Finding Joy Read online

  Joy giggled. I deepened my voice.

  “My daddy’s name is Chubby. And my name is Chubby. And when I smile…” I paused to draw out the part the kids loved best. I smashed my lips together and puckered before saying, “… it goes like this!”

  I started to bare my teeth, but it wasn’t necessary. Joy was already kicking up her feet and roaring with laughter. Her chubby little toes curled again like when she was little.

  God, she’s growing up. Starting to get curves. Not as much as I had when I was eleven, but I think she takes after her father’s side of the family. All straight edges with flat butts and small chests. Unlike me. I’m a winding road with so many curves, I don’t know where one begins and the next ends.

  She’s worried about growing but I think she’s fine. I know the other girls in her class are more developed, but I’m glad that she’s late going through puberty. I started at ten and look where that got me. Pregnant at nineteen, married to a gas station attendant who could barely afford our tiny apartment.

  When I complained about the mice gnawing on the bread or ruining another box of Corn Flakes, he’d tell me, “Don’t worry, baby, I’m going places.”

  Oh, he went somewhere all right. Straight out the door to his new life.

  Thank God for Ronny. I know he has his flaws, but he loves me. I know it. Look at our house. On a cul-de-sac in The Estates, with all new appliances and shag carpet. Had it built special. Ronny made sure to get the newest and brightest. Nothing used for him.

  Alan still can’t get his act together enough to pay child support. Or visit Joy. Poor kid. She keeps waiting, thinking he’ll come. But the asshole stays away.

  Her face is changing, too. She still has baby cheeks that fill up like balloons when she smiles, but there’s a hint of cheekbones now. I also noticed a thoughtfulness in her green eyes, like she’s taking everything in and analyzing it. More so than I ever did.

  And he’s missing it all. Idiot.

  Five

  Joy

  I know, you’re wondering when did the Bong Years start? And I’m getting there. Just let me tell my story in my own time, okay? Catalina comes into it a lot, so you might as well know about my first summer there…

  “Don’t forget to floss,” Mom cautioned.

  “Yeah, those braces weren’t cheap,” Ronny grumbled, in that grouchy-grouch voice.

  In the middle of a hug, Mom stiffened almost imperceptibly before smoothing my hair, something she hadn’t done since I was eight.

  “Okay.” I started to say ‘I love you’ but somehow the words got stuck when an older girl, a teenager in a baby-blue Catalina Island Camp t-shirt and white shorts, walked by. I take it back, she didn’t walk, she full-on floated out the terminal doors before joining the crowd on the dock.

  Mom’s gaze followed mine as she led me outside. “Maybe she’s one of the counselors.”

  “Lucky Joy,” Ronny said, getting an eyeful.

  Take a picture, why don’t you? I thought, rolling my eyes.

  I’d imagined this island camp to be pretty cool when I opened my Guess Who’s 11? birthday card and the brochure fell out. But now, looking at the teens with their hair sun-streaked and strong, tanned legs, I started to realize that this was going to be way cooler than playing with my Malibu Barbie set.

  “Barbies, for an eleven-year-old?” Cheryl had teased when she saw me pushing my Country Camper over the lawn last week.

  “So?” I’d said, parking the van under a rose bush and pulling Barbie out from behind the wheel. I brushed her hair with one finger and held her up to my flat chest. Cheryl was right but, even though she was my best friend, she still didn’t understand about becoming. Instead of a stupid shag cut, so short people thought I was a boy, I got to have long, silky hair. My boring green eyes turned aqua behind sunglasses and no pimples stained my smooth, peachy cheeks. I had a great husband, Ken, and we loved our daughter Skipper so much that we took her on all of our camping adventures.

  “Joy Chapel?” The pretty blonde counselor called my name off a list.

  “No more than two shots of whisky a night, kiddo. They won’t let you sail with a hangover,” the winking Ronny said, loud enough for others to hear.

  “Oh, Ron,” Mom giggled, slapping him gently with the back of her hand. She loved his I’m-in-public-so-act-charming voice.

