Gingerbread Read online

  We ate lunch at a diner and afterward we shared a piece of chocolate pie and then Sugar Pie read the tarot cards for me. First she had me shuffle her ancient deck of cards, and she told me to concentrate on a question, or a certain issue, to which I would like answers or guidance. Shrimp Shrimp Shrimp , I thought as I shuffled the deck, and separated the cards into three piles. I was glad the day with my two favorite people was turning out so much more pleasant than spending the day giving birth to a baby.

  Sugar placed her hands over my three piles of cards to feel which pile had the most energy rising from it. After choosing the middle pile, she proceeded to lay down three cards when suddenly her head popped up and her eyes flashed at me.

  "Seems like you got yourself into some deep trouble, Cyd Charisse," she said. Her eyes softened as she continued laying out the cards. It was like I could feel her heart reaching out to me in concern. When she finished laying down the cards, she squeezed my hand and said, "Little girl, is there anything you want to tell me about?"

  I smiled because it's not often that a girl as tall as me gets called "little," and it's not often that I smile. My dad Sid is the only other person who calls me "little girl." The nickname is our little joke. I am three inches taller than him.

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  When I didn't answer her question, Sugar said, "Well, what was on your mind when you shuffled the cards?"

  I said, "I want to know about my future with Shrimp and whether I will grow another bra size."

  She laughed and then said, "That's all?"

  Sometimes the need to let go of a secret can be overwhelming. I said, "Maybe if things had been different I might have been doing something very different today other than coming to Santa Cruz with you and Shrimp." Feeling like if just one person I cared about knew, then maybe it wouldn't hurt so much. I whispered, "Like having a baby."

  Sugar pointed at the Seven and Five of Swords cards and nodded her head, like she was doing the math from the cards and what I had just told her. "Of course," she whispered. "Betrayal." She was not all weepy and oh-let-me-hold-you-poor-baby. She knew what was on my mind. "You did the right thing," she said, and a massive tide of relief swept through me. "See that Five of Cups card?" she asked. "Notice how two cups are still standing upright? What you can learn from those cards is, maybe you've been hurt, but not all is lost."

  Little tiny tears formed in my eyes but I kept them back. "I didn't want to hurt it," I said, refusing to choke on the almost-tears. "I just wasn't ready."

  "You did the right thing, Cyd Charisse," Sugar Pie repeated. She laid down another card and pointed to the card with the knives staking through a heart. "I can see you didn't get much help from that sorry thing you used to call 'boyfriend.'"

  I shook my head. I didn't want to go there. It's funny to think that a year ago I was so totally obsessed with Justin,

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  and now I am grateful to be on the opposite end of the country from him. He still tries to call me. I asked Leila to please stop giving me his phone messages.

  Sugar said, "Cyd Charisse, I have never told anyone about this before, but remember that story I told you about my sister Honey running off with my man?"

  I nodded.

  "Well, the part of that story I leave out is that the same day I found out they were dead, I found out I was pregnant. Sounds like something out a soap opera, I know, but life is funny, baby, and that's no joke." She nodded solemnly.

  "What did you do?"

  "1 was eighteen years old, unmarried, no job, just lost my Honey and my honey. I did what you did. Only it wasn't legal then and it was in a back alley basement of the colored doctor. Most painful experience of my life." Sugar's beautiful cafe-au-lait-colored skin paled at the memory. I remembered the horrible cramping in my stomach after the procedure, which was performed in a safe and legal environment, so I could only imagine what Sugar must have experienced fifty years ago.

  'Are you ever sorry you did?" I asked. Because that's what haunts me, that later on, I will want to, and not be able to.

  "Never," Sugar said. I believed her, kinda. "If I hadn't done it, I never would have made my way to California. Got to New York, Paris, Chicago, all them places before coming here. Had me some adventures." Her coral lips had come back to color and she smiled. "You know, there was a time I thought the world was over for me. And I was but eighteen years old. Thought I had no life left to live. And I look at

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  these cards in front of me, and I see that's how you've been feeling. But the times in your life--good and bad, and they'll be lots of both--are still ahead of you. Now's the time for you to think about your future, making new friends, seeing new places. You might have been to hell and back, girl, but losing yourself in Shrimp and spending the rest of your time with this old lady is not all that's in the cards for you."

