The Little Friend (58 page)

All the girls—including the ingrate Lee Ann—burst into laughter.
Do what, Harriet?

Screw
, said Harriet, chillingly.
Screw is a perfectly good word.…

Oh yeah?
Idiotic snickers—they were filthy, all of them, the whole sweaty, menstruating, boy-crazed lot, with their pubic hair and their perspiration problems, winking and kicking each other in the ankles.
Say it again, Harriet? What’s it mean? What’s she got to do?

Zach and Zig had now turned to the subject of beer drinking. “Now tell me this, Zig. Would you drink something if it tasted bad? And was bad for you, too?”

“Phew! No way!”

“Well, believe it or not, that’s what a lot of grown people and even kids do!”

Zig, astonished, surveyed the audience. “Kids here, Boss?”

“Maybe. Because there are always a few really dumb kids who think drinking beer is
cool, man!
” Zach gave the Peace sign. Nervous laughter.

Harriet—who had a headache from sitting in the sun—squinted at a cluster of mosquito bites on her arm. After this assembly (over in ten minutes, thank Heavens) there was forty-five minutes of swimming, then a Bible quiz, then lunch.

Swimming was the only activity Harriet liked or looked forward to. Alone with her heartbeat, she winnowed through the dark, dreamless lake, through the sickly, flickering shafts of sunlight that penetrated the gloom. Near the surface, the water was as warm as bathwater; when she swam deeper, spikes of cold spring water hit her in the face and plumes of powdery murk rolled like green smoke from the plushy mire on the bottom, spiraling with every stroke, every kick.

The girls only got to swim twice a week: Tuesday and Thursday. And she was especially glad that today was Thursday because she was still reeling from the unpleasant surprise
she’d had at Mail Call that morning. A letter from Hely had arrived. When she opened it, she was shocked to see a newspaper clipping from the Alexandria
Eagle
which read EXOTIC REPTILE ATTACKS WOMAN.

There was a letter, too, on blue-lined school paper. “Oooh, is that from your boyfriend?” Dawn snatched the letter away. “
 ‘Hey, Harriet,’
” she read, aloud, to everybody. “
‘What’s happening?’ 
”

The clipping fluttered to the ground. With trembling hands, Harriet grabbed it up and crunched it in a ball and stuffed it in her pocket.

“
 ‘Thought you’d like to see this. Check it out …’
Check what out? What’s that?” Dawn was saying.

Harriet, her hand in her pocket, was clawing the newspaper to shreds.

“It’s in her pocket,” Jada was saying. “She put something in her pocket.”

“Get it! Get it!”

Gleefully, Jada lunged at Harriet and Harriet hit her in the face.

Jada screamed. “Oh my God! She
scratched
me! You scratched me on the eyelid, you little shit!”

“Hey you guys,” someone hissed, “Mel’s gonna hear.” This was Melanie, their wigwam counselor.

“I’m bleeding!” Jada was shrieking. “She tried to put my eye out! Fuck!”

Dawn stood stunned, her frosty lip-glossed mouth hanging open. Harriet took advantage of the confusion to snatch Hely’s letter back from her and jam it in her pocket.

“Look!” said Jada, holding out her hand. On her fingertips, and on her eyelid, was blood—not a lot, but some. “Look what she did to me!”

“You guys shut
up,
” said someone shrilly, “or we’re gonna get a demerit.”

“If we get another one,” said someone else, in an aggrieved voice, “we can’t roast marshmallows with the boys.”

“Yeah, that’s
right
. Shut up.”

Jada—fist drawn theatrically—stepped towards Harriet. “You’d better watch your back, girl,” she said, “you
better—
”

“Shut
up!
Mel’s coming!”

Then the bell had rung for chapel. So Zach and his dummy had saved Harriet, for the moment at least. If Jada decided to tell, she’d get in trouble, but that was nothing new; getting in trouble for fighting was something that Harriet was used to.

What worried her was the clipping. It had been incredibly stupid of Hely to send it. At least no one had seen it; that was the main thing. Apart from the headline, she’d hardly seen it herself; she’d shredded it thoroughly, along with Hely’s letter, and mashed the pieces together in her pocket.

Something, she realized, had changed in the clearing. Zach had stopped talking and all the girls had got very still and quiet all of a sudden. In the silence, a thrill of panic ran through Harriet. She expected the heads to turn all at once, to look at her, but then Zach cleared his throat, and Harriet understood, as if waking from a dream, that the silence wasn’t about her at all, that it was only the prayer. Quickly, she shut her eyes and bowed her head.

