My Mother Was Never A Kid (Victoria Martin Trilogy) Read online

  And I dream. Long, involved, endless chasing nightmares. Running-away stories where I hang on to cliff edges, windowsills hundreds of feet above the street, and airplane wings until finally, agonies later, the light of the sun streaming into the room pulls me out and into the warm quiet midday. A second before I open my eyes a thought shoots through my head. Where will I be? And I pray it’ll be in my own bed at home, but even before I look I know I’m not. The feel of the sun on my cheek and the brightness on my eyelids—that doesn’t happen in my room no matter what time it is. My room is in a court and sunlight like this never comes in. So there’s no point in the guessing game, I open my eyes. Sure enough, I’m just where I was when I fell asleep, across the room from Cici, in my mother’s bedroom in 1944. I know I’ll never get home anymore.

  Sixteen

  Just from the feel of it, I can tell it’s afternoon here’s a little white radio clock on the night table between our beds, but it’s facing my mother’s side. I turn it very carefully, avoiding the globs of gum stuck to the top. Obviously this is where my mother sticks her gum before she goes to sleep. That’s not bad except when you play the radio the top gets hot and then it melts down the sides and … ugh. My mother would flip if I did that now. I wish people didn’t have to change so much.

  I’m right, it’s almost three o’clock. I suppose we’ve managed to use up most of the day already. Just as well, it’s sure to be a gross one anyway. I slide out of bed as silently as I can, trying not to wake Cici. But she opens her eyes.

  “It’s okay. I was awake anyway. I just didn’t feel like making it official by getting out of bed. But—well … you can’t go crazy.” And with one swoop she swings her legs up and out and lands standing next to her bed. Then she plops down again on the edge and just sits there, staring at nothing. I try to look very involved in getting dressed. Then, just like that, she snaps out of her trance and says, “I’m calling her. Right now.”

  “Who?”

  “Horseface Davis. And I’m going to do it this minute before I change my mind.” And she bolts out of the room and heads down the hall, I suppose to the phone. While she’s gone I get dressed. Eventually I’m going to have to do something about these clothes. I mean, I can’t wear the same thing every day forever. But where am I going to get the money to buy new ones?

  “I did it. I called her.” Cici has come back into the room, looking pretty deflated.

  “What did she say?”

  “Nothing much, just that she can’t see me till tonight. I’m supposed to be over there at eight thirty. That’s a long wait….”

  “Felicia!” my grandmother calls from downstairs. “Felicia, Victoria, breakfast!”

  “We’re coming right down,” my mother leans out the door and shouts. Then she turns to me and shrugs. “Might as well.” And we go downstairs to the kitchen, where my grandmother is making her super blueberry pancakes. Fabulous! I love them!

  “I hope you like blueberry pancakes,” Cici says, helping me to a couple. “These are really keen.” That word “keen” always makes me want to giggle.

  “Are you kidding? I love them. These are the best I’ve ever had.”

  They both look at me kind of funny because I haven’t even tasted them yet. Little mistake, but easy to wriggle out of. “They have to be because I’ve never had homemade pancakes before. All we have at home are the frozen ones.”

  “Frozen pancakes? I never heard of such a thing.” Now my grandmother is really interested. “Where do you buy them?”

  Here goes nothing. “Actually my father picks them up in a commune in New Jersey.” It’s my policy to tell stories so odd that people can’t find anything to hang a question on. All they can say is a polite “Oh, of course,” and let it drop. That’s just what my grandmother says now. I see from her face that I have to be more careful. They probably think I’m a little strange already—I mean, what with my jeans and clogs. Especially the clogs. I can see my grandmother staring at them, but I’m prepared. If she says anything I’ll tell her they’re orthopedic. In fact, why wait?

  “They’re orthopedic.”

  “I beg your pardon?”

  “My shoes. They’re orthopedic.”

  “Oh, of course.” What’d I tell you.

