Ordinary Life (17 page)

“Hello, Anna,” I said. “Today”—here I raised my eyebrows expectantly—“a walk!”

She waited for me to explain. “A walk,” I said, and demonstrated, walking purposefully around in a circle, taking deep breaths and exhaling vigorously. I held out my arm to her invitingly.

“Okay!” She opened the back door to yell something in German to her daughter, who yelled back, “
Gut! Gut
!” and then we were off.

I pointed out and named things for Anna. “Sidewalk,” I said, and patted it with my sneaker. “Sun,” I said, and we both squinted upward. “Tree,” I pointed, and then sprang a pop quiz. “This?” I asked, pointing to the sidewalk.

Anna stopped walking to concentrate. “Zeit. Walk,” she said.

“Good. But
side
. Sidewalk.”

“Okay,” she said agreeably. “Zide. Zidewalk.”

As we neared the end of the block, I saw Artie emerging from
his front door. Oh, this was perfect. I was so good at this. I looked at Anna out of the corner of my eye. She was looking at Artie. This would be too easy.

“Man,” I said casually. Anna nodded. She knew that one. “I
know
that man,” I said. Anna looked at me uncomprehendingly. “Anna and Sarah,” I said, and shook hands with her. I pointed to Artie, and made another shaking motion. “
Artie
and Sarah.”

“
Ja
,” she said. Anna was very smart, I thought proudly. We walked closer, and Artie recognized me and waved.

“Hello, Sarah!” I thought he looked a little nervous, but I was pleased to see that he was wearing his blue cardigan.

“Hi, Artie. I’m just taking a walk with my friend Anna, here. She doesn’t speak English. Remember?”

He nodded to Anna and said to me, “I remember.”

I stood between them to make my introduction. “Artie,” I said, pointing to him. “Anna,” I said, pointing to her. They shook hands, and Anna nodded a few times, smiling. I saw she was blushing a little, and took this as a good sign. Artie was smiling at her.

Then he turned to me and said, “I was just about to go for a walk.”

“I know,” I said. “I see you every day.”

“Yes, well …” He looked at Anna again. “Nice to meet you,” he said, and then, “Welcome to America!”

He walked away. Anna looked at me expectantly. “And now—we walk home,” I said, and turned her around. I thought the meeting had gone very well. I was learning much about making love happen—surely Billy Croucher would be mine by September. I’d seen him riding his bike through the neighborhood three times thus far. Twice he had spoken to me, and one of those times had accepted a Life Saver.

Anna and I passed Kathy O’Connor sulking on her front porch on the way back. I didn’t want her to do anything that would discredit me in Anna’s eyes, and I gave her a friendly wave. “Is that her?” she called out.

“Yes,” I said. “Want to meet her?”

Kathy did her usual hesitating, and then clomped down her steps to come and stand critically before Anna, who smiled at her and extended her hand, saying, “Hello.
Ich Anna
.”

Kathy shrugged and shook Anna’s hand. “I’m Kathy,” she said. “Can’t you speak English?”

Anna looked at me, then back at Kathy. “Zidewalk,” she said.

Kathy snorted, and pointed derisively at me. “
She’s
not an English teacher!”

Anna smiled, thinking she understood. “
Ja
—teacher,” she said fondly.

“What does ‘How do you do?’ mean?” Kathy challenged her. “How about ‘One, two, three’?”

Anna stopped smiling. “Shut up, Kathy,” I said, quietly.

“You haven’t taught her anything. She can’t understand anything. She’s a moron.”

I took Anna’s arm and smiled pleasantly at Kathy. “Okay,” I said. “Good. Good-bye, now.” We began walking.

Kathy stood on the sidewalk watching us go. “You’re so
stu
pid!” she yelled after us. I turned and waved.

“Okay—see you later.”

Back at Anna’s, I decided to open up. “Kathy?” I asked. Anna nodded. “
Stinky
,” I said, holding my nose. “P.U.”

Anna nodded gravely. “
Ja
, P.U.,” she said. “Okay.”

