Stop That Girl by Elizabeth Mckenzie

be part of their family!”
    “All I’m saying is Mrs. Dogey seemed somewhat nice.”
    “She liked my cookies?” Mom said.
    “Yeah, I think she did.”
    “Okay, wait and see.
Wait and see.
”
    She’d say this whenever she was foisting something new on us. For example, because Kathy collected kangaroos, Mom had been convinced I should collect something. Detecting in me a slight attraction to owls, she pounced. Word got out. From then on I was receiving owl items whenever I was due for a gift.
    Though I complained and raged, owls were halfway decent. Rather handsome, with their thumb-shaped bodies and big eyes, they had more presence than most birds. The way an octopus is better than a fish. But not instead of books and records and clothes. And who wanted to be pegged as an “owl person”? At night from my bed I gazed up at the shelf that displayed my enlarging collection and felt something bordering on despair. I wondered why children were encouraged to amass large quantities of animal bric-a-brac. Was it supposed to keep us engaged in life, through the quest to find more? Give us some phony sense of accomplishment as our collections grew? Keep our wants pure?
    “You’ll appreciate them someday,” Mom said. “Wait and see.”
    “You know what?” I said. “Collecting stuff’s a drag.”
    “Ann, there’s nothing wrong with collecting things. Most girls do.”
    “I collect kangaroos,” Kathy said.
    “Oh, big wow, you’re so cool,” I said.
    “How pleasant you are,” Mom observed. “Wait until you go to college.”
    “Then what?”
    “You’ll miss us,” she said.
    Would I? When Mom finally escaped, her years at Vassar were
the time of her life.
I’d heard so much about it, it seemed like nothing else ever lived up to it, so much so it made me wonder if having
the time of your life
was even a good idea. She and her roommate would ride the train into New York; once, the night before such an outing, Mom dreamed a produce man was cursing and chasing them down the street. Next day, flitting around Greenwich Village, they knocked into a fruit stand and a produce man cursed and chased them down the street. They ducked into a subway, laughing and gasping for breath. She felt like her own person for the first time in her life. Not for long. What a thorn I must have been in her side. Imagine having a baby when you were still a kid, a colicky baby from what I’ve been told, a screamer all night long. No help from her parents, just harsh words and told-you-sos. A new job, finding all those babysitters, hard to keep track of it all.
    Nana was my favorite. She had her own grandchildren, but we paid her to spend time with me and act like a grandmother. On Friday nights we’d drive her home and watch her amble up the walk with her bag, open the door, and disappear inside.
    I wouldn’t miss them. I knew how to resist feeling that.

    The place they sent me that summer had sandstone-colored buildings and was as brown as a lion, all dry grass and windy oaks. My roommate, Hannah, was from Chico, the daughter of a surgeon, a party girl. She was bronzed by hours of poolside lounging, her perfect tan set off by the puka shells she wore at all times around her neck. She also had a plastic bag full of marijuana in her suitcase as big as a submarine sandwich. “Like to get stoned?” she asked me, our first day there.
    “Never really have,” I admitted.
    “Oh, man, you’re in for a treat. Let’s roll up a doob right now.”
    “Yeah, sure,” I said. “Might as well try it.”
    Listening to “Miracles” on Hannah’s tape deck, I soon fell into a reverie about having sex with Archie. I tried to imagine all the things we’d never done—which included about everything. After a while I opened my eyes and saw Hannah organizing her string bikinis on her bed. It looked like she was spelling something with them. I changed into my suit, and off we went to sprawl beside the pool.
    Letters soon poured in from Mom.
    Please