I’D thought it was going to be my mom taking me when I said I needed to go to the store. There was a list on the fridge: plastic wrap, toothpaste, bleach, things like that. I figured a trip to the pharmacy or grocery store was on deck for the day, which was a Saturday. Shampoo was on the list; that’s something Mom usually picks out.
But when my dad heard me bring it up, he said, “Great! I need some light bulbs. We’ll go together. It’ll be an outing.” He winked at my mom; he’d been looking for more ways to spend time with me. I needed tampons, but I wasn’t about to tell my dad that.
We ended up going to the ratty little drug store next to the Safeway. I’d been there plenty of times. Lisa and I used to go a few mornings a week back when she lived near me and we went to the same school. We’d ride the city bus to school together, passing the strip-malls down Jackson as we rode alongside smells of cleaners and cigarettes, cheap colognes and armpits, towards the turn-off for Ridgepoint Junior High. If you got off a couple stops early, the bus let you out by the Safeway and you could walk from there in about fifteen minutes.
Lisa’s mom wouldn’t let her wear make-up, so we’d get off the bus by the drug store, and she’d smear the testers over her eyes and rub them into her cheeks and lips. I’d wait for her near the front, reading the posted ads for 2-for-1 paper towels or 50% off a second box of dish detergent when you buy the first one full-price. Sometimes they’d leave testers out for the nail polish too. When that happened, Lisa would stink up the whole corner of the store until I feared getting caught. She’d come out wet-nail-shaking, bold colors announcing something she considered important. I wasn’t allowed to wear make-up either, but I didn’t care: there was no one I wanted to impress in that shithole anyway.
On one of those mornings before school, we’d run into Helen, who’d stopped in with her mom to get a protractor like our math teacher had told us to do. I’d seen her coming around the aisle while Lisa was caking on the foundation. Helen’s wall of bangs edged around the corner first, jutting forward, an oversized, yellow, 1970s rapist’s moustache. Behind them, Helen’s bouncy curls shined and glowed like they’d been weaved of gold and Heaven-sent to slap down onto her goddamn head. Or at least that’s how she would have described it, minus the cussing. I hissed at Lisa to put that stuff away, and quickly. Helen walked past us with a high-headed “hello.” Her full name was Helen Maria Grace, and I’m not even kidding about that.
Lisa lived across the state now and went to some high school out there. Also, she was pregnant. One month. We kept in touch by email.
My dad and I went into the store and got the things on Mom’s list. When he turned down the aisle marked Kitchen/Hardware, I took a detour down Feminine Hygiene, named such because some idiot thinks maxi-pads keep you clean. I wondered if there could be people called Feminine Hygienists. Their work would resemble that of Dental Hygienists, but in a different area. I found the tampons. Stacked up in bold pinks and purples, they stood their ground between the apparently-related diapers and condoms. The boxes were bigger than I’d hoped and would stick out of my pocket if I tried to take one; I’d have to get some later. I grabbed a spiral notebook in School/Office and found my dad. He asked if I’d gotten what I needed, and I held the notebook out in front of me.
A zitty kid swiped my dad’s card and scanned our items. When we were done checking out, we walked back to our old station wagon, my dad’s two plastic bags crackling in the breeze and me swinging the bottle of bleach by its cool plastic handle. We didn’t want the bulbs to break, so we put our stuff on the floor of the backseat instead of in the hatch. My dad made a crack about “mission accomplished,” trying to make sure we were having fun, and I smiled.
“You wanna drive?” he asked me. I had my learner’s permit and needed an adult with me to practice.
“Sure,” I said, and took the keys. We got in and I drove out of the parking lot. There was no stalling; there were no lapses of judgment. I was nearly prepared for the test that would come in a month and a half. I felt so confident my dad could’ve even asked me to parallel park.
But back on the main road where Lisa and I had ridden so many times in years past, the car started pulling left. I tried to drag it back with the steering wheel but it felt contorted, as if suffering from one of the side cramps I get in P.E. class after lunch. I looked at my dad and we decided at the same time: “Must be a flat.” I pulled over and turned on the radio as my dad got out to take a look.
“Come on, Dani,” he said. “You’re gonna be driving on your own soon and you need to know how to change a tire.”
I knew he was right, but I was in no shape to be squatting and crouching, my backside sticking out with a soggy lump bumped out between the legs because I’d worn jeans too tight for the situation. I flashed back to what it must’ve felt like to be a baby awaiting a change. I told my dad I was tired.
