Starting With Alice

  To Sophia,

  with more to come

  Contents

  One: No More Barbies

  Two: Donald Sheavers

  Three: The Terrible Triplets

  Four: Oatmeal

  Five: Riding with Lester

  Six: Call from Chicago

  Seven: Sweethearts

  Eight: Embarrassing Moments

  Nine: Hello and Good-bye

  Ten: The Sad Time

  Eleven: The World According to Rosalind

  Twelve: Starting with Me

  Thirteen: The Shampoo Party

  Fourteen: K-I-S-S-I-N-G

  Fifteen: Little Girl Lost

  Sixteen: Pancakes and Syrup

  Seventeen: What Happened at Donald’s House

  Eighteen: Spring Thaw

  Nineteen: The Party

  ‘Alice in Blunderland’ excerpt

  1

  NO MORE BARBIES

  HERE’S WHAT I LOVE:

  Alice, my name

  Pepperoni pizza

  Felt-tipped pens, sixty-four colors

  Snow

  Flip-flops with sequins on them

  Books about girls like me

  My dad

  Here’s what I hate:

  Anything with gravy

  Lint in my belly button

  Brussels sprouts

  Lester’s smelly socks

  Washing my hair

  Splinters

  Barbie dolls

  When I was in first grade back in Chicago, I got three Barbie dolls on my birthday. It wasn’t so bad then because I didn’t have any at all.

  One Barbie came with a beach bag, another came with a wedding dress. The third one came on a motorcycle. My dad said why didn’t I keep the ones with the beach bag and the wedding dress, and give the motorcycle Barbie to the poor children.

  “Where will we find some poor children?” I asked.

  “I don’t know,” said Dad, “but I’ll start looking.”

  Now that we’ve moved to Maryland, some of the kids at school think we’re poor. Dad and my brother, Lester, and I live in this little two-bedroom house in Takoma Park. Dad has one of the bedrooms, I have the other, and Lester, who’s fifteen, gets the whole basement to himself so he can play his guitar, his saxophone, and his drums.

  Here’s what I have:

  A purple beanbag chair

  Three Barbies

  A birthstone ring

  A panda-bear purse

  Seventy-one books

  Bubble bath

  Green sparkle nail polish

  Here’s what I don’t have:

  Pierced ears

  My own house key

  Levi’s jeans

  Really long hair

  A pet

  Ice skates

  A mother

  When I was in second grade, I got my fourth Barbie, only she died a horrible death. It was Lester who taught me to hate her. That Barbie came with a sports car, and Lester said why didn’t I keep the car and ditch the doll.

  “What’s the matter with her?” I asked.

  “She’s a freak,” said Lester.

  “She is not!” I said.

  “Look at her neck!” said my brother. “Look at her legs! She looks like she’s been stretched! No girl looks like that.”

  I turned Barbie around and around on the table and looked her over. Her long yellow hair came halfway down her back. She had big breasts and skinny arms and a perfect face. There’s another thing I don’t have: breasts.

  I went into the bathroom with Barbie and took off all my clothes except my underpants. Holding Barbie in one hand, I looked at us together in the long mirror on the back of the door.

  My hair is sort of strawberry blond and it barely touches my shoulders. My neck and legs aren’t long, my arms aren’t exactly skinny, and though my face is okay, it’s definitely not perfect.

  I looked at Barbie again and thought of flushing her down the toilet, except she would probably stop it up.

  I put my clothes back on and went out to the living room. I twisted Barbie’s head until it was facing backward. I bent one of her legs back until it was touching her nose, and bent the other forward until her foot was over her head.

  “What are you trying to do, Alice? Kill her?” Lester asked as he came in eating a cheese sandwich. Lester looks a lot like pictures of my dad when he was younger. His hair is dark, and there is just a shadow of a mustache above his upper lip.

  “I don’t think I like Barbie anymore,” I said.

  “How come?”

  “Just what you said: She’s a freak,” I told him.

