Life Is Funny That Way

 

 

Life is funny sometimes. A few months ago I was reading through all of the birthday wishes on Facebook, thinking again how nice it is that so many people take the time to say happy birthday on Facebook. 

Yeah, I know, they tell you whose birthday it is and they supply all of the words, in case you don’t have time to think up something clever on your own, or in case it’s someone you only know on FB, rather than as a family member or an in-real-life friend. The internet has made it easy – and sometimes vastly impersonal – to contact people.

I don’t usually single people out for a blog, and I’m not naming names, so I hope this isn’t embarrassing.

The day after my birthday, while I was finishing up thanking people who had left messages on my feed or in my notifications, I noticed what I call a “Facebook email” from a friend. I was surprised by a lot of it, and she seemed a little surprised that we had so much in common politically, socially and even the challenges we’ve faced.

I didn’t know those things about her. She discovered them about me by being on Facebook with me as well as reading my blogs.

A little background. This woman and I were born a day apart in the same hospital. In fact, our mothers were in the same room. I was a preemie, and my mother once told me that her mother said she thought her baby was the smallest she’d ever seen until she saw me. In fact, if I’d been born an hour later, we would have shared the same birthday.

So we’ve kind of known each other since birth. And we were in the same parish, so we saw each other in church on a weekly basis, and then were in school together, I believe for the full 12 years, although we weren’t in many, if any classes together in high school. I’m not even sure if we were in the same class every year in elementary school.

I always considered her my friend, and said hi to her as we were leaving church. We were friendly in elementary school, but we lived a town apart (actually less than a mile apart, but I didn’t know that growing up), so she had friends from her neighborhood. My so-called neighborhood friends were not in my grade, so at recess, I generally did not have friends. 

I did the rounds of the recess yard until I found someone who would let me play with them. If that didn’t happen, I played Jacks by myself or wandered around imagining. I was never me in the recess yard. I was one of my characters.

Since she had her friends, we didn’t often play together at school. It was enough for me knowing that I knew her, and we had our birth “friendship” that somehow always made me feel a connection to her.

When high school ended, I went to Penn State, and she went – wherever it was she went. We lost contact. For me, that happened with most people, although I do have a core of three other people I went to at least part of elementary school and high school with that I’ve generally kept in contact with most of the time since high school graduation. I even went to two of their weddings.

It never seemed strange to me that I didn’t keep in contact with people. Most people thought I was weird or boring or whatever they thought.

I had a friend a year younger that I met in high school. Everyone thought she was my sister. I don’t have any sisters, but even my mother thought this girl looked like she could be my sister. Well, the fake sister moved away at the end of my sophomore year in high school. I was devastated because we had a blast together. I think I was at my funniest when I was around her.

We pledged our undying friendship, like Anne of Green Gables and her bosom friend, Diana, promised to write, and then she moved. We had each other’s addresses. Yet somehow, we never managed to get around to writing. I’ve often wondered what happened to her, and I do think of her often.

And like my “fake sister”, my “birth friend” and I, while not pledging unfailing friendship or promising to write, went our separate ways, and every time there was a class reunion, I’d wonder if she’d be there. I went to most of them.

I only recently discovered how much we had in common. I knew we were both left-handed (I always know which of my friends are left-handed; it’s a lefty thing.). She’s the oldest and only girl in her family, and I think she has two brothers.  I’m the youngest and only girl in my family, and have two brothers. That was pretty much what I knew of our commonalities.

It turns out we both married later (late 30s), never had kids, and we both like big dogs. Apparently we also have some of the same challenges I’ve written about in my blogs in common. It could have acted as a bond between us had we known.

I just never thought people were much interested in me or the things I did.

I don’t know many people who write or are as passionate about writing as I am, so there aren’t many people I can talk with about writing. Most people get bored once you start talking about your characters. After all, according to them, the characters aren’t real. It’s not like them talking about their children. (I suppose they’ve never read The Velveteen Rabbit to know what becoming real really is.)

It made my day to hear someone who, until our reunion in 2023 hadn’t seen me in 50 years, express similar anxieties growing up that I’d had, someone I thought was so together and talented. The idea she expressed, that my writing touched a lot of people was something I never really considered. I don’t think of many of my topics as important.