“Come on out,” he repeated. “This could happen when you’re driving alone. You don’t want to have to rely on some pervert to pull over and help you out.”
He had a point. We went into the way-back and got out the spare and the tools my dad said we’d need. Together, we arranged the jack and we pumped that baby up to where it could just as well have been sitting in my high school parking lot on hydraulics.
My dad handed me a big X of a wrench, a hybrid gynecological-crucifixion tool that could unscrew tires from their mounts. I set an end of it on one screw after another and leaned leftwards, pulling with both hands on different arms of the X. It would rotate reluctantly at first, years of dirt and oil cooked on by the sun in a way that reminded me of the time my mom made me clean the oven. Finally freed, it would spin like an oversized jack. By the time I’d finished, almost ten minutes had gone by and my fingers were black.
“Okay, what next?” I asked, wiping my hands on my jeans, the second time that day I was glad to be wearing black. Before my dad could answer, a car pulled up and parked behind us.
“Need a hand?” a man asked, approaching the left side of the car. He was tall with bright yellow hair and wore a T-shirt I’d guesstimate had been ironed within the last half hour. It was carefully tucked into what he most likely referred to as his slacks. I wasn’t happy about the fact that I recognized him.
“Hi, Mr. Grace,” I said. “This is my dad. We’re just changing the tire.”
My dad stuck his hand out and shook hands with Helen’s dad. “How do you do?” he asked. Mr. Grace and I explained who was who, or whom, and my dad made some comment about Helen seeming like a nice girl. Mr. Grace took that as a cue to converse, and he stuck around and shot the shit while my dad and I did all the work. “Great job,” he said when we were done. “Guess you didn’t need my help after all.”
He reached into his pocket and took out a glossy postcard with photos on both sides. “I’d like to invite you to something,” he said, and handed it to us. The front and back differed only to the extent that would a virgin daiquiri and a hot chocolate: one invited us to Party with the Lord! that night; the other more staidly requested our presence at tomorrow morning’s service. A banner reading “The Greatest Church on Earth” was emblazoned on the top of both; on the front, attractive youth smiled and laughed, while on the back they projected peaceful stares of connectedness. I flipped the slickened paper over in my hands, focusing on the eyes of the enthusiasts. Mr. Grace got back into his car and we waved.
“I rest my case,” my dad said once Mr. Grace had driven off.
That night, I found Lisa online and sent her a chat.
ME: Saw Helen’s dad today. Total weirdo.
LISA: Not surprised. How’s school?
ME: Same. How’s pregnancy?
LISA: Sucks.
No doubt well-practiced in filling up awkward silences, Lisa wrote again.
LISA: When are try-outs?
ME: One month. Exactly one month. Precisely.
And it was true: thirty days remained. I’d worked it all out on the calendar. Hence the trip to the store: I needed to practice with more than just starts and sprints between now and then.
LISA: You gonna get the car?
ME: Hopefully. I am not riding home with Helen and her mom.
I waited awhile, but Lisa had disappeared. The user is offline and cannot receive chats, I was informed. One of Lisa’s parents must’ve walked into her room; the content of our conversation wasn’t yet public.
“We can drive you,” Helen’s mom had told me last year around this time, cheeriness dripping down her face and hardening there like chocolate fondue on a strawberry. She was leaning out her car window; Helen rode shotgun. I’d been walking in front of the school’s steps, about to go in for first period, when Helen had called me over: “Daniella! My mom wants to talk to you!” A people who spoke only the language of obedience, there was nothing to be gained from attempting polite dismissals with a Grace; I’d followed suit.
“We can drive you home after track,” Mrs. Grace had elaborated. “Helen says you want to be on the team but don’t have a ride home.”
Sarcasm yet as foreign a tongue as disobedience, I’d resisted mouthing a sassy “Oh, thanks, Helen,” and replied, “Thank you, Mrs. Grace, for the offer, but it’s ok. I’m waiting till next year to go out for the team.”
“But we’re here anyway,” she pressed. “Helen’s Save the Environment Club doesn’t let out until 5pm, so I’m always here to pick her up.” I looked at Helen with surprise; I admit I’d expected Abstinence Club. She nodded happily, curls bouncing. God’s planet, after all.
The warning bell rang. “I’d better get in for class,” I said. “Thanks again for the offer, Mrs. Grace.”