  Lester looked down at the Barbie in my lap. “She wouldn’t be so bad if she didn’t look so stretched and skinny,” he said. “Probably nothing wrong with her that a little scrunching up wouldn’t cure.”

  “How?” I asked.

  Lester picked up the Barbie, and we took her to Dad’s workbench in the basement. He turned the handle on Dad’s vise until the two metal parts separated far enough that we could squeeze Barbie in between them. Her head was at one end, her feet at the other.

  Then Lester began to turn the handle the other way. The two metal pieces moved closer together, squeezing Barbie tighter and tighter.

  “Uh-oh!” said Lester as Barbie’s head began to bend backward, and suddenly it snapped off. Barbie fell to the floor, and her head rolled under the basement stairs.

  “Lester!” I said. “You killed her!” I was trying not to laugh.

  “I didn’t mean to do that!” he said. “I thought it would scrunch her up a little.”

  Dad came down in the basement to get the garden hose. I had just picked up Barbie’s body and Lester was on his hands and knees under the stairs, looking for her head.

  “What’s this?” asked Dad.

  “The operation was not a success and the patient died,” Lester said, getting up with Barbie’s head in his hand.

  Dad had a strange look on his face. A worried look. He stared at Lester and then at me. “You seem to think it’s funny,” he told us.

  It was, but I don’t know why. I could see that Lester was trying not to laugh too.

  “So what will it be next?” Dad said. “Pulling wings off butterflies? Setting little puppies on fire?”

  I couldn’t believe what he said. Lester and I would never do anything like that, ever!

  “No more Barbies,” said Dad. “No more Barbies in this house.” He picked up the hose and went upstairs.

  I looked at Lester. He grinned.

  “Yay!” I cheered. “No more Barbies!”

  “No more freak show,” said Lester, and handed her head to me.

  I took her back upstairs, fastened her head on with double-sided tape, and put her in her sports car. I sent the sports car whizzing off the edge of the coffee table. Barbie lost her head again.

  Next I put her on the motorcycle and ran her off the back of the couch. This time her head went down the heat register on the floor. I guess it rolled all the way to the furnace. Even I didn’t like to think what was happening to Barbie then. I put the rest of her in a cracker box and buried her in our backyard.

  Lester came in later and found her sports car upside down under the coffee table.

  “So where’s the freak?” he asked.

  “Buried,” I said.

  “We could probably fix her up if you really wanted,” he told me.

  “Not without a head,” I said. “Besides, I’d rather have a friend. Somebody I can talk to, I mean.”

  “Good thinking,” said Lester. “Welcome to the real world.”

  I never got another Barbie after that, so there were no more Barbies for the poor children.

  2

&n
bsp; DONALD SHEAVERS

  LESTER TOLD ME ONCE THAT DAD worries about whether he’s raising us right. That’s why he gets upset sometimes. My mom died when I was five. I guess I was in kindergarten. We were living in Chicago then, and for a while my aunt Sally took care of us.

  It’s weird when you lose your mother. Weird and sad. For a long time I could remember the smell of her skin—the hand lotion she used. But as we were packing to leave Chicago for our move to Takoma Park, I realized I couldn’t remember that smell at all. I cried more then, because I couldn’t remember her smell, than I’d cried at her funeral.

  In fact, I think I only cried a little at the funeral. Everyone else around me was crying, but I kept thinking, She’ll be okay when she wakes up. I didn’t know about forever.

  The reason we moved from Illinois to Maryland was because my dad, Ben McKinley, was promoted to manager of a music store. It’s called the Melody Inn. Dad plays the piano, the violin, and the flute. He sings, too. He said my mom liked to sing, especially songs from Showboat. Maybe that’s why they fell in love, because he heard her sing.

  I can’t sing at all. I can say the words, but I can’t tell if my voice is going up or down. It used to be that whenever there was a party and we sang “Happy Birthday,” everyone looked at me and said, “Al-ice!” and laughed. So now when I go to birthday parties, I just move my lips.

