Girl in Reverse (9781442497368) Read online

  He walks out backward. “Don’t you mean verses?”

  “No, chapters.” I shut my door in my brother’s goofy face.

  . . . the true creation story of me.

  Chapter 3

  I could grow a beard waiting for Mr. Thorp to get off the phone in his office. All weekend I obsessed over what rumors had been spread about me. I have rehearsed and re-rehearsed my side of the story until I can say it without crying. But so far, walking into school has been a carbon copy of every Monday, except for the pretzel twist in my stomach.

  Mr. Thorp, of the clipped-caterpillar mustache and poochy eye bags, finally puts his caller on hold and looks up blankly. He mentions not one word about social studies. He does not ask a single question. Over the weekend my humiliating incident seems to have fallen into the empty wastebasket between his ears. He says nothing about Neil or commie coughing or the deaf-and-blind Miss Arth. “Since this is your first offense, if you successfully complete your detention, your truancy will be expunged from your permanent record.”

  Mr. Thorp reaches over, punches the blinking button on his phone, and that’s it.

  I walk out with my punishment—eighth hours on Wednesday and Friday for the next four weeks. Art room cleanup.

  Sorry, Ralphie, all I got is a pink slip—no floats, no ticker tape parade for me.

  Outside the front office I stop. I stare at the buffed brown floor, thinking I hate this place. But who cares? Nobody. My heroic departure was nothing that the swipe of a pink slip couldn’t wipe away.

  Outside, the ROTC honor guard is in formation around the flagpole. Neil Bradford holds a precision salute as the flag is raised. He’s starched and serious. Neil will not receive a detention. Miss Arth will not receive a detention either. People don’t get eighth hours for adjusting their earrings, even if right before their very eyes an innocent person is getting crushed by a tank.

  In the lunch line Patty Kittle and my other former best friend Anita ask me how I’m feeling now. They both wear pearls, an essential part of the sorority girls’—better known as cupcakes—school uniform.

  “What?”

  Patty says, “You went to the nurse’s office during class, right?”

  “No. I wasn’t sick. I walked out.” I hold up my detention slip.

  “Oh!” She nods, wide eyed, with her hand cupped over her mouth.

  Anita’s eyes shift all over the place. “Well, I’m so glad it was just because of . . . that, I mean, I’m so happy for you that you weren’t sick or having . . .” She holds her stomach, cringes, and mouths cramps.

  Is feeling prejudice more pleasant than cramps?

  These are the only conversations I have the whole day except the ones in my head.

  Oh, Patty and Anita, maybe the nurse could medicate you two for your phony sincerity syndromes. You know, the ones you use to hide the fact that you dropped me, the smiles that scream sorority girls and rice girls don’t mix.

  If I had done a handstand on my desk everyone would still have avoided looking at me in social studies. Miss Arth yawn-talks her way through a lecture on the future of the oil industry in America, followed by a Cold War film so dull it shreds itself in the projector.

  Mr. Thorp reads the afternoon announcements—the Student Council Ideals and Ethics Committee meets today. . . . Glee Club will practice its repertoire of religious, popular, and novelty songs for the Brotherhood Week assembly. . . .

  The final bell. The dreaded Monday here and gone.

  * * *

  On Wednesday afternoon the art room smells of turpentine and wet clay. It’s big and messy. A freezing draft from outside comes through a ground-level door that isn’t latched tight. Prisms hang in the long windows overlooking the icy track and football field. They cast patches of rainbow across the floor. I shiver, fold my arms. I remember sitting in here last year full of my parents’ assurance that Patty and Anita and I would be fine starting at Wilson High School together. We’d stay loyal and watch out for each other after transferring from Our Lady of Sorrows. We would not become ladies of sorrow ourselves.

  No one would have predicted that the polite, straight-A former Girl Scout Lillian Firestone would become a juvenile delinquent.

  I sign the detention form on the art teacher’s desk and read a list of “Cleanup Procedures” posted on the wall: 1. wipe tables, 2. soak rags and brushes in turpentine, 3. rinse eyedroppers, 4. sort pastels, 5. wash mirrors, 6. alphabetize glazes.

