So That’s Exactly What I Do
But for some unknown reason,
all morning long
everyone who sees me wearing it
feels compelled to comment on it.
Real intelligent comments, like this one:
“Omigod!
Where’d you get that jacket?
Colette has one exactly like it.”
And: “Has Colette seen that jacket?
She thought hers
was the only one in the Universe.
She’ll die when she sees yours.”
And this deeply charming remark,
uttered by a guy in my herstory class:
“Hey. You’re wearing Colette’s jacket.
Does that mean you two lesbos are in love?”
“No,” I say under my breath,
“It means you’re a pig.”
Sheesh. I’m starting to think
it might just have been easier
to cope with having legendary nipples.
I’m Sitting by Myself in the Cafeteria Reading a Book (Like I Do Every Day at Lunch)
When Colette comes over to me.
I hand her her jacket and thank her again.
She shrugs and says, “No problemo.”
Then she plops down right across from me,
as though she eats with me
all the time.
“What are you reading?” she asks.
“It’s called Stuck in Neutral” I say.
“What’s it about?”
“Oh, this kid who has cerebral palsy,” I say.
“And his father’s thinking about killing him to put him out of his misery.”
“I can so relate to that,” she says.
“Just this morning I was thinking about
killing my mom—to put me out of my misery.
My mother can be a monster pain in the butt.”
“Yeah,” I say.
“But at least you have a mother.”
At which point,
Colette turns a deeper shade of pink
than the contacts she’s wearing.
“Oh. Yeah. Sorry. Oops,” she says.
Jesus. What is my problem?
Why did I have to say that?
A silence drifts down over us
and hangs in the air like smog.
Then Colette leaps up,
says, “Later,”
and jingles over to the table by the window,
where Bette and Madison and Crystal are sitting.
I sure blew that.
After the Last Gong of the Day
I cram my books into my backpack,
head out into the hall,
and almost get mowed down
by Colette and her friends,
who’re high-fiving each other
and laughing hysterically about something.
As they disappear around the corner,
it crosses my mind
that Whip isn’t coming to pick me up.
And that for the first time
since the beginning of the school year
I could actually go to Poquito Mas with them.
If only they’d ask me.
I’m Walking Home from School
When I glance up and almost scream:
there’s Whip’s face—
ten stories tall!
He’s grinning down at me from a billboard
that’s been painted on the side of
an office building near Tower Records.
I try to look past him,
at the sky or the clouds …
Only there aren’t any clouds.
There never are in L.A..
I don’t think I’ve seen a single cloud
since I got to Hellywood.
I didn’t know
how much I liked them
till now.
I miss seeing them
dotting the air like lazy lambs
grazing on fields of blue grass.
I miss watching them
rush past the rooftops
like ghosts in a hurry to get home.
I miss trying to find funny faces in them,
like I used to
with Mom.
No Clouds
No rain.
No hail.
No fog.
No nothing.
Every day’s hotter
than the day before.
October’s here.
But leaves don’t fall.
There isn’t any weather
at all.
No rain.
No hail.
No fun.
No friends.
No clouds.
No fog.
I Hear a Sort of Twisting Rustling Sound
It’s coming from overhead.
I glance up just in time
to see this gigantic palm frond
plummeting toward the ground
like a suicidal broom.
It crashes down
onto the hood of a BMW
that’s parked on the street
only a few feet away from me,
and leaves a nasty dent.
Man.
Back east,
if you get hit on the head
by a falling leaf,
you might not even notice.
Out here,
you could end up with brain damage.
As I Head Up the Driveway
I’m thinking that even if
these stupid shredded fronds,
clacketting together in the tops
of all these needle-necked palms,
were to turn orange and gold
and shimmering crimson rose
and suddenly drop to the ground,
what good would it do me?
I still wouldn’t be able
to rake them up into huge soft piles
like I used to rake
the maple leaves back home.
And even if I could,
I wouldn’t exactly be able
to jump into a pile of palm fronds
without getting all cut up, now would I?
I know fifteen
is way too old
to jump in the leaves
and I haven’t actually done it in years.
The truth is,
I wouldn’t be caught dead jumping in the leaves now.
But I guess I liked knowing that they were there.
