Rantalicious: Spring has Sprung
(Rantalicious, Thrifty eBook Series)
June 2011 Issue
Smashwords Edition
June 2011
Copyright © 2011 by Alisa Dana Steinberg
Books by Alisa Dana Steinberg:
Text Me, A Tale of Love and Technology (available in eBook and print edition at most online retailers)
Rantalicious: True Tirades from a Woman on the Edge (available in eBook and print edition at most online retailers)
www.alisadanasteinberg.com
All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying and recording, or by any information storage and retrieval system, without permission in writing from this author/publisher, except for brief quotations in critical reviews and articles.
This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents either are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.
Contents
∞
The Kissing Girls Club
Every little girl has to have a best friend. No, excuse me. Every little girl has to have a bestest friend, otherwise she’s considered a social outcast amongst her gender. No matter how mean she was or nice, these were the rules of childhood. And I can tell you, in my young partnership, starting as early as first grade, I certainly wasn’t the latter. That role was left to my significant female other.
“I told you, it only deserves a five and a half,” Leah commented on my just finished cartwheel after my bottom landed on the wet grass. I brushed the green blades off of my checkered red and black dress jumper (with white dickie underneath) and my patent leather Buster Brown shoes.
It was the early 1970s, and although the tenets and rituals of girls were the same as today, unfortunately the wardrobe was always evolving in and out of ugliness (hence the white dickie), and sometimes represented by logos that had nothing to do with the clothing itself (Buster Brown Shoes: represented by a Little Lord Fauntleroy Character wearing a big hat and always with his dog, but you never saw his shoes. But always with the hat and dog. Go figure.)
“How can that be?” I questioned her judgment. “That cartwheel was at least an eight.” I actually felt it was perfect, but was there anyway to convince Leah of that?
“Nope.” She angled the tip of her shoe to a grass strand that stuck straight up from the ground. “If you landed right it would be flat.”
I grimaced, sweeping my dark, long hair off my face. “It was flat. It just popped up.”
“Mine didn’t. And mine was perfect.” There was a flash in her azure eyes, which meant there’d be no getting through to her. The flash was something I and other children only had the privilege to see. The rest of the world – the adult world - observed a six-year old with innocent eyes, cornflower-colored hair, round cheeks, and powder pink and blue dresses. Leah was basically a life size version of a baby doll, except this toy didn’t have a string you did or didn’t pull to say what you did or didn’t want her to say. This evil doll had a mind and mouth of her own. “And what I say goes, remember?”
It wasn’t altogether strange for one girl to be the dominant and the other to be submissive. On the contrary, from the get-go it seemed to be the norm. Not to say that us nice girls were weak; mostly, we just didn’t know what to do.
“This is my bestest friend, Alisa,” Leah said the first day of Kindergarten. She pulled me to her side and then put her arm around my shoulders. She squeezed really hard and I cringed. She was stronger than I was and known to aggressively lead while playing house in Nursery School. (Leah always appointed herself as husband.)
I looked on at the rest of the class; little girls were paired off. A few making nice-nice with each other, sharing Play-Doh, giggling about a boy whose pants were falling down past the crack in his behind, and then there were the others, being held as tightly as I was, gasping for air, afraid to retaliate. No one wanted to be teased or bullied. And no one – no one – wanted to be left alone.
“Yeah,” I eked out, “we’re bestest friends.”
It wasn’t the first time she pushed for me to do something I may not have wanted to do. For instance – The Kissing Girls Club.
“I think I know what club we can have,” Leah said one day while we were cutting and pasting during class.
I was laboring at cutting the circumference of a fish I had drawn, but no matter what hand maneuver I used, the result was jagged edges. Frustrated, half of my brain listened to Leah, while the other end concentrated and criticized as I snipped away at what should have been a fin, but looked like a dagger.
“Are you listening to me?” she asked with anger coating her tone. She lay her scissors next to a perfect cut out of an angel – no jagged edges whatsoever – and it wasn’t even Christmas! What attention was she vying for? I wondered. “I said – are you listening to me?”
“Yes,” I whimpered, not wanting to instigate an argument with Leah, “I just can’t do this fish.”
She grinned. “See? I do everything better than you.”
Just at that moment, our teacher, Mrs. Quinn, came around, took one look at Leah’s angel and patted her head. “Wonderful angel! ... Ah, Leah, you’re such an angel,” she said, her shimmering gold cross hanging over her chest. That spring Mrs. Quinn got religion which not only meant wearing the cross, but turning in her knee-length, pink and purple pleated skirts for beige polyester pants. Her frosted eyeliner had also departed. “Alisa,” she said with an inquiring expression, “are those teeth?” She pointed to my vicious fin.
Ugh.
I shook my head, sniffing some snot back up into my nose. Spring allergies were getting to me, although I had no idea at the time what that was. All I did understand was that each instance that I hurried onto the playground in May, smelling the grass that was shrouded in fresh dew made me sniffle and sneeze like no one’s business.
Achoo! Aaaah ... Choo!
“Alisa,” Leah grimaced, standing in the middle of a circle of four girls on the playground under a tree, “can’t you stop sneezing? Don’t you have a tissue?” My nose was running again. Actually, more than running – let’s just say it was a sprint that landed right in the bend of my wrist as I wiped the snot from under my nostrils.
“Yuck,” she said, shaking her head.
