The Geography of Girlhood Read online

where the only curriculum is kissing,

  love is the first day of sun

  after a whole winter of rain,

  love is a secret thicket of small trees

  just outside of town,

  love is how you are born,

  love is how you ruin your life.

  So when people ask, I want to tell them

  that whatever this was,

  it definitely wasn’t that.

  Jenny Arnold Is Going to Kill You

  If there was a list of stupid things to do, flirting with

  Jenny Arnold’s boyfriend would be smack-dab at the

  tippy-top. Denise tells you the word is out: Jenny

  Arnold is going to kill you the day you hit high school.

  She tells you that Jenny Arnold says this summer is your

  last, so you’d better enjoy it.

  The next time you see Jenny Arnold’s boyfriend, he

  doesn’t look at you. You stare at him through the

  window of junior high, the one that looks out on the

  rest of your life, and you realize this is the first boy

  you’re going to die for, and if you live through the

  summer, it probably won’t be the last.

  2

  low tide

  June 9

  It’s the first day of summer and

  the sun rises like a giant, dumb saucer.

  I take the dogs and

  sit outside in the gory heat

  waiting for Tara to come home

  and face all the trouble that can’t help

  but flare up around her.

  She’s been out all night

  and I try to picture what she was doing and with whom,

  but it’s about as easy as trying to picture

  dying or being born.

  The heat is starting to slap me around now

  and after I fill the dog dishes with water,

  I sit there and wonder

  if there will ever be a mystery inside of me

  like there is inside my sister—

  something bright and fast and wonderful,

  something awful and true, something

  that cannot be stamped out

  no matter how many ways

  our father tries to stamp it out.

  Summer has lost all control of itself

  when Tara’s car pulls in the drive.

  Our father waits at the door for her,

  fighting the heat.

  My sister gets out and gives me a little wave

  before she goes to face him,

  and I sit there,

  waiting for the noise to start,

  watching as the dogs run wild around the yard,

  eating things that will make them sick later,

  bringing back things the rest of us thought

  were long since buried and gone.

  Visiting South

  Every July my sister goes

  to be a camp counselor

  and I get sent south,

  away from the sea and the pines

  and to the flat land of boy cousins

  and tumbleweeds.

  Even though we’re too old for it

  the boy cousins and I play marbles all summer long,

  the banter of glass globes

  in the lap of my summer dresses.

  Always, the sex of cousins smells sharper

  than that of the boys back home,

  especially this summer,

  the summer before high school,

  with the liquid flood of marbles all around,

  the print of lineoleum on my cheek,

  the beer bread crumbs

  dug in my knees.

  This must be the start of the sweet and hungry days,

  out here in the overgrown acres of forever

  with the boy cousins,

  because I feel like soon I will taste sin firsthand

  and maybe even the way I smile, or walk,

  even the way I roll the marbles

  across that endless floor,

  will surely give me away.

  The Postcard I Imagine My Sister Writes from Camp

  There’s a guy here who looks just like you, Bobby.

  He’s got sideburns and a sunburn. He’s a loser and a

  sycophant. Trouble is, he says the most beautiful things,

  walks the most beautiful walk. First day I saw him,

  I thought, There he is, the fool I’ll fall for. He calls

  Tamakwa “summer camp for the hormonally insane.”

  He thinks he’s clever and oh my God, he is. He’s not

  wasteful like you are, he doesn’t waste my time with

  stories about cousins or killers. The stories he tells, they

  get right to the point, like a dog’s nose to a crotch.

  Your stories never had much of a point and if they did,

  I never understand how you got to it. This guy, he’s

  special in a stupid kind of way. He knows how not

  to hurt me, he knows how to bring up his girlfriend

  casually in conversation, he knows better than to lay

  himself in front of me and hold out a hand that could

  mean either “Stop” or “Come Closer.”.

  Wedding Day

  My sister and I come home to find

  that our father has spawned with Susan,

  his bride-to-be that wants to get married at sea.

  I’m in the catch and release program,

  she likes to say, thinking it’s funny

  that she’s had more boyfriends

  than there are salmon in the jetty these days.

  As we’re motoring out to the harbor,

  I look at my father, cheeks flushed,

  new wedding ring burning a hole in his pocket.

  As he steers us across the shallow part of the shoal,

  I try not to think of my mother,

  instead I look at my sister,

  who’s wearing Bobby’s leather jacket

  and not even trying to hide her latest hickey,

  and Susan, the brand-new bride

  who is tagging my father with a kiss and a vow

  before one day she releases him

  back into the wild.

