Twelve (5 page)

But boring was better than another B-word, which I hoped Mom would somehow forget, and which of course she did not, despite the gift with purchase at the Clinique counter.

“All right, Winnie, time to focus on you,” she said as I trailed her into Macy's junior department.

“I'm tired,” I said. “I need to sit down.”

“You can sit down in the dressing room,” Mom replied. “Now let's see, I suppose they have a lingerie section for pre-teens. Do they call it ‘lingerie' at that age?”

I pretended I wasn't with her. Did she have to be so loud?

“Excuse me, miss?” Mom said to the nearest salesclerk. “We're looking for a bra for a twelve-year-old. Can you point us in the right direction?”

“
Mom,
” I said through gritted teeth.

“What?” Mom said.

“You don't have to
say
it,” I said.

She closed her eyes as if she were aggrieved. She'd done that a lot this particular excursion.

The salesclerk glanced from Mom to me. She was young, which made it worse. Her clothes were very hip.

“No worries, we have a great selection right over here,” she said. She led us past the prom dresses to a section full of socks, then past the socks to a section where everything was shiny or lacy or flowered. She pulled free a pink bra with a bow at the center. It had no cups, just flat pink triangles. “Isn't this adorable?”

“No,” I said.

“Winnie,” Mom warned, shooting me a look.

The salesclerk laughed. “That's okay. I remember how embarrassing it was getting my first bra.” She smiled at me as if she were my pal, which she wasn't. She selected another bra. “How about this one? I love the little Care Bears.”

Care Bears? On a bra? She had to be joking. But no, there they were, marching across the elastic band with their lollipops and rainbows. How old did she think I was—two?

“No,” I said.

“This one?” Red lace this time. And padded.

I looked to Mom for help, then immediately looked away, remembering that she was the enemy. But that left me feeling awfully alone, and stupid, and now in the most annoying of ways I felt as if I might cry. I wrapped my arms around my chest and gazed at the prom dresses.

“We'll take a look, and we'll holler if we need you,” Mom said.
Holler
. She actually said
holler
.

“You got it,” said the salesclerk.

Mom waited until she was gone. Then she said, “Winnie, stop being such a pill. I'm sorry you don't want to be here, but you might as well make the best of it. Now. Do you see any styles you like?”

“No,” I said. I couldn't help it—it was the truth.

She pushed her hand through her hair. “What exactly is the problem? Can you explain to me
why
you're so against getting a bra?”

Because they're wrong,
I wanted to say.
Because they've got straps that show through, and people will see. Because Gail wears a bra, and Amanda even though she doesn't need one, and I don't want to be someone like that. Because tomboys are much cooler, and I want to be a tomboy, and anyway, why
don't
boys have to wear bras? Or something equally
horrible, at any rate. And jockstraps don't count, whatever they are.

There were lots of reasons I didn't want a bra, even if I didn't know many of them until that minute. And even if I wasn't about to say any of them out loud.

So I shrugged. Mom got even more exasperated.

“Winnie, this is getting old,” she said.

“Then let's go home,” I said. I strode out of the “girls' intimates” section and ran smack into the last person in the world I would have chosen to see at that terrible moment: Gail Grayson, examining a blue sequined prom dress.

“Gail,” I said without meaning to.

“Winnie,” she said. First she looked surprised, and then displeased, because that's how she always looked when it came to me. Like she smelled something sour.

My brain went into overdrive. How long had she been here? What had she heard?

“If you get that one, you'll have to get a strapless,” Gail's mom said, appearing by the rack. She had platinum hair and gold hoop earrings. “Although possibly your black bra from Paris Houghton might work. Isn't it the one with removable straps?”

“Mom, this is Winnie,” Gail said with zero enthusiasm. “Winnie, this is my mom.”

“Hi,” I said.

“I'm Ellen,” Mom said, joining us and stepping forward to shake Mrs. Grayson's hand.

