Girl in Reverse (9781442497368) (22 page)

I nod, but Mr. Howard and I both know the truth—it already has.

I sit down. His gaze stays on me, strong and direct. Silence. Tears come, and then this stunning gush of stored-up awfulness out of my mouth. “Lots of the time here I feel like a yellow locker creature. Everybody sidesteps me. I was so dumb, I thought geisha girls were Chinese, for God's sake. The whole world knows I'm adopted. Hard feelings are piling up at home. I've got a rice face. Not once has any guy even shown one ounce of interest in me.” I wave my hand at Elliot's drawing. “And now this!”

I cover my cheeks and sob. Mr. Howard sits. The clock ticks in reverse.

“Are you finished?” he asks finally.

“I guess.”

“So, according to you, Elliot's pretty dumb to like you.”

Silence.

Mr. Howard rubs his whiskers. “Does he have any idea if you like
him
?”

I slump on the stool, shake my head. “I don't know. . . . No! I've never . . .”

“So . . . you've got your guard up. Getting sunk inside can make a person kinda . . .”

“Clammed up,” I say.

“Exactly.” He pats his heart. “It can cut a person off right here.”

We sit quietly for a long moment, then Mr. Howard motions for me to stand up. We face each other. His expression says he is viewing something glorious. He raises an invisible torch in his fist. I know exactly what he's doing—saluting the flame in me.

*  *  *

Friday night. Joy sleeps on the foot of my bed. Why? Mother is in Wichita for the weekend visiting her great-aunt, who is ill again. She did not want to go. She never wants to go there. Ralph says it feels like the house has taken its girdle off for three whole days.
Ahh . . .

The doorbell rings. I check the clock. Almost eight. Ralph nearly knocks himself out racing downstairs to answer it. A male voice
—
then Dad's. My nerves chatter. Stomach somersaults. “Come in.”

Oh, God . . . oh, God . . . Is it Michael Benton?

Ralph yells, “
LILY! 
” loud enough to start the neighborhood dogs barking.

God! My
fathers
are chitchatting.

I cannot go down there. I will climb to the attic and hide under the tarp. Ralph runs upstairs. “Lily! It's the guy, you know, the . . .”

“
Michael Benton! 
” I screech. “Oh, God.” I burst into tears.

Ralph's mouth hangs open. Blink. Blink. “Who? That guy from the museum?”

“Dr. Benton!”

“
No!
Are you crazy? Yes, you are crazy. It's what's-his-name . . . Michelangelo.”

I gasp. I sink onto the edge of my bed, my nerves out of gas.

Elliot.

Ralph raises his eyebrows. “He brought his drawing stuff.”

Elliot sitting in Old Smoky in our living room! Elliot and my father talking. God. What on earth can Elliot be saying? I kick slippers off. Pull socks up. Select loafers. Apply Tangee. Remove Tangee. Pinch. Pat. Lick lips. Descend.

He's three feet taller than my father, or maybe it's his electric hair. “I wasn't sure you'd be home. I came by about the cartoon,” Elliot says.

Dad's expression reads,
Cartoon?

“Wow” cannot work its way out of my mouth. Nothing works its way from my mouth except a silent squeak.

“I have an idea for it,” he says.

Dad does one of his meaningless “ho-ho-ho” laughs. I assume it's supposed to convey a crazy-teenager tone, and for the first time in recorded history I am actually grateful for his filling the moment with something . . . anything.

Ralphie springs into action. “Hey, Dad, I need your help
with this Scout thingy, upstairs, it's a
construction materials
quiz.”

We all know it's a cheat. Ralph to the rescue.

“Have you had your turn for current events yet?” Elliot asks, his hands in his pockets. He is standing in front of a photograph of me holding my newborn brother in a blanket. I have a toothy grin and two huge hair bows that look like crushed antlers.

“No,” I say, remembering I have legs. We walk into the kitchen and sit at the table.

Ralph darts in. “Sorry!” He yanks the freezer open, shakes two Eskimo Pies from a box, and runs out.

“D . . . do you want something? Coke?”

“Coffee would be good.”

Coffee. Coffee . . . of course he'd want the thing I can't . . . Shut up. Just get the percolator and . . . God.
Put coffee scoops in the basket, water, lid, plug in. Pray.