  Stepbrother

  One day he was a kid three grades below me,

  and the next we’re related.

  He’s more disgusting than the parts of a fish

  you throw in the trash.

  Fortunately, he doesn’t say much to me,

  except for pass that at the dinner table

  or are you finished? when referring to the bathroom

  or food of yours he wants to eat.

  He’s always down at the docks,

  collecting marine life, the kind that stinks when it dies.

  His glasses are big like goggles

  and for a person I’d prefer knowing nothing about,

  why do I have to accidentally see him naked at least

  once a month?

  His mother is always saying how

  he needs a positive male role model

  and I agree.

  He’s in desperate need of a dad

  but one thing’s for sure:

  he’s not getting mine.

  Happy Birthday

  Randall Faber called me today to wish me a happy

  birthday and I said thank you and he asked me what’d

  you do? and I told him I went to North Carolina to see

  my relatives and when I got back I had a whole new

  family. Actually, I didn’t say that last part.

  Randall told me he spent his summer building an

  add-on to his kitchen with his dad and his brothers.

  Also, he got a new dog.

  I picture the Faber family—a gang of boys and a mom

  that makes the meals and a dinner table full of people

  that know how to love each other in a regular way.
/>   It sounds nice, I say, and Randall says it is, and he

  asks how Elaine is and I say we’re not really friends

  anymore, and he asks how Denise is, and I say I’d

  rather not talk about it and then we say goodbye,

  and that’s it.

  Denise

  Denise is sick in the head

  and has been since June,

  when she killed something for the first time.

  Her father gave her traps for the kitchen and den

  and orchestrated their placement,

  as if he were back in Da Nang,

  festooning the forest with a collar of landmines.

  I was sleeping over

  the night he gave out the orders,

  and in the morning, we collected the bodies

  and bagged them before breakfast—

  three rigid mice and one warm one,

  soft and barely bleeding,

  fresh from the thunder of running from cats.

  We took them out to the trash

  and there, under the rotting elm,

  Denise’s sobs were the sound of a prom dress

  being taken off in a parking lot—

  slick and satiny and torn.

  Her father, all bourbon eyes and confiscated heart,

  didn’t like tears

  and refused us food

  until they were dry and gone.

  Now, Denise can’t wait to kill things.

  Last week, slain beasts were taking the form of

  cats and squirrels, then birds and bees,

  and now she’s got her sights on

  boys from the neighborhood and beyond,

  some of them so big they could only be called men.

  She’s ready for them all to fall down, one by one,

  until the town is littered with creatures

  whose hearts she’s broken,

  with me, faithful witness, following just behind,

  tagging the bodies

  so the next of kin

  can always be notified.

  Perfect

  Today is my fifteenth birthday

  so Tara is playing the part of Perfect Sister,

  beautiful on the half-shell,

  experienced but never vampy.

  Oh, I know, she has her problems:

  the way she couldn’t stop knitting

  that scarf for Susan for Christmas

  (it just grew and grew, an avenue of red yarn),

  the broken curfews, the pregnancy scare,

  the tendency to do everything

  everyone tells her not to do.

  But all in all, she’s a pretty picture,

  teeth white as the sky,

  eyes marshy and green as Florida.

  With her lipstick that matches the moon,

  she’s telling loaves of lies,

  saying she never starts fights,

  saying she’s gained weight, really she has.

  She goes on and on,

  sipping from a bottle of something

  swiped from the berth below

  and leaning against me in quieter moments,

  whispering I love you as we round the point,

  just before Dad drops the mainsail

  and with the sure hand of a father,

  takes us back to shore.

  Favorite Foods

  When we get home from our sail,

  all sunburned and salty,

  I walk into my room

  and find a boy I barely know

  reading my diary.

  He’s got it open to my list of Favorite Foods

  (I told you my diary was stupid)

  and I scream What are you doing?!

  My stepbrother leaps up and runs out

  and I slam the door in his face

  and after a moment I hear him say,

  like tacos, too.

  But when I open the door, he’s gone.

  To the Grave

  Don’t tell Elaine, Denise says

  when she shows me the medication the doctor

  put her on.

  Don’t tell Denise, Elaine says

  during the only phone call we have all summer,

  the one where she brags about having sex with

  Stan Bondurant.

  Don’t tell my mom, my stepbrother says

  after I catch him feeding a stray cat

  outside our house.