I sighed. We’d been standing in the hot sun for close to half our recess, and I and the rest of the crowd were losing some patience – Laura Shunbaum, a frail boned girl with cat’s eye spectacles, fidgeted as she stood in place, careful to try to pull her underwear from wedgie mode under her yellow, polka-dotted dress when she thought no one was looking; Sarah Taggert, who was only a half-shade away from being an albino, kept patting her face and frowning as her cheeks and t-zone turned from a near translucent white to a scarlet red (I had seen less red in the Cherries I frequently threw aside from my Hot Fudge Sundaes); and then there was Linda Burns, who started to twirl her caramel colored ponytails while her eyes wandered to the swings and the carousel on the playground – a definite sign that Leah was losing her audience. But alas, she had nothing to fear, because although I was her bestest friend, Leah had another more formidable ally – Mona the Horrible.
Mona wasn’t so much appreciated as a friend, but as a strongman – like one would have in the mafia – except this one was two-feet tall, wearing a pink frilly dress with a face like a Schnauzer ... Okay, maybe some mafia did have faces like canines, and okay, maybe some wore polka-dots and frills in their private time, but none were as fierce as Mona.
As we listened to Leah, Mona continually smacked her fist into her open palm. Something we all knew meant business from After School Specials with
parents chastising their children about drug use and sexual activities. Both of which we didn’t understand. A drug was St. John’s Aspirin, and the birds and the bees we understood as literally the birds and bees and nothing else.
Mona slammed her fist against the inside of her palm. We all jumped out of our skins and lulls.
“Now, I created this Kissing Girls Club a while ago,” Leah said, plainly and directly eying each one of us, “and we’ve picked the boys we’ve had crushes on, but we haven’t kissed any one of them.” Leah lay her hand on her chest. “Since I’m the leader of this group, I don’t have to be the first to kiss a boy.” Of course. “But I can pick the person who does it first – and they can’t chicken out!” She looked around. “And I pick,” Leah scanned our faces with the same demeanor of a person leading a group in Russian Roulette. Her sights and pointing finger landed on me. “And I pick you, Alisa!” The group turned to me and Mona punched her hand for added effect. Leah continued, “By the end of the week, you’ll kiss Evan.”
Evan. Just Evan. We didn’t know any of the boys’ last names. We only knew them by where and who they sat with in class, and if they were a desperate leach, hanging onto a particular group even though they didn’t want him, or a joker or the boy who put Play-Doh up his nose (each boy’s group had at least one pal who shoved objects and art supplies up his nostrils). Once, one boy tried to push a medium-sized wooden block up his nose; later on in sixth grade, we all took a spacial reasoning test and we never saw him again.
“Me?” I balked. “Why me?”
Leah sneered. “What’s wrong?” she asked. “Don’t you want to kiss Evan? ... Don’t you want to kiss a boy?”
“Well ...” I looked away and at the clan of The Kissing Girls Four, my sisterhood. What did they really think of kissing boys? I mean – did they even like them to begin with? We didn’t even associate with the boys, always passed them by in the school hallways with our noses up in the air while they teased us.
Anyhow, it seemed that some of the hearts of The Kissing Girls Club sisters had already been taken: Sister Laura was hopelessly in love with unicorns, practically wallpapering her entire bedroom with Unicorn posters – the minute you stepped in, you were being attacked by a stampede of horses with horns jutting out of their heads. And Sarah told me she was planning to marry Crumbs, her Calico cat. They were planning on an August wedding when all the mice would be purged out of their hiding holes due to the scorching heat, so that the wedding attendees would have an entree; along with the entree, they would have a more than satisfactory amount of catnip, which Sarah would be able to buy once she got a return on her missing teeth from the tooth fairy. And Linda ... well, I don’t think she cared about much, except for space – she took up some and she was spacey. So how in the world were anyone of us really going to be able to kiss boys?
We thought it was all a ruse (or at least I thought it was) – girls kissing boys. We were inclined to believe that The Kissing Girls Club was a bunch of girls getting together talking about boys like older females, plotting our futures with the so-called crushes of our choice (we picked our crushes by how much we could stand them), and laughing and turning red at the thought of our first kiss. And besides, The Kissing Girls Club was a great name for any organization of little girls. It was cool to be a member of a group with a groovy, happening title. But little did I or the others know that our fearless leader took the club name as literal.
Until now.
“By the end of the week!” Leah exclaimed.
And even this seven-year-old girl knew that the end of the week was Friday and Friday was only two days away. Two days of my knees knocking together, two days of wincing when I’d see people kiss in person and on TV, two days of not wanting to be anywhere near Leah, anxious that she might pull me to the side and signal to the club to gather in a corner, and then ask me for a strategy on how I was going to lay a smooch on dear old Evan.
Evan. Who or what was Evan, anyway? I was aware of specific physical characteristics of Evan: he was shorter and tinier than I was, like most boys were in comparison to the girls of that same age. He had olive skin, brown eyes the shape of almonds, and had sable-colored hair. And it had a sheen. Like a faded golden halo.
What did I know about Evan? Well, he wore a blue hooded sweatshirt to school every single day (I didn’t know if it was the same sweatshirt, I never got close enough to smell him for a musty, putrid smell from days of grass rolling, food throwing and snot wiping), and in class, he always leaned back in his seat, balancing on the edge of one solitary chair leg.
This was important; I was hypnotized by this feat. But I was even more in awe of him never appearing to be concerned about falling backward and cracking his head open.
I’d watch in agonizing ecstasy: he’d lean back on his chair and listen to the teacher; he’d lean back on his chair and laugh; he’d lean back on his chair while cutting paper ducks or snowflakes (oh my God!); and crazy enough, Evan would lean back on his chair at lunchtime when he was eating his sandwich, and I could hear my mother’s voice ringing in my ears – “Alisa! Sit up straight! You’re going to choke on your food if you don’t sit up straight!”
It was the fear of my mother and then God that had me sitting military style – feet flat on the floor and body at a perfect ninety-degree angle.