Elliot unloads his newsprint pad onto the kitchen table and slides a paper out. I find the bottle opener, carry my Coke and his coffee mug to the table, and glance down at Neil Bradford's horrible current events cartoon of the Chinese tank crushing the United Nations. “I got it off the bulletin board,” Elliot says.

I stand with a hand over my mouth, my face burning, my eyes shifting between the cartoon and Elliot. I step back. “Why'd you bring this? Is it supposed to be a joke?”

“No! Wait.” He pats the cartoon. “You'll see, Lily. Really!”

I stand, fist around my bottle. Elliot squints at me. Grabs his pencil. “Okay, Lily, that's perfect. Exactly what I need. Now raise the Coke and look up like you're carrying a torch. Turn so I can get your profile, straighten your spine, twist a little, and step forward. Now freeze!”

“What's going on?” I say with my eyes fixed on the Aunt Jemima box on top of the refrigerator.

“Just do it, for God's sake. Please?”

He sketches, rips the page off, and starts over. His whole body is drawing. Elliot and his art locked together, entwined at my kitchen table. Ticking clock. Ralph and Dad laughing upstairs. Refrigerator clicks on, shudders off.

He sits back. Rubs his eyes. Stretches. “Can I see it?” I ask.

“Not yet. Not until it's all finished.” He looks at me, almost smiles, his voice low. “I wish I could draw it in color. Your hair's got gold and auburn tints in it.”

I swipe my head, as if I'll feel it shimmering. Heat rises up my neck. “W—what's this for?”

“You'll see. You'll
know
.” Elliot closes his drawing pad, steps over to me, and tilts my chin up. I am washed through by something—liquid lightning?

Dad or Ralph or a herd of camels chooses this moment to clomp across the ceiling. Elliot looks up, then at me. He
brushes his fingers over my cheeks and lips as if erasing the awful ink marks once and for all. He gathers his supplies. “Good night, Lily Firestone.” And he's out the front door.

*  *  *

I have waved Elliot James good-bye, vowed to never wash my face, and fainted on my bed. If somebody asked me to describe him at this very second, I'd say: totally unpredictable, tall, messy-cute, art genius, awkward but not
that
awkward, and not like anybody else. I used to believe he was pure egomaniac with stuck-up tendencies, but now he's creating something mysterious for me, which is a million times more than I've done for him.

Snap judgments can snap you back.

Elliot James has also temporarily rescued me from obsessing over the other tall art person—Dr. Michael Benton. Even though the phantom has left Kansas City he's everywhere—coming up our front walk in the form of the postman, driving the car beside us at a red light, seated next to Ralph at the barbershop. Crazy, crazy.

Ralph is, of course, saying the inevitable. “So, your weird mood and all . . . is 'cause of Elliot what's-his-name, isn't it?” Or yesterday when I brought him a fresh fish head from the Chows, he popped his face into the space at the top of the attic stairs and said in a fake Chinese accent, “Oh . . . you speak? Hau yu? So glad you return to long-lost brother. Pigeons fussy, worry about honorable sister who
all kissy now. Lowly ignored pigeons need good luck too. You go Chow House? Fishy date? You and honored boyfriend play kissy-kissy egg-roll lip all time now?”

I say good! Let Ralph believe I'm all kissy-moody-whatever. I can't talk to him about Elliot and I am not ready to talk to anyone about the phantom and how I'm exploding inside out.

*  *  *

When Mother got home Dad didn't mention Elliot's visit. I think Ralph gets credit for that move. And my mother is so carefully attended by her kitty godmother, she does not yet detect the secret intruders from my past.