  Sugar laid down a new card. "The future," she said. "See the Fool there? He's innocent, fearless, about to go off the edge of a cliff. That card can tell you that you just don't know what's around the corner. Looks to me like some new people are coming into your life, and some old ones coming back in. Like you're going back to new-old places."

  "Huh?" I said. "Not boarding school!"

  "Maybe not boarding school. But definitely back to an old place. Here's the Chariot card. Things change quickly, sometimes even backward."

  Bor-ing. I asked Sugar, "Is Shrimp my soulmate? How come there's no Lovers card here?"

  "Maybe you're going to have many soulmates in your life," Sugar said. "Which would be the opposite of me. I had many loves but only one soulmate. Maybe you'll have many soulmates but only one true love. You did get the Ten of Pentacles card. That card can indicate someone you got a real soul connection with."

  "Shrimp!" I said.

  Sugar laughed. "Who said I was talking about Shrimp?"

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  Eight

  "Do you think Sugar was trying to mess with my mind?" I asked Shrimp later that night after we'd dropped Sugar back at the home.

  We were making out in the back seat of the bug, parked under dripping trees on a hill at Lands End which overlooks the Pacific Ocean and the Golden Gate Bridge. Shrimp sighed. This was about the sixth time I had asked him.

  He wriggled his hand out from under my shirt, sat up, and cinched the strings on his drawstring shorts, then leaned down to caress my cheek. "No, Cyd," he said, "I don't think Sugar was trying to mess with your mind. 1 think she was trying to tell you to make more friends besides me and her, and to be open to the possibility that we might not be together for all time."

  He said it so casually. I hoped Gingerbread had covered her ears. "You don't think we'll be together for all time?" I said. My voice was hurried and anxious, shocked. The thought of!

  The night was pitch black except for the stars twinkling through the VW bug's sunroof, but I could see his pupils dilating in fear of having to decide this huge thing right now. "I don't know," he said. "I never really thought about it. I dig you mucho. But I barely know what I'm going to paint tomorrow, or where I'll want to surf next weekend, much less who I'm going to be with for eternity. What do you think, that we'll be together for all time?"

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  "Now I don't," I said, and shoved his body off of mine. I was getting really aggravated. I adore Shrimp and maybe one day when I'm thirty or something I will want to marry him if I ever decide I believe in marriage, but that's forever away and right now it's not like I need to spend every waking second with him. I guess I just wanted to know that when he pictured his future, I was in it. And since he wouldn't make that proclamation, I announced, "Maybe the tarot cards were right. Maybe you're not my soulmate."

  Shrimp sighed again. "Or maybe you're making the tarot cards be right."

  "You don't believe in the tarot, do you?" I said.

  He did not even hesitate. "Nope," he said.

  "So you think Sugar is a liar?" I asked.

  "I didn't say that," he said. He took a deep breath, si
gnaling he was about to spout more than his usual minimal sentence comments. "I said I don't believe in those cards any more than I believe that fate is predetermined and we have no choice about it. I'm saying that if you decide that the tarot card says I am not your soulmate or your eternal whatever, then maybe now you're about to make it a self-fulfilling prophecy."

  "Mister Big Words!" I accused, then wished I had some automatic smacking device I could use on myself. I had just pulled a Nancy, who always gives Sid or me stupid names when we have said something totally smart and she can't think of anything smart to say back quickly. Which is how Sid often gets called "Mister All-Important Executive Man," and I become "Miss Sullen Teen Nightmare."

  '"Mister Big Words,'" Shrimp repeated, laughing, like I had just broken through to a whole new undiscovered level

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  of uncool. "Cyd Charisse, you are just delicious."

