Rebecca Schiff - The Bed Moved - Stories

“Hey, punko,” he says. “Want to show Longview what we’re made of?”

I think of the post-me albums, the diapers, the boys who make diaper jokes about Gandhi.

“Do you want me to get hit by a car on purpose?”

“No, just clean up your room before the meeting tomorrow.”

“They’re not going to go in my room.”

—

MY BED’S BEEN MADE. I trot downstairs, sling around the banister at the base. I pile some hot artichoke on a saltine. The chairs are out, evenly staggered, Mommy style. She’s very exacting about the chairs.

“Good job, Mom.”

Mom? It just comes out, her new name. Is this how it happens? One day you’re “Mommy, change me, feed me, sprinkle talc all over my naked body,” the next day you’re complimenting her on folding-chair spacing. Mommy doesn’t notice.

“I need to review the talking points,” she says. “Don’t eat all the dip before people get here.”

People get here. The gardener lady’s wearing lipstick, maybe hoping to meet another enraged single. She’s dreaming, though, because except for me and the widower, it’s all furious couples in sweaters.

Daddy has maps, crudités, an easel.

“That was my easel,” I say, to nobody. Nobody asked to borrow it, either.

“The morning commute won’t be affected by the one-way chokehold Longview is imposing, since cars can still use both Longview and Hillview to go west,” he says, drawing parallel sedans going west. “But we want to get some folks out to protest Longview in the mornings, too. Bruce? Lillian?

“The evenings are when we have our real battle. As the streets parallel, we will get all of Longview’s eastbound commuter traffic.” He draws a fat line of trucks trying to go east.

“Not on our watch!” screams a Bruce.

“Not our kids,” says a wife, pointing at me. There’s applause. I represent something, a kid who might run into the street, basted by a car that should have been on Longview.

“She knows not to run into the street,” says Daddy. “But, as I said in the tape I sent City Hall, some kids don’t. And that’s why we’re not going to let these Longviewers commute in peace, day or night, until we get this one-way farce reversed and traffic is flowing freely on both streets in both directions again!” He draws cars going in both directions.

“Sign up for a morning or evening shift depending on your work schedule. Stay-at-home moms, we need you right now.”

Mommy calls them non-working mothers.

—

“I WISH my parents cared about something,” says Kira. She’s using ketchup packets to make a rag look bloody for a skit we have to do about The Pearl. She’s going to play the mother and me the father. A doll is playing our baby. A Tic Tac is playing the pearl.

“You live on a cul-de-sac,” I say. “What’s the problem?”

“My dad has no interest in community service.”

I don’t mind playing the father. I’ve borrowed one of Daddy’s old jackets, and I’m roughing it up with a stapler. I’m going to need a mustache. Luckily, I have no breasts. Kira’s costume is from our linen closet. Her hair’s in braids.

“The kids who got Of Mice and Men are really lucky,” she says, trying to make our doll look deader. “I’d kill for that one.”

—

BOTH PHONE LINES are busy over the weekend. One of the Bruces is getting divorced. He’ll be departing our street for a condo, a support group.

“I’m losing a real soldier,” says Daddy.

There was the time this Bruce stayed up half the night coming up with the perfect clip art for the “Hillview Is Not a Highway” flyer, the time he called Mayor May a cunt. After a while Daddy just says, “A soldier,” and Mommy and I fill in the rest of his sad.

Over on Line 2, Kira sheds her uterine lining for the first time. My bridge almost collapses with the news. My uterine lining remains intact. Happily married Bruce calls on Line 1 to talk to Daddy, now his one remaining Bruce, suddenly the only Bruce he can count on.

The town, for some reason, is not moved by the tape.

“Do you know what this means?” Daddy laughs, maybe thrilled to be ignored. “Hamburger wants war. Are you ready to mobilize?”

We’re sitting around the kitchen table Tuesday evening. Mommy’s drowning a tea biscuit in decaf. I’m coloring in my maison for French. I draw mon téléphone in ma chambre.

“La Ligne Deux,” I write.

“I’ll call Bruce,” he says.

“I don’t know,” says Mommy.

“I have a Pakistan ditto,” I say. “But then I can help.”

Help means collating the new flyers, practicing our chants. The new flyers say “One Way? No Way!”

“I have to be at work early tomorrow,” says Mommy later. She’s in her nightgown, under her lamp. He’s pacing the den, pretending to yell at cars. “So keep an eye on him on Longview,” she says. “Don’t let him do anything crazy.”

“If he tries to do something crazy, how will I stop him?”

“Just tell him to stop.”

—

WEDNESDAY, A.M., Daddy and I are standing in the shoulder of the other street, minivan gusts whipping our “One Way? No Way!” signs back into our chests. Daddy’s scanning for his friends. Never-married gardener is a no-show. Happily married Bruce not present.

The cars just go west. There’s not much to see.

The widower friend shows up wearing his flannel jacket, dusted with dog hair. He and Daddy sort of grip each other hello, and then he leaves. We wait. A couple of women in terrycloth walk by, but we’re not sure if they’re Longviewers or Hillviewers or just power walkers.

“Maybe tomorrow I’ll bring Kira, so we have more people.”

“The whole street’s in denial,” says Daddy. “People completely disregarded the sign-up sheet. The stay-at-home moms stayed at home. But wait until they see how much traffic our street eats tonight. We’ll stand in front of our house with signs. I’ll make extra copies at work, so everyone has one to hold.”

—

LE MATIN PROCHAIN, LE MÊME. Except Daddy makes me and Kira sing a song. It has to do with sticking to a union till the day we die. We sang it last night on the sidewalk in front of our house. Daddy passed out lyrics. Mommy and I didn’t need them. The union song is from a cassette Daddy keeps in the car for long car trips. We have other tapes, but Daddy never plays them. What he does play now are cassettes from Line 1’s answering machine — Sorry, Alan, work’s been crazy, tae kwon do, Karen caught the flu. Mommy urges Daddy to delete, but he’s starting a list by the phone.

“Not flu season yet!” it says.

—

FRIDAY MORNING, I lie in bed for a few minutes after I wake up, sliding the lump under my left nipple. It seems wider than usual, wider than the right. I scramble to my desk, flip through the index of Exploring Life Science until I find Puberty, female.

“Breast bud and papilla swell and a small mound is present; areola diameter is enlarged.”

This is it, this is Puberty, female.

—

AT ASSEMBLY, Kira tells me she can’t come anymore. Assembly’s in the gym. It’s Croatia Day. Puffed-sleeved maidens wave handkerchiefs while the teachers shush us. Every last Friday of the month, we’re herded into the bleachers to disrespect dancers from politically unstable lands.

“It’s only been two days,” I say. “We haven’t even done civil disobedience yet.”

“Why do you keep touching your breast?”

“I’m not. Why can’t you? Is your mom scared?”

“No. Your dad’s—”

The dancers’ clogs make a sudden racket on the shellacked floor.

“What? My dad’s what?”

“Your dad’s awesome. But I don’t live in that neighborhood.”