The Belief in Angels (33 page)

“I’ll meet you in front of school tomorrow and we can figure out your schedule together, okay?” Leigh says.

“That would chase all my mimsy away,” I answer.

“Serendipitous!” Leigh shouts as she rounds the corner.

She’s teasing me. It’s wonderful.

Two days later it’s my thirteenth birthday. Leigh throws me a surprise party after school at her house. She’s invited the chess guys, a few kids she knows from school, and her new church buddies, which is weird, since I don’t hang out with them, but Leigh is friends with everyone and they’re all nice to me anyway. It’s probably the best birthday party I’ve ever had.

I manage to stumble through the next few weeks at school until the summer break, recovering my reality as I go.

But I dream the drowning dream almost every night.

Jules, 13 years | Late June, 1974

A GRAPE-SIZED SPACE

LEIGH CALLS ME on a Wednesday morning. We’ve been out of school for a week, spending most of our time down at the jetty swimming. The song sparrows chirp like crazy. There’s no breeze and I can already smell muggy seaweed in the air. It’s going to be a hot day. I’m thinking we should head down to the beach early to find a good spot, but Leigh calls to ask if I want to go into Boston on the bus and go shopping.

I know she’s already been this week. She went with her sister and got lots of really cool new clothes. Since Annie decided to have an abortion and not to go to college, Ms. Westerfield’s been trying to help her get a decent job somewhere. According to Ms. Westerfield, Annie needs a more professional wardrobe, so Leigh’s helping out with that since Annie and her mom are still not talking.

Leigh tells me she wants to show me something.

Later that day we’re in Gilchrist’s, shopping, and Leigh pulls me aside to show me a shirt stuffed under her blouse. I am so blown away I blurt out, “What are you doing?” She shushes me and then drags my arm and pushes me out of the store. She steals the shirt.

Leigh tells me how easy it is and when we walk into another store she dares me to stuff a bra she wants inside my shirt. I grab a handful of bras and consider whether to do it or not. My heart beats a mile a minute and I think I might throw up with nervousness. I do it. I’m exhilarated.

I’ve broken another rule. The day we skipped classes was the first time I did something delinquent, even though I’ve been brought up by criminals. Now I’ve stolen something. I feel like a real kid and not somebody’s mother.

We spend the rest of the day shoplifting from different department stores. It’s a total blast.

That night, I have my nightmare again. I’ve started keeping a log of it. The dream doesn’t come every night, but it comes often. I also write down the events of the day before I fall asleep every night. I want to see if they contain a pattern I might be able to interrupt. I keep a count.

I think there might be a magic number? Maybe if I dream the dream fifty times, or a hundred times, it might go away forever. It seems crazy to me that I keep having the same one over and over. I’m certain most people don’t do this. Trying to sort out a pattern might be a good way to track my craziness in case I’m ever sent to the loony bin. I’m sure that can happen at any time.

The next few weeks are roughly the same. Leigh and I go into Boston every weekend and shoplift from stores. The trip to Boston is quick if we take the ferry—just an hour. But if we want to travel in by bus, we have to catch three buses, and that takes hours.

A couple of times I talk Leigh into visiting my grandfather’s apartment with me since we aren’t far from where he lives, off Commonwealth Avenue. We take the T after the buses. Those visits are sad, though, because he acts sweet and gives me money, which makes me feel guilty for shoplifting.

After Moses died, my grandfather met and married a woman named Ruth from his synagogue. He seems happier than I’ve ever known him to be before. Ruth is younger than him and he perks up around her, almost like a teenager. Ruth speaks perfect English and is nice to us. I’ve grown to love her as much as I loved Grandmother Yetta. The best thing is the way the two of them act so
in love.
I never saw my grandfather kiss Grandmother Yetta, but he kisses Ruth all the time.

When Leigh and I visit, Ruth makes us lunch.

It’s the same lunch Grandmother Yetta used to make: chopped liver and chicken soup with rice. Ruth even gives me the
poopach.
They treat Leigh and I like we’re kids, but I don’t mind. I know if my grandfather had any idea about what I’ve been doing he would be horrified. His life seems pure and innocent compared to mine. He doesn’t seem to understand what
my
life is like. The one time I tried to explain what a horrible mother Wendy is he got angry with me for being disrespectful and ungrateful. I gave up trying to make him understand. David and I pretend everything is normal when we see him and he seems to want it that way.

Maybe he feels like he can’t change it.

One day in Boston, a few weeks after we’ve started becoming delinquents, I’m having a smoke outside of Bloomingdales and Leigh walks out of the store with one of those lighted makeup mirrors right on her head. “If you put it somewhere obvious, no one questions you,” she says.

