CHAPTER EIGHT
The river had carried Nicole, Shanti, Petra, and Tiara through the mountains and deposited them in a steaming spring surrounded by blackened rock that looked like burned-over cake batter.
“Wh-where are we?” Tiara asked.
“Some kind of lava fields, it looks like,” Shanti answered. Algae clung to her scalp. She’d lost her sash in the raging waters. They all had. They were covered in mud till all that could be seen were their eyes and mouths.
“I hate this place,” Tiara whimpered. “It’s super creepy. Like a haunted Chuck E. Cheese’s where the games all want to kill you and you never get your pizza.”
Shanti glared at Petra. She struggled to keep her tone even, but it was difficult. “Why didn’t you let go of that case? If you had just let go, we could have held on to the tree, and we wouldn’t be out here in the middle of some lava field with no idea how to get back to the beach.”
“I’m sorry,” Petra said. “It … the case was — is — important to me.”
“What do you have in there — a vintage Bermes scarf17?” Nicole struggled to her feet and offered Petra a hand.
“Bipolar Bears18,” Tiara said sympathetically. “My mom put me on those as soon as I turned thirteen. She couldn’t deal.”
“It’s not that,” Petra said. “I have a medical condition.”
“What kind of medical condition?” Nicole asked.
“It’s a hormonal thing,” Petra answered nervously.
Tiara’s hands flew to her mouth. “In health class, they told us there’s an or in whore because you always have the choice to respect your body and say no. You’ve got one of those STPs now, don’t you?”
Petra stared. “STP is a motor oil.”
“Oh. My. Gosh. We didn’t even learn about that one. It must be really bad!” Tiara gestured solemnly to her crotch. “Protect the citadel. Protect the citadel.”
Petra looked to the others. “Help.”
Nicole shook her head. “Public school Sex Non-Ed. When I’m surgeon general, I am so fixing that.” On the walk, she explained hormonal, and Tiara nodded, smiling.
“Ooh. It’s okay, Petra. When I get my monthlies, I need a handful of Advil and a chocolate donut. I’d give anything for a chocolate donut right now. I’m so hungry. Even hungrier than when my mom put me on that grapefruit and hot sauce diet before the Miss Tupelo pageant last year.”
“I’ve done that diet,” Nicole said.
Shanti nodded. “Me, too. Except without the grapefruit.”
Tiara’s eyes filled with tears. “All those years of starving myself and now I’m really starving.”
“All those pageants — local, city, state. The car rides with my hair in rollers,” Shanti echoed.
“Straighteners and extensions,” Nicole said.
“Teeth bleaching,” Tiara added. “Eyebrow shaping. Tanning booths. Bikini waxes. Lipo.”
“Pills. Injections,” Petra mumbled.
“What?”
“Nothing.”
“Feels like we’ve been in training for the wrong pageant,” Nicole said with a sigh.
“What are we going to do?” Tiara asked.
Their bellies ached with hunger, and the earlier thrill of losing a few pounds before pageant time had been replaced with a terrible, desperate longing for food. To make matters worse, the rain had started again. It pounded wet fists against them.
“Let’s move on,” Shanti said. “I think if we follow the stream it’ll lead back to the beach and the others.”
They marched alongside the stream as it fattened into a river, alert all the while to the constant sound track of caws, shrieks, growls, and croaks. Birds flew suddenly from treetops, the slapping of their wings like gunshots. Things slithered, hissed, and cackled in the great unknown. Petra sang a Boyz Will B Boyz song softly to herself to drown out the noise.
“You have a really nice voice,” Tiara said. “Almost as good as the record.”
“Thanks,” Petra mumbled and blushed. “I was a big Boyz Will B Boyz fan.”
“Who wasn’t?” Nicole laughed. “When I was eleven, I had their posters all over my room.”
“Me, too!” Tiara said, smiling. “Who was your favorite?”
“Mmm, maybe Joey”
Petra let out a loud “Ha!”
“What’s wrong with Joey?”
“Nothing, if you like boys who tan like it’s an Olympic sport.”
“He was pretty orangey,” Nicole agreed. “J. T. Woodland was the best, anyway. He was so cute, with those big eyes and those curls. He was the most talented one, I think. I wonder why they kicked him out?”