I always think of myself as being a bit of a nuisance announcing my blog on 3 group pages, my own page and my author page on the chance that a couple of people want to read them. I picture people rolling their eyes and saying, “I wonder what she’s on about this time.”

Yeah, some people may be interested in some of my topics. But I do get worried when the readership numbers drop considerably. I think, oh, did I say something offensive last time? How do I rectify that? Because I get few, if any, comments on my work.

Yes, I try to take into consideration that between Thanksgiving and New Year’s people are busy and just don’t have time to read some silly blog. And I never know what people are behind the readership count.

I always feel like I come off as a bit self-absorbed when I talk about my books and where people can find them. It’s not like I have a real publisher. They’re all self-published, and you won’t find them in bookstores – there are still bookstores, right? 

And I also have to mention my pen name, Bridget McGowan, since you wouldn’t find my books by looking under my given name. So in my defense, I have to let people know about my books if they’re ever going to find them.

I do like talking about my books, though. It isn’t a, “Hey, look at me, I’m some bigshot author,” though, especially since I haven't sold more than 10 of any of them. It’s “Let me tell you about my current best friend.” And that would be the main character of the book.

People look surprised when they ask how many books I have on Amazon and I say 17. I guess they’re expecting me to say one or two. 

The thing is, I’ve written 25. I just don’t have covers for the rest (people who do covers are very expensive, so my husband, Blue Scream of Jeff – read his blogs – has done most of my covers.) I designed two, but he had to do the computer stuff to them, since he won’t teach me how, and I don’t have the program, anyway. So I’m waiting to have covers done for the rest. 

Meanwhile, I’m working on the next novel, with two that I’ve promised to write in mental storage, and another idea in its 5^th month of gestation.

But my birth friend gave me encouragement to keep going, knowing that somehow I’ve touched others with what I had to say. Wow. Who knew?

About books: Love of My Life

 

Many of us like to engage in “what if.” What if someone who was killed in a car crash had decided to wait to leave? What if the alarm hadn’t gone off? What if you’d decided to stop in to a particular restaurant, and the person you needed to make your career a success was there?

What if someone else told the story of your life as they knew it?

Tom Morton is a successful businessman. He has an attractive, successful wife and a teenage daughter who has never given her parents any trouble.

What a change from his formative years!

Tom was the third of three sons. The eldest was trouble from the moment he was born, and the family mainly feels the less said about him, the better. The second son was mentally challenged, and although he ended up doing well enough given his disadvantages, he was not what his parents expected.

So, when Tom came along, was intelligent, and didn’t give anyone a hard time, he was the shining star of the family. Everything seemed to come easily to him, and his parents didn’t look too hard to see if he was exactly what they thought. His mother certainly wouldn’t have listened to anything against her “good” son.

Everything seemed to be going right for him, and it looked like he was headed for a big advance in his career. His boss even brought him along for a meeting with another company they were going to merge with.

The meeting was in the World Trade Center. The date was September 11, 2001.

The story is told by four different women: his teenage daughter, whose last words to him the night before were, “I hate you!” because he refused to let her date someone he and her mother thought was too old for her; his wife, who felt so blessed to be married to such a wonderful man; his mother, whose world revolved around him; and Marty, a friend of his since childhood, who had reconnected with him just before he married, and had stayed in touch, even though they had long ago realized they would not be a good match.

Many people were saved on 9/11 because of “what ifs.” One man was saved because his daughter was ill, and he decided to work from home. A woman’s lived because she couldn’t decide what to wear, and missed her usual train. Another went to work early that day, and left the building a few minutes before the planes hit to go get coffee at a local shop.

The what ifs of this story come because he was never able to contact anyone to let them know whether or not he was all right. His boss managed a call to his wife just before the cell towers came down. He lost the call just as he was about to give her a message about Tom. Tom had left his phone home that day.

What if his boss was about to say Tom wasn’t with him for some reason? What if he’d gone for coffee and was about to return as the jets hit? What if he was on his way up in the elevator and it had just reached the point of the crash, killing him immediately?

The first three women had no way of knowing what became of Tom. All they knew was that he was presumed dead. His wallet was all that was recovered, with the remains of a few burnt bills.

