Lucretia and the Kroons

1

Most twelve-year-olds don’t know much about death, and that’s the way it should be. But a handful get the knowledge too soon. You can see it in their eyes, a sliver of sorrow floating in the iris, visible even at the happiest of times. Those kids have encountered that enemy, too soon and will always bear its scars.

For instance, take Lucretia Gardner, now turning twelve years old and having a party to celebrate. The party is to be held in the two-bedroom apartment she shares with her mother in Flushing, Queens. Three of her four good friends are invited. The fourth, Sunny, her best friend, couldn’t come because she’s at St. Jude’s Hospital in Memphis getting yet another treatment for her cancer. Sunny has sent a card, delivered by her despairing grandmother. The note inside reads, I wish I was with you. Lucretia knows Sunny probably dictated the words and her grandmother wrote them. Sometimes Sunny’s hands are so weak she can’t even hold a pen. Sunny’s sickness casts a long shadow that Loochie can’t escape.

The three girls arrived together, right on time. Noon on a chilly Saturday in November. Because the birthday girl wanted to make an entrance, her mother answered the door. Mom walked Lucretia’s guests into the living/dining room, where the curtains were drawn open and all the lights were on. Bright balloons had been tied to the backs of the chairs around the dining table. The words “Happy Birthday” were spelled out in yellow cutout letters taped to the wall above the couch. The treats had already been set out on the table and the three girls, without any prodding, picked at a bowl of mini candy bars, ignoring the bowl of fruit.

“Loochie’s just putting on her dress,” Mom told the girls. She asked after their mothers and fathers, and about school. She spoke to each girl — Priya, Monique, and Susan — in turn. The girls answered back distractedly. Fine, everyone and everything was fine. Priya asked politely for a sheet of paper just as the birthday girl called out from the back.

“Everybody’s here?”

“Yes! Yes!” her mother shouted as she produced a sheet of paper from a drawer.

Priya, whose full name was Priyansha, gave a very faint bob of her head as she accepted the sheet and whispered, “Thank you.”

Then the girl began folding that paper at all kinds of wonky angles. The two other girls watched as if Priya were performing surgery. They turned their backs to Loochie’s mother, the woman already forgotten.

“Hit play,” Lucretia called.

Lucretia had put together a playlist on the computer the night before so her mother found it on the screen, clicked play, and turned up the volume on the monitor’s speakers. As she went to check on her daughter the first song played. It seemed like the obvious pick.

I’mmmm coming up so you better get this party started.

Even the three girls, still mesmerized by Priya and the paper, couldn’t help but hum along and sway slightly.

Lucretia stood at the large mirror attached to her mother’s dresser, on which were three foam mannequin heads. Two had wigs on them. The third head was bald because Loochie’s mother was wearing that one, her weekend wig. Her mother had never liked straightening her hair. She kept it in cornrows beneath the wigs because life was just easier that way. There was one wig for work, one for the weekends, and one her mother wore out on some evenings when she dressed up and looked attractive. Loochie always thought her mother looked pretty, even without the store-bought hair, but on those evenings her mother turned the volume higher. She never told Loochie where she was going, or who she was going to see. Loochie understood the woman was going on dates but since they never talked about them she could never really picture what that meant. Apparently it required a special wig.

Mom entered the bedroom, sat on the bed, and watched her daughter get ready.

Lucretia Gardner had actually turned twelve on Thursday. She would’ve been happy to have this birthday party with Sunny alone, the two girls giggling over whatever was on the TV while Loochie fed a few spoonfuls of ice-cream cake to her best friend. Because of Sunny’s cancer there wasn’t much chance the girls would be running through Flushing Meadows Park like they used to do. Settling down in their favorite spot below the humongous steel Unisphere.

“I wish Sunny was here,” Loochie said quietly.

Her mother leaned forward and smiled tightly. Loochie could see the woman’s reflection in the mirror. “It’s good for you to spend time with your other friends, too, especially now.”

“She’ll get better,” Loochie said.

