Skin (2 page)

She picks up a stray sock and throws it into the washing machine without looking.

“Mamma! Stop swinging your booty around and look at me. Please.”

“
Booty
. I like that word.”

“I know you do. Dad says it. It’s part of his phony hip-hop thing. Will you please look at me?”

Mamma turns to me with a harried smile. She teaches at the local college and her classes start today, too. Her smile goes slack. “What did you do to your lips?”

So it’s not a delusion. Well, at least I’m not crazy. “Nothing.”

“You must have done something. Look at them. They’re white.”

“God hates me.”

“Very funny. Did you eat ice? Or hit them hard? Or—”

“I didn’t do anything.”

Mamma comes over and feels my forehead. She touches my lips gently. She tilts her head—a baffled expression on her face—and I can see her eyes fighting to hold back worry. That’s all it takes—now I’m really worried. Before this was just something odd—but now… My throat squeezes shut so hard, I can’t swallow. Her hands cup to hug my cheeks, like they did when I was little and I’d get hurt. If she gets any more tender I will lose it and blubber all over.

I step away. “Am I sick?”

“Do you feel sick?”

“No.”

She blinks. “Everything’s normal?”

“Normal?” I point at my lips.

“Besides that.”

“Yeah, right. Besides that, how was the play, Mrs. Lincoln?”

“All right, Pina, there’s no point getting mad at me. I’ll call Dr. Ratner. Are you ready for the bus?”

I point at my lips again.

“Besides that.”

I throw my hands up in exasperation and go in to breakfast.

Mamma follows me. “Don’t say a word,” she says to Dad. “And, you…” She points as Dante comes into the kitchen. “You are to eat in silence.”

Dad looks at Mamma in surprise. Then he looks at me. His lips part. He blinks. “What happened?”

“Your lips are white,” says Dante.

“I mean it,” says Mamma. “Silence. Besides, there’s nothing to talk about until we know more.” She picks up the phone and goes into the other room.

Dad cuts the pancake into quarters and puts a piece on each of our plates. We dig in.

If there’s one thing in life you can count on, it’s Dutch pancake. With lemon and confectioners’ sugar. If I had wanted Dad to make me comfort food, this is exactly what I would have asked for. The dense, reassuring texture as my fork goes through it, the rich, egg-y smell as it approaches
my mouth, and now, at last, the heavenly taste. At this moment, nothing else matters.

I love food. I love eating. I’m not fat, which I suppose is unfair, or that’s what some of my friends say. When they moan about their weight, I keep quiet. I don’t know why I’m not fat. I don’t do sports. But I dance. I do jazz. Maybe that’s the answer. Except even the girls who are major athletes complain about their weight.

The phone rings. Once. I thought Mamma was on the phone. Oh, yeah, it’s only 7 a.m. Dr. Ratner’s office isn’t even open. The answering service must have paged him, and that’s him calling back now. Mamma clearly picked it up on the first ring.

I know this routine. We are not a particularly accident-prone family. But somehow the accidents we have take place after-hours, so Dr. Ratner’s always getting paged and calling us back.

Dad takes another pancake out of the oven. “Who needs seconds?” He sneaks a look at my mouth as he serves. My father would like to be discreet. The trouble is, he can never remember what’s supposed to be private. You don’t tell Dad a secret unless you want the whole family to know.

Dante, on the other hand, doesn’t even try. He’s still staring at me.

I stare right back.

“It’s an okay look for eleventh grade,” he says, and shrugs.

I almost gasp. He’s actually trying to be nice. I could try back. “Ninth grade is good.” I stop, remembering those days, how it really was.

Dante holds his fork mid-bite. “You stopped talking after one sentence. You never stop talking after one sentence. That’s scary.”

“Well, ninth grade is actually no good at all. You’re the youngest in the school and some of the upper class jerks treat you like scum. You don’t know the building—and the high school building is like a maze—so the first week you get lost all the time and wind up late for all your classes. You think you know all about studying from middle school, but you find out you’ve got no decent study habits at all and the grades on your first few assignments knock you flat. The teachers—”

“Stop!” Dante puts up his hands in surrender. “I liked you better when you sat there scowling with your white lips.”