But Evan wasn’t scared. No. He was a dare devil! Maybe I liked it ... Or maybe I just liked that cool sheen on his hair. (It took me a lifetime of hair conditioner, gloss treatment, and shine spray to realize that it was probably genetic.)
“You haven’t been paying attention to me for two days now,” Leah complained. She was standing behind me as I froze in place in the play area, facing a wall filled with cubby holes. I was holding a Baby Alive doll that wasn’t working. It had batteries. But it just stopped, and I was doing the same, afraid of saying a word and instigating an onslaught of The Kissing Girls Club near a cubby hole stuffed with red rain boots and a wall menagerie of finger paintings portraying what we were planning to do that summer; I looked up at Leah’s and saw that she finger painted her family at their pool, and except for Leah, everyone was headless.
This isn’t good.
“You’re ignoring me,” she whined.
I turned around and passed her an expression like – who me?
Her eyes narrowed.
“We meet at lunch. Today,” she informed me, her voice brittle with annoyance. “Under the tree near the swings.”
Great, I thought. It had to be near the swings. Once I liked the swings, until I witnessed a girl flying through the air on one of the playground swings, as far up as we all usually went, and then, on her way down, jutting with the strength and speed of a rocket missile, she flew out into another girl, her feet smacking her squarely in the head.
The girl tumbled face first on the dirt.
There was blood all around her head. I thought she was dead, but she wasn’t. Turns out she also landed teeth first. Which meant that all her top front teeth had been knocked out. All baby teeth, but still, until her grown up ones grew in, she’d be all gums, and probably traumatized.
I knew I had been psychologically thwarted even though I didn’t think of the situation in those exact words – I think my exact words were – “Good grief!” (The Peanuts comic strip and cartoons were big at the time and so were their expressions ; unfortunately, later on I would find that myself and Charlie Brown had way too much in common.) That was enough. I didn’t want to be too close to the swings. I was fearful of them. What would happen if Evan was on a swing and I would be forced to approach him? And what would happen if he was swinging at the time and I came to close and the same thing happened to me that happened to that girl? I wouldn’t look good being all gums. I knew this. I once stared at myself in the mirror while I sucked in my lips over my teeth.
Not pretty.
Under the tree near the swings that recess, most of The Kissing Girls clamored away amongst themselves about dolls, siblings, and the parents who always sided with their siblings. There was no mention of my kissing Evan.
But I knew it was going to happen. While most of the girls were chatting, Leah was on the look-out, eying each boy that passed us by, and Mona kept watching me, probably making sure I didn’t go AWOL from the club.
I felt my palms get clammy, and I began to wonder if there was any chance of renegotiating this kissing Evan thing. Maybe being Leah’s slave for the rest of the month would be a fair trade for kissing Evan. Or for a year. Maybe giving her the ring from the Cracker Jack box that she oh so coveted would be equal to kissing Evan. But from the look on Mona’s face, I guessed that it was too late for a business meeting with Leah, and just at the moment I was going to turn away from Leah and Mona (since they were making me increasingly nervous to the point of my feeling that I was going to throw up), I caught sight of Evan walking with a group of boys. They were going in the direction of the slide, and as they talked and bounced around intermittently like Mexican jumping beans, Evan was staring down, picking up stones, and throwing them back down on the ground.
I sighed. Partially because the fear was growing within me, and then because I was relieved that he wasn’t going anywhere near the swings.
Leah snapped her fingers like a cast member from West Side Story. “Evan. I see him.”
All the girls stopped talking and Mona crossed her arms and looked at me with an expression of evil satisfaction.
“He’s right by the slide,” she said, and then turned around to me. “It’s time for you to kiss him.”
I could feel the stares of the group, and I swallowed hard.
Leah wrapped her arm around my waist and pushed me forward. “Go,” was all she told me.
I slowly stepped away from the group amidst a collective of gasps. I could see the gleam from Evan’s hair. As I moved closer to his shiny head, I felt a large presence behind me. I turned around and found the entire Kissing Girl’s Club following me. Leah led of course.
Slowly approaching Evan, I hoped that he wouldn’t be too startled, and then he quickly turned his head in my direction. A little shocked that I was now face to face with him, I quietly said, “I just want you to know that I don’t want to do this. But I have to.”
Evan stared at me with a queer expression. “What’s going on? he asked, copying my quiet volume. I saw him look up and above my head to where the Kissing Girls were standing.
“I need to kiss you,” I told him.
Evan’s almond eyes widened. “I don’t think so.”
“Yeah,” I said.
Immediately, Evan ran away from me, as fast as the wind.
In turn, the Kissing Girls Club rushed after him.
Evan ceased his running when he reached a wire fence that was part of the circumference of the playground.
When we cornered him at the fence, he was shaking.
I was terrified, and for ten seconds, we stood facing one another.
Obviously, Leah noticed my hesitancy. “Well,” she exclaimed, “kiss him!” and then she said it again. In my ears I was hearing Leah, and with my eyes, I was seeing Evan, his back to the fence, his eyes shut tight and his face
scrunched up. His body trembling.
I heard the slamming of Mona’s fist-to-hand motion and the shrieking Leah – “What are you waiting for? Kiss him already! ... Do it!”
Words coming from Leah that I would usually fear, passed through me like water through a delta. I felt their vibration but I wouldn’t be shaken. I stood firm, looking straight into the face of a boy that was terrified, and then … I stepped back.
His eyes opening and obviously sensing an opportunity had arrived, Evan whipped away from the fence and dashed through our little crowd, leaving The Kissing Girls Club behind and stunned. Including the head of the monster, Leah, who, suddenly speechless, watched Evan as he ran off in the distance … but that wouldn’t last for long.
“Alisa,” Leah said, her fiery eyes wandering to me, “why did you let him go?” and it came out more like a judgment than it did a question.
