Are You There God? It's Me, Margaret Read online

  Mr. Benedict Jr. handed out the paper himself. I read his phrases.

  MY NAME IS

  PLEASE CALL ME

  I LIKE

  I HATE

  THIS YEAR IN SCHOOL

  I THINK MALE TEACHERS ARE

  I nibbled on the edge of my pencil. The first two were easy. I wrote:

  My name is Margaret Ann Simon.

  Please call me Margaret.

  The next two were harder. I liked and hated a million things. And I didn’t know what he wanted to know about. Also, he wouldn’t answer any questions. He sat at his desk and watched us. He tapped his fingers and crossed his legs. Finally I wrote:

  I like long hair, tuna fish, the smell of rain and things that are pink.

  I hate pimples, baked potatoes, when my mother’s mad and religious holidays.

  This year in school I want to have fun.

  And also learn enough to go to seventh grade.

  I think male teachers are …

  That was the worst! How was I supposed to know? Every teacher is different. But I couldn’t think of a way to fit that in. So I wrote:

  I think male teachers are the opposite of female teachers.

  There! That ought to do it. It was a stupid answer but I thought it was also a pretty stupid question.

  At two-thirty Nancy slipped me a note. It said: Secret club meets today after school my house—no socks!

  I went home to change before going to Nancy’s. My mother was waiting for me. “Let’s have a snack and you can tell me all about your first day of school,” she said.

  “I can’t,” I told her. “No time now. I’ve got to go to Nancy’s house. I’m joining her secret club.”

  “Oh, that’s nice,” my mother said. “Just tell me about your teacher. What’s she like?”

  “It’s a he,” I said. “His name is Mr. Benedict and this is his first job.”

  “Oh gads! A first-year teacher. What could be worse?”

  “He’s not bad,” I told my mother. “I thought he was very nice.”

  “We’ll see how much you learn,” my mother said.

  I changed into shorts and a polo and walked to Nancy’s.

  5

  The others were already there. Janie Loomis, Gretchen Potter and Nancy. That was it. We sat around on the porch and Nancy brought us cokes and cookies. When Gretchen helped herself to six Oreos at once Nancy asked her how much weight she’d gained over the summer. Gretchen put back four cookies and said, “Not much.”

  “Did you see Laura Danker come in this morning?” Janie asked.

  “Which one is she?” I said.

  They all giggled. Nancy spoke to me as if she were my mother. “Margaret dear—you can’t possibly miss Laura Danker. The big blonde with the big you know whats!”

  “Oh, I noticed her right off,” I said. “She’s very pretty.”

  “Pretty!” Nancy snorted. “You be smart and stay away from her. She’s got a bad reputation.”

  “What do you mean?” I asked.

  “My brother says she goes behind the A&P with him and Moose.”

  “And,” Janie added, “she’s been wearing a bra since fourth grade and I’ll bet she gets her period.”

  “Did you get it yet, Margaret?” Nancy asked.

  “Get what?”

  “Your period,” Nancy said, like I should have known.

  “Oh—no, not yet. Did you?”

  Nancy swallowed some soda and shook her head. “None of us has yet.”

  I was glad to hear that. I mean, suppose they all got it already and I was the only one who didn’t. I’d feel awful.

  Gretchen smacked her lips, brushed the cookie crumbs off her lap and said, “Let’s get down to business.”

  “Agreed,” Nancy said. “First of all we need a good club name this year. Everybody think up a name for our club.”

  It got quiet. Everybody thought. I didn’t really think but I pretended to. I didn’t even know anything about the club so how could I pick out a name?

  Gretchen suggested the SGCT which meant the Sixth Grade Cu-Tees. Janie said that sounded really dumb. So Grechen told Janie if she was so smart why didn’t she suggest a name. Janie suggested the MJB Girls which meant the Miles J. Benedict Girls. Nancy told Janie she’d forgotten the Jr. on the end of his name. Janie got mad and excused herself to go to the bathroom.

  “As long as we’re on the subject,” Nancy said, “what do you think of Miles J.?”

