Revenge of a Not-So-Pretty Girl Read online

  “Tell us where you hide your money!” Caroline hollers as she throws the pocketbook on the floor. But the lady just shakes her head.

  “Don’t be acting like you don’t got none. I mean, look at all the stuff you have in this place. Nice paintings on the walls, china in that cabinet over there. Tell us where you hide the money.”

  “What you took from my purse, that’s all I have,” the old lady says, hardly above a whisper. So Caroline just steps past her, walks out of the kitchen and to the doorway leading into the living room. She stands there surveying the scene for a few seconds, then turns to Gillian and tells her to look through everything in the kitchen. She tells me to hit the living room.

  “And, Gillian, keep an eye on her,” she says as she walks through the living room and into another hall that has one door on one side and two on the other.

  The first thing I notice about the living room is all this big, fussy wooden furniture. Everything looks as if it weighs about four thousand pounds. There’s this giant wall-unit thing that has these little pink chandeliers on either side. I can’t figure out if it’s ugly or not. And the couch is big and purple and plush. I’m thinking if I sit in it, I might just sink right on down to the floor and never make it back up.

  “Fay, don’t forget to look under those chair pillows!” Caroline yells.

  I start with the couch. I tuck my hand behind the cushions, afraid my fingers might touch something fingers have no business touching. But then I realize how clean the place is. There’s nothing there. There’s nothing in the love seat either. I open the doors of the big wall-unit thing, and there are all these crystal liquor bottles, but no liquor in them. I close the doors. On the sides of the unit are little animal figurines and some pictures. There’s a big black-and-white photo of some fancy-looking woman and man standing in front of a huge car. I pick it up. I’m thinking they’re in California, ’cause there are palm trees behind them. And they’re wearing old-time clothes and hats and look like something out of one of those old Abbott and Costello movies they put on WPIX on Sunday mornings. The woman is all glamorous, and I wonder if it’s the old lady. The thing is, I never think of old people as being pretty or ugly. I just think of them as being old. But then you see pictures of them from when they were young, and it’s like you’re looking at a whole other person.

  Caroline suddenly walks into the living room. She grabs the photograph from me and throws it onto the floor. But the glass doesn’t break, on account of the carpet being so thick and fluffy.

  “Why you out here looking at pictures? Come inside with me. We have to turn over the mattress in the bedroom.”

  We struggle trying to flip the thing over. And I’m starting to sweat, being all packed into my scarf and coat and hat like I am. We finally get the mattress off the box spring, but there’s nothing there. There’s nothing under the bed either.

  I notice some of the chunky, antique-looking brooches and necklaces scattered across the floor.

  “Maybe that stuff’s worth something,” I say.

  “Maybe. But it’ll be too much of a hassle to sell. And I don’t want to risk some cop or somebody tracing it back to us.”

  She has a point. Cash is cleanest. So we start going through all the clothes in her closet, pulling them off hangers, checking the pockets, and tossing them onto a pile. What’s weird is, even though she looks borderline homeless, the old woman has some really nice clothes. Maybe she just doesn’t believe in wearing her good wardrobe in wintry conditions.

  I go through all her button-down blouses quickly, since there’s really nowhere on them to stash any money. The skirts take a little longer because she has like a million of them—tweed ones, wool, cotton—but most don’t have pockets. Some have matching suit jackets, but those pockets are mostly empty. Every now and then I come across something and think it could be a wad of cash, but when I pull it out, it’s only crumpled-up tissues or an old receipt.

  We have to get a chair from the kitchen to reach the ten or so hatboxes stacked on the shelf at the top of the closet. But we don’t find anything there either—except for big, flamboyant hats.

  I follow Caroline into another room, which has a desk and chair and daybed. There’s no money there either. And Caroline begins breathing all hard and looking all crazy. I’m thinking, Maybe she needs a slice of cake or something. Then I look down at my watch to see that it’s nearly five-thirty. An hour and a half till Mama gets home, and I haven’t even started dinner or washed the dishes I left in the sink this morning.

