The squad was made up of three girls from a school. The girls’ names was Debbie, Donna, and Shenay. They was stalwart, steady, and statuesque, always going round not hurting old people or weak boys but helping them. They strolled down Ronald Drive and Cahill Street to Nathalie Avenue to way over to Jefferson Estates, where they could be invited in some Body’s house for cookies and where they could automatically spot trouble. Things that needed correcting. A yelling mother. A father that liked to observe things too much. A brother that was in danger of getting left back in school with a bunch of stupids. A sister that didn’t have no friends and was going to get murderized by some others and furthermore she thought she was going crazy. For instance. That was at day.

At night they came together and decided Who Should Benefit From Our Good Deeds? They all had Good Hearts. They was all big strong girl students, that did science superbly smart and got into the honor roll just from their math grade. You Know Girls Can Be Boy Smart. The Helper Squad was loved by every Body in Amity-ville. They was a home for girls and boys that had secrets and that needed things corrected. The Helper Squad mothers and fathers wanted the girls to be stupendous.

(That’s how I made them in my notebook. Stupendous.)

Their mothers and fathers let them talk about babies and how babies came, just as long as they don’t have none of their own. Right now you all just help and do right. We love you just like you are. And don’t forget: You are the Ones.

(That’s how I made them.)



They had us in a circle of two, all by ourself, them close to where the bus comes, me and Bethi in a circle by ourself, but then they broke it up by telling Bethi that I had called her a slow girl in Mr. di Salvo’s class yesterday so then I was an only circle. They told her Come Stand over Here by Us. Bethi looked at me with her mouth hanging open, nothing new. She went over to the back opening of their circle. Then it was just me to make a circle out of one person, waiting for the bus which would surely include more agony. Bethi and I were apart, but together by radar we were waiting to get to Park Avenue Elementary and by radar remembering when my head got massacred in a fusillade of blood by Bibi and Crater and Martha and Bellerina last summer on this very corner. We listened to their ugly brains and their ugly ways. I wanted them like my whole Body was fire.

—I’m going with Charlie to The Back. I am his world.

—What you doing there? No one is suppose to be in The Back.

—None of your fucking business.

—The Back is where the lezzies go. You a homo.

—Teeny, tell your sister she’s butt ugly. You cunnylingling.

—What’s that mean?

—Look in the mirror.

—No one is suppose to be in The Back. They say that’s where girls . . .

—Look in the mirror.



They would giggle like monsters and it would fill in all the air that I had saved up in my head. I was trying to be self-independent and breathe my own air. My notebook was in my bag with all my stories in it and was my own air. I had learned about Indians in the Nineteenth Century being self-independent, especially when the Frontiersmen had it out with them over all the harms they were causing. The wagon trains moved in a circle and pulled out shotguns under the flaps. The Pioneers suffered. They had a dream. That one day this nation will rise up. The Pioneer People built America because they would not let their dream get stoppled. I learned from Mr. di Salvo that the Indians could be awful quiet, holding in their breath in the shrubberies when ambush was near. The Pioneer People would be sitting in the wagon train with women and children, some who could read and write. But they could not make out the thunder in the ground or the smoke signals from the rocks that said: You was born to sacrifice for this great land.

I do the same in my circle.

Ass. Ass hole. Cunny. Four Eye Fuck. Think You a Brainiac, but You is a fucking Re-Tard. You and Your Fucking Notebook Full of Lies. (Why you have to write lies like that?) You and You Re-Tard Sister. I’ma Kick Your Goddamn Ass. Like I did Last Summer Remember. You better stay indoors. WITH YOUR NOTEBOOK. Slow Girl will be a Dead Girl. Yeah I’m Looking at You. Four Eye Fuck.

The other girls giggle gigantic giggles. Then Bellerina’s sister Gimlet and her girl friend Big Susie come by on their way to high school and just stand there, letting the girls look them up and down. Every Body drinks in Gimlet and Big Susie and knows in their heart that they are the rulers, even if no Body is allowed to say what else they are. Bethi is just standing there not doing a thing. Because it wasn’t her head that got massacred last summer, the braids all torn up, the teeth in shatters. The eyes in a clump. No writing hand at all. All because of the notebook I keep with the stories. Only the girls from the bus stop think it was all about them which it was not. Bethi doesn’t know what she is doing there in the girls’ circle. I make a note to myself that I will have to explain that to her later on. That and a thousand other things like how to be good friends with the teachers. The ones that can still be outraged and feel for you.