Her mother nodded but her smile dropped. “Well, when she’s back from Tennessee you can have another party. Okay? For now, you’re being rude to Priya, Susan, and Monique. Don’t keep them waiting.”

Loochie remained still in front of the mirror.

“Aren’t you glad I invited your other friends?” Loochie’s mother asked, a little too eager.

“Yes,” Loochie said, but that was a lie, one she told only to make her mother happy.

“They’re all asking after you,” Loochie’s mother said, though Loochie guessed that was a lie, too. Mom reached for her daughter’s hand, the one that wouldn’t stop patting at stray strands of hair. She pulled Loochie close, into her lap.

“You’re nervous?” her mother asked.

“No.” Loochie lied again.

The truth was that Loochie knew something about each of those three girls in the living room, facts that she’d heard in school and discussed privately with Sunny more than once. Monique had breasts. Loochie didn’t have to hear about that. She could see them plainly. Everyone could. But she’d also heard that Susan had had pubic hair since she was ten. And Priya, maybe most shocking of all, was the first girl in Queens (or at least their class) to have her period. Meanwhile Loochie was developing at a glacial pace. Compared to Priya, Susan, and Monique she was still a child. The only person maturing more slowly was Sunny and at least Sunny could blame it on her sickness. Loochie had no good excuse. Those three girls waiting in the living room were blooming but Loochie still felt like a seed in the mud.

Mother and daughter looked at each other’s reflection in the dresser mirror. Was her mother thinking the same thing as she was? That they should cancel this party right now? Probably not. The three foam wig-heads watched them both.

“Did they ask about me?” Loochie asked.

“Of course they did,” Loochie’s mother said. “They can’t wait to see you. And you look beautiful, like an emerald princess.” She rubbed Loochie’s shoulders lightly. “I better get the cake.”

Loochie stood up. She smoothed the front of her dress. It was green with ruffles on the top and shoulders. When she’d slipped it on this morning the taffeta felt stiff on her skin and her chest was itchy and tender. She felt a little better in the gown now. She even liked herself in it.

From the living room Loochie and her mother heard the next song start.

Lucky you were born that far away so we could both make fun of the distance.

Loochie’s mother did a little hip swivel, poorly, in honor of the Shakira song and Loochie, mortified, grabbed her mother’s elbow. “Please don’t dance in front of my friends.”

Her mother put up her hands and said, “I won’t, I won’t.”

Then her mother opened the bedroom door and led the way out. Loochie followed.

Their apartment was shaped like a capital letter H. Loochie’s mother’s bedroom sat at the top of the left side and it fed directly into the kitchen. Step out of the kitchen and you found their bathroom just to the right. And, at the bottom of this side, Loochie’s bedroom. Her door was shut now. It had an orange and blue Mets pennant taped to it, a gift from her older brother, Louis, to commemorate the team’s 2000 National League championship. It was starting to show its age, but Loochie kept it up. Louis had taken her to one of the games. He was grown-up and didn’t live with them anymore. She reached out and touched the pennant lightly, trying to calm herself. She could feel her heart banging against her ribs.

A small walkway, hardly a hallway, connected this half of the apartment to the other half, the right side of that H. The right side of the apartment was just one room, a living room and dining room combined. The space had seemed humungous to Loochie when she was a toddler, like a long runway for her stubby legs, but by now it felt tiny. There was a dining table in the middle of the room and farther up a sofa and television. At the far end of the room, the top of the H, were three windows that faced the street. The three girls sat in a tight circle on the floor between the dining table and the sofa. Loochie felt embarrassed that there was so little space in here for them. All three girls lived in bigger apartments.

Monique and Susan watched Priya, who held a sheet of paper that she’d folded into a flower shape. Little numbers had been written on different flaps of the paper. Priya flicked the paper so it looked like the flower’s petals were opening and closing. All three girls counted out loud as the petals moved.

“… five, six, seven, eight.” They didn’t even look up when Loochie’s mother walked in the room.