  “Caroline, it’s getting kinda late,” I say. “I need to get—” But it’s as if she doesn’t even hear me.

  “Gillian!” she yells. “You find anything in there?”

  “Um, no,” Gillian yells back, only her voice sounds muffled. Caroline glances at me and walks out of the room. I follow behind her.

  The old lady is where we left her, but her coat is now completely unbuttoned, and for the first time, I notice her patchwork quilt sweater and the giant flower brooch with a silver stem and different-colored petals clasped up near the collar. Then my eyes drift down to her hands, which are resting on her lap, and for some reason, this makes me a little sad. See, her fingers are Keebler-elf small and bowed. And there are so many brown spots, her hands don’t even seem like they belong to a white person. My eyes make their way back up to her face, and she suddenly lifts her head and stares right at me. And there’s a strange look in her pale green eyes. It kind of gives me the creeps, so I turn my back to her and face Gillian, who’s standing near the counter, removing ginger snaps from a cookie jar.

  “What the hell are you doing?” Caroline yells.

  “I don’t know. I couldn’t find nothing. And all this looking around made me a little hungry. I didn’t have lunch today at school, you know.”

  Caroline just glares at her for a while, then, as if she suddenly remembers the lady is still there, she turns and looks at her. And then she grabs the ginger snaps right out of Gillian’s hand. She doesn’t say a thing, just sits down across from the lady, laughs her weird forest-creature laugh, then stuffs the three cookies into her mouth, never taking her eyes off the old woman. She stares and she chews. She chews and she stares. There’s just this weird silence that continues on forever. I hold my left arm up a little and point to the time with my right hand, but Caroline doesn’t even glance my way. And so we stay like that—Gillian at the counter with the opened cookie jar next to her, Caroline sitting across from the lady at the table, and me standing right at the doorway thinking that Mama will be home in an hour and a half.

  Then Caroline jumps up. I knew she couldn’t sit quietly forever. She runs over to the counter, grabs another cookie, eats it, and throws the cookie jar against the white tiled floor. The crash startles the lady, and I hear this little gasp. Hell, it startles me. What startles me even more is Caroline wasting perfectly good food. There’s another glass container on the counter—one that’s see-through, and it has either sugar or salt in it. Caroline picks that one up too and throws that to the floor. Then she picks up one with oats in it and does the same. One after another, they go crashing to the floor. With each bang, the lady flinches, but she still doesn’t move. Near the table, there’s a china cabinet. Caroline opens it and takes out these pretty serving plates. I see the lady’s eyes open wider. Caroline throws the first plate to the floor, then grabs the second one and brings it up high above her head. The old lady unsteadily pulls herself up and stands on her rickety legs.

  “Please stop it. Please.”

  She shuffles over to the counter, which has this framed black-and-white photo on it. I’ve seen pictures on fridges and stuff, but never all nicely framed on a kitchen counter. It’s another old-time photo, only not as glamorous as the one in the living room. At least, I don’t think it is. It’s so faded, it’s difficult to clearly make out the images in it. But I can tell that there’s a woman holding a baby. The old lady bypasses this and instead opens a drawer and pulls out a book, The Jo
y of Cooking. She flips through it, to a page where there are two crisp twenty-dollar bills, then does this about six more times.

  Once the old lady is finished, Caroline grabs the book, turns it over, and begins shaking it so hard the cover separates from the spine. When she’s finally convinced that there’s no more money hidden away in it, she tosses the book onto the counter. She then snatches the bills from the old woman’s bony fingers and begins to count out loud.

  My eyes shift back to the faded photograph, and I absent-mindedly pick it up. But the old woman suddenly seems to gain some strength, because she lunges at me all Jack be nimble, Jack be quick–like and grabs for the picture.

