Secrets 01 Secrets in the Attic (4 page)

The next morning on the bus, Karen said nothing about the way she had treated me or why she was so upset. I didn't know what to make of it. She was quieter than usual, but she wasn't especially unfriendly. She gazed out the window and, as she usually did, made comments about places we passed. This house looked like a house made of gingerbread, that one looked as if it was leaning worse than the Langer Dairy building and could be blown over in a strong wind, or that side road looked as if it led to a secret lake where frogs waited to be turned into princes. We were soon in a contest to outdo each other with fantastic possibilities.

Whatever had been bothering her had passed, I thought, and decided to let it go.
"I'm going to see my grandmother on
Saturday," I told her, "but I'll be back by four. My mother is on duty, and it's my father's poker night. You want to come over? We can try to make a good pizza again."
She didn't answer immediately, so I held my breath. In fact, she acted as if she hadn't heard me. I was about to repeat it, when she turned and nodded. She said nothing more about it, and I didn't see much of her in school, because toward the end of the third period, she went up to our teacher and asked to go to the nurse's office. She didn't look at me when she walked out with her pass. She remained at the nurse's office through lunch. Usually, when a girl did that, it was because she was having bad cramps, but later, when the school day ended, Karen told me she had gone to the nurse because she had a terrible headache.
"She wanted to send me home, but I begged her not to," Karen told me.
"Why?"
She didn't reply. I could see from the way she frowned that she still had the headache.
"Maybe you should go to the doctor," I suggested. She shook her head.
"No doctor can cure this," she told me, which was very cryptic and mysterious.
"Why not?"
"Take my word for it, Zipporah," she replied, and pressed her lips together firmly, which was usually what she did when she wanted to stop talking about something.
She frightened me, because I thought she might be talking about something terminal, like a brain tumor. Maybe that was what had happened the night before. She had gotten terrible news. I told my mother about it later that day, and she tilted her head to the side as she often did when something puzzled or interested her. When I was little, I believed some thoughts weighed more than others and shifted in your head to make it tilt. I told my father, and he went into hysterical laughter, which brought tears to his eyes. From that time on, he would kid my mother about her having heavy thoughts.
"I doubt it's something like that," she told me. "There would be other symptoms, Zipporah."
I breathed with relief.
"I'm sure it's just something emotional. Part of growing up," she said.
Adults were often saying that to us: "It's part of growing up."
When are you grown up? I wondered. When do all these parts come together and form you?
"I don't understand how that could be part of growing up," I told my mother. I knew some young people had pain in the legs from growing so tall so quickly, but a headache?
She looked at me with more concern than usual and said, "Come with me a moment."
I followed her into the sitting room, that special feminine place in our house.
"Sit," she said, nodding at the small settee with the light pink flowery design.
"Why do we have to come in here to talk?"
"It's long past the time when you and I should have a mother-daughter talk," she said, and sat in her rocker. "I should have done it the first time you had a period, but these days, girls are having periods so young, it seems."
"How can that change from when you were young?"
"Wouldn't we all like to know," she said. "Anyway, Zipporah, these hormonal changes that are taking place in your body and Karen's have emotional effects, too. You have feelings that you don't understand, feelings that even disturb you and can cause all sorts of reactions, headaches included. Don't you find yourself confused by your feelings?"
I shook my head, but reluctantly. It was as if I were confessing to a failure.
"You will," she said. "My guess is Karen already is. I know you spend a lot of time with each other. Does she bring up sexual things?"
"No!" I said. What an embarrassing question to ask me. Of course, we had some conversations about it, but I didn't want to describe that to my mother.
She smiled. She knew I wasn't telling the truth.
"I'm sure you two talk about boys. Don't worry about that. It's nominal."
"She doesn't like anyone at school, and neither do I," I said sharply, hoping that might end it, even though it didn't mean we refrained from talking about boys.
"You will," she said, with that adult confidence I despised because I didn't yet have it. "Some boy will suddenly look . . . interesting. Maybe it will be in his smile or in his voice or just the way he walks. You'll find yourself vying for his attention, blushing when you least expect it, and hoping he sees you as special, too." She smiled at me. "Are you sure that hasn't happened yet?"