  Aunt Sally didn’t like to see us leave Chicago. Her daughter, Carol, had told us that Aunt Sally’s afraid Dad will marry on the rebound.

  “What’s the rebound?” I’d asked Carol. Carol’s two years older than Lester.

  “That’s when a man loses someone he loves and marries the next person who comes along,” she had said.

  The day we moved to Takoma Park, the first woman who came along was a neighbor, Mrs. Sheavers, who brought over a lemon cake. The cake was good, but her voice was too loud and she talked too fast. When she finally went home, I said to Dad, “Please don’t marry Mrs. Sheavers.”

  “What?” said Dad.

  “Just don’t marry her on the rebound,” I said.

  He laughed. “Alice, she’s already married. She’s got a child.”

  I was glad to hear it. “Well, promise me you won’t marry the first woman who comes along,” I said.

  “Believe me, I’m not thinking about marriage right now,” he said.

  I didn’t know whether this was good or not. My uncle Charlie was getting married in November, and he was fifty-seven. So if it could happen to Uncle Charlie, it could happen to Dad. I really, really wanted a mother, but I sure didn’t want Mrs. Sheavers.

  Carol had also told me that Aunt Sally was afraid that Lester would fall in with a bad crowd if we moved away, and that none of us would eat right. Dad must have been worried about Lester and me too when we moved, because he started thinking right away about finding us some friends.

  “I can make my own friends, Dad,” Lester said. “Please don’t start arranging my life.”

  Lester hadn’t wanted to move at all, because he was a sophomore in high school and he’d have to leave his girlfriend. When he first found out we were moving, he wouldn’t speak to Dad for a week. He said that Dad had ruined his life and that we might as well be moving to Siberia, because who ever heard of Maryland?

  “You’ve heard of the Baltimore Orioles, haven’t you?” Dad had asked him. “You’ve heard of Johns Hopkins University and the Chesapeake Bay?”

  But Lester said the Baltimore Orioles stunk and he didn’t care about John Hopkins. All he cared about was Amy Miller, this girl he’d leave behind. But then he found out that Amy Miller kissed his best friend in the backseat of a Toyota, so he broke up with her two days before we left, and then he said we couldn’t get to Maryland fast enough. After that, everything was okay.

  After we finished Mrs. Sheavers’s cake, though, Dad washed the plate and asked me to take it back and to thank her very much.

  “If she’s not there, just give it to Donald,” he said.

  “Who’s Donald?” I asked.

  “Her son. Didn’t I tell you?”

  “You didn’t say it was a boy!” I complained. “I don’t want to make friends with a boy.”

  “All you have to do is hand him the plate, Alice,” said Dad. “It wouldn’t hurt you to say hi.”

  I trudged across the grass to the house next door, but I didn’t have to ring the bell because Donald Sheavers was sitting at the top of the front steps eating peanuts out of a bowl and throwing the shells on the grass.

  He was probably one of the best-looking boys I’d ever seen. He had really white teeth and brown hair and blue eyes. He looked like the Barbie doll’s boyfriend, Ken.

  “Here’s your plate,” I said. “It was really good.”

  “What? The plate?” Donald said, and laughed. I wished he’d just take it so I could go back home, but he went on eating peanuts.

  “Tell your mother we liked it very much,” I said, holding it out in my hands.

  But he still didn’t take the plate, so I just set it on the step beside him.

  “I like chocolate better,” he said. “What’s your favorite?”

  I shrugged. “Chocolate, I guess.”

  “Are you Alice?” he asked.

  “Yes.”

  I started to leave, but he said, “Do you want to see something no one has ever seen before and no one will ever see again?”

  I stopped and looked at him for a minute. I couldn’t think of anything he could have that no one had ever seen before and would never see again.

  “Okay. What?” I said.

  He held up a peanut, broke open the shell, and took out the nut. “No one has ever seen this nut before,” he said, popping it into his mouth and swallowing, “and no one will ever see it again.”

  I couldn’t tell if Donald was stupid or smart. “Everyone knows that,” I said.