————

As soon as the prayer was finished, and the girls stretched and giggled and began to gather in conversational groups (Jada and Dawn and Darci, too, obviously talking about Harriet, arms folded across their chests, hostile stares across the clearing in her direction) Mel (in tennis visor, swipe of zinc oxide down her nose) collared Harriet. “Forget swimming. The Vances want to see you.”

Harriet tried to conceal her dismay.

“Up at the office,” said Mel, and ran her tongue over her braces. She was looking over Harriet’s head—for the glorious Zach, no doubt, worried that he might slip back to the boys’ camp without talking to her.

Harriet nodded and tried to look indifferent. What could they do to her? Make her sit by herself in the wigwam all day?

“Hey,” Mel called after her—she’d already spotted Zach, had a hand up and was threading through the girls towards him—“if the Vances get finished with you before Bible study, just come on out to the tennis court and do drills with the ten o’clock group, okay?”

The pines were dark—a welcome respite from the sun-bleached brightness of “chapel”—and the path through the woods was soft and sticky. Harriet walked with her head down.
That was quick
, she thought. Though Jada was a thug and a bully, Harriet hadn’t figured her for a tattletale.

But who knew? Maybe it was nothing. Maybe Dr. Vance just wanted to drag her off for what he called a “session” (where he repeated a lot of Bible verses about Obedience and then asked if Harriet accepted Jesus as her personal savior). Or maybe he wanted to question her about the
Star Wars
figure. (Two nights before, he had called the whole camp together, boys
and
girls, and screamed at them for an hour because one of them—he said—had stolen a
Star Wars
figure belonging to Brantley, his grunting little kindergarten-aged son.)

Or possibly she had a phone call. The phone was in Dr. Vance’s office. But who would call her? Hely?

Maybe it’s the police
, she thought uneasily,
maybe they found the wagon
. And she tried to push the thought from her mind.

She emerged from the woods, warily. Outside the office, beside the mini-bus, and Dr. Vance’s station wagon, was a car with dealer’s plates—from Dial Chevrolet. Before Harriet had time to wonder what it had to do with her, the door to the office opened with a melodious cascade of wind chimes and out stepped Dr. Vance, followed by Edie.

Harriet was too shocked to move. Edie looked different—wan, subdued—and for a moment Harriet wondered if she was mistaken but no, it was Edie all right: she was just wearing an old pair of eyeglasses that Harriet wasn’t used to, with mannish black frames that were too heavy for her face and made her look pale.

Dr. Vance saw Harriet, and waved: with both arms, as if he were waving from across a crowded stadium. Harriet was reluctant to approach. She had the idea she might be in real trouble, deep trouble—but then Edie saw her too and smiled: and somehow (the glasses, maybe?) it was the old Edie, prehistoric, the Edie of the heart-shaped box, who had whistled and tossed baseballs to Robin under haunted Kodachrome skies.

“Hottentot,” she called.

Dr. Vance stood by with composed benevolence as Harriet—bursting with love at the dear old pet name, seldom used—hurried to her across the graveled clearing; as Edie bobbed down (swift, soldierly) and pecked her on the cheek.

“Yes, maam! Mighty glad to see Grandma!” boomed Dr. Vance, rolling his eyes up, rocking on his heels. He spoke with exorbitant warmth, but also as if he had his mind on other matters.

“Harriet,” said Edie, “are these all your things?” and Harriet saw, on the gravel by Edie’s feet, her suitcase and her knapsack and her tennis racket.

After a slight, disoriented pause—during which her possessions on the ground did not register—Harriet said: “You’ve got new glasses.”

“Old glasses. The car is new.” Edie nodded at the new automobile parked beside Dr. Vance’s. “If you’ve got something else back at the cabin you’d better run along and get it.”

“Where’s your car?”

“Never mind. Hurry along.”

Harriet—not one to look a gift horse in the mouth—scurried away. She was perplexed by rescue from this unlikely quarter; more so because she had been prepared to throw herself on the ground at Edie’s feet and beg and scream to be taken home.

Apart from some art projects she didn’t want (a grubby potholder, a decoupage pencil-box, not yet dry) the only things Harriet had to pick up were her shower sandals and her towels. Someone had swiped one of her towels to go swimming with, so she grabbed the other and ran back to Dr. Vance’s cabin.

