Don't You Trust Me? (11 page)

Helena was one of the elite, a glossy creature from a fashion website. She stared at us with unbelieving eyes as we piled into the back two seats of Brett's car the next Saturday. She leaned over and whispered something into his ear as he turned the key in the ignition, and he laughed. The back two seats listened in resentful silence.

Once we arrived at our target neighborhood and the girls started fanning out to tackle different sections, I thrust a collecting can at Helena.

“Here,” I said. “I know you'll want to help Brett, so—” I pointed to the far end of the street. “You can start all the way down there at the corner and work your way back.”

Her eyes widened. “Me? I wasn't planning—”

“You're a senior, aren't you?” I asked. She nodded. “Have you got your volunteer hours completed?”

Her perfectly made-up face grew sullen. “No,” she admitted.

I went on smiling and holding out the collecting can. After a pause she took it.

“Brett,” she said, raising her voice, “you have to come with me. I'm not doing this alone.”

“I'm sorry,” I said. “We have to optimize our little team. No doubling up. Anyway,” I added as she began to look mutinous, “you are both such great draws, it would be a shame to waste either of you.”

She cocked her head, not understanding.

“Oh, I just mean that Brett is a basketball star, and you, of course, are totally
gorgeous
,” I said. “Naturally anybody would want to give either of
you
a donation. Go up there and sell them on the basketball team! Make them understand why we need money for new uniforms! I'm sure you can do it if you try.”

“Oh.”
She nodded as if this made perfect sense. “Okay, I suppose. Yeah,” she said thoughtfully. “I imagine I could, if I tried.”

I lowered my voice. “If there're any guys home, they're the ones for you to go after. I mean, what guy wouldn't be happy to give, when
you're
asking them? Know what I mean?”

She actually returned my wink, and sashayed down the road with her collecting can front and center.

I had reserved the finest, richest hunting grounds for myself. As the last of my team dispersed, I removed from the van a small bag I'd brought along and fished around inside it.
Let me see. . . .

I slicked my newly shorn hair back with gel and secured it to my head with a tightly bound scarf. Examining myself in a compact mirror, I rubbed a little blue shadow under my eyes and cheekbones and then powdered my face to a sepulchral pallor. My collecting can was labeled with a bland, unspecific agency name. Satisfied, I approached my first house.

“Collecting for cancer? Oh dear, I suppose so,” sighed the lady at the door. “Hang on a minute, let me get my purse.”

I sagged suddenly against the screen door. “Sorry—so sorry! I'm just a little dizzy,” I said.

“Oh, wow! Here, you'd better come in. Are you all right? Sit down, and I'll get you something to drink.” She
deposited me in a chair in her front hall, examining me with a heightened attention as she noted my pale skin and apparently hairless head.

“I'm fine,” I said bravely as she disappeared down the hall toward the back regions. I leaned my head against the wall and rested my hands, palms upward, on my knees. When I heard her padding steps returning, I collapsed like a rag doll.

I timed it exactly. She walked in and looked at me, and for a split second I was bent over and breathing shallowly. Then, apparently becoming aware of her presence, I jerked to attention. I pasted a sickly smile on my face and sat up.

“Oh, thank you! You are so kind.” I took the glass of water from her and drank greedily. I sighed and closed my eyes for a moment. When I opened them, I said, “I shouldn't bother you anymore. Thank you. I'll be fine now.”

“No, indeed,” she said. “You're not well. What agency are you working with? They ought never to have sent you out like this!”

“Oh no, honestly,” I protested, “I'm fine, really I am! It was my idea to come out today. Look, there's the van, down the road. They'd be horrified.
Please
don't tell them. This is so embarrassing! Promise me you won't tell them. See, I feel much better already.” I demonstrated, sitting up tall and smiling.

“Well . . . I suppose.
You do look better. But you ought to take better care of yourself ! Oh, that's right, you were collecting for . . . er, for—”

“It's a general fund, ma'am, for people suffering from cancer—to defray costs getting to the hospital for treatments, and so on. Any small amount will be appreciated.”

“Oh yes, of course. I have my purse right here. Let me see, will fifty dollars be enough?”

Half an hour later I had received three hundred dollars, four glasses of water, and a shot-glassful of brandy. One heavily shawled and turbaned lady gave me twenty dollars. She whipped off her turban to show a bald head. “I've got small cell carcinoma. What have
you
got?”

Never missing a beat, I said, “Oh, I prefer not to discuss it. Sorry, but I'm not comfortable.” I smiled wanly. “
You
look great, though. I hope you're getting better.”

“Don't ever smoke cigarettes, kid,” she said. “Don't
do
it.”

“I won't,” I said.

“Good. No, I suppose you wouldn't. Looks like you got your own problems.” She seemed to want to move on to a detailed discussion of her prognosis, chemotherapy treatments, and doctor visits, so I made my excuses and was about to leave when she shot out a cold, clammy hand and grabbed my arm.

I don't
like being touched by strangers, especially not a sick one. I pulled away. Her face got all mean and slitty-eyed, and she snatched the twenty-dollar bill right out of my hand. I was about ready to haul off and punch her one, when she pointed at my head.

“Next time,” she said, “you'd better tuck
all
your hair under the scarf. Now get out of here and don't come back.”

Uh-oh. I fingered the back of my neck. Sure enough, there was a wisp of blond hair that had escaped the scarf.

“Okay, no problem,” I said, as easy as can be. I left, minus the twenty.

