Gina

 

My mother was a story-teller. She loved to tell us about her childhood, the things her family did that sounded to more modern ears like old-fashioned ways, from back before television: the plays the children enacted, the songs around the piano, and everyone sitting around the dinner table relating the important events of their day.

She liked to tell about her friends, how things were with the children with whom she attended school, and the games they played in the back street after school. They were city children during the depression, making games of the odds and ends they had to work with.

One friend she kept over the years was a woman named Anne. “Aunt Anne” wasn’t a relative. We called anyone who was a close family friend “aunt” or “uncle.” Although they both grew up, married and moved out of the city, Anne to the western side, my mother to the northeastern side, they kept in touch and visited a couple of times a year when births and the day-to-day of suburban life allowed. Oddly, neither of them had learned to drive at that time, so visits required trains, buses and trolleys unless they visited on weekends when their husbands could drive the family to the other’s house.

Anne had five children, four girls and a boy, the boy being the middle child, while my mother had two, a boy and a girl. One of Anne’s girls, Regina – or Gina, as everyone called her – was born the same year I was, our birthdays being a couple of months apart. Birth order and life experiences were not considerations when thinking of a child’s personality in the 1960s. Our mothers were friends, we were the same age and both girls, so there was simply no reason Gina and I would not be friends as well.

I liked going to their house. It was interesting and always noisier than ours. Their house had four bedrooms upstairs, and a larger kitchen than my mother’s. The two oldest girls shared a room, as did the two youngest, and Charlie, their son, had a room of his own.

Their neighborhood had sidewalks, and every week the street cleaner made its way down the road, unlike our rural neighborhood, where the front lawn met the street and the woods were at the end of our block. The bus came through their neighborhood, just like in the city, and there were clothing, grocery and drug stores on the main street that was a few blocks away at the end of their street.

We lived in a three-bedroom house, and had an extra room downstairs that we called a playroom, since our toys were there. In the back yard was a swing set, a sliding board, and an in-ground sandbox my father had put in, complete with a large box at one end that held the trucks, buckets and shovels that were only to be used in the sandbox. 

In summer a two-feet-deep swimming pool was still put up on one side of the yard when I was in the lower grades of elementary school. There was a creek that Gina considered a river to swim in only a few blocks from our house, and blackberries and tadpoles were easy to find.

Gina was pretty: everyone said so. Whenever someone saw a picture of Gina and me, they’d ask who the pretty girl was that I was standing next to. 

Gina had light brown hair and brown eyes that were so light they were almost amber. In summer, she turned a bronze tan, and her hair turned golden. She was a sharp contrast to me, with my pale skin, dark hair and blue eyes. Gina and Suzanne, a study in contrasts.

Most people thought Gina Martin was sweet, kind and loving. They saw that she could be a bit of a scamp at times, but never did anything out of malice.

I thought differently. Oh, she could turn on the charm, even as a small child. And she would enthuse over small wonders.

 “Oh, I love it!” she’d react at the sight of the Christmas decorations in the windows of stores in the city. And who knows? Maybe she did feel that way. I only know that on the only occasion we got together with Gina and her mother in the city, she dashed up to the windows before I could get to them, with outbursts of enthusiasm.  

Since there was little point in my repeating what she’d just said, I remained silent. It wasn’t my style, anyway. I tended to say little and enjoy the sights from my soul. Besides, if I tried to imitate a girly-girl attitude, people would tease me.

Of course, afterwards, when Aunt Anne and Gina had left for their train station, my mother berated me for being sullen. I told her I wasn’t being sullen. I just didn’t want to repeat everything Gina said, and didn’t get a chance to say anything good first.

I did like her. I was always excited to see her when we would visit or, more rarely, when her family came to our house. But there was always something underlying her girly-girl façade, as if she had a secret, and was amused that I never guessed it.

Gina could, indeed be malicious. While she pretended to love having the chance to see me and do things together, she had an agenda. And it was often mean. While I so wanted her to like me, especially to please my mother, Gina didn’t act as if she cared one way or the other if I was there. I was either her foil or in the way, but never truly her friend.

She’d set out to make me look the fool. I often thought it was because my mother would often mention how well I did in school, and while she did all right in school, it was not her forte.

She’d insist on playing some game she knew I hated, and if I refused, she’d complain that I wasn’t being very nice. My mother would then scold me and insist I cooperate.