I’m completely freaked out. “That’s it! I’m not stealing anything anymore. We’re probably one eye shadow away from juvenile hall.”

“Nobody’s paying attention to us. Don’t worry!”

“Listen, if I get in trouble, they could send me away. If I go, who’s gonna take care of David?”

“Okay. Okay. Nobody’s getting sent away. Probably best if we quit while we’re ahead, anyway.”

I don’t feel like I’m ahead. I feel like I’m right in the path of punishment.

That punishment comes swiftly.

Back at the house, Wendy drives up with a Burger King dinner for David and me. As we start eating in the kitchen, Wendy announces that David and I will be spending the rest of the summer at camp. David’s been to summer camp a few times since Moses died. Wendy gets him into a free program at a two-week camp every year. This time we’re both going for the whole summer and my grandfather’s paying. David loves it, so he’s thrilled. But I’ve never been to camp. The prospect of being away from Wendy and the madness is intriguing, but I’ve been looking forward to a summer with Leigh and our normal,
non
-shoplifting summer activities—swimming, reading, riding bikes, and making trips to the library and the beach. Wendy has apparently arranged for me to go to a YMCA girl’s summer camp in Cape Cod with the daughter of a friend of hers, a girl named Smith. I do not like this girl.

Smith is a summer dude. Her family owns a bungalow in Withensea and they come to live on the island every summer. Her parents have tons of money and send her to a private girl’s school in Cambridge. She acts spoiled, stuck up and childish even though she’s a year older than I am. She’s always bragging about something she can do better than everyone else. She thinks all the “townies” are poverty-level ingrates with no sense of culture or sophistication. I have no desire to change her mind about this and even encourage her perception so she won’t try to be my friend.

It’s true that Withensea is more a place to leave than a place where people arrive.

I’ve been to the suburb she lives in outside of Boston. It has prettier houses, but practically no natural beauty. Withensea has that in spades.

Also, and this is a big also, I’ve seen her parents naked and having sex with Wendy on one of those orgy nights. The connection grosses me out. However, Wendy and Smith’s mother, Betty, have decided we should become friends. They are unaware, as parents usually are, of the fact that we are mutually repelled by each other.

The next day I’m coerced by Wendy into spending the morning with Smith at her house so that we can “make plans about camp.” She promises we’ll go and visit my grandfather afterwards. Smith gamely plays the hostess and makes an effort to entertain me by showing me her bedroom, which includes her extensive collection of small crystal animal figurines. This lasts about an hour, as all the animals have names and individual “personalities” that Smith describes in detail. It’s like she’s trying to be Laura in the
Glass Menagerie.
Smith is a huge phony.

I sit on her pink ruffled bedspread in her very pink room, and she prattles on as I try to conjure a reason to force Wendy to drive me back to the house or make an excuse to jump on the next bus. Miraculously, my body responds with its own answer to my dilemma. I begin to have wicked bad stomach cramps.

Smith moves on with the display of her belongings, showing me every item in her wardrobe, and the cramps begin to intensify. All my life I’ve been pretty stoic about handling pain, but it begins to feel uncomfortable enough for me to lie back on the pink froth of her bedspread. When I do this she screams and points to my crotch, which has become saturated with blood.

“Get up! Get up!” she shouts at me.

I am bleeding onto her pink bedspread. Smith runs out to tell our mother’s about my predicament—not the way I planned to announce the beginning of my menstruation.

Soon Wendy and this girl’s mother, Betty, stand in the room while I writhe on the bed. Wendy smirks in the doorway and makes the same pronouncement over and over—“She’s a woman!”—while Betty makes consoling noises and instructs me to take off my pants in the bathroom. She wants to wash everything.

“How come she gets her period first?” Smith pouts. “I’m a year older. It’s not fair!”

Really? This idiot chick is going to freak out on me because I got my period first?

Smith whines about the blood on the bedspread. Betty, who turns out to be decent about the whole thing, tells her to pipe down. She’ll buy her another one.

I’m freaked out and embarrassed. More by the attention than the physical mess I’ve created. Betty pulls me into the hallway bathroom to show me the Kotex
pads to put on. She takes me in the bathroom and shuts the door, leaving Wendy standing in the hallway. She gives me the Kotex pad, but Wendy, standing outside the bathroom, insists that I try using a tampon. Betty reluctantly gives me a box of tampons. I have never seen what a tampon’s unwrapped interior holds. She argues with Wendy that the tampons are too large for me, but Wendy shouts to me through the bathroom door that I should try it first before using the pad.