Double Stuf Oreo

Thomas used to be my best friend. And that is what I called him, Thomas, not Tommy or Tom. Thomas is the name that our teacher and my mother and his mother use. But the kids in school called him other names: Two-Pound Tom, Tommy Long Legs, Piano-Dork Tom, Four-Eyed Spiegel. These are not names I would use, even now. But I'm telling them to you so you know what they say. My mother always says you should know what your enemies say because it is more important than what your friends say.

I met Thomas one summer when I was staying home from summer camp. It was the day of the swim test and I didn't want to get into the pool because I had just got my hair permed. I once overheard a girl at my church say that if you get in a pool the day after you perm your hair, it will nap up so bad you will never have straight hair again. So instead of spending the day in the athletics shed, hiding from the swim counselors, I pretended I was sick. I sat at home, watching Kids' WB and eating strawberry ice cream straight out of the carton because my mother was at work. Sometime in between Pokémon and Jackie Chan Adventures the doorbell rang.

I looked out the door peephole, just like my mom told me to do. There stood a boy, taller than me, and real, real skinny. He was wearing tight jean shorts and a t-shirt with words I didn't recognize. His hair was in a funny cut, not like the other boys at school or at camp, but real short, like peach fuzz. And I couldn't tell what he was . . . he didn't look Black, but he didn't look White. He was something in between.

"Hi," he said when I opened the door. Even though he was taller than me, his voice was quiet and small. "I'm Thomas. I'm new in town, from Austria. Do you have any children in this house that are my age? I'm 12."

"I'm 11, almost 12. Do I count?" I asked him. I still couldn't figure out what he was. He had a sharp, black-people nose, but small, white-people lips and his skin was the color of a brown paper bag.

Thomas looked at me and then over his shoulder. Across the street, in the doorway of the house that had just been bought, stood a woman. All I could see was her pale white skin and her even whiter smile. She was nodding, it seemed toward us. Thomas turned back to me. "Well, do you have a brother?"

"No. It's just me. Actually I did have a brother, a twin brother, but he died at birth."

"Oh. Well, are there any boys on this street? I've looked, but I can't find any."

"Not really. The Kosmeyers have a son, but he's almost 18. And there are baby boys. The Joliets have a baby named Henry. He just started to talk. But the only person our age on the street is me. And now you, I guess."

"Oh," Thomas said. He sounded disappointed. "Well . . . do you think we can be friends?"

"Sure! What do you like to do?"

"Well, I play the piano," he began.

"And. . . ."

"I like to read . . ."

"Do you watch The Powerpuff Girls?"

"No."

"Well, what about music? Do you listen to *NSYNC?"

"I don't think they have that in Austria."

"What?" I didn't know what to say. I couldn't imagine a place in the world that didn't have any *NSYNC. I thought real hard about something that they would have in Austria.

"Do you like ice cream? They must have that in Austria . . ." This was my last question; if he said no to this, there would be little hope for friendship.

"Yeah! Strawberry is my favorite."

"Me too! I'm eating some right now. Do you want some?"

"Sure," Thomas said. For the first time in the whole conversation, he smiled.

"Sit here on the steps and I'll go get it. You can't come inside because my mom says no visitors when she isn't home."

And that is how we first became friends, eating strawberry ice cream on my porch, in the middle of July, with his mother watching us from across the street.

* * *

At the end of the summer, it got real hot. It was the kind of hot where you could spend a whole afternoon just peeling the tops of your thighs apart and then letting them melt back into each other, repeating the process over and over again. In fact, it was so hot that all the summer camps got moved into the nearby YMCA, and the news warned parents to keep the elderly, kids, and pets indoors. So, instead of going around to other neighborhoods to meet kids, Thomas would sit all day in his air-conditioned house and wait for me to come home. Every afternoon that the camp bus pulled up to the curb by my house, he would be sitting there. On Fridays, he'd be there with two cones of strawberry ice cream because he had just gotten his allowance. Is that your boyfriend, the girls on the bus would tease me. Eww, no way, I always replied. But then one day when I got off the bus, something came over me and I ran and gave Thomas a big hug. Everyone in the bus made loud, kissy sounds. And that next week I was the most popular girl in camp because everyone thought I had a boyfriend.

If we didn't have strawberry ice cream to eat, we would watch TV in my house, or if there were a breeze, we'd play outside with Henry Joliet. We would pretend that we were married and that Henry was our child, even though he was white. I still didn't know exactly what Thomas was, but I knew that even though his mother was white, he wasn't. His nose was too big to be white, and his hair didn't move in the wind when we rode our bikes; it just stayed there, stiff on his head. My mother said that he probably had a black daddy back in Austria and that one drop was all he needed anyway. I was glad Thomas was black, because the only other black kids I knew were from church and they lived two towns away. Most of them were too mean to talk to and called me names like High Yella or Rich Bitch or the worst, Double Stuf Oreo.