  With a half-smile, I looked down at my white legs. Not even Malibu Skipper I thought, as Mom gave me a little push toward the gangplank where kids were filing onto the boat.

  But in a few minutes, it didn’t matter; I was in the bow with the June sun on my face. I placed my hand on the rail feeling the engines hum as a girl around my age came up beside me. “Hey,” I said.

  “Hi,” she replied, in a shy kind of voice. Then she wrinkled up her nose. “San Pedro stinks, huh?”

  “Guess it’s pollution from all these ships,” I said, trying to sound all mature.

  She nodded and grabbed the rail next to me as The Catalina Express sped up. I noticed her long curls rippling in the wind like the choppy waves below us. I wish mine did that, I thought running a hand over where my hair stopped just past my neck. Definitely growing it out this summer. Don’t care what Mom says.

  The thick smell of engine oil soon made way for fresh ocean air. Here, the captain really let it rip. The keel hissed over the water, parting the deep blue behind us in a big, foamy V. I put my hand over my chest in the same shape and felt my heart beating slower and slower. Noticing how it got quieter the further we were from shore.

  The spray tickled my skin as the island grew bigger on the horizon. I like that word. Horizon. It was on my sixth-grade vocabulary list when we read The Call of the Wild and I kept imagining dogs mushing toward a snowy wall that always stayed twenty feet away.

  “That’s the Isthmus,” said the girl, who was named Bethany by the way; Bethany Wallach. She was a real Jewish girl, the first one I’d ever met, or even heard of. My parents didn’t do church or talk religion much, so she had to explain to me about the Old Testament and the New and Jesus being a prophet, not God, to the Jews. I didn’t really see the difference until she told me about them celebrating Hanukah instead of Christmas and getting presents for eight days.

  Now I really was jealous.

  I followed the line of her finger to the small bay peppered with all kinds of yachts that probably belonged to TV stars or millionaires. A short pier led to a few buildings on shore.

  “That’s our camp?” I asked.

  “No, silly. We’re going to take the shuttles.” She jerked her chin toward the pier, where four flat-bottomed boats that looked like the ones on the Jungle Cruise at Disneyland were docked. There, a few men, with deep lines and tanned skin so leathery it could have lined Mom’s purse, held out hands to help us board.

  When about half an hour later we finally chugged around the bend, my heart just stopped. Here, a row of palm trees skirted blue canvas-roofed cabins in a bay with waters so quiet, the littlest angel must have lived there. Surrounding it all were mountains topped with eucalyptus, ironwood and sage bushes.

  Wow!

  This paradise was going to be home for a whole month. And Ronny paid for it? Maybe he wasn’t such a jerk, after all.

  Over the next four weeks I learned to sail, canoe, kayak, and my favorite, rowing, because no matter how many circles you went in, it felt like you were going somewhere.

  There were day hikes to the top of Miller Hill and moonlit sneaks to raid the boys’ camp. I sang goofy songs in the mess hall and tear-jerkers around the campfire. And of course, I bowed at the feet of my cabin counselor, Gail and the others as they imparted teenaged wisdom on stuff like Vietnam, equal rights, and saving the Earth.

  One morning during cabin cleanup, Gail lifted a conspiratorial eyebrow and waved us over to her trunk. Thrilled with the attention, we all gathered round her like little chicks ready to gobble up handfuls of feed. When she held up a tattered scrapbook and warned that the contents were secret, our heads
bobbed bird-like as we promised not to tell. She slowly opened it to the first page, where glued-in photos of her marching for Earth Day sat at odd angles with stickers and concert tickets.

  On the next page, she unfolded a flyer for a women’s march and said, “We stopped traffic for blocks during this one. Cops came, billy clubs raised. Thought I’d get beat but they were just being jerks hoping to scare us off.”

  My jaw was on the floor, but my mind was on what I’d do later. Just before lights out, when we were supposed to write letters to our parents, I’d pull out the little diary Grandma had given me, unlock it with the tiny key, and pour all these moments onto the page.

  By the end of the week, I had filled the diary and started using binder paper, folded in fourths and stuffed inside. When no more fit in the diary, I resorted to hiding these secret scribblings under the flowered panties at the bottom of my trunk, figuring no one would look there.