Just in case.
Trudging Through Whip’s Pathetic Palm Forest
I’m suddenly decked
by this major wave of nostalgia
for the maple tree in my front yard back home.
I miss its knotty old arms,
and that lap-like spot
between its two lowest branches,
such an easy climb up,
as though it had grown like that on purpose
just for me.
I read The Whipping Boy sitting in that tree.
I read A Wrinkle in Time there.
And Tuck Everlasting.
I read To Kill a Mockingbird
in that maple.
And every word Richard Peck ever wrote.
I read Speak
and Hard Love and Hope Was Here
in those branches.
And Mom and I
were sitting up there
when she read me Charlotte’s Web.
That was some tree.
Oh, Great
Whip’s standing out in front of the house
waiting for me.
And when he sees me,
he shouts out my name and starts
trotting down the driveway toward me
like that puppy I had when I was seven,
who used to get so excited when I got home from school
that he’d pee all over me.
“Boy, am I glad to see you,” Whip says.
“If you hadn’t shown up in another couple
of minutes,
I was going to get a posse together.”
A posse?
Now, I don’t usually think of myself
as a particularly mean person,
but suddenly my mouth flies open
and the words come shooting out like arrows.
“What I can’t understand, Whip,
is why you’re so worried about me now,
when you haven’t given a shit about me
for the last fifteen years.”
Whip’s tail suddenly stops wagging.
“That’s not how it was. I’ve been wanting to explain—”
“I don’t care what you’ve been wanting,” I say.
And I brush right past him,
into the house.
When I Get Upstairs to My Room
I find a package lying on my bed.
It’s from Lizzie!
I rip it open.
And instantly go mega-splotchy:
it’s filled with fiery red maple leaves.
They’re from my old tree, her note says.
My old tree!
But the thing is,
she’s ironed them flat
between two sheets of wax paper.
“So they’ll last,” she says.
I try to pull the sheets apart,
but they’re all melted together.
That damn wax paper.
It makes it impossible to smell them.
Impossible to feel them.
Impossible.
I know Lizzie meant well,
but there’s just something so awful about those leaves,
something so completely pathetic
about the fact that they’re the only
real bit of fall I’ll see this season.
I crumple them up
and fling them into the wastebasket.
Dear Lizistrata,
Your care package just arrived. Thanks SOOOOOO much for the maple leaves. They almost made me cry.
Wistfully yours,
Ruby
PS. Ray’s not succumbing to Amber’s scuzzy charms, is he? Keep reminding him how wonderful I am.
PPS. Am I wonderful I’m feeling insecure today·.
I’m in the Middle of Writing Yet Another E-mail to My Late Mom
Demanding to know why on earth
she ever even married He-who-shall-not-be-mentioned
in the first place,
when there’s a tap at my door.
I yank it open, hoping it’s Max.
But, naturally, it’s the scumdad,
looking all hangdog and pitiful.
Sort of like he did in Sing to the Wind,
in that scene where he finds out
that Meg Ryan is dumping him
for his best friend.
He says that he knows I’m angry.
And that he doesn’t blame me in the slightest.
And that if he was me,
he’d feel exactly the same way.
But that he wishes I’d give him a chance to explain
why he and my mother
had to break up all those years ago.
I stand here for a minute,
staring into his pathetically pleading eyes,
then I slam the door right in his face,
just liked he slammed the door in mine
before I was even born.
And I’ve Got to Admit:
It feels grrreat!
But a little while later,
I glance out the window
and see Whip sitting in the gazebo,
slowly turning the pages of a big scrapbook.
He must be trying to cheer himself up
by reliving his glorious rise
to fame and fortune.
Figures.
Then Max comes over
and sits down next to him.
They look through a few pages of the book
together.
Does Whip
have something in his eye?
Or is that a tear
he’s swiping at?
Geez.
I hope it’s not a tear.
Oh, geez.
Max just handed him a Kleenex.
Hey, Wait a Minute
Answer me this:
If Whip was planning
on getting all weepy,
how come he just happened
to choose to do it
in a spot so clearly visible
from my bedroom window?
I’m only asking you this because
Lizzie must have spent at least a decade
trying to explain to me
what passive-aggressive means.
