Phoenix Rising (4 page)

Personally, I think they lifted Mrs. Bordtz's face too far. She could pluck her eyebrows with her teeth
.

Mom bought me a beautiful blue sweater the other day. Just for fun, she said, 'cause she thought I'd like it. I do
!

Lucas has gotten a job in a music store, so he can make money during the day and go broke at night playing free gigs. Dad's not happy about the job. He wants Lucas to go back to college. He has this insane idea that Lucas is going through a phase, and that some morning he'll come down for breakfast in a suit and tie, freshly shaved
.…

I got a C on my math test. Phooey. Or, as Sara Rose would say: Poopoo forever! She was so cute when I was over there the other night. I wonder if I'll have kids someday. That's kind of hard to picture, but I like them
.

Bloomfield gave me a valentine
.

I gave him one, of course, with this drippy poem I'd written, but I didn't think he'd have one for me. It's a little kid's valentine: “Bee mine, honey! You're sweet!” with a real nice note inside. He's different on paper than in person. Softer. He tells me what he couldn't say, i.e., that he likes the color of my hair; it looks warm
.

The other night we had this big discussion about life, sitting in his car in front of the house. Jessie and the folks took turns peeking out the windows until he honked the horn and flashed the lights
.

The moon was down and you could see a million stars. Bloomfield started talking about the universe (big subject) and how crazy it is to believe in God; life is just a freak accident and you might as well make the best of it, etc
.

Then he asked did I believe in God, and I felt kind of embarrassed telling him yes, since I can't explain it. I don't picture God as a guy in a white beard, or some game-show host awarding prizes (“Let's tell Helen what she's won!”)

God is the feeling I have sometimes that we're, all of us in the world, connected; part of something large that we're too close to see, like those paintings made up of tiny dots that take shape only at a distance
.

Of course, that all came out crazy, and I expected Bloomfield to argue. But he didn't
.

He kissed me
.

Bloomfield kissed me
.

His lips were softer than I'd expected, smooth and warm and light. Then he pulled back and really looked into my eyes. Then he kissed me again and I kissed him back
.

My stomach was all tight and fluttery
.

His hand caressed my throat, then moved down my blouse.… I'd never let anyone touch me there before. His hands seemed made to fit me
.

Mom would die if she read this
.

I don't know what to think. I'm glad and scared
—
glad because I'd like to kiss him forever, and scared because I don't know what will happen. It seems like boys always try to sleep with you, then as soon as you do, they cross you off the list. (Attention, Mom! I'm not speaking from experience.) I've seen it happen to Bambi. She gets involved with all these guys, then never hears from them again. They pretend they don't know her. How can people be so cruel? And how can she be so stupid? She's so hungry for love, she pretends she's found it
.

Sometimes I could shoot her parents. They've totally screwed her up. They can't be real with her for five seconds. Like, years ago, when she had to have her tonsils out, they told her she was going to a party. They dressed her up and curled her hair. The next thing she knows, she's being strapped to a gurney
.…

Speaking of parties, Bloomfield and I went to Debbi's. Needless to say, her parents were away and the place was a madhouse: cars on the front lawn, the neighbors called the cops, etc. I got a headache from the noise and the cigarette smoke but I wasn't feeling that hot anyway. I'm having the damn chemotherapy again, every other week
.

Bloomfield doesn't know about all that
.

For one thing, there hasn't been much to say. Dr. Yee says things are basically under control and the chemo is just prevention. But I feel like hell when I have it. I stay home from school. Everybody thinks it's because of my periods or some kind of tricky hormonal deal. I'm afraid they'd act different if they knew the truth, start treating me like some fragile flower when I'd rather be a cactus, tough and prickly
.

I feel guilty 'cause I haven't told Bloomfield the truth. We're supposedly having a relationship (or something) and trying to be honest with each other. But I'm scared if I told him it would blow his mind. He doesn't like things to get too heavy
.