  “That’s not yours,” she says. She latches on to my wrist. And her hand is really cold and damp. And her fingers look like they belong on the grim reaper. It’s just a stupid picture, so why’s she getting so up in arms about it? I mean, she didn’t act this way when Caroline was destroying her glass containers. So I pull my arm in, toward my chest. Only, she’s still holding on. Two seconds before, she could hardly stand up, and now all of a sudden, she’s like a member of the Super Friends with her Wonder Twin powers. So I gather all my strength and extend my arm, and she goes flying. I mean, it’s as if I shot her out of a cannon. I hear this noise, and the rest of it happens like a slide show. You know, as if I’m slowly clicking on a View-Master.

  There’s the old lady’s head against the edge of the table. There’s the broken glass from the stuff Caroline flung to the floor. There’s Gillian, with her jaw hanging loose and her mouth open wide. There’s Caroline, looking equally dazed. And the slides all stop once the old lady crumples to the floor like a ton of bricks.

  The seven-block walk from the old lady’s apartment back to mine is like a weird dream. It’s as if sight is the only one of my senses that’s really registering. I can see leaves and pages of the New York Post blowing right past me, but I can’t seem to hear the whistle of the wind or the rustle of the paper. I can see Gillian’s lips moving a little, but I can’t make out her words. A snowflake lands on my nose, but I don’t wipe it off. I was so cold earlier in the afternoon, with the dampness of the weather cutting through my jeans, through my long johns, and chilling me to the bone, but I don’t really feel the nip anymore. I don’t really feel anything. I don’t feel warm. I don’t feel cold. As Prospect Park disappears behind us, people spill out from the Parkside Avenue subway station. I can see them fighting with flyaway scarves, trying to clear wind-blasted hair from their eyes. I see their lips moving too but still hear nothing. Cars roll down the street, but in this strange silence. Not even the Madonna look-alike in her black lace gloves and black leather jacket and black leggings is able to make much of an impression on me. As we turn onto Flatbush and pass the Jamaican bakery I always stop in front of to take in the strong, spicy scents, it’s as if I’m congested. It’s as if I was the one who conked my cranium against that table, and not the old woman.

  I should have thought through the whole situation better. Messing with those stuck-up girls, the only thing you ever have to worry about is maybe a really spirited one connecting a fist to your jaw or something. But you can pretty much manhandle them to your heart’s desire without any serious repercussions. Some might fuss or carry on a little, but they’re like rubber bands; they just snap back into place. But you can’t do that to some old woman. I see those commercials on TV. I know old people are always falling and cracking hips. I know how easily they can just keel over from a heart attack. That’s what did away with my grand-daddy on Mama’s side. And that’s what did away with my friend Keisha’s grandfather. Why didn’t I think about Keisha’s grandfather before I decided to go through with this? He got mugged while waiting for the number 2 train down at Borough Hall and had a heart attack and died right there on the platform.

  But just as suddenly as my senses went numb, they come rushing back after a swift and solid punch to the arm from Caroline.

  “What’s the idea?” I shout.

  “We’ve been trying to get your attention for a minute now,” Caroline bellows back. “Look. Up the street. It’s her.”

  I look around, but no one stands out to me.

  “The girl in the sheepskin,” Caroline adds. “The one who laughed at us. She’s getting ready to go into that building. Why don’t we teach her a little something?”

  Two hours ago, this would have been an appealing prospect. But now, I can’t seem to wrap my mind around it.

  “I gotta get home. My mother—” But before I can finish, Caroline is charging ahead, with Gillian close behind. So I just shrug and follow.

  We reach the girl as she’s turning onto the building’s walkway. Caroline grabs hold of the girl’s schoolbag, commanding her to let go, but the girl just ignores her. That’s when Caroline’s fist lands on the side of her head. But the girl still doesn’t let go. Instead, she starts calling us jealous and ugly and tries to spit on us. I can’t believe how arrogant she’s being in the middle of getting her butt kicked. Why can’t she just let this happen? All I want is for this horrible evening to be over.

  “Just let go of the stupid bag!” I yell. But she keeps fighting back.

