Sixteen Not Mine

Now don't get me wrong. I mean, I want you to understand from the beginning that I'm not really so dumb. I know what a girl should do and what she souldn't. I get around. I read I listen to the radio. And I have two older sisters. So you see, i know what the score is. I know its smart to wear tweedish skirts and shaggy sweaters with the sleeves pushed up and pearls and ankle socks and saddle shoes that look as if they've seen the world. And I know that your hair should be long, almost to your shoulders,as sleek as a wet seal, just a little fluffed on the ends, and you should wear a campus hat or a dink or else a peasant hankie if you've that sort of face. Properly, a peasant hankie should make you think of edelweiss, mist and sunny mountains, yodeling and Swiss cheese. You know that kind of peasant. Now, me I look like a picture always in one of those magazine articles that run "And Stalin says the future of Russia lies in its women. In its women who have tilled its soil, raised its children "Wel, anyway, I'm not exactly too small-town either. I read Winchell's column. You get to know what New York boy is that way about some pineapple princess on the West Coast and whaqt paradise pretty is currently the pretiest, and why someone, eventually, will play Scarlett O'Hara. It gives you that cosmopolitan feeling.
And I know tht anyone who orders strawberry sandae in a drugstore instead of a lemon coke would probably be dumb enough to wear colored ankle socks with high heeled pumps or use Evening in
Paris with a tweed suit.  But I'm sort of drifting. This isn't what I wanted to tell you. I just wanted to give you the general dea of how I am not so dumb.  It's important that you understand that.  
     You see, it ws funny how I met him.  It was a winter night like any other winter night. and I didnt have my Latin done, either But the way moon tinseled the twigs and silver plated the snowdrifts, I just couldn't stay inside. The staking rink isnt far from my house you can make it in five minuts if the sidewalk isnt slippery so I went skating. I remember it took me a long time to get ready that night because I had to drain my skating socks first. I dont know why they always wear out so fast just in the toes, too. Maybe its because I have metal protectors on the toes of my skates.  That is probably why. And then I burshed my hair hard, so hard it clung to my hand and stood up around my head like a hazy halo. My skates were hanging by the back door all nice and shiney, for I'd just got them for Christmas and they smelled queer just like fresh smoked ham. My dog walked with me as far as the corner. She's a red chow, very polite and well mannered and she kept pretending it was me she liked when all the time I new it was the ham smell. She panted along beside me and her hot breath made a frosty little balloon balancing on the end of her nose. My skates thumped me good naturedly on my back as I walked and the night was breathlessly quiet and the stars winked down like a million fliriting eyes. It was all so lovely. I ran most of the way and it was lucky the sidewalks had ashes on them or I'd have slipped surely.  The ashes crunched like crackerjack and I could feel their cindery shape through the thinness of my shoes.  I alwys wear old shoes when I go skating.  I had to cut across someone's back garden to get to the rink and last summer's grass stuck through the thin ice, brown and discouraged. Not many people came through this way and the crusted snow broke through the little hollows between corn stubbles frozen hard in the ground.  I was out of breath when I go to the shanty out of breath running and with the loveliness of the night.  Shanties are always such friendly places.  The floor all hacked to wet splinters from skate runners and the wooden wall frescoed with symboles of dead romance.  There were sa smell of signed wool as someone got too near the glowing isinglass grin of the iron stove.  Girls burst through theh door laughing, with snow on their hair, and tripped over the shoes scattered on the floor.  A pimply faced boy grabbed the hand from the frizzled head of an eight grade blonde and stuffed it into an empty galosh to prove his love and then hastily bent to examine his skate strap with innocent unconcern. It didnt take long to get my own skates on and I stuck my showes under the bench far back where they wouldn't get knocked around and would be easy to find when I wanted to go home. I walked out on my toes and the shiny runners of my new skates dug deep into the sodden floor.  It was snowing alittle outside quick, eager little Lux like flakes that melted as soon as they touched your hand.  I don't know where the snow came from, for there were stars out.  Or maybe the stars were in my eyes and I just kept seeing them every time I looked up into the darkness. I waited a moment. You know, to start to skate at a crouded rink is like jumping ona moving merry go round. The skates go skimming round in a colored blur like gaudy painted horses and the shrill musical jabber re and the man calliopes. Once in, I went all right. At least after I found exactly where tht rough ice was. It was "round,round, jum the rut, round, round, jump the rut" And then he came. All of a sudden his arm was around my waist so warm and tight and he said very casually, "Mind if I skate with you?" And then he took my other hand. Thats all there was to it. Just that and then we were skating.  It wasnt that I'd never skated with a boy before. Don't be silly. I told you before I get around. But this was different. He was a smoothie! He was a big shot up at school and he went to all the big dances and he was the best dancer in town except Harold Wright, who didn't count because he'd been to college in New York for two years!  Don't yoou see? This was different. I can't remember what we talked about at first; I can't even remember if we talked at all.  We just skated and skated and laughed every time we came to that fraught spot and pretty soon we were laughing all the time at nothing at all.  It was all so lovely. The we sat on the big snow bank at the edge of the rink and just watched. It was cold at first even with my skating pants on, sitting on that hard heap of snow, but pretty soon I got warm all over. He threw handful of snow at me and it fell in a lttle white shower on my hair and he leaned over to brush it off. I held my breath. The night stood still. The moon hang just over the warming shanty lie a big quarter slice of muskmelon and the smoke from the pipe chinney floated up in a sooty fog. One by one the houses around the rink twinkled out their lights and somebody's hound wailed a mournful apology to a star as he curled  up for the night.  It was all so lovely.
