CHAPTER 28

At the Hot Shoppes on the New York State Thruway, Nola ordered tea. She fished out the Lipton’s teabag and wrapped the string around the bowl of the teaspoon squeezing the teabag like a tourniquet, dribbling the soaked-up liquid back into her cup.

“Hey, that’s very clever,” my father said. “I’ll have to try that.”

Liz and I exchanged a look. Not daring to roll our eyes, we barely fluttered our eyelids. Under the table she nudged my knee with hers. Nola bit her lip with her two big childish front teeth and watched the drips falling from the teabag. I tried to unravel the puzzle of her good looks. Everyone had eyes, a nose and mouth. Why couldn’t I stop staring at Nola? Was it her high forehead? No, because sometimes that was ugly. It was everything combined, the sheen on her silky blonde hair curving to the shape of her skull, deep-set eyes, cornflower blue, that were not too close together or too far apart. It was the high cheekbones, although not the blueblood kind, hers were high and broad like a farm girl’s, and the summer tan on skin that appeared to have no pores, those dazzling teeth and a smile like a branding iron.

We pulled into the Lake George campground at dusk. My father blamed Liz’s sister for the descending darkness, for driving like a snail when it was Mandy’s turn at the wheel. “I drove over the speed limit!” Mandy yelled back. “You said we could get to Lake George before dark and you were wrong!” Now a storm was gathering. We tried to jam the tent poles into the lakeshore but they wouldn’t stay upright in the sand, so we had to throw our stuff back into the car and trudge into the woods until we found a spot where the ground was firm and level among a few scrubby pine trees. Nola brought the car around to our new site. My father yelled instructions for putting up the tent over the roar of the wind and I wished I were brave enough to talk back to him like Mandy. I’d tell him he was a stupid, stupid man. If I had been the one who mapped out the itinerary and we ended up trying to pitch a tent in the dark, boy, would I have been told off. You stupid, stupid girl.

“Pretty fucking stupid,” I muttered under my breath.

“What did you say, kid?”

We were at the trunk unloading supplies when it started to rain, fat drops plunking on our heads slowly at first, and then faster. I grabbed the Coleman lantern from Liz, while she carried a sleeping bag under each arm, and we ran for cover. The five of us crammed into the tent (made to sleep four) just as the drops merged into sheets of rain lashing the canvas. We laughed with relief.

“Are we lucky?” my father said. “Is that great planning or what?”

“Yeah, great planning,” I said. I turned to show Liz my smirk.

“Are you two conspiring against me?” my father said.

“They’re just counting their blessings, Clyde,” Mandy said.

My father slept against one side of the tent, then came Nola, then me, Liz, and Mandy against the other side. The tent reeked of mildew even after being draped over our bushes in the sun, and pebbles poked through the canvas floor and into my back. I shifted and squirmed until I found a smooth patch of ground and fell asleep for a while, but I woke to a rustling sound. The rain had stopped. It was dead quiet for a few seconds and then the rustling picked up again. Fuck. Black bears lived in the Adirondacks. I was scared and moved closer to Liz, but I was not as scared as I might have been or should have been because I figured even if it was a bear my father would know what to do. He wasn’t afraid of anything. It probably wasn’t a bear, though. All kinds of smaller critters lived in these woods, I told myself—raccoons, badgers. I put the folded up T-shirt I was using for a pillow over my head, and tried to go back to sleep, but the rustling intensified, and I was losing my nerve. I was about to wake up my father when I realized with a jolt that the rustling was coming from inside the tent—the shrill rubbing of nylon against nylon. Then a girl’s giggle and my father’s hoarse whisper. The growl of a sleeping-bag zipper.

Oh, please God, no. Not this. I moved away from them like an inchworm in my mummy bag pressing against Liz, hiding my face in her Herbal Essence hair. Liz didn’t wake up, nor did I try to wake her up. I pretended I was asleep too. More rustling and the tent zipper, zhrip, zhrip, and my father and Nola climbing out. Zhrip, zhrip closing us up again. Branches snapped under their feet. The car door croaked open. They would do it in the Torino. At least not in here. Liz and Mandy slept. Still, I didn’t wake them. I wanted Johnny. I wanted Johnny to hold me.

In the morning, I expected my father to expend a lot of effort in my direction, making nice and sweet-talking to me, but I was mistaken. He despised my stricken face, my rubbery arms and legs, my bloody heart wrapped in rags.

“Don’t just stand there. Help out. You think you’re here to get waited on?”

I kneeled on the dew-soaked ground to gather the felled tent poles and slid them clanging like bells into their nylon bag. Then I started stuffing my sleeping bag into its own bag, punching the fiber-filled nylon to the bottom. I positioned the sack between my knees and punched and punched. The sun was out but the morning air was chilly. Nola wore my father’s tweed jacket with elbow patches and laughed when the too-long sleeves flopped around.

We drove into town and I was bleeding, doubled over in pain. “I got my period,” I whispered to Liz. She fished a Darvon out of her purse and I went to the public ladies’ room with the pill and a tampon in my back pocket. I gulped the Darvon with water cupped in my hands at the filthy sink and walked back to the car. They were waiting for me. They wanted to stroll around the town.

“I’ll stay here,” I said. “I can lie on the backseat.”

“You be OK, baby?” my father said.

I looked away. “Yes, go.”

The Darvon was useless. I lay with my knees drawn up and rocked in agony. Nothing helped, not lying on my side or on my back with the soles of my feet against the window, not on my stomach with one arm raking the dirty floor, nothing, until I pushed open the door, lurched into a patch of weeds and threw up. I felt only halfway better after that, but enough to fall into a fitful sleep with my cheek pressed to the cigarette-stinking vinyl seat.

For nine days and nights we pretended it wasn’t happening. I didn’t say a word to Liz or Mandy until the last rest stop on I-95 before the Baltimore beltway. Nola went out to wait in the car and we were left in the ladies’ room. Of course Liz and Mandy knew. We’d all known since the first night. My own silence for all that time mystified me.

“What happened on the trip? Why are you so upset?” my mother asked.

“He was mean to me, yelling at me the whole way.”

My father came into the kitchen.

“Why were you picking on Joanna?” my mother asked.

“Obnoxious teenager,” my father said. “Snotty kid. I can’t trust her. That Liz Stone, too. Disrespectful. They were terrible, terrible. I was stuck with them for ten days.”

I was stunned by his brazen lies. I didn’t expect or even want him to confess to my mother. I wanted to protect both of them, as always. But I couldn’t understand what he gained by turning on me.

Johnny came over the night after we got back and I asked him to go for a walk. I was relieved to get out of the house. We went slowly around the block twice and on the second loop stopped at the corner three houses before mine to sit on the curb side by side. I cried into his V-neck sweater. He agreed I should say nothing to my mother. She would find out on her own, he said. He held me against his chest stroking my hair, my cheek, smoothing the nap of my eyebrow. “He didn’t think you knew,” Johnny said.

“I’m not stupid,” I said through my tears. Johnny kissed them away. He slipped his hand under my blouse and I closed my eyes. I felt his fingertips brushing my nipple, touching the shape of one breast, the budding warmth, then shivers. I didn’t wear a bra. He liked to come into my room when I was doing my homework. He kissed me. Johnny complicated everything. His tongue was hot and gentle, and I felt better.