Marty was the  only one who might have known, but whatever she knew, she never told the others.

I’ve always been fascinated by what if ideas. This is a story of what if, and how it affects the lives of four women. It’s a story Tom couldn’t tell because of the events of 9/11.

Mothers and Daughters

 

Mothers and daughters often have an odd relationship.

My mother was an identical twin. I never had any trouble telling them apart. There was something slightly different that I saw in their looks. And their personalities couldn’t have been more different.

My aunt was an extrovert. My mother was an introvert.

They were born in the 1920s, and typical of that era, were born at home, which makes the survival of both a bit amazing. They were the only twins in their grade, and possibly in the school, so everyone made a fuss.

Typical of the times, their mother dressed them alike throughout their childhood. Since they went to Catholic school, their uniforms were more of the same.

When they became teens, my mother was content to continue dressing alike. According to my mother, my aunt wanted to be more independent. She was a size smaller than my mother, so she frequently tried to find outfits in her size that weren’t available in my mother’s size.

I think of my mother as the dependent twin. Her mother didn’t help things. If one wasn’t invited somewhere, the other couldn’t go. Consequently, when she was invited to parties or other outings, my mother thought my aunt was the one people really wanted, and she was only invited so her sister could go.

Because they were always together she didn’t develop much independence.

When it came time for high school, my mother wanted to go to the Catholic high school. My aunt didn’t. But their parents couldn’t afford to send both to Catholic school, and their mother wouldn’t split them up (which would have been a good thing, especially for my mother’s development), so they both attended the public high school, which my mother didn’t particularly like.

My mother’s father was Catholic, but her mother wasn’t. Since the children were raised Catholic, and had been sent to Catholic elementary school, their mother felt she’d fulfilled her obligation.

As was usual at the time, my mother lived at home until she married. She got a job when she finished high school, and dated, like other girls.

One boy was interested in her that her mother wouldn’t allow her to date because he wasn’t Catholic. She told my mother life was difficult enough without having different religions in the family. She spoke from experience.

My mother dated a few different boys, but there was a war on – this was the 1940s – and many went off to the military.

She was thrilled when the cute, “older” boy from the next block down asked her out. He went into the military, too, but was discharged early due to a medical complication, and they were married in 1944, when she promptly left her job and handed her husband all of her money.

I balked when she told me that. When my husband and I married, we didn’t like the way each other did banking, so we kept separate bank accounts in separate banks. Her take on marriage and finance is not mine.

I was the only daughter and the youngest. A preemie born before the advent of the NICU, I wasn’t necessarily expected to live. I suppose tenacity kept me alive.

To say I have a temper is an understatement. I’m of Irish descent and an Aries, and descended from redheads on one side of the family, which gives some indication of just how much temper stereotyping and tradition say I have. I’ve been told The Taming of the Shrew could have been written about me (The main character is also named Catherine), except I’ve never succumbed to being tamed.

Actually, I think the zodiac descriptions are nonsense, and the Irish people I’ve met have been sweet-tempered and lovely, and my ginger relatives were always wonderful when I saw them. Still, I – although not remotely a redhead myself – seem to fit the trifecta stereotype.

It isn’t difficult to imagine the conflicts between my mother and me when I was often forbidden to do the things my brothers were allowed to do for no better reason than I was born female. In fact, most of our conflicts had to do with gender and gender roles.

My mother always strove to make me “ladylike”. My so-called friends in the neighborhood would pick fights with me, and say the most horrendous things to me. I would like to have hurled an expletive or two, given them a litany of their shortcomings, and had nothing more to do with them, preferring solitude to joyless friendships.

But no. According to my mother, I must never stoop to their level. I had to be kind because, how would I feel if someone said that to me?

Excuse me? Someone did!

Consequently, since this was drilled into me since I was a wee, small child, I have never been able to have a face-to-face spoken confrontation with anyone. I choke on the words. Everyone thinks I’m fine with everything, and they can say what they like with impunity.

I’ve long said that this inability of mine was the greatest disservice my mother ever did to me.

But oh, can I write letters that drip daggers and seethe with sarcasm. If you’ve injured me, quake if a letter arrives from me.