My mother may actually have wanted me to have friends, but it never felt like it where Gina was concerned. It felt more like punishment for not being the kind of daughter my mother wanted. And Gina was very good at being that sort of girl.

“I always wished you had a sister,” my mother often said. I was glad I didn’t. I’d be expected to live up to the standards of an older sister, to be just like her. I’d have been expected to be a good example to a younger sister. In either case, I would never have been allowed to be myself.

Gina did have sisters. The advantage it gave her was that she learned early how to fight like a girl. I knew how to play the game like my brother, so I never stood a chance against the likes of Gina.

She came to spend a week at our house the summer after we both finished second grade. Having a fellow eight-year-old to play with seemed like a dream. In reality, it felt like a nightmare.

Gina was very steet-wise, but didn't know much about nature.  Her mother apparently thought a week out in a rural area would be a great adventure for her. I don’t think she’d ever been swimming in a creek, a lake or a river, and we went swimming in the creek every weekend in summer that it wasn’t raining. Of course, she saw me as something of a country bumpkin, lacking in sophistication, or whatever eight-year-old girls were supposed to have.

Gina and I would not only have to share a bedroom, but a bed. Because it was only a twin bed, and because Gina still occasionally wet the bed, my mother made it up with a waterproof mattress protector, and each of us sleeping at opposite ends of the bed. Of course, she would have the good pillow and sleep in the usual position, while I would face the foot of the bed with one of the spare pillows.

While I certainly didn’t wet the bed at that age, I did sleep with a few little stuffed animals. I knew Gina would tease me if I did that, so I put them up on a shelf while she was visiting.

On one corner of my dresser was a stuffed animal rabbit who stood up like a person, with a yellow and green striped “tuxedo”. He was in my Easter basket when I was about five. He wasn’t one to take to bed or even play with. He was a fancy stuffed animal who lived on the dresser. 

When my bed was made, a polar bear with a plastic face and plastic suspenders that had “Santa’s Helper” printed on the straps sat on the pillow. There was also a clown made of circles of cloth, and bells at the end of his hands and feet hanging on my bedroom door. This was simply my bedroom décor.

Gina entered my bedroom, looked at the stuffed animals and chuckled.

“You still play with stuffed animals?” she asked.

“No, they’re decorations. They’re not for playing with.”

She immediately picked up the bear and started dancing it in the air. I grabbed it and put it on the bed.

“It isn’t to play with!”

My desk was next to my dresser. On it was a blotter where I put my books when doing my homework, a pen holder with my name on it and a ballpoint quill pen that one of my aunts had given me as a First Communion gift, and a silver-plated piggy bank that had been a christening gift from someone. Along the wall were my few books, with ceramic bookends in the shape of kittens playing on a chair.

In front of my bedroom window was my vanity, with an ornate oval mirror. The curtains on the window were white cotton with tiny ivy leaves running down them. They matched my bedspread. It was as girly a room as my parents could make it, although I still had the blue nursery wallpaper that they had put up before I was born, since they were sure I’d be another boy.

Despite her disdain for the stuffed animals, Gina admired my room. She didn’t have her own room at home, and hers was more Spartan, the curtains plain and older, and the furniture utilitarian rather than designed with a girl in mind.

“You are so lucky! You have all of these nice things, and you don’t have to share with anyone,” she said in a burst of admiration.

Once we’d put her suitcase in my room and she finished looking around, we went downstairs to have lunch.

Shortly after we finished our sandwiches, my two main friends knocked on the door. They knew Gina was coming, and were curious to see what she was like. I introduced her, and thought the four of us would have had a great time playing together. She discovered they had only just finished first grade and decided she didn’t want to play with them. I had to make our apologies saying Gina and I were going to play together for today.

“I can’t believe you play with first graders!” she said after they left. I was surprised that it would make any difference.

“They’re my friends.”

“Why? They’re babies.”

“No, they’re not! Besides all the other girls around are a lot older.” We would have been considered babies to the girls my brother’s age. Paul was 12 at the time.

If we’d walked four or five blocks up the road we could have played with girls from my grade, but I decided at that moment I didn’t want to share my school friends with Gina. If she wanted to play with other girls, she’d have to settle for the ones she considered “babies.”

Gina and I played in the back yard for a while. Then my mother told us we were going to the creek to go swimming.