But I could never get it through
my thick skull.
Until today.
But Even So
Maybe I ought to cut the guy some slack.
I mean the only real trouble he’s given me
since I’ve been out here
is that not-letting-me-walk-to-school thing.
I suppose
I ought to be able
to just let bygones be whatevers.
But grudges R me.
Forgiving people was hard for Mom, too.
She never forgave Whip, that’s for sure.
She never even had another boyfriend,
after him.
She swore off love. Swore off men.
Said none of them were to be trusted.
Which made things pretty sticky
when I started hanging with Ray.
Mom was all over me about him.
How did I know he really liked me?
How did I know he wasn’t just using me?
How did I know he wouldn’t break my heart?
I had to be home by eleven o’clock.
And we could never ever be alone together,
in his house or mine.
Not even in the kitchen.
But I guess Mom forgot
just how alone
and just how together
you can be
in a car.
The Night Before I Left for Califeelia
Ray and I drove out to the reservoir
and sat together in his Mustang,
listening to the rain whisper on the roof,
watching it ripple in melting ribbons
down the windshield.
Then we drifted
deep into the backseat,
drew the curtains of steam down
over the windows,
and kissed.
When our tongues touched,
it felt like chocolate melting …
Ray kept on trying to reach around
and undo my bra strap.
But he couldn’t quite manage it.
Which was a lucky thing for me.
Because I might have fainted
if there hadn’t been a layer of lace
between his fingers and my skin.
If that’s what second base feels like,
third base must really be something.
There’s Another Tap at My Door
I open it a crack.
This time it is Max.
And I’m way relieved to see him.
But I can feel my cheeks catching fire.
Whip probably told him about
how I slammed the door in his face.
Max sits down
on the edge of my bed.
“Want to talk about it?” he asks.
Sweet.
Whip did tell him.
I shake my head no.
“Want me to eat dinner with you guys tonight?” he asks.
“Oh, would you?” I say,
flinging my arms around his neck.
“They don’t call me Aunt Max for nothing.”
Max Stands Up and Holds Out His Hand to Me
But I’m not exactly ready to head downstairs.
“What am I going to say to him?” I moan.
“How about something s
imple and to the point,
like ‘I’m sorry’?” he suggests.
“Sorry never works,” I say.
“What do you mean?” he asks.
“Well, it never worked with Mom,” I say.
“She sucked at accepting apologies.”
“That must have been hard on you,” Max says.
And my stomach twists
with a sudden wave of guilt
for dissing my poor dead mother.
“Not really,” I say, trying to downplay it.
“Besides, after enough time passed,
she usually just forgot about
whatever it was that I’d done, anyway.”
But Max’s eyes
go all soft with sympathy,
as though he thinks having a mother like mine
must have been a real test.
So I add,
“It wasn’t her fault she was like that.
It was Whip’s.”
“I see… ”Max says.
But it’s pretty obvious
that he doesn’t.
So I explain it to him:
“Mom never got over Whip dumping her.”
“Well,” Max says with a shrug,
“I guess some people
never get over what happens to them in life.
And some people do.”
Then he grabs hold of my hand
and I let him yank me toward the stairs.
But I can’t shake the feeling
that I’m about to walk the plank.
Two’s Company, Three’s Much Better
Max and I sit down to dinner with Whip
at the table in the gazebo.
No one says a word.
Max gives me a look.
I know what he’s hoping I’ll do.
And I want to do it for him.
But when I try to force the words out,
it feels like they’ve been glued
to the inside of my throat.
I cough and I splutter
and I finally manage to croak,
“I’m sorry I slammed the door in your face.”
“I’m sorry, too,” Whip says,
grabbing hold of my hand.
“And so am I!” Max suddenly says.
Whip and I turn to look at him.
“Well, everyone else was apologizing…”
he says.
And the three of us crack up.
If This Was a Movie
This would be the scene where
Whip’s eyes would start getting all teary.
And mine would, too.
Then he’d hug me.
And maybe I’d fight it for a second,
but then I’d give in and hug him right back.
And it would be
perfectly clear
to any idiot in the audience
that in spite of everything
we were somehow going to manage
to live happily ever after.