  I’m usually not a person people trust with their secrets

  but in two weeks school starts

  and it’s obvious to everyone that after that,

  the only place I’ll be taking those secrets

  is to the grave.

  Labor Day

  The harbor is alive with motors

  and the sun is shining or something like it

  and the Sound is full of jellyfish

  and the gulls are flirting with their catch

  before they come to kill it.

  I am down at the dock

  trying with all my might

  to stop summer from ending

  and so is Larry in slip 15

  who’s had enough of his life

  so he just drinks his way through it,

  or the guy who lives on the tugboat

  that my stepmom says might sink,

  but no matter what, the spangle and spell of school

  is coming for me like a tide I can’t stop,

  it’s coming for me like a storm off the coast,

  it’s coming for me like a spark that sets the

  forest aflame

  and while all the girls are like bulbs about to bloom,

  me, I am trying to stay dug down in the dirt

  because I know what is waiting for me

  when I come out.

  3

  the lay of the land

  The First Day of High School

  Don’t ask me why, but

  I’ve decided that being afraid of Jenny Arnold

  is more powerful than being in love.

  Love isn’t five feet nine like Jenny Arnold is.

  Love doesn’t drive a lime green Barracuda the way

  Jenny Arnold does.

  And love won’t kill you like Jenny Arnold will.

  On the drive to school, I ask my sister

  if she’ll protect me from what’s about to happen.

  My sister just laughs.

  She can’t wait for me to die so she can get my room.

  When we get to school,

  everyone is having the time of their goddamn lives

  and all I can think about is my funeral.

  I’m on my way into second period gym

  and that’s when I see Jenny Arnold

  standing in the locker room,

  wearing nothing but her underwear and a rose tattoo

  on her hip—

  a thorny invitation to sniff

  and get pricked.

  Jenny Arnold doesn’t care who sees her and why

  should she?

  She’s a rock star in a room full of doofs,

  she’s done things the rest of us have never even

  read about.

  She walks towards me, topless and queenly and

  I realize I’ve been dreaming about getting hit by

  Jenny Arnold

  all summer long, the way some girls dream about

  getting kissed.

  Suddenly, I can’t wait for the punch;

  at least I’m going to die at the hand

  of someone who’s beautiful and cool.

  I close my eyes and wait

  to get smacked, but instead

  Jenny Arnold smiles and says,

  Welcome to high school

  and then she walks away,

  heading toward the showers

  like a flower blooming towards the rain

  and for no reason at all,

  I go from feeling cursed to blessed,

  because like any goddess on high,

/>   Jenny Arnold has the gift of taking life

  and she has the gift of giving it back.

  Just Friends

  Why I have to have a locker right next to Randall Faber,

  I will never know.

  Every day I see him and we pretend like it’s normal

  like we’re “just friends”

  except inside I feel kind of sick,

  knowing that no matter how old I get,

  Randall Faber will always be my first kiss,

  my first beginning, my first end.

  I guess the upside is that

  now I’m a woman with a past,

  I’m not all present and future like I used to be

  and maybe that’s a good thing

  if it weren’t so absolutely awful.

  Biology

  Some people are only happy if they are making your life

  miserable and Mr. Horter is one of them. He enjoys the

  torture of frogs and freshmen. His life is sure to be

  awful, because his head is pointy and he is cruel and

  his pants are weird. He is destined to a life with a wife

  who (I’ve seen her) is as mean as he is. I imagine them

  kissing each other at the door when he comes home.

  Then I try to imagine him getting her pregnant (which

  she is) and all I can imagine is two people bumping up

  against each other in a pitch-black room. I don’t know

  what my life holds, but if it’s anything like Mr. Horter’s,

  I don’t want it. What I’d like to know is, shouldn’t they

  have teachers that inspire you to grow up, instead of

  people whose lives seem to say, Stop now because it’s

  never going to get any better?

  Erosion

  Denise and Elaine don’t talk at all anymore.

  They are like that cliff in town,

  the one that’s sliding into the sea.

  Geologists say the erosion was inevitable.

  Nothing could stop it,

  not with the rain and the wind the way it is.

  Whether it’s soil or best friends,

  things can’t help but slip away and disappear.

  I guess nothing on the map ever stays fixed.

  All you can do is make sure you’re not standing on it

  when it goes.

  My Mother at Fifteen

  I don’t know much about my mother, just that she had

  wanderlust all her life, even at fifteen, with her lipstick