The creek had a dock, complete with a diving board. People in the area used that to go into the water. On the opposite shore was a sand bar where a stream emptied into the creek. My mother and I often went across while my dad socialized with the other men in the neighborhood, and my brother, if he didn’t come with us, spent time with the other boys from the neighborhood. I could swim across the creek, but my mother always brought a tube with us in case I got tired, or one of us decided to just relax and float. Gina decided to use the tube.

Once we had reached the sand bar, Gina discovered our creek wasn’t just water to swim in, but also a beach to play on. We had a great afternoon and I thought it would be a great week, even if Gina wouldn’t play with my friends.

We had a roast beef for dinner with scalloped potatoes. My mother would let me be picky about vegetables, but meat and potatoes were nothing we could pick over. Gina didn’t like scalloped potatoes, so my mother let her have potato chips, since she wasn’t about to cook something for one person.

“I don’t like scalloped potatoes, either,” I said. “Can I have potato chips?”

“I’m not running a restaurant. You’ll eat what I cooked.”

But apparently for Gina, it was a restaurant. She gave me a sneer that made me want to kick her.

After dinner, we watched TV. My parents decided what the family watched. This was the time of black and white console TVs, one in a house, not a time where people could choose from multiples in different rooms. Gina was being her charming self; family life was undisturbed.

Once we were in our pyjamas and ready for bed, Gina and I got into the bed the way my mother had set it up for us. No sooner had I settled myself than Gina kicked me. Thinking it an accident, I moved my legs. A moment later, she kicked me again.

“Cut it out!” I said.

“Cut what out?”

“Stop kicking me.”

“I’m not kicking you.”

“You did. Twice.”

She kicked me again, so I kicked her back as hard as I could

“Ow!” she shouted.

“What’s going on?” My mother asked, appearing in the doorway.

“Suzanne kicked me,” Gina said.

“Gina kicked me three times. I told her to stop and she didn’t, so I kicked her back.”

“This is to stop right now or you’ll both sleep on the floor. The very idea! I don’t want to hear a sound out of either one of you.”

When my mother used that tone, everyone, even Gina, knew better than to test her.

There was no more kicking, and I soon fell asleep.

Fortunately for all of us, Gina didn’t wet the bed.

The next morning Gina was all sweetness. She dressed, combed her hair and went downstairs as if she lived at our house.

After breakfast we played in the playroom with my dolls until my mother shooed us outside, saying it was too nice a day to stay inside.

Outside, we played a while on the swings and the slide. I decided we should play a pretend game, but Gina didn’t want to play it. Instead, we played in the sand box. I had trucks and shovels and such to play with in the sandbox. Gina didn’t want to play with trucks. She said they were boys’ toys, so she started putting sand in a bucket while I played with my favorite truck, a small green and red dump truck. 

All of a sudden little bits of sand rained down on me. I looked up and Gina laughed from the other side of the sand box, and then tossed a shovel full of sand across at me.

“Stop that!” I said.

“I don’t have to. It’s fun!”

“You wouldn’t like it if I did that to you!”

“But you wouldn’t. You’d get in trouble.”

“So will you if you don’t stop.”

She tossed another shovelful of sand in my direction. I got up and marched to the house.

“Tattletale!” she said, laughing

“Mother, Gina’s throwing sand. I told her to stop. She wouldn’t play the game I wanted to play.”

“You can’t always play only what you want. But there’s to be no throwing sand.”

My mother came out with me.

“Gina, we don’t throw sand here. If you’re going to do that, neither of you will be able to play in the sand box.”

“I’m sorry. I didn’t know.”

“I told you!” I insisted. How could anyone “not know” they weren’t supposed to throw sand? And she thought my friends, Debbie and Patty were babies!

After a while, she asked my mother if we could go to the creek to go swimming. It was Monday, so my father was at work.

“I’m sorry; I have too much to do to take you.”

“Zanne and I could go ourselves. We both know how to swim.”

The idea of two eight-year-olds swimming by themselves in a body of water 12 feet or more deep was a frightening idea to my mother. While she let me go there with Paul when he was in the mood to take me, she knew that he and I swam in an area below the falls that was shallower than where our family went swimming on the weekends.”

“It’s too dangerous,” my mother replied. “Why don’t you two get your bathing suits on and go swimming in the pool?”

Gina made a face, but realizing my mother wouldn’t budge on this, agreed to the pool.

