Annie on My Mind

Chapter three

"You didn't think!" Mrs. Poindexter boomed. "You didn't think! This
girl," she said, turning to the others at the table, "has been at Foster
all her life, and she says she didn't think! Mary Lou, kindly ask
Jennifer Piccolo if she will step in for a moment." Mary Lou Dibbins,
council's plump and very honest secretary-treasurer, pushed her chair
back quickly and went out into the hall. Mary Lou was a math brain, but
she'd told me that Mrs. Poindexter took care of council's financial
records herself, and kept the little money council had locked up in her
office safe. She wouldn't even let Mary Lou see the books, let alone
work on them. "Mrs. Poindexter," said Ms. Stevenson, "I really wonder if
... Angela, is Jennifer's name on the agenda? I don't remember seeing
it."

"N-no," stammered Angela. "Jennifer volunteered at the last minute,"
Mrs. Poindexter said dryly. "After the agenda was typed." Then Mary Lou
came back with Jennifer, who had a bandage on one ear and looked
absolutely terrified--not as if she'd volunteered at all. "Jennifer,"
said Mrs. Poindexter, "please tell the council what your father said
when he found out the doctor had to lance the infection on your ear."

"He--he said I shouldn't tell anyone outside school what had happened or
it would ruin the campaign. And--and before that he said he was going to
resign from being pub-pub-publicity chairman, but then my mother talked
him into staying, unless--unless no one's punished, he--he said he'd
always thought Foster was a--a school that produced young ladies and
gentlemen, not ..." Jennifer looked from Sally to me, apologizing with
her frightened, tear-filled eyes, "not hoodlums."

"Thank you, Jennifer," Mrs. Poindexter said, looking pleased under her
indignant surface. "You may go."

"Just a minute," said Ms. Stevenson, her voice tight, as if she were
trying to hold on to her temper. "Angela, may I ask Jennifer a
question?" Angela looked at Mrs. Poindexter, who shrugged as if she
thought whatever it was couldn't possibly be important. "Angela?" said
Ms. Stevenson pointedly. "I--I guess so," said Angela. "Jenny," Ms.
Stevenson asked, gently now, "did Sally ask you to have your ears
pierced?"

"No--no."

"Then why did you decide to have her pierce them?"

"Well," said Jennifer, "I saw the sign and I'd been thinking about going
to Tuscan's, you know, that department store downtown, to have it done,
but they charge eight dollars for only two holes, and I didn't have that
much and the sign said Sally would do four holes for only six
dollars--you know, one-fifty a hole--and I had that much. So I decided to
go to her."

"But Sally never came to you and suggested it?"

"n-no."

"Thank you, Jenny," said Ms. Stevenson. "I hope the infection heals
soon." There was absolute silence as Jennifer walked out. Angela
looked at the piece of paper--the agenda, I suppose--in front of her and
said, "Well ..." But Sally jumped to her feet. "Mrs. Poindexter," she
said. "I-I'm sorry, I'll--I'll pay Jennifer's doctor bills. I'll pay
everyone's if I can afford it. And--and I'll donate the money I made to
the campaign. But I really did try to be careft;l. My sister had her
ears done that way and she was fine, honest ..."

"Sally," said Ms. Stevenson, again very gently, "you took risks. You know
your way couldn't have been as safe as the sterile punches they use down
at Tuscan's."

"I--I know. I'm sorry." Sally was almost in tears. "Well," began Ms.
Stevenson, "I think ..."

"That will be all, then, Sally," said Mrs. Poindexter, interrupting. "We
will take note of your apology. You may wait outside if you like."

"Mrs. Poindexter," Jody said, as if it had taken him all this time to
work up to it, "is this really the way a disciplinary hearing's supposed
to go? I mean, isn't Angela--I mean, isn't she supposed to be doing
Liza's job, sort of, and running the hearing?"

"Of course," said Mrs. Poindexter, smooth as an oil slick, shrugging as
if asking what she could do if Angela wouldn't cooperate.

Then she turned to me. "Eliza," she said, "now that you have had a
chance to think over our talk, have you anything to say? An explanation,
perhaps, of why you didn't see to it that Sally was reported
immediately?" She put her glasses on and looked down at her notes. I
didn't know what to say, and I wasn't sure anyway how I was going to
make my tongue move in a mouth that suddenly felt as dryly sticky as the inside of a box of old raisins. "I
don't see what rule Sally broke," I said at last, slowly. "If I'd really
thought she was breaking a rule, I'd have asked her to report herself,
but ..."

