Dear Bill, Remember Me? Read online

  April 6, Sunday

  I talked to BD on the phone. We were peaceful. That’s good. Because we have been fighting a good bit lately.

  April 12, Saturday

  Mom came into my room with a sweater she’d washed for me. “Oh, by the way, honey,” she said (which is always the signal that she’s going to be serious), “aren’t you and Brian seeing an awful lot of each other?”

  “Me and BD?” I said, sort of stalling for time.

  “Yes. You saw him every single night this week. Do you think that’s wise?”

  “Wise?”

  “I don’t want you to be in a terrible hurry like I was.”

  “Terrible hurry?”

  “To grow up,” she said.

  “Grow up?”

  “Jessie! Do you have to repeat everything I say?” She flashed me a funny little smile. “When two people see a lot of each other, it’s not always so wise. They might get too—they might get carried away.”

  “Oh,” I said. “You don’t have to worry, Mom. No one is going to carry me away.”

  Tuesday, April 15

  Thinking about me and BD. At this point in my life, the way I feel is—my body is my body. And I don’t care to share it with anyone. I don’t know totally why I feel that way, and I don’t think I have to know why. It’s just the way I feel. Sometimes in the morning I look at myself in the mirror and I feel proud. I look myself all over and I think, Hey, yeah, Jessie, that’s your body. Terrific!

  Sunday, April 20

  A fight with BD last night. Please don’t read this, Miss Durmacher! It’s private and personal. We were parked in the cemetery. BD said I was being mean. He said I was being selfish, and also unfair. I didn’t know what to say in return, so I just got mad. I said, I’m going home! I wanted to get out of the car and walk but he wouldn’t let me. He started the car and drove me home. I was furious. He won’t even let me get mad in my own way.

  Monday, April 21

  Miss Durmacher, you didn’t say how long or short the entries had to be. I’ll describe the weather today. Sletty gray air and the smell of garbage everywhere.

  Tuesday, April 22

  Today, in school, I saw BD in the halls, and I saw him in geometry class, and I saw him in the cafeteria. We looked at each other. He didn’t say anything, and I didn’t say anything.

  After school I started home. After a few blocks I felt someone was following me. I turned around. There was BD behind me. I started walking again. Then I turned around. He was right behind me. He grabbed me in a big hug, knocking my books every which way and said, “Kiss! Kiss!” I was sort of shocked, but I couldn’t help kissing him back. And then he laughed and laughed.

  Wednesday, April 30

  Today I tried to talk to BD. He says it’s my fault we fight so much. He says I pick the fights, that I’m aggressive, he’s peaceful. This might be true. He is peaceful when he gets his way. He said I didn’t know how to give in gracefully. He might be right about this, too. I hate to lose a game or an argument. He says I’m a prickly character. He’s started calling me Porky, short for porcupine.

  Sunday, May 4

  Last night BD and I parked down by the river. Cars were lined up for a mile, all of them dark, all of them looking empty. Ha-ha. I told BD I felt like I’m part of a factory production make-out line. BD just laughed. He always laughs when he doesn’t want to answer. Anyway, he was getting down to business. He’s been doing that lately—and we’ve been fighting about it. A standoff, so far.

  “BD, let’s kiss,” I said. I really like kissing that boy.

  “Sure,” he said, but he didn’t stop what he was doing.

  So I said, “Quit that, BD, you’re getting friendlier than I want you to be.”

  “Oh, don’t you like that?” he said, sort of sweet and surprised. “It feels nice. You are so nice and soft, Jessie. I bet your sister and Mark do this—”

  I gave him a little shove. “What’s it to you what Anita and Mark do? That sounds sick to me.”

  “Porky,” he said.

  “Don’t call me Porky,” I said. “I don’t like it.”

  “Seems like there are a lot of things you don’t like, Jessie,” he said. “Don’t you trust me?”

  “I don’t see what that’s got to do with anything, BD,” I said. “But come to think of it—if I gave you $100 to keep for me, I guess you wouldn’t spend it, but what if I gave you one thousand?”

  “Jessie, that’s silly, you don’t have a thousand dollars.”