  “I think he’s cute!” Gretchen giggled.

  “He is—but he’s too skinny,” Nancy said.

  Then I finally thought of something to say. “I wonder if he’s married!”

  Janie joined us again. “My guess is no. He doesn’t look married.”

  “Anyhow, did you see the way he looked at Laura?” Nancy asked.

  “No! Did he?” Gretchen opened her eyes wide.

  “Naturally! Men can’t help looking at her,” Nancy said.

  “But do you think she looks that way on purpose?” I asked.

  The others laughed and Nancy said, “Oh Margaret!” Nancy had a great way of making me feel like a dope.

  Then we talked about Mr. Benedict’s questions and Gretchen told us that she wrote male teachers are very strict—because if Mr. Benedict thought we were afraid of him he’d bend over backwards to be really easy going and nice. I thought that was pretty clever and wished I had written it myself.

  “Well, the whole idea of those questions is just to find out if we’re normal,” Janie said.

  I hadn’t thought about that. Now it was too late. “How can he tell if we’re normal?” I asked.

  “That’s easy,” Nancy said. “From the way you answered. Like if you said, I hate my mother, my father and my brother, you might be weird. Get it?”

  I got it.

  Nancy snapped her fingers. “I have the perfect name for our club,” she said.

  “What is it?” Gretchen asked.

  “Tell us,” Janie said.

  “We’ll be the Four PTS’s.”

  “What’s it stand for?” Janie asked.

  Nancy tossed her hair around and smiled. “The Pre-Teen Sensations!”

  “Hey, that’s good,” Gretchen said.

  “I love it,” Janie squealed.

  We had a secret vote to pass the club name and naturally it passed. Then Nancy decided we should all have secret sensational names such as Alexandra, Veronica, Kimberly and Mavis. Nancy got to be Alexandra. I was Mavis.

  Nancy reminded us that nobody in school was to know anything about our secret club and that at secret meetings such as this we were to use our secret names. We all had to solemnly swear. Then we all had to think up a rule.

  Nancy’s rule was, we all had to wear bras. I felt my cheeks turn red. I wondered if the others wore them already. I didn’t think Janie did because she looked down at the floor after Nancy said it.

  Gretchen’s rule was, the first one to get her period had to tell the others all about it. Especially how it feels. Janie’s rule was, we all had to keep a Boy Book, which was a notebook with a list of boys’ names in order of how we liked them. Each week we had to change our lists and pass the Boy Books around.

  Finally Nancy asked me what my rule was. I couldn’t think of one to equal the others so I said, “We meet on a certain day each week.”

  “Naturally!” Nancy said. “But what day?”

  “Well, I don’t know,” I told her.

  “Okay, let’s think up a good day,” Gretchen said. “Tuesday and Thursday are out. I have to go to Hebrew school.”

  “Oh Gretchen!” Janie said. “You and that Hebrew school business. Can’t you get out of it?”

  “I’d love to,” Gretchen explained. “But I’ve got to go one more year and then I’m through.”

  “What about you, Margaret? Do you go?” Janie asked me.

  “You mean to Hebrew school?”

  “Yes.”

  “No, I don’t go,” I said.

  �
�Margaret doesn’t even go to Sunday school. Isn’t that right?” Nancy asked.

  “Yes,” I answered.

  “How’d you arrange that?” Gretchen asked.

  “I’m not any religion,” I said.

  “You’re not!” Gretchen’s mouth fell open.

  “What are your parents?” Janie asked.

  “Nothing,” I said.

  “How positively neat!” Gretchen said.

  Then they all just looked at me and nobody said anything and I felt pretty silly. So I tried to explain. “See uh … my father was Jewish and uh … my mother was Christian and …”

  Nancy’s face lit up. “Go on,” she said.

  This was the first time they were interested in anything I had to say. “Well, my mother’s parents, who live in Ohio, told her they didn’t want a Jewish son-in-law. If she wanted to ruin her life that was her business. But they would never accept my father for her husband.”

  “No kidding!” Gretchen said. “How about your father’s family?”