But most of these things were the occasional spats mothers and daughters have. My mother and I got along well. She would tell me stories of her childhood, and I would rail against the injustices done to her. I wouldn’t let someone do that to me or tell me I couldn’t go to college. I wouldn’t care if I didn’t have all the best things. And she would tell me things were different then.

Her parents were lucky they didn’t have me as a child. Anyone who knew how adamant I was, even at six, that they weren’t going to make me write with my right hand knows I would have been beaten to a bloody pulp by the 1930s nuns, and refused to submit.

Submit was never part of my vocabulary. Even my mother in the 1960s and ‘70s would often shake her head and say, “What are we going to do with you?” (My fear was that they'd return me to the orphanage. I always believed I was adopted because I didn't look like my brothers -- that is, I wasn't a boy. And I couldn't tap dance, so what good would I be there?  My only knowledge of orphanages was Shirley Temple films.)

One of the few things my mother and I had in common was that we were both born female. She didn’t mind it. I hated it. I always said she wanted a daughter, and she got me, instead.

Another thing we had in common was being introverts.

As a child, I was also shy, but somewhere in high school I think I mostly outgrew that – they’re not the same thing.

I still prefer the idea of a party to actually going to one, and I have to rehearse what I’m going to say when I have to make a telephone call to a stranger. I have to plan on what so say if someone else answers, tells me the person isn’t there, or if I have to leave a message on a machine. It's so much preparation! Texting is a godsend to introverts everywhere.

Dealing with people is exhausting, and I don’t know where my mother found the energy to not only deal with, but actually enjoy three children. She once told me she’d originally wanted five or six kids.

Of course, she couldn’t understand how I could dislike parties and meeting people, yet absolutely love getting up on stage to perform. I told her I only get stage fright at parties. On stage, you’re separated from people, and you know you’re doing the one thing those party  people are afraid to do. On stage, I’m in my element; at a party, especially where I don’t know many people, I have to pretend to be some character and play a part. (And being a writer, I have lots of characters to choose from.)

Attending an all-girls Catholic high school was probably the best academic decision she made for me. Because she was denied that choice, I was denied any other. But it allowed me to flourish scholastically. Socially,  not so much.

Girls were always difficult for me to understand. Growing up, I never knew when they were going to decide they didn’t like me for a day, a week or forever.

High school was a bit easier in that regard. I didn’t have people bullying me for being better at schoolwork than they were, as I had experienced in elementary school. We were separated into academic “tracks”, and I was mostly with the “smarter thans.” Being in the middle range of that group, there was nothing in that regard to bully me for.

I still didn’t have many friends. I always wanted to be popular, but in hindsight, having a lot of friends probably would have been exhausting. That was for the extroverts.

But how was I to ever date if I went to an all-girls school? Oh, yes, there were dances. But I lived a half hour from my school, and my parents wouldn’t let me have the car – although my brothers were allowed to take the car to any and sundry thing they needed to drive to. That was another bone of contention between my mother and me.

“Boys are supposed to drive.”

“But I don’t have a boyfriend because I can’t meet any boys because I can’t get to the dance because you won’t let me use the car.”

While this wasn’t entirely true, it was my argument.

I was in the church guitar group, and there were boys in it. The problem was, the boys I liked were dating other girls. Most of the rest were younger, weren’t interested, or weren’t old enough to drive.

Only through the magic of my mother setting things up with her friends who had sons, as well as a boy in the group who also didn’t have a date to the prom was I able to attend the junior and senior proms. In those days  one wasn’t even allowed to buy tickets to the prom without a date.

“You can’t because you’re (just) a girl,” has never been an acceptable reason for anything in my mind.

Anger combined with the “just a girl” restriction developed a very strong sense of independence in me.

I can’t? Hold my wine. I’ll show you!

I probably accomplished more because I was told I couldn’t than for any other reason.

I stood up to my parents when they threatened to take me out of said Catholic high school halfway through because my father lost his job. Always very private about finances, they wouldn’t go to either the parish priest or the principal of the school to plead hardship for a tuition reduction.

I told my parents that if they tried to pull me out of my school where I knew everyone to put me in a public school where I’d have to start all over again learning my way around, and have no friends halfway through high school, I’d go myself and tell the priest and the principal about the situation they were trying to keep private.