  “Foreign orthopedic.” I know that’s a little heavy, but I might as well pick up a little sympathy while I’m at it. From the way she shakes her head, I can see that I’m getting some. I finish the pancakes and tell her that they’re sensational, and she gives me two more, and I think she’s beginning to like me a little more. Still, how much can you like one of your daughter’s friends when you only met her a day ago? It’s very hard getting used to not being loved by your own family. Sometimes in the past, I mean the future, I used to think that nobody loved me. Well, now that it’s really happened it’s completely different. I’d never make that mistake again.

  I’m so busy devouring my pancakes I don’t even notice that my mother hasn’t even touched hers. In fact, she’s looking absolutely miserable. When she catches me looking at her, she gives me a tiny smile and then she excuses herself and leaves the kitchen. My grandmother doesn’t say anything, just takes her plate off the table and makes herself busy putting things away. I finish up the last of my pancakes pretty fast and take my plate to the sink.

  “That’s all right, dear,” says my grandmother. “I’ll do that. Why don’t you go upstairs and keep Felicia company? I think she needs someone to talk to.”

  “Sure thing, Mrs. Lyons.” Wow, that’s funny, I mean, calling my grandmother “Mrs. Lyons.” “And thanks for the pancakes—they were the best I’ve ever had.” She smiles and I know I’m making headway.

  I go upstairs and my mother is sitting on her bed sewing her grungy old graduation dress.

  “Hi.” I try to sound casual.

  “Sorry I deserted you, but I guess I’m not so hungry.”

  “Hey, don’t worry about me. Really, I understand.”

  “I knew you would.” And she gives me a nice kind of confidential look. Then, motioning to the dress, she says that she’s just killing time so she thought she might as well try to get the placket in, and just as soon as the words come out of her mouth she remembers that she probably won’t even need the dress and, like it was on fire, she shoves it off her lap.

  “Well, that’s one crummy thing I won’t have to do.”

  “You really think she won’t let you graduate?”

  “Absolutely. When I tell her what I tried to do she’ll probably even expel me.”

  “You think so.”

  She just gulps and shrugs her shoulders.

  “What about Ted? She can’t expel her own kid.”

  “She won’t have to ’cause I’m not going to tell who the other person is.”

  “But he’s such a … pig.”

  “Still, I’m not going to rat on him.”

  “But he doesn’t deserve to get away with it like that.”

  “Maybe not, but I’m not doing it for him, I’m doing it for me.”

  “How come?”

  “It’s just … promise you won’t laugh?”

  I promise absolutely, because I could never laugh at my mother now when she’s in such terrible trouble.

  “Well, you may think this is really jerky after all the crazy things I’ve done, but squealing is against my ethics. For that matter, so’s cheating on a science test.” And she waits for me to laugh or something, but I don’t because I can really understand how she feels. It’s sort of like what happened with me and Liz at the party in Philly. I could have stuck Liz with that joint easy, but I didn’t because it would have been like squealing, and come to think of it, that’s against my ethics too. Maybe I’m a lot more like my mother than I thought. Right now I kind of hope so.

  Anyway, Cici goes on. “Going against your ethics makes it sound like it’s religious or something, but for me it means just not doing things that make you feel ashamed inside.” For a split second there, I thought she was p
utting me on, but I can see she’s not. Talking very seriously like this makes me a little uncomfortable so I don’t make any comment. I just listen. “When you’re little, there’s always someone to take care of things like that, someone to tell you, no, don’t do that. But when you get older, like us, you have to start taking the responsibility yourself. I was still acting like a kid. I suppose I just didn’t realize that it was time to stop being a kid and start growing up.”

  It feels weird hearing her say those things because suddenly she’s hitting pretty close to home. You could say that’s my problem too—I mean all that trouble I’m always getting into in school. So I tell her I think she’s really got it together and that in a funny way she’s helped me too. That seems to make her feel a little better for a while anyway. I feel very close to her now and I can tell she feels the same about me. Maybe my grandmother’s right about responsibility changing you. Cici sounds different already.

