View From a Kite (20 page)

Read View From a Kite Online

Authors: Maureen Hull

Tags: #Juvenile Fiction, #Historical, #General, #JUV000000, #JUV039030

“There's the one who slops around and unloads a mouthful of spit.”

“And the one who can't control his teeth and ends up cutting your lip.”

“Or chips your teeth with his.”

“Did we get them all?”

“That's five. What's the sixth?”

“Bad breath,” say Christine and Denise together. “The guy who doesn't brush and floss his teeth before every date.”

“Mouthwash,” says Denise. “Mouthwash is crucial.”

“Mark always brushes his teeth,” I insist. “But…he's sort of a cross between tonsil excavation and that spit thing.”

“Too much enthusiasm,” my mentors concur. “Not enough experience.”

“Tell him to halve everything,” says Denise. “Half the push, half the wiggling, half the spit. If that doesn't feel good, tell him to halve it again.”

“How can I do that?” I am indignant. “His feelings will be hurt if I tell him he's doing it wrong.”

“You want to baby his ego, or you want good kissing?”

“Toad in the throat, or dot dot dot?”

I have to think about this. I mull it over all through supper. Mark is giving me the three-fingered wiggle from across the room, which means I'm supposed to meet him after supper in the fourth floor janitor's closet—to which he has stolen a key. The janitor goes home at five and I have come to associate the smell of Lysol with the exploratory meandering of Mark's fingers. Mopping Aunt Edith's floors is never again going to be quite the chore it was.

Denise is staring at me through her water glass. She knows what's on my mind. She's seen Mark wiggling his fingers at me; she figured that one out a while ago.

“If he gets all wounded and pissed off,” she says, “remember, we've still got the A list.”

“You go on and tell him, Gwen,” says Evvie, “so's you can tell me how to do it.” She blushes fiercely.

“So what's Nelson's problem, Evvie?”

“Nothin'. Nelson don't have no problems. He's real good at dot dot dot, Lord he'd go all night if I'd let him, it'd just be nice, you know, if he could sorta slow down. You know, that woodpecker thing. Don't you never tell no one. Don't you never say nothin' to Nelson, he'd kill me for sure. He'd just die, he'd be so embarrassed. He'd run to the woods and never, never come back. Promise me on your mama's grave you won't never say nothin'. “

“Scout's honour, Evvie, not a word.”

Evvie is shocked at herself for having said anything to us. We all swear solemnly never, ever to open our mouths on the subject of Nelson and tongues and woodpeckers. She looks a little dubious, and we have to swear all over again on the heads of our unborn children to never, ever say nothin' to nobody.

For Evvie's sake, I decide, I will do this. I will tell Mark his kissing sucks. For the sake of Evvie's marriage. For women everywhere.

We finish supper and head back to our rooms to swallow the pile of pills the head nurse is passing around. Half a dozen at breakfast, half a dozen at lunch, eight more at suppertime. Horse pills, we call them, because the PAS are big enough to choke a horse. The Ionizaid, of which there are only two per meal, are tiny. From time to time the pile is joined by others: vitamin pills to build you up if they think you look peaked; iron pills if your blood is too pale; cold medication if you've been hanging around the nurses and have caught something. It's nothing to swallow two dozen pills in the course of a day. Every mouthful is one mouthful closer to being discharged.

I brush my teeth, twice, and floss, and brush my hair, and put on some blusher. I think about mascara, but decide against it—it's amazing how that stuff smears. Even the so-called waterproof kind will rub off and leave you with raccoon eyes. I'm nervous. Am I in love with Mark? No. But I like him a lot, and he's funny and makes me laugh, and the way he smells and the feel of his skin make me shiver. I'm trying to be in love with him. If he gets mad I'll be really pissed off at Denise and Christine. I haven't the slightest interest in Denise's A list of losers, I just want Mark. I want him to kiss better. If he kissed better I could really fall in love with him.

He's waiting in the closet and he's impatient because I took so long. He pulls me in and locks the door behind me.

