To All My Fans, With Love, From Sylvie. Ellen Conford

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СКАЧАТЬ turned the radio back on. Harry Belafonte was singing “Sylvie.”

      It was like a sign. I love that song. It’s just like it was written for me. Except some of the boys in school sing it to me and change the words, so they sing it: “Sylvie, Sylvie, I’m so hot and dry. Sylvie, Sylvie, can’t you hear, can’t you hear me callin’, Bring me little mm mm Sylvie, Bring me little mm mm now-ow . . .” Instead of “water,” they sing “mm mm” in a really dirty way.

      I try to ignore it and to just walk away with my head high to show them how juvenile I think they are. And they really are. They’re just juvenile babies. None of the boys in school are mature enough for me and it makes them mad because I won’t even look at them, so that’s how they get back at me.

      A lot of them try to act like James Dean and dress like him and let their cigarettes hang off their lips till you think they’re going to set fire to themselves. But it takes a lot more than a pair of jeans and a garrison belt to be James Dean. They just end up looking hoody, and some of them really are JDs, but the thing is, you know James Dean isn’t; you know that he’s just misunderstood, and on the inside he’s good and it just takes the right person to understand him and sympathize with him for the goodness to come out.

      These guys who imitate him, they don’t know how he suffers, they don’t understand how he really hurts inside. So they’ll never be James Dean because they don’t know what it feels like to hurt so much that you can hardly talk to people.

      Anyway, another interesting thing about that song, “Sylvie,” besides that it’s my name is that it’s the first song I ever heard with the word “damn” in it. I didn’t know you could say that on the radio, but it’s in the song, and they play it on the radio. And none of the rock-and-roll songs I like have any swear words in them, so I don’t understand why people are more upset by rock and roll than by “Sylvie.”

      Also, I think Harry Belafonte is beautiful. Not just handsome, but beautiful, and I never thought any man was beautiful before. He isn’t in too many magazines so I only have one picture of him, but I love to look at it and imagine him kissing me. Even if he is a Negro, I don’t care, it doesn’t make him any less beautiful, and when I hear him sing “Sylvie,” I imagine him holding me in his arms and singing the words softly right into my ear.

      The barbecue smells really began to get to me, so I got into a pair of capri pants and my striped boat-neck top and went downstairs.

      Uncle Ted was toasting marshmallows on the grill. “Well, well, how’s the patient?”

      “Sylvie, Sylvie!” the twins screamed, like they hadn’t seen me for a year. “Marshmallows! Daddy’s toasting marshmallows!”

      “Yes, I see.”

      “Are you feeling better?” Aunt Grace asked.

      “Not really. It’s just so hot up in my room.”

      “Sit down on the chaise longue,” she said. “It’s nice and cool down here now. Would you like to try some toast and tea?”

      “Well,” I said doubtfully, “at least I could try.” I really would have liked a hot dog, but a person with a sick stomach couldn’t ask for a hot dog. It was toast, or starve to death.

      “I’ll make it,” I said, as Aunt Grace started to get up from the redwood table.

      I went through the back door into the kitchen and made the tea and toast. I ate it there, where nobody could see me wolfing it down. I had four pieces of toast with chunks of Velveeta on them and two cups of tea.

      I went back outside, holding my stomach.

      “I don’t know if eating was such a good idea, Aunt Grace.”

      “Oh, dear. Maybe we’d better call Dr. Fitch if you’re still feeling this way tomorrow.” I could see Aunt Grace didn’t like that idea too much. Monday was canasta day. Well, I didn’t want the doctor either. I had to be just sick enough to stay home from school, but not sick enough to have Aunt Grace miss her game at Millie Reemer’s.

      “Are you going to throw up, Sylvie? Are you going to throw up?”

      “Stop it, Honey!” Aunt Grace said sharply.

      “I better go back to bed.”

      “Take the little fan from our room, Sylvie,” Uncle Ted called after me as I went inside. “That’ll stir the air around, anyway.”

      “Okay. Thanks.”

      The afternoon dragged on forever. I lay on my bed with some of my magazines, the fan whirring away on my desk, the radio playing the top twenty-five songs of the week.

      I began counting how many hours I had left to live in this house. Each hour that dragged by seemed longer than the year I had already been here.

      I don’t really know for sure why Aunt Grace and Uncle Ted took me in, especially because the way I got myself out of the O’Connors’ was by being as much trouble as possible without actually being a JD.

      Like I said, I knew the social worker wouldn’t believe me if I told the truth about Mr. O’Connor and what he was trying to do, so the only thing I could think of was to make the O’Connors want to get rid of me.

      I started not answering them when they talked to me. I didn’t do anything they told me to. I went out of the house and wouldn’t come back till all hours of the night. If I didn’t have a baby-sitting job I’d usually go to the movies and then just walk around till I was sure it was late enough for them to be plenty worried about me.

      I knew what I was doing was making Ernie and Georgie very nervous and upset, but I couldn’t help it. I had to get out of there. I was a nervous wreck myself, from having spent all those months practically running from Mr. O’Connor, and not always getting away. Somehow he always managed, no matter how cagey I thought I was being, to get his hands on me one way or another, a couple of times a week.

      When I started acting like a real “troubled teenager,” Mr. O’Connor got madder and madder.

      One night when I came in late from baby-sitting, Mr. O’Connor was dozing in front of the television. All the lights in the house were off. I closed the door real softly behind me, but just then the TV blared out the “Star-Spangled Banner” and Mr. O’Connor woke up and saw me.

      “This is a fine hour for you to come waltzing in,” he said, snapping on the floor lamp next to his chair.

      “How do you know what time it is?” I said. “You were asleep.”

      “Don’t be fresh with me, young lady, or I’ll teach you some manners with this.” He held up his fist.

      “You lay a hand on me,” I said, my voice all shaky, “and I’ll tell the social worker and you’ll never get any other kids at eighty bucks a month.”

      He dropped his fist to his side. I guess the thought of losing the money the county paid for the three of us made him think twice about hitting me.

      Then he got this real sly look on his face.

      “Why do you have to be that way, Sylvie?” he said. “Why do you always have to make СКАЧАТЬ