Ronnie’s present was the next-to-last to be opened. The paper was red and there were creases in the wrong places, so everyone knew it had been taken off some other present, folded into a square, and reused. It wasn’t obviously Christmas paper-no Santas, no holly, no candy canes, just red-but still, everyone knew. The girl next to Wendy whispered something, who turned to tell Alice. Wendy’s mouth was tickling Alice ’s ear when the present emerged, and then everyone fell silent, so the secret was never shared.
“Isn’t that nice,” Maddy’s mother said, as she had said twelve times already, with just the same inflection.
Ronnie’s gift was a Barbie, and no one in the fifth grade at St. William of York had played with a Barbie, not in public, for at least a year. When they did play Barbie, they played Soap Opera Barbie, in which Ken gets Barbie pregnant and they then have lots of serious talks about what to do, and whether it was wrong to have so much sex, and how they would never do it again if God would just take the baby away. The whole point of Soap Opera Barbie was the beginning, where you put Ken on top of Barbie and had them make funny noises. But that was a secret game, played in twos. In public, the only proper response to a Barbie was polite boredom, as if you couldn’t quite remember what she was for. As if you’d never seen her under Ken, going Oh! Oh! Oh!
So a Barbie was bad enough. But this was a black Barbie, which was weird, because black Barbies were for black girls, they just were, and not because of prejudice, which the St. William of York girls knew was wrong. Maybe if a girl had, say, ten Barbies, one of them would be black, because then a girl could really branch out, have an apartment house full of Barbies. Maddy, in fact, was just the kind of girl who might have her own Barbie town. Her parents were that rich. So, although she was too old and the Barbie was black, that wasn’t the worst thing.
No, the worst thing was that it was a Holiday Barbie. In July.
She wore a red gown and a fur-trimmed cape, and even Alice, who was sometimes slow to understand what other girls seemed born knowing, realized the doll was some Toys for Tots leftover. Ronnie’s father was always bringing home stuff like this-heart-shaped boxes of candy in late February, chocolate bunnies in May, new lawn furniture in October. Alice had heard her mother say that Mr. Fuller’s Coca-Cola truck came home fuller than it went out. She wasn’t sure what that meant exactly, but she had figured out it wasn’t good, much less exquisite.
“Very pretty,” Maddy’s mother said, as if she meant it. “Say, ‘Thank you.’ ”
“Thank you, Ronnie.” Maddy was the kind of girl who could make “That’s a pretty dress” or “I like your hair that way” sound more evil than anything heard in an R-rated movie. In school, she had a habit of saying, “Yes, sister,” so it sounded like a curse word. Alice, who sometimes got in trouble for saying the right thing, had studied Maddy and tried to figure out how to get away with being so rude. It had to do with getting your mouth and your eyes not matching, so one-the mouth-looked pretty and right, and the other-the eyes-had this hard glitter, but nothing extra. No wink, no raised eyebrow. Ronnie, on the other hand, did it backward. Her eyes were always wide and confused-looking, while her mouth was twisted and sneering.
Ronnie knew Maddy was making fun of her.
“It’s a stupid nigger doll,” Ronnie said, grabbing it from Maddy and throwing it into the baby pool. “My mom picked it out.”
“Ronnie.” Maddy’s mom had to search for Ronnie’s name, or so it seemed to Alice. “Please go get your gift out of the pool.”
“I’m not going into the baby pool,” Ronnie said. “There’s so much pee in there it will take your toenails off.”
Twelve little girls looked at their toenails beneath the table, for almost all of them had walked through the water at least once that day. Alice ’s toenails were robin’s egg blue, which matched her blue jellies. Wendy had pink polish. Ronnie didn’t wear polish, not since the time she had tried to paint her fingernails and come to school with red streaks all the way to her knuckles.
“Ronnie, please.” Maddy’s mother put a hand on Ronnie’s wrist. Instinctively, Ronnie yanked her arm away and up, hard. Alice knew it was an accident, nothing more-an accident that Ronnie’s hand was clenched in a fist when she pulled away, an accident that the fist hit Maddy’s mom on the underside of her chin.
But Maddy’s mother cried out, louder than any kindergarten baby, as if the blow really stung, and the girls screamed as if they had just seen a car come crashing over the fence of the wading pool area.
“You hit my mom,” Maddy said. “Ohmigod, she hit my mom.”
“I’m sorry,” Ronnie said. “I’m sorry, I’m sorry, I’m really sorry. I didn’t mean to.”
“You hit my mom. You hit a grown-up.” The other girls’ voices bubbled up, shrill and shocked, but a little excited, too.
When Maddy’s mother spoke, it was in that quiet, scary tone that adults use so effectively: “I think we should call someone to take you home.”
“I said I was sorry. I didn’t mean to fight. It was an accident. You touched me first.”
“You must be tired from all the sun and excitement. Is there someone at your house I can call to come get you?” Cell phone out, at the ready.
“I came with Alice,” Ronnie said, grabbing her arm. “We have to go home together.”
Alice was caught off guard, unprepared to wiggle out of this. Yes, technically she was supposed to go home with Ronnie, but not if Ronnie misbehaved. Why should she have to leave just because Ronnie was bad? She hesitated, and that was when Ronnie told her story, about the aunt and the Oreos and everything else.
“Very well,” Maddy’s mother said. “Actually, I feel better about two of you walking. Now, you are going to your aunt’s house, right? On this side of Edmondson? Good.”
It wasn’t good and it wasn’t well and it wasn’t fair. Alice peeled herself away from the bench, grabbed her towel and her shoes. Wendy’s sympathetic glance only made it worse. Ronnie walked into the pool and grabbed the doll, dropping it twice on the way back. Water had seeped through the cardboard. The doll’s dress clung to her hard little body, drops of moisture beaded on her brown limbs. Alice wished she could dip her feet in the wading pool, rinsing them, because she knew what Ronnie said was only half true. The little kids did pee in it, but that wouldn’t take your toenails off. In fact, Alice ’s mom said pee was good for athlete’s foot and jellyfish stings.
And so they went, leaving those two sets of wet footprints, one slightly ahead of the other, together yet apart, linked by the sheer unfairness of things, the usual daily accidents. Up the stairs, across the vast black parking lot, up the long hill to Edmondson, where Ronnie beat on the silver button for the Walk sign, even though everyone knew it would change in its own good time and the button was just for show.
“I thought we were going to your aunt’s house,” Alice dared to say, and Ronnie simply stared, her lie forgotten.
“My aunt works,” she said. “In the summer she works at the crab house on Route 40. Besides, she doesn’t like me to come around right now. She and my dad are in a fight about something.”