  How would anybody ever know if I just signed in and left?

  On the wall is a diagram showing how to shade a flat two-dimensional circle to create a sphere. Another poster, titled “Principles of Portraiture,” outlines the proportions of the human face. Student self-portraits are tacked to cork strips around the room. They’re terrible! Every one looks like an electrocuted zombie.

  The side door thunks open, followed by a swoosh of freezing air. I wheel around. In sweeps a tall guy with messy brown hair, glasses, and a long coat. Elliot James!

  “Self-portraits are a pain,” he says, tossing me a glance. He flops his portfolio on the table. “Don’t laugh until you’ve tried one.”

  What? “I wasn’t laughing.”

  “But you wanted to,” he says.

  No I didn’t.

  He sits on a stool at a drawing table with photos taped to it. His boots are paint splattered. His knit scarf falls on the floor. “Girls don’t get detentions. What’d you do?”

  I ignore the question, grab a rag, and wipe an arrangement of bottles and shells sitting on a pedestal in front of the window.

  “Don’t touch that! It’s a still-life model. You’ll change the shadows. And don’t clean the tables, either. Nobody’ll notice. It’s just stupid crap to make you sorry for what you did.”

  “Do you have one too?” I ask.

  “One what?”

  “Detention,” I say.

  “No!” Stupid. Stupid. Elliot James is the king of the art room. Of course he doesn’t have an eighth hour.

  “Yearbook stuff.” He points to his drawing paper. “Caricatures.”

  I must look blank because he says, “You know, caricatures, drawings where you exaggerate people’s features and personalities.” He waves his pen. “It’s sort of like Chinese calligraphy. Just a few perfect strokes and no more. But with a pen instead of a brush.”

  Continued blankness.

  “Chinese calligraphy, you know, handwriting. I’m learning how. Practicing the techniques.” He tilts his head, speaks slowly. “China. Right? That big ancient place across the ocean?” He makes a wavy pattern with his hand, then hunches over the table, rubbing his boots together as he draws. He has a rolled towel propped under his forearm to keep from smearing the ink, and an expression as intense as The Thinker’s.

  I wring the life out of some sponges, thinking that at least he said China like it’s a place, not a slap in the face. I prop the sponges behind the spigot. I looked dumb about calligraphy because I am. I know exactly zero about China—we haven’t studied it yet—except that it’s now Red China and that pandas live there and so did Gone Mom and my birth father. But I didn’t. Babies living in Chinatown, San Francisco, don’t learn Chinese handwriting. And little Chinese orphan girls who move to Missouri and get adopted and go to Catholic school don’t learn it either.

  I check the clock. Thirty minutes to go. Now what? Clean up or don’t clean up? I straighten the stools around the blocky wooden tables and empty a coffee can into the rust-stained sink. A greasy swirl slides down the drain. “That was turpentine. You don’t dump turpentine down a sink,” Master Elliot says.

  Too late now.

  “And you can’t rinse oil paints with water,” he says.

  What else can I mess up?

  He blows on his ink drawing of our head football coach blasting a whistle. It took him all of four minutes, maybe less. Elliot turns. “So . . . what did you do for the detention?”

  “I walked out of social studies in the middle of class.”
>
  “Because . . . ?”

  “. . . of a cartoon, a political cartoon this guy brought for current events. . . . Kinda dumb, but anyway . . .”

  “Cartoons aren’t dumb. What was it?”

  “Uh, well, these creepy Chinese soldiers in an army tank are killing United Nations kids in a crosswalk, and this guy coughed ‘commie’ at me because I’m, you know, Chinese, so he wouldn’t touch the picture after I contaminated it, and it got worse and I finally walked out.”

  Elliot looks up at me, curls his lip. “That was stupid.” His face shifts. He glances at the clock, says, “Damn,” stands, slides his drawings into a folder, and in another whoosh of freezing air bolts out the door.

  It bangs hard against the frame. The self-portraits flutter. I pace between the tables, telling my audience of zombies, “So he thinks I was stupid for walking out. Well, that’s perfect. An eighth hour plus insults!”