My mom brought me home from school one day soon afterwards and then rushed off immediately, scrubs shifting quickly over her shoes as she walked. “Overtime,” she said simply, waving. I nodded. I looked out the window and watched her faded sedan drive away. It was 3:30. Warm and sunny. Good day for a run.
Nobody in my family could say where I got the running gene. My dad used to joke that the only thing he could run were diagnostics and my mom could only run her stockings. Mom would roll her eyes and say she spends a lot more time running reports at work than she spends wearing stockings in the first place, but it didn’t matter: my dad placed a higher premium on humor than on accuracy. I didn’t have any siblings, but this was also irrelevant: no one but me in the entire extended family considered physical exertion anything but a chore, so it’s unlikely there would have been anything to inherit. Maybe that’s why I liked it: out of everything that was everybody’s, this one thing was mine.
Because I couldn’t yet drive myself to any trails or paths, the routes I ran were suburban. Within five minutes, I could eject myself from my own neighborhood and move further along the spectrum towards the wealthy homes with each subsequent step. Swank neighborhoods made for great running: big garages and ample indoor storage prevented the curbside line-up of cars found in poorer areas and left behind a wider area of asphalt than I could find almost anywhere else. The roads were headphones-safe: cars couldn’t sneak up behind you when their drivers were all off at work all day or attending Mommy and Me or Pilates classes. Driveways were longer and lawns greener, both worked on by people I knew didn’t live there. I’d wave or nod at these employees but they wouldn’t respond, as if too well-instructed in the art of invisibility.
Often, I would pass Helen’s house. An American flag oversaw the comings and goings of Helen’s four little brothers year round. A grassy hill on the east side of their yard permanently housed posts driven into the ground to support a volleyball net; small pop-up soccer goals guarded the north and south sides of that field. The remainder of the yard was bricked in and included low walls that transitioned into benches for sitting or dirt beds for planting flowers. Something was in bloom year-round. When a vehicle was temporarily parked in the driveway, it was one of two American-made, WWJD-stickered SUVs they owned. Once I ran by while the family was piling into one of these Grace ships; Helen’s brothers scampered back and forth around the huge beast of a car, fighting over who got to sit where. Mr. and Mrs. Grace happily laughed and shook their heads slowly, looking at each other with satisfied surrender. Helen waved at me from one of the back seats.
Like a child first allowed to ride a bike all the way around a neighborhood corner and out of sight, I felt the escapism pumping through my veins that afternoon. Twenty-five minutes and about half the route passed before I even thought to check the time. I had no intention of walking or slowing down. The sun slipped lower in the sky and I imagined my limitations disappearing along with it; as darkness extended its arms into the surrounding skies, so too would drive, endurance, and endorphins keep me padding through the streets where everybody’s life stood motionless except mine.
When I did fall to walking, it was because I was home. Pot holes and peaks of sidewalk concrete hovering over dead tree roots made for risky footing as dusk grew deeper. My feet shifted among the gravel and river rock spit from neighbors’ front yards. I ambled this last eighth of a mile, enjoying my solitude in the near-dark, the cool air sweet against my hot skin and thirst-quenching in my wide-open lungs. My end of the street was quieter. There were no cars in my driveway, so I stretched and walked evenly up its paved surface towards the porch.
A cylindrical rolled-up sleeping bag, the old kind, when they were big rectangles with quilted material on the insides, stood up on the front steps. A bag lay beside it, and then a backpack, pink and schoolish. Summiting slightly beyond these low-lying hills was a pair of knees; someone was obviously lying down on the little porch, legs bent, feet up close behind their backside. It was Lisa.
“I bussed it,” she told me when I looked at her in surprise. “Left this morning.”
“It’s a Wednesday,” was all I could think of to say.
“I know,” she said, standing up. “I thought I’d go to school with you tomorrow. You know, transfer in.”
“Cool. But why?”
“My parents,” she told me, and picked up all her things so we could go in the house. “They found out.”
“It’ll be a good lesson for me,” I found myself explaining two hours later. “Make me think twice. I mean, I’m already scared to death of getting pregnant, just from what I’ve seen so far.” I hadn’t even bothered trying to shield the truth from my dad.
“I don’t know,” he answered. “I just wouldn’t feel right towards her parents.”
“They kicked her out,” I said. “We can tell them she’s here if you want. It’s not like we’d be harboring a fugitive.”