“Ladies,” her mom said, wearing an exaggerated smile, “may I present the birthday girl, Lucretia Gardner!”

Mom clapped and the three girls at least had the good manners to look up from their game. But they all seemed aggravated, as if Loochie and her mother had interrupted them in their homes.

Loochie’s mother stepped aside, still clapping (a bit too enthusiastically at this point), and Loochie inched forward in her role as birthday girl and emerald princess. She told herself not to throw her arms out, that it was too theatrical and embarrassing a gesture, but then she couldn’t help herself. She did feel good in the dress, after all. And it was her birthday. She raised her hands and flung open her arms and because the Shakira song was still playing she even twisted her hips much like her mom had done in the bedroom.

The star had arrived.

But the audience didn’t respond to her shine. All three girls watched Loochie for a moment and then, almost as one, they scanned her green dress from the ruffled front down to the hem. Then Priya offered a tight grin and said, “Happy birthday, Loochie.”

Monique and Susan followed the leader. Same tight grins, same bland birthday wish.

And that was it.

Loochie dropped her hands as her mother left the living room. “I’m going to get the cake,” her mother called with great enthusiasm. “It’s a Cookie Puss!”

As soon as her mother was gone the girls looked at each other again and hunched forward over Priya’s folded paper game, as if Loochie weren’t standing right there.

Monique whispered, “That’s a dress for a six-year-old.”

Susan actually looked up at Loochie again, scanned the dress one more time, and nodded her agreement with Monique.

Priya threw out one hand, mocking Loochie’s gesture. “Look, everyone,” she said. “It’s Princess Broccoli.”

Lucretia Gardner’s stomach dropped. Her cheeks felt hot and her hands trembled. For a moment the living room was silent. Then the silence was broken.

“You whores can get out of my house!” Loochie yelled.

Loochie’s mother walked into the living room with the Carvel ice-cream cake, a candle in the shape of the number twelve on top, and before she could sing the happy-birthday song she witnessed her daughter menacing the girls, hands on her hips, screaming.

“Get up! And get out!” Loochie commanded.

Loochie’s mother almost dropped the cake.

The three girls rose together. They’d lost their cool demeanors. Even Priya, usually composed and masterful, dropped the toy she’d made. The plucked paper flower fell to the floor. Susan took one step toward the door and inadvertently crushed it. Loochie didn’t move aside. The girls had to go around her to reach the front door. Her mother was so confused that she didn’t know what to do so she just stood there, balancing the cake in her hands.

Loochie couldn’t see her mom. Her vision had tunneled. “Walk out the door, whores!”

“Loochie!” her mother finally managed. “What happened? Girls, wait.”

Loochie’s mother tried to step in front of Priya, but Priya frantically stumbled around her and toward the door. The other two girls did the same. Now Loochie stood alone in the living room. Sunlight streamed in from the windows behind her, and to her mother, this made it look as if she was actually on fire, burning with rage.

“You whores can use the front door or I can throw you whores off the fire escape!”

“Where did you learn that word?!” Loochie’s mother shouted. “What happened? I was just gone for a minute!”

All three girls reached the apartment door. Loochie’s mother still hadn’t put the cake down and poor Cookie Puss was already melting. A few drops of vanilla ice cream fell from the serving tray and landed on the living room carpet behind her like a trail of little white tears.

Priya couldn’t get the apartment door open fast enough. She unlocked it and leapt into the hall. The others ran after her. Despite their terror, or maybe because of it, they laughed so loud that people must’ve heard them out on the sidewalk. Loochie’s mother kicked the apartment door closed with her foot and it slammed.

Loochie was already unzipping her dress and kicking it off. She stood there in the living room in a matching pair of green underwear. The dress pooled around her feet, hiding her black patent leather Mary Janes. Someday very soon Loochie wouldn’t be so willing to stand nearly naked in front of her mother. But for now she stood there, in her underwear, shivering with anger.

She finally pointed at the ice-cream cake in her mother’s hands.

“Put it in the freezer. I’m saving it for Sunny.”