"The point," said Mrs. Poindexter, not even bothering to flip her
glasses down, but peering at me over their tops, "as I told you in my
office, has to do with the spirit of the rules--the spirit, Eliza, not a
specific rule. I am sure you are aware that harming others is not the
Foster way--yet you did not report Sally or ask her to report herself.

And furthermore, I suspect that you did not do so because, despite being
student council president, you do not believe in some of the rules of
this school."

"Out of the night that covers me," suddenly echoed in my mind from
English class. "Black as the Pit ..." I licked my dry lips.

"That's right," I said. "I--I don't believe in the reporting rule because
I think that by the time people are in Upper School they're--old enough
to take responsibility for their own actions." I could see Ms. Stevenson
smiling faintly as if she approved, but she also looked worried. She
raised her hand, and Angela, after glancing at Mrs. Poindexter, nodded
at her. "Liza," asked Ms. Stevenson, "suppose you saw a parent beating a
child. Would you do anything?"

"Sure," I said. It suddenly became very clear, as if Ms. Stevenson had
taken one of the big spotlights from up on the stage and turned it onto
a place in my mind I hadn't seen clearly before. "Of course I would. I'd
tell the parent to stop and if that didn't work, I'd go to the police or
something like that. I don't think what Sally did is on the same
scale."

"Even though," said Mrs. Poindexter, her voice sounding as if it
were coming through gravel again, "Sally caused a number of infections
and in particular infected the daughter of our publicity man?" I got
angry then. "It doesn't make any difference who got infected," I
shouted. "Jennifer's no better than anyone else just because we need Mr.
Piccolo." I tried to lower my voice. "The infections were bad, sure. But
Sally didn't set out to cause them. In fact, she did everything she
could to prevent them. And she didn't force anyone to have their ears
pierced. Sure, it was a dumb thing to do in the first place. But it
wasn't--oh, I don't know, some kind of--of criminal thing, for God's
sake!" Ms. Stevenson nodded, but Mrs. Poindexter's mouth pulled into a
tense straight line and she said, "Anything else, Eliza?" Yes, I wanted
to say to her, let Angela run the meeting; let me run meetings when I'm
holding the gavel--for she'd done nearly the same thing to me, many
times--student council's for the students, not for you ... old ... But I
managed to keep my anger back, and all I said was
"No," and walked out, wanting suddenly to call Annie, even though I
didn't know her very well yet and I was going to see her the next day
at the Cloisters anyway. Sally was sitting on the old-fashioned wooden
settle in the hall outside the Parlor, hunched over and crying on Ms.
Baxter's skinny chest. Ms. Baxter was dabbing at Sally's eyes with one
of the lace handkerchiefs she always carried in her sleeve, and
chirping, "There, there, Sally,
the Lord will forgive you, you know. Why, my dear child, He must see
already that you are truly sorry."

"But it's so terrible, Ms. Baxter," Sally moaned. "Jennifer's ears--oh,
Jennifer's poor, poor ears!" I had never seen Sally like this. "Hey,
Sal," I said as cheerfully as I could, sitting down on the other side of
her and touching her arm. "It's not terminal, she's going to get better.

You did try to be careful, after all. Come on, it'll be okay.

Jennifcr'll be fine." But Sally just burrowed deeper into Ms. Baxter's
front. Ms. Stevenson came out of the Parlor and beckoned to us to follow
her back in. She looked kind of grim, as if she were having trouble with
her temper again. I'd heard on television that when a jury takes a long
time it's a good sign for the person on trial, but when they make up
their minds quickly it's usually bad, and my mouth got raisiny again.

Mrs. Poindexter nodded to Angela when we came in, after looking at Ms.
Stevenson as if trying to tell her that she was letting Angela run the
meeting after all. Ms. Stevenson, if she noticed, didn't react. "Um,"
said Angela, looking down at her paper again. "Um--Sally--Liza--the council
has decided to suspend you both for one week."

"That's only three days," Mary Lou put in, "because of Thanksgiving."

"I did not," said Mrs. Poindexter, "see you raise your hand, Mary Lou.
Continue, Angela."