My dad thought it over and looked at his watch. By now, my mom would be too busy to take a phone call. “Tell Lisa she can stay through the weekend,” he told me. “Beyond that, your mom and I will let you know once we’ve discussed it.” He turned as if to go down the hall, but then stopped and looked back at me. “What is she going to do?” he asked quietly.
“She doesn’t know yet.”
The next Friday evening, my parents having agreed to Lisa’s visit as long as her parents knew about it, Lisa and I sat speculating as to whether we were just bitches for not liking Helen, or whether we actually had a reason.
“I think it goes back to sixth grade,” I reasoned. “Remember that time she told me her parents would be pissed if she went roller skating with us?”
“I think it was more along the lines of, ‘That wouldn’t sit well with my mother and father.’” Lisa remembered.
“Ah, yes,” I answered with mock serenity. “Something about the music they play at the rink?”
“Think so. She couldn’t help it, I guess. They probably told her to say that.”
“Maybe,” I replied, thinking a moment. “Yeah, I remember saying something like, ‘That sucks,’ and all she gave me back was, ‘It’s not ideal.’ Miss Priss with the language, I guess.”
Lisa looked strangely nonplussed by the whole thing. “That’s just Helen,” she said.
She was right, but I missed the cynicism and acerbic tongue I’d come to know. “What’s with the forgiveness?” I asked her. “You join her church or something?”
Lisa laughed. “Far from it,” she answered, nodding towards her stomach. “I guess I’ve just realized that anyone can make mistakes. And anyone can change.”
We were quiet for a moment. “You want to go tomorrow, then?” I asked her.
“Yeah. We’ll ride the bus down Jackson like old times.”
“Sounds great,” I told her. “So, this is good, right?” I asked. “You’ll get some information, you’ll be able to make a decision; things will get better after that? It’s always easier once you know what you’re going to do.”
Lisa nodded reluctantly.
When I was in eighth grade, my parents spent the school year putting in overtime, saving up for a summer trip to Washington, D.C. so I could witness first-hand the government I’d been studying all year. We’d travel underground and then groundhog into the drenching heat to visit a museum or observe a vote; we’d duck back down into the airy darkness again, resurface by a monument attesting to the righteousness of democracy or the folly of war. Nights, we spent in the closest motel my parents could afford, the three of us sharing one room, the fan running full-blast.
Mornings, I discovered the best way to see a city: on foot. Finally on vacation after years of hard work, my parents lay dormant long after the sun rose each day. I would get up an hour or two before either of them and hit the city running. By this means, the city’s star-shaped design became etched in my mind, ready for recall once my parents were up, when I’d navigate them to and from historical sites, restaurants, subway stops, artistic and cultural displays. The independence was addictive.
I’d mapped my own city the same way, and I’d spent plenty of time on and around Jackson. Just past the turn off for Ridgepoint Junior High stood the women’s clinic, site of consistent unrest and raging debate. It was hard to miss: days rarely passed without the clinic being on the receiving end of somebody’s spray-painted, shouted, or otherwise-demonstrative protestations. Chants of passages from religious texts and bobbing posters of oversized fetuses pounded in line with the rhythm of my feet as I passed by. Messages written on walls, awaiting near-daily resurfacings of muted paint, denigrated women in ways I’d assumed went out of fashion with the Crusades. Patients would enter and exit quietly, heads bowed, or loudly, screaming back at the protestors, sometimes losing themselves to tears in desperation. The location was ingrained in my mind, and I knew exactly what to expect.
These were the things I tried to prepare Lisa for the next morning, when we hopped on the bus near my house and rode the long stretch down Jackson, á la the Ridgepoint days of yore.
“But I thought we were just going for information,” she said.
“That won’t matter,” I told her, reaching in my pocket to ensure I still had the $10 bill I’d stashed there that morning. We were still three weeks out from try-outs, and surely a women’s clinic would sell the right supplies. “We’ll wear hats and keep our sunglasses on,” I said. “It’s easier when people can’t see your eyes.”
“How do you know?” she asked.
“I don’t, really. I’m just saying: they don’t need to know what’s going on in our heads.”
The clinic’s requisite group of proselytizers eyed us the minute we rounded the corner from the bus stop. Today’s group was mixed: some middle-aged folks, barking their cries alongside spouses and friends, some younger families, angry parents holding the hands of even angrier children, their novice faces full of the unmarred glory of righteous hate. The building’s two paths to the front door, a set of five stairs and a handicapped ramp, were visible in flashes between stomping legs and bodies. We walked towards them, headfirst into the crowd, my intentions locked in on the railings that paralleled the steps and the ramp. I tried not to look at the signs printed with bloody pictures, but bold letters above one of them caught my eye: “Greatest Church on Earth.”
