coming, so I began to talk fast. “I’m my own invention. I invented myself. All I know about myself is that I woke up one day over at Twin Oaks and they said my name was Sydney Cinnamon, which could or couldn’t be my real name, and that’s all I know. When I found out I was out of the ordinary, a ball in a world of blocks, I decided even if they don’t roll, I do. I decided to roll away, be whatever I wanted to be.”
“But a roach!” and she made a face.
“Well, I decided to be something people don’t like instinctively and make them like it. Something bizarre, like me.” I stole a look over my shoulder at her father to gauge how long I could hold her attention. “If I’d have been something besides a roach, I’d have been an alligator or a snake. Something people look at and go ‘Yeck!’ just because of how it looks and not for any other reasons. If I’d been a vegetable, I’d have been a piece of slimy okra.”
She laughed and said, “Hey!”
“I’d have been crabgrass if I’d been a plant, or a dandelion. If I’d been a piece of mail, I’d have been a circular addressed to Occupant.”
She said, “If you were a musical instrument, you’d be that tuba,” as a tuba tuned up across the field from us.
“Not me, I’d be bagpipes. Bagpipes tuning up are the worst noise I know.”
I was trying to think of other things to be, to keep it going, but half a dozen people were now standing near us, watching.
I gave a self-conscious pull to my sweater in back, and felt my tooth with my tongue.
“If you were a member of the weasel family, you’d be a skunk,” she said.
One of the women watching us said something that ended in “just darling together,” and Little Little’s father called her more insistently, and much louder. It sounded like LIT-TOE! LIT-TOE!
“I have to go,” she said.
My mind raced with a plethora of answers to that one: naw, hang in here; were you planning to go over to Stardustburger after? Can we talk more later?—and when I couldn’t seem to get any of them out, my mouth opened and out came, “Are you sure skunks are weasels?” … My face went red because that had issued forth, like a few soft raindrops squeezed out of a black thundering sky, when hard pellets of hail were called for.
She only laughed and lifted her hand to wave good-bye, while I felt a sharp sock of disappointment, watching her go.
When I went back to the locker room, I met Laura Gwen on her way out.
“Hey, Sydney?” she called over at me. “I went over your entire shell with Endust!”
10: Little Little La Belle
T HE DAY AFTER I met Knox Lionel, at one of my mother’s summer parties for the TADpoles, he called me at seven in the morning from the Howard Johnson’s motel.
“Little Little,” he said, “I have to see you right away!”
“It’s dawn,” I said. “It’s too early.”
“In Genesis it’s written that Abraham rose early to stand before the Lord,” he began, “and it is written there that Jacob rose early to worship the Lord. In Exodus it is written that Moses rose early to give God’s message to Pharaoh, and—”
“I’m not awake, Little Lion!” I complained.
But there was no stopping him. “… Judges it is written that Gideon rose early to examine the fleece. Now in First Samuel it is written that Hannah and Elkanah rose early to worship God, and in Mark it is written that the Son of God rose early to …” On and on.
I finally agreed to meet him.
It is also written somewhere that many strokes overthrow the tallest oaks.
I picked him up in front of the motel, seated in my Kiddyride behind the wheel, while Little Lion stood beside me, close enough to get his arm across my shoulders as I drove.
I was dressed in one of my crisp white cotton numbers, made to order for me by our housekeeper, Mrs. Hootman, who washed and ironed them faithfully, clucking over them as though they were alive. “Now you’re a dear little dress all pretty for our