"Yes, I'm sure. Why does all that have to, happen now, anyway?" I asked. "Maybe I'm different."
"I hope not!" she said, laughing "Girls who are that different when it comes to boys are persona non grata."
I had only a vague idea of what she meant. Back then, we were ages away from openly confronting homosexuality, especially in our small community. I had really heard about it only in reference to boys, anyway, who were derided as fairies, which made no sense to me, because fairies were magical.
"Maybe it won't happen to me for a much, much longer time," I suggested, only because I was telling the truth. It really hadn't yet, and I was afraid it never would.
"Not much longer," she said. "You're sculpturing," she added.
"Huh?"
"Your body is changing, Zipporah. We're not so unlike caterpillars and butterflies. You're emerging."
Was I? Was I finally emerging? Maybe she could see more than I could because she was a trained nurse, I thought.
"I've been watching Karen, and I can tell you she's becoming a beautiful young woman. Don't be disappointed if she suddenly pushes you aside or ignores you to spend more time with a boy. The same thing will happen to you, and you'll grow closer when you two can share that, but until then, she might be more secretive, more withdrawn. She's developing desire. When that happens to our daughters, we mothers can only hope we've given them enough common sense to protect themselves from getting into bad trouble."
"You mean getting pregnant, don't you?"
"I do. I don't want you to become the Ice Queen, but I do want you to think about the consequences of every action. Promise me you'll do that."
"Mama, I don't even have a boyfriend!" I protested.
"I told you, you will, and sooner than you think. You know," she continued, "that there are times of the month when a woman is more likely to get pregnant if she doesn't take precautions."
"Yes, I know," I said. "We learned all about that in biology class."
"There are things you just can't learn in a formal classroom setting, Zipporah. All this can happen so fast your head spins. A boy attracts your attention. You can't help wanting to be with him. You just naturally explore, push yourself toward your limits. Sometimes it all happens literally overnight."
I sat back. Was she right? Would it all just happen one day as she said, unexpected, sudden, like a bolt of lightning? Is that what had happened to Karen, and because it happened just out of the blue, I didn't notice? Who could she be with or care about without my knowing?
I thought back to my conversation with Alice Bucci in the boys' room when she took me in to see what had been written about Karen on the stalls. "You don't live with her," she had said. "Lots of people do lots of things secretly. Even their parents don't know."
Didn't I have to admit that I had secret thoughts I had never shared with Karen? Why couldn't the same be true for her?
"I hope Karen's mother has had a conversation like this with her," my mother said. "Has she?"
What if she hadn't? I thought. Was she in danger? Did I dare ask?
"I don't know."
"I want you to feel that you can come to me with any questions, any problems, Zipporah, anytime, okay?"
I nodded.
"Your grandmother was not as forthcoming. We never had talks like this. She was old school, embarrassed by any references to sex or her own body. How she and her generation expected us to learn everything properly is a mystery. They simply had blind faith, which we know does not work. There have already been four teenage pregnancies in our township," she said, and my eyes nearly popped.
"Four? In our school?"
"I can't tell you any more about it than that. It's privileged medical information."
"How can they keep it a secret?"
"Some women don't show until their fourth or fifth month. I didn't show with you until almost my sixth. Unless you're a bad girl, you don't have to think about it, the symptoms, I mean. There are other problems, however, like sexually transmitted diseases. I don't want to make it all sound unpleasant. It's not, but it only takes a little carelessness to make it so. Understand?"
"Yes," I said. I was still uncomfortable talking about it. I hadn't even been out on a formal date. I felt as if I were being inoculated against a disease that didn't exist.
"Don't bury your head in the sand, Zipporah," she warned. "That's the way you get into trouble."
"I'm not! I said I understand!"
"Okay, okay." She thought a moment and then leaned toward me. "There's no chance Karen's already been with a boy like that, is there, Zipporah? No chance she's done something she now regrets, is there?"
"No," I said, but not with enough confidence to satisfy myself, much less her.
"All right. If you need anything, let me know," she said. I knew she meant if Karen needed anything.
I nodded, and she smiled and rose.
"I love my sitting room," she said, looking around. "It feels cozy, doesn't it?"
"Yes."
"We all need our special places," she said, running her hand over my hair. "You're going to be a pretty young woman. Don't you worry. They'll be taking numbers at the door just like at the bakery."