“I’ll bet it was drugs.” Tiara batted away a dragonfly.
“It wasn’t drugs,” Petra said.
“How can you be sure?” Tiara asked.
“He just didn’t seem like the drugs type to me.”
“Boy band loyalty.” Nicole nodded. “I feel you.”
“Can we keep going please?” Shanti called back.
The girls picked up their pace. On the other side of the river, orange-and-pink birds waded on stalklike legs. Shafts of sun broke through the heavy trees. They lit patches of ground like the reflections from some tropical disco ball.
“What was your favorite song of theirs?” Tiara asked.
“ ‘Let Me Shave Your Legs Tonight, Girl,’” Petra blurted out.
“Ohmigosh, I LOVE that one!” Tiara said, clapping. “How about ‘I Only Want to Be with You’ or ‘I Just Need to Be Yours’ or ‘You, You, You’?”
Nicole chimed in. “‘I Gave Up My Hobbies So I Could Spend More Time with You.’ ‘I Love You Like a Stalker!’ Or — ooh, I know: ‘Safe Tween Crush’?”
“That one is so awesome!” Tiara began to sing. “Wanna rock you, girl, with a butterfly tunic. / No, I’m not gay, I’m just your emo eunuch. / Gonna smile real shy, won’t cop a feel, / ’cause I’m your virgin crush, your supersafe deal. / Let those other guys keep sexing. / You and me, we be texting / ’bout unicorns and rainbows and our perfect love. / Girl, we fit together like a hand in a glove. / Now I don’t mean that nasty, tell your mom don’t get mad. /I even wrote ‘You’re awesome’ on your maxi pads.” Tiara sighed. “My mom let me use that song for my Christian pole dancing routine.”
Petra sputtered. “Christian pole dancing?”
“Yeah. It was my talent for a while. I was a virgin bride on her wedding day — kinda like in that TiffanyJeanTiffany video? I wore this mini wedding dress and these white stockings with garters and some pretty silver handcuffs. It was a real fun routine.” She sighed. “But once I turned ten, my mom said I needed something new.”
“That is total crazytown,” Petra said.
“I know! I think I could have done it till I was at least twelve.”
Petra rolled her eyes and sang, “Let me shave your legs tonight, girl. Let me show you how it feels when your man …”
“Your man!” the girls sang.
“Can’t stand …”
“Can’t stand!”
“The stub-ble inside your heart, oh!”
Annoyed, Shanti walked a good ten paces ahead of the others. She liked being in the lead, and as she walked, she practiced.
“Hello,” she said, practicing her intonation, because tone was everything. “I am Shanti Singh, Miss California, land of opportunity! I am a junior at Valley High School, where I currently maintain a 4.0 CPA. My parents immigrated to America just before I was born, and I am so grateful to this country for giving me so many great opportunities. I hope to show my gratitude one day by becoming the first Indian-American president. And I also hope to work with children,” she added hastily. “And, um, animals.”
Shanti cursed her verbal clumsiness. Ums were deadly. Hadn’t her handler, Mrs. Mirabov, told her so? Keeping it together under pressure was what separated the winners from the losers. Shanti had been setting goals since she was four and won her preschool’s finger painting contest. By the time she hit middle school, she’d won just about everything there was to win — science fair, debate team, gymnastics, soccer, synchronized Tae Kwon Do. Winning was easy and addictive; the more she won, the more she felt she couldn’t risk failing. It was as if she were in constant competition with herself.
But she couldn’t control everything.
She looked back at Nicole — friendly, easygoing Nicole — with envy and unease. She knew the Top Five would not hold both a black and a brown contestant. No matter what they claimed, the pageants were not multicultural-friendly. It was funny to Shanti how her white classmates could distinguish between several white faces but would get confused when confronted with, say, two Asians, frequently mistaking one for the other as if looking at a spot-the-difference kids’ magazine puzzle and feeling stumped.
To win Miss Teen Dream, Shanti knew she would have to work twice as hard as the other girls. That’s why she’d hired Mrs. Mirabov, whose record was superb and whose drive matched her own. It was Mrs. Mirabov who’d evaluated Shanti through narrowed, steel-gray eyes and made her pronouncement: “Your problem, Comrade Singh, is a lack of likeability. No one wants to be your friend. You are efficient and ambitious, which is good for KGB agent; not so much for teen beauty queen. We must humanize you.”
