Five

The Other Alice: Letter #1

Dear Alice,

You’re not going to know who this is until you see my signature at the end of this letter. Don’t look! Please! Just try to guess as you read along.

Clue # 1: I was born and raised in Cedar Rapids on the west side of town, near the waterworks and the Little League field. No, this is not Cathy Glendenning. Cathy lived close by on Waverly Street, but she had an older brother, and I was an only child.

Clue #2: I’m a girl. I’m 5’6” and I weigh about 125 lbs, and people in my family always said I was pleasant to look at. Not pretty (like you) but just pleasant, like I had a face that was easy to forget; a face with no magic powers, not a face you could die for, or a face that could give you back your life.

Clue #3: Until I left home my shoulders were always slouched and, whenever I went outside, I would act like I was ready to apologize for something I was about to do, usually something stupid. Once, when we were about thirteen, your mother and my mother chatted by the frozen food lockers in the Krogers Market on West 7th. Your mom told mine that she was taking a trip across the United States. She was talking real fast, like she was cranked up on speed, and you could see her black bra through her blouse. To tell you the truth, I thought she looked cheap.

I remember she told you to get some Kellogg’s Raisin Bran, and I followed you up and down the aisles until you found the section where the cereals were stacked. We didn’t speak at all, not a word, but I remember feeling happy inside, proud that people saw us together, even though you were beautiful and my face felt like a mistake.

Clue #4: I was in my junior year at Benjamin McKinley when I saw you for the last time. It was a Saturday morning in the beginning of August. We were at the movies. You were sitting three rows in front of me, two seats in from the aisle. The movie was Baby, the Rain Must Fall starring Steve McQueen, who I met later in Los Angeles, but that’s another story, a story you wouldn’t believe.

Anyway, after the show I walked over to Keegan’s Wash and Dry. I was going to visit my cousin, Viv, who managed the laundry on the weekend. But when I knocked on the office in back, I was surprised to hear Mr. Keegan’s voice. When he opened the door, he looked all sweaty and red in the face. He said Viv was out running an errand and would be back later. I knew right away he was lying. Behind him I could hear someone making breathing sounds that were just short of words, and right before he closed the door I looked down and saw his penis peeking out of his open fly.

Clue #5: Two weeks later, when I came back, Mr. Keegan offered me money to be “sexual” with him. I said okay. We used the beat-up couch in his office, the one with the plaid cushions. He said he would give me twenty dollars if I played with my breasts while I watched him masturbate. He kept the radio on real low, tuned to a station that broadcast readings from the Bible and gave crop reports every half hour.

When he came the first time, he snapped his head back and semen flew all over my face and hair. For about a minute I could hear my pulse pounding in both my temple and my wrists. The next time he looked at me, I saw Christ’s face in the cloud of blood floating across the iris of his right eye.

Clue #6: Inside his desk Mr. Keegan kept pictures of other girls who were “sexual” with him, all of them naked, their faces looking baffled or just plain irritated. The two girls I recognized had already graduated the year before. I’m not going to tell you their names.

There are no more clues, Alice. Okay? I think you know who I am. If you do, keep in mind I’m no longer the person you remember, that homely girl with the greasy complexion; a girl with no sense of direction who was always swimming upstream; a girl who would have traded places with anyone raised on love.

Now I have lots of friends. The streets of San Francisco are filled with girls like me, girls who are not quite pretty. But now I stand up straight and my posture reflects my new health and enthusiasm. The people around me are happy and wise. My old life is over, smashed to bits. I’m creating my future and yours too. Just you wait and see.

Two more things I want to mention before I end this letter.

(1)Remember Julie, fat Julie whose father was Reverend Wellsworth, the pastor at St. Paul’s Methodist church on 14th Street? Well, get this, Julie is not so fat anymore. Last Sunday I saw her at a “love-in” over in Berkeley. She was wearing a T-shirt without a bra and a denim skirt cut so short that you could see her butt cheeks. She was dancing by herself to the live band, whirling all over the place with her hands stretched above her head. She was pretty now—not beautiful, but certainly someone with beauty inside her—and she moved her body in a way that was bouncy and good natured. Now men looked at her and smiled instead of looking away from her fat face.

    She was changed: You could see it in her eyes, which were clear and filled with wonder.

(2)I took LSD later that day with a guy I met on Telegraph Avenue, an older dude named Charlie, and we stayed up all night talking and making love. I told Charlie about my hometown, about Mr. Keegan, and about all the girls he smeared with his lust. Charlie said that Mr. Keegan should die. I agreed. And now that you’ve read this letter, I know you do too. Good luck in college. I’m sorry we were never able to become friends. Maybe someday we will.

Love and XXX,

Alice