“Mark,” I say, as he starts in. “This is too fast for me. Can you go softer with your tongue?”

“Sure,” he says, matter-of-factly. “How's this?”

“Slower,” I say, and he slows down, down, down, soft and gentle and sensuous. Our tongues are waltzing, sweet and silky, and I am definitely starting to feel both delirious and juicy. So is he, the Lysoled air is positively vibrating with our ragged breathing. Holy Hannah, I'm thinking. Then we have to stop, we really do have to stop, because I'm halfway down his throat, our two sloppy toads are having hysterics together and I'm about to explode. I finally get it, I finally, really get this French kissing stuff, and I have to tell you it's wicked dangerous, it's gorgeous, it's definitely going to lead to all kinds of dot dot dot fun and trouble. I can smell the lavender.

CHAPTER 42

Miz-etc. showed up with a big stack of textbooks for me. Now that they're not going to rearrange my insides and now that I'll be home for good by March (knock on every available piece of wood), they're concerned about my lapsed education. I didn't finish my last year, obviously, and I didn't do anything much all fall to try to catch up, though at one point Miz-etc. did try to suggest academic distraction might take my mind off “things.”

Time to buckle down, she says, although I think January's better buckling weather. I'm not going to get through the last half of last year and all of this year by next June, no matter how bright they think I am. I'm not going back to high school in March, either. I can study at home, at Elizabeth and George's, and write the exams in June. I'll still have one more year after that, but maybe by next September I'll feel like getting on a school bus each morning and sitting in classes with kids a year behind me. Maybe. I'll figure something out. This may just be one of those things where I'm going to have to grit my teeth and endure. I wish now I'd finished last year at the San, but I don't see how I could have. Couldn't hold up a book the first two months I was there, I was such a mess.

So, today I'm starting with history. World History. According to this text, World History seems to begin and end with Europe, with a passing nod to the ancient Egyptians, and a bit on Africa, India, and China as they pertain to the British Army, the acquisition of foreign loot, and the building of canals and trade routes to get more and better loot. Obviously, if I'm going to learn any of the rest of the world's history, it'll have to be after I get out of high school. I've got to pass an exam on this book, which means a lot of memorizing of dates and causes. The War of Blah Blah Blah was fought in eighteen-something-and-something between England and fill-in-the-blank, most likely France. The causes were greed, and national pride, and greed. It ended with the signing of the Treaty of Let's Swap Colonies. Allemande left, all join hands, then do-si-do.

Take a deep breath, Gwen, you're stuck with this. Gird your ravishing loins and buckle down, just as soon as you put the final touches on the newly designed Poetic License Application Form.

W. T. B. A P.? (WANT TO BE A POET?)—FORM 7A

Please check the following where appropriate and provide corroborating documentation. See subsection 21C for a complete list of acceptable documentation. Successful applicants must score a minimum of twelve out of a possible twenty points.

1. Body fat percentage of less than fifteen percent.

__

2. Full head of wild, unruly hair.

__

3. Personal tragedy, categories 1 through 3.*

__

4. Family tragedy, category 1.**

__

5. Loss of either parent before age ten.

__

6. Loss of limb, sight, or hearing.

__

7. Mental illness, categories 1 through 49.***

__

8. Alcoholism or drug addiction (minimum six months' duration).

__

9. Consumption.

__

10 Incarceration in sanatorium and/or mental institution.

__

11. Large, limpid and/or dewy brown or black eyes.

__

12. Possession of hardwood writing desk (minimum four drawers).

__

13. Wardrobe, minimum fifty percent solid black (black mixed with white or other colours is NOT acceptable).

__

14. Allergy to hot cocoa, and/or hysterical reaction to skin on hot milk.

__

15. Paranoia (non-pathological).

__

16. Voyeuristic tendencies.

__

17. Love of Nature (two points if fatuous).

__

18. Facility with one musical instrument (or at least two card tricks).

__

19. Income at or below poverty level.

__

20. Italian grandparent, deceased.****

__

*see subsection 19F
** subsection 27B
*** subsection 34C
**** Please note Death of a Pet has been de-listed. Also, First Sexual Experience After the Age of Fourteen will no longer be considered unless it involves at least three other people, a vat of herring, and/or a nudist colony of nuns. Attach a separate sheet (paper-clipped, NOT stapled) with dates, details and one notarized photograph of all participants, including herring.

