Stacey and I spin the stools at the soda fountain.
Then we sit on them and spin.
“You girls want something?” asks the man behind the counter.
We stop spinning, and Stacey says, “Let me see,”
putting her finger on her chin as she studies the menu.
He taps his fingers and looks at her while she decides.
“What about your friend here?” he asks Stacey,
as if I’m not sitting right next to her.
I only have a dollar
and I also want to buy a headband.
“Can I have a hot-fudge sundae?” It’s fifty cents.
“Oh, you speak English,” he says. “I thought you was,
you know, a foreigner.”
“I’m from California.”
“Well you look kinda different.”
I look big-eyed at Stacey in the mirror facing us.
She looks back at me the same way.
“You ready, miss?” he asks Stacey,
and she says, “One scoop of pistachio
and one scoop of chocolate.”
He doesn’t say anything about the way she talks.
After he goes away,
Stacey asks, “Do people always ask you stuff like that?”
“You get used to it, kind of.”
“I’d want to cuss them out. Don’t you want to cuss them out?”
“I just want them to stop.”
“Well, I’d want to cuss,” she says,
and then we both giggle.
I can tell Stacey anything
and she won’t think I’m bad.
“You want to know what Mother calls him?” she asks,
her giggles like hiccups. “A . . . soda . . . jerk.”
“Soda jerk?” I ask, my giggles choking me,
and she nods
hard, because she can’t talk.
Then we spin some more,
but a lady in the cards section gives us a dirty look,
so we stop
and I make a pig face in the mirror.
Just like my cousins, Stacey makes one back.
Then the man brings our ice cream
but doesn’t go away. I pick up my spoon
and he’s still standing there.
“So, I have to know,” he says,
“what are you?”
But just because he has to know
doesn’t mean I have to tell him
anything.
I put my two quarters on the counter,
then slide off the stool.
“Wait for me,” Stacey says,
and spoons a mound of pistachio in her mouth.
Outside, she says, “We know what he is—
a real soda jerk
minus the soda.”