Girl in Reverse (9781442497368)

For Jack

The Lie

by Lily Firestone

When I was four I swallowed a lie.

It sunk inside me, grew a shell, stayed hidden.

But the lie became restless.

It broke into bits and surfaced so I could not ignore it anymore.

The lie dissolved into truth and

showed up in the mirror.

SISTERS OF MERCY CHILDREN'S HOME KANSAS CITY—1938

“Say it, Lily.”

I bow my head, close my eyes, press my hands together. “Choose me.”

Nancy bends down and whispers, “Again . . . like a magic prayer.”

“Choose me. Please.”

“That's right.” Nancy smiles, tucks my hair behind my ears, smooths my dress.

My good shoes clatter on the steps. I hear Sister Evangeline talking to the lady who wants a girl.

Step. Step.

The lady walks out of the shadow. She has shiny black hair and a bright pink sweater.

“M—Mamá!” I stumble, grab the railing.

“No!” Nancy says. She reaches for me, but I'm free. I run to Mamá, grip her legs.

She wobbles, twirls around, and looks down. Her lips are red. Her eyes are blue and crinkled. She says,
“AH!”
She is
not
Mamá.

Her hair swings. She bends down and lifts me into her arms. I hug her neck. She does not smell like sweet wood. She is flowers.

. . . This time I won't let go.

JANUARY 1951

I hold my face as if it has been dipped in plastic, slide down in my seat, and stare at the doodle—a tornado-shaped ink spiral gouged in the desktop.

Five rows ahead Neil Bradford faces our class in his ROTC uniform. He holds out a cartoon taped to red construction paper that he has brought for current events. His eyes glitter. “See? It's an army tank stuffed with Chinese commies about to crush all these little kids in the crosswalk. Each of the kids wears a name tag of a country in the United Nations.” His lip curls. His gaze skims our class. “Don't be fooled, folks. They're out to get us!”

The Chinese soldiers in the tank are fiends with crossed eyes and nasty bucktoothed grins. They aim their bloody bayonets and machine guns at the poor, helpless United Nations.

He slices me with a glance, pats his chest. “My brother is in Korea right now fighting the Red Chinese.” Neil's voice gets pushy. “The
Evil Empire
is attacking our boys this very minute. Their next target? The U.S. of A.”

Neil pivots and salutes the flag. Kids whoop and applaud. He starts the cartoon around the room.

I tuck my hair behind my ears, remembering last Friday's current events cartoon. It showed a Chinaman's mask over the muzzle of a crazed, razor-toothed bear—the global symbol of Communism.

I glance at Neil's cartoon when it is handed to me. But when I try to pass it to the guy beside me, he yanks his hand back, holds it suspended in midair. He bucks his teeth at me, crosses his eyes, and fake coughs, “Commie.” Neil covers his mouth, as if suppressing his own commie cough.

Another comrade of Neil's sneezes, “Chink!” Somebody snickers. The air sizzles, all eyes on me.
Commie
.
Chink.
My hands fly to my cheeks. My insides buzz. The cartoon falls on the floor with the machine guns aimed right up at me. I glower at Miss Arth seated at her desk—
God!
DO
something.

But she doesn't.

No. Miss Arth is preoccupied with her ear. She grimaces, pulls off a tight earring, and massages her fleshy earlobe. The fat gold glob wobbles on her desktop.

Two rows up Patty Kittle turns to me with an expression full of pity.
Sorry, Lily.
I look from one to the other of my classmates.
Even the nice kids stare right past me out the window.

“But . . . ,” I squeak. “But.”

The Communism-is-contagious guy beside me swivels in his seat, jiggles his hands palms up, silently mimicking—
but . . . but . . . whad?

Neil stuffs his hands in his pockets, smug as can be. Miss Arth removes her other earring. She runs her finger down her grade book, announces the next student's turn, and boom! The attack is over.

I sit back, slapped. Trapped.

My hands and face tingle.

The next thing I know, right in the middle of fifth hour, I am standing on Neil's cartoon, grabbing my books. The janitor, on a stepladder at the back of the room, catches my eye. He salutes me with a lightbulb raised in his fist. Neil hops back as if giving the enemy a wide berth as I square my shoulders and step around him, out the door, and into the empty hall.

I yank my coat from my locker. The school secretary tracks me walking past the front office window. I bump the building door open, run down the front steps, through the crosswalk, and up the street.

Lily Firestone, unhooked from the world.

*  *  *

You did it
—
you did it
—
for once
—
you did the right thing.
The rhythm of the words propels me for blocks, through
Southmoreland Park and across the lawn of the art museum. I sit on a stone wall, clutching my books. It's spitting snow and windy. Cold seeps through my coat, but I feel a little fire in me—a right and true flame. I unload my books, pull my knees up, remembering a different rhythm, a jump rope chant from grade school:
Jap-mon-key-girl-Jap-mon-key-girl.
Kids chanted it during recess after Pearl Harbor was bombed. I didn't know if I was a Jap or not. I didn't know
what
I was. I thought it was supposed to be funny. I hopped and scratched like an ape until something shifted inside and I realized
I
was the joke.

Easy as pie, without trying, I've changed from being a monkey to a commie.

