To the Manna Born: The Life of Donna

Chapter 9 — Ruby Roundhouse

 By Christopher Leeson 

As soon as Donna got back to her room, she checked her phone. There was a message from Glory.

Costume fitting. My place, 5:00. Don’t eat dinner; there will be party food. Bring nothing. I have everything. Don’t worry about a costume, I’ll handle it. I’ll take you home at eleven.

Donna read it twice. She had known it was Halloween, the way you know about taxes: as a fact on a calendar. She had said yes to the party on Wednesday, in the hallway between classes, when Glory asked if she was coming and Donna’s mouth answered before the rest of her was consulted. She hadn’t been looking forward to any sort of crowd activity, but she had given her word, and she didn’t want Glory thinking her word was worth nothing.

Nonetheless, she had been worrying for three days about what sort of outfit Glory would find for her.

She typed okay and closed the phone.

She put the Victoria’s Secret bag on the shelf in her closet and changed out of her downtown clothes into her dungarees and a hoodie. Elisa wasn’t home yet, so she wrote a note, Going to a Halloween party at Glory’s. Back by 11:30, and left it on the kitchen table. Then she went out to the stop and took the bus to Glory’s neighborhood.

#

Glory’s house smelled of cinnamon and warm wax. Her parents, she said, were “at a thing,” as they generally were, and the thing was never specified. Glory was practically a latchkey kid. Donna wondered whether that bothered her, then shrugged it off. At least Glory had parents somewhere. That was more than Donna had.

Orange lights were strung along the porch rail, and a bowl of full-size candy bars sat on the hall table beside a card in Glory’s neat handwriting: Take one. Take two and face the consequences.

The costume lay across Glory’s bed like a patient waiting for surgery. It was hard to make sense of at first: boots, a belt, wrist wraps, a cropped top, and shorts. One thing she was sure of was that there wasn't enough of it to cover very much.

Glory came in from the hall.

“Whose costume is this?” Donna asked.

“Yours.”

“I was afraid of that. Is it Tomb Raider?”

“Close. It’s Ruby Roundhouse.”

“That’s no better. Crop tops and short shorts aren't my style! I’ll be gawked at all night.”

“Ruby is an outfit for a character who kicks people through walls,” Glory said. “Nobody pushes her around. She’s the best fighter on her team, and everybody learns to respect her.” She held up one of the boots. “You’re a kind of tomboy. Ruby’s the perfect role for you to play. And by the way, I have a holster and gun for you, too, if you want it. In the movies, Ruby doesn’t use a gun, but I'd bet she'd carry one if she needed to.”

“Yeah, I'll take it. I like the idea of packing. 

Donna contemplated her friend's dark gray robes lined with green and silver. A platinum wig slicked back from her face. A wooden-looking wand, and a tie in gray and green knotted with the precision of a professional strangler. "What's that outfit you're wearing?”

“Draconia Malfoy. She’s a Harry Potter sorceress. I especially like the Platinum wig. It’ll be fun being a blonde for once.”

“Fun isn’t the word I’d use for being blonde.”

“Then you’ll appreciate Ruby's auburn wig. Hurry up. It’s close to 7:00. People will start arriving soon.”

With Glory’s help, Donna brought the pieces together and started squeezing into them. There the costume was sparse, the top, the shorts, and the boots were all tight fits. And the accessories, mostly straps and buckles, took two people to figure out.

The wig went on last. Long and glossy, it had a weight and swing her own hair didn't. Glory adjusted it slightly, then stepped aside so Donna could face the full-length mirror.

A stranger looked back at her.

It wasn’t Langdon, and it wasn’t Donna. She had Donna’s face, but the girl looking out at her looked tough, in spite of being lightly built and pretty. 

“This is crazy. It shows off too much skin!”

"Your skin is beautiful."

“And the wig is itchy.”

“Wigs always itch at first. It’ll stop soon,” said Glory. "One more thing,” she added. “There’s dancing tonight. If a boy asks you, you should be ready.”

“Me dancing with boys? I don't know how!”

