Starting With Alice Read online

  Before we knew it, a tree went up in the living room, and Aunt Sally set to work in the kitchen making pies and rolls and apple dumplings. Presents were piled under the tree, a wreath appeared on the door, and Dad even sat down at the piano one evening and played Christmas carols while the rest of us sang. Well, everyone but me. Lester said he would give me a quarter not to sing, so I figured I might as well make some money off it.

  “Okay, Alice, you’re next,” said Carol when she’d finished trimming the tree. “We have to decorate you for Christmas.”

  I giggled.

  “First, your nails,” she said. She painted every other nail green and the rest of them red. She braided a large red ribbon in my hair and put silver sparkles on my eyelids. We went downstairs to show Lester.

  “Look how beautiful I am!” I crowed, leaning closer so he could see my face.

  “Great! Go hang yourself on the tree,” he said.

  But it was fun having Carol around. We sat up late at night playing cards, and Dad took us all to the Messiah Sing-Along at a church on Cedar Lane. This time Lester said he would pay me a dollar not to sing and embarrass him, but I couldn’t have anyway, because I can’t read music. I just wanted to be in the same room with all the people singing, “Hallelujah! Hallelujah! Hal-leeeee-lu-jah!” And that’s exactly what I did.

  11

  THE WORLD ACCORDING TO ROSALIND

  UNCLE MILT AND AUNT SALLY AND Carol went home a few days after Christmas, but on New Year’s Day, the Naked Nomads met in our basement again to practice. Rosalind came with her brother. She brought along a 500-piece jigsaw puzzle of a jungle, and we sat around our huge living-room coffee table putting the pieces together.

  “I wish we never had to go back to school,” said Rosalind. She was working on the zebra, while I was looking for the last two pieces of the giraffe.

  “Oh, it’s not that bad,” I said. “Some parts of it are okay.”

  “Which parts?” asked Rosalind.

  “Lunch and recess,” I said, and we laughed.

  “Not the Terrible Triplets,” said Rosalind.

  “No, not them,” I told her.

  “The next time they try to eat at our table, we should say, ‘No triplets allowed,’” said Rosalind.

  I put the hind legs on the giraffe.

  “The next time they ask me if I live in the elephant house, I’ll say, ‘Yes, right next to you, the hippos,’” said Rosalind.

  I found the tip of the giraffe’s tail and started work on the panda bear.

  “The next time one of them needs a partner for anything, we’ll say, ‘Sorry. Try the monkey house,’” said Rosalind. She hated the Terrible Triplets even more than I did, because of the way they called her an elephant.

  “If I were queen of the world, you know what I’d do? Make everybody change places,” Rosalind went on, picking up a puzzle piece with the face of a gorilla on it and slapping it down hard with the palm of her hand. “Everybody who’s skinny would have to be fat, and everybody who’s rich would have to be poor, and everyone would have to be kind to animals.”

  I thought about that. “If I were queen—no, if I were God—I wouldn’t let anyone die until they were a hundred years old,” I said. “I especially wouldn’t let a man die on his honeymoon or a mother die before her children were all grown up.”

  That settled, we furiously attacked the puzzle, seeing who could find the next piece the fastest and slapping each one down hard with our hands.

  Here’s what I like:

  500-piece jigsaw puzzles

  Rosalind

  My cousin Carol

  Anything with chocolate

  Macaroni and cheese

  My cat

  Here’s what I hate:

  The Terrible Triplets

  People dying

  Maps of the United States

  War

  Gas-station restrooms

  Lester gave me a black-and-white notebook with lined paper in it that he’d never used, and I began keeping my lists in that. I wanted to see if, when I got to be twenty, I still loved and hated the same things I do now.

  When I went back to school after New Year’s, the Terrible Triplets were all wearing new sweaters that were exactly alike. They weren’t even sisters, but they’d got their mothers to buy them red sweaters with little white reindeer on them. Whenever we changed classes—went to the gym or anything—they linked arms and walked down the hall in step.