  For the next few hours we just sit around the room chatting about all kinds of different things. Mostly we’re both trying to not think about what’s going to happen. I don’t know about my mother, but it doesn’t work for me. All I can think of is that soon it’s going to be eight thirty and we’re going to have to go over to that teacher’s house, and from the sound of her, she’s horrendous. My teacher, Mrs. Serrada, is a horror, but apparently she’s Mary Poppins compared to this gnome. My mother says that Horseface is even meaner in her sewing class than she is in science, if that’s possible. Nothing she loves better than to get some poor schnook up there in front of the whole class and make her cry while she rips out seams that took forever to put in. According to Cici (who I suspect knows from firsthand experience), one crummy little mistake and Horseface practically tears the whole dress apart. Oh, boy, I dread this confrontation. Still, I suppose that’s nothing compared to the consequences. My mother must be worrying about the same thing because right at that moment she turns to me and says, “I’ll never live this down. I’ll always be that freak girl who didn’t graduate. All my friends are going to be in high school and I’ll have nobody to talk to in my class. I’ll be just like Harold.”

  “Hey,” I say, “that’s not true. People forget quickly, you’ll see.” But she doesn’t buy it for a minute and she’s right. They’re going to point her out like she was some kind of weirdo.

  “And then I’ll never be able to go to college. But there’s no college in the whole world that’ll take me with this on my record. My whole life is probably ruined…. I wish … I wish so hard it never happened. How can I stay here and face next year? I just can’t. I can’t face it.” And she squeezes her eyes tight shut for a second and then she says suddenly, “I’ll leave first.”

  “You mean run away?”

  “Right.”

  “But you can’t just take off like that. I mean there’s got to be another way.”

  “There isn’t. Besides, I’ve made up my mind I have to go.”

  “Right now?”

  “Yes.”

  Oh, no. I can’t let her do such a horrendous thing. “Cici, I think you’re making a grotesque mistake.”

  “Look, Victoria, I only told you because you’re my dearest friend and the only person in the whole world I would trust with this kind of secret, but there’s no way you can talk me out of it so don’t even try.”

  “But it’s dangerous.”

  “It doesn’t matter. I told you I made up my mind so let’s not talk about it anymore. Okay?”

  “Sure,” I say. “I didn’t mean to bug you.” But all along I’m thinking that I’m not going to let her run away. No matter what.

  “Forget it. It’s okay.”

  No way! Now I’m really freaking out because I’ve made up my mind too. I’ve got to come up with some way to stop her. I mean she’s my mother and she’s my best friend and I’m not going to stand around doing nothing while she screws up her whole life. Damn it!

  I count to forty-six slowly and then … “Cici?”

  “Yeah?”

  “What about all those things you said—you know, the stuff about not being a kid again?”

  She looks surprised and then annoyed. Considering she’s my only friend in the entire world, I’m probably taking a big chance going at her like this.

  Without even answering me, she grabs down an old suitcase from a shelf in her closet and starts throwing clothes in it.

  “All those things you said to your parents? Just a load of BS, huh?”

  “You know it wasn’t, Victoria, but I … I just can’t go through with it.”

  And the way she looks at me I feel sick to keep pushing her like this, but I have to stop her … any way I can.

  “So instead you take the kid’s way out. Boy, Cici, you’re really too much. Your parents are going to be off the wall when they find out. Don’t you care?”

  “Hey, cut it out!”

  “Plus now they’re going to be stuck with the responsibility of straightening out your problems for the ninety millionth time.”

  Now she’s furious. “What’s it to you, anyway!”

  “A lot. You fooled me like everyone else, only worse because it was like you were talking about me and doing what I should be doing—you know, taking responsibility for myself—and it made sense and I really got sold. Big story, huh?”

  From the way she stares at me, I think maybe I’m beginning to reach her a little.

  “You’re wrong, it wasn’t baloney. I meant it,” she says, “when I said it.”

  “Then, damn it, stick to it.”

  She doesn’t answer, but she’s not packing either.

  “C’mon … I’ll help you. I swear.” I’m practically begging her. “I’ll stick with you every single minute.”