I watch their mouths. I try to listen with my eyes close. I can see Gimlet yanking her sister Bellerina by the hair telling her You Better not be Doing It, then lighting up a cigarette in front of every Body and then passing it to Big Susie who runs her tongue along the cigarette before she takes it in her lips and smiles back at Gimlet. From where I am standing, the girls’ mouths move to things that don’t make any sense, like Teeny’s mouth saying over and over, I want visitor hands of cyclone skirt, I want visitor hands of cyclone skirt. Every Body laughs. Which shrinks my only girl circle. Gimlet looks over in my direction but she don’t do anything. Big Susie says, Y’all ain’t supposed to play like that. That supposed to be your fren! Only she knows it ain’t playing. Something will happen that will get my ass kicked again. The other girl circle wants me in-tense. Gimlet puts her hand in Big Susie’s jeans behind pocket and she and her keep on walking to the high school. I hold my breath. We watch till they’re a speck. I turn my eyes down. I feel what they want. Out under the new tiger frame glasses I’m wearing there is a world of uncovered things like hands, hair, voices, teeth, windows, behinds, desires.

*   *   *

(They were the most perfect girls I could think of.)

Debbie, Virgo, her favorite color was red, like the setting sun over the mountains you could see from her bedroom window. She was precise, innocent, shy, perfectionist, of service to others. Solicitous. The time she wanted to go with Donna’s brother’s best friend but her good virtuous held her down. All the times she got a 100 grade in math class, but she didn’t say nothing. She was modesty carnation.

Donna was in love with her brother’s best friend. He loved her back although he was secretly more in love with Debbie. But there are some bonds and some promises that are stronger than the Heart Dictation. There is Honor. There is Friendship. There is another Girl Truth.

Donna, Aries, was a grade A student and the most beautiful girl in the school. Sometimes rash, sometimes thorny, but always up front. Everyone wanted to say that Cynthia Wiggins was the most beautiful, but secretly they knew that beauty is not just outwardly. No, what about all that on the inside? And Donna’s biggest wish in life was to become a veterinarian and take care of sick injured horses.

At the Divine Confabulation Private School For Girls Donna asked to play a slave in the Thanksgiving Assembly in the fifth grade. Everyone wanted to be a Mistress on a plantation, but Donna knew right from wrong. She was her mother and father pride and joy. Her favorite colors was brown and white.



In school Mr. di Salvo asks me if I can spell the word “appreciate.” If I can spell it correctly, I will get to be one of the Women in the Pioneer play. I will get to sing “This Land Is Your Land” with the other Women. I will get to have Mrs. Shea from third grade sew me a bonnet and a long apron to wear over my clothes when I walk along the stage with the others. All this for “appreciate” on our weekly spelling bee. Bellerina sees that I am having trouble. She and I are at the middle desk. She has not had her hair straightened in days. There are all these little nubs down the back of her neck. The Ultra-Sheen grease that her mother told her to put in missed her hair and smacks down her neck and shows my reflection in it. I can almost see my corduroy pants on her neck through my tiger frame glasses that everyone makes fun of and calls me F.E.F. cause they know I won’t do nothing. I only have one pair of pants. My parents say that we are poor, but not to go out broadcasting that information. How can I help it? My knees are rundown. Every Body knows. And I can’t do nothing. But the school bus on page 2 of the spelling book honks to me: appreciate, appreciate. The Boloney Butcher for B whispers, I appreciate a truly smart girl like you. I am going stark raving for a girl in the fifth grade who is going to get it later on from the girls at the bus stop. A whole bunch of dreams. I want to do something. Will my parents finally go away with us on vacation to the mountains or the seaside like they promised? Will they send me and Bethi to private school—where we really belong? A truly smart girl. My brain remembers the melody lane from the day before in the backyard: Daddy mowing the dried-up lawn and whistling “California Dreamer” and Mom singing the commercial for Eight O’Clock Coffee and Bethi trying to get all the words to “Shakeit Shakeit Shakeit” in one line, like there are no other words to the whole song. Me sitting in the bushes with my notebook which is the dream weevil and trying to get it all down the way I would truly like it to happen and looking up in the sunlight and wishing I had a real mother and a real father and a real sister that wanted the utmost best for me, who realized all the dynamite I have in me, like a princess or a very smart and beautiful princess/girl/student. I listen. I want to shout to Bethi, —We’re going to the country, We’re going to the fair, as those are the other words, but she is really too slow to get anything. I hate her.