“Shit!” I whispered to Lisa. “That’s The Graces’ church!” Lisa held my hand and tucked her chin as far as it would go. I realized the vast distance between our positions, our realities, in that moment: as a committed friend, I was free from equivocation; she had no such luxury. I thought I saw a tall, neatly-dressed, yellow-haired man in the distance and wondered if he’d recognize me. We rounded the corner onto the ramp and I grabbed the cool, greasy side railing with the hand that wasn’t holding Lisa’s.
But as I turned to look at Lisa, I saw a boy running at us with rage in his eyes and something small and white in his hands. He wore a small backpack and a grin I wouldn’t dare describe. He couldn’t have been more than twelve, but as he reeled his arm back for a pitch, I saw his determination and single-mindedness feed adrenaline to his small frame and embolden it with a power he’d likely ascribe to something high above. His arm shot forward and I felt something wet run down my face, chest, and arms: I had been pelted with at least three or four eggs, their yolks now dripping into waste on the concrete below.
“You should have respected your own!” he yelled at me as I looked up at him with shock and disgust. “You’re dirty!” he shouted again. I stood there a moment longer, trying to take in what had happened: I’d been shunned like a witch by someone too young to even understand the entirety of the argument at hand. Lisa tugged on my arm and I looked away from the boy; we moved once more towards the iron-bar-protected glass door that beckoned us with the freedom of private property.
But something pulled my gaze back once again. A small hand on the end of a long, thin arm reached through the crowd and grabbed the boy by the shoulder, wheeling him back. The boy turned to face his captor, who yelled at him: “That’s fucking bullshit, Mikey; stop it! Where the hell did you get those eggs?” It was Helen.
Mikey took one look at her and smiled broadly, suddenly. “Mom!” he cried, defiant, victorious. “Helen said Hell!”
I saw Mr. and Mrs. Grace coming for Helen and Helen saw them too. Her father’s hand reached towards her as hers had reached towards her little brother. She looked at me, knowing, of course, that we were there for Lisa, who had suddenly and inexplicably started attending our school just days before. Struggling in the crowd, still holding onto Lisa with one hand, I let go of the railing with the other and took off my sunglasses so Helen could see my eyes, see I knew it wasn’t her, see that we both knew there was nothing 100% about what either of us was there for. Then Lisa’s hand was on the door and we were in.
Lisa and I spoke little on the bus ride home, shellshock and the weight of her decision filling up the silence with more importance than could any words. Some mutual understanding, though, urged us to deboard at the stop by the Safeway and drugstore; in the drama of it all, I’d forgotten to use my ten dollar bill. Familiar smells greeted us and made us smile despite ourselves: the same cheapey teen-targeting brands of make-up as before lined the walls and kiosks; the powdery or lotiony testers emitted their chemical-fumed memories of times when something like trying to look a little older mattered.
I held a nail polish tester out towards Lisa—metallic green—and asked, “Hey—want to go for it?” But something new happened: she started to cry.
“I shouldn’t have done that back then,” she said softly. “My parents never even found out that I did that.”
“Oh, Lis,” I said, putting my arm around her, “that’s all in the past now. Besides, we were like twelve! Everyone does idiotic stuff when they’re young.”
She looked up at me and laughed, a bit of the old Lisa coming out in her words: “You calling me an idiot?” she asked.
“Sure am,” I said. “What are friends for, right? We gotta tell it like it is.”
We both started laughing through the tears that had sprung up in both our eyes. Lisa said, “Alright, Dani, let’s get you what you need to knock some shit out of those prissy-ass track team girls.” We linked arms and walked towards Feminine Hygiene, hardening our minds against the accusatory stares we’d receive from condom boxes and babies on diaper packages, ready to laugh at being told how to be hygienic in the many ways the world wanted us to be.
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Erin Lebacqz has fiction published or forthcoming in One Title Magazine and The Rusty Nail, and has contributed to the local weekly paper where she lives in Albuquerque, New Mexico. She has taught English in California and New Mexico for years and continues to enjoy doing so.
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LF #026 © Erin Lebacqz. Published by Little Fiction | Big Truths, October 2012. Images from The Noun Project.