  And then something comes over me and I rush at Caroline and the girl, throw every ounce of my little body at them, and tackle the girl to the ground. We land on a muddy area to the side of the walkway and I start smooshing her beautiful, stubborn, snooty face into the ground. I smoosh it and smoosh it until she stops struggling and starts crying. I smoosh it until her pretty yellow sheepskin jacket turns the brown of the mud.

  “Wow, Faye, what’s gotten into you?” Caroline asks as she locates the wallet in the girl’s schoolbag and fishes fifteen bucks out of it.

  “I don’t know,” I say. And I really don’t. “I just need to get home.”

  Caroline flashes this weird smile my way, then looks back over to the girl.

  “Maybe next time you’ll think twice before laughing at people,” Caroline says, throwing the wallet at the girl and walking off.

  I kind of lag behind Caroline and Gillian the rest of the way home. When I reach the walkway of my building, I mumble a quick good-bye and rush inside. In my apartment, I go into autopilot mode, trying not to think about what happened in that old woman’s kitchen, trying not to think of that stupid girl in the sheepskin, trying to start dinner and make sure everything is in its place in the fifty-five minutes I have till Mama gets home.

  When I hear the key turn in the lock, I quickly check the chicken stewing in the pot and turn off the front burner. Then I dab up the cooking oil that spilled onto the stove. I breathe a sigh of relief. Finished just in time. I glance around the rest of the kitchen. Every dish and utensil has been washed and stacked in the dish rack. And the orange plaid dish towel is folded in two like Mama likes it, and laid neatly on the side of the sink. I cut it way too close today.

  I sit at the table, where my schoolbooks are opened to my homework, and scribble April 11, 1984, so the page doesn’t look so gleaming white and empty. And then I take a few breaths. I swear I can hear my own heartbeat. And my temples are throbbing like crazy. My pulse must be coming at Mach 2. The breaths are supposed to calm me down, but it’s not really working. I just keep seeing that old woman fall. And even worse is hearing the sound that fall made.

  Suddenly, the door slams and then there are footsteps. Only nine from the front door to the kitchen. Something’s wrong. Only nine when there should actually be thirteen. And they’re fast and furious. Mama must not have had a particularly good day. Maybe she broke her employers’ priceless crystal punch bowl. Maybe she served them something they were allergic to.

  I sit quietly and keep my head down, though I can still see the doorway to the kitchen. When Mama gets there, she doesn’t linger. She just passes by without looking in.

  “Evening, Mama,” I say. Only, she doesn’t answer. I know she heard me, so I go back to looking at the almost-blank white page in front of me. Her bedroom door slams, and a few sec
onds later, I hear the theme to The Edge of Night, all serious-sounding and dramatic. It’s the only soap opera Mama tapes on the regular. Ever since she got that Betamax recorder, it’s The Edge of Night every afternoon. Sometimes on Fridays and Mondays she’ll tape The Young and the Restless so she can keep up on the weekend cliffhangers and figure out what Mrs. Chancellor is up to.

  It’s never good when Mama just locks herself in her room and starts watching her stories. If something bad didn’t happen at work, maybe she got into an argument with Daddy over the phone, or maybe somebody on the train pissed her off. I suppose I’ll just have to be satisfied with guessing, since it’s not like she’ll ever tell me.

  There’s a roach creeping across the counter. I just look at him for a while. He moves really fast, then stops and lingers, as if he’s sensing some invisible force. I can see his antennae moving around. But I don’t even think about getting up and killing him. I don’t think about doing anything that might make any noise and draw attention to me in any way, so I just sigh and think about Michael Jackson. I wonder what he’s doing at this very moment. Probably not looking at some nasty roach crawling across his kitchen counter. Probably doesn’t even have roaches where he lives. I wonder whether he’s all healed from that accident he got into, shooting that Pepsi commercial. Wish I was there to nurse him. But one day I’ll marry him, and this will all be a memory. Keisha says I’m nuts for thinking this since every other girl also believes she’s going to end up with him. But I’m different. Even if Thriller wasn’t as popular as it is and if “Billie Jean” hadn’t been number one on the radio, I’d still be interested.