  “Well, my grandmother wasn’t happy about getting a Christian daughter-in-law, but she at least accepted the situation.”

  “So what happened?” Janie asked.

  “They eloped.”

  “How romantic!” Nancy sighed.

  “So that’s why they’re not anything.”

  “I don’t blame them,” Gretchen said. “I wouldn’t be either.”

  “But if you aren’t any religion, how are you going to know if you should join the Y or the Jewish Community Center?” Janie asked.

  “I don’t know,” I said. “I never thought about it. Maybe we won’t join either one.”

  “But everybody belongs to one or the other,” Nancy said.

  “Well, I guess that will be up to my parents,” I said, ready to change the subject. I never meant to tell them my story in the first place. “So uh … what day should we meet?”

  Nancy announced that Friday was no good for a meeting day because she had piano lessons. Janie said she had ballet on Wednesday so I said that only left Mondays and we agreed that Monday would be our meeting day. Next week we had to bring our Boy Books and get checked to make sure we were all wearing bras.

  When the meeting was over Nancy raised her arms high above her head. She closed her eyes and whispered, “Here’s to the Four PTS’s. Hurray!”

  “Long live the PTS’s,” we chanted.

  All through supper I thought about how I was going to tell my mother I wanted to wear a bra. I wondered why she hadn’t ever asked me if I wanted one, since she knew so much about being a girl.

  When she came in to kiss me goodnight I said it. “I want to wear a bra.” Just like that—no beating around the bush.

  My mother turned the bedroom light back on. “Margaret … how come?”

  “I just do is all.” I hid under the covers so she couldn’t see my face.

  My mother took a deep breath. “Well, if you really want to we’ll have to go shopping on Saturday. Okay?”

  “Okay.” I smiled. My mother wasn’t bad.

  She turned out the light and closed my door halfway. Was I glad that was over!

  Are you there God? It’s me, Margaret. I just told my mother I want a bra. Please help me grow God. You know where. I want to be like everyone else. You know God, my new friends all belong to the Y or the Jewish Community Center. Which way am I supposed to go? I don’t know what you want me to do about that.

  6

  The next day after school Mr. Benedict called me up to his desk. “Margaret,” he said. “I’d like to discuss your getting-to-know-you paper. For instance, why do you hate religious holidays?”

  Was I sorry I wrote that! How positively stupid of me. If it was true that he was trying to find out if we were normal, I guess he thought I wasn’t.

  I half laughed. “Oh, I just wrote that,” I said. “I really don’t hate them at all.”

  “You must have had a reason. You can tell me. It’s confidential.”

  I raised my right eyebrow at Mr. Benedict. I can do that really good. Raise one without the other. I do it whenever I can’t think of anything to say. People notice it right away. Some people actually ask me how I do it. They forget what we were talking about and concentrate on my right eyebrow. I don’t know exactly how I do it. What I do is think about it and the eyebrow goes up. I can’t do it with my left. Only my right.

  Mr. Benedict noticed. But he didn’t ask me anything about how I do it. He just said, “I’m sure you have a perfectly good reason for hating religious holidays.”

  I knew he was waiting for me to say something. He wasn’t going to just forget about it. So I decided to get it over with in a hurry. “None of those holidays are special to me. I don’t belong to any religion,” I said.

  Mr. Benedict seemed pleased. Like he had uncovered some deep, dark mystery. “I see. And your parents?”

  “They aren’t any religion. I’m supposed to choose my own when I grow up. If I want to, that is.”

  Mr. Benedict folded his hands and looked at me for a while. Then he said, “Okay, Margaret. You can go now.”

  I hoped he decided I was normal, after all. I lived in New York for eleven and a half years and I don’t think anybody ever asked me about my religion. I never even thought about it. Now, all of a sudden, it was the big thing in my life.

  That night when Grandma called she told me she’d gotten a subscription to Lincoln Center for the two of us. We’d meet one Saturday a month, have lunch and then go to a concert. Grandma really is clever. She knew my parents would never say no to one Saturday a month at Lincoln Center. That was culture. And they thought culture was very important. And now Grandma and I would have a chance to spend some time alone. But I was glad that Lincoln Center didn’t start right away because I didn’t want anything to interfere with Bra Day.

