So she was all white on white on white, like the most perfect kind of vanilla dessert cake you've ever seen.
I wanted to be her chocolate topping.
She was serving against the mean girls from Davenport Lady Gorillas. Yeah, you read
that correctly. They willingly called themselves the Lady Gorillas. And they played like superstrong primates, too. Penelope and her teammates were getting killed. The score was like 12 to 0 in the first set.
But I didn't care.
I just wanted to watch the sweaty Penelope sweat her perfect sweat on that perfectly
sweaty day.
She stood at the service line, bounced the volleyball a few lines to get her rhythm, then tossed it into the air above her head.
She tracked the ball with her blue eyes. Just watched it intensely. Like that volleyball mattered more than anything he in the world. I got jealous of that ball. I wished I were that ball.
As the ball floated in the air, Penelope twisted her hips id back and swung her right arm back over her shoulder, coiling like a really pretty snake. Her leg muscles were stretched and taut.
I almost fainted when she served. Using all of that twisting id flexing and concentration, she smashed the ball and aced le Lady Gorillas.
And then Penelope clenched a fist and shouted, "Yes!"
Absolutely gorgeous.
Even though I didn't think I'd ever hear back, I wanted to know what to do with my
feelings, so I walked over to the computer lab and e-mailed Rowdy. He's had the same address for five years.
"Hey, Rowdy," I wrote. "I'm in love with a white girl. What should I do?"
A few minutes later, Rowdy wrote back.
"Hey, Asshole," Rowdy wrote back. "I'm sick of Indian guys who treat white women like bowling trophies. Get a life."
Well, that didn't do me any good. So I asked Gordy what I should do about Penelope.
"I'm an Indian boy," I said. "How can I get a white girl to love me?"
"Let me do some research on that," Gordy said.
A few days later, he gave me a brief report.
"Hey, Arnold," he said. "I looked up 'in love with a white girl' on Google and found an article about that white girl named Cynthia who disappeared in Mexico last summer. You
remember how her face was all over the papers and everybody said it was such a sad thing?"
"I kinda remember," I said.
"Well, this article said that over two hundred Mexican girls have disappeared in the last three years in that same part of the country. And nobody says much about that. And that's racist.
The guy who wrote the article says people care more about beautiful white girls than they do about everybody else on the planet. White girls are privileged. They're damsels in distress."
"So what does that mean?" I asked.
"I think it means you're just a racist asshole like everybody else."
Wow.
In his own way, Gordy the bookworm was just as tough as Rowdy.
Dance, Dance, Dance
Traveling between Reardan and Wellpinit, between the little white town and the
reservation, I always felt like a stranger.
I was half Indian in one place and half white in the other.
It was like being Indian was my job, but it was only a part-time job. And it didn't pay well at all.
The only person who made me feel great all the time was Penelope.
Well, I shouldn't say that.
I mean, my mother and father were working hard for me, too. They were constantly
scraping together enough money to pay for gas, to get me lunch money, to buy me a new pair of jeans and a few new shirts.
My parents gave me just enough money so that I could pretend to have more money than
I did.
I lied about how poor I was.
Everybody in Reardan assumed we Spokanes made lots of money because we had a
casino. But that casino, mismanaged and too far away from major highways, was a money-losing business. In order to make money from the casino, you had to work at the casino.
And white people everywhere have always believed that the government just gives
money to Indians.
And since the kids and parents at Reardan thought I had a lot of money, I did nothing to change their minds. I figured it wouldn't do me any good if they knew I was dirt poor.
What would they think of me if they knew I sometimes had to hitchhike to school?
Yeah, so I pretended to have a little money. I pretended to be middle class. I pretended I belonged.
Nobody knew the truth.
Of course, you can't lie forever. Lies have short shelf lives. Lies go bad. Lies rot and stink up the joint.
In December, I took Penelope to the Winter Formal. The thing is, I only had five dollars, not nearly enough to pay for anything—not for photos, not for food, not for gas, not for a hot dog and soda pop. If it had been any other dance, a regular dance, I would have stayed home with an imaginary illness. But I couldn't skip Winter Formal. And if I didn't take Penelope then she would have certainly gone with somebody else.
Because I didn't have money for gas, and because I couldn't have driven the car if I
wanted to, and because I didn't want to double date, I told Penelope I'd meet her at the gym for the dance. She wasn't too happy about that.
But the worst thing is that I had to wear one of Dad's old suits:
I was worried that people would make fun of me, right? And they probably would have if
Penelope hadn't immediately squealed with delight when she first saw me walk into the gym.
"Oh, my, God!" she yelled for everybody to hear. "That suit is so beautiful. It's so retroactive. It's so retroactive that it's radioactive!"
And every dude in the joint immediately wished he'd worn his father's lame polyester suit.
And I imagined that every girl was immediately breathless and horny at the sight of my
bell-bottom slacks.
So, drunk with my sudden power, I pulled off some lame disco dance moves that sent the
place into hysterics.
Even Roger, the huge dude I'd punched in the face, was suddenly my buddy.
Penelope and I were so happy to be alive, and so happy to be alive TOGETHER, even if
we were only a semi-hot item, and we danced every single dance.
Nineteen dances; nineteen songs.
Twelve fast songs; seven slow ones.
Eleven country hits; five rock songs; three hip-hop tunes.
It was the best night of my life.
Of course, I was a sweaty mess inside that hot polyester suit.
But it didn't matter. Penelope thought I was beautiful and so I felt beautiful.
And then the dance was over.
The lights flicked on.
And Penelope suddenly realized we'd forgotten to get our picture taken by the
professional dude.
"Oh, my God!" she yelled. "We forgot to get our picture taken! That sucks!"
She was sad for a moment, but then she realized that she'd had so much fun that a
photograph of the evening was completely beside the point. A photograph would be just a lame souvenir.
I was completely relieved that we'd forgotten. I wouldn't have been able to pay for the photographs. I knew that. And I'd rehearsed a speech about losing my wallet.
I'd made it through the evening without revealing my poverty.
I figured I'd walk Penelope out to the parking lot, where her dad was waiting in his car.
I'd give her a sweet little kiss on the cheek (because her dad would have shot me if I'd given her the tongue while he watched). And then I'd wave good-lye as they drove away. And then I'd wait in the parking lot until everybody was gone. And then I'd start the walk home in the dark. It was a Saturday, so I knew some reservation family would be returning home from Spokane. And I knew they'd see me and pick me up.