Shanti had flinched slightly at Mrs. Mirabov’s assessment, as if she’d told Shanti that her personality made her look fat. “Tell me what you can do,” Mrs. Mirabov demanded. And Shanti dutifully recited all her talents. “No, no, no. Not what you can do like trained dog. What you love. What you have special passion for?”
Shanti had stared blankly, feeling a sense of panic as if she were in a dream in which she had forgotten to study for a test. There was one thing Shanti loved, but it was not the sort of achievement that wowed judges. It was a secret passion, and that’s what it would remain: secret.
“No,” Shanti had answered. “Nothing.”
“Well, then. We will have to try on personalities until we find one that fits.”
They tried everything: telling jokes, country and western songs, a ventriloquist act with a lovable fuzzy sidekick, photo ops with terminally ill children. But Shanti wasn’t natural with the kids, whose wary expressions seemed to suggest she’d actually given them cancer. Finally, during a painful roller boogie version of “The Midnight Ride of Paul Revere” that was supposed to make Shanti appear “quirky, but cute and patriotic,” Mrs. Mirabov had moaned in Russian and begged her to stop. After a long pause, she raised her perfectly coiffed gray head. There was a new gleam in those eyes. “You know, Comrade Singh, there is one thing I learned during my defection: Everybody loves a happy assimilation story.”
An American underdog was born.
Shanti delighted the judges with the Parents, what-can-you-do? anecdote about her dad putting out the life-size, blow-up lawn Santa on the Fourth of July. She charmed them with heartwarming tales of making popadam in her grandmother’s kitchen while simultaneously introducing the old woman to the joys of hip-hop. At regionals, she dazzled the crowd during her Bollywood dance routine. Her likeability scores came back in the high nines. Representing the marriage of old-world traditions with the apple-pie aspirations of the new country, she took crown after crown. It made everyone feel warm and hopeful, and they moved Shanti forward as if reaffirming their beliefs in all they stood for. It was great for everyone. It just wasn’t true. And Shanti wondered if her actual talent was fraud.
Shanti stopped to catch her breath. She had never been so tired. More than anything, she wanted to stop and rest. That was what her grandmother used to say to her all the time. “You work too hard. You should relax and enjoy your life. Maybe play Ragnaroknroll19, like your nani. I made an avatar of myself — I’m Super-Kali-Fragilicious! I just laid waste to the Dungeon Master of Carpathia. It was fun.”
“I can’t go another step,” Nicole said, panting.
Shanti was relieved that somebody else had said it first. The rains had stopped. They’d reached a wide plain sheltered by tall rock walls. In the distance, the rock yielded to more jungle.
“All right,” Shanti said. “We’ll rest.”
The girls stretched out on the carpet of green and fell asleep.
When Shanti woke again, the island sky had sneaked toward dusk, and she noticed that Tiara was missing. Quickly, she shook the others awake, and they searched the surrounding area, shouting Tiara’s name. An almost ecstatic moan led them to a large bush adorned with a haphazard assortment of red, star-shaped fruit. Tiara was sprawled beside it, her mouth and hands stained with red juice.
“Tiara, did you eat this fruit?” Nicole asked, frightened.
“Uh-huh. Don’t tell my mom. She’ll make me go for a run.”
“How many did you eat?”
“I don’t know. Four or twelve.”
“Which one was it — four or twelve?”
“I don’t know. I’m not good at math. They’re really yummy. They taste kinda like gummi bears, but with dirt on them.”
Shanti whispered to the others, “Those could be poisonous.”
“Tiara, do you feel okay?” Nicole asked.
“I feel … full,” Tiara said, tasting the word, which seemed as delicious as the fruit. “I can’t remember the last time I felt full. It’s awesome.”
“It’s getting dark. We should get going,” Shanti said.
“So tired,” Tiara muttered. Her eyelids fluttered.
“I think we should wait to see if Tiara’s okay,” Nicole whispered.
“It’s her fault she ate that fruit, not mine.”
“Harsh much? I thought you were all about family and togetherness.”
Shanti’s cheeks colored. “No one in my family would do something that stupid.”