“So nice to meet you,” Mrs. Grayson said. “I'm Noreen.” She smiled a wide wrecking-ball smile, ready to knock down anything in its path. She must have been to a tanning salon, because she was midsummer bronzed and it was still the middle of spring.

“Gail's going to her cousin's Sweet Sixteen,” Mrs. Grayson said. “The theme is Las Vegas.”

“Mom, they don't care,” Gail said.

“Forty thousand dollars,” Mrs. Grayson confided. “That's what Kiki's daddy is paying for this shindig. Can you believe it?”

“That's more than my wedding,” Mom said.

Mrs. Grayson bark-laughed. “I know! It's crazy!”

Gail's cheeks colored, unless I imagined it.

“So what are you two wild women shopping for?” Mrs. Grayson asked, referring, apparently, to me and Mom.

“Oh,” Mom said. “Well . . .”

Don't,
I begged her silently. I got that pre-diarrhea feeling of desperation, because Gail would be the worst person in the universe—the
worst
—to know I was bra shopping.

“I dragged Winnie to check out the spring shoe sale, actually, ” Mom said. “We figured we'd check out the junior department while we were here.”

“How
fun,
” Mrs. Grayson said. “Don't you just love shopping with your daughter? Don't you wish you could fit in these darling fashions?”

Gail looked behind me at the intimates section, then back at me, her expression craftily innocent. “I thought you were shopping for a bra,” she said.

“We figured we'd take a peek,” Mom said smoothly.

“I thought you didn't believe in bras,” Gail went on. She was referring to a remark I'd made on the playground once, the time she was mean to Dinah.

“Don't believe in
bras
?” Mrs. Grayson said. She blinked her overmascaraed eyes. “Now listen. You girls think you'll stay young and firm forever, but you won't. You have to wear a bra, or you'll sag.”

“I don't think Winnie has to worry about that yet,” Gail said.

“Oh yes she does,” Mrs. Grayson said. She zeroed in on me. “You most certainly do, Wendy. It's never too early to start caring about your appearance.”

“It's Winnie,” I said.

“What's that?”

“It's Winnie. Not Wendy.”

Gail smirked. I got the sense she thought her mom and I were stupid, both. I was filled with a dislike for her that swirled and mixed with my embarrassment.

Mom's hand tightened on the handle of her Neiman Marcus bag. “Well, we've got to get going. Winnie? You ready?”

We walked right out of Macy's, and then we continued through the mall and into the parking lot, where I climbed mutely into the car with Mom. The air conditioner kicked on at full blast when she turned on the engine. Neither of us mentioned the fact that we were leaving without what we'd come for.

“I didn't like that girl,” Mom said after merging into the afternoon traffic. “She's pretty on the outside, but I have a feeling she isn't very pretty on the inside.” She glanced at me. “Am I right?”

“Uh-huh,” I said.

“She's not going to have any friends if that's the way she acts.”

“She only acts that way to certain people,” I said. “She has lots of friends.”

“
Hmmph,
” Mom said. She flicked her blinker and scooted into the far right lane. “That makes me like her even less.”

In the end, I got three bras—one white, one black, one tan— at Target. The tan one was gross and I didn't want it, but Mom said that was the only color that wouldn't show under white clothes. She called it “nude,” not tan. I thought to myself how much there was to learn about being a woman, most of it kind of silly.

Mom seemed more relaxed at Target than at Macy's, commenting that Target had “surprisingly good” lingerie. I felt more relaxed, too. I felt safe there with its bright wide aisles and displays of random items, like Sno-Kone machines. Mom let me get one as an impulse buy, along with a set of four fancy plastic cups with matching spoons and a three-pack of flavored syrups.

“It'll be perfect for summer,” I said, eager to get home and try it out.

“Will you share with Ty?” Mom asked, acting motherish and in-control-of-the-purse-strings even though the Sno-Kone box was already in the cart.