We had tubes to float in for the pool. The pool was really too shallow for us to actually swim in, but it was refreshing and we could have fun floating around. We played games to songs that ended in one person dumping the other off the tube at the end of the song. Gina enjoyed being the dumper, but when it was her turn to be dumped, she sputtered water and declared she didn’t want to play that game anymore.

Gina got out of the pool and started toward the sandbox.

“We’re not allowed to play in the sandbox in bathing suits,” I told her.

“I’m not going to play in the sandbox. I’m just getting a bucket so I can put water in it.”

“No! Sand toys stay in the sandbox and pool toys stay in the pool.”

“You have too many rules around here.”

“Most people around here are smart enough to realize that you don’t mix sand toys with pool toys, and don’t need to be told,” I retorted. She stuck her tongue out at me, and returned to the pool for a while.

Gina was soon bored with the pool, and laid a towel out on the lawn so she could lie in the sun. I couldn’t think of anything more boring, so I stayed in the pool.

“Aren’t you going to going to get a suntan?” she asked.

“No. I don’t get tan,” I replied.

“You’re just being rude,” she said. I ignored her.

When lunchtime arrived, my mother brought our sandwiches out to the picnic table. It was a summer treat at our house to be allowed to eat lunch outside. My mother surprised us with the question of whether or not we wanted chocolate milk instead of regular milk. Chocolate milk was even rarer, since my mother didn’t believe in putting too many sweets in our diet.

We managed to have fun having lunch, pretending we were at a posh restaurant that had an outdoor café. Gina cut her sandwich into four slices instead of two, saying they were finger sandwiches, and rich people ate those. She pretended the chocolate milk was a cocktail. 

After she had finished eating, she went into the house and got a package of candy cigarettes that most of the little corner stores had.  She pretended to smoke her candy cigarette for a while, and then threw it out.

“You’re not going to eat it?” I asked.

“Oh, yuck! Those things taste awful. I only use them to pretend smoke, so I can look sophisticated.”

I wondered where she’d learned a word like “sophisticated.”

We changed out of our bathing suits and played inside for a while after lunch. My mother didn’t let us go back into the pool for an hour after eating.

In addition to my toy furniture – sink/range combination, fridge, table and chairs and doll beds to keep my dolls in – there was also an old player piano on one wall that was only for Paul and me to practice our piano lessons on. It was out of tune and some of the keys didn’t work, but it was not considered a toy, and banging on the keys was not allowed. In the corner at the end of the room where my toys were was a small closet where my mother’s ironing board and iron, feather duster and vacuum were stored.

At the other end of the room was a bay window with a window seat below it. The window seat was really made of two long boxes, one holding board games and the other containing my mother’s sewing machine and other sewing things, and material to make clothes. On either end was a raised cabinet with a drawer. The one nearest the doorway had a lamp on it. The one at the other end had Paul’s fish tank on it.

There were green cushions on the window seat that had once been on a chair and sofa that we’d had when I was a baby. I used the window seat as a hospital bed when I played doctor, or for things like bus seats or seats for a concert I might give to the dolls. It was whatever the imagination could dream.

Gina didn’t seem to have the imagination I did, so I often had to explain what we were doing with the window seat, and she seemed to go along with a look that said she thought I was crazy.

It was nice to have an entire afternoon where Gina didn’t try to cause any drama. I would like to have had some time to myself to do something like sit outside and read, but I knew my mother wouldn’t allow me to abandon Gina – or even expect her to be interested in reading a book.

That night Gina didn’t try to kick me or tease me about the stuffed animals. We went to sleep without much talking beforehand.

The next afternoon we took a walk. We’d had a very pleasant day so far.

Our street ended where it crossed another road that came up from the main thoroughfare into our neighborhood parallel to ours. It then curved and our street met it. The part of the other street that ran parallel to ours bordered on woods that had a sudden, steep drop-off. A fence ran along the length of that part of the road. At the bottom, just where the road started to curve, the fence ended. But there was a hole cut into the fence near the end. The fence was meant to protect the unwary from injury or death, but the local kids still used a steep path by the hole in the fence to travel down to the lower section of the woods.

“What’s over there?” Gina asked, approaching the fence.

“Just the woods. But it drops down.”

“How come there’s a hole in the fence?”

“The kids go through there and climb down. There’s a path, but you have to hang onto the vines so you don’t fall.”

“Where does it go?”

“Down to the paths along the creek.”