“Anybody can do a simple dance. A slow song plays, somebody leads, you follow.”

“I’d feel silly.”

“You’ll feel sillier if the whole room finds out you don’t know the first thing about dancing. Come on. Be a sport.”

The dance lesson took ten minutes. Glory gave each step a number, counted under her breath, and steered Donna across the rug. By the end, her feet had more or less understood what they were supposed to do.

Glory led her downstairs, where a good many guests had already arrived and filled the living room with a treasure chest of Halloween identities. Mia was Wonder Woman, with a tiara and a lasso of gold rope. Kaylee was a vampire whose cape kept catching on furniture. A Mantra attracting a lot of attention. There was also a pair of Mario Brothers, a girl in a flapper dress, and a boy in a gorilla suit. Mike and Jake had shown up and were setting up their equipment at one end of the room. They wore matching skeleton shirts.

“What do you think when you look out over the room?” Glory asked.

Donna shrugged. “It’s an ill-assorted pack. Cowboys and Martians drinking together.”

“Most people have forgotten what a Halloween party really is.”

“Besides foolery?”

“Don’t you see? We’re dressed as people from many times and places. We represent centuries of ghosts who have all been raised from the grave by the dark magic of Halloween to revel together.”

“Is that important to know?”

“Some people just enjoy knowing things.”

“Those are the people they call nerds.”

“As you say. But I’m the hostess, and I have a duty to greet people and tell them what to expect. I'll be back soon.”

Glory stepped away, and Donna stood alone. Being isolated in a crowd made her uncomfortable, so she drifted along the wall, wanting to avoid notice. Judging from their size and the sound of their voices, most of the kids around her were juniors and seniors. Donna was enrolled as a junior, though Langdon had been eighteen and a senior. But she looked young for her age, and so Elisa had claimed she was a year younger than she was. Donna hadn’t liked the idea, but preparing for graduation would have been a hassle with so many other problems on her mind. And, besides, she had no plans and nowhere else she wanted to be, so she hadn’t fought against the idea.

Abruptly, Kaylee and Mia caught up with her.

“Oh my gosh,” Kaylee said, circling. “The boots. Those look like the real thing. You're awfully cute, miss.”

“Who are you under your disguise?” Mia asked.

“Donna,” Donna said reluctantly, which earned her delighted shrieks.

“Coming as Ruby Roundhouse is so imaginative,” Kaylee said.

By then, the living room had warmed with the body heat of the crowd, and the air was thick with pizza grease, candy sugar, and cinnamon-candle smoke. Melted wax hung in it too, and candy wrappers rustled every time anyone reached into the bowl.

When the band’s amp began to crackle, Mike swore and the music stopped. Donna looked across the room and saw a slight, dark-haired boy in a gray jumpsuit with a proton pack strapped to his back. He knelt beside the amp and started working on it with a screwdriver. Within a minute, the crackle was gone. Mike nodded approvingly and muttered his thanks.

The ghost-buster was Neil Kowalski from Auto Class.

“I didn’t think Neil was the party type,” Donna whispered to Glory, who had materialized at her shoulder.

“I invited almost everybody from auto shop. Lucky for the amp that I did.” Glory eyed her companion's face closely. “Are you getting along all right? Pretty soon, the party fun will start and you’ll feel more involved. But a hostess’s work is never done. I have go back to the pizza in the microwave.”

At Glory's retreat, Donna scanned and crowd and picked out Neil again. He glanced her way but gave no sign of recognition. She gave a sigh. It was a relief to wear a disguise in public. It also felt a little funny to be walking among acquaintances and yet be regarded as a stranger.

When Glory came back from the kitchen, she clapped her hands and announced the first party game: a mummy-wrapping race. There would be teams of four and one member would be wrapped from head to toe in toilet paper while the other three carried out the operation while racing the clock. Donna was drafted onto a group with Kaylee, Priya, and the gorilla. At the outset, she intended to hang back and watch the gorilla and Kaylee to all the work of wrapping Priya, but her team started out in such hapless confusion that it made something old and fierce stirred in her chest.