  She just stands there staring at the half-packed suitcase, not moving, as though she’s trying to decide, and then just like that she flips the top closed and shoves it out of the way. Now she looks up at me. There are tears in her eyes, but she’s not crying. “I knew it all along,” she says. “Growing up stinks.”

  And then she smiles at me.

  I hope I did right. But I don’t have much time to worry because suddenly, from nowhere, the scream of a police siren freezes me. Instantly my mother jumps up. Her face snaps into life as she shouts, “It’s an air-raid alarm!”

  “What? An air raid?”

  “Wait here!” she says. “I must turn off the lights downstairs. Be right back.” And she flies out of the room, knocking the stupid test paper off the dresser as she passes.

  “Hey, wait for me!” I shout, but she’s gone. I pick up the test paper and just sit on the bed staring at it and listening to that crazy siren wailing like it was right outside the window.

  Funny, all this fuss about the test and neither of us really even looked at it before. So I look and—you’re not going to believe this, but that creep fooled her. The paper says 1943, but this is 1944 so that’s last year’s test he was trying to sell her. No wonder he was so hot to call it off. I told you there was something fishy about his attitude. He was ripping her off. What a creep! I shove the paper into the secret drawer. Wait till I show Cici.

  “Turn those lights off,” a man’s voice shouts from the street. I look out of the window and everything is dark so he must mean me. I leap to the switch and turn it off. I can’t believe this whole thing. I mean, I keep forgetting we’re at war. I know it’s only a drill, but what if it’s not? A bomb could drop any minute and I’m busy worrying about some dumb test paper. I must get my head together. I just can’t sit here in total darkness on the bed like some kind of jerk waiting to be blown out of the roof. But what should I do? Hide under the bed? Fat lot of good that’ll do.

  “Cici! Cici!” Waste of time trying to shout over those sirens. Well, I’m certainly not going to wait up here. Any jerk knows you’re supposed to go to the basement. At least it’s more like an air-raid shelter down there. Where is my mother? How could she just go off and leave me like this?

  “Cic
i!” Oh boy, my voice is getting screechy. I’m really losing control. “Cici!” I can’t help it, I’m scared, really terrified. I’ve got to find my mother. “Mommy!”

  It’s black in the house and there’s no light coming from the outside so I just feel along the wall until I get to the door of the room. That hall is like the inside of my eyelids, but at least I know where the steps are so I just creep my way along the hall. If those sirens would only stop. I run my fingers along the wall and accidentally hit a small picture, and it slides off the hinge and falls to the floor. Naturally I manage to clump right on it, crunching the glass and snapping the wood frame all in one step. I’m not about to stop for anything now, so I kick it behind me and keep going. I must be near the end of the hall by now, so I walk more carefully, slowly feeling around, making little circles with my foot, hunting around for the beginning of the stairs, I think the railing was on the right, but I don’t remember. And now I can’t find it. It must be farther down the hall. I have to hurry. Even if the planes were right overhead you couldn’t hear them over the sirens.

  “Mommy!” Stupid to call her—she couldn’t possibly hear me. Ohhh, my toes are over nothing, no floor, hurtling me forward. I grab out for the railing, for anything, but there’s nothing but flat wall. My hands slide, my body falls forward and down, and I’m going through the air, banging my shoulders against the sides of the wall, slamming my hands against the steps, sliding down on my palms over the edges of the stairs, knocking, bumping, and then crashing boom against a solid wall with my forehead. Lightning strikes and painful colors push me farther and farther down until I’m spinning, pulling, pushing, then suddenly falling free and easy. Arms far out, flying gently, floating through tingly red soup, lying back and feeling numb, but good, kind of smiley stupid good. We’re hanging there, the red soup and me. Far away I can make out some blue spots slowly swimming around. Blue lima beans? Hello, purple noodles, and way far up at the tippy-top, something white. The top of the pot? The something white is getting bigger and bigger as I get closer. It’s round and spreading and it’s bright and glaring and yellow and I’m heading right for it, and now my head bursts through it and out into the open….