“Really? Let’s go.”

“No! My mother said we weren’t allowed to go to the creek.”

“To go swimming. She didn’t say we couldn’t go just to look.”

“Gina!”

“What, are you scared?”

“No. I’ve been down that path lots of times with Paul.”

“So? Let’s go.”

Gina went through the hole and started down the path, her feet skidding a bit as she reached for a thick vine that hung from a tree at the top of the path. As she made her way down, I went through the hole in the fence. If anything happened to her, I’d be in big trouble. I knew the day had gone too well!

We both made it down the path unscathed. Gina saw the water through the undergrowth and headed toward it. She didn’t know the area, and was surprised when we reached the water near the falls. There were huge rocks right at the falls, and she walked onto them.

“This is so neat!” she said.

“Yeah,” I replied. “Now that you’ve seen it, let’s go.”

“Don’t you ever do things that are fun?” she whined.

“I do lots of things that are fun. But we’re not allowed to play around the creek when there’s not an adult around.”

“You’re so boring,” Gina replied. I didn’t tell her that I’d be a lot less bored if I didn’t have to be with her.

“And you’re a pain in the butt!” I said instead.

Gina trudged back toward the path we’d come down.

“Where are you going?” I asked.

“Back.”

“Do you think you can climb back up?” I asked.

The path was much steeper than it looked from the top. I knew how to get up, where the handholds were. But I wasn’t about to tell Gina. If she wanted to go that way, she’d have to figure it out herself. Yes, I was being mean, but four days of doing only what Gina wanted to do, putting up with all the things she did to me just because she could get away with it, as well as my mother yelling at me because she thought I wasn’t being friendly, it was the only way I could get back at her.

Gina made an attempt, but couldn’t figure out how to get up the cliff.

“Now what do we do?” she asked.

“We go this way,” I said, and started down the path toward the dock. 

She didn’t know where I was taking her, and was surprised when we arrived at the dock. There was a long set of cement steps built into the side of the hill that we had to walk up to get to street level. She was out of breath by the time we reached the top.

“You don’t even know how lucky you are, if only you liked to do fun things. I’d be down there all the time if I lived around here.”

“It would get boring if you lived around here,” I said.

We walked back to my house. Neither of us mentioned going near the creek.

After dinner, my parents were sitting in the back yard – we’d had a cookout – while Gina and I ran around catching lightning bugs. Paul and one of his friends were playing some game involving a deck of cards.

“Hey, why don’t we go up into the tree fort?” Gina asked all of the sudden. She hadn’t shown any interest in the tree fort until then, although she knew it was there.

“It’s too dark to go up there now,” my mother said as if she thought Gina was joking. That put an end to whatever plans Gina may have had.

There were two trees at the back of our property that were fairly close to each other. The first was split into two trunks about a foot above the ground, and I always thought it looked like a giant that had been turned upside down and buried in the ground so that only his legs stuck up.

There was only one low branch off this tree. It curved down a little so that if I stood in the sandbox and jumped, I could just about reach it and hang by my hands from it. I wasn’t able to pull myself up onto it the way Paul could.

The other tree was about three feet from the split one. It was a thick, sturdy-looking tree.

Paul and his friends had taken an old picket fence someone was getting rid of to form the forts. The first fort had two thick boards to hold it up. There was one nailed to each side of both of the giant’s legs. The fort itself consisted of fence boards nailed to those two base boards, and a hole had been cut in the center to get through onto the fort.

Originally, Paul had nailed small pieces of wood up one giant leg to act as steps, but they hadn’t lasted, and now we used an old wooden ladder that my dad used to use before he got his big aluminum ladder.

The ladder reached to the top of the branch that stuck out. From there anyone wanting to get into the fort would grab hold of the two base pieces – there was a space between them and the boards near the hole to provide handholds – and step up onto the branch to push through the hole and get into the fort. The fort was really only a platform, since it had no sides.

Once someone was in the fort, there was a branch that came out from the leg closest to the other tree. The branch was about chest height for Paul. There were fence posts nailed onto the top of the branch and also nailed to either side of the other tree. Pickets from the fence were nailed crosswise along those  to form a platform. There was also a rope tied around the leg above the platform so that things could be tied to it to bring them up to the fort or down from it. Paul often shimmied down the rope to get out of the tree.

