Big Girls are Mean

Photo by Megan Forbes

There was no one my age to play with in Happy Acres. I'd outgrown Penny, and Billy and Mom didn't like me pestering the neighbors. Most of my neighbors were old. They got hummingbirds drunk on sugar water, pruned rose bushes in their pajamas, and hung laundry out to dry. On Halloween, they pretended they didn't recognize me, but I know they did because they winked and put an extra popcorn ball in my pumpkin. I was the only kid who visited them, and they liked me. Too bad you can't play with old people.

The only kids left were the dumb boys and the big girls.

Christina was a big girl. Like Brother, she was older than me, and she lived in a pale yellow single-wide with a green awning two spaces down from the butterfly bush. I liked her long hair. It was blonde and straight, parted in the middle. Wished mine was long like that. I got a Pixie haircut instead. 

Christina's best friend, Mary, looked just like her. Side by side, you'd have thought they were twins. Mary's family lived in a chocolate brown doublewide. Just because you have more space doesn't make you rich. People get the wrong idea when you live in a doublewide. Mary's trailer space was on the other side of Happy Acres by the wash house. They never mowed their yard. Brother would have done it for a quarter.

The big girls were always at Christina's trailer. If I wasn't grounded, shriveled up in a swimming pool, or practicing ballet, I wished I could play with them. Mostly they ignored me.

One day while hunting Monarchs at the butterfly bush, Christina stopped to watch. There were Monarchs, Swallowtails and Dog Faces hungry for that bush. I showed her how to be real still and wait for a butterfly to land just right on a bloom before pinching their wings shut. 

Took a while, but Christina caught a Monarch. 

"Be careful," I said. "Don't rub your fingers too much or you'll take all the flying powder off its wings."

Christina squealed. The butterfly unrolled his licorice tongue and tickled her finger.

There's wasn't any room in my Critter Catcher for another butterfly. We set hers free. 

Five minutes later, I was sitting on Christina's couch drinking Kool-Aid. I watched her draw hippie frogs making peace signs. Mary was there too. She wrote "groovy" in balloon letters and colored them in like rainbows. They giggled about boobies and boyfriends. I did, also, even though I didn't have any. Christina got out a Tupperware of tiny glass beads in all different colors. We sat at her kitchen booth and strung love bead necklaces. I poked my finger with my needle and bled.

Everyone in Happy Acres knew when I had to go home for dinner. Mom's voice ricocheted off trailers like a pinball game. 

"You can come back if you want," Christina said. "And keep the necklace. It's yours." 

I ran home feeling big league. Couldn't wait to go back to Christina's.

Big girls smoked cigarettes. I watched them at the 7-Eleven before school. They'd find cigarette butts rimmed with lipstick and smoke them in the alley. If they were lucky, they'd find a big, fat one already lit, just waiting for them on the window sill by the door. The big girls were always late to school.

I never tried a cigarette. Mom smoking in the VW Bug with the windows rolled up cured me forever. 

The next day, it felt like a hundred and fifty degrees in the shade. Barefoot, I jumped from Bermuda patch to shade until I reached Christina's trailer.

The big girls pulled me inside the trailer. I sat between them on the couch under the swamp cooler.

"There's something we want you to do," Mary said. She gave me a handful of Oreos. 

Christina put her arm around me. "We're all friends, right?" she said. 

I didn't know what to say, but I knew what I hoped for. 

"We like you," said Mary. "But we're not sure we can trust you." 

"What do you mean?" I asked.

Christina shot up and grabbed an envelope off the counter. "We're gonna give you this friendship test, just to make sure," she said.

A test? A friendship test? I wasn't good at taking tests. They made me nervous and sick to my stomach. My mind would go blank, and I'd end up with a big, fat "D." 

"All you have to do is ride your bike to the market on Beardsley and give this envelope to the man behind the counter." 

"What's in it?" I asked.

"Nothing, just a note my Mom wrote and a dollar bill."

I'd already been to the market that morning for a Popsicle. Mom would never give me permission to go twice in one day. 

"Look, my mom forgot to buy her Virginia Slims," Christina said. "She's gonna be home from work in less than an hour. She could die without them."

"I dunno," I said. I wanted to be a big girl, but sneaking might get me grounded. Rollerama was Saturday. 

"If you pass the friendship test, you can come over any time you want," Christina purred.

Anytime? Anytime I wanted?

"Okay, I'll do it!"

Christina went from syrupy sweet to pure business. "A pack of stogies costs thirty-two cents. We want two packs. Get Virginia Slims. Do not get Salems. Thirty-two times two is sixty-four cents plus tax. After you buy the cigarettes, keep the change."

I couldn't keep up with the math, but I knew that change could buy me a pack of Sweet Tarts to make my tongue bleed with enough left over for a gigantic Pixie Stick. 

"If shopkeeper asks you anything at all, pretend you don't know what he's talking about," Mary said. "I mean it. Don't say a word. All you have to do is smile and be a little kid."

Be a little kid? I wasn't a little kid. I was a big girl, and I'd prove it.

"Now go. We'll be right here waiting for you," Mary said. She gave me the envelope and shoved me out the door.  

And off I rode to take the friendship test.

I couldn't believe what happened after that. I snuck on my bike all the way down to the market on Beardsley to buy cigarettes for Christina and Mary, not her mother. Found out because the man behind the counter wouldn't give them to me. Said my note was a fake, and I should be ashamed of myself for thinking he was stupid enough to sell cigarettes to a minor. And he kept the envelope.

"Maybe you need to find yourself some new friends, kid," he said. "Go home."

I rode the long way back to Happy Acres.

Christina and Mary didn't want anything to do with me after that day. They yelled told me to scram and play with the little kids where I belonged. Christina said it was my fault she was grounded forever. The store owner knew her mother.

Big girls are mean.