"Oh, Mama," I said.
She laughed and returned to the kitchen to prepare dinner. I ran upstairs to my room to think about everything she had told me. I was okay with it for myself, but she really put the worries in me when it came to Karen. I was the one who had the mother who was a nurse. I had an obligation to share my good fortune, I thought. Surely, she would appreciate it.
And it would be a good way to get her to tell me what was bothering her and what secret things had happened.
It was early enough for me to get on my bike, ride into town, see Karen, and come home before dinner. I was bursting with the need to tell her some of this, to warn her. I charged down the stairs.
"I'll be back in a while," I called out, and before my mother could object, I was out the door.
Karen and her mother had moved into Karen's stepfather's house soon after the wedding. She had told me how her stepfather's mother resented them so much she would keep herself in her own little apartment at the rear of the house and wouldn't take meals with them. She did practically nothing with them as a family.
"We really didn't see much of a change after she had her stroke and died," Karen had told me. "It was as if she wasn't there before, anyway. Harry still hasn't gotten rid of all her things. My mother tells him to give them to the Angel View Thrift Store that sells stuff for charity. He says he will, but he hasn't. He hasn't done much with the apartment, either, even though he said he would fix it up and rent it out someday."
The Pearson house was one of the few brickfronted homes in Sandburg. It had a pretty lawn with waist- high hedges and a sidewalk that curved up to the stone steps in front and the veranda. Druggists, it seemed, were only a few levels down from doctors when it came to making money. Pearson's Pharmacy was the only drugstore in the village, and people who lived in the outlying areas came to it rather than travel another five miles or so to another drugstore. They also sold toys, candy, and ice cream, but they didn't have as big a fountain as George's, and the ice cream was prepackaged and not nearly as good.
Like me, Karen had her own room upstairs. From the way she talked, once she got home, if she didn't have any chores to do, she went to her room and remained there. Unlike me, she didn't spend much time with her mother and stepfather watching television or even just talking, and she had no brother or sister to talk to or write to. She was alone much more than I was or would ever be, I thought.
Her mother had continued to work at the drugstore after she married Harry and was gone most of the day. Harry was the only pharmacist, so he had to be there almost all the time. They rarely had dinner together, because Harry always had to stay behind to close up or do inventory or prepare prescriptions for the morning. Because her mother waited for him, Karen usually ate by herself. Sometimes she even ate in her room. I felt sorry for her and wished Harry were more considerate.
Karen told me he was strict about the hours the store opened and closed. If someone needed a prescription after seven p.m., he or she would have to travel twenty miles. Occasionally, Karen said, the doctors would plead with Harry to go back and prepare a prescription, but he was never happy about it and always made it clear he was doing someone a big favor. That surprised me, because in his drugstore, Mr. Pearson was always quite pleasant and seemingly concerned about the illnesses his customers had. At least to the public, he was a jovial man with a soft round face my mother said looked like a bowl of vanilla pudding with two plums for eyes, a walnut for a nose, and a banana for a mouth. He was stout, with all of his weight going to his upper torso. Karen revealed that his legs were bony and hairy.
"They look like they had stopped growing years before the rest of him," she told me once after we had left the drugstore together.
Later, in the attic, when I asked her why her mother had married him, she told me her mother had decided to choose security over romance
_:
"Besides," she added, "my mother said she made love only in the dark so she could imagine him to be anyone she wanted."
"Made love in the dark? Don't you have to see a little to know what you're doing?" I asked, and she laughed, thinking I was joking. I wasn't. Karen knew much more about it all than I did, but I didn't think that was because she had the same sort of conversations with her mother that I had with mine. "Then she didn't fall in love with him?"
"No. When I asked her about that once, she said we couldn't afford it."
"Huh? What a funny thing to say."
"No, it wasn't," Karen said. Almost overnight, she had become so much older and more serious. "When you're younger and you don't have children or responsibilities, you can be carefree and adventurous. You can have twenty dollars in your pocket and elope and worry about everything else later. But my mother had me, a teenager, and she was barely making enough to give us food and shelter. We didn't have health insurance. We had nothing extra that was really important. Harry was a solution, so I don't blame her. I don't!"