  Not that they were anything too crazy. Just the stuff I dealt with every day. Like how come I looked like a pancake from the side, barely with nubs, and only a few wisps of hair on my privates like the nine-year olds in the gang showers, when most of the other girls in my cabin had a fistful of curling hair and Barbie boobies? Or why did the older counselors laugh when I asked what a tampon was? And how come some of the girls from Palos Verdes whispered that they didn’t want Bethany, a Jew, to be part of their skit at the Talent Show?

  Lots of questions, but no real answers. Except maybe how different I was. How others gabbed and squealed while I struggled to find the words.

  I marveled at how easy it was for girls like Sydney and Erin. How witty comebacks and one-liners just rolled off their tongues.

  But I couldn’t even remember jokes our counselor had just told. Most of the time, I was too lost in dreams to keep up with the other kids. So, I just smiled and pretended to get their jokes. All the while wondering, what the heck did I just miss?

  Still, I managed to change a bit in that month at camp. And it wasn’t just how my shag cut now touched my shoulders, or how the blonde forearm hair showed against my tan like wisps of cotton. I’d memorized protest and peace songs that I mimicked in poetry that I shyly shared with my counselor, Gail. She later took me up to the boar pits to tell me how mature she thought it was. That I should keep writing because I had some real talent. I thought she was just being nice, but nonetheless I stood taller when she said it.

  In those four weeks, I began to see the life beyond pretending. In those four weeks I started to become.

  And some things just didn’t feel right anymore.

  I knew just what I’d do when I got home. I would pull out each one of my Barbies and seat them in their Country Camper, making sure to stroke Skipper’s hair one last time before sliding the little plastic door closed. Then I’d give the RV one big push and watched it roll to a stop.

  Before putting it all into the Good Will box. And walking away.

  Six

  Iris

  I hardly recognized the girl that stepped off the boat. Could that tanned kid twittering away with other girls, wide grin showing the gap between her teeth, be my daughter?

  Not trusting my own eyes, I raised my hand in a tentative wave.

  “Stop making a spectacle of yourself,” Ron hissed under his breath. He wrapped an arm around my waist and dug his fingers into the soft flesh under my blouse.

  Immediately, I lowered my arm and clasped my hands in front me to look like the well-trained wife Ron demands. Wincing as his pinch tightened down like pliers and bowing my head, I peeked through my false eyelashes to see if anyone who’s important in Ron’s eyes had noticed my faux pas.

  Nouveau riche mothers with flared jeans and glam tops flicked cigarette ash from their manicured nails, while the Beverly Hills elite in Perry Ellis skirt suits rolled their House Beautiful magazines into canvas bags.

  But the only person that I noticed was Joy, whose high-stepping filly gait sunk to a slow shuffle. With every step, her wide smile folded deeper into a scowl.

  I wanted to run to her, take her in my arms like when she was five and spin her around, but Ron’s hand was there. If I dared move, it would tighten on my waist like a spring-loaded clamp. I put on my half-smile placid mask.

  “Hi, Mom. Hi Ronny,” Joy said, giving me a dutiful peck on the cheek before copying my clasped hand pose.

  Ron greeted her with a grunt and had started to turn toward the exit when that actor from the Mary Tyler Moore show walked by, arm slung over his son’s shoulder.

  Suddenly, the Ron that wooed me all those years ago appeared. Pivoting on his Ferragamo loafers, he lifted a rakish brow and trumpeted, “Who took my daughter and replaced her with a tan goddess?”

  When the actor, Ted Kite, glanced our way, Ron squeezed Joy so tight I thought he might break her ribs. She stood there, arms stiff at her sides, lips pressed into a smile that never reached her eyes.

  The next thing I knew, Ron was shaking hands with Ted Kite. After a boisterous joke or two about sending kids to camp, he swept an arm in our direction.

  “My wife, Iris and this tanned goddess is my daughter, Joy.” He didn’t say stepdaughter.