CHAPTER 43

I have been perusing
The Cape Breton Book for the Prevention
and Treatment of Tuberculosis
, from 1908, and reading the good bits to Evvie and Denise. Partly for their edification, and partly because I am sick to death of the Hundred Years' War.

“Time does not drag to the wise patient…Rising rather late and retiring early cuts off a day at both ends.”

We showed this one to MacConnell, hoping she'd agree with what is patently obvious, namely that since we're supposed to be resting we shouldn't be disturbed in the morning until ten or so. She told us to forget it, and to be in the dining room for breakfast at seven sharp. She also told us to stop complaining about lukewarm eggs and wet toast, all our own fault because we straggle in at seven-thirty and the kitchen staff can't be expected to keep things hot forever just to please us. She did, however, tell us to feel free to go to bed earlier. She's such an unreasonable woman.

“…the women, of course, find plenty of diversion in plain and fancy needlework.”

I finally finished the second bootie and sent them off. They're almost the same size, but it was a struggle. Now I'm teaching Evvie to make them. She doesn't know how to sew a button on. She says her sisters all can sew, but she was a bad girl and never paid attention when her mother tried to teach her, she was always running off to the woods and skipping out on her chores. She likes animals, she says, which is how she and Nelson ended up working on some old guy's farm. She was taking care of the chickens and cows before she got sick, and Nelson does everything else; the old guy is retired and lives thirty miles down the road, in an apartment in town. In exchange for doing all the work Evvie and Nelson get a small house and all the food they can eat, as long as they grow it themselves. I can't quite figure out what they do for money. Evvie gets some Children's Allowance and she used to pick berries and sell them, and Nelson does repair work on other people's trucks when he's got spare time in the winter, but that seems to be it. They are the poorest people I've ever met. Evvie doesn't read so well, either, or at least she didn't until Denise and I took her on as a project. We had a devil of a time finding anything she'd agree to try, but once we hit upon Mrs. Oikle's lubricious romance magazines she went into overdrive. It's not that she's dumb, or anything, it's just that she really hated school, partly because she didn't have anything to wear except hand-me-downs and stuff from church boxes. She says she'd run to the woods and hide and not go to school at all rather than be seen in a dress she knew was an old one that one of her classmates had worn until their mother put it in the church box for the indigent. So she didn't learn to read very well at school. I am kind of appalled by the way she's taken to those cheesy magazines, but reading is reading, I guess. I read her a Chekhov story the other day and she said she liked it, she said she knew folks that foolish back home.

Anyway, I'm teaching her to knit, and she's teaching me how to plant by the moon, and what weeds aren't really weeds but can be used to cure warts, lumbago, spavins, dropsy, heartache, madness, and walleye.

“‘The institution must send back its patients into the world without having unsettled their minds and made them discontented with the life to which they belong. If we place patients from poor homes among surroundings which, to them, are luxurious we are bound to unfit them for the life to which they must return. Simplicity and economy in sanatorium construction and furnishing will avoid ruining the citizen while curing the individual.' Well,” I say, “that explains a lot.”

“A lot of what?” says Evvie, searching in vain for dropped stitches. “I don't believe I've dropped them at all,” she mutters to Denise, “I do believe them blue ones have chewed up the others.”

“Explains the lack of cashmere bed throws, walnut panelling in the reception rooms, caviar on toast for breakfast. Explains the dearth of champagne and the preponderance of plastic chairs and Formica tables in the dining room. They are acting in our best interests here, making sure we don't develop a taste for the finer things and end up spending the rest of our lives mooning over possessions and foodstuffs we can't have, turning our backs on our lowly, but heavenly ordained, station in life and annoying the upper classes by attempting to break into their society and play with their toys.”

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