  First thing on Saturday morning Moose Freed arrived to cut our lawn. My father sulked behind a sports magazine. His finger was a lot better but it was still bandaged.

  I sat around outside while Moose cut the grass. I liked the way he sang as he worked. I also liked his teeth. I saw them when he smiled at me. They were very clean and white and one in the front was a little crooked. I pretended to be really busy reading a book but the truth is—I was watching Moose. If he looked toward me I put my nose back in the book in a hurry. Moose would be number one in my Boy Book if only I was brave enough, but what would Nancy think? She hated him.

  After lunch my mother told my father we were going shopping. We still had our same car but my mother thought we needed two now, because there weren’t any buses in Farbrook and taxis were so expensive. My father said he’d see, but I knew we’d be getting another one soon. My mother can talk my father into anything.

  My mother drove to a shopping center where there was a Lord & Taylor. I had on my blue plaid dress and my loafers without socks and three Bandaids on my blisters.

  First we went to the ladies’ lingerie department where my mother told the saleslady we wanted to see a bra for me. The saleslady took one look and told my mother we’d be better off in the teen department where they had bras in very small sizes. My mother thanked the lady and I almost died! We went down on the escalator and headed for the teen shop. They had a whole display of underwear there. Bras and panties and slips to match. All I ever wore was white underpants and regular undershirts. Sometimes a slip if I was going to a party. My mother went to the counter and told the saleslady we were interested in a bra. I stood back and pretended not to know a thing. I even bent down to scratch a new mosquito bite.

  “Come here, dear,” the saleslady called.

  I hate people who call you dear. I walked over to the counter and raised my right eyebrow at her.

  She reached over the top of the counter and said, “Let’s measure you, dear.” She put the tape measure all the way around me and smiled at my mother. “Twenty-eight,” she said. I felt like giving her a pinch.

  Then she took out a bunch of bras and put them on t
he counter in front of us. My mother felt them all.

  “Now dear—I suggest the Gro-Bra. It grows with you. You’re not quite ready for a double A. Suppose you try them on and see which is most comfortable.” She led us to a dressing room with a pink door that locked. My mother sat in the dressing room on a chair. I took off my dress. I wasn’t wearing anything underneath but pants. I picked up the first bra and stuck my arms into the straps. I couldn’t fasten it in back. My mother had to help me. She adjusted the straps and felt the front of me, “How does it feel?” she asked.

  “I don’t know,” I said.

  “Is it too tight?”

  “No.”

  “Too loose?”

  “No.”

  “Do you like it?”

  “I guess …”

  “Try on this one.”

  She got me out of the first bra and into the next one. I wondered how I’d ever learn to do it by myself. Maybe my mother would have to dress me every day.

  The next bra was softer than the first. My mother explained it was made of dacron. I liked the way it felt. My mother nodded. The third one was fancy. It was lace and it made me itch. My mother said it was impractical.

  The saleslady knocked on the door as I was getting back into my dress. “How did we do? Did we find something?”

  My mother told her we did. “We’ll take three of these,” she said, holding up the soft bra.

  When we got back to the counter who should be there but Janie Loomis and her mother.

  “Oh, hi, Margaret,” she said. “I’m getting some winter pajamas.” Her cheeks were bright red and I saw the selection of bras on the counter in front of her.

  “Me too,” I said. “I’m getting some flannel pajamas for winter.”

  “Well, see you Monday,” Janie said.

  “Right—Monday.” I was plenty glad that my mother was down at the other end of the counter paying for my bras.

  7

  When I got home I carried my package straight to my room. I took off my dress and put on the bra. I fastened it first around my waist, then wiggled it up to where it belonged. I threw my shoulders back and stood sideways. I didn’t look any different. I took out a pair of socks and stuffed one sock into each side of the bra, to see if it really grew with me. It was too tight that way, but I liked the way it looked. Like Laura Danker. I took the socks out and put them away.