Thomas and I would pretend that we were recently married and living in New York City. I was an actress and a painter and he was a piano player. He would come home from work and I would serve a delicious dinner of leaves and sticks. We would eat and then put the baby to bed. That usually took about 20 minutes because Henry never wanted to lie down. But if he did, we would then lie down and go to bed.

One day when we were in bed, Thomas asked me if I knew what real adults did in bed.

"Yes," I said, "but my mother says I can't talk about it."

"Mine too," he replied. Then we sat up and told each other everything we knew.

"I heard that if you do it, you'll get pregnant, even if you don't want to," I said.

"My cousin in Germany told me that if you kiss a girl, you won't be able to stop and then you will have to do it," Thomas said with wide eyes.

"No way! That can't be true. I've seen my mom kiss her boyfriend, and they never do it!"

"But my cousin is almost 17! He knows everything!"

"Look, I'll show you it isn't true." I leaned over and pressed his lips to mine. His lips were dry and he kept his eyes open. I saw when I peeked.

"Kiss, kiss, kiss, kiss," Henry said. He had gotten up from his bed and was pointing at us. I pulled away and carried Henry back into his house.

"You don't want to do it now, do you?" I asked Thomas as we got ready to leave.

"No," he said. We walked home in silence.

Finally, when we reached my house, he quietly asked, "We're still friends, right?"

"Sure! Bestest Friends."

"Great," he said before he ran across the street to his home.

* * *

By the time school started in September, everyone was eager to meet my new friend. Was he cool, they whispered to each other in the halls between classes. Where was his accent from, they wondered during PE. I overheard Peggy Alton say that we had sex. It's not true, I told her. He's not even my boyfriend.

But it didn't take long for the kids to think that Thomas wasn't cool at all. He still didn't know who the Powerpuff Girls were and he could only name musicians who had died long ago. Plus, his fall clothes were strange. His jeans were too tight, his shirts had collars, and instead of sneakers, he wore funny brown loafers. Some of the kids called them diarrhea runners.

Within two weeks, it became just the two of us, me and Tommy the nerd, Piano-Head Tommy, Poopy-Shoe Tommy. I lost the few friends I had because they didn't want to be seen with him, but I didn't care. My mother said that if a different looking boy was all it took for them to get lost, they were not worth finding. Besides, Thomas and I had things in common, things that mattered. Like strawberry ice cream and being black.

On the day I turned 13, as we walked to school, Thomas stopped right before we entered the school's gates.

"Today I want you to walk in alone," he mumbled. His head was down and he looked more embarrassed than he usually did before entering school.

"Why?" I asked him.

"Because it's your birthday. I don't want them to make fun of you on your birthday."

"Please! I don't care about them. Come on, we'll be late," I said. Thomas looked at me with tears in his eyes, not the kind that you have when your cat dies, but the kind you have when you realize your secret diary, that you thought you lost, was hiding the whole time under the living room couch, not in Peggy Alton's locker.

I took Thomas's hand and we walked into the schoolyard together.

"Look at the human ball and bat . . . Two-Pound Tommy and Jamie Roly-Poly," someone yelled out. Everyone laughed.

"Today is my birthday!" I replied with a smile.

* * *

Two weeks before Halloween my mother asked me what I wanted to be. I hadn't been thinking much about it because I had been busy with other things, woman things. For example, during dinner one night, I thought I had wet myself. But when I went to the bathroom, there was blood in my pants! My mother cried and so did I. Hers was like a lost-then-found diary crying but mine was like dead-cat crying. I wasn't ready. "Does this mean I can't play outside anymore," I asked her. "No," she said. "What will I tell Thomas," I asked her. "Nothing," she said. "This is no business for boys."

And then there was Thomas. It's not that we were going out or anything. We couldn't go out even if I wanted to because my mother said no dating until I was 16. But sometimes, when the bus dropped us off early or when we knew that his mother was grocery shopping and wouldn't be standing in the door, waiting for him to come home, we would go into his backyard and kiss. It was always better than it had been the first time; his lips were soft and sometimes we would use our tongues. Once we spent ten minutes just swapping the same piece of gum, over and over until it stuck to our teeth and lips and made a big mess.

With all of these woman things, I hadn't had time to think about what I wanted to be for Halloween. I ran over to Thomas's and asked him what he was going to be.

"I don't know. In Austria I was always a piano player," he said.

"Well that's stupid. What did you do, carry a piano?"

"No. It was just implied."

"What? Whatever. Do you want to be something together? Like Britney Spears and Justin Timberlake?"

"Who?"