I played alone in the gully the next morning. I caught a grasshopper and stared at him through a crack in my fingers while I held
him in my closed hand. He was frightened, and alternated between struggling desperately and holding extremely still. I felt sorry for him, but I wanted to take in a little more of his fine anatomy before I set him free. When I let him loose, he remained still for a moment, as though stunned by his good fortune. Then he sprang up high, exhilarated, and was gone. I lay down in the grass and opened my eyes wide. Here was a forest, miniature and pliant, and here was I, godlike. I watched ants, serious minded and marching in a row. I heard the complicated sound of whirring insect wings close by, but I couldn’t see what the insect was. I got up to find out and saw a group of three boys not far away. They saw me at the same instant. They laughed when one of them said something I couldn’t quite hear, and then they started toward me.

It didn’t seem like a good situation and I started to run. But I twisted my ankle and fell, and before I could get up again, they were surrounding me. I noticed with surprise that one of them was Billy Croucher. “Hi, Billy,” I said. He didn’t answer. He fiddled with his belt loop and looked away from me. The biggest boy wore a leather wrist band with studs on it. He was sweaty—I could see beads of moisture over his lip. “You know her?” he asked Billy. Billy looked at me, and then at him.

“No,” he said. “I don’t know her.” I thought that none of the boys could be very much older than I was, but there were three of them, and apparently they were together against me. I thought of the grasshopper I’d so recently held in my hands.

The biggest boy spoke. “Okay, take ’em off.”

“Take what off?” I was still on the ground and I wondered if I should get up.

“Your pants!” he said, and the boys behind him snickered and moved restlessly.

I looked at them one at a time. When I came to Billy, he looked straight at me, and I saw nothing in his face that would help me at all. My throat began to hurt. “No,” I said quietly.

“What?” the boy asked.

“No.”

There was a pause, and I knew that he was deciding what to do. In that moment, I remembered something.

A huge dog once nearly bit me in the face, and I’d known the precise moment when he decided to do it. I’d been lying beside him watching him pant, mesmerized by the constant forward and backward motion of his black, sawtooth lips and his seemingly endless production of saliva. He looked at me in a rather friendly, investigative way. But then something crossed his eyes and I saw it; and I moved away just as he growled and lunged forward. I remembered that moment, and I understood that the time to do something was now.

“I live right up there,” I said, pointing to the house nearest the gully.

The ringleader lifted his head and stared up to where I was pointing. “So?” He kicked me softly in the leg.

“So I can yell just one word, and my father will be right down here. He’s home, and he was a German Nazi.”

No one moved.

“I swear to God,” I said. “One yell, and that’s it.”

The ringleader looked at his friends. Then he turned fiercely back to me. “Okay,” he said, in a low voice. “But don’t you ever come back here again!”

I rose up. My ankle hurt badly, and I couldn’t help limping, but I tried to make my back look proud and strong as I walked away. “Don’t you ever come back!” the ringleader called.

I was almost to the top of the gully and I chanced turning around to look at the three of them. “I’ll come back anytime I want,” I said. “
Du bist ein schwein
,” I added. Anna had not reciprocated in vain. “
Schwein!
” I yelled, and then I burst into tears and ran as best I could toward home. They didn’t win, I kept telling myself. They didn’t get your pants off. But that seemed not to matter.

I missed Anna’s lesson that afternoon. I stayed inside. I watched
My Little Margie
and read some fairy tales. I looked at spit under my microscope. Sometime near the end of the afternoon, though, I began to feel bad about not showing up, and I went over to her back porch. She was there, but she was with someone. I got closer and saw that it was Artie. I ran home, went up into my room, lay on the bed, and wept. It hadn’t been a good idea, my matchmaking. I wished I’d never started it. It was dangerous. I went to my window and pressed my mouth to the screen. “Anna!” I yelled.

My mother came into my room with a basket of clean laundry; “What are you doing?” she asked. I turned around guiltily.

“Nothing.”

She put some underwear in my drawer. “Aren’t you going to help Anna today?”