“She was hungry! Look, we’ll just watch her for a while. If she’s fine, then we know that fruit is safe to eat. We might have found a food source, okay?”
“It beats cannibalism,” Petra said. “Plus, do you really want to be walking through the jungle at night? At least this place seems open.”
“Remember that big zit I had on my chin this morning? It’s all gone,” Tiara said, rubbing her thumb over her chin. Tiara’s skin was, in fact, perfectly clear and dewy.
“Wow. It looks like you just had a rock dust facial,” Petra said.
“Are those good?” Nicole asked. “I’ve always wanted to try one.”
Shanti examined Tiara’s face and looked more closely at the small fruit. She wished she had her botany book. “I’ll bet these have special properties that cause cell turnover in your skin — I did a science project on free radicals. I’ll bet I could turn this into my own skincare line and be Fortune 500 before I’m twenty-five. I’d call them Shanti Berries™.”
“You can if there are any left.” Petra grabbed a handful and gobbled them down.
“What are you doing?” Nicole asked.
“Tiara ate those hours ago and she’s fine and her skin looks great. If I’m going to die, I’d rather go out with a full stomach and amazing skin.” Petra smacked her lips, tasting. “Oh wow. These really are good!”
“Told you,” Tiara said sleepily.
“Okay. Here goes nothing.” Nicole crossed herself and bit into one, squirting juice. “Mmm. Oh wow.”
Shanti was weak from hunger, but she didn’t like going into situations in which she was not one hundred percent in charge. The fruit was an unknown. What if it were poisonous? She knew what Mrs. Mirabov would say: “Comrade Singh, you must train yourself to be without. Being beauty queen is like being marine, only harder. Marines do not fight in four-inch heels.” Still, the fruit was so inviting, and Tiara seemed fine. In the end, her hunger was stronger. She allowed herself three small pieces of fruit, marveling at their sweetness.
The sun’s light retreated. Sated and tired, the girls stretched out in the soft grass and watched the pale rind of moon grow more pronounced.
It began as a slight tingling in her fingers, and then Shanti was aware that her vision was more acute and that the edges of the jungle were unfolding, showing her more and more, like one of those accordion birthday cards.
“Anybody else feel … strange?” she asked, trying to keep the panic at bay.
Petra sang another old Boyz Will B Boyz tune to herself and mimed dance steps. Nicole giggled. Tiara stared up at the sky. From the corner of her eye, Shanti caught a colorful bird skating above the bushes. It looked at her and trilled one word: fraud.
“Oh my God.”
“What’s the matter, Bollywood?” Nicole asked, and laughed at the nickname.
“Don’t call me Bollywood,” Shanti snapped, but it only made Nicole giggle more. “What’s happening? I don’t understand — Tiara was fine after she ate that fruit. You didn’t see or hear anything strange, right?”
Tiara’s fingers tried to grab hold of an invisible ladder. “No. Well, the trees were singing funny camp songs to me and I think I saw a big rabbit surfing through the air. But that was all.”
“Oh my God!” Shanti cried, her words floating out in front of her in strings of black type.
“You sound funny, Bollywood. Like a Valley girl.” Nicole giggled anew.
Shanti clapped a hand over her mouth and fought to regain her composure. Carefully, she lifted her fingers, which no longer felt like her fingers but like butterflies, light and free. “Why didn’t you tell us, Tiara?”
“I didn’t want to bother you.”
Shanti blinked desperately, fighting the plant’s power. She liked to be in control — it was her safety net — and she could feel that net being ripped away from her by the star-shaped fruit.
Petra tried to calm her. “It’s kind of like Burning Man without the patchouli.”
“Do you think they’ll give us a pee test when we get back?” Tiara asked.
“Back where? What’s back?” Petra asked, and Tiara nodded.
Shanti fought with everything she had — synchronized Tae Kwon Do moves and circle turns. She shifted through her Bollywood talent routine, but soon her fingers forgot the language. Her head was an overgrown garden, and she was lost inside. She no longer knew where or who she was. Finally, she stretched out beside the others, and the jungle came to embrace her.
“I will search for berries as my ancestors did upon the plains before hunting the buffalo,” Shanti said dreamily.
Nicole rolled her head toward Shanti. At least, she thought she rolled her head. It was getting hard to tell what was what. “You’re not that kind of Indian, Bollywood.”
