A Woman Like That by Joan Larkin

Author:Joan Larkin [Larkin, Joan]
Language: eng
Format: epub, pdf
Tags: Anthology
ISBN: 9780380802470
Publisher: Perennial
Published: 2000-10-12T05:00:00+00:00

BRIDE OF CHRIST / 157

Charley threw the offending photographs at my feet. Angie Dickinson smiled up at me, an autograph across her Police Woman uniform, as my life turned away from the brick wall of my brother’s touch and headed for the steep cliff of treacherous girls.

Louise continued with the evidence: “You like playing the boy when we play House, and you like kissing me. You know what that’s called?”

I didn’t.

“Don’t forget the magazines,” Charley said. “She loved the magazines.”

I looked at Gina. “You did smile,” she said in a low voice.

“She’s a weirdo,” Charley shouted. Her sister agreed: “Abby Normal.”

The wrong question formed on my lips: “But am I hopeless?”

Surprised, they thought it over carefully, eyeing each other for an answer.

“You get one more chance,” Louise said at last.

“But don’t ask for help,” Charley added. “You either act like us or forget it.”

After the sisters marched away, Gina looked up. “Got it?”

I nodded my head, eyes blurred with relief.

“Good.”

SECRET #3

I didn’t go back to Wide Waters Lane, waiting instead on my own front porch for August to end—outside where it was safe, but not quite yet in the world, where it wasn’t. I read books, rode my bike to the library, watching out for football players. Then one day, in the middle of the afternoon, a few weeks before I would turn eleven, a car pulled up and ejected four squat dark forms, all of them resembling one another, and somehow, me.

“Cousins from Ottawa?” my mother said, appearing beside me. “What are they doing here?”

Before long, my entire family was standing on the front porch.

“Compare,” said the man in the driveway. He held out his hand.

“We’ve driven for help, Doctor Cousin. Something terrible!” My father, an obstetrician/gynecologist, who drove a fancy sedan, shook the man’s hand, smiling briefly at the fat woman and the two girls who cowered in the background.

After the men headed inside, my mother whisked the fat woman 158 / Joan Larkin

into the house, my brothers close behind on her heels, leaving me alone with two cousins about my age.

Their names were Fatima and Angelina.

The older one was taller than me, prettier. She walked over to my chair and perched on the edge, scanning the sidewalks. The neighborhood was Italian, but ritzy; it must have seemed strange.

Bored, Angelina asked to braid my hair.

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