Of course, I'll have to tell him eventually, especially if I go bald. (My hair, Bloomfield? Oh, didn't I mention it? I decided to shave my head.) I haven't lost much yet but there's a lot in my brush, and what's left feels like sofa stuffing. Dr. Yee says it might not be a big problem; we'll have to wait and see (I love surprises!); but in the meantime I might consider getting a wig
.

That's out. Some of the kids at the clinic wear wigs and it's so obvious, they might as well have arrows pointing to their heads. Mom says we could find a good one, but I'd still feel like Dolly Parton
.

If it keeps falling out, I'll have to do something. I picture Bloomfield and me at Foothill Park, lying in the cool grass, kissing. Then we rise, and as we walk off into the sunset together, he points to the ground and says, Wait, you forgot your hair
.

I can't stand this
.

At least my face isn't puffed up (yet), so that's something
.

They've got me in group counseling at the clinic, mostly with people my age. Compared to some of them, I'm in really good shape, which makes me feel better and worse, simultaneously. (Whenever Jessie hears the expression “Things could be worse,” she says, “They will be.” You'd think she and Bloomfield would get along, but they don't.)

I like the group therapist. She's young and snappy. She has us doing visualization: Imagine your healthy blood cells conquering the bad ones. Picture Chemo gobbling up a cancer mouse
.

Last week we did this really neat thing. She put on some beautiful guitar music and told us to close our eyes. We were going to take a train trip in our minds. It could be any type of train we chose, brand new and streamlined or a locomotive
.

It was a long, smooth ride. Nancy, the therapist, described the countryside, rolling hills and snow-frosted mountains, pastures purple with lupine
.

At last we stopped by a brilliant blue lake. Can you see it? Nancy said. Now you're diving in. The water is cool. You're diving deep to find a treasure chest. Deeper and deeper. You see it shining on the lake floor. Swimming is as effortless as breathing
.

There, you have it. Lift it up. It's easy. You're swimming toward the surface, toward the sky
.

Now you're back on land. Open your chests, she said, and see what kind of treasure you find
.

One girl found diamonds, rubies, emeralds. One boy found a book he'd written. Another boy found a silver key. One girl found a smiling baby girl. That kid who always wears the baseball cap found a letter, but he wouldn't say what was in it. He cried
.

I had a hard time describing the treasure I was seeing. It crowded all the words from my mind. It was light, golden, glowing light, radiating warmth, growing brighter and brighter
.

Is it scary? asked the therapist, and I said no. The light was coming from me
.

Then we all took our treasures and got back on our trains and rode home again and opened our eyes
.

6

I was sitting on the bench outside the emporium, waiting for Bambi, who is always late.

On her tombstone it will say: The Late Bambi Sue Bordtz.

Someone honked their car horn but I didn't look.

Next, the honker whistled, then shouted, “Hey, blondie!”

If I turned my head every time someone whistled, I'd have to wear a neck brace.

I looked when the honker shouted, “Hey, Monkeyface!”

I knew that voice. Bloomfield was parked by the curb, leaning out his car window with that curdled smile Helen found so irresistible.

“What do you want?” I said.

“It was great talking to you the other night,” Bloomfield said. “Really boosted my ego.”

“Too bad you hung up. I was just getting started.”

He looked away, then back at me again. “What's your problem?” he demanded.

“You know.”

“If I knew, I wouldn't ask.”

“I'm not going to sit here and shout at you!” I shouted.

“Then come over to the car so we can talk.”

“My mother told me to never talk to strangers, and you're as strange as they get.”

“Hey, listen!” Bloomfield sneered, redfaced.

“No, you listen! Just because you feel like a guilty creep, don't expect me to make you feel better! Or to tell you everything's fine when it's not!”

“I don't know what the hell you're talking about!”

“Hi, Bloomfield.” Bambi materialized beside me, in a tiny T-shirt, aiming her braless breasts at Bloomfield's car.

He ignored her. “Listen, Jess, I don't know what your problem is, but don't take it out on me, okay? I called you up the other night because I thought we could be friends.”

