Sorry. Can I just borrow you for a sec?” Mrs. Jameson stood up while I squeezed my fingers together—taking a deep, shaky breath once she was out of the room. I remembered what Callie had told me earlier, how Mrs. Jameson sometimes embarrassed herself in front of the whole school. Callie knew I wasn't naturally confident, so she'd brought it up over breakfast, perhaps to give me a boost before our meeting today. “She gets on the loudspeaker, you know, in the middle of class,” Callie said. “And she'll start to make an announcement but then she forgets what she wanted to say.” She described the long, painful silences—the umming and ahing—and the way her class would burst out laughing while the teacher rolled her eyes.

I could hear Mrs. Jameson speaking in low tones outside the door, and suddenly I remembered the incident report. Why
couldn't
I read it? If she was so certain, why not share it? Unless she knew that her details were wrong and the report was full of misinformation. I slid my hand across the desk, glancing over my shoulder. It had been written in pencil, marked with scribbles and cross-outs, with a doodle of an owl in one corner of the page. I skimmed through it quickly, reading about the red ink and Miss Dimmock, Callie and Robyn, and then I saw a name I didn't recognize: Lucinda Berry.
The witness
, I thought, but I couldn't read any more.

Mrs. Jameson was bustling back into the room, thanking me for coming in. She didn't sit down, but gave a tense smile, avoiding my gaze. She said she'd investigate further and give me a call. Then she stood by my chair as if preparing to march me out. Another parent
might've remained seated until things were fully settled. They might've mentioned lawyers and lawsuits with cool hostility in their throat. But I hadn't transformed so much in one day. I swallowed my objections and headed for the door.

“I feel all chattery,” Callie said that evening, as she huddled on the sofa, wrapped in a blanket.

I'd told her that even if she was suspended, she wouldn't be punished. She and I would know it was a farce and spend the day out having fun. We could go on a day trip to New York. Or drive up to Boston. We could stop by the vintage tractor show, eat blueberry pie.

“I don't know why this is happening.” She shivered. “I think I might be cursed.”

“Don't say that. You're going to be fine.”

“I don't ever want to see her again. I bet she wants to kill me.”

“Robyn's not going to hurt you.” I tucked in the edge of Callie's blanket.

“What else did Mrs. Jameson say?”

“Well, she claims there was a witness.”

“She does? Who?”

“I…I'm not sure.”

“Great. Now two people hate me.”

“Callie, girls can be jealous.”

“Did she say it was a girl?”

“Well, not exactly.”

Callie turned and looked into my eyes.

“Was it Lucinda?” she asked. I made a face and shook my head. But Callie could read me sometimes, and she knew she'd guessed it right.

“I am cursed,” she moaned. “This isn't getting better. She's going to do something worse. I know she will.”

“What do you think she might do?” I asked, rubbing her arms to warm her up.

“I don't know.” Callie's teeth clacked together. “Just something bad. I don't know.”

Callie was born lucky, that's what Joyce said. Even though Callie's father was already married and asked Joyce not to have her. Joyce was nineteen when she got pregnant, studying pre-law at college, but when she learned she was expecting she decided to drop out.

When I first met Callie all I could see was her vulnerability. The flaking skin on her scalp, her delicate curling feet. She seemed so defenseless, but as I visited from week to week, I could see there was strength in her steady gaze, in the speed that she grew. She laughed and smiled. One week she couldn't roll over and the next week she could. One week she couldn't grasp a rattle, and the next week it was tight in her fist. She unfolded herself for us a little more every day.

Joyce moved home with her parents to raise Callie, and I saw them on the weekends. But despite her claims of good luck, Joyce had started to seem depressed.

“If she says ‘antiseptic' one more time,” Joyce muttered as her mom left the room, “I'll kill myself.”

“Don't kill yourself,” I said. “You can always come stay with me.”

“Sure. A baby in the dorm. A screaming baby on the keg.”

“Once I start working, we'll get a place together. Okay?”

It was the first time I'd said it, and Joyce didn't respond. I'd taken it for granted that she'd want my help, but we had never discussed the details. I let the subject drop, but the next time we talked on the phone, Joyce was the one to bring it up.

“When we move in together, I think we should decorate our place like a jungle,” she said. “Leopard-skin couch. Fuchsia walls.”

There was a deliberate jokiness to the way she said all this, like she was afraid I hadn't been serious. She didn't have to worry. I knew exactly how to play along.

“We'll get zebra-print sheets and snakeskin pillows.”

“Hang mosquito nets from the ceiling?”

“And stick an elephant in the corner!”

We began to make plans that seemed more and more real. There would be a house near a park, swimming pools in the summer. We'd pick pumpkins at a farm for Halloween and give Callie her first taste of apple cider. We'd teach her to sled and ice-skate, to jump double Dutch, and there would be chalky hopscotch squares all over the driveway. I knew that there would be sacrifices, but that was almost the best part. When Joyce was around, selflessness would be easy.

After I graduated, I returned home to Cansdown, found a job in a dental clinic, and saved up to rent an apartment for the three of us. Within a few months, we'd found a small two-bedroom in Honey Hill, the center of town. Joyce and Callie took the larger bedroom, while I took the smaller. She put a potty on our bathroom floor, set up a play area in the living room, and filled up the refrigerator with snacks and juice boxes and the cheese slices Callie would roll into tubes before eating. In the morning there were songs in front of the TV, shrieks, small socks pulled over small feet, the smell of apple juice, puzzle pieces shoved
under the couch. I was still very young, but suddenly I felt settled, full of responsibilities and adult knowledge. I watched how Joyce handled her daughter, playful yet firm, unself-conscious, and I tried to imitate her. I learned the names of stuffed animals, how to slow down a tantrum, bedtime rituals. Each night, Callie sat on the edge of the bathroom sink, and I hummed the tooth-brushing song while Joyce got out the paste. At three years old, Callie already had her own little quirks and habits, her own sensitive, formidable personality, and when I saw her chuckling, or patting her own arms, or babbling nonsense to herself, I knew that Joyce had been right. Callie was born lucky, and it was up to us to keep her that way.