When the mosquitoes started biting in earnest, we decided to stop catching lightning bugs, and let them out of our jars so we could go inside. We weren’t bug murderers, after all.

It was Thursday night, and when I went to bed that night, I thought the end of the week couldn’t come soon enough. I’d been lucky that the past few days had been somewhat smooth, but I was thoroughly sick of Gina by that point. Being on your best behavior was too much to ask of anyone for that long, and I no longer wanted this phony friend to like me.

I woke up in the middle of the night to use the bathroom. I took my bathrobe and pillow with me when I left the room. When I finished in the bathroom, I went downstairs as quietly as I could. My mother tended to wake easily, but hearing my dad’s snoring, I hoped she wouldn’t hear any slight noise my going downstairs might make.

I lay on the sofa, using my bathrobe as a blanket. It was easy to fall asleep where I had room to move and didn’t have to worry about being kicked. Alone in the living room, I felt like I could breathe for the first time all week. Soon, I was asleep.

My mother woke me when she came downstairs in the morning.

“What are you doing down here?” she asked quietly.

My head hurt because it was so early – my mother tended to get up around five – and I wasn’t ready to be awake.

“I couldn’t stand it anymore. I’ve been around her every second for nearly a week. I just needed to be alone.”

She sat down on the edge of the sofa. “Did you ever think maybe she’s scared?”

“Scared? No. She does mean things. Little things that you don’t catch, like throwing sand at me or complaining when she’s the one who started something. If I suggest anything, she doesn’t want to do it. She’s always trying to get me in trouble. She won’t play with my friends, and I’m afraid they won’t like me anymore by the time she goes home.”

“Don’t be silly!”

“I’m not. It’s what happens in school. Gina’s good at all of the recess things, and I’m not. The kids at school make fun of me because I’m good at the school things. When I ask to play most of the kids tell me the game is crossed. People only act friendly to me when they need help with school work. Then, once they understand it, they leave.”

“Suzanne, I’m sure you’re exaggerating.”

“Please don’t make me go back upstairs to my room,” I said, knowing no matter what I said, my mother would deny that he daughter wasn’t good at making friends.

“All right, just this once,” she said as I lay back down. She brought in a throw blanket, and put it over me.

I was still asleep when Gina came down in the morning. When I woke up and got dressed, I discovered she hadn’t eaten breakfast; she was waiting for me. I tried not to feel annoyed, but I couldn’t help suspecting her actions were meant to make her look good. It made me suspicious about what might come next.

“Why were you sleeping down here?” she asked over cereal.

“I couldn’t fall asleep, and I didn’t want to wake you,” I lied. I couldn’t tell her I couldn’t breathe because she sucked all the air out of the room. I didn’t even have the words then.

“How did you manage to fall asleep on the sofa? I could never do that,” she said. I shrugged.

It was rainy that morning. It had been raining when I woke up in the middle of the night, and was now pouring out. Puddles had formed in every low spot on the ground. If it kept up all day, the creek would be too muddy to swim in the next day.

We played in the playroom most of the day. Gina seemed bored, but there wasn’t much else we could do. I suggested we find books to read, but of course, she wasn’t interested.

She went upstairs to the bathroom, but took an awfully long time. I went up to see if everything was okay, and found her in my room, sitting at my desk. She had my piggy bank open.

“What are you doing?” I demanded, dashing into the room. “That’s mine!”

“I just wanted to see how much money you had in it. I didn’t take any.”

“It’s none of your business!”

I grabbed the bank, put the money back into it and closed it. I looked around for the tiny screw that went into the underneath part, but couldn’t find it.

“Where’s the screw?”

“I don’t know. I dropped it.”

I looked around but didn’t see it. I’d have to look for it later.

“Get out of my room!” I shouted.

She rolled her eyes and left in a huff. When she went downstairs, I put the bank in one of my drawers under my clothes until she was gone. Why couldn’t she just be like normal people, I wondered.

When I came downstairs I was furious and went to find my mother.

“She went through my things. She opened my piggy bank and took the money out. That’s not okay. I don’t care if she is a guest. It’s not okay.”

“Stop shouting. Where is she?” my mother asked.

“Probably in the playroom.”

My mother strode into the playroom. I thought she was finally going to yell at Gina.

“Regina,” my mother said quietly, “did you go into Suzanne’s piggy bank?”

“I didn’t take any money.”

“I didn’t say you did. Did you open it?”

“Yeah.”