  At lunchtime, when they came to our table, Rosalind put her feet on the two chairs across from her and said that all the chairs were taken. When we paired up for relay races and Dawn and Megan chose each other, Jody looked around for a partner, and Rosalind told her to try the monkey house. When Megan asked if she could borrow my blue pen to draw in the Mississippi River on her map, Rosalind reached over and took my pen for herself.

  “We don’t loan things to triplets,” she said.

  I went on working, but across the aisle Megan was sitting so still that I stole a look at her. I thought she’d be glaring at Rosalind and me, but she was just staring down at her paper, and she looked sad. Really sad! I felt a hollow thunk in my chest, but when I looked over at her again, Megan had turned the other way. Now I had two things to feel bad about: what I’d said about Uncle Charlie and what we had done to Megan.

  I wasn’t so sure about Rosalind. It seemed to me she just liked to keep a war going.

  At dinner that night, Dad and Lester were talking about the fighting in the Middle East and about how, when there’s so much hate going around, the slightest thing can start a fight.

  “Is that how wars begin?” I asked. “Somebody says something mean, and then that person says something back, and before you know it, they’re fighting?”

  “Sort of,” said Lester.

  “And it ends when they all make up?” I asked.

  “Usually when one side runs out of bullets or soldiers and they just give up,” Lester said.

  That got me thinking about the Terrible Triplets. I imagined our quarrel ending only when all five of us—Dawn and Jody and Megan and Rosalind and I—were lying dead on the playground.

  At school the next day, I was the last one to the table with my tray, and there was only one seat left. Both Dawn and Jody put their feet on it and said it was reserved for triplets only. I had to go to the boys’ table and eat with Donald Sheavers.

  At recess they got the jump rope first and wouldn’t let me in. Rosalind either.

  “See how they act?” said Rosalind. “They want us to hate them.”

  Maybe she was right; I didn’t know.

  At least I had Rosalind for a friend. The girl with the dirty hair didn’t seem to have anybody. I thought about telling her to wash her hair and chew with her mouth closed and then I’d be her friend, but that didn’t sound quite right. She was smart, though. Her name was Sara, and she said funny things sometimes that made people laugh.

  We were learning to write letters and signing them Yours truly, and then we had to read them to the class. Sara wrote a letter to her grandmother. She had the right margins and she had put the date in the right place, but instead of Yours truly, she wrote, Yours till the Mississippi wears rubber pants to keep its bottom dry.

  Everybody laughed. Mrs. Burstin laughed too. She said that sometimes people who like each other a lot sign their letters Yours forever. And Sara was saying Yours forever in another way, because the Mississippi River would never wear rubber pants. I decided right then I liked Sara, even though I didn’t like her hair.

  But when I told Rosalind I thought Sara was funny, she said, “I’m still your best friend, aren’t I?”

  Donald Sheavers was my friend too, though. He said my cat was lonely. He said she liked being with Killer while we were in Tennessee, so I told him I would bring her over if we could call Killer “Muffin” while I was there.

  I don’t know if Muffin could even see Oatmeal or not, but he could smell her. She would pounce on his paws and swat at his tail,
and Killer—I mean, Muffin—would go rooting around the rug, trying to sniff out Oatmeal with his nose. Even if he was deaf, I’ll bet he could have heard her purr, because Oatmeal purrs so loud.

  I didn’t like to think of my kitten as lonely. But I especially didn’t like the thought that Donald had been right, that the dog and cat went together as well as muffins and oatmeal. But this was a war I could stop before it even began.

  “Okay, you were right,” I said. “Muffin and Oatmeal get along fine. I’d just feel better if we called your dog ‘Muffin’ from now on.”

  “You can call him anything you want,” said Donald. “He can’t hear you anyway.”

  I told Rosalind about Oatmeal and Muffin. We were sitting on the swings on the playground. It had snowed the night before, and we let our boots drag in it as we twisted the swings around and around, making circles on the ground when the swings began to unwind.

  “Maybe they’ll have babies,” she said.