“No,” I said. “She’s busy.”

My mother looked closely at me. “Are you all right?”

“Yes.” I felt stiff all over. Even my tongue felt stiff.

“Okay,” she said doubtfully, and left. I stood at the window and stared over toward Anna’s house, but all I could see was the roof. My heart hung huge inside me.

A week or so later, I read in my microscope use and care booklet that pond water was interesting to view. I took an empty jelly jar
from the cupboard and went to the gully. I stood at the edge, looking to see if anyone else was there. I saw a monarch butterfly and ached to follow him, but it wasn’t safe yet. I waited. After a long time, I ran quickly to the stream and filled the jar. I noticed the tepee was in ill repair, and I wanted to fix it. Instead, I ran home.

After I prepared the slide, I pulled my chair up to the microscope and focused it. I was astounded. Living in the water that I had imagined was crystal clear were forms of life that were disgusting to behold. It came to me that there was no place on earth that was pure. No person, either. In all of us was this mix of things, and the trick was to focus on the better parts. I could feel hope run free in me again, like unblocked circulation.

Carol Conroy returned the next day. I told her about Anna, and I told her about the incident in the gully. “I don’t think we should go there anymore,” I said. “We’ll find another place.”

“Well,
I’m
going,” she said. “I’m going right now. Come on!”

I followed her reluctantly. “What if they come back?”

“They’re only stupid
boys
. I know a curse my mother taught me that could rub them all out.” I followed Carol down the familiar grassy hill to our tepee, which we spent the afternoon fortifying.

I resumed teaching Anna in the afternoons. I brought over my mother’s wedding album and began with “bride” and “groom.” Though Anna covered her mouth and giggled when she understood what the words meant, she repeated them right back to me. Earnestly. Flawlessly.

It is 3:17
A.M
. I am lying in bed looking at the dim outline of packed suitcases lined up neatly against the wall. My husband is snoring. I tap him gently. “Hey, Sam,” I say. Nothing. I shake him.

“Yeah,” he says. Then he begins snoring again. I turn on the bedside light. He squints, holds his arm up over his eyes. “What’s the matter? What happened?”

“Nothing,” I say. “I just … I don’t think we should go.”

He sighs deeply. “We already have tickets. It’s
tomorrow
. We can’t change our minds now—we’ll lose a lot of money!”

I sit up and push my pillows behind me. Sam looks at the clock and winces. “Well, I’m sorry,” I say. “But I can’t sleep. I have to talk about this. You get married so if you can’t sleep you can talk to someone.”

He stares at me with red-rimmed eyes. “Where was that in the vows? If I’d known that, I’d have married JoAnn Anderson. She slept like a log. And when she got anxious, she painted her kitchen.”

“Sam, listen. I’m serious. I know we’ll lose money, but I don’t
want to go. I want to stay home for Christmas. Why can’t we stay home for Christmas?”

“Because you told your parents we’d go there. And because we always go there.”

“Well, not this year.”

“Why not?”

“Oh, come on. What do we talk about every time we come home from there?”

“We decided the
kids
had fun. Remember?”

“Well, I know, but I just decided I don’t want to do it anymore. I don’t want to spend another Christmas worrying about my father’s mood, tiptoeing around him, seeing him glower if something’s not just right, listening to him order my mother around—”

“Kate.”

“What?”

“This is old stuff. Your father’s not going to change.”

“Well, that doesn’t mean I have to endure his behavior.”

“The kids like to go to your parents’. It’s the only time they get to visit them. Your mother would really be disappointed, too.”

“Well, we’re not going.”

Sam reaches over to turn out the light. “Fine, we won’t go.”

I lie still for a while in the dark. Then I say, “All right, fine—we’ll go.”

As we begin our final descent, our son throws up. This is usual. I don’t mind it, except for the part when I have to give the bag to the flight attendant, who acts not kind and professional, but personally offended. I want to say, “Look, he’s a seven-year-old-kid who’s embarrassed enough already. Don’t make him feel worse.” Instead, I always apologize.