We Run the Tides(30)

“So,” I say with fake casualness. “What brings you here?”

“I spilled some milk,” Ewa says.

My mother elaborates. “Ewa was an au pair for a neighbor on Lake Street. The older girl is named Maxine.” My mother stares at me. “Do you know her?”

“What school does she go to?” I ask.

“The Viner School,” Ewa says. “She’s in eighth grade.”

Viner is the other all-girls’ school. We compete against each other sometimes in sports, and always for boys. We have many choice things to say about Viner girls.

“I think I do,” I say. I don’t add that I met Maxine before she dropped out of dancing school and that she has a reputation.

“Maxine’s a little . . . confused but has a good heart,” Ewa says, “but her father . . . it’s a different story. Tonight, he was getting a late-night snack and spilled a whole gallon of milk on the floor. He called out to me because my room is by the kitchen. He ordered me to clean up the milk.”

“That’s not her job,” my mother says to me.

“No, that’s not in my job description. If one of the younger kids had spilled the milk that would maybe be my job, but my job is not to clean up after him.”

“Why was he drinking milk?” I ask.

“That’s beside the point,” she says.

“Right,” I say. Her response confirms my hypothesis that he wasn’t drinking milk, but something stronger. Why else would she say it’s beside the point? I also suspect she was not in her room but was drinking with him. But it’s not my position to offer my theories here, now.

“I think you should go back to bed,” my mother suggests.

“Okay,” I say. “See you tomorrow.”

I lie sleepless in my canopy bed, and an hour later, I hear my father placing Ewa’s two suitcases down in the room next to my room, which is called the playroom, though no playing happens there. The furnishing is too formal, the room too neat. There’s a fold-out leather couch, peach in color, where guests spend the night. It’s a strange layout for a guest bedroom because I have to pass through the room to get to my room. Now I hear Ewa getting settled into the bed. The springs of the couch sigh. She sighs. She and the couch sigh together.

In the morning, I walk quietly past Ewa. She’s moved the mattress to the floor, and she’s sleeping facedown, her arms and legs at diagonals, like an “X,” her white pants hanging on the golden doorknob.





18


When I come home from another day of my classmates ignoring me, Ewa is sitting in the guest bedroom, beading.

“What are you making?” I ask.

“Earrings,” she says. “Do you have pierced ears?”

“Yeah, I have two holes in my left ear, one on my right. I did the second hole myself.”

“Wow,” she says. “That’s brave.”

“I have an ear-piercing business,” I say. “I pierce people’s ears. Boys, girls, whoever, with ice and a sterilized needle.” Business is a grand word for what I do. I have pierced three ears at the rate of $5 each. One of them was Maria Fabiola’s.

“I’m impressed,” Ewa says. “And that’s good that you sterilize the needle.”

I knew she’d like that part. All Swedes are devotees of sanitation and sterilization.

“Maybe you can pierce my ear sometime. I’d like to go for a third hole.” She pulls on her right earlobe and shows me where she’d like it.

“That would look good,” I say.

I watch her slip a light blue bead onto a wire. I wonder what her plans are now that she’s not an au pair anymore.

“Do you have a boyfriend, Eulabee?”

“Not at the moment.”

“Is there someone you like?”

“Yeah.”

“Then you should make him your boyfriend.”

I let out a quick laugh. “How do I do that?”

“Well, first you should go on a date. Is there anything you two have in common? Something you both like?”

“We both like music. We both like this band called the Furs.”

“The Psychedelic Furs!” She stops beading.

“Yeah,” I say, hoping this is the same band.

“I just saw that they’re playing in San Francisco soon.”

“Really?” I say.

“Yeah, you have to get tickets and invite him.”

“I don’t know,” I say. “That seems a little . . . like a big leap.”

“Here’s what I’ll do,” she says. “Why don’t I buy two tickets and then you can tell him that you have an older friend—it’s always good to have an older friend, sounds impressive and makes him realize how mature you are—and your older friend happened to have two tickets to the Furs show and she gave the tickets to you.”

I feel a lightness in my chest and in the arches of my feet. “That would be really cool,” I say. I stare at Ewa, this refuser of cleaning up milk spills, with a new admiration.

*

THE FOLLOWING EVENING, I find two tickets on my desk fanned out in a “V” shape. The concert’s at the Fillmore. I’ve never been to the Fillmore. My lungs push against my rib cage. Now I just have to invite Keith. And then convince my parents to let me go. And I have to find out if the band’s recorded more than the one song I heard half of.