I shrugged.
Mona, who I fully expected a wallop from, just shook her head at me, walked backward a few paces, and then ambled back to the schoolhouse. The Kissing Girls followed her. Leah and I stayed behind.
“Do you know what you’ve done?” she asked.
I shrugged.
“You were supposed to set an example,” Leah informed me. “Now none of the girls are going to kiss the boys.”
I finally spoke up. “Is that such a bad thing?”
She raised her eyebrows. “It is if your club is named The Kissing Girl’s Club!”
Afterwards, she walked away from me, and I escaped without a scratch or a tough squeeze or a forced kiss. The Kissing Girls Club disbanded: Laura went on to form her own club for Unicorns, Sarah didn’t marry her cat Crumbs, opting later on to exchange vows with a more homosapien breed; and Linda managed to remain herself, floating on some psychedelic cloud, twirling her hair, and somehow, eventually getting into college.
Leah kept on being bossy. I supposed being a bully was something that remained in one’s blood; key punched into your DNA.
I would eventually have my first kiss at fourteen with my first boyfriend, Jordan, at the neighborhood shopping mall, at the entrance of A & S, a department store, where there was a cascade of cosmetic counters.
I wasn’t too impressed.
But then there was the first kiss with a boy that I loved, and the first time I made love to someone I was head-over-heels for.
But I would never forget Evan what’s-his-name. The boy who got away.
∞
Behind the Magic 8 Ball
I was once told that siblings are like branches that grow on a singular tree; they may come from the same tree or root, which is the mother, but still the branches grow in different directions.
Who did I hear this from? My mother, who had heard it from her own. I suppose she probably just listened at first, and then when she had my brother and me, I’m sure she could see the wisdom in her mother’s words …
“Now, Alisa,” my brother said while lying in his bed, “remember that you’ve got to work hard this year. This year is going to count.” He raised his eyebrows as I fidgeted in place.
One would think this would be an older brother telling his younger sister during her sophomore or junior year of high school to crack down on studying, because this is a year that would matter to get into a good college.
And that would be only half right.
I wasn’t starting my sophomore or junior year; I was beginning sixth grade and my brother was still in Junior High. The true part of it: he did mention college.
“How do you suppose you’re going to get into a good college?” he questioned me as he lay in his bed, text books sprawled all around him.
I thought about it for a moment, working on a correct visualization of what a college was, yet my mind kept wandering to the elevator that wasn’t working in my Barbie Townhouse (darn that elevator, it never worked!); I was baffled.
My brother just stared at me. “You know, Alisa, getting into a good college is important,” he said.
I didn’t bother to ask him why. After all, we had gone through this same, identical conversation since three years beforehand, with some variations, of course …
Entering into 4th Grade:
“You know, Alisa, you’re in the big kid’s building now,” he told me, and I nodded. “You really need to do well. It’s coming up soon that you’re grades will matter for college.”
I nodded again, secretly sweating over learning my times tables.
Entering into 5th Grade:
“You know, Alisa, you’re really, really going to have to do well this year. Last year, you could slack, but not this year,” he said, putting down his math book to take a long look at me. “Just think about college. It’s important.”
I nodded. I wondered if I should wear my new Earth Shoes to school the next day.
My brother shook his head.
Entering into 6th grade:
“Are you listening to me, Alisa?” he questioned.
I was busy pondering. The mishaps of my Barbie Townhouse passed through my head, leaving room for only one thought – what I was going to do with the plot of the novel I was working on.
My brother shook his head.
At this point it became obvious. My brother’s intention was on getting into a good college and mine was to become a writer.
Not that the two were mutually exclusive, it’s just that when the creative muse calls, much of what’s around drops away from the world of the muser …
“Alisa,” my mother scolded me, “you must pay attention in class. Stop day dreaming!”
But it was no use. I was hooked, and my brother and I were two branches that curved in two different directions: he was the rational and responsible person and I was the creative, skipping stones person, and anyone would think that never the twain shall meet, but they’d be wrong …
“So how much older is your brother than you?” a coworker asked while I typed away at my desk.
“About two and half years.”
“Oh. So you’re close in age.”
I stopped typing. “You would think so. Chronologically,” I said, “but he seems a lot older to me.” The person’s face screwed and I elaborated. “Let’s put it to you this way,” I said, “if the term Older Brother was actually in the dictionary, and you opened up to it – aside the entry you’d see a picture of my brother.”
My mother told me how it started. Before she gave birth to me, she informed my brother – then two and a half years old – that he was going to have a sister. In the spirit of family solidarity, my mother offered him a perk: no one was to see his little sister unless he allowed them to.
This must have worked since when my brother first saw me, instead of cringing or jostling me, he gave me a big kiss on the cheek. And from then on, anyone who wanted to visit with his little sister had to take my brother’s tiny hand, and he would lead them to my basinet or crib. It worked like a charm … but then sometimes went too far …
“I couldn’t date you then,” said an old high school friend of my brother’s.
“Why not?”
“Because you were Darren’s little sister.”
I arched an eyebrow. “So you just assumed that you couldn’t date me?”
“No. We were told.”
I rolled my eyes.
But then it could be all worth it …
“What do you want for your birthday?” a friend asked me.
It was the spring of 1976 and I was about to turn nine. All I could think of was the hottest toy on the market. “I want the Magic 8 Ball.”
Before there was the Wii and the Nintendo Playstation, Asteroids, Pac Man and Pong, there was a black and white plastic ball with the number eight on it. Inside the ball was a three-dimensional triangle, a die, floating mystically in water. On the triangle were phrases such as “You may rely on it” or “My sources say no” or “cannot predict now,” “ask again later” (which always pissed everyone off) that you could see through a small, circular window in the ball when you asked it a question and shook it up.
