Pretty Is

This came totally out of nowhere, from behind my back, after a long silence. It was Tuesday afternoon. Monica and I were in a canoe on the lake, and she was in the stern while I sat in the bow, paddling halfheartedly and staring at the forest that came right down to the edge of the water. We were supposed to be aiming for the far side of the lake, opposite to the swimming area and dock. But Jeff had told us to take our time, explore a little, practice maneuvering. Now the green and yellow and red fiberglass canoes were scattered over the lake, and there was no one else close enough to hear what Monica said.

The silence had been grim, at least on my side. Isabel and Jasmine had quickly paired up—I wondered if Isabel liked me less now that Monica had joined us—and so had the counselors and the four boys, leaving me no one to canoe with except Monica. It wasn’t fair. I wanted to get away from her, not get trapped in a canoe with her.

This time I did turn and look at her, letting my paddle drag in the water. “Well, it is your fault. And you ruined practically my whole summer.”

She laid her paddle across her knees and glared back at me. “I didn’t mean to get you in trouble. I didn’t know Mama was going to walk in right then.”

My answer came out in a rush. “Yeah, well, that’s just the kind of dorky thing you always do. You say the wrong thing at the wrong time. You wear weird clothes. You—”

Still half turned, my paddle now lying across the bow, I stared down at the water alongside the canoe. Under a hazy sky the lake water was light green today, gleaming but murky; looking into it was like looking through an old glass bottle. Out here it was fifty feet deep, Jeff had said. My eyes caught a flicker that must have been a fish, and then it was gone.

I heard Monica take a deep breath. “Anyway, you already hated me, didn’t you? You hated me even before that happened. You think I’m such a dork, you don’t even want to go to the same school as me.”

I wondered how she knew that. I shrugged uncomfortably, then risked a glance at her. Would she start crying, or hit me with the paddle, or—?

She did neither. “Well, guess what, Erin?” She separated her words as if punching each one of them: “I’m just the way I am.” She stabbed her paddle into the water. “Come on—paddle.”

I watched her angry, splattery strokes for a moment, and then I started paddling too. We headed straight for the other side.

In bed that night, in my slightly musty, plaid-lined sleeping bag, I shifted every which way, annoyed by each rustle of the bag and creak of the bed frame yet unable to keep still. I kept thinking of Monica saying, “How come you hate me?” and “You don’t even want to go to the same school as me.” I had said a lot of not-so-nice things to her, but I’d never said I hated her or that I dreaded being in the same school. It was unsettling to find out that somehow she knew. Not only knew but was hurt by it.

And there was something else she’d said in the canoe—for the first time she had apologized for letting Mama know I’d gone out that night. She hadn’t thought Mama would hear, had never intended for her to hear. Somewhere in the back of my mind, I realized, I’d known that all along. Of course it was an accident. Monica might be a dork but she wasn’t mean. Bossy, yes, but a tattletale, someone who liked to get other people in trouble? That wasn’t Monica.

Once again I rolled from my back to my side without finding a comfortable position. I winced, one eye scrunching into the pillow, and made myself hold still. In the dark cabin only an occasional sigh revealed the presence of other people. Outside, the sounds of a summer night in the mountains drowned themselves in the cicadas’ mindless, monotonous chorus.

I’d focused all the blame for the miserable aftermath of my nighttime adventure on Monica. But her role in the whole thing had been accidental. If I was going to hand out blame, I’d have to pin it on someone else.

The next day, Wednesday, was the day of Mama’s operation. I thought about it a lot—at canoe practice, while Jeff was demonstrating the J-stroke; in the dining hall, while Reverend Haywood said a too-long grace before lunch; during quiet time, while I lay in my bunk and tried to read a book. It was creepy to think about—Mama lying on a table unconscious, being cut open with a knife, and part of her insides being taken out. The thought of it nagged at me.

After quiet time our group straggled toward the craft house, where we were supposed to paint the birdhouses we’d hammered together the day before. As we followed the gravel path behind the dining hall, for once I didn’t avoid Monica. I hurried to get beside her and looked up, suddenly aware of how much taller she was than me. Her face, behind the big owlish glasses, wore one of her stubborn silent looks.

I didn’t feel especially reassured. I knew that stubborn look much too well. There might be no reason at all for what she said, and if there was one, she wasn’t about to explain it. On the other hand—I surprised myself with this idea—maybe her stubborn look was really a worried look. Maybe now, and even some other times when she acted like this, she wasn’t just pigheaded but worried or scared.

I was surprised that she’d taken the initiative, but I didn’t have a chance to say that or anything else. As if to prevent an answer, she abruptly stepped ahead of me and away down the path with her long strides. In a moment we were filing up the three stone steps into the craft house.

It was just one room, nearly filled by two large tables with stools scattered around them. At the far end were shelves overflowing with supplies—paint, wood, pipe cleaners, cardboard, wire, scissors, glue, beads, Popsicle sticks, you name it. There was one big window on each side, with screens but no glass. The air in the craft house had the earthy smell of the woods, with a hint of paint thrown in.

The ten of us jostled our way in, each claiming a stool and workspace at one of the tables. The craft counselor, a middle-aged, hawk-nosed woman named Marta, handed out our birdhouses, calling out the names we’d penciled on the bottom.

“Where’s my turd house?” Tommy said, elaborately craning his neck and looking all around. “Gotta paint my turd house.”

I didn’t have much to say, just started painting, half listening to scattered bits of conversation. Jasmine was talking about how her brother made a birdhouse once and their kitten slept in it. Isabel pointed to a jar of red paint and said, “That’s the color I want on my nails.” The flat-faced boy, Leo, said, “If you paint it blue, will you get bluebirds? Or blue turds?”

As I brushed pink paint on the sides of my birdhouse and yellow on its roof, I thought of Mama lying very still on the operating table, surrounded by people in green masks and gowns. I thought of how far away she and Daddy were, at the hospital in New Bern. To be sitting here at a newspaper-covered table in a one-room, tin-roofed cabin in the mountains, painting a birdhouse pink and yellow, seemed like about the most useless, pointless thing a person could do.

And yet, at the same time, I felt I needed to paint it perfectly, to fill the long afternoon with precise strokes of the brush, spilling nothing, smoothing the brush lines from the wet surface. Around me everyone else kept laughing and chattering as they painted. Only my sister and I were silent.

I looked over at Monica, who appeared to be concentrating hard on the dark green she was glopping onto her birdhouse. I was glad I wasn’t the only one who was quiet. I was glad she had arranged for us to use the phone.