Dyan Sheldon - The Crazy Things Girls Do for Love

Emboldened by her success with Mrs Costa (who finally coughs up one hundred dollars), Sicilee storms around the square, handing out her flyers and smiling her I-know-you-want-to-help-really smile, overcoming the most obdurate and irrational arguments with sincerity and common sense. We buy too much. We waste too much. We depend too much on resources that are running out and can’t be replaced. Sicilee is unflappable, unstoppable. “Less is more,” she explains. “If you buy a year’s worth of groceries, you don’t eat it all on the first day, do you? Yet that’s pretty much what we’ve done with our finite resources,” she says. “When half the world’s a desert and the other half’s under water, nobody’s going to care if they can send emails on their cell phone or not,” she warns. Realtors, lawyers, the jeweller, the toy store, the boutique, the deli, the market, the gift shop, the soda fountain, the candy store, the bike store, the hardware store and the sports store all put up a fight, but are defeated in the end by the rolling thunder of Sicilee’s perseverance and persuasion. She amazes herself with how much she knows. She puts the cheques in a green envelope and slips it into her cotton bag.

Sicilee is so involved in her task that it isn’t until she comes around to where she started that she looks up at the clock on the church tower again. How time flies when you’re saving the world. The only way she’d make lunch at the mall is if she’d left two hours ago.

It is then that her eyes fall on the sign by the door that leads to the basement of the church: St Paul’s Thrift Store. Sicilee’s had a successful morning. She’s in a good mood. And perhaps the merchants of Clifton Springs aren’t the only ones who have been moved by her arguments. Why not? she thinks. Swinging her bag over her shoulder, she strolls up the path and disappears inside without even bothering to check that no one’s watching her.

The Birch Grove Shopping Centre is part of the suburban sprawl that surrounds the historic village of Clifton Springs. Unlike the historic village itself, there is nothing either quaint or attractive about the shopping centre – and no grove of birch trees, either. It’s simply a row of box-like concrete buildings with the supermarket at one end and a small parking lot dotted with litter and weeds in front. There are similar – if not actually identical – shopping centres in every direction. What distinguishes Birch Grove (at least today) is the presence of Maya Baraberra outside the entrance to the supermarket, dressed in a skirt covered with dozens of plastic bottles and a jacket and hat made of plastic bags. Ah, the things a girl will do for love.

Following a pattern that is now well established, Alice refused to come with her. “Even if I wasn’t going to my gram’s for the weekend, I wouldn’t come,” Alice declared. “I’m not really good at exposing myself to ridicule.” She didn’t think Maya should go either. “It’s kind of, you know, uncool, begging for money,” said Alice. “Like those geeks who try to get you to sign petitions you know nobody’s ever going to read?” And it’s doubly uncool if you’re dressed as the town dump. “You know, I’ve seen guys dressed as rabbits and clowns and stuff like that,” said Alice, “but I’ve never seen anyone dressed like garbage before. Everybody’s going to laugh at you.” Alice didn’t understand why, if Maya had to beg, she couldn’t wear regular clothes to do it. “It’s not like you’re advertising anything,” Alice reasoned. “You’re just asking for money.” So are all those Santas at Christmas, argued Maya. Alice said that that was different because it’s seasonal. Maya, however, wouldn’t be persuaded. She wanted to make an impact. “You mean that you want to raise more money than Sicilee Kewe, so you can impress Cody,” said Alice.

Which, of course, is true. If it weren’t for Sicilee shooting her hand into the air as if it was on a spring and boasting about how easy it is to get people to donate when you’re doing it for such a good cause, right now Maya would be hanging out with her friends at Mojo’s, drinking coffee and listening to jazz like on any other Saturday afternoon. “It’s not just that,” lied Maya. “I actually am advertising something, you know. I’m advertising environmental ruin and the end of life as we know it if we don’t stop using so much plastic.” There won’t be any more Santas at Christmas then, because there won’t be any seasons. “I want to make people stand up and take notice.”

Well, she’s certainly doing that.

Maya began the day with the enthusiasm of a crusader. Let Sicilee go from store to store in the village like a double-glazing salesman. Maya would do something memorable and eye-catching. Something artistic. She wasn’t going to just ask for money like Sicilee, which any fool can do. Maya was going to make a statement; create an event. Maya would be living, breathing conceptual art. She wouldn’t be surprised if the town paper sent a photographer around and did a story on her: Local Girl Set to Save the World.

But that was at the beginning of the day, long before those schoolgirls strutted by shouting out, “OhmiGod, it’s the Incredible Bulk!” – their giggling sounding like a swarm of locusts. Before those younger schoolboys pulled off some of her bottles and lobbed them at her, shrieking with glee. And long before the droves of Saturday shoppers arrived – pretending not to see her and shoving their carts past her so quickly you’d think they were giving things away inside. Maya’s been standing at the entrance to the supermarket since it opened and by now is feeling less like an installation in the Museum of Modern Art than someone dressed as a chicken to advertise a new fast-food restaurant. She is uncomfortable and constricted. Every so often she walks a few feet to the left or to the right, but movement is difficult and she can only see straight in front of her, so she never goes too far. She gave no thought to the fact that she might need to go to the toilet. She gave no thought to the possibility that she might see someone she knows. The last thing she wants at this point in time is her picture splashed across the front of The Clifton Springs Observer.