It had the answers to everything. Which, being such a shy and sensitive child at the time, was what I needed. I could count on the Magic 8 Ball to tell me what was going to happen in my future, and then I wouldn’t be so scared. Besides that, I knew the kids at school would give me and my Magic 8 Ball a lot of attention; something I felt I desperately needed.
“Look! A Magic 8 Ball,” I said to the same friend, holding it up to her at eye level. She grabbed it and lowered herself into her desk seat, mouthing a question to herself, shutting her eyes and then shaking it.
It was a few minutes before the homeroom bell was to ring, and everyone in the class circled around us and the Magic 8 Ball. “Wow! Look what she has!” said a fellow student. “That’s so cool!” said another. Until the entire classroom was all a flutter over the Magic 8 Ball and the person who brought it in – me!
Throughout the day, my Magic 8 Ball and I went from one class to another with much fanfare. Word that the Magic 8 Ball had arrived and was amongst the third grade class sped like a motorcycle driven by Evel Knievel, and finally I was getting my due!
After my day of glory and fame, myself and my Magic 8 Ball ventured onto a crowded school bus to go home. I could see my brother in the back of the bus talking and laughing with his friends. Going down the aisle, I squeezed through a throng of sweaty kids, sitting and standing up from their bus seats, as if to be daring, while I held tightly onto my Magic 8 Ball.
I found my way to an empty seat in the middle of the bus and went to sit down when in all the commotion, Cal Stevens, a trouble making fifth grader, suddenly grabbed the Magic 8 Ball from my hand.
I gasped, and those who were around us laughed with glee as Cal started shaking it.
I clawed for the toy, but only came up with empty air as Cal held the Ball up and away from my grasp, teasingly. “I just want to check my fortune,” he told me, grinning, while I jumped to clutch it. “Hmmmm,” he looked over at the Ball for a split second, “will Alisa get her Magic 8 Ball back?” He shook it above his head and then read the Ball’s answer. “It says my reply is no.” Everyone around us laughed.
Not only did Cal have my Magic 8 Ball, now he encouraged the embarrassment and humiliation I had sought to resolve that day with my new toy.
In only a minute, Both Cal and the Magic 8 Ball undid the undoing of a year’s worth of insecurity from my third grade year.
Realizing I wasn’t going to get the 8 Ball so easily, I began to whimper as I reached out for it. “Give it back!” was my retort. “Give it back.”Then the bus driver started to rev up the engine, and suddenly, Cal lost his footing and the Magic 8 Ball fell from his fingers.
As if in slow motion, the Ball plummeted from above our heads to the floor, crashing and breaking into pieces, the water and the fortune-telling triangle lying askew on the aisle.
I began to sob, and the surrounding crowd either stared at me or, along with Cal, laughed at me.
My life is over, I thought. I covered my tear-filled eyes with my hands and hunched over.
“Hey!” a familiar voice came out of nowhere. “What did you do?” The voice sounded irate.
I pulled my hand from my eyes and immediately saw my brother face to face with Cal. And Cal wasn’t laughing too much anymore as he looked straight into the nose of my brother since my brother was about two inches taller than he was.
Through all the voices and the bus revving up, I couldn’t hear exactly what my brother was saying to Cal. All I could go on is what I saw: my brother in Cal’s face, grimacing and grinding his teeth as he spoke, poking Cal in the chest, and Cal, shaking a little, but keeping his obstinate stance with my brother, frowning back at him.
My brother suddenly looked over at my tear stained face. We looked into each other’s eyes. I sniffled. And then Darren turned to Cal and punched him square in his face.
Shortly thereafter, there were fists flying and yelling and cheering from people for either boy, and I stopped crying, looking in amazement at my brother and Cal fighting.
“Hey,” the bus driver cried out, “you better stop that fighting right now!” But the scuffle and cheering continued.
The bus driver turned off the engine and got up from his seat. He turned into the aisle and hurried over to the raucous. Without even as much as a question of who started the problem, the driver grabbed both Cal and my brother’s collar, dragged them down the aisle, and threw them off the bus.
With my jaw practically to the ground, I looked out the window and saw my brother trying to talk with the bus driver while pacing on a grassy knoll. His arms outstretched and his face full of worry, my brother appeared to be pleading.
But the driver would have nothing of it, turning around and stepping onto the bus, revving up the engine and driving away from my school. And my brother ... my all-American brother – burgeoning honor student and social luminary – and now, as it had turned out, superstar older sibling.
I stared at his solemn face as we pulled away from the curb, and I was stunned. And when what had happened finally hit me, I started crying again. Not because of the loss of my Magic 8 Ball, but that my poor brother was left behind at our school with no way of getting home.
My brother did make it home that day, but not without my mother telling the school and then the bus driver off and then informing me that since the Magic 8 Ball had brought on such a brouhaha, that I wasn’t going to get a new one.
By then the Magic 8 Ball didn’t matter; I was just happy knowing my brother was safe in our home and didn’t seem to hold it against me that he was thrown off the bus because of my predicament.
And by the time we became young adults, it was clear that I would get myself into all sorts of situations that my brother would be there to dig me out of or thought he had to dig me out of ...
“Where have you been?” he questioned me, standing in his apartment alongside his girlfriend, gritting his teeth.
We were both in our early twenties, and my brother was a young lawyer living in Manhattan, and I was a writer, just finishing college (yes, I did make it to college), and visiting.
“What do you mean?” I asked, totally baffled alongside my new friend, who just happened to be a boy.
His name was Gary, and my brother looked him up and down.
Really, I had no idea what was going on. From that morning until the time that I had arrived back at his apartment in the early evening, I had been frolicing around Manhattan having the time of my life.