  I stared at Rosalind. “They can’t have babies!” I told her. “One is a dog and one’s a cat!”

  “Well, what’s a mule, then?” she asked.

  “What’s that got to do with anything?” I wanted to know.

  “Is a mule a horse or a donkey?”

  “I don’t know. Part horse, part donkey, I guess,” I said.

  “See?” said Rosalind. “If horses and donkeys can make mules, then why can’t dogs and cats make… um… I don’t know… dats or cogs or something.”

  “Rosalind, you are weird sometimes,” I told her.

  “I know,” said Rosalind, grinning at me over the snow. “That’s why we’re best buddies. Right?”

  12

  STARTING WITH ME

  IT WAS AROUND THE FIRST OF FEBRUARY that I got sick. When Dad woke me to go to school, I walked down the hall to breakfast, got as far as the kitchen doorway, and threw up on my bare feet. And in case anybody wants to know, it was warm and looked like vegetable soup.

  “Al!” yelled Lester, scooting his chair away from the table, as though my vomit had splashed his pants or something.

  “I’m sorry,” I said, and barfed again.

  “Honey!” Dad exclaimed, clanking the pan of oatmeal back on the stove and hurrying over. He grabbed a paper towel and held it under my chin. That almost made me upchuck again, but I guess there wasn’t anything left in my stomach. With his other hand, he felt my forehead.

  “You’re burning up,” he said. “Let’s get you right back to bed.” He guided me down the hall and, over his shoulder, called, “Lester, get the mop, would you?”

  “Dad!” Lester yelled in horror. ‘’I’m still eating breakfast!”

  “Not anymore, you’re not,” Dad said. “I need some help here. Now please get the mop.” Lester gave a howl of pain.

  Dad says Lester has a queasy stomach. Les can imagine himself having almost any kind of disease there is. Dad says if Lester ever went to work in a hospital, he’d be the first patient in the emergency room.

  But right then I wasn’t concerned about Lester. I was just trying to make it back to bed with legs as limp as cooked macaroni.

  Dad gets very quiet and worried-looking when one of us gets sick. After I lay down again, propped up against my pillow, Dad brought in the thermometer and put it under my tongue; then he sat down on the edge of my bed and studied my face. You know what’s weird? When somebody’s taking your temperature and he just sits and looks at you. Like I’m supposed to do something. Make the thermometer hurry, maybe.

  I wiggled my toes under the bedclothes and watched the ripples they made in the blanket. Then I spread my hands out on both knees to see if the fingernails on my right hand were as dirty as the nails on the left. I tried to imagine what would happen if I bit down on the thermometer and broke the glass and all the mercury came out in my mouth and I swallowed it and got mercury poisoning and died, and I knew that Aunt Sally would say we never should have left Chicago.

  Finally, when it seemed ten minutes had gone by and Dad was looking past me out the window, I began to clear my throat.

  “Oh! Right!” Dad said. He leaned over and took out the thermometer, then laid it on the back of his hand and slowly turned it around. “Oh,” he said again softly.

  “What is it, Dad?” I asked. Even my voice sounded weak and feeble.

  “About a hundred and two,” he said. “First I’m going to call the doctor. Then I’ll call the store and tell them I won’t be in today.”

  He went down the hall to the bathroom, came back with a wet washcloth, and put it on my forehead. Then he asked if I wanted orange juice or something. When he saw me clamp my lips together as though I might throw up again, he said, “No, better not.”

  Something was different this time about my being sick, but I couldn’t figure out what. Then I knew: It wasn’t just the first time I’d been sick here in Takoma Park; it was the first time there was no one else around to take care of me except Dad. Even after Mom died, there was Aunt Sally, and whenever I had a cold or a fever, she’d come over and stay with me till Dad got home from work. Now it was just Dad and Lester and me, and we had to look out for each other.

  My father kept going to the window and back again, waiting for the doctor to call, as though any minute he might drive right up to our house.

  “Tell me everything that hurts, Alice,” he said finally. “The doctor will want to know.”