“Yes,” I said. “And Sandra. I'll be the one to make them, but I'll let them pick which flavor.” The box almost, but not entirely, obscured the limp collection of bras, but I wasn't so worried about them anymore, even though anyone looking would have known exactly what they were. I don't know why—they just no longer seemed so important.

That evening, over strawberry-kiwi Sno-Kones, I told Ty about the special escalator at Target that was just for shopping carts.

“The people go up one escalator, and the carts go up another,” I said. “It's so cool.”

“I know,” Ty said.

“It's like a conveyor belt, lifting the carts up-up-up,” I said.

“I know,” Ty said.

“He
knows,
” Sandra said. “We
all
know, because we've all been to Target, including you. Why are you suddenly so fascinated with the stupid escalators?”

“Sandra said ‘stupid,' ” Ty tattled.

“Sandra,” Mom warned. “We don't use that word, remember? ”

“I don't know, I just like them,” I said. “Nobody else has them, not even the mall. Not even Kmart or Wal-Mart.”

“Because at the mall you don't use shopping carts,” Sandra said in a duh-voice. “And Kmart and Wal-Mart aren't two stories.”

“They built that particular Target in a part of the city that was already developed, so they had limited space to work with,” Dad said. “That's why it's two stories.”

I scooped up a slurp of shaved ice, reliving the escalator moment in my head. “I was like, ‘Bye-bye, Sno-Kone machine! Bye, syrups! See you in a minute!' ”

“Oh my God,” Sandra said, rolling her eyes. She stood up and took her cup to the counter. “I've got homework to do.”

“And I want to read the paper,” Dad announced. I noticed he hadn't finished his Sno-Kone, but he dumped it in the sink before I could alert him. “Ellen, would you care to join me?”

“Absolutely,” Mom said. She rose from the table. “Winnie? Remember your promise?”

She meant the Sno-Kone machine and how it was my responsibility to clean it. “Yeah, yeah, yeah,” I said. “You kids go on. Enjoy yourselves.”

She laughed and messed up my hair as she left the room. I was glad things were normal between us again. I hated it when they weren't, even when I was the one causing the problem. Especially if I was the one causing the problem.

“So,” I said when it was just Ty and me.

He tilted his cup to get the dregs of his Sno-Kone. The skin around his mouth was red. “I told Taffy about the boy with the steel head,” he said.

“What?” I said.

“What you told me, about how he probably grew up to be a criminal.”

Uh-oh,
my stomach told me. Thank goodness no one else was in the kitchen.

"I told her about the steel plate, too,” Ty said.

“And . . . what did she say?”

“That I could have the rest of her pizza.”

“Oh.”

“I turned the pizza sauce into spit and spitted it into my milk carton.”

“Ewww. Did you pour it on anyone?”

Ty looked intrigued, which told me he hadn't.

“Never mind,” I said quickly. “So . . . are you and Taffy friends now?”

Ty considered. “She is not my friend, but she's not my enemy.”

“Huh.” That sounded pretty good, actually. I was impressed.

“Can I see your new bras?” he asked.

“I've got to clean up the kitchen,” I said.

“But after?”

“I suppose.”

“And can I try one on?”

“Sure,” I said, feeling generous. “We'll try them on together.”

June

GRADUATION, GRADUATION, GRADUATION. By the last week of school, that was all anyone could talk about. Our ceremony was this coming Friday, and we were all going to dress up, and there'd be musical numbers and speeches and a PowerPoint presentation called “Then and Now,” which the office lady, Pam, put together each year. I knew the format from other graduations, although this year we'd be the ones whose cute little baby pictures would be shown, followed by pictures of us in our sixth-grade glory. I wondered what songs Pam would choose for the sound track. Last year, one of the background songs was “Sing a song. Make it simple, to last your whole life long!” At the la-la-la-la-la part, everyone in the auditorium joined in. It made my heart swell, even though I wasn't one of the kids moving on.