THE BLONDES

by Eva Eliav

We called them the blondes.  They clustered together, confident and graceful, buttercup heads bobbing.

Those were the days when teenage girls were simply aspiring, less finished versions of their mothers.  The blondes' mothers were worthy of emulation: wives of lawyers, doctors, professors, politicians.  They supported culture, behaved with perfect tact, and threw wonderful parties for good causes. Both mothers and daughters had gone to private schools.  When they ate their soup, they scooped it outwards. 

Though their surfaces were flawless, the blondes weren’t airheads.  Nicky painted.  Babs was a pianist.  Cindy invariably aced Latin exams.

Poor Cindy.  She was refined, more intelligent than the others, but she was challenged.  She had an enormous bust.  In those times, decent girls with large busts kept them covered.  Cindy wore roomy white blouses, buttoned high, and sober pleated skirts in the family tartan.  She made sure everyone knew she planned to study languages at Vassar.

We were all on a trip together, a tour of Spain.  I wasn’t a friend of the blondes.  I was small and dark and plump.  My marks were good, but not spectacular enough to compensate for my lack of beauty and private school credentials.  My curls sprang in all the wrong directions, and when I had my ears pierced, a fad that year, one stud stuck to the skin.  My ear was red and sore and looked like a small balloon. 

“Tough luck,” said Bobbie, wrinkling her delicate nose. She was the sweetest of the blondes.  Her own lobes had healed without a hitch. 

One night, near our hotel, I saw her in the arms of a dark-haired Spanish boy.  She swayed against him, limp as a cloth doll, her face pale in the lamplight.  A tiny pearl glistened beside each cheek.  Her open mouth looked moist and bottomless.  The boy swooped down and covered it with his own.  I’d always thought that lovers kissed with eyes shut, but Bobbie was watching as I scuttled past.

                                                                   *

“I model in my spare time,” Bobbie said.

We were sitting by the pool, a Spanish winter morning that smelled of oranges and sunlight. 

“Cool,” I murmured.

“Yeh, it’s fun.”

“Is the money good?”

Bobbie laughed.  “It’s mainly for my mother’s charities.  Sometimes I play the guitar if they ask me.”

Bobbie played very well.  On bus trips between cities, we sang folk songs.  Most people sang, that is.  I mouthed the words.  I couldn’t sing in a group, too self-conscious.  When I was small, my mother told me I sounded like a door that hadn’t been oiled.  The shame had lingered.

“You’re lucky you can play.”

Bobbie nodded.  We looked at the pool for a while.  Its bottom was tiled in turquoise, green, and silver.  A pool boy holding a net on a long stick skimmed the immaculate blue surface with lazy strokes. Every so often, he stole a glance at Bobbie.  Subtly, she shifted her body to give him a better view. 

“What does your Dad do?” I asked.

“He’s running for office.”

“Wow,” burst from my lips.  “That sounds exciting.”

Bobbie shrugged.  She leaned closer, about to speak.  Just then, Matthew came out, waving a camera. 

“Smile, gorgeous,” he said.

Bobbie parted her glossy lips and struck a pose.  Matthew joined us, and I seemed to disappear.

That night, we reached the port town of La Linea.  From there, we’d hop to Gibraltar the next day.  The hotel, the entire city, was a dive.  A burly man with greasy black hair unloaded our bags from the bus and shooed away the beggars, bony children who twisted between our legs like starving dogs. 

Four in a room, we huddled on one of the cots.  It was too cold to sleep.  We were fully dressed in thick sweaters and jeans, our coats piled on top of skimpy blankets. 

Oddly enough, I’d been put with three of the blondes.  But they had no special magic to conjure warmth. Babs began to cry.  “I wish Biff was here,” she whimpered, “God, I miss him.”  Biff was her boyfriend, an undesirable she’d been sent on the trip to forget.  “I’ve got a cure for cold and heartache,” Bobbie said.  She scrambled over to her bag and pulled out a bottle of whisky.  

I couldn’t bear the stuff, but the others cheered and drank.  Whisky dribbled on the covers and soon the room reeked of it.  “I hate my mother,” said Babs.  Her voice was bleak and unfamiliar in the darkness.  Cindy took the bottle.  “Screw mothers,” she hissed. “Sugar-coated bitches, all of them."  After a while, Bobbie lurched down the hall to the bathroom.  When she came back, she stumbled and fell sprawling.  Legs splayed, she floundered in the darkness.  “Help me,” she groaned, scrabbling at my arm.  Her long, musician's fingers were sticky with sweat.  I squeezed my eyes shut, pretending to sleep.  Babs tipped the bottle to her mouth, spattering whisky, and Cindy shrieked with laughter.

Eva Eliav grew up in Toronto, Canada and received a degree in English Language and Literature from the University of Toronto.  Since 1970, she has been living in Israel.  Her work has been published in a number of magazines both in Israel and abroad, including Room of One’s Own, Parchment, Voices (Israel) Poetry Anthology, ARC (Israel), Natural Bridge, Quality Women's Fiction, and the internet literary journal Apple Valley Review.  Her poems are due to appear in Stand in 2007.  She is presently working on new collections of poetry and prose. Eva Eliav is married and has a daughter.  Contact Eva.