  I whip Elliot’s scarf off the floor, stuff it in the trash can, grab my books, and walk out on my own detention.

  * * *

  Sleet taps the bus windows. We wheel past the Country Club Plaza—the World’s First and Finest Shopping Center, my father’s baby. Every day my real estate developer father tramps between the restaurants, construction cranes, fountains, and cement mixers in his hard hat, yakking into his walkie-talkie. By the time I get home I have decided to tell my parents that I am volunteering in the art room after school. They won’t like it. It’s not Future Homemakers of America Club or Pep Squad. They are allergic to anything arty.

  When I walk into the front hall they are talking in the kitchen—voices hushed. Dad comes out still wearing his overcoat and carrying a highball glass full of ice. He motions me into the living room.

  Surging panic. I perch on the edge of the couch.

  He removes his hat and smooths the hair on the sides of his head. The flesh of his neck bunches when he loosens his tie and undoes his top button. He steps to the bar and pours a generous jigger of bourbon over the ice and then water.

  Mother enters with a tortured expression and a letter that she hands to him. I recognize the Wilson High School letterhead. My father holds it at reading distance. His gaze bounces across the page. He reads aloud the section reporting my truancy and detention.

  “Is this a mistake?” Mother asks.

  Dad lights a cigarette, takes a deep drag and a deeper gulp of bourbon. He clears his throat, looks longingly at the evening paper on his footstool.

  “No,” I say. Next comes a prolonged pause where the question “Why?” should be. Their bewildered silence nudges me on. “Do you want to know why?”

  My father nods.

  “Because the guy sitting next to me in social studies called me a commie and other kids sneezed ‘chink.’ And Miss Arth just sat there and did nothing to stop them. She acted like I didn’t exist!”

  “You walked out of school because of a sneeze?” Mother turns to my father, palms up. “A sneeze?”

  “I did not sneeze, Mother.”

  “I know that.” She shakes her head. “Yours was an extreme reaction, Lillian.”

  My mother’s words are tacks in me. I turn to Dad, search his face. “What your mother is saying is that the class’s conduct did not warrant you getting yourself in trouble, Lily.”

  How would you know that?

  Dad rubs his eyes. I’m glad he’s not wearing earrings he can fiddle with. I poke my parents with a slow and overly elementary explanation. “They did this because I’m Chinese and we are currently fighting the Red Chinese Communists in Korea.”

  Mother fixes me with a look, shakes her head. “You are not the same girl you used to be, Lillian.”

  Thank you for noticing.

  My father turns to my mother with a slight smile. “Well, the world isn’t the same place it used to be either, Vivian. Our Lily hasn’t changed.” I haven’t? “The world has—the Germans and the Japs, the Cold War, Korea, the Communist takeover in Red China . . .”

  Mother holds up a hand. Her eyes shift between my father and me. “Why should all that concern Lily?”

  I look right at her. My eyes fill up. “I am not talking about the war over there in Korea. This happens to me at my school every day. Who else’s concern would it be? Miss Arth and the vice principal were horrible. Everyone was.”

  I wipe my face, expecting her to get back to asking about the consequences of my detention, but instead she says, “Who knows about this, Lillian?”

  I count on my fingers. “Miss Arth, Mr. Thorp, the janitor who was changing a lightbulb in the room at the time, all the people in my class, the art teacher . . .” I do not mention Ralph deflecting Mr. Thorp’s phone call. “I’ve tried to tell you lots of times before that I got teased and insulted. Even at Our Lady of Sorrows. How was I supposed to understand it?” I turn to Dad. “You always said it was just goofy kids’ stuff. Don’t let it bother me.”

  My mother’s mouth turns down. “We were trying to help you get along, protect you.”

  “From what? Myself? All that did was make it my problem.” I stare at my lap. “My face is Chinese and it’s not going away!” I do not look at her. Can’t. We fall into our ocean of silence where hurts old and new crash against each other.

  Why in the world did you adopt me?

  I take a long breath and another, and explain about my punishment cleaning the art room. My mother looks as if she has swallowed turpentine. She glares at Dad and heads to the front hall. She stops a moment, turns back, and holds her hand palm facing out, as though bestowing a blessing. “Never forget. You are an American, Lillian. You are a Firestone.”