Dr. Vance was loading the trunk of the new car for Edie—who, Harriet noticed for the first time, was moving a little stiffly.

Maybe it’s Ida
, thought Harriet, suddenly. Maybe Ida decided not to quit. Or maybe she decided she had to see me one last time before she left. But Harriet knew that neither of these things was really the truth.

Edie was eyeing her suspiciously. “I thought you had two towels.”

“No, maam.” She noticed a trace of some dark, caked matter at the base of Edie’s nostrils: snuff? Chester took snuff.

Before she could climb in the car, Dr. Vance came around and—stepping sideways between Harriet and the passenger door—leaned down and gave Harriet his hand to shake.

“God has His own plan, Harriet.” He said it to her as if telling her a little secret. “Does that mean we’ll always like it? No. Does that mean we’ll always understand it? No. Does that mean that we should wail and complain about it? No indeed!”

Harriet—burning with embarrassment—stared into Dr. Vance’s hard gray eyes. In Nursie’s discussion group after “Your Developing Body” there had been lots of talk about God’s Plan, about how all the tubes and hormones and degrading excretions in the filmstrips were God’s Plan for Girls.

“And why is that? Why does God try us? Why testeth He our resolve? Why must we reflect on these universal challenges?” Dr. Vance’s eyes searched her face. “What do they teach us on our Christian walk?”

Silence. Harriet was too revolted to draw her hand back. High in the pines, a blue jay shrieked.

“Part of our challenge, Harriet, is accepting that His plan is always for the best. And what does acceptance mean? We must bend to His will! We must bend to it joyously! This is the challenge that we face as Christians!”

All of a sudden Harriet—her face only inches from his—felt very afraid. With great concentration, she stared at a tiny spot of reddish stubble in the cleft of his chin, where the razor had missed.

“Let us pray,” said Dr. Vance suddenly, and squeezed her hand. “Dear Jesus,” he said, pressing thumb and forefinger into his tightly shut eyes. “What a privilege it is to stand before You this day! What a blessing to pray with You! Let us be joyful, joyful, in Your presence!”

What’s he talking about?
thought Harriet, dazed. Her mosquito bites itched, but she didn’t dare scratch them. Through half-closed eyes, she stared at her feet.

“
Oh
Lard. Please be with Harriet and her family in the days to come. Watch over them. Keep, guide, and shepherd
them. Help them understand, Lard,” said Dr. Vance—pronouncing all his consonants and syllables very distinctly—“that these sorrows and trials are a part of their Christian walk.…”

Where is Edie?
thought Harriet, eyes shut.
In the car?
Dr. Vance’s hand was sticky and unpleasant to the touch; how embarrassing if Marcy and the girls from the cabin came by and saw her standing in the parking lot holding hands with Dr. Vance of all people.

“
Oh
Lard. Help them not to turn their backs on You. Help them submit. Help them walk uncomplainingly. Help them not to disobey, or be rebellient, but to accept Your ways and keep Your covenant …”

Submit to what?
thought Harriet, with a nasty little shock.

“… in the name of Christ Jesus we ask it, AMEN,” said Dr. Vance, so loudly that Harriet started. She looked around. Edie was on the driver’s side of the car with her hand on the hood—although whether she’d been standing there the whole time or had eased over after the prayer moment who could say.

Nursie Vance had appeared from nowhere. She swooped down on Harriet with a smothering, bosomy hug.

“The Lord loves you!” she said, in her twinkly voice.
“Just you remember that!”

She patted Harriet on the bottom and turned, beaming, to Edie, as if expecting to start up a regular old conversation. “Well,
hay!
” But Edie wasn’t in such a tolerant or sociable mood as she’d been when dropping Harriet off at camp. She gave Nursie a curt nod, and that was that.

They got in the car; Edie—after peering over her glasses for a moment at the unfamiliar instrument panel—put the car in gear and drove away. The Vances came and stood out in the middle of the graveled clearing and—with their arms around each other’s waists—they waved until Edie turned the corner.

The new car had air-conditioning, which made it much, much quieter. Harriet took it all in—the new radio; the power
windows—and settled uneasily in her seat. In hermetically sealed chill they purred along, through the liquid leaf-shade of the gravel road, glossing springily over potholes that had jolted the Oldsmobile to its frame. Not until they reached the very end of the dark road, and turned onto the sunny highway, did Harriet dare steal a look at her grandmother.