Brooke Read online

  Most of the girls made fun of her because she was so big, but none of them ever said anything to her face. She looked as if she could sweep them off their feet with one swing of her heavy arms. I learned they had nicknamed her Cora Munching because she ate so much. She even sneaked food between classes. I thought that if she lost weight, she could be very pretty, but I was afraid to tell her.

  After my softball practice, I had to hurry home to get ready for dinner and try to get in some homework, Occasionally, I didn't have time to shower before I sat for my piano lesson. Professor Wertzman didn't seem to care. He had a strange odor himself, an odor that nearly turned my stomach because he sat so close to me on the piano bench. I tried to turn away or hold my breath, but it was difficult not to inhale that stale, clammy, sour smell. I noticed he wore the same shirt all week, and by Friday, the collar would be yellowish brown where it touched his neck.

  When he gave me instructions, he had a way of closing his eyes so that they became slits. Sometimes, when he got very excited about a mistake I had made, he would spray the piano with spit and then wipe it off with the sleeve of his left arm quickly. Often, Pamela came in to watch, and when she was in the room, his expression suddenly took on softness, his gentle, considerate teacher's voice returning. When we were alone, he spoke abruptly, had little patience, and complained continually about the difficulty he had turning a pebble into a pearl. It was always on the tip of my tongue to tell him I never asked him to perform any miracles, but I swallowed back my pride and let him lash me with ridicule and criticism.

  One night, when Peter was sitting alone in the living room and reading, I stopped in to talk to him.

  "I tasted caviar," I said, "and I hate it."

  "What?" He looked at me, and then he smiled. "Oh. Right." He nodded.

  "I'm never going to be good on the piano:' I said. "Even the professor says my fingers aren't right. He says I'm too forceful and that I'd be better at drums or carpentry work."

  "Is that what he said?" Peter laughed. "Well, just put up with it awhile longer until I get Pamela to think of something better."

  "I don't want to be in beauty contests," I added. "It can't hurt you to do it once or twice," he told me. "Look at it as a new experience."

  "No one else at the school is going to be in any beauty contests, and there are girls in school who are really a lot prettier than I am. They're going to laugh at me and make fun of me," I warned him.

  "Maybe you'll win. Then they won't laugh:' The way he said it made me believe I really had a chance. Maybe Pamela was right about me.

  "Will you and Pamela come to the home game this Saturday?" I asked. I had been mentioning it all week, but Pamela pretended she didn't hear me.

  "Sure," he said. He thought a moment. "I ought to get myself a video camera, too." He looked at me. "Don't expect me to become one of those crazy Little League parents, though."

  I laughed.

  When he brought up the game himself at dinner that evening, Pamela refused to go.

  "Do you know what damage is done to your skin sitting out there under that horrible sunlight and letting all that dust come settling on you? When you come home," she said, turning to me, "you make sure you go right into a bathtub and clean all the pollution out of your pores and wash your hair."

  She thought intently for a moment and then suddenly rose and came around the table.

  "Let me see your hands," she ordered. I raised my palms, and she grabbed them and ran her fingers over them.

  "Just as I thought," she said to Peter. "Her skin is getting rough. Soon she'll have calluses!"

  "Really?" he asked. He sounded amused, and I could see he was trying not to smile.

  "Come over here and feel them. Come on." "I believe you."

  "This is just ridiculous. A daughter with hands like a ditch digger. I want you to come up to my room after dinner. I have a hand lotion you'll have to use continually. You rub it in four or five times a day."

  "Four times a day? You mean even while I'm at school?" I asked.

  "Of course. How much longer will this baseball nonsense continue?" She was beginning to pout.

  "We only have a few games left," I said. "I came on late in the season."

  "Good," she muttered, and returned to her chair.

  I was afraid to tell her that I had already agreed to try out for the girls' basketball team. The coach saw me shooting baskets with some seniors and asked me to come to tryouts next week. Besides that, Coach Grossbard believed I might get chosen for the all-star game this year and have to go to a special practice after the end of our softball season. Sports were the one thing I knew I was good at--and I didn't intend to give them up.