Bellerina whispers in my ear, —A-P-P-R-E-S-H-E-A-T-E.
I repeat her words. I want to stand in the girls’ circle. When I used to be there, Bellerina used to play the funniest jokes on me, and I wouldn’t get mad. She had told Bibi in secret exactly where it would hurt the most on my Body to hit me, and she was right. She stold my notebook to see the stories I wrote in it so she could give the others more ammunition. She informed me that she would get her older brother Beanie from prison to take me to The Back and feel my nubs under my dress. She did all this and still. I want to stand in the girls’ circle. I will spin Bethi out, cause she really don’t know what it means, the circle. She don’t know that I should have what she has, only she don’t recognize that for her genuine slowness.

Mr. di Salvo announces that I will be one of the people pulling the wagon across the prairie. They had those, too, you know, when the horses died, and the cattle broke down. I don’t have to wear a dress if I don’t want to. The girls wearing aprons and bonnets will have to wear a dress under. But I can wear whatever I want to, even my gym suit, as a puller.

The songs I will have to sing with the chorus are “Fifty Miles on the Erie Canal,” “Sweet Betsy from Pike,” “Carry My Back to Ole Virginny.” I will have to walk slow like they did in the old days. They did not run across the prairie. I will have to learn my songs good. Bellerina holds her big teeth under her big hand. She will get to be a Pioneer Woman. She will get a bonnet and an apron. She will get to sit in the wagon while the boys and some unlucky girls pull it. Even though she weighs as much as a ninth grader, one ton, and she is butt ugly.

The teacher is not expecting nothing. I was born on Easter, an Aries baby, so that makes me the kind that is innocent yet secretly commanding. I raise my hand and I get up slowly out my desk. My palms are sweaty. My long braids that I hate for my mother to make on me are messed up already because I’ve been putting my head down on my boring speller too much. I get up. The gray venetian blinds on the big window hold back the sun with their straight arms and tell me that I am in the right lane. Go on, Girlie! they cheer. They reach down and pat my head like I’m the faithful dog. The doorframe gets ready to move. The tiles on the floor are shivery with delight. Shakeit Shakeit Shakeit. Shakeit all you can. I open my mouth. —Bellerina Brown is a Fucking Ass. Hole. The class goes wild. Shakeit all you can. Shakeit like a milkshake, and do the best you can. The venetian blinds nod yes you can and the clouds outside fall into the classroom and swirl my brains up in a pudding. Bellerina swings for my stomach, but I land on Mr. di Salvo’s desk, where I hide with the other butterflies under the stack of math tests from last Wednesday. A staunch stunning wind from the spelling lists stampedes the stalactites on my hands. Bellerina punches but I am too fast. I’m always out her way.

With both eyes open under my tiger frame glasses I see the pretty one hundred girls who are in shock and who don’t want to consider me anymore for them. The rough zero girls have questions for me later: We ain’t know you was like us, Glory! The snaggle-tooth boys cheer Hip Hip, and BooBoo claps me on the back. Mr. di Salvo takes me and Bellerina out the play. We will have to sit in Mrs. Shea’s class with the third graders while the assembly is on. We will have to write out the words to “The Star-Spangled Banner” ten times and maybe get locked in the closet, which is Mrs. Shea’s specialty.

Bellerina looks me up and down. —Later. Today. After School. Your Ass is Grass.

I sit back in my seat. The pencil groove on my desk smiles and asks me, Now that wasn’t so hard, was it?



(The story goes on.)