“Not like that,” she heard herself shout. “Spiral it! You have to wrap in a spiral!”

She dropped to carpet on her knees and yelled instructions as if someone had elected her captain. Her boots were pinching every time she shifted her weight, while he head movements made the wig slide toward one ear or the other. She ignored the white paper dust floating in the lamplight and tickling her nose while she redid the manner of rapping, tearing it the perforations wherever necessary.

The team's effort beat the clock by six seconds. Kaylee ran up lifted Donna to her feet in a hug. The mummy-wrapped Priya exclaimed, "We did it!" The gorilla, silent to the end, held up a paw for a high five. Donna was breathing hard, laughing. She straightened her wig crooked, and drew her toy gun, shouting, “Yahoo! We’re the best!”

The doorbell rang at half past eight.

A ragged chorus outside chanted “Trick or treat!” from the porch, and Glory glided to the door. A gust of cold October air rolled in, smelling of dead leaves and wood smoke. The draft made the candle flames lean and flicker. Draconia’s wand lifted. “I hereby summon the demonic horde from the outer darkness!” she announced to the room.

A dozen senior high boys now piled in off the porch wearing many different costumes, all clutching pillowcases, and all trying to look as though they weren’t too old for this kid play. Under the orange lights, Donna picked out a hockey-masked psycho killer, a pirate with a patched eye, a Frankenstein’s monster with a foam forehead, and someone was wearing a Hulk mask pushed up to the top of his head.

“Trick or treat!” the pirate called out.

“Treats have to be earned,” Glory proclaimed in a drawl that hummed with authority. “Give us a trick, or become judges in the costume contest. Preferably both. But don’t do anything that damages my folks' property.”

There was a mixed reaction, and then the newcomers started performing tricks. A monster juggled three oranges and dropped two. The pirate sang "Blow the Man Down" badly and was cheered for his courage. The visitors were spreading through the room, a little rambunctious, a little loud, while the the other guests rearranged themselves around them.

Donna drew her share of attention. Most of it was expressed as admiration for her costume. But some of the boys were from her auto-shop class, which made her more uncomfortable to be seen this way. “Where did you find boots like that?” asked one. “The wrist wraps are perfect,” said another.

When boy in the hockey mask pointed his phone at her, Glory waved her wand in front of the lens. “House rule. No photographs of the guests without permission,” she said in so smooth a way that the boy apologized.

But Donna wasn't used to be admired for her physical appearance and she didn't know how to deal with it. Her arms crossed over the wrist wraps, then uncrossed in nervousness. Under the warm wig, her scalp had gone damp. Her pulse was pounding in her ears, almost loud enough to be overheard. She looked down at her boots, which kept pinching her toes.

But nobody got too far out of line. It was the volume of it that put her out of sorts, all those faces turned her way. She was getting looks like she had never gotten from boys before.

Donna straightened her wig again, excused herself, and retreated through the crowd. She came out near the front door just as the last of the trick-or-treaters were coming in. One of them caught her eye. He was worth a second look. The room got a little quieter around him.
 

The tall fellow wasn't carrying a pillowcase for candy. He wore a sharply-tailored black tuxedo with a white shirt, a bow tie, and a Union Jack pocket square folded to a point. His hair was immaculately combed. He seemed to be in command of the spot he occupied, straightening his cuffs and surveying the room. He said in a theatrical British accent, “I’m usually called Tanner. Tanner Brooks. But tonight I go under the name of James Bond.”

Someone snickered. “Hello, Mr. Bond. Did you bring your license tonight?”

The snicker set everyone nearby laughing. Tanner laughed along with it, head thrown back, perfectly delighted with himself.

Donna watched his mannerisms. He could be laughed at without wanting to throw punches. He just seemed to join in the fun.

This Tanner guy was handsome, she thought.
 

Then she blinked in startlement. Had she really thought that? Langdon had always been able to tell a good-looking guy from an ugly one, but he had been indifferent to male attractiveness. The sensation that was brushing Donna like butterfly wings had a warm edge to it. It conveyed a sense of wanting. Incongruously, it was like the feeling Langdon got when looking at a girl who was dressed to be sexy hot.