  Peter decided that he would drive me to my game on Saturday. I was dressed in my uniform when I came bouncing down the stairs. Pamela was expecting her masseuse, but she was still downstairs giving Joline some instructions about a new juice drink that included herbs which she claimed retarded the aging process. As soon as she saw me come down the stairs, she began a stream of complaints.

  "Is that their uniform? You're dressed like a boy. Why don't you wear a skirt, at least?"

  "They can't wear skirts, Pamela," Peter said, laughing.

  "Why not?"

  "They might have to slide into base. They have to wear something practical."

  "Why don't they wear some decent color combination, then?" she followed.

  "These are the school colors," I explained.

  "Whoever picked them out is not very creative. Remember what I said you're to do as soon as you come home," she told me, and continued up the stairs, mumbling under her breath.

  "She's really very proud of you," Peter tried to assure me. "It's just that sports have never been important to her."

  On the way to the game, he talked about his own interest in sports and how he followed football and tennis.

  "I play a mean game of tennis," he bragged. "One of these days, take you to the club, and we'll hit a few. Would you like that?"

  "Yes," I said. "I've always wanted to play tennis, but we never had anyplace to play. My old school didn't have tennis courts, but Agnes Fodor does."

  "Great. Now, that's a sport I might get Pamela interested in. She likes the outfits," he told me.

  The outfits? I thought. They had the least to do with why I would want to play or watch a sport. I began to wonder if Pamela and I would ever understand each other. And wasn't that important? Having a mother who understood your dreams and desires, your hopes and wishes?

  As Peter and I neared the school, I thought about the team we would play today--they were undefeated. The girls on their team did look tougher, stronger, and hungrier. Their leadoff hitter was a tall African-American girl who looked as if she could drive the ball through anyone in the infield. I saw how the girls on my team stepped back when I started to pitch, anticipating a line drive. However, I took advantage of her height and kept my pitches low. She went for two bad ones and missed, and the third was a foul that our first baseman was able to catch. My team cheered, and the nervousness they had come to the field with settled.

  I grew stronger with every pitch. Once in a while, I gazed at the bleachers and saw Peter smiling at me. He had brought his new video camera and was filming the game I had three hits that day, one a triple with two girls on base. It drove in what was to be the winning run.

  The other team looked stunned. My team gathered around me and cheered as if they had won the World Series. As we left the field, I heard the other coach ask Coach Grossbard where she had gotten the ringer.

  Peter was really excited all the way home. "Wait until I play the tape for Pamela. That last hit of yours was a beaut, right between the right fielder and the center fielder. How'd you do it?"

  "My coach at my last school showed me how to turn my feet to place the ball," I explained. Peter was very impressed, and for the first time since I had moved in with him and Pamela, I felt proud of myself and confident that they could be proud of me.


  When we arrived home, Pamela was still soaking in her milk bath, something she did after every massage. Peter hurried in to tell her about the game. I showered, washed my hair, and changed. Peter wanted to take us to a fancy restaurant to celebrate. But first, he wanted to show Pamela some of the highlights from the game.

  I waited downstairs in the family room. The two of them finally appeared, Pamela looking radiant and beautiful. Peter put the tape in the machine and turned on the television set.

  "Did you wash your hair with that shampoo I bought you?" Pamela asked me--it was obvious she didn't care about how well I'd done in the game.

  "Yes, I did."

  She put her fingers through my hair and nodded. "You don't realize the damage the sun can do to your hair."

  "I wore a hat," I said.

  "It doesn't cover your whole head, does it?"

  "Here she is. Watch this, Pamela!" Peter cried. It was when I had my first hit, a strong single to left. She nodded. "Did you rub the skin lotion into your hands?"

  I had forgotten, but I nodded. She narrowed her eyes with suspicion and felt my hands.

  "They're very dry."