“I could introduce you to my editor,” Gary said while we were flipping through albums at Virgin Records in Times Square. “I know it’s just a small literary magazine, but it may be worth submitting to.”
“I don’t know.” I said. “I think what I wrote is too long to be a short story.” He was definitely trying to get on my good side with his contacts, but I just wanted to be friends. Be that as it may, I wasn’t about to blurt out I wasn’t interested since Gary was my New York City tour guide.
I looked at my watch. “It’s close to noon,” I told him, and then I scanned my surroundings, smiling. “I love this city. I want to move here someday.”
Gary touched my shoulder. “I’ll give you a tour around the entire city. And we’ll have the best time.”
I glanced at my watch again.
“Do you need to be back at a certain time?” he asked.
“No. I just wondered when we’re going to lunch.” I added, “I told my brother we would be out all day.”
Gary fulfilled his promise. We went everywhere in Manhattan: the Village, the Upper West Side, the Upper East Side, Central Park, the Empire State Building, and more, and basically, we were just wandering aimlessly down streets without a care in the world.
“Where were you?” my brother asked at eight pm.
I was stupefied by his reaction.
“In the city. Like I told you.”
“I get that. But did you ever think of calling?”
I could tell this was a rhetorical question, so I remained quiet and examined what he was wearing - a dark blazer and light blue button down oxford.
Why was he all dressed up?
“I was worried!” he yelled. “I just can’t believe how irresponsible you are!” I looked back at Gary whose face was screwed as he experienced the sibling argument first hand.
“But,” I responded, ready to give an explanation: But I was out all day having fun ... Didn’t I tell you I’d be all out all day?
“No buts ... I was worried! ... How do I know who you’re with? You can be with anyone!” he said as if Gary wasn’t standing right in front of him.
My brother shook his head and stomped out of the room.
His girlfriend said, “He was so worried about you.”
“Why?” I asked.
She shrugged. “That’s him.” She sighed. “And we were going to this party, and he was so excited. He was going to introduce you to all his friends.”
“Why?” I asked again, except this time I was shocked. What was the big deal about him introducing me around? ... And what was the problem with me being out all day? I did come back, didn’t I? And I had a good time.
She shrugged and then disappeared into the room my brother had gone into.
Gary turned to me. “What’s wrong with your brother?”
So Gary didn’t get it either, I thought.
Then I got it; both Gary and I didn’t understand, and there was a reason for that. “I’m the creative one and he’s the logical one,” I said, “I think there’s a disconnect.” I paused. “And he’s the older brother.”
“Must be difficult. He’s so protective.”
I shook my head.
“It comes in handy.” ...
“Why do you always do this?” my brother asked, gritting his teeth.
My brother was collecting me from a friend’s apartment. With my brother was the same girlfriend.
My brother shook his head. “You told me that you knew this person.”
The person my brother was referring to was Diana, a girl that I had met on my Club Med vacation in the Turks and Caicos. The trip was a present to me from my parents after I graduated from my Master’s Program (yes, I actually went to graduate school).
Diana was fun, nice and smart - everything you’d want in a friend, including she had an apartment in the city. Finally, I was getting closer to moving to the Big Apple by knowing people, other than my brother, who actually lived there.
But then our friendship was going awry. The first time I visited her, Rod, a Bostonian boy that I had been seeing when at Club Med, decided to meet me in Manhattan and follow me around the city. Being that he was attractive and promising for a future, serious relationship, I stayed one night with him at his friend’s apartment and went back to Diana’s the following morning.
Diana was more than miffed. “Where were you?” she asked, grinding her teeth.
“With Rod. Remember him from Club Med?” I asked.
She grimaced.
By my second visit, Rod and I had been over with for a while.
“You’re not going to be on any late night outings, are you?” Diana inquired.
“No,” I replied, “Rod and I aren’t even talking anymore.”
“Good ... I just want to spend some quality time with you.”
That night, Diana and I went out to a very busy bar. There, leaning against a window, was a handsome man with dark hair and olive skin. Our eyes locked the minute I walked through the door.
Moments later, he came over to me, introduced himself, and then we were enraptured in conversation while Diana spent her time with some of her other friends a short distance away.
The night ended with our exchanging phone numbers. And Diana was none too pleased.
“What? You’re going on a date with him tomorrow?” she said upon our return to her apartment. I noticed the lines in her forehead wrinkling. “You can’t do that. You promised. You promised you’d spend all your time with me!”
“Well, I didn’t say all of it ...”
Her eyes began to tear. “You’re going to have to leave!”
“What? ... But ...”
“Get out!”
I just stood there for a moment, stunned. “Okay,” I finally reacted. “But I have to call my brother. I don’t know if he has space for me at his apartment.”
I reached over for her phone, and Diana weeped, which increased my confusion.
What was she getting so emotional about?
I dialed my brother’s number. “Hello? Darren?”
And then, it hit me ...
“Lesbian?” my brother’s girlfriend blurted out in the back of the taxi. My brother didn’t just make room for me in his apartment, he also decided he should pick me up with his girlfriend.
I knew how my brother’s mind worked – he sensed something was more amiss than usual (which was pretty amiss), and that he had to exert himself into the situation. His girlfriend, pretty and tiny, was obviously there on her own accord for one thing only – gossip. “Lesbian? You think she was a lesbian?”
“What else could explain how she was acting? The jealousy about the guys I was dating ... and the crying?” I said, and then I turned around and peered through the rear window. My brother was hauling my very large suitcase in the trunk of the taxi, shaking his head.
Darren shut the trunk and got into the front seat of the taxi, and we pulled away from my now ex-friend Diana’s building. My brother was completely quiet, but his girlfriend chattered on.
“A lesbian. Wow.”