Donna didn’t like thinking that way in these circumstances. She tried to force it out of her mind.

“Dancing!” Glory shouted across the room. At her signal, the band boys swung into something slow and spooky, like they might play in the Adam's Family home. “Rules are simple!" explained Glory. "Boys choose. Any girl, one song. Girls may decline, if they don’t mind being outed as bad sports.”

The room sorted itself. Mia was offered a hand by the Frankenstein’s monster. Kaylee was claimed by the pirate. Donna pressed her back to the wall, hoping to be overlooked, but no one who had seen her Ruby Roundhouse outfit was likely to forget she was there.

“Excuse me,” someone said to her.

It was the Ghostbuster. Neil. He come up in front of her with his hands in the pockets of his jumpsuit, displaying a look of terrified determination. Kowalski had always struck Donna as one of the shy boys, but tonight he’d found enough nerve to cross the floor. Maybe his costume had enabled him.

“Would you like to dance?" he said. "I’m Neil.”

Her classmate still had no idea who she was. Dancing with a boy sounded crazy, but she didn’t want to be rude. She remembered how he’d helped her in auto shop. Before she had made any solid decision, she heard herself saying yes.

The boy took her acceptance with surprise, but only paused a moment before taking her hand. He led her out among the other dancers. But when it came down to the footwork, she realized he didn’t really know how to begin a dance. To help him out, Donna took his hand and put her left hand on his waist. Then she started counting in a whisper, one-two-three. They were awkward at first, but in about thirty seconds the couple was moving through a box step like the one Glory had taught Donna to do. Along the way, Neil stumbled, at which point she said in a low, impatient voice, “Left, Kowalski. Your other left.”

He froze.

“That voice,” he said. “Are you Donna?”

“Is that important?”

“Maybe not. But I’m glad to pair with someone I know.” He looked her over from wig to boots. “You’re taller now.”

“It’s the boot heels.”

They kept dancing, a little less tense than before, until the music stopped. Then they walked to the treat tables together.

“Your wrist wraps are really accurate,” he said.

“You must have seen the movie.”

“I’ve got the DVDs of both films. I liked your character so much that I couldn’t resist asking for a dance from Ruby Roundhouse.”

“That’s nice,” Donna said, unable to think of anything better.

The band struck up a different tune.

“Too bad the rules don’t allow two dances in a row,” he said.

Donna didn’t think that two dances would be a good idea. It might make things awkward the next time she and Neil shared the same class.

“I’ll see you in school,” she said.

“Right,” he said, drawing off.

Now Donna sensed the proximity of someone else.

“May I?” a male voice asked.

She looked back. Tanner was there with one hand extended, palm up. His smile was unhurried. She noticed how the Union Jack in his pocket caught the light.

Donna felt awkward. She had known Neil Kowalski was a good guy before they danced. but she didn’t know this bargain-basement James Bond, as good-looking as he was. But the chemistry around him was like a witch's brew. For no earthly reason she could name, she heard herself say, “Sure.”
Tanner's hand took her wrist and guided her back to the dance floor.

She quickly grasped that Tanner was the man in charge, and that he also knew how to dance. By following him, she her own dancing became easy, too. His motions told her feet what to do. She no longer needed to count. She didn’t have to steer. She just went where he guided her, and his guiding was so smooth that her feet instinctively knew what do to.

“Who are you supposed to be?” he asked.

“Ruby Roundhouse. Jumanji.”

“Ruby Roundhouse,” Tanner said, in the Bond voice. “Isn't that the jungle girl who fights with her feet”

“Jungle explorer,” Donna corrected him. “She only fights when provoked.”

He laughed. “I’ll have to be careful not to provoke you.” His easy laughter resonated somewhere deep in her chest.