  He leaned down to kiss me but I was giggling, too. Fight forgotten. I reached my arms out to him and he snuggled in. We didn't do It. Just looked at the moon and stars through the sunroof as Shrimp whispered a rap song in my ear. Mister Big Words. Lover of interdimensional planetary combustolary wordiness bo-bo-birdiness. Cyd Charisse and Shrimp in the Land of Big Words, flying through multisyllabic iambic pentameter haiku why you juvenile court detention retention. Word .

  When he finished, I whispered back in his ear, "I love you."

  "Yeah," he mumbled in that sexy deep voice, "ditto." For a little guy, he sure could keep a girl warm.

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  Nine

  After Shrimp dropped me off at home, I went in through the back door. Sid and Nancy were talking in his study, drinking martinis. They must have had a really tiring day because normally Sid drinks only the martinis I make for him. When I was younger, Sid used to pay me a dollar to make his martinis and pack the tip of his cigar before he had his evening smoke. Sid says I am his perfect creation, that only I make the perfect martini.

  Nancy was saying to Sid, "Well, at least she's not dating a drug dealer or turning up pregnant. I guess we should be grateful for that."

  I came this close to letting out a gigantic "HAH!" from the other side of the sliding mahogany study door.

  "Nancy," Sid said. A warm feeling of comfort and safety came over me, which I realized was caused by the smell of Sid's cigar. "Relax. I think the recovering little hellion's bad times are behind her. Frankly, I don't see why you're so concerned about that boy . Seems like since they've been together, she's managed not to be arrested for shoplifting or get kicked out of school. He's a good enough kid. Did you know he's going to work part-time at the Java the Hut store at Ocean Beach? Good thing for a young person, holding a job."

  "She spends all her time with him!" Nancy shrieked. "We don't know anything about his family! At least that Justin boy, we knew of his family."

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  "If you ask me, Justin was Cyd Charisse's trouble, not this Shrimp fellow." The dirty little secret in our family is that Sid-dad loves all his children, but I am his pet. He always defends me to Nancy. Drives her nuts.

  "How do you know so much about that boy , Mister Sudden Empathy?"

  "Maybe if you spent some time actually talking to him instead of scowling at his hair or his clothes or his way of mumbling, you'd get to know him, too. Kids are like dogs, Nancy. They know who their friends are."

  "But..." Nancy groaned.

  "Enough!" Sid said. This Cyd silently thanked him and went upstairs to her room. Wowsa, he had really stood up for Shrimp. I know for a fact that Sid shudders in horror every time he witnesses Shrimp's spiked platinum hair and sharktooth necklace. Probably Sid Just wanted to be contrary to Nancy. That's how they get along.

  When I got to my room, I flopped on my puke princess bed. A voice called out "Ouch!" I rolled over onto my stomach and skooched to the end of the bed to see what creature lay underneath.

  "That bounce hit my head!" my nine-year-old brother said.

  "So maybe some little pest shouldn't hide under there," I said.

  Josh crawled out from underneath my bed and did this bizarre lickety-split marathon run around my room, banging his fist into each corner as he passed it, like he was marking territory. This is not a boy who worries about my parents catching him awake after bedtime.

  "Come here, Hyper Boy," I said. I turned down my bed

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  sheets to make room for him. He did a divebomb into my bed as I pulled the next Narnia book out from my night-stand.

  "Do the voices! Do the voices!" he cried out. He is a sucker for my Asian.

  "Okay," I said, "but you have to be quiet."

  Josh smacked his hands over his lips, producing loud blubbering noises. I closed the book and started to put it away.

  "Okay okay okay okay okay okay okay," Josh rush-whispered. "I'll be extra super-duper quiet." He banged his head against my shoulder a few times before nestling it inside my hip. I flicked his head just for fun and then started to read.

  I am the only person for whom he will be quiet and calm at night. He drives Leila nuts and I think he is responsible for all the new gray hairs on Nancy's head that she has to have colored out, despite Nancy's claim that I am the root of her gray hair woes.