They were horrified, and threatened, but I was determined. In the end, no one was told. They left me in my school, and my mother got a job to pay my tuition. (At 16, no employers believed I actually was 16, so I couldn’t get a job. Otherwise, I would have paid my own tuition.)

It was surprising when, after graduating from university, she treated me like an adult, not like the child who had better be on her best behavior when we were out or just wait till you got home!

During a 10-year period when I was actually at an appropriate weight for my height, as a joke while looking for a bathing suit, I tried on a bikini and was surprised it fit. My mother was with me at the time, and actually encouraged me to buy it – I didn’t.

When one so-called boyfriend dumped me suddenly – the  vast majority of my friends were married with children by this time – and in frustration and not a few tears, I said, “Why can’t anyone ever love me," she actually cried.

The thing is, my mother was keen on my finding someone and getting married. I wasn’t. I simply didn’t like being dumped, especially with lame excuses or gas lighting.

My mother, the dependent twin, went from her father’s house to my father’s house, and never really learned how to be independent. I was born independent.

I went from my parents’ house to college, where I made my own decisions on a daily basis, back home until I could – sort of – afford an apartment alone.

When my father died, I had moved back home to go back to college for something I could get a job in. My mother transferred her dependence on me. She couldn’t make a major decision without consulting me. If one of my brothers visited, she consulted him instead. I found it quite frustrating that she was never her own advocate. I’ve always bristled somewhat to have to consult with someone on more than a superficial level about anything. I suppose that’s why, in 13 terms of college, I had 11 different roommates. And I even liked some of them.

Relations between my mother and me were generally good as long as there wasn’t a third party involved. Once the third person entered the picture, I felt like I was expected to dissolve, especially if said third person was male. I was, after all, only a girl.

Once I got married – at 39 – my mother was anxious for me to have children. Me, not so much.

I assumed it was probably a foregone conclusion that a first child – no, only child – at 40 wasn’t going to happen, and I proved correct in that.

I’m amused when people sigh and say how sorry they are that I didn’t have any children. I kind of laugh and tell them I’m cool with it. Besides, if God had intended me to have children, I would’ve been born male.

My mother, on the other hand, was decidedly not cool with it.

One day, we got into the whole baby discussion, and her desire for me to have a baby so she “could have grandchildren before I die.”

Don’t ever do that to me. I am not responsible for other people’s burdens.

I told her she had a granddaughter and two step-grandchildren. She somehow thought that didn’t count because they lived at least five hours away, and she never got to see them.

I am not without a sense of humor. I told her if she wanted to have grandchildren so badly, she should’ve had them first.

The whole grandparent thing is lost on me. My mother’s parents died well before I was born, so I never think of them as my grandparents. My father’s parents were it, and we saw them only a couple of times a year. They lived in the city, an hour away by the roads and speed limits of the time. They had so many grandchildren, I don’t think anyone was particularly special. I never had the impression my grandmother was particularly overjoyed to see us.  I didn't actually think she even liked me, although I think my grandfather thought I was okay. I didn’t know them well.

I have fond memories of my grandfather taking us for walks around their part of South Philadelphia.

The thing I remember most about my grandmother was that when I was a teen and into my twenties, every time she saw me she wanted to know if I had a boyfriend yet, and the answer was always no. I don’t remember her ever noticing me when I was a child.

She hadn’t wanted my parents to name me Catherine because none of the Catherines born into the family had ever married. My grandfather’s youngest sister was one, and she was a spinster.

My parents didn’t give any credence to such superstitions. And I, devil that I am, would tell my grandmother that I was simply following family traditions.

My mother was always my staunchest ally, although I didn’t always appreciate the fact. She would defend me against any outsider, even if privately she would tell me I was weird.

Still I think she did the best she could for me, and I did the best I could for her.

A Look Back

 

“Hey, girl, c’mere!”

I looked up from where my four-year-old self was playing in the front yard – the front yard – to see a girl standing outside our side gate. She was bigger than I was – probably five – with brown hair the same shade as dirt. I thought if she got down on the ground grass might get confused and grow out of her head. I thought that was funny, but I didn’t say it because I didn’t want to be mean. Sometimes I said things I thought were okay and got yelled at for being mean.