Shenay is a Scorpio. She do not bother with boys at all. She is sexy, strategic, and silent. She figures things out. Shenay has one mission on her mind: Find those who need help, and send in the Helper Squad. That would be her, Donna, and Debbie. They all live on the same street, and at night they are all dedicated to saving.

Shenay can open her bedroom window and get the feel of the ocean waves crashing against the rock. She teaches Donna and Debbie. She tells them to look behind what you see. Look for the genuine-ality of a thing. Donna and Debbie say I don’t get it. Shenay says, “Let me give you an example.”

When she is lying in her bed at night, she sees gypsy moths fist-fighting in the wall and hears pumpernickel swans discussing yesterday’s math problems together. Did you get this one? Sure. That one was a cinch. The swans kiss her on the forehead. Honey, you ain’t never told me you were such a smartie.

Shenay says, “Look.”



On my way to the principal’s office to get my punishment okayed I pass Bethi’s classroom and wave to the teacher, Mr. Flegenheimer. Can she come out right now? I just got an important message from our mother and I just want to tell her it in the hall, Mr. Fleg. Private. It’s important from our mother.

Mr. Flegenheimer brings Bethi out because he is getting too many complaints from the parents of Special Ed that he is not treating their kids like regular human beings. That he is holding back their bathroom and making them pee in their chairs and sit in it for a long time before calling the nurse and the janitor. That he is closing the venetian blinds and making them sit there, just like that, so he can put his head down on the desk. Mr. Flegenheimer is trying to look different now, but we all know.

—You can talk for three minutes, and I mean three minutes, Glory. I have a good mind to talk to your mother on the phone to confirm this, Mr. Flegenheimer says. Then he is gone back to the class that is howling over something. His eyes are closed.

Bethi is afraid to look at me. She just got allowed into the back of their circle this morning. She is afraid of what I will do to her. —Don’t worry about that till later, I assure her. I will get you back later. Right now I want you to do me a favor. I want you to go to Mr. di Salvo’s classroom and tell him to send Bellerina to your classroom, Mr. Flegenheimer’s orders. Can you do that? Okay, Bethi? Can you do that? I whisper all this to her, but it takes a real long time before she gets the directions straight. She is not a retard. She is just slow. Her whole classroom is full of slow kids, so she don’t feel so alone. They get beat up all the time, except for the large ones that are truly brainless and that can kill you just by looking your way.

Bethi goes to my classroom and gets Bellerina who calls her Stupid Ass and Brick Brain all the way back to Mr. Flegenheimer’s door. I’m waiting there. Martha Madison suddenly appears out of nowhere humming her group of Women’s song for Assembly, “I’se Gwine Back to Dixie.” She says in my direction, —You Gonna Wish You Was Dead Meat. Martha is cross-eyed so she sometimes scares me and she sometimes doesn’t. Now I am only thinking of my plan. Bellerina slaps her five and then Martha books. Bellerina turns and looks me dead in the eye. There, I am there. Shakeit Shakeit.



The door opened to show the first victim in need: old Mrs. Goodwin, a faithful soul who had a heart of gold. She was a white lady who trusted everyone. She lived all by herself in the black neighborhood of Tar Hill where people live in apartments instead of normal houses. She can make you believe in mankind all over again. Hallelujah for Mrs. Goodwin!

She had fell down her apartment steps and all the food stamp cans of food in her grocery bag rolled into the alleyway where Joe the town bum was laying. “Help me, Joe!” she cried, but he only cried back, “Mrs. Goodwin, indeed I wish I could! I myself am too weak to do much of anything.” So they both agonized in tribulations until around the corner came—the Helper Squad!

Debbie helped the old bitty to her feet, but when she found that Mrs. Goodwin couldn’t walk, she carried her in her girl arms up the steps to her house and put her in the bed. Donna said, “Debbie, how come you got so strong?” Debbie didn’t want to say. Modesty carnation.

Donna placed all the cans of food in their cabinets and to top it off, she cooked Mrs. Goodwin a whole dinner. Saucy Frank Supper with corn and tomatoes in it. Mrs. Goodwin closed her wrinkly eyes with tears of joy. “What would this world be without girls like you?” Donna shaked her beautiful hair and made Mrs. Goodwin feel better just by looking at her.