  I watch her climb the stairs, imagining the sentence she doesn’t say—So act like one. I listen to her creak across the floorboards in the upstairs landing. My father leans in, filling the emptiness she left, and says in a confidential tone, “Your mother is scared for you, Lily. The world situation has everybody terrified. She wants you to adjust, fit in. She has tried to put her own hardships behind her and she wants you to do the same.”

  I nod, but I don’t mean it.

  Dad opens the newspaper. My parents’ bedroom door clicks shut. I sink back into the sofa, squeeze my fists thinking that this is exactly how she always operates. She hears something and she owns it. She determines if it counts, if it matters in the world. And I have let her determine if I count, if I matter exactly the way I am.

  I cannot stand her.

  This is why we should never try to talk. This is exactly why.

  Chapter 4

  “Hey,” Ralph says, tapping on my bedroom door after the house has calmed down. He tilts his head toward our parents’ shut door. “What gives?”

  I shake my head. “They got a letter from school. God. I’m so sick of everything. I can’t talk about it anymore.”

  “Okay.” He waves his hand. “Then just come look at this. It’s different.”

  “No.”

  “Please!” He pulls me into his bedroom and opens the door by his closet that accesses the attic steps. He turns on the light. Displayed on the step right under his candy collection, which is mostly empty Bit-O-Honey and Necco wrappers, is his Boy Scout collection. He painted the attic stairs bright blue, something our mother allowed during the period right before now when she believed he could do no wrong. Before Ralph turned eleven he could have painted his carpet blue or built a campfire in the bathtub without a peep from her. He is still a master at working around her. Much better than I am. He plays smart, then dumb, he tiptoes, has tantrums—whatever works. Dad knows it too. “Crazy like a fox,” our father calls his protégé.

  Displayed on the stair is a scraggly strip of fur, an old stick of polished wood, the chunk of swirly rock he threw at me the other night, and the cap to a bourbon bottle.

  We kneel on the floor. “It’s not finished, yet,” Ralph says. “I’m looking for more stuff.”

  “Ralph, normal Boy Scouts collect coins or stamps, or how about matchbooks?”

  “Well,
this was easier than Hog and Pork Production or Bugling or writing a report on the dangers of laxatives or bandaging my own finger.”

  I point at the fur. “Where’s the rest of the squirrel?”

  Ralph slashes a flat hand across his neck.

  I shiver. “Ick.” I sit back on my heels and rub the stick. It’s about a foot long, wider than a ruler, with one flat side and another that’s curved, like a wooden cylinder cut in half lengthwise. “What is this?”

  Ralph shrugs. “Don’t know. I thought you might.”

  “Why not collect things that go together, have a theme?”

  “Oh, I am.” He raises three fingers. “Scout’s honor.” He puts the stick back, organizes his measly junk, and glances up into the dusky rafters. “I’ve found lots of strange stuff up there.”

  * * *

  Saturday night.

  My parents are out. So is Ralph. If I joined the Boy Scouts I’d at least have an indoor campout tonight instead of sitting here with a stale popcorn ball stalking myself in last year’s yearbook. I guess it’s better than reading our Bible, although lots of people at school think the yearbook is the Bible. The freshman pictures look like God dealt a bad deck of miniature face cards: I giveth you pimples. To you I bestow a hooked nose. You shall look like a turtle. But ye, oh blessed one, can have a smooth, sculpted white face and blond hair. Actually, every single face is white, cover to cover, except mine. Mine’s grayish. My mouth is a dull dash mark, my eyes black pinpricks, and my hair flat. No wonder I never look at myself.

  The yearbook makes school seem shiny and organized, all of us packed between the padded silver covers. Everybody is lined up, achieving great things—winner after winner. Yearbooks don’t include the taunts and discrimination and cliques. There is not a group picture of the Students Prejudiced Against Chinese People, because the members are secret, or they used to be, until Korea. Now prejudice is free to eat in the lunchroom, ride the bus, join fraternities, sneeze, cough, speak up. Prejudice is big at Wilson High School.