The Question Authority. Rachel Cline
“About my condition.” She says this sooo dramatically, as though she’s a character in a soap opera, and then she cracks up. I laugh along but not full out. I can sense she’s about to reveal something I didn’t see coming, and that is my least favorite thing on earth.
“But what?” I finally ask her. “What are you talking about?”
“Let’s do a test. Look at what I’m wearing and see if you can figure it out.”
Since when do I care what she’s wearing? For the record, it’s a white, man-tailored shirt that’s huge on her, and pink corduroy bell-bottoms. I see Beth every day and I’ve never seen the pants before but she gets a lot of new clothes so that’s not particularly weird. The pants are the kind with patch pockets on the front and back and a high waist—sailor bells—and I wish I had some like that but my wardrobe is only what I can order from Sears or find at A&S. It’s hard even finding blue jeans that fit me and I got stuck with Wranglers even though everyone else is wearing Levi’s or Lee Riders. Anyway, Beth is wearing pink pants. “New pants?”
“Well, yeah, but that’s not the point. I guess he is kind of perceptive because he got it right away.”
Now she’s openly baiting me. I scan the lunchroom, looking at what everyone else is wearing for some kind of clue.
“HINT: It feels like rocks.”
“Your period??” “It feels like rocks” is what Janie told Harriet in The Long Secret, which Beth gave me for my birthday in fifth grade and is still my second-favorite book of all time.
“A-duh!” We both laugh because of the way Beth says that phrase. She makes her upper lip stick out and crosses her eyes. But while I’m laughing a weird thought comes into my head out of nowhere: Beth’s naked body. She’s still a girl, not a woman, but with breasts and pubes and everything I don’t yet have. The thought embarrasses me.
“My mother was so funny yesterday,” I say, even though my mother is never funny. “I was playing Laura Nyro and she was trying to dance along with ‘Stoned Soul Picnic.’ She doesn’t have a single ounce of natural rhythm.”
Beth nods and continues her story. “He comes up behind me this morning and says, ‘Don’t worry, no one else can tell.’”
“Ew!”
“I know, but isn’t that kind of crazy? He deduced it that I was covering up the bulge with the long shirt, and the pink pants are in case I leak.”
“What bulge?”
“From the pad, stupid.”
“You’re wearing a sanitary napkin?”
“What else would I be wearing?”
“My mother bought me Tampax,” I say, bragging. “She put them in my bathroom so we don’t even have to discuss it when it happens.” I thought this was extremely cool of her but Beth’s face is perplexed.
“But you’re a virgin,” she says.
“And you’re not?”
“You can’t use tampons if you’re a virgin.”
“You can too . . .” As soon as the words are out of my mouth I begin to doubt myself. What do I actually know about any of this? Thankfully, she changes the subject. “Do you want to come with me to Loehmann’s next weekend?”
I’ve never been to Loehmann’s but I know what it is, more or less. I have no money to spend and no excuse for buying any new clothes but I want to go where Beth goes.
“How much money would I need?”
“How should I know? It depends on what you buy.”
“How much will you bring?”
“Sometimes you’re such a blockhead. Obviously, my mother buys my clothes for me. I have no idea. Ask your mother.”
I make an appropriate face—she remembers who my mother is.
“Okay, bring a hundred dollars.”
This would be almost funny except she doesn’t appear to be joking. I’ve never even seen a hundred dollars. That would be like five years’ worth of my allowance, and the most I’ve ever managed to save of that was enough to buy The White Album.
For dessert there is prune whip, which no one would dare eat.
7
Naomi
We were on the stoop with a bunch of the girls and I said one of them should come on upstairs; she looked like she needed to lie down. I think it was Amelia. Chicken pox was going around. I said it out loud, like it was normal, because to me it was, but Bob grabbed me by the arm and took me inside right then and roared at me in a voice I’d not ever heard before: What was I thinking? How could I be so naïve? I know now that I was threatening his whole world, his master plan, but at the time I was blindsided. “She needs to lie down,” I told him. “There’s clean sheets,” I said, thinking he was upset because I was going to let her see our slovenly ways.
A year later, we had girls upstairs all the time. Girls getting their periods for the first time—I put them to bed with some whiskey and a hot water bottle like I was taught. Girls who were sleepy, or who needed a shower, and, eventually, girls who were going to get their picture taken, to “model.” There were so many reasons to go upstairs, after a while, it’s a wonder we ever sat in the kitchen. But we did that, too. One girl would be upstairs with Bob and I’d be downstairs with the others doing macramé or tie-dye, or baking cookies. They loved me because I never said much, and I told them they were beautiful, too.
I didn’t even know what “ironic” meant then. Or maybe I did and I just let Bob tell me I didn’t. I preferred to let him tell me what was what, because then it couldn’t be all my fault. But in my heart I knew that it was: I’d given him the idea the day we met—before we mounted Babe the Blue Ox and rode off yonder. I myself was only fifteen years old when we sat behind Wilson’s Café and I told him how I grew up. And on that day, he listened so well.
8
Nora
Ihave just begun to unpack the Singer folder when the wall of my cubicle speaks. “Your phone was ringing,” says invisible Ktanya, a fellow paralegal—if she’d gone to the Academy, she’d be a lawyer herself, but she went to Boys and Girls High so she’s a fantastically well-dressed clerical instead. She has never spoken directly to me before so I guess my visit to Jocelyn’s office has increased my social currency. For the first six weeks of my tenure, Ktanya’s desk belonged to creepy Arthur, who spent his whole day attempting to control his wife by phone, in a whisper that was fully audible to me: “Isn’t it time for you to get dressed?” “I told you not to go there.” “What were you doing at The Gap?” Ktanya is usually all business—dresses like a lawyer on a TV show, takes notes on a laptop, unfailingly begins and ends all her phone conversations with cordialities that sound almost nineteenth century to me. I know she has a husband and a young daughter, although there are never any personal phone calls over there. No messes of any kind. I ring my voicemail but there is no message waiting.
The first thing I need to do with any new case is let opposing counsel know we are interested in settling. Although our group is called “Settlements,” this is not an actual lawsuit. I only settle complaints and disputes of the sort that can be decided by a hearing officer rather than a judge or jury. The standard of proof at these hearings is low—a “preponderance of evidence”—and the hearing officer is not even a lawyer let alone a judge. The outcome of such a proceeding is therefore unpredictable for all concerned. Anyway, the text of my letter to Singer’s lawyer is standard, saying, “I’m your contact point, let’s talk”—but in formalese. I just need a few key facts to customize it; the teacher’s name (Harold Singer) and the case number go in the subject line, but I have to unpack the various manila folders that