  "I like it when you put me to bed, Cyd Charisse," Josh whispered. I knew it took superhuman willpower for him not to shout. "I like it better when you are here instead of away at school."

  "Well, don't get too used to me," I said. "I haven't decided for sure that I am staying."

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  Ten

  I am thinking of moving my commune to Siberia. We will invite Wallace and his new girlfriend, Delia. She is from Alaska and probably knows everything about wild cold wilderness situations. Wallace and Delia could figure out how to make iced coffee igloos for us to live in. We'll call them "coffeegloos." Everybody might have a hard time sleeping because the coffeegloos' walls give off a caffeine-laced aura, so we could tell ghost stories. We'd listen to the wind whir and the coyotes howl and wear those cool fur hats with the flaps on the ears. Probably Wallace and Shrimp will have to learn to ice fish even though they're vegetarians. Survival is key. They will sit at the hole in the ice for hours and hours, not talking but most likely communicating telepathically. Delia and I will dance around the coffeegloos while they are gone and listen to our voices echo at the crests of the plains. I'm fairly sure no one else I know will want to visit my commune in Siberia, but that will give us a chance to get to know the natives better. They will teach us how to make borscht and tell us about the olden days, when Siberia housed Stalin's prison camps. We won't be scared.

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  Eleven

  I have figured out a brilliant plan to drive Nancy crazy. I have a summer job at Java the Hut. Nancy can't say anything about it because Sid thinks young people should have jobs, like he did when he was a kid and had to walk five miles to school in the snow every morning before he became a self-made gazillionaire. Sid thinks having a summer job will "straighten the little hellion out," even if it is working with that boy .

  Plus now I can thank Shrimp and Sugar not to call Cyd Charisse "spoiled" any more, thankyouverymuch.

  I guess I am lucky because I don't need to work for money. Actually, I don't really care about whether or not I have money. Sugar says that is a rich person's conceit, but I told her it's not my fault Sid is rich and Sugar agreed, that's true. Anyway, I am not a mall junkie kind of girl who needs to save money for hair clips and glitter makeup and boy band CDs. Excuse me while I go retch at that thought.

  So I try not to use the fact that I don't actually need the Java the Hut job as a reason to be rude to customers who complain that their coffee is not hot enough or who say "I asked for a latte and you gave me a cappuccino," huff, when I know for certain the word latte was uttered to me. I also try not to roll my eyes at customers who assume that because I am a teenager working for minimum wage and what barely counts as tips that they need to speak extra s
lowly to me. "Miss, could ... I... please ... have ... a ... single ...

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  blended ... decaf... capp ... with ... extra ... foam? Did you get that? Are you sure? Want to repeat it back to me?"

  If you have to have a job, Java the Hut is the place to be. Maybe because the coffeehouse is located all the way out in foggy and cold Ocean Beach, but everyone is pretty mellow. The place has old bean bags for chairs and sofas from the Salvation Army and ancient books on bookshelves which customers actually read and there is always the smell of saltwater mixing in with the coffee scent. Wallace has even installed a special rack for customers to park their surfboards. What is extra cool is that since the surf at Ocean Beach is so fierce, the surfers have to be extra strong to swim out. Which means Cyd Charisse gets to admire some customers with buff bods and tight pecs in wet suits all day long, uh-huh.

  Some establishments have signs saying "Shirt and shoes required." At Java the Hut, shirts and shoes are optional if you don't mind freezing in the Ocean Beach chill, but you can check your perkiness at the door. I mean, this is not a place where employees have to ask would you like to super size that order and then offer a pearly smile.

  Delia, who is the daytime assistant manager and Java's girlfriend, makes the days go by quickly. She is a dancer studying at San Francisco State. She stands on her toes when she is grinding coffee and grooves to a hip-hop beat as she clears tables. She always has funky music blaring at the store. She likes to shake her booty as she adds register receipts at the end of the day, singing, "Make my funk the P-Funk, I wants to get funked up."