Friends Out Of Necessity
When I was eight years old my family and I moved to a small town where the kids didn’t take kindly to strangers. On my first day of third grade Kimmy, a short blond-haired girl with an infallible attitude, took votes during recess to see if she should let me on the merry-go-round. She made sure everyone said no.
There was one kid in my class who was always in the background by herself, a pale red-headed girl named Bobbie Jo. I knew who she was, but because the other kids ignored her I thought it might help if I ignored her too. Besides, her skin was all freckled and clammy-looking, and everything she did was done jerkily, as though she was nervous or unsure of herself. So she sat reading in her corner of the playground, and I sat drawing in the sand in mine.
After a while our teacher noticed we were always alone and called both our mothers in for a conference. I remember waiting anxiously in the playground behind the school, sitting gloomily on the swings and kicking the dirt up into dust clouds. When my mother finally came out I ran up beside her and we walked the few blocks home in silence. When we got home she brought me into her bedroom where we could be alone and gravely turned to me.
“Jolie, I know things have been rough for you since we got here, but Bobbie Jo has been going through the same thing for a much longer time. Now, her mom and I have discussed this with your teacher, and we all agree that it would be best if you and Bobbie Jo became friends. Starting tomorrow, I want you to spend your recess time playing with Bobbie Jo instead of going off by yourself.”
It didn’t occur to me to do anything but grimly promise I would, so the next day when the kids poured out of the old brick school building at the shrill “brrringg” of the recess bell, I slowly walked to where Bobbie Jo sat at her desk. I didn’t know what to say or do, but when I looked in her eyes and saw the same fear and embarrassment that I was feeling, I knew that her mom had talked to her too, and that everything was going to be okay. She stood up giggling nervously, put her right arm behind her back to firmly grasp her left elbow, and said in a weak, squeaky voice, “Wanna go play on the teeter-totter?”
Thus began one of the most memorable friendships I have ever experienced. The school year flew by as we spent all our recesses inventing new games, drawing houses in the sand, and parading around the playground with our arms linked. Bobbie Jo, with her feminine dresses and dramatic ways, and I with my dusty jeans and realistic attitude, made an unusual pair. We were two very different people, but when we got together we always had fun.
When summer finally arrived and school let out I was invited to spend the weekend at Bobbie Jo’s house, a small cottage buried deep in the woods. Bobbie Jo’s family was a lot like the Swiss Family Robinson, only her family had chosen to live self-dependently. While her two younger brothers collected eggs from the chicken coop, Bobbie Jo and I climbed up the wooded hill behind her house collecting the sap that had oozed down into metal buckets attached to the trees. Before supper we washed our hands and faces in a china basin set out on a table near the door, and after supper ate homemade ice cream for dessert. We played Yatzee at night by the light of oil lamps and in the morning had sap syrup on our pancakes. I came to know Bobbie Jo better that weekend than in the entire previous year.
The start of the fourth grade brought with it a boost in my popularity. I suddenly found myself the center of Kimmy’s attention and, as I had learned the year before, what Kimmy liked everybody liked. At first I told them I wouldn’t play with them unless Bobbie Jo played too, but Bobbie Jo, with her quiet ways, just didn’t fit in with such a rowdy bunch.
Gradually, Bobbie Jo stopped hanging around with us and went back to reading by herself. She knew she didn’t belong, and I guess deep down I had always had doubts about the way they had treated us before too, because one day during gym class I asked Kimmy about it. She put her arm around my shoulders as though she were comforting me and declared in her most superior voice, “We always treat everyone like that their first year here!”
I knew then that I could never be as ruthless as the other kids were, and shortly after that I stopped playing with Kimmy’s crowd and went back to Bobbie Jo. We never talked about it, but things just weren’t the same after that. We still played together, but the intimacy was gone. We were practically strangers.
That summer my parents decided to move to a bigger town. One afternoon, as I was packing my things to take to our new home, the phone rang. I ran to the living room to answer it. Bobbie Jo’s voice came through the receiver quiet and wavery.
“Hello, Jolie? This is Bobbie Jo. I was just playing around with the piano and I made up a song about you going away. Do you wanna hear it?”
I really wanted to get back to packing, but something in her voice reminded me of the closeness we once shared, so I said okay.
She didn’t know how to play the piano and she couldn’t hold a note, but as her song woefully floated across town through the telephone wires, I was reminded of the weekend I stayed at her house, the weekend I got to know the real Bobbie Jo for the first time.
When she finished her song we said goodbye for the last time. I hung up the phone with a sigh and, turning back to my packing, wondered apprehensively about the town that would be my new home, the girl who would be my new best friend.