  "Here's where she strikes out their best hitter. Watch these three pitches. Look at that."

  "You should go up and rub in the lotion," she said.

  "I will."

  "Here it comes, Pamela, the triple. Watch this. There. Wow! That was the winning run."

  "She's developing muscles," Pamela said with a grimace. "What girl her age has muscles? Sports will make you too masculine," she warned. "Why do you insist on pursuing these silly sports?"

  I felt my heart sink I had hoped that once she saw how good I was, she would not be so down on my participation in sports, but nothing Peter showed her on the tape seemed to impress her.

  "I'm hungry, Peter," she whined.

  "Fine. We're ready. So what do you think?" he asked. "We got a little Babe Ruth, huh?"

  "I'd rather have a little Cindy Crawford," she quipped. "Hurry upstairs and do your hands, Brooke," she ordered.

  I looked at Peter and then left the room. They were both waiting in the car when I returned.

  "Watch your posture," Pamela complained from the car window as I approached. "You're hunching over too much. It's your shoulders. They're getting too big, probably from swinging that heavy stick of wood."

  "It's called a bat," I muttered as I got in.

  She shot me a fiery look of irritation and then caught sight of herself reflected in the glass and worried about a redness in her right cheek all the way to the restaurant.

  Not another word was said about my softball game. For all she cared, I could have struck out every time at bat.

  Even Mrs. Talbot back at the orphanage had been prouder of me.

  Before dinner ended, I looked at Pamela and asked, "Did you ever play softball, Pamela?"

  "Me? Of course not." She sniffed. "Hardly."

  "Then how do you know you don't like it?" I followed.

  "What?"

  "It's like if you never tasted caviar but said you don't like it."

  She looked at Peter. "Whatever is she saying?"

  Peter smiled, but I didn't smile back. And then, for the first time, I saw a dark shadow in his eyes when he glanced at Pamela and then at me.

  I looked away and thought about the wonderful feeling that had traveled through me when I connected at the plate and that ball went sailing. All the lotions, herbs, vitamins, and shampoos couldn't make me feel better about myself than I had at that moment. What would happen if Pamela made me stop playing? Would I ever feel good about myself again?

  7 Trial By Fire

  Despite my lack of enthusiasm and my dislike of Professor Wertzman, I was able to play a crude rendition of "When the Saints Come Marching In" five weeks after I had begun my lessons. Pamela thought this proved I was talented enough to perform at the first pageant. As the reality of my actually participating in that event grew, she decided to begin instructing me on how to do what she called the Runway Walk.

  "The only difference is that instead of presenting some designer's new fashion, you're really presenting yourself," she explained.

  We used the long downstairs corridor in our house, and she immediately criticized the size of my steps.

  "You're plodding along like a robot, not walking You've got to glide over that stage, float. Think of yourself as made of air. That's how I was taught. Soft, soft, feminine, soft," she chanted as I repeated the journey from the front door to the dining room. "Glide. Don't move your arms so much, relax. Open your hands. You can't walk out with your fists clenched! You're not smiling, Brooke. Smile. Stop!"

  She thought a moment. "You can't look bored or uncomfortable, Brooke. Beauty must be ignited with enthusiasm. This is the motto I was taught, and you must learn and live it as well."

  "I feel silly," I grumbled.

  "You must get over that. What you're doing is not silly. It's professional. The judges must sense that you have self-confidence?'

  "But I don't belong in a beauty pageant. I'm not beautiful," I insisted.

  She raised her eyes to the ceiling and looked as if she was counting to ten. "All right," she said in a softer voice. "Come with me now."

  She walked briskly to the stairway and waited for me to catch up. Then she caught my hand in hers and took me up to her bedroom.

  "Sit," she said, pointing at her vanity table. I did so. "Look at yourself in that mirror. What do you think are your worst features?"

  "All of them," I moaned.

  "Wrong. You have a great deal of raw beauty. Now, do as I say," she ordered, and pulled out her lip pencils. "Bold lips are back. Not every young woman can wear bold eye shadow, but most can easily wear a bold lip color.