I had never seen this girl before. I didn’t know her name, and obviously, she didn’t know mine. I didn’t know where she’d come from. She must be a street urchin, I thought. That was what my mother called children who roamed the streets instead of staying in their own yards.

“Girl, c’mere,” she said again.

I obediently walked over to the gate, resting my arm on the top. She didn’t smell, but she looked like she needed a bath, anyway.

“Can I come in to play?” she asked.

“No,” I said. “I’m not allowed to let anyone in.”

She pinched me! I didn’t even know that word.

“Now can I come in?” Was she serious?

“No. I’m not allowed to let anyone in,” I repeated, thinking maybe she was stupid.

She pinched me again, and I ran into the house to tell my mother. She ran out and chased the girl to the end of our property, and told her to go home and leave her little girl alone.

Go home? This little girl had a home? I always thought urchin and orphan were the same thing. I imagined a truck coming down the street to collect all of the urchins when the street lights came on to take them back to the orphanage.

But the girl wasn’t an orphan. My mother even knew her name. She lived on the next block. But, my mother said, she was too old to play with me – she really was five – and my mother didn’t like the fact that her parents let her “run wild.”

Apparently, sometime later, one of her parents came over to complain about my mother chasing their daughter. My mother made no bones about what she thought of their daughter pinching me when I was only doing what she had told me to do.

The girl’s name was Veronica, and she became my nemesis a few years later when I started school, and she was in first grade for the second time.

Why I was in the front yard is a mystery. The sandbox, swings, and sliding board – and in summer, the little swimming pool – were in the back yard. That was where children played. Only on summer evenings, when my parents sat out in the front and my two older brothers and I dashed around catching lightning bugs in jars were we allowed in the front yard. And then my mother admonished us to keep our voices down so we wouldn’t bother the neighbors. Once the street lights came on, we had to set the lightning bugs free and go inside to wash out the jars and wash the ick smell of lightning bugs off our hands.

We lived on the corner. The high telephone pole with the street light on it was on our corner. Just before it was the stop sign. That was the big red circle with a lot of corners on it and painted letters. I didn’t know how to read, but I knew my letters – you had to to sing the alphabet song, although I thought elemeno was one letter.

The letters on the sign danced around when I looked at them. They were P-O-T-S or P-O-S-T or S-P-O-T or T-O-P-S or S-T-O-P. It was always different, but it meant stop. 

I always thought that was the most likely place the man in the big black car would pull up someday and say, “Hey little girl do you want some candy?” I would shout, “No!” and run into the house. But he never showed up

I had two older brothers, Eddie and Robbie. They had friends who lived across the street, Bobby and Jimmy, and they had a little sister, Nancy. She was still a baby, maybe two years old. That was the natural order: two boys and a girl. Sometimes when my mother went across the street to have coffee with Bobby and Jimmy’s mother and watch her smoke cigarettes, I was allowed to play with Nancy.

I don’t remember what we played, but she had toys I didn’t have, like blocks and rattles and a jack-in-the-box. Her toys were easy to play with. You could pretend they were all kinds of things until she took them away from you.

I knew about real names and nicknames, although I could never figure out what Nancy’s real name was. Nancy must be a nickname, since that’s what everyone called her. My brother, Robbie’s real name was Robert, so I thought Nancy’s brother, Bobby’s real name must be Bobert. But everyone laughed when I said that.

Several of my aunts and uncles – the real ones, not the neighbors we called aunt and uncle – had lots of children, and when they did, the first one was often a girl. I used to think that was so sad for them to be the oldest and a girl. If they didn’t have older brothers, who would teach them how to build snow forts, or catch frogs, or how to find the front and back door of a worm’s house? Who would squish bugs for them so they didn't have to get bug gook on the bottom of their shoes? Who would take them on adventures and pretend things with them or teach them how to climb up the slidey part of the sliding board? No wonder they were so girly!

But if you were only having three children, the first two had to be boys. It was a rule.

Our front yard had two gates, one on the front and one on the side because we lived on a corner. Our front steps and the walkway that led to the front gate, as well as the one to the side gate were made of flagstones that were cemented in place. The stones were all different sizes and shapes. My favorite was a light grey one that was bigger than the others, and roundish, with a hump in the center. It was a little sparkly, too. When I was allowed in the front yard and not catching lightning bugs or playing jacks on the steps, I was usually sitting on my favorite stone and pretending something.

