many cat owners labor.) The times I jammed that cat into lace pinafore, she’d never once bit or scratched me. Oh she’d struggle. I could feel her sinews tighten in my hand. Only once did she lose her temper though. When I’d tied her into my baby carriage with an elaborate web of Christmas ribbon, she managed to gnaw through her restraints and wound up under an azalea bush hissing in her white bonnet.
Lecia didn’t even look up from her detective magazine when she told me that nobody’s mother skated.
“Oh come on. Who cares what nobody does?” Truly when it came to convention, I had a lot of double-dog fuck-you in me by then.
“You’ll care when you hit junior high and you’re the new Becky Smedley.” This prompted a thin layer of concern, for the comparison had been made before. One of those chip-toothed boys with ringworm scabs on his arms had likened me to Becky after I wouldn’t let him copy my math one morning. She was certainly no skinnier than I was, and I’d watched her in the cafeteria suffer the scapegoat’s fate of sitting alone among cubed carrots and peas shot from various straws.
What she’d done to warrant this was a mystery. She was gawky, sure. Plus she was a good head taller than most of the boys but for a few who’d been held back a lot.
What she did to encourage it, though, was plain: she took it—every flipped paper clip, every sign pasted to her back, every foot slipped out sideways into the aisle so she’d trip and her avocado-green tray would sail from her hands. Thus the cube steak and sliced peaches would become airborne with the milk carton whose red-and-white presidential faces we failed year after year to memorize. Into this slop and other slops like it Becky went sprawling. And she did not rise up. Her passivity in the face of such acts became a magnet for them. Even second- and third-graders would trail behind her like bad goats bahhing. Over the years her sticklike form curved in on itself—head bent down another millimeter each day, shoulders pinched forward—till her wholebody became a sort of living question mark, the punctuation with which she responded to every mean sentence we could construct.
“Becky Smedley is too big a spaz to go skating,” I said. The cat sighed, her eyes at half-mast. From Mother and Daddy’s room, the TV chittered.
“No but if she did go, she’d take her mother. And they’d hold hands.” I looked down at Lecia. Surely her hair hadn’t been in curlers all day, but that’s how I recall it—in giant wire rollers under a lacy net. She kept her hair set that way for so long that the pink spikes fixing the curlers in place worked permanent dents into her head.
“What’s wrong with that? There’s nothing wrong with that.”
“If you don’t know, there’s no help for you,” Lecia said. Her voice was flat. The cat pushed her nose against Lecia’s chin, then tipped her triangular head to rub her face there.
“You don’t know everything,” I said. Actually I doubted the veracity of this.
“No but I know that. Goddamn sure do.” Not once since I’d stood there had our eyes met.
“So you coming to bed?” I finally asked. My invitation was close as I could get to an apology.
“I’m sleeping out here,” she said.
It was my wrongness she meant to convey, and ultimately to correct—to save me from my own self, to protect me from the fate of Becky Smedley and her ilk. But the condemnation of her sleeping on the sofa felt like more than I deserved.
Not everybody branded by difference suffered Becky’s fate. The town tolerated affliction with more grace than most places I’ve lived. They had to, for we were, as populations go, teeming with chemical and genetic mutation. Toxic air, I suppose, cooked up part of the human stew. Plus there was inbreeding galore. People disapproved of marriage between first cousins, but it happened, and at least one boy I knew was rumored to have knocked up his sister. Three kids in my
Lecia didn’t even look up from her detective magazine when she told me that nobody’s mother skated.
“Oh come on. Who cares what nobody does?” Truly when it came to convention, I had a lot of double-dog fuck-you in me by then.
“You’ll care when you hit junior high and you’re the new Becky Smedley.” This prompted a thin layer of concern, for the comparison had been made before. One of those chip-toothed boys with ringworm scabs on his arms had likened me to Becky after I wouldn’t let him copy my math one morning. She was certainly no skinnier than I was, and I’d watched her in the cafeteria suffer the scapegoat’s fate of sitting alone among cubed carrots and peas shot from various straws.
What she’d done to warrant this was a mystery. She was gawky, sure. Plus she was a good head taller than most of the boys but for a few who’d been held back a lot.
What she did to encourage it, though, was plain: she took it—every flipped paper clip, every sign pasted to her back, every foot slipped out sideways into the aisle so she’d trip and her avocado-green tray would sail from her hands. Thus the cube steak and sliced peaches would become airborne with the milk carton whose red-and-white presidential faces we failed year after year to memorize. Into this slop and other slops like it Becky went sprawling. And she did not rise up. Her passivity in the face of such acts became a magnet for them. Even second- and third-graders would trail behind her like bad goats bahhing. Over the years her sticklike form curved in on itself—head bent down another millimeter each day, shoulders pinched forward—till her wholebody became a sort of living question mark, the punctuation with which she responded to every mean sentence we could construct.
“Becky Smedley is too big a spaz to go skating,” I said. The cat sighed, her eyes at half-mast. From Mother and Daddy’s room, the TV chittered.
“No but if she did go, she’d take her mother. And they’d hold hands.” I looked down at Lecia. Surely her hair hadn’t been in curlers all day, but that’s how I recall it—in giant wire rollers under a lacy net. She kept her hair set that way for so long that the pink spikes fixing the curlers in place worked permanent dents into her head.
“What’s wrong with that? There’s nothing wrong with that.”
“If you don’t know, there’s no help for you,” Lecia said. Her voice was flat. The cat pushed her nose against Lecia’s chin, then tipped her triangular head to rub her face there.
“You don’t know everything,” I said. Actually I doubted the veracity of this.
“No but I know that. Goddamn sure do.” Not once since I’d stood there had our eyes met.
“So you coming to bed?” I finally asked. My invitation was close as I could get to an apology.
“I’m sleeping out here,” she said.
It was my wrongness she meant to convey, and ultimately to correct—to save me from my own self, to protect me from the fate of Becky Smedley and her ilk. But the condemnation of her sleeping on the sofa felt like more than I deserved.
Not everybody branded by difference suffered Becky’s fate. The town tolerated affliction with more grace than most places I’ve lived. They had to, for we were, as populations go, teeming with chemical and genetic mutation. Toxic air, I suppose, cooked up part of the human stew. Plus there was inbreeding galore. People disapproved of marriage between first cousins, but it happened, and at least one boy I knew was rumored to have knocked up his sister. Three kids in my
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