Smiling gamely and holding out a bucket that says CSHS ENVIRONMENTAL CLUB – EARTH DAY FUND, Maya stares out at the rows of cars, the busy road beyond them and the small huddle of concrete buildings on the other side. It’s not much of a view and after looking at it for so long Maya’s mind has started meandering – the way minds do when you stare at a blank wall. A woman and a small child in a teddy-bear snowsuit wander by, and Maya’s mind turns not to Cody Lightfoot as it usually does, but to the unusual thought that this may be the first time a bear has been seen around here since long before the birch grove disappeared. Diverted, Maya’s mind ambles back to a history project they did in eighth grade. The bottles clacking and the bags rustling every time she shifts or someone runs by her, Maya tries to imagine ancient, deep forests; to see black bears fishing in the river, wolves moving in the shadows; to hear the cracking of twigs as deer step warily through the trees.

Blinking in the reflection of sunlight off the roofs of cars, Maya is failing miserably in this act of extreme imagination when the child in the teddy-bear snowsuit sees her.

“No, Mommy! No, Mommy!” he shrieks, leaning backwards and tugging on his mother’s hand. “It’s a monster! It’s a monster!”

The mother laughs, dragging him forward. “It’s not a monster, honey. It’s just a girl dressed up like a plastic bottle.”

Earlier – when she was full of optimism and hope and hadn’t yet been publicly humiliated – Maya would have laughed, too. By now she is lucky to be able to smile.

“I’m not really a plastic bottle,” she explains as the mother and child come nearer. “I represent the billions of plastic bags and bottles we throw out every year. And that’s just in America.”

The mother smiles back in a placating, stay-away-from-me way, tightening her grip on her son’s hand.

Hoping to make them stop or at least slow down, Maya talks faster and louder. “That’s bags and bottles that are produced squandering precious resources. Bags and bottles that are used once and then spend the next thousand years in landfill.” She carefully stretches out the arm that holds the collection bucket to block them. “Think of it! The only thing with a longer life span is depleted uranium!”

“I’m afraid we’re only visiting here,” says the mother, darting past her with the bear in tow.

“What? Visiting the planet?” Maya calls after them. “Where did you park the spaceship?”

While Maya is temporarily distracted, another small child comes up to her. This one signals her presence not by screaming hysterically but by pulling on Maya’s skirt.

Maya looks down.

The little girl is gazing at her earnestly and eating a candy bar, her mouth smudged with chocolate.

Maya’s stomach growls. Lunch is another thing she didn’t plan for.

“Yes?” Maya gives her a friendly, non-monster smile.

The little girl chews slowly, almost meditatively, as though deciding exactly how to word her question, which is obviously an important one. “How come you’re dressed like that?” she asks at last.

Maya has approached scores of people this morning to tell them about the Environmental Club and Earth Day celebration, but this is the first time anyone has approached her. Maya responds with enthusiasm. She explains about climate change, plastic bags and plastic bottles. She explains about the Earth Day celebration and all the fun things there are going to be there. “We’re even having a contest to see who can make the best sculpture out of junk,” she finishes. “Do you think you’d like to enter?”

The little girl shrugs. “I just wanted to know why you’re dressed like that,” she repeats. “You know, because you look so dumb.” She runs after her mother (a woman who doesn’t look as if she’s ever turned a light off in her life) and Maya turns back to the car park with a sigh.

How much longer should she stay here, gazing out at nothing? She looks into her bucket. At the rate she’s going, another week might not be long enough.

The project they did in the eighth grade was called Where I Live Now, and it was all about the animals that used to live in the area, before Jeroboam Clifton colonized it in the name of the English queen. Not just bears, wolves and deer, but muskrats, otter, possum, raccoon, skunk, beaver, wild ducks and turkey and the sky full of birds. And there was a Lenape village near the river – the same river that no one wanted to help Clemens clean last year. When the Lenape lived there, the river would have been filled with fish, not garbage. Maya sighs again. There would have been a lot more to see then – and a lot more to hear than traffic and stereos and car doors slamming and shopping carts rattling over the asphalt.

Suddenly something catches Maya’s eye that makes the Birch Grove Shopping Centre look a lot more interesting than it did a few minutes ago – though not in a good way. A fire-engine red people carrier has just turned into the far entrance.

Maya feels herself go as rigid as concrete. There is only one people carrier that colour in Clifton Springs and it belongs to Brion Tovar’s parents. She squints into the distance. Mr Tovar is driving and beside him is Brion. Behind Brion are Shelby, Jason and Finn. Gott im Himmel, what are they doing here? It’s Saturday afternoon. They’re supposed to be at Mojo’s, eating bagels. But for some reason, they aren’t. They’re cruising through the car park, searching for an empty space. And in less time than it takes to throw a potato chip wrapper into the gutter, they are going to find one and be jumping out of the car.

She can’t let them see her. Maya has weathered the teasing, ridicule and mockery with patience, if not actual good humour, but riding the pink and blue bike (now equipped with brakes) to school, always asking what’s in the soup or sauce or telling them what’s in that cookie or that body spray, and often being seen with her new friends Clemens and Waneeda are nothing next to this. If they see her dressed like this with her bucket, she’ll never live it down. Uninvited, Alice’s voice echoes through Maya’s head. It’s really uncool… Everybody’s going to laugh at you… Well, if they’re not laughing now, they will be very soon. And the hip image she’s worked so hard to build since the beginning of high school – and already dented – will never recover.