I avoided the front yard for several days, but I didn’t like being at the back of the house, which was cramped, with a collection of bamboo stalks in one corner, patio furniture in the other, and a concrete hole in the middle. When I was bored of reading and my crayons became soft in the heat, I strapped on my roller skates, thinking the dimpled concrete of the empty pool could serve as the perfect skating rink. Herbert saw me from the kitchen window and shouted that I would break my leg.
He kept a stash of Twinkies and fried fruit pies hidden behind the breadbox in the kitchen, so I took a Twinkie and went to the front yard in my skates. As I was sailing to the mailbox, my mouth full of yellow sponge and cream, a car stopped and I knew what was going to happen. A man stepped out of the car and took a series of photos, then drove away.
Delia came home that evening and saw me sitting at the kitchen table, reading my book. “Why aren’t you outside, doll?” I shrugged. I didn’t want to tell her that people were looking at me, that they stared and took photos and some of them even laughed.
On most nights, our dinner came from the restaurant. Delia unloaded Styrofoam containers from a brown paper bag and set them on the table. I ate my Reuben sandwich and coleslaw, weird food my mother never made at home. She didn’t join us for dinner and I was left alone with Herbert and Delia, who talked about grown-up things. I looked out the front window from the table, watching for more cars. None came.
After dinner, Delia and Herbert sat on the back patio with wine and I was allowed to watch television in the front room, sitting in the crater left by Herbert on the green sofa. I watched two sitcoms and before the third came on, I went into the kitchen to get a glass of milk. On my way back to the living room, holding the glass to my lips, I saw a man standing outside the front window. He was large and looming. We locked eyes and then he rushed to his car and drove away.
I set my glass down on the coffee table, splashing milk onto Herbert’s TV Guide, and ran to my bedroom. In my bed, from underneath the covers, I wondered: Who are these people? And why are they staring at me?
Before we moved into the house on Harper Lane, I had feared there was something wrong with me. Back home when we visited cousins they would laugh and call me Miss Piggy, until a chorus of mothers went Shhhhhh. In first grade, in Mrs. Palmer’s class, the two girls who sat next to me, Melissa H. and Melissa D., told me they weren’t inviting me to their Halloween party because I had fat germs. When I asked my mother what this meant, she said to ignore them.
I didn’t know what other people saw when they looked at me. In the mirror I didn’t see it. Now at Delia’s house, things were even worse. People were taking photos and I didn’t know why. During the day I hid in my bedroom and watched for them. Once when I was making a mess in the kitchen with peanut butter and jelly, two girls climbed over the fence into the backyard. I dropped the knife and screamed for Herbert, who flew out the back doors and chased the girls away. “Goddamn tourists,” he screamed. I looked outside in horror. Herbert came back into the house and tousled my hair. “Just ignore ’em, kiddo.”
Ignore them. That’s what my mother had said.
I stayed away from the windows so that no one could see me. For most of the day I sat on the living room floor, wrapped in a blanket to protect me from the chill of the air conditioner, and watched Herbert’s shows with him. When my mother left her room to go to the kitchen, she said I was spending too much time indoors. “She’s not the only one,” Herbert said.
He and Delia took me to Sears and bought me a bicycle with purple tassels that dangled from the rubber handles. When we got home with the bike, they expected me to ride it up and down the street. I lasted for an hour, until a man and a woman in a silver van stopped outside the house. “Hello, leetle girl,” the man said in a weird voice.
When I went inside the house I was crying.
“What’s wrong, sweet pea?” Delia asked, coming over and running her acrylic nails down my back. “Did you fall off your bike?”
“People are looking at me.”
“Who is?”
“People in cars. They stop in front of the house and take photos of me.”
Delia began to laugh, holding her hand over her mouth, her frosty pink nails hiding a wide smile. “They’re not taking photos of you, doll. They’re taking photos of the house. A famous lady used to live here. I’ve been in the house so long, I don’t notice those crazy people anymore.”