  While Joy stared at her shoes, I nodded politely and gushed how I was a huge fan. Ted’s chortling was cut short when Ron shoved a business card into his hand.

  “If you are ever looking for real estate in Santa Juana, give me a call.”

  Ted held it up like a mini-flag and said he had to go.

  Ron shook his hand heartily and led us out of the terminal. Once we were all buckled into the Lincoln, he rolled up the windows and turned on the AC. But that cold air did nothing to dim the rage in his face.

  “Did you have to fucking embarrass me?”

  “What?”

  “Your head bobbing like a plastic Jesus in a Spic’s low rider.”

  “I was only trying to act how you want me to.”

  “Looked like an idiot. You could have said something about my listings, but I should have known when I met you, you were just white trash. Take her out of the sewer, she’s still covered in shit.”

  “I never was trailer trash,” I retorted.

  I felt the heat before the sound. It spiced the cool air, a flashing palm burning skin with brutal piquancy.

  My husband, father of the year.

  Seven

  Joy

  I can’t remember when Mom married Ronald, I was only two. But I do remember my real dad coming around. And how he used to set me on his knee and start bouncing while singing, “She’ll be coming round the mountain” in a Johnny Cash voice. Imagining I was riding six white horses, I’d cry, “Faster, Daddy, faster.” And his leg would jiggle so much, I’d teeter before falling off in a heap of giggles.

  Once, while rolling around in a fit of laughter, I looked past Dad at the popcorn ceiling and noticed a long crack from one side to the next. “Look, Daddy, a river.”

  His tickle hands halted, and he froze, staring at that crack for the longest time. Then he lifted me off his knee, stood, and walked away. Kept right on going out the front door.

  Pretty soon after that, I started riding a stick horse.

  Dad sang, “We’ll all go out to greet her when she comes,” but he hasn’t greeted me in so long I can’t remember.

  I wonder what I did wrong.

  Anyhow, once, during a visit to Aunt Kay’s when I was supposed to be sleeping, I crept down the hall to listen to her and Uncle Mike rant about Ronald and Mom.

  “Just call me Ronny, like Governor Reagan,” Kay mocked.

  “Ronny, my ass. He thinks he’s hot shit because he drives a Lincoln and lives in The Estates,” Mike said.

  “Did you see her face?”

  “Again?”

  “She tries to cover it up with make-up, but I know.”

  “Asshole,” Mike said.

  I knew what the make-up was covering. The same thing our perfectly mowed lawn and etched concrete patio did. The same thing shrouding our windows. Mom w
as just as skilled at curtaining her face in Cover Girl beige as she was in sewing flawless window coverings.

  And we all pretended to believe that the marks beneath the foundation were just smears, places she hadn’t expertly applied the make-up.

  Like today, when I got back from camp.

  Yeah, if my real dad was here, he’d kick Ronny’s ass. Lay him flat. Wrap Mom up in his strong arms, (they were strong, weren’t they?) and whisk us away to a place beyond the mountain.

  Eight

  Joy

  So, you might be asking how a girl like me could go from being a bare-chested little kid climbing trees on the golf course and screaming Tarzan, to smoking so many bowls her green eyes turned red? I don’t really know. It just sort of happened.

  Well, that’s not exactly true. I did have a plan in mind before I started getting high. And it made perfect sense in my idealistic brain. Or so I thought.

  It all started on the first day of junior high. My stomach was doing full-on flips as I combed my hair over to one side; it was then even longer than after camp, almost long enough to look like one of those movie stars in black and white movies. Veronica Lake or Lauren Bacall.

  “You do know how to whistle, don’t you?” I said, making a kissy face into the mirror. “You just put your lips together and blow.”

  “Joy!” Kyle’s voice seeped through the bathroom door into my movie dream. “Mom says you gotta hurry up or you’re going to miss the bus. And I need the bathroom. You’re not the only one who has school, you know!”

  “Okay!” I started to call him a brat but then, remembering that I was now in junior high, decided to act more mature. I shoved the barrette haphazardly above my right ear and swept the door open. “You may enter, younger brother. And I bid you a glorious day.”