Screaming filled the next twenty minutes. Mostly Reggie. (“I can’t believe it!” “I’m really going!” “Pinch me!”) Though I did my share, as I really was happy for her. (“Wow!” “Oh my God!” “Cool!”)
When actual conversation became possible, I learned that Reggie’s father had finally caved in. She had been begging him for the past year. His big objection was that she was too young. Bandstand age range was fourteen to eighteen. Reggie argued that you didn’t have to prove your age: you just lied and they believed you, especially if you looked old enough.
The big moment had come that morning. Her father was in the bathroom, shaving. Reggie was planted outside, whining and begging. Suddenly the door flew open and her father was standing there with a face full of shaving cream, raging: “Okay—go! Go! I hope you get arrested!”
As for Reggie’s mother, she had never been a problem. One look at her and you knew where Reggie got her looks and style. Reggie’s mom called her daughter’s friends “hon” and jitterbugged with Reggie to Bandstand in their living room.
“So,” I said, “are you gonna dance?” This might seem like a dumb question, but the Bandstand dance floor was small and usually monopolized by the regulars from South Philly. Just watching them, either in-studio or on TV, was practically a national sport. They had their own fan clubs.
She sneered. “Does a bear poop in the woods?”
“So what about Tommy D?” I said.
Ah. Tommy D.
That was all the name you needed. Tommy DeBennedetto was the cutest guy on the show. Black hair curling over his forehead. Midnight killer eyes. Every girl in the Delaware Valley was in love with him, including Reggie. Including Tommy’s girlfriend and co-Bandstand regular, Arlene Holtz.
“What about him?” said Reggie.
I hadn’t thought this through. “I don’t know….I never saw him dance with anybody but Arlene.”
“So?” she snipped. “Who needs Tommy D?”
And I thought: Bandstand—look out.
Reggie had brought the Bandstand tote that held her records. Shapewise it looked like either a large coffee can or a small hat box. It had a picture of Dick Clark, the host of Bandstand. We sang while we danced:
You cheated
You lied
You said that you love me
Despite Reggie’s endless labors to girly me up, when we danced, the boy was always me.
Splish splash, I was takin’ a bath
’Long about a Saturday night
We did slow. We did fast. We did the jitterbug (with the new push step), the hand jive and the stroll and the birdland and the cha-cha and the chalypso.
We only stopped dancing to sing—more shout, really—our personal national anthem, by the Cookies:
Don’t say nothin’
Bad about my baby
(Don’t you know)
Don’t say nothin’
Bad about my baby
He’s true
He’s true to me
We jabbed our fingers into each other’s face and snarled the last line over and over:
So, girl, you better shut yer mouth!
Eloda made the mistake of appearing in the dining room. “Eloda!” Reggie cried. “I’m going to Bandstand!”
Eloda looked up from her dustrag long enough to flatly reply, “You don’t say.”
If Eloda had been smart, she’d have run downstairs and locked herself in her cell. Reggie birdlanded over to her, flung the dustrag away and danced her around the dining room table. She even let Eloda be the girl.
Eloda tried to be a good sport, but she couldn’t disguise the pain on her face. I felt bad that she had to endure my friend’s exuberance—and felt all the worse for having made her endure me in the laundry room. I had to rescue her. I called out the first thing that came to mind: “Eloda, my room smells. Would you please open the window and air it out?”
Eloda broke from Reggie and fled.
Reggie raided the fridge for a black cherry, her favorite soda. We always kept bottles on hand for her.
“Must be great,” she said, flopping onto the sofa, “having a maid.”
Reggie had always called my Cammie-keepers that. It had never bothered me before.
“She’s not a maid,” I said. “She’s a trustee. This is her job.”
“You must trust her a lot. What if she steals stuff?”
I shushed her. “Quiet. She’ll hear. And she doesn’t steal.”
“But what if?”
“She doesn’t.”
She took a long swig of black cherry. She leaned forward. “All I’m saying is, she’s behind bars for a reason. Trustee or not.”