"Uhhh! You're so . . . forget it. Ok. Hmm. How about . . . remember that show we watched at my house, The Simpsons?"

"Yeah."

"Well how about we go as Marge and Homer? You know, the parents? I will make my hair into a blue beehive and you can wear a pillow under your shirt and say 'D'oh!' and 'Why you little . . . !'"

"Ok. That sounds good."

"Perfect!" I told him everything he would need to get and made sure he wrote it down so he wouldn't forget.

I went home, thinking of what a great Marge I would make.

* * *

My mother did my hair. Between the dying and styling, it took almost three hours.

"It won't turn blue," she said. "Black hair doesn't turn blue."

"Can't you do it one more time?" I pleaded with her.

"No. This cannot be good for your hair. Besides. Look at it. In the light you can see blue highlights."

It was true, but only because the light in the bathroom was pretty strong.

I knew the light wouldn't be as good at Peggy's Halloween party. I really didn't want to go to the party, and I knew Peggy didn't want me to be there. In fact, when she handed invitations to Thomas and me in homeroom, she loudly proclaimed that she didn't want to invite us, but her mother made her invite the whole class. I had crumpled the invitation and put it my jacket pocket, but my mother found it as the jacket was going into the wash. You have to go, especially since we searched so long to find a green halter dress in your size, she had said. Plus, I'm planning on lending you my red bead necklace and my red shoes.

My mother put the finishing touches on my hair and looked at my reflection in the mirror.

"Perfect. You look just like Marge."

"This dress is too tight," I said as wiggled, trying to stretch it out.

"No, it's form fitting, that's all. It shows off your curvy, black figure."

"Do you think Thomas will like it?" I asked.

She sighed loudly and looked at me with eyes that said, don't tell me you're getting crazy over this boy. But then her face broke into a smile and she said, uh huh. Definitely.

* * *

Peggy's mother pointed to stairs leading to the basement of the house where the party was. I walked down alone; the dress rode up my legs, almost to the point of showing my underpants. When I reached the floor, I looked around the room and saw everyone from our grade. Some people I could recognize, and some I could only guess about because their faces were painted or masked. The rumor had gone around that because Peggy's parents smoked they wouldn't mind if you smoked. And sure enough, the bad kids were in the corner, surrounded by smoke. I looked around the room again. Thomas's mother was supposed to drop him off after his piano lesson, but he was nowhere to be found.

I looked around the room again and again. And then I spotted the blue hair. Big blue hair in a beehive, like mine, but much bluer and much taller. It was on the head of a girl named Andy. She had been in my fourth grade class, but we had never been friends. She was standing there in a green dress just like mine with red shoes and bead necklace just like mine. She had come as Marge Simpson. But the difference was that her hair looked blue like mine should have. And she was white like Marge.

I heard my mother's voice, telling me that I was beautiful. Telling me to hold my head high and to forget about them, who were they anyway. But her voice was drowned out by the music. I thought of those funny mirrors at the circus that distort your body. Andy was the perfect Marge, and I was just the screwed-up reflection. She and her green dress were free from curves.

It was too late to turn around. My mother had already left, saying she would be back to pick Thomas and me up at 10 pm, more than two hours away. I was alone, with no friends, no Thomas, and there was another, better Marge. I started to look for a place to hide. And then I saw him. He was walking toward Andy wearing one of those bald wigs and a pillow under a white collared T-shirt. Everything was right . . . the blue pants, the three black hairs on the bald wig, he had even worn black shoes instead of the stupid diarrhea runners.

How could it be, I wondered. I thought about what I looked like standing there, alone, in a stupid Marge costume with my mouth wide open and my eyes filling with tears. Not even dead-cat tears, tears that were much worse than that. Maybe I was standing there for ten seconds. Maybe it was five minutes. Eventually, Thomas came up to me.

"I'm sorry," he said. He couldn't even look in my eyes. "I . . . I wanted to tell you but . . . I was just . . . I'm sorry."

"What is going on? Why is she wearing my Marge costume?" I looked at him closely, "Did you come with her?"

"Yes . . . I mean, no, my mother took me, but . . . well . . . she's my new girlfriend. I wanted to tell you, but I just . . . she said if I would be her boyfriend, she could make me cool . . ."

I couldn't hear what he was saying anymore. I was running away, but it was all in slow motion. My thighs got in the way, glued together at the tops, slowing me down to the point that I didn't know if I was moving at all. The dress rode up my legs, showing everything. I could not see through my tears.

I finally made it out the Alton's front door, through their yard, to the street. I stopped to catch my breath and closed my eyes. Encouraged by the halter dress, my belly closed in on my lungs, pushing them into a tiny space. The weight of 13 years suddenly crushed me and when I finally opened my eyes, I could only see myself.