  “Answer the question, BD,” I said. “If I gave you one thousand dollars to keep for me, and then I went away, would you spend my thousand dollars?”

  “No, I wouldn’t, Jessie. I wouldn’t spend one single penny of your money.”

  “What if I gave you that thousand dollars and then I didn’t come back for ten years? What if you were told, by someone you knew was trustable, that I was dead. Would you spend my money?”

  “Jessie, is this going to be another Fong Mountain,” BD said. “Let’s get back to the subject. I said you could trust me, and I meant it. I’ll be careful.”

  “Careful. What does that mean?”

  “Well, you know, I won’t, uh, hurt you—”

  “Hurt me?”

  “Well, you know, maybe you’re afraid of—”

  “I’m not afraid, BD.”

  “If you’re not afraid, then why won’t you—?”

  “Not being afraid isn’t a reason to do something. Just because you’re not afraid of heights doesn’t mean you’re going to take a walk along the edge of the Empire State Building.”

  “I’m not talking about the Empire State Building, Jessie,” he said in this patient voice.

  “I know what you’re talking about, BD,” I said, and suddenly I had the feeling that I was up there on Fong Mountain again. And I was all alone. And I thought, Oh! I wish I had someone to talk to.

  Saturday, May 10

  I have kind of a problem here. What I want to write about is BD and me, but I keep thinking you’ll read this, Miss Durmacher. Your eyes might just slip and catch this or that. And if they do, you’re going to just keep reading. That’s human nature. So this is going to be my second entry for the week.

  Friday, May 16

  Oh, BD, you mix me up … I love you … but …

  Friday, May 23

  BD came over last night. I thought we could just walk around, buy ice cream, and maybe talk. Be restful with each other. It was a nice night, warm, and I didn’t feel like doing anything special. Also, BD couldn’t get the car, which was a relief to me because we wouldn’t have to park and then fight over me.

  But the minute we set foot on the sidewalk, BD said, “We’re going to the movies,” and he starts walking fast, getting ahead of me, like he wanted me to have to run to catch up with him.

  So I just kept walking along at my usual pace, and I said to his back, “How do you know that’s what I want to do?”

  “There’s a new movie at the Cinema,” he said. “You’ll like it.”

  “How do you know that?”

  He turned around, gave me one of his smiles. He really has the nicest smile in the world! But he uses it unfairly. “Oh, listen, Jessie, if I like it, you’ll like it. Right?”

  “Wrong!” I yelled.

  “Say it again, Porky. They couldn’t hear you in Rochester.”

  “Very funny, BD. And I told you not to call me Porky!”

  “Why don’t you smile more? When you frown like that it makes you look like a teacher.”

  “What’s wrong with teachers?” I said.

  “Who said anything was wrong with teachers. Don’t change the subject, Jessie.”

  “BD, you said if I frowned that made me look like a teacher. You meant ugly!”

  “I didn’t mean anything of the sort,” he said. “I was just talking, just using a metaphor.”

  I knew he thought he had me there, but Miss Durmacher you had just reviewed all this stuff. “You mean a simile,” I
said. “The moon is a balloon is a metaphor. The moon looks like a balloon is a simile.”

  “Don’t act smartass! Come on, walk faster, or we’ll miss the opening of the movie.”

  “What movie?”

  “The movie we’re going to see.” BD wasn’t smiling now. Neither was I.

  “I don’t believe I’m going to any movie,” I said. “I haven’t made up my mind what I want to do tonight. Nobody asked me what I wanted to do, only told me what they wanted to do.”

  “They,” BD said. “There’s only one of me.”

  “Oh, BD,” I said, “no, you’re a whole government. You’re a president, vice-president, and secretary of defense all rolled into one.”

  “What are you talking about?”

  “You know what I’m talking about, BD. How you always have to be Top Banana. The Big Cheese. Always telling me. You’re a regular Mao Tze Fong! We’re going to do this, we’re going to do that, we’re going here, we’re eating this—don’t you think I have a mind of my own? You want your own way all the time. You never ask me anything. You just barrel on ahead. You want to lead me around by the nose!”