“After what you did?”

“What did I do?”

“Forget it! Just forget it!”

“All right! I give up!” He smashed the car door with his fist and pulled into the traffic.

“He seems upset,” Bambi said. “Don't you know how to flirt?”

I stalked inside the crowded mall. It's huge and new and the stores are so ritzy, people dress up to go shopping.

“You're making a big mistake,” Bambi said. “Bloomfield's pretty cute.”

“Don't you ever think about anything but boys?”

“Like what? Oh, wait a minute, Jess. I'm going to get a beauty make-over.”

Bambi slid onto a stool at the Macy's cosmetics counter, where a woman with pink hair waited to transform her.

“You know what your problem is, Jess?” she said, while the woman drew blue moons around her eyes.

“Yeah, I know what my problem is.”

“Your problem is, you're way too critical of guys. You'll always be alone if you don't lighten up. You know what my mother says?”

“Tell me. I must know.” I splashed myself with sample perfumes.

“She says all men are dogs.”

“She's right,” the makeup artist said, ladling on mascara. Bambi's eyes looked like the scene of a tragic forest fire.

“That's what she says. She says all men are dogs.”

“Does she say that about your father, too?” The Bordtzes have been talking divorce since Bambi was born; stuck with each other like an ugly pair of shoes, no good together, no good apart.

“Well, sure,” Bambi said. “He's a perfect example. He completely takes her for granted, like she's always been there and always will be. Which is true. Who'd marry her?”

“He did.”

“Yeah, when she was young and pretty. Now she's old.”

“How old is old?” asked the makeup artist, painting Bambi's mouth a frigid purple.

“I don't know,” Bambi said. “Thirty-eight, I think.”

The woman groaned.

“No, wait. She's forty. Or forty-one.”

The woman gouged Bambi's face with blusher, futilely trying to sculpt hollows in cheeks like candy apples.

“Anyway,” Bambi said, “you should go out with Bloomfield. He's very good-looking.”

“So? He dumped my sister.” Mingled perfumes filled my nose. I had to grab the counter. I felt dizzy. “He dumped her because you told him she had cancer.”

“I didn't mean to,” Bambi whined, fidgeting. The makeup artist wandered off to sharpen an eyebrow pencil. Say the word cancer and everyone splits. Which is ridiculous, because it isn't always fatal.

Did the cancer kill Helen, or was it the cure—all that poison flooding her veins?

“He would've found out anyway,” Bambi insisted. “She was wearing a wig.”

Helen and I picked it out together, trying to make a joke of it, shopping in places with names like Wig World.

“Where's Vincent Price?” Helen had whispered when we walked into the House of Hair. The room was full of foam mannequin heads draped with all kinds of wigs; some as obvious as hats, some as subtle as if they'd been snipped off sleeping children.

“Those are real hair,” the saleswoman told us proudly. We were afraid to ask her whose.

Helen tried on a bunch of wigs. Some of them cracked us up. Helen as a movie star. Helen as president of the P.T.A. The one she bought was long and brown and thick, just like her own hair before it changed.

“Oh boy,” Helen said, gazing at it in the mirror. “Mom will never have to cut my bangs again.”

She'd been so nervous about wearing it to school, afraid it would fall off. It didn't; it fit so snugly she was glad to take it off at night. At home she just wore a bandanna. That bandanna made my brother and dad so nervous they couldn't look her in the eyes.

“It was a good wig,” I told Bambi. “It wasn't all the same color.” Good wigs are shaded, like heads of real hair. “Anyway, it was none of your business.”

“I didn't mean to tell him!” Bambi sniveled. “We were talking and it slipped out. I thought he knew!”

“Well, he didn't. And as soon as he did, he took off.”

That bastard Bloomfield will burn in hell for betraying my sister. When he ran into her at school, he looked away.

I would wake up in the night and hear Helen crying, but I didn't know what to say.

“All done!” announced the makeup artist. “What do you think?”