“Whatever,” Shanti replied. “Hey. Did you just see a purple dinosaur? He was wearing a boater hat.”
“Nice. I love a stylish dinosaur,” Petra murmured.
“I had a dinosaur when I was little. A stuffed dinosaur named Mr. Wiggles,” Tiara said. “One night, I found him under the covers, down, you know, there.” She lowered her voice to a whisper. “I think he did the nasty to me.”
Nicole patted her mouth. “My lips are spongy. Anybody else’s lips spongy?”
Tiara grabbed Petra’s arm. Her voice was low and urgent. “Mr. Wiggles. I put him in the back of the closet. I couldn’t look at him after that. He was a bad, bad dinosaur. What if he finds me? What if he finds me here?”
Petra held Tiara’s face in her large hands. “You’re safe. Ride the wave, my Mississippi flower. You’re on a smooth, pretty wave, just floating.”
“Okay,” Tiara said, settling back. “Okay.”
“Isn’t that nice?”
“Yeah.”
“Do you see the stars up there? Can you make out any shapes?”
“Yeah. I can.”
“What do you see?”
Tiara began to whimper. “A pervy dinosaur.” She leapt up and made a serpentine run for the jungle.
“Should we go after her?” Petra asked.
“Go after who?” Nicole asked.
Petra tried to remember, but her mind would not stay on task. “I don’t know.”
Shanti felt the blades of grass petting her ears. “I’m not sure what kind of Indian I am. I’m not really sure what I am at all anymore.”
“We’re not just sashes and states,” Nicole said on a sigh.
“Or gender,” Petra murmured. “Or bodies.”
“I’m sort of everything all at once,” Nicole whispered.
And then they were silent, lost to dreaming.
Shanti was a kite flying high in the sky. She’d never felt so weightless. At first, it was terrifying — where would she go? How would she get back? What if she were to drift away unnoticed? But soon she found she liked the feeling of not knowing. She was in control of her thoughts, and that was all she really needed. A strong tug brought her back.
Down below, Mrs. Mirabov held her string. “Comrade Singh, you are disgrace. Come down at once. We have work to do if you are not to be total failure like high-waisted, acid-wash jeans.”
“But I don’t want to. I like it up here.”
“You will fail, Shanti Singh. You need the winning. As yourself, you are not enough.”
Shanti the Kite wobbled and dipped. She feared that the wind might upend her and she would crash to earth and break into a million small splinters. Everyone would see. In a frightened voice, she called to Mrs. Mirabov. “Hold me up!”
“Only if you do as I tell you.”
“Okay,” Shanti agreed.
Mrs. Mirabov tightened her hold on both the string and the kite’s tail, and the kite went taut. Shanti felt it as a stabbing pain between her shoulder blades.
“I’m going to break,” Shanti gasped out.
“Nonsense. You are only as good as what you can do. Remember that you are not likeable, Comrade Singh,” Mrs. Mirabov called.
“I know.” The pain in Shanti’s back sharpened. It was unbearable.
“It is important for girls to be likeable.”
“But why?” Shanti asked.
If Mrs. Mirabov had an answer, she wasn’t sharing. “Come down this instant and we work on interview portion. You can tell story of how much you wish to be mother someday. People like to hear about your future plans for ovaries.”
Carefully, Shanti inched her way down, but the wind resisted. “Let go,” it whispered.
“I can’t. I’ll crash,” she said.
“Everybody crashes sometime.”
“Not me.”
“Comrade Singh, there are other girls who would not keep me waiting. Other girls who want it more.”
“She’s the best,” Shanti tried to explain.
The wind was warm. It caressed Shanti’s skin. It wanted to play. “We will hold you for a while.”
And for a moment, Shanti wondered why she needed Mrs. Mirabov when she already had the wind.
“I’m sorry,” she called down. “But I have to do this on my own. Thank you. And good-bye.”
“You will fail, Comrade Singh!” With a scowl and a blast of Russian, Mrs. Mirabov let go of the string connecting them. As Shanti soared higher, her handler shouted, “You are on your own! A girl without a tribe is no one. No one!”
“No one,” the wind said, laughing. “No one,” it sang like a round. “No one,” it repeated until it sounded like the ringing of a temple bell signaling something sacred, some great happiness, a moment freed from attachment. “No one,” it chanted, and all Shanti heard was Om.