When the song ended, Tanner walked her back to the tables. Instead of begging off and leaving, she stayed to listen while he talked, mostly about himself: his father’s boat, and his summer trip to London. He also talked about the Bond movies, saying that the whole franchise went to hell after Daniel Craig left the role. But Donna's attention was on her companion's long eyelashes, not the Bond actor. Over Tanner's shoulder, she saw Kaylee watching them, her eyebrows climbing halfway up her forehead.

Donna felt a stirring inside of herself. It was very like what Langdon would feel upon winning a fight, or accepting a dare.

Tanner never bothered asking her name, but persistently called her Ruby. In the strangeness of the moment, Donna thought it would be a mistake to correct him.

After the song ended, he bowed with a flourish. “Maybe later, again, Ruby?”

“Maybe,” Donna whispered, rules be damned.

He strolled away, but she stood where she was, trying to put a harness on the sensations still tingling inside herself..

#

A little before ten, Glory tapped her wand against the candy bowl and announced that trick-or-treat period of the party was over. The drop-in boys groaned and started to claim their. Then they filed outside in a chattering stream. Tanner was last to make his exit, saying good night to everyone in general, and letting the door closed behind him with a click.

Donna’s glance lingered on the door a moment longer than it needed to.

The official guests stayed however. Glory brought out a boombox, saying she had something suitably spooky to play. She pressed the “on” button and a narrator’s voice came thin and dry. The story was a version of "The Monkey's Paw," a story about an elderly couple, a withered paw, and three dark magic wishes that exacted a terrible price.

Donna listened with half an ear. Mostly she eavesdropped on the whispering going on at her left.

“Did you see who Tanner was with?” asked a girl.

“He danced with Ruby. What's with her tonight? She's a totally different person at school.”

“Tanner zeros in on a different girl at each party," spoke up Kaylee. "At he homecoming, it was Jenna.”

“And it was Amber on Columbus Day," added another. "He was all over her that night, but hasn’t looked at her once since then.”

“Tanner’s the stud type,” one of the boys volunteered. "Girls should stay away from him!"

But the girls weren't listening. “When he was dancing with me,” Mia said, “he kept looking back at Ruby. It made me want to stomp his feet! I was Wonder Woman. What kind of girl does he want? I was showing off more skin than almost anybody else in the house!”

Donna overheard that smugly. But she didn't want to think about Tanner. Instead, she tried concentrating on the audiobook. By now, the story had reached the part where the old man makes his first wish. At this point, the narrator’s voice dropped lower. The listener knew something bad was going to happen. As the story rolled out, the moral was clear. Unwise wishes will make a person's life worse, not better.

#

Glory drove Donna home a little before eleven. Both of them remained in costume. As with the chemise, Glory was letting Donna keep the outfit she’d been given. “I think you should take a little of Ruby Roundhouse home with you,” she had said. “She’s a good role model.”

Donna, being distracted, didn’t ask why she should need a role model.

The streets they passed were quiet and empty, many of the lighted ghosts and witches on people’s lawns already having been switched off against a backdrop of bare maple trees.

“Do you know the boy in the tuxedo?” Donna asked, trying to keep her tense sounding voice natural.

Glory maintained her eyes on the road. “Tanner Brooks? He’s a senior. His father owns half the car dealerships in town. Popular. Slick. Very good hair, don’t you think?”

“What’s he like?”

“Mostly, he likes pretty girls.”

“You know what I mean.”

“Why are you interested? Did you like him?”

“What if I did?”

“I don’t know. They say he goes with a lot of different girls. He even goes over to other schools to find new girls.”

Donna had nothing to say about that, and they drove the next couple of blocks in silence.

The living room light was on when Donna’s house soon came into view. Glory parked at the curb to let her out. “Bye,” she said before driving off.

#

Inside the house, Elisa was sitting on the couch with a book, reading glasses perched on her nose. Donna lingered in the foyer, wig still on, in full Ruby regalia. She wondered if Elisa would finally scold her for coming home looking so incredibly girlie and sexy. Anyone who heard the doctor's warning should know that her stepchild had been carrying on in a way that could ruin the rest of her life.

Elisa looked up and blinked. But she said only," Did you have fun?”