    Then he sat up straight and said, "We'd better start home." Not "Shall I take you home?" Or "Do you live far?" But "We'd better start home." See that's how I know he wanted to take me home. Not because he had to but because he wanted to.  He went to the shanty to get my shoes. "Black ones," I told him. "Same size as Garbo's." And he laughed again. He was still smiling when he came back and took off my skates and tie the wet skate strings in a soggy knot and put them over his shoulder.  Then he held out his hand I slid off the snow bank and brushed off the seat of my pants and we were ready.  
It was snowing harder now. Big, quiet flakes that clung to twiggy bushes and snuggled in a little drifts again the tree trunks. The night was an etching in black and white.  It was all so lovely I was sorry I lived only a few blocks away.  He talked softly as we walked, as if every little word were a secret.  "Did I like Wayne King, and did I plan to go to college next year, and had I a cousin who lived in Appleton and knew his brother?" a very respectable Emily Post sort of conversation, then finally "how nice I looked with snow in my hair and had I even seen the moon so close? for the moon was following us as we walked and ducking playfully behind a chimney every time I turned to look at it.  And then we were  home.  
    The porch light was on.  My mother always puts the porch light on when I g o away at night.  And we stood there a moment by the front steps and the snow turned pinkish in the glow of the colored light and a few feathey flakes settled on his hair. Then he took my skates and put them over my shoulder and said, "Good night now. I'll call you. "I'll call you, he said. I went inside the and in a moment he was gone. I watched him from my window as he went down the street.  He was whistling softly and I waited until the sound faded away so I couldn't tell if it was he or my heart whistling out there in the night.  And he was gone, completely gone.  I shivered. Somehow the darkness seemed changed. The stars were little hard chips of light far up in the sky and the moon stared down with a sullen yellow glare.  The air was tense with sudden cod and a gust of wind swirled his footprints into white oblivion.  Everything was quiet. But he'd said, "I'll call you." That's what he'd said "I'll call you." I couldn'tsleep all night. And that was last Thursday. Tongith is Tuesday. Tonight is Tuesday and my homework's done, and I darned some stockings that didn't really need it, and I worked a crossword puzzle, and I listened to the radio, and now I'm just sitting. I'm just sitting because I can't think of nything else to do.  I can't think of anything, anything but snowflakes and ice skates and yellow moons and Thursday night.  The telephone is sitting on the corner table with its old black face turned to the wall I can't see its leer.  I don't even jump when it rings anymore. My heart still prays, but my mind just laughs. Outside the night is still, so still I think I'll go crazy, and the white snow's all dirtied and smoked into grayness and the wind is blowing the arc light so it throws wierd, waving shadows from the trees onto the lawn like thin, starved arms begging for I don't know what. And so I'm just siting here I'm not feeling anything; I'm not even sad, because all of a sudden I know. All of a sudden I know. I can sit here now forever and laugh and laugh and laugh while the tears run salty in the corners of my mouth.  For all of a sudden I know, I know what the stars knew all the time he'll never, never call never.

I hope you all like it...