Petra sat by the river’s edge listening to the night sounds and watching a frog hopping along the marshy, muddy bank. When Petra was little, her mother used to tell her a bedtime story. Now she found herself inside the story, which went as follows:
Once upon a time, when magic was not questioned and the miraculous showed itself in every dewdrop and moon shadow, there lived a frog. The frog had fine, strong legs and a wonderful, full-throated croak and was the pride of its mother and father. They loved the frog’s jolly temper, its warm greeting to the sun each morning, and did not mind at all that the frog thought itself a princess.
When the frog said, “Once I am grown, I shall have the most beautiful golden hair,” they said only, “To match your beautiful heart.” When the frog asked, “When shall I become a princess?” they answered, “When you are ready.”
And so it went, the frog cheerfully insisting to all in the meadow that it was a princess-in-waiting, until one day, a real princess strutted into the meadow, proud and vain.
“Hello, sister princess,” said the frog happily, for it was certain this was a sign that the time for its transformation had come.
“Why do you call me sister, little frog?”
“I’m not a frog,” the little green creature laughed (and Petra felt it deep in her belly). “I’m a princess, like you.”
“You?” laughed the girl. “You’ve no long golden hair like I. You’ve no alabaster arms and delicate feet with toenails painted a sweet pink. You’ve no honey-sweet laugh like mine. You’re just a lowly, croaking, ugly frog.”
“You’re wrong,” the frog said.
“I will show you,” the princess said. She led the little frog to the clearest part of the river. “See for yourself. You are a frog. And I am a princess. And nothing, nothing on this earth, will ever change that.”
The frog gazed at itself in the cursed water as if seeing for the first time and saw that what the princess said was true, and its sadness was beyond measure. In her dream, Petra felt warm tears on her cheeks.
Before sleep each night, the frog prayed to the four winds, to the great fish, to the sun above, and to the goddess moon that when it woke, it would be a princess. Yet each morning, the frog opened its eyes to find it was still only a frog. How could nature be so wrong about something so important? The frog grew bitter and lonely. It despaired. The frog’s parents became terribly frightened.
“We must do something,” croaked the mother.
“What can we do?” croaked the father.
They sat with their little frog and said, “We wish you only happiness. If you are meant to be a princess, then so be it. We will love you no matter what. Perhaps you should visit the Wise Witch of the Woods. She will know what to do.”
It was a daring plan, for the woods were full of many dangers, but the little frog was determined. After kissing its mother and father good-bye, it traveled far and wide in search of the mysterious, elusive Wise Witch of the Woods. For years it searched without luck. The frog feared it would never become a princess.
“Don’t give up,” Petra whispered in her dream, and as if the story-frog heard her, it came upon a large acorn covered in vines. The half-buried acorn was easy to miss, but the frog saw straightaway that the acorn was a false shell hiding something inside.
“Hello? Is there anyone there?” the frog croaked out.
“Yes! I am the Wise Witch of the Woods. I’ve been trapped inside this acorn by a terrible spell,” came the response. “If you can release me, I will grant you your heart’s desire.”
The frog didn’t know how it could possibly save a witch from so great a spell. But it sat for a while and it thought and eventually it came up with a plan. It summoned up all its courage and let loose a mighty croak, which cracked the acorn to bits and freed the witch.
The Wise Witch was very grateful to the little frog. She kept her promise. “What is your heart’s desire?” she asked.
But the frog had almost given up on its wish. It didn’t know if such a wish were possible. “Well,” it said softly, afraid, “I have always wanted to be a princess. But I have seen myself in the river. And it has shown me that I am a frog.”
The witch smiled. “The river does not know everything. Look again.”
Together, they traveled to another part of the river. It was hard to see anything here, but the witch said, “If you are brave and your heart is true, make your wish and jump.”
The frog dove into the water, and soon its legs began to lengthen. Its three spindly fingers became five slender ones with jeweled rings on each. And when the frog broke the surface, its long golden hair shone in the sun.
“I am a princess!” said the frog in a voice soft and sweet as first spring clover.
“Princess,” Petra repeated.