  “You’re being difficult tonight,” he said. He was smiling. Only not his usual, regular beautiful smile, more of a toothy mean smile, as if he would like to really bite off my arm instead of talking to me. “You’ve been difficult just about every time we see each other lately. Now, do you want to see that movie, or don’t you?”

  “I don’t care about the movie,” I said. “What I care about is that I have a mind of my own, I am a free person also, and I don’t want to be in any dictatorship relationship!”

  “Dictatorship relationship,” he said. And he laughed. Hee-hee-hee. “You mean a dictatorial relationship. Dictatorial, not dictatorship.”

  I stared at him. Then I turned around and walked in the other direction. And he didn’t come after me, and I didn’t go back after him.

  Wednesday, May 28

  I guess everything really is over with BD and me. We really have broken up. I never would have thought it—breaking up over grammar, not sex.

  June 2, Monday

  I know I missed making a couple of entries, Miss Durmacher, but I was sort of upset. I’ll make some extra ones to make up for it. Anita has a job after school at the telephone company. Mom has been going over every day to help Aunt Peggy, who just had her fifth baby. I don’t have anything to do except hang around the house, feeling crummy.

  June 4, Wednesday

  Sometimes, thinking about BD, which I can’t help doing a lot, I think I was the biggest fool in the world, because it’s true I never loved a boy the way I loved BD. Then I go over everything in my mind, and I don’t see what else I could have done.

  June 5, Thursday

  Why should I miss someone who all I could do was fight with, anyway.

  Friday, June 6

  I’m sick of hanging around the house, I’m sick of thinking about BD. Two whole weeks is enough. I’m going to get a job.

  Saturday, June 7

  Everyone at every place I go says, “Leave your name, we’ll call you.” Or else, “Fill out this application.” Then they ask you a hundred questions about your whole life for a job which they don’t mean to give you, anyway.

  Sunday, June 8

  I got a job!

  It happened just by accident, this way. Yesterday, I was really discouraged after spending the whole day looking for work. I stopped into Dippin DoNuts on the Blvd. I ordered coffee and a plain doughnut, and just out of habit told the lady behind the counter I was looking for work.

  She looked me over. I sat up straighter. She said, “Are you prepared to start next week, and then work all summer?”

  I said, “Sure!”

  She looked me over again. She asked me how old I was. She asked me where I lived. She said she was Mrs. Richmondi and she owned the place. Then she said that her regular girl had gotten smashed up in a car accident the day before. She needed someone right away. I start tomorrow afternoon.

  Sunday, June 15

  I’ve worked a whole week, every day after school from four to seven. (Then Mrs. Richmondi comes in for the last three hours and to close up.) And I worked all day Saturday. I’m a little bit tired today, but I like working. Yesterday morning I got up at five o’clock. Everyone was asleep. I crept around the house and let myself out as quiet as I could. The birds were racketing while I walked to work, but everything else was quiet. The streets were empty. Not even one car. And the houses all quiet. It was nice. I was never out early in the morning like that.

  Monday, June 16

  I have to wear a horrible uniform, orange with white trim (Mrs. Richmondi is big on orange—all the cups are orange, also the napkins), but other than that, I really like my job. Mrs. Richmondi is nice, too, but she hates bare feet. She’s got a sign on the door: NO BARE FEET.

  Wednesday, June 18

  I see BD every day in school and we never say a word, just look at each other and then keep walking.

  Mom came in to Dippin DoNuts today and ordered coffee and a jelly doughnut. Then a bunch of kids came pouring in yelling orders, and before I’d really taken in who was there, I thought—BD’s here! And my hands got sweaty.

  Thursday, June 19

  BD came into the doughnut shop today.

  It was 6:30. At first I almost didn’t recognize him. He was wearing a funny-looking hat that was too big for him, a gray, crumpled fedora with a wide brim like something out of a thirties gangster movie. And a red wool shirt and enormous, huge red-and-white sneakers. And he was smoking a cigarette, had it dragging from his lower lip like Humphrey Bogart or Jimmy Cagney in one of those old-time movies.