Meanwhile Shenay was in the alleyway helping Joe the bum to his feet. He smelled strange and warm. She was telling him, “See, if you believe in yourself, you can do it.” Joe said he had never believed in himself before today. He was going downtown to get a job at the local school, doing anything. He wants to better himself. Maybe he can raise to a janitor. Shenay, you are a gold mind. Let me thank you.

“Don’t thank me. Thank the Helper Squad. We want the world to be the place where you can dream and come true.”

“I NEED to thank you, Shenay.”

“I said DON’T, old man.”



Back then. The daylights whipped out of me. I said I couldn’t take it no more. I felt a rippliness in my head from the punches and slides. I told them that I would never tell on them and besides my family has a pool table in our basement. Come over and use it any time. We just don’t have some things that go with it. I’ll never tell on you. Come over any time. But my head was getting pulverized, and in reality I was already on a cloud floating up to the sky. The voices around said, You ain’t got no pool table. Your family is poor as dirt. Don’t you go on putting on airs. My lips realized, How did you know that word: airs? Then my head got completely mashed up. Meanwhile Beanie, Bellerina’s brother, waved to me from his car and laughed because it was truly funny seeing the smart-ass skinny one with the spy notebook of no-good gossip bout everyone on this block get the daylights whipped out of her and maybe he even saw what I wrote about a guy like him in my notebook about how strong and handsome but feeling up ladies now what a shame and why do they have to do that when all they have to do is ask and surely someone will say, Yes please.

Bibi and Martha had my head in a lock, and then Crater had the stupendous idea of putting me between the cinder blocks to see if they could make a girl sandwich. Bellerina said, It hurts the most when something hard is lying on top of your moist spot. The other girls looked at her funny. Where the heck is that? Bellerina turned her head away. She said into the wind, Why am I the only one who ever knows anything?

It did not get that far. They slabbed me on a cinder block and I felt the blood bath behind my braided head go into my braided eyes and the true way Beanie’s snout nose looked came clear in my mind. Spread out like a father’s but he was only a guy. Even with that snout nose I saw through to Beanie’s handsomeness. Didn’t I say so in my notebook? Next to the made-up stories about Debbie, Donna, and Shenay there was this gorgeous guy named B. who went to prison but who was really too fine to really do anything prisonable. He was in secret a millionaire and he was going fix a deserving girl up in private school where they learn and he would be driving a Fifth Avenue. Only in real life now his car says Dodge. He is handsomely driving a Dodge, Away. I felt like laughing and then the blood trinkled to the line that was my mouth, all the way into my neck, later my eyelids. The blood burned deeper the spot of lonely that was already there. We have a pool table. Only problem is we don’t have the balls that go with it. Where is every Body running? Why are you going? Wait. But it was too late. I was there half a sandwich for a pillow and no way in hell Beanie in his Dodge was going to give me another look now.



At the bus stop I am always shrinking of the girls. Fall Spring Morning Bedtime School Clothes PJs. I want to be with them but I am also shrinking. I wish I was dumber. I wish I was getting left back. I wish I weighed a hundred twenty pounds in the fifth grade. Then I would be in the bus stop circle. I could stop feeling Bethi breathe down my plaid dress in her waiting. She stands so close. I need to do something to her, even though she will never tell on me, and that fact makes it more stupider to do it in the first place.

My mother thinks that I am incomprehensible for wishing these kinds of things. To be left back and big. My father just laughs in the background, while he is watching Sixty Minutes. He laughs, Just one look at Glory’s math grades and you can tell she’s gonna be in the fifth grade a long time, maybe years. I would’ve got a horse whipping. You don’t know how easy things are nowadays. It’s the state of cultural illiteracy. Then he goes back to watching. Mother adds, And another thing: You better stop bringing up private school, girl. It’s just incomprehensible. Do you think we made out of money? Then Father adds, And you better stop writing in that damn notebook and write something for Mr. di Salvo that will get you passed into sixth grade. Bethi smiles at me but I don’t want it. Then they go on. Mother is folding clothes and telling Bethi what to put down on her spelling worksheet and my father is saying to the TV, —I Been Told You That Last Year, Stupid Ass, and I am doing nothing important, just standing there in an invisible cloud of butterflies, roaches, and wasps, all asking me to be their best friend.