“It was a costume party.”

Elisa’s eyes explored the outfit with what seemed like real intensity. “I can see that. What kind of costume is that? Are you a rock climber?”

"I'm Ruby Roundhouse, the jungle explorer."

“All I can say is that your boots are wonderful," added Elisa. "Did you win the costume prize?”

“No. The Mantra won. Not even Wonder Woman could compete with a costume like hers. But my team won the mummy-wrapping contest.”

“Sounds good. Congratulations.”

“I’m going to bed,” Donna said.

“Goodnight, then,” replied Elisa, returning to her book.

Donna climb upstairs was a heavy tread. She felt dejected. She might as well give up on her experiment. If a costume this hot didn’t jar a reaction out of her guardian, nothing would. Elisa wasn't taking her role as a stepmother seriously? She was simply not going to stand up. She was not going to lay down the law. Probably nothing Donna could do, short of setting the house on fire, could get a rise out of her.

Once again, it felt like she was living in this house alone.

If that's how it is, fine, she thought. If nobody cares what happens to me, I just have to accept that I’m on my own. If I make a mistake, it’s nobody’s business but my own. No one in the world is going to shed a tear over me.

Donna paused in front of her bedroom mirror and couldn't resist its draw. She took another look at herself in costume. Wow! What a girl! she thought. She straightened the auburn wig and looked at those uncomfortable but eye-catching boots. Her ultra-tight hot pants were incredible! She shifted right while shifting her eyes to continue her visual feast. Then she shifted to see herself from the other side.

Standing there, looking, made Donna feel a kind of detachment. It dawned on her that she was seeing herself as a boy would see her.

As plenty of boys had seen her this night.

At first, she had been totally embarrassed. But the more attention she had received, the better she had felt. It seemed like the big shift had come when she was dancing with Tanner. Afterwards, the embarrassment became mixed with thrills. A strange chemistry had overtaken her tonight, and a weird feeling of satisfaction still lingered.

But she only understood one thing.

She had started to enjoy being looked at.

Being gawked at was still a little frightening, but it had also been like she was basking in a new light. She couldn't help thinking of a roller coaster. The ride was meant to be frightening, but it was a kind of fear that a person goes looking for. Such fear was the payoff that made the ride worth taking.

When one is on the roller coaster, he dearly wants off.

But when got off the roller coast, he soon wanted to go back again.

But what still bothered her was that most of her admirers had been boys. But somehow the fact that they were boys only added to the thrill. Why should that be?

Donna yawned and started to take off her costume, wig first, then the boots, the arm wraps, the accessories, the hot pants, and the top. Once she stood as nude as a centerfold, she pulled on her regular nightwear--the light jogging pants and t-shirt. Another glance at the mirror told her that Ruby Roundhouse was now looking damned dowdy. She didn't think she could draw many glances now.

Donna started thinking ahead to Monday, two days off. There was no longer any point in dressing to provoke Elisa. Elisa didn’t care about anything.

Damn but she was tired of nobody caring.

What did people want from a person?

How did people who were love become loved?

With a sigh, Donna took the earbuds out of their little box, and pushed them into her ears. Then she snapped off the lamp on the stand beside her bed. She needed to get the doctor's spiel again. The party had done something to mess with her mind and she was anxious to reinforce the Langdon side of her nature again.

The recording began its usual lecture about broad shoulders, a deep voice, and leaving girlhood behind.

Underneath the tracks of the CD, however, she was being brought along by life lessons she couldn’t audibly hear. Resonating in her skull was a quieter voice telling her comforting things. It spoke of enjoying the social system at school, of fitting in, of studying hard, of the pleasure of being admired by a crowd, and of how nice it was to be popular. And the sleep-teaching also reminded her how an attractive boy should send a shiver down her spine. The secret voice whispered all of these things into her mind patiently, confidently, and constantly.

Donna soon fell asleep.
 

The night’s lesson went on uninterrupted until the morning alarm clock rang.

 

 

TO BE CONTINUED IN CHAPTER 10