At that point it seemed like I ought to change my focus and switch back to actual charitable fund-raising, preferably a few streets away. This was a difficult moment for me, as I was doing so well, vacuuming tens and twenties and the occasional fifty up and down the street and tucking them into my pocket as soon as I was out of the direct line of sight of the donor. One part of my brain urged me to quit while I was ahead. Besides the ill will of Ms. Small Cell Carcinoma, what would my fellow volunteers think if I returned to the minivan with nothing to show for my afternoon? My status as a fund-raiser would surely drop like a rock, and my popularity would drop with it. Another part of my brain said,
Oh, c'mon! Just one more house for
me
!

Luckily, I spotted Emma walking down the road. If
she were to see me made up like this she would notice, and the cancer lady might tell people about me. I raced to the van, removing the scarf and wiping my face and scalp with a moistened towelette. I grabbed a box I had brought along for food pantry items and cut through somebody's backyard to the street beyond so I'd be out of view of the sicko.

Lugging jars of peanut butter and tuna fish around was nowhere near as much fun, but at least I did get a respectable haul, using my acting and improvisational skills to wheedle big fat checks out of some of the householders. And a few, of course, did hand out cash, which automatically belonged to me, or at least, that's the way I figured it.

Rather to my irritation I discovered that the wealthiest households were
not
necessarily the most generous donors. A few of the richest ones tried to fob me off with a dollar. I accepted these offerings with teary-eyed gratitude, all the while allowing my gaze to wander over the Porsche in the driveway, the Persian rugs, the wide-screen TV, and the fancy antiques. Sometimes this did the trick, sometimes not. There are people out there who have
no
compassion for the disadvantaged.

When I returned to the van with my last box of food, it was packed with donations. My fellow philanthropists were growing tired; we had made a good-size haul for each of the causes, and everyone was feeling much more
satisfied and companionable with one another than we had earlier.

We dropped off the food and checks for the food pantry and then went out for pizza. I managed to sit next to Brett. We talked about reverse lay-ups and left-handed dunks, which apparently have something to do with basketball, and he asked me to come watch him play at the gym after school on Monday. Helena missed this, as she was holding forth to Brooke about the pathetic sum—$27.45—that was the result of her afternoon's efforts. Even the pizza was the way I like it, with lots of meat and no vegetables. And when we paid, everybody else put in six dollars. I slipped my contribution in under the pile—three dollars folded so they looked like six dollars, sticking out from beneath the others. It was just a
little
scam after the major maneuvers of the afternoon, but it put the cherry on the top of the cake for me.

All in all, a good day. I felt something that might even have been a glow of liking for my companions.

ON SUNDAY, BROOKE'S GRANDMOTHER STOPPED
by. She looked older than grandmothers in Los Angeles generally do, which I assumed was because she didn't dye her hair or go to the gym too much. Actually, neither do some of the
abuelas
in my neighborhood, but non-Hispanic white women in Southern California tend to resent the encroachments of old age and invest a lot of time in fighting back.

We were all five seated cozily around the breakfast table with a pot of tea and a plate of cookies, exchanging family news, when it occurred to me how lucky I was. When a woman that Brooke greeted as “Granny” had walked through the door, I hadn't thought of the
possibility that it might have been her
paternal
grandmother, who would presumably have been
my
grandmother as well. Neither of my real grandmothers has ever been especially interested in me, but I understand that some grandmothers spend their golden years doting upon their offspring's offspring, demanding regular visits and photographs and so on. In that case the gig might have been up.

Luckily, this woman was apparently Aunt Antonia's mother, so all was well. Really, it was good that any other possibility had not occurred to me—my air of unconcern was perfectly natural.

“How are your parents, Janelle?” she asked.

I corrected her use of my name and then explained about the problem with my father's job that had cropped up in Brazil, and how my mother had closed the shop (what kind of shop? I wondered) and joined him in the swamp for three months.

“What kind of shop does your mother have, dear?” the nosey old thing wanted to know. “I would think that the fall would be a busy time for many businesses, in the lead-up to the holidays.”

“Oh, she was speaking metaphorically, weren't you, Morgan?” said Aunt Antonia, smiling at me. “It's not really a shop.”

I made a noncommittal noise and took a sip of tea, waiting for somebody else to fill Grandma in.

“Aunt
Jackie is a real estate agent,” said Brooke.
Thank you, Brooke
.

“And quite the go-getter,” said her brother, Uncle Karl. “But the fall and winter are slow times. If Jackie and John are going to take a vacation, they usually do it around then. She knows a few young, hungry agents who are happy to take any calls she does get.”

John, Jackie, and Janelle Johanssen?
Were these people
crazy
? No
wonder
I wanted to change my name.

Grandma then began cross-examining me about the boyfriend from whose embrace I had been so cruelly torn. The other family members bit their lips and looked at one another out of the corners of their eyes, no doubt figuring I would burst into tears, or start throwing the cookies around the room at this tactless probing. I tried to remember what the guy's name was. Oh yeah. Ashton Something.

I folded my hands across one knee and responded, “I am doing well, thank you. I have put that behind me.”

Brooke, her face scrunched up with the agony of recalling how Ashton had done me wrong with that blonde on Facebook, flung herself into the conversational fray. “Granny, guess what? I am learning to ride a horse. Morgan already knows how. She's so good that our instructor wants to train her to jump. Oh, and Morgan is a really, really wonderful fund-raiser for charities. You wouldn't believe how much she has
gotten people to donate. She's absolutely brilliant!”

“My! It seems we have quite the highflyer in our family!” said Grandma. “Morgan, come over here beside me and tell me all about it.”