When I was four I didn’t really have any friends. Nancy was still a baby, but I guess she was my friend when I played with her, even if she couldn’t pretend things.

There was also a girl who came with her father when he stopped by for the block collection for church. Her name was Patty, which was one of my favorite names when I was little (my other favorite was Debbie). When she came with her dad, she and I would stand there looking at each other and say hi. She was a couple of years older than I was. I didn’t know then that she had a sister who was my age – and no brothers! I thought of her as one of my friends since I said hi when she came to our house, and I sometimes saw her at church, and said hi to her there. I didn’t know where she lived, so we didn’t play together. My parents did, which I thought was amazing. But they said she lived too far away, and was too much older. I think she might have been six.

My brothers were in school, and had lots of friends. I knew the names of many of them: Jerry, Ricky, Skeeter, Benny, Frankie,  Joey and Glenn. When I was by myself I used to pretend to be those friends, even though I had never met most of them, and I would make up what I thought they were like.

When my brothers were at school or off with their friends, I played by myself. There was so much to do in our back yard I was never bored. Sometimes I would bring my dolls outside and pretend they were my friends. They always wanted to do what I did, and I thought that’s what it was like to have friends.

I wasn’t allowed outside my yard unless I was taking the dolls for a walk. Then I could walk along the side yard between the front and back, but not in the street. (There were no sidewalks in our town.)

A boy named Billy lived across the street. He would play in his yard, and sometimes he talked to me. He was my friend but I used to say he wasn't because I wasn’t allowed to have friends who were boys. I didn’t know why. He wasn’t allowed in the street, either, but sometimes he would run across the street to steal my dolls. That’s all he did; then he’d run back to his yard, so he wasn’t a street urchin. But I wasn’t allowed across the street, so I couldn’t get my dolls back.

Billy liked to take the heads off my dolls, fill them with stones and throw them back across the street. He didn’t actually throw them at me. He wasn’t trying to hit me, just give me back parts of my dolls. Sometimes he wouldn’t give the rest of the doll back, and I’d have to get my mother to make him give them back. She never yelled at him. She knew it was just his way of being friendly. She’d just say, “Come on, Billy, that’s not nice. Give her back her doll.” He wasn’t really mean, so he would – until next time.

One of the best things was when we went downtown to get new clothes. We would be all dressed up, and had to take the train. Before we left for the train station, my mother would say, “We’re going out. You’re to be on your best behavior. If I have to speak to you while we’re out, I won’t do anything then, but just wait till you get home!” She also told me not to contradict her when she told the train conductor how old I was. I knew contradict. It meant be quiet.

Knowing we had to be on our best behavior, I was shocked when I saw other children running around in stores and playing in the clothes racks, or screaming, or touching things they weren’t supposed to. Weren’t they afraid of what would happen when they got home?

But there were so many things to look at in the city, with sidewalks everywhere and buses and yellow taxis, I didn’t think that much about the other children. We were usually only there just before Christmas and just before Easter.

At the end of the day, we’d walk down to where my dad worked, and all the people in the office seemed happy to see us. They told us how big we’d gotten and how nice we looked.

When my dad finished his work for the day, we’d go someplace nice for dinner before going home on the train.

One thing my mother could never understand was the fact that I was convinced I was adopted. One of the children in the neighborhood was adopted, but I was never allowed to talk to him about it because I didn’t know if he knew that, and if he did, if it would hurt his feelings if I mentioned it. But from the time I learned about him, I was sure I was adopted.

I knew about orphanages. I had seen Shirley Temple movies. You got to sing and tap dance if you lived in an orphanage. I thought I might at least have a chance at getting tap dancing lessons in case my parents ever decided to give me back. 

My mother assured me I wasn’t adopted, and asked why I thought I was.

“I don’t look like the boys,” I replied. She looked at me like I was crazy. My brothers and I have a strong family resemblance. But that’s not what I meant. I’d seen them in the bath. I did not look like them.

I never got the tap dancing lessons, and they never gave me back, so I guessed I was supposed to be there.

It wasn’t always easy being four, but it was fun most of the time.

 

 

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.