The Girl I Wanted to Be: A Novel - Softcover

Chapter 1: The Family Reunion

On the last day of our family reunion, we roast a pig in the backyard, which really is the beach and then it turns into the lake. I ask Dad if a tide will come in and drown the pig, and my cousin Barry, who is seventeen and has started to shave, says, "Presley. It's already dead." Then he scoops up a handful of sand and sprinkles it over my head. Even though I know I'm going to have to unbraid my hair, shake the sand loose, maybe even wash it again, I don't say a word, because Barry is bigger and stronger and also the cutest of all the cousins. His dad, my uncle Tim, who is digging a grave for the coals, turns to catch Barry salting me like an ear of corn, and when he shouts out Barry's name -- first, middle, and last -- Barry dashes into Lake Michigan and swims fast beyond the bobbing red buoys, far away from a spanking he has long outgrown.

At nine o'clock in the morning, it's already 84 degrees. Dad says it will take all day to roast the pig, even with the coals simmering underneath its belly and the sun dissolving in the sky above. I pull on my sandy braid with one hand and, with the other, tug at my purple one-piece that's grown tight since we bought it in June, when summer began and eighth grade finally came to an end. Mom says it's too close to the end of the season to buy a new one, and now I've got this suit that creeps into places it has no business going. I catch Dad raising his eyebrows as I try to sneak my suit back into place, so I grab my jean shorts from the patio chair and hoist them over my hips to hide what happened these past few months, this expansion I cannot seem to control.

"Better shake that sand out of your hair before your grandma sees it on her clean floor," Dad says.

"I'm not going inside. I'm going out front to roller-skate for a while."

"Well, don't go too far." He calls Uncle Tim to help him lift the pig up over the fire. The pig is stretched out and bound to a stick and looks like it fell asleep during a magic trick. Last year I had to do a group project on farm animals, and Misty Thompson, who wore only designer jeans paired with various cotton-candy-pink angora sweaters, quickly took charge of the assignments. I got stuck with the pig, and other than it being a main dish, the only thing I could remember was how farmers would sometimes train them to find little tumors of fungus buried in the ground below. That and their tendency to pee in their own trough. I cannot imagine eating any pig. I don't want to see my meat in its natural state, in the shape and form it took as a living thing. I prefer a flat, boneless chicken breast cloaked under cream-of-something sauce.

I'm slowly backing up toward the porch where I left my skates when Betsi, my mom's sister, pops her head over my shoulder and whispers, "Not a chance in hell I'm eating any of that," and then she makes loud snorting sounds. I giggle and plop down on the patch of lawn to pull on my royal-blue skates blackened with skid marks. Betsi crouches down to help me with the laces.

Betsi was only a teenager when I was born, and because she still understands why I roll my eyes when Mom tells me to wear a hat and scarf in the winter, I've never called her Aunt anything, just Betsi. She ties my laces extra tight, and when I stand up on my skates, ready for motion, I spot my brother, Peter, through the back windows of our cottage. He's sitting in the big beige recliner, the upholstery worn soft like the fur of an old dog. Barry would kick Peter out, but he's still seeking refuge in the water, so Peter basks on his temporary throne. He's nursing a bowl of soggy cornflakes, milk dripping from his spoon onto the book about earthquakes balanced on his knees. Peter's only nine, but he never had to learn how to read, he just knew. On road trips to Florida to see the grandparents, Dad would ask me to read billboard signs aloud, but by the time Peter was three, he was beating me to it. Though he might have been destined for recesses filled with wedgies and swirlies, he is without enemies. The other kids may avoid him, but they are polite enough, the way I am toward my best friend's mother or my teacher. He wears his glasses thick and large, his clothes neat and self-pressed, and carries his only constant companion: a book, any book. And he never complains.

"Goddamn, it's hot!" Betsi announces this to no one in particular. She runs her fingers through her hair, what's left of it, and I wonder if she's forgotten that she chopped it away. Now it's just a dark red eraser on top of a pencil. When she first showed up at the cottage a few days ago, pulling into the driveway in her dusty black Jeep with the top off, I wanted to cry. Her hair had been past her shoulders, thick curling cables, the same color as the wine she used to drink. Betsi didn't seem to notice the look on my face as she bounced over to give me a hug and hand me her bags. I grabbed one of the duffels but couldn't take my eyes off of her. She laughed when she realized why I was frozen, and told me most women kept their hair long simply because boys made them think they'd be ugly without it. She tried to convince me to join her, but I said no way. Then she said I was oppressed, and I said no, actually I was pretty happy, it was just that I liked having braids. Then she sighed so loud her nostrils flared, so I've kept my hair in braids for nearly the entire week just to prove I meant it.