  “You didn’t,” he said, and grinned. “Want one?” He held out the bowl.

  I didn’t, especially, but I decided to stick around long enough to see if he was dumb or what. “What grade will you be in?” I said, sitting down and breaking open my peanut.

  “Third.”

  “So will I,” I said. “Do you know what teacher we’ll get?”

  “It’ll be either a man or a woman,” said Donald.

  Now I really couldn’t tell if he was stupid or just mouthing off. “What’s nine times seven?” I asked.

  “Same as seven times nine,” said Donald.

  “I’m going home,” I told him.

  “Want me to come over sometime?” he asked.

  “I don’t know,” I said. “Maybe.” It would have sounded rude to say no.

  “Where’s your mother? I haven’t seen any mother over there,” he said.

  “She died.”

  “Oh,” said Donald.

  “Where’s your dad?” I asked in return.

  “He doesn’t live here anymore. He’s in Denver,” said Donald.

  “Well, my dad’s not marrying on the rebound,” I said quickly, in case he got any ideas.

  “What’s a rebound?”

  “The first woman who comes along,” I said.

  “Well, that’s good, because if your dad married my mom, you’d have to be my sister,” said Donald.

  That thought was just too awful for words. “I’ve already got a brother,” I told him.

  “How old?”

  “Fifteen. He’ll be sixteen next week.”

  “When I’m sixteen, I’m going to get my learner’s permit and drive a car,” said Donald.

  “Good for you,” I said, and ate another peanut.

  “You want to see our dog?” he asked.

  “Sure.”

  Donald got up and walked to the front door. He opened the screen and called, “Come on, Killer!”

  I jumped up and braced myself, because I hadn’t been around animals much. I waited. Nothing happened. I wondered if this was going to be the dog no one had ever seen before and would never see
again.

  But then I heard the click of a dog’s toenails on the floor inside, and out came a dog so old, it must have been somebody’s grandfather. It was sort of dirty white with long hair that covered its eyes. It came out as far as the doormat and then stopped.

  Donald took his foot and gently nudged Killer’s hind legs until he moved out a little more so Donald could close the screen.

  “Here’s Killer,” he said.

  “How old is he?” I asked.

  “Almost a hundred, in dog years. Mom’s had him forever.”

  I knelt down and put out my hand, but Killer didn’t even turn in my direction.

  “Is he blind?” I asked.

  “Almost.”

  “Why don’t you trim the hair over his eyes, then?”

  “Because it’s been that way since he was born, and if we trimmed it now, the light would hurt his eyes.”

  I didn’t know whether to believe that or not.

  “Is he deaf?” I asked.

  “Probably.”

  “Why did you name him Killer?”

  “Because Mom read an article about robbers. It said if you put a dog’s dish outside your house with the name ‘Killer’ on it, robbers will think twice about breaking in. So after Dad left, we changed Muffin’s name to Killer.”

  I went over and patted Killer on the head. He turned and sniffed my hand, and his tail gave a little wag. “His nose still works,” I said.

  “Yeah, he’s got a good nose,” said Donald.

  “Well, I’ve got to go home,” I said. “I’ll see you at school.”

  “Yeah,” said Donald.

  When I got back, Dad said, “I see you made a friend.” I knew he’d been watching us from the window.

  “He’s not a friend. He’s a neighbor,” I said. “I want some girlfriends.”

  “You’ll find some,” said Dad. “In the meantime, at least you have Donald.”

  I still had a peanut in my hand, so I went in the living room, where Lester was reading a magazine.

  “Do you want to see something no one has ever seen before and will never see again?” I asked him.

  “Yeah?” he said. “What?”

  I held up the peanut. I broke open the shell and took out the nut. “No one has ever seen this peanut before,” I said, and popped it into my mouth, “and no one will ever see it aga—”

  I made the mistake of trying to swallow as I said the last word, though, and choked. I coughed, and suddenly the peanut came back up and shot across the floor.