"Um--the suspensions will be removed from your records at the end of the
year if--if you don't do anything else. So colleges won't know about
it unless you break another rule."

"And?" prompted Mrs. Poindexter severely. "Oh," said Angela. "Do I--do
I say that, too, with Sally here and everything?"

"Sally," said Mrs. Poindexter, "is still a member of the student body."

"Well," said Angela, looking at me in a way that made my heart speed up
as if I were at the dentist's. "Liza, Mrs. Poindexter said that because
you're council president and--and ..."

"And because no council president in the history of this school has ever
broken the honor code--go on, Angela," Mrs. Poindexter said.

"There's--going to be a vote of confidence on the Monday after
Thanksgiving to see if the kids still want you to--to be council
president. But," she added hastily, "the fact that there was a vote of
confidence won't go on your record unless you don't get reelected."

"Meeting adjourned," said Mrs. Poindexter, picking up her papers and
leading the others out. Sally gave me a weak smile as she passed my
chair. Conn hung back for a minute. "The key," he said to me in a low
voice, bending down to where I was still sitting, "was when Angie said,
'Mrs. Poindexter said'--note 'said'--about the vote of confidence.
I hope you caught that, Liza, because it was her idea and she's the only
one for it. Ms. Stevenson got her to say the part about things not going
on records. We all thought you should stay in office, and I bet the rest
of the kids will, too. Heck, none of
us would've turned Sally in either, not for that. A couple of kids said
they might have tried harder to stop her, that was all, but I bet they
wouldn't even have done that. Liza, Poindexter's so worried about the
stupid fund-raising campaign, she can't even think straight." Conn
reached down and squeezed my shoulder. "Liza--I'm sure you'll win."

"Thanks, Conn," I managed to say. My voice was too shaky for me to say
anything else. But all I could think was, what if I don't win and it
does go on my record? For the first time in my life I began wondering if
I really was going to get into MIT after all. And what it would do to my
father, who's an engineer and had taught there, if I didn't. And what it
would do to me.

5

I told my parents about the suspension Friday
night while they were in the living room having a drink before dinner,
which is always a good time to tell them difficult things. My father was
furious. "You're an intelligent person," he thundered. "You should have
shown better judgment." My mother was sympathetic, which was worse.

"She's also an adolescent," she told my father angrily. "She can't be
expected to be perfect. And the school's coming down a lot harder on her
than on Sally. That's not fair." My mother's a quiet person, except
when she thinks something's unjust, or when she's defending me or Chad.
Or Dad, for that matter. Dad's terrific, and I love him a lot, but he
does expect people to be perfect, especially us, and especially me, his
fellow "intelligent person."

"It's fair, all right," Dad said into his martini. "Liza was in a
position of responsibility, just as Mrs. Poindexter said. She should
have known better. I wouldn't expect that little twit Sally Jarrell to
know how to think, let alone how to behave, but Liza ..." That's when I
got up and left the room. Chad thought the whole thing was funny. He
came out to the kitchen, where I'd gone, on the pretext of getting a
Coke, and found me leaning against the refrigerator, fuming. "Pretty
cool, Lize," he said, flapping one of his earlobes and wearing his
isn't-life-ridiculous look.
"Oh, shove it."

"Think she'd do my ears? One gold hoop; like a pirate?"

"She'll do your nose if you don't shut up," I snapped.

"Hey, come off
it." He pushed me aside and reached into the refrigerator for his Coke.
"I'd give anything to be suspended." He popped the ring into the can and
took a long swallow. "What are you going to do next week, anyway?
Three free days and then Thanksgiving vacation--wow!" He shook his head
and then brushed the hair out of his eyes. "They going to make you
study?" I hadn't thought of that and realized I'd better call school on
Monday to find out. "I'll probably run away to sea," I told Chad. Then,
thinking of the Cloisters and Annie, I added, "Or at least go to a lot
of museums." School seemed very far away the next day at the Cloisters
with Annie, even though at first we were the way we'd been on the phone--
not exactly tongue-tied, but not knowing what to say, either. The
Cloisters, which is a museum of medieval art and architecture, is in
Fort Tryon Park, so far uptown it's almost out of the city. It overlooks
the Hudson River like a medieval fortress, even though it's supposed to
look like a monastery and does, once you get inside. I was early so I
decided to walk from the subway instead of taking the bus that goes
partway into the park, but even so, Annie was there before me. As I
walked up, I saw her near the entrance, leaning against the building's
reddish-brown granite and looking off in the opposite direction. She
had on a long cotton skirt and a heavy red sweater; I remember thinking
the sweater made the skirt look out of place, as did the small backpack
strapped to her shoulders. Her hair tumbled freely down over the pack. I
stopped for a few seconds and just stood there watching her, but she
didn't notice me. So I went up to her and said, "Hi." She gave a little
jump, as if she'd been miles or years away in her thoughts. Then a
wonderful slow smile spread across her face and into her eyes, and I
knew she was back again. "Hi," she said. "You came."