“We don’t do things like that here. You don’t go into drawers, piggy banks or anything else without asking.”

“I’m sorry. I just wanted to see how it opened.”

“You’re not to do anything like that again.”

“Yes, Aunt Rose.”

As soon as my mother left the room, Gina turned to me, an angry look on her face.

“You’re such a tattletale. That’s probably why no one likes you. I heard you when you were crying to your mother, telling lies about me.”

“They weren’t lies, and I wasn’t crying.”

“You’re such a baby. No wonder you play with the babies in the neighborhood.”

My mother came back into the room.

“Girls, stop it! Gina you did something wrong. You should know better. And Suzanne, you begged to have Gina visit, and you’ve done nothing but complain since she got here. This has to stop!”

The rain had stopped while Gina was in my room. Now the sun was shining, steam rising from the road surface.

“Why don’t the two of you go outside,” my mother said.

We did as she suggested, since it wasn’t actually a suggestion. Everything outside was wet, so we couldn’t use any of the toys outside. I wandered around the yard trying to figure out what to do. I didn’t want to play with Gina after what she said.

“Hey, we never did go up in the tree fort,” she said. Apparently she could ignore everything that had happened in the house.

I went up first to show Gina how it was done, and moved up to the upper platform. She was very agile, and came up more easily than I did. She didn’t actually use the ladder, but pulled herself up onto the lower branch and climbed up that.

Once on the platform, she stood and looked down at the yard.

“It looks really neat from up here,” she said. “It’s a shame we didn’t come up here before.”

“I come up here a lot. I bring things to play with up here on the rope.”

“Wow, that’s a great idea.”

She was being nice. I wondered why.

We both sat on the upper platform and watched people mowing lawns, riding bikes or walking dogs.

“Do you think we’ll go swimming at the creek tomorrow?” she asked.

“I don’t know. It’s usually muddy after it rains.”

“Let’s take a walk,” she said.

“We can’t go to the creek again.”

“I know,” she said, sliding onto the lower platform.

I moved to the edge of the top platform and turned onto my stomach to slide onto the lower one. As I did so, Gina grabbed one of my shoes and pulled it off.

“Hey! Give that back,” I said, reaching the lower platform.

“Go get it,” she said, and tossed it down into the sandbox.

Then she disappeared through the hole, and climbed along the lower branch monkey-like, grabbed it and lowered herself down, hanging full length from the branch before she dropped onto the ground.

I came through the hole cautiously with only one shoe. As I reached with my foot for the ladder, she pulled it away, and laid it on the ground. Then she picked up my shoe and dashed out of the yard, leaving me stuck in the tree.

I carefully lowered myself onto the branch, straddling it with my body, my arms and legs wrapped around it. I slowly slid to the lowest point on the branch, afraid I’d fall and die. Very slowly, I brought one leg to the same side as the other. Somehow, I positioned myself so I was holding on with my hands and hanging straight down. My feet were only a couple of feet above the ground. I let go and fell to my knees in the wet sand.

I stood up slowly and limped into the house in tears.

“What’s wrong?” my mother asked.

“We were up in the tree fort and she took my shoe. She threw it down and climbed down, then took the ladder away. Then she ran off somewhere with my shoe. I hate her!”

“Don’t do that. Where do you think she might go?

I wanted to say, To hell, I hope, but my mother would’ve slapped my face. “To the creek, probably. The other day she went through the hole in the fence. I had to go with her to make sure she didn’t get hurt.”

“You know I don’t want you down there by yourself.”

“I told her that, but she doesn’t listen. She does what she wants, especially if it’ll get me in trouble. Just like I told you before.”

“What’s going on?” Paul asked coming into the room.

My mother explained the situation.

“Suzie, get another pair of shoes on, and we’ll go look for her.”

“I don’t care about her,” I said.

“Look, I need you to help me.” My mother gave me a look that said I’d better do as Paul asked.

Paul and I headed toward the fence and went through. There were muddy skid marks down the path to the bottom. We went down and dashed along the path to the falls.

She stood on the rocks near the water above the falls. She turned when she heard us, then threw my shoe over the falls. Throwing the shoe knocked her off balance, and she fell into the creek. The rain had swollen the creek, and it flowed quickly out to the middle of the falls. It was deep in that area, the current strong. Gina couldn’t get herself back to the rocks.

“Help!” she screamed.

