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Yet it was Helen Ma
Only not this fall. Now that it was time for middle school, a lot of the girls in their class were going to private places. “Real private school,” Wendy had said-not meanly, but a little carelessly, forgetting that Alice wasn’t going with them. Alice thought St. William of York was a real private school. It was real enough that Alice ’s mother couldn’t afford it anymore. Next year, Alice would have to go to West Baltimore Middle. Ro
But Alice knew: It was about the money. In the end, everything was about money-in her house, in the Fuller house, even in the rich kids’ houses. Parents just had different vocabulary words for it-some fancy, some plain-and different ways of talking about it. Or not talking about it, as the case may be.
In the Fuller family, they screamed and yelled about money, even stole from each other. Earlier this summer, Ro
Alice and her mother did not fight about money, did not even speak about it directly, not even when her grandparents visited from Co
That had been back in the third grade, though, when neon scrunchies were important and Alice hadn’t yet learned to be good. Now the thing to have was jellies, which is why Alice saved her allowance and bought her own, at Target. She had shown them to her school-year-best-friend Wendy, when it was time to open the presents, and Wendy must have approved, for she made room for Alice on the bench she was sharing with two other girls from their class.
Maddy’s birthday party had been set up near the baby pool, not because they were babies, but because it was behind a fence, and they needed the fence to tie the balloons. Alice found herself counting the gifts. She was always counting. Steps on the stair, lines on the highway, birds flying south for the winter. There were fourteen presents on the table, but only thirteen girls at the party. Did Maddy’s mom bring a present, too? Or did one of the girls away at camp send a gift? Fourteen presents, thirteen girls. Hers was one of the prettiest on the outside- Alice ’s mother had wrapped it in blue paper that shimmered-but the shape gave it away. The present was a book, just a book, and Maddy was not the kind of girl who would be happy to get a book. Maddy wanted one of those new T-shirts, the kind that leave your belly showing, and rubber bracelets, and the nail polish you could peel right off. Maddy was the youngest girl in the class, but she knew the most about makeup. She was always sneaking gloss, and green mascara, until the nuns caught her and sent her to the bathroom to wash it off.
Alice had expected Maddy’s mother to be pretty, too, just so. Yet Maddy’s mother was sort of plain-slender enough to wear a two-piece, but tired-looking, as if being so thin and ta
“I’m Maddy’s mother. I used to work-at Piper, Marbury?” Alice ’s mother made an “ah” sound, as if this were a good thing. She approved of Anything Creative, as she was always telling Alice. But Alice was surprised to find out that Maddy’s mom was a piper. She thought she had been a lawyer. She imagined Maddy’s mother in a green hat with a feather, leading the children out of Hamlin, along with the rats. No, the rats came first, the piper took the children later. Besides, Maddy’s mother must have been a piper in an orchestra to draw such an “ah” sound from Helen, not someone who just played on the street or in circuses. A mother who made music must be fun.
But Maddy’s Mother Who Used to Work had looked as if she had a headache from the moment the party started. Her forehead had four creases, like two equals signs, and there was a tiny set of parentheses at the bridge of her nose. These seemed to get deeper and deeper as the day wore on, and by the time it was time to open the presents, her face looked like a very hard math problem, maybe even algebra. St. William of York didn’t have a gifted program, but Sister Elizabeth had started giving Alice extra-credit homework in math. This was a secret. Alice wasn’t sure why. She thought it might be because she didn’t have a lot of secrets from her mother, who always seemed to know exactly what she was thinking. Other times, she thought her mom would be disappointed in her for liking math, which wasn’t creative and led to making money, which Helen Ma
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“Isn’t that nice,” Maddy’s mother said, as she had said twelve times already, with just the same inflection.
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