The frog on the bank croaked in response and leapt into the moon-dappled river. On the water’s surface, a bright orange fish swam through Petra’s reflection, blurring all definition.
Nicole could not sit still, and so she went for a walk in the glistening green of the jungle. To her surprise, she came upon a gingerbread house that smelled of cinnamon and cloves. Smoke pumped from its chimney.
“I wonder where I am?” she said.
A beautiful café au lait teen stuck her head out of one of the windows. She wore a pointed princess hat with a #1 on it. “You’re on the corner of stupid and clueless.”
Canned laughter echoed in the trees. It sounded like the laugh track on all those teen TV shows Nicole had seen a million times.
“I’m sorry?” Nicole said.
Another comely sister stuck her head out a window. There was a #2 on her hat. “You a couple snaps short of a gingersnap, aren’t you?”
“I beg your —”
A third girl in a hat marked #3 shoved her hand out the window, palm first. “Talk to the hand.”
The laugh track roared and subsided again. The house, the trees, and the sidekicks cast tall shadows that reminded Nicole of an art exhibit she’d seen by an African-American artist. The exhibit was a series of silhouettes of slaves and minstrels. It was very controversial and pissed off a lot of people. But Nicole had found it powerful; it had made her angry and afraid in equal measure.
“Excuse me,” Nicole said as she ran into the house, where she found her mother sitting at her vanity, putting more and more powder on her face. The vanity held a collection of hair relaxers, skin brighteners, oils, and flattening irons. Hanging from a department store rack was a sleek, sparkly dress in a doll’s size.
“There’s my baby now,” her mother said to the mirror. She frowned. “Oh, you look so rough, sugar. Have you been using your grease?”
“Mom, my plane crashed on this island and we had no food and people died and —”
“Don’t you worry, baby. We’ll get you fixed up in no time.” Her mother reached over and patted a collage taped to the wall. The glossy pictures had all been torn from magazines, a collection of pale, blond, hipless women with aquiline noses, bony legs, blank eyes, and thin, wan smiles. The body parts had been taped together like a series of lines, more Bauhaus building than woman. Sighing, Nicole’s mom ran a hand over the thickness of her thighs, the roundness of her bottom, and it was as if Nicole could feel the shame in her own body. “It won’t do, baby. It won’t do at all.”
“What should we do?” Nicole asked.
Nicole’s mother turned to her. It was hard to see her features under so much cover. Only her eyes shone out, wide and afraid. “The giant’s coming,” she whispered. “We don’t have much time to get you ready, Ne-Ne.”
“Ready for what?”
Her mother clapped and the sidekicks danced into the room. One did the moonwalk. They struck their poses, hips cocked, lips pursed, palms out in a talk-to-the-hand motion.
“I know you,” Nicole said to them. “You did pageants before you went to Hollywood. Now you’re on TV.”
“That’s right. We’re the sassy black sidekicks.”
“You know, the best friend of the main character.”
“The comic relief.”
“The ones who can put you down and tell you off.”
“I’ve been working on my head swivel. Wanna see my head swivel?”
“What happened to you?” Nicole said, going down the line. “You used to play Bach on the viola and work at a nonprofit after school. You wanted to go to London and start that cool underground theater and you never, ever moonwalked. And you … you were Episcopalian.”
Number 3 swiveled her head perfectly. “Not no more, sugar.”
“Why are you talking like that? What’s with the double negatives?”
“I’m about to double negative your head in a minute!” She snapped twice, and the laugh track erupted again. In it, Nicole heard barks and screams.
The ground shook. Nicole’s mother gasped and the girls went into their head-swiveling, finger-snapping minstrel show at a frenzied pace.
“What’s happening?”
Number 1 offered Nicole’s mother a large pair of garden shears. Her mother looked balefully to the collage. “It’s the only way, baby.”
Nicole understood and she felt frightened. She didn’t want to cut herself down. The jungle shook with a giant’s footsteps.
“Quick!” Nicole’s mother lunged at her with the scissors and Nicole ran out of the house and into the menacing shelter of the jungle. Behind her, footsteps thundered. Trees cracked and fell. The jungle was losing color, becoming a silhouette. The white space nipped at Nicole’s heels, tugged at her hair. She could not outrun it, and then she was lost inside, a feathery black cutout in the background, her hand still reaching for safety.