Paul took off his sandals and shirt, and waded into the water. He swam out to her in a few strokes and grabbed her wrist.

“Get on my back and hold on.”

She did as she was told and he swam with some difficulty to the shore above where the rocks were. He told her to get off his back and pushed her in to the shore. He stood up in the mud and slogged out, his hand on Gina’s back to make sure she didn’t fall back in. Her shoes were full of mud and water.

“How am I going to get back?” she asked once Paul was on dry land. He laughed and got his shirt and sandals back on.

“The same way you got here: Walk.

Paul and I started up the path toward the dock. Gina didn’t immediately follow.

“Aren’t you going to help me? My shoes are full of mud!”

“I’d say that’s your fault,” Paul replied. “And my mother’s going to be mad that you threw Suzie’s shoe away. So you can stand there until you die, or you can come with us.”

I guess she expected Paul to carry her home. He’d had enough of the things she’d done and he saw her throw my shoe over the falls. He was soaked and muddy because of her. I didn’t think he was any happier with her than I was.

When she saw she was getting no pity from either of us, she reluctantly followed, sniffing as she went.

It seemed to take forever for the three of us to reach home. Once we did, I went in the front door. Paul took Gina to the back yard. She had to take her shoes off, and he hosed her and her shoes down before she could go into the house. Then he hosed himself off and came in.

My mother had towels ready for both of them.

Paul got to the bathroom first, and took a shower. When he finished, Gina took her turn.

While Gina was in the shower, my mother called hers, and told her about what had just happened. She listened, her lips compressing.

“No, Anne, it wasn’t just being a scamp. It was vicious. And she completely ruined a pair of Suzanne’s shoes for no reason. Not to mention she could have been killed, all because she didn’t do what she was told. Paul could have been killed trying to get her out of the water. This whole week’s been one thing after another. I think it would be best if you came to get her tomorrow instead of Sunday. You’re all welcome for dinner.”

She listened again, and actually rolled her eyes.

“Whatever you think is best. She’ll be ready. I’ll see you tomorrow.”

“Can I sleep on the sofa tonight?” I asked.

“Yes. I’ll fix it up with a sheet for you,” she said.

She went upstairs and packed Gina’s clothes into her suitcase except for her pyjamas and the outfit she’d laid out for her to wear when she got out of the shower.

I came up to look around the room to make sure my mother didn’t forget anything. I also wanted to make sure Gina didn’t do anything to my things.

When Gina came out of the shower, my mother told her she’d already spoken to Anne, and they were coming to get her tomorrow.

“There was no excuse for what you did. Suzanne let you have your way on everything all week, and all you did was do mean things to her. That’s not the way anyone should behave. You could’ve been killed falling in the creek like that.”

Gina said nothing. I don’t think she was even listening. My mother left the room and Gina dressed She didn’t look at me or say anything. When she finished dressing and combed her hair, she went downstairs and sat on the sofa, watching TV. She stayed there until my father came home and we had dinner.

Gina decided she didn’t like what we were having for dinner – she’d eaten the same thing earlier in the week – and only ate a couple of pieces of bread with butter.

“Suit yourself,” my mother said. “You won’t starve. And you get no dessert and nothing later if you don’t eat dinner.”

Gina said nothing to anyone, and even went to bed early.

In the morning she had breakfast and sat on the sofa with her suitcase beside her, looking like a martyr until her father arrived. No one made her sit that way. She simply refused to have anything to do with any of us.

Mr. Martin – Uncle Ray – apologized for his daughter’s behavior. He said he couldn’t believe it when he heard what she’d done.

The shoes she had on the day before were still wet, as were the clothes, so my mother put them all into a plastic bag. The morning was overcast, so hanging them on the clothesline wouldn’t have done much good.

“Suzanne,” Uncle Ray said, “I’m sorry Gina behaved that way toward you. Maybe once she’s learned some manners, you can come to our house for a visit.”

I stared at him as if he were crazy, but said nothing.

Once Gina and her father were gone – she didn’t even bother to thank my mother, although her father did – my mother looked at me.

“Just remember this week,” she said. “And if you ever ask to go to her house for a week, you’ll know why the answer will be no.”

“I don’t ever want to see Gina again, even for a day,” I said.  “I’d rather have no friends at all than one like Gina.”

“Well, now I know I have the best daughter,” my mother said. That was the gushiest thing she’d ever said.