Bellerina looks me up and down in the hallway. —What you doing here?

Before I can open my mouth she says, —You want me to permanently damage that shit-ass face of yours?

—Bellerina, let’s you and me go to The Back. No one will know.

—Now what in Shit’s Heaven do I want to go to The Back with you for? You ain’t no Body. Forget it. I’ma kill you.

—Aww no, Bellerina, I have something really big to tell you out there. If you know this you will be Boss of the Girls. You will have the Power.

—What in Shit’s Heaven?

—Please come with me. Then you can whip my ass in front of the whole school. Let’s run to The Back. Okay? Let’s run. Let’s run.



Debbie ran across little Tiffany Hammond. Tiffany was in tears, and her brown curls glittered in the sun. “What is the matter, dear child?” Debbie asked. Tiffany said it was all these words she couldn’t get on her spelling quiz. She was going to fail third grade. She couldn’t even make up a spelling story. She sat on the steps of her apartment and wept perfoundly. Debbie put her arms around Tiffany.

“Let me help you,” she said. By magic, Donna came with Shenay. The two of them explained spelling tips to little Tiffany. They taught her how to practice to win. Meanwhile Debbie thought of a story that could put together the words Gather Garnish Gaze Gazebo Generous Generosity Genuine Ghost Gibberish. They read Tiffany’s story out loud and they laughed in harmony. Tiffany said, “You saved me from impending doom, all you are geniuses,” and they laughed when they realized that Genius was a spelling word, too.

Shenay said why don’t we start a spelling club at school cause she said girls need to know more spelling words than boys so that they wouldn’t be sitting on no steps in the middle of the day crying their goddamn eyes out. “Girls can be strong, Tiffany. Tears ain’t always the answer,” Shenay said. Donna said that a spelling club would be just fine. Donna said that she had something to discuss with Debbie in private, so goodbye, Shenay. Shenay thought a minute to herself. Then she said, “Yeah, goodbye, Girls.”



Bellerina and I snuck out the window over the emergency door. I sent Bethi back to her class, only I didn’t know if she could make it without blabbing. Me and Bellerina walked half the way to The Back. We didn’t say a word. We looked over by the handball court and saw the High Schoolers smoking there. They cursed all the time but it didn’t sound like the way elementary cursed. It came over elementary lips like bowling balls except Bellerina who it was her natural way of life. High Schoolers could curse up a storm and when it was over, you realized that all they said was, Hi, how you doing? Bellerina waved to her sister standing out there with Big Susie but they didn’t notice her. Gimlet had her warm arm around Big Susie’s shoulder, and their faces was really next to each other. I felt my secret long heart.

Charlie came out the shack that stood in the corner of The Back. We could see him from halfway. Charlie wiped his mouth along the edges with his pointer finger and his thumb. He was big and small at the same time. He waved to us to come. —I’m feeling warm! he shouted. He was leaning against the shack.

Bellerina looked a bit scared. She turned to me. —So what you want? What you got to tell me?

I swallowed. —Bellerina. I don’t want to fight anymore. What is it about me you don’t like? I can change! My notebook is only stories. Of how things can maybe be. I am really smarter than people think. I can change! BELLERINA!

—I don’t like your fucking face. Can you change that?

I also don’t like your slobbering Re-Tard sister. Why she have to stand with us?

I also don’t like it you think you are better than me. You think you a Brainiac. Well, let me tell you. That’s a damn lie. Write that in your damn notebook full of lies. Four Eye Fuck In Liar. You hurt a lot of people with them damn lies. That’s what you are.

Bellerina walked away just like that. So my plan had failed. I just kept my head down and my eyes closed. Bellerina walked to the shack. It was a stupid plan when you got right down to it.

I sighed with the future. Your Body never gets used to it. It hurts more each time. I de-test the feeling of hands messing me up. I am a girl made out of brown peel, not iron and steel. I also de-test the eyes. They can mess you in a way that makes you afraid to sleep at night, get up in the morning. The eyes can push you off into a lonely circle, like the circle of me and my sister, like the circle of me. I de-test it all.