"How many ribs do you want me to save for you, Bets?" Uncle Tim hollers.

"Zero," she yells back. "I think I'm going vegetarian. You've scarred me for life." She nods toward the pig they are holding prisoner.

Uncle Tim laughs. "Coming from the girl who can put down twenty White Castle sliders on her own, I find your statement hard to believe."

"The difference is, no one cooked the cow on a pole in front of me."

"We'd better get this up on the coals," my father interjects.

"Right," Uncle Tim says. "Betsi, if you change your mind, you just let me know."

Barry's still in the lake, practicing flips off the floating diving block in the distance. All of the grandparents -- Grandma and Grandpa Dunn, and Dad's mom, Biddie -- hover indoors, where the temperature is more forgiving, taking their places around a card table for their usual post-breakfast game of bridge. Mom and my dad's sister, Helen, and her three kids, Kristen, John, and Mark, went into town for groceries to make side dishes for our pigfest, cheesy baked carrots and Caesar salad. Aunt Helen's husband, Richard, her second, stayed only two days because he's a lawyer and he says the courts of justice do not take vacations.

"What a pig." For a second I think Betsi is talking about dinner, which Uncle Tim and Dad have successfully hoisted over the pit and are studying like a painting in a museum. Then behind them I catch the sun bouncing off of something light, a reflection from a mirror, maybe, but it is Barry, shorts pulled down, back turned, aiming his naked ass right at us, a gleaming polished tooth. His body shakes with soundless laughter.

In one flash of motion, Betsi yanks her Michigan State tank top over her head, steps out of her black nylon shorts, and sprints into the lake, her red string bikini wrapped like licorice ropes around her skin. Betsi's slender but swims strong, approaching the diving block in no time, her baby-oiled body melting a path behind her. Barry's swim trunks are now pulled up again and he stands on the far end of the wooden block, smug and sure, arms folded. His skin is the color of cinnamon toast, and long wet locks of black hair fall into his eyes, green as washed sea glass. Just as she reaches the ladder, he dives away on the opposite side, and the water quickly erases all evidence of his entry. Betsi hoists herself up onto the dock, her hair in wet spikes, her chest rising and falling and practically spilling out of her suit. Her cheeks are puffed as if she's holding her breath, but really, they're full of the water she's trying to save until Barry surfaces.

But I don't see him. Not near the diving dock or the buoys or the shore. And when Betsi swallows her ammunition, I know she doesn't see him either. I am about to say something to Dad and Uncle Tim, who are poking the pig with a stick, when I hear a great gasp of water and turn to see Barry shooting up like a geyser behind Betsi. The splash blinds her as he grabs her ankles and pulls her in with him. At first she fights him, spitting water in his face with her yelps and screams, beating on his chest while trying to stay afloat. But then he pulls her to the farthest side of the block, and the splashing and shouting stop. I can't see what they're doing anymore -- it's just the water quietly licking the shore -- so I skate around to the front and practice Crazy 8's in the driveway while I wait for Mom to come home.

* * * * *

The pig is gone. Its flesh is in the bellies of everyone but me and Betsi, and the parents have taken their swine-filled stomachs to the back porch, protected by screens and surrounded by the zap of the bug light that glows purple and white from where it hangs in the tree. They smoke cigars and sip after-dinner drinks, hot coffee that smells good, like mint, but Mom won't let me have a sip.

After announcing that we ate too late, the grandparents have all gone to bed with a few afghans and comforters added to their sheets, though it's still hovering just below 80 degrees outside. The humidity hangs in the air like a secret. It's hard to make out what is really going on in the thickness of the night. Barry and Betsi have gone for a walk on the beach. They've been gone for at least an hour, and with Peter's nose buried in another book, I join Kristen, John, and Mark on the floor in the living room. We sprawl out on the shag caramel carpet, studying a game of Pick-Up Sticks. I can still hear the parents' voices on the back porch, puzzle pieces floating in through the window.

"I think she looks good," I hear Mom say.

"Kath. It's only been eight weeks." It's my father's voice.

"So?"