Wars come in all sizes: whole world, playground, classroom, even inside your own skin. My mittens are fists. I wipe my eyes, furious that I didn't protect myself way back then. I should have stood up, fought back. But I didn't. I didn't know how. And now I'm still just me, still trying to ignore it.

. . . until today.

I rock side to side, hot tears on my face, recalling still another rhythm—the cadence of my first mother's steps and how her hair swayed when she carried me around the puddles and scary dogs and steamy gutters filled with the trash of Chinatown.
If we ever get lost from each other, Lily, look for my bright pink sweater. You can always find me.

She was Mamá, my birth mother, who sailed here from China and delivered me in California before the Iron Curtain and the Bamboo Curtain divided the world. After three years she put us on a train to Kansas City, pried my arms from around her neck, lowered me to the floor of the Mercy Children's Home, and walked out. Mamá disappeared and became Gone Mom.

But today she has walked back inside me. Right where I don't want her. “I'm here, where you left me, Mamá, a truant Chinese speck in the middle of America.”

I blot my eyes on my coat sleeve. Squirrels chase around the oak trees, scramble through piles of dead leaves. I look up. Shiver.

I am not alone.

Across the wide sidewalk in front of me sits a huge naked man. He's on a tall, blocky pedestal, with one fist clenched under his chin and a squirrel on his knee. I walk over and squint at the engraving on the smooth stone base below him:

THE THINKER

RODIN

His face looks worried. I circle him, study the curves of his backside, his biceps and massive bare back. He's weathered gray-green metal with rain streaks down his sides and between his thighs and fingers. His whole body is clenched.
He looks like he has muscles in his brain.

Behind him is the Nelson-Atkins Museum of Art, with its rows of columns and steps. I watch a shadow slide slowly across
The Thinker
's jaw and down his chest. It's getting late. I rub his frigid toes. “So, I've gotta go now. But where to? Home or someplace else?”

No reply.

Snow gathers on his eyebrows and the crests of his ears. I guess
The Thinker
is like me today—lots of problems and no answers.

I slump against the bus seat feeling split between the quiet, shrinking Lily Firestone before two o'clock this afternoon and the truant me.

By the time I get home, kids will already be home entertaining their families with the big news:
Lillian Firestone, you know, the adopted Chinese girl at school, ran away.

Or they're saying—
Lily Firestone is a Communist spy.

Or—
Lillian Firestone is missing in action.

Or—
Did you know that the Jap girl is really a chink?

The vice principal, Mr. Thorp, will have called my mother to report me truant, and our whole house will have collapsed.

But, amazingly, Mother is cooking, not crying, when I walk in. Nothing weird, no ripple in the air. I slip into the living room and check the phone—it's working.

No ring from Mr. Thorp all through dinner.

“We had a speaker at our patrol meeting today,” Ralphie says at the table, sneaking a napkin full of too-chewy minute steak into the pocket of his Boy Scout pants. “Jerry Newcomer's uncle talked about being in the air force. He's heading out to Korea.” I picture Neil Bradford's brother straddling a machine gun in a frozen Korean foxhole. “Different guys in our patrol are bringing people to inspire us for our Citizenship in the Nation badge, like someone from their family tree who has done something brave and important.”

My mother perks up. She turns to Dad, mouth open, but he waves her off.

“Vivian, I am not going to bore those Scouts with tales of twenty years in the real estate business. They need inspiration, not the
glory
of my bad-back deferment.” He takes a long sip of his bourbon and water.

My brother shifts in his seat. “Well, do we have anybody else, any relatives I could bring?” He waves his arm toward Mother and then toward me. “Uh, well, I guess Lily wouldn't have . . . uh, anybody . . .”

The radiator gurgles as if it's about to throw up.
Shut up,
Ralph
.

Our mother brushes an invisible crumb off her lip and stands, her voice staccato. “
Our
family tree is charted in the front of the Firestone Bible.” Her apron looks as
if she ironed it after she put it on. She marches to the kitchen with a bowl of Waldorf salad that does not need refilling.

She always refers to our family tree as if it is the source of all life on earth, the only reference we will ever need. Ralph and Dad share an eyelash of a glance. They look just alike, round heads, thick middles, except Ralph's not bald.

My brother shifts on his seat, tilts his head at me—
sorry
—and pokes a fork at the marshmallow bits floating in his dish of peaches. Mother goes upstairs without another word on the messy topic of family roots. If a little Ajax powder can't fix it, she's
gone
.

Our father pats Ralph and me on the shoulders. “I guess you two better handle the dishes tonight.” He heads to the living room, evening paper in hand.

Dinner is done.

I lean across the table. “You need a bar of soap for dessert!”

Ralph makes a saliva bubble, smiles. “I know. Sorry. I'll do 'em.”

I truly feel sorry for Ralphie, though. There's nobody from our family I'd call brave or courageous, except maybe him for bringing this up in the first place.

Cars snake around the traffic circle in front of our house. Headlights wash the dining room ceiling. Dad's radio news filters in from the living room.
One-kiloton nuclear test bomb dropped on Nevada flats . . . the grisly aftermath of Seoul, Korea's capture by the Communists . . . Mao on the move . . .