Bellerina called back to me, —I’ma get you this afternoon. Me and the girls. You better be ready. Drag me out in the cold. You lucky Charlie is here for me.

She went with Charlie in the shack. Charlie said, —Dag! Dag!, and I saw other High Schoolers fast-walking there. She had said: —I’m his whole world.

Bellerina’s sister Gimlet shook her head when she saw Bellerina going in the shack. Big Susie grinned. Gimlet usually doesn’t care, even when she swears she will kick anyone’s butt who messes with her little sister. She took a puff of cigarillo, down to her feet. She looked and shaked her head. Big Susie laughed, —She’s going to get lit up.



They were needed again. Little Bobby Lee had fallen off his sister’s banana seat bike and was bleeding. Another boy stood near him. “Help!” the big boy cried. Soon a crowd was there. No one was capable of doing nothing. Lucky for them Debbie, Donna, and Shenay was speeding on their way to the place.

“What happened?” Debbie asked. The big boy told her. The crowd agreed. Bobby was so clumsy when you weren’t looking. His sister was in tears.

Shenay stepped up and looked at the big boy. She waited a moment with eyes that didn’t move. She said, “I’m waiting.” The crowd growed silent. The sun didn’t move from the sky. She said, “I’ll wait.” The big boy looked. A river of pee ran down his leg and he bawled. “It was not all my fault,” he bawled.

Shenay stepped back. The crowd laughed and started smacking the big boy upside his head. Someone held little Bobby Lee in their arms and rocked him to sleep like a scared hummingbird. Shenay stepped back until she was just a speck on the distance.



I sat down on the steps of the handball court, and out the stretch of my eye, I could see the shack at The Back. High Schoolers went in and they stayed. The sky hung blue. Gimlet walked over to me out of nowhere. I had to catch my breathing. I was thinking about burning my notebook. It was just a bunch of stories. A fire would prove something. Or I could take cinder blocks and make a sandwich. That would be better proof.

Gimlet stopped in front of me and said she heard I was going to get my ass kicked. That’s what she heard. She looked over at the shack. She shrugged her shoulders. But then she just kept on walking, like the air was not holding her down.



Shenay called a special meeting. It was at her family’s ski lodge, and her parents were both away on a medical mission in the Heart of Africa. “I want to speak to you both from my soul,” she explained the girls.

She pulled Darnell Williams out her closet. “Is this the boy you two been dreaming about?” The girls nodded yes. “Well, stop it right now. We have a large mission at hand. What will happen if we don’t save things?” The two others didn’t have anything to say in their shame. “What will happen if we ain’t responsible for the lips and knees and heads and hearts of others?”

Shenay took Darnell Williams and kissed his mouth into her own. She put his face on her chest and said, “There. Ooh there.” She told him, “Also: Kissing me on my neck drives me wild. Now you going to have to give me what you been giving these two.” There was no arguing with Shenay.

The other two said, “We understand,” and went on home to do their social studies homework. They realized that Shenay could have it all, but she was doing this to be responsible. She taught them a uplifting lesson about girls in the life of the world.



In the corner of my eye I saw Bellerina fast-walk out of the shack in The Back. She was saying something but then Charlie pulled her back in. Her shirt was open. I could see the sides of it blowing in the wind. I could see that she was not wearing a undershirt but a womanly brassiere. She had meaty sides.

In the hallway Gimlet was talking to the Principal Blackburn. Big Susie was nodding yes to everything. Gimlet cried, —And if my goddamn sister can’t be learning here in school I’ma go to the damn Super-in-ten-den to get some answers. You suppose to be watching over these kids. And they hanging all over the place who knows where doing shit.

Principal Blackburn said, —Gimlet, it’s good that you watch out for Bellerina. She’s been having trouble. Why hasn’t your mother called? Or your father? We need your parents to take action.

—I’m her parent. Shit. I’m just as good.

—This is really the job of a father, Gimlet. You are pretty young yourself. Please send your father in to see me.

—You see Big Susie? Well, she is Bellerina’s father, if I say so. Get that through your thick head, Mrs. Blackburn. Shit.