“You’re not supposed to mention that,” says Dad.

Dad’s right. But I feel bad, too, ’cause I said all that stuff on Dante’s first day of high school. Everything I said is
true—but he didn’t need to hear it all at once. I cut a large hunk off my second piece of pancake and slide it onto Dante’s plate.

He eats it fast. So fast I bet he can’t even taste it. And I would have savored every bite.

“Aren’t you going to say thanks, at least?”

“I wanted to finish it first, before you could change your mind.” He licks the corners of his mouth and smiles. “Thanks.”

Mamma comes in. “Dr. Ratner said this is not an emergency. He’ll call us back as soon as he gets into the office and can look at his schedule.” She hesitates. “At 8:30.”

“School starts at 7:30.”

“Dr. Ratner is convinced this is not an emergency, Pina. If you were vomiting or bleeding or running a high fever or…”

“Okay, I get the picture. Looking like a freak isn’t bad enough.”

“He said, whatever it is, and it might be nothing, a little delay isn’t going to change it.”

“All right. I’ll wait.”

“I’ll make you the earliest appointment possible. But…” She hesitates again; she does that when she’s about to deliver bad news. She’s so easy to read, I could scream. I think of pinching her. “There are no openings today. Or
tomorrow. He was sure of that. The earliest he can fit you in is Thursday.”

“I’ll die before Thursday.”

“He said you are in no danger of dying.”

“Your face said I was.”

“That’s not true, Pina. I just worry—you know how I am. Your lips might even turn normal again by Thursday.”

“Really? Did Dr. Ratner say that?”

“Something like that.”

“Yeah, right. Then I’m staying home till they do.”

“You’re going to school.”

“How can I go to school like this?”

“I have some old lipstick.”

“You do?” Dad looks at Mamma as though she’s a stranger.

That lipstick is probably nine hundred years old. Mamma doesn’t wear lipstick. Mamma doesn’t color her hair. I don’t even think she owns a brush. It embarrassed me all through middle school. But I’m over that now. Besides, I don’t really like makeup. It’s just asking for acne. “Forget it. I have lipstick of my own.”

“You do?” Now Dad looks at me as though I’m the stranger. Then he serves Mamma a second piece of pancake, though she hasn’t touched the first, and sits down to his own plate, which he’s already half eaten, stealing bites
between pouring juice and milk and coffee for everyone. He eats with gusto. I think Dad enjoys eating as much as I do.

“I thought you were like Mom,” Dante says to me with a snarky smile.

I send the smile right back, though I don’t know what he’s talking about. I’ll deal with him—but I turn to Mamma first. “How come you let Dante call you Mom, but you burst into tears if I don’t say Mamma?”

“He’s a boy,” says Mamma.

“That is such a bad answer. No one talks about boys versus girls that way anymore.” I turn again and glare at Dante. “She’s Neanderthal. How dare you say I’m like her? I’m nothing like her.”

“I just meant the lipstick. I thought you hated fake stuff. You know, ugly is real—that sort of thing.”

“Can it, Squirt.” He is all wrong. I am not into ugly. I’m just sick of acne. And I am not like Mamma. I want to kick Dante under the table.

And minutes ago I wanted to pinch Mamma.

Do white lips turn you violent?

“HEY, SEP. LIPSTICK? At school?” Devin’s waiting at the end of the walk as I come out.

“Eleventh grade—I mean, we knew that, but now it’s real. Today. You ready?” These are dumb things to say, but I’ve got to throw her off. Talking about my lips when I don’t even know what’s going on will just make me nervous. Like Mamma. What’s the point of making a big deal out of something that could be nothing?

“And shiny pink?”

This is all I have left from when I was ten and couldn’t wait to wear lipstick. What did I do with the big stash of
lip and eye junk I accumulated in middle school? Some of it was half decent. I keep my voice light. “It’s the most important year. SATs count now. And all that stuff.”

Devin nods. “Shiny pink is kind of cool, in like a retro sort of way.”

I might jab her in the ribs with my elbow if she keeps this up. “I hear the teachers really crack down on grades this year.”