"Of course I came," I said indignantly. "Why wouldn't I have?"

Annie shrugged. "I don't know. I wondered if I would. We're probably not
going to be able to think of a thing to say to each other." A bus pulled
up and hordes of students with sketchbooks, plus mothers and fathers
with reluctant children, had to go around us to get to the door. "All
week," Annie said, watching them, "I kept, um, remembering that guard
and the two little boys, didn't you?" I had to say that I hadn't, so I
told her about the ear-piercing incident to explain why. "Because of ear
piercing?" she said incredulously when I'd finished telling her the
story. "All that fuss?" I nodded, moving aside to let some more people
through. "I guess maybe it is a little harsh," I said, trying to explain
about the fund-raising campaign, "but ..."

"A little harsh!"
Annie almost shouted. "A little!" She shook her head and I guess she
realized we were both getting loud, because she looked around and
laughed, so I laughed, too, and then we both had to step back to let a
huge family pass. The last kid was a stuck-up-looking boy of about nine
with a fancy camera that had hundreds of dials and numbers. He looked
more like a small robot than a kid, even when he whirled around and
pointed his camera at Annie. Annie held out her big skirt like a
medieval damsel and dipped into a graceful curtsy; the kid snapped her
picture without even smiling. Then, when Annie straightened up into a
religious-looking pose that I've seen in a hundred medieval paintings,
he became a real kid for a second--he stuck his tongue out at her and ran
inside. "You're welcome," Annie called after him, sticking out her
tongue, too. "The public," she sighed dramatically, "is so ungrateful. I
do wish Father wouldn't insist that I pose for their silly portraits."
She stamped her foot delicately, the way the medieval damsel she was
obviously playing might have. "Oh, I'm so angry I could--I could spear a
Saracen!" Once again I found myself catching her mood, but more quickly
this time. I bowed as sweepingly as I could and said, "Madame, I shall
spear you a hundred Saracens if you bid me, and if you give me leave to
wear your favor." Annie smiled, out of character for a second, as if
thanking me for responding. Then she went back into her role and said,
"Shall we walk in the garden, sir knight, among the herbs and away from
these rude throngs, till my duties force me to return?" I bowed again.
It was funny, I wasn't nearly so self-conscious this time, even though
there were crowds of people around. Still being the knight, I offered
Annie my arm and we strolled inside, which is the only way to get to the
museum's lower level and leads to the herb garden. We paid our
"donation" and went downstairs and outside again, where we sat on a
stone bench in the garden and looked out over the Hudson River. "It just
seems ridiculous, Liza," Annie said after a few minutes, "to make such a
fuss about anything so silly." I knew immediately she meant the
ear-piercing business again. "In my school," she went on, sliding her
backpack off and turning to me, "kids get busted all the time for
assault and possession and things like that.

There are so many security people around, you have to remind yourself
it's school you're in, not jail. But at your school they get upset about
a couple of infected ears! I can't decide if it's wonderful that they
don't have anything more serious to worry about--or terrible." Annie
grinned and flipped back some of her hair, showing me a tiny pearl
earring in each ear. "I did mine myself," she said. "Two years ago. No
infection."

"Maybe you were lucky," I said, a little annoyed. "I wouldn't let Sally
pierce mine."

"That's just you, though. I can't imagine you with pierced ears,
anyway." She buried her face in a lavender bush that was growing in a
big stone pot next to the bench. "If you ever want it done," she said
into the bush, "I'll do it for you. Free."

I had an absurd desire to say, "Sure, any time," but that was
ridiculous. I knew I didn't have the slightest wish to have my ears
pierced. In fact, I'd always thought the