I thumb through my notebook, past my recipe for bird's nest soup and
Jane Eyre
quotes, and find a blank page. I am going to draw my family tree, intruders and all, using an original code of initials Ralph would envy. I start with a branch for infant me born to Michael Benton and Lien Loo. I add some bamboo shoots that look weird and erase them. On another branch I draw toddler me with Evangeline Wilkerson as my mother and my older
sister
Nancy beside me. I leave a bunch of unnamed leaves on this branch for my other Mercy orphan sisters in the dorm. Above Evangeline's initials are two blank branches for her birth mother and father and another official branch for the
mother
who raised her: Sister Immaculata. Next to Evangeline is a leaf named “½” for her currently missing half brother. Another whole branch is for the almost-in-kindergarten
me, adopted daughter of Donald and Vivian. Ralph is beside me. I add our four-legged child, Joy. And on still another branch is high school me with a twig connected to my new Auntie Chow. I'm not sure where the pagan babies I helped adopt in grade school fit, so I draw a bunch of little unidentified, baptized angels, except one I specifically got to name in the third grade: Rita Marie.

I close my notebook, realizing I've left out Mother's great-aunt in Wichita. Oh well. . . .

In my mind I see Michael Benton's ghosty finger with its ghosty wedding ring pointing to an empty spot beside him. I shudder. Enemy intruders on every branch.

April 2, 1951

Dear Dr. Benton,

I will be in the Buddhist temple at 3:45 p.m. on Friday, April 13. I need to retrieve my belonging. You can leave it on the bench by the bodhisattva.

Thank you.

I slip the letter out of Dad's typewriter. No signature. Not even an initial.

Mother drones in my head—
Don't live in reverse.
But my slipper is part of that “reverse,” and I want it back. The thought of Evangeline keeping her word to Gone Mom and saving it for me all these years makes me stand up. Literally.

I write the envelope in care of the Nelson-Atkins
Museum with no return address, stamp it, and walk it to the mailbox before I lose my nerve. Spies and undercover agents and even nuns who plot adoptions must feel the way I do now—just walking down the sidewalk, all nonchalant and simple on the surface.

I listen to the note slide and hit the other letters. Out of my hands it instantly grows to dragon size, exhaling smoke through the slot.

*  *  *

“Where are we going?” I ask Elliot in the car on Friday night.

“Art room.”

He must sleep there, shave, and take baths in the sink.

I have not seen him since our kitchen table encounter. He has picked me up at the bus stop down the block. We follow his flashlight beam from the side street by school to the building. Mist swirls in the cone of light. He shoves the clunky door open. No key needed. It's cold. The light sweeps over a table with lots of candles. Elliot lights a match, lights them, flips though a big newsprint pad, and pulls out a drawing slid between the pages. He smooths it onto the table. Shines his flashlight. I lean down.

It's a cartoon, a takeoff on Neil Bradford's political cartoon. Now I know why Elliot had me pose, pretending to walk with my fist raised. It's drawn in the Chinese style—simple ink strokes on paper. It shows a girl who looks like
me in a crosswalk. There's a tank about to smash her. But instead of demon Chinese soldiers, this tank is packed with kids who are labeled “Wilson High School.” They point machine guns at me. But instead of spraying bullets, the guns spray words—
chink
,
monkey girl
,
Jap
,
slant-eye
,
ching-chong
,
rice girl
,
commie
 . . .

The caption is: “War casualties at home.”

One of Elliot's ink strokes jumps out at me. It is the one that forms my backbone—
straighten your spine, Lily, twist a little, hold up the Coke bottle—
a strong, perfect upward sweep of ink. Other lines capture the swing of my arm and my hair flying back as I march ahead. My other fist is raised as if I hold an invisible victory banner.

It's ingenious. He's twisted the old defeat into a triumph,
my
triumph, with just a few ink marks. I can't talk. I wipe my eyes—afraid they'll drip and smear the drawing. I can't look at Elliot.

“You like it?” he asks, scrutinizing his work. “It took practice to get the feeling, the
force
of you right. You could use it for your current event—you know, twist it on them. . . . It'd take guts to do it.”

I stare at the Lily in the cartoon. Elliot has captured that flame in me—the feeling I had walking out of class that day and when I touched fingers with the bodhisattva and when I adopted Joy.

“It's amazing,” I whisper.

“Here's the old cartoon.” Elliot stuffs into my coat pocket a copy of the original newspaper cutout—or as Mr. Howard now calls it, the cartoon that was the catalyst for my new career as a real person.

He's right. It was the starting point for everything—my detention, my acquaintance with
The Thinker
and the
Girl before a Mirror
and Mr. Howard and Elliot and the bodhisattva and the Chows and Evangeline and even the phantom.