  He sat down at the counter. I wiped my hands down the sides of my uniform. “Yes?” I said, just like I did to anyone who came in. “Can I help you?”

  “Cupacawfee,” he said, with the cigarette dangling from his mouth.

  I poured coffee into the orange mug and set it in front of him. “Would you like a doughnut with your coffee?” I said, which is the next thing I always say to regular customers.

  “Yup,” he said.

  I was nervous. Some of the coffee spilled. I wiped it up. “Cinnamon, plain, sugar, jelly, chocolate, banana, peach, orange, cream, or cinnamon-chocolate?”

  “What kind would you recommend?”

  “Whatever you like.”

  “What do you think is the best?”

  “That depends on your taste,” I said.

  “Well, what is your taste? What is your favorite?”

  “The cinnamon-chocolate.”

  “Then that’s what I’ll have,” BD said. “Cinnamon-chocolate.”

  “I thought you didn’t like chocolate, BD,” I said, putting the doughnut down in front of him.

  “Everyone needs an open mind in this world,” he said. “I haven’t eaten chocolate in quite a few years, so I might just as well try it again, don’t you agree, Jessie?”

  I stared at him. I wanted to say, BD, is that you?

  I went into the kitchen and took a tray of fresh jelly doughnuts back into the shop. With a piece of waxed paper I began arranging them on the shelf.

  “You like working here?” BD said to my back.

  “Yes.”

  “I heard from some of the kids you were working here.”

  “Oh.”

  “What do you like best about it?”

  “The people,” I said. I finished arranging the doughnuts.

  “You eat a lot of doughnuts?” he said.

  I nodded. “Too many.”

  “I wouldn’t mind working in a doughnut shop. They’d lose money on me.”

  I nodded. I had missed BD an awful lot. I had thought about him nearly every single day. Sometimes I had loved him so much in my thoughts, in my mind, that I could hardly stand it. Sometimes I had hated him just as hard. Now here he was, not more than two feet from me, and all we were talking about was doughnuts.

  The door opened and a woman and tw
o little boys came in and sat down. I wiped the counter in front of them. “One coffee, and two hot chocolates,” the woman said. “And—let’s see, oh, let’s splurge, three jelly doughnuts.” She smiled at me. The little boys were twirling on the stools.

  I took care of them. BD was brushing up the last crumbs of his doughnut and eating them. “Anything else?” I said. His cigarette was smoking on the edge of the ashtray I’d put down next to him. “More coffee?” BD nodded. I could feel him watching me as I got the Silex and poured his coffee. I took a creamer out of the refrigerator under the counter and put it next to his cup.

  The woman and two boys finished and she paid. She left me a dime tip on the counter. I put it into my apron pocket and wiped up everything.

  “This smoke bothering you?” BD pointed to the cigarette.

  “Some,” I said.

  BD dropped the cigarette on the floor and stepped on it, ground it out beneath his foot like it was his worst enemy he was grinding down to shreds.

  “Thank you,” I said.

  “Cooperation, ma’am,” he said, putting on a Western accent. “We strive to co-op-erate. For instance, how do you like my hat?”

  “Your hat?”

  He took off the hat, twirling it on his fingers. “My hat. This venerable, antique, genuine gangster hat. You don’t like it, do you?”

  “Well—”

  “No, I can tell, you don’t have to say anything, you think it’s an ancient, grungy piece of junk. Okay, Jessie, if that’s what you think, then I don’t want to wear this hat,” BD said. And he opened the door and flipped the hat through. I could see it sailing out into the parking lot. “That’s what I mean by cooperation, Jessie.”

  “You dope, BD,” I said. “I liked that hat all right, it’s your sneakers I’m not so wild about.”

  “My sneakers? These genuine red-and-white Converse Ail-Americans? Jessie! That’s all you have to say.” He kicked off his sneakers one after the other, and sent them sailing through the door into the parking lot where they joined his hat.

  “You’re crazy, BD,” I said. “You’re really impossible.”

  And just then my boss, Mrs. Richmondi, parked her car outside in the lot. I looked down at BD’s bare feet and then at the sign Mrs. Richmondi had tacked on the door. NO BARE FEET.