A NOSE FOR THINGS | PAGE 1, 2
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We wore slinky dresses Mrs. Leonard hadn't attempted to slip into in years. We dusted off high-heeled, sling-back pumps, patent leather sandals, spangled and sparkling shoes that we would slip onto our small feet. Then we'd shuffle around in clunky circles to dance hall music we could only hear in our heads. The perfumes had a stale, powdery smell to them, but we'd douse ourselves anyway, and I would be secretly relieved that Mrs. Leonard's sense of smell wasn't nearly as acute as my mother's. If we'd ever imagined we could try on my mom's precious colognes -- forget it.

Then we'd move into Mrs. Leonard's brightly lit bathroom, a bathroom of such monstrous proportions it could have contained my bedroom and my playroom. It had a make-up mirror with big lights around it, like movie stars used, and two round, ornately decorated sinks. Janine and I would dig expensive lipsticks out of one of the multiple vanity drawers and climb up on the counters, where we'd make up our faces until the heat from the lamps threatened to melt them off.

I only upset Mrs. Leonard once, and it was over dinner; in fact, it was the only time I ever ate close to a normal meal in that house. Mrs. Leonard had made stew, and a big pot of it stood on the end of the table with five bowls stacked next to the pot and all the silverware and napkins in one pile. Ted and Tom were crawling all over the kitchen table in anticipation of the feast. Mrs. Leonard had poured them each glasses of milk, but when I got a glass of Kool-Aid, suddenly they wanted Kool-Aid too. Not surprisingly, Mrs. Leonard poured their milk back into the carton and filled the glasses with the orange Kool-Aid. The boys didn't even complain that their Kool-Aid was cloudy from the traces of milk left in the glass.

The table was sticky and the napkins were actually cheap paper towels torn in half -- not the textured, patterned paper napkins we always used at my house. Mrs. Leonard, in the housecoat, her hair lumpy in back where she'd lain on it all day watching television, dished stew meat and vegetables into the bowls. When she started ladling into mine, I said, "No carrots, please." Cooked carrots were one of the only things I wouldn't eat, and the mushy orange things in Mrs. Leonard's stew were the same color as Ted and Tom's Kool-Aid. If she made me eat those carrots, I was surely going to gag.

"Shh," Mrs. Leonard snapped. "Not in front of the boys!"

But it was too late.

They started chirping right away, "No carrots, please, no carrots for me, please," like a couple of oversized macaws. They jumped out of their seats and took their bowls back to their mother. "No carrots, please. No carrots for me, please!"

Mrs. Leonard shuddered. "Look what you've done! Now you've ruined it!" she yelled, right into my face. Then she threw the ladle into the stew and stomped out of the dining room, up the stairs. I'd never even seen her go upstairs before.

Quietly, Janine walked over to the stew pot, fished out the ladle and picked the carrots out of the boys' bowls. "No carrots for me, no carrots for me, please!" they sang and carried their bowls back to their seats. Janine served herself some, and we sat at the tacky table and ate in silence. The only sound was spoons scraping against the bowls. After a little while, we heard the sound of game show applause coming from the living room; when we smelled a little cigarette smoke wafting into the kitchen, we knew everything was going to be all right.

Everyone in the neighborhood knew there was once a Mr. Leonard, but I never asked Janine about him, and she never mentioned him to me. Word around our neighborhood was that he'd been in Vietnam, a commander or something of equal importance. Apparently, no one knew if he died or not; he just wasn't around Spence Avenue anymore. Mrs. Ramsey next door liked to whisper some of her theories to my mother over the fence. "Maybe Mr. Leonard got a pretty Vietnamese girl in the family way," she speculated once. Mrs. Ramsey had heard of such things happening to soldiers over there. "I just wondered, since your girls play together so much, if you'd heard anything."

"I don't really talk to Mrs. Leonard much," my mother sniffed, whipping bed sheets off the clothesline and folding them into stiff, perfect squares. "And really, our girls don't play together that often." She turned her back to Mrs. Ramsey then and looked sidelong at me, trying to communicate something in that silent way that mothers and daughters are supposed to have. I rarely understood what action was expected of me, but Mrs. Ramsey got the message. "Well, I've got some biscuits in the oven, I better get inside."

The truth was that I can't remember ever seeing my mother talk to Mrs. Leonard. If you crossed the street from my house and walked three doors down to the cul-de-sac, you'd be at Janine's, but I have no memory of my mother crossing that street, making that short journey or passing through the dusky foyer into Mrs. Leonard's domain. I can't picture my mother easing back into the dusty sitting room chair, Mrs. Leonard sitting up and offering one of her Brand X cigarettes, my mother wiping her nose, declining gracefully before their talk led to the antics of us girls.

But they must have had a conversation once, before Janine got permission to go camping with us at Turlock that one fall. Maybe our mothers talked on the telephone; I can't believe mine would have been satisfied with the mere word of us girls. Somehow, Janine obtained the requisite consent, and it turned out to be the seemingly uneventful trip that would change everything.

On the last night, we toasted marshmallows at my dad's grand campfire, and Janine ate 11 of them. She had a skinny little body, but she still managed to squeeze 11 toasted marshmallows into it, even after a hamburger and potato salad. Then she slurped a can of grape soda and smiled and giggled and belched a lot. She had a grape mustache and I teased her, and we ran around chasing each other like only a couple of sugar-loaded 6-year-olds can. When my mom tried to get us calmed down and into the camper, Janine threw up on her, a great gooey mass of purple vomit. My mom gave me another one of those lateral glances, and this time, I understood exactly what she meant.

Then my mother yanked the tearful Janine over to one of the shower stalls in the women's restroom, and Dad wiped the stinky grape slop off the camper steps. It seemed like we sat alone by the dwindling campfire for an awful long time. When Mom and Janine finally returned, my little friend's face was pale, but her skin shone like a new shoe and my mother looked her over proudly before climbing into bed with my dad. And as Janine and I lay down next to each other in our sleeping bags, her damp curls smelled unmistakably like my mother's shampoo. I had a hard time falling asleep that night, as I wondered if Janine would ever smell like herself again.
SALON | Feb. 23, 1999

Debra Fay Holton is a writer and performance poet who performs regularly at the GirlFest in Santa Cruz, Calif.