  "If you knew anything about makeup and faces, you would know you don't have what we call beestung lips, so you should stay away from dark, matte shades. You need colors with more intensity. Dark colors will make your mouth look smaller. First, open your mouth." She demonstrated. "I want to line your lips fully."

  I did what she said, and she began.

  "Good," she said, stepping back and

  scrutinizing me. "I like to mix and match my lipsticks. In the morning, begin with a matte lipstick. Then, later, rather than add more of that, which might look cakey, I'll smooth on either a clear gloss or lip balm. Sometimes I try a sheer moisturizing lipstick or colored gloss," she lectured as she worked.

  She had my face turned to her so I didn't see everything she was doing, but she worked like an artist and then said, "There."

  I turned and looked with surprise at my face. My lips were prominent now.

  "My mouth looks so different," I said. She laughed.

  "Audrey Hepburn, who had thin lips, used to outline just lightly over the lip line like that. Everyone has her own little tricks?'

  She studied my image in the mirror a moment. "You can wear a dark eye liner, I think," she said. She continued to make up my face, powdering, working on my eyes, until she had what she wanted and told me to look at myself again.

  "Well?" she asked.

  "I look so . ."

  "Pretty?"

  I was afraid to use that word. Did I dare think it? "Different. Am I pretty?"

  "I've been telling you that ever since I set eyes on you. Now that you are made up and see what you can look like, you should feel more comfortable and confident about yourself. I want you to do more in the way of makeup every day so you get used to it, Brooke?"

  "You mean put on makeup for school?"

  "Of course. That's why I bought all this for you and had it here before you arrived. Every day from now on, I want you to prepare your face as if you were entering a beauty contest. That's what life is for us, anyway, a continually running beauty pageant."

  "But none of the other girls wear makeup yet. They'll think I'm trying to look older and fit in with the older girls?' I complained.

  "Let them think what they want. They don't have half the beauty I. . I me
an you do. Let's go?' she said. "Back downstairs to practice the runway walk now."

  She paraded me back and forth in the hallway for nearly another hour, using music, showing me how to turn, to pause, to look out at the audience, to make myself look seductive or innocent.

  "Every contestant, every model, is really an actress, Brooke. You have to assume a persona Think of yourself as someone special, and be that person for a while. Sometimes I imagined myself like Marilyn Monroe, and sometimes I was more subtle, an Ingrid Bergman or a Deborah Kerr. Nowadays, all the girls your age are trying to be like one of those dreadful Spice Girls, but you will be someone unique. You will be . . me," she declared, and laughed. "Just keep studying me all the time, and it will come."

  Pamela's words scared me--she really did want to make me into her, and my talents and wants just didn't matter. I didn't understand--why couldn't Pamela like me for me? And, if she wouldn't even like me, how would she ever come to love me?

  The next day, I began to feel a little better when I realized at least the kids at school liked me for the real me. On the bus that morning, everyone wanted to sit next to me and talk about the game. In homeroom, Mr. Rudley, who admitted he had yet to attend a school sports event, said he heard he had better show up at the next softball game. The school had a star. I knew I was blushing all over. When I looked at the others, I saw Heather staring at me. She looked so furious, it made my heart thump.

  At lunch, I received all sorts of invitations. I was asked to girls' houses, told about upcoming parties and events, and invited to join clubs. Lisa Donald, who was one of the school's best tennis players, volunteered to give me instructions at her family's tennis court.

  "You could come over next weekend," she said. "I'm having a few friends over, including some boys from Brandon Pierce." I knew that was an all-boys school nearby.

  "Whom do you know at Brandon Pierce?" Heather challenged.

  "My cousin Harrison, who's bringing a friend. We might play doubles," she told me.

  All the girls looked envious. I had to admit that I had never played tennis before, ever.

  "Never? How come?" Heather demanded. "Don't your parents have a court?" She made a tennis court sound as common as a bathroom,