“It looks good. Really. It’s kind of fun to dress up for school. I mean, lots of the other crowds do it, why shouldn’t we?”

“Are you even listening to me?”

“Are you listening to me?”

“How many years have we been best friends, Devin?”

“Since second grade.”

“So zip it about my lipstick, okay?”

“Sure, cool. Don’t get touchy.” She straightens the front of her shirt. “Amanda got a bra yesterday.”

Amanda is Devin’s little sister. “She’s twelve. No big surprise there.”

“You know what she said to me when she got home with Mom? She said, ‘I’ve been waiting for this my whole life.’”

I laugh. “Amanda’s always been direct.”

“I’ve been waiting my whole life, too.”

I blink. Devin is ample in the breast area. “What are you talking about?”

“Falling in love.”

I gulp. “We’re sixteen. There’s time.”

“How do you know?”

I think about all the stuff we read last year in social studies, when Mr. Hannahs did the unit on global concerns, and all the walking-home conversations I had with Owen about doomsday worries. “Okay, there’s population explosion and depletion of fossil fuels and global warming, the skies are graying, the seas are rising. But you’re not a polar bear who can’t find an ice floe to rest on. And you’re not a Bangladeshi, whose city is about to be swallowed up by the sea. You’ve got time to fall in love. Plenty of it.” I take a breath.

“Stop! That doesn’t help.” Devin pulls on her fingers and looks down. “I’m sick of being just me. No one notices me. And I’m ready for a boyfriend.” Devin’s voice wavers a little.

I move closer to her for moral support. “It’ll happen.”

“Will it, Sep? I don’t mean is it likely. I’m not talking about just any sixteen-year-old girl and the likelihood of her finding true love. I’m talking about me. I’m talking about Amanda and her bra and her getting what she’s been
waiting for all along. For years, I’ve been watching everyone hook up, even back in eighth grade and more in ninth grade and almost everyone else but us in tenth grade. And I’m still waiting.”

I loop my arm through her elbow so we’re walking along Italian style, like I do with Mamma, and I pull her close so our sides would be touching if our arms weren’t in the way. I squeeze so tight I’m practically lifting her toward me. “It will happen, Devin. Maybe not this year. Maybe not next. But it will. Soon.”

“How can you be so sure?”

“You’re lovable, Devin. And you’re loving. It’ll happen.”

Devin sniffs and I realize she was on the verge of tears. “You’re the best friend ever, Sep.”

“So are you.” And that’s the truth. I love Devin. I want her to be happy. For her sake I even hope she’ll fall in love this year.

“What have you been waiting for?” she asks quietly.

“You mean my whole life? Nothing.”

“Come on, Sep, tell me.”

“No, really. I guess I’m just not like that.”

“Trust me, you are. I bet everyone is. They have to be. And I bet something good will happen to you because you look good. You look like a good person, I mean. People can see it in you. So tell me: what have you been waiting for?”

I look like a good person
. What a daft thing to say. But I don’t want to argue with Devin—not now, not the way she’s feeling. “I’m just moving ahead, eyes open. Whatever happens, happens.”

She laughs. “Right. What about the index cards?”

Devin’s no one’s fool. Yesterday she went with me on my annual trek to put index cards in all my new teachers’ school mailboxes, asking them to please call me Sep and never use my full name in class. So she’s right, I do try to control some things—but you’d have to be an idiot not to try to control something like that. “You win.”

But I still don’t think I’ve been waiting my whole life for something. I’m doing what I want to do—daily life is fine. Sure, I want to fall in love. Deep and true. But I’m not in a rush. Devin might be ready. But I’m not.

“Okay, don’t tell me if you don’t want to.” Devin drops my arm. “Becca’s having a party on Friday. Leave it to her to have the first party of the year. A dance party, of course. What are you going to wear? I bought some of those new pants, you know, the cropped ones. Everyone’s got them. I was nice and took Amanda shopping last week and saw them and couldn’t resist. But they look stupid on me. They make my thighs seem huge. Like a whale. Like I shouldn’t walk on the Atlantic City boardwalk or some passing Japanese guy might harpoon me.”