Shenay pushed Darnell Williams out a five-story window. His Body was a blood bath. She didn’t have time for that kind of mess. She knew there was more important things in life besides girls loving boys. Why do girls always be helping others? Why don’t girls grow up to be mad scientists? Why don’t girls grow up and love other girls and fight over them instead of boys? The world had too many fences in it for Shenay. She called the ambulance to come and pick up the blood bath.



Mr. di Salvo came outside and grabbed my shoulder. Bethi was next to him, looking guilty in her slow way. She knew I was going to fix her. Mr. di Salvo asked, —What the hell are you doing out here? pulling me back into Park Avenue. He dragged me past Gimlet and Mrs. Blackburn. Mr. di Salvo listened and took out his hanky and wiped the sweat off his lip. —Hell, he said.

He turned to me. —You are lucky your sister blabbed. You trying to get your butt beat? Always looking for a way out of math. You barely passed the test from last Wednesday. But just how would you know that, Glory? You just sitting out here enjoying the day when the rest of us are looking over the math answers. You. You. You. You. You.

I looked at my sister before we dumped her off at Mr. Flegenheimer’s. I could not think of any big evil to scare her with. She blinked at me. I growled, —What you want, Bethi? Stop wasting my precious time. Stop looking at me. Wipe your nose. Close your damn mouth.

But Bethi put her nose close to my shoulder. She sniffed me. She whispered so only I could hear, —I don’t want you get beat up, Glory. I going to help you. We going to poison them. We going to kill them so we can stand back together. I want to be with you. We going to make poison.

I stopped. I hugged my sister. I didn’t care. I hugged her till we got to Mr. Flegenheimer’s, where the kids were screaming like gorillas from behind the door. Mr. di Salvo made me let her go.



Shenay didn’t let her mind go down, like some other girls she knew. She concentrated. When she saw a girl, she did not try to explain it that the wind or the stars or the pencils told her to do it. She did not have to go crazy in her head to feel the genuine things. She walked up to the girl and held her in her arms and said, “You are my present to me.” That’s all there was to it. She would always help Those In Need, Shenay would. She did not have to be a nut case.



Big Susie saw me and walked next to me on the way back to Mr. di Salvo’s class. Mr. di Salvo held my arm tight. He was thinking about how I had been a different girl. That meant zero girls’ punishment. But by the time we got to our classroom, Mr. di Salvo was thinking of letting me be in the chorus to sing one of the assembly songs. He said I would have to learn the words and not just goof off with my head in the clouds like I am prone to do. Could I learn the words and not be a screwball. Mr. di Salvo was feeling for me and that was a good surprise.

Big Susie was walking next to me. She leaned over and her chest touched me on the shoulder. She whispered in my ear that I was not getting beat up that day or on any day. Bellerina was not going to get me. Bellerina was not going to get anyone. Big Susie touched my hair with her hand. She said, —You girls are scared shitless. Then you go and do some shit. Just wait. And then Big Susie was gone.

 

I’se going back to Dixie
No More I’se gwine back to wander,
My Heart’s Turned Back to Dixie
I can’t stay here no longer
I miss de old plantation, my friends and my relation,
My heart’s turned back to Dixie, and I must go.

I’ve hoed in fields of cotton
I’ve worked up on de river
I used to think if I got off
I’d go back there, no never
But time has changed de ole man, His head is bending low
His heart’s turned back to Dixie, and I must go.

 

I sat in the desk in the back of the room, next to Martha Madison. She tried to look rough and scare me into last year, but I kept my eyes right on her till she looked away. The venetian blinds asked me how I felt. The pencil groove in my desk wanted to know why I wasn’t talking to it anymore. I said out loud, —I don’t want you. No more. Martha Madison winked her eyes in the other direction trying to do like I was crazy. Only I wasn’t.

You can change things just by ignoring the furniture. You can get your own kind of strength. I looked hard at Martha Madison. From the side, her eyelids had on a trace of her mother’s eye makeup, Blue Oceans. Martha always stole her mother’s makeup to come to school in. She had dreams. The desk wood was silent. The venetian blinds were just venetian blinds. I looked hard at Martha. I also had dreams. I will keep my notebook in my school bag. That’s the proof. I will get back in that circle.