Cat's eye

Carol comes to my house and takes it all in—the unpainted walls, the wires dangling from the ceilings, the unfinished floors, the army cots—with incredulous glee. “This is where you sleep? ” she says. “This is where you eat? These are your clothes? ” Most of my clothes, which are not many in number, are pants and jersey tops. I have two dresses, one for summer and one for winter, and a tunic and a wool skirt, for school. I begin to suspect that more may be required.

Carol tells everyone at school that our family sleeps on the floor. She gives the impression that we do this on purpose, because we’re from outside the city; that it’s a belief of ours. She’s disappointed when our real beds arrive from storage, four-legged and with mattresses, like everybody else’s. She puts it around that I don’t know what church I go to, and that we eat off a card table. She doesn’t repeat these items with scorn, but as exotic specialties. I am, after all, her lining-up partner, and she wants me to be marveled at. More accurate: she wants herself to be marveled at, for revealing such wonders. It’s as if she’s reporting on the antics of some primitive tribe: true, but incredible.

Chapter 10

O n Saturday we take Carol Campbell to the building. When we walk into it she says, wrinkling up her nose, “Is this where your father works? ” We show her the snakes and the turtles; she makes a noise that sounds like “Ew,” and says she wouldn’t want to touch them. I’m surprised by this; I’ve been discouraged from having such feelings for so long that I no longer have them. Neither does Stephen. There’s not much we won’t touch, given the chance.

I think Carol Campbell is a sissy. At the same time I find myself being a little proud of her delicacy. My brother looks at her in an odd way: with contempt, true, and if I myself said such a thing he would make fun of me. But there’s an undertone, like an invisible nod, as if something he wants to suspect has come true after all.

By rights he should ignore her after this, but he tries her out on the jars of lizards and ox eyeballs. “Ew,”

she says. “What if they put one down your back? ” My brother says how would she like some for dinner? He makes chewing and slurping noises.

“Ew,” says Carol, screwing up her face and wriggling all over. I can’t pretend to be shocked and disgusted too: my brother wouldn’t be convinced. Neither can I join in the game of making up revolting foods, such as toadburgers and leech chewing gum, although if we were alone or with other boys I would do it without a second thought. So I say nothing.

After we get back from the building I go to Carol’s house again. She asks me if I want to see her mother’s new twin set. I don’t know what this is, but it sounds intriguing, so I say yes. She takes me stealthily into her mother’s bedroom, saying that she’ll really get it if we’re caught, and shows me the twin set, folded on a shelf. The twin set is just two sweaters, both the same color, one with buttons down the front, the other without. I’ve already seen Mrs. Campbell wearing a different twin set, a beige one, her breasts pronging out, the buttoned sweater draped over her shoulders like a cape. So this is all twin sets are. I’m disappointed, because I was expecting something to do with twins. Carol’s mother and father don’t sleep in one big bed, the way mine do. Instead they sleep in two little beds, exactly alike, with matching pink chenille bedspreads and matching night tables. These beds are called twin beds, which makes more sense to me than the twin set. Still, it’s strange to think of Mr. and Mrs. Campbell lying in them at night, with different heads—his with a mustache, hers without—but nevertheless twinlike, identical, under the sheets and blankets. It’s the matching bedspreads, the night tables, the lamps, the bureaus, the doubleness of everything in their room, that gives me this impression. My own parents’ room is less symmetrical, and also less neat.

Carol says her mother wears rubber gloves while washing the dishes. She shows me the rubber gloves and a spray thing attached to the water tap. She turns on the tap and sprays the inside of the sink, and part of the floor by accident, until Mrs. Campbell comes in, wearing her beige twin set and frowning, and says hadn’t we better go upstairs to play. Possibly she isn’t frowning. She has a mouth that turns slightly down even when she’s smiling, so it’s hard to tell whether she’s pleased or not. Her hair is the same color as Carol’s, but done in a cold wave all over her head. It’s Carol who points out that this is a cold wave. A cold wave has nothing to do with water. It’s like doll hair, very tidy and arranged, as if sewn into place.

Carol is more and more gratified the more bewildered I am. “You didn’t know what a cold wave is?”