  “My head hurts,” I said. “And I ache all over.”

  “Is your throat sore? Do your ears hurt?”

  I shook my head.

  “Tummy ache?”

  “A little.”

  The phone rang and Dad went into the living room to answer. When he came back, he said, “The doctor says he’s quite sure you have what’s going around, an intestinal flu—headache, vomiting, and fever. He had seven calls about it yesterday. He says there really isn’t anything to do but take Tylenol and drink plenty of water. But you can’t go back to school until your temperature’s normal.”

  Dad sat by my bed and read the newspaper while I tried to sleep some more, but I couldn’t. I lay still for a long time with my eyes closed, hating the feeling of wanting to vomit and not being able to. I guess I did sleep a little, though, because when I opened my eyes again, Dad had taken off his shoes and was leaning against the wall, with sofa pillows behind his back. He gently stroked my forehead.

  “I remember,” he said, “the day you were born.” He looked down at me and smiled. “You hardly had any hair at all. Just peach fuzz, we called it. I told Marie that’s what we ought to call you, Peach Fuzz, but she had a name all picked out—Alice. Like Alice in Wonderland, because you were such a wonder. After Lester was born, see, we’d wanted more children, but we just didn’t have much luck. And then—when we’d almost given up hope of having another child—Marie was pregnant again with you.”

  Dad tipped his head back and went on stroking the side of my face. “We’d been close before, of course—Marie and Lester and I. But it wasn’t till you came along—starting with Alice, I guess—that we began to feel that our family was complete.”

  I grinned. “Starting with me,” I said.

  “That’s right. What we needed was a little girl, and we got the best little girl in the world.”

  “Yeah, but I can’t sing,” I said.

  “Who cares?” said Dad.

  “I’ve got freckles,” I told him.

  “All the better,” he said.

  “And I’m… I’m not always nice to Lester,” I confessed.

  “No, I suppose not. But if you were perfect, you wouldn’t be Alice, now, would you?” He adjusted the pillows behind his back, and then I saw that he’d brought some books along with him and they were strewn about the bedcovers. “How about if I read to you?” he said. “Your choice: The Prince and the Pauper, Charlotte’s Web, or Pinch?”

  “The Prince and the Pauper,” I said. “I’ve read the others.”

  “Ah! Mark Twain! My favorite!” said Dad, and began to
read: “ ‘In the ancient city of London, on a certain autumn day in the second quarter of the sixteenth century, a boy was born to a poor family of the name of Canty, who did not want him. On the same day another English child was born to a rich family of the name of Tudor, who did want him. All of England wanted him too… .”

  Every so often, my dad read aloud to us like this, and it was so wonderful, lying in bed, cozy and warm, listening to his voice, that I almost forgot I felt like throwing up.

  I think I must have dozed off after the first chapter, though, because when I opened my eyes again, the room was dark. Dad had pulled the blinds down and gone back out to the living room. I didn’t feel quite as bad as I had before, but I could tell I still had a fever.

  I wondered what I was missing at school and how much work I’d have to make up when I got back. Maybe Rosalind was sick too, and her brother had to mop up after her. Maybe the Triplets were all home too, throwing up on their matching red sweaters.

  Then I got to thinking about the girl with the dirty hair and how I shouldn’t think of her like that. She had a name: Sara. I wouldn’t want to be remembered as the girl who couldn’t sing. I’d just want to be known as Alice. The next time I saw her, I’d say, “Hi, Sara.”

  Then I got this terrific idea. If Rosalind and Sara and I became friends, we could be triplets too. We could be the Terrific Triplets. We could go around the playground with our arms around each other. We could all sit together at a table at lunch.

  I decided that when I got better, I was going to have a sleepover and invite Rosalind and Sara, and we would have a shampoo party and get in the bathtub, and then Rosalind and I could help Sara wash her hair and make her look better.

  I heard the front door open and Lester coming down the hall. He poked his head into my bedroom. “How you feeling? Are you through barfing yet?” he asked.