Eloda was under attack. My defenses were bristling.
“There’s a reason they’re called trustees,” I countered. “You can trust them.”
“And there’s a reason they’re in jail. They’re criminals.”
“She loves me!” I shot back.
To this day I don’t know who was more surprised at my words, Reggie or myself. Why did I say it? I knew it wasn’t true. But I wanted it to be. Reggie and I just gawked at each other.
Then her face changed, softened. She put down her soda and came to sit on the arm of my easy chair. She smiled. “Cammie, I’m only trying to—”
Whatever it was, I didn’t want to hear it. I blurted: “Sometimes I pretend she’s my mother.”
She blinked. She didn’t believe me. And then she did. She glanced around to make sure Eloda wasn’t nearby. She whispered, “She’s in jail.”
Defend. Lie.
“Not for long,” I said.
That slowed her down. “No?” she said. “When does she get out?”
Lie. “Any day now. Her old job is waiting for her.”
“Really?” She looked interested. “And what job is that?”
“It’s a cleaning business. She cleans people’s houses. They give her a key and let her in the house even when they’re not there.” I couldn’t stop myself.
“Really?” she said.
“Yeah,” I said.
“So what was her crime?”
“Shoplifting.”
“Really?”
“Yeah.”
“Shoplifting what?”
“A pack of cigarettes.”
“A pack of cigarettes. They threw her in jail for stealing a pack of cigarettes?”
“She didn’t even steal them. She just forgot to pay. And she had a bad lawyer.”
Reggie wagged her head. She smiled down on me. It was a smile of enormous pity, the pity of the righteous for an unfortunate, misguided soul. She hadn’t believed a word I’d said. “Cammie, Cammie…life isn’t a comic book.” She squeezed my hand. “Bad people don’t get good just like that.”
“Tell that to Corrections magazine,” I told her. “And my father.” I thought of the Quiet Room. The forever-empty Quiet Room.
“Most people that get out of jail, they do something else and come right back in.”
“That’s bullpoop,” I said. “What do you know about prisons?”
She squeezed my hand. “Bad is bad. I know that.”
I was out of arguments. “I don’t care,” I said, hoping she would drop it.
She didn’t.
She came down from the armrest. She knelt on the floor before me. The shock and condescension were gone. She was simply dead serious, as if she were studying the cosmetics rack at Woolworth’s. “Cammie…,” she said. She laid her hand on mine. “I just don’t want to see you get hurt.”
I stared over her head. “What do you care?”
“You’re my best friend.”
“Big deal.”
She squeezed my hand again. “Cammie, she’s in jail. She can’t be your mother. She’s tricking you.”
I snatched my hand away. “Says you.”
She gestured at the apartment. “Cammie—look.” I didn’t. “Just look at this nice place you live in. If you were stuck in a jail cell, wouldn’t you love to have a nice, cushy job up here?” She squeezed my hand for the third time. Suddenly I couldn’t stand her touching me. “Wouldn’t you be all peachy to the warden’s daughter so you could keep this nice, cushy job?”
I heard Boo Boo’s voice: snootin’…high life.
I smacked her hand away. I shouted into her face. “She’s not peachy!” And thought: I wish she was.
“Fine,” she said: calm, reasonable, Reggie the grown-up. “Not peachy. So let her be your maid. Your friend, even. Invite her to your wedding.” Animated now, tossing up her hands. “But for Pete’s sake, just don’t make her your mother! She’s a criminal!”
I shoved her. Hard. She toppled backward. Her head bounced off the floor. I raged down at her: “You don’t know nothin’!”
Shock. Disbelief. Tears. She was so anxious to reach the door she crawled halfway before picking herself up. She struggled with the bar lock, screaming curses, heaving with sobs. Finally the door flew open. She wheeled. Her cheeks were black with eyeliner. She thrust a finger at me and shrieked: “Just because you lost your mother doesn’t mean…doesn’t mean…” She choked on her own sobs and went clattering down the stairs and, I assumed, out of my life forever.