“Yeah.”
“That’s unbelievable.”
“But,” I said to her, “not that I have anything against lesbians. But I didn’t want to stay with one that was attracted to me.”
She immediately swiveled round to where I was sitting. “Did she make a pass at you?”
My brother groaned.
I thought about it.
“I’m not sure,” I replied, “I mean, I didn’t know to look for anything.” I pondered the two days I had spent with Diana and then her behavior during my first stay at her apartment. “Come to think of it, she did kind of look at me that way ... you know.” I gave her a semi-leer, which probably made me look constipated.
“Unbelievable,” she said. “Darren! Did you hear this?”
“Yes, I heard.
“Lesbian.”
“That’s what I heard,” he said and without so much as a look, commented, “I thought you said you know this girl.”
“I do. She wasn’t like this at Club Med, so I don’t get it.”
“Oooh,” Darren’s girlfriend cooed, “maybe she doesn’t know that she’s a lesbian.”
“Darren, she wasn’t about to tell me,” I said. “It’s not an easy thing to talk about.”
Darren shook his head. “Please, just remember, at least know someone for a while before you stay with them next time. At least six months.” He continued, “ ‘Cuz the next time, I won’t save you.” He turned around in his seat to face me. “I’m not going to save you again, Alisa. I’m not going to always be there.”
But he was always there.
He was there congratulating me when I walked down the aisle to receive my Master’s degree, when I needed money for a couch, and when I first moved to Manhattan for a job, and more, all the while continually swearing, in one form or another, that I would be the one to fix my situations.
But there was one situation that hadn’t been fixed …
“Here, Alisa,” my brother said to me, passing a paper bag my way.
I had only been living in Manhattan for a couple of months (and loved it).
I opened the bag, and when I looked inside, I gasped.
I grinned and shrieked, and then pulled out the Magic 8 Ball.
He said, “I know that the last one wasn’t replaced so ....”
I immediately grabbed him, wrapping my arms around his neck.
I hugged him as tight as I could.
“Thanks, Darren. Thanks so much,” I gushed.
Was it the best gift I’d ever gotten?
As the Magic 8 Ball would say: You may rely on it.
∞
Birds of a Feather
“Just don’t be scared,” Jodi said.
We were on line at the McDonald’s drive-thru window.
I raised an eyebrow. “Why should I be scared?”
“Just don’t be.”
Jodi had quickly become my closest friend while I was in college even though we didn’t go to the same school. I went to the University of Buffalo, and she went to a private Catholic college in the same area.
On the evenings that I hung out at a college bar called P J Bottoms – which was most every night – Jodi was there at the front of the bar with her hot dog cart selling wieners and making fast friends.
“Would you marry me?” a guy asked her, wobbling with one of her hot dogs in his hand, his eyes glassy.
Jodi laughed while picking up a couple of dogs cooking on the grill with her her metal tongs, turning them over. “If I had a dime for every time some guy asked me to marry him,” she joked. She gestured to all the men hanging around her hot dog cart, eating and drooling.
Jodi giggled, her bleached blonde head bobbing up and down with every guffaw. She opened her leather jacket, revealing her blue, yellow and purple tie-dye t-shirt. “God it’s getting hot,” she said and then wiped her forehead with the back of her hand.
“Well, that’s a remark you don’t often hear in Buffalo,” I said to her, trying to hand over two dollars for a hot dog.
She stopped wiping her forehead and stared at me. “You’ve bought hot dogs before from me, haven’t you?”
“Uh ... yes.” I pulled my money away.
Had I offended her?
She grinned. “You have a ziggy?”
“A what?”
“A ziggy.”
I hadn’t heard the term “Ziggy” before except for the popular comic strip (the comic strip was about a pathetic, bald man, who, for some inexplicable reason, was a favorite of all pre-teen girls ... Much later came Menudo). “A ziggy?”
Her eyes narrowed and she smirked. “A cigarette.”
“Oh no. I don’t smoke.”
“Guess that explains why you didn’t know what a ziggy was.” She rummaged through her jacket pocket. “You probably thought I was talking about the cartoon.”
“Well ... uh ...”
“Forget it. Here’s one,” she said, pulling a beaten up cigarette from her pocket. “Oops,” she quickly covered her pocket with a hand. “Don’t want that type of cigarette to fall out.” She put the smashed cigarette to her lips and a fellow wiener eater hastened to light it. She inhaled and then blew out some smoke. “You know what I mean.”
“No, I don’t,” I replied, “I mean I do. But I don’t do that stuff either. Smoke grass.”
“Never?” she asked, her eyes darting out of their sockets.
I shrugged and nodded.
“Wow,” she said, “I’m a fan of the Grateful Dead. You don’t smoke pot they throw you off the fairgrounds.” She aimed her tongs at me. “Can you take over for a minute? I’ll give you a free hot dog if you do.”
Knowing a good deal when I heard it, I responded with “You bet,” and took over the tongs and the cart while she took off her jacket and sat down on the curb, smoking her ziggy.
As I turned over hot dogs, served them and collected money, she talked to me in between puffs. “I’m Jodi by the way.”
“Alisa,” I said and passed a hot dog to a guy who was wearing just shorts and a t-shirt in the middle of Autumn (translated in Buffalo terms: winter). I gave him his change. “You’re almost as bad as she is. It’s cold out here.”
“Just so you know,” Jodie inserted, “Buffalo does warm up. I should know, I’m from here. It eventually gets warm.”
The guy that offered Jodi a marriage proposal suddenly said, “Hey, why don’t you ever let me turn the hotdogs?”
She flicked some ashes behind her back and got up from the curb. “ ‘Cuz, we’re actually together.”
She put her arm around me.
His eyes went from her to me and then back to her. “Naaah ... you’re total opposites.”
