Lalouise

I first met her the summer she stayed with her moshum and kokum.  I knew them as Victor and Laura, our neighbors.  I always knew when Laura came for tea.  Her booming laugh that always ended in hacking and coughing echoed through our house.  Victor was quieter.  He would softly say his piece but we often found ourselves hanging on his words, waiting to hear the end of the story.  Sometimes he got lost in thought and it never came.  Victor and Laura were the vigilant eye in our community, forever sitting on their stoop smoking their roll-yer-own tobacco to the point we would forget they were there.  That is, until they spoke up to caution us against one crazy idea or another.  Or, informed our parents of the true course of events in one of those moments when chaos reigned and our little gang was at each other's throats.

Laura came by and after a short chat with my mom, introduced me.  They said she was older than me, but I couldn't tell.  I was no giant and she was even smaller than me, not just short, but I would say scrawny.  Arms so tiny her joints looked like knobs and her skin was as white as alabaster.  Her head looked giant on her tiny body, but as I reflected on her image more closely I realized I was seeing mostly hair.  She had this wild, curly hair that framed her head in a way it made her look like she had a halo when she was backlit by the sun.  It was her glasses though, that made her the subject of instant ridicule.  They were too large for her face and so thick that her eyes were magnified to 10 times their normal size.  So much so that the first reaction she received from most people was, 'Whoa, look at those glasses!'

She was with kokum for the summer.  Something had happened at home, but when I tried to listen, their voices got quiet and I only picked up a few words.  I heard hungry and neglected.  I saw their lips curl up in disgust, the soft ticking of tongues and the slow shaking of heads that comes with the unthinkable.  I didn't know anything else.

I knew I didn't like her mom and dad.  He was Harvey.  He was a large man.  His pants were always hanging so low they were falling off and his shirts were so tight across his belly, they gaped at the snaps, and pale white skin poured out.  He had a booming voice and eyes that leered.  Her mom was Dorothy.  She talked too fast and didn't seem to make a lot of sense.  She always looked frazzled, her dress was disheveled and her hair was always in a lopsided bun with strands hanging.  When they visited Laura would get loud and mean and we could hear fighting all the way up the block.

Her name was Lalouise.  She was a girl of few words.  Mom said she couldn't talk really well, that she was an only child and her mom and dad didn't pay much attention to her, she added, that she even suspected that Lalouise was locked in her closet sometimes, but her jaw was set in the way it gets when she doesn't approve of something and there was a knowing look in her eyes that told me she knew more than she was saying.

That day, Lalouise's first words she spoke to me were, 'hey, what do you have there?'.  She was referring to my Malibu barbie doll.  Half of my doll's blond hair was pulled out from the roots, and one foot had been chewed up by the dog, but she was my constant companion.  'She's Malibu Barbie', I informed Lalouise, 'do you want to see her swim?'  And we were off.

Malibu Barbie swam in a mudhole I had built under our deck.  It doubled as my cooking pot when I decided to make mud stew, but today it was perfectly arranged for a beach party.  My gutted Barbie Winnebago that dad had picked up from the garbage dump sat on the 'beach' and the cigarette box upholstered chair my aunt had made for me was set out for my brother's cast off GI Joe to enjoy the view.  I dunked Barbie in the muddy water to Lalouise's oohs and ahs.  Neither of us noticing the clumps of mud gathering in her hair, or the way that the muddy 'banks' of my pond were grinding dirt into the knees of our jeans.

I should have known more about Lalouise from all the time we spent together, my questions were unending.  She was evasive, though.  Mostly she responded with grunts and I came to know which ones were affirmative and which ones weren't.  Sometimes, when I would dig a bit too much she would get a look of panic on her face and make an excuse to leave.  I wouldn't see her for a few hours but she always came back.

It was tough to say we developed a friendship from there, Lalouise didn't talk enough for it to feel that way, but she was good at listening to my constant chatter, and I liked hanging with a girl for a change.  We played a lot that summer.  I would either show up at her kokum's door and invite her out, or she would show up at mine.  I let her into my imaginary world where the fence was  a balance beam and a blanket tossed on the ground was for our floor routine, as we competed in the Olympics.  Or maybe the blanket was for a picnic as we wrapped our cats in blankets and held them like babies as we had tea from a little china tea set with missing handles.

We had one disagreement that summer but it changed everything.  Looking back, I suspect that Lalouise made a mistake that wasn't a far stretch for a girl that had experienced what she had in life.  For me, it was unforgivable.  It was a cooler day, we were both wearing heavier coats.  I saw her out in the yard and decided to join her.  As I walked up I saw that she was holding something down and sitting on it.  As I neared it became clear that she had her little orange tabby under her, and she had all of her weight on him and her hands around his body, squeezing.  'What are you doing?', I  yelled, just before I launched myself in the air and tackled her off of him.  She was stunned as I grabbed her by the front of her jacket, looked in her eyes and said, 'you will kill him, you know!'  She was sheepish, but when I asked her why she was doing that, she had no answer.  I could see by the look in her eye that she was doing exactly what I imagined, and I had no doubt I saved her cat's life.  She just shrugged.  Everything changed between us after that.  She stopped coming by, and I don't even remember when she left her Kokum's and went back home.

The next time I saw her was in the school yard.  The year had just started and we were all getting used to a bigger school and more kids as we transitioned into Vera M. Welsh for grade 3 to 6 kids.  I heard her voice before I saw her.  She was yelling and angry, but I had to make my way through a mob of kids before I saw her.  She was lying on the hard packed ice-mud that we called a school field.  A bigger boy was standing over her and taunting her.  He called her a googly four-eyed monster and laughed.  Everyone around him was laughing and encouraging him on.  I stood, frozen in place for second, and then my eyes met with Lalouise's and I saw her pain and fear.  My heart was beating in my chest and panic rose in my throat as I quickly looked away and backed out of the crowd, leaving Lalouise to fend for herself. 

After that day I pretended I didn't know her, and she pretended she didn't know me.