Jesus Land. Julia Scheeres
of here.”
“Oh,” I laugh, embarrassed. “I’m Julia. Guess we’re both new.”
She nods, and plucks another dandelion from the ground.
Squeals pierce the air and we turn to watch a group of girls surging around a boy who’s standing over a bicycle, across from the gym entrance. He’s shirtless despite the chill air, wearing only light blue satin running shorts. He thrusts out his chest—tan, broad—and a few of the girls grope it as he laughs.
They scatter when a black Camaro roars into the parking lot. It screeches to a stop slantways across two spaces, and a man in aviator sunglasses jumps out.
“There he is,” Mary says. “Coach Shultz.”
The shirtless boy pedals away, and we stand and move toward the other girls. Coach Schultz comes at us with swooping arms.
“Everyone inside! We’re late!”
“No, you are,” someone mutters.
He jingles a key into the door and holds it open, sizing up bodies as they flow into the building. I thrust back my shoulders as I walk by him, hoping to make a good impression.
In the dank locker room, Mary and I migrate silently to a corner. I try to keep my eyes to myself as I quickly strip off my shorts and T-shirt and snap into my Speedo, but can’t help but notice when the big-chested girl next to me unhooks her bra and her boobs fall down like half-filled water balloons. My own boobs are still little-girl pointy—I’m what people call a “late bloomer.” At sixteen and a half, I haven’t gotten my period yet and am still cursed with a boyish, narrow-hipped body.
The door cracks open and there’s a whistle blast.
“Enough lollygagging, girls!”
Coach Schultz orders us to pair up for warm-up exercises, and everyone immediately nabs a partner, leaving Mary and me for each other. I walk over to her. We do ten minutes of stretching on the tile floor next to the pool, and then the real competition begins.
The coach has us swim fifty yards, freestyle. Some of the girls claw through the water like cats, barely reaching the halfway flag before wheezing to a stop. Coach Schultz orders them out of the pool, and among them I see Rose Marie, sucking in air through her smoker’s mouth and coughing. I grin; the process of elimination has begun.
When my turn comes, I knife through water, happy to deafen the murmuring around me. Twelve strokes to the deep end, flip turn at the black T painted on the bottom, twelve strokes back. This is one thing I do well.
David and I learned to swim at the YMCA when we were six. After I learned to float, my favorite thing to do was to scissor my arms and legs into the middle of the deep end while the other kids huddled at the ledge, terrified of letting go of the tile lip.
“Come back!” David would squeal, twisting his head around to look at me with huge eyes. “Don’t go there!” But the feeling of being alone and hard to reach enthralled me, and I went from polliwog to shark in record time.
Coach Schultz blows his whistle and orders the girls who made the first cut to do continuous laps, alternating between breaststroke, backstroke, and the crawl. I lick the fog from my goggles and press them back to my face, pushing them against my cheekbones until they suck lightly on my eyeballs. At the end of my eighteenth lap, I notice a forest of legs in a corner of the pool. There’s a whistle burst and I rise to the surface along with a handful of other girls, including Mary.
“There’s my A-team, right there,” Coach Schultz shouts, leaning against the lifeguard tower with a clipboard. We call our names to him, and he writes them down.
In the locker room, everyone hustles back into their clothes in hunched silence. I exchange a smile with Mary and pull my shorts over my suit before fleeing the sour gloom, fearing that one mean look will puncture my high spirits. As I bike back up County Road 50 in the swelling heat, carloads of girls with wet hair pass me. Sweat trickles down my face and pastes my Speedo to my body, but I’m elated. I’ve made the swim team and found a friend.
We go to Kmart for our annual trek to buy school clothes, and I hole up in a dressing room with a mound of clothes, hoping to find something that doesn’t look like it was bought at Kmart. This is tricky. I choose a few pastel oxfords and polo shirts—although these have swan icons instead of the trendy alligators and horses—and a pair of plastic penny loafers. A pair of fitted paint-splattered jeans gets nixed by Mother when I walk out to model them for her.
“What do you want people staring at your butt crack for?” she asks loudly, causing several shoppers to turn in our direction. She walks to a rack of dark denim, grabs two pairs of baggy jeans and throws them into our cart as I look away, tears stinging my eyes.
None of the kids I know would be caught dead in the Kmart parking lot, but Mother views blue-light specials as manna from Heaven. Polyester slacks, two pairs for $10? We can outfit the entire family! Reduced-for-quick-sale toothpaste? We’ll stock up for the next five years! Our family shops at Kmart for the same reason we drink instant milk and eat Garbage Soup and use dish detergent for bubble bath: We’re cheap.
Mother still hasn’t gotten over the Great Depression. I know that if I complain about my school clothes, I’ll be subjected to stories about how her family was forced to eat withered apples from her father’s general store in Corsica, and how she left for college with only two flour sack dresses to her name. Shame on you! You don’t know how good you have it! I’d just as soon stick my hand in a vat of boiling oil than hear it once more.
Mother says money we save by being frugal helps the cause of missionaries around the world, but it certainly doesn’t help mine. Once again, I’ll be Dorky Girl at school. My only hope is to find more baby-sitting jobs, so I can acquire enough money to go shopping at Tippecanoe Mall like a normal person.
In the men’s department, David greets us cradling an armload of satin basketball jerseys emblazoned with Big Ten logos. Purdue. Michigan. Notre Dame.
He looks at Mother with a wide-eyed mixture of hope and apprehension, and she shakes her head and strides to a table piled with T-shirts. Colored Hanes, $2.99! Mother scoops several into the shopping cart.
David hugs the shimmering jerseys to his chest.
“What’s wrong with these?” he asks, alarm rising in his face.
I look at him and roll my eyes.
I was three years old when my mother told me I was getting a baby brother.
When she said “your baby brother,” I assumed he’d be mine and mine alone, and swelled with self-importance. I would no longer be the baby of the family; I, too, would have someone to boss around.
A crib was placed in an upstairs bedroom and I’d check it several times a day, peering between the slats to see if my baby had arrived. Time after time, I was heartbroken by the empty mattress.
“Baby here today?” I’d ask Mother.
“Soon,” was always the reply.
The day he arrived, on March 17, 1970, I was in the basement, lost in Mister Rogers’ Neighborhood; the older kids were at school. After the show ended, I went to the kitchen for a butter-and-sugar sandwich and Mother hushed me. My baby brother was sleeping, she said, and I was not to disturb him.
I waited until she started washing the dishes before creeping upstairs on my hands and knees. The door to his room was closed, and I paused on the threshold, listening to pots banging against the sink, before pushing the door inward.
The sun streamed through yellow curtains as I approached the crib on tiptoes, breathing hard. Finally. Inside it was my baby doll, asleep. I stared in awe at his molasses-colored skin; nobody told me that my baby would be