She pulled her arm from my shoulders and took back her tongs. “But you know what they say. Opposites attract.”
The guy shook his head and walked away from the cart with his half-eaten hot dog.
“Sorry,” she said to me. “I had to get rid of him.”
“No sweat,” I said as she dropped a hot dog into a bun and handed it to me. “I don’t smoke ziggies. I don’t smoke grass. So you made me more interesting.”
Jodi looked me right in the eye. “Oh no. I got a feeling you’re interesting.” She took a drag of her cigarette, then lowered it and blew smoke out of the side of her mouth. “No. I can tell. You’re cool.”
From there on in, I joined Jodi at her hot dog cart practically every night. I shared the helm of the little business from Autumn until Spring, when the students went back home, and I realized I was having so much fun in Buffalo that I decided to stay throughout the summer.
It was the last month of Spring before that Summer, and Jodi and I found ourselves in a quandary. “Remember ...” Jodi said.
“I know. Don’t be scared,” I repeated. “I just wish I knew what I shouldn’t be scared about.”
The car in front of us moved away from the window and we drove up, our stomachs grumbling with hunger. We needed some hamburgers – and fast.
Not having a job and a hot dog business (no students, no business; Jodi gave back the cart to its owner for the summer – a stockbroker who needed some hot dog cash to polish his jet skis), left us in a lurch; we had no money to eat. It was even too much to buy the special of the month: the 39-cent McDonald’s Hamburger.
Jodi and I emptied our pockets, searched under couch cushions, and scanned our floors for a lost bill or coin, but no such luck.
Until that day when Jodi showed up at my door, flapping a fiver in my face. Shortly thereafter, I found myself one car behind from a McDonald’s drive-thru window in Jodi’s rusted blue Pinto that whined when your turned on the ignition and expelled a death rattle when you turned it off.
Over the loud sputtering of the engine, I asked, “What gives?” to Jodi.
Jodi waved her five dollar bill again. When she first showed it to me, she said she found it at the bottom of her backpack wedged in a pack of ziggies.
She smiled and whispered, “It’s counterfeit.”
“What?”
A young woman appeared at the window wearing a red and yellow McDonald’s hat. “Can I help you?”
“You sure can,” Jodi replied, and I pinched her forearm. But that didn’t stop her. “We’ll have ten of your most impressive 39-cent hamburgers.”
The window attendant disappeared into the cooking area.
“What are you doing?” I asked Jodi, astounded.
“Getting hamburgers, of course.”
“You can’t get hamburgers with a counterfeit bill,” I told her in a hushed voice.
She smirked. “Oh no?” she said and held up the five. “This was passed off to me at a Grateful Dead concert for a hot dog.” She added, “I didn’t notice.”
“That’s because you were stoned at the time.” I pointed to the drive-thru window; the attendant had returned. “This girl is sober.”
Jodi cocked an eyebrow. “Are you sure about that?”
“That’ll be five dollars please,” said the window attendant.
Jodi handed her the bill and I pinched her again.
She turned to me. “It’s done,” she said.
“I can’t believe this,” I said, shaking my head.
“And that money looks pretty pathetic, too.”
“You mean it doesn’t even look real?”
“Please. It’d be thrown out of a Monopoly game.”
I pulled my hair and pursed my lips. I was afraid that I would scream.
I suddenly had a headache trying to figure out how to explain to my parents that I was arrested and then handed over to the FBI for possessing counterfeit money.
They’d be so horrified; maybe they wouldn’t even bail me out. Maybe they’d leave me in jail or prison to teach me a lesson. For years I’d never have another 39-cent McDonald’s Hamburger, I’d never get married, have children, become a successful writer ... I was doomed.
“Don’t look so hysterical,” Jodi said. “Passing a phony bill and seeing what happens is a great psychology experiment.”
“That’s great,” I told her, “only you’re a political science major.”
“Even better.”
She turned around and stared at the window attendant who was now at the cash register. Jodi tapped her fingers on the steering wheel. My forehead and cheeks felt hot. I began to perspire as I waited to see when exactly we would be caught.
I felt the cold of steel handcuffs on my wrists.
“She’s sober,” Jodi casually remarked, still staring at the McDonald’s attendant. “But my bet is on a low IQ.”
I held my breath.
“Uh, Miss,” the attendant said to Jodi, “here are your burgers.” She passed her a McDonald’s bag. “And here’s your change.” She put a few dollars and coins in her hand.
Looking down at the money, Jodi’s eyes widened.
“Thank you for coming,” the attendant said.
“No problem,” Jodi responded. She rolled up her window and then looked at me. “Well, I was right. Low IQ.” She faced the road. “Not only can’t she tell real money from Parker Brothers money, but she gave us change for seven hamburgers. We ordered ten.” She clutched the bills and coins as if they were about to scurry out of her hand. “How do you like that?”
At first, I was quiet, and then I begged, “Please ... please drive away from the window.”
I was sure it was only a matter of time before the police would put out an APB on us, but they didn’t, and when I relayed the story to my mother, I got the expected result ...
“You shouldn’t hang around with people who are such bad influences,” my mother warned me. “Remember, birds of a feather flock to together. You don’t want to be the wrong type of bird do you?”
I sighed. “Mom, this isn’t high school,” I told her. “I’m in college. It’s not like I was about to succumb to peer pressure.”
Her eyes narrowed. “Oh no?” ...
“What does the crazy freak want now?” my boyfriend asked.
His name was Wade, and he was also a student at the university, plus he was a bouncer at a lesser known bar next to PJ Bottoms. He was huge – he was six-foot-four with muscles